The Car Mechanic
Chapter Four of Longing to Know (which is the book I'm currently reading through) contained one basic point and a bunch of rebuttals (mostly to points I wouldn't've disputed, so no matter). The point was that knowing God is like knowing your car mechanic; meaning, that knowing God is not fundamentally different from knowing anything or anything else in the world.
See, the problem is that knowing God is much different from knowing most other things around us. This is obvious. Not only can we see and touch and hear and smell and taste the things around us, but we can measure them, and can use standard scientific process to ascertain the validity of a given conclusion. With God, we can use none of our senses, nor can we use scientific process to test God, nor can we compare results with others, because that way we end up with moral recombination. She does try to adress this point in a series of concessions/rebuttals:
"You may be protesting: 'But you can't touch God! You can touch your auto mechanic! The analogy doesn't hold water! [...]' You're right: I could drive down to Jeff's [the auto mechanic's] garage and touch him. I can't do that with God. I think this will be helped as we talk about what goes on in the ordinary act of knowing, and what doesn't. Is touching, for example, necessary to knowing?"
No, touching Jeff is not necessary. But she then goes on to describe what would be necessary: she says that if Jeff were on a trip to Europe, she would have to take his mother's word that he would indeed be coming back. The thing is, the mother may very well be lying for some complicated reason, or Jeff may be going through a midlife crisis and will not come back... In this instance, I'm willing to take the risk of believing her because it's easier to, and because my life doesn't depend on this decision of trust, this "epistemic act," as she calls it. But a decision of faith on as grand a level requires a much more elaborate reason for acceptance than laziness or reckless apathy. Especially if it's a choice that will be effecting the entirety of one's life on earth and potentially after earth has passed. Essentially, SOME sense is necessary (hearing and seeing Jeff's mother) and some blind trust is necessary (believing that his mother wouldn't lie). The process becomes much more convoluted: what if there were 10 women showing up pretending to be Jeff's mother and you didn't know which, if any, was the true Mrs. Jeff's Mother?
See, the problem is that knowing God is much different from knowing most other things around us. This is obvious. Not only can we see and touch and hear and smell and taste the things around us, but we can measure them, and can use standard scientific process to ascertain the validity of a given conclusion. With God, we can use none of our senses, nor can we use scientific process to test God, nor can we compare results with others, because that way we end up with moral recombination. She does try to adress this point in a series of concessions/rebuttals:
"You may be protesting: 'But you can't touch God! You can touch your auto mechanic! The analogy doesn't hold water! [...]' You're right: I could drive down to Jeff's [the auto mechanic's] garage and touch him. I can't do that with God. I think this will be helped as we talk about what goes on in the ordinary act of knowing, and what doesn't. Is touching, for example, necessary to knowing?"
No, touching Jeff is not necessary. But she then goes on to describe what would be necessary: she says that if Jeff were on a trip to Europe, she would have to take his mother's word that he would indeed be coming back. The thing is, the mother may very well be lying for some complicated reason, or Jeff may be going through a midlife crisis and will not come back... In this instance, I'm willing to take the risk of believing her because it's easier to, and because my life doesn't depend on this decision of trust, this "epistemic act," as she calls it. But a decision of faith on as grand a level requires a much more elaborate reason for acceptance than laziness or reckless apathy. Especially if it's a choice that will be effecting the entirety of one's life on earth and potentially after earth has passed. Essentially, SOME sense is necessary (hearing and seeing Jeff's mother) and some blind trust is necessary (believing that his mother wouldn't lie). The process becomes much more convoluted: what if there were 10 women showing up pretending to be Jeff's mother and you didn't know which, if any, was the true Mrs. Jeff's Mother?
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