Terms
Someone I don’t know commented on a Facebook thread about a New Yorker article that asks if God is transgender. The comment expresses a very familiar, conventional, and convenient religious idea, but it’s one that makes no sense, and is the source of endless horrors. It’s an idea that should be disputed more often than it is.
Is there no end to the arrogance of humanity? We are constantly making God on our own terms instead of His, which is really nothing more than deciding that we know best and really ought to be God.
There’s so much wrong with that claim. I could go on about it for hours. The most obvious item is that if we can’t use our own terms when it comes to “God” then what are we even talking about? Human terms are all humans have, so why are we talking about a “god” that has entirely different terms?
I asked it there and got an unenlightening reply:
Me: What else can we do? What other terms do we have access to?
Commenter X: His terms. A God we could fully comprehend or explain is too small to be true or be worshiped.
Uh huh. The standard answer, but so useless. In that case, what do we have to do with such a god at all? Why do we worship it? How do we know it merits worship? How do we know anything about it? What kind of ridiculous, bullying game is this in which we’re told to worship something we’re also told we can’t possibly understand?
So I said some of that:
But how can we? How can we do anything with terms that aren’t ours? What is it we’re worshiping if it’s radically separate from our terms?
Also, the problem with saying we mustn’t “make God on our own terms instead of His” is that that means we can’t second-guess any part of God-based morality. But what if it’s the wrong morality? How can we decide which morality to follow if we’re not allowed to “make God on our own terms instead of His”?
Commenter X: All great questions to ask. I believe the Bible is the Word of God, and I believe it answers a lot of those questions, but in order to understand it correctly, we need to know its context. We need to know about the dead sea scrolls, the talmud, the old covenant and the new. And most importantly, we need to believe in Jesus as Lord and pursue a relationship with Him. If we seek Him wholeheartedly, He is faithful to make Himself known.
The familiar cop-out.
But at that rate we can’t have any kind of secular morality at all, we just have to obey words from an old book, while arguing about which words and which book and which interpretation and yadda yadda.
It’s all a cheat. We have to be able to think critically about morality, using the only terms available to us, which are of course human terms. That is not arrogance – the real arrogance is pretending to know which god is the real one and that we have to obey it.
But the more you know about those things, the more it becomes obvious that the Bible was written by men. It changes. It contradicts itself. It says stupid things that violate the laws of science. It is incoherent in many places. It is boring and tedious in others. And when you read the various sources, such as the dead sea scrolls, and include the Nag Hammadi library, you begin to realize that there has never been a period in history where humans have been able to agree on what God is…that’s why so many book burnings, so many witch burnings, so many heresy hunters. It appears “God’s terms” are totally incomprehensible, and we’re better off trying to sort life things out for ourselves, using science, philosophy, art, and the humanities rather than ancient texts by people who had no idea that bacteria existed or that the earth moved around the sun.
I’ve seen that headline in the NYTimes rather than the New Yorker, but either way the headline by itself is enough to put me off. The whole concept of that-which-creates-the-whole-altogether (because that’s what they say god is, right?) having a gender to begin with, any gender, is so far down the anthropomorphizing hole it’s hilarious. Presumably then, since god created everything, rocks would have genders, and stars and the air. As I say, totally ludicrous. The first mistake was using “he.” Which I notice the-believer-on-FB does as a matter of course.
But of course. It’s the ultimate in arrogance not to assume that “God” is a he.
So when Commenter X speaks of “His terms,” they really mean “the various and often incompatible terms of different groups of people who lived near the Mediterranian thousands of years ago.”
X isn’t speaking of some incomprehensible deistic being, or a pantheistic Ultimate Understanding of the Universe which we can never reach. X advocates worshipping an all too human god, and “His terms,” means, “don’t let the genocides and the stonings and the rest of the abominable morality upset you, just Trust the god of the Bible (and the clerics who interpret His Word.)”
All-powerful being(s) of whatever gender (!) incapable of clearly communicating his/her/its/their wishes and meanings to us is/are not worthy of worship. A bit of a cop out to communicate with just a select few over however many centuries ago and leave the rest of humanity, for all future time, dependent upon “faith” alone. If humans can invent mail forwarding and voice mail, all-powerful beings have absolutely no excuse. As noted above, anyone who’s already drunk the Koolaid of the Torah, Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Koran, etc. has already fallen for a particular set of human “terms” and is no longer truly searching or arguing in good faith.
“So when Commenter X speaks of “His terms,” they really mean “the various and often incompatible terms of different groups of people who lived near the Mediterranian thousands of years ago.””
Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Just those Commenter X agrees with, obviously.
I think the Norwegian philosopher Peter Wessel Zapffe put it rather well, although the eloquence will no doubt be lost in my lousy translation:
Peter Wessel Zapffe
Actually I kind of like X’s original comment. I do find it convenient for dealing with religious people and I think your reaction at the top of this post would have been a better response to it than what you actually said to X. Indeed, ” if we can’t use our own terms when it comes to “God” then what are we even talking about? Human terms are all humans have, so why are we talking about a “god” that has entirely different terms?”. This seems to lead quickly to the conclusion that one should indeed stop talking about or trying to explain or interpret that god-thing or its “will” in human terms
If X truly believes that ” A God we could fully comprehend or explain is too small to be true or be worshiped.” then this invites the response “Then you shouldn’t try to explain it to me – or even point me to any document written in human language that purports to do so. In fact you should shut up about it right now because any attempt to talk about it is a denial of whatever makes it worthy of what you call worship.”
Its a dead end. ‘God’s terms’ are by definition unknowable. And no one who actually reads the Bible can keep a straight face claiming that any practical knowledge of those ‘terms’ can be derived thence.
613 commandments in Deuteronomy etc. Almost all of them categorically ignored by ‘true believers.’
Alan Cooper @ 8 – well yes, quite so, but I was (foolishly) hoping to get a real answer, so that’s why I limited myself to a couple of questions aimed at teasing out the contradictions.
Yes, the Socratic approach is powerful with someone looking for real engagement but can backfire with one who is just looking for a chance to preach some gospel. But I still would not “dispute” X’s original claim as I see it as not *self* contradictory but rather as something I can willingly accept and agree to – since it undermines any *further* attempt to tell me about that god thing.
Just like X, I too am constantly amazed at the arrogance of humanity – in that it produces so many religious leaders (and followers) who arrogantly claim to be doing something they have declared to be impossible, deciding that they know best and making some idea of “God” on their own terms.
Well, the thing about this particular claim is that there are many possible responses to it – so many that I can’t pick a preferred one. Joke but also true.
It’s what my essay in 50 Voices of Disbelief was about.
This blog needs a “like” button.