Friday, September 25, 2009

What I Should Have Said

The other night I gave a talk at Tulsa University entitled “In Defense of Progressive Religion.” I thought about posting the text of it here, but I’ve decided against it for several reasons: First, it’s too long for a blog post, even relative to the long blog posts I’m prone to write. Second, most of the points I made in the talk are ones that should be familiar to readers of this blog or my book. Third, I think that a revised version of the lecture may be more appropriate for another venue where I’ve been invited to submit an article.

What I want to address in this post is a question I received during the question-and-answer period after the lecture. As I reflect back on my response, it seems to me to have been seriously inadequate. And since I cannot go back in time to offer a better reply, I want to post one here.

But first, we need a bit of context. Hence, even though I’m not going to post the text of my lecture, I need to talk about some elements of it which bear on the issue at hand.

In the course of my lecture, I advocated a roughly Hegelian view of how we should develop our beliefs so as to bring them more fully into alignment with reality (a method that Hegel developed in order to address what he saw to be the weaknesses with the enlightenment and the seemingly intractable difficulty surrounding what has come to be called “the problem of the criterion”—although I didn’t get into those details in my talk).

Instead of repeating what I said in my lecture (which is very close to what I have to say in a recent post), let me frame these ideas in more explicitly Hegelian terms. The essence of Hegel’s method for increasing our understanding of reality—a method I like to call “critical traditionalism”—is this: reality as it is in itself, while distinct from what we experience (which is always filtered through our worldview), impresses itself upon experience in ways that expose the inadequacies of our worldview. Thus, if we live out our worldview with a keen eye towards noticing the “contradictions” that arise within it as it crashes up against reality, we can modify it appropriately. But then the modified worldview has to be lived out in the same way. When worldviews are handed down from generation to generation, and appropriated by each new generation with an openness to revising them in the light of the fissures that living them out exposes—when that happens, the worldviews evolve towards an ever closer approximation of the “Absolute” that transcends all finite human perspectives and experiences.

The idea here is that the only non-question-begging way to uncover the weaknesses of a worldview is from within, by those who “try it on” and seek to live it out with an eye towards noticing when and where it doesn’t work. Those who offer an external critique of a worldview will, inevitably, do so in terms of their own worldview, which itself will inevitably be inadequate. Their focus will be on this other worldview and all the ways in which it fails to measure up to the criteria presupposed by their own worldview—but all the while, these criteria are being embraced dogmatically. Because worldviews are, in effect, the lenses through which we look at our world, they become as invisible to us as the glasses we wear—unless and until they distort what we see so much that we stumble. So, instead of railing against alternative worldviews, we should focus on critically refining our own by trying to become more fully aware of it and its presuppositions, and by noticing when we stumble and then trying to make adjustments so that we stumble less.

This is not to say that alternative worldviews should be ignored. What it means is that we’re just being dogmatic if all our energy is focused on pointing out how many inadequacies a different worldview has. When we create such a list of inadequacies, it will be in terms of certain standards of adequacy—and the standards of adequacy we employ will be those that flow out of our own worldview. To put the point in blunt and oversimplified terms, such critique amounts to saying, “On the assumption that my worldview is right and yours is wrong, we can demonstrate that your worldview is wrong.”

But other worldviews besides our own can be very valuable. To the extent that we can put ourselves in the shoes of those operating out of alternative worldviews and see the world through their eyes, we can broaden the scope of human experience that we have to work with as we endeavor to refine our own worldview. To the extent that we can take note of tendencies towards convergence among alternative culturally and historically situated traditions, we can discover trajectories of development which may say something about the reality that all of these worldviews are responding to. And insofar as the project of living out a worldview produces some of its most glaring failures precisely where it encounters and engages with adherents to different worldviews, our engagement with alternative worldviews may be instrumental in forcing the kinds of changes that move us into closer alignment with a transcendent reality. In short, we may learn from one another, especially if we really pay attention to each other and resist the knee-jerk propensity to just critique other views in the light of our own presuppositions.

And while we are not well situated to critique the substance of alternative worldviews without dogmatically assuming the adequacy of our own criteria of criticism, we are well-situated to point out the dogmatism that such a thing involves, and hence to challenge communities which cry “heresy!” and pronounce anathemas against every alternative worldview (whether those communities be our own or others). We are well situated to point out how the path of critical traditionalism becomes stunted when adherents to a tradition refuse to be critical, even in the face of experiences which expose glaring weaknesses within the worldview. And we are well situated to point out that disdaining all traditions in the name of “thinking for yourself” really just amounts to starting a new tradition while failing to consider what progress other traditions may have made over the centuries.

From this Hegelian framework, a particular religious worldview might be viewed as having its origins in a culturally and historically situated interpretation of a reality that transcends human understanding. As succeeding generations live out the worldview, inadequacies are discovered, and (sometimes grudgingly) changes are made. If so, then the pathway to deepening our understanding of the “Absolute” calls for (a) allowing all of these traditions to evolve in just the way that Hegel recommends: adherents to a tradition appropriate a worldview from the preceding generation, live it out critically, and pass a revised version on for the next generation to do the same; (b) following this procedure with the tradition that we have inherited; and (c) challenging anyone who imposes various sorts of impediments to progress—such as refusing to critically assess their inherited worldview in the light of experience, or denouncing those who do so, or directing all of their critical energies on other worldviews rather than their own.

In any event, what I was doing in my lecture was sketching out what such a Hegelian approach to religious traditions entailed, both in terms of a willingness to critically assess the teachings of one’s own religion and a conditional respect for alternative religious traditions (conditional insofar as it does not extend respect to traditions that staunchly resist critical development or have no tolerance for other traditions than their own, etc.)

But the question that prompted my inadequate reply related to a point I made about convergence. If alternative religious traditions are evolving in the light of inadequacies exposed by the collision between an inherited worldview and a reality that transcends direct human experience, then all these traditions are being molded by the same transcendent reality. And if that is the case, then—barring various impediments to progress—we should expect a convergence of traditions, a gradual narrowing of the gap of difference between them. Of course, there are always impediments to progress, and so it is an open question whether the convergence will ever be significant enough to allow for these traditions to achieve full congruence within the lifetime of the human species.

In the face of this possibility of convergence, and the kind of respect for alternative religious traditions that it implies, one young man in the audience asked, in effect, “What about Jesus?”

More precisely, he pointed out that Christianity is “Christocentric,” that is, it is a religion that makes Christ central. The nature of reality is understood through the lens provided by the story of Jesus’ life and death. To be Christian is to stand in a certain relationship to Jesus—the relationship of a disciple. And it involves believing certain things about Jesus—that He was more than just an ordinary man or a wise prophet, that He was the messiah, the savior of the world, the incarnation of God, the divine Logos, one Person of the Trinitarian Godhead. Or something in that vicinity (there are narrower and broader definitions of Christianity which allow for more or less flexibility in precisely how Christ is to be viewed).

The young man didn’t say all of this. What he did was ask a question along the following lines: “Jews are never going to accept that Jesus is the Son of God. So how do you think that this convergence is going to happen? Are Christians going to have to give up on the divinity of Christ? Doesn’t convergence require, in effect, that Christians cease to be Christian?”

My reply was essentially this, although probably worded less elegantly: “I can’t read the future. I don’t know what a convergence will look like or even if it will fully happen. What I can say is that, according to this progressive model of religion, you should not give up on your belief in the divinity of Christ without a good reason to do so.”

But there is so much more I could have said and should have said. Two things in particular come to mind. First of all, either there really is a sense in which Jesus was divine, and the earliest Christians were recognizing and responding to this (in their own culturally situated terms) as they formed their religious communities and shared their stories and, eventually, wrote their seminal texts—or not. If not, then in the course of living out a worldview in which the divine is perceived to have expressed itself in and through Jesus in a special way, a contrary reality will gradually wear away at this belief until at last it has eroded away altogether. But if Jesus really was divine, then the divine reality that transcends our experience will ultimately reinforce and refine this doctrine. It won’t go away under the pressure of living out a Christian worldview, because whatever contradictions emerge in the course of doing so won’t ultimately call for abandoning this doctrine.

Versions of the doctrine may have to be abandoned, as will versions of Christianity which combine with the doctrine in ways that don’t work. But if, in the course of living out your life as a Christian, the divinity of Christ facilitates rather than inhibits your capacity to live with integrity and honesty in relation to your world, you may be justified in believing that this is one of the things that won’t erode. You will be like Schleiermacher, the father of progressive religion, who respected alternative religious paths, who thought that each had something of importance to share with others about the divine—and who believed that the thing of most importance which Christianity had to share was precisely its central doctrine that God acted in and through Jesus, a human who was also divine, to effect the redemption of the world. If you agree with Schleiermacher in this, then adopting the progressive approach to Christianity should not lead you to fear that Christ will be lost in the process of convergence.

The second point I should have made in response to this young man's question was this: When we consider the claim that Jews are never going to accept the divinity of Christ, it may be worth asking why it seems so plausible to think this. And it does seem plausible. Although some Jews do convert to Christianity—my own brother-in-law, for example—it is hard to imagine a widespread transformation of this sort. This is true despite what I personally see as the intrinsic power of the core story of Christianity (which I sketch out, for example, here).

When I reflect on the narrative of Jesus’ life, I see a story of astonishing beauty that resonates with some of the deepest longings of my soul. But I know that most of my Jewish friends just won’t see it in these terms. There’s just too much ugliness that has been heaped over it—because the doctrine of Jesus’ divinity is intimately bound up with a history of persecution at the hands of Christians.

Consider it in these terms: What distinguishes Christianity from Judaism? Of course, there are numerous differences. But these differences trace back to one seminal difference, the thing that distinguished the Jesus sect from other Jewish sects in the earliest history of Christianity, despite their shared roots and overlapping Scriptures. And what is that difference? Obviously, it is a different understanding of who and what Jesus was and what His life meant.

But that one difference was sufficient to map out a history of social marginalization and oppression—a history that eventually set the stage for one of the greatest moral horrors in the history of the world. This is not to say that Christians perpetrated the Holocaust. The Nazis did that (although many Christians were quietly complicit as Jews were herded off to concentration camps, brutalized, and murdered). What it means is that the history of social marginalization within Christian Europe set the Jews apart in a way that Nazi ideology was able to exploit.

Anti-Semitism wasn’t born with Hitler and the Nazis. Its roots trace back to the earliest history of Christianity. As Karen Armstrong has noted in The Bible: A Biography, a vilification of the Pharisees became so potent in the earliest years of the Christian movement that it made it into the Gospels. Why? Armstrong puts it this way:

After the destruction of the temple the Christians had been the first to make a
concerted effort to become the authentic Jewish voice and initially they seemed
to have had no significant rivals. But by the 80s and 90s, Christians were
becoming uncomfortably aware that something extraordinary was happening: the
Pharisees were initiating an astonishing revival.

In effect, two Jewish sects survived the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem: the Christians and the Pharisees. And the Christians resented the efforts of the Pharisees to establish themselves as the true inheritors of Judaism. This fact was combined with another force that Armstrong notes in passing. In the efforts to reach out to the gentiles, the writers of the synoptic gospels “were too eager to absolve the Romans of their responsibility for Jesus’s execution and claimed, with increasing stridency, that the Jews must shoulder the blame.”

As Christianity distanced itself increasingly from its Jewish origins, the other surviving sect became identified with Judaism. But the old rivalry remained. And as the Christians became the empowered majority, that rivalry took on a new and more sinister shape. Fueled by the biblical passages which seemed to blame the Jews for Jesus’ crucifixion, the Jews were vilified and marginalized. The fact that they didn’t accept the divinity of Jesus was trotted out as a justification for social oppression. And so an anti-Semitic ideology was born.

And this history of oppression, culminating in the horror of the Holocaust, has shaped Jewish culture and identity in ways that would be hard to underestimate. To embrace the divinity of Jesus, given such a cultural history, could very naturally be seen as caving in to two millennia of social oppression and abuse. For many, it would symbolically represent selling out one’s cultural identity to the oppressor.

Now I don’t simply want to say here that this history of oppression provides powerful and understandable impediments to Jewish acceptance of Christ’s divinity, impediments that would interfere with such acceptance even if it is true that the doctrine of Christ’s divinity expresses a genuine insight into the divine. And I certainly don’t want to say that the prospects for convergence between Christian and Jewish worldviews depend upon Jews getting over their resentment so that they can come to see the beauty of Christian teachings. The point I want to make goes deeper than that, and follows the Hegelian spirit of directing criticism inward, towards one’s own worldview.

What I want to point to is a practical contradiction within the dominant Christian worldview, a contradiction that has made itself manifest in the course of a history in which generations of people have sought to live it out. The Christian worldview has from its beginnings urged evangelism, that is, sharing and promulgating the “good news.” But it has also laid down layers of crud that have made it essentially impossible for some people to hear this news, even if that news really is as good and beautiful as Christians claim (Christianity's more recent history in relation to gays and lesbians is also instructive on this point).

Such a contradiction demands internal criticism. If there are impediments to a convergent evolution between Judaism and Christianity here, I don’t think their main sources lie in Judaism. If the doctrine of Christ’s divinity has its source in a transcendent divine reality, then the capacity to appreciate this is blocked by crud. And it is Christian communities that, over the centuries, have been spewing out this crud.

As Christians, we need to turn our critical eye inward and ask why. And we need to transform our own worldview to repair this ugly fissure, out of which this ugliness has been allowed to pour into the world.

According to the Gospel of Matthew (7:5), Jesus offered up a saying about this kind of prioritization of self-criticism, one which strikes me as very wise: “First take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”

In any event, when the young man at the lecture asked, "What about Jesus?", that’s what I should have said.

22 comments:

  1. You're definitely on to something (as usual). The reasons for our attachment to "crud" deserve a post in themselves. People hold beliefs because they work, but what does it mean for a belief to "work" for someone? If the unselfish desire for truth and integrity were humanity's dominant motive, then maybe we would see the convergence you describe. On the other hand, I think that the "crud" beliefs such as anti-Semitism and homophobia satisfy a very deep-rooted desire to feel superior to others, and to channel aggression away from one's core group in order to preserve social stability. These motives make crud beliefs so appealing that people are willing to overlook some pretty serious divergences from the empirical evidence. We can even see the irrationality of others' crud while clinging to our own. What's to be done? Does Christianity, or Hegel, or anything, provide a meta-crud critique that distinguishes between good and bad ways in which a belief works for its adherents?

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  2. Hi, Eric-

    "So, instead of railing against alternative worldviews, we should focus on critically refining our own by trying to become more fully aware of it and its presuppositions, and by noticing when we stumble and then trying to make adjustments so that we stumble less."

    Unfortunately, human psychology seeks confirmation, not refutation. But I completely agree. Education should (and does, to some degree) make this kind of critical thought and self-knowledge core curriculum. Does home-schooling?


    "On the assumption that my worldview is right and yours is wrong, we can demonstrate that your worldview is wrong."

    The question then is whether reasons can be adduced one way or the other. If one world view is founded on reality, and the other on "hope", there may be an asymmetry that is not simply relativistic, but rich with content, even data.


    "... forcing the kinds of changes that move us into closer alignment with a transcendent reality"

    Reality is not transcendent, it just is. The problem is that we are limited beings, so we see things dimly, as per Kant and Plato. So you might better say: ... that move us towards omniscient or complete knowledge of reality (which relative to our capacities, could be called transcendent knowledge, but if it is transcendent of our capacities, then we can never get there, can we?).


    " ... “thinking for yourself” really just amounts to starting a new tradition while failing to consider what progress other traditions may have made over the centuries."

    Hmmm- some of those traditions turned out to be thoroughly disposable, didn't they? Traditions undergo a sort of Darwinian selection for the ability to sustain intellectual and emotional interest. I appreciate tradition, but thinking for one's self should come first on the list of philosophical virtues, not second (if joined to knowledge)


    "As succeeding generations live out the worldview, inadequacies are discovered, and (sometimes grudgingly) changes are made."

    Sounds like scholarship, even science, not religion. If one begins with faith, there is no place to go with critique and reason- no way to adjust, other than personal revelation or authority. I understand that you wish to shoehorn scholarship and progress into your conception of religion, but that does not seem ultimately compatible with its source or with common understanding. Indeed, the principle trick of religion is to seem as unchanging as possible so as to be maximally authoritative and "true", even while changing subrosa.


    " ... (c) challenging anyone who imposes various sorts of impediments to progress—such as refusing to critically assess their inherited worldview in the light of experience, or denouncing those who do so ..."

    Again, you are talking scholarship here, not religion. Commonly, religion is devoted to its own perpetuation through all possible means/memes- song, dance, indoctrination of impressionable minds, tortured theology ... whatever it takes to keep critical thought at bay. Here's a proposal- how about you advocate that parents not teach anything to their children about religion until they are "of age" to think for themselves? That would make religion into a matter of critical thinking, not mindless indoctrination. Or that children be taught neutrally about all religions until they are of age? That would promote your ideal of adopting multiple viewpoints.

    cont ...

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  3. "... if that is the case, then—barring various impediments to progress—we should expect a convergence of traditions, a gradual narrowing of the gap of difference between them."

    How interesting. I agree with the questioner that this is happening, as (some) religions lose their rough edges, reconcile themselves with science and modernity, and eventually become channels of psychotherapy and community feel-good-ism. Really, it can not come soon enough! But at the same time, human emotion/imagination must have its say, and the symbologies that converge from tradition and our unconscious to describe "reality" are extremely persistent and attractive, as your Jesus question indicated, even if many Christians have indeed given up on the divinity of Jesus.


    "What I can say is that, according to this progressive model of religion, you should not give up on your belief in the divinity of Christ without a good reason to do so."

    Sorry, but if you posit the premise of convergence, then every parochial doctrine will eventually have to go- bodhisatvas, green taras, Jesus, Sun Myung Moon, the whole kit and kaboodle. They are all symbols, and you can only hope that they symbolize something inscrutable and inconceivable about outer reality rather than something about psychology alone.


    "But if Jesus really was divine, then the divine reality that transcends our experience will ultimately reinforce and refine this doctrine. It won’t go away under the pressure of living out a Christian worldview... "

    There's a brave hope! But how does living out in the present day have anything to do with it? At best, Jesus provides an example, an inner totem of faith, and a focus for devotional thoughts. Nothing is coming back, in the form of evidence and data. Is happiness with one's devotional fixations the criterion for ontology? There's a philosophy! Is moral utility in community-building the criterion for philosophical truth/ontology? Again, I don't think so.


    "If you agree with Schleiermacher in this, then adopting the progressive approach to Christianity should not lead you to fear that Christ will be lost in the process of convergence."

    This again is presupposing what you aim to find out through the progress of scholarship and knowledge. Perhaps you were better sticking with the original assertion that the future is formally unknown to us.


    "This is not to say that Christians perpetrated the Holocaust. The Nazis did that ... "

    Sorry, but the vast majority of Nazis were Christians. Not very good ones, in your view perhaps, but their own view would have been different. They might have been fulfilling traditional teachings, not flouting them.


    "Anti-Semitism wasn’t born with Hitler and the Nazis. Its roots trace back to the earliest history of Christianity."

    Indeed, in fairness, even farther back to Roman and Egyptian times, as you hint at.


    "To embrace the divinity of Jesus, given such a cultural history, could very naturally be seen as caving in to two millennia of social oppression and abuse. For many, it would symbolically represent selling out one’s cultural identity to the oppressor."

    Right.. and for what? To adopt a new symbol for the same old thing- our yearning for superstitious engagement with reality? (Not to say the illusion of mastery over that occult reality by way of prayer, incantations, etc.?) That would totally unnecessary. The beam is far bigger than simple antisemitism, peculiar doctrines, or historically accumulated crud. It is the entire foundation of belief-intensive religions of this type. It is God as being, rather than God as symbol. The convergence is coming by way of knowledge, and it will be Jungian and psychological in character. (If, as the commenter above says, knowledge and scholarship have anything to do with it.)

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  4. A video of the talk is now available online at http://vimeo.com/6749630, for those interested.

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  5. Hi, Eric-

    I get the message. Let me just leave you with a couple points. If you stake your philosophy on the direct truth-value (veridicality) of psychological/spiritual experiences, that is just as likely to lead to a religion of fear and superstition as one of hope and Kumbaya. Both have their place in the social "good" and in psychological experience.

    "Ultimately, it is only the pragmatic value of faith understood as an act of hope that can justify believing beyond the limits of the evidence."

    I see- so you seem to understand that this is a game of three-card Monte. Religion is a utilitarian project of social cultivation with "belief" as motivation, as the rapt altar of attention, but not true or justified. We can have no knowledge of the divine. Intriguing.

    But viz Harris's point, the issue is not whether progressives approve fundamentalists- not at all. The point is that simply rendering obeissance to a deity and a "truth" that you yourself do not apparently believe creates a cultural climate of god-worship which automatically lends power and credibility to those who worship most devoutly and "know" most firmly, not to say most fiercely. To say that you don't know but still believe (tepidly) is no defence when someone else says they do.

    Best wishes and sayonara!

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  6. There's an analogy to competing theories in science to be made here, but that model suggests an option that you don't raise (perhaps you do in the talk, haven't had a chance to watch it here) and that is of a competing theory having better explanations for the evidence. If that were a possibility, then why couldn't an outside commentator suggest that certain incongruences within the Christian, or other, framework can be better understood on this other theory.

    To clarify, I'll take your example of Christian anti-semitism. Stated simply, the incongruence seems to be something like, the Gospel suggests that disciples of Jesus should undergo a radical transformation towards sacrificial love, but in fact, the opposite has been true through most of Christian history with regard to Jews, as Christians seem more likely to hate Jews than non-Christians, or at any rate hate them enough. Now, if naturalism can be considered as a competing theory, then it seems to have a very good answer to this problem. Humans have evolved a tribal instinct that helped them to survive over the millennia in the face of larger and faster genetic competitors. Often, this inherent instinct to tribalism remains stronger than any moral teaching a person may encounter or even accept. If that is the case, then it is quite easy to understand why someone who claims to be a disciple of Jesus could scruple the blind hatred of a competing religious group. It also, interestingly, may give a better explanation of why the early Christians absolved the Romans of Jesus's crucifixion at the expense of the Jews: they had a tribal connection to the Romans (since they were citizens of the empire) that they no longer had with other Jews.

    Now, I'm not suggesting by any means that this one example somehow proves the superiority of naturalism to Christianity as a worldview. Just asking whether this type of theory comparison might not be useful on your model, and if not why not.

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  7. Jendi: You make the insightful observation that much of what we’re tempted to think of as “crud” impeding the development of a worldview actually “works” in terms of certain standards of judgment.

    This gives rise to a number of problems, one of which might be expressed in the following terms: A key way that we critically assess the merits of a worldview is in terms of its pragmatic value. But to assess the pragmatic value of a worldview, we need standards of assessment. A worldview “works” if it achieves good results…but which results should be judged good, and why?

    The problem arises precisely because the standards of value used to distinguish what works from what doesn’t are among the CONTENTS of a worldview. How, then, can we distinguish between "cruddy" standards and better ones in a non-question-begging way? If the Hegelian method says that a worldview is to be assessed in terms of how well it works, but if part of what we want to assess are the standards employed to decide what works, how do we do that? How do we assess the pragmatic value of our standards of pragmatic value?

    Three things come to mind. First, we can look at the behavior motivated by a worldview (either directly motivated, by being explicitly recommended, or indirectly motivated, by interacting with human psychology in ways that make such behavior likely) and decide whether this behavior actually succeeds in promoting those things to which the worldview attaches value.

    Second, we can see whether attaining some of the ends valued by a worldview is compatible with attaining other ends valued by that worldview.

    Third, we can assess whether the attainment of the goals valued within a worldview “feel” the way those goals OUGHT to feel to the worldview’s adherents IF the goals really have the value that the worldview attaches to them. This last is the most nebulous but also, I think, the most important.

    This is only an outline. I’ve thought about writing up something more substantive about this problem with pragmatic assessment and approaches to solving it. I may yet do so.

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  8. It's not merely a Hegelian viewpoint; it's been perfected much since then. William Temple wrote, "Until we have reached the perfect understanding, which must be beyond our grasp so long as this life lasts, the wise man will alternate between these two activities, using his religion as the inspiration and guidance of his life unless he sees real reason for disregarding it, while he is as relentlessly thorough as his mental capacity allows in bringing to bear upon that religion the purging criticism of philosophic inquiry."

    In fact, the idea of finding the "correctness" of each of any given worldviews (religions) is something that was being taught nearly 2000 years before Jesus' time, in the tradition of Vedantic Hinduism. A verse from one of the Upanishads: "The milk of cows of any hue is white. The sages say that wisdom is the milk and the sacred scriptures are the cows."

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  9. Cheek: I'm not sure how much you will find in the TU talk to address your question/concern. There's actually more that directly pertains to your concern in my earlier "book talk," which I did not include in the TU talk simply because I wanted to use the invitation to give that talk as an opportunity to pursue some other issues.

    Two thoughts occur to me, however. First, a prelimiary point: If you are the kind of theist who offers a theistic worldview as an interpretation of human experience--and if you include the best scientific theories about the operation of the natural world as part of what you are seeking to interpret--then your worldview will not exclude the kinds of interpretive resources that you gesture to in your example.

    In fact, in my book I make use of our tribal origins and the psychological predilictions imposed through natural selection on our hunter-gatherer ancestors as part of my explanation for how the pressure of a transcendent benevolence on the human psyche--and the resultant impulses towards benevolence-across-boundaries--might be transformed bit by bit into a tribalism in which religious affiliation operates as the basis for assigning tribal membership.

    But this point is more about your specific example than about the broader point, which has to do with comparing the explanatory resources offered by alternative worldviews. I think that such comparison across traditions has value, but its value is going to be more limited than in science, for several reasons.

    Let me focus briefly just on one. Unlike with scientific theories which share a methodological framework that establishes criteria for theory evaluation, comparison of holistic worldviews lacks such a common framework for generating shared evaluative criteria (for reasons gestured at in my response to Jendi).

    A methodological framework arises because certain presumptions and approaches are found to WORK, that is, to achieve the aims for which the enterprise was created. But a worldview is not an enterprise that was created for a specific set of aims; it is, rather, a way of thinking about life and one's place in it which helps to set aims.

    I could say more, but have to get to work on a book review.

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  10. nuclear.kelly--I love the Temple quote. Thanks for sharing it here. And the verse you quote from the Upanishads captures quite beautifully the spirit that seems to pervaid scriptural interpretation at many times in many traditions--Midrash, for example, in Judaism.

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  11. Kelly, great quotes! thank you. Some responses to Burk and then to Eric:


    Burk - ......”transcendent knowledge, but if it is transcendent of our capacities, then we can never get there, can we?).”

    Too true. If there is something truly “transcendent” then we can’t have logical knowledge of it. But if there were something beyond us, what would it look like if we were starting, or evolving, to be able to experience it? Little glimpses here and there? A lot like subjective, spiritual experience perhaps? Who knows? Skyhooks that will later be understood as cranes perhaps. Or perhaps it's ideas in our heads, but ultimately subjective experience is our beginning and end.

    Burk -“It is God as being, rather than God as symbol”

    God is completely symbolic to me - but symbols point to something or else they have little power. Of course, this can all be in the eye of the beholder. I think God has about as many meanings as there are people - or at least a heckuva lot of meanings.

    Burk - “If you stake your philosophy on the direct truth-value (veridicality) of psychological/spiritual experiences, that is just as likely to lead to a religion of fear and superstition as one of hope and Kumbaya”

    This is true, but the same is true of naturalistic philosophy is it not? We will always be capable of going to the moon and building atom bombs at the same time.

    Burk - “The point is that simply rendering obeissance to a deity and a "truth" that you yourself do not apparently believe creates a cultural climate of god-worship which automatically lends power and credibility to those who worship most devoutly and "know" most firmly,”

    If you have experience with fundamentalists, you know that they detest “liberals” within their religion more than atheists ( warning - over-generalization!). This is because the conservative theist and the atheist both agree on what God is. One believes God exists the other doesn’t, but they agree on what it is. A liberal tends to say, maybe God is different, or maybe I don’t know, but I still want to participate because that is more important - fundamentalists really dislike these apostates, seeking to destroy their literal views from the inside!

    Back to Eric’s post - I still feel this view is inadequate concerning anti-Semitism. Any concrete, literal belief that a Jew must know Christ for a “convergence” is still on the same path of anti-Semitism, however FAR FAR away from the “crud” discussed. And taking the plank out of our eye is great, but to do so in order to try to change someone else is not the point, I think. We can’t look at another’s beliefs and reduce them by believing that they would convert if WE had done something differently. That’s disrespectful to Judaism, a tradition far older than Christianity and probably most responsible for many of the most positive, “just” aspects of Christianity.

    Rather, even Jesus is still a symbol, if there is any sort of deeper reality that we can have access to. All words and mental images are symbols for experience.

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  12. Steven,

    Some excellent points, including some that identify places where I am open to misinterpretation and that force me to refine what I'm trying to say.

    You say: "We can’t look at another’s beliefs and reduce them by believing that they would convert if WE had done something differently. That’s disrespectful to Judaism, a tradition far older than Christianity and probably most responsible for many of the most positive, 'just' aspects of Christianity."

    I agree with this. A Hegelian approach to convergence will NOT, I think, view convergence as something that will be forced, or even as something that ought to be pursued for its own sake. And such convergence is impeded as soon as one tradition looks at another and says, "Well, we've got the truth and they're not accepting it; so how can we refine our presentation so that they will come to accept it?" Insofar as this way of thinking is premised on the assumption that one HAS the truth, it stunts evolution.

    From a Hegelian perspective convergence, if it happens, will do so NOT because it has been actively pursued but because alternative traditions have evolved through their own efforts to live out a worldview critically, and these contemporaneous evolutionary paths have resulted in a convergence.

    But part of the forces at work that drive and impede evolution have to do with the character of interactions among rival traditions. Openness to learning from one another is one of the forces that I thinks facilitates evolution.

    And sometimes such openness is blocked. And sometimes the block to B hearing A has its roots in A's treatment of B, in which case we cannot lay the blame on B for the existence of such impediments.

    That was part of the point I was trying to make. Another part has to do more specifically with Christianity's evolution (as opposed to Judaism's): If living out the Christian worldview (or a particular manifestation of it in the course of its evolution) both calls for evangelism AND lays down impediments to the success of evangelism, that is a practical contradition that needs to be resolved within Christianity. The evolution of Christianity in terms of the Hegelian method demands the resolution of this "contradiction."

    And it may well be that the project of evangelism itself, at least as it has been traditionally conceived, generates contradiction. The task of striving to convert others may, given human nature, generate impediments to conversion--in which case that task generates a contradiction when practiced in the real world. And so a worldview that endorses this practice clashes with reality.

    If so, then the worldview will need to be modified. Perhaps such modification would entail that "evangelism" be abandoned, or perhaps it would entail merely that it be reconceived as something other than the effort to convert others. After all, there is nothing in the announcing of good news that implies or requires that one be focused on the conversion of those to whom the news is announced. It seems to me that this drive to convert is bound up with the doctrine of hell and the idea that unless the good news is embraced, hell is the result (a wonderful way to turn good news into BAD news...a Hegelian contradiction of its own).

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  13. Eric,

    Thank you for a fascinating description of your own evolving and open thinking on the matter.

    You pinpointed my objection perfectly in showing that evangelism, meaning proselytizing, does seem to go hand in hand with assuming that one knows the truth, or that one's truth is superior to another's. I don't have a problem with respectful proselytizing, whether in religion or politics, but I do have a problem with the pre-existing, default setting of "I know the best version of truth there is to know".

    Since you argue for universalism in the Christian tradition, I'm sure that evangelism to you might actually be more about spreading good news, instead of having to qualify the "good news" by first convincing someone of the HORRIBLE news - namely the inevitability of Hell and the existence of the kind of God that would send people there.

    I'm sure to you that convergence is more about give and take between different traditions, and I appreciate your focus on and approval of pluralism.

    Thanks for a explaining your thoughts more thoroughly!

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  14. Wow, took me awhile to get back to this. Sorry about that. On your first point, I totally agree. I offered the example simply to demonstrate how weighing explanatory power might look, not because I thought it was actually a clear example of greater explanatory power for naturalism over theism or that theism might not have access to some of the mechanisms described in naturalism.

    I think your second point is largely correct, too, though I wonder how significant the differences would be once the process played out. Assuming there is in fact an external reality, then it seems plausible that beings sharing both basic faculties and basic needs will be drawn to similar success criteria after seriously and openly reflecting on their experiences of competing worldviews.

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  15. Eric:

    I think ontological worldviews can be compared under objective criteria, or at least under generally accepted reasonable criteria, such as internal coherence (or absence of conceptual problems for example materialism’s mind-body problem), how well they comport with observational facts (e.g. materialism has trouble comporting with quantum phenomena), how well they comport with incorrigible beliefs (such as the existence of libertarian freedom of will, the objectivity of at least some moral truths, etc), how well they pragmatically help us live the way we wish to live (i.e. have a good life and be good persons), and others. In reference to the last criterion you claim that the pragmatic value of a worldview can only be judged using standards that are part of the content of that worldview. In the praxis though one observes that people much easier agree on what’s right than on what’s real, so that broad and specific agreement about what constitutes a good life and a good person is prior to any discussion about which ontological worldview is more probably true.

    So I think that worldviews can and should be compared to each other. When doing this I think it becomes quickly apparent that religious worldviews are much more successful than non-religious ones. On the other hand the epistemic distance between, say, the three great monotheistic religions is much smaller, so that here the results of comparing one to the other are not as unequivocal. Still there is something to be gained here too. For example all three monotheistic religions have to deal with the conceptual problem of evil, and I personally find that specific Christian dogmas such as the Incarnation (which is contingent on the dogma of the Trinity) help one solve this serious problem of theism. Having said that it’s not the case that a Christian philosopher’s job is to defend Christianity; their job is to search for truth. So other religions may have some advantages when compared to Christianity, for example I find that the expression of the universality of love one finds in Sufi writing is superior to anything we have in Christianity. Similarly, Buddhism may have much to say about the non-personal aspects of fundamental reality. I really don’t see why religious traditions cannot grow by learning from each other.

    The really important thing though is this: Religion is not mainly about knowing the truth, but rather about living the truth. Jesus in the Gospels urges us to follow a particular path and to be as perfect as God in heaven is – not to hold all the right beliefs. So what is truth? I’d say that truth is what characterizes those beliefs which help us realize the point of our existence and transform ourselves to be closer to God (as the Gospels say, by its fruit one recognizes truth). But, as is the case when one climbs a mountain, there may be many paths towards God, indeed perhaps even non-religious paths. If true statements are like roadsigns that point to the right direction it’s not necessarily the case that religious ontological beliefs from different traditions must be compatible in order to be true, rather they must point to the right direction according to the spiritual path by which they stand. Thus I do agree with the main focus of your post, namely that the truth of spiritual beliefs should be evaluated within the worldview in which they are claimed, and that it is not always possible to compare them from the outside with beliefs which belong to other spiritual traditions. For the same reason though I don’t agree that there will necessarily be a conversion of religious beliefs in our future on Earth, for it may be the case that any particular spiritual path is more effective than any other path for those who have grown in the particular tradition.

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  16. Dianelos,
    "In the praxis though one observes that people much easier agree on what’s right than on what’s real, so that broad and specific agreement about what constitutes a good life and a good person is prior to any discussion about which ontological worldview is more probably true."

    This statement is at odds with my experience. I've found basic beliefs regarding ontology to be much less controversial to the average person than beliefs about the good life. For example, I don't think I personally know anyone who denies the persistence of material objects (and I'm in a philosophy grad program). I do know many people, however, who deny the necessary existence of moral facts. In fact, even among people who simply assume moral facts to exist independently, I've encountered quite a bit of profound disagreement as to what those facts are. Many people, for example, think it's fine to execute serial killers, whereas others find such action to be a clear breach of moral laws. Almost everyone I know believes that stealing is wrong, yet almost everyone I know also has no problem with file-sharing. Could you perhaps point me to the universal or even consensus goods that your view posits?

    Also, you claim that a view shouldn't have any obvious conceptual problems such as the mind-body problem in materialist ontology (as though there were no mind-body problem on a dualist conception), but then blithely accept that Christian theology might have a better answer to the argument from evil without noting that that very argument constitutes just such a conceptual problem for all traditional conceptions of personal deities. Then you make the claim that libertarian freewill and moral objectivity are incorrigible. Do you mean this in the Cartesian epistemic sense because if so, those two controversial positions are clearly not incorrigible since it is fairly clear that someone could understand and believe them even when they are false. By incorrigible do you perhaps mean that they seem true to many people? That would be correct, though a strange use of the term. You also claim materialism has trouble comporting with quantum phenomena. Do you mind saying which materialist thesis and which quantum phenomena you believe are incompatible?

    Finally you claim that "it becomes quickly apparent that religious worldviews are much more successful than non-religious ones." This is a pretty big claim (for which you provide no argument) that isn't quickly apparent to me. In fact, I think, after years of studying the theoretical issues involved, that it is false. Perhaps you could show me where I am obviously wrong.

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  17. Ok, I re-read that last post, and it came off much snarkier in print than I'd meant it. If I gave offense, I'm sorry.

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  18. Cheek:

    A main point in my previous post was this: I observe that in ontology much of philosophy is done by analyzing arguments for or against a particular worldview. I find that a more effective method is to define reasonable criteria and use them to directly compare alternative worldviews one to one – especially when such worldviews are far from each other, as is the case with theism and naturalism. But let me respond to some of the specifics you raise:

    Cheek said: “I've found basic beliefs regarding ontology to be much less controversial to the average person than beliefs about the good life.

    Well, I disagree. The world is divided between religious people (who believe that reality is transcendental) and non-religious people (who believe that reality is basically what we see around us). Within the latter naturalistic camp people do not agree on the most basic properties of such a reality, for example they don’t agree whether there is one universe or many, whether reality is deterministic or not, whether causality works only forwards in time or not, etc. Within the former religious camp people do not agree whether the transcendental reality is monotheistic, polytheistic, or non-theistic. Metaphysics is a difficult field, and the variety of beliefs demonstrate this fact.

    In comparison I think that there is broad agreement about the good life. Indeed, as far as ethics goes, all the world’s religions are so similar as to be essentially interchangeable. Should you described a virtuous life to a Hindu or to a Buddhist or to a Jew or to Christian or to a Muslim or to an atheist for that matter, they would all probably agree that this is a good life. An agreement would similarly obtain if you described to them a wicked life. There are of course disagreements about some particulars, such as the case you mentioned of whether it is ethical to execute serial killers, but in comparison to the huge disagreements about ontological beliefs I think these are really minor.

    Cheek said: “Almost everyone I know believes that stealing is wrong, yet almost everyone I know also has no problem with file-sharing.

    Or consider, for example, how many people know that smoking is terrible for their health but keep smoking. Or consider how many theists genuinely believe in God, but live as if God did not exist. Human nature is like that: even when we hold true beliefs we sometimes tend to live as we did not hold them.

    Cheek said: “Also, you claim that a view shouldn't have any obvious conceptual problems such as the mind-body problem in materialist ontology (as though there were no mind-body problem on a dualist conception) [snip]

    I was talking about theism, and theism does not entail dualism - but let’s not open this can of worms. (And in any case in my judgment the mind-body problem is hugely more serious on materialism than on dualism.)

    Cheek said: “[cont] but then blithely accept that Christian theology might have a better answer to the argument from evil without noting that that very argument constitutes just such a conceptual problem for all traditional conceptions of personal deities.

    Well, I did say that the problem of evil is a conceptual problem for theism. But, not withstanding its emotional force, I think this is not a very serious problem: It is notoriously difficult for the atheistic side to demonstrate that the evil in the world is gratuitous, and moreover I’d argue that Irenaean theodicy as developed by John Hick offers an effective explanation of why a perfect God would allow for the existence of evil.

    -- continued in the next post

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  19. Cheek said: “Then you make the claim that libertarian freewill and moral objectivity are incorrigible.

    Yes, what I mean by this is that I could not doubt that I have libertarian free will, or that, say, to torture a child for fun is objectively wrong, even if my life depended on my doubting them. I cannot even imagine what future experience could possibly convince me that any one of these is false. Now I have discussed with people who claim that they actually believe that they lack libertarian free will, or that the proposition “to torture a child for fun is wrong” only refers to a fact about personal taste or about social convention or perhaps about the way our brain has evolved. When this happens I feel very uncomfortable because I can’t even imagine how it is like for a human being to really believe such. In any case, given that these two beliefs are for me incorrigible in this sense, reason forces me to reject any ontological worldview which implies that any one of them is false.

    Cheek said: “You also claim materialism has trouble comporting with quantum phenomena. Do you mind saying which materialist thesis and which quantum phenomena you believe are incompatible?

    Actually the trouble I claim affects all mechanistic ontologies, including all flavors of materialism. And it’s not about quantum mechanics per se, but about observational facts we came to know via quantum mechanical experiments. Here is the kind of trouble I refer to: It’s possible to set up a series of simple looking experiments (you press a button here which causes one of two light bulbs there to flash) where 1) it’s easy enough to mechanistically (i.e. scientifically) model the observations themselves, but where 2) it turns out to be incredible difficult to describe a mechanistic reality which would give rise to the same observations. This is interesting on two levels: It weakens (quite seriously in my view) any mechanistic ontology, and it once again demonstrates that how things appear to be is often not how they are.

    Let me know if you’d like me to post a description of these experiments here. Alternatively you may wish to read about this problem. A very good and recent book is “Quantum Enigma” by Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner. Another is Nick Herbert’s “Quantum Reality”.

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  20. Dianelos,
    Thanks for the temperate response to what in retrospect was a pretty intemperate critique. Very gracious of you. A few issues in what you said, I'll take it point-by-point as you did.

    As for defining reasonable criteria, I tend to agree with you (and disagree to whatever extent with Eric) that this is the ideal starting point for a program. However, I think the problems that Eric raises are substantial and may in fact be prohibitive. I simply do not see (this gets on to the points about moral agreement in your post) that it is so easy to reach moral agreement. I think we could go round in circles, both citing examples we think support our respective cases, so I won't go that route unless you insist. Instead, I'll just point out that there is an established psychological tendency to notice only the facts that confirm our own theories. I think this could explain why I believe the most basic (and perhaps basic is not the best word here since it has a different technical sense in both science and philosophy, so maybe normal or regular? not sure what works best) ontological beliefs are far less controversial than corresponding moral beliefs. I think we tend to think the beliefs we are most convinced of are the least controversial and look for confirmation in experience. One last point here, I simply do not see the broad agreement you speak of between religions. We can of course quibble over which moral beliefs are central and which are peripheral, but I have noticed that pluralists tend to compare religions as opposed to religious believers. It seems to me that even within individual religions, individual believers fill out the entire spectrum (or very nearly the entire spectrum) of beliefs regarding such central (to my thinking) topics as the grounds of moral truths or even the primary moral responsibilities of both individuals and communities.

    The file-sharing example wasn't the greatest anyway, but I will say that the smoking analogy is not a great one since smokers do not believe that smoking is healthy. Many file-sharers seem to really believe that there is no moral problem with what they do.

    You're probably right that mind-body issues get us too far afield here, so I'll agree to leave that one alone as well apart from saying that while theistic accounts may offer solutions to the mind-body problem, any such solution would depend on the specific theistic ontology invoked.

    I'd also say arguments from evil are a whole other area of discussion, so I won't go into depth on why I find them compelling. Suffice it to say that I find the conjunction of rampant and perpetual suffering (both human and animal), moral objectivity, divine goodness, and a sufficient amount of divine power much more implausible than any of the other stories told in various religions. I do not, however, endorse any particular deductive formulation of this argument, so I guess I agree and disagree with you here.

    Regarding freewill and moral objectivity, I share your intuition regarding the former, and while I do not have any intuitions really regarding the theories on the latter, I do find the joyful child torture case compelling. However, I find that I can quite easily conceive of an ontology that included neither freewill nor moral objectivity and still explained our intuitions. It doesn't seem bizarre to speculate on either case that minds featuring built in dispositions towards the concepts would be selected naturally.

    I'll look at the Rosenblum book. I'm not familiar with his work (or really much of the work in contemporary physics apart from what reaches the popular level). Is it safe for me to assume that OUP has the same quality in Physics as it does in philosophy?

    Thanks again for the thoughtful response. I enjoyed it.

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  21. Dianelos and cheek: I really enjoyed reading your exchange, which is the kind of thoughtful engagement of ideas I am always hoping to stimulate with this blog. I wish I had more time to join the conversation, but for the moment must prioritize a plate full of other things.

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