Believe Because You Saw or Believe What They Say

I had hopes of spending the next few paragraphs discussing in depth the peculiarities of Shoeless Joe and finding some great new understanding about the nature of God in baseball—perhaps, a revelation akin to the one Ray Kinsella had—but upon reading the novel I could not separate it enough from The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. There was, however, one interesting aspect to Shoeless Joe that I feel greatly distinguishes it from The IBC; when time is skewed (e.g. Ray’s meeting with Doc Graham or Archie Graham’s appearance on the highway) there is no complete break from reality. The characters are able to interact with those from the past without being forced to leave “actual time” completely. At first I wrote it off as a conceit that each story created, just another means to convey a message, but I started to think of the implications of the two: actual time being broken completely allows for one person (or select group) to have a religious experience while actual time’s blending with a more sacred time can involve many people. It seemed at the end of Shoeless Joe that if one was willing to take the leap they could become part of the experience that Ray created; in The IBC only Gideon and Stan are truly able to say they saw the game that lasted over 40 days. I see this as two methods of finding or believing in a faith. Shoeless Joe posits that faith comes from experience, those that are involved, or in this case, that let themselves be involved are welcome to enjoy the fruits of “believing.” The IBC presents that only some people are in fact open to such experiences and we choose either to believe or not to believe what they say.

In “Religion As a Cultural System” Geertz states the “basic axiom underlying what we may…call ‘the religious perspective’ is everywhere the same: he who would know must first believe.” He says this in response to a quote by MacIntyre that mentions how “we justify religious belief…by referring to authority.” Authority is not what is worshipped, but we turn to these experts to guide and instruct our thoughts. I can’t help but disagree with this. I understand Geertz’s notion that in order to know there must first be belief, but I am hard pressed to trust someone else’s ideals before trying to experience and interpret these “religious” moments on my own. Geertz says that a religious belief comes not from everyday life, which would make us agnostics, but from the following of some prior authoritative figure. For those who’ve never been introduced to religious authoritarians are they not welcome in a religious system? Would they not have the ability to create their own? Or is religion solely a construct for the masses?

The use of “authority,” however, could be mended in MacIntyre’s statement. It assumes that there is always one person or synthetic object (e.g. The Bible) that is the source for authority. This association that religion or religious systems come from a man-made authority echoes in my ear because lately I’ve come to accept that a person’s religion best suits them when it is molded around personal experience. If authority were changed to mean any object, thing, or idea natural or artificial that in one person opens up truth, then I would agree that religious systems are based upon authority. In order to find this, one must find “authority” through personal practice. When we are able to see Shoeless Joe hit along side Moonlight Graham then we can understand the nature of religion as it pertains to ourselves.