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God-talk, myth, childishness, positivism and causality

When some hear talk of God, they suppose that the speaker is imagining (and believing) that God is some superhuman being, part grandfather and part Zeus. This critic of God talk is unaware of how philosophers understand God. To help this critic grasp the difference between the two conceptions of God, we might contrast an imaginary person who has learned a laundry-list of scientific facts (e.g., the atom consists of 3 particles, etc.) with someone else who has studied the history of scientific discovery. The former might be said to have a childish understanding of science. They might look at, say, an atom, as a cluster of marble-like neutrons and protons, encircled by smaller, speck-like electrons. Interestingly, it is just this sort of person who says that while the desk in front of me seem solid, it consists mainly of the void. Such a person is unaware of fields, unaware of the complex of analogies and disanalogies with our life world (the world as we experience it most directly), which we use to understand the materials out of which our life world is consituted. Their scientific beliefs are not unlike the childlike beliefs about God had by one who has attended Sunday school as a child, but hasn't acquired a philosophical understanding of the divine attributes. The latter understanding involves analogies and disanalogies too. And it relies on common sense notions of causality, purpose, the objectivity of human knowledge, etc.

The positivist who thinks that science discredits religious belief is not that far from the person who has merely memorized a list of scientific facts. For they are merely opposing one set of childish conceptions (i.e., of religion) with another (i.e., of science).

With the help of philosophy, we can recognize how both scientific understanding of matter and natural theology are valid disciplines that understand their objects through paradoxes derived carefully and rationally from our everyday understanding of our life world.

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