I am not optimistic about the persuasive ability of the essay that follows. I do hope that, at the very least, it may encourage people to devote some attention to matters that previously did not concern them, and I hope that they may reevaluate the meaning of some terms that they are apt to throw around on a daily basis as if these terms have significance -- but which ultimately may not, if other beliefs that they hold ring true. That is, if truth has any real meaning. It is my conviction that it does, though I think it may be futile to attempt to convince others of that. Nevertheless, I will try.

On January 30, in a blog post entitled "What happened?", I finished with a question:

How can we call anyone "enlightened" or "saved" who can look around at this world, see all of the terrible things in it, and not care, and go on smiling?

In response, Hannah, an e-mail correspondent who is a published fiction writer and a philosophy major, writes:

I don't claim enlightenment and not only am I not convinced a god exists, I pretty much don't care. I do think that it's entirely possible to be able to look at the world and smile, though. Not because of ignoring or failing to recognize the awful stuff, and absolutely not because of not caring. Just because I think it may be necessary to be able to grin and value the world for its good stuff in order to think it's worth trying to fix the bad.

The second part of that comment is much more easily dealt with -- the part that follows "don't care" -- so let's get that out of the way. I do think that one who sees absolutely nothing good in this world would be one ill-equipped to begin to attempt to make it better, since such a person would probably have a limited conception of what "goodness" really entails. So there must be some things that make us smile. With respect to smiling, then, we should smile when we encounter things that are truly good and deserve to be met with smiles -- but I submit that these should be the smiles of persons who, after years of living as hermits in the wilderness, receive telegrams informing them that their heroes are dead, but upon entering the graveyard finds a childhood friend among the mourners. Yet this is a solemn affair; they cannot exchange words.

But certainly not all things are so inspiring, and it has been my experience that there are very few. And certainly there is enough bad in the world that no one should be able to look about and remain in a state of "unclouded bliss" -- the emotional state that Schleiermacher attributed to those who were truly "saved". However, Schleiermacher noted that this could not come about until the consummation of the Church, and that for this to happen, somehow, all persons must be accepted into it -- for if there were any separation, persons somewhere would still suffer, and for a Christian to have this knowledge and nonetheless remain in a state of unclouded bliss would be incompatible with Christian pity. My question as written, then, was concerned with those who claim to be "enlightened" and "saved" -- so Hannah escapes that charge.

Let us now return to the more difficult of Hannah's assertions: "[N]ot only am I not convinced a god exists, I pretty much don't care." I promised her a more substantial reply soon, but responded with the following note:

[T]he question of whether a god exists or not must concern you, if anything else really does. Cf. Plato's Apology 27C: "But if I believe in spiritual things I must quite inevitably believe in spirits. Is that not so? Indeed it is." Which is not to say that you must believe in the Christian god, or any other god as defined -- but you must believe in something supernatural, something...transcendent. Or at least you must be concerned with the existence of something like that.

Hannah replied:

Why? ...

It may not be completely accurate to say that I don't care whether a god (or gods, or whatever) exists. If it was made convincingly clear to me that one did or one didn't, I'm sure I'd take at least a passing interest.

In the meantime...it just doesn't matter to me. I feel no need for a god (and think that if he exists, he's got a helluva lot to answer for). I believe that people are basically good, that crazy and brilliant and awful things happen for any reason or for none at all, and that the world doesn't take any particular interest in me. I believe, yes, that you mostly get what you deserve, but I don't think there's anything mysterious in that. I am, at this point in my life at least, supremely unconcerned with the existence of an afterlife or the lack there off. I'm okay with all of that. I'm comfortable with it.

I'm not comfortable, though, with the problem of evil -- I've yet to see a satisfactory answer. I'm not comfortable with predestination; I think it would make living rather pointless. I've seen no indication that there's anything out there and while yeah, faith is by definition belief without proof, that lacks a certain sense to me. So there's that.

But really, I don't see any need for more than this concrete world. I guess it depends how you define "something transcendent." I'm missing the part of my brain that's supposed to find upsetting the lack of things like a caring diety or a meaning of life. (I had a sort of defining moment -- I think in Philosophy of Religion, though it may have been a philosophy and lit class -- when the prof was explaining how scary folks found the idea that there was nothing but the world and the wilderness. I sat in the back of the room and couldn't think anything but, "That's scary? Why?")

It's not scary to me. If anything, it's kind of liberating. If there's no basic meaning to my existence, if I can control who I am and what I do and to some extent, what's done to me or at least how I respond to it -- that I can work with. That I can do something about.

I will admit that it is very difficult to begin to respond to such a comment, but I will do my best.

The first thing that must be noted -- and Hannah is not alone here -- is that whenever someone mentions the word "god", people immediately assume that they know exactly what kinds of things the person will discuss. Hannah mentions predestination, a caring deity, the afterlife. And though I think that the problem of evil is a serious question -- and while I think that it does create something of a problem for certain religious views, I do not think that it should turn us to atheism, or dispassionate agnosticism -- I do not intend to discuss it at length here. Similarly, I do not mean to discuss predestination, or attempt to describe the attributes of a god, caring or otherwise. If a deity does exist, I think that it is probably beyond our comprehension, that we lack the terms and knowledge to speak seriously about an infinite thing -- so I hold my tongue on the matter. This is not to say that I am unconcerned with the existence and character of such an entity, but rather that when it comes to the deity I hold to Wittgenstein's dictum and remain silent whereof I cannot speak.

Hannah is quite right, however, by assuming that meaning will enter into this discussion. On that note, let us return to Plato's Apology, 27E-28A:

There is no way in which you could persuade anyone of even small intelligence that it is possible for one and the same man to believe in spiritual but not also in divine things, and then again for that same man to believe neither in spirits not in gods nor in heroes.

So you say that the question of whether or not a god exists does not concern you. If I took the word "god" and added a letter -- the letter "o", after the "g", or before the "d" -- would you then be concerned with the question of whether or not our resultant term had objective meaning? Or, if I replaced our new word with "virtue" or "love" -- would the existence of these things concern you? I hope that they would.

But if you see no need for more than this concrete world, where will you find these things? In what will you ground them? What meaning will they have, if there is no meaning?

My 1996 Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus defines transcendent as follows:

1. excelling, surpassing (transcendent merit).

...

4. (esp. of the supreme being) existing apart from, not subject to the limitations of, the material universe (opp. IMMANENT).

That is something like what I mean when I say "transcendent", and I say that good, virtue, love -- and all things of their ilk -- are transcendent things. They are spiritual things; they are divine things. And I submit that to be completely unconcerned with the existence of a god is to be unconcerned with their reality as well -- for they are things like a god, if they are not one with the deity. This is why I wrote, "[T]he question of whether a god exists or not must concern you, if anything else really does."

The existentialist will tell you that this is not so -- that while this material plane is all there is, these things still have meaning and worth -- and that we individuals give this worth to ideals by holding them in high esteem. But I need not lauch a complex argument to the effect that individual wills are fickle, imperfect things, and to point out that to yoke the meaning of love to the whims of humans would be to cheapen its significance by giving it the consistency of tissue paper. I need not point out that there are many who think evil good and good evil, and by saying that the reversal of these things is rendered true and given meaning by the simple fact that people do it is like permitting virtue to be hijacked by thugs and coerced at gunpoint to commit atrocities in its own worthy name.

And the existentialist is wrong. Or, at the very least, the existentialist cannot be right -- for if the existentialist is correct in asserting that the only things that really exist are the things that we can touch and the ground on which we walk, it does not make sense to speak of anything as truly being right. If all other things are relative, then all other things are shadows and our world is one of darkness.

Hannah writes that the idea of predestination makes her uncomfortable -- that "it would make living rather pointless." And yet, somehow, she finds the absence of love, virtue, worth, and meaning to be "liberating." Here we return to her quote that

It's not scary to me. If anything, it's kind of liberating. If there's no basic meaning to my existence, if I can control who I am and what I do and to some extent, what's done to me or at least how I respond to it -- that I can work with.

Suppose that we were to replace "meaning" here with "value" or "worth" -- these things are, if not synonymous, at least of the same class, such that it makes sense to speak of one where another is discussed. It may not bother you, Hannah, to think that your life has no worth or meaning. But consider that your loved ones -- everything that you care for, that you love -- is also subjected to the same fate. And consider that you only think that you love them, but in truth you cannot love, because love is nonexistent. And if someone were to steal into your stables one night with a samurai sword and take the bloodied head of your beloved horse, only to enter your room and place it in bed with you a la The Godfather, upon waking you would be a fool to shed tears as if some great injustice had been done. The horse was not really beloved of you, and it would not make sense to speak of injustice. Somehow I think that you would cry anyway.

But I am really just repeating myself -- I believe I have said all that I have to say on the matter, if not here, then elsewhere, and over the course of several years, and despite the charges that people level against me I do not enjoy hearing myself repeat the same things over and over again, and I do not think that I am saying things that are really novel. After all, over two thousand years ago Plato put my point rather succinctly in the Apology with

There is no way in which you could persuade anyone of even small intelligence that it is possible for one and the same man to believe in spiritual but not also in divine things, and then again for that same man to believe neither in spirits not in gods nor in heroes. (27E-28A)

There is only one other point to note, and I will do so briefly -- recall that Hannah writes, "I believe, yes, that you mostly get what you deserve, but I don't think there's anything mysterious in that." I submit that if Hannah had seen half of what I have seen -- or experienced -- she would be hesitant to make such a statement, unless I happen to live in the land of exception. Nevertheless, if we return to my blog entry that began this discussion, we will see that Hannah's not an altogether unfamiliar sentiment, though her position is a little different. In writing about the apparent selfishness of Christians, I wrote:

And I've been thinking that maybe (at least in a lot of cases) Christianity necessitates that a person become selfish, because it requires that person to say, in a sense, "Everything is alright with the world; God's in control -- and whatever misfortunes befall people befall them as a result of their own transgressions against Him."

In both Hannah's case and theirs, then, there seems to be a lack of a need to confront head-on the problem of evil, because to do that one must first affirm the existence of evil -- and justified evil is not really evil. But at least, with some urging, the Christian will admit that evil must have had some kind of reality -- however transient -- in order to have necessitated Christ's sacrifice in the first place. Hannah, however, need not even make such a concession. If nothing has any meaning, then evil itself has no meaning -- so there is no evil.

If one truly believed that, I can certainly understand how one would find much to smile about. But once that person came to realize that good is likewise a casualty of this materialistic worldview, I imagine that the smile would soon join the other divine things in the graveyard.