{"id":1937,"date":"2022-07-24T11:24:45","date_gmt":"2022-07-24T11:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/07\/24\/faiths-immanent-value\/"},"modified":"2022-07-24T11:24:45","modified_gmt":"2022-07-24T11:24:45","slug":"faiths-immanent-value","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2022\/07\/24\/faiths-immanent-value\/","title":{"rendered":"Faith’s Immanent Value"},"content":{"rendered":"

Suppose you sincerely believe in God and the soul but that your faith is in vain. You die and become nothing. Your faith was that the curtain would lift, but it falls, irrevocably.  My question is whether, and to what extent, that upshot would matter. What if there is nothing on the other side of the Great Divide?<\/span><\/p>\n

My answer is that it won't matter because you won't know it. You will not learn that your faith was in vain. You will not discover that your faith was a life-enhancing illusion. You will have had the benefit of a faith which will have sustained you until the moment of your annihilation as an individual person. You will not die alone for you will die with the Lord-believed-in, a Lord never to be known, but also never to be known not to be.   If the Lord-believed-in is enough for this life, and this life turns out to be the only life, then the Lord-believed-in is enough, period.<\/span><\/p>\n

Your faith will have had immanent value. If this life is the only life, then this immanent value is the only value your faith could have had.<\/span><\/p>\n

"But then your faith will have been in vain!" <\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, I said that myself at the outset. But it is true only from a point of view external to my life, a point of view that cannot be my point of view.  What then is that to me when I no longer exist? In life, I can view my life from outside: I can play the spectator of my life. But if and when I no longer  exist, I cannot play that role. If my faith is lived here and now by me in full conviction of its non-vanity and non-illusoriness, then nothing that happens after my annihilation can retroactively mark my lived faith as vain and illusory. It will have served a good, life-enhancing purpose, and indeed the only purpose it could have served if my earthly tenure ends in utter annihilation.<\/span><\/p>\n

"The believer believes that God exists independently of  whether or not anyone, including himself, believes that God exists. The sincere belief in God is belief in a transcendent being."<\/span><\/p>\n

Yes, that is right, but it doesn't follow that God exists. It also does not follow that God does not exist. The life-enhancing content of the belief is what it is whether or not the transcendent object of the belief exists. My point is that sincere belief in God suffices for this life, and suffices sans phrase<\/em> (without qualification) if this life of mine ends utterly with death.<\/span><\/p>\n

"What do you mean by 'suffices for this life.'"<\/span><\/p>\n

I mean that a sincere lived<\/em> (existentially appropriated and practically manifested)  faith in God suffices to confer upon this life value, purpose, and moral structure, making it affirmable as good, and worth living.<\/span><\/p>\n

"But  if a believer took this attitude you are describing and apparently also advocating, then that believer would be in some doubt as to whether there would be any post-mortem experiential confirmation by the believer himself of the transcendent validity of his faith. If so, his faith would not be subjectively certain to him, and would then be neither knowledge nor faith!"<\/span><\/p>\n

I respectfully disagree!  It would not be knowledge, of course, but it would be genuine faith. A faith that is subjectively certain is not a living faith, but a crutch, a convenience, a cop-out, an evasion.  Living faith, genuine faith, is faith sustained in the teeth of doubt. Only then is it authentic.<\/span><\/p>\n

"Why is an authentic faith one that lives with doubt?"<\/span><\/p>\n

Because our predicament in this life is not such as to allow us any certainty about such ultimate matters as the existence of God, the immortality of the soul, whether we have a higher destiny, whether we are called to divine fellowship, whether theosis<\/em> is a real possibility, and so on. One ought not dogmatize about the uncertain. To do so is to pretend to enjoy an insight that one does not enjoy.  Such epistemic pretension is a kind of hubris that could have tragic consequences.  Think of all the people who have been murdered and tortured to death because others claimed to be certain about what they had no right to believe they could be certain about.<\/span><\/p>\n

"But aren't you dogmatizing when you claim that one cannot be certain about the matters in question?"<\/span><\/p>\n

No, because I am claiming merely that there are plausible reasons to believe that there are no rationally compelling reasons to believe that one can be certain about the things that the dogmatists claim to be certain about.<\/span><\/p>\n

Genuine faith is not blind, but it is at best<\/em> reasoned faith. Experience, however, teaches that reason is weak and vacillating.  This experientia docet<\/em> is not a dogmatic pronunciamento<\/em>.  In plain English, I am not dogmatizing when I report what experience teaches.  Reason is weak, but not so weak that it cannot apprehend its own infirmity. It is weak, but not impotent.  Its infirmity affects both arguments for and arguments against  God, the soul, and rest of the ultimate matters. And this includes arguments for and against the veridicality of a putative divine revelation. <\/span><\/p>\n

We are not wholly in the dark or wholly in the light. Our predicament is a chiaroscuro, a play of light and dark. It is as if we are in a cave in which  there is light enough to discern reasonably a possible route of escape from a condition which is admittedly not wholly satisfactory, but darkness enough reasonably both to doubt whether there is an escape and  to suspect that those who claim to see a way to the fullness of light of being empty dreamers, wishful thinkers, utopian reality-deniers, mentally unstable, or even utterly mad.  Some in the cave will reasonably argue that their condition is as good as it gets and that we must accept reality and not muck things up by reaching for the unattainable. They will deny, with justification, that their condition is speluncular. Other in the cave will reasonably argue the opposite. Neither party is entitled to dogmatize.<\/span><\/p>\n

If our condition is cave-like, then a reasoned faith is as good as it gets and its ongoing vitality feeds from its tension with reasoned unfaith.  <\/span><\/p>\n

Here below we ought not allow our inquiry into the ultimate matters to degenerate into either denialism or  dogmatism.  Saying this, I am not dogmatizing, but expressing my reasoned conviction. Thus place is made for reasoned faith which is neither blind nor dogmatic. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Suppose you sincerely believe in God and the soul but that your faith is in vain. You die and become nothing. Your faith was that the curtain would lift, but it falls, irrevocably.  My question is whether, and to what extent, that upshot would matter. What if there is nothing on the other side of … Continue reading “Faith’s Immanent Value”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[372,139,291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-belief","category-religion","category-sermons"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1937\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}