The Metaphysics of Religion

This (anti-metaphysical) thesis asserts that metaphysical propositions – like lyrical verses – have only the expressive function, but no representative function. Metaphysical propositions are neither
true nor false, because they assert nothing, they contain neither knowledge nor error, they lie completely outside the field of knowledge. (Rudolf Carnap)

Broadly speaking, sources of human knowledge are rational, revelational, and empirical. These categories are not sharply discriminated from each other; there are transitions between one category and the other. For example, the transition between rational and empirical is somewhat quite obvious although the same is not true of revelational and empirical. Metaphysics, although included in rational knowledge, may also be perceived as a transition between rational and revelational. It can also be argued that perhaps there is no transition between revelational and empirical knowledge; they are quite distinct from each other. The mystical mode of knowledge, on the other hand, can either be considered wholly subsumed by metaphysics or totally an independent category.

Rational knowledge is the knowledge according to the reason or that, which appeals to reason; this is not necessarily verifiable by direct observation or laboratory experimentation, although much of it is. The knowledge obtained from revelation is given by the word of God; it is obtained from the Holy Scriptures. Almost all of this knowledge is unverifiable. Empirical knowledge is wholly verifiable and testable. This is indeed the most reliable knowledge that man has.

Religion, in the context here, is understood to consist of a system of beliefs having one (or more) supernatural entity or being as the central and fundamental belief. Although, religion in this prescribed sense will be the subject of discussion here, there will however be occasions when reference will be made to individual specific religions also, e.g., Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, etc.

Metaphysics is a field of speculation that encompasses almost every branch of human thought. Physical sciences, which are based and reinforced by empirical information, though are excluded from the arena of metaphysics because in such sciences, speculation does not play any central role although it does help sometime in formulating scientific theories. Any theory that is not verified by empirical evidence will not receive acceptance as a theory of physical science. Metaphysics generally deals with notions, concepts, hypotheses, etc. related to the non-material world, i.e., the sphere of mental events, or the astral world. Knowledge of the material world will sooner or later become part of the physical sciences. Looked at another way, physical sciences are constructed on the basis of the information gathered through sense- perception; on the other hand, the point of departure for the metaphysical epistemology is the belief that the sense-perception data are not reliable. The roots of this philosophical dispute extend to the ancient times. Protagoras (480-411BC) was probably the first known philosopher who placed nous (mind) above every thing else; to him mind was indeed the Primal Being or God Himself. Plato (427-347BC) formulated the concept of form, which was equivalent to Protagoras’ nous, and the formless matter was subservient to form. Aristotle (384-322BC) also believed in the supremacy of the form. A whole litany of metaphysical concepts was conceived by the ancients, which continued to be worked upon and enhanced by the succeeding philosophers, mystics, and metaphysicians of all kinds. Modern work on mind-body problem was inspired by Descartes who “..used the soul to explain intelligent brain functions: there is something like an intelligent creature in your brain which sees what needs to be done and then pulls the right strings. Descartes did not concern himself with the question of just how intelligence works in a physical sense, since at that time intelligence was regarded as a purely spiritual property”, (Furst 1979).

Soul

Soul is a central concept in the metaphysics of religion. The ancient Greek philosophers philosophized about soul and they invariably believed that the soul was non-material although it was incorporated somewhere in the human body. At death, body dies and decays but soul is liberated and remains alive; soul is immortal. The material body was considered a hindrance for the soul to develop its full potential. During his last hours before dying, Socrates (477-399 BC) discussed the nature of the soul with his friends who were there with him. Socrates was not afraid of dying, in a way he looked forward to die, because he believed that after death his soul will be shorn of the material body and will join the company of gods in the next world. He will then be able to continue his intellectual work unhindered without having to satisfy the needs of the material body. He comments, “A soul in this state makes its way to the invisible, which is like itself, the divine and immortal and wise, and arriving there it can be happy, having rid itself of confusion, ignorance, fear, violent desires and the other human ills and as is said of the initiates, truly spend the rest of time with the gods”, (Plato 1981). Later, Plotinus (200-277 AD) expanded on the concept of soul comprehensively and his metaphysics eventually found its way into Christianity, and Islamic thought was also greatly influenced by it. Plotinus believed in a kind of Holy Trinity: The One, Spirit and Soul. “The One is indefinable, and in regard to it there is more truth in silence than in any words whatever”, (Russell 1972). Russell, describing Plotinus’s philosophy, considered Spirit to be equivalent to nous which “..is the image of the One; it is engendered because the One, in its self-quest, has vision; this seeing is nous…Those divinely possessed and inspired have at least the knowledge that they hold some greater thing within them, though they cannot tell what it is; from the movements that stir them and the utterances that come from them they perceive the power, not themselves, that moves them, in the same way it must be, we stand towards the Supreme when we hold nous pure..”, (Russell 1972). According to Russell, Plotinus described, “..Soul, the third and the lowest member of the Trinity though inferior to nous, is the author of all living things; it made the sun and moon and stars, and the whole visible world. It is the offspring of the Divine Intellect. It is double: there is an inner soul, intent on nous, and another, which faces the external”, (Russell 1972). A materialistic way of thinking cannot make much sense out of the preceding description of soul. According to the modern researches, brain performs all the functions that were considered to belong to the mind (soul). According to Furst (Furst 1979), “..it was scientific advances of the nineteenth century, most notably the theory of the evolution of species and the principles of conservation of matter and energy, which annihilated Descartes’s soul. For if the universe was a closed system, as nineteenth century physics revealed, with the total amount of stuff in it constant, then intelligent action should be explainable on the basis of pieces of matter in motion, without recourse to non-material soul”. The trend of the modern research in the mind-body problem indicates that it is likely that some time in future, the duality of the mind and body issue will get resolved by reducing the so-called mental events into the material events. The researches in neuro-science and artificial intelligence are converging on this matter. For instance, according to the Type-Identity theory of Smart, Place, and Armstrong (xrefer), “Just as water is H2O and common salt is NaCl and the temperature of a gas is mean molecular kinetic energy, mental terms like ‘believing’, ‘desiring’ and ‘loving’ will be shown to be synonymous with terms that refer to types of neural events, so that some day we shall be able to say ‘love’ is such and such activity in sector 1704”.

Comprehending the Incomprehensible

Almost all the religions have God as a pivotal Being in whom belief is an essential article of faith. In most religions, God remains, largely undefined, over-defined, or some time defined so vaguely that such a definition is of little use, with the result that God of one religion is not the same as of an other. Discussing this confusion, Smith (Smith 1989) remarked, “What, then, is meant by the word ‘god’? This is not a simple question. There have been many historical concepts of god, from the anthropomorphic deities of the Greeks to the omnipotent god of Christianity. Some gods are all powerful, all knowing, and all good, while others are not. Some gods are objects of reverence, while others are not. Some gods communicate with man, while others do not. Differences such as these make it impossible to give a detailed description of a god that will encompass every religion – and securing wide spread agreement on the meaning of ‘god’ is a formidable, if not, impossible task”. Lowder (Lowder) also dwelled on the same theme, “The god of Islam (Allah) and the god of Christianity (Jehovah), despite their common origin in the god of Judaism (Yahweh), are mutually exclusive. Jehovah and Allah, at least as traditionally understood, cannot both exist at the same time. Both claim to be the Creator of the universe, but they have contradictory attributes (e.g., Christianity claims that there are three ‘persons’ known as God but Islam claims that there is only one)”. There is a great deal of confusion in religious thinking and belief. The religious literature is replete with internal contradictions; the confusion is so chaotic and dense that any effort to resolve it is doomed to fail. For example, one of the attributes of both the Christian God and Allah is that He is Incomprehensible. If God indeed is incomprehensible, how can then one describe Him and assign Him any traits? Should we believe that these traits e.g., Omnipotent, Omniscient, All Merciful, etc., are untrue, or else God, after all, is comprehensible? In spite of His incomprehensibility, so much has been written about God and His traits, His hell and heaven, His retribution and reward, that no other subject may have received as much attention or written detail.

Comprehending the Incomprehensible is indeed a veritable paradox. The picture is much more muddied by the celebrated psychologist, Carl Jung, who had tried to justify the paradoxical description of God, and metaphysics pertaining to religion. He (Jung 1993) said, “Oddly enough the paradox is one of our most valued spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or cuts down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes any where near comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible”. So, describing God is indeed a conundrum, which does not seem to have a resolution. In view of Jung’s way of thinking, any description of God, which is sufficiently muddled and riddled with contradictions, is good and eminently apt. Metaphysicians have rendered religion into a knotted riddle which keeps on becoming more and more intricately tied into itself. The more paradoxical a description of God is, the more beautiful and enchanting it becomes. It is quite another thing that it loses meaning completely, if it had any to start with. A scientist, on the other hand, does not have the same license. Any theory that he propounds or a statement that he makes, he is called upon to provide a proof for it, otherwise his theory and statement, do not have any credibility. Jung (Jung 1993) was fully conscious of this one-sided tilt in favor of the religion when he wrote, “The religious minded man is free to accept whatever metaphysical explanation he pleases about the origin of these images; not so the intellect, which must keep strictly to the principles of scientific interpretation and avoid trespassing beyond the bounds of what can be known. No body can prevent the believer from accepting God, Purusha, the Atman, or Tao as the Prime Cause and thus putting an end to the fundamental disquiet of man. The scientist is a scrupulous worker; he cannot take heaven by storm. Should he allow himself to be seduced into such an extravagance, he would be sawing off the branch on which he sits”. By implication, Jung seems to admit that metaphysics is an extravagance and the metaphysician is an unscrupulous dreamer. He does not have contact with the worldly reality although he may very well believe that he indeed is one with the reality, whatever it is. According to Carnap (Carnap 1935), “Metaphysicians can not avoid making their propositions non-verifiable, because if they made them verifiable, the decision about the truth or falsehood of their doctrines would depend on experience and therefore belong to region of empirical science. This consequence they wish to avoid, because they pretend to teach knowledge which is of a higher level than that of empirical science… and precisely by this procedure they deprive them of any sense”.

References

Carnap, R., “Philosophy and Logical Syntax – Chapter on The Rejection of Metaphysics”, 1935, http://nb.vse.cz/-sloukova/FIL.418/carnap.htm.

Furst, C., “Origins of the Mind”, Prentice Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, New Jersy 07632, 1979, p.7.

Jung, C., “The Basic Writings of C. G. Jung – The Religious and Psychological Problems of Alchemy”, ed. Violet Staub De Laszlo, The Modern Library, New York, 1993, pp. 552, 553.

Lowder, J., “Is a Proof of the Non-existence of a God Even Possible?”, http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/jeff_lowder/ipnagep.h tm.

Plato, “Five Dialogues – Phaedo”, tr. G.M.A. Grube, Hacket Publishing Company, Indianapolis, 1981, p.120.

Russell, B., “A History of Western Philosophy”, Simons and schuster, New York, 1972, pp. 288-89.

Smith, G., “Atheism – The Case Against God”, Prometheus Books,Buffalo N.Y. 14228-2197, 1989, p.31.

“History of Philosophy of Mind”, http://www.Xrefer.com/entry/552820.



The author is Assistant General Superintendent of Engineering at Detroit Water & Sewerage Department, Detroit, Michigan. He has taught part time at The University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, and at the Wayne State University, Detroit.