God In Question (16-2) Midterm Report

People often bring up whether everything should be objectively criticized and investigated. Should every thought, feeling and action be scrutinized by our analytical thought process to determine what we think the best course of action is? Certainly stoics like Seneca and Epictetus may have agreed but what about on the topic of religion and more specifically God? The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard had a different way of approaching this subject. He believed that when it came to God objective reasoning was not only wrong but contradictory to religious belief altogether. To Kierkegaard truth was subjective and religious faith lay at a personal level where only your own relationship with your truth is what matters. On the other hand would have been William Clifford, a strong supporter of logical inquiry and rational thought in all aspects of life. It was his belief that we have a moral obligation to not only ourselves but to humankind in general to never believe anything without sufficient evidence. It was his thought that when we do believe something without sufficient evidence it threatens our future objective reasoning skills and could undermine the progress of humanity because we, as humans, make decisions based on our beliefs and therefore we would be making decisions based on possibly false beliefs. But what about feelings: love, hate, fear? Should each be meticulously reasoned through? Is a human being even capable of fully reasoning though every emotion? It is, for the most part, seen that people, even logical ones, do not logically work through their feelings of love and fear. Especially love, an illogical and often unexplainable feeling of happiness and caring. Now obviously there are explainable things happening in the brain when one loves just like when one believes but I speak as to the very nature, conditions and objects of such love and belief. Why do some love those who abuse and hurt them? Why does one love a person they’ve only met once? There are many questions that are of this nature when it comes to our feelings but they are often left evaluated and we act on them anyway because they are strong and at least as far as love goes, it feels good so why question it? And so this leads me to the primary question I face: is it agreeable or proper to put one’s belief in God in the same category of an unchecked emotional phenomena such as love? And that being said is it contradictory for one who questions the belief in God as being illogical to also act on his feelings of love?

            Some, like Clifford believe that in every belief that is held without proper evidence there is a potential threat to the wellbeing of men everywhere In his work The Ethics of Belief, Clifford talks of the consequences that holding these false beliefs have of men, “The harm which is done by credulity in a man is not confined to the fostering of a credulous character in others, and consequent support of false beliefs. Habitual want of care about what I believe leads to habitual want of care in others about the truth of what is told to me. Men speak the truth to one another when each reveres the truth in his own mind and in the other’s mind; but how shall my friend revere the truth in my mind when I myself am careless about it, when I believe things because I want to believe them, and because they are comforting and pleasant?” Clifford makes a good point, if I simply believe things because I want to without any regard to the truth, how likely am I to respect the truth when dealing with others? If people do not respect the truth how likely are they to engage in honest exchanges and communication? This is a good principle to adopt but can this really be applied to everything? If one chooses to act on one’s feelings of love even though he has no good evidence to support those feelings does that really make him a credulous person? Will that spill over to all other areas of his life? And again, as far as God is concerned if one believes in God without evidence can one really say that they are ready to belief other things without evidence as well? Kierkegaard on the other hand believes that objective reasoning is not as sturdy and reliable as many seem to believe that it is. In Kierkegaard’s work, Truth Is Subjectivity he outlines a couple arguments against objective reasoning. In one of his arguments he argues that objective reasoning is never certain. In every instance he argues that the closest we can get to truly knowing anything is an approximation and when wagered with the eternal happiness that God represents an approximation is not worth the trade. And with eternal happiness being a possibility it is not possible to simply ride on an approximation. His second argument is that objective reasoning is never finished. He states that with every empirical inquiry and discovery there is always the possibility and near certainty that in the future it will need to be revised based on new discoveries and evidence. And based on the fact that religious faith requires total commitment, in his eyes, belief in God cannot be based on something that is in constant need of revision and which is so uncertain. In this light how reliable is objective reasoning when being compared to something like our feelings anyway? The world is flat, the earth is the center of the universe, and other various things all used to be fact and basing decisions on such things would have been considered logical at the time. So is objective reasoning always the best way to go?

            Coming back around to the topic of feelings it is easy to admit that we do not always, if rarely, address our emotions in a logical, reasonable way. And often times this is seen as normal and one would not call you crazy for it. For example, your best friend gets in a fight and needs your help. What do you do? Chances are you’d help your best friend even if you knew it was your best friend who started it. Another example, in some terrible situation you are forced to choose between the lives of your two children and the four of another family’s you don’t know and will never know. They will never know you so the risk of retaliation is not there. What would most people do? Save their two children and regretfully seal the fate of the unknown family’s four. Most people would not call you a terrible person for doing either one of these things because as a person we can understand and sympathize with each other. We know how we would feel in those situations and we know that we would probably do the same thing. Now if we take a second look at these examples and apply objective reasoning, overriding our emotions and feelings, we see a different story. Rationally it makes no sense to sacrifice four children for two (considering all extraneous variables are equal for the purposes of demonstration) and rationally looking at it, your friend was the one who started the fight (assumingly unjustly) so why should you assist him/her in that injustice? These examples are here to help demonstrate how we put emotions above rational thought sometimes and how even in doing this we are not considered necessarily irrational or out of line for doing so. Is it possible that rationality is not entirely based on objective reasoning but on a cultural or societal consensus also? Are there not things that we do that are technically irrational but because they are seen as normal in our culture they are not thought of as such?

            Coming full circle we’ll return to where God comes in in all of this. Many like to bring in objective reasoning when trying to prove God’s existence or try and claim that believing in God is illogical and not based in rational thought. Well, that’s actually correct. One of the core tenants of religious belief is, in itself, not knowing. That’s why one has to have faith. Without faith there is no religion. So the question is not whether religious believe is rational, because it’s not. The question is whether God needs to be objectively explained and rationally proven? Obviously, as just explained, a religious person would say no because faith requires not knowing and having faith is a core tenet of religion. And as Kierkegaard would say, religious faith requires objective improbability. But to get down a little deeper why, is it that people constantly assault religious belief with objective reasoning and the need for evidence? Can faith in God not be paralleled with the same emotions one feels for their own children? Logically thinking your own children are no more important than anyone else’s but you place more importance on them because of the way you feel and no one calls you crazy or asks for evidence that your children are more important because they feel the same way about their children. In this light can we not apply this to one’s belief in God? One’s faith in God is a powerful feeling that many would say is like a strong love. And many that would criticize this belief have a technically irrational love for their families. Is this hypocritical of them? Can they act on their love for their family, a technically irrational act, but then inquire on the evidence and rational thought behind one who believes in God? Being both irrational acts can you say that the belief in God requires evidence but that the love for your children does not?