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Essay / The Artistic Explanation of God - 1129
The concept of God found and described in art is a very interesting concept. God can be much more easily understood and explained through the concepts of art. This is not a common idea, although it actually makes a lot of sense. In Joseph Kupfer's essay The Art of Religious Communication, he discusses his ideas about God in relation to art. His essay addresses all the different ways God can often be looked at through art in a much more realistic way. Often in the art world, things can be explained in a way that other things cannot be. In Kupfer's essay, he explains the existence and transcendence of God as something that can only be understood through art. Art has a way of explaining things that science and logic cannot. In the first section of The Art of Religious Communication, Kupfer explains why “religious beliefs and the interpretation of experience are better expressed artistically than argued rationally” (310). Often, when people try to explain God rationally, they run into many problems because, as Kupfer explains, God cannot be understood through rational argument. God is not a being that fits into the realm of science because “God’s existence is unlike anything else” (Kupfer 311). Trying to explain the existence of God with rational arguments will always fail. Rational arguments must have limits, so when the thing being explained is unlimited, the arguments will always fail. To explain something else, the existence of the object is not the same thing as its qualities. “The shape, weight or color of something presupposes that it exists” But with God, men often try to explain its existence by its attributes (311). It's obvious why this fails. The existence of God is all the more fundamental as the middle of the article is defined, the rest of the essay would be much easier to decipher. The Art of Religious Communication was a very intriguing book. essay, which explained the existence of God in a completely new philosophical way. Kupfer's use of poems and artistic depictions of God is a relatively new concept. He took something else we know, art, and used it as a visual to explain God. Usually, God is explained using rational, logical arguments, which often fail. This happens because it is not possible to explain God through logic, which Kupfer makes clear in his essay. Looking at Kupfer's essay, his reasoning for the existence of God was a refreshing move away from the ideas of most philosophers. Works Cited Kupfer, Joseph. “The art of religious communication.” Philosophy: contemporary perspectives on perennial questions. Fourth ed. New York: Saint-Martin, 1994. 310-20. Print.