Word: !kung
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Thus begins Kung's eight-hundred-page descent into philosophical, anti-Christian hell, down through the depths of skepticism, Deism, atheism, and finally "nihilism," which Kung defines as the denial of all reality. He burns to prove that it is "rational" to believe in an ultimate reality, and that this reality must be the Christian God. Kung lives in the shadow of Thomas Aquinas, who believed that science and religion did not clash because some things could be proved by science, while others simply had to be believed through faith. Kung revises Aquinas, redrawing the boundary between faith and reason...
...KUNG BEGINS his argument by dismissing every serious competing strain in Western thought to Christianity as sophistry. Sometimes his arguments are effective, particularly his critiques of Descartes and Wittgenstein. But eventually he buries the reader beneath a mound of philosophical jargon. As Kung's arguments become more and more complex, the philosophical debris grows to such heights that one cannot help laughing at serious remarks such as, "Obviously, Kierkegaard did not know Pascal's work firsthand; he quotes him only once, and then indirectly, through Feuerbach." Obviously...
...Kung should not be condemned for the sin of inarticulateness. He disposes of Descartes, Hegel, Marx and others with remarkable self-assurance. Finally he comes face to face with his arch-villain, the Great Satan of Kung's world, Nietzsche, Nietzsche, the apostle of nihilism, stands for everything Kung fears: God is dead, there is no reality, everything is meaningless. Far from believing Kung's favorite quote of Einstein's, "God does not play dice," Nietzsche says, there is no God, there are no dice, there isn't even a game...
...Kung feels he can refute Nietzsche by proving it is "rational" to believe in reality. He doesn't do it very well. True, he points out that no one can prove reality doesn't exist. Equally true, however, no one can prove it does. So belief in reality must remain just that--belief...
...KUNG FAILS even more embarrassingly in proving that this reality, if it does exist, must be the Christian God. He discusses Eastern philosophies and religions as little as possible, and never mentions Islam at all. He contends that he has no intention of supporting "a God whose arrogant dominion is upheld by an exclusive missionary appeal, contemptuous of freedom." In other words, if the Catholic Church wants to gain converts in the Third World it can't trample on Asian and African ways of thought. But Kung has no choice but to be exclusive and missionary in approach; he insists...