Think Again

This:

““What other symbolic form,” he queries, “has managed to forge such direct links between the most universal and absolute of truths and the everyday practices of countless millions of men and women?”

Eagleton acknowledges that the links forged are not always benign — many terrible things have been done in religion’s name — but at least religion is trying for something more than local satisfactions”

struck me as odd. Christianity is specifically what they’re talking about, not religion, which is very often entirely about local satisfactions.

I’m reluctant to make fun of Eagleton without actually reading him, because he has been misrepresented to me by people enthusiastic about him in ways that suggest making fun is appropriate only to find out, when reading him, that what he has to say is clever, insightful and interesting. Annoying!

Without contributing to his coffers, this is a reasonable summary (in his own words) of Terry Eagleton’s thoughts on the topic. I have to say that it makes some rather strange assumptions, and wilful disregard of Christianity as she is practised, in its attack on Dawkins.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v28/n20/eagl01_.html

“Christianism”: I’m pretty sure I intended to type “Christianity”

This part’s more fun.

“[B]elieving that religion is a botched attempt to explain the world . . . is like seeing ballet as a botched attempt to run for a bus.” Running for a bus is a focused empirical act and the steps you take are instrumental to its end. The positions one assumes in ballet have no such end; they are after something else, and that something doesn’t yield to the usual forms of measurement. Religion,Eagleton is saying, is like ballet (and Chekhov); it’s after something else.

So, the purpose of religion is aesthetic? It speaks to our limbic systems’ exadaptive capacity to feel a whelming sense of bond/connection/empathy in response to evocative or communicative sensory data? I’ve never had a proponent of religion suggest this clearly that the purpose of religion is identical to the purpose of storytelling. Hm.

[Aside: it’s my understanding that what it means to be “moved” by a ballet, or by a Chekhov story, is beginning to be well-explored within neuroscience (fun easy-read popularizations here and here). Within a few generations, it seems reasonable to expect that the broad-strokes analysis of the physiological mechanisms underlying aesthetic appreciation will fall in the realm of applied science / neurology. A quick comment bleg – is there anyone around whose expertise falls roughly into this realm, who could mention some researchers / research programs who are currently doing reliable / frequently-cited studies of these mechanisms? I’d love to hear, and it seems relevant to this comment thread because Fish/Eagleton are building their case on this analogy.]

…

Shorter rest of the article: liberals don’t believe in the coming kingdom of God because they believe in the coming kingdom of Man.

Shorter problems with Fish’s article: straw man argument, due to false dichotomy. That’s strong evidence that this is a polemic piece, designed to aggravate and rally rather than analyze or assess. So, I guess there’s no point in engaging with it too deeply.

i thought this piece by eagleton (subscribers only unfortunately) did a slightly better job of handwaving at some of the contradictions in liberal secular positivism (or whatever it’s called)

I gave up on the piece early, when I got to the part where Fish opines that science should not be held responsible for not asking or answering the question of why anything exists in the first place because that’s not what science does. Maybe he should trot down to the physics department for one of their bag lunch research seminars or something? Or, I don’t know, read a book about what contemporary physics is up to? Maybe he’d like to know what NASA is spending his tax dollars on, such as the upcoming Planck mission?

If most religious believers believed in the kind of content-free religionism that carefully avoids saying anything that might possibly be shown to be false, the angry atheists of the world would not exist. Eagleton, et al., who affect to be above the vulgar theological errors of the rubes whose religion actually says something, are really saying nothing more to the angry atheists than: “Well of course I don’t believe that sort of rubbish, but you haven’t said anything about what I believe — whatever that is.”

By theological questions, Eagleton means questions like, “Why is there anything in the first place?”, “Why what we do have is actually intelligible to us?” and “Where do our notions of explanation, regularity and intelligibility come from?”

I was under the impression that science does address these questions. Eagleton and Fish have presumably heard of cosmology and neuroscience. So perhaps they are using some occult meaning of the word “why” to make these questions extra-scientific?

I gave up on the piece early, when I got to the part where Fish opines that science should not be held responsible for not asking or answering the question of why anything exists in the first place because that’s not what science does.

Granted, Fish is completely right.

No science will ever answer a literal question of this form. Even asking the question is problematic, because there’s an implicit assumption that there is some coherent justification for “why” matter exists.

This idea of “purpose” as justification is very human. Some caution with language and intent is necessary here. One could say the “purpose” of a pigeon’s wings is to enable flight, but within this discussion it would be better to say “the pigeon can fly because it can flap its wings to achieve the necessary loft.” This is not an ontological statement, and does not address “why” the bird has wings; it’s more an identification of the characteristics of flight-enabling wings.

To ask, “what purpose does this have?” implies the thing in question was made for a purpose, by some entity capable of making things for a purpose. It’s the kind of question you’d expect humans to ask, given that so many of us spend our lives making purposeful things, or contributing to the production of purposeful things. We, especially those of us who think about and analyze the experience of human beings, are inclined to think in terms of purpose. So, we’re inclined (at least our naive intuition is inclined) to conflate consequence with purpose.

In the case of matter, the existence of an inhabitable world, or the particular shape of a coastline, there’s just no compelling reason to entertain that equivocation.

Noisy atheism is ambrosia for people who like to argue but hate the possibility of being shown to be wrong.

Oh, horse pucky. That’s actually a perfect description of people who waste their time constructing gauzy, too-content-free-to-be-refutable forms of “religion” so that they can complain about those horrible blue meanie atheists.

eagleton is also a wily intellectual opportunist — indeed wily enough that i frankly doubt this quality can be amplified by filtration

dawkins is by no means wily or opportunist, and not much of an intellectual outside his own discipline — certainly he has very little cultural curiosity

the point about the ballet argument is that — even when the great day comes that science explains our attraction to its forms, and sense of what’s excellent in it and what isn’t — we will not on that day stop finding value in ballet itself and turn only to books on neuroscience: “why it works” and “how to do it” are different kinds of knowledge (as anyone trying to translate music theory to listenable music performance can tell you)

does this translate into the knowledge that churches have that science doesn’t? eagleton is making a masked burkean argument, isn’t he? burkleton is suggesting that there is social practice and resistance and sense of community (the practical “how to do it” of a culture) built into and around its institutions which we would be wise not merely to sweep away thoughtlessly in the name of current explanatory theory (with all its links to the technocratic management class, within so-called “rationalist” culture)?

the irony here being that hitchens is the one who has lately made the great burkean trek across the political floor…

conclusion: they are all rogues (except dawkins, who is a bit of a hapless numptie, or “bright”, in his own doomed coining)

I went looking for an original quote, Birth of Tragedy I think, but I liked this paraphrase by Jorge Bonilla:”Only as an aesthetic product can the world be justified to all eternity…” I also thought I might look for Nietzsche on positivism, but why bother.

It doesn’t even occur to them, apparently, to try to get these panglossians to read the newspaper? Which. would. refute. them?

No, it wouldn’t. Because the world is not uncovered or discovered, and facts cannot refute faith, nihilism, hope, or despair. The world is created. Now PZ & Dawkins might admit that science is bull, just a more useful delusion than religion, but utilititarianism, well, N dealt with that well enough. Seems to me that science is where I smell the vengeful & judgemental ressentiment, the moralism of modern revelations. Applied neurology will justify our values? Right.

Can’t you both be right?

Heh. I enjoy questions that can be resolved via polling.

I think everyone’s been a bit too harsh on the column. There’s a lot to criticize – in particular, I think Rorty has a lot to offer in terms of refutation of the idea that the philosophically “self-sufficient” will see no use for “hope.”

But the push back against the absurd certainty of the new atheists that Fish has offered in multiple columns should be welcomed.

To me, the important takeaway is just this:

“Meaning, value and truth are not “reducible to the facts themselves, in the sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.” Which is to say that there is no such thing as a bare account of them. (Here, as many have noted, is where religion and postmodernism meet.)”

“There he is!” Viy cried and fixed an iron finger on him. And all that were there fell upon the philosopher.

Walter, it’s precisely on questions of meaning and value )as well as ethics) that religion, as compared to art or, on its best days, even philosophy, has at best platitudes, and at worst sheer atavistic barbarism, to offer. (I assume your use of the word “truth” in this context was meant as a bad joke. )

I love how Eagleton (both from here and the Salon excerpts from about a week ago) seems to be describing a sort of Christianity adhered to by about 0.001% of Christians.

That’s why, instead of showy atheism, I like the relatively muted apathetic agnosticism better: not only am I not buying what you’re selling, I don’t want it for free either. Get off my lawn.

john at 35: it may not matter whether idealist A ever makes claim B, if the institution idealist A works for and within (let us call it institution C) in effect unavoidably establishes claim B… this is (i think) sortakinda-marxist eagleton’s sortakinda point here

(since by any reasonable metric eagleton also works for institution C, there’s a lot of heavy lifting being done offstage, as usual: and he is of course being fantastically slippery, as several ppl have noted, about his own beliefs, viz (papal) institution D — still, the notion of a checks-and-balances set-up between formally incommensurable institutions is not inherently politically absurd, as a guarantee of something-or-other nice… tho not as a rule much cheered on by sortakinda-marxists… )

I couldn’t read Fish. He meanders on and on so much about nothing. They don’t teach getting to the point in whatever benighted department he got educated in either.

Also, can we please invent a time machine to deliver all of these people to some time before the Enlightenment that they hate so much?

(at 40 i’m using “establishes” in the sense of the “established church”, not in the sense of “since we have established delta is a right triangle)

(and at “(papal)” i should probably have said “(papal and/or ‘sorta-kinda revolutionary’)”)

Also:

a) What’s wrong with cold-hearted reductionism? Particularly, while talk about meaning and value can only end in tears with the religious crowd, certainly truth is, in fact “reducible to the facts themselves.” I daresay no reduction, in the sense of some thing some person actively does to the truth is even necessary. Truth already is the facts themselves. What else might it be?

b) Kathleen, when most religious people believe a stupid and vicious thought process, and atheists are trying to argue against what people actually believe (shameless plug), pointing out the stupidity and viciousness of “if you don’t agree with me Satan will waterboard your ass for all eternity” is precisely to the point.

Steve –

The use of “truth” was not mine, but rather a quotation from the piece.

Your description of religious ethics as “platitudes” or “barbarous” can only make sense relative to some presupposed ethical perspective, which is entirely the point.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that you’re not comfortable with certain religious principles or with the consequences of religion in certain cases.

There’s nothing wrong with pointing out that analytic philosophers generally don’t find arguments over the existence of god very compelling. (I like this overview of that subject: http://bostonreview.net/BR34.1/byrne.php)

I fear the tendency of a certain type of rationalist to mistakenly treat statements about meaning or even ethics in the context of scientific rationality.

But John, your point is well taken. I’m not intimately familiar with Ditchkins’ arguments, and so maybe there’s less to push back against than I thought.

Also, for what it’s worth, I’m an atheist.

third, do the atheist QED victory dance.

No religionist would do such a victory dance if he felt he had a winning argument.

Salient@8

You can check out my Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (Basic 2001), which covers some of the neuro musical stuff (and was reviewed in Science and Nature).

In general, there’s a lot of work on music and emotion, e.g. Patrik Juslin and John Sloboda, eds. Music and Emotion: Theory and Research (Oxford UP).

There’s Robert Zatorre at McGill and Isabelle Peretz at U Montreal. Anne Blood has done some key brain imaging work on music and emotion; I believe she’s at Harvard these days.

Uri Hassan at NYU is doing interesting work on neuroimaging response to film, e.g. Hasson et al. “Neurocinematics: The Neuroscience of Film,” Projections 2, 1-26, 2008.

Semir Zeki has written a book on neural response to visual art.

46: Let’s be accurate- it’s God who will be doing the waterboarding according to most accounts. You and Satan will be board buddies.

Fish (like Hitchens) is these days just out to annoy people. I won’t defend every position Eagleton takes, but he does deserve to be read carefully, and he clearly scores versus Dawkins who, like his many fans above, will not allow the possibility of religious *thinking* in any active, interesting sense.

If you want to engage thought as thought, then Eagleton’s point holds that you need to read and engage with religious thinkers. If you refuse that on the grounds that these are just a few theologians and demotic religion is something else entirely, fine, but then you have a problem of history and social science in pinning that thing down and studying it properly. There’s plenty of interesting work along these lines, but generalizing from tales of stupidity and viciousness falls, ahem, short of the rigor to which people who claim to be rationalists should aspire.

Christopher Hitchens may be an Islamophobe, but he’s not an intellectual. I really, really, really wish people would stop lumping him and Dawkins in together. To see the difference, just read both The God Delusion and God is Not Great. The former is intelligent and thoughtful, even if it may not engage the latest theologian’s version of the expressivist god. The latter is, well, bring your barf bag.

Shorter Danby #55: [courtier’s reply]

If I want to learn more about religious thought- as I do, since it’s a very important aspect of human behavior- I turn, neither to apologists nor to Dawkhitch, but to the likes of Pascal Boyer.

Why is that a “trouble” for ME, Colin? I already said that for serious study of “religion” I turn not to the dynamic duo but to someone like Boyer, precisely the kind of person you’re talking about, and one of whose major points is in fact that “religion” is really not a coherent category. Please reply to your actual interlocutors rather than to straw men.

Hi all,

I’ve read a reasonable amount of “old Eagleton” and no new Eagleton, but I’d be very interested in anyone’s thoughts on the relation between the two. Frankly, this religion wheeze of his came as a complete surprise to me and left me wondering what I’d been missing in the earlier stuff. Any thoughts would be appreciated.

frowner, there was a letter in the lrb recently what quoted maurice bowra* cheerfully giving himself a pat on the back for giving eagleton tenure (or whatever the term was), precisely because TE was publicly a committed marxist and a committed catholic

*do i mean maurice bowra? him or someone i always confuse with him

“what quoted” — an example of the quality writing one turns to the lrb for

How you’re squaring the incoherence of religion as a category, Steve, with your various earlier statements about “religion” is unclear to me.

Many things seem unclear to you, Colin. Context is all. I was replying to people, and concerning other people, who are specifically attempting to defend highly deliquescent versions of a specific relioguin, Christianity.

Now do you actually have something to contribute to the discussion, or not? Dark mutterings about “extreme biological reductionism” suggest not.

bowra-eagleton letter somewhere here (scroll down): it’s from nogod-botherer a.n.wilson

Well, Steve, one trouble is that the Dawkins/Hitchens position requires assuming one big object of knowledge called “religion,” plus a whole lot of other assumptions that let them draw easy conclusions about this thing.

That is a variation of courtier’s reply.

Their arguments certainly do not require ‘assuming one big object of knowledge called “religion”’. I’m pretty sure Dawkins or Hitchens do not even claim to be trying to debunk that kind of vague meta-category. They mostly take aim at the actual beliefs and practices of the Abrahamic religions they’re familiar with. To the extent Dawkins tries to generalize, it’s to something like “worship of supernatural creator gods”, which seems like a well enough defined thing to argue with.

And whatever else you think qualifies as “religion”, that’s a pretty large chunk of what’s actually practiced. If anyone in this thread or elsewhere sometimes confuses god belief (or the Abrahamic religions specifically) with some amorphous broader category, that’s at worst a fairly minor semantic error . (And more likely just a matter of understanding the context. )

By the way, the “Dawkins is an extreme biological determinst” wheeze is so crashingly ignorant (and so sure a sign of a scientific illiterate) that it really should be ignored, but just for the record:

I am very comfortable with the idea that we can override biology with free will. Indeed, I encourage people all the time to do it. Much of the message of my first book, “The Selfish Gene,” was that we must understand what it means to be a gene machine, what it means to be programmed by genes, so that we are better equipped to escape, so that we are better equipped to use our big brains, use our conscience intelligence, to depart from the dictates of the selfish genes and to build for ourselves a new kind of life which as far as I am concerned the more un-Darwinian it is the better, because the Darwinian world in which our ancestors were selected is a very unpleasant world. Nature really is red in tooth and claw. And when we sit down together to argue out and discuss and decide upon how we want to run our societies, I think we should hold up Darwinism as an awful warning for how we should not organize our societies.

What Dawkins has had to say about genetics and human evolution is *wrong*. It’s so totally, atrociously, and embarrassingly wrong he’s given up writing about it and turned to God. Ditto Hitchens.

Kathleen, you’re an idiot. As a biologist I can tell you that Dawkins is a genuine biologist who has made important and permanent contributions to evolutionary theory.

Of all our superstitions surely the belief in free will conflicts the most directly with the scientific worldview.

Speak for yourself. I am not responsible for your cognitive limitations. A nice example, though, of the rhetorical use of “surely” to disguise the entire absence of an argument.

What Dawkins has had to say about genetics and human evolution is wrong.

Please provide some evidence or citation to support this. This isn’t to say I disagree with you, but “totally, atrociously, and embarrassingly wrong” is a strong claim and some kind of reference or detail would be appreciated.

As a biologist I can tell you that Dawkins is a genuine biologist who has made important and permanent contributions to evolutionary theory.

That’s what I thought (being an outsider to the field, I have no room to be assertive), but maybe Kathleen’s referring to the various accusations that Dawkins stepped outside his jurisdiction? I thought most of those criticisms were handily dispensed with, but I’d be curious to hear more precisely what she’s referring to.

If Eagleton’s proposal to consider the religious as the aesthetic is accepted, we ought to expect to hear fairly traditionally religious people say that “aesthetic” is the correct modern word for what they experience in church and when thinking about the bible. Eventually we might expect to hear that churchgoing is a more aesthetic experience than poetry-reading. We might hear sermons praising an aesthetic appreciation of correct morals.

Are those who speak so confidently about “religion” intimately familiar with the history and content of the various religious worldviews around the world? There’s much that is repulsive in religious thought and practice, especially of the more vulgar and thoughtless kind, but there’s much that is repulsive and vulgar in nationalism, fascism, Maoism, Realpolitik, the ideologies that animate aerial bombing, or factory farming, or our penal system. On balance, I think adherents of religious worldviews rarely come close to these quintessential expressions of barbarity, and in fact have contributed much to what is valuable in modern civizations.

Of course religions are notoriously dangerous when allied to the power of the State and Empire, as the history of Christianity, Islam, and Buddhism attest (and, of late, religious Zionism in Israel). But that hardly tells the whole story of religions around the world (as a famous Hungarian dissident once said, ‘History takes no note of the baby feeding at its mother’s breast.’). In the bulk of items from the twentieth century catalogue of horrors: from King Leopold’s Belgian Congo, through World War War, the bombing of Dresden, Nagasaki and Hiroshima, the Stalinist Gulags, the Holocaust, the Great Chinese Famine (1958-1961), the Chinese Cultural Revolution, colonialism in Indochina, the bombing of Cambodia, the genocidal Khmer Rouge, etc., religions were not the principal cause or among the primary variables of violence.

It’s of course important to fight against all who use their religious beliefs and identification to foment inexcusable ignorance and lies about the natural sciences and scientific theories, or to trample upon European Enlightenment values or the virtues of rationality, or to bully others who respectfully disagree with them, or resort to religious justifications for the resort to collective violence in what are otherwise often political and socio-economic conflicts…. But religions have no monopoly on evil and wickedness, on folly and superstition, on stupidity and violence, and so forth and so on.

Anyway, for a more sympathetic take on religious worldviews that largely avoids intractable theism/atheism debates and polemics, please see the introductions to my posts for the following bibliographies:

Hinduism: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/12/hinduism-selected-bibliography.html

Classical Chinese Worldviews: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/12/classical-chinese-worldviews.html

Buddhism: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/12/buddhism-basic-bibliography.html

Judaism & Jewish Philosophy: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2009/03/judaism-jewish-philosophy-selected.html

Christianity: http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2009/04/christianity-select-bibliography.html

Islam: Forthcoming anon.

New work in molecular genetics but most particularly in evolutionary developmental biology is showing the model of gene function, gene regulation, and thus selection that underpinned Dawkins’ work is fundamentally incorrect.

As a molecular biologist, I call bullshit on this. Any aspect of DNA function that’s visible to selection can properly be treated at the high level of abstraction of population genetics as a “gene” in the specific sense that Dawkins uses the word. Moreover, Dawkins was always quite clear about this.

I’ve run across something like the argument Steve and Kathleen are having before. I’m inclined to agree with Steve, but the work I was doing required me to take people like Kathleen seriously. But I could never figure out why the argument was supposed to be so stunning. What it sounded like to me was, “Genes can’t operate outside specific environments, etc., which also have to be taken into account — therefore, in 10 years scientists will have realized that thinking in terms of genes is totally worthless, and that the existence of the gene was in essence a superstition.”

Mark, to choose just one of your whines for unpacking , here’s the context in which I used the phrase “atavistic barbarism”:

…it’s precisely on questions of meaning and value (as well as ethics) that religion, as compared to art or, on its best days, even philosophy, has at best platitudes, and at worst sheer atavistic barbarism, to offer.

You don’t think that what is offered by, say, the Taliban is properly described as “atavistic barbatism”? I eagerly wait your explication of this claim.

Steve, if you want to continue standing on the deck of that ship as it crunches into the iceberg of evo-devo, you should at least be aware that even Dawkins has jumped that particular Titanic.

I was trained as a devlopmental biologist, I follow current work in evo-devo with great interest despite having left academia, and I say that this claim is plain nonsense. It also suggests that you have no understanding whatsoever of population genetics and have great difficulty in operating on the level of abstraction which it occupies, and in understanding the extent in which such an abstract framework can provide useful insights regardless of the nature of the underlying details (as it was doijng before anything at all was known about those details).

And as I said, Dawkins was always admirably clear about the precise and very abstract sense in which he used the word “gene”, a word with at least as many potentially incompatible meanings as “species”.

Steve: as you probably already suspected, I also smell like poop.

Huh, I think Steve needs to kick out the jams a bit more, personally.

I’m not a molecular biologist, and so while I know some evolutionary theory (mostly on the math end) I’m certainly not in a position to jump in on the debate between Steve and Kathleen, in particular, in any substantive form. But it’s still worth pointing out something here in her comment #91:

[Dawkins] was writing in the space created by the absence of positive knowledge; because of advances within the biological sciences that space is now gone. He has (along with the sociobiologists, who have re-named themselves evolutionary psychologists because of the embarrassments attached to their previous moniker) retreated hastily from many of his earlier positions […]

Wait a second. Is this supposed to be a criticism?! Kathleen, this is called “theory building.” Scientists come up with a theory that matches the limited knowledge they have, and then it gets tested, it gets replaced with better theories, etc. etc. That’s how science works. If Dawkins’s work on genes has been superseded (which I take it is a highly contestable position, and one that Steve is ably contesting, but let’s assume arguendo that it’s true), that hardly means that it didn’t represent a genuine scientific advance or he doesn’t deserve the title of a really good scientist and serious intellectual (unlike Hitchens) as a result. Nor does it mean that the original work was “wrong-headed” or “empty assertions” or “interested, above all, in noisy irrefutable argumentation for its own sake,” or “so totally, atrociously, and embarrassingly wrong,” or any of those other slurs Kathleen keeps throwing at Dawkins in order to suggest that he’s some kind of fraud. Newtonian physics has also been superseded. It doesn’t mean Newton wasn’t a real scientist. Good science gets superseded all the fucking time.

Well, whilst this thread ungently oozes its way to “this thread is now closed for further comments” maybe it is not out of place to wonder why Fish/Eagleton feel compelled to waste their energy on somebody that rarely get exposure in the mass media?

Well, whilst this thread ungently oozes its way to “this thread is now closed for further comments”

Can we all come together on our opinion of Christopher Hitchens?

Theron,

Has science explained what an idea is?

Kathleen: I’m not surprised nobody respectable (who also has some expertise in science) has said that. I read it in one of those popular books on complexity and chaos theory, probably published before the mid-1990s. It would take me a little while to track down which one, assuming the library still has it and/or I took notes.

Philosophy, religion, art, and ethics, for example

One of these things is not like the others,
One of these things just doesn’t belong,
Can you tell which thing is not like the others
By the time I finish my song?

Your response to my statement struck me as a non sequitur, but only because we are talking about rather different things.

No, I think you and Fish are talking about different things, and that’s the clarification I was trying to make. I think Fish is conflating the question “why do birds have wings” (something any geneticist can answer) with “why ought birds have wings?” (something which science can’t answer; the question itself is based on a faulty premise).

Whether or not Fish’s confusion is deliberate or merely fortuitous, it’s not for me to say.

“On a more serious note, it’s way, way past time for people in the humanities to stop wasting time (and making themselves look foolish) attacking their pet strawman versions of “scientism”, which resemble the views of no scientist with whom I have ever been acquainted either in person or in print.”

Actually, I don’t think that he’s building a strawman in that comment. I think pretty much every scientist would admit that it is unlikely that human endeavor will ever allow us to know absolutely everything about the universe, and that almost every bit of knowledge that we have can be altered by the addition of new knowledge. It’s just that most scientists wouldn’t point to that gap in knowledge and say “you see that there? that gap is God.”

I had the impression that Dawkins qua scientist was (“merely”) a zoologist, and qua writer a popularizer. Is it in fact the case that he has made substantial contributions to evolutionary theory itself?

I had the impression that Dawkins qua scientist was (“merely”) a zoologist, and qua writer a popularizer. Is it in fact the case that he has made substantial contributions to evolutionary theory itself?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: both The Selfish Gene and The Extended Phenotype are in fact scholarly rather than popular works. The ideas in the former are mostly those of George Williams, but extended and brought forcefully to the attention of many biologists who had managed to ignore Williams; and it had a profound impact on the field even among dedicated opponents of his ideas, who were forced to greatly refine their arguments. The latter has some interesting and original ideas, which however don’t appear to have borne major fruit though they’ve certainly had some influence.

What amuses me about these threads is quickly they devolve into a muck slinging contest. So who is the bigger moron, Richard Dawkins or Terry Eagleton? On your marks… and remember whoever manages the most contemptuous dismissal of the contending writer’s arguments, personality and scientific/literary career — whether or not accompanied by anything resembling reasons — wins!

Kathleen:
The nice thing about scientific research is that it tends to resolve these sorts of arguments in ways that obviate sweaty, red-faced name-calling. Steve, if you want to continue standing on the deck of that ship as it crunches into the iceberg of evo-devo, you should at least be aware that even Dawkins has jumped that particular Titanic.

And where and when do you imagine he did that?

Oh dear, I seem to be late for the party. Which seems to have become all about Richard Dawkins, somehow.
But, crikey — when did Stanley Fish (and, apparently, Terry Eagleton) transform into intellectual ringers for Roger Scruton (who’s been making the same argument for decades)?
Also, I was quite struck by this, quoted above:
“Meaning, value and truth are not “reducible to the facts themselves, in the sense of being ineluctably motivated by a bare account of them.”
I may be terribly confused, but I seem to recall Jerry Cohen making a similar argument about value and facts. And I don’t generally associate Jerry with either postmodernism or neo-religiosity.

Steve, I have come to the following (in principle falsifiable) hypothesis: you’re a new computer programme designed specifically for these comment threads in the spirit of a “Türing-test”.

The trick applied by your evil genius is to have you (seemingly) defend the current consensus in ways abrasive enough to trigger emotions in your interlocutors – but not quite as abrasive to get you banned. Probably the evil genius is commenting here as well. If it works he can, struck as he is by the late stages of neurological decay, at least posthumously reach world domination: when you are fine-tuned, you can be replicated and force your consensus on every discussion – in the spirit of ‘science has it X’, therefore X.

A tendentious precis of that other LRB Eagleton article, for pete’s sake at 75 and 83

Disclaimers
i: I am really really NOT an Eagleton fan – I think he’s an opportunist slyboots — so what struck me on first read of this piece is that he is taking a more complex, less glib, less “outflanking” position than he usually does.
ii: on second read, last night, with a view to writing it up, it struck me that it’s not really as good as I first thought — in fact it’s a mess, a ragbag of postures and cleverness stitched together for provocation’s sake (who wd have think?) in the course of which he paddles briefly round what I consider a good argument, w/o very clearly or fairly making it…
iii: … in particular — his main target in this short section is A.C.Grayling — I have no reason to suppose he characterises ACG fairly (I’ve never read any); fairness of this kind is not something I associate with TE (I don’t associate it with Hitchens either)… So it’s possible that the “good argument” I’m claiming he’s dabbing towards has been dispatched by ACG and others, and I’ve just never seen this done well. (I slightly think not or I’d see more evidence of its traces upthread — but absence of evidence is not evidencne of absence, so — )
iv: I seem to have set myself the task of taking an argument made inadequately by someone I dislike and making it “better”, in the face of a LOT of people who dislike him even more. This is nuts and I am circumspect. However I still sort of cleave to the belief that you should demolish the STRONGEST version of yr opponent’s argument, even if they are fool enough not to make it — it’s (in the long run) better for your own side…

Eagleton is reviewing Ben Wilson’s “What Price Liberty? How Freedom Was Won and Is Being Lort”, which is a history of the march of liberty in Britain — and different notions of liberty — from the Stuart Era to the present; and of how some of these ideas of liberty are wound deep into Britain’s ideas of itself, and some less so, and where are we now with it? Eagleton begins to gently mocking the complacent British sense of self — as stout john-bullshit yeoman shouting get orff my land to Vikings, Normans, Kings, priests, Boney, Hitler, and etc — and concludes (unexpectedly and given my low opinion of him rather winningly) by making a case for exactly this kind of stubborn bolshy unthinking commitment to (as an anglo-saxon wouldn’t know to call it) Negative Liberty, as a key element in any project of social liberation and self-enlightenment.

The key — says Eagleton — to Wilson’s story is that it’s not a “Whig History” of liberty, in the sense of a tale of a unified transhistorical concept (that bright side and dark side both agree on), as it gradually emerges from shadow into the light, fully formed if not yet fully enabled. As Eagleton says Wilson says, there are in fact (of course) there are several different types of liberty — there political liberties, economic liberties, cultural and religious liberties — and different groups and institutions battle for these more specific liberties; which as often as not encroach on one another. “Liberty” is divided against itself: my licence is your constraint — your right to privacy is affected by my freedom of information, and so on. This isn’t exactly news, but — says Eagleton — Wilson is very good on the paradoxes of the current multicultural settlement. Where on the one hand communal sense of grievance impinges on the right of the citizen to criticise who s/he pleases, to state what’s wrong about someone else’s beliefs — and on the other, a certain militant secular pseudo-rationalism is establishing Reason as a monolith against the darkies…

Nor is it the case that scientific knowledge advanced entirely against “the church”; a better description of its advance in and after the Renaissance is that it advanced along the political divisions between the many different churches — with different religio-polities working it sometimes as a proxy, sometimes as a weapon, at different times. Here an instance I was reading about last week (not from the Eagleton article): the three founders of the science of botany — Otto Brunfels, Hieronymus Bock and Leonhart Fuchs — were all ambitious 16th-century Protestant theologians, patronised by and competed for by local Protestant princelings: to these three, this new and important knowledge was a weapon against corrupt Catholicism. In other words, the story back in the day is not of Science vs Religion, so much as Religion vs Religion, with science scuttling deftly between the camps. How is that relevant now? Is it any more?

Eagleton’s position on this last is — I believe — a slippery mix of Burkean conservatism (don’t destroy institutions until you understand their FULL role — until you understand the value they bring as well as the harm they cause) and sorta-kinda Marxism: in which the rationalising bluster of certain (mostly strawman) atheists is cast as (objectively) coterminous (in our current situation) with the ideology of the Party of War, and with the cynical economic self-interest of the ruling class generally. So he is criticising the rhetoric of enlightenment, as it slides from the valid defence of some institutions against others (Darwinism as a necessary component in scientific education) to pre-emptive demolitions of said institutions, to justification for Empire — “Enlightenment” as a rationale for hurtling overseas into benighted lands and violently shattering their social structures and defences and safetynets, replacing them with little more than a slipshod version of a pure market economy, in its ugliest version, with all constraints and counter-traditions basted to bits. (But I am filling in a lot of gaps here, to make this argument — I think — stronger and clearer than TE makes it; and therefore of course making it was for him to slip off in another direction and mock and sneer at me for empiricism or relativism or post-modernism or any one of the dozens of little present-day clerical heresies that lie in wait for the guileless… )

So the anyway, perhaps the bluntest redux I think I can fashion of TE’s half-made argument is that Militant Rationalism, as its righteously blasts its genuine institutional foes, at the same risks clearing the landscape of ALL social and quasi-political structures than can actually stand up to — for good reason or bad — the unfettered crypto-religion of the free market; and that when and if science turns to battle this final and greatest enemy*, it will find itself entirely co-opted, penetrated and denatured.

(Caveat: this is all quite hurried — post on a blog comments thread when I’m meant to be doin something else — and I am not in sympathy with all of it AT ALL; I think there’s a strong version of what is animating Eagleton-when-honest lurking beneath this, a version I *am* more in sympathy with, I think — but I don’t know if I’ve got it right exactly.)

(Second caveat: this is a very long post and I apologise…)

And by all means, please have the last word as I’ve already grown a bit weary.

As you wish. It’s curious that you cite Ziman against what I said, since 1) he was a trained scientist, as you yourself pointed out, and was far from being afflicted with scientism himself; 2) his attacks on scientism were directed primarily at the people he called “metascientists” (philosophers, sociologists, etc. studying the scientific enterprise) rather than at scientists themselves. To quote from Teaching and Leaening about Science and Society: “The point is to show how very far the real opinions of thoughtful scientists and science teachers are from the scientistic views that have been sketched earlier in this chapter. … Scientism is a more serious disorder amongst those who have been taught a little science than it is for those who teach it.”

Actually I’m a bad classical violist. Not into heavy metal.

I think she was reminding you that Turing was English and didn’t sport an umlaut.

Turing? He spent the 1930s squawking about computability but his discredited theories have long been considered a joke by real… (continued on page 91)

Steve,

For the record (and then you can have the last word): The thoughts of Ziman I was referring to were largely found in his book, Real Science: What It Is, and What It Means (2000). In any case:

1. I never said *all* or even *most* scientistists were afflicted by scientism, nor did I ever claim it was confined to *only* scientists, so I’m not sure what point you’re making.
2. He offers evidence that there is indeed something called “scientism,” about which *you* said there were no non-strawman versions.
3. An example of one of the beliefs found in “scientism” is a belief in “strong” reductionism, a belief that perseveres in many quarters, in addition to the related belief in providing a “Theory of Everything.” Much of what counts for scientism today will disappear when intelligent people, including scientists, give up such beliefs.
4. Scientism may or may not include what Kitcher called “the Legend,” but we would do well to keep in mind “the stereotype of science that idealizes its every aspect–is almost as damaging as the attack it is supposed to be fending off” (Ziman).

And now you can have the last word (but I appeal to your sense of decency to use it wisely).

But humans want to know: “what is the point of all this?” You give them Big Bang, evolution, brain chemistry – and they get the impression that there is no point. They get depressed.

I don’t think this is anywhere close to universally the case. I’d like to see some supporting evidence for this that’s beyond anecdotal.

I admit to suspecting that you understand very little about either science or scientists.

I second what I understand to be JoB’s point, Steve: while I enjoy reading the objective content of your comments, the tone’s just frustrating — there’s really no need for such consistent hostility. At best it’s a distraction from the worth of the points you’re making, and at worst it’s a severe detriment to the thread and a likely discouragement to would-be commenters.

Example: Whatever you think of Patrick’s viewpoint upthread, I think it was useful and interesting to hear his comments. Wearing out your interlocutors with accusations about their qualifications or ignorance, even when this doesn’t verge into actual personal attacks, is just conversational dirty pool.

‘Course, I made pretty much the same mistake on a thread a couple months ago, compounded with insufficient familiarity with the topic of discussion, so feel free to ignore me on this.

Wearing out your interlocutors with accusations about their qualifications or ignorance, even when this doesn’t verge into actual personal attacks, is just conversational dirty pool.

I do take your point. But when I encounter people saying really dumb things in a particularly cocksure, tub-thumping way, the spirit may be willing but sometimes the flesh is weak. Anyway, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it. ;)

Turing? He spent the 1930s squawking about computability but his discredited theories have long been considered a joke by real… (continued on page 91)

Page 91:

androids.

salient, thanks for catching my point ;-)

(or is it pöint?)

Steve, that’s the most straightforward non-apology-apology possible. There you go again: dumb and all that. (by the way: I like my umlaut’s and there’s at least poetic justice in “Türing”)

engels, why do you want to do to Turing what Kathleen wanted to do to Dawkins? I don’t know whether he was a creep or what he was up to with spies (argh, the biographical details) but if he was wrong (which is the faith of most of us trying to say something concrete) he was so in a still very relevant way. Only a Fish would find fault with him across the board.

Or her!

JoB,

I like my umlaut’s and there’s at least poetic justice in “Türing”

Well, who doesn’t like a good umlaut now and again? (Beckett did. He made a highly obscure and metaphysical umlaut joke about a town I spent a few years in that I have always treasured. The joke, I mean, not that I don’t also treasure the town.)

But it’s hard for me to see the poetic justice in germanising Turing, given that he was instrumental in beating the Germans the next-to-last time England managed to beat them.

JoB changes moniker to to JöB in 3… 2… 1…

Belle, thanks for your post @ 130! I agree entirely with your # iv, of course.

The details of the development of science against the backdrop of religion are certainly complicated. I do think that even the science being done by religious persons was subversive, since its very pursuit embraced a methodology that is a direct challenge to the (any) Church’s claim to be an authority in matters of secular truth. The method of science separates questions of empirical truth from a need to refer to authoritative religious figures or documents. The complexities of the relationship often involve prior religious convictions corrupting or misleading scientific pursuit. Take Louis Agassiz, a man who contributed an enormous amount to the advancement of science, but who also, at least in part due to a religious commitment to creation, offered a pseudo-scientific defense of racism. (This is an over-simplification, but hey, this is a blog comment not a journal article).

The later point, that we should be cautious about tearing down our social structures, is well-taken. But I don’t hold that science could ever serve the role of political morality that religion has held and does hold. Science offers a replacement for religion’s explanatory role. I think we have a great deal of evidence that religions have done (and still do) a less-than-satisfactory job in the role of a political, moral doctrine. The secular moral doctrine of liberalism that comes out of the social contract tradition is, I believe, a superior alternative for this political role. The point is just that the choice isn’t between religion or unfettered free-market. This form of liberalism, in that it emphasizes viewing persons as free and equal, also has the ability to counter-act a tendency to imperialism and a sense of moral superiority – I wonder if these impulses didn’t have at their hearts a religious motivation after all, the enlightenment version of the crusades.

This is getting long, so I’d better cut it off. But your post gives me lots to think about, and I do think bellegleton is a subtler and more interesting position than what I found in Fish, so thanks again for it.

Less facetiously, what Pete said.

But of course a rational person could argue that it’s all wrong: pain is there for a reason, the body reacts to it, etc.

…I have no idea where that’s coming from. A rational person would probably recognize that a sensory nervous system capable of feeling pain was an adaptation with problematic effects (the fact that pain is “there for a reason” does not carry any moral implication like “one ought to feel pain” or whatever). In fact, this adaptation seems to have necessitated counter-adaptation in the form of, e.g. endorphin release mechanisms to alleviate debilitating pain.

I doubt a rational person would believe that our bodies are some kind of realization of the ideal that should never be messed with, and I strongly suspect a rational person would argue in favor of offering treatment and alleviation to suffering persons.

Ginger 141, many, many get depressed, especially as they get older and there are fewer and fewer meanings left to generate.

Do you have any research or evidence you could link to? From what I can remember of the canonical studies, and this is admittedly fuzzy, late-life satisfaction is thought to revolve around feelings of life accomplishment or lack thereof.

Salient, you don’t need any special research; all you need is to spend some time on this planet, and you’ll get an idea of when and why people turn to religion.

Salient, you don’t need any special research; all you need is to spend some time on this planet, and you’ll get an idea of when and why people turn to religion.

Your claim is not “people have a reason to turn to religion.” Your claim is specifically that “many, many” people who are non-theists throughout their lives become depressed, specifically because “as they get older and there are fewer and fewer meanings left to generate.” I am assuming by “many, many” you are talking about at least, say, a third of non-theists who live to beyond middle age, who experience this specific phenomenon. Admittedly, perhaps I’m not clear on what you mean when you say “meanings left to generate.”

Please provide some justification for this, or (if necessary) correct my misunderstanding of your position.

the point henri is making is that — when you’re old and tired and ill and possibly lonely, and things didn’t turn out the way you thought they were going to when you were young and sexy and amazing, and you’ve lost trust in your own ability to make things happen right for you emotionally or intellectually or creatively — then the chances of you turning to a pre-fashioned myth of consolation are quite high, especially if the institutions that offer such consolation are willingly putting themselves out there, and the rival institutions are focused on other (exciting, high-stakes) projects

i think it’s pretty easy to see how militant rationalism can seem a bit uncaring and intimidating if you already feeling broken: it only reaches out to you if you’re prepared to participate at this high and intellectually challenging level; it’s competitive, it’s argumentative, it’s about fashioning the future — and here you are, timid and excluded, mayne never very confident that you understood this science stuff, and (this you definitely think) without much of a future yourself, let alone any sense you could fashion anyone else’s… so you turn to those folks on the corner who’ve always been there, who run a soup kitchen and hold out a seemingly friendly hand…

“Meanings left to generate” is a reference to 141.

You’re going way too literal with “people who are non-theists throughout their lives become depressed.” All I’m saying is that the Big Bang and brain chemistry do not provide satisfactory answers to proverbial “life’s big questions”. Many people find it depressing, especially as they grow older, or experience some tragedy, or, you know, general misery. And religion helps, in a way that rational thought can’t.

doubly excluding for those who once thought they wanted to participate, and never got their rhythm going, and sat miserably on the sidelines as the action got further and further away…

“Admittedly, perhaps I’m not clear on what you mean when you say “meanings left to generate.””

To be fair, this bit I do agree with somewhat. Some very fulfilling meanings that are available to theists and non-theists alike are love of family and friends, attainment of skill at sport or art or music etc, earning the respect of your professional peers, and so on. As you get older, your friends and family die off, you’re less physically able, and you’re (often) no longer working. So a lot of the key sources of meaning in your life are going to be diminished, unless you’re lucky. In the case of the latter person I mentioned in 169, he continued working well beyond the point he should have been, given his physical state (he was ;past 90), because it was one of the few sources of pleasure and meaning left in his life. But religion wasn’t enough for him. I’m not faulting religion for this – in the circumstances, it would be hard to have any consolation and I’m sure he’d have been just as depressed as an atheist. I’m just saying that in my experience it’s no better than atheism in extreme circumstances.

Belle and Henri,

I wonder if militant rationalism may be more of a bogeyman than a real worldview. Militant rationalists need love too. OK, so that’s a toss-away quip, but my real point has to do with what I think involves a distinction between views about the source of one’s purpose. To look to a God, or any other authority, for one’s purpose is to search externally for this purpose. Enlightenment thinking on this subject, I think (setting aside enlightenment thought about the source of explanations about the natural world), involves a turn inward. We look inward and use our reason to determine our purposes. This is a fundamental shift. Even those who look inward for purpose require caring relationships. These folks need not be hardcore philosophers; rather the difference is just in the source of the validity of one’s purposes – are my projects valid because they accord with some external standard (are they, and I, validated by something else?), or because I have intrinsic worth and I chose them?

I’m worried that I might be saying something that is just tangential to your post above Belle (@ 164). So, here’s my picture of the good (rather than cold and uncaring) militant rationalist soup kitchen. It would be pretty terrible to engage with the broken man or woman by citing Kant or Darwin, or something like this. Rather, I see the enlightenment, ‘liberalist’ approach as involving emphasizing that the broken person is valuable, in and of themselves, and that they ought to recognize themselves and their own goals as deserving of respect. They also deserve, from our rationalist, compassion and maybe even friendship, because they matter, they count. I think this message of self-worth and empowerment can be very powerful, as powerful as the message that God loves them and is there for them.

it is a bogeyman, yes, but the fact that aggressive defenders of rationalism are (some of them) a bit slow on the uptake when it comes to the issue of the consolation of the broken and the disappointed — yes yes it needs to be taken care of, but it’s doesn’t occur to them that it’s something THEY could be doing, they have important exciting intellectual battles to fight and scientific discoveries to make! — is a bit what i’m getting at: there’s sometimes an self-unaware assumption of the division of labour (and sometimes also an assumption that such consolations are either to be privatised or handed on to the relevant bureaucracy) that plays into the hands of those who want to flourish the bogeyman…

(ah- sorry for the double post! Must have tapped “submit” before I was done.)

(comment using the dreaded s-word is trapped in moderation)

belle@164: I’m finding it difficult to distinguish what you describe as “turning to religion” from “finding a nice, old-fashioned woman who will look up to you and serve generally as a haven in a heartless world, after a youth that was misspent following so-called peers who didn’t really have your best interests at heart and didn’t really know what was important,” which I have to think is applicable to only a minority of life narratives.

I don’t think there’s any intrinsic reason why the atheist soup kitchen — if this is the synecdoche we’ve hit on — shouldn’t flourish, and indeed be the best and nicest one to go to: it’s not a matter of people’s temperaments, I don’t think. It’s a matter of the shape of the institutions being fashioned (and the will to fashion them, and the awareness of the need): some of what’s being pushed back against is simply that intellectual celebrities — however entertaining or insightful* — are a bit unlikely to be that great at the kind of institution-forming that’s felt to be missing.

*(which is almost by definition other people’s lame and annoying)

…people like Dawkins and so on should also advocate for the poor…

As in fact he does; his left-liberal politics are hardly a secret.

The ‘community’ argument sounds convincing, and I’m sure it’s helpful, but I don’t think it’s sufficient. Hanging out with your bowling league buddies is nice, but it won’t fill the void. The question remains – for me, at least, but I suspect for many others as well – what am I doing here? I get up every morning and go to work, have a barbecue with my buddies on Sunday, read blogs – why? To keep doing this for a couple of decades more and then get cancer or heart attack and disappear? What is stopping me from ending it right now?

“I don’t think there’s any intrinsic reason why the atheist soup kitchen—if this is the synecdoche we’ve hit on—shouldn’t flourish, and indeed be the best and nicest one to go to: it’s not a matter of people’s temperaments, I don’t think. ”

Well, that depends. I think we’re relatively unlikely to see a (large) explicitly atheist soup kitchen style organisation, but there are plenty of secular organisations like that (Shelter, for instance, to keep within this particular synecdoche) which are very successful and do a lot of good work. Most atheists I know would be more comfortable donating to or volunteering for secular organisations like that than an avowedly atheist one. I mean, I consider myself relatively “militant”, but I don’t think we should be proselytising to vulnerable people. It seems to me the most likely form of organisation in this sphere would be for avowedly atheist/agnostic/humanist/rationalist organisations to arrange fundraising/volunteering drives within their membership – something that does indeed happen, but not as systematically as within organised religion.

Also, unless I’ve misread him, I don’t think Henri was thinking so much about financially suffering people as psychologically, although obviously the two are interlinked.

Haven’t had time to read all the comments but if you are still interested in the neuroscience of ballet then look up Calvo-Merino in google scholar. She has the most highly cited dance studies showing that the more you dance (yourself) the more your brain responds to seeing other people dance. Maybe the same is true of religion ?!

Right, arguing with atheists or learning about history is fun, but it’s not that much fun. Just think of all the unpleasantries one has to endure for the dubious pleasure of arguing with atheists: brushing teeth, sitting in the office for hours, grocery shopping, etc.; all that endless boring maintenance stuff. Not to mention things like, say, colonoscopy. All this just to become the best rock climber in the world? C’mon.

Cheer up, Henri. Your concerti are rather nice and some of them still get played occasionally. ;)

See, the family, children, that all sounds very nice – until you analyze it rationally and realize that it’s all a combination of some residual religious indoctrination and animal instincts. But we are not religious and we are not animals, so why should we value our children more than any other children? Or our wives over other women, especially if we find some of the other women more attractive?

I understand that people often are strongly attached to their families and care about them – that’s an empirical fact – but conceptually it’s seems kind of weak. Especially after being married to the same woman for many years and when the children have grown up.

By the way, provided you’re willing to go whole-hog on utilitarianism, Peter Singer will gladly demonstrate to you that it ISN’T rational to love your kids more than other people’s. ;)

Humans truly are a ridiculous species and much of our behavior doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. Accepting that and laughing at it (at oneself above all) I find to be a great help in warding off the metaphysical blues. I think it’s only when we insist on taking ourselves very, very seriously that we get really good at making ourselves unhappy.

For the relationship between Fish and Eagleton, it’s worth remembering where David Lodge found inspiration for Morris Zapp and Phillip Swallow.

I discussed the LRB piece here when it appeared: point is, Dawkins is more grating when he gives lip-service to the aesthetics of religious cultural output (the Burkean sublime, if you like) than if he ignored it entirely.

(There’s a one-word reply to people who gleefully ape PZ to shout “Courtier’s Reply!” and that word is “philistine”. If you prefer two words, “smug arsehole”; or three, “oh, fuck off.”)

Salient:

And of course, it’s worth acknowledging that church communities fall into this category too.

Oh absolutely. My point was that the one area where I would concede that atheism as a world-organising-system (a concept which I’m not entirely comfortable with, but anyway) falls short of religion is in the community building. At the same time I think that’s a strength, in that I’m definitely not a fan of many of the tools religion uses to reinforce the sense of community, but I fully recognise the downsides as well.

Pete:

On the one hand, I like the line Ginger takes @ 188 (Why go on? I got my reasons, but you tell me, why do you go on?).

That wasn’t quite the line I was trying to express, but, still, it’s a good question. Henri clearly hasn’t ended it right now, and is an atheist. So he must have some reasons of his own. My point was more an extension of the “the human mind is the meaning generator, not received authority” argument. And human minds are gloriously diverse that individuals’ answers to that question are necessarily going to be different.

Pete:

Ginger might be taken as addressing both of these in her post as well

I’m a he, not that it matters much.

Pete:

Here religions of various sorts offer themselves as contenders. I want to address this version of the concern at a more abstract level. I think that the answer is that the source of our final ends is not external to us. Meaning is not imposed from without – my final ends are my final ends. So, for me, my final ends involve my relationships with my wife and family, my career, and very general things like living a full and varied life and in general being decent. These are things that I value, and I try to organize my life, with all of my first-order ends and projects, in such a way to achieve them. It is because of these things that I value that I go on. If you ask, “But what is the purpose of all of this?”, I guess I just think there isn’t one.

This is exactly my point, much more eloquently put.

. Just think of all the unpleasantries one has to endure for the dubious pleasure of arguing with atheists: brushing teeth, sitting in the office for hours, grocery shopping, etc.; all that endless boring maintenance stuff. Not to mention things like, say, colonoscopy. All this just to become the best rock climber in the world? C’mon.

I think I’ll let Tim Minchin answer this one for me:

Isn’t this enough?
Just this world?
Just this beautiful, complex
Wonderfully unfathomable world?
How does it so fail to hold our attention
That we have to diminish it with the invention
Of cheap, man-made Myths and Monsters?
If you’re so into Shakespeare
Lend me your ear:
“To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw perfume on the violet… is just fucking silly”
Or something like that.
Or what about Satchmo?!
I see trees of Green,
Red roses too,
And fine, if you wish to
Glorify Krishna and Vishnu
In a post-colonial, condescending
Bottled-up and labeled kind of way
That’s ok.
But here’s what gives me a hard-on:
I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant lump of carbon.
I have one life, and it is short
And unimportant…
But thanks to recent scientific advances
I get to live twice as long as my great great great great uncles and auntses.
Twice as long to live this life of mine
Twice as long to love this wife of mine
Twice as many years of friends and wine
Of sharing curries and getting shitty
With good-looking hippies
With fairies on their spines
And butterflies on their titties.

Henri:

See, the family, children, that all sounds very nice – until you analyze it rationally and realize that it’s all a combination of some residual religious indoctrination and animal instincts. But we are not religious and we are not animals, so why should we value our children more than any other children? Or our wives over other women, especially if we find some of the other women more attractive?

See, this is why I mentioned the social Darwinism thing. You’re the one apparently advocating vulgar reductionism, not the scientists or the militant atheists. Most of us don’t see much of a problem in love of family as a source of meaning. Sure, some values boil down to axioms unjustifiable by pure, cold rationality. But they do mean something to us. But it’s not like they’re controversial, or problematic. Even the theists agree. So what’s the problem?

Having read his overwrought testimony, I am curious as to why Steve Fuller doesn’t reveal his true thoughts about evolution. Is it because of animal cowardice or animal inconvenience? Everyone here is taking Fuller at his word when he says he’s a philosopher of science but he sounds like a loudmouth failed (but competent) sociologist with a strong post-modernist streak. I would like to be proved wrong. It would put what he says in a better light. And he’s been on the blogs and listservs now for years doing his borderline-inchoherent shtick. Somebody with his zeal and skill should be more open about their beliefs especially now that the New Atheists have rolled into town.

“but I certainly never sank so low as to be a philosopher, nor a loudmouth provincially “successful” (but incompetent) sociologist of science who’s been a worldwide laughingstock since Dover.”

Oh wow THAT Steve Fuller!

My apologies to Steve LaBonne for thinking he wasn’t a scientist. I was trying to find out why your bile/content ratio is so high. Philosophical principle is always a good shot. I guess it must be career frustration or something else that isn’t — or perhaps is — revealed in the list you’ve provided.

I guess it must be career frustration or something else that isn’t—or perhaps is—revealed in the list you’ve provided.

Or perhaps it’s just that anti-science nimrods annoy me.

I’d like to know if there’s one person on this thread willing to state that he or she does not live most of his or her life according to assumption and faith, even if it’s their own sense of reason.

Dawkins thinks he’s found the cure for faith. But his own is the one he ignores. He’s an anti-humanist. To humanists that’s more offensive than religion, which is after all no more than a system of laws.

Reason at its most abstract is individual and private. And the moral esthetic of scientific exploration is no more than the esthetic of mountain-climbing writ grand.
The search for ‘truth’ is no more than the search for unknown facts. And when those unknown facts are known they become banal. So the search goes on again. For what!!!?

In the end there is no there there, beyond desire. Dawkins defends a kind of desire.
What kind of intelligence is it that needs to invent new gadgets, lets say: new musical instruments, as opposed to learning how to play one well
What does that last word mean?

There is no purpose to life beyond the social. NONE. Science as such is as absurd as rock climbing without the need to get over a hill to find food. And scientists and those who pretend their non-scientific activities are science act out of desire not selflessness, and certainly not out of necessity.

The close study of texts, or of man made things, is a social act and an act of introspection.
All gods fail. They always have. In the 20th century man made himself god. He failed too.
Religion as such is not the answer. Neither is science. And neither is Robert Fulghum
There is no test that you can pass that enables you all on your own to claim the mantle of ‘reason.’ Our descendants will always look back at us and our preoccupations and find them largely to be odd.
Better ironic self-awareness than pure reason. Because pure reason is something we will never have.
Does it matter whether Alden Pyle thought of himself as religious?

And before I get yelled for supposedly saying something about subjectivity and numbers:

We think and communicate in categories by means of words. I’m willing to stipulate that numbers are external, but I won’t say the same for language.
That would simply be illogical.

sorry for the typo

I’d like to know if there’s one person on this thread willing to state that he or she does not live most of his or her life according to assumption and faith, even if it’s their own sense of reason.

I am willing to state that.

I think it’s worth pointing out that confusion over the meanings of words could fuel a long and pointless exchange, here. The idea of “faith” — to me — is belief that not only is held in the absence of experiential evidence, but also would be held in the face of compelling contrary evidence.

For example, if you had faith in Jesus as savior and in the middle of a day the skies seemed to split and Muhammad appeared to you in a fiery chariot and declared to you his status as your savior, you would assume yourself to be hallucinating, because you know Jesus is your savior. Perhaps you would assume it’s the devil’s work, to tempt you. Whatever: if you have faith, then no evidence whatsoever to the contrary could possibly convince you otherwise. You’d disbelieve your own senses for prolonged periods of time before you’d change your faith-belief.

So, e.g., it would be possible for me to

It would be impossible for me to have faith in, say, the models of chemistry, because I’ve seen those models accurately predict phenomena. If I saw a model that did not accurately predict the phenomena it was meant to represent, I would scrap it — to me, that means I have no faith in the model. That having been said, one of my lines of work is theoretical modeling, even at the apprentice stage. So I’m accustomed to the idea that most of what we “know” is a distillation that is subject to re-interpretation as new training data comes in or as we think up new modeling methods.

It is also essentially impossible for me to have faith in the non-existence of any supernatural god. I know enough common sense about biology to understand, e.g., that people die; if I were to die and then find myself in some supernatural realm, well, I’d feel pretty open to accommodating new evidence.

But colloquially speaking, we throw around the word “faith” in all sorts of silly ways — optimistic = I “have faith” in humanity, for example. That’s fine for everyday discussion, but if we’re going to have a serious exchange about faith, I think it needs to be built on some common understanding of what we mean when we use the word.

I regret having attributed some degree of coherence to what sleepy was typing in his previous rant. Clearly, that was a libel. I have no idea at all what to make of stuff like

Also, you’re confusing born again christians with christian scientists.

(huh?) so I won’t even try.

“The idea of “faith”—to me—is belief that not only is held in the absence of experiential evidence, but also would be held in the face of compelling contrary evidence.”

But mention the word “Marx” and Brad DeLong starts howling at the moon.

And by you logic we wouldn’t need a black man or a woman on the Supreme Court because reason dictates that once we understand [by reason alone!!] what racism and sexism is we have no need for a black or female “perspective.” Sooner or later they’d end up on the court. But the argument for “perspectives” sounds like relativism!

High jackass quotient on this thread.

And by you logic we wouldn’t need a black man or a woman on the Supreme Court because reason dictates that once we understand [by reason alone!!] what racism and sexism is we have no need for a black or female “perspective.”

Sigh. Reason “dictates” no such thing. Valid reasoning from pretty well-accepted psychological premises would surely “dictate” the exact contrary.

Please take a course in logic so that you might come to have some idea of what reasoning actually entails. “Reason” is not some kind of civil religion (Robespierre has been dead for quite a while). It has no content in itself, it’s basically just logic, a tool for insuring that the truth of your premises, if they are true, survives intact into your conclusions.

“well-accepted psychological premises would surely “dictate” the exact contrary”
And those premises are based on the premise that pure reason is impossible.
You should Dawkins’ friend Colin McGinn on relativism and democracy.
http://mcginn.philospot.com/index.php?story=story080531-113347

You want intellectual simplicity in a psychologically complex world.
And you don’t even see the contradiction because the only psychology you refuse to see is your own.

Ginger 204, See, this is why I mentioned the social Darwinism thing. You’re the one apparently advocating vulgar reductionism, not the scientists or the militant atheists. Most of us don’t see much of a problem in love of family as a source of meaning. Sure, some values boil down to axioms unjustifiable by pure, cold rationality. But they do mean something to us. But it’s not like they’re controversial, or problematic. Even the theists agree. So what’s the problem?

Look, I happen to love my children and abhor social Darwinism. What I’m saying is that being a rational individual it’s difficult for me to make a deep meaning out of it, as I realize that it’s merely a product of early indoctrination and some circuits in my brain.

You seem to sorta agree, so what does “they do mean something to us” mean exactly? Does it make you a closeted person of faith, a vague universalist in denial? If so, what are we arguing about?

Right JoB, or it could also be a result of some combination of chemicals in my brain: nicotine, too much sugar, fluoride, who knows. So then, as a rational individual, should I join some unitarian universalist church and (hopefully) enjoy myself (like my injured friend in 157), or should I remain pure and keep suffering? Dilemma…

Right again, but if (hypothetically) I did find a religion and become happier that way – would it make Mr. LaBonne despise (or, best case scenario, pity) me? I suspect it would. But why?

It’s actually about respect for people as the producers of those artifacts

I admire Wagner’s music (well, more than I actually like it, but that’s a different discussion). I most certainly don’t admire or respect Wagner as a person, and why should I?

“What I’m saying is that being a rational individual it’s difficult for me to make a deep meaning out of it, as I realize that it’s merely a product of early indoctrination and some circuits in my brain.”

But all human meanings are a product of our environment and circuits in the brain (defined loosely). Again, what’s the problem? Knowing that doesn’t make them any less meaningful to us. You keep seeming to argue that “deep” meanings need to be rooted outside our minds, but the whole point I’m arguing is that the meanings are generated by our minds. Certain meanings have more power because they’ve been reinforced during the course of evolution, or a broadly universal applicability, or for some other reason, but they’re still our minds’ reasons.

” Does it make you a closeted person of faith, a vague universalist in denial?”

Uh, not as far as I can tell, but then I’m not sure what precisely you mean by that. It makes me someone who believes the meanings we give things are enough for us.

^^^”this kind of discussion” — ie crooked timber-type arguments about religion and rationalism

What Steve doesn’t say is this: “I have an idea where Henri will find more durable source of consolation. I will email him suggestions as to where we could meet up and spend time chatting about it.

Seriously, I were Henri’s friend and believed, based on my understanding of his personality, that I DID have such an idea, I most certainly would broach it, of course without tactlessly disparaging whatever he was currently trying to use to get him through the day (unless it were something self-destructive like excessive use of drink or drugs.) But yes, as a good little liberal I don’t feel it’s my place to do that to a stranger. Like any way of life liberalism has its limitations, but I find this particular limitation of liberalism to be a price worth paying in order not to live in a society of bossy busybodies.

Belle, I can only repeat that I’m quite aware that that’s one of the costs of liberalism, and it’s one that seems to me worth paying in light of the benefits and considering the alternatives. Other people’s calculations on that point may of course differ.

You’re still not comprehending what I said. Let me rephrase it: it’s about respect for the human endeavour that is the creation of cultural artifacts.

Respect which, no doubt, some straw person out there is gravely lacking. Whatever.

belle,
I haven’t caught up entirely with this thread, but if I understand you correctly: Part of my point is just that the religion that seems to be trumpeted by celebrity academics like Eagleton is not the same as what you’d actually find elsewhere. Eagleton perhaps gets to make up his own theology and receive a publishing contract in return, without having to feel like his intellectualism has forced him to leave the community of believers. The hoi polloi are expected to parrot phrases from a somewhat constrained group of sources, or more likely to realize that the help they are able to offer others from their particular station in life precludes intellectual commitment of any kind, if they are actually going to help rather than make themselves feel better.

They’re often related to things outside our minds, but I fail to see why meanings have to be (or even can be, absent the supernatural) rooted outside our minds. To take a simple-ish example, the word “toilet” denotes a real object or class of objects, but the meaning each person gives to it is his/her own. And for words in general, even their denotations are constructed by a community of minds.

to make it pedant proof:
“…trillions on the romance of big science.”

I don’t know, GY. You pick a perfectly ordinary object or activity and you make it your fetish, sort of. Arbitrary and capriciously, just because you feel like it. I suppose it might work for some people (star wars fans come to mind), but I don’t think it’s very common, and it’s probably a recipe for a huge disappointment later in life. It’s not rooted outside your mind enough, not meaningful enough, can turn to dust at any moment.

If I were a religious believer reading this thread I think would probably be questioning my belief in a benevolent creator by this point.

We are partial: we have preferences and can not escape having them. The world is mostly inert and absolutely meaningless.

Again, you’re obfuscating through wordplay. Adopting your odd definition of the word “meaning,” even if you believe in some god, this does not imply the world has any “meaningful” attributes. After all, it’s not as though creating something imbues you with the authority to call it meaningful — meaning in the sense you’re using, insofar as it exists, is an intrinsic property, not dependent on any relationship. So, ok. The world can’t possibly have the kind of “meaning” you seek to prove it doesn’t have. I would call this a misuse of the word “meaning.”

After all, you go on to say/imply that:
(1) we’re all operating on “faith”
(2a) more specifically, and this is the irksome part, you are arguing that we are all completely equally arbitrary in our choice of faith.
(2b) As a consequence of 2a, you are implicitly claiming there is no appropriate criterion we may use to objectively judge Person A’s “faith” superior to Person B’s “faith”

Do I have this more or less right?

Perhaps we can achieve some common ground by noting that all wordviews, be they of largely rationalist or religious inspiration or orientation are, at bottom, at least insofar as we endeavor to rationally vindicate or justify them as well as bind them in some fashion to our experience, rest on principles or truth claims that are not themselves rationally justifiable without infinite regress (i.e., we can always ask the question: ‘And what justifies *that*?). Hence the resort to and appeal of, in the history of philosophy, “self-evident” truths. Put differently, in the words of Nicholas Rescher:

“The fact is that philosophy cannot provide a rational explanation for *everything,* rationalizing all of its claims ‘all the way down.’ Sooner or later the process of rationalization and explanation must–to all appearances–come to a halt in the acceptance of unexplained explainers.”

With regard to logical derivation at least, “we must accept some inexplicable ultimate, unless we are to descend into an infinite regress.”

Rescher suggests that we consider the possibility of philosphical explanation as being “sytemically holistic,” meeting criteria having more to do with fit and coherence rather than as simply or solely a process of axiomatic linear justification. The latter prefers a type of philosophical exposition that relies on inferential expression and argumentation to vindicate its claims, while the former generally resorts to a rhetoric of persuasion: “Like inferential reasoning, rhetoric too is a venture of justificatory systematization, albeit one of a different kind.”

Rescher uses examples from the writings of Nietzsche to illustrate this form of philosophical discourse although he reminds us that most philosphers will employ both methods of philosophical vindication even if, in the end, one predominates, as it usually does (I think Sartre’s Being and Nothingness is a nice example of shifting back and forth between these two modes of philosophical exposition, sometimes in an irritating way).

As Rescher further explains,

“Reflection on the contrast between the argumentative and the rhetorical modes of philosophical exposition leads to the realization that these two styles are congenial to rather different objectives. The demonstrative/argumentative (inferential) mode is efficient for securing a reader’s assent to certain claims, to influencing one’s *beliefs,* The rhetorical (evocative) mode is optimal for inducing a reader to adopt certain preferences, to shaping or influencing one’s *priorities and evaluations.*”

Religious discourse (save that of theologians committed to natural theology) is written typically in the rhetorical and evocative mode, indeed, often in figurative language more appropriate to the types of “things” it is endeavoring to speak about, things that are beyond the limits of rational cognition and literal description. But philosophical discourse as well often finds sufficient reason to rely on the rhetorical and evocative mode:

“the rhetorical…mode of philosophical exposition is by nature geared to securing acceptance with respect to *evaluations:* to enlisting the reader’s agreement to certain priorities or appraisals. It is preoccupied with evaluation, with forming–or reforming–our sensibilities with respect to the *value* and, above all, the *importance* of various items. It is bound up with a view of philosophy that sees the discipline in *axiological* terms, as an enterprise that has as its prime task the securing of certain evaluative determinations and the establishment of certain prizings and priorities. It aims primarily to *induce* people to an evaluative standpoint. It exerts its appeal not in reasoning from prior philosophical givens, but rather by rhetorical means that exert their impetus *directly* upon the cognitive values and sympathies we have fixed on the basis of our experience of the world’s ways.”

And Rescher’s pellucid conclusion:

“Even the most demonstration-minded philosopher cannot avoid entanglement in evaluation by rhetorical devices. For even the most rationalistic of thinkers cannot argue demonstratively for everything ‘all the way down,’ so to speak. At some point a philosopher must invite assent through an appeal to sympathetic acquiescence based on experience as such. On the other hand, even the most sentimental philosopher cannot altogether avert argumentation. For a reliance on certain *standards* of assessment is inescapably present in those proffered evaluations, and this issue of appropriateness cannot be addressed satisfactorily without some recourse to reasons.” (Please see, Nicholas Rescher, a System of Pragmatic Idealism, Vol. III, Metaphilosophical Inquiries, 1994: 36-58)

Keeping this in mind, we might now consider the following from John Cottingham:

“In the history of philosophy, the epithet ‘spiritual’ is most commonly coupled not with the term ‘beliefs’ but with the term ‘exercises.’ Perhaps the most famous exemplar is the sixteenth-century Ejercicios espirituales (‘Spiritual Exercises,’ c. 1522-41) of St. Ignatius Loyola. As its name implies, this is not a doctrinal treatise, nor even a book of sermons, but a structured set of exercises or practices; it is a practical course of activities for the retreatant, to be followed in a prescribed order, carefully divided into days and weeks. [….] In Ignatius…we are dealing with a practical manual–a training manual–and the structured timings, the organized programmes of readings, contemplation, prayer, and reflection, interspersed with the daily rhythms of eating and sleeping, are absolutely central, indeed they are the essence of the thing. Ignatius himself opens the work by making an explicit parallel with physical training programmes: ‘just as strolling, walking and running are exercises for the body, so ‘spiritual exercises’ is the name given to every way of preparing and disposing one’s soul to rid itself of disordered attachments.’ [….]

What holds good for any plausible account of the tradition of spiritual exercises also holds good more generally for any true understanding of the place of religion in human life: we have to acknowledge what might be called the primacy of praxis, the vital importance that is placed on the individual’s embarking on a path of self-transformation, rather than (say) simply engaging in intellectual debate or philosophical analysis. [….] The philosopher Blaise Pascal was a striking advocate of this line of thought. His famous nuit de feu or ‘night of fire’ on November 23 1654–the intense religious experience that led to a radical change in his life–generated in him what he describes as feelings of ‘heartfelt certainty, peace and joy’ [cf. the Sanskrit formula, saccidananda in orthodox Indian philosophy and comparable descriptions of the Buddhist’s nibbana.] But the God who is the source of these feelings is ‘the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,’ not the God of ‘philosophers and scholars.’ Commentators have discussed the exact import of these words, but the general point is clear enough: faith, for Pascal, must arise in the context of a living tradition of practical religious observance, rather than from debate and analysis in the seminar room. This is consistent with Pascal’s general philosophical stance on the epistemic status of religious claims, which may be described as proto-Kantian; questions about the nature and existence of God are beyond the reach of discursive reason. ‘If there is a God,’ says Pascal, ‘he is infinitely beyond our comprehension…and hence we are incapable of knowing either what he is or whether he is.’ And since reason cannot settle the matter, we have to make a practical choice, a choice on which our ultimate happiness depends.”

Lastly, consider the following points from the late Ninian Smart and Hilary Putnam respectively:

Who can say that Christianity is false because it is supposedly not rational? What if it be rational to expect worldviews to proceed substantially form symbolic sources? What if it is rational to expect revelation from the Beyond if God is ever to address the world that she, having created other than herself, is hidden behind? And if it is not irrational to believe in God, why not the Qur’an, why not Islam? Can the Christian prove her revelation or the Muslim his, over against the other? So [perhaps] it is not rational to think there are clear rational answers to the question of the truth of worldviews.” (From Smart’s Religion and the Western Mind, 1987: 12-13)

The philosopher Hilary Putnam puts Smart’s point this way: “‘Is our own way of life right or wrong?’ is a silly question, although it isn’t silly to ask if this or that particular feature of our way of life is right or wrong, and ‘Is our view of the world right or wrong?’ is a silly question, although it isn’t silly to ask if this or that particular belief is right or wrong.”

In any case, and in many respects, sensitive, empathetic, reflective, and critical global worldview description and analysis is in its infancy, and thus it seems highly unlikely anyone is (at least today) sufficiently well-versed in all the planet’s religious and philosophical worldviews to engage in such an enterprise. For we are only now beginning to appreciate the unique logic and forms of rationality found in non-Western worldviews. And we are still in the process of formulating the possible candidates for acceptable cross-cultural and comparative criteria for the analysis and evaluation of worldviews, especially if we grant that the assumptions and methods of modern Western philosophy are not necessarily privileged in such an enterprise, and in fact remain open to learning (about contemporary philosophy’s own myths and presuppositions, for example) from this cross-cultural encounter. Another way to put this would be to concede that Western philosophy (or science for that matter) does not possess an a priori monopoly on, or privileged possession of, the truth in any absolute sense. This is not equivalent to denying we can or should strive to make rational and ethical assessments of particular beliefs or practices within worldviews (cf. Martha C. Nussbaum’s Sex and Social Justice, 1999, or think of Gandhi’s critique of Hinduism and his belief that no religion should countenance in theory or practice the violation of fundamental ethical values and precepts), for we do and should. And this is all the more urgent if we happen to believe religions are first and foremost about “ways of life” and personal conduct, rather than dogmas, doctrine, or orthodoxy (i.e., more a question of orthopraxis). Smart himself argues, and I think persuasively, that it is through the comparative analysis of worldviews that we will generate the normative conceptual resources and categories for worldview evaluation, if only because the process itself will serve to “detribalize Westerners,” that is, enable us to overcome our dispositional tendency to “treat our tradition normatively, either explicitly or secretly.”

In some measure, of course, and particularly in the beginning, we unavoidably treat our own tradition(s) as normative in the comparative study of worldviews. (As Henry McDonald has argued, we ‘see’ or act and think on the basis of our own norms, rules and values, i.e., ‘on the [normative] basis of our own concepts, because they are the logical space in which we move and without which we could see nothing at all.’) Smart and others who have thought long and hard about the comparative examination of worldviews, being at the same time pioneers and trailblazers in this enterprise, believe that it will eventually allow if not encourage us to become more self-critical about our own worldviews, and that the result of such encounters and dialogues need not lead to either absolute relativism or radical scepticism.

So while we may be critical of specific worldview beliefs, practices, interests or themes (the latter in the sense perhaps of undue or misplaced emphasis), it is fruitless to make truth claims about worldviews as worldviews. With regard to this more modest critical endeavor, for example, we might assess the potential or capacity of a particular worldview to rationally, ethically, and creatively respond to various urgent issues and problems in our contemporary (and future) world: be it nationalism, uneven or unfettered technological development, public health and general welfare, various kinds of violence, ecological deterioration and devastation, the recognition of basic human rights, the commodification of values, global distributive justice, the awakening and exercise of functions and capacities thought essential for human flourishing or eudaimonia, and so forth and so on. This serves to remind us that, at bottom, our traditions and worldviews are the repositories of our normative conceptions of the good life, and only a clear and deep understanding of such conceptions will enable us to find the evaluative criteria essential to critically assessing ideologies and worldviews in the interests of our shared humanity or individual and collective flourishing.

257, Ginger, I’m not talking about fetishes or obsessions, as colloquially understood. I’m talking about the way we attribute vary levels and types of meaning to everything we encounter, all the time.

I understand that our personal judgments of things are subjective. But you suggested before that something like rock climbing can serve as life’s meaning; that’s what I’m responding to. At that point it’s not just subjective (you enjoy rock climbing – I don’t), it seems to break into a whole different category. But I’m probably missing something again.

I’m aware of similar attempts to speak to the apparent commonalities of mystical experience, much of which goes back to the efforts of those committed to philosophia perennis in the study of religions. I’ve been particularly interested in the different states of consciousness adumbrated in mystical experiences (and how these relate to the ‘unkowability’ of God in some traditions or some sort of supra-rational non-propositional knowledge of Ultimate Reality, as in the case of nirguna Brahman in Advaita Vedanta) and, relatedly, the kind of careful elucidation of types of mystical experience (especially the ‘apophatic’ and those entailing what Robert K.C. Forman terms the ‘pure consciousness event’), a taste of which one finds in Jerome Gellman’s entry on mysticism found in the online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mysticism/

That said, I’m equally interested in the *differences* between religions, what makes them unique as religious worldviews, etc. And I don’t assume that such differences are negative, indeed, they may speak to some interesting features about human nature (at least as historically constituted and expressed to this point in time). Moreover, mysticism is, at least in our time and place, a religiously elitist path : “For the world of the mystic is a rarefied world, perhaps like the heights of Machu Pichu, suited for habitation only by those whose blood has become specially adapted for such altitudes. If religion is not to be confined to a spiritual elite, it must be able to speak a language suitable for ordinary humanity–indeed, to close off that possibility would be a denial of the compassion and universalism that is the hallmark of great religions” (John Cottingham). In fact, one of the things I find most intriguing about religious discourse is its capacity to “speak” to those at various levels of psychological maturity and growth (as well as different ‘character types’ and temperaments), self-knowledge, ethical sensitivity, and spiritual discernment.