Another day, another argument
I have just gotten back from eating dinner, and the train of thought started by the previous post kept chugging along until it hit a station. I remembered a conversation I had had recently on a similar vein as the ideas I put forth in the last post. The girl I was talking to was a staunch atheist. While I know everyone who reads my blog has strong feelings on this subject, try this time for the sake of experiment not to think of the things I'm going to bring up as true or false but as provable or fallacious. I'll try to put in reminders as I go along.This girl, whom I shall call 'Jane,' was adamantly against everything I had proposed on the nature of suffering and evil, as outlined in the previous post. She insisted that it could not be as I said; to think of some afterlife where all is made right was ridiculous. There is no reason for human suffering, there couldn't be. She had read Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov and agreed with one of the characters in saying that she would reject any place in heaven on account of God's cavalier attitude towards the suffering children.
For a long time I struggled with her, trying to get her to see my side. How dull could she possibly be? I asked myself. Then it occured to me that almost certainly she was asking herself the same question. What kind of fool believes in this mystical hocus pocus? She was saying; he certainly knows some things, but some of what he believes is really quite ridiculous!
I must have startled her when I started laughing, but I couldn't help it. We were really so close to understanding each other, but we kept getting caught up on some basics. I tried to explain my new thought to her.
We each had some basic premise that was key to our argument. Hers was that everything is basically physical. She saw no evidence to contradict it, plenty of circumstantial evidence against the people who said the things I had been repeating, and therefore no reason to doubt this premise. Thus, physical suffering, which I had passed over because of my own premise, was much more important in her view than it was in mine. There was no way I could convince her of the truth of my premise, and solely because of that, my argument was unprovable and void to her. In the same way, I had to reject her argument on the same assumption that my premise was correct.
I wonder how often this occurs? I'm relatively sure it happens more in discussions on religion than anywhere else, but I still wonder. Both sides believe the other is being entirely uncooperative because they won't play on their field. "Prove to me the existence of God without any talk of spirituality" one side cries, while the other says, "just pray over your disbelief and God will speak to you." Don't you see that both are being ridiculous? I wonder how any converting (to either side) gets done.
posted by Emmett @ 19:15
3 Comments:
Of course it happens all the time. I'm constantly aware of it. What are the tools of rhetoric? Logos, Pathos, Ethos. Let's focus on Logos. In an essay I read for English, they pointed out that you *can not* make assumptions and not back them up to have effective Logos. An example they gave was between two children trying to convince their mother that they should have the car. "I'm the oldest!" shouts the eldest. "She had it last night!" shouts the younger. The younger one makes the assumption that equality is logical; the elder makes the assumption that the older and (presumably) more responsible should be rewarded. Neither gives any logical basis for this or even considers that anyone else would have a different value system, so they both come off as whiny brats.
Unfortunately, we can't provide logical support for EVERYTHING we think. At some point, you get to a point where logic breaks down and assumptions have to be made. How the heck do you prove existence? You can't. I have never seen independent, stand-alone logical proof that existence exists. I go on the assumption that it does, and many of my further assumptions come from that fact (or assumption).
What gets really annoying is that you can't prove the existence of God or any other thing such as He, but nor can you prove His non-existence. You can't even prove that proof is or is not needed, as you pointed out in your "show me the proof/pray over the disbelief" lines. You can't prove that the society is more important than the individual, or the individual more than the society.
We all have to make some of these assumptions part of our outlook, our personal worldview, and they play into everything we do, say, or think. Thus, clashes.
Wow I rambled awhile. And I mostly just rehashed, anyway.
I'm supposed to say something profound, I can feel it, but darned if I know what that is.
It seems to me (though "Jane" would dispute it), that there is always some inner knowledge. You don't have to call if spiritual if you don't want to. It's just a belief that you have had from birth, that no one taught you, and if someone tries to make you disbeilive it, though they have all the logical proof in the universe to contradict you, you just can't be convinced of their view.
And now, to demonstrate my theory and simultaneously blow it out of the water, I turn to my Bible. In Jer. 31:33, it says, "After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law on their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people." To supplement that, (I believe it's Pres. Monson, a general authority in the LDS church) "The only thing we do not know, is that we DO know."
There are some things you can't prove or disprove. Each person just has to reach inside themselves and make their own choice.
Don't worry, Paul, I ramble too. I can see the impass, and missionaries come up against this all the time. I don't think trying to convince her while she is staunchly opposed to what you are saying is ever going to work. I'll have some more insight in two years. But for now, I can tell you that someone has to take a leap of faith in order to be pursuaded to believe in Diety. So comes the impass. She has to be truly (not just faking or doing the hocus pocus to prove she did it and it didn't work)willing to accept it. However, with what you laid out in the "show me" lines, it is impossible when she doesn't care to believe. If you think about it, it's quite convenient for her. No Diety=no sin=fun now=no eternal consequences=no sunday meetings=happy time in funky town! Okay, seriously now. Yeah, it seems like hocus pocus. Poof! There's sin. Poof! There's an afterlife. Poof! There's illogical comfort. Poof! There's genius fools. How convenient for her. But I think she's probably saying the same thing about us, too. Hmmm. I need some aspirin.
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