[Wittrs] Religion, Wittgenstein and Magic

Sean Wilson <whoooo26505@xxxxxxxxx> · Sun, 18 Mar 2012 20:08:53 -0700 (PDT)

I write this mail in response to Lief Carter, concerning a tangent that emerged 
in another discussion. Lief Carter says of the thoughts Wittgenstein had about 
the Resurrection while on a ship to Bergen in 1937, that "it is magical to 
believe, with Wittgenstein, in Christ's immortality."  

Wittgenstein was NOT expressing a belief in "magic," where the sense of that 
word means a kind of hocus-pocus (rabbit in the hat). It is precisely this kind 
of atheistic thinking, popularized by Bill Maher  -- and, back then, Bertrand 
Russell -- that would have unnerved Wittgenstein to no end, because he regarded 
it as being so shallow. 

The grammar of religious claims is predicated upon the unknown; it isn't 
predicated upon "magic." Claims of magic can be tested by science; religious 
claims cannot. For all that the God stories do is change with the state of 
knowledge; they don't ever get "refuted." This is because the stories are 
specifically designed for things that are not yet known. In this sense, judging 
a god story is no different than judging literature -- one does not ask for 
proof; one asks for what makes for a good ending (aesthetic).

It is in this context that Wittgenstein wrote about the Resurrection. Having 
seen the failings of human character and the despicable nature of the human 
race, Wittgenstein could not bear to think of a story about humans that 
was solely placed in their own hands. It was in this context that he pondered 
the Christian God story (a more complete quote of which I place at the bottom 
of the mail). 

Finally, Wittgenstein never says he "believes" in resurrection, as though it 
were a kind of magical event. In fact, he says that one could only properly 
understand the whole idea by loving something else. His idea is that one must 
love the god story, just as one might love an ending in a movie. You say to 
yourself: "I hated that ending." Why? It is for the same kind of reason that 
one says I trust this God story, because I want this ending for the story of 
humanity. This is the story of human ending that I enamor. It isn't an 
endorsement of magic; it's an aesthetical endoresment. One really wants to say: 
it is a connoisseur judgment.

Also, the whole magic-science thing is an old grammar that has long unfolded 
upon itself. Let's suppose that, one day, science learns that consciousness and 
souls can be explained with higher-order physics, and that Artificial 
Intelligence can replicate consciousness. This doesn't mean that God is 
relegated to the status of hocus-pocus; it merely means that the supernatural 
now has another explanation (story). So the work of God becomes understood as a 
particular kind of higher-realm physics. I ask you: what is more phantasmal: 
Harry Potter's wand or Jim Kirk's phaser? I wonder if it is magic to Lief 
Carter to believe that terrestrials exist and that the planet has been visited 
by them before? Which is worse: beliefs about the outer world (terrestrials) or 
beliefs about the netherworld?  And if both are rejected, aren't we left in the 
straight jacket of logical positivism? What do you do: get rid of all 
metaphysics? How is that even possible?

My point is that the equation of religion with hocus-pocus isn't well thought 
out, and neither is the assessment of Wittgenstein's views about religion. 

QUOTES FROM WITTGENSTEIN [allcaps in place of italics]

"Religious faith and substitution are quite different. One of them results from 
FEAR and is a sort of false science. The other is a trusting." 1948, CV p. 72.

"Life can educate one to a belief in God. And EXPERIENCES too are what bring 
this about; but I don't mean visions and other forms of sense experience which 
show us the 'existence of this being,' but, e.g., sufferings of various sorts. 
These neither show us God in the way a sense impression shows us an object, nor 
do they give rise to CONJECTURES about him. [But] experiences, thoughts, -- 
life can force this concept on us. 
So perhaps it is similar to the concept of 'object.' (1950, CV p. 86)

"An honest religious thinker is like a tightrope walker. he almost looks as 
though he were walking on nothing but air. His support is the slenderest 
imaginable. And yet it really is possible to walk on it. ( 1948, CV, p. 73)

"I read: 'No man can say that Jesus is the Lord, but by the Holy Ghost.' -- And 
it is true: I cannot call him LORD; because that says nothing to me. I could 
call him 'the paragon,' 'God' even -- or rather, I can understand it when he is 
called thus; but I cannot utter the word 'Lord' with meaning. BECAUSE I DO NOT 
BELIEVE that he will come to judge me; because THAT  says nothing to me. And it 
could say something to me, only if I lived COMPLETELY differently.
    What inclines even me to believe in Christ's Resurrection? It is as though 
I play with the thought. -- If he did not rise from the dead, then he 
decomposed in the grave like any other man. He is DEAD AND DECOMPOSED. In that 
case he is a teacher like any other and can no longer HELP; and once more we 
are orphaned and alone. So we have to content ourselves with wisdom and 
speculation. We are in a sort of hell where we can do nothing but dream, roofed 
in, as it were, and cut off from heaven. But if I am to be REALLY saved, -- 
what I need is CERTAINTY -- not wisdom, dreams or speculation -- and this 
certainty is faith. And faith is faith in what is needed by my HEART, my SOUL, 
not my speculative intelligence. For it is my soul with its passions, as it 
were with its flesh and blood, that has to be saved, not my abstract mind. 
Perhaps we can say: Only LOVE can believe in Resurrection. Or: it is LOVE that 
believes the Resurrection. 

Regards and thanks.

Dr. Sean Wilson, Esq.
Assistant Professor
Wright State University
Personal Website: http://seanwilson.org
SSRN papers: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/cf_dev/AbsByAuth.cfm?per_id=596860
Wittgenstein Discussion: http://seanwilson.org/wittgenstein.discussion.html

________________________________
From: Lief Carter (R) <LHCarter@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: LAWCOURT-L@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
Sent: Sunday, March 18, 2012 10:18 AM
Subject: Re: The taint of Christianity

While I may be dangerously close to dead horse beating, I again want to support 
HH's position in this string:  No, the EC doesn't prohibit magical thinking, 
but I would like to think that rationality tests, especially those with teeth, 
do.  I've not yet seen a sensible defense for limiting state-sanctioned 
marriage to heterosexual couples that explains why infertile hetero couples may 
marry but homosexual couples who wish to become parents cannot.  Nor is there a 
rational defense for permitting singles to be parents but not gay couples, 
given the now unequivocal life outcome data favoring the latter.  That is, I 
don't see any rational justification for this distinction other than that the 
majority has a right to enforce religious morality untethered from reality, but 
this agument is both circular and nullifies the EC.  [ASIDE:  DOES THE EC  
PROHIBIT THE STATE FROM TELLING ANY RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION HOW TO DEFINE WHAT 
IT DEEMS A SANCTIFIED
 MARRIAGE?]  Nor, pace Rick S., do I see any rational basis on which to 
distinguish a prohibition of abortion in the first weeks of pregnancy from the 
failure to punish women who spontaneously abort, perhaps due to their own 
negligence, or from people who use contraceptives.  To call the human DNA 
cellular material in its first stages of division a person while a living 
chimpanzee is not IS purely magical thinking, just as it is magical to believe, 
with Wittgenstein, in Christ's immortality.

PL

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[Wittrs] Religion, Wittgenstein and Magic

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