{"id":12276,"date":"2009-10-29T11:10:04","date_gmt":"2009-10-29T11:10:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/29\/is-religion-dangerous-is-philosophy\/"},"modified":"2009-10-29T11:10:04","modified_gmt":"2009-10-29T11:10:04","slug":"is-religion-dangerous-is-philosophy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/29\/is-religion-dangerous-is-philosophy\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Religion Dangerous?  Is Philosophy?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Religion-Dangerous-Keith-Ward\/dp\/0802845088\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Is Religion Dangerous?<\/font><\/a><font face=\"Georgia\"> is the title of a very good book by Keith Ward (Lion Hudson, 2006).&#0160; It is a good answer to the Dawkins-Hitchens junk-critique of religion as dangerous.&#0160; I&#39;ve got the book on loan from the local university library, but some fellow had the chutzpah to issue a recall.&#0160; So I must return the book today, and cannot say anything further about it until I get it back again.<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">Consider the parallel question, Is philosophy dangerous?&#0160; <\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">The question makes little sense seeing as how there is no such thing as philosophy as doctrinal system.&#0160; There are only philosophies, many of them, in conflict with one another.&#0160; At most one could say that there is philosophy as a type of inquiry.&#0160; (But the minute we ask <em>what<\/em> type of inquiry, by <em>what<\/em> method or methods, we will find ourselves confronted with a host of competing metaphilosophical &#0160;answers.&#0160; The nature of philosophy is itself a philosophical question, and metaphilosophy, despite the <em>meta<\/em>, is a branch of philosophy.)<\/font><\/p>\n<p style=\"TEXT-ALIGN: justify\"><font face=\"Georgia\">One cannot therefore sensibly ask whether philosophy is dangerous.&#0160; There is no such doctrinal system as philosophy.&#0160; One can, however, sensibly ask whether, say, Kant&#39;s philosophy is dangerous.&#0160; The same goes for religion.&#0160; It makes little or no sense to ask whether religion is dangerous.&#0160; For there is no such thing as religion as a system of doctrines and practices.&#0160; One can however ask, with a show of sense, whether Islam is dangerous.&#0160; But even here one must be careful.&#0160; No doubt certain sects of Islam are dangerous as hell, but would you say the same about Sufism, Islam&#39;s mystical branch?&#0160; The Whirling Dervishes of Konya seem not to be much of a threat to anyone.<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Is Religion Dangerous? is the title of a very good book by Keith Ward (Lion Hudson, 2006).&#0160; It is a good answer to the Dawkins-Hitchens junk-critique of religion as dangerous.&#0160; I&#39;ve got the book on loan from the local university library, but some fellow had the chutzpah to issue a recall.&#0160; So I must return &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2009\/10\/29\/is-religion-dangerous-is-philosophy\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Is Religion Dangerous?  Is Philosophy?&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12276"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12276\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}