John D. Brey
Well-Known Member
. . . In a dialogue lost to the ravages of time and tide I implied that an atheist or agnostic could do theology just a well as, with just as much revelation and excitement, and to just as great a profit as, any theist, if they (the atheist or agnostic) were merely capable of acknowledging, for the sake of argument, concepts they don't really believe exist.
In the dialogue in question, I used the example of the difference between a metaphor and the reality it symbolizes. For example, in the case of the metaphorical suggestion that "love is like a rose," the rose is real, material, visible, while love, if it exists, is invisible, intangible, and not materially real (only its results could be said to be tangible or material). In this interplay between metaphoricity and real, most people can play the game just fine since they've experienced love even though it's intangible and not materially real like the rose. The interplay between the rose and love is based on the tangible, visceral, beauty of a material rose, being used as metaphor for the eviscerated (intangible/immaterial) beauty that love is in its invisibility.
In the aforementioned dialogue (now found only in the limbo of the lost), my interlocutor seemed to concede that his lack of belief/experience in an invisible, intangible, God, precludes him from expending the kind of time and energy necessary to burn the midnight oil trying to correlate an experience of God (he doesn't have) to a theological metaphor that may or may not fit the experience of God, he doesn't have.
Which is to say that where the divine, God, the invisible reality, hasn't been experienced, it's difficult to establish the kind of metaphor versus referent that exists in the statement "love is like a rose." Ergo, when my interlocutor gets perturbed by my constant and incessant reliance on the phallus as the quintessential metaphor for my theology, I propose that she's allowing a very natural bias to infringe on what would otherwise be a very natural and legitimate interplay between "real" (in this case my theological referent) and "metaphorical" (in this case the phallus). . . If I told my interlocutor that to me her lips were like two lovely roses, she's not likely to look at her lips in a mirror to see if they have petals and thorns growing out of them. She can play the metaphor game just fine on that level, while on the other hand, if I imply that what is real in my theology is metaphorized seamlessly in the rituals circumscribed by brit milah (ritual circumcision), she might seem somewhat legitimately incapable of playing the metaphor/real game since in this case her familiarity with the tangible, the phallus, doesn't have a reference for my referent (my theology) that would in any way correlate it to the phallus, or the ritual cutting of the phallus (brit milah).
I propose that the frustration with my "penis obsession" is a legitimate frustration since it has no reference for my referent, such that my referent's relationship to brit milah, ritual circumcision, the phallus, make no sense to those who can only see such discussions as an obsession with the metaphor unhinged to any referent or reality. There's no way to connect my metaphor, the phallus (and circumcision), to what it's a metaphor for, where there's no experience of God that might in some way establish the connection between God, brit milah, ritual circumcision, and the phallus.
John
In the dialogue in question, I used the example of the difference between a metaphor and the reality it symbolizes. For example, in the case of the metaphorical suggestion that "love is like a rose," the rose is real, material, visible, while love, if it exists, is invisible, intangible, and not materially real (only its results could be said to be tangible or material). In this interplay between metaphoricity and real, most people can play the game just fine since they've experienced love even though it's intangible and not materially real like the rose. The interplay between the rose and love is based on the tangible, visceral, beauty of a material rose, being used as metaphor for the eviscerated (intangible/immaterial) beauty that love is in its invisibility.
In the aforementioned dialogue (now found only in the limbo of the lost), my interlocutor seemed to concede that his lack of belief/experience in an invisible, intangible, God, precludes him from expending the kind of time and energy necessary to burn the midnight oil trying to correlate an experience of God (he doesn't have) to a theological metaphor that may or may not fit the experience of God, he doesn't have.
Which is to say that where the divine, God, the invisible reality, hasn't been experienced, it's difficult to establish the kind of metaphor versus referent that exists in the statement "love is like a rose." Ergo, when my interlocutor gets perturbed by my constant and incessant reliance on the phallus as the quintessential metaphor for my theology, I propose that she's allowing a very natural bias to infringe on what would otherwise be a very natural and legitimate interplay between "real" (in this case my theological referent) and "metaphorical" (in this case the phallus). . . If I told my interlocutor that to me her lips were like two lovely roses, she's not likely to look at her lips in a mirror to see if they have petals and thorns growing out of them. She can play the metaphor game just fine on that level, while on the other hand, if I imply that what is real in my theology is metaphorized seamlessly in the rituals circumscribed by brit milah (ritual circumcision), she might seem somewhat legitimately incapable of playing the metaphor/real game since in this case her familiarity with the tangible, the phallus, doesn't have a reference for my referent (my theology) that would in any way correlate it to the phallus, or the ritual cutting of the phallus (brit milah).
I propose that the frustration with my "penis obsession" is a legitimate frustration since it has no reference for my referent, such that my referent's relationship to brit milah, ritual circumcision, the phallus, make no sense to those who can only see such discussions as an obsession with the metaphor unhinged to any referent or reality. There's no way to connect my metaphor, the phallus (and circumcision), to what it's a metaphor for, where there's no experience of God that might in some way establish the connection between God, brit milah, ritual circumcision, and the phallus.
John
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