Shake it
In this tv documentary Irshad Manji says – before going on to say in what ways she is critical of contemporary Islam – ‘My faith in God is unshakeable.’ It takes an effort to balk at that statement, precisely because she does go on to say in what ways she is critical of contemporary Islam, and because she gets a lot of threats for doing so; but all the same I do balk at it. I admire Manji, and I hope she succeeds, and I earnestly hope there are a lot of people like her; but all the same, I wish unshakeable faith were not considered a virtue, as (one can tell by the way she says it) Manji clearly does consider it.
There’s a real problem here, because I do get why people want to have unshakeable faith, and why they do think it’s a virtue, but in spite of that, I think that’s a bad way for humans to think, and that it ought not to be valorized.
We’re too fallible and limited to have unshakeable faith in anything. Anything that is doubtful enough to need faith to begin with, is therefore doubtful enough to be dangerous to have unshakeable faith in. It’s okay to have unshakeable confidence that if the stove burner is red hot, you really really really shouldn’t place the palm of your hand firmly on top of it; but you don’t need faith to know that: long experience of burns and pain and hot things are plenty. But faith is about things that aren’t like red hot stove burners, and that’s why it should be cautious and minimal rather than blind and maximal. It’s unfortunate that even generally sensible people think unshakeable faith is a good thing.
I firmly believe that whenever anyone introduces the nebulous term “god” into a discussion, the educated among the listeners/readers should insist that s/he define what it is that she means be the term. It really makes no sense for ostensibly intelligent people to assume that their listeners understand what they mean by the g-word.
Doug how can you define God? God defies definition,that is the reason types like us waste time trying to either prove or disprove his or her or its existance,and then when we have wasted time on that we waste more time on what sort of God he is!
Or her or it!
Richard, I think you’re onto something – but I’m not sure what I think you’re onto is what you think you’re onto.
(Pause. Re-read. Yup, it parses.)
Contrary to what you say (and as I’m sure you know), many people do have quite definite beliefs about God – demonstrably false, absurdly self-contradictory beliefs for the most part. Many people also have quite indefinite beliefs about God. But the problem with the latter is that IF God/s really are as inherently indefinable (vague, beyond our capacity to know, ineffable, etc.) as claimed, then there is a real problem with what it could possibly mean to BELIEVE anything about God/s, including its/their existence. In the ordinary sense of “believe,” to have a belief is to assert or otherwise cognitively assent to the truth of some claim or proposition. But a proposition which genuinely CANNOT be defined lacks propositional content – that is, it is quite literally MEANINGLESS.
So, when pressed, it always seems to turn out that the people pushing the vague, indefinable concepts of God are EITHER (1) disguising actually quite definable notions with all sorts of excess verbiage about how ineffable God is as a defense against criticism for their claims; OR (2) emitting sound and fury that quite literally signifies nothing, as must be the case with any undefined and undefinable concept “towards which we can only gesture” or whatever (see Polkinghorne, Whitehead, or whatever famous sophisticated theologians are usually cited in this sort of smokescreen).
To frame this notion as you do above is to imply that God does indeed exist, and is so beyond us that we cannot possibly understand him/her/it/they. Perhaps. But if we cannot possibly understand or define God, then we certainly cannot do things like believe in God, rely on God, or make any decisions about anything in life based on any notion we might have about God – which is exactly what religious people insist on doing.
The inability to define God isn’t a defense of faith – it’s part of what makes faith an offense.
If a word referring to something for which no evidence has ever been adduced has at least 100 current definitions, I think it’s safe to say that the word is essentially meaningless, and certainly confusing. In such a case, the person who wants to employ the word needs either to define it, or to choose an alternate word. So no using the g-word without a definition.
My point is made many words but still no definition.
And my point, which you seem to be evading, is where there is no definition, there can be no genuine belief. One cannot BELIEVE in an empty concept, a claim that doesn’t have any definable content.
But more: Words without any real meaning cannot be the basis for (or used in) other assertions, so even those who claim that “God” is undefinable and ineffable and all that guff always turn out to be relying on some pretty definite claims when they make actual use of the word “God” – and those claims generally don’t stand up to the slightest pressure of critical thinking.
Empty bullshit or concrete claims which no one can give any good reasons to accept – take your pick. If someone has a third choice to offer, by all means…
Also, Richard, types like us don’t waste time trying to prove or disprove its existence; we waste (or spend) time pointing out why there is no reason to believe it exists, which is a different thing. A very different thing.
Q.”Why do we call God our Father?
A.”We call God our Father because he gave us life and provided us with fatherly care”.
I, for one, am a whole lifetime – trying to comprehend this [old penny] Roman Catholic Cathechism Q/A…It sincerely baffles me.
I am of the impression that in order to love God one has to have had the love of a biological father/surrogate father.
Well, I’d say you’re right to be baffled, Marie-Therese. It’s baffling for a whole slew of reasons. Just for one – what fatherly care? The ‘care’ we know about comes from other humans if it comes from anywhere, so why should we love this ‘God’ character for it? And what about people who are in pain and unhappy? Are they supposed to hate God? No – but then that answer makes no sense.
Bafflement is the only proper response, it seems to me. None of it hangs together, none of it makes sense.
God does provide us with fatherly care. He gave us other humans, who only rarely murder us, the sea, which only rarely sweeps our villages away, terra firma, which only rarely shakes our dwellings down upon our heads, the vast beautiful sky which only rarely sends winds which destroy everything in their paths. You get the idea.
“If we are waiting for God…”
You might as well wait for Godot.
Marie-Therese:
Just wanted to point out a very poignant song that I think you could relate to, a very beautiful version of which appeared on a Chieftains album of 2002, The Wide World Over. The song is composed and sung by Joni Mitchell. It’s called “The Magdalene Laundries.” You might need a hanky the 1st time round. The whole album is excellent, with many other guest stars, such as Sinéád O´Connor, the Corrs and Van Morrison.
Good old Sam, there are recurrent exhibitions of his works in the National Library Dublin.
The name Godot also forms a pun on the Irish phrase “go deo “meaning “eternity.”
Another interpretation is that Godot is simply God.
The characters wait for god, receiving messages from a middle man (The church or bible), and God never comes.
Marie-Therese:
I once studied that play for a literature class, and wrote a paper on it (comparing it to Mamet’s “American Buffalo”). Never knew anything about that pun. Is “go deo” pronounced exactly like “Godot,” or is there some difference?
Sometimes fathers spank their children.
Sorry last post was Richard not Doug,
“Sometimes fathers spank their children.”
In this context, Richard, that is just fucking offensive and stupid. In fact, in just about any context that is just fucking stupid – it’s following Mary-Therese’s discussion of real abuse by nuns that makes it especially offensive.
You are now officially a troll. I’ll never defend you (or feed you) again.
G.as you well know my comment was for Doug not Marie.T. What happened to Marie is disgusting and I dont think her experience should be used to make cheap points!
Short version ….
“God” to whom/which we can only gesture ….
How about two fingers?
Or a quick mooning?
“And my point, which you seem to be evading, is where there is no definition, there can be no genuine belief. One cannot BELIEVE in an empty concept, a claim that doesn’t have any definable content.”
This isn’t right. There are many concepts that defy satisfactory definition but which we can still meaningfully discuss. I think Wittgenstein point out that ‘game’ is one of these. We all know what it means, or we seem to, but we can’t define it adequately so that our definition includes all the things that are games and excludes all the things that aren’t.
Joni Mitchell and David Mamet in the same thread. I’m impressed.
“My faith in God is unshakeable”
Yeah, in saying this – is not Irshad Manji justifying to all and sundry and herself, that her faith is unshakeable. It sounds to me like its on very rocky shaky ground.
0B
“And what about people who are in pain and unhappy?
If God is suposed to be their loving father, why then, like the fathers whom Richard mentioned, who spank their children, is he perpetually agonisingly so – neglecting them?
PERHAPS, LIKE THE LATTER, he TOO SHOULD BE HAD UP FOR ABUSE/NEGLECT.
“Are they supposed to hate God”
MAYBE IT IS THE OTHER WAY AROUND!
I read
“One never learns who Godot is or the nature of his business with Vladimir and Estragon. As a proper noun, the name “Godot” may derive from any number of French verbs, and Beckett stated it might be a derivative of godillot, which is French slang for “boot”. The title, in this interpretation, could be seen as suggesting that the characters are “waiting for the boot”.
Faith is what you should tentatively rely on when you need a position one way or another and you don’t have the time and/or ability to go through a reliable process of investigation.
Faith per se certainly isn’t a virtue; and unshakeable faith is more like epistemic vanity.
Hey Tom I really liked your line about faith in your comment at Stephen’s, so much so that I pasted it into my notes file in order to quote it somewhere later. Stick it in here why don’t you.
Oh well I will.
“And that’s what strong, undoubting faith is really in: not in this god or that one, but in oneself. The core article of such faith is that one’s own guess is right.”
Tom Freeman
Thanks, Marie-Therese. That certainly spells it out.
John M,
[quoting G’s “And my point, which you seem to be evading, is where there is no definition, there can be no genuine belief. One cannot BELIEVE in an empty concept, a claim that doesn’t have any definable content.”]
“This isn’t right. There are many concepts that defy satisfactory definition but which we can still meaningfully discuss.”
This isn’t right. G said “BELIEVE” – he even helpfully put it in caps to make it easier to find and notice – he didn’t say “meaningfully discuss” – so it’s no good saying it is not right to say one cannot believe because one can meaningfully discuss. Believing is not the same thing as meaningfully discussing.
You keep doing that – changing the terms apparently without even noticing you’re doing it. It’s annoying (yes I know I’ve said that before). By all means dispute, but dispute with what people actually say, not with your inaccurate translation of what they say. It’s not as if this is live conversation where words can’t be checked and we have to rely on memory: the words are written down: you can check them. Don’t be in such a rush to say ‘this isn’t right’ that you can’t be bothered to get the vocabulary right.
“Somebody who grows up in Italy to be a Catholic will interpret his belief in God by the following.
27 The desire for God is written in the human heart, because man is created by God and for God; and God never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in God will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for:
As Bono says: “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for”.
Besides, having just read in the article section of B&W about the abominable barbaric “stoning” act of the young Kurdish teenager, I FIND IT HARD TO BELIEVE that only in God will we find truth and happiness.
Thanks OB. I always like to be told where to stick it…
(BTW there’s an expanded version of my comment at Stephen’s via the link I posted above.)
John M: Yeah, what OB said.
But there’s more to it, as well. A word that merely lacks a completely specifying or satisfying definition is one thing: There is no definite number of hairs which constitutes “not bald” as opposed to “bald,” etc. But the hand-waving gibberish of the theologians and “more sophisticated believers” on the nature of God is more than merely unsatisfactory, it is truly empty. I posted a Google link in that original comment that leads to thousands and thousands of instances of this gibberish (as well as lots of irrelevant links, as usual). Any subject which consistently reduces people to literal hand-waving (or talk of hand-waving) is more than unsatisfactorily defined – it is so undefined as to be meaningless.
Theological gibber-jabber about God even uses (or invents) other words which mean next-to-nothing and are only used to describe God. For example, theologians use words such as transcendent and immanent, which mean nothing more than “that which goes beyond the world” and “that which is in the world.” But what do those phrases themselves really MEAN, in specific? Either God is nowhere – outside of space and time – which immediately induces headaches for anyone who actually thinks about the implications at all. Or God is everywhere, which is just another kind of headache-inducing nonsense. You can SAY this sort of thing. You can even talk about it at great length. (And Lord knows theologians do go on about it!) But none of that endless talk makes it any more coherent, or gives any proposition about the nature of God any real content to evaluate – or believe, or base further actions upon, etc.
But at least it’s sophisticated! If it weren’t sophisticated, it might be truly worthless, so thank god it’s sophisticated, eh.
“The desire for [sex] is written in the human heart, because man is created by [sex] and for [sex]; and [sex] never ceases to draw man to himself. Only in [sex] will he find the truth and happiness he never stops searching for.”
Now, that’s *much* truer.
Whereas for woman, apparently, heavy medication is required if men are going to have [sex] with anything other than themselves or sheep.
OUCH!
shriek
That was a reference to something in News, not a generalized comment. Sorry!
[collapses in mirth]
OB quoting Tom F.: “And that’s what strong, undoubting faith is really in: not in this god or that one, but in oneself. The core article of such faith is that one’s own guess is right.”
Ha. The next time a faith-head tries to tell me how important it is that I believe in “something greater than myself”, I’m going to use this on him.
“The desire for [sex] is written in the human heart”.
Gee, Doug, you are spot on!
Is that it? Godot, I must read up on it some more. In the meantime I do not mean to rub you up the wrong way, but would the “go deo” desire not be more thrilling with a more appropriate muscle to hand?
Hey! It’s been weeks (well, maybe days) since I had to drug a woman to get her to present her rump.
Marie-Therese: “Godot, I must read up on it some more. In the meantime I do not mean to rub you up the wrong way, but would the “go deo” desire not be more thrilling with a more appropriate muscle to hand?”
Not sure what that means, but it sounds pretty sexy.
Let’s not be sexist about these things. I’ll have you know that my wife encourages me to drink. She thinks I’m insufficiently amorous otherwise. The shameless hussy plies me with liquor in order to get me into bed. (We have separate bedrooms.)