Philosopher and Executioner

I said to myself: if God really exists, the FBI ought to seize him and sue him for genocide ,for killing babies, the use of biological weapons and other crimes.

By Dong Liang-jie

The back of the head

Philosophy is the most cruel and most painful spiritual activity mankind can undertake. This is because in the field of philosophy there is no authority and no absolute truth. It tears away the masks of the good and the evil alike to examine their true identities. According to philosophy, religion is simply a spiritual phenomenon and all religions teach pretty much the same thing.

Science also comes under its judgment. When scientists tell philosophers, "this is what the world is like," the philosophers will ask,"why?", "is this always the case?" Philosophy tries to seize every opportunity. Once it discovers something suspicious, it tries to negate the whole thing and start all over again. For this reason, it takes a lot of courage to study philosophy. At the very least you need more courage to study philosophy than to commit suicide.

A scientist often takes a positive approach, whereas a philosopher's approach is always negative. A philosopher's view is like that of an executioner, who cares nothing for a person's personality or external image but focuses only on the back of his head - to figure out where his knife should land. When a new theory or doctrine is presented to a philosopher, he will not simply accept it. Instead, he will examine it to see where his knife will land - in skepticism, challenge or criticism. He will try to destroy other people's domain and establish one of his own. The most typical example is Kant. Simply put, he "executed" God in intellectualism and "resurrected" him in morality.

I have done some philosophical research and I have written a book and several articles about philosophy. I can't call myself a philosopher but unfortunately I had the same problems as philosophers do, namely, skepticism. For example, when Christians preached the Gospel to me, saying, "God created mankind", I would say, "This is simply a hypothesis. Which is more reasonable, 'God created mankind' or 'mankind created God'?" Isn't it true that for many people their idols are fictional literary heroes? Doesn't the relationship between the Old Testament and the New Testament seem to you like the relationship between the first eight chapters of The Dreams of the Red Chamber and the rest of the book?

The Christian doctrine of the death of Christ provides us with a profound revelation of morality because he died to bring us forgiveness for our sins. But my response was, "No big deal! Socrates' death is even more glorious because he died with no external help." Furthermore, on the cross, Jesus cried out,"My God, my God, why do you forsake me?" It sounded as if, at the last moment, his faith in God was wavering. At least it rouses this suspicion. Two thousand years have passed since Jesus died and rose again to forgive our sins, and the world population has now increased twelve-fold and so have human sins. Why doesn't he come and do it again?

To my mind, fundamental issues like creation, resurrection and forgiveness were the back of the head for Christianity.

Nonsense

There are roughly two types of philosopher. One approaches things from a metaphysical or empiricist standpoint and attacks one religion with another. Nietzsche was an example of this kind. The other's approach is from the standpoint of logic, mathematics or science and he attacks religion with intellectual or scientific wisdom. Russell was an example of this kind of philosopher. It is easy to deal with the first kind. In fact there is no need to deal with it at all as it will eventually become self-destructive and dig its own grave. The second kind is much harder to deal with because it is based on common sense and scientific wisdom, and this seems to be irrefutable.

For example, in logic you may find this conundrum, "If God is omnipotent, then is he able to create a stone which he cannot lift ?" In trying to answer this difficult question, you will fall into a trap whether your answer is yes or no. In fact, this question shares the same logical style and the same linguistic structure as the Barber's Fallacy, also known as Russell's Fallacy as it was first proposed by Russell and it was directly responsible for the third crisis in the history of mathematics.

Richard the barber had a slogan for his business - "I only cut the hair of those who don't cut their own hair".

Then one day he became confused. Ought he to cut his own hair? If he did, then he became one of those who cut their own hair. But according to his slogan he was not supposed to do that. But if he did not cut his own hair, then he would be one of those who did not cut their own hair. Then according to his own principle he ought to cut his own hair after all. To express it in mathematical terms, you get "For any assertion A that is not self-reflective, A does not belong to itself if and only if A belongs to itself."

A simple fallacy like this was capable of triggering a huge cataclysm in the fields of mathematics and logic as well as in all areas of scientific thought. When Russell told this fallacy to Frege, the German mathematician, the founder of modern logic and one of the pioneers in philosophical analysis, Frege said, "This will lead to the collapse of the entire theory of deduction. I wish you hadn't discovered it."

Later, typology and modeling were added to limit definition and avoid contradiction but the result was not satisfactory. (It is hard to explain the fallacy about God and the stone and Russell's fallacy,but these are still a matters of logic, not matters of theology.)

It was not until Godel, the great mathematician who proposed the famous Incompleteness Theorem, that its philosophical significance more fully revealed itself in fundamental mathematical research. The Incompleteness Theorem states that any consistent mathematical theory must contain one or more premise that cannot be proved from within the theory. For example, in the Theory of Relativity, the premise that the speed of light C is the largest constant cannot be proved by the Theory of Relativity.

It is not my intention to introduce a mathematical crisis into religious arguments, although an American mathematician, when speaking of Godel's Incompleteness Theorem, did call mathematics a branch of theology. But the third mathematical crisis and Godel's Incompleteness Theorem are of obvious philosophical significance. They proclaim and prove that the human mind is not infinite and we must maintain a humble attitude before its mysterious nature. To return to the fallacy concerning God and the stone, we discover that while our intention was to throw a stone at God, it turned out to be an egg, which not only failed to kill God but also cracked and brought ridicule on our own heads.

Having said that, I don't mean that we can now arbitrarily bring God or other theological concepts into science. Rather we have to draw a line between science and theology - in the end they belong to different fields. Scientific theories can be proved as either true or false, whereas theological judgments cannot be proved as true or false from within human experience or by means of technical expertise. It is quite ridiculous to talk about the Word becoming flesh and about the resurrection, and yet it is this very ridiculousness that requires us to believe rather than trying to understand it from the standpoint of the intellect. So I finally came to the realisation that it is nonsensical to raise an attack on religion based on intellectual logical techniques.

Like a mouse digging underground

I finally understood the relationship between science and religious belief, but that doesn't mean that I was prepared to accept Christian faith right away. Instead I still had a strong mental and emotional resistance to Christianity. There was no denying all the crimes committed by the church in the past. The Inquisition and the Children's Crusade are notable examples. In Europe 370,000 people were killed under the Inquisition. As for the Crusades, apart from his justification of the wars, the Pope recruited tens of thousands of children in their early teens and sent them to the battlefield. It is not hard to imagine their fate.

Nevertheless, I understood the difference between church and its doctrines. So once again I went back to the Bible and other related books with two issues in mind. Firstly, if the Bible provided sufficient justification for the violence of the Crusades and the Inquisition, then I would go to hell rather than believe in it. Second, even if the Bible did not provide such support but if the church I went to failed to deal honestly with those historic facts, then I would not go to that church.

In regard to the first issue, although I could find no direct support in the Bible, I thought I did find some indirect support in the Old Testament, namely, God's judgements on mankind. The origin of the Passover especially chilled me. Despite all the preaching about God's love in the New Testament, its horror remained with me. Sometimes I was convinced that there were some basic problems with the Bible as the God of the Old Testament seemed so different from the God in the New Testament. Once again I fell into confusion and skepticism.

I continued to go to Friday Bible study meetings, but I stopped going to Sunday services. I did not want to show any respect for this kind of god. I was especially skeptical about the Lord's Prayer. When I read, "Your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven... for yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever", I was reminded of the Middle Ages when the state and religion were one!

I had also considered quitting the Friday Bible study meetings. But I still wanted to know more about it all. So I said to myself, "Maybe this is just my misunderstanding. At least I can collect some material to fuel my attacks." As I listened, I often raised hard questions.

One day, I pointed out that the God in the Old Testament did not look like a God of great love. Rather, he looked like the chief of a band of uncivilized savages. Having uttered such blasphemy, I assumed that they would ignore me for the present but would never come to invite me again. To my great surprise, one of the brothers urged me to read the Bible thoroughly and he said he would pray for me. I felt he was worried about me and yet he seemed to have a kind of confidence in regard to me. So I read a little more about the Bible.

I certainly didn't want to just read books about Christian teachings as I had developed a habit of examining things from both positive and negative points of view. Once again I read Russell's Why Am I Not a Christian and Nietszche's anti-Christianity books. During this time my life went through a painful period as my spirit once again became a kind of battlefield. One voice in my heart was saying," If God really exists, then the FBI ought to arrest him and sue him for genocide, for killing babies, the use of biological weapons and other crimes". But another said,"A person ought to have some kind of fundamental belief and Christianity is the best belief of them all".

Every time I went to the church on a Friday, I prayed that if God really existed, He would guide me. Then I started to have dreams. I heard a very clear voice in my dreams," Why do you pray? You ought to have the courage to be critical. But even if God really exists, he will not accept you anyway because in the past you have so often blasphemed the Holy One."

This kind of dream happened twice to me. A brother at church said that this was Satan's interference. I didn't understand why Satan would bother to interfere with an insignificant being like me.

I didn't believe in spirits and I preferred to believe that these dreams were genuine reflections of inner conflicts in my subconscious. But I didn't pray in Jesus' name either. I had my own reasoning. First, I had my own free will and I refused to be controlled by anything. Second, I believed that the best way to deal with fantasy and fanaticism was to calm down and evaluate myself from a neutral standpoint. Third, the best way to deal with spirits was to ignore them. And fourth, I didn't really want to attract the attention of spirits before I had found God.

However, from a Christian point of view, all these reasons were signs of a lack of faith. But at least I didn't give up. To my surprise I did actually calm down and took a firm new standpoint: I would stop scrutinizing things from a transient and capricious viewpoint. For instance, didn't we often subconsciously alter our moral standards in order to understand certain historic events?

So once again I started to think about the subject of death. First of all, our viewpoint on death is different from God's. While we consider death as the end of everything, God sees it as the beginning of a new life, in either heaven or hell. Second, death seems to carry different meanings for different races or even for the same nationality in different historic periods. Take the Chinese, for example. The concept of death in ancient China is very different from what we have today. We have reason to believe that the Chinese people of two thousand years ago were not all that afraid of death. From a linguistic standpoint, the word death is related to return. So death was like going home.

During that time I was like a mouse digging in the dark. But I wasn't even quite like a mouse. Although a mouse may not see the light, at least it possesses a biological navigator. I didn't.

Visitors from far away

So I entered into a contradictory state, which, despite my lack of peace and joy, aroused in me a strong desire to investigate. It was the desire to keep digging until the light broke through. Over a short time I read several books, both Christian and anti-Christian. Books about religious history written by non-believing scholars from a neutral standpoint were particularly interesting for me. I believed an unbiased attitude was extremely valuable because religion could be a minefield of zealotry and hatred.

Barth said, "The Bible is not man's book about God, but God's book about man." He also said, "From our own point of view, it is incredible that there were so many people killed in Old Testament battles. But then there are so many other things that are beyond our understanding."

So suddenly light entered my soul. I read the Bible again, "But who are you, O man, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'" (Romans 9:19). "Do not deceive yourselves. If any one of you thinks he is wise by the standards of this age, he should become a 'fool' so that he may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness in God's sight. As it is written: 'He catches the wise in their craftiness'; and again, 'The Lord knows that the thoughts of the wise are futile.'" (I Cor. 3:18-20)

These words seemed to be targeted directly at me, and I felt refreshed. Actually, the Bible was full of refreshing words like these!

According to the Bible, the key to the lack of harmony between men and God is the forbidden fruit. For this reason, those who, like myself, believe they are wise, ought to learn a lesson.

In the following few days, I kept asking myself, "To be or not to be?" Then I finally nodded: Yes. But why? Because of my spiritual poverty and ignorance. I don't know anything. All I know about is my own ignorance. I must clean up my own soul in the same way that I clean up my room to greet guests from far away.

On October 21, I prayed to God before I fell asleep, "If you can hear my voice, please give me guidance. I don't know what to believe." That night I dreamed that I was visiting a fair with a range of gorgeous displays. I found one very interesting item and decided to buy it. But then I thought that perhaps I might be able to find something even better. So I kept on looking . After a long while I was beginning to feel weary, so I went back to buy the first one. But by that time the door of the store had closed. When I woke up, my first thought was: Believe now; don't wait.

Where wisdom ends

In retrospect, I realize that I had had another motivation in my fierce attack on the Lord's miracles. When the Pharisees asked Jesus to perform a miracle, Jesus always refused "because this generation does not deserve to see miraculous signs". But there were other occasions when Jesus did indeed perform a number of miracles. So there are two completely different arguments. One is, "if I see a miracle I will believe". And the other one comes from the intellect, saying " I will only believe if you take the miracles out of the Bible." Neither of these makes sense.

Indeed, miracles can bring men to religious faith, either from amazement or terror. But this kind of belief does not last long. In other words, miracles alone do not bring about true faith. Look at the circumstances under which Jesus performed miracles - situations of great faith, hope and love! (Mark 1:40, 2:1-12, John 11:33-40) Without at least one of these, men do not deserve to see miraculous signs.

When Jesus rejected the Pharisees' request for signs, he declared, "You hypocrites! The greatest miracle of all is that you should believe".

The other argument is," I will believe if you take the miracles out of the Bible." This is often brought up by so-called intellectuals. What they mean is that Jesus' miracles are not consistent with human intellectualism. I used to hold the same kind of position. But now I understand. If all the miracles were actually taken out of the Bible and only the intellectual stuff was left, would we really believe in Him?

Of course not! We wouldn't need to believe Him any more. It would make no difference if we were to simply believe in a high school teacher, because Jesus would be providing no more intellectualism than a high school teacher would. In fact, this argument tends to destroy religion. Only miracles can bring stimulus and revelation to stubborn intellectuals: Your little bit of wisdom is nothing; God's wisdom is far beyond what you can see; it is impossible to save yourself with human wisdom; when wisdom ends, there faith and religion begin.

Absolute measurement

God's Word, whether in the Old Testament or in the New Testament, provides no support for the Inquisition. On the contrary, he frequently taught, "Watch out for false prophets", "Do not judge others lest your Heavenly Father judge you", and "There is not a single righteous man in the world." Throughout the Bible, there is no single instance in which God changed peoples' beliefs by force. Religious belief is always one's own choice. In other words, God never violates a person's free will. How could He allow the Inquisition to judge the sins of others?

The concept of sin is vital in the Bible. It is a concept which Chinese people find hard to accept. Why? Our traditional culture has grown out of generations of scholastic wisdom of which we are all very proud. Come to think of it, Christianity tried three times to penetrate Chinese civilization, the longest attempt lasting over 200 years, but none of them succeeded. A principal reason had to do with the strength of Chinese culture following the Han Dynasty.

Original sin is an absolute measurement to which nobody can claim to be an exception. It also eliminates any form of self-worship or human idolatry. By this measurement, any man-based accusation becomes baseless. It also uncovers any kind of deception disguised as righteousness. Ultimately it reveals human frailty.

What is the most advanced development in our civilization? It is neither mathematics nor logic. It is neither scientific knowledge nor democratic culture. It is the art of waging war - books about military strategies. How many of these books have been published in Chinese history? The number surely exceeds that of any other nation in the world. Why so? The reason is that there has been no fear of killing other people. So there have been all kinds of ways to fight different peoples. All kinds of cruel punishments can be found in China. For this reason, Lu Xun once said: "There are plenty of ways of killing in China. In respect of capital punishment China is number one in the world. Even those who worked for the Inquisition are left far behind." I love the Chinese nation. Yet I feel sad that the Chinese are likely to become the most violent nation in the world. What brings a little comfort to other nations is that China, with its frequent civil wars, very seldom attacks other nations.

Many people like to consider themselves sinless or righteous. They hope Jesus could at least allow a few such to exist so that they can fight for a place. Jesus knew our mind too well. He stated firmly: "There is no one righteous, not even one." (Romans 3:10) So we are all lost! Not even one! It is even impossible to pretend to be one. We lost our job with a faked diploma!

Not even one! This firm statement eliminates the root of struggles. And it is great wisdom!

Having tasted the wonder, I began to see the beauty of the doctrines.

Aesthetically, I don't really see much beauty in Christian doctrines. This is because God reveals truths that directly reflect the true state of the human heart, much like what was done in the introductory poems in The Dream of the Red Chambers: a skeleton that cures. Other religions tend to act like a beautiful woman beckoning to you and leading you on to destruction.

From a different angle, we see that Christian revelation provides us with moral standards. And from the intellectual standpoint, Christianity is beautiful whether you believe it or not.

Premise I: God exists and He is omnipotent.

Premise II: Men have free will.

Premise III: Men are born with sin.

Everybody is finite. And a finite mind cannot comprehend the infinite mystery. And so faith is necessary.

We sin and we cannot free ourselves from sin by our own efforts. So it is only through faith that we can become righteous and be freed from sin. As for things like equality, freedom, justice and human rights, they are not only consistent with Christian doctrines, they are reasonable inferences from them.

Bondage and freedom

There is a famous saying of Rousseau: "Men are born free and they are always stuck in bondage." The Bible tells us: "Men are born in bondage and they can obtain freedom through faith."

Do these two statements contradict one another? Not at all. Rousseau was talking by the measure of the world, which is illusory. What is the significance of a newborn baby's freedom? Who can grant a newborn absolute freedom? Still none of us misunderstand Rousseau's message: Men do long for freedom.

A newborn's mind and body are both fragile and so he is in bondage. As he grows up, he will commit more sins on top of the original sin he carries with him. Sin makes him blind and the blind do not have freedom. It is only through faith that he can obtain freedom. "If you hold to my teaching, you are really my disciples. Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-38) Indeed, our greatest bondage is our spiritual poverty and our ignorance of the truth.

Christian doctrines are heavenly truth and the Word of Jesus is their vessel. Some of them may seem ridiculous but they are to the point. Some may seem unreasonable but they have strong reasoning behind them.

His love may seem cruel but it is full of compassion. His love is like the spring breeze silently caressing all.

At this point, let me quote Tagore's poem Devotion as my epilogue:

Your love is different from that of others;

While others' love gives me bondage, Yours gives me freedom.

The author earned a Master's degree from Beijing People's University. He worked as a correspondent, and is currently studying at the University of Hawaii.