By Schubert Ogden
The Notebooks of Schubert Ogden
In their book, DtIrStreit urn die Wunder, the Kellers point to the emergence of a statistical understanding of natural law as showing that "der menschliche Geist auf einen Begriff vom so etwas wie Gesetzlichkeit anscheinend iiberhaupt nicht verzichten kann." They then say: "Bernard Bavink hat in diesem Zusammenhang von einem 'Kausalbediirfnis' des Menschen gesprochen, das unbedingt befriedigt werden will. Man kann, ohne zu iibertreiben, sagen: mit der 'statistischen Gesetzmal5igkeit' hat man dieses Kausalbediirfnis zu befriedigen versucht, als die friihere Auffassung von einem mechanisch-starren Naturgesetz wenigstens partiell zusammenbrach und nicht mehr geniigte" (189).
I find it striking that Bavink's concept-term "Kausalbediirfnis" is an exact parallel to Bultmann's "Geltungsbediirfnis," even as I recall how Hartshorne is accustomed to taking account of both needs in connection with his explanations of theistic arguments and argumentation. It's not that, without belief in God, we wouldn't believe in causal order and in the worth of our own lives and of everything else; no, since our need to believe in both demands to be satisfied somehow unconditionally, we would believe in them willy nilly. But the concept "God," rightly understood, arguably enables us to understand these inevitable beliefs more adequately than any alternative concepts either do or could.
10 March 2005