Andrew Sullivan posted a reader response yesterday, in the aftermath of the Sullivan Harris debate. It was well written, and I am resisting the urge to post the entire letter, which you can find here.
The reader suggested that a fundamental difference between believers and some atheists was their tolerance of mystery,
Not the Colonel-Mustard-in-the-library-with-a-candlestick kind of mystery, but the awe-and-humility-before-truths-and-experiences-greater-than- we-are-and-deeper-than-we-can-grasp kind of mystery."
The reader goes on to find the distinction between believers and non-believers in the believers' "humble acceptance of the limitations of human understanding and the possibility that the answers are more than we can know."
The idea is that non-believers have a kind of arrogance (my word, not the reader's) which amounts to refusing to accept the possibility that anything they don't understand can exist. Believers, on the other hand, understand and appreciate mystery.
As you might expect, if you follow the postings at The Mull, I agree with most of what the reader has to say about mystery, and its importance, but don't think that it forms "the fundamental disconnect between believers and non-believers". I think, in fact, that there are people who have understanding of, and appreciation for, mystery on both sides of the belief divide, and that there are people who don't on both sides as well.
And I think much of the confusion around the topic has to do with misunderstandings that are shared across the divide.
But the more I thought about the reader's comments, the more I realized just how complex the idea of mystery is. It involves the whole question of what knowledge really is, the whole question of what belief is, and how it differs from knowledge. It involves our fundamental relationship to the world we find ourselves in, as well as issues of consciousness, language, perception, and much else.
So, instead of a post, I'm contemplating a series—an attempt to outline some basic understandings, which will, I hope, shed some light on the subject, and help readers to make up their own minds.
But first, a couple of comments in defense of those nasty atheists.
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The reader's charge that believers accept mystery while non-believers don't is not the strongest part of the post. It would be a good point if you had atheists, on the one hand, arguing that there is nothing "greater or deeper than we can grasp", and believers, on the other hand, arguing that we can't know that for sure, and we should keep an open mind.
But this is far from the case. Most atheist believe there is more to the world than they know. And believers do not argue for an open mind. They argue for a very specific set of ideas—as specific as the doctrine of the trinity, for example, or the total depravity of man. To embrace such complex and specific ideas is something more, or other than, a mere appreciation for the limits of one's knowledge. -
Sullivan notes, at the end of the quote, that this (the fact of mystery) is why he finds agnosticism far more persuasive than atheism. The implication, if I understand him correctly, is that atheists are writing off a possibility which they can't prove wrong, while agnostics are bowing to mystery by admitting the limits of their own knowledge.
It sounds plausible enough, but it's really an unfair (to atheists) portrayal of the situation.
If I tell you there is an invisible, unique, and undetectable Boojum in the closet, which is controlling everything in the room, you have no intellectual responsibility to take me seriously—not even to the extent of keeping an open mind—whether or not you appreciate mystery.
The idea that, just because some people claim that God exists, it becomes close-minded for other people to ignore the possibility, doesn't hold up.
One might as well argue that believers have a responsibility to move away from their extreme position in favor of God, and become agnostics merely because there are people who don't believe.
Lest I seem unbalanced, I should point out that, early on in the Sullivan Harris debate, I came down on the side of believers, arguing that there were distinct kinds of truth claims in science and religion—a point I might well revisit in this series.
At least, thats what I think today.
Watch for Part 2 - Human Knowledge
