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)

Copyright (c) Dana Prom Smith 2012