tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post2188183044056407512..comments2024-03-15T17:06:31.642-05:00Comments on The Piety That Lies Between: A Progressive Christian Perspective: Divine Revelation and Cultural Filters: The Human Journey to GodEric Reitanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comBlogger7125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-80616663513086910042014-12-13T11:20:25.015-06:002014-12-13T11:20:25.015-06:00Hi, Eric-
No need to reply at all, or feel guilty...Hi, Eric-<br /><br />No need to reply at all, or feel guilty, etc. <br /><br /><br /><i>"... given the cultural filters through which that revelation is received."</i><br /><br />If god is all powerful, nothing of the kind is "given". Anything is possible, and you are simply making apologies for the inscrutability of it or whatever you think it is to take such things as given.<br /><br /><i>"Revelation stretches the limits of our worldview so that more authentic revelation can make it through, in turn leading to further stretching in an ongoing cycle. "</i><br /><br />This restates the restrictions of human cognition as given, which, god being all-powerful, they are not. God may have other mysterious reasons for all this hiddenness, but a obvious counter-hypothesis is that it does not exist at all. And that one, taken over all the evidence, is rather more efficient in accounting for all the hiddeness, among much else.<br /><br /><i>"While the transformed worldview remains imperfect at each stage in the cycle, it is hopefully closer to the divine reality than its predecessors."</i><br /><br />What can this really mean? It is wishful thinking if you do not have any empirical test to work with. The "hopefully" is dangling in the breezes of imagination, which may be communal and traditional, (and mystically psychological) but is not more real for all that.<br /><br /><i>"If we are, indeed, creatures made by God, then God is responsible for us being the kinds of creatures that we are. And part of what is essential to us is that we are social creatures who form cultures and engage with the world through our cultural lenses."</i><br /><br />This is, obviously, the ultimate in circular reasoning. If you assume your whole argument, then naturally your premises follow your conclusions.. or something like that! The point I was trying to make in reply is that we are talking about very totalistic paradigms, which have to be judged, not by their internal assumptions, but by an overall, bird's-eye perspective on how they each fit the evidence of reality. And hopefully one can try to put one's various psychological predilections, not to mention cultural filters, a little to one side to do such an evaluation. That is the nature and aim of intellectual integrity. If done honestly, you might find that all this apologizing for the absence of god has a better explanation than "his" inscrutability.<br /><br />With best wishes...<br />Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-61401358944565972552014-12-09T11:48:22.812-06:002014-12-09T11:48:22.812-06:00Apologies for ignoring this for so long. I've ...Apologies for ignoring this for so long. I've been very busy. I think, Burk, that you misconstrue the nature of my response to your earlier argument (and I should note that it is a very focused response to a single objection from religious diversity). The question is whether the hypothesis that religious belief is a response to a divine reality self-disclosing to human beings is compatible with what we observe in the world concerning diverse and incompatible beliefs about God and the supernatural, including divergent claims about divine revelation. <br /><br />In terms of its logic, then, my response is similar in form to a common approach pursued by someone who defends Darwinian theory against a critic (such as, say, Behe) who thinks there are observable phenomena that are incompatible with Darwin's theory (such as the purported examples of "irreducible complexity"). <br /><br />The critic might point to a feature of living organisms for which there is, at present, no established account of how that feature in fact evolved via natural selection. But the critic does not merely say, "There is not yet such an account." Instead, the critic says, "Evolutionary theory cannot account for this, and hence the fact that this exists shows us that evolutionary theory is wrong."<br /><br />The defender, in this case, may tell a story--a purely speculative one--of how the feature MIGHT have evolved. This story would assume that all organisms and their features are the product of the natural forces described in evolutionary theory, and would tell a story which shows that there is no conflict between this assumption and the existence of the feature in question. "Here's how it might have happened given my assumptions," the defender says...and then tells the tale. <br /><br />If the story is coherent within the framework of Darwinian assumptions, and the story, if true, WOULD account for the existence of the feature, then the defender has successfully shown that the critic is mistaken in their citicism--even though the defender is assuming the truth of what the critic denies and is telling a tale that is speculative. <br /><br />If the critic complains that the defender's response begs the question (because it assumes what the critic denies), the critic has misunderstood the logic of the response. If the critic complains that the story is mere speculation, the critic has misunderstood the logic of the response. Eric Reitanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06135739290199272992noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-56854658422383156992014-11-18T13:28:40.775-06:002014-11-18T13:28:40.775-06:00... cont ...
"But if you assume that the wor...... cont ...<br /><br /><i>"But if you assume that the world is created by a God who cares about forging a relationship with us, we are forced to ask, "Why would such a God make us such that our capacity to experience the divine is limited by the filters..."</i><br /><br /><i>" If we are, indeed, creatures made by God, then God is responsible for us being the kinds of creatures that we are. And part of what is essential to us is that we are social creatures who form cultures and engage with the world through our cultural lenses."</i><br /><br />I think this fits the term question-begging quite well. If I assume my premise, then the attack on that premise can be disregarded. Hmmm. The opposing premise, in case you have not heard about it, is that we are formed by the blind forces of evolution and came up with the god concept for various persistent psychological reasons including superstition, need for father-figures, fear, social cohesion, the consciousness illusion of souls, desire for an imaginary life after death, etc.<br /><br />The point of putting the argument I did was not to confirm you in your original premises, but to offer a reason to doubt that the god concept is coherent (even aside from being empirically vacuous) as you have refined it through your cultural filters, psychological filters, or whatever source it has. Because it remains one of love, omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotence, world creation, yet features curious hidden-ness as perhaps its main characteristic. <br /><br />Your explanation of all this is merely to restate that it is that way, and to continue to assume a premise that does not logically tie the two conditions together coherently at all, for to additionally assume that god has some personal characteristics of wanting a relationship with humans, and wants humans sufficiently separate from itself so that such a relationship could be meaningful ... it is the most ornate, convoluted, and Ptolemaic contraption for a reality that has a far easier explanation. Was having competing human groups with opposing religions which bless them as they kill each other part of this god's plan as well? It does beg belief.<br />Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-76271362416052556392014-11-18T13:28:22.404-06:002014-11-18T13:28:22.404-06:00Eric-
"Christian progressives are often accu...Eric-<br /><br /><i>"Christian progressives are often accused of "cherry-picking" the Bible or the tradition..."</i><br /><br /><i>"Here, in a nutshell, is the idea behind a progressive understanding of divine revelation and human religion: God is imperfectly encountered in experience, filtered through the assumptions and prejudices and conceptual categories that we bring to our experience--our worldview, if you will"</i><br /><br /><i>"I think the answer is yes. In fact, my progressive theology is premised on an affirmative answer."</i><br /><br /><i>"But this assumption is seriously problematic from the standpoint of the progressive vision of divine revelation sketched out above. On that vision..."</i><br /><br />So, the answer boils down to .. that is my premise, and I'm sticking to it.<br /><br />I think that betrays both cherry-picking, and also a certain lack of imagination that god might be actually real, rather than a domesticated image that you have formulated to support your preferred and assumed cultural position / moment / ideals.<br /><br />But if you really thought that god were <i>real</i>, then you would be more open to its being something quite different than what you assumed. There would be an encounter with an <i>other</i>. And that other might have powers and purposes quite different from what you currently believe. But that is not evidently what happens in the work of theology, since, by my (atheist) interpretation, there is no other there.. it is not real, thus you are left in your echo chamber to make of god whatever you like. Which is precisely what you have done.<br /><br />I mean, is there <i>any</i> aspect in which you fundamentally disagree with your own religion- that god instructs you to do something that you believe is wrong? Or a theological conclusion that you regard as immoral, but at the same time as inviolable? Is there any aspect of "other" or "encounter" to it, or does it rather accord thoroughly with the preferences you bring to it? Who exactly is doing the criticism and refinement of the image of god? Does god really have anything to do with it?<br /><br />... cont ...<br />Burkhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11158223475895530397noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-51909555722778424212014-11-13T11:54:43.375-06:002014-11-13T11:54:43.375-06:00Those cultural filters sound nifty. I found a loca...Those cultural filters sound nifty. I found a local store that has ‘em on sale and will throw in a free, illustrated copy of Borges’ “Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote”!<br /><br />Has anyone ever, anywhere, anytime, read/interpreted the Bible without a cultural filter? Is it possible for anyone to arrive at a fundamentalist perspective without their cultural lenses in place?<br /><br />I don’t think so.<br /><br />Whose cultural filter provides the best approach? Looking in from the outside, even though the end results (progressive vs fundamentalist) look different, it’s all the same process.<br /><br />Contrary to my little joke above, I don’t seem to be able to select a cultural filter from any retailer. I have to ride out on the horse that brung me… therefore: Calvinism! :)<br /><br />Kokopellikokopellinoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-51003858741309644482014-11-07T18:03:44.105-06:002014-11-07T18:03:44.105-06:00Great article and a very succinct, to the point, a...Great article and a very succinct, to the point, articulation of how a progressive might tackle the thorny issue of biblical inspiration. Will be recommending to friends...shartehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13064917027989094980noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6215077578479252542.post-27229935231846439772014-11-07T16:40:44.026-06:002014-11-07T16:40:44.026-06:00I suspect that these cultural filters are actually...I suspect that these cultural filters are actually more than lenses through which we view the world. Thinking of them like that suggests that if you take them away you'll be able to see more clearly. But I think it's more likely that you wouldn't be able to see at all. We understand the world by interpreting the information from our senses in our brains, and this interpretation involves fitting this information into models that we've learned to use as we develop. I suggest that what you're describing as cultural filters are really aspects of this internal modelling. If you take the modelling away, you lose the ability to do the interpretation and can no longer make sense of your senses, so to speak. For God to communicate his revelation to us without going through our cultural filters would involve him giving us different models to interpret him with. Still, some of the things that people experience through the Holy Spirit do seem to suggest that God can interact with them on a different level than their normal cognition. Perhaps revelation involves a mixture of the two?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01096109605684916912noreply@blogger.com