Punctum Saliens

… but you don’t realize that what I said is not what I really meant. Language sure is a sneaky little bugger. A quote from Thomas Merton in Zen and the Birds of Appetite:

The language used by Zen is therefore in some sense an antilanguage, and the “logic” of Zen is a radical reversal of philosophical logic. The human dilemma of communication is that we cannot communicate ordinarily without words and signs, but even ordinary experience tends to be falsified by our habits of verbalization and rationalization. The convenient tools of language enable us to decide beforehand what we think things mean, and tempt us all to easily to see things only in a way that fits our logical preconceptions and our verbal formulas. Instead of seeing things and facts as they are we see them as reflections and verifications of the sentences we have previously made up in our minds. We quickly forget how to simply see things and substitute our words and our formulas for the things themselves, manipulating facts so that we see only what conveniently fits our prejudices. Zen uses language against itself to blast out these preconceptions and to destroy the specious “reality” in our minds so that we can see directly. Zen is saying, as Wittgenstein said, “Don’t think: Look!”

In light of this, think about the Bible as the inerrant, inspired, yada, yada, yada, Word of God. Feel free to fill in as many adjectives as you deem appropriate. The transfer from God to the original writers to the words printed in your KJV or NIV or NAS or 21CKJV may be perfect. But the transfer from the words on the page to your mind to what you say is definitely not. Our interpretation of the words is subject to the falsification that Merton discusses. Why do you think so many different people can get so many different interpretations from the same Bible?

As a child, I believed the same things my parents did. I was naturally influenced by the biases and rationalizations of my parents and those who taught me in the church and so I saw things in the world as they did. As I was not exposed to very much influence other than my parents and our church, my logical preconceptions and verbal formulas were the same as my parent’s. Hence, what fit nicely into their way of thinking also fit nicely into mine. Even though I struggled with those beliefs and even though I felt they didn’t “work” for me, I did not have the tools to change my habits and rationalizations and so I could not accept any other belief. I had to get to a point of desperation and throw everything away — telling everyone that I no longer believed anything anymore.

But even though I made this declaration, the beliefs still stuck with me and troubled me. I still had a very difficult time accepting any belief different from those with which I was raised — I still felt they were all “false.” But since I couldn’t go back to my old beliefs, I had no where to turn; I had nothing to believe. Eleven years after my denouncement, I was still trying to find common ground among different beliefs. Not between Islam or Buddhism and Christianity but between the Lutherans or Methodists or Episcopalians and the “real” Christians (i.e. how I was raised)

It took a long time and a large separation between me and my parents and the religion of my youth before I was able to step out of my preconceptions and look at things differently. And, at least for me, that separation was crucial. I needed the physical and emotional space to be there before I could relax my defenses, so to speak, and allow new ideas to seep in without immediately judging them from my old perspective.

One of the easiest ways to get stuck in the rut of “see[ing] things only in a way that fits our logical preconceptions and our verbal formulas” is to limit our exposure to new ideas and differing opinions. As a child, I only listened to preachers who agreed with the pastor of our church and I only read approved books, etc. All else was off limits because it was dangerous to expose ourselves to wrong ideas — at least ideas that we said were wrong because of our preconceptions. I would bet that many, if not most, of determinations of what was appropriate and what was not was made because someone else — someone trusted as a spiritual leader — said so. The books were not read first hand but were simply dismissed because so-and-so said it was evil. And so, we were constantly exposed to in-bred ideas and as a result, our minds atrophied and became inflexible which made it harder for us to entertain differing opinion. A vicious, downward spiral.

One solution is to do what Cliff Martin proposes in the comment thread to a post at OutsideTheBox: “Just as The God Delusion should be required reading for all believers, the McGrath’s wonderful little answer[, The Dawkins Delusion,] should be required reading for all atheists!!”