A selection of the best from recent issues of the Philosopher

Living Illusions: A Psychology of Belief
Michael Jacobs
SPCK, 1993, 202pp. £9.99pb, ISBN 0-281-04702-2

For theists, attempts at proving the existence of God have rested with five traditional arguments, of which four are a posteriori and one a priori. The four a posteriori arguments, namely the Cosmological, the Teleological, the Moral and the argument from religious experience, seek to demonstrate the existence of God from humanly observable phenomena or from the totality of things.

 The a priori or Ontological argument, best expressed by St Anselm and subsequently modified by Descartes, takes the concept of perfection entailing existence and concludes, therefore, that the perfect being (God) exists.

 In his book, Richard Messer attempts to analyse and clarify the diversity of views which have arisen concerning the role of philosophy in the rational justification of the existence of God. Messer shows that the views have broadly settled into two distinct philosophical faiths. On the one hand there is the empiricist and rationalist traditions exemplified by the likes of Plantinga and Swinburne. On the other hand there is the Wittgensteinian exemplified today by D.Z. Phillips.

 In propounding his thesis, Messer takes critical points from both philosophical faiths and uses them to show that perhaps we should question the traditional, rational justification for the existence of God and ask whether or not it should even be the task of philosophy to undertake the enquiry.

 The Swinburne view that philosophical reasoning and language descriptions are adequate tools to use in the rational justification of God's existence, is held up against the opposing 'Wittgensteinian' view, currently held, for example, by D.Z. Phillips, that language descriptions of God and attempts to prove his existence only provide support for a sort of 'philosophical fideism'. In other words, to use language to describe God, exceeds the limits of reason because it sets philosophical reasoning above that of religious faith.

 Messer argues that the traditional philosophical temptation to make religion into a rationally grounded system is one to be resisted because it misconceives both religion and philosophy.

 A further discussion of the appropriateness of the traditional proofs of GodÍs existence (Chapter 6) draws on the contemporary opposing views of Swinburne and Phillips to advance Messer's conclusion that both schools treat the existence of God in an unsatisfactory manner. In his final analysis, Messer asserts that both Swinburne and Phillips either ignore or fail to see the full significance of the relativity of true religious belief and the consequent need for a notion such as fundamental trust. 

Do we need proof of GodÍs existence when true religious belief and fundamental trust, occurring in the face of the uncertain,underlies ones response to the question of the appropriateness of the Proofs? Perhaps study of the Proofs should be given up, as they do not provide a neutral example of philosophical argument at work, or cogent support for the existence of God.

 Despite the book's relatively slim size for a work of critical analysis, it is no less penetrating and insightful even if a little abstract in parts. Supplemented by an excellent bibliography, this book should be of value to all those interested in the Philosophy of Religion.

 In Living Illusions: A Psychology of Belief, Michael Jacobs takes a coldly clinical attitude tyowards belief. All this has been done before, not least by Michael Jacobs, since the book is a revision of his Towards the Fullness of Christ. But other authors have managed to be both more entertaining and more profound, given the type of approach to religious experience and belief. Jacobs provides a model of understandings of religion, from more primitive to more sophisticated (though stressing his stages are not rigid). He compares and contrasts his model with other developmental models (not all concerned with religion): such names as Piaget, Kohlberg, Erikson and Tillich, and many less illustrious, and does it very prosaically. He opts in the end for the highest religious understanding to be that nothing can be known of God. It is hardly a fully Christian conclusion. It appears to me it can be a rather unsatisfactory way of justifying a void of faith by claiming that 'emptiness' is the highest expression of it. 

Illusion is said by Jacobs to be 'the use of objects, fantasies, words and ideas, as a way of mediating and interpreting the realities which we can never fully either know or understand' (p.18). Thus he says of psychoanalysis (in considering Freud's The Future of an Illusion) what he also thinks of even 'hard' science: 'even when it is 'correct' it is still an illusion'. Such a position seems to me too sceptical for even the living of ordinary life. I yield to the temptation to quote Jacobs against himself (he is criticising clinging to fixed beliefs, in fact using a quote of C.S Lewis): 'their prison is only in their minds, yet they are in that prison; and so afraid of being taken in that they cannot be taken out'. 

The Conclusion

More research needed.