A Fine Distinction

What Atheists Can't Answer By Michael GersonFriday, July 13, 2007; Page A17 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/12/AR2007071201620.html?hpid=opinionsbox1 "...Atheists and theists seem to agree that human beings have an innate desire for morality and purpose. For the theist, this is perfectly understandable: We long for love, harmony and sympathy because we are intended by a Creator to find them. In a world without God, however, this desire for love and purpose is a cruel joke of nature -- imprinted by evolution, but destined for disappointment, just as we are destined for oblivion, on a planet that will be consumed by fire before the sun grows dim and cold. This form of "liberation" is like liberating a plant from the soil or a whale from the ocean. In this kind of freedom, something dies." (1) I do not agree that mankind has an innate desire for morality and purpose. I believe that ethical and purposive structure is innate. The desire for such things is a secondary or tertiary phenomenon derived from experience of the structures in question. (2) I do not believe the belief in God to be derived from anything else either in Man nor in Nature. God is like Language, like Music, like the Imaging...it is an independent constituent of human cognition. Just as Music is not able to be reduced to Language, so also God's presence is not explicable nor reducible to phenomena of Language nor Emotion nor Love nor Hate nor anything else that lives upon the earth. The experience of God stands alone in Human Cognition. Language stands alone in its complexity. Music stands alone in its complexity. Emotions stand alone in their complexity. And so on. In human cognition, God stands alone and is not dependent for existence upon anything other product of human cognition. If you go outside what humans know and begin to talk about God, you will be a saint or a mad man.