Monday, Jun. 05, 1950

Where Are We?

Oarsmen at Oxford University had their minds on "Eights Week," and most undergraduates were sweating out their finals. But neither these distractions nor the fine spring weather last week could damp down the philosophical war that has been raging between Oxford's logical positivists and Oxford's believers.

Logical positivism (a close relative of U.S. Philosopher John Dewey's pragmatism) erects its system of thought on the premise that no statement (except in logic and mathematics) may be considered meaningful if it is not potentially verifiable by evidence of the senses. The idea of God is one of the first things that logical positivists throw overboard. Last week Philosopher Tony Quinton of All Souls' College undertook to dispose of God in the heart of the enemy camp, the Roman Catholic undergraduate Aquinas Society.

Notice the Boop. To hear the assertion that God exists, declared handsome Tony Quinton, is like visiting a friend and having him ask: "Did you notice our boop when you came through the garden?"

"No, what is it--an animal of some sort?"

"Yes, it's a sort of dog; it guards the house."

"I didn't see anything like a dog."

"Oh, you wouldn't see it. It's invisible."

"Well, can you smell it, touch it, hear it?"

"Not exactly . . ."

"Anyway, I thought you'd been burgled recently; it can't be a very good guard."

"Ah, you wouldn't talk like that if you knew what it was to have a boop. Of course, it hasn't dealt with the burglars yet, but it knows who they are and is going to punish them."

God, said Quinton, is just about as evident as a boop. Then he went on to draw a prestidigitator's "proof" of God's nonexistence from Christian dogma: "God created the world." "World" in this sense, said Philosopher Quinton, means not "earth" but "everything."

"God," he went on, "obviously didn't create Himself. The only thing outside of everything is nothing. Therefore, if God created everything except what is outside of everything, namely nothing, and if God is the only thing outside everything, then . God is nothing."

I Believe. After 55 minutes of such fast-stepping talk, the Rev. Thomas Corbishley, chubby Jesuit Master of Oxford's Catholic Campion Hall, got to his feet. "Mr. Quinton," he began, "do you believe the statement that no statement is true unless it is verifiable?"

"Certainly," replied Quinton. "How," asked Corbishley, "can you verify that statement?" Quinton admitted that this cornerstone of positivism is unverifiable.

"Then why do you believe it to be true?" asked the priest.

"I believe it to be true because it is true," Quinton answered.

"There!" shouted Father Corbishley triumphantly. "So I believe that God exists because He does exist. Now where are we?"

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