Ted Jones

Phil 110 – Tues.

Instructor: Brian Tapia

17 May, 2005

God is an Elephant

Its official: We are now living in the information age, a.k.a. the Super Information

Highway (SIH). This sounds like an obvious statement, which has been used since its inception,

but ten years ago the question still lingered, “Will it last?” The 1980’s introduced us to the

internet, and the 1990’s proved its usefulness. But now, here in the millennium, the SIH is seen

as a mainstay for acquiring a level of presence in society and business. Even religion and

philosophy have acquiesced to its necessity as, “He who has a web page first, must be telling the

truth,” seems to be the rule of thumb these days. Maybe a school of thought doesn’t necessarily

feel the need to broadcast itself to the world, but it will surely be lost in the milieu of other

doctrines that thrive on shouting louder than it’s neighbor. Regardless, seeking souls no longer

have to sell all their possessions, shave their head ( or grow long hair), commit to poverty, and

aimlessly roam the globe in search for the meaning of life; it now comes to them.

In contrast to 2000 years ago , this is important. Then, religion typically was also the

source of education. Without the constant influx of conflicting ideas, a religion within a specific

culture could develop for thousands of years without interference. Students receiving education

through an inherited religion would never know other ideas until venturing to another land, or

unless they became conquered by another country, thereby adopting a new faith. Today, you can

literally get out of bed, logon to the internet, and decide which religion you want for breakfast -

no sword fights, no bloody battles, your countries resources stay intact.

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This is not a judgment, good or bad, on the noted phenomena. It’s merely to point out that

the human races point of view is changing from multiple, segmented conflicting views, to an

alternate world overview, with a broadness that either leaves one utterly confused, or presses one

to seek a higher truth. Never before in the history of man, have so many people been so widely

exposed to what the world contains in its entirety. This used to be the attribute of well traveled

men, the wiser ones having strengthened their own faith by gleaning universal truth from others,

where the remainder were relegated to resolve religious differences by slaughtering each other.

So what is the devout disciple to think when the questions unanswered by his own faith,

are easily answered by a variety of others? Does he throw away his native faith, trading it for

another, only to find it also has its unanswered questions? Perhaps a disciple is of a faith that

does have all the answers, and there are no questions. By it’s very definition, wouldn’t this

exclude all other religions making them false, thereby causing intrinsic compromise as one is

required to interface with non-believers just to navigate society? These are broad statements, but

I think any questions more specific than that would be contained within those two extremes.

However, I believe there is a third extreme that relieves the “SIH Seeker” of either of those worn

out paths.

God is an elephant.

There is a Chinese parable of three blind men; never having seen an elephant, they seek

to find out what one is. They each take hold of a different part of the pachyderm and

emphatically claim the elephant to be most like whatever it was they grabbed on to. One claims

it’s like a snake, the next a tree, and the third a rope (Kou 83-85). There are different versions of

this story, but a favorite of mine is by John Godfrey Saxe, a 19th century lawyer and poet. The

last two portions summarize the lesson :

And so these men of Indostan

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Disputed loud and long,

Each in his own opinion

Exceeding stiff and strong,

Though each was partly in the right,

And all were in the wrong!

Moral:

So oft in theologic wars,

The disputants, I ween,

Rail on in utter ignorance

Of what each other mean,

And prate about an Elephant

Not one of them has seen! (Saxe)

Humanity has been arguing for centuries about the existence of God and how best to

worship. All parties express bits of truth that ring true universally, but we can’t all be 100%

correct. We can agree what water and the sun are because we experience these fully with our

senses every day, but that god we conceive of as being God has yet to be experienced in such a

way as to end all arguments for good. We keep arguing, searching, re-defining, and flat out

failing to come to a consensus that accommodates both our humanity and Gods existence.

I propose that God is the elephant, and we, the human race, are nothing but foolish blind

men arguing over subjective points of view of who God is. I often imagine that some cosmic

observer, if not God himself, is watching us as we try to define something that we have no means

with which to define. If this is the case, there is nothing to argue. Even if the primary existence

of God still bothers the philosopher, he has only to recognize that either choice still leaves him

with one option common to all- that option is to exercise faith. After clearing away the dross of

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argumentation, we are left with only a few universal truths that allow each of us to return to his

own faith, reassured, and with sword and scabbard unsoiled.

We are lost: We are utterly lost for an ultimate answer. We’ve found all there is to find

and put it on websites (so to speak), shouted it from the mountain tops, and gone door to door.

King Solomon in the book of Ecclesiastes figured this one out; “What has been will be again,

what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun” (NIV Eccl 1:9). All

points of view are now known, yet religion still insists on trying to corner the market on ultimate

truth.

We must accept: We cannot change human nature, for it is this very nature that makes us

human. Raymond M. Smullyan points this out in his humorous, but poignant, selection called Is

God a Taoist? He refers to human nature as “natural law,” summarizing that it is impossible for

us to rise above this, for humanity and natural law are one in the same (Kessler 433). We argue,

seek, kill, destroy build, and continue to do so over and over, granted we seem to find new ways

of doing this with every generation.

We call it God: We toy with definitions of who God is and what he is like. The very act

of defining God in any rigid manner creates its own paradox, hence more argument. The problem

of evil is one such example. Epicurus’s Paradox states, “Is he willing to prevent evil, but not

able? Then he is impotent. Is he able but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and

willing? Whence then is evil?” (535). I don’t believe it is heresy to ask these questions, after all

it’s in our nature. But to define God, insist he conform to the empirical, ethical, and moral

standards we set forth, then reject his existence because he does not, is ludicrous. The very

definition of God insists that he is above all of this. Above good and evil? Yes. Beyond

explanation? Yes. Full of paradox? Why not.

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We call it salvation: What is it that drives humanity towards the spiritual? Why can’t we

just leave it alone? After all, it’s responsible for just as much destruction as it is creation. And

once a religion claims to have the answers, it has to spread the news like grocery store gossip and

take over the world. There is this drive in all our souls that there is something out there beyond

the here and now and that it can be possessed. To embrace the one, is to let go of the other. We

long to rise above our own humanity and be set free. I would imagine even the Atheist

occasionally looks around and feels the need to transcend what we are and be set free from the

limitations of current reality.

Faith is all we have: Soren Kierkegaard wrote how all roads of reasoning end with a leap

of faith (Handout). Gunapala Dharmasiri expounded on Buddhist thought suggesting that using

the fundamental laws of nature to explain what is beyond those laws is unnecessary and wrong

(Voices 515-16). Faith is that part of our humanity that we use to navigate the unknown and the

non-empirical. When we ask why, we are trying to get an empirical explanation for something

we have no means to interpret other than by faith. Kierkegaard and Dharmasiri emphasize the

absurdity of empirically proving Gods existence, but then the opposite must apply also, proving

that God does not exist. In either case we must bend our knee in faith.

An opposition to this argument would be any religion claiming exclusive revelation of

God via a divine prophet. Christianity, for example, has the boldest claim, that Christ not only is

the way to God, but is God incarnate. My rebuttal is not to prove Christ’s authenticity as true or

false, but to question if it negates the aforementioned universal truths. Do they still apply?

At best, for the Christian, if the dynamic of Christ is true to the very letter, then what it

has to offer is knowledge of the mechanics of salvation and restoration to God. The story of

Christ’s life, death, and resurrection is very moving and embodies what humanity has been

reaching for all along. But is knowledge of how something works enough to cause one to

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implement faith in it? Didn’t Abraham from the Bible simply [have faith] in what God said when

he was promised offspring, and God credited it to him as righteousness (NIV Gen 15:6)? In this

instance, knowledge of Christ is not mentioned, yet God is still providing salvation. In contrast,

Romans 10:10 does express exercising faith in the context of the knowledge of Christ, following

it with, “For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that

you confess and are saved” (NIV). They each predicate faith with different messages of

knowledge, but both hinge on man trusting in God. It is the faith that God rewards, not the

knowledge of how something works. If indeed, Christ is the vehicle God uses to restore man to

himself, obviously this eternal dynamic was in effect during Abrahams time also. But knowledge

of the dynamic, or how it worked, was not required. Though revelation of the Christ dynamic

came later, the requirement of salvation remained the same; faith. This falls perfectly in line with

universal truth. At the worst, the story of Christ is merely a symbolic fairytale of a really nice

guy that got a raw deal. Even so, the Platonic idea of what Christ symbolizes still conforms to

universal truth: We are still trapped within the confines of a finite reality, we long to transcend it,

and anything that is beyond this reality, requires faith which is initiated by man.

I am not claiming that all religions are equally true or equally false, and therefore it does

not matter which is chosen. As humans, raised in varied cultures, what is a “best” religion for an

individual is often dictated by where he was raised. This has nothing to do with degrees of truth,

other than the universal truth that we are always subject to the restrictions of humanity. What I

do advocate however, is recognition that the very definition of God intuitively encompasses the

characteristic of God being beyond definition. I do not feel this eliminates direct experience or

access to God, but rather promotes it. For, by being beyond definition, the first requirement of

experience would be faith. Any conscious man can exercise faith. The Muslim, the Jew, the

Christian, and even the radical Jihadist can, at any moment, appeal to universal truth and seek to

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experience God directly. I feel any religion will drive a man to this conclusion if he pursues it to

its logical end.

Man has an innate ability to recognize and respond to universal truth. He should worship

as he wills, and maintain faith that God is as inexhaustible as he is indescribable. He is above our

petty definitions of good and evil, and we do not have the means to fully understand in the here

and now. Each should claim “this I know,” then be open to others, lest he miss yet another

chance to experience God directly.

So, God is an elephant, and we are but blind men. Take a firm hold of what you know,

but be careful where you reach.

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Works Cited

The Holy Bible, New International Version. Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 1978.

Kessler, Gary E. Voices of Wisdom. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, fifth ed.

2004. 433, 515-16, 535.

Kierkegaard, Soren. The Leap of Faith and the Limits of Reason. Handout in Philosophy 110,

May 2005.

Kou, Louise and Yuan-His. Three Blind Men and an Elephant: Chinese Folktales. Millbrae, CA:

Celestial Arts, 1976. 83-85. As posted by Duen Hsi Yen.

<http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html.> Accessed 14 May,

2002.

Saxe, John Godfrey. The Blind Men and the Elephant. Wordfocus.com. Accessed 14 May, 2005.

<http://www.wordfocus.com/word-act-blindmen.html.>

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