Todo Tiene Su Como-Se-Llama

"I suspect it has a lot to do with the fact that great art communicates truth directly to parts of ourselves that we often don't think consciously about unless we're actually interacting with a work of art. If the work is at all successful, then we sense and appreciate the truth it reveals, even truth about faith."

I've studied this less than you have, but I suspect you're on the right track here. Art's particular power comes from the fact that it speaks to both the heart and the mind (generally more the former than the latter, at least at first). In philosophical terms, art has truth content, but it's not necessarily propositional.

...I'm not exactly sure how that last sentence works out, but nobody said art was easy. Or maybe I'm just spouting nonsense; that's always possible. ;-)

I think you have made an important point beautifully. I particularly like the distinction you are suggesting (if I read you right) between sheer emotionalism -- the "blind faith" I heard about periodically growing up -- and a kind of studied, tested imaginative engagement with human existence. Neither is going to prove rationally that the doctrinal propositions of a religion are accurate. But the latter can at least demonstrate to the individual or the community that the practices and pieties of a religion are true to the human condition. The aesthetically meaningful is not arbitrary or unchallengeable; it can be discussed and debated.

However, for most evangelicals -- though probably not for most Christians -- this is going to be a very frightening proposal. For one thing, it undermines confidence in the Bible's sufficiency or exclusive ability to communicate truth. That is because it diverts attention from propositions to experiences, so that "the word of God" is identical not with a text but with the human engagement with the text.

For another thing, your proposal makes it difficult to discriminate among religious systems. Most likely, any given established religion has shown itself capable of bringing meaning to human life -- and chances are, that is true of many secular belief systems as well. So while you may be developing reasons for belief, you are doing it in such a way as to suggest that other religions (though not all other religions, nor all sects or spokespersons of all religions) are valid too.

Arguably, however, "blind faith" (which I'm not sure actually exists) is open to exactly the same criticism to an even greater degree. There's no non-tautological way to challenge blind faith at all, on any grounds, whereas it is possible to criticize an aesthetic. So for someone who concludes, as many people have, that her religious beliefs cannot be rationally proven or disproven, your proposal is promising.

Another interesting question, though, is whether you are promoting a definition of truth that allows for any distinction between literal truth and metaphor. If the image or symbol works, you seem to imply, there simply is no need to inquire further.

I think you've hit on something here, and I was struck by your last question(s). I agree completely with the idea that aestheticism heavily influences our faith and religious experience. We, as humans, are deeply moved by beauty when we have the eyes to see it, and I think it's because beauty is an echo of things beyond our norm (yes, I'm Platonic in philosophy, big surprise). I've never read Jennings, but I have been struck by similar thoughts when I read some of the other poets in the post, particularly Herbert and Eliot, and I think you've really expressed this idea wonderfully.

However, to bring myself back to those last two questions, even though faith can, and I believe does, sometimes arise out of aesthetic experience, true faith doesn't stay solely based on those experiences. If it does, I think it becomes something similar to the "blind faith" mentality I know most of your readers (myself included) completely abhor. I've found myself thinking about faith quite a lot in the last two years, because of experiences teaching in a small, conservative Christian school, and I've come to think that faith must be a holistic ideal. What I mean is that faith *must* incorporate widely varying and sometimes seemingly contradicting elements if it is to address all the different aspects of that which makes us human.

I myself could never be satisfied with a faith that didn't have a firm rational basis (going back to that idea you mentioned earlier of a reasoned explanation). But as Wilson pointed out, no reasoning can totally explain or prove everything about a religion, however much it might make the "leap of faith" easier. That's why I like what you've put here so much, because I think it's things like this that truly make faith real to humanity.

In conclusion, spot on, chum. I think you've got some great ideas here, and no, I don't think they make faith necessarily irrational (if placed into the whole framework that should be faith), and I don't think it's a negative thing.

First, this was a fascinating and engaging post.

Second, I think Barbour pretty much said what I was thinking. Faith is a holistic part of our lives. Emotion, reason, art, all of these things are vastly stronger as part of a unified whole.

I do have to wonder what influences our likes of art styles; that quote from the New Yorker is an example. One fellow found that particular art piece even more inspiring. The other found it dulling his experience.

I know I've had that with myself; my taste in what is "good art" tends to vary from others of my friends (such as yourself). Something that I find brings me closer to God in that brief instant, might "dull the light" in your case.

I suppose it just goes to show how fickle we mere humans are.

This was a very wonderful post. It's so good that I feel like I could respond to it all day and not feel like I wasted my time. However, I will just add a little personal comment here.

I'm not sure how to word this (and still have time to write it down), but I believe I understand what you are talking about and I think I can relate to the aesthetic experience you have when you experience certain kinds of art. I think that the experiences we have when we experience art give us a sense/feeling of something that is both mysterious and transcendent to us.

Probably the most interesting aesthetic experience I have ever had was reading Richard Dawkins book The Blind Watchmaker. (The Blind Watchmaker explains evolution in a very elegant and poetic way...) I felt a deep sense of wonder when I read that book, and from then on I started to experience science and philosophy in ways that I had previously experienced faith-based art...

I don't know how well I am communicating, but I think I have similar aesthetic experiences, even though I am not religious and don't have 'faith' anymore. I say so because your post made me notice this in a special way ...

[I started to write more, but your post is so good I'll never submit anything if I keep writing... I'll probably come back though.]

This is a really interesting post, Jared, and I think it deserves a response.

"If faith can somehow arise out of aesthetic experiences, does that make it irrational?"

The beauty of an idea and the truth of an idea are, of course, two different questions: if we think that an idea must be true because it's beautiful, we're engaging in wish thinking.

So, yes. Wish thinking is irrational, in the sense that it is not a rational way to form beliefs. This doesn't mean that the aesthetic sense can't give us some ideas that end up being true, but we can't conclude that an idea is true based solely on our aesthetic experience of the idea.

"Is that a negative thing?"

Hmm... not necessarily. It might be demonstrated that humans live more moral and more fulfilled lives if they believe in beautiful ideas rather than unpleasant true ones. I would say, if it leads you to making bad decisions, or to violate the freedom of others, then it is a negative thing. Otherwise, I don't think anyone can say it's negative.

For myself, I find a great deal in theism to be aesthetically unsatisfying. For example, the notion that nearly all of the human beings who have ever lived will be suffering in hell for eternity is, to me, deeply repulsive. I had always thought of Christianity as something that everyone ought to hope is true, until I realized that those who simply can't bring themselves to believe that God exists would be consoled by the idea that Christianity isn't true.

The realization that this is a terrible universe to live in if that notion is true is one of the things that led me down the path toward rejecting Christianity, so you might say that, without my aesthetic response, I might still be a Christian today (though it's not, by any means, the main reason why I am not a Christian).

Great post, Jared. While I disagree with your conclusions, I agree with you that aesthetics are an integral part of human belief--one that it is difficult, if not impossible, to ignore so that we don't engage in wish thinking. Cheers.

Luke, I like your response; it's very thoughtful, and I actually agree with it to a considerable extent. However, I think you may be oversimplifying Jared's idea of aesthetics. You write:

The beauty of an idea and the truth of an idea are, of course, two different questions: if we think that an idea must be true because it's beautiful, we're engaging in wish thinking.

John Keats notwithstanding, I think you are correct, at least in the senses that people usually use these words. Beauty is not necessarily tru[e], and truth is not necessarily beaut[iful] -- at least, not if we assume that beauty and pleasantness are the same thing.

But I suspect that when Jared talks about "great art," he is not only referring to art that is pleasing. In fact, the word "beauty" doesn't show up at all in his original post. Great art can just as easily be deeply disturbing. (Having watched many movies with Jared, I can testify that this is part of his outlook.)

Rather, I think great art is something that communicates, usually by a sort of analogy, something that we recognize as true to human life. It does not simply communicate propositions; rather, it reveals something about humanity by allowing us to recognize ourselves in work that is not about us. Art shows one human what it is like to be another human, and thereby actually shows him what it is like to be himself. This truth is not even necessarily something that could be put into the form of a statement. I doubt, for example, that it is possible to give someone a passable understanding of love or hatred by defining them; it works much better to tell a story.

In this way, I suspect that Jared would tell you that a great myth like the Odyssey communicates truth -- not because Jared believes in the Cyclops, or even because he believes in happy endings, but because there is something recognizable in the story about deep human needs and ends.

Now, a lot of Christians (I do not necessarily include Jared here) actually take pretty much the same view of Christianity. They do not consider Christianity true because it involves a series of true factual statements, but because it is a sort of enacted metaphor for human life and needs. Some of these Christians begin with that thought and then proceed to accept Christianity's doctrinal propositions as well, on any number of grounds, whether rational and irrational. Others do not, and stick with treating Christianity as a sort of roleplaying. Still others never really ask whether Christian doctrines are factually true; they figure the question of factuality isn't important, and they think the question can't be rationally settled one way or the other anyhow. Nobody has actually proved beyond all doubt that God doesn't exist, either; leastwise, there are people who believe in God who are smarter than any of us.

In any of these three cases, however, we are not talking about mere wishful thinking. We are talking about a deliberative, theoretically sophisticated way of perceiving one kind of truth -- arguably, the kind of truth that was always most important in religion. (Even for most atheists I know, the most important reason to reject God's existence is moral.) To put things in terms you might find congenial, this is roughly the difference between believing in Santa Claus at age eight, and writing "Yes Virginia, There Is a Santa Claus" at age 58. You may conclude, as I do, that the entire Santa Claus myth is a bad idea. But it's best to be clear about what people are actually saying and why they're actually saying it.

"They do not consider Christianity true because it involves a series of true factual statements, but because it is a sort of enacted metaphor for human life and needs."

To be honest, I don't have a problem with assertions that Christianity is "true" in this way. I can even agree, with the qualification that there are some things which are deeply unpleasant and unbeautiful (I mean to say, there's some beauty and some ugliness in the Bible and Christian doctrine).

What I object to is claims of metaphysical, rather than aesthetic, truth. To be honest, I'm not sure what you mean by "a lot of Christians" believing Christianity in this way. Certainly it's not a very large group. I spent 10 years as a Christian, and can't recall meeting anyone who called themselves Christians and considered the religion an extensive metaphor.

"Nobody has actually proved beyond all doubt that God doesn't exist, either"

This can't be said with two things being pointed out: 1) God hasn't been proven to exist, either, and 2) "Nobody has actually proved beyond all doubt that [X] doesn't exist, either" can include many items. Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, and the Man in the Moon are three examples.

I like to say that belief in God is like belief in aliens. I'm fine if you think that there are probably aliens somewhere in the universe. However, if you start making specific claims about the aliens which you have no way of knowing, then you're no longer being reasonable.

In the same way, my reason is not particularly offended by claims that there might be a God somewhere. I just can't see how claims that God doesn't want us to masturbate or that he wants us to talk to him everyday or that he sent his son to die for our "sins". These are unsubstantiated claims that people only accept if they happen to have been born in the right religion. You can believe in God without accepting all of the blatant nonsense that people try to sell with him (although I don't personally believe in this sort of God, this is a sort of God that I find more reasonable than others proposed).

All right, Luke, here we come to some problems.

First, I think it would help for you to define your use of the term "Christianity." Whether or not this is your own background, it sounds to me as if you are using the term pretty much the way most evangelicals do. That is a strangely narrow and idiosyncratic usage. (I'm sure you are aware that evangelical Protestants are a minority among the world's two billion Christians.*) I have not been limiting myself to that definition, because -- well, why would I? That would be sort of like limiting myself to refuting the claims of historical materialists when discussing atheism.

Second, I think you should reexamine what I said about the impossibility of disproving God's existence. I was not using that as an argument for belief in God. Other arguments exist for that, had I any interest in invoking them. I was using it to show why some people are complacent. Such people are content with ideas that merely (a) work for them and (b) are not so incredible as to invite ridicule from other people. (Other examples: my spouse is the one perfect match for me; giving to charity means good karma; Michael Phelps is the best athlete in the world. None of these things can be verified by any academic discipline; in fact, all are on shaky ground one way or another. But few people are going to worry too much about that if they find these ideas congenial. Why should they?)

If you think that sort of complacency is an inherently harmful attitude, then you need to make a case for that. You haven't so far. You've just called it unreasonable without actually showing that being unreasonable is a bad thing, or even defining reasonable. (Most people use the term in a pretty expansive sense. In ordinary conversation, there is such a thing as a "reasonable" hunch in the absence of any particular data. The hunch need not hold up to rational scrutiny in order to make good sense to somebody who has been around enough to develop reliable intuition.)

Third, you are incorrect to claim that "people only accept [specific doctrines like the atonement] if they happen to have been born in the right religion." People change religions every day, and some of them convert to religions with very specific and inflexible doctrinal claims.

Finally, as for your distinction between metaphysical and aesthetic truth ... this is not a distinction that would have made sense to most people at the time that the world's religions were organized. It probably does make sense to most people today. But people today can do different things with that distinction when it comes to religion. Some accept that distinction and insist on examining religion in light of it -- including atheists and evangelicals. But for others, this is not necessarily the case. They prefer to examine religion mainly in light of its own premises.

For example, consider what the the Catholic catechism says about the commandment against lying. It reveals that in Catholic theology, truth is not primarily a matter of factual veracity. Instead, it may be more of an outlook, a way of living. According to the catechism, God is the source of all truth; not only his Word but also his Law is true by definition. That's an odd thing to say; what can it mean to say that the Law is "true"? It's not something one would ordinarily say about a law. I wouldn't call a speed limit "true" (or "false"), for example. So something different is going on here. Truth for the Catholic Church is a standard, not a statement.

Further reading in this part of the catechism supports that interpretation. Jesus, the catechism says, "is the Truth" (emphasis theirs). To know the truth is to live in his word. Truthfulness is a virtue of sincere people, not a quality of propositions. Now, I don't mean to say that Catholics don't also use the term truth in other ways; they do. But when it comes to ultimate reality -- reality beyond the human subject and beyond tangible nature -- their theologians insist that you can't separate truthfulness in human thought from human participation in a relationship with God. And that is inseparable from what we are characterizing as aesthetic experience, because true aesthetic experiences (on this account) are encounters between humans and the true God.

(A lot of "liberal" Protestants think of religious truth this way, too. But they might be more likely to express this understanding in terms of metaphor and human needs, as I did earlier -- terms that make more sense to people used to thinking in modern ways about the nature of reality.)

I realize that you would disagree with this understanding of what truth is. I am not trying to argue you out of it. What I am urging, though, is that you not assume that all religious people are using your definition. Your definition is shared by most atheists and most evangelicals, but it is probably a minority position among the world's theologians. For them, to complain that God can't be proved by science is just bewildering; it's like pointing out that you can't demonstrate the deliciousness of chocolate by writing a book. That exercise would be not only futile but pointless; nobody actually cares about proving the statement that chocolate is delicious, they just want to encourage you to delight in its deliciousness.

(This is related to the fact that Catholic theologians have a much different idea about what salvation is than evangelical Protestants have. Salvation is something one participates in, not something one acquires by thinking certain things. But that's a story for another time.)