Mr. Carroll, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

My apologies to Mr. Sandler.

The substance of what they say is complete nonsense. But they operate on a level of superficiality where sense does not apply. They are pure stylists.

"Here's where it get's tricky. What if, when I shut up, my head falls off?"

As an argument, it's just about as effective and profound as the rest of the article. For Carroll, "what if" = "Q.E.D.," which is seriously goofy.

Is "modesty" really the right word for a point of view that (1) denies the existence of reason and knowledge (dropping 2500 hundred years of Western thought down the chute) and (2) declares everyone who disagrees to be a "fake."

"This can seem to mean that God is simply unknowable. If so, humans are better off not bothering about it. Atheism, agnosticism, or childish anthropomorphism -- all the same." -- James Carroll.

"'Agnosticism': with special reference to theology, is a name for any theory which denies that it is possible for man to acquire knowledge of God." Catholic Encyclopaedia.

Apparently, Carroll doesn't even know what the word "agnoticism" means. Stupidity? ignorance? childish malapropism -- all the same.

This reads like the stoned 3 am rambling of an undergraduate two weeks into Theology 101. The type of rambling that causes said undergrad's friends to respond: stfu will ya, let's go get some . . . (insert name of whatever nearby greasy spoon is famous for feeding stoned and/or drunk students from said undergrad's campus).

Reminds me of the similarly uneducated ramblings on free will and, I believe, God's omniscience that TNR published about a decade ago on its back page column. I think the author then was James Wood, the literary critic. I was embarrassed for him.

Hey Jim what's wrong with James Wood? I like his criticisms, the few I've read have all been enjoyable reads. I liked his take on Saul Bellow.

What if every possible affirmation that can be made of God, even by the so-called religions of revelation, falls so far short of the truth of God as to be false?

This is true.

God is God precisely in escaping and transcending comprehension by human beings. This can seem to mean that God is simply unknowable. If so, humans are better off not bothering about it.

What if God's unknowability is the most illuminating profundity humans can know about God?

These are false.

Young children and infants don't "know" their parents, except in the limited ways that a child can perceive, and even then only as it pertains to the child.

Yet, there is a bond. Emotional availability trumps intellectual incompatibility.

Also, children grow up. And so will humans.

Posted by: Michael Herdegen at October 17, 2005 6:45 PM

According to this understanding, God is God precisely in escaping and transcending comprehension by human beings. [...]

But here is where it gets tricky. What if God's unknowability is the most illuminating profundity humans can know about God?

Does this remind anybody else of Stewie Griffin from Family Guy? Specifically the scene where he's sitting around smoking dope with Brian, and accenting just about every other word: "Whoa, whoa, I've got it, I've got it: Death happens to us all, because we accept it as an inevitability. Whoooaaaaaa!!!"

"the radical otherness of God..."

It is unusual to see those words written, here in 2005. While Carroll's next statement is just silly (on the order of a square circle), he certainly tapped the root (Latin - radix) in mentioning the 'otherness' of God.

It reminded me of a rarely used theological word which describes the attribute of self-existence: aseity. God is self-existent, and therefore quite different than anything we know here in the universe (the material world), and different than anything we know about ourselves. And yet, we know something of God.

Of course, the primary way God's 'otherness' is described in Scripture and in church history is by the word holiness. To be 'holy' is to be "other". Direct encounters with God are traumatic (for the most part), not what we would expect today.

In Psalm 50:21, God tells his people (who have cast his words behind them) - "These things you have done and I kept silent; you thought I was altogether like you". But no.

Anyone can bandy about a 'paradox' to promote agnosticism (which is really just practical atheism). No one comes into contact with God and remains blithely the same.

Michael H. nails it.

A variation on his theme: if perfection is unattainable, does it follow that one should not try to do better?

Scof:

I don't mind Wood as a literary critic.

As a philosopher tho, he's pathetic. (if indeed it was he who contributed the esay II referred to).

EX 33:

[13] Now therefore, I[Moses} pray thee, if I have found favor in thy sight, show me now thy ways, that I may know thee and find favor in thy sight. Consider too that this nation is thy people."
[14] And he said, "My presence will go with you, and I will give you rest."
[15] And he said to him, "If thy presence will not go with me, do not carry us up from here.
[16] For how shall it be known that I have found favor in thy sight, I and thy people? Is it not in thy going with us, so that we are distinct, I and thy people, from all other people that are upon the face of the earth?"
[17] And the LORD said to Moses, "This very thing that you have spoken I will do; for you have found favor in my sight, and I know you by name."
[18] Moses said, "I pray thee, show me thy glory."
[19] And he said, "I will make all my goodness pass before you, and will proclaim before you my name `The LORD'; and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
[20] But," he said, "you cannot see my face; for man shall not see me and live."
[21] And the LORD said, "Behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand upon the rock;
[22] and while my glory passes by I will put you in a cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by;
[23] then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back; but my face shall not be seen."

Direct encounters with God are traumatic (for the most part), not what we would expect today.

This makes me think of all those traumatic encounters, the miracles and casting of demons into pigs and all that...we don't see anything like that in the modern world. If it happened then, it should happen now, shouldn't it?

Scof:

In the Scripture, there are several pretty well demarcated occasions with miracles - they are associated with Moses, Joshua, some of the Judges, Elijah, Elisha, some of the other prophets, and then Jesus (and the apostles). Miracles are everywhere, but over thousands of years, they are not 'commonplace'. They are bunched together.

It is a point of theological debate whether miracles still occur. Many Protestants do not think so, because the revelation of God was complete in Christ, and because the Bible is complete.

The purpose of miracles is very simple - to attest that the 'performer' is not speaking on his own. Miracles verified the messanger. If the message is full, then perhaps miracles (at least, of the type recorded in Scripture) just aren't going to be common, or even widely known (remember Jesus's warning to many that he healed).

Of course, Christians believe that when Jesus came the first time, he was a man, physically indistinguishable from any other. The miracles verified his message. The next time, all will know him immediately. And that really won't be a 'miracle'; just the revelation of the reality we currently do not see. Will it be traumatic? For everyone, I think. But some will run towards him anyway.