Doubting Giles
Giles Fraser is getting bored.
Perhaps it’s time for a new sort of conversation about religion. The old one is getting really very tired, as in some overblown boxing match between two bruisers who just won’t topple. They slug it out. Land huge blows. Declare victory. Only for the opponent to rise again (no resurrection reference intended) and for the whole sorry circus to wind itself up for a rematch.
Well could that be because one side refuses to admit that it’s making it up as it goes along? It does tend to keep futile brawls going when people refuse to admit that. I know it’s what I always do when I don’t have any evidence or argument – I just keep talking. I don’t mind; I don’t have to be anywhere else just at the moment.
For a more interesting discourse about religion would also have to involve the reclamation of agnosticism, of the ability simply to admit that one doesn’t know.
Well, that would be an idea, but surely Giles Fraser knows that many believers don’t do that, but on the contrary insist that they do know, because they have ‘faith’ (or because they read it in the [translated] Bible or the Koran). But those people (suprise surprise) aren’t Giles Fraser’s main prey.
For the Bible constantly refuses to give God a definite shape and size. That’s what the Hebrew Scriptures call idolatry and what Marxists, following on, came to call reification. It’s turning God into a golden calf. Kant was right when he argued in the Critique of Judgement that it is the second commandment, the refusal to allow human beings a fixed view of God, which offers the most significant protection against religious fanaticism.
All right, but then if that’s true, human beings who believe in this unfixed God have no basis on which to tell everyone else what to do – except the same human secular earthy basis that everyone else has.
And those who work out their faith in a certain doubt and confusion are, in fact, the true believers. Walking by faith and not by sight, as St Paul puts it.
Fine, but then you don’t get to tell us what to do. You have no special authority, or even special insight (except whatever insight comes from the sources that are naturally available to all humans – a habit of thinking about moral questions, for instance). You’re on the same footing as everyone else. So that spells an end to clerics appearing on panels as clerics, as if that gave them some sort of expertise or inside dope. You don’t get to do both. You don’t get to insist that ‘faith’ is all doubt and uncertainty, and still pretend you have special knowledge.
Some atheists are threatened by non-fundamentalist faith. They reckon it a liberal alibi for fundamentalism, offering a more superficially plausible account of God which serves only to shelter fanatics from the sort of criticism that would put them out of business…A contrasting approach would be to work on the assumption that the most effective way to attack bad religion is with an alliance that includes good religion.
Yes – I can see that, up to a point. (Up to a point because I wouldn’t want to join such an alliance on all issues; I would always want to reserve the right to ignore god and all its works on the grounds of extreme improbability and lack of corroborating evidence.) But there seems to be so little ‘good religion’ of the kind you describe around the place – religion that is genuinely doubting and uncertain. The endless valorization of ‘faith’ may be one reason for that dearth. At any rate the god-botherers who keep haranguing us incoherently about the virtues of faith don’t motivate me to make an alliance with them. Thanks for the invitation though.
Seems that Fraser’s position on the need for a “doubting faith” is somewhat similar to what I’ve been arguing in comments on the necessity of keeping in mind that one may be wrong – which fundamentalists by definition don’t have (if I recall, I argued that that was exactly the critical difference between the two camps in the long thread with Stewart).
I cannot but agree with you on telling other people what or what not to do, or indeed on religion proclaiming itself the sole authority on morality. Clerics may well have a thing or two to say on morality – but if they do so, they do as moral philosophers rather than clerics. Which needs to be made clear.
I also agree that any “alliance” would need to leave ample room for both sides to battle over the question of whether or not God exists.
Yeh. I was posting this at just about the time Stewart was suggesting another thread on this (overall) subject, coincidentally enough. Therefore god exists.
(Don’t mind me, just my little tease.)
“Clerics may well have a thing or two to say on morality – but if they do so, they do as moral philosophers rather than clerics. Which needs to be made clear.”
Just so. If they do, they have it on the kinds of grounds that we all have, grounds that are on principle open to anyone. I can see their claiming that they spend more time than most people thinking about such things – but that again is a secular claim (and there is the problem that their thinking may be and often is distorted precisely by the theist beliefs, which tend to confuse things rather than clarify them). They could make a sort of clinical claim: people come to us with their problems, we have experience. But, again: secular claim. And that claim doesn’t usually give therapists an automatic place on moral panels.
On that, I agree. Reacting to the same quote OB singled out, there is a bit of an “ought” and “is” issue going on here. What percentage of people one would identify as clerics claim no supernatural authority for what they have to say on morality? If it’s not a considerable majority, is there a lot of point talking about it as if it were otherwise? It is possibly relevant also to muse on how many of those who make no such claim get listened to as if they had.
That’s why it’s all so dang shifty. Shifty, shifty, shifty. I hate shifty. If for most people god really is just a big ol’ shrug – then why is that such a well-kept secret except at the moments when people want to say atheists are really fundamentalist believers themselves? Pure Shift-O-ville.
I keep running into this same argument when arguing with believers. It’s a cozy fallback position to which even the most crazed extremist will retreat until the coast is clear. The bottom line is that if you don’t know what you’re actually talking about, you shouldn’t be talking at all. To the extent that they do (and they are awfully talkative) they make claims of certitude. These brief flirtations with apophatic theology ignore the main point of that theology–you can’t make any claims about God, even the claim that God exists and is more than a warm fuzzy feeling in your gut. The very act of writing the article is self-contradictory. But they do go on…
It’s nice of Fraser to advocate ‘the ability simply to admit that one doesn’t know’, but he must think he knows certain things. After all, he is presumably a vicar because he endorses certain propositions traditionally associated with vicars and not because the pay is good or because he likes the clothes.
Well, it’s possible to believe certain things with varying degrees of certainty. And even with many things one *knows*, one keeps in mind that knowledge is fallible, perhaps it will all turn out differently. It’s not a zero-sum game between total certainty and agnosticism.
The 39 articles:
http://www.acl.asn.au/39articles.html
I can’t help but notice that Fraserian doubt is not apparent. I mean, either Christ did truly rise again from death, and took again his body, with flesh, bones, and all things appertaining to the perfection of Man’s nature; wherewith he ascended into Heaven, and there sitteth, until he return to judge all Men at the last day, or he didn’t.
Suppose I were a Christian. Which I am not, I am not sure whether the version of Christianity I would sympathize with exists – but let’s suppose. And that it is an article of faith for me that Christ rose on the third day, met with his disciples at Emmaüs, ascended, etc.
Rationally, I am well aware that the above would be a miracle. A singular breaking of the normal laws of nature undertaken by Divine Intervention. I am also aware that the evidence that this miracle actually occurred is pitifully little – surely, there we have second-hand and third-hand accounts, but the event itself is so singularly improbable (miracles having a probability of zero) that there is no ground on which a committed skeptic could be convinced that the event occurs.
Articles of faith are not expressions of certain knowledge: they are expressions of things that are *believed*. Belief manifests itself with varying degrees of conviction. Sometimes during the day I am more convinced of the philosophical and religious principles that I hold than other times. Sometimes I am not very convinced at all.
Then there’s faith (sorry OB!) which I would see as the *trust*, rather than the knowledge, that all will turn out to be allright, that the Deity believed in is a good Deity, that all our good things and bad things and failings and mistakes and despair will be looked at kindly by that Deity after we’re dead – even if our own consciousness does not survive. But faith in this sense and doubt go hand in hand. Were I certain or rationally convinced, I would have no need of faith.
I don’t think the picture above is that a-typical for religious people. Perhaps the more pronouncedly religious commenters could chime in. But the thought that I may be mistaken is always there. Sometimes further in the background than other times. But I never forget that I could be wrong.
And what the above does not contain, which is important, is any license to condemn those that think differently from me, blow myself up in subways, or burn heretics.
Maybe the word “subway” isn’t in there, but the articles speak of explicit things which are to believed, not limiting what shall be done to those who don’t, explicitly including all those parts of the Old Testament which prescribe stonings for those who don’t keep the Sabbath, etc. On the basis of the articles, a fundamentalist has it easy “proving” that the non-violent are worse than lax.
Unless “Ceremonies and Rites” include stonings, I suppose.
The following has been sent to the independent letters page – one word has been altered where it occurs, both singular and plural, to accomodate OB etc ….:
Giles Fraser, the vicar of Putney, (Article 27/11/2006) is either seriously deluded, or l****g.
He claims that religion is doubt, and is done from the pulpit.
In which case, why are religious leaders so certain as to what is right and wrong, and are only too eager to tell us so?
Whereas science is built on testing and experimentation, and is only 100% certain that some things are wrong. The scientists’ certainty that something is correct may be 99.999 … 9%, but it should never be 100. It is only too clear that he doesn’t have the faintest idea what he is talking about.
Since he is a Christian, we will concern ourselves with that collection of stories.
We can be certain that parthenogenesis is impossible in mammals, and that, even if it was, the result would be a female offspring.
We can be certain, so far, that no “god” is detectable, or has been detected. And that, therefore, there is no reason to believe in such a being’s existence.
If the vicar of Putney wishes to deal in certainties, perhaps he would be better employed putting down the deliberate public l**s of that group of fellow-christians who represent themselves as “Truth in Science”, and who are busy peddling deliberate, creationist l**s to children in British schools.
Mr Tingey
I’ve reached the end of the line with you. Either you stop going on about lying, or I will program this site so that every time you access it, you are redirected to a Christian site (and I can do that very easily).
Putting in asterisks doesn’t suffice.
I repeat: do not call people liars on here.
This reminds me of the liberal 1960s waffling of Bishop John Robinson (the book ‘Honest to God’ and so on), or the more recent silliness of Bishop John Shelby Spong, or even the pseudo-theological psychobabble of Paul Tillich (‘the God beyond God’…). Also, the drivel of Keith Ward in ‘Prospect’ a while back.
All of this theologically liberal ’embrace not knowing’ stuff is pure nonsense, and I find it somewhat embarassing. These poor theological types don’t seem to have the guts to admit that all this ‘God’ stuff is purely subjective and there is no fixed image of God precisely because there is no God, beyond the creation of the human imagination. They seem to me to be like adults who can’t accept that Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy are fictional.
Not at all. The reason for the validity of theological doubt is not that God as such is as fictional as Father Christmas or the Tooth Fairy – it’s that there is a *natural* openness to questions surrounding ultimate categories, such as God. Or existence as such (see the discussion on the meaning of Eagleton’s expression). Or the nature of the mind. These cannot be solved with any scientific certainty, and the very enterprise of trying to come up with a framework in which they all fit together can be doubted.
Of course, any such framework *is* a creation of the human imagination. Nonetheless, it does refer to something outside of our minds. It has a truth-value.
“We can be certain, so far, that no “god” is detectable, or has been detected. And that, therefore, there is no reason to believe in such a being’s existence.”
Is it worth mentioning one more time that this is simply wrong? ‘God’ is detectable to some people, they detect him/he/it often, or think they do (which is the best that most of us can do in most circs). There are many very gripping accounts of this by some brilliant people. It is true that ‘god’ is not scientifically detectable but that is beside the point.
John M:
“‘God’ is detectable to some people”. Quite a lot of people detect multiple gods in this very way. Some detect one god and others one goddess. There are people who become possessed by his spirit on Sunday and start to “speak in tongues” while most of the people who detect the very same god think they are deluded. Some people detect a god who permits polygamy while the god detected by others thinks this practice an abomination.
The literature of psychology is full of studies of how the mind makes mistakes of perception. Almost all believers diagree with most other believers about the nature of the deity of deities they detect. They believe the other believers to be mistaken. Atheists just go one step further and think they are all mistaken.
I have no problem granting that it’s a slippery subject. If that’s all it were, most of us probably wouldn’t be contributing to this forum. One of the reasons a good many of us do so, is because people acting in the name of religion are oppressing others and making claims that they represent divine authority. Even if Merlijn is 100% right that these are not different points on the same spectrum but completely separate phenomena, the perception of their being linked is being abused by those exploiting one being more generally acceptable than the other. There’s philosophy and there’s abuse of human rights and if the former can be used to justify the latter, we have a problem on our hands.
Yeah, what Mark and Bob and Chris said. The guy is the dang Vicar of Putney after all. He does have certain job requirements. When he gives communion (I assume he does give communion – but perhaps Putney is a very cool hip parish which doesn’t go in for that kind of thing?) does he tell each communicant that he doubts the wafer really does turn into a piece of Jesus? Maybe he does. Would any of you South London types like to drop in on his church next Sunday and find out?
St Mary’s in Putney seems very big on doubt. Except where it concerns children. Judging from the website, (http://www.allsaintsputney.co.uk/pages/children.html) they seem to be quite big on getting them young…
They’ve a quote up from Dr Rowan Williams which I hadn’t heard before: “Pull religion out of education and you have something less than human.” That’s a bit obnoxious: a child raised without religion will be ‘something less than human’? Ugh.
Well they have to keep flogging the product. If that requires calling secular education less than human, why, it’s a small price to pay.
Well, things such as handing out the wafer and saying: “This is the body of Christ” are not declarative claims. It’s part of ritual language, something else alltogether – the same going for prayer, affirmations and a lot of that is said in Church. The whole act of Communion is symbolic. My personal understanding is that this is generally understood to be the case in Protestantism and more liberal Catholicism.
(Of course, not all clerics understand this. I know of a case of a priest who wanted to ditch the whole wafer and wine thing, as drops of the blood of Christ always ended up being spilled and all those old toothless grannies were leaving crumbs of the body of Christ all over the floor)
No, it’s not something else altogether. That’s putting it too strongly. Historically, it wasn’t symbolic at all, it was quite quite literal, so that history at least hovers in the background of the ritual. It’s not possible to make a radical separation between declarative claims on the one hand and communion as pure symbolic ritual on the other.
Yeah, like when did ‘liberal Catholics’ ditch transubstantiation? If you’re *that* liberal, baby, surely you ain’t Catholic…
As vicar of Putney, Giles Fraser (ahem) knows that the wafer doesn’t turn into Jesus’ ear. Article XXVIII:
All the big religions have a huge complicated structure of dogma, myth, and superstition, which fine and ill-used minds have laboured long to make appear superficially self-consistent. But the basic questions are simple: (1) Were there one or more entities which used supernatural powers to start this universe? (2) Do they intervene in it now? (3) Is there any reliable way of knowing how they wish or require humans to behave?
Large parts of the answers are becoming clear too: (1) Maybe, maybe not. If there were, then either their supernatural powers were severely limited (as Keith Ward asserts), or they were indifferent to the continual suffering of many life forms on planets like this one, or they did not foresee that suffering. (2) Not so far as we can observe, although personal belief in the existence of such entitities can inspire humans to do wonderful or evil deeds. (3) No, and various humans’ trust in particular (and, incidentally, mutually contradictory) seers and books is a great source of evil.
To judge from some of his other writings, Giles Fraser would agree, more or less, with all that. I look forward to Merlijn sensitively and persuasively dissecting it!
Dave: the doctrine of transubstantiation has come under enough fire from within the Church that the Pope had to emphatically defend it in 1965, and it is currently opposed by the grassroots Catholic groups united in the “We are Church” movement. There seem to be plenty of liberal Catholics who want to ditch the whole idea (something which my own interactions with Catholics rather confirm).
Merlijn de Smit –
‘Of course, any such framework *is* a creation of the human imagination. Nonetheless, it does refer to something outside of our minds. It has a truth-value’.
Prove it. Something that is not demonstrably real has no truth-value.
‘With regard to theodicy, I am attracted to theologies involving a ‘suffering’ God – one who shares humanity’s (and all life’s) fate’.
But attraction to an *idea* has no bearing on its reality. I might be attracted to a God that subjugates women and hates homosexuals (I’m not), but being attracted to such an idea says nothing about its ontological reality.
‘If God is immanent in the universe, she is so in us as well, and our most basic, commonly shared norms would be a reliable enough guide to how she wants us to behave’.
Take a look at what were basic, commonly shared norms at various periods of biblical history (http://tinyurl.com/sakqk). Outside of the Bible, look at history in general: warfare, tribalism, sexism, homophobia… These are all common themes, and were once seen as normative; indeed, for many religious people today these still *are* normative values (look at radical Islam for example).
One other comment to Merlijn:
God = She?
If you’re trying to break away from traditional theistic categories, then why insist on gendered language?
Nah, I just like to refer to God as she when I’m in the mood to. God has been referred to with masculine pronouns often enough. I don’t insist on the usage any kind of language, but will allow myself some leeway.
Of course religious language does refer to something in the world. Which relates to a comment OB made earlier in the thread as well: I may have put the matter too strongly by regarding religious ritual and the usage of language in it *as* symbolic, but I believe this was an important reaction to people regarding it *as* declarative. It’s both. Most of what the Bible says is metaphoric – but still, the question of whether God or not exist is not one that can be divorced from it.
Knowledge-claims made within a religious framework are, in the end, true or not. Christ did or did not rise on the third day. God does or does not exist. These questions either have a truth-value, positive or negative – or they are meaningless. It may be that the question of whether God exists or not *is* meaningless – but at least to me, it is not obviously so, and if you want to argue it is, the burden of proof is upon you.
“But attraction to an *idea* has no bearing on its reality. I might be attracted to a God that subjugates women and hates homosexuals (I’m not), but being attracted to such an idea says nothing about its ontological reality.”
I’m well aware of that, of course. Hence said that I am attracted to the idea, not that the idea is true. Whether it is or not I cannot confidently say. There is a certain intellectual lack of rigor in arguing for a suffering God only on the basis of the problem of evil. But it would need to be made clear that a God hypothesis involving one is as a whole more coherent than the one of classical theism. Needless to say, I’m unable to do so at least for the next ten years or so.
Them Anglos might not like Transubstantiation, but they go a bundle on the Real Presence:
“Of the Lord’s Supper
The Supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another; but rather it is a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death: insomuch that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”
It’s a fine line, with heresy to either side…
More to the point, Fraser’s welcome to clad his Christianity in unfalsifiable doubt, but why’s it _Christianity_ that is so clad? If it’s all a metaphor for another metaphor, then why not put Odin, or Allah, or the Great Pumpkin, or the Holy FSM at the heart of it?
Well, that depends on the answers one would give to the central issues Nick raised, for one. And these answers may be clad in awareness of their own fallibility – but the questions are nonetheless substantial.
But aside from those – I think one’s preference for Christianity vs. other monotheistic religions *is* to a large extent based on that a lot of us have learned to think about religion in precisely Christian terms. There’s an enormous cultural heritage behind Christianity. I could imagine a version of, say, Asatru which would regard Odin or the Nordic pantheon as a metaphor for theologically substantially the same Deity I am considering – I don’t know, I don’t know much about Asatru. But as a religious movement, it is both marginal and very young. It simply lacks the breadth of human thought that has been transmitted in the Christian tradition.
Not to mention the weight of habit and social pressure and infant indoctrination.
Talking of Norse Mythology
and
christianity …..
Your links need some work, GT. I think you meant to link here and here.