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[♪♪♪]
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ROBERT LAWRENCE KUHN: If God exists, God would be the ultimate reality. If God exists, nothing would be more important. But God's existence triggers arguments, analytical and experiential, for and against. These arguments are obviously inconclusive. Any of them individually, all of them cumulatively, how else could the world have increasing numbers of non-believers, as well as multitudes of believers? If God exists, I'd want to know God, touch ultimate reality.
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But I worry because between humans and God, if there is God, between the finite and infinite, if God is infinite, there seems an unbridgeable gap.
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So, isn't there a deeper question hiding here? Isn't the inquiry really about human knowledge of God? Our capacity to bridge that gap?
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Exploring human knowledge, its essence and nature, is a field of philosophy called epistemology. Can epistemology, the theory of knowledge, be applied to God? [♪♪♪] Can we know God? I'm Robert Lawrence Kuhn and Closer To Truth is my journey to find out.
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[♪♪♪] When I think about knowing God, I can get confused, knowing what about God? I'm confronted by at least three meanings. One, does God exist? Two, if God exists, what is God like? Three, if God exists, can I have a personal relationship with God? But each of these three meanings boomerangs back to epistemology. How could it be that my normal, common, human thought, awareness, perception, cognition, emotion, could know God?
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I begin basics, applying epistemology to knowing God. That's why I go to Notre Dame to meet a philosopher who works in philosophy of religion and specializes in epistemology, Robert Audi.
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Robert, the question of whether God exists, what God is like, what can we learn from epistemology that can help us discern this question? The first thing to say is that we can be talking about God as a personal figure known through let's say the Bible. But we can also be talking about God as the God of perfect being theology. The God of the philosophers if you like, who is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly good. Epistemology is going to take account of what being you're talking about
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when you ask how we might know. Now there's knowledge without belief. Think of what you might call a meteorological knee. The knee works like a barometer. When there are objective indications of heavy weather, the person believes there's going to be heavy weather. Perhaps the mechanism is very, very accurate, more accurate than an ordinary barometer, and we find the track record is terrific. But now, add something. He forgets that he's been getting it right but we know his track record.
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I think we're going to arrive at a position where we will say ask him, he knows whether it's going to rain. He will be puzzled that he believes it's going to rain, not knowing where the belief comes from, the mechanism may evoke the belief rather automatically. I want to say he could know without being justified. Now, if God is possible, which I take it is clear, and is omnipotent, God could bring it about that some people have knowledge of God that is implanted.
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My old colleague Al Planning <ph> spoke of a sensus divinitatis. This is a possibility. So, that would not be justified? That's the problem. Philosophers and certainly skeptics want more, they want justification. So, it's very important to allow the possibility that someone who believes that God exists could know that but lack justification. And if somebody has knowledge of a kind natural from experience, the complaint should be don't do anything that depends on justification,
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but not you couldn't possibly know. Now justification. You probably want to go to that, don't you? And the concept of basic belief. AUDI: Well, there are many arguments for the existence of God. If those are ones' basis for theistic belief, then theistic belief is not basic. If it comes from a sensus divinitatis it may be basic, it may be quasi-perceptual in that it comes from experience directly and not from inference. But let's remember that there can be the accumulative case,
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as where someone has a mastery of a multitude of different arguments, each with some weight, even if none is conclusive. And has had religious experiences. So, there's an experiential basis with some weight. There are many arguments with some weight. And all together, for this person, a theistic position is rational. Now the kinds of arguments that would be philosophical arguments versus the kind of personal experiences -- There's a very big difference and one is third person communicable.
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- Yes. - You may not agree. And the other one is, is not. I mean, if you tell me you had a religious experience, I'd say, you know, that's nice but that makes no difference with me. I understand your point but notice that if you don't have perceptual experiences of the kind I have when I look at an artwork, because you aren't trained. I have to do my best by description, but you can perhaps appreciate that I have had an experience which has subtleties that actually give me something to go on.
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Now let's agree that if you have an experience as of God's sustaining, loving, forgiving, that experience does not convey any kind of direct indication that it's an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good being. But if one is thinking of God as a person, as introduced in the Bible, that's another matter. And then, one can argue, theologically and philosophically that this must be a person with all these attributes that the philosophers have attributed.
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I understand the arguments and I understand the critique. And I can evaluate that. But that if I had a religious experience, I wouldn't trust that. I don't think anyone should say that a single experience or even repeated experiences should be intellectually compelling for someone with no other indications. You can hope that God exists and is sovereign in the universe. And hope does not require a lot of evidence. You can have faith that God is sovereign in the universe,
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and you can have firm belief that God is. In my view, even religious hope can carry motivation and positive attitudes but it's intellectually very modest. And what it takes for it to be rational is very sparse, relative to what it takes for certainty. So, if we start with hope, faith, and belief. And the next one would be knowledge, which may be is impossible. If you like, yes. Is that a chain of epistemology? AUDI: I call the kind of theism in which hope is central aspirational,
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the kind in which faith is central where it doesn't entail belief, fiduciary because trust is central. The kind in which belief is central, depending on how strong it is, doxastic, meaning belief entailing. And then, we could call the final kind, embodying knowledge, epistemic because we're taking it that there's knowledge of God. And interestingly, the epistemic kind wouldn't have to involve justification. So, you might not have all you'd like,
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if you just had belief that constitutes knowledge from a sensus divinitatis. [♪♪♪] KUHN: Robert outlines the elements of knowing God. Hope faith belief knowledge. A sequence of increasing degrees of confidence in the conclusion, here God. As for God and me, I have the hope but not the faith. So, I could not get to belief much less the knowledge.
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But could there be a shortcut, a kind of wormhole of belief? If belief in God is indeed properly basic, then justifying belief in God to reach knowledge of God is intrinsic to human beings and does not need to be extrinsically verified. Hmm, but isn't belief in God as properly basic, by itself, a leap of faith? I can take the first step, hope. Then I fade. I can't go further. [♪♪♪] But how much of this way of thinking, the epistemology of religion and theology
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depends on that simple three letter English word G-O-D, God? Perhaps the simplest understanding of God is the classical idea that God goes beyond anything humanly imaginable. If such be God, what can we know about such a God? A contemporary leader in proclaiming this ineffable vision of God is the orthodox philosophical theologian at Notre Dame, David Bentley Hart. In one sense, all of these traditions, Christianity included,
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encompass this affirmation that you really can't know God in the way that you would know an object of experience. But can you know the things that are not true about God, such as composite or evil? But what you can know about God is different from knowing God. When it comes to the question of know -- what you can know about God, Christian tradition, like the other theistic traditions, has a sphere of cataphatic knowledge. Things that can be positively said.
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But these positive affirmations are based on the effects of the operations of God. So, you can say God is creator because there's a creation. But then, all of these traditions will say but howsoever much you can know cataphatically, God is infinite, in himself, unknowable because, you know, just logically speaking, the infinite is always infinitely more. And in that sense, you have to say that you cannot intellectually grasp or know or have an intuition of God in himself.
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That, you know, the divine essence being infinite simply will not submit to the confines of a finite mind. All of these traditions have another way of knowing God, which is one of direct encounter, intimate union, which saying Christian thought is understood, is, in some sense, super intellectual, that is it goes beyond concepts. But, none the less, is a real and immediate presence of God, the soul. So, the degree to which we can know God rather than simply know about him,
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is a spiritual condition. Until one reaches a point that's not only beyond the affirmations that you can make based on God's operations but also beyond negation and becomes just the intimacy of a pure embrace, beyond words and concepts, there's a degree even in this life in which the intimacy of knowledge defeats conceptual forms. So, I think whenever one talks about knowing God and talks about the cataphatic and apophatic, one has to understand that epistemology is not the only issue.
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There's another way of knowing that surmounts both affirmation and negation, in all of these traditions, which is the union of the soul with God. [♪♪♪] KUHN: David's God is the classical God of early Christianity. It's also the God of the philosophers. David offers three ways of knowing this God. One, positive assertations. Observing the operations or effects of God in the world or on people. Two, negative assertions. What God is not. Three, personal spiritual experiences,
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mystical union with God. I like this kind of philosophy but not necessarily this kind of God. Suppose God, if there is a God, is not so purely perfect, not so unbridgeably apart. It reminds me of the God of Judaism, at least Talmudic and rabbinic Judaism. A God who cuts a more approachable image. [♪♪♪] To discuss this Judea God, I meet an Israeli philosopher, an expert on Talmudic literature, Menachem Fisch. [♪♪♪] The only way we can acquaint ourselves with the idea of God,
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meet God, conceive of God, is by the words at our disposal. God, in the three monotheistic traditions today, is totally unique and totally perfect. And we can wax poetical with the words we have. And artists imagine and poets imagine and theologians imagine. And we read our scriptures and understand what we understand, always by means of the vocabulary at our disposal. This is disconcerting for some people. Maimonides, for example, knew this very well.
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That the only way humans can know anything is by conceptualization. He, therefore, viewed saying anything, attributing anything to God, not merely an image, a bodily image, attributing agency, attributing a will, attributing a thought is idolatrous in the extreme because we're likening to others. That is a profound violation of God's uniqueness and God's perfection. But for a religion, who believes in a God-created universe, who believes in this or that degree of divine providence,
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who believes in that or that degree of divine retribution, who stands in prayer before a God, that is not enough. Maimonides took his theology to the extreme of banishing all God talk from the religion. And all divine presence, I mean, it's not merely -- he created the world but we're not allowed to say it. No. You're, you -- in the most profound sense of the term, you are not allowed to attribute to him an action, agency. Not everybody is as extreme as Maimonides,
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but Maimonides gives us a good sense of what a serious intellectually honest deeply religious theology would look like if you take that notion of perfection as the basis. Talmudic Judaism contains a voice that denies divine perfection.
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It doesn't deny that God is the creator of the world, that entered a covenant with us, that gave us the Torah, gave us the law. And that we entered into a covenantal, intimate, deep, religiously meaningful relationship. But it denies his perfection, especially moral perfection. As it denies the moral perfection of scripture, of the moral perfection of the law, and the moral perfection of the institutions of the law. And here I've counted all four sources of religious authority
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of rabbinic Judaism. Now if this is your view, these denials do not constitute or are not pressed into the service of subverting religion, no. It defines what religious faithfulness and obligation is. From that point of view, given the imperfect system, entering the covenantal relationship, is to help it improve itself. And therefore, your religious duty is to do your best, to troubleshoot, and confront, and criticize and to argue against, when you think it's wrong.
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That doesn't mean that you're right all the time, but it's not an argumentative critical, and therefore, rational enterprise. In essence, humans are co-creators with God, can help God improve God's own self? Not only God's own self, God's Torah. - Okay. - Okay? And the world. And, and the beauty of this voice is that God speaks back. He welcomes this as a profound dispute of religiosity within that cannon because the voice of religious submission and divine perfection, scriptural perfection,
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is alive and kicking there. But this other voice which I think is also dominant is alive as well. So, the Talmudic cannon is a cannon divided as to its own very project, if you wish. And this voice of confrontation has God requiring, demanding critique. And he's actually described as sacking Elijah. He's the only prophet who God commands to anoint his successor because I can't do with yes men, I need someone to, to talk back. So, within that form of religiosity,
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prayer looks very different, prophecy looks very different. Human religious obligation looks very different. And then, how do we know God is a slightly easier task I'd say within, within a Maimonidean framework. [♪♪♪] KUHN: Menachem's God of Judaism is certainly more human and seems easier to get to know. But already I hear the charges of anthropomorphism, humans creating God in human's own image, charges that I cannot easily refute. Nor could I strenuously deny that a more human God
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seems to reflect a more primitive religion, a pre-philosophical way of thinking. None the less, I find myself attracted to such a human-like God. It's how I'd hoped reality to be, less stern, more engaging, a closer connection between the human and the divine. But my inquiry is not about what I might find pleasing as traits of God. It's about really knowing God and I fear I have so far omitted a critical way of thinking. How does what I know relate to what really is?
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Some philosophers deny that we can ever access underlying realities. Even though we measure data and discover laws. Can such a philosopher called a strict empiricist or anti-realist, also believe in God? I know just whom to ask, the Dutch American philosopher of science, Bas van Fraassen. KUHN: Bas, if we take epistemology and apply it to God, particularly from your remarkably dual positions as a philosopher of science who is an anti-realist and, and analyzing the scientific world.
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And yet, as a devout believer in God, what can you say philosophically about how we can know God, if there is a God? Well, I think that religious people speaking in, you know, religious terms are going to answer this differently from any answer that would really help you, the way you are starting on the question. A Hindu, for example, would say well, in the Bhagavad Gita I see that Arjuna is talking with Krishna. Krishna is his charioteer but he's a God.
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So, obviously, it's possible to know God. And the Christian will say yeah, well Jesus was the Christ, Jesus is one person in the Trinity. Many people knew Jesus and talked with him, so they knew God. So, it's possible to know God, right? Of course, even if you don't bring to an unbeliever and say here, start here. - You couldn't possibly, right? - Right, right. What the believer takes as somehow, what should I say confirming or reinforcing his faith, is not at all the same sort of thing
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that you would bring in a discussion with a non-believer who thinks about could I have reasons to believe in the existence of God, right? But then the question is, what would satisfy you? What exactly would be grounds for a secular person to think that God exists? If God wants me to believe in him or it or her, that's God's problem, that's not my problem. It's God's problem to figure out what it's going to take for me to believe in God. Well, it seems God doesn't really care in the same way
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because he's not going to send you ghostly apparitions or celestial emails. And if I got those, I wouldn't believe them. No, of course. And so, you know, I feel like, in the worst possible world, because I don't, I don't see a scientific way to get to God. Philosophical arguments to get to God, I love, but I don't, I don't think any of them, deep down, you know, absolutely work. And if I had an experience, I wouldn't trust it. I see, yeah. So, I'm in trouble, right?
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Yeah, well this is one thing that Martin Buber emphasized. He said if we get to the point where the focus is on the feelings. - Then you've already lost God. - Right. And they're already no longer talking about God. I don't have any faith in arguments for the essence of God and -- in or any theodicies. I think of theologies and theodicies are stories like a myth and so on, exactly the same level as the statues and paintings that we have in church. Alright, that's an interesting analogy.
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- They help us, you know. - I like it, I like that. At the same time, we don't think for one moment -- That, you know, God looks like a bearded man, right? And when we have pictures of angels or of, of saint or -- no reason to think that the saint actually looks like this, this statue but we go and burn a candle and we feel it is a way of interacting with the religious reality. And I think the same happens with the theological theories.
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And philosophical arguments which you think very analytical really have the same, you know, true impact as some work of art that would -- Yes. Give you this feeling, this possibility, can I, can I go further than that or --? That's where you're going to leave me. Yeah probably. I mean, you said it's God's problem. - Yeah, yeah. - Well, yeah. We also believe that God does pursue people. You talk about the Hound of Heaven, and that a person will start talking about his past life and say
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oh, there were all these things that were drawing me, that were bringing me, that were pushing me, that I had these experiences. I came to the end of the road, I couldn't go anywhere. And they say, well, yeah, it was coming closer and closer to you. It was pursuing you, it was chasing you, it was the Hound of Heaven after you. Hound of Heaven, that's very good. But, of course, you have to receptive. Well, maybe you're the Hound of Heaven and I'm trying to be receptive. Maybe this is my...
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KUHN: Bas states that we can know the non-physical reality of God, even though we cannot know the physical reality of the common world. So, what does it mean to know God? There are multiple approaches to this question.
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One, the epistemology of religion and theology generates a flow of concepts, from hope to faith to belief to knowledge. But must religious belief be justified or is it properly basic?
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Two, God can be known in three ways. Positively by observing God's operations, negatively by discerning what God is not, and mystically through some kind of direct union. Three, the extremes of God stand out in sharp relief. God maybe so transcendent that one must keep utterly silent or God may be fallible and approachable and in need of human help. Four, is it our problem to find God? Or God's problem to find us? Does the Hound of Heaven have a good nose?
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Overall, does the perfect being, God of the philosophers fight the imperfect God of rabbinic Judaism; does Athens roar with Jerusalem? Might I offer a God of both? God being perfect and imperfect at the same time? God's smiling at the contradiction. I'd like there to be such a God, if there be such a God. Perhaps the Hound of Heaven is coming Closer To Truth.
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[♪♪♪]
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ANNOUNCER: For complete interviews and further information, please visit closertotruth.com. [♪♪♪]
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