The Theological Ramifications of the Oreo, and other Thoughts
Wow, I got quite a negative backlash from my last quasi-post. I didn't realize my philosophical rantings had won me such an ardent following, expecting only the most substantive of epistemological essays, the meatiest of metaphysical meals, the most obscure ontologies. Well, fear not. As my "testing" non-post might have led you all to believe (hope beyond hope), I'd like to bring back the LiveJournal, and perhaps update more frequently in order to further hone my already razor-sharp (humor me, please) philosophically investigative writing skills.
This first re-entry into the literary waters will be a mere dipping of my toe: a "fluff" article to both whet your Salvatian appetites and reacclimate myself to the methods behind my LiveJournal madness. In other words, I'm stretching my muscles at this point, folks.
I'd like to begin by positing that God is like the cream filling in an Oreo. God is adhesive, holding us all together; God is different from us, and yet in and around us all; God is the reason for the existence of the whole. Of course, this somewhat silly metaphor assumes the legitimacy of cataphatic statements made about the divine: can we say anything definite about God? The Roman Catholic tradition assigns titles and characteristics to God like Creator, all-knowing, etc.... But if God, as we are instructed, transcends all attempts to name, define, categorize or describe him ("him" is a perfect example: God is not a male, and is not limited by the boundaries of sex or gender), how close does what we say of the divine come to actually describing it? Was my Oreo analogy a legitimate one to make? If language, infinite though it is, does not even approach the transcendence of God, then my comparison would seem to be no less valid than any other. Unfortunately, that does not mean that the characterization of God as Oreo filling is particularly apt, but rather that my description, like all others, ultimately fails.
But this idea extends much further than the Catholic deity (if "further" is a word that can be used when contemplating the divine), as I'm currently learning in my Humanities class. Our entire lives revolve around language; whether it be the books we read, the conversations in which we interact, or even the menu at the local McDonald's (please don't eat at McDonald's). But every word we utter is entirely, 100% arbitrary. When I say "tree," there is nothing inherent in those 4 letters that signifies a tall wooded plant that provides shade and perhaps fruit. That is why we may say "l'albero" in Italian, "el arbol" in Spanish, "arbor" in Latin, and "to dendron" in Greek, all describing the same botanical phenomenon (who studies botany, anyway?). Put another way, words have no direct correlation to what they signify, but are rather random groups of letters (or sounds, in the case of speech) arbitrarily developed to represent particular concepts.
So what does this all mean? Why is this important? Well, take the uncertainty, imprecision and vagueness we experience when trying to speak about the divine (define "God". Go ahead. I dare you.). The fact is, we cannot define (or even adequately describe) God, because we do not have language transcendent enough to correspond to the divine. We literally can say nothing of God (not even this sentence). But this semantic paralysis applies to everything, to every word we utter, to every concept we refer to. Our language does not refer to reality in anything but a superficial, arbitrary way. It seems to follow, then, that we cannot accurately say anything at all.
But how can this be? I've just spent the better part of 4 paragraphs using words and language to describe this problem. We interact with books, people, and McDonald's menus on an everyday basis; language seems to work just fine in practical application. Well, I suppose that's a question for a philosophy major (see Molteni, Nathan), or at least for another day. At the moment, I don't have an (the?) answer to this question. Perhaps I'll explore it in the future (though the history of my LiveJournal has been eclectic enough to inform me that there's a good chance I'll never return to this topic).
I hope you all have been satisfied by this significantly lengthier entry. Until next time, my faithful readers (= maybe Andrew).
This first re-entry into the literary waters will be a mere dipping of my toe: a "fluff" article to both whet your Salvatian appetites and reacclimate myself to the methods behind my LiveJournal madness. In other words, I'm stretching my muscles at this point, folks.
I'd like to begin by positing that God is like the cream filling in an Oreo. God is adhesive, holding us all together; God is different from us, and yet in and around us all; God is the reason for the existence of the whole. Of course, this somewhat silly metaphor assumes the legitimacy of cataphatic statements made about the divine: can we say anything definite about God? The Roman Catholic tradition assigns titles and characteristics to God like Creator, all-knowing, etc.... But if God, as we are instructed, transcends all attempts to name, define, categorize or describe him ("him" is a perfect example: God is not a male, and is not limited by the boundaries of sex or gender), how close does what we say of the divine come to actually describing it? Was my Oreo analogy a legitimate one to make? If language, infinite though it is, does not even approach the transcendence of God, then my comparison would seem to be no less valid than any other. Unfortunately, that does not mean that the characterization of God as Oreo filling is particularly apt, but rather that my description, like all others, ultimately fails.
But this idea extends much further than the Catholic deity (if "further" is a word that can be used when contemplating the divine), as I'm currently learning in my Humanities class. Our entire lives revolve around language; whether it be the books we read, the conversations in which we interact, or even the menu at the local McDonald's (please don't eat at McDonald's). But every word we utter is entirely, 100% arbitrary. When I say "tree," there is nothing inherent in those 4 letters that signifies a tall wooded plant that provides shade and perhaps fruit. That is why we may say "l'albero" in Italian, "el arbol" in Spanish, "arbor" in Latin, and "to dendron" in Greek, all describing the same botanical phenomenon (who studies botany, anyway?). Put another way, words have no direct correlation to what they signify, but are rather random groups of letters (or sounds, in the case of speech) arbitrarily developed to represent particular concepts.
So what does this all mean? Why is this important? Well, take the uncertainty, imprecision and vagueness we experience when trying to speak about the divine (define "God". Go ahead. I dare you.). The fact is, we cannot define (or even adequately describe) God, because we do not have language transcendent enough to correspond to the divine. We literally can say nothing of God (not even this sentence). But this semantic paralysis applies to everything, to every word we utter, to every concept we refer to. Our language does not refer to reality in anything but a superficial, arbitrary way. It seems to follow, then, that we cannot accurately say anything at all.
But how can this be? I've just spent the better part of 4 paragraphs using words and language to describe this problem. We interact with books, people, and McDonald's menus on an everyday basis; language seems to work just fine in practical application. Well, I suppose that's a question for a philosophy major (see Molteni, Nathan), or at least for another day. At the moment, I don't have an (the?) answer to this question. Perhaps I'll explore it in the future (though the history of my LiveJournal has been eclectic enough to inform me that there's a good chance I'll never return to this topic).
I hope you all have been satisfied by this significantly lengthier entry. Until next time, my faithful readers (= maybe Andrew).