God: The Blank Slate  


Harry T. Cook
Harry T. Cook


By Harry T. Cook
3/14/14

 

Of late one could have read several articles in various newspapers and magazines, which in turn took up the cudgels for and against the existence of god. Or God, if you prefer. For philosophical purposes here, it might be helpful to recall an argument Anselm, an 11th-century thinker, adduced for the existence of a deity: God is that that than which nothing greater can be conceived.

 

Something may have been lost in translation, but Anselm seems to have left the content of belief in the divine to the individual human being's intellectual power of conceiving. When Person A. hits the wall in the conceiving process, having conceived of nothing greater than his particular idea of deity, then that deity -- for him -- is God. The position is filled. None other should trouble to apply.

 

Unless I am mistaken, that sounds as if there might be little to no uniformity in human conceptions of deity, despite the best efforts of religious authorities to press dogmatic certitudes upon their flocks.

 

The idea of God is so common a notion that few human beings in proportion to the whole give it a second thought. It is only he or she who questions the likelihood of there being such a deity that turns heads.

 

A number of avowed atheists read these essays and are careful to point out to their author whenever they think he has skated too close to what they consider the thin ice of theism - i.e. belief in a transcendent deity, but worst of all the one that in varying ways is claimed by traditional Judaism, Christianity and Islam to exist.

 

My atheists friends do not like to be reminded that, strictly speaking, the term "atheist" does not mean one who disavows belief in a deity or who claims that no such deity has ever existed, does not now exist or ever will. An "a-theist" is one who is not a theist -- the theist being one who, possessing nothing that could qualify as an objective datum, nevertheless confesses belief in an omnipotent, omniscient and omnipresent deity "unto whom all hearts are open, all desires known and from whom no secrets are hid."*

 

On one occasion, I asked members of an adult inquirers class I was teaching if they were really interested in affirming the existence of such a deity as that language depicts. An uncomfortable silence ensued as I suppose my inquirers were looking back over the course of the past day or week or month or year and having to consider that everything they'd said and done may have registered in the consciousness of this deity whose human representative is supposed at some point to come again to judge both the quick and the dead.

 

Since every class has its clown, the clown in my class cleared his throat and said, "Honk if you prefer atheism."

 

The discussion that followed was as frank a thing of its kind as I had ever encountered or would ever encounter over more than 40 years of congregational work. It stopped almost everyone in the room in his or her tracks -- several being angry with me because I had not sprung quickly to the defense of orthodox belief. Others were frustrated because they thought they had come to the class to understand what it was they should believe and had not expected to become enmeshed in questions without answers.

 

Finally, one class member looked me in the eye and said: "Do you or do you not believe that God exists?" He did not seem to me to be in the mood for a lengthy philosophical disputation, so, keeping it brief, I said, "No. I don't know enough to believe such a thing." I expected him to throw something at me, but instead he asked me to say more.

 

I took the opportunity to invoke some of what I had read of Paul Tillich and what I had heard at his own feet years before. I told the story of a question/answer period at the end of a Tillich lecture on his concept of "the ground of being" as opposed to being itself. A student rose to ask, "So, Herr Doktor Tillich, would you say that God exists?"

 

Tillich leaned back in his chair, its front legs an inch or two from the floor, and stared upward for a moment or two. Then down came the chair with a bang, and addressing his interlocutor, he said, "Nein." Tillich went on to reiterate his idea of God as "the uncreated creator."

 

I've often wondered since what Tillich knew about the Big Bang hypothesis and whether or not he would consider whatever force is said to have initiated that momentous event to be his "uncreated creator."

 

Outside of colloquies -- both formal and informal -- during my graduate school years, that inquirers class taught now so long ago was the only instance in which I saw people wrestle so earnestly with a question they'd never dreamt had no certain answer.

 

I left them on that night with this thought: "The idea of God is like a large blank canvas upon which anyone can paint his or her conception of deity." One class member, who had up to that moment remained silent, spoke the last and most important words of all: "Yeah, but bring some turpentine, because you're going to change your mind a lot."

 

*From the Collect for Purity of Heart, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, p. 323


Copyright 2014 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 

Readers Write 
Essay 3/14/14: To Test or Not to Test


Philip Leech, Spring Lake, MI:  

Your essay reminded me of my days at an outstanding (public) college "preparatory" school in East Grand Rapids from which I graduated one year after you, in 1958. Several of my classmates went on to Albion. I look back with great fondness at those days and when asked about my education experience I always say my educators taught me to learn how to learn. What more can one ask?

 

Paul Tuthill, Grand Rapids, MI:
You didn't propose any alternatives to the dreaded test. I enjoyed your use of the word for verbal explosive mental physiology.


David Reck, Alden, MI:  
Thanks be to those elementary and secondary teachers, but most of all to your Mater et Pater.

 

Fred Fenton, Concord, CA:  

You report a faculty member saying the SAT "helps winnow out the chaff." The problem with our educational system is that it does not value each and every student as a precious mind to challenge and inspire. We need to pay teachers more and give them all the tools they need to do a demanding, professional job. Winnowing out students with problems is not a caring, humane approach. It also sells the country short.

 

Cynthia Chase, Laurel, MD:
"Schools as filling stations." A very apt description, unfortunately. In second grade, our grandson was given a list of spelling words to memorize. "Maroon" was one of the words. I asked, "Do you know what 'maroon' means?" "No." Did the list-maker mean maroon, the color, or maroon, the action? Who knows? Did it even matter to him or her? I am reminded of the school Dickens depicted in Hard Times.


Marie Auberson, Shaker Heights, OH:
I, too, preceded the onset of the SAT, but my kids did not. I, too, was admitted to a pretty good college -- Oberlin. I got what I needed there and more besides. Albion was my second choice, and I knew then that I could get a good liberal arts education there, too.  
 

Barbara Mark, Farmington Hills, MI:  

I will be eternally grateful that I never had to take an SAT or write a personal essay.  I was horrible at writing. I didn't have to write a master's thesis to get my library science degree at U of M. But I can appreciate good writing, which is why I so enjoy your essays.  I especially like your reminiscences, because I was acquainted with you. (Class of 1960, Albion College).

 

Marilyn Bowers, St. Paul, MN:  

The SAT did not exist as I was preparing for college, and, like you, I think I might have blown it. My grandchildren have suffered through it, and I know they are smarter than their scores showed. One test on one day is a terribly bad judge of a student's capability. I won't say where from, but I did graduate magna cum laude -- and that was without an SAT on my record.

 

Mark Bendure, Grosse Pointe Park, MI: 

I know that the SAT tests are accepted as "IQ" tests for some purposes, such as Mensa membership qualification and, to that extent, are subject to the "cultural bias" criticisms of most standard IQ tests.  However, as I recall, and it has been more years ago than I care to admit when I took it, the SAT measured what had been learned in a subject such as math or English. If you had learned calculus and trigonometry and mastered algebra and geometry, you scored well on the math part of the test.  If you knew the difference between an adverb and a preposition, you were likely to do well on the English portion of the SAT.  Unless my recollection of the SAT is flawed, a distinct possibility, then I suspect that the rigors of reading, writing and 'rithmetic which you likely underwent in high school would have produced greater SAT results for you than you now imagine.  Critical thinking: alas, a different story. Too few teachers at the elementary and high school levels encourage critical thinking, and I would bet that the current emphasis on standardized scores influences curricula that do not encourage critical thinking.  As a result, a sizable number of high school graduates could probably recite the years that the Civil War took place, but not why it occurred.  My point:  The SAT is probably a more or less accurate measure of a student's understanding of subjects in traditional education, assuming the student received a traditional education in those subjects.  It is probably not a fair test of a student's ability to learn those subjects if he/she has not received the traditional education tested for.  Even less is it a measure of a student's fitness for an advanced education that involves critical thinking and problem solving rather than regurgitated factoids.

 

Blayney Colmore, La Jolla, CA:
H
as anyone come up with a way to reliably measure the ability and enthusiasm of a high school student for college work? Thrilling as it was after WWII to open university doors to a whole new group, thanks to the GI Bill, we may have created a monster that now needs taming. Yes, evidence shows a bachelor's degree is as good a measure as any for future prospects, but not necessarily because it always prepares someone better for a useful and productive life; just provides better access. We're caught between the fierce focus on technology, and the need for generous-spirited people who can reason well. I doubt we'll make much headway on figuring that one out until we outgrow our current worship of money and power as the measure of worth.


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