Lecture XXXVIII (Nr. 0511)

[506] I really grasped the point. Let me try it and, if I don't, let me ask again, namely the question of whether supernaturalism separates the holy so much from the ordinary form of existence, that it could not say that even in the ordinary forms of existence the divine is indirectly present (or must be always indirectly present). Now it IS. They would say that in terms of the doctrine of creation.

Only some deistic people separate God in such a way that He sits sleepingly beside the world and the world runs alone. That was the ideal position of God for the bourgeois society in the 17th and 18th, and partly 19th, century, where God was alongside the world, and there He could sit and sleep and the world runs according to His rules. . . But that is not even good supernaturalism; no good supernaturalist would say that today. QN: Don't many theists say that you must infer the existence of God, and if you have the experience of ultimate concern. . . PT: You cannot infer anything ultimate because it makes the ultimate dependent on the preliminary, and classical theology always knew such inference is an impossible step. QN: You said in a child you should not disturb the unbroken myth unless he asks the question. Don't you think maybe that mother helps to create a creative mind in the child at times? PT: By disturbing. There are always exceptions to every human relations, otherwise the religions of law would be right, but they are wrong just because of this. If I give here a rule and you

apply it mechanically, then I am wrong and you are wrong, because reality is different. But if you make it a general rule that the mother or teacher should PROVOKE skepticism, that, I think, is simply playing with the fire, and you shouldn't do that. But if there is a special situation, it might be.