I love this video from Yvette Flunder, because it seems to me that the older I get, the less certainty I have. Two things struck me recently about Christians, the first is that we need to explore things more. I need to read more. We can become very insular in our particular tradition, in our particular brand of faith, in our particular world view and outlook. We can use languages and concepts that can be completely opaque and sometimes are very ignorant. Secondly, having wrestled with tough concepts, let's be willing to say 'I don't know' when we don't. Realistically, most of the things we believe we can't know:
- How can Jesus be human and divine? - I don't know
- How can there be a God of love in a world of suffering? - I don't know
- How did the world come into being? - I don't know
- How can the Trinity be three and one? - I don't know
- What happened at the resurrection? - I don't know
Honey, I don't know. But I have more peace than I have ever had in my life, I am more secure, even though I am filled with more questions, I am more at ease in my relationship with God, and I am not ashamed and I am not afraid.
I can say Amen to that :)
9 comments:
Another post that is making me think.
And surely faith is being comfortable with not actually knowing and understanding the 'how'.
I think that 'not knowing' is helpful in terms of humility. Accepting that it is ok 'not to know' is freeing.
Wonderful, Lesley! Thanks for sharing that.
Thanks Lesley. I have this youtube clip on my favourites. First came across it in my own church when a group of us were working through the early part of "Living the Questions." It is so liberating and yet so comforting at the same time.
"I don't know" could be one of the mantras of the science based atheist community, if there was such a thing.
It may appear sometimes that the opposite is true, that atheists are trying to inform believers of what the atheists know to be true - cosmology shows this, evolution shows that, and so on. But this has to be taken in the context of the uncertainty of knowledge and the capacity we have to be sure of what we think is the case. The whole point of science is to account for and to compensate for our many known fallibilities - but there's no expectation that it can do that perfectly, especially in the hands of fallible humans.
"Cognitive closure refers to the possibility that certain problems cannot be explained by the human mind. In philosophy of science some have adopted the position that some problems are forever outstanding, and not because their solutions do not exist, but rather because the solutions cannot be properly conceived."
But it's not that straight forward.
The New Mysterians (cognitive closurists? e.g. McGinn) hold the view that the cognitive capabilities of all organisms are limited by biology, e.g. a mouse will never speak like a human, and that in the same way, certain problems may be beyond our understanding. Well, we can say that about a mouse, because we are at a sufficiently higher level of cognition to recognise the limitations of the mouse brain. But this argument is paradoxical, because we would have to be of sufficiently higher cognitive capability in order to assess our cognitive capability, to the extent that we can asses the mouse. In other words, we're not in a position to say what we can't figure out - not by using just our cognitive capabilities anyhow. New Mysterians might be right in saying it's erroneous to claim that every problem can be solved - but that isn't the issue. The problem is that we can't be sure which problems can't be solved; we can't determine the limit of what we can know. This is sufficient to make the search for knowledge, including the knowledge about knowledge, so fascinating and proably endless.
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. - Mark Twain
It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so. - Mark Twain
Yeah - how true. What is sobering for me is the number of times I have been certain and wrong. Worse than that by far is the number of times people have asked for my advice and I have given it based on what I thought was 'true' and now I would say that it is damaging. I guess we all do it - especially parents http://www.artofeurope.com/larkin/lar2.htm
PS Thanks to all of you for commenting - it is so encouraging, and so much better to have a conversation than a monologue
Giving advice is difficult:
Julia Sweeney
That is SO funny.. just trying to evaluate whether I can post it and if I do whether you want me to h/t you.
BTW why does the community of 'I don't know' be atheist - can't we admit that at the end of the day we are all agnostic. (Just realised that by the title of the post I am saying I am agnostic!)
No need to h/t - I didn't.
My point was that it could be a mantra of the science based atheist community, if there was such a community, but it wasn't my point that it need be exclusive to such a community. I think we're all in the same boat; it's just some theists think they have exclusive access to absolute truth through God; and many different theists think they access to a different absolute truths through different Gods, which in itself should be telling us something.
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