A Dialogue on Metaphysics

(Theism, Atheism, Nonsense)

"He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end"

Ecclesiastes 3:11

A one-day seminar on “Illuminating the Mind: Christianity Among Other Worldviews” was organized by the Student’s Council, Discussion Forum of MZU in collaboration with the so-called ‘Synod Campus Ministry’ on the 29^th of March, 2016 at the ADM Conference Hall here in MZU. Renowned reverends were present and the resource person was none other than Rev. Zoramsanga. The seminar was organized in such a haste that no proper info about it was circulated, and that was probably the reason for the low turnout of audiences. I myself did not know anything about it until the very last minute - this really gorgeous friend of mine called me up and told me about it and asked if I would like to attend it with her- because it might be helpful to her dissertation, and when a pretty girl asked you to do something, you have to drop everything and 'just do it' even when you're not wearing a Nike pair of shoes, which I never do! hehe. Anyhow, I was there and had a wonderful time. Rev Zoramsanga gave a one and a half hour or so lecture on the topic “Genesis in Context”. Not what I had initially hoped for but still, it was an interesting one.

 It was basically a liberal interpretation of Genesis, to make Genesis more rational and more appealing to citizens of the postmodern globalised world. Now I shan't go into his lecture but will be addressing some of the issues that I myself had raised during the interactive sessions. The central theme of my argument is that atheism is practically irrational if we first consider the limits of epistemology. The problem with this, however, is that almost all our existing discourses on theism will also have to be discarded on the same ground of irrationality. Unfortunately, no one in the seminar, including the Rev. Zoramsanga himself understood my arguments, and our dialogues never quite met. And by the end of the seminar, I was dubbed as an ‘atheist’ despite my very lucid statement that stated just the opposite. So I’ll try to do justice to my arguments by re-presenting them here.

With the turn of the 20th century, metaphysics has suffered a severe blow, both from the analytic and the continental tradition. Even though Immanuel Kant, with his development of the transcendental notion of the "synthetic a priori knowledge' and his analysis of the schematic nature and role of the 'mind', had taken considerable steps towards the consolidation of metaphysics, the enlightenment (and its legacy), with its premise firmly rooted in rationality and its later orientation to naturalism, however was basically a project to do away with Metaphysics. Even though philosophers like Bertrand Russell and his cohort took a positivist approach to it with their theory of "Logical Atomism", sadly, it only added to its limitation and subsequently to its present state of non existence (it now has existence only as a ghost - through the Derridian concept of "hauntology"). positivism and analytic philosophy, with their highly narrow conceptual scope for epistemology (the correspondence theory), basically have no room for metaphysics to thrive within their traditions.

Modernism, with nihilistic existentialism as its ontological zeitgeist, was basically a manifestation of the continental's lamentation to this condition of disappearance. The transition to postmodernism doesn't do much good either, as it basically, in a way, celebrates what modernism was lamenting. But postmodernism, as the ever paradoxical agent, doesn't completely shun the notion of metaphysics like its counterpart poststructuralism (Derrida's “metaphysics of presence”, Lacan's “object petit a”has no room for metaphysics). Its extreme subjectivism leaves certain attitudinal space for metaphysics as can be seen in postmodern theology. But the problem even with this postmodern attitude is its notion of spirituality and its notion of politics, or rather its notion of 'the political' (politics and political-closely related as in 'cause and effect' but have a completely different ontology. 'Politics' is studied is departments like Political Science, IR, Area Studies etc whereas 'the political' is mainly dealt with in Literature, continental philosophy, sociology etc).

Now enough with the historical baggage. In the simplest of terms, Metaphysics as in noumenal reality is perceptible neither through sensation nor reason. Kant, Godel and Wittgenstein have established that beyond a shadow of a doubt. Any proposition (notice the primacy of language here) that claims to state any case - 'noumenal', 'ding an sich'- beyond 'atomic complex', 'incomplete symbols' etc etc. are basically nonsensical. However, this nonsensicality does not really determine the ontological case of metaphysics.

Godel's Incompleteness Theorem is basically a proof of the limitation, triviality actually of the Enlightenment's most fundamental premise, namely human rationality. The standard measure for the nonsensicality of any proposition that claims any metaphysical or ontological case beyond this limited rationality is this same limited rationality itself, and this frankly, in the continental sense is quite ‘absurd’.

The limits of formal language is quite easily overcome by an  informal one,  not in the Beckett-ian (Samuel Beckett) sense, ok, maybe a little, but informal as (mainly) in say like poetry- the cases of the romantics like Keats, Shelley etc and transcendentalists the likes of Emerson and Walt Whitman etc. are prime examples in this regards. And if I may so add, Wittgenstein once read a poem in front of the Vienna Circle, who as positivists believed that the Tractatus was about the Correspondence Theory. And then we have highly informal narratives such as the ones by high modernists authors the likes of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf, and then we have postmodern narratives like Magic Realism appropriated to perfection by novelists like Salman Rushdie and Gabriel Marquez. These narrative techniques are capable of expressing what formal propositional language is incapable of expressing. Narratology, in general, offers lots of spaces that are seemingly beyond possibility as per syllogism. 

Similarly, the limitation of human rationality can quite easily be overcome with 'Faith' as it is constrained neither by "Paralogism" nor the "four Antinomies". Further, if faith is to be discarded as per our 'limited rationality' so can this 'limited rationality' be easily discarded as per faith. The nature of our reality can be categorised into three schemas: first of all is materialism, it would be hard to deny the validity/materiality of External Realism which John Searle seems to fetishise so much, it’s highly naïve, but his “default position” actually makes a lot of sense, but, unfortunately for Searle, External Realism or materialism is/are just the beginning and is/are by no means an end in itself/themselves. Secondly, we have semiotics, Michel Foucault’s notion of “Discourse” and its functionality as in “power/knowledge”, “disciplinary power” and “biopower” is one that unfortunately cannot be easily untangled or disproved. They are the very fabric[s] of culture (as opposed to nature), society and civilisation themselves. What this amounts to, (to imitate Derrida himself), is that ‘there is nothing outside politics’ and that (to imitate Sartre) ‘politics always precede existence as well as essence". This Foucauldian notion of semiotics is ubiquitous and perpetuates itself all the way to Baudrillard's notion of "simulacra"/"hyperreality" and the "desert of the real". And then we have Faith, the most important of them all. Faith, as irrational as it is, gives us excess to what lies beyond the boundaries of materialism and semiotics/politics – precisely with its irrationality. Its functionality is highly analogous to that of Romanticism and Transcendentalism, but offers so much more than these movements, for example, the primacy of emotion that we have in the two former movements is decentered, although not removed in the latter.

So, as it stands, almost all our discourses on concepts like say God, and Theism, in general, have been constructed within the parameters of our 'limited rationality' (analogous to Hegelian idealism?) as neither sensation/reason nor formal language allows us access to the great beyond, one pertinent example here would be the importance of Hermeneutics in Biblical and theological studies. As such most of our concepts about noumenal reality are products of our attempts to describe what we should have "pass[ed] on in silence".

Academic apologies for theism as we have now established are more or less constructed within the parameters of our 'limited rationality' to meet the standards that it (rationality) has established mainly through philosophical and scientific discourses to the exclusion of the third schema ‘faith’, and since they are just constructed discourses within the parameters of our rationality, they have absolutely nothing to do with God in its noumenality, an entity we can neither perceive, nor express in/through sensation, reason nor formal language- which in effect automatically renders us null to disprove Its existence. All that atheism has ever done is disproved constructed discourses about god that have nothing whatsoever to do with GOD in Its noumenality.  The problem with this rationalisation of what is inherently irrational is that it easily becomes subject to flaws and fallacies, and even after all the Hermeneutical interpretations that it (theism) has gone through, it is still, at its most fundamental level a 'case' that should have been either demonstrated or "shown" (as per Zizek) or "pass[ed] on in silence" (as per Wittgenstein) rather than rationalised it in the first place - as they fall short of any referent or any corresponding fact. In other words, we and our mind, and as such our epistemology and rationality are always constrained by the four-dimensionality of the spatio-temporal to which we have been thrown into (as per Kant, with a pinch of Heidegger), and since  formal language/logic is what constitutes the "totality" of "all that is the case" of this spatio-temporality, any rational 'case' claimed that is meta-physical is automatically a "Transcendent Judgement" and is thus irrational and nonsensical as it lacks "Bedeutung" or a "referent". The limit of formal language/logic is the limit of the world and thus cannot even be pictured  (mentally) and are therefore "sinnlos"/"unsinning". However, it should be noted, as before,  that Wittgenstein himself read poetry at a conference, in front of the positivists.

The funny thing about all this is that, as mentioned before - seemingly rational discourses like atheism are inherently nonsensical in the sense that they try to disprove a God that is absolutely beyond perception through rationality/sensation and beyond formal language, in other words beyond epistemology. It is nonsensical on two levels: first, it tries to disprove a noumenal reality that is absolutely beyond our rational capability and hence beyond our epistemology. How can you disprove something or anything that you have no idea about? Secondly, it tries to disprove constructed concepts and discourses that have been rationalised and articulated, when they should have been demonstrated or expressed through irrationality, and are hence already nonsensical.

So, basically, if you are an outspoken atheist, whether you are a scientist or a philosopher or a philosopher wannabe, the chances of you being right are as slim as the chances of you getting into heaven. And if you are a philosopher wannabe who doesn't really read philosophy but knows the names of different philosophers, the chances of you understanding this post are as slim as the chances of you being right, you, however, will feign shrewdness and act all savvy, and will most likely commit strawman (just like Searle) after your long tiring efforts.

"A then pawh kan hre thei lo

 He luikam atang hian"