Longing to Know

This series of blogs will be less like blogs and more like reading journals: once again, simply a voice made open for anyone that cares to to listen. It is about a book I started reading today, entitled "Longing to Know." I do indeed long to know; this whole process is about a naïve, simple, raw, innocent hankering after whatever is God. I believe it to be necessary, though it takes energy and time. It has long been my custom to sacrifice routine for importance- that is, figuring out the grand scheme of my life is a greater priority than schoolwork. This has not yet succeeded in entirely killing my GPA, and I believe it morally correct, so I believe I'll continue.

As has been a common theme on this blog, one of the things I most often get annoyed about in other people's arguments (which I very well may like as a whole) is what I believe to be a bunch of very small oversimplifications that begin to grate on my nerves after four or five have passed by just barely without my noticing. There are several that have come up in Longing to Know so far, in the first thirty-five pages, two of which I can now remember:

• "If God is, and he is master of all, then he is master of you and your wold. If he isn't, then you are."
• "Learning and discovery occur regularly."

But along with these types of statements come more that are impressive, or at very least, thought provoking:

• "We seem connected to God in much the same way that we are connected to our parents- the family systems therapists call it emotional fusion."
• "We would probably say that we're involved in knowing, every waking hour. But perhaps for precisely that reason it is extremely difficult to put into words what it means to know.
• "We may be bent, but the bentness has not snuffed out our sense of glory. We don't know exactly what we long for; that doesn't seem to stop us from longing for something ultimate."
• "We've flet compelled to call ourselves skeptics in the name of integrity."
• "Western tradition [...] has unquestioningly assumed that knowledge is limited to what can be put into words and justified. [...] But if scientists had been so limited, no scientific discovery ever would have taken place."

And still more that are simply assertions I simply hope it will go on to prove adequately:

• Although in recent centuries some theologians have tried to say that you can be a Christian without affirming certain things to be true, I (and many others) humbly submit that this is nonsense. [...] We affirm [...] the Apostles' Creed: 'I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth; and in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord...' We affirm that the Bible is God authoritatively telling us the way things are."


• When you have specified [a] set of essential features, [the] essence [of a being or object], you are in touch with the proper object of knowledge. The essence isn't identical to any [being or object] you see. [...] But the essence is more important, and, Plato said, more real than any [real being or object] you see.

Much of the first three chapters littered with questions: "How can there be certain, infallible, objective knowledge when what we claim is true seems to be determined by subjective factors such as our cultural upbringing or personal ambitions?" "Will we this time settle down to skepticism? "What truth claims actually make the cut? How is it decided what does?" As well as I can identify with many of these questions, I'm curious to see how these questions are handled throughout the book, because I feel as if so far it has succeeded better in demonstrating the self-recognized hopelessness of the counterargument to her thesis than in developing her own. Much of the rest sounds like an attempt to set up a bed of premises from which to draw an epic conclusion: "Philosophers from well back into the nineteenth century, disturbed by adverse consequences of the modernist model of knowledge, have been attempting to revise this faulty conception of knowledge, and have made insightful proposals. With several decades of retrospect, the similarities and significance of these efforts become more marked. In our shift away from modernism, whole domains of human experience I believe have the prospect of being restored to us." End of paragraph, shift of topic. Wait, wait, what are those insightful proposals? What's the significance of their efforts? What's being restored to us and why's it important?

The chapter, which is largely about skepticism, its history, and the fact that it is related to Post-Modernism, presents a single hard, cold argument: "we are being asked to settle for that which is untrue to our very selves." Sure, if you've been used to thinking a certain way, if you have, as you've said, been a Christian your entire life and "can never remember a time when [you haven't] had a solid concept of God," it will seem pretty contrary to your nature to turn to skepticism. In fact, if you've lived in a society founded by Christendom for long enough, it'll probably seem contrary to your nature to turn to skepticism. I don't feel that this provides a very sturdy footing for a refutation of everything from Sophism through Hume and Nietzsche and Sartre. I feel like I must be missing something.