Desupernaturalization: A Comment

Abstract

BENEATH all the preaching and exhorting, and almost lost in all the pose striking, a theme offered by Mr. Xenakis begs for serious attention: it is impossible to be a theist, and there are no believers. Once we see this, with the help of philosophical therapy, we shall be saved from the pernicious effects of upon the social fabric. In the comments which follow, no attempt is made to defend supernaturalism either in the form of the grab-bag of odd beliefs which Xenakis takes it to be, or in the form of some historic faith. I shall have in mind a form of Protestant Christianity as a sort of test case, but for all that I shall say, Xenakis could be entirely correct in his thesis. The question here examined is: has he given any reasons for believing the thesis to be correct? Fair comment is made difficult by the fact that I have not been able to unravel any sustained argument in justification of the main thesis. Definitions, premises, generalizations, and conclusions abound in bewildering array, but because of my own lack of insight or because of a deficiency in the article itself, no clean thread of argument emerges for me. This forces me to peck away at the paper section by section, a method likely to give, mistakenly, the impression of peevishness. I By definition, god = = someone values something extremely. In partial explication of this definition, Xenakis offers a number of remarks. 1. gods are values (= valuations), and therefore do not describe anything. Values presuppose objects, but are not themselves objects. 2. god is not a name of any kind, cognitively speaking, and hence can not be investigated by science. 3. created the is a logical impossibility, because this would mean that something in the world valued by me created the world, or, that a created the world. 4. A believer confuses words with object words and is misled into thinking that he is naming or describing a supernatural being. The reader who has been mulling over this definition with its accompanying loose explications is startled to find Xenakis saying that all of this reinforces the thesis that God is not a cognitive concept. The suspicion dawns that Xenakis is under the impression that he has been justifying a thesis, when in fact he has simply delined god as a non-cognitive term and then observed his creation and found it good. Where have the standard questions been answered? Certainly, normal religious usage has been ignored. A believer worships and therefore sets a high value on his god, but only because he believes that there is a being who is worthy of being worshipped. To collapse what is worshipped into the act of worshipping requires more defense than a definition. Even linguistically they are not of the same order. One would respond in different ways to the two questions, Can you make sense of the sentence, 'God is the Maker of Heaven and Earth', and What are your feelings toward the God whom you say is Maker of Heaven and Earth?