AND ADAM GAVE NAMES TO ALL . . .
 
A recent suggestion that Erasmus may have been an atheist has made me rethink many basic issues relating to abstraction, words, and experience undefined by words. First, Erasmus would never have thought of himself as an atheist. However, the Catholic Church itself, in relation to mystical experience and thinking, is always highly critical, at least intellectually,  and thinks often in terms of, “What will this line of thinking come to?” As to experience itself, the Catholic Church officially states one CANNOT experience God, period. This may sound strange to Richard, used to hearing about the experiences of Pentecostals and other far out Protestant denominations  and even Lebovitzser [I cannot locate the correct spelling at the moment even in my unabridged Merriam Webster] Hasidim in the book 8 AND A HALF MYSTICS, Abulafia’s infinite search for all the names of God, Sabatai Sevi’s mystical elevations, etc.  But the Catholic Church usually likes to burn its mystics. This is definitely not true of the Eastern Orthodox Church as Jud has already found out.
 
The point is, or goes back to, ‘experience undefined by words’. Whenever one talks about this or that object, a chair for instance or even just a random rock picked up off the ground, one places it automatically in the category ‘object’. But this is not the experience itself, or as Korzybski [sp?] would say, “The map is not the territory”. An addendum to the point is necessary here in the form of bringing up David Hume’s essay on miracles which A] strikes directly at the heart of religion per se of ANY kind based MERELY on a text, and B] despite the high level of threat, religious people realize it is unanswerable because of its basic common sense, that is, who are you rationally going to truly and firmly trust, your own experience, or the WORDS of another person? Even if you personally experience something you cannot explain with words, you still are ‘certain’ you experienced it, whatever it was.

If someone else TELLS you they had such an experience, common sense says give it no credence without physical evidence EVEN THOUGH you may know personally such an experience is possible. If you do know, you also have the common sense to know it is absolutely uncommunicatable. And then you are presented with a TEXT that says some person one does not even know, knows nothing about their veracity except from other people one does not know, and all that from 2,000 years ago, what does common sense imply that you believe automatically – if there is no immediate social or physical coercion involved? The Pentecostals and Hasidim have all sorts of external and internal coercive forces about them. But just a plain John Doe at work, his mind on the business at hand, is going to not only be skeptical but probably flat refuses to listen to such claims.
 
But nonetheless it does all fall back, everything falls back, on wordless experience primarily. And obviously if a religious ‘experience’ happens, it is a firm personal affirmation of whatever [I do not include Sunni Muslims because they are even m ore hostile than Catholics to mystics, hence the eternal conflict with the Shia and Sufi but even the current problems in Somalia and Lahore]. When they say they are religions of the book, they mean they are religions of THE BOOK and JUST THE BOOK! The glossolalia of the Pentecostals or the ecstasies of the Hasidim only have respect WITHIN their groups.

Now, we forget we belong in the group of animals who use words. Even chimpanzees and gorillas supposedly trained to use words do not use them anyway like we really do. We stand out as the naked, physically helpless monkeys for a reason. Without words we are NOTHING. NOTHING AT ALL. SOMETHING THAT SHOULD DIE QUICKLY. Even though Aristotle equivocally says animals have some krinein, reason, it is not the reason of words but of perception and sense and wordless memory – a very different thing from our kind of category organized memory, that is, word organized words, that is, context.
 
So, with words, MAYBE we do not die quickly. Maybe not. What do you think? None the less, though, for the vast number of religious people just having a ‘BOOK’ is not really enough, no matter what they are compelled to say. They FEEL they should get something out of religion other than being yelled at, bullied, told what to think, told what to say, told what to do . . . “What is the matter you read, my lord?” “Words, words, words . . .” “No what is in the book you read, my lord?” So, let us get to the heart of the matter. Erasmus felt personal experience was necessary to validate religion. Now, initially that would seem to make him a believer. “Words, words, words . . .”? No, with the coming of humanism versus scholasticism, writing convincing words like Shakespeare superseded logical arguments as in Thomas Aquinas who, when pushed to the wall HAD to say all our knowledge is based on our human physical experience AND NOTHING ELSE . . .
except ‘revelation’ . . . about an ‘object’ God which, however, was WHOLLY beyond ALL words by definition. Marius brings this out EVEN with the antischolastic Luther, that is, “We cannot know ANYTHING about God but we have faith that . . . “ and he fumed and raged as, first, his congregations simply stopped listening to him, then simply stopped going to church to listen to such utterly pointless bombast.
 
Now, the Catholics were much more sensible. First, they buried everything in words. Then they made the words legally binding. And then they prosecuted those who did not follow the words. Yes, you could ‘experience’ God in a way if you followed certain rigid formulas obeying the logical definitions of Aquinas. In San Juan de la Cruz or even Ignatius Loyola the formula was, Divorce your mind of all words and images and what is left is ‘almost’ God. BUT you cannot say anything about your experience that effects human action in a novel way OR even say that you do not remember in words what you experienced, ELSE you are a heretic. The only thing you can SAY or WRITE is that everything is perfectly alright with the Church, i.e., Our Lady of Fatima, Our Lady of Guadalupe or possibly make some vague prediction that no one can ever figure out what it means specifically or go say your rosary, etc.

When one thinks of the actual, physical condition of the children who had these experiences – children are quite good candidates for such experiences – thinks what MUST have been their conditions, for God’s sake a brother and sister shepherds in Diaz’s 19th century Mexico? Perfect picture of hell on earth like the boy bordellos of Caleb Carr’s THE ALENIST.

Now, Erasmus tried to stay as neutral as possible in his statements after writing the PRAISE OF FOLLY [and then revising it again and again], but basically he said you had to be crazy to believe. I think he did say it in a positive way, but one MUST remember his context, actually much, much worse than 19th century Mexico where faith is the ONLY escape from such insane, perfectly sadistic, even masochistic savagery. EVEN THE CATHOLIC ENCYCLOPEDIA TODAY says he was a coward for NOT siding with either the Protestant fanatics or the good and proper Catholic fanatics.

However, in puzzlement to be sure, it said ALL the Popes of his lifetime liked and supported him, even offered to make him a cardinal, because he was the ONLY major intellectual figure that DEMANDED everyone sit down and talk instead of trying to kill each other. It does give you a different perspective on why the Renaissance Popes were so indecisive about how to handle Martin Luther and John Calvin until after the Council of Trent – to which the Protestants were invited – and Father Paolo Sarpi, protected by secular Venice, wrote about – where the real Counter-Reformation began.
 
Now, whether Erasmus can be really called an atheist or not, I do not know. But most of the people of his time did call him either such or near enough to it to make no difference except who set fire to the stake he might be tied to. Remember Rabelais.