Christianity: the Death of Language.

What does that phrase mean, "the death of language"? It is the destruction of meaning, the sapping of explanatory power from normally expressive speech. Upon seeing Godard's film Weekend, I found that phrase one of the most memorable and relevant.

Christianity is the religion I grew up in, but I never professed belief. Even from my earliest days I was a skeptic. The whole enterprise just smacked of obvious deception. Even my simplest objections seemed damning evidence of the simplistic rationalizations shakily supporting the Christian belief system. A child that asks "Why does no one see God?" is told that he is invisible, but omnipresent. The effects that he has on our lives are extolled and praised mightily, but there is no proof that he does anything. The assumption simply exists that he must be there, directing things.

"Why are there so many conceptions of God or the gods? Why do different cultures have their own interpretations that incorporate their societal values?" The obvious answer does not occur. Not all religions can be correct, but if only one religion must be correct, it must have some demonstrable truth value that makes it more likely to be true. However, the very nature of religion is to shun proof, to revel in mystery, and to make truth claims without knowledge or examination. Hume's point about the contrariety of religious claims stands. Therefore it is impossible to make a rational decision regarding a choice of religion.

"Why do people largely inherit their parents' religion? Why do they not stray if somehow there are more convincing claims for Christianity, or Islam, or Judaism?" The truth is, most people simply swallow the dogma of their parents. Once the decision is made to bring that child up in a religion, most commonly they do not abandon it throughout their lives. In general, converts to another religion make up a very small percentage of that religion's membership.

"Why are there no obvious miracles today, when there were in ancient times?" Of course, it is common to call just any coincidence a miracle, but these are obviously meant to console and bolster the faith of those who believe in an interceding, active God with a plan for all people. But the paltry evidence offered is a double-edged sword for believers. For every one person who survives a car crash, thousands die. For every family given a delicious warm meal on Christmas morning, thousands die of starvation in Africa. And the list goes on. The suffering isn't some sort of punishment for the wicked; there is no just or equal distribution. In fact, one might say that suffering is random, exactly as we would expect it would be if there were no God looking out for his faithful flock. The miracles are just invented.

Every aspect of the universe, in fact, looks exactly as if there were no God. We move further and further away from the "God of the gaps" of the everyday believer with each new fact, every morsel of knowledge. As we gravitate closer to the gods of the theologians, we see language itself die in the service of religious "learning".

What does this phrase then mean, "the death of language"? It is the rote, the ritual, the veil of equivocation, the tired and empty show that destroys meaning. For the faithful Christian, many words lose their meaning in being subsumed to their faith. Love, justice, belief, grace; so many words rendered so meaningless by equivocation and repetition of the same weary rebutted explanations. For the theologian, his faith is so vague and nebulous that scarcely any import can be assigned to the rotting dust he spews forth. Obfuscation abounds in the most sophisticated treatises; little if any meaning can be gleaned from their twisted pronouncements on the mysteries of the transubstantiation, or the ascension of Mary to heaven, or the sublime nature of the Trinity. They speak of nothing known, of things no man could ever observe, and pretend to be sage in such chicanery. What folly! What arrogance, to presume oneself gifted with the keys to the divine!

But this is exactly it. Every man has his own keys to the gates of heaven, for no two conceptions can really be the same. With no reference, no corresponding reality, every religious idea must necessarily be as individual as the mind that birthed it. No agreement can be made, for there is nothing to agree upon. Every man molds his own religion, one that supports his own views and renders him correct in his interpretation of reality. His biases, his hates, his loves, these are all projected onto a waiting emptiness he calls his God. When he proclaims, "I cannot disobey my God", he means, "My God cannot disobey me."

And atheists are slandered as arrogant. The Bible calls them fools.

How droll.