On Wisdom
Demanding evidence for the existence of God is a dishonest question, if one’s doubts are not based on lack of evidence.
Basic truths, that is, the axioms of thought, are affirmed or denied based on reasoning from first principles, not on evidence.
- The statement “Life has meaning” is not proved nor disproved by evidence. It is an axiom of ontology.
- Nor is the Law of Cause-and-Effect. It a metaphysical axiom of physics.
- Nor is the Law of Non-Contradiction. It is an axiom of logic.
- Nor is the Golden Rule. It is an axiom of ethics.
- Nor is the statement “Creation is evidence of a creator.” This is a statement not of fact, but of wisdom.
But the meaningfulness of life, causation, reason, morality and creation are all proofs of God.
Wisdom the ability to see the meaning of a fact, to regard it judiciously, which means, to see it in its proper proportion and context. Wisdom is a prerequisite to any understanding of the meaning of statements of fact.
The Fool in his heart says there is no God. This is not because the fool sees evidence nor fails to see it. Evidence is irrelevant to this question. He says there is no God because he is foolish, and so the meaning, context, and due proportion (without which evidence and reasoning on the question cannot be understood) are, indeed, not understood by him. Sin darkens the intellect. Folly blinds the fool.
Sadly, I speak from experience. I was the fool blinded by folly. Logic told me there was a moral order to the universe, on which all manmade law and custom must rest. I could not account for the origin of that moral order. I held it to be a product of objective reasoning, based on self-interest rightly understood, or survival instinct: this, despite that moral heroism involved selflessness, that is, love, and the the highest form of moral heroism involved self-sacrifice. A soldier in one instant might throw himself on a hand grenade to save his squad, or a mother over decades might sacrifice all her time and thought to her beloved children. I knew this, and, logical as I ever strove to be, if one lacks wisdom, one cannot see on which side of the pan the weight of evidence falls.
Most conclusions in life are not based on the syllogisms of formal logic. Rather, they are the accumulation of countless trivial experiences which only makes sense when seen in matrix of the pattern of evidence they form.
The atheist sees a pagan Summer King rite, or hears a Tartuffe speaking hypocrisy, or stumbles across Red propaganda demeaning the Crusades, or sees an adventure film depicting the Spanish Inquisition as sadistic, and so the whole idea of organized religion, therefor the idea of God, fall into disrepute in his imagination.
He decides all religions are equally mythical, and all myths are false, except Christian myths are the most false of all. They he reads Voltaire, Darwin, Freud and Marx, sees these men as scientists, not crackpots, and says that science evolved in the West despite, not due to, the Church. Everything good and fine in life he attributes to churchlessness.
Ontological arguments showing the necessity of an uncaused First Cause cannot dislodge this monument of contempt in his imagination.
Likewise, the monotheist reads the stark grandeur of the creation account of Book of Genesis, and compares that to the childish absurdity of Norse or Canaanite myths of gods licked out of iceflows by a primordial cow, or a storm-god killing his dragonish mother to build the cosmos from her corpse.
He compares the austerity, compassion and wisdom of real historical figures like St. Mary, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Thomas Aquinas, with the adultery, sodomy and parricide of pagan figures of Venus, Apollo, Jupiter.
He sees the stepped pyramids of Mexico adorned by bloodthirsty gods with goggle-eyes and protruding tongues, and compares that the soaring sublime architecture of the Cathedral at Chartres.
So he decides not all religions are equal, and perhaps not all denominations.
And then he hears the lies, the lies, the lies and the lies about lies from modern secular materialists, who self-identify as meat-robots, or imagines the smell from the endless killing fields and open mass graves in Lenin’s Russia, Stalin’s Ukraine, Mao’s China, or the pickled body parts of babies kept in jars on the desk of Kermit Gosnell.
Even maintaining a polite respect for his fellow atheists becomes increasingly difficult, as history puts on stark display what philosophers as ancient as Aristotle pointed out about the absurdity of communal ownership of common goods, or writers as wise as Moses and Confucius about the wickedness of pride and hypocrisy.
Was there ever an atheist who eschewed adultery? The private lives of Karl Marx and Ayn Rand do not bear close inspection. Was there ever a Muslim prophet who healed the sick and raised the dead?
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
