![\"DesireCloud\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/572\/2017\/08\/DesireCloud.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Photograph by \u201cImaresz\u201d (7-5-13)<\/span> [Pixabay<\/a> \/ Pixabay license<\/a>]<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n \u201cFicino\u201d<\/a> is an atheist, former Catholic, and all-around interesting fellow. This exchange occurred underneath my blog post about sehnsucht<\/em><\/a>. His words will be in blue<\/span>.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Oh again.<\/span><\/p>\n Do we all desire, as the outermost sphere of the heaven, itself divine and itself eternally in motion, desires the unmoved mover, as the earthly lover desires the beloved from across the agora? Desires the unmoved mover, which thinks nothing but its own thinking, and is loved and desired for all eternity?<\/span><\/p>\n Habet Acht. Habet Acht. Bald entweicht die Nacht.<\/span><\/p>\n I understand that Augustine wanted the form of the Beautiful to have a human face. And he found that face in a Palestinian centuries before his own time.<\/span><\/p>\n I have been learning, if I desire P, it does not follow that there exists a P. My desire is my desire. Reality is what it is.<\/span><\/p>\n Keeping watch, alone, in the night \u2026 I am glad that we understand some of the same things. . . .\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Aristotle teaches us that we are of one species, and rational soul unites us.<\/span><\/p>\n So if you desire food, it proves there is no food out there? If you have sexual desire, that\u2019s proof that sexuality is a myth and a figment of your imagination? If you desire a good chat with an old friend, it\u2019s proof that such things are nonexistent? Why should this desire be the only one that has nothing on the other end of it? On what basis can one definitively proclaim that it\u2019s just us and our own brain and has no relation to anything else?<\/p>\n ok, in the light of a rainy morning, I can try to engage in discussions that I was too sad to hold last night. I was emoting more than arguing with your OP.<\/span><\/p>\n I\u2019ll leave aside your first three questions, because I think it\u2019s clear that I did not propose any of those \u201cif \u2013 then\u201ds.<\/span><\/p>\n On the last question, I don\u2019t know enough to defend the \u201cdefinitively\u201d part. As far as I\u2019ve seen, we don\u2019t need the hypothesis of an occult soul, separable from the body, to explain what we find in life, and I think I\u2019ve lived more harmoniously since jettisoning it.<\/span><\/p>\n Your fourth question, if it can be rewritten as \u201cwhy should my yearning for a lost loved person not be like my desire for food, which aims at an object that exists,\u201d I think one answer is that these are different kinds of desire. Pothos or the like is not identical to orexis. Then, the analogy is a bit off, since I don\u2019t desire the return of a morsel that I already ate. And I do desire to have friends in general, as I desire a supply of food in general. That\u2019s different from wishing a bygone friend were still here or wishing that a particular morsel of food could return.<\/span><\/p>\n from a human sense of the numinous it does not follow that, literally, \u201cnumen inest.\u201d I think the burden of proof is on the person who claims that there is a divinity there. But the sense that there is something beyond ourselves, and the tendency of mystics to talk as though they experience the oneness of all things, suggests that we have more to learn.<\/span><\/p>\n I used to read a lot of German literature \u2013 it was my first foreign language I really got into. I never came across the blue flower except perhaps, was it in Novalis?<\/span><\/p>\n The first three questions have to do with replies to your statement, \u201cI have been learning, if I desire P, it does not follow that there exists a P.\u201d I didn\u2019t\u00a0claim<\/i>\u00a0that you proposed any of them. They are my responses to your denial of what we call the \u201cargument from desire.\u201d<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think you have overcome the argument at all here. Nothing you have written shows me why a desire for God proves that there is no God, rather than that there is.<\/p>\n Atheists are always demanding proof, proof, proof (and usually in a solely empirical sense). Well, this argument\u00a0is<\/i>one of our proofs, which (together with many others, in a cumulative effect) are why we believe in God.<\/p>\n I understand that you don\u2019t or won\u2019t think it has much force, and deny that is is compelling. I agree that it\u2019s not compelling by itself, and I don\u2019t even claim much force for it, but I think it is one valid consideration.<\/p>\n Moreover, it touches upon things that atheists also feel. You have granted that; so has another correspondent of mine a day or two ago. You mention \u201cthe sense that there is something beyond ourselves.\u201d Indeed.<\/p>\n That being the case, I\u2019d like to hear the alternate explanations that preclude God as the \u201cresolution\u201d to the longing.<\/p>\n Dave, you are the one making the assertive claim. I don\u2019t think the fact of desire demonstrates the existence of that which is desired.<\/span><\/p>\n I know, but that\u2019s not an argument. If you don\u2019t have one, simply say so. But merely saying this has no persuasive power. I continue to seek atheist plausible alternate explanations for these sorts of longings.<\/p>\n I can\u2019t prove there isn\u2019t a God of the sort that classical theism proposes. Christianity seems to be saddled with considerable defeaters, and I think we\u2019re both familiar with discussions about those.<\/span><\/p>\n I haven\u2019t studied human religious feeling and experience enough to have a comprehensive explanation of longings for the transcendent. I would think the structure of the experience is heavily influenced by culture. Someone in an animistic society that also worships ancestors might not be accurately described as longing for the same thing that, say, Matthew Arnold may have longed for. I don\u2019t know.<\/span><\/p>\n Members of my family claimed to have had mystical and\/or religious experiences. Some of them were or are charismatic Protestants. Another one was a sort of Vedanta\/Jungian\/Meister Eckhart amalgam of a mystic. Their \u201cdoctrinal\u201d beliefs differed on many important points. There was another one who made various prophecies \u2013 which did not prove true. I came to discount what I can only loosely call religious experience as a source of truth.<\/span><\/p>\n Anyway, this is the best I can do. I don\u2019t have a worked-out theory about Sehnsucht.<\/span><\/p>\n ETA: when I was a Christian I received what we called the Baptism of the Holy Spirit, spoke in tongues, and so on. As far as I know, such phenomena are explained by appeal to physical and psychological processes. That\u2019s how I look back on it, too. So as you wrote above, I think it\u2019s \u201cjust us and our brain.\u201d I can\u2019t prove that there isn\u2019t also a ghost at work in the machine, so to speak.<\/span><\/p>\n Lots of people don\u2019t seem to display much yearning for the transcendent. I don\u2019t know what conclusion if any to draw from that.<\/span><\/p>\n Over on The Secular Outpost<\/em>, Joe Hinman has for years maintained that worldwide religious experience is evidence that humans can have some contact with a Ground of Being kind of God that Hinman thinks Paul Tillich has explained better than anyone else (I think I represent Hinman\u2019s views correctly). You may be familiar with some of Hinman\u2019s writings. He has a blog called Metacrock.<\/span><\/p>\n Fair enough. I think this is a very interesting and honest comment. For myself, the most plausible explanation for such deep longings seems to me to be that there is indeed a God and a heaven \u201con the other end.\u201d<\/p>\n I would say that that conclusion is based on analogy (other desires, that all seem to be capable of fulfillment) and (for me) the inadequacy relatively less plausible alternate explanations.<\/p>\n One can always posit mental or psychological dysfunction, sure, but that hardly explains all cases: especially ones from solid, deep thinkers like C. S. Lewis. Something is going on with him.<\/p>\n But I\u2019m glad at least that we both experience \u201clongings for the transcendent.\u201d It\u2019s a common ground. We may disagree on the explanation, but you aren\u2019t doubting the very experience. So it\u2019s a fruitful ground for further potential discussion, I think.<\/p>\n I\u2019d love to have these sorts of discussions on atheist comboxes: if I could ever find one that wasn\u2019t a \u201cfeeding frenzy\u201d of insults towards Christians and Christianity. Till I find that, I\u2019m delighted\u00a0to interact with\u00a0a few non-insulting atheists who wander over to my page, where I don\u2019t allow insults towards them. Welcome!<\/p>\n Thanks for this discussion! I enjoyed it.<\/p>\n Related materials:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Romantic and Imaginative Theology web page<\/a><\/p>\n 15 Theistic Arguments (Copious Helpful Resources)<\/a><\/p>\n Beauty as a Road to God<\/a>\u00a0(Eleonore Stump, 2007) [PDF download]<\/p>\n The Intuitive Conception and Knowledge of God<\/a>\u00a0(William P. Alston) [PDF download]<\/p>\n Dialogue with an Agnostic: God as a \u201cProperly Basic Belief\u201d<\/a>\u00a0(Dave Armstrong vs. JD Eveland, 2015)<\/p>\n Faith and Reason<\/a>\u00a0(Michael Polanyi, 1961)<\/p>\n Christian Faith and Belief<\/a>\u00a0(Alexander R. Pruss, 2001)<\/p>\n Michael Polanyi and Tacit Knowledge<\/a>\u00a0(Mark K. Smith, 2003)<\/p>\n Does Joy Lead to God?: Lewis, Beversluis, and the Argument from Desire<\/a>\u00a0(Edward M. Cook)\u00a0[PDF download]<\/p>\n The Argument from Desire \/ Longing for the Existence of God\u00a0<\/a>(John M. DePoe) [PDF download]<\/p>\n Jack Meets Gen X: Apologetics of Longing and the Postmodern Mood<\/a>\u00a0(Gregory Dunn) [PDF download]<\/p>\n The Argument from Desire\u00a0<\/a>(Peter Kreeft, 1994)<\/p>\n Argument From Desire: Do our desires point to something or nothing?<\/a>\u00a0(Art Lindsey) [PDF download]<\/p>\n The Bayesian Argument from Desire<\/a>\u00a0(Victor Reppert, 2009)<\/p>\n The ontological argument from desire\u00a0<\/a>(Alexander R. Pruss, 2010)<\/p>\n