Geary was referring to the ungodly hours.
Geary concludes:
"God cannot be conceived of or spoken about in any meaningful way without
contradiction."
which is exactly Suellen Hoy's point in his Chasing Dirt: The American Pursuit
of Cleanliness (Oxford University Press).
Hoy researched the concept of dirt in the American Far West ("far to who?" as
Geary prefers), and notes that cleanliness
may be "wed" with a moral quality, as indicated by the adage "cleanliness is
next to godliness."
Ungodly is thus dirt.
Although the logic here may be complex. I agree with Geary's passages on what
theologians call 'the via negativa' -- nothing affirmative can be said about
God (Geary of course extends to "nothing sensical can be said about God"). A.
J. P. Kenny explored this in, where else, Oxford in his Wilde Lectures on
Natural Theology (yes, there are such things), "The God of the Philosophers".
Kenny, following Aquinas, argues that if cleanliess is next to godliness, dirt
is next to UNgodliness. From this he deduces the Summa Theologica.
The American pursuit of cleanliness is related to the 'chase' of dirt -- and
Hoy expands on what you do once you have chased dirt successfully. "The pursuit
of cleanliness," Hoy writes, "is not trivial" (* the reference is to "trivial
pursuit") "but serious and theological". And I would add, Griceist. Grice
almighty.
Cheers,
Speranza
