Category: Religion

Dale Tuggy Avoids D. Z. Phillips

In the fourth of a series posts on the evolution of his views on the Trinity, Dale Tuggy reports on his time at the Claremont Graduate School.  About D. Z. Phillips, he says the following:

D.Z. Phillips I avoided. I’d read real epistemology (Chisholm, Plantinga, etc.) and was always unimpressed with the later-Wittgenstein approach, especially to the epistemology of religion. Anyway, I heard it all repeatedly from some of my fellow students, who also said that every Phillips class was basically the same line over and over. I never could identify with the quasi-conversion stories some of them related about reading Wittgenstein’s On Certainty.

It looks as if Dale and I are in agreement when it comes to the philosophy of religion of the late Wittgenstein. See my The Question of the Reality of God:  Wittgensteinian Fideism No Answer.

I hope Dale comes to Tucson again this summer to visit his in-laws.  Peter, Mike and I met him in Florence where we visited a Greek orthodox monastery.  An excellent discussion ensued.  We hope to see him again. 

The Christian ‘Anatta Doctrine’ of Lorenzo Scupoli

Buddhism and Christianity both enjoin self-denial. But Buddhism is more radical in that it connects self-denial with denial of the very existence of the self, whereas Christianity in its orthodox versions   presupposes the existence of the self: Christian self-purification falls short of self-elimination. Nevertheless, there are points of comparison between the 'No Self' doctrine of Buddhism and the   Christian doctrine of the self.

In his Combattimento Spirituale (1589), Lorenzo Scupoli writes:

     You my mind, are not mine: you were given me by God. Neither are
     the powers active within me — will, with its energy – mine. Nor
     does my feeling, my ability to enjoy life and all my surroundings
     belong to me. My body with all its functions and requirements,
     which determine our physical well-being, is not mine either….And
     I myself belong not to me, but to God. (Unseen Warfare, St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1995, p.   172)

Apart from the references to God, this meditation of Scupoli, of which the above is merely an excerpt, bears a striking resemblance to the one contained in the Anattalakkhana Sutta. Buddha there examines each of the khandas, body, feeling, perception, etc., and concludes with respect to each of them that "This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am." In Scupoli we encounter virtually the   same litany: body, feeling, mind . . . of all of which it is true that "This is not mine, etc." Of course, nothing depends on the exact taxonomy of personality-constituents. The point is that however one classifies the constituents of personality, no one of them, nor any combination of them, is veridically identifiable as one's very self. I say 'veridically,' since we do as a matter of fact (falsely) identify   ourselves with all manner of item both within us (feelings, memories, etc.) and without us (property, progeny, etc.) But these false self-identifications are part of what our ignorance/sinfullness consists in.

Thus Scupoli (who I take to be a representative Christian, and who is of interest here only as such) and Buddha agree with respect to the (negative) thesis that nothing in one's experience is veridically identifiable as one's very self. Thus nothing that we ordinarily take to be ourselves (our bodies, our thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.)  can in truth be one's self. But there is also similarity in their reasoning. One way Buddha reasons is as follows. If x (body, feeling, perception, etc.) were my very self, or were something that belonged to me, then I would have complete control over x. But it is evident that no x is such that I have complete control over x. Therefore, no x is either my self or anything that belongs to me. This could be called the 'complete control' argument. Scupoli has something similar:
     Let us remember that we can boast only of something which is a
     direct result of our own will and is done by us independently of
     anything else. But look how our actions proceed. How do they begin?
     Certain circumstances come together and lead to one action or
     another; or a thought comes to our mind to do something, and we do
     it. But the concurrence of circumstances does not come from us;
     nor, obviously, is the thought to do something our own; somebody
     suggests it. Thus, in such cases, the origin or birth of the
     thought to do something cannot or should not be an object of
     self-praise. Yet how many actions are of this kind? If we examine
     them conscientiously, we shall find that they almost all start in
     this way. So we have nothing to boast of. (174)

This passage suggests the following argument: One cannot justifiably take pride in anything (an action, a physical or mental attribute, etc.) unless one originates it 'independently of anything else.' But   nothing is such that one originates it in sublime independence of all else. Therefore, one cannot justifiably take pride in anything.

But does this amount to an argument against the self? It does, given the Buddhist assumption, crucial to the reasoning in the Anattalakkhana Sutta, that a self is an entity that has complete control over itself. Such a self could justifiably take pride in its actions and attributes. For it would be their fons et origo. So if one cannot justifiably take pride in any of one's actions or attributes, then one is not a self. Pride is one of the seven deadly sins  precisely because the proud person arrogates to himself a status he lacks, namely, the status of being a self in the sense in which this term is employed in the Anattalakkhana Sutta.

In sum, both Buddha and Scupoli are claiming that no one of us is a self for the reason than no one of us is in complete control of any of his actions or attributes. No one of the things which one normally takes to be oneself or to belong to oneself (e.g., one's body, habits, brave decisions, brilliant insights, etc.) is such that one has originated it autonomously and independently.

The main difference between Buddha and Scupoli, of course, is that the latter maintains that God gives us what we do not have under our control. Thus for Scupoli, what we do not have from ourselves, we have from another, and so have. But for Buddha, what we do not have from ourselves, we do not have at all.

Does God Exist Because He Ought to Exist?

Steven, Peter, et al.:  This paper has been languishing  on my hard drive for some time.  Comments appreciated. 

Abstract.  Modal ontological arguments for the existence of God require a possibility premise to the effect that a maximally perfect being is possible. Admitting the possibility of such a being may appear to be a minimal concession, but it is not given that the admission, together with the uncontroversial premise that a necessary being is one whose possibility entails its actuality, straightaway entails the actual existence of a maximally perfect being. The suspicion thus arises that the modal ontological argument begs the question at its possibility premise. So various philosophers, including J. N. Findlay, A.C. Ewing, John Leslie and Carl Kordig have attempted to support the possibility premise by broadly deontic considerations concerning what ought-to-be, where this ought-to-be subsists independently of the powers of any agent. The basic idea is that God, conceived as a maximally perfect being, is possible because (i) he ought to exist, and (ii) whatever ought to exist is possible. The basic idea is that the non-agential oughtness or axiological requiredness of the divine existence certifies the possibility and in turn the actuality of the divine existence. The overall argument could be described as a broadly deontic God proof along modal ontological lines. This article sets forth and defends the argument before explaining why it is not ultimately compelling.

Continue reading “Does God Exist Because He Ought to Exist?”

Keith Parsons Update

Apparently, Keith Parsons' decision to abandon the philosophy of religion has garnered a lot of attention.  Here is my commentary from last September.

Update 1/13:  My man Peter Lupu leaves a comment at  Secular Outpost.  And Ed Feser rips into Parsons here, once again substantiating  my playful reading of his name as an acronym: Filosophical Erudition Sans Excessive Restraint.

A Vision of Hell

The spiritually immature have spiritually immature conceptions of man and God, heaven and hell. If you think of man as just a physical being, then, if you think of God at all, you will most likely think of him as a physical being, as a sort of Man Writ Large, or Big Guy in the Sky. This will lead either to a childish form of theism (God as Big Daddy, supplier of material needs, wish-fulfiller) or to a form of atheism of the Edward Abbey 'No angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon' variety.

Something similar is true of conceptions of heaven and hell. The materially minded will develop crass conceptions. Popular Islam's notion of paradise as an endless disporting with 72 black-eyed virgins, as a doing there all the carnal things one is forbidden here, is as theologically hopeless as is a Christian fundamentalist's notion of hell as fire and brimstone.

I suggest the following as closer to the theological reality of hell where hell is permanent separation, recognized as such, from one's absolute good, recognized as such.

To be in hell is to be in a perpetual state of enslavement to one's vices, knowing that one is enslaved, unable to derive genuine satisfaction from them, unable to get free, and knowing that there is true happiness that will remain forever out of reach. Hell not as a state of pain but of endless unsatisfying and unsatisfied pleasure. A state of unending gluttony for example, or of ceaseless sexual  promiscuity. A state of permanent entrapment in a fool's paradise –  think of an infernal counterpart of Las Vegas — in which one is constantly lusting after food and drink and money and sex, but is never satisfied. The fire of desire endless and unfulfilled, but with the clear understanding that one is indeed a fool, and entrapped, and cut off permanently from a genuine happiness that one knows exists.

Josiah Royce and the Religious Paradox

WilliamJames_JosiahRoyce_ca1910_Harvard There are tough questions about the possibility and the actuality of divine revelation. An examination of some ideas of the neglected philosopher Josiah Royce (1855-1916) from the Golden Age of American philosophy will help us clarify some of the issues and problems. One such problem is this: How can one know in a given case that a putative piece of divine revelation is genuine? Before advancing to this question we need a few sections of stage-setting.  (That's Royce on the right, by the way, and William James on the left.  Surely it was degeneration when American philosophy came to be dominated by the likes of Quine and Rorty.) 

1. Concern for Salvation as Essential to Religion. It is very difficult to define religion, in the sense of setting forth necessary and sufficient conditions for the correct application of the term, but I agree with Royce's view that an essential characteristic of anything worth calling religion is a concern for the salvation of man. (The Sources of Religious Insight, Charles Scribner and Sons, 1912, p. 8) Religious objects are those that help show the way to salvation. The central postulate of religion is that "man needs to be saved." (8-9) Saved from what? ". . . from some vast and universal burden, of imperfection, of unreasonableness, of evil, of misery, of fate, of unworthiness, or of sin." (8) In an earlier post on Simone Weil I spoke of generic wretchedness. It is that which  we need salvation from.

2. The Need for Salvation. "Man is an infinitely needy creature." (11)  But the need for salvation, for those who feel it, is paramount. The need depends on two simpler ideas:

a) There is a paramount end or aim of human life relative to which other aims are vain. (12)

b) Man as he now is, or naturally is, is in danger of missing his highest aim, his highest good. (12)

To hold that man needs salvation is to hold both of (a) and (b). I would put it like this. The religious person perceives our present  life, or our natural life, as radically deficient, deficient from the root (radix) up, as fundamentally unsatisfactory; he senses or glimpses from time to time the possibility of a Higher Life; he feels himself in danger of missing out on this Higher Life of true happiness. If this doesn't strike a chord in you, then I suggest you do not have a religious disposition.  Some people don't, and it cannot be helped.  One cannot discuss religion with them, for it cannot be real to the them.

3. Religious Insight. Royce defines religious insight as ". . . insight into the need and into the way of salvation." (17) No one can take religion seriously who has not felt the need for salvation. But we need religious insight to show that we really need it, and to show the way to it.

4. Royce's Question. He asks: What are the sources of religious insight? Of insight into the need and into the way of salvation? Many will point to divine revelation through a scripture or through a church as the principal source of religious insight. But at this juncture Royce discerns a paradox that he calls the religious paradox, or the paradox of revelation.

5. The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (22-23) How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25) But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation?

The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation:

Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge — that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which  seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it  declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible?

Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)

Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. By what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result? But this is exactly Royce's problem.

It is not merely an academic problem.   To see why see the earlier post on Seyyed Hossein Nasr.

Nagel on Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion

I have in my hand a copy of Thomas Nagel, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997). The last essay in The Last Word is entitled, "Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion." One hopes that Nagel does not consider it the last word on the topic given its fragmentary nature and occasional perversity. But it's a good essay nonetheless. Everything by Thomas Nagel is worth reading.  Herewith, a bit of interpretive summary with quotations and comments.

Nagel's essay begins by pointing out a certain Platonism in the philosophy of Charles Sanders Peirce, a Platonism that is foreign to pragmatism as usually understood. Nagel quotes Peirce as saying that the aim of science is "eternal verities," a notion at odds with the Jamesian view that the true is that which it is good for us to believe. What science is after is not a set of beliefs conducive to our flourishing but a set of beliefs that correspond to the world as it is independently of us. The researcher aims to "learn the lesson that nature has to teach. . . ." But to do this, the inquiring mind must "call upon its inward sympathy with nature, its instinct for aid, just as we find Galileo at the dawn of modern science making his appeal to il lume naturale [the natural light]. . . ."

Divine Light, Sex, Alcohol, and Kerouac

If there is divine light, sexual indulgence prevents it from streaming in.  Herein lies the best argument for continence.  The sex monkey may not be as destructive of the body as the booze monkey, but he may be even more destructive of the spirit.  You may dismiss what I am saying here either by denying that there is any divine light or by denying that sexual indulgence impedes its influx, or both.  But if you are in the grip of either monkey I will dismiss your dismissal.  Why should I listen to a man with a monkey on his back?  How do I know it is the man speaking and not the monkey?

Poor Kerouac got the holy hell beaten out of him by the simian tag-team.   The Ellis Amburn biography goes into the greatest detail regarding Kerouac's homo- and hetero-erotic sexual excesses.  His fatal fondness for the sauce, for the devil in liquid form, is documented in all the biographies.

It is not that the lovable dharma lush did not struggle mightily in his jihad against his lower self.  He did, in his Buddhist phase in the mid-fifties, before the 1957 success of On the Road and the blandishments of fame did him in.  (Worldly $ucce$$/Suckcess is an ambiguous good.) I've already pulled some quotations from Some of the Dharma which  offers the best documentation of Jack's attempt to tread the straight path to the narrow gate.

One lesson, perhaps, is that we cannot be lamps unto ourselves even if the Tathagata succeeded in pulling himself up into Nirvana by his samsaric sandalstraps.  To the vast run of us ordinary "poor suffering fucks" a religion of self-help is no help at all.  The help we need, if help there be, must come from Elsewhere.

Nirvana as Asphyxiation

E. M. Cioran, Drawn and Quartered, tr. R. Howard (New York: Seaver Books, 1983), p. 118:

In the Benares sermon, Buddha cites, among the causes of pain, the thirst to become and the thirst not to become. The first thirst we understand, but why the second? To long for nonbecoming — is that not to be released? What is meant here is not the goal but the way as such, the pursuit and the attachment to the pursuit. — Unfortunately, on the way to deliverance only the way is interesting. Deliverance? One does not attain it, one is engulfed in it, smothered in it. Nirvana itself — an asphyxia! Though the gentlest of all.

I am reminded of Ramanuja's rejoinder to Shankara: "I want to taste sugar, not become sugar." If salvation is destructive of all individuality, what could it be worth? If, on the other hand, salvation is merely entry into a Hinterwelt that reproduces in improved form features of the hic et nunc — as on the puerile Islamic conception of paradise as endless disporting with black-eyed virgins — then (i) what rational person could believe in it, and (ii) how could it solve the fundamental problems that plague us here below? They would simply be reproduced in the hinterworld.

Report from Afghanistan and More on Religious Zealotry

Spencer Case reports from Afghanistan, and I comment in blue (older comments of mine in dark orange):

Greetings again from Afghanistan. I've been reading your blog regularly although I haven't written in a while, so I hope you'll forgive a few preliminaries. Things are winding down in my tour, despite an attack on my base by a few Taliban last week (of which my report can be found here: http://www.cjtf101.com/en/regional-command-east-news-mainmenu-401/3362-us-afghan-servicemembers-respond-during-attack.html).

Also, I became interested in Robert Reilly's book The Closing of the Muslim Mind: How Intellectual Suicide Created the Modern Islamist Crisis because of your pointer. I reviewed it in the Idaho State Journal and on my Dateline Afghanistan blog. Imagine my delight when none other than Reilly himself posted
a comment to my review! (online at: http://www.pocatelloshops.com/new_blogs/afghanistan/?p=99)

By the time this month expires I will be drinking my much awaited first post-deployment beer. Speaking of worldly pleasures, I'd like to make a second stab at an unresolved argument we had a couple of months ago. I am still convinced  that sincere conviction in a religious afterlife commits one to zealotry. After all, given a sincere conviction in Christian  salvation, how could the pursuit of any finite good be justified? And who could be more of a paradigm case of zealotry than the person who thinks all worldly goods are completely overridden by some one eternal Good?

In your response to my argument, you write:

Continue reading “Report from Afghanistan and More on Religious Zealotry”

Buddhism on Suffering and One Reason I am Not a Buddhist

(This entry touches upon some themes discussed with greater rigor, thoroughness, and scholarliness in my "No Self? A Look at a Buddhist Argument," International Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 42, no. 4 (December 2002), pp. 453-466.)

For Buddhism, all is dukkha, suffering.  All is unsatisfactory.  This, the First Noble Truth, runs contrary to ordinary modes of thinking:  doesn't life routinely offer us, besides pain and misery and disappointment, intense pleasures and deep satisfactions?  How then can it be true that sarvam dukkham?  For the Buddhist, however, what is ordinarily taken by the unenlightened worldling  to be sukha (pleasure) is at bottom dukkha.  Why?  Because no pleasure, mental or physical, gives permanent and plenary satisfaction.  Each satisfaction leaves us in the lurch, wanting more.  A desire satisfied is a desire entrenched. Masturbate once, and you will do it a thousand times, with the need for repetition testifying to the unsatisfactoriness of the initial satisfaction.   Each pleasure promises more that it can possibly deliver, and so refers you to the next and the next and the next, none of them finally satisfactory.  It's a sort of Hegelian schlechte Unendlichkeit.  Desire satisfied becomes craving, and craving is an instance of dukkha.  One becomes attached to the paltry and impermanent and one suffers when it cannot be had. 

There is more to it than this, but this is the essence of it.  The thing to note is that the claim in the First Noble Truth is not the triviality that there is a lot of suffering in this life, but that life itself, as insatiable desiring and craving for what is unattainable to it, is ill, pain-inducing, profoundly unsatisfactory, and something to be escaped from if possible. It is a radical diagnosis of the human predicament, and the proposed cure is equally radical: extirpation of desire.  The problem for the Buddhist is not that some of our desires are misdirected; the problem is desire itself.  The soulution, then, is not rightly-ordered desire, as in Christianity, but the eradication of desire.  The root of suffering is desire and that root must be uprooted (e-radi-cated). 

Although Buddhism appears in some ways to be a sort of 'empirical religion' — to hazard an oxymoron — the claim that all is suffering involves an interpretation of our experience that goes well beyond the empirically given.  Buddhism, as a development from Hinduism, judges the given by the standard of the permanent.  Permanence is the standard against which the  ordinary satisfactions of life are judged deficient.  Absolute permanence sets the ontological and axiological standard.  The operative presupposition is that only that which is permanent is truly real and truly important.  But if, as Buddhism also maintains, all is impermanent, then one wonders whence the standard of permanence derives its validity. If all is impermanent, and nothing has self-nature, then the standard is illusory.  If so, then we have no good reason to reject all ordinary satisfactions.

For Buddhism, the fundamental problem is suffering in the radical sense above explained, and the solution is entry into nibbana by the extirpation of desire, all desire (including even the desire for nibbana), as opposed to the moderation of desire and its redirection to worthy objects.  I reject both the diagnosis and the cure.  The diagnosis is faulty because incoherent: it presupposes while denying the exstence of an absolute ontological and axiological standard.  The cure is faulty because it issues in nihilism, as if the goal of life could be nonexistence.

I am talking about primitive Buddhism, that of the Pali canon.  Attention to the Mahayana would require some qualifications.

So one reason I am not a Buddhist is that I reject the doctrine of suffering.  But I also reject the doctrines of impermanence and 'no self.'  That gives me two more reasons.

But I should say that I take Buddhism very seriously indeed.  It is deep and sophisticated with a rich tradition of philosophical commentary.  Apart from its mystical branch, Sufism, I cannot take Islam seriously –except as a grave threat to other religions and indeed to civilization itself.  But perhaps I have been too much influenced by Schopenhauer on this point.

 

No Provision in Islam for Mosque-State Separation

John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion (Yale UP, 1989, pp. 48-49):

From the point of view of the understanding of this state of islam [submission to Allah] the Muslim sees no distinction between the religious and the secular.  The whole of life is to be lived in the presence of Allah and is the sphere of God's absolute claim and limitless compassion and mercy.  And so islam, God-centredness, is not only an inner submission to the sole Lord of the universe but also a pattern of corporate life in accordance with God's will.  It involves both salat, worship, and falah, the good embodied in behaviour.  Through the five appointed moments of prayer each day is linked to God. Indeed almost any activity may be begun with Bismillah ('in the name of Allah'); and plans and hopes for the future are qualified by Inshallah ('if Allah wills').  Thus life is constantly punctuated by the remembrance of God.  It is a symptom of this that almsgiving ranks with prayer, fasting, pilgrimage and confession of faith as one of the five 'pillars' of Islam.  Within this holistic conception the 'secular' spheres of politics, government, law, commerce, science and the arts all come within the scope of religious obedience.

What Hick calls a "holistic conception," I would call totalitarian.  Islam is totalitarian in a two-fold sense.  It aims to regulate every aspect and every moment of the individual believer's life. (And if you are not a believer, you must either convert or accept dhimmitude.)   But it is also totalitarian in a corporate sense in that it aims to control every aspect of society in all its spheres, just as Hick points out supra.

Islam, therefore, is profoundly at odds with the values of the West.  For we in the West, whether liberals or conservatives, accept church(mosque)-state separation.  We no doubt argue heatedly over what exactly it entails, but we are agreed on the main principle.  I regularly criticize the shysters of the ACLU for their extremist positions on this question; but I agree with them that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion . . . ."

This raises a very serious question.  Is Islam –  pure, unEnlightened, un-watered-down, fundamentalist, theocratic Islam — deserving of First Amendment protection?  We read in the First Amendment that Congress shall not prohibit the free exercise of religion.  Should that be understood to mean that the Federal government shall not prohibit the  establishment and  free exercise of a  totalitarian, fundamentalist  theocratic religion in a particular state, say Michigan? 

The USA is a Christian nation with a secular government.  Suppose there was a religion whose aim was to subvert our secular government.  Does commitment to freedom of religion enjoin toleration of such a religion?

 

Test Your Religious Knowledge

Here.  Your humble correspondent answered 14 out of 15 questions correctly for a score of 93%. 

Jews are at the top, which is no surprise.  As I once said to my Israeli friend Peter, "I have never met a stupid Jew."  He immediately shot back, "Then you've never lived in Israel."  The alacrity of the repartee of course supports  my point about Jewish intelligence.  Atheists come in right after Jews, which again is no surprise: people who identify as atheists are exercised over religion and know a lot about it the better to oppose it. Hispanics and Blacks are at the bottom.  A liberal will infer that the survey is racist.

More on Whether Atheism is a Religion

Peter Lupu e-mails:

Your post provoked these thoughts:

I agree with you that most religions include as indispensable certain core metaphysical tenets about some kind of transcendental existence that is vital for the understanding of the nature and identity of our own self and that these core tenets distinguish religious ideologies from secular ideologies such as atheism and Marxism. However, it is worth noting that secular ideologies also include certain indispensable core metaphysical tenets: e.g., atheism denies the existence of a transcendental being such as God or denies that the existence of such a God is relevant to understand our nature and identity and Marxism is committed to the existence of deterministic historical laws which will inevitably lead to a certain socio-economic-political arrangement (i.e., communism).

In fact, both religious as well as secular ideologies can be identified in terms of their respective metaphysical core tenets in the sense that giving them up is giving up on the ideology itself. Hence, those who adhere to each ideology must hold on to their defining tenets come what may, for giving up these tenets is giving up the ideology itself. So we can define a religious attitude (in contradistinction to a religion) as a certain epistemic attitude whereby someone holds on to the metaphysical tenets that define their ideology come what may and regardless of the cogency of counterarguments or counter-evidence. Of course, we already have a word for this sort of attitude and it is "dogmatism." So it is not clear to me that we need another word for it, although I think that this is what people mean when they say that secular ideologies such as atheism or Marxism are or can be for some people a "religion."

Peter,  I take your point to be that when we say that militant atheism or Marxism are religions, we are speaking loosely: all we mean is that the commitment of their staunchest adherents is dogmatic and unshakeable.  Thus I take you to be agreeing with me me that militant atheism and Marxism are not, strictly speaking, religions.

Joseph Antolick e-mails:　

I think there's a problem when you worry – not without merit, since it's common in these discussions – that considering militant atheism a religion itself is a debating trick. You go on to say that there's a problem of defining religion (you even entertain the possibility that there's no way to "specify necessary and sufficient conditions") and also that these atheists are anti-religionist. Well, if it's not clear what a religion is, then how is it clear that atheists are anti-religion? I'll grant you that Richard Dawkins hates Catholicism. But so do a number of Muslims.

But I did suggest a criterion for distinguishing religious from non-religious ideologies:  "all and only religions make reference to a transcendent reality, whether of a personal or impersonal nature, contact or community or identification with which is the summum bonum and the ultimate purpose of human existence.  For the Abrahamic faiths, Yahweh, God, Allah  is the transcendent reality.  For Taoism, the Tao.  For Hinduism, Brahman.  For Buddhism, the transcendent state of nirvana."  This criterion makes it tolerably clear what counts as a religion and also what it is to be anti-religion.  I can't see what good purpose is served by lumping militant atheism in with the religions, unless one is talking loosely — see Lupu's comment above.  In a serious discussion one should avoid loose talk.

My claim here is that A) There is reason . . .  to at least suspect that the New Atheists are themselves religious and B) That if this is in fact the case, then the New Atheists are no more "anti-religion" than fanatical muslims for whom there is no room in the world for any religion but Islam.

And what reason would that be?  The fact that one's commitment to one's ideology is is total, dogmatic, and unshakeable by counter-argument is not a good reason to think that the object of one's commitment is a religion.  Countless Communists were committed heart, soul, and mind to their ideology. Some, like Trotsky, sacrificed everything for the cause.  But that didn't make Communism a religion.  An ersatz religion perhaps, something that substitutes for religion in the lives of its staunch adherents, but not a religion strictly speaking.  Faith and hope were major players in Trotsky's life, but they weren't religious faith and hope, though I will grant you that they were quasi-religious.  See my post, Trotsky's Faith.

Obviously, Muslims are not anti-religion because their ideology is a religion by my criterion, albeit a political religion if you will, one that denies church/mosque-state separation.    (Whether Islam is a religion that deserves First Amendment protection is a further question, and a pressing one given the bit after 'albeit.') 

To give an analogous example, Stephen Hawking in his new book claims that "philosophy is dead" – but then, as reviewers have noted, goes on to engage in metaphysics and take explicitly philosophical positions. If that's a fair description of his views, is it right to say Hawking is "anti-philosophy"? Or is it just that he's anti- any philosophy that differs from his? I think the difference between those two descriptions is important.

I'm glad you brought that up.  There is a big difference between being anti-religion and being anti-philosophy.  To oppose philosophy is to do philosophy.  Any attack on philosophy is a philosophical attack.  Anti-philosophy is just more philosophy.  And so I agree with you about Hawking.  He is anti-any philosophy other than his own.  But anti-religion is not just more religion, but precisely the rejection of all religion.  To oppose philosophy is to do philosophy; but to oppose religion is not to do religion, but to do philosophy.

The right way to combat militant atheists is not by arguing that they are serving up religion, but by exposing what they do as bad philosophy, as based on the dubious philosophical doctrine of scientism, for example.  Atheism is a philosophical position with all the rights, privileges, and debilities pertaining thereunto.  Dawkins, Grayling  and the boys may be dogmatic pricks but that does not make them religionists.  It makes them — dogmatic pricks.  Once you have exposed atheism as just another philosophical position you have already done quite a bit to undermine it: it is just another contender in the arena of Big Ideas;  just another contender that cannot establish hegemony — except in the minds of its dogmatic adherents.

That said, I don't claim to have the ultimate answer on this. But I do worry that there's a recognition that defining "religion" is difficult, and then a move is made to try and define religion in such a way that purposefully excludes militant atheists from the outset. I'm reminded of when Paul Davies wrote an op-ed, pointing out that even scientists have faith – and there was a fierce reaction from a number of scientists.

But why would you want to lump militant atheists in with religionists?  That makes little sense unless you are engaged in some sort of rhetorical sleight-of-hand.    Surely the burden is on you to show that they are religionists when it is plain to most of us that they are not.

And you also have to be careful not to equivocate on 'faith' as between religious and non-religious faith. Above I mentioned the faith of Trotsky.  Surely he was a man of faith in a secular, non-religious sense: as a professional revolutionary he believed with all his heart in the coming world-wide proletarian revolution that would usher in a classless society, a worker's paradise, etc. etc.  One could even in his case speak of a secular soteriology and eschatology, of the final salvation from alienation at the eschaton.  But again, a substitute for religion, something that merely resembles religion in certain ways, something the commitment to which is like a religious commitment, is not a religion strictly speaking.  

Are men of science men of faith?  Of course.  They have faith in the intelligibility of nature and in the uniformity of nature, and they hold this faith beyond what they have actually verified.  They have faith that the future will be like the past.  But no good purpose is served by conflating this sort of faith with specifically religious faith.  You cannot effectively defend religion against the attacks of scientistic scientists and their literary (Hitchens) and philosophical (Dennett) fellow travelers by saying that the attackers themselves have various faith commitments.

 

 

On ‘Spirituality’