THERE IS A QUEEN!

Spot the logical error...

I believe, I truly believe, that there is a Queen of England. I believe she is not just the Queen of England but also of Canada, where I live. Some say she is just the Queen of England, however.

I know of six standard arguments for the existence of the Queen of England. Now, I know that none of these arguments constitute definite proof of her existence, but I still think they're quite persuasive. (Except for the Ontological Argument.) I have abiding faith that there is a Queen, even though I haven't seen her and there isn't much evidence of her presence.

Now, the Queen of England owns corgis - that is nearly certain. Can we truly call ourselves Canadian if we don't believe the Queen owns corgis? Be assured she owns several of this breed of dog.

The corgis have names: These are Emma, Linnet, Monty, Holly and Willow. Some people omit the name Emma from the list. Others include the names Cider, Berry, Candy and Vulcan. Both sets of people, the Emma-omitters and the Dorgists are utterly, absolutely wrong and should have their Canadian citizenship revoked before they destroy the commonwealth.

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You spotted it. If the existence of a is uncertain, and if b is put forward as an attribute of a, b cannot be more certain than a. Nor, I think, can you have complicated discussions about b until a has been established as certain. It is useless to assert that Jesus is the Son of God, unless God's existence is certain. What a dilemma for a Christian. Unless one removes oneself entirely from "descriptive" talk about God in favour of "evocative". Not "information" but "meaning". Not the letter but the spirit.

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And what was the point of this? Just that I am tired of people on both the religious right and the religious left telling me, in tones of utter certainty, what "God wants" us to do. How can these people say they know this?

NONAUTHORITARIAN CHRISTIANITY?

At a certain point in my life (perhaps my mid twenties) I realized that if I was to be religious, I could no longer base my faith on any form of authoritarianism. Not because I was a rebel, but because authoritarianism just doesn't work.

By "authoritarianism" I mean any truth claim that is argued by appeal to some unimpeachable authority. In religious terms this would today generally be sacred writings, regarded as having been inspired by God and thus infallible; or it might be the utterances of a prophet or leader held to be on intimate terms with the divine.

Leaving aside the intricate complexities of translation and interpretation of holy texts, one may still legitimately ask of them, "How do we know they are true?" The answer "Because they are divinely inspired" only begs the question "How do we know that?" To which the only possible answers are "tradition" and "faith", none of which are in any way self-authenticating or otherwise persuasive answers.

Why, one might ask, do I trust doctors? Not because of their aura of authority, I would respond. Quite the contrary - it is because they always have to prove themselves. The certificate I see hanging on the wall of my doctor's office is evidence to me that they have been proven. They have spent several years attending medical school, and have met stringent standards necessary to establish their worthiness to practice medicine. These schools, these standards, are also not automatically authoritative but represent centuries of accumulated, and continually tested and challenged, knowledge. I can't myself accumulate all the knowledge necessary to judge my doctor's diagnoses, but I can learn enough so that, say, if my doctor were to tell me, "You suffer from an excess of choler" I'd regard him or her as a quack.

It is very well not to base my faith on authority; but I also decided that I could not base it on supernatural experiences. These are out-of-the-ordinary experiences that are generally presented as evidence for a non-material reality lying beyond the physical world or the world of the senses. These could include mystical experiences, visions, auditions, near-death experiences, recollection of past lives through hypnotic regression, precognition, or significant coincidences (synchronicities). It isn't that I didn't believe that any of these things happen; but a) \most of them don't happen to me, and thus constitute hearsay; b) many purported instances are likely fraudulent or the result of self-deceit; c) they might be subject to scientific (i.e. materialistic) explanations; and d) they just don't seem to mean anything. So a bird flew through my grandparents' house, an omen of my grandfather's death; so over thirty years later another bird flew through my parents' apartment, just two months before my father's death. That's eerie, and ominous, and depressing; but it's not what is typically meant by religion.

Where did that leave me? No sacred texts, no mysterious occurences requiring supernatural explanation - what else is there? Only reflection, I decided.