John Wisdom – Gods

Wisdom claims that religions are revealing of the present world, even if they are often referring to what lies beyond this life and our senses. Regardless of the differences a believer and a none believer have, or do not have, towards an afterlife or a life beyond the one they live now, the differences between the beliefs an atheist holds and those that a theist holds are not confined to how they live their lives or face death, for there are also differences in how they view life presently.

The truth or falsity of what atheists and theists believe about life has been debated time and time again. John Wisdom is of the belief that religious beliefs are susceptible to factors that rely on how things are in the world, and how one views and interprets these things. This includes a belief in God. Wisdom begins with the claim that the existence of God is no longer an experimental issue as it once was, and he accounts for this with the further claim that this is due to the fact that we now have a better knowledge of why and how things happen as they do.

It should be acknowledged, however, that there is, of course, some persistence of this element, which can be demonstrated by the phenomenon of people praying; it is often the case that people pray for others and actually get a sense of helping from this. Wisdom chalks this up to there still being mystery surrounding how humans work. For example, one can never know what another human will do next so expecting a prayer to make a difference [to a person] is not so definite a thing as believing in its mechanical efficiency (185).

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Despite theists and atheists having difference views as to the facts of the world, this difference is not the kind that can be settled by an experiment. He adds that a belief in God will give a person a different attitude and approach to life and death; it is this belief that can make a person not fearful of death. While atheists and theists have a difference in their expectations of a world to come, an afterlife, their differences are not constrained to only this. They also differ as to the facts of this present life, and the existence (or non-existence) of another world that is now, just beyond our senses.

He answers this with an analogy of other minds, which he claims we can reasonably confirm because the existence of other minds explains why certain things behave the way they do, all by themselves. This existence of other minds answers Wisdom’s first question about the reasonableness of belief in divine minds, by giving evidence that there is behaviour which gives reason to believe in any sort of mind. One can then examine if their are other mind-patterns in nature that cannot be explained by human and animal mind-patterns, which we can easily detect empirically, and if these are super-human.

Then, one must ask if these things are sufficiently striking to even be called mind-patterns. He states that behaviour similar or superior to human behaviour is considered to be mind proving. Wisdom concludes that this distinction seems to be an issue of the application of a name. He attempts to show how the line between a question of fact and the mere application of a name is not so distinct, as the application of a name can be based on many things, such as what we have noticed about or our feelings towards that certain thing. Oftentimes, even when there is agreement on the facts, there is still argument as to the conclusion.

Here, Wisdom shows how a claim such as the existence of God can begin as experimental but gradually change completely through the use of his gardener analogy. This analogy goes like this: two people return to their long neglected garden to find that there are plants and flowers growing among the weeds. One believes a gardener has been tending to the plants but the other does not. They inquire around only to discover that no one has seen any gardener come by, so they do a careful re-examination of the garden, at the end of which they still disagree.

Wisdom claims that, here, the argument is no longer experimental since it is now a matter of their different attitudes towards the garden; they both examined all the same fact, one does not know or expect something the other does not, and yet they still do not come to the same conclusion. But how can there still be a question when all the facts are known? It is now a matter of how each person interprets the facts they have been given. Each person can try to help the other to see what they see by drawing attention to certain patterns in these facts, by drawing attention to features that may have been overlooked or by connecting the facts in pecific ways. The people in the garden analogy must weigh the cumulative effect of many factors. As in the case of settling an argument over whether or not a certain thing is beautiful, it involves a lot of re-examining, re-looking, re-stating and re-describing. This can also be determined through the connecting technique, a technique which involves pointing out likenesses and connections a thing has with something else in order to convince another of one’s way of thinking. One can point out things that one is or is not influenced by, or what they should or should not be influences by to demonstrate misconnections in another’s thinking.

Wisdom is saying that differences in belief are no more subjective than are differences as to whether a thing is beautiful or not. This explains the essence of religion, according to Wisdom, as some belief as to what the world is like. Thus, he concludes that when a difference in belief in the existence of God is not experimental, it is therefore not based on solid facts, which means that one cannot just assume the right or wrong about it. But now, what should happen when one inquires in this way into the reasonableness of the belief in gods? Wisdom says a “double and opposite phased change”.

The first phase of the change is to show a connection that favours the theist, but the second is to show a connection that favours the atheist. In other words, reveal a source for belief, but then show why that source proves to be an unexpected reason for it. For example, Wisdom uses Freud’s theories as a basis for rejecting God as an subconscious, infantile projection, but then rediscovers God as a presence in that subconscious and the source of such projections. This proves, according to Wisdom, that atheists and theists differ as to the fact of psychoanalysis.

However, this seems to a slightly contradictory to Wisdom’s claim that belief in God is not fact based because it is not experimental. It seems that this, in fact, would make it a difference of facts, not just a differences of attitudes, since psychological statements are statements of scientific fact. Psychology is a science, which is based on experiments to reveal truths, so if an atheist and a theist differ as to the fact of psychoanalysis, the reasonableness of the belief of God would not be somewhat subjective, as Wisdom says, but more fact-based.

Wisdom believes that religious beliefs are completely susceptible to logical and empirical criticisms. Everything one believes, or does not believe, about the existence of God is attitudinal and experience-based; the way one interprets the things that see, discover, or hear is what leads to their unique beliefs. To discuss the truth or falsity of atheist or theist views is almost as arbitrary and discussing whether or not a certain thing is beautiful, for each person is going to have interpreted that certain thing differently and therefore have a specific attitude toward it. Bibliography Wisdom, John. “Gods”. 1944.

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