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Friday, 10 November 2006
The religiosity of Derb
 Since John Derbyshire kindly linked to us in this Corner posting, I will use the opportunity to express my faith in his religiosity. In the original article that sparked debate between him and Wesley Smith, John states that yes, he does believe in God and (this is important) he believes there to be a connection between himself and God. Everything else, however, is open to doubt. Personally I think this is a very intellectually honest position to take, especially since according to John, he has not had a religious experience of any kind. There's knowing of the intellectual variety and then there's knowing that only comes from religious experience. Without that second kind of knowledge, it seems to me, John has come to a very sound place. I really don't think God is disturbed by our doubts. I also remember reading somewhere, "When men search for God, they are searching for everything. When they have found God, they have found everything." This is knowing that is beyond knowing and only comes from profound experience. He who is without doubt, let him cast the first stone. Posted on 11/10/2006 11:52 AM by Rebecca Bynum
Comments
10 Nov 2006
Mary Jackson He who is without doubt, let him cast the first stone. Or scone.
Without doubt what?
10 Nov 2006
 Hugh Fitzgerald
But how do you know that there's a certain kind of "knowing that comes only from a religious experience"? I have never had a religious experience in my life, wouldn't recognize it if it stared me in the face and dared me to blink first, but I am convinced that I have experiences in that kind of knowing all the time. Had it yesterday, reading The Phoenix and Turtle. Had it the day before, reading a deadpan comment by means of damning quotation, in an email from my father. Had it today, when I walked in the woods and suddenly re-found the key to the universe that I had dropped, amazingly, a full three years ago, and not even at the same place on the path where I just found it, but a good 30 yards further on. I'm without a doubt about this. Do I really get to cast the first stone? Don't worry; I always prefer a palpable miss. 10 Nov 2006
Rebecca Bynum Hugh, I'm not talking about intuition, or a sudden burst creativity. I'm talking about the full-blown divine embrace, I'm talking about spiritual rebirth. If you've had it, you know you've had it. If you haven't, you haven't. My only answer at this point must be, how do you know I don't know? 10 Nov 2006
Mary Jackson I have never had a religious experience in my life, wouldn't recognize it if it stared me in the face... Well, if you wouldn't recognise it, how do you know you haven't had it? the full-blown divine embrace Perhaps Hugh gets that with his "palpable miss". 11 Nov 2006
Hugh Fitzgerald
Mr. Justice Stewart (Potter Stewart, brother of the classicist Zeph Stewart) wrote famously in a case that appeared to require a definition of obscenity: "I know it [obscenity] when I see it." If I had had a religious experience, I would have known it. I didn't; I haven't. 11 Nov 2006
Caryl Johnston I too read Mr. Derbyshire's article concerning his loss of religious faith. I also thought it was honest to some extent. But that honesty, if that was what it was, has come with a cost. What Mr. Derbyshire communicated to me in that piece was a tiredness, a lack of vitality, a sense of resignation and above all, complacency. In that respect his mood was very much in tune with the mood of Western elites today. 11 Nov 2006
mark b I took this from another discussion with Mr. Smith. This is as basic as I can make "religious" experience. As Hugh, notes, it is definitely something you know when you experience it. Some religious experience works for every religion. The experience of the Spirit as I describe works for all religions for the most part. That and the Father experience can work for Judaism. The experience of Jesus rather limits one to Christianity however you construct it along with the Trinity experience: We can only form a true sense of our likeness to God through the experience of God and what wisdom we gain through prayer. Thus far, I have found there are four ways to experience the direct manifestation of God. As the Spirit, the Father, Jesus (the son is an inoperative principle or concept at this point) and as the Trinity. (There are countless other manifestations of Grace, but they are not the same as the face to face, soul to Creator experiences.) The direct experience of the Spirit lifts one into a vision of the whole of nature, of creation as perfect and loved in every living thing. Man is not seen as anything separate or more special than a worm. This experience of God lacks further identity or personification and has often been the basis for Hindu and Buddhist thought since it is oceanic and impersonal (it seems). The direct experience of the Father (as Jesus himself expressed it and I have experienced) is intensely personal. God is understood as Father and he bestows his personal affection on his creature offspring, man. He loves his human child absolutely and unconditionally. This is also the I Am That I Am experience of God; the Burning Bush, Isaiah's vision, perhaps's Paul seventh heaven. The experience is often accompanied by a further vision of life from God's eyes or experience of his creation. The direct experience of Jesus is different, too. There is a frightening sense of one's own putrid corruption ("Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."�) while there is the ego destroying humiliation of reckoning God's mercy and purity that stoops to intercourse with such a bag of scum which results in ineffable joy of salvation from self. The direct experience of the Trinity is a vision or revelation which makes it possible to understand how God can be one and three. You see how it is. This is pretty much all that we know of God. All the rest is speculation, analogy, metaphor, and theology. We build lots of pretty things out of our encounters with God, but they are all provisional or tend to be that. Some doctrines and dogmas we create are wise and some don't stand the test of time and reason after a few millennia or so. My experience is that men would much rather talk about God and invent squabbles, minutiae, debates, codes, creeds, organizations, and systems than spend all that time actually learning to know God through prayer. Prayer seems passive and undynamic, whereas preaching, teaching, defending, speculating, proselytizing, doing good deeds and good things for God seems much more active, satisfying, and powerful. Derbyshire questions Gods nature because he's never encountered it face to face. But a lot of believers fail to further question Gods nature and their own because they think they've discovered all they need of it for this lifetime. Their defense is the argument from numbers and tradition, not experience. Most believers never come to realize just how self-deluding Christians (or Jews and Muslims) can become out of piety and credulous submission to religious authority, or from spiritual pride. The question is: who can you trust? The Church is trustworthy in some respects, but not all. The individual is an interpreter of his own experience and easily deluded. It is only God who is trustworthy, but discernment, ahh, there's the rub.
I see John basically as a theist without revelation. |