Why Believe in God, Part II
In Part I we covered one of the main reasons many former Jehovah’s Witnesses doubt the existence of God. In Part II I will explain my view of another influence, more wide spread that affects most of the western world. This portion and Part III get into science and philosophy of which neither am I an expert. There are many on this board for more experienced in both these subjects and I welcome their input. I would also like to thank Rational Witness for the resources that have helped me in this part of my spiritual growth.
What the heck is Hyperbolic Doubt
Bear with me on this. History can give such insight into the present.
Hyperbolic Doubt was the invention of physicist, physiologist and mathematician and philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650). The modern scientific method is rooted in Descartes’ method of hyperbolic doubt. Simply, he
“refused to accept the obviousness of his own senses. In the search for a foundation for philosophy, whatever could be doubted must be rejected. He resolves to trust only that which is clearly and distinctly seen to be beyond any doubt. In this manner, Descartes peels away the layers of beliefs and opinions that clouded his view of the truth…..What does this have to do with doubting God’s existence, and isn’t this post supposed to be about belief in God’s existence rather than doubt. Yes, but again to understand where we are and where we are going it is best to see where we came from and how we got here.
What is important in this for Descartes is, first, that he is showing that knowledge is genuinely possible (and thus that sceptics must be mistaken), and, second, that, more particularly, a mathematically-based scientific knowledge of the material world is possible. ’ http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/d/descarte.htm
Descartes’ efforts, ironically, were to try to quell skepticism. It did not take long for the new scientific method to take precedence over church authority. Science took on the roll as guardian of absolute truth while religion was relegated to the institution of non-provable beliefs. The Bible and belief in God came under intense scrutiny and subjected to the test of “doubt”. Higher Criticism found the Bible wanting.
In the past couple hundred years orthodox religion has tried to hold its own, attracting those who are content with faith alone. But two extremes emerged as a result of the age of enlightenment: religious Fundamentalism and Liberalism. Both were direct products of the Cartesian method. Liberalism tried to accept the Bible as a spiritual guide but not the “word of God” because it could be doubted. Fundamentalists tried to take the Bible literally and prove every word as infallible truth from God, beyond doubt. (Proper Confidence, by Lesslie Newbigin)
CONCLUSION
The ‘concept’ from which we have escape captivity (the Watchtower Society) is as fundamental as they get. They pat themselves on the back for not taking the 7 days of creation literally, and then apply the 144,000 and 1000 year reign literally. They not only literalize the obvious, but go in to literalize the symbolic, such as Revelation and Daniel. Then they take all 600 laws of the canceled Mosaic law and apply them “in principle”, which means cross the line and we will disfellowship you. Although this approach to spirituality existed in Jesus time and before, Newbigin says:
Fundamentalism is, like liberalism, a child of the Enlightenment. It has sought to reassert the authority of the Bible in the new situation created by modernity.” (Proper Confidence p 85This is where we come from. The Watchtower Society has tried for 133 years to “reassert the authority of the Bible in the new situation created by modernity”. We bought into it. Then the carpet was pulled out from under us and our foundation of faith was destroyed. We do not necessarily default to orthodox faith nor to liberal faith. Our faith proved to be in a fundamentalist fraud. The default for us is more likely Cartesian doubt.
But it is not just the WT society. The conflict continues among the liberalists and fundamentalist to rectify the improvable message of the Bible. The question is where do we individually stand now. We doubt by default because we too are children of the enlightened age, as well as survivors of the WT fraud. In Part III we will look at hyperbolic doubt and ask: Should it be used to measure all concepts?