An Argument against the Philosophy of Religion

Stephen L. Chalmers¹

We now come to yet another way in which an important boundary to religious belief is disregarded, and with serious ramifications for religion and spirituality. The culprit is the so-called philosophy of religion. This project is, in my opinion, fundamentally misguided at best. At worst, it is idolatry of the highest order. It rests on an assumption that must be categorically rejected, especially by any serious religious person.

By philosophy of religion I mean what is often called the philosophy of theism or philosophical reflection on God, the attempt to understand what God is like or to prove God's existence by reason. This is sometimes called philosophical theism or natural theology. There is another sense often given to philosophy of religion, according to which it means merely a study of man's ideas about God, comparative religion or sociology of religion. It will be clear from what follows that my argument is not an argument against philosophy of religion in this sense. There is nothing obviously incorrect or misguided, at least in principle, about philosophy of religion as the mere study of human ideas or beliefs about God, where there is no pretense of actually talking about God. (I imagine that in the near future religious studies departments at most of our colleges and universities will direct more of their attention to this sort of theology. Their survival may very well depend on it). We can understand our ideas about God quite clearly. After all, our ideas about God are our ideas about God. Certainly we know our own minds, beliefs, and thoughts quite well. We also understand many things about the world around us. It is for this reason that the social, natural, and physical sciences make sense. They investigate matters within human experience and which are accessible to the human mind. They are legitimate areas of human inquiry. For this reason religion itself, as an empirical phenomenon, is open to investigation.

These introductory comments will help bring into sharper focus the fundamental problem with something as pretentious as philosophy of religion, understood as the philosophy of God. It is this. We can understand the world and ourselves, but we cannot understand God. If philosophy of religion aims at understanding or knowing anything about God, this discipline is simply a horse that pulls up lame at the gate. If human beings cannot understand or know anything about God, or even make any true statements about God, then it follows quite clearly that any philosophy of God, any attempt to understand what God is like or to prove God's existence using human reason, is fundamentally misguided.

I recognize, of course, that many people resist this conclusion. (Interestingly, many of the students I have taught, even those who are religious, find my thesis quite compelling. They usually articulate it before I do!). Many of those who resist my conclusion are themselves philosophers of religion. Perhaps their resistance is grounded in a fear of unemployment, something no doubt left over from the hey-day of logical positivism earlier this century. More charitably, though, I suspect it is better (and more correct) to say that they reject the conclusion of my argument because they reject its basic agnostic premise, i.e., the notion that we cannot understand God. So perhaps we should give further consideration to that premise.

Why suppose that we cannot understand anything about God? I will not argue as some theologians have argued; namely that our inability to understand God is rooted in sin. John Calvin and many other Protestant theologians, to some extent even Karl Barth, have made much of the alleged influence of sin on the human personality. They claim that sin blinds us intellectually and makes reason incapable of knowing anything about God. But the sin argument is developed within a general theology that, somewhat paradoxically, assumes an understanding of God after all, even if it is not by way of philosophy. At the root of such arguments is a literal interpretation of the Bible, and consequently an account of human history full of statements about what God is like, what his plans are, the consequences of disobeying God, and a scheme of salvation. It will be clear that I reject all of this for the same reason that I reject any philosophy of God, namely we cannot understand anything about God. There are no qualifications to such a judgement. Since the sin argument presupposes the very opposite, I must reject that line of argument altogether.

My argument doesn't involve any controversial theological beliefs at all, though it has been asserted in different forms by religious thinkers from Proclus to Kierkegaard, within as well as outside the Christian tradition. The argument is simply this. To understand something one must use human concepts. Now human concepts are curious creatures. They apply to small things (e.g., rubber bands, screws, raindrops, and cells), very large things (e.g., mountains, stars, and planets), and lots of things in between (e.g., cars, houses, caves, and bears). All of these items are understood by means of human concepts. What do rubber bands and bears have in common? They are all items located in sense experience. That is to say, they are either directly or indirectly (i.e., with the aid of scientific instruments) observable or in principle within the scope of sensory experience. Human concepts seem to have emerged from sense experience for the distinct purpose of referring or applying to the world of everyday experience. Among other things human concepts allow us to make sense of our experiences, to categorize, to define, and fundamentally, to interpret the data of our senses. This makes a good deal of sense given what we know about the biological evolution of our species. The application of concepts to the world around us has great survival value. In short, then, human concepts are limited to human experience. They do not apply to anything outside our experience.

If one now suggests that there is a discipline that can provide an understanding of God, such a notion clearly runs into an obvious contradiction. God is not like anything within human experience or the world. Hence, God does not share any properties or qualities with humans or finite things. God is an immaterial being. The world is material and we have bodies. How can I think about God in terms of concepts and categories by which I understand a table or a tree? God is infinite or unlimited. The world and human experience is finite or limited. God is a transcendent being. God is ultimate. Hence, human concepts cannot apply to God. And for this reason God cannot be understood. And so the philosophy of God must remain an empty and dead discipline.

It might be objected that such a conclusion does a disservice to the cause of religion and spirituality, perhaps even promotes atheism. Nothing could be further from the truth. The religious person ought to welcome my conclusion. After all, if there is nothing left for reason to say or know about God, if our understanding must lay prostrate before mystery, faith can have the upper hand, as it ought. Truly religious people would have never invented philosophy of religion because truly religious people live by faith. Their lives are inspired by the experience of mystery and awe at the Universe, not questions about the essence or nature of God or whether the latest scientific discovery proves that God exists. The meaningful nature of religion is not located in statements or talk about God. It is located in human experience itself. Religion is the natural spiritual impulse that flows from that aspect of the world and human experience that cannot be understood, but which precisely on account on its incomprehensibility invokes in us a sense of wonder and mystery. It is what Saint Paul spoke of as "seeing through a glass darkly" and the mystics spoke of as the great "cloud of unknowing." I shall put it quite succinctly: religion is the experience of the limit of human concepts.

Hence, we have here another important boundary to religious belief. The boundary set by human concepts. Philosophy of religion fails to honor this boundary. This failure in turn does a great injustice to religion, for the boundary in question, or recognizing the boundary, is itself the essence of genuine religious belief and faith. The medieval Jewish philosopher Maimonides had it right. The more we affirm about God the more we deny Him. To affirm a truth about God or to understand God requires bringing God down to the level of human experience. If we succeed in such a precarious task we shall have only succeeded in erecting an idol. We shall have understood and proved a God that does not exist. This is the very opposite of faith. It is unbelief. It is a form of religious atheism.

ENDNOTES

1. Stephen Chalmers is a fictitious character who represents an extreme form of theological pessimism. There are similarities here to John Hick and Gordon Kaufman.