CC Saussure-Language and God

Oh Saussure, how I love thee!
I especially love your unusually effective drawings of waves, and your concise examples (signifier being a gust of wind and signified being a body of water- two entirely separate entities that make something new when they collide, just like language), because most of the time you are too damn smart to be understood without a picture aid.
“There are no pre-existing ideas, and nothing is distinct before the appearance of language.” Ah! The words I’ve wanted to say to every Jehovah’s Witness that has come knocking on my door over the years. Saussure is so eye-opening, to me, mainly for this reason. He takes an idea that I’ve vaguely felt throughout my whole life, one that I’ve attempted to communicate over and over (but usually fell short), and supports it with an insanely complex argument about the ways in which language works. Yes, debating the existence of God is made much easier now on account of Saussure. But don’t worry, I don’t limit his effect and genius to my own childish desire to point out the inconsistencies of faith. But this is the connection, the leap that I make, from language to faith. I see an irresistible parallel between systems of language, as Saussure describes it, and faith. For example, Saussure states that “each linguistic term is a member, an articulus in which an idea is fixed in a sound and a sound becomes the sign of an idea.” Therefore, each signifier has the signified embedded into it but it is not a universal law. The connection between the signified and the signifier is “arbitrary”, and it only gains its significance by virtue of what surrounds it, and by the “contract” made between a community and the system of language it upholds. Furthermore, this also means that the signifier “becomes the sign,” or the thought or idea, but it never actually IS the thing or the idea.
When speaking about faith, I see it operating on a similar level. There are several religions to choose from (just as there are several languages). Each religion is very similar, but different based on the culture that it originates from (just as the signifiers that are used to express ideas differently from language to language). For humanity, there is a definite need to understand what is beyond explanation. Just as we attempt to “order nature” and ideas with language- give it some coherence, we also attempt to order things beyond our realm of experience (god, cosmology, etc.). With the idea of God implanted deeply into our minds we are meant to believe that language is a nomenclature, which Saussure convincingly disapproves here (or so I believe). When language and experience becomes too much, too difficult to order, too malleable for our compartmentalizing minds, we turn to God and wipe our hands clean of all blame. “a dog is named a dog because Adam said so, and Adam’s thoughts are from God” or something along those lines. But when we consider that there is no concept of “dog” before the language which allows the term to come into existence, that, in fact, there is NOTHING before the human mind attempts to wrap itself around “it” and define” it”, the idea of God becomes yet another signifier. It varies from culture to culture, person to person, it is not universally stable.

So, I guess I did kind of use Saussure in this mini blog as a way to push religion into the background. Yet, I hope this doesn’t offend anyone’s sensibilities. After all, the system is held up by what everyone contractually agrees upon, and God is something most people agree upon, so it is a part of the system. Thus the contract is set, and as Saussure points out, “the community is necessary if values that owe their existence solely to usage and general acceptance are to be set up; by himself the individual is incapable of fixing a single value.” So, I haven’t killed God and neither have all these exciting postmodern theories (which all basically seem to link back to the idea that we are all alone. Victims or valiant queens and kings of our own linguistic mess, you decide. But regardless- indefinitely alone and trapped within system upon system upon system intended to keep our thoughts and actions in place).