Sharkboating

I suspect that, until the day I die, the phrase "sharkboat" will always elicit a laugh from me.  A much-loved classmate of mine misheard our (rather thickly accented) Brazilian professor; he described skepticism as "sharp, bold agnosticism," but she heard "sharkboat agnosticism."  I like her version better.


As you might have figured out by now, the theme of agnosticism is on my mind today - the saying, in regard to questions of the eternal nature, a simple "I don't know."  Not even necessarily "I don't care;" just simply not knowing enough to take a particularly hard stance one way or the other.  The issue of agnosticism, for me, raises with it the (perhaps even bigger) issue of knowledge.  What does it mean to know anything?  What does it mean to know if there's a God, or to know God?  These are pretty fundamental questions, after all - how do we know anything, let alone God?


Rather than prattle on about epistemology, I'd rather play around.  Knowledge.  Knowing things. How do you know anything?  I don't know, truth be told, how it is we know.  I'll leave that debate for the philosophers among us.  One thing that's obvous, though, is how one defines knowledge is pretty important in how one goes about defining what it means to know something...or someone.  Is knowledge pure, verifiable, factually provable?  Is that what knowledge must be for us to know something?


If that's the case...well, then knowing if God exists, let alone knowing God, is a doomed cause.  Let's be completely, totally frank.  If God, or God's existence, were knowable in the same way that something factually demonstrable, like 2+2=4 or that the capital of Spain is Madrid, then faith wouldn't be faith.  There is no element of trust required on my part when it comes to knowledge of the factually demonstrable.  It simply is, and barring the sort of fringe folks who populate groups like the Flat Earth Society, there isn't room for debate or dispute.  Of course, there are some who argue that God's existence is factually demonstrable, but considering that every attempt using science or philosophical reasoning to prove God's existence has been met by an equally compelling counter-argument, I'm going to say those folks fall into a fringe group.  


At the end of the day, we don't know God (or of God's existence or non-existence) through the scientific method or logical processes.  Stating that there is a God requires taking a step beyond what science or logic can prove.  Of course, so does stating a lot of things that are taken for granted in daily life.  It makes quite a bit of sense that I won't get hit by a car if I look both ways before crossing the street and only cross at a crosswalk and only when I have a walk signal...but that doesn't necessarily mean that someone carelessly making a right hand turn while driving too fast won't zip around the corner and clip me.  We as modernists tend to assume we can really, truly know a lot of things...and forget in the process that much of life's fundamental realities aren't always governed by the guaranteed or the factually verifiable.


So, perhaps "can I prove God's existence?" is the wrong way to go about addressing the matter of whether or not there is a God, and if so, what that God is like.  I'm reminded of one of my favorite aspects of the Spanish language - there are two ways to say "to know."  One is saber - this is the verb for knowledge of facts.  I "saber" that 2+2=4, or that Madrid is the capital or Spain, or that my name is Kevin.  However, the verb conocer also exists to describe relational knowledge.  I "saber" that my friend KJ lives in New York, but I "conocer" her very well after three years of seminary together.


But...what does that have to do with anything?  I suggest that our definition, in English, of "to know" has been corrupted by modernity and robbed of its relational connotation.  I can't know, with factual certainty, of God's existence, but I can surmise on a subjective level based off experience and a relational sense of connection to a superhuman reality that, yes, I am convinced that there is a God...even as I acknowledge that my conviction necessitates stepping past the strict boundaries of what I can intellectually know.  In other words, there's an inherent element of trust present in this.  I don't know there is a God, but I believe there is a God.  It's what Kierkegaard might call a "leap of faith" - we go past what can know (a risky business), trusting that beyond the boundaries of knowledge there is Something, and that this Something is trustworthy.  Perhaps far more than skepticism or agnosticism, professing to believe in God is a journey in a sharkboat, sailing across an ocean of doubt, improbabilities, and unanswerable questions in the hope of some form of peace to be found on the unseen shore of a strange, distant New World.