Some words from Immanuel Kant. He certainly isn't an oracle of this site, but as regular readers will recall I sometimes bring him in to liven things up, especially in his capacity as a philosopher of religion.
This is from his commentary on the Book of Job:
"Job speaks as he thinks, and with the courage which he, as well as every human being in his position, can well afford; his friends, on the contrary, speak as if they were being secretly listened to by the mighty one, over whose cause they are passing judgment, and as if gaining his favor through their judgment were closer to their heart than the truth. Their malice in pretending to assert things into which they yet must admit they have no insight, and in simulating a conviction which they in fact do not have, contrasts with Job's frankness -- so far removed from false flattery as to border almost on impudence -- much to his advantage."
This confirms a point I made once before in this blog. If theology is to go in the direction Kant wanted, it will abandon theodicy altogether. It will abandon the usual efforts to show that what appears to be evil in the world is "really" good, or in the "long run" good, or necessitated by the good of free will, and so forth.
That, after all, is what Job's friends were offering -- explanations about why God had to do to Job the things he did. And Job wins God's favor by refusing to indulge with them in the theodical pasttime. It is better to be impudent about God than to offer him false flattery.
If Job's friends wish to remain believers, then how can they stop deceiving themselves? To refuse to indulge in the theodical pasttime is to acknowledge that God is either evil or weak, and, in either case, not worth worshipping. If Job did not reach that conclusion, then he too deceived himself.
ReplyDeleteHenry, you probably know enough about Kant's underlying epistemological position to know how (especially in the light of the title of the book, which I've hijacked as the title of this post) he would have addressed your question.
ReplyDeleteAs for myself, as you know I would dispute your premise that a God whose power is less than complete, a God who might even have to allow bad things to happen to good people, is for that reason unworthy of worship.
Beyond that: I think that in these matters everybody is making a "wager" of one kind or another, whether they wish to put it that way or not. The paradigmatic wager is Pascal's -- you can't prove a worship-meriting God doesn't exist, and you have very little to lose if you're wrong, so consider...etc.
But then there is the (usually more implicit) atheist's wager. Suppose a given atheist is willing to concede the minute possibility that a worshippable God exists, while still thinking a godless universe by far the most likely possibility. THIS atheist (or atheism-inclined agnostic, or whatever term you like) might say that he is willing to bet that if such a well-hidden God does exist, that God will appreciate the atheist's refusal to believe in Him, and perhaps reward it as a sign of a meritorious devotion to evidence and reason.
And then there is the third wager, Job's. This person may have concluded from his own experiences or observations that a worshippable God is very unlikely for essentially the reasons you describe. But he may respond by hurling that doubt -- not a denial -- at the skies, betting on one of two possibilities. First, that if there is no God, there will still be benefits to this state of suspended not-quite-disbelief. And, second, that if there is a God, that God may come out of hiding -- as He of course did in Job's case -- precisely in reaction to such searching cries.