{"id":5955,"date":"2016-12-14T05:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-12-14T05:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/12\/14\/searle-on-religion\/"},"modified":"2016-12-14T05:46:31","modified_gmt":"2016-12-14T05:46:31","slug":"searle-on-religion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2016\/12\/14\/searle-on-religion\/","title":{"rendered":"Searle on Religion"},"content":{"rendered":"

For some religion is too good to be true. For others it would be awful if true.  And then there are the indifferent for whom religion is simply not an issue.  Among the latter are those who consider talk of religion to be in bad taste in polite society.  <\/span><\/p>\n

In <\/span>Mind, Language and Society<\/span><\/a>, John R. Searle writes:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In earlier generations, books like this one would have had to contain either an atheistic attack on or a theistic defense of traditional religion. [. . .] Nowadays nobody bothers, and it is considered in slightly bad taste to even raise the question of God's existence. Matters of religion are like matters of sexual preference: they are not to be discussed in public, and even the abstract questions are discussed only by bores.<\/span><\/p>\n

What has happened? [. . .] I believe that something much more radical than a decline in religious belief has taken place. For us, the educated members of society, the world has become demystified. . . . we no longer take the mysteries we see in the world as expressions of supernatural meaning. We no longer think of odd occurrences as cases of God performing speech acts in the language of miracles. Odd occurrences are just occurrences we do not understand. The result of this demystification is that we have gone beyond atheism to the point where the issue no longer matters in the way it did to earlier generations. (pp. 34-35)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

My commentary on this Searle-y passage here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
<\/a>Where Are the Honest Atheists?<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>Atheism and Ontological Simplicity: A Retraction and a Repair<\/a><\/div>\n
<\/a>God and Socrates: Two Different Ways of Existing?<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For some religion is too good to be true. For others it would be awful if true.  And then there are the indifferent for whom religion is simply not an issue.  Among the latter are those who consider talk of religion to be in bad taste in polite society.   In Mind, Language and Society, … Continue reading “Searle on Religion”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[139],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5955","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955","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=5955"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5955\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5955"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5955"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5955"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}