Simon Holloway posts a very interesting piece on why he doesn’t regard himself, or wish to be regarded by others as an atheist. In the process he makes some interesting observations about the narrative nature of “God” in the Tanakh.
I think, by the way, he is wrong in calling beliefs about a God or gods as the “cause of the universe” (not an exact quotation but a summary) scientific – precisely because they attempt to speak of one outside the universe and therefore outside the realms of science.
Indeed, there is no other way than story, poetry, myth and ritual to make reference to a deity outside the boundaries of scientific knowledge but within the boundaries of literary allusion. As far as I can see, Holloway wishes to maintain that the said deity exists only within the boundaries of the literature as a narrative character, but not in (what we may call) reality.
There are, of course, those Feuerbachian theologians from the non-realist school who would agree with him, but steadfastly refuse to use his terminology.
I think they are both mistaken followers of the Humpty-Dumpty approach: ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone,’ it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”
The thing is, however imprecise our language, and however inadequate our theology, we generally tend to take “God” to refer to a reality outside the boundaries of space and time, neither simply a narrative construct nor an illusion. If it disbelieves like a duck, and reads scripture like a duck, then the chances are it probably is a duck.
Or at least a rather badly broken egg. “I disbelieve in God but I’m not an atheist” Like Humpty, I’m afraid that may just be a rather bad yolk.
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I’m getting addicted to your bad puns. Keep it up!
It seems that what he really wants to say regarding the philosophical idea of god (or gods) existence is that he is agnostic about it, especially as he wants to say that he doesn’t believe one way or the other (because he doesn’t care).
I completely understand Simon Holloway’s point of view. After all, atheism is getting far too trendy nowadays. With all those buses and billboards, who would want to associate with such tawdriness?
He does not believe in the existence of the God of Tanakh, but is agnostic on the existence of cosmic divine principle, or some such. It is a so-called ‘positive agnosticism’ (to borrow Mark Vernon’s term), in that he might affirm an intuition of something greater yet also hold that speculation on it is inadequate. It seems this intuition is stimulated by reading Tanakh in Hebrew (I notice his banner image is Syriac though, yay!) and through the practice of Judaism. Then he find Dawkins hollow, and the tide carries him back to positive agnosticism. It makes sense here.
Good point
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