Notes from some of the things Denys Turner said in the clip Jonathan Miller in conversation with Denys Turner.
Being a
card-carrying atheist is no longer intellectually interesting in the way it still
was in the 19th century. Indifference is more troubling, as it ceases to be
astonished and rules out certain questions, especially “Why is there any thing
at all?”
“There is all the
difference in the world between a question concerning HOW things are and the
question concerning THAT things are.”
Classically: creatio
ex nihilo. This is an odd expression. Aquinas pointed that there isn’t a
kind of thing that the name “nothing” names.
“God is not any
kind of thing...We’re not talking about something that’s on the map of
creation. We’re talking about something that’s off the map of creation.”
Hence the need
for negative theology, “knowing that you don’t know what you’re talking about”.
Theology is “the sense that on the other side of our language is something
which sustains it but which can’t be contained within it.” Cf. Ludwig Wittgenstein
at the end of his Tractatus logico-philosophicus “What underlies how we
say things cannot itself be said.” [strongly interpretative rendering of “Wovon
man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen.”]
Bertrand Russell:
“the world is simply given” – better: “the world is gifted, it has been given
to us by a good and loving God”
The language of
gift presumes intentionality but beware the language of purpose. Gifts can be
gratuitous; a thing can exist simply because this sort of thing is beautiful.
Either
everything, in some way or another, including failure, reveals God, or the
atheist position is correct.
