Marilynne Robinson Doesn’t Not Believe In God at Zoomtard

Marilynne Robinson Doesn’t Not Believe In God

29 Comments Published September 23rd, 2009 in Uncategorized.

Marilynne Robinson was asked by a PBS journalist “As one who sometimes has trouble with this himself, and I know a lot of people who do, too, I would be interested in hearing about why you believe in God”.

I know this might not seem like the best answer in the world, but I do not not believe in God. If I were to say I don’t believe in God, I would feel that I was saying something that was not true.
I don’t think that we have a basis in our experience that allows us to put together a case for the existence of God. I don’t think that’s intended. I think that people who feel that they have to be able to put it together in that way, arrive at it rationally, as it were, simply lack acquaintance with the extreme fallibility and limitedness of human capacities for reason and for gathering relevant information and all the rest of it. I think the feeling of amazement that I think is appropriate to an alerted sense of what being is leads very naturally to deep comfort with the assumption of God.

I do not not believe in God.

I could only say it as well now that I have read it, memorised it and can repeat it. I do not not believe in God.

People sometimes reveal they envy my faith. They just can’t bring themselves to believe it.

I couldn’t either. It seemed foolishness until I stumbled, in pure amazement into the acute realisation that all of life and everything in it was a gift. I found the end of myself. Or in Robinson’s words, I experienced “the extreme fallibility and limitedness of human capacities for reason and for gathering relevant information and all the rest of it”. When faith burst in on me, I found that the believe in/don’t believe in question was as irrelevant as asking what colour the curtains are in heaven.

So maybe your challenge for today is seek out that giftedness of the life you live, the story you inhabit and the world that cavorts around you. Pop out of the tight strictures of thinking everything can be attained by steps on a mental ladder. Break free of the method. Dive into the art of life, where we find an alerted sense of what being is which leads very naturally to deep comfort with the assumption of God.

Your Correspondent, Is meant to be on sabbatical from Zoomtard

29 Responses to “Marilynne Robinson Doesn’t Not Believe In God”

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1 Nelly And I Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:05

i’m still not sure what colour the curtains are
2 QM Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:22

re: curtains in heaven.
well now. Lets pause. that’s not actually a particularly sensible statement is it.? It’s like saying that pondering on whether there is evidence enough to believe there is intelligent life on mars is as irrelevant as whether the Martians like karaoke. The later only becomes irrelevant if the former is false.

You’re a computer man arn’t you? , It’s a || logical operator. If A isn’t true/believed there’s no point checking B. B only becomes irrelevant is A is false.

if (A == null) || (B == null)
DoThing;
3 zoomtard Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:24

God is not like martians. Once again, analogy fail.
4 QM Sep 23rd, 2009 at 10:26

says you. I say god is like Martians. analogy succeeds.

in any case, you don’t believe in god. how do you know he’s not like Martians?
5 zoomtard Sep 23rd, 2009 at 11:06

*Slaps head.*

A proposed existing martian is a creature.

The proposed Christian God is the Creator.

Looking for evidence for martians or the Higgs-boson or a clock at Old Trafford during stoppage time is not like searching for God.
6 jimlad Sep 23rd, 2009 at 12:56

I think the curtains might be white. It’s hard to see properly though because it’s so cloudy from God’s presence, and the emerald throne casts a green light on everything.
7 I Cant Find My TROUSERS Sep 23rd, 2009 at 13:43

Good points there jimlad, methinks though that they are probably not white. It’s a colour thats every where up there, sure they might match the Lords glow but it’s a bit of an overkill really, a real design disaster- that kind of thing would look good in the reception of cult headquarters. I’m going to go for Deep Blue.
8 Clairebo Sep 23rd, 2009 at 16:14

I’m not a Robinson fan and even I know that these comments do not befit that post!
9 anna Sep 24th, 2009 at 12:30

i am a robinson fan so slightly biased but this was a great post
10 zoomtard Sep 24th, 2009 at 13:17

We’re all great posts!
11 jimlad Sep 24th, 2009 at 13:41

Clairebo, the questions could perhaps have been proceeded with a request for clarification, which would have fit better with the point of this post, but since the question came as a result of the point being missed I don’t see why they should have been expected to fit. Regarding the other question, humour rarely respects its subject. What other types of comments can be added?

Oh yeah, great post! (oops)

I actually do think this is a great post but I don’t know much of Robinson’s work. Is this a common theme of her work, and if so do you, Clairebo, think she misuses it, or is your disagreement with the author unrelated to the extract given here?
12 Disapproving Ex-Housemate Sep 24th, 2009 at 16:35

Two orthogonal posts make a cross, Zoom.

*strokes chin thoughtfully*
13 aldc,minethought Sep 27th, 2009 at 17:29

re: curtains in heaven

It’s no use to make dellima with what is the color of what so ever in heaven, it’s not our problem anymore.

Don’t be an atheist… People who refuse to acknowledge the existence of God have no else to turn to…but themselves. What a pitiful substitute isn’t it?
14 Clairebo Sep 28th, 2009 at 13:43

jimlad, I just don’t enjoy her style. It’s not earthy enough for me. Plus, the first book of her’s I picked up was Gilead, and I just could not believe that I was reading from a man’s perspective.
15 Morbert Sep 28th, 2009 at 14:54

Ironically, I think that’s one of the most sensible descriptions of belief in God (or not not belief).

Now if only apologists like William Lane Craig and John Lennox would stop clouding the issue with their “Philosophical arguments” which demonstrate God exists.
16 jimlad Sep 30th, 2009 at 13:37

This is getting off topic now, but I hadn’t read those apologists’ works before. It still seems interesting to discuss their philosophies and consider new ones, whether or not they form the crux at this point in time, but it’s probably currently more interesting to consider whether their premises are true than anything, until those premises are themselves proved.

I just noticed on the wikipedia page that John Lennox apparently draw some idea from thermodynamics. I came across an argument like that recently quoted in a book, where the idea of entropy was used to show God’s existence. I’m not quite convinced. The most common action in the universe could be said to be that of the simple harmonic oscillator, which ok, can lose energy, eg like a pendulum under the action of friction, but something about the way it works makes me think it’s not right to simply apply a general principle of entropy to everything without considering whether it necessarily has to result in loss of energy (or loss of information if you’re talking about chaos). One oscillator could transfer it’s energy to another and back again via an entire chain of oscillators, and maybe this happens with no loss of energy throughout the system as a whole, and no deterioration.

I haven’t thought it out at all but you seemed to have a good knowledge of physics from your previous comments, Morbert. I don’t want to start off a whole new discussion here as it wouldn’t be sensible to the theme of this post (or as sensible as it). But do you know if John Lennox’s scientific arguments have been considered seriously by other physicists, and where I could find their thoughts?
17 Morbert Sep 30th, 2009 at 16:42

Hmmm… I would hesitate to call Lennox’s arguments scientific. His arguments are more philosophical in the sense that he takes a bird’s eye view of the relationship between God and the universe, whereas scientists tend to keep their noses to the ground, tinkering with experiments and sniffing out the beauty in physical laws without paying much attention to what they imply in terms of metaphysics (imagery courtesy of the physicist Stephen Weinberg). The problem with Lennox et al is less about science, and more about what they infer from science.

For example: The second law of thermodynamics, which is related to the increase/decrease of usable energy in a system, is a very well established law. But people often misunderstand the law, and believe it says things about order and information that it doesn’t. I am unaware of Lennox explicitly mentioning thermodynamics, though he asserts that order and information must stem directly from intelligence, which is a common misconception that is often due to a poor understanding of thermodynamics.

I’m reluctant to burst into a spiel until I know the specific arguments you are referring to. As for the view of physicists: A good book to start with is “What is Life?” by Erwin Schrodinger. It deals with concepts like order and complexity from the perspective of physicists and chemists. You might find it to be quite different from the literature of philosophers, for reasons mentioned in my first paragraph.
18 jimlad Sep 30th, 2009 at 23:22

Sorry, it was William Craig not John Lennox, but I couldn’t find any more detail on what his arguments were. I was just interested to find out as wikipedia said they were scientific.

There’s not really much need for a spiel on the actual argument I did read about. I was surprised to read of another scientist defending the idea that the 2nd Law of thermodynamics implies that there should have been a decrease of free energy in the universe since its origin and the fact that there wasn’t evidence for this shows that the universe is being sustained by something outside itself. Hamilton’s law can probably be used to derive the 2nd law of thermodynamics, so for starters there is no reason to assume that the minimum possible amount of free energy in the universe is 0, and secondly nature is full of harmonic examples showing how energy can be constantly passed about between systems without needing a constant influx of more energy, and thirdly you need some sort of heat sink in the form of an external system for thermal entropy to occur and there’s no reason to assume the universe as a whole has one.

I was just wondering the argument I read was misquoted or over-simplified. As you say, these things just seems to cloud the issue but it looks like you’d have to blinded too not to see through this particular cloud as the proof’s conclusion can’t be derived no matter what angle you approach it from. I was wondering if there are more serious discussions going on, whether there are genuine scientific observations that point to God’s existence.

The closer I get to the nitty gritty of what proofs of God I’ve read, the more arbitrary the matter of belief becomes. I didn’t study history though I like it, so I wonder if I became better read or was trained in it to begin with, what I would think of the historical case for Jesus?

I believe I will always believe in God. An objective observer might find many explanations for my belief, which do not rely on God to actually exist (there’s probably too much entropy of the other sort (chaos theory) for them to completely analyse every spiritual encounter I experience ;p so their general theories will have to do). When it comes down to it though, I don’t have any reason not to believe. My faith is a gift. I do not not believe in God.

But Zoomtard, where does this leave evangelism? Is it right to project my subjective motivation on others? Or do we share our faith like we share music? But then we lose the authority of the Evangelical Christian movement that purports to hold proofs.
19 QM Oct 1st, 2009 at 09:13

(sorry to butt in slightly intra topic – though I guess that’s my game!)
Jim, you seem to be leaving it as implied and obvious that god-faith is a good and positive thing, and a gift. Of course it ‘can’ be, but just a cursory look around tells you that god-faith can have negative implications too. It can blind, delude and obscure truth. Can faith also be a curse? isn’t it a curse to the islamist, who’s given (indoctrinated) with this gift? is it a gift to the creationist? or conspiracy theorist? I don’t think there is much of an excuse for accepting unevidenced/unproven ideas and histories in the name of faith. If they move beyond being unevidenced/unproven they no longer require faith, only judgement. Good judgement is a gift.
20 Clairebo Oct 1st, 2009 at 17:21

from who?
21 zoomtard Oct 1st, 2009 at 21:13

Touché!

Unanswered, I note.
22 QM Oct 1st, 2009 at 21:50

[watching location location location]

I was running with Jim’s idea that faith is a thing that is given to him by the god in which he has this faith (a mite circular perhaps). Whilst not accepting the idea that everything we perceive as good about ourselves is graciously granted by a god, and that which is bad (childhood cancer or blindness say) isn’t. I was saying that IF it be the case, then I can think of better gifts, better virtues… for instance, good judgment to discern what is true and what is not. I wondered whether he felt that Bin Laden’s faith was a gift from god, or that a creationist’s faith in a literal genesis is a gift or a curse. To say , ah, that’s not REAL faith, isn’t a good enough answer. If there are historical stories which Jim deems to have actually physically happened then he should decide this using his judgment, based on many factors, it should be no more intellectually acceptable to him than me. Given the ability of faith to distort, delude and blind then he should be wary of seeing it as a wholly good thing granted from god, and that faith is substitute for judgment or intelligence. That is a dangerous idea which can end up in Islamic/Isreali/Christian terrorism at its worst.
23 zoomtard Oct 2nd, 2009 at 10:23

Your faith in reason is misplaced and unreasonable.
24 QM Oct 2nd, 2009 at 11:30

So faith is a gift from god, but reason and good judgement aren’t?

In fact they are not to be trusted. but faith is to be trusted.

when deciding whether or not people 2000 years ago performed miracles we should use faith rather than judgement, because reason is unreliable. Similarly when determining if there is a god figure of any flavour watching over us we should apply the faith given to us by that proposed god, in order to be fully correct.

i might say that your faith in faith is misplaced.
25 zoomtard Oct 2nd, 2009 at 16:11

“So faith is a gift from god, but reason and good judgement aren’t?

In fact they are not to be trusted. but faith is to be trusted.”

You seem unable to do even the basic work of seeing where someone is coming from.

You have faith in your reason. You can offer no reasons for trusting only in your reason and no reasonable defence of the idea you believe your reason without having faith (believing in) reason.

Or in other words: You set reason against faith without reason and with blind faith.
26 QM Oct 2nd, 2009 at 16:44

>>Or in other words: You set reason against faith without reason and with blind faith.

and that’s a good thing right?
because faith is to be trusted.

Or is it different because of the word ‘blind’. is non blind faith, faith the addition of sight, or in fact faith with the addition of good judgement? So is it not fair to say that the active ingredient in turning this blind faith which you accuse me of, to the good type of faith which you claim you have… is the addition of good judgement.
27 Babette Robinson Oct 6th, 2009 at 23:56

God does not believe in Atheist, therefore,
Atheist do not exist.

I believe…….. my heart tells me so. Even if you don’t believe in God, he believes in you. Faith is daring the soal to go beyond what the eyes can see.
28 Babette Robinson Oct 6th, 2009 at 23:59

ops misspelled soul. Also Marilynne may God bless you
29 QM Oct 12th, 2009 at 13:47

so…….. the question stands. What must i temper my ‘blind faith’ with to enlighten/envision it? What must the Islamist temper his blind faith with? what should the delusional Benny Hinn devotee use to refine their faith?

i say ‘reason’ … you say what?

if i was being cheeky i might refer the comment of Oct 1st, 2009 at 21:13

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Zoomtard is like the theological sketchpad of Kevin Hargaden, who lost his heart to a Cabra girl and now works for a wee little church plant just outside Dublin. Ever few weeks he attends lectures for a theology degree. He likes films, books and Manchester City but the topics discussed here may not be nearly so interesting.

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