cms@gatech.edu (12/04/90)
Hello. I've been absent for a while because I've been studying
feverishly for my final exams. For my Religion and Ethics course this
quarter, I've chosen to write an essay in lieu of my final exam. Here
is a sample of my essay on one of the authors we studied this quarter
whose name is Kai Neilsen. Necessary background: Nielsen is an
atheist. This may seem obscure to many people; if you're not at all
familiar with Kai Neilsen, many apologies. If you are familiar with
his work, please let me know what you think. Comments on my poetic
abilities are also welcome :-). Enjoy!
A Poetic Essay on Various Authors
Whose Very Words I put into Verse
by
Cynthia Anne Miller Smith
written in the same format as Dante's Myth
In the beginning of this course
We studied Kai Nielsen;
Although his views I do not endorse,
And he's certainly not born-again,
Nonetheless, let's review his words,
Trying to understand this gentleman.
Morality without God his philosophy undergirds:
His view of morality and religious ethics
Contains two extremes he regards as absurd:
In divine command theory our decisions we fix
Upon the direct commands of God;
To this Nielsen does several criticisms affix:
With God, he believes, we are overly awed;
How do we know that God is good
Unless our knowledge of God is previously unflawed?
His positions are to be rationally understood
Based on what he thinks it means to be human,
Self-denial is irrational, contrary to humanhood.
Everyone receives different messages from the Numen,
Sometimes we must, othertimes we can't, ofttimes we should;
Contradictory commands cannot be obeyed with acumen.
How do we know which commands are bad, which good?
Our unflawed knowledge of good makes God unimportant and trivial.
1 John 4:1-6 is my response to his falsehood.
Rational is not religious, religious is not rational.
[Religion is morality tinged with emotion.]
For rational ethics: acceptance; for religious ethics: denial.
What is this happiness in which we are so deeply enmeshed?
For Nielsen, it should universal, factual, rational be wished;
For Nielsen, ethics should, in general, be utterly secularish.
Secular moralists link moral rules to happiness promotion,
Greatest happiness, least suffering for most.
Yet his definition of religious ethics argues caution.
[In nothing but God do we boast;
Without belief in God our lives are impoverished --
His promises of protection and immortality foremost.
For inner peace and contentment we have wished,
for the dark insights of Kierkegaard we desire,
For the conversion of poor sinners we have fished.]
Nielsen ignores middleground of religious moral fire
Between "divine command" and "rationalistic" religious ethics.
God gives reason, reason natural law, justice and mercy does God require.
Any moral code without God embraces the impractical and quixotics.
If we accept creeds and doctrines of Christianity,
Its moral teachings embrace the practical and rationalistics.
In any religious ethic, commands are given to humanity;
In obedience, we freely adopt a way o flife of radical transformation;
We give up wealth, power, peer approval, and all vanity;
We renounce our needs, serve our neighbor's, attain salvation;
We choose a way of life radically different in our Redeemer,
Our sins are forgiven by Christ's sole mediation.
Backing up moral statements with facts is the duty of the believer,
Nielsen says quite plainly about religious morality,
But deducing moral statements with factual ones is the work of the dreamer.
Yet sometimes fulfillment of duty results in sorrow, in actuality,
And not happiness as Nielsen claims the religious ethicism believes,
for happiness is neither the goal nor the ultimate goal of our faith
in essentiality.
One fulfills duty when one satisfaction of one's sense of right and wrong
achieves,
As Antigone understood, for sometimes we spit on happiness,
For truly our sense of morality to work, as the absolutist perceives.
I have rights because I exist and from God I am blessed;
I do what is right because God exists,
I achieve happiness because only to God am I acquiesced.
Nielsen thinks those who believe in God are not rationalists
Since we have no evidence of either his reality or his love
Since religious experience can be explained by nontheists and naturalists.
If we speak of supernatural perceptions and God thereof,
We are explaining the obscure by the still more obscure;
In face, we have no grounds for believing in God or His Dove.
It does not help us verify God's existence by believing in "the other shore,"
For immortality is possible even in a Godless universe;
Appealing to faith is the vein of the borrower, the copier, the contradictor:
An anthropological fact is that thousands of religions are very diverse
With contradictory revelations yet claiming ultimate authority and truth.
Which to choose? To all Nielsen is totally averse.
There's no reason to believe Christians live according to the truth,
According to "the reality principal," while secularists are deluded
About humanity's true estate, at least according to the polling booth.
Christianity is myth-eaten and within it falsehood is exuded,
Intelligibility of key concepts is seriously in question,
Christianity is one revelation and authority among many which about ethics
have brooded.
To believe that Jesus rteally reveals reality's true construction
Is, given this state of affairs, the epitome of self-delusion;
Nielsen regards as ludicrous in the extreme the very suggestion.
As one in the tradition of Kierkegaard, I come to the conclusion
That Nielsen has missed Christianity's deepest and strongest appeal;
For, as Camus and Sartre recognize, our condition in this world is absurd
without God's inclusion.
Luther said a sound-believing Christian, to be real,
Must tear out the eyes of his reason,
But unless in utter darkness he makes a leap of faith to the Supremely Real,
he will never attain lasting happiness, "his meat in due season."
Without belief in God, we are driven to despair,
So we should join the circle of faith despite impediments of emotion and reason.
We need to ask this, in all sobriety, in order to be fair:
Is there professional evidence that we despair, or lose our sense of identity
And purpose if we do not follow Christ and like clothing Him wear?
There are many peoples and cultures without Christianity
Whose members are happy and live with much purpose.
Thus, freedom from despair, orientation, and point to life may flow without
following the Christ-entity.
Nielsen's presentation of Christianity is disingenuous;
It isn't Christianity's purpoe to save people from despair,
But to give people freedom from the despair of slavery to sin -- which is
glorious!
So, if we assume Christianity or Judaism is essential, we err.
We might then argue that a generic belief in divine providence is essential.
Some people lose direction when they lose God, however,
Non-believers also lead happy, productive lives where for them God is not
influential.
Nielsen here climbs out on a very short tether
When he argues for us in a way that is completely insubstantial.
One may say, "Well, this may work for the intellectual or whomever
Cannot or will not draw warmth from the tribal campfire;
Yes, it may work for them, but for the plain person, never."
But what about Confucianists whose philosophy is without God, Nielsen does
enquire?
Nielsen asserts theists believe people must despair without God,
That people are happier with belief, but, again, happiness Christianity does
not necessarily give or require.
Therefore his conclusions are false if not downright odd.
Amazingly, Nielsen argues that faith can make on an "ichabod."
Pascal in "Pensees" says in Christ we have hope in paths secularists cannot
or will not trod.
Judeo-Christianity gives one a sense of sin and unworthiness deserving of
the rod,
As in Stephen Daedalus in "The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man,"
or Jerome in "La Porte Entroite," where self-loathing is given the nod.
Believers are neither happier nor better adjusted that the above tribesman.
Personal virtue and vice seem to be completely independent of doctrinal
affiliation.
For theistic apologetics Nielsen is an incredibly poor spokesman.
Nielsen also argues that human beings were made to no purpose without exception.
Thus, to give our lives meaning, we are driven to faith in the divine,
Then we discover that only in God can we find hope and consolation.
Cardinal Mercier and Professor Hick say we are pulled by the divine
To come into relationship with god and covenant with our Maker.
If one finds purpose in worshipping God, we say, "happiness is mine."
Religious moralists assume we have an essence or a telos -- a pacemaker
That helps us establish our purpose and relationship with the Lord;
We must fulfil our essence or remain forever God's forsaker.
Telos or purpose and ultimate happiness in so achieving is our reward;
Nielsen regards this assumption as groundless and senseless.
He goes to discuss purpose -- what is the real meaning of the word?
That gadget in the kitchen or that fence along the road -- what is its purpose?
Someone did something here in the doing of which the thing with the purpose was
brought about.
Of course, his purpose is not identical with its purpose.
In the scientific world picture, not theistic, where God is out,
We are forced to say that in this first sense life is purposeless.
In the second sense, we are speaking of something we are specifically about.
For example, the question, "what was your purpose in coming here?" we must
address.
We are not robbed of this second sense of purpose -- goals, aims, intentions --
By rejecting the theistic worldview, Nielsen does profess.
If I asked you, "What are you for?" you'd be insulted by my pretension.
I would be treating you as a means not an end.
Many of us would find life disturbing and meaningless if our lives did have
purpose in the first sense Nielsen does mention.
In the caste system one's purpose is determined by rules which do not bend.
Woman's purpose if often determined, unfortunately, by the same.
The notion that life without God is without worth is, of muddled thinking,
a dividend.
People who think "if God is dead there's no purpose in life because there's
no purpose in life" produce reasoning lame.
They assume people are incapable of creating their own sense of purpose.
God gives us our ability by virtue of reason to create our own sense of purpose,
perhaps dear Thomas would rightly claim.
Secular moralists and Christian moralists clash over what will provide lasting
contentment -- which purpose?
Christians basic purposes are set by God, which we are free to reject,
But unfailing happiness comes from being a person in union with God and His
purpose.
Religion is morality tinged with emotion, did Matthew Arnold reflect.
"Entering into final union with God" results in peace and harmony.
Such a reinterpretation might breathe life into these ancient symbols as an
aftereffect.
Such a coating eats away at religion, leaving no substance and disharmony.
Such a view renounces traditional religion and God's creative and redemptive
acts,
Preserving the name of religion while promoting atheistic baloney.
Christianity necessarily involves a life of morality which God backs.
The Christian moral view sharply conflicts with secular morality.
Christian morality is at the heart of Christian religion, which atheism lacks.
Abraham had faith before God established our system of morality.
We believe in God not because we obey his commandments;
We obey God's commandments because we believe in God -- this is simple
rationality.
As the living need food and God needs worship, natural law needs guidance.
Christianity tells us what God is, what God has done, and how God thinks we
ought to live,
Which is, admittedly, a far cry from the Deist God's insouciance.
In sum, Nielsen has argued that morality and religion can be exclusive;
Moral claims cannot be derived from statements about God's existence
in the affirmative.
It is not senseless, only blasphemous, to question the Will of the
Supreme Executive.
Nielsen claims there are no grounds for believing life is not purposive
If there is no God; in the only sense it really matters and is definitive,
We can and do have purposes in a Godless world. My additive:
We obey God not because it gives us a sense of the purposive
But because we believe in God; we believe not because we obey but to live
Because God is objectively real; obedience gives us purpose but purpose is
additive.