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Law vs Milbank: Belief and the Gods - part 4

Paradox is a powerful tool when examining infinity

Issue 44, 31st January 2016
| Theologian and founder of Radical Orthodoxy. Books include The Monstrosity of Christ, co-authored with Slavoj Žižek.
4,636 words
Read time: approx. 23 mins

Read part 1: Stephen Law on the allegiance of philosophy in the battle between science and religion.
Read part 2: Anglican theologian John Milbank's forthright response to Stephen Law.
Read part 3: Law argues that Milbank's defence of religion is little more than pseudo-profundity.



Many thanks indeed to Stephen Law for his temperate and measured reply to my initial response. We can agree at least on the Confucian need to maintain our humanity – the quality of Ren!

However, I must reiterate my views that first God is not subject to evidence and second that it is not after all so easy to disentangle God and the Good.

First, Stephen claims that my desire to distinguish religion at least partially from magic (and the issues here are more complex than many think) applies only to the question of whether we can influence or manipulate God. However, occult influences cut both ways, as any decent magical practitioner will tell you! Magicians may be able to affect the weather, and even the stars if they are advanced in their art, but the influence of the weather and the stars on us also counts as magical. Indeed the former instance of natural magic remains both apparent and mysterious – just how does material weather affect our spiritual mood? Reverse magic whereby things move minds would seem to be all too real, while, inversely, the complex effect of our minds on our bodies (ranging from moving our limbs to moods affecting physical well-being) would seem possibly to fall within the instance of primary natural magic exercised by mental influence.

John Milbank
Issue 44, 31st January 2016

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shaunmaunder 6 February 2016

Is it a good thing to allow oneself to become so deluded? If it were only to trick oneself in to believing would be bad enough, but isn't this also to hope that by such confusion, he can hope to convince others of his 'deep understanding'? In other words, he hopes to gain power, by speaking in the 'right' way allows him a chance to pretend to know?

And do you think that unto such as you
A maggot-minded, starved, fanatic crew
God gave the secret, and denied it me?
Well, well--what matters it? Believe that, too

Terri Ann 4 February 2016

OMG, millions of words!!! There are 50 times more words than necessary in this post. It attempts to utterly bore the reader into submission. So very much said, but very, very few points are made, and 95% just meaningless waffle. It is possible to present a good argument for believing in god, and I've heard many good arguments before in my life, but this long winded, rambling, digressive monologue of pointless vague statement, one after another, does nothing to even closely resemble a valid argument.

Milbank still continues to confuse 'good' with 'religious'. They are not synonyms. I quote him, "Even were the world one vast concentration camp, the fact of their remaining one last believer, one last good person, ..." So, he says only a believer is a good person?

There are billions of very good people on Earth, and it has absolutely nothing what so ever to do with whether they believe in a god or not.

Religion causes hatred, wars, rejection, disunion, segregation, bigotry and fundamentalism, to name but a few. Even the Germans under Hitler were Christians. Right now the IS thing and Taliban thing are all religion based and very strongly god focused. In the name of god, humans have always slaughtered each other on mass.

Evil is a very real thing. It is definitely not merely the absence of good. In fact every single act of evil is done by someone imagining they are doing 'good', or they imagine they have no choice given the circumstances as they see it, and they imagine anyone else in their place would do the same thing. Evil is very much stronger and more powerful than good. One bully can frighten a whole train full of people. One gunman can terrify a whole crowd of hundreds of people. One evil leader can cause unspeakable misery and suffering to a whole nation of people (North Korea for one example among many). Massive evil exists, and god does not care. No silly illogical story from the bible can explain it. The 'fallen from grace' fairy tale has no logic in it at all.

Love does not require someone to be brutally sacrificed, whipped, tortured and nailed to a cross in order for others to be forgiven of sins they've accidentally or inadvertently committed. Presumably, those sinning wilfully without begging redemption on their knees are not redeemed by the blood of christ. Of course if the savage crucifixion thing is true, then the bible clearly states it was done 'so ALL can be forgiven', meaning everyone, including the most heinous criminals, whether they have ever heard of jesus or not. The whole concept is utterly ridiculous in the extreme.

Rick Fetters 1 February 2016

What a load of pseudo-intellectual drivel.