To build an Incarnational Apologetic capable of reaching the post-modern person, it is important to understand four basic approaches in the search for truth.
- Rationalism
- Agnosticism
- Experientialism
- Pragmatism
In my previous post, I outlined Rationalism. In this video post, I want to focus on Agnosticism which is defined as follows:
Agnosticism says that knowledge of God is either not known, or completely beyond our grasp.
The key thinkers covered in the following video are:
- David Hume (1711-1776): Desire, not reason, governs all of human nature.
- Immanuel Kant (1724-1804): We know the phenomena (appearance) but not the noumena (reality).
- A.J. Ayer (1910-1989): All questions about God are meaningless and all “God-talk” is nonsense.
Understanding Agnosticism is one more step toward interpreting postmodernism and developing an effective Incarnational Apologetic.
Very interesting video, and thanks. I do have the following cavils – Saying Bizarro depends entirely on Hume, and would not be possible without him is, I think, overstating the case. Wayyyy before Hume, there were texts of angelology and demonology, and a corresponding obsession with symmetry in nature. There was a medieval notion of all land beasts having their equivalent water beasts – the existence of the narwahl being some kind of evidence, from a symmetry argument, for unicorns. We do not take these ideas as serious natural history now, because they were utterly divorced from what we call evidence, today, but they do proceed from an idea of the universe as orderly, symmetrical, and Platonic, somehow, and created by a rational mind that we would recognize as “our image” if we ran into it and had a conversation.
I think there is another facet of agnosticism, and I’m not able to attach a philosopher’s name to it, but the concept is that of the “event horizon.” A black hole has an event horizon, the surface through which light may not pass (in a blach hole’s case, due to gravity), and therefore through which no information is available. This is a more physics-based notion, and lies behind the idea that our local “universe” may have much beyond it, but we are forever locked out of getting any information from it by the limited, constant speed of light. I know, I know – the concept of black holes is, like all science, ever changing. But the notion of a singularity leads to an idea that we must be agnostic about what goes on beyond the event horizon. This has led to a lot of entertaining speculation on white holes, pocket universes, and more, all (at least so far!) untestable.
Hi, thanks for taking the post your thoughts. I do have a question. You wrote, ” Saying Bizarro depends entirely on Hume, and would not be possible without him is, I think, overstating the case.” Can you give me a timestamp from the video referencing where I say this? Thnaks.
Sure. At 2:22, you say that “Hume’s skepticism created the foundation for Superman and his arch-nemesis, Bizarro.” So, I didn’t really quote you, I suppose. Later, you say that Stargate (and its ilk) “wouldn’t exist except for the philosophical foundation laid by Hume.” So I took that second statement, perhaps erroneously, to apply equally to Bizarro and his odd “backward” world (going off into comic-book geekiness here, admittedly far from the topic of your blog, I don’t think Bizarro could ever be described as Superman’s “arch-nemesis;” Bizarro Superman was a simple creature and manipulable by Lex Luthor (also pictured in the Superman cover you use), Superman’s TRUE arch-nemesis. In fact, I remember Bizarro Superman being a loyal friend to Superman on many occasions! Again, sorry for the geeky tangent).
While I’m thinking about SG and the concept of alternative worlds/universes, I always thought they went far back, to ideas of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory, and other religion’s notions of an afterlife. While some pantheons lived in inaccessible parts of our world, like Mt. Olympus, the notion of a world only accessible to humans upon death, or by other kinds of creatures, such as angels or djinn, leads one to wonder about voyaging there and what it would be like. Hence part of the appeal of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
I’m certainly no expert on, or even much of a fan of, the Stargate series (I might leave it on if I chance upon it, but won’t search for it, if you know what I mean), my impression was that the Stargates are for travel within this universe. In other words, they are a FTL (faster-than-light) device, not a machine for leaving the universe entirely. I could be wrong, though.
Thanks!
Ah, I see what you are driving at. True, there are many complexities within the various plotlines of Superman comics over the past 50+ years and I have grossly simplified those for the sake of illustration. You must realize though that this 10 min video is only part of a 3 hour class and designed to generate discussion to help students relate to the complex thinking of philosophers, like Hume, by putting them into a sometimes more relatable context (comics, movies, pop-culture, etc…). You are right to observe that there is not a direct 1 to 1 correlation between Hume and Bizzaro/Stargate. But the larger point is that his philosophy laid a foundation upon which many other thinkers and entertainers have built their ideas. It is the discussion of these complexities that is the most valuable aspect to the short video summaries, so thanks for jumping with some challenging context.
I totally get it. But the comic nerd in me couldn’t let it slide…