Religion – Page 25 – Maverick Philosopher

The Inconceivable

It is arguable that all religions and salvation-paths point to the Inconceivable and terminate in it if terminus they have. The Nibbana of the Pali Buddhists. The ontologically simple God of Thomas Aquinas. A theory of the Inconceivable would have to show that it is rationally admissible that there be something that cannot be grasped rationally. The theory would not be a grasping, but a pointing to the possibility of the Ungraspable. It would include a discursive refutation of all attempts at foreclosing on this possibility. The theory would deploy itself on the discursive plane, but the purpose of it would be to point one beyond the discursive plane, to make a place, as it were, for the possibility of the Transdiscursive.

But such a philosophical project is self-contradictory. If you say that the Inconceivable is possibly existent, then you exclude its necessary nonexistence. You make a determinate predication of the Inconceivable and therefore think it, conceive it, as having the property predicated. But then you fall into contradiction by affirming something of that of which nothing can be affirmed. There is no transcending the duality of thought if you are to think at all. A 'theory' that consists of a pointing to the Transdiscursive must needs be gibberish. The Real is exhausted by the discursively graspable. Outside it, nothing.

Is this a good objection or not?

A Pieperian Argument for Doxastic Voluntarism

Josef Pieper (1904-1997) is a 20th century German Thomist. I read his Belief and Faith as an undergraduate and am now [December 2007] re-reading it very carefully. It is an excellent counterbalance to a lot of the current analytic stuff on belief and doxastic voluntarism. What follows is my reconstruction of Pieper's argument for doxastic voluntarism in Belief and Faith. His thesis, to be found in Augustine and Aquinas, is that "Belief rests upon volition." (p. 27. Augustine, De praedestinatione Sanctorum, cap. 5, 10: [Fides] quae in voluntate est . . . .) I shall first present the argument in outline, and then comment on the premises and inferences.

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The Philosopher and the Religionist

The philosopher and the religionist need each other's virtues. The philosopher needs reverence to temper his analytic probing and humility to mitigate the arrogance of his high-flying inquiry and overconfident reliance on his magnificent yet paltry powers of thought. The religionist needs skepticism to limit his gullibility, logical rigor to discipline his tendency toward blind fideism, and balanced dialectic to chasten his disposition to fanaticism.

The Supernatural and the Miraculous

I think it is important to distinguish the supernatural from the miraculous especially inasmuch as their conflation aids and abets the 'Dawkins Gang.' (That's my mocking moniker for Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, Hitchens, and their fellow travellers.) Let's briefly revisit Daniel Dennett's definition of religions as

. . . social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.(Breaking the Spell, p. 9, emphasis added)

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Faith and Prayer: The Case of Ron Franz

One of the minor characters of Jon Krakauer's Into the Wild is the old man to whom Krakauer gave the name 'Ron Franz.' He was 80 years old when his and Christopher McCandless's paths crossed. McCandless made indelible impressions on the people he met, but he affected Franz more than anyone else, so much so that the old man with no surviving next of kin wanted to adopt the 24 year old as his grandson. The story of their encounter is recounted in the chapter entitled 'Anza-Borrego' and is also well told in the movie version of Krakauer's book. Franz came to pin his hopes on the remarkable young man and longed for his return from Alaska. When he heard from a hitchhiker that McCandless had died, he and his faith were shattered:

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Simone Weil and Generic Wretchedness

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace, tr. Emma Craufurd, Routledge 1995, p. 70:

The extreme affliction which overtakes human beings does not create human misery, it merely reveals it.

This suggests one of several tests you might apply to yourself to see if you have a religious 'bent' or sensibility, or orientation toward life, or however you wish to phrase it. If, upon reading the Weilian line, a 'yes!' wells up in you, then the chances are excellent that you are religiously inclined. If your response is in the negative, however, or if you are just puzzled, then that indicates that you lack the religious attitude.

I offer the following, from an earlier post, as a partial unpacking of the Weil quotation:

A Pascalian Indication of Our Fallenness

Edward T. Oakes in a fine article quotes Pascal:

The greatness of man is so evident that it is even proved by his wretchedness. For what in animals is called nature we call wretchedness in man; by which we recognize that, his nature now being like that of animals, he has fallen from a better nature which once was his. For who is unhappy at not being a king except a deposed king? Who is unhappy at having only one mouth? And who is not unhappy at having only one eye? Probably no one ever ventured to mourn at not having three eyes; but anyone would be inconsolable at having none.

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Philosopher of Religion Complains, “I Don’t Get No Respect”

Like Rodney Dangerfield, we philosophers of religion get no respect. As philosopher of religion Nelson Pike puts it,

If you are in a company of people of mixed occupations, and somebody asks what you do, and you say you are a college professor, a glazed look comes into his eye. If you are in a company of professors from various departments, and somebody asks what is your field, and you say philosophy, a glazed look comes into the eye. If you are at a conference of philosophers, and somebody asks what you are working on, and you say philosophy of religion . . . [Quoted in D. Dennett, Breaking the Spell, 2006, p. 33)

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Conservatism, Religion, and Money-Grubbing

This from a reader in Scotland:

I'm a first year undergraduate philosophy student with some very muddled political views. My father has always been a staunch supporter of the Left to the point of being prejudiced against all things on the conservative or Right side as 'religious' and 'money grubbing' . I never questioned any of his beliefs until perhaps a year or two ago. Now that I have began studying philosophy I cannot ignore this lazy neglect and the time has come to develop my own political views.

The next time you talk to your father point out to him that there is nothing in the nature of conservatism to require that a conservative be religious. There are conservative theists, but also plenty of conservative atheists. (I am blurring the distinction between religion and theism, but for present purposes this is not a problem.) Below you mention David Horowitz. The Left hates him for being an apostate, but his conversion to conservatism did not make a theist of him. He is an agnostic. Conservatism at one end shades off into libertarianism, one of the main influences on which is Ayn Rand. She was a strident atheist.

Opposition to conservatism is often fueled by opposition to religion. But surely one can be conservative without being religious just as one can be religious without being conservative. There is a religious Right, but there is also a religious Left, despite the fact that 'religious Left' is a phrase rarely heard. Here in the States a lot of liberal/left mischief originates from the Reverend Jesse Jackson, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (One may well doubt whether these gentlemen are worthy of the 'R' honorific.)

As for 'money-grubbing,' you might point out to your father that there are money-grubbers on both the Right and the Left, and that there is nothing in the nature of conservatism to require that a conservative be a money-grubber. In fact, studies have shown that conservatives are much more charitable and generous than liberals/leftists. See Conservatives are More Liberal Givers. It is sometimes said that capitalism has its origin in greed. But this is no more true than that socialism has its origin in envy.

To feel envy is to feel diminished by the success or well-being of others. Now suppose someone were to claim that socialism is nothing be a reflection of envy: a socialist is one who cannot stand that others have things that he lacks. Driven by envy alone, he advocates a socio-political arrangment in which the government controls everything from the top, levelling all differences of money and status, so that all are equal. Surely it would be unfair to make such a claim. Socialism does not have its origin in envy, but in a particular understanding of justice and what justice demands. Roughly, the idea is that justice demands an equal distribution of money, status and other social goods. Conservatives of course disagree with this understanding of justice. What we have are competing theories of justice. Just as it is a cheap shot to reduce socialism to envy, it is a cheap shot to reduce a free market approach to greed.

It was namely for the philosophical content that I started reading your blog but I gradually became enthralled with your conservative views . They have uprooted many of my fickle Left-leaning political ideas . Now I am left increasingly uncertain about many political questions that I commonly held as beautifully obvious. I have began noticing the phenomenon of 'political correctness ' at University and am not entirely sure what to think of it.

Are there specific books you recommend for anyone who wants to find some sense in this Liberal climate ? I have been considering picking up some of Horowitz' writings.

I am glad that my writing has had the effect of opening new perspectives for you. Unfortunately, universities have become hotbeds of political correctness and indoctrination when they should be places where ideas of all sorts are critically and openly examined. I would recommend Horowitz to you, in particular, Destructive Generation, Left Illusions, Radical Son, and Unholy Alliance. He has also written a couple of books on the politicization of the universities. Among academic philosophers, I recommend the works of John Kekes.

Is Religion Dangerous? Is Philosophy?

Is Religion Dangerous? is the title of a very good book by Keith Ward (Lion Hudson, 2006). It is a good answer to the Dawkins-Hitchens junk-critique of religion as dangerous. I've got the book on loan from the local university library, but some fellow had the chutzpah to issue a recall. So I must return the book today, and cannot say anything further about it until I get it back again.

Consider the parallel question, Is philosophy dangerous?

The question makes little sense seeing as how there is no such thing as philosophy as doctrinal system. There are only philosophies, many of them, in conflict with one another. At most one could say that there is philosophy as a type of inquiry. (But the minute we ask what type of inquiry, by what method or methods, we will find ourselves confronted with a host of competing metaphilosophical answers. The nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question, and metaphilosophy, despite the meta, is a branch of philosophy.)

One cannot therefore sensibly ask whether philosophy is dangerous. There is no such doctrinal system as philosophy. One can, however, sensibly ask whether, say, Kant's philosophy is dangerous. The same goes for religion. It makes little or no sense to ask whether religion is dangerous. For there is no such thing as religion as a system of doctrines and practices. One can however ask, with a show of sense, whether Islam is dangerous. But even here one must be careful. No doubt certain sects of Islam are dangerous as hell, but would you say the same about Sufism, Islam's mystical branch? The Whirling Dervishes of Konya seem not to be much of a threat to anyone.

To Understand the Religious Sensibility . . .

. . . two books are essential: Augustine's Confessions and Pascal's Pensées. If you read these books and they do not speak to you, if they do not move you, then it is a good bet that you don't have a religious bone in your body. It is not matter of intelligence but of sensibility. "He didn't have a religious bone in his body." I recall that line from Stephanie Lewis' obituary for her husband David, perhaps the most brilliant American philosopher of the postwar period. He was highly intelligent and irreligious. Others are highly intelligent and religious. Among contemporary philosophers one could mention Alvin Plantinga, Peter van Inwagen, and Richard Swinburne. The belief that being intelligent rules out being religious casts doubt on the intelligence of those who hold it.

Pavel Tichý on Whether ‘God’ is the Name of an Individual

This post is the third in a series on Pavel Tichý's "Existence and God" (J. Phil., August 1979, 403-420). So far I have sketched his theory of existence, made a couple of objections, and refuted his argument for it. I now turn to section II of his article (pp. 410-412) in which he discusses Descartes' Meditation Five ontological argument. But in this post I will address only the preliminaries to the discussion of Descartes. Tichý writes,

We have seen that 'Jimmy Carter' and 'the U. S. president' are terms of completely different typological categories: 'Jimmy Carter' denotes an individual, and 'the U. S. president' denotes something for an individual to be, an individual-office. Which of the two categories does the term 'God' belong to? It would be patently implausible to construe it as belonging to the former category. If 'God' were simply the name of an individual, it would be a purely contingent matter whether God is benevolent or not; for any individual is conceivably malicious. But of course the notion of a malevolent God is absurd. If so, however, God cannot be an individual; God is bound to be rather something for an individual to be, and benevolence must be part of what it takes for someone to be it. In other words, 'God' must stand for an individual office, and benevolence must be one of the requisites that make up the essence of that office.

It is only because 'God' denotes an individual-office that we can sensibly ask whether God exists. To ask, Does God exist? is not to ask whether something is true regarding a definite individual; for which individual would it be? It is rather to ask whether, of all the individuals there are, one has what it takes to be God. It is to ask, in other words, whether the divine office is occupied. (410-411)

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From the Mail: On the Truth of Religion

This from a U. K. reader:

In your 'Maverick Philosopher' blog post on Friday 16th October, you address Carlo Strenger's Guardian article 'Atheism: Class is a distraction' and I think you have done the author a disservice.

You rightly point out that the argument "All Religions contradict one another, therefore no religion is correct" is a decidedly poor one. This is not however, what the author is trying to say.

"According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage."

Strenger's point is not that 'because religions contradict each other, no religion can be true' but that given these contradictions, one cannot use the fact that 85% of the world's population are religious as support for religion's truth. If 85% of the world's population believe that humans cause global warming, that, at least prima facie, provides support for the theory. If however every one of that 85% has a different and non-compatible version of the theory then the fact is meaningless in this regard. Strenger goes on to use this statistic to support his view that religion has an easier time in the 'market of ideas'.

This is a charitable and creative interpretation of Stenger's meaning, and it may well be what he had in mind, though it is not quite what his words say. In any case, let's be charitable and construe Stenger's meaning as my U. K. correspondent does. Accordingly, the fact (assuming it is one) that 85% of the world's population is religious does not support the view that religion is true because the various religions contradict one another.

But what is meant by 'religion is true'? Religion is an abstraction; in concrete reality there are a large number of religions. 'Religion is true' could mean that (a) every religion is true; that (b) some one particular religion is true ; that (c) some religion or other is true; or that (d) one or more propositions that capture the essence of all religions are true.

Now it is obvious that the fact that 85% of the world's population is religious does not support the view that every religion is true. But then no reasonable person would suggest such a thing. So we can exclude (a). If this is what Stenger has in mind, then he is beating a dead horse.

It is also clear that the fact in question does not support the view that some one particular religion is true, Theravada Buddhism for example. But then no reasonable person would take it mean such a thing. So (b) ought to be excluded as well.

Does the fact that 85% of the world's population is religious support the view that some religion or other is true? Well, it might, especially if we take 'some religion or other' to range over both extant (actual) religions and possible religions. The fact that religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices are widespread in time and space does lend some inductive support to the thesis that some religion or other, a religion yet to be worked out perhaps, is true.

My last suggestion is that 'Religion is true' could be taken to mean that one or more propositions that capture the essence of all extant religions are true. I grant that it is not obvious that religions share a common essence. It may be that the various religions are related by Wittgensteinian 'family resemblances.' And so it is not clear that there is a set of propositions that all religions worthy of the name give expression to. But it is arguable that there is such a set. The fact that 85% of the world's population is religious would then provide some support for the truth of the propositions in this set.

If Religions Contradict Each Other, Does it Follow that No Religion is True?

This from a piece in guardian.co.uk:

According to the Pew survey, 85% of humanity is religious in some way, and that's probably a low estimate, since nobody knows the true figures about China. This doesn't mean that religion is true (it can't, because religions contradict each other), but that there are strong cognitive and motivational factors that give religions an evolutionary advantage in the market of ideas. A scientific worldview is cognitively and emotionally more difficult, and hence at a disadvantage.

This passage cries out for logico-philosophical analysis. One of the claims that the author is making is that religion cannot be true because religions contradict each other. What this presumably means is that no religion can be true because every religion contradicts every other religion. If so, we are being offered the following argument: (1) Every religion contradicts every other other religion; therefore, (2) no religion is true. I grant the premise arguendo. In any case, it is plausible. To supply an example, Christians affirm what both Jews and Muslims deny, namely, that Jesus of Nazareth is God incarnate. So there is no question but that some religions contradict other religions in respect of some doctrinal propositions. (But it is also true that some religions agree with other religions in respect of some doctrinal propositions. For example, the three Abrahamic religions all agree on the proposition that God exists, and on plenty of others.)

Generalizing, we can say that every religion contradicts every other religion in the sense that no two religions share all the same central doctrinal commitments. (I will refine this in a moment.) So even though Christianity and Islam agree that there is but one God, they disagree on whether this one God is triune. And although Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians agree on much, they disagree on the filioque. To make this a bit more precise, I suggest the following definition:

Religion R contradicts religion R* =_df there is some central doctrinal proposition p which is affirmed by the adherents of R but denied by the adherents of R* or vice versa.

If this is what we mean by one religion contradicting another, then most religions contradict most other religions. But consider a religion that affirms the existence of an immortal soul and another that takes no position on this question — neither affirming nor denying an immortal soul — on the ground that worrying about this doctrinal point merely distracts one from the unum necessarium, namely, working out one's salvation with diligence. Assume further that these two religions are otherwise completely alike as to doctrine. These two religions do not contradict each other by the above definition.

So one may wonder about the truth of (1). For the sake of argument, however, let's grant it. Our main question is whether (2) follows from (1). It obviously does not. Consider Christianity and Islam. They contradict each other by the definition I just gave. But it doesn't follow that both are false. For it could be that one is true and the other false.

Our author has committed an egregious logical blunder. The logical mistake is not confined to the context of religon. Suppose you and I disagree on any sort of point at all. Suppose you affirm that anthropogenic global warming is taking place and I deny it. It does not follow from our disagreement that we are both wrong. What follows is that one of us is right and the other wrong. This follows from the Law of Non-Contradiction according to which, necessarily, one member of a pair of contradictory propositions is true and the other not true.

The rest of the article is equally pisspoor as you may discover for yourself.

Pessimistic Thoughts on Political Discourse in America

The following piece was written on 12 April 2006. I repost it, slightly emended, because events since then have led me to believe that the grounds for pessimism are even stronger now than they were before. It is becoming increasingly clear that conservatives and liberals/leftists live on 'different planets.' And it is becoming increasingly clear which planet bears the name 'Reality.' A return to federalism may help mitigate tensions, as I suggest here. But that is not likely to happen.

………………………….

A few nights ago on C-Span I listened to a talk by Mark Crispin Miller given at the University of Massachusetts (Amherst). His theme was that of a book he had authored alleging that the 2004 election was stolen by the Republicans and how democracy is dead in the USA. Not having read Crispin's book, I cannot comment on it. But I will offer a few remarks on his talk.

Miller, a tenured professor at New York University, is obviously intelligent and highly articulate and entertaining to listen to, his mannerisms and delivery reminiscent of Woody Allen. He takes himself to be a defender of the values of the Enlightenment. But then so do I. So here is the beginning of a 'disconnect.' From my point of view, Miller is an extremist motivated by the standard Leftist fear of, and hostility toward, religion. (Miller's NYU colleague, Thomas Nagel, owns up to his fear of religion, as I document here.) Miller's hostility was betrayed a dozen or so times during his speech by mocking turns of phrase. But of course he doesn't see himself as an extremist but as a sober defender of values he feels are threatened by Christian Reconstructionism, also know as Dominion Theology.

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