LETTERS TO A FRIEND: Humbug
Dear Friend,
Years
ago while on vacation, my 5 year old daughter, Elizabeth, came down with a
dangerously high fever. We took her to
the nearest emergency room. The
physician on duty, after examining her, said, "Your daughter's fever is
idiopathic. She needs a full spectrum
treatment."
I
said to him, “You mean you don’t know what’s causing her fever.” Surprised, he
said, “Well, we’re not sure, and we think it’s better to try several
approaches.” After seven years of Greek
in college and graduate school, I knew that "idiopathic" meant "one's
own suffering." He was saying that
her fever was unique and thus couldn’t be diagnosed. He didn't know what was causing her high
fever. "Full spectrum" meant
that he would throw everything at her, hoping that something might stick. Happily, it did.
The
physician's language was humbug. Max
Black, late professor of philosophy at Cornell University, in his book The Prevalence of Humbug wrote that
humbug is a "deliberate misrepresentation, short of lying, especially by
pretentious word or deed" (Cornell University Press, 1983). Not wanting to admit his ignorance, the
physician used a word which was a "deliberate misrepresentation, short of
lying." Isaac Asimov called the
word "a high-flown term to conceal ignorance."
Theologians and
ecclesiastics use a lovely word to conceal their ignorance. Sometimes, they act as though they’re saying
something when they’re not. The word “mystery”
means "an unknown later to be revealed." Words such as eternal, immutable, immortal,
and unchangeable are, as Alfred North Whitehead said, “compliments hurled at
God.” They convey no knowledge other
than that we don’t know anything about God.
Theological language about God is humbug, but then again theology is not
about God but about human beings. If I
say God is my father, I mean to say I am a child of God which is to say that
theology is really anthropology.
Also, “syndrome” which
is used by psychotherapists, psychiatrists, and physicians means no more than a
collection of symptoms, not what in the hell is really going on. Often, they use the phrase “black box” as if
to say that they know the stimulus and the response, but they don’t know why the person chose the response. Whenever people
deliberately use obscure language, chances are, as with ancient priests,
they’re concealing their ignorance.
There
are a lot of mysteries, idiopathies, and syndromes in life. As Werner Heisenberg, the Nobel Laureate in
physics who was known for his work in quantum mechanics and the development of
the principle of indeterminacy wrote: “What we observe is not nature itself,
but nature exposed to our method of questioning.”
I
write all of this in response to your questions about faith and knowledge,
especially the religious groups who claim to know the truth. Faith is not knowledge. For one thing faith cannot be proven or disproved. Claims to know the absolute truth are, on the
face of it, humbug.
Corollaries
to faith are presuppositions and assumptions.
We can’t prove them, but we use them to make sense out of our
experiences. For instance, it makes more
sense to understand our experiences in the context of a universe, but we can’t
prove it. We cannot claim as a truth
that the laws of physics are the same throughout the world because no one has
ever run such an experiment. We assume
it. Also, it makes more sense to believe
that this complex universe did not appear by accident, as though it were
happenstance, but again such a belief cannot be proven. We presuppose it. The most complex organizing principle we know
is the person, so it is not unreasonable to believe that something close to a
person but far beyond a person is behind this vast complexity. Again, this is an assumption which is to say
that a belief in God is an act of faith, not knowledge.
Now,
where everyone seems to go astray is when they claim that their presuppositions
are true which is humbug.
Presuppositions and assumptions are only useful when they can explain
everything in its breadth and in its depth.
Although physicists often speak about the beauty of their theories,
their theories do not explain either beauty or mercy. No such presupposition as ever been
discovered that comprehends the whole of it.
Werner Heisenberg put it simply: “Every word or concept, clear as it may seem to be, has only a limited range of applicability." As Saint Paul said, “We see through a glass darkly.”
If
you’ve come along with me this far, then the question of good and evil
arises. Again, as I look at the world, I
can assume that it is evil, indifferent, or good. If I say that it is either evil or
indifferent, I have the problem of explaining away goodness, and, conversely,
if I believe it is good, I have the problem of explaining evil or
indifference. No matter which was I
turn, I face the inexplicable. To me it
is a far better quandary to be in if I am faced with the problem of evil
because evil is in many ways a corruption of goodness. We cannot tell a lie without first knowing
the truth. A betrayal first requires
trust to make any sense. Loyalty is
never a corruption of deceit.
Ultimately, it is a matter of faith, and, thus, not truth. There are no presuppositions or beliefs that
can explain everything, so we make choices about what to believe which are acts
of faith, acti fidei.
If
someone or an institution, such as a church or a scientific association, claims
truth for their propositions, they are forever trapped in their truth, unable
to learn anything new. Of course, all of
this raises the question of doubt because no presupposition is ever entirely
satisfactory. Faith implies to
doubt. Indeed, I don’t see how anyone
can have faith or believe without doubt which is to say that anyone who claims
to know the truth and has no doubt is preaching humbug. I like another quotation from Werner
Heisenberg. “The first gulp from the glass of
natural sciences will turn you into an atheist, but at the bottom of the glass
God is waiting for you.”
Dana Prom Smith (10/21/2012)