tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post6984450004854329483..comments2024-03-15T17:06:31.642-05:00Comments on The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective: Once More Into the Muck HeapEric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-9246588880359207872010-06-11T18:11:08.027-05:002010-06-11T18:11:08.027-05:00Burk--This is well articulated and represents a pl...Burk--This is well articulated and represents a plausible position that I can ALMOST agree with.<br /><br />A couple of key points of disagreement need to be noted, however. First, I don't want to reduce experience to experience in an observational sense--and I don't want to say that the only experience with evidential value is experience in the observational sense. <br /><br />I think the problem of the criterion (What counts as a compelling reason to believe, and on based on what reasons do we believe that it counts as a compelling reason to believe?) comes into play here. You operate (I think) on the assumption that what we might call empirical observation is the only kind of EXPERIENCE with evidentiary value--that is, the only kind of experience that offers a good reason to believe certain things to be the case about reality. You may (and probably do) also acknowledge the existence of certain non-experiential reasons to believe, but we'll set that aside for now. <br /><br />In any event, for me the problem of the criterion is huge, and my approach to addressing it is influenced deeply by my reading of Hegel--so I'll just leave that issue for now with a promissory note to devote some future posts to my understanding of Hegel's critical engagement with the enlightenment.<br /><br />In any event, what you aptly call "the gestalt of the human condition" is (with appropriate qualifications) what I have in mind as providing the material against which alternative worldviews need to be tested. But I lend to elements of that gestalt an evidentiary value that you don't--but not an evidentiary value that we can harness directly in the way that scientists do empirical evidence. <br /><br />This is not to say that I lend evidentiary value to everything that you locate within the rubric of the gestalt of the human condition. Rather, it is to say that I see the question of what has evidentiary value as more open than you do. I agree that for the kinds of inquiries scientists pursue, only empirical observations have the sort of evidentiary value amenable to the scientific method. But I think there are other methods of inquiry for which other experiences offer a different kind of evidentiary significance.<br /><br />I do agree that there is a great deal of creativity that is an intrisic element of speculative theology and philosophy. And if these disciplines involved nothing more than that, then it would amount to just "making stuff up." But I think there is more--but again I'll content myself with a promissory note at this point, since I can't do justice to it in a comment.<br /><br />Finally, I agree that much of what goes by the name of religion involves embracing a story that goes far beyond what is needed in order to understand experience, but rather serves social and personal needs. But here I'd make two points. First, the decision to live in the light of such a story should not be confused with knowledge claims--and so long as that confusion isn't made, and other conditions are met (which I discuss in my book), this decision can be legitimate.<br /><br />Second, there is a difference between adopting a religious narrative by which to live and doing theology. The latter is more about using these religious stories as a springboard towards a deeper understanding of the world--or at least it can be that, if it operates as part of a broader Hegelian method of inquiry rooted in the problem of the criterion--and so I end with another promissory note...Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-13609379640501020432010-06-11T17:11:33.190-05:002010-06-11T17:11:33.190-05:00Hi, Eric-
Sorry about your cold, and about this u...Hi, Eric-<br /><br />Sorry about your cold, and about this unpleasantness from Myers. <br /><br /><i>"He asks, “Which particular sect has the worldview most consistent with experience?” Here, the hidden assertion is not a particular answer to the question, but rather (I'm pretty sure) a claim about the unavailability of an answer. In effect, he’s stating that there is no way to know which worldview is best, because there are no standards for assessing worldviews or methods for going about trying to ascertain which worldviews offer the best “fit” with experience as a whole."</i><br /><br />You might want to be honest here and admit that theism is not really trying to best fit our experience as a whole in an observational sense. If that were true, then theologians would be scientists. What theists are doing is creating a story that goes way, way beyond our experience in a way that satisfies far deeper participatory issues of psychology, such as a need for belonging, supporting a patriarchal system that has traditionally been judged as the best social organization, answering our natural but mistaken superstitions, sponsoring cleansing and bonding rituals whose deep-seated attraction has outlasted their original rationales, etc.<br /><br />In short, it is not our experience that religion attempts to address, but the gestalt of the human condition, which requires a great deal of <i>creative input</i> quite apart from a bare analysis of our position in the cosmos. <br /><br />We may very well need these psychological services to various extents for our individual and collective happiness, but claiming that the theology that sponsors them also supplies knowledge about the facts of existence, our cosmic history, the ultimate reality, etc. is not only wrong, but quite beside the point. What it knows and studies is our psychology, and if that psychology requires a bit of flummery in the form of certainty of ultimate realities, contact with a living god, etc., that remains a psychological insight, not an analytical one.<br /><br />This is what neatly accounts for the varieties of religion, compared to the unity of science, since participatory psychology is also power politics, and gets entangled in issues of tribalism, narrative dominance, meaning creation, cultural leadership, and so forth in ways that pure analysis, staked empirically, tends not to, when done well.Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.com