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PaperclipPerfector  13d ago (text post)   30944 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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the dreaded ‘ this isn’t true ‘ always reared its head

I find it helpful here perhaps to share this early passage from Ratzinger (later Benedict XVI)'s Introduction to Christianity which sheds light on how this condition is inescapable.

Anyone who makes up his mind to evade the uncertainty of belief will have to experience the uncertainty of unbelief, which can never finally eliminate for certain the possibility that belief may after all be the truth. It is not until belief is rejected that its unrejectability becomes evident.

It may be appropriate at this point to cite a Jewish story told by Martin Buber; it presents in concrete form the above-mentioned dilemma of being a man.

An adherent of the Enlightenment [writes Buber], a very learned man, who had heard of the Rabbi of Berditchev, paid a visit to him in order to argue, as was his custom, with him, too, and to shatter his old-fashioned proofs of the truth of his faith. When he entered the Rabbi’s room, he found him walking up and down with a book in his hand, rapt in thought. The Rabbi paid no attention to the new arrival. Suddenly he stopped, looked at him fleetingly, and said, “But perhaps it is true after all.” The scholar tried in vain to collect himself—his knees trembled, so terrible was the Rabbi to behold and so terrible his simple utterance to hear. But Rabbi Levi Yitschak now turned to face him and spoke quite calmly: “My son, the great scholars of the Torah with whom you have argued wasted their words on you; as you departed you laughed at them. They were unable to lay God and his Kingdom on the table before you, and neither can I. But think, my son, perhaps it is true.” The exponent of the Enlightenment opposed him with all his strength; but this terrible “perhaps” that echoed back at him time after time broke his resistance.5

Here we have, I believe—in however strange a guise—a very precise description of the situation of man confronted with the question of God. No one can lay God and his Kingdom on the table before another man; even the believer cannot do it for himself. But however strongly unbelief may feel justified thereby, it cannot forget the eerie feeling induced by the words

“Yet perhaps it is true.” That “perhaps” is the unavoidable temptation it cannot elude, the temptation in which it, too, in the very act of rejection, has to experience the unrejectability of belief. In other words, both the believer and the unbeliever share, each in his own way, doubt and belief, if they do not hide from themselves and from the truth of their being. Neither can quite escape either doubt or belief; for the one, faith is present against doubt; for the other, through doubt and in the form of doubt. It is the basic pattern of man’s destiny only to be allowed to find the finality of his existence in this unceasing rivalry between doubt and belief, temptation and certainty. Perhaps in precisely this way doubt, which saves both sides from being shut up in their own worlds, could become the avenue of communication. It prevents both from enjoying complete self-satisfaction; it opens up the believer to the doubter and the doubter to the believer; for one, it is his share in the fate of the unbeliever; for the other, the form in which belief remains nevertheless a challenge to him.

Perhaps anything is true. Perhaps I have an invisible unicorn. That seems like a really weak defense of faith.

It isn't a "defense" or frankly a whole argument for faith, let alone Christian faith specifically. You're missing the point if you're trying to parse it as that. It's quite literally the first chapter of a book that does contain that if you want it, but that's not why I'm quoting it.

The point of the story is that the general feeling and condition of doubt is inescapable. We do not and can not know any metaphysic to be true from experience alone. Anything we do is ultimately under the rubric of dealing with things we do not comprehend.

What if Russel's teapot indeed? I personally hold that claims of knowledge on metaphysical matters are unwise, and that we have to deal with a condition that is and remain mysterious. If acting as if invisible unicorns or Saturn orbiting teapots existed granted visible boons, I'd consider the idea even if I am unable to reconstruct a logical justification for it.

To not consider it because anything could be true seems silly. The world is full of things we can't understand and still use.

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