______________________The Dead Zone__________________________ ~~~ As a public figure and so a character in a debate, Richard Dawkins may be found in the dead zone marking the intersection of a childs question---Who made God?--and the peculiar debris of an abandoned and forgotten science---theology. The zone is dead because the questions it encourages are unanswerable. This hardly means they are insignificant. Childish questions have their point, and in the case of Gods existence, their point is to put in doubt some of the intellectual maneuvers by which His existence is affirmed. ~~~~Doubt is very much a manner of temperment. It is rarely encouraged (or displaced) by arguement. For certain temperaments, the existence of the universe is a mystery, one that gnaws irritably at the soul. On the other hand, a great many men and women take the universe in stride, and if they are disposed to ask why it is there, they are easily pleased with the answer that the physicist Frank Wilczek insouciantly(indifferently) offered: The universe, he wrote, appears to be just one of those things. A willingness to let matters rest in this way is a characteristic of individuals that William James described as healthy-minded---another way of describing them as thick. ~~~Of course if physicists can believe that the universe is just one of those things, then believers can affirm that God is just one of those things as well. ~~~To the question of why believers should not stop with the universe, there is only the counterquestion of why physicists should not proceed further to God. ~~~I mention these points to stress what should be obvious: Questions arising in the dead zone ARE a matter of temperament. A religious instinct is universal: It arises in every human being---hence the popular observation that there are no atheists in foxholes. But whether an instinct is allowed to progress toward frank affirmation, or whether it is denied and then discarded---these are not issues that answer to any claims of arguement. ~~~This is one reason the dead zone is dead. ~David Berlinski~
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 22:06:41 +0000
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