TEMPORAL AGNOSTICISM: PROBLEMATIC NOTION OF GOD

           When confronted with the question, how could it be possibly describe a blue color to a blind man since birth? Often it put an individual to brief silence or taken aback, putting into a deep interest of providing an answer to such query. Thinking any possible way that could perhaps describe, the blue color to a blind man since birth. Some would refer a blue as to the feeling of sadness; others would refer in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a trigger of depressive emotions.  Blue commonly used to symbolize male gender in contrast to pink used for females. But despite the nod of the blind man to the given description, the question remains whether such description could guarantee that the blind man could picture out the color blue or still confuse of what is really a blue remains. The dichotomy of a blind man and able individual to see remains a point to consider. A blind may possibly had the idea of what is blue but compared to the understanding of an able may vary.

Similarly when an individual think about the idea of God, either one who consider itself as a believer or non-believer in respect with their questions are trivialized, feeling helpless to such pondering. Questions such as: Who is God? What is a God? Is there a God? If it exist could it be possible that an omniscient and omnipotent God permits suffering? Or is it recognition of the limited feature of man that such recognition of supreme-being plays a vital role in aiding its inability? By these and other questions that could be possibly excogiated makes no difference between a blind man and an able person.

          As man continuously seek out for suitable reason for such blindness. Set of God’s come to emerge, varieties of them come to be part of human history, but few of them knew of the existence of the others. Creating an intricate human practice involving distinctive emotions, acts, and beliefs. It is doubtful that there is any common to all religions, but all religion expresses and fosters a sense of the sacred. Religion had played a vital role in human history; it holds a power over humanity like nothing else. As Marx would point that, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions; it is the opium of the people.”      

         Reason has built the modern world; it is precious but also a fragile thing which can be corroded by apparently harmless irrationality. The spawned ideas of God are at the start problematic, the arguments drawn are deemed incoherent thus; such nausea must be subjected to nihilism.

        The paper would like to present its point in support that a coherent definition of a supreme being must be forward before the question of its existence can be meaningfully confer. Holding to the idea that existence of any deity is currently unknown but is not necessarily unknowable, therefore one will withhold judgment until/if any evidence is available.

      To further aid the point, the discussion would consider Anselm Min’s Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida and Marion—as the proposition to debunk ontotheological where such method would only suggest oblivion and that a non-ontotheological approach in addressing the problem of expressing God’s subtle integrity is more likely possible. J.L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddenness Justifies Atheism is also taken into account as it suggests a probable reason for non-belief.

Anselm  Kim’s Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida and Marion

     Anselm’s Naming the Unnameable God: Levinas, Derrida and Marion presents a postmodern phenomenological approach to the problem of expressing God’s subtle integrity. The interpretation of Kim to the works of the three French thinkers, attempt to usher the thinking in a unique alternative way of naming this unnameable God, in a way that it would preserve God’s irreducible transcendence and to avoid a sheer kataphasis and sheer apophasis.

            The discussion centers Levinas, Derrida and Marion’s argument for the need to reject ontotheological approach, for such thinking would only be dangerous to believer and non-believer. Ontotheology would only contribute to the oblivion or forgetfulness of being. For such employment method would only recede the nexus towards naming this unnameable God.  

         The following provided by Anselm Kim’s interpretation to Levinas, Derrida and Marion point in rejecting ontotheological approach and its non-ontotheological naming of the unnameable God drawing from their respective approach.  It will also include a story that would somehow contribute in naming this unnameable God as a conclusion.

Levinas, Derrida and Marion: Naming God Non-ontotheologically

Levinas: God in the hungry

       Min had come to show how Levinas had come to a thinking of naming God in a way that it would not be consider as ontotheology. Levinas had come to consider that ethics could be a possible way out for ontotheology. One can avoid any possible thematization or reducing God’s transcendence to man’s subjectivity. It is the encounter of the ‘Other,’ hungry, that would shakes up such purportedly par excellence ontotheological thinking. Hungry for Levinas is the expression of the unbridgeable distance between the self and to God.  

       The main point of Levinas is that this thematization of God would only lead to confusion and the possibility of putting God in distant place, offering instead an alternative that would possibly lead into nearness through individual relationship with the neighbor.

 Jean-Jacques Derrida: On Prayer

         His rejection of ontotheological leads him to focus on the potential of negative theology which occurs into two phases. The possibility of negative theology only as an event and takes place in the course of prayer. Prayer for Derrida is a secret, absolutely secret. Prayer is a way of asking all the questions which are part of the individual’s iconography. It involves a suspension of certainty and that such epoché (to bracket, to put certain belief out of action or consideration so that they may not interfere with the pure and unadulterated apprehension of an event or experience.) of knowledge is part of a prayer has to be in order to be authentic.

      Derrida’s naming God, is possible only as negative theology in its self-transcending, self-negating movement as prayer to another whose name remains forever unspecified, or as reference without a referent and only as a movement of referential transcendence inherent in all human struggles for authenticity and justice.

Jean-Luc Marion: God in praise

        Marion also come to an understanding similar to Levinas and Derrida that it is necessary to dismiss ontotheology and the precipice it entails in to the discourse on God. Marion’s agreement the need for going beyond the sheer understanding of God and in finding mode that will preserve the transcendence of God. For Marion, praise is neither true nor false. It does goes beyond the predicative propositional use of language. It is a performative that elaborates gifts with words, not to make things with words.

         Derrida, Levinas and Marion attempt to shake the ontotheological comportment of the believer and non-believer come into such understanding or create a par excellence concept of God (Naming the unnameable God). It illuminates ones understanding, an understanding that is devoid of conceptualization, representational approach to God or reducing God’s transcendence through the language of predication as one attempt to name this unnameable God. The three French thinkers idea does gave an opportunity to a believer or non-believer of re-thinking what had come to be in the process of knowing this unknowable God. The idea provided offers an idea and the necessity to suspend as believer or non-believer in totally accepting the ethereal concept of God. Derrida and Levinas and Marion offer the need for going beyond, being critical to brevity of expression, solipsistic understanding. For such thinking would shove further to a more complicated and unprogressive attempt in naming God.

J.L. Schellenberg’s Divine Hiddeness Justify Atheism?

Schellenberg’s account of Divine Hiddenness argues that does God’s hiding justifies atheism, for God having a feature of all-knowing, all-loving and all-good must be present to a being that is limited by nature, incapable of knowing and doing the ways of its existence perfectly. Schellenberg emphasized hiding does not mean of that God exist unlike Paul Moser’s claim in his article, Divine Hiddenness Does Justify Atheism, that God is hiding because humanity are sinful and must undergoes purification to be worthy of such divine attention. The proper way of such refinement is to follow the way of Christ. Hiding simply means the lack of evidence that are credible as humanity searches for a God, which could be similar to the Noseeum Argument that follow a general pattern: (a) so far as we can tell (detected) there is no x. (b) So, it is more likely than not (perhaps significantly so) that (c) there is no x.

To further reason out that Divine Hiddenness could possibly justify the belief or suggest an individual to imply that God does not really exist and that such idea are all delusional. Schellenberg formulate arguments that would broaden and strengthen his claim surrounds Analogy Argument and Conceptual Argument which attempt to excogiate the concept of divine love. Both argument focuses only one theme, the notion of love whether it be human or divine which surely if it is coming from a divine then simply it would be unthinkable that it would not supersede human love which despite of its genuine it remains repugnant as time for man changes.

Schellenberg’s acknowledgment of divine love which is deemed far more what human could possibly be pregnated in time or more than what a mother could possibly offer to her child despite of being limited does point to the reason of dismay. Despite of one’s effort still it remains untouched by a divine. The conception does hint that man’s in need of divine love is the cause of becoming an atheist or to reject that God is not a loving authority, such notion of divine love, that God is capable of such act as understood by an individual would suggest a test of faith. The idea that divine love is far higher, that it is a must for a God to quench such longing by revealing itself evidently, suggest that traditionally and culturally such conception as one of God’s feature does fail to be reasonable and unworthy of faith. It only contribute for one’s disbelief and that divine love is just delusion.

Therefore, Schellenberg is suggesting that traditional themes ink to God are not reliable proposal as a proof of its existence or to imply that such conceptualization must be subjected to further examination before it could be easily hinge to God. Traditional arguments need to be rectified if it needs the revelation of truth.    

Min and Schellenberg’s Non-Ontotheological Appeal

Anselm Min and Schellenberg’s identification that such ontotheological approach does causes an individual who is incapable of grasping what is far more thinkable to fall apart, if such proposition would be taken dogmatically or be followed. Both is trying to emphasize the necessity to debunk such guidelines for it will not lead an inquiry and the inquirer positively but rather be the cause of man’s delusion. A revision of God’s feature and its possibilities must be polish in order to avoid contradiction, so that the discussion of God must not be intricate to the point of rejecting the possibility. For the notion of God is a matter only of possibility as long as evidence is not provided and if provided it must not only reside to believers, as it is always understood but also to non-believers. It is more practical or acceptable to suspend thematic idea that contributes to the oblivion of the inquiry and inquirer. If there is really God outside of the mind, then the burden must not conceded by the inquirer it should be on God’s behalf to manifest its existence scientifically.

Timelessness, Omniscient and Omnipotent God

           Attributes being hinge to a God such as: timelessness, omniscient, omnipotent and other impeccable attributes that are inconsistent could be trace to individuals longing for the highest form of goodness, love and benevolence, in the acknowledgment that it is impossible for a human to perform such act then the idea of God come in. One may ponder that there must be something perfect and the only capable of that is a God.

Some of the interesting problem that may possibly occur in the idea of God as timeless is that it points to the question that “can a timeless God know that what time it is?” it would suggest that because God is not in the time, it is impossible for a God to think over the past, present and future of its dominion. On Omniscience, God as all-knowing, the question of such notion is that, how a God, is all-knowing would allow an individual horrendous intentions be acted and create chaos which likely as a result it would trigger some individual to God does not exist. It is puzzling greatly such gesture from a God. God being omnipotent (all-powerful). What is omnipotence? the term has been used to connote a number of different positions, despite of different religion common among to the idea of all-powerful is that God able to do anything that it chooses to do and able to do absolutely anything, even the logically impossible. So why God permit evil/suffering to be part in the existence of humanity when such predicament would only convince that God does not exist.

Timelessness, omnipotence, omniscience and other sort of such highest conception does post unpleasant impact particularly to an inquirer philosophically and theologically because human diversity (economically, technologically, socially, etc.). As it enters to its phenomena, its outlook whatever the word may seem firm still the conception of omniscience, all-good, timelessness, omnipotent and other impeccable traits are determined on the level of its scope of experience, tradition, cultural and other sort that affects an individual is limited to one’s facticity.

Going back to the question of how could an individual possibly see a blind man the blue of blueness or the red of redness. Words may variably constructed to address or satisfy the blind in its query, others may seem satisfying, lacking, concrete but the question still remain how does it guarantee that the blind man since birth could create blue, if it is created, is it really blue or does it only send him to despair out of envy that others have really seen it. One thing is for clear it remains a possibility.