{"id":9962,"date":"2012-02-05T16:20:32","date_gmt":"2012-02-05T16:20:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/05\/mormonism-and-anthropomorphism\/"},"modified":"2012-02-05T16:20:32","modified_gmt":"2012-02-05T16:20:32","slug":"mormonism-and-anthropomorphism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2012\/02\/05\/mormonism-and-anthropomorphism\/","title":{"rendered":"Religion and Anthropomorphism with an Oblique Reference to Mormonism"},"content":{"rendered":"

A young man who was brought up Mormon, retains much if not all of the salutary character formation, but is now an atheist, writes (emphasis added):<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

I've been thinking about some of our conversations about theology and epistemology. Particularly the stuff on Mormonism. I'm sitting in on [Professor X's] medieval philosophy class reading St. Anselm among others, and I'm constantly struck by how far removed Anselm's view of God is from the one I grew up with. And, it seems to me, how far removed from the God of the Bible. I mean, Anselm and Aquinas both are absolutely relentless in denying God any anthropogenic [anthropomorphic?] qualities whatever. We are left with something that is faceless, devoid of human emotion, and about as difficult to relate to as anything I can even imagine. I can appreciate the intellect of men like Anselm and Aquinas, but this picture of God seems repugnant.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Being an atheist, I don't have a dog in this fight, but it does seem to me that there is more to be said for the Mormon view of God than most theists, you included, seem to realize. I recently read a book called The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion<\/em> by Sterling McMurrin. I highly recommend you check it out and read it, especially the supplementary chapter in later versions on the question of whether God is a person. I think if you do, you will find yourself forced to take Mormonism a bit more seriously as a religion.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

I have spoken more than once of the tension between Athens and Jerusalem, and Athens and Benares.  I am now tempted to speak of the tension between Athens and Salt Lake City, though this third tension is but an exacerbated form of the first.   My understanding of Mormonism is limited,  so I won't address it directly. But my understanding is that Mormons maintain that God is a physical being who inhabits a physical planet.  This conception of God, whether or not it is exactly what Mormons accept, is  as repugnant to me as the Anselmian-Thomistic one is to my correspondent.  This post raises the question of anthropomorphism in religion.<\/span><\/p>\n

Imagine a spectrum of positions. <\/span><\/p>\n

1. At one end crude anthropomorphism:  God as a physical being, a superman, as is suggested by such phrases as 'the man upstairs'  and 'the big guy in the sky.'  This is the way many if not most atheists think of God and why they indulge in such mockeries as 'flying spaghetti monster,' and compare God with the Tooth Fairy (Dennett), Santa Claus, a celestial teapot<\/a> (Russell), an angry unicorn<\/a> on the dark side of the moon (Ed Abbey), etc.  Many if not most atheists, being most of them materialists, can only think in material terms:  the only way God could be real would be for him to be a physical being.  (The tacit assumption being that to be real = to be a denizen of spacetime.)  So they think that if God is real, then he must be a physical being; and since the 'highest' physical being is man, then God is a Big Man  literally out there somewhere.  (Does he perhaps drink Celestial Seasonings (TM) tea from Russell's teapot?)  On his 1961 suborbital flight, about a month before astronaut Alan Shepard's, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin was reported to have said  that he didn't see any God.  When I heard the news report I was 11 years old.  I exclaimed: "That dumb commie doesn't know that God is a purely spiritual being!"  Atheists, who typically can think only in material terms, then naturally deny the existence of God since it is surely absurd to think of God as a Big Man, mit Haut und Haar<\/em> (Schopenhauer), etc.  So I sincerely hope that Mormons do not hold that God is literally a physical being with skin, hair, a GI tract . . . .  If that were the only option for theists, then we should all be atheists.<\/span><\/p>\n

2.  At the other end of the spectrum, a conception of God so attenuated and diluted as to turn God into a mere concept, or a mere feeling ('God is the feeling one has when one is with those one loves') or one's ultimate concern (Tillich), or an unconscious anthropomorphic projection (Ludwig Feuerbach) or perhaps a causally inert abstract object, a denizen of the Platonic menagerie. <\/span><\/p>\n

3.  The positions at both ends of the spectrum are demonstrably untenable.  Briefly, God cannot be a physical being because no physical being is a necessary being, and God is a necessary being.  By definition, God is the ultimate ground of the existence of everything contingent.  (He is more, of course, but at least that.)  As such, he cannot himself be contingent, and so cannot be physical.  That is just one argument.  I am not assuming that God exists; I am merely unpacking the concept of God.  It is equally easy to show that God cannot be a concept, or an anthropomorphic projection, or an abstract entity.  I needn't waste words on whether God is a feeling or one's ultimate concern.<\/span><\/p>\n

God cannot be a concept because concepts depend for their existence on minds, and God, by definition, is a se<\/em>,  and so cannot depend for his existence on anything, not even himself. ('Causa sui' is to be taken privatively, not positively: God does not cause himself, which would require that he be logically or temporally prior to himself; it is rather the case that God is not caused by another.)  There are of course concepts of God, but God cannot be a concept.<\/span><\/p>\n

For similar reasons, God cannot be an anthropomorphic projection.  The concept of God is the concept of a being that exists whether or not humans exist.  Obviously, such a being cannot be an anthropomorphic projection.  So if one says that God is an anthropomorphic projection, that is just a roundabout way of saying that God does not exist.  Nor can God be an abstract entity.  Abstracta, by definition, are causally inert, and God, by definition, is the first cause.<\/span><\/p>\n

4.  The interesting positions are somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.  God is not physical; God does not depend on any mind for his existence; God is not an abstract entity.  What is left but to say that God is a mind?  Now the only minds to which we have access in the first-person way, that way which alone reveals them in their true intrinsic nature, are our minds.  Since I know my own mind, and know it to be both causally efficacious and not physical, I conjecture that either God is a mind, or more like a mind than like anything else.  One's own mind provides a model whereby one can think about God. In fact, it is the only decent model we have.   So the most adequate, and only,  way to think about God is to think about God as an unembodied mind, or better as an unembodied person<\/em> where a person is a "subsistent individual of a rational nature." (Aquinas, ST I, 29, 3.)  Thinking  of God as person might not be perfectly adequate, but the other ways I have mentioned are entirely  inadequate and utterly hopeless.  So God is a person but not  a man.  A person needn't be human.<\/span><\/p>\n

5.  If we think of God as a bodiless person we avoid the Scylla of anthropomorphism.  God is not in the form of a man; it is the other way around; man is in the form of God.  God is not anthropomorphic; man is theomorphic<\/em>.  This is how we ought to read Genesis 1, 26-27:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Faciamus hominem ad imaginem et similitudinem nostram . . .<\/em> (Gen 1, 26) Let us make man in our image and likeness. . . <\/span><\/p>\n

 Et creavit Deus hominem ad imaginem suam. . .<\/em> (Gen 1, 27) And God created man in his image. . . <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

 An oft-repeated mistake is to take these spiritual sayings in a materialistic way as if to imply that God has the form of a man.  It's as if one were to argue:<\/span><\/p>\n

Man is made in God\u2019s image.
Man is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.<\/span>
Therefore<\/span>
God is a physical being with a digestive tract, etc.<\/span><\/p>\n

But that would be  like arguing:<\/span><\/p>\n

This statue is made in Lincoln\u2019s image.
This statue is composed of marble.
Therefore
Lincoln is composed of marble. <\/span><\/p>\n

The point of Gen 1, 26-27  is not that God must be physical because man is, but that man is a spiritual being just like God, potentially if not actually. The idea is not that God is a big man, the proverbial \u2018man upstairs,\u2019 but that man is a little god, a proto-god, a temporally and temporarily debased god who has open to him the possibility of a higher life with God, a possibility whose actualization requires both creaturely effort and divine grace.<\/span><\/p>\n

6.   The upshot is that God is a person, a pure spirit or unembodied mind, or at least more like a person than like anything else with which we are familiar.  The Scylla of anthropomorphism and 'spiritual materialism' is avoided by thinking of God as a bodiless<\/em> person.  The Charybdis of abstractionism\/conceptualism is avoided by thinking of God as a person, and thus as a concrete individual who knows, loves,  and freely acts.<\/span><\/p>\n

If we stop right here we have a position in the middle of our spectrum, one that is represented by many contemporary theists, Plantinga being one of them.  But we can't stop here, as it seems to me.<\/span><\/p>\n

For God  is also the absolute reality.  If God is absolute, then God is ontologically simple: he is Being itself in its prime instance, and wholly partless and incomposite, hence free of act\/potency composition.  I can't repeat the arguments here.  The simple God of Augustine, Anselm, and Aquinas is a second position in the middle of the spectrum, one even farther from anthropomorphism than the first according towhich God is a bodiless person, but not simple.  <\/span><\/p>\n

I can easily understand how my correspondent above would find the simple God to be, as he says, "repugnant."  We are left with something that is faceless, devoid of human emotion, and about as difficult to relate to as anything I can even imagine.<\/strong> In response I will say two things.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, the simple God of Anselm, et al., despite  its difficulties — which intellectual honesty forbids me from 'papering over' –  is vastly superior to the crude anthropomorphism which Mormons apparently accept.  (If I have misrepresented the Mormon position, then I should like to hear exactly what their position is on the topic under discussion.)   <\/span><\/p>\n

Second, religion is about transcendence and transcending, about reaching beyond the human-all-too-human, and beyond all the images  of  the picture-loving imagination.  Religion is not about the positing of a hinterworld that duplicates this world with the negative removed.  It is not about crude, materialistic, wish-fulfillment.  This is why we find the Islamic 72 virgins conception of paradise so paltry and ridiculous:  it is a blatant pandering to the basest elements in our nature, a pandering at once both superstitious and idolatrous.  Religion aims at a spiritualizationof the human being which cannot  be imagined and is just barely conceivable.  It is about theosis<\/em> (deification) as is maintained in Orthodox Christianity.  And because the ultimate goal for humans is not imaginable and barely conceivable, it is repeatedly pictured in crude and absurd materialistic  ways — which only fuels the fires of atheism.  Actually, one ought to be an atheist in respect of the anthropomorphic God-conceptions.<\/span><\/p>\n

This is a difficult topic to write about and of course no materialistically-minded worldling could possibly be persuaded by it.  No matter how much light one sheds on an object, a blind man won't see it — he lacks the requisite organ.   But perhaps an analogy may be of some use.  Imagine a fetus in the womb who finds his environment quite acceptable, and indeed the ultimate in what is real and worthwhile.  You try to persuade the fetus that staying  in the womb indefinitely is decidely suboptimal, a mistake in that he  is capable of a marvellous development after an event called  'birth.'  He of course doesn't know what you are talking about and is in no position to imagine what it is like to be born and develop.  And he will find it almost impossible to conceive. For him birth is death: the end of his cozy and secure womb-life.   His natural tendency is to say that you are 'bullshitting' him:  <\/span><\/p>\n

"Look man, this is reality, this is what I know, this is what I have evidence for; you are pushing some fantasy projection, some opiate so that we we fetuses won't work to improve conditions here in the womb but will waste our time dreaming about some nonexistent goodies on the other side of what you call 'birth' but we know to be death and annihilation.  Sure,  it would be nice if there were something more, but there ain't.  Your talk of infants, and children, and adolescents, and adults, is just a lie to make people denigrate the only reality there is, the reality here and now, in what you call 'womb' but we anti-birthers  call 'reality.'"<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A young man who was brought up Mormon, retains much if not all of the salutary character formation, but is now an atheist, writes (emphasis added): I've been thinking about some of our conversations about theology and epistemology. Particularly the stuff on Mormonism. I'm sitting in on [Professor X's] medieval philosophy class reading St. Anselm among … Continue reading “Religion and Anthropomorphism with an Oblique Reference to Mormonism”<\/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":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9962","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=9962"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9962\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9962"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9962"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9962"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}