The Triplex Via of Naming God
2016; Philosophy Education Society Inc.; Volume: 69; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
2154-1302
Autores Tópico(s)Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices
ResumoIN A DELIGHTFUL SHORT STORY entitled Nine Billion Names of Arthur C. Clarke describes task that monks of a Tibetan monastery have set themselves, namely, to list possible names of God. This, they maintain, purpose for which world was created, and they have been working on project for three centuries, ever since lamasery was founded. They believe that of God's names can be written with not more than nine letters in a special alphabet they have devised. To speed up job high lama has hired a computer and engaged two operators to write a program that can complete task in a hundred days instead of 15,000 years. He explains importance of task: Call it ritual, if you like, but it's a fundamental part of our belief. All many names of Supreme Being--God, Jehovah, Allah, and so on--they are only man-made labels. There a problem of some difficulty here, which I do not propose to discuss, but somewhere among possible combinations of letters, which can occur, are what one may call real names of God. By systematic permutation of letters, we have been trying to list them all. (1) Only when computer up and running do programmers learn consequences of their work. Once last of divine names deciphered, universe will be extinguished: They believe that when they have listed His names--and they reckon that there are about nine billion of them--God's purpose will have been achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, very idea something like blasphemy. Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide? There's no need for that. When list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up ... bingo! (2) Despite taking what one of them calls Wide View, computer experts are fearful of outcome and anxious to depart. As they trek down mountain road, under a sky ablaze with familiar, friendly stars, one of them lifts his eyes to heaven: Overhead, without any fuss, stars were going out. (3) The philosophical problem of some difficulty, to which lama refers, has been a challenge for Western philosophy since start: how to speak of supernatural. When Thales declared that all things are full of gods, he expressed an early and confused pantheism. The problem to discern divine, distinguish it from natural, and somehow describe it in only terms available, namely, those of nature. One of fundamental tasks of theology to explain how it possible to speak validly of God, whose nature must by definition lie beyond human cognition. The early philosophers and poets recognized difficulty and ambiguities involved. According to cryptic utterances of Heraclitus, for whom the way up and way down are one and same, (4) Logos is both willing and unwilling to be called by name of Zeus. (5) Euripides has Hecuba proclaim: You who support earth and have there your sanctuary, whoever you are, you are difficult to know. Zeus, whether you are a necessity of nature or mind of mortals, I pray to you. (6) The Greek philosopher Xenophanes identified challenge when he observed that humans depict gods in their own likeness: If oxen and horses and lions had hands or could draw with hands and create works of art like those made by men, horses would draw pictures of gods like horses, and oxen of gods like oxen, and they would make bodies of their gods in accordance with form that each species itself possesses.... Ethiopians have gods with snub noses and black hair, Thracians have gods with grey eyes and red hair. (7) It no surprise that humans fashion image of gods in their own likeness: human nature not only what we know best, but best of what we know. …
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