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In addition to
treating what is commonly called the philosophy
of religion, this section considers a wide spectrum of situations,
experiences, and issues recognized as "religious" and endeavours to
appraise the characteristic approaches and attitudes not only of the adherents
of particular religions but also of those who stand outside any particular
religion, whether as sympathizers or caustic critics. Outside the scope of this
section, however, are questions relating to the study of religions and its
methodology or questions relating to the types of argument by which one
interpretation of a religious claim is preferred to another (see also RELIGIONS,
THE STUDY AND CLASSIFICATION OF ).
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Evidences of
religious attitudes and loyalties exist in every sector of human life--in human
experience in general; in "culture," the complex interweaving of
attitudes, concerns, and views; and in history, the record of social and
personal behaviour. |
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Religion
incorporates certain characteristic feelings and emotions such as wonder, awe,
and reverence. The religious person tends to show a concern for values, moral
and aesthetic, and to seek appropriate action to embody these values. He is
likely to characterize behaviour not only as good or evil but also as holy or
unholy and people as not only virtuous or unvirtuous but also as godly or
ungodly. |
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As a feature of
human existence, religious life can be studied, for example, in terms of
psychology, sociology, and history. Among the first books in the psychology of
religion were two by Jonathan Edwards,
an 18th-century American theologian: A
Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God (1737)
and A Treatise Concerning Religious
Affections (1746). About a century later, during a period
of religious "revivals," interest developed concerning the age at
which conversions most often
took place--the period of adolescence. Reflections on such facts, and in this
sense the psychology of religion, only came, however, with the works of two
American psychologists: Edwin Diller Starbuck's Psychology
of Religion (1889) and the classical treatment by William
James's Varieties of
Religious Experience (1902). Generally, the psychology of
religion has shown that though religion for some is a crisis experience, for
others it is a natural growth. (see also Christianity,
religious experience)
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As psychology
became more analytical it became more interested in the abnormal, in neuroses
and dreams, in the techniques of hypnosis, and in the kinds of experience
induced by drugs. When Freud
spoke of religion as an illusion, he maintained that it is a fantasy structure
from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity; and in his
treatment of the unconscious he moved toward atheism. The study of the
unconscious by the Swiss psychiatrist Jung,
however, suggested that dominant archetypes
(implying innate tendencies to form symbolic images) are supplied by a racial
unconscious, thus providing a psychological approach to belief in God. (see also
collective unconscious) |
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In classifying
individuals into different types, psychology has distinguished between religious
people who are: "extrovert" or "introvert" (Jung),
"healthy minded" or "sick" (William James), and
"objective" or "subjective" worshippers (J.B. Pratt). There
is always the danger, however, that psychological distinctions may beg too many
philosophical questions. (see also Index: personality)
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One of the most
widely accepted studies of religious experience in regard to feelings was
written by the modern German Protestant theologian Rudolf
Otto. In his Idea of the
Holy, Otto analyzed what is distinctively religious in
terms of the unique concept of the "numinous";
i.e., something both awesome and appealing, both fearful and attractive. |
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Psychology,
however, is concerned not only with individuals but also with what is known
about group behaviour, which can also be of importance in any study of the
Christian Church or other religious institutions regarded as communities of
religious people. The authority of a religious leader, like that of all leaders,
is derived from his symbolic character and the extent to which the leader and
his followers share a common ideal. |
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The ideas and
images of a religion are much influenced by the social culture in which it
emerges. Some of the oldest social institutions and practices, such as those
concerning birth and death, marriage and the family, and art and music, have
developed in a religious context. Religion has often been a driving force in the
reform of social abuses, but also it has been associated with reaction and
oppression. More recently, the sociology
of religion--influenced by contemporary sociology--has been concerned with
making use of sociological criteria and of demographical and statistical studies
in planning the church's mission and appraising its significance. |
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Conclusions in the
history of religions have been largely determined by the particular ideas of man
or history with which the study was approached. Some scholars have supposed that
at the dawn of human existence there was a belief in a single god and that only
later there occurred a development into a belief in many gods as well as animism
(a belief in souls or spirits in man and other aspects of nature). Other
scholars have supposed an evolutionary development of religion, which only
reached monotheism--considered
to be the highest form of religious belief--after a long period of purification.
The two approaches sponsor, respectively, two contrasting myths about primitive
man. According to the one, there was once a golden age of innocence and harmony;
according to the other, the life of the earliest man was nasty, brutish, and
short. |
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Granted the
ubiquity of religion and its diversity, historians have found no universal
essence expressible in terms of common beliefs. What is probably common to all
religions is nothing more than the claim that reality is not restricted solely
to what is yielded by sense experience itself. |
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Religion has had a
strong but ambiguous cultural influence. The thought that a man depended for his
life and existence on a power not his own has encouraged some persons to be
lazy, as it has inspired others to greater effort. A conviction about another
world has led some religious people to disvalue human life; it has led others to
view human life as having the significance of a state of probation. It has been
plausibly argued by some (e.g., the German sociologist Max Weber) that
Protestantism provided a seedbed for modern capitalism; Catholicism, according
to others, easily accommodates a Socialist point of view. |
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Because a religious
view is generally associated with a conviction about the inadequacy of
"things seen and temporal," religion as a cultural influence usually
shows itself dissatisfied with things as they are. Often, however, when
confronted with novelty, religion has tended to be conservative. Thus, religion
has alternately opposed or fostered social and cultural development. |
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A situation is
regarded as religious when through its spatiotemporal features what can be
termed depth or another dimension can be disclosed objectively. In this sense,
there cannot be such a thing as a religion that is nontranscendent. On the
subjective side, there will be a matching self-disclosure, a "coming to
one's self" that occurs as a response to a vision of the eternal in and
through the temporal. |
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Different religious
approaches can be distinguished by the different interpretations they give of
what is objectively disclosed, of what in this sense is the transcendent. In
primitive religion, for example, the transcendent is always interpreted in terms
of an ultimate power or activity expressing itself, whether singly (monism)
or with multiplicity (pluralism),
through the objects and events of the world. |
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Animism views the
world as having life, power, and feeling as do men. A monistic view of the
universe is conceptually akin to the view according to which people or objects
exert the peculiar influence they do and have the strange significance they
possess because of mana--a
power or force somewhat similar to the scientific concept of energy--that they
embody. Animism becomes more diversified and pluralistic when it becomes spiritism,
which locates the cosmic life, power, and feeling in particular objects. Totemism
involves a highly complex system of beliefs and practices whereby an animal or
plant becomes a totem, or a focal symbol for the life and well-being of a tribe.
Just as tribal communities are sustained by a power that the totem symbolizes
and expresses, so the patterns of tribal behaviour are maintained by taboos.
Persons, things, and behaviour are taboo, or are prohibited to members of a
society, when they are judged to be so highly charged with sacred power that
ordinary "profane" persons must keep their distance.
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These primitive
viewpoints have a certain conceptual kinship with what the more sophisticated
religious viewpoints have labelled with such terms as theism,
polytheism, pluralism, and Idealism. Theism interprets the one cosmic,
life-giving power in personal terms--different versions varying in their views
of the adequacy of those personal terms. Polytheism
posits a multiplicity of cosmic personal powers on whose activity (whether in
cooperation or conflict) the universe depends. Pluralism views cosmic power as
mediated and expressed through a multiplicity of ultimates (e.g., finite
persons) or otherwise views the universe as best understood in terms of ultimate
atomic units, with no claim made for the absolute supremacy of any one of them.
In this way, pluralism--even of a personal kind--differs from theism, which
holds that God is a Supreme Person. |
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Absolute
Idealism maintains that activity is an ultimate category but makes no claim, as
does theism, for this activity to be personal. Instead, it takes a biological
organism as its dominant model. Theism, like deism, has sometimes posited an
ultimate personal power or being beyond, above, and certainly separated from the
changing scenes of life, whereas absolute Idealism posits an ultimate power or
being that is considered to be the whole, of which the changing scenes of life
are but a part. |
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Religion is not
merely a matter of being aware of a transcendent dimension nor is it merely a
claim for a broader and more comprehensive view of the reality. Fundamental to
religion is the conviction that through a right relation with a cosmic power or
powers, man will find his salvation.
Various views of such salvation have been held. Salvation has been regarded as
something attainable only after this life. Other views, however, tend to posit a
salvation for man through escape rather than fulfillment. Alternatively,
salvation may be viewed as something anticipated in the present but fulfilled
perfectly after this life. Salvation also has been interpreted in terms of
fellowship with God or as a state of bliss needing no God (as by the early
20th-century British philosopher J.M.E.
McTaggart), as a state of ultimate peace that arises when man sees
his peculiar and rightful place in the whole universe (as by Spinoza),
and as a state of bliss in which man cannot properly speak of himself as a
self-conscious individual as in the Buddhist state of Nirvana. |
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5.1.3.1
Inner attitudes and dispositions.
A religious view of
the universe contends that a new dimension and depth can be disclosed within the
person who responds. Though religious faith has its characteristic inner
attitudes and dispositions, they must be of a transcendently self-involving
kind, and there must be a depth to any attitude or disposition before it can be
called religious. Thus, the attitude of awe is related to the feeling of fear.
For fear to become awe, however, it must be characterized by a particular depth
and self-involvement that come from responding to the presence and activity of
God, or of the sacred or holy that call it forth. |
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Religion relates to
the whole of a man's personality and because of this totality of human response,
people speak of "conversion"
in relation to religious attitudes. Generally, a person who becomes religious or
ceases to be religious undergoes a profound transformation. Persons who have
become converted to religion speak of the world as having taken on a fuller and
richer dimension; those for whom the religious vision has disappeared speak of a
world as having become flat, dead, and bleak. |
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Many religions bind
their adherents to specific practices and particular moral
codes. Thus, conversion has often shown itself in radical changes of
behaviour; e.g., an alcoholic becoming a total abstainer. Such behaviour
as murder, lying, breaking promises, stealing, and committing adultery have been
condemned by the world religions. So strong is the ethical element in Confucianism
that some regard it more as an ethical system than a religion. Yet, ethical (and
ceremonial) codes can be transformed imperceptibly into no more than current
social conventions and mere customs. Whether such codes have changed or not,
their range and detail vary widely. Pork is eaten by Christians but is
considered to be unclean by Jews and Muslims. Muslims and Buddhists abstain
totally from alcohol; Christians and Jews need not. A Sikh will not shave his
beard; but Hindus, Christians, and Muslims are free to do so if they wish. In
contrast with Christians, Buddhists will not kill animals, and Muslims may
practice polygamy. (see also ethical
relativism) |
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Whatever the
diversities, religious faith
is not only self-involving, but it has a social dimension as well. Hermits
apart, religion brings people together as children of one family having a common
father. For Christians, the significance of the universal religious community,
the church, has been
variously interpreted. Some, with a Protestant emphasis, have viewed the church
as a voluntary institution created ad hoc for the convenience of its members to
enable them to gather together to worship, to sing hymns, and to share common
interests and beliefs. The Catholic view is that the church is a social
institution that is derived from God and whose structure expresses the givenness
of God himself. |
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To be of religious
significance, however, social practices and moral codes, like inner experiences
must have depth, a transcendent dimension, or they become superficial and
dangerous parodies of religion, all the more dangerous for being in their
outward features so similar. |
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The assertion that
the view of religion from within is privileged needs careful analysis. |
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First, religious
faith is logically privileged insofar as it is characterized by a
self-involvement, commitment to which partial commitments can only point. A
temporary loyalty, however intensive, is at best a distant pointer to a
conversion. Further, because religious faith is grounded in a disclosure, there
is something logically privileged about it in the same sense that some are
"privileged" to understand a joke when others do not. Yet, even though
religion has a disclosure basis, it is still true that just as there are
techniques for jokes so also are there techniques for meditation, whether in
Christianity or in other religions. By virtue of such techniques men can have a
reasonable expectation of a view of religion from within. In another sense, the
view that religion from within is privileged may merely mean that if a man
believes something and is committed, he is more involved than a man who does not
believe. |
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One aspect of the
logically privileged position of religion might be called its semantic
privilege; i.e., the fact that a religious vision cannot adequately be
expressed. One fundamental problem for religious language,
according to linguistic analysts, is to discover more reliable rather than less
reliable ways of talking. One need not presuppose, however, so fundamental a
distinction between the sacred and the secular that men become committed to
total silence on religious matters. When St. Paul, for example, wrote of being
"caught up" (in II Cor.) he "heard things that cannot be told,
which man may not utter." If this statement of Paul's were generally true
of religion, however, religious people would be so privileged that they would be
living in a segregated silence. |
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Some scholars have
argued that the privileged character of religion makes it unsuitable as a proper
study for the philosopher, who must in principle be detached, not committed, and
have an openness to all truth. The lack of finality in philosophical thought is
contrasted with religious commitment and the final claims sometimes made for
religious doctrine. Nevertheless, insofar as anyone has a coherent world view,
there will be some degree of commitment. |
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Religion is not,
however, altogether beyond argument, and those who are outside a religion can
still have some inkling of what is being discussed within a religion and the
manner in which it is being discussed, especially when the social, cultural,
historical, and psychological embodiments of the religion are described. For
this reason Western Christians and Jews, for example, are able to know something
about the primitive religion of an African or Indonesian tribe. |
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Thus, much about
religion can be known by those outside it, however, views about the nature of
religion and definitions of religion have a systematic inadequacy about them.
Like everything of the spirit, religion cannot be described so as to make clear
to the detached observer the characteristic quality and depth of religious
awareness and commitment. |
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5.1.5.1
The essence or core of religion.
For the insider,
the essence of religion is given in a moment of vision and disclosure. Friedrich
Schleiermacher, a German philosopher of the 18th and 19th centuries,
described the basic religious experience in terms of a kiss or an embrace.
Attempts to understand such a unity can only be made in terms of the particulars
into which the unity subsequently breaks, and such particulars then fall broadly
into subjective and objective compartments. |
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Faith describes a
subjective state that accepts what a disclosure discloses and is akin to
personal trustfulness, to a conation or striving that, according to Spinoza, all
living things display. Prayer
is the utterance of words (rite) with or without some dramatic context
(ceremonial) designed either to carry one into the presence of what is
worshipped or to express appropriate sentiments in the presence of what is
worshipped. Most prayers incorporate words that function in both ways. Ritual
is especially concerned with events in human life that have disclosure
possibilities and in which mystery is at its highest. |
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Mystery
in the context of religion refers to situations, such as birth, reproduction,
death, and suffering, in which there are numerous possibilities for new insights
and yet further insights. Public worship
must constantly renew and realize in the liturgy
the possibilities of the past disclosures. If the outward expressions and forms
come to dominate, ritual can become an empty shell, and religious practices can
become devoid of religious significance. |
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One of the effects
of religious beliefs and
practices is sacralization, a process in which certain persons, days, or objects
become regarded as sacred. If such objects are granted more than the status of
symbols, they may become objects of idolatry or superstition. (see also sacred
and profane, religious
symbolism) |
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Belief in
salvation, which often accompanies religious commitment, can have various
practical results. If salvation is viewed as something that inspires progress
and may be accomplished in the realm of time, such doctrines of salvation
encourage social reforms and projects that envision an abundant life for
humanity. If, on the other hand, salvation is viewed as something that is beyond
the realm of time and set entirely apart from this world--something for which at
best this world is a probation and at worst a sink of misery and iniquity from
which the sooner man is released the better--such doctrines of salvation can be
excessively individualistic and may even encourage oppression and tyranny. |
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Religious belief
has sometimes led men to detailed conclusions about nature and history. Good
harvests have been interpreted as due rewards for appropriate worship or good
behaviour, or both; calamities have been viewed as the results of sin, either
ceremonial or moral. If God is believed to be in control of history, a nation
that does what is right and follows his guidance, as expressed through its
prophets and other religious personages, is expected to experience national
prosperity and success. In previous periods, when this did not occur, the
ensuing calamities were attributed to the backslidings of earlier generations.
(see also nature, philosophy of)
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Many observers of
religion claim that in the modern world few would suppose that God intervenes in
this direct and predictable way. According to this view, God's activity in the
world, apart from being expressed in its constant creativity and conservation,
is effective through man's own intellectual and physical activity. Insofar as
man's own creativity is exercised, however, within the framework of the order
that the world displays, and in no way violates it, one cannot exclude a similar
creativity on the part of God. Admittedly, the fact that man expresses his
activity through an intermediate organism (his body) indicates that there is no
exact parallel between God and man; nevertheless, because God's activity
terminates with the universe, the analogy with God's activity might very well be
expressed in the number of ways in which man can effect creative development in
his own body. |
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Internal criticisms
of religion have their basis in the imbalance that occurs when one aspect or one
understanding of religion is allowed to dominate the rest. Heresies have arisen
when one way of understanding has been developed without balancing it with
another. In the development of doctrines concerning the nature and person of
Christ within Christianity, for example, heresies arose when a particular model
(e.g., that of fatherhood and sonship) was believed to be capable of
infinite development. The model of the Father-Son relationship was pressed too
far, and the Son was subordinated to the Father in a way inconsistent with
Christian orthodoxy, thus leading to what became heresy.
Sectarianism develops when
religious insights are associated exclusively with one particular doctrinal or
theological phrase, such as justification by faith, or with one particular
theological view regarding religious practices; e.g., baptism. Because
religion is at once infinite and mysterious, it is important that religious
belief does full justice to a wide variety of approaches. |
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Another criticism
of religion has been that it has tended to be overintellectual; and when this
trait has been combined with moral laxity and factional rivalries, it has led to
protests about the arrogance of intellectualized religion, often leading to the
opposite error of supposing that belief does not matter as long as common
sentiments are shared. Religious believers have not always recognized that for
the most part their belief explicates metaphors, images, and symbols. Though
ways of religious reasoning are appropriately informal and variegated, having
their origins in a multitude of images and symbols, it nevertheless is
considered a religious duty to produce the most reliable overall discourse based
on the various images and models. |
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The fundamental
difficulty of all religious understanding, however, is to balance
intelligibility and mystery. If the intelligibility is neglected, religious
belief can become dishonest and religious men can lose integrity; if mystery is
neglected, there may be splendid controversy and exercises in logical appraisal,
but the heart of religion will have disappeared. |
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The basic
difficulty of all religions and of historical religions in particular is to
effect a constant rebirth of symbols in changing cultures. In the course of time
some of the most powerful images and symbols lose their fertility in promoting
ideas that inform a religious community. This might be said of the image of
sacrifice in the Christian religion. Religious practices and institutions,
though they may have social merits, can all become stereotyped routine, as
happens when they fail to preserve a sense of reverence and fail to disclose the
givenness of the sacred or holy. Because religious belief is so important and
influences all aspects of a society, there is a tendency for religious
institutions to become authoritarian and oppressive. If a religious institution
becomes interwoven with political views it can become tyrannical. Religion's
only compulsion, according to some scholars, must be the compelling power of a
vision, as the modern English-American philosopher Alfred
North Whitehead expressed it: "The power of God is the worship
He inspires." The authority of any religion is the authority of a vision,
the authority of that which, in being disclosed, inspires men and leads them to
fulfillment in their lives. For a Christian, the final authority is the love of
God in Christ, and love is not love if its power is anything but inspiration.
For other religions there is the compelling inspiration of that to which--Nirvana
or the Qur`an, the Buddha or Muhammad--point. |
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Internal criticisms
of religion usually focus on such themes as narrowness, sectarianism,
traditionalism, conventionalism, materialism, and immorality. Some criticism is
also reserved for religiosity, which, though granting a
dimension of faith, treats faith in an altogether superficial and often
unbalanced way. Religiosity represents an excessive preoccupation with religion
that is depicted in an incoherent and oversimplified relating of religious faith
to intellectual views and social and personal practices.
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Because religious
commitment is so all-embracing and tends to influence thought, feelings, and
behaviour, it is not surprising that there are many reasons why religious claims
have been rejected. |
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5.1.7.1
Rejections on the grounds of alleged incoherence.
Religious claims
have been rejected because of their alleged logical or moral incoherence. |
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Logical incoherence
may arise internally or externally and in relation to different issues. In
regard to internal coherence, critics have maintained that man should be able to
expect that God would see to it that there could be no possibility of ignoring
his existence or of making mistakes about religious beliefs and behaviour, if
religious convictions are so important. They have also claimed that it is
altogether too na?e, though inevitable, to think of God as made in the image of
man. Some have rejected theistic belief because of the incoherence of the idea
of God, which must--they claim--combine so many incompatible predicates; e.g.,
God is eternal, yet acts in time, or he is loving and yet incapable of
suffering or feeling. |
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Religious beliefs
have been alleged to be externally, as well as internally, incoherent because of
their conflict with other views about the universe, especially scientific views.
The doctrines of heaven and hell,
in particular, which have given great personal and social significance to
religious belief, have been rejected by many critics when these doctrines were
viewed literally. Yet it has been the supposed actuality of heaven and hell that
has given religious persons their hope and their terror respectively. Absolute
Idealism, it has sometimes been alleged, is incoherent insofar as it states that
time is not "real" and that evil does not really exist. This is not to
say, however, that there is no temporal succession or nothing evil, claims that
would be obviously incoherent. What is being claimed is that within a particular
interpretation of the universe, time and evil are not left as ultimate
categories but are in some sense derivative from other categories. |
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It has been argued
that by far the greatest problem of external incoherence that belief in God has
to face is that of the evil and suffering that characterize the world. Critics
have stated that if God cannot rid the world of evil and suffering, he is not
all-powerful; if he could, but he won't, then he isn't all-good; if he is
powerful and good but not all-wise, then, even though he is trying his best,
there are bound to be disasters. The most serious classical expression of this
problem was given by David Hume,
in his Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion (1779). With such considerations in mind, some
philosophers, such as John Stuart Mill,
have been willing to argue for a limited God--i.e., the great
fellow-sufferer who understands and has compassionate sympathy. |
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Though religious
conviction shows itself in moral behaviour, it has been argued that religious
people have not shown outstanding moral qualities. An 18th-century English
philosopher and churchman, Bishop George
Berkeley, when presented with this objection, remarked that nothing
evil can be attributed as such to the Christian religion and that the only
legitimate comparison is that between a person who is a Christian and what the
same person would have been otherwise. The distinctiveness of the Christian
faith, however, has sometimes been supported by arguing a stark contrast with morality.
The 19th-century Danish philosophical theologian S?en
Kierkegaard, for example, by a too literal misreading of the biblical
story of Abraham and Isaac (Gen. 22), supposed that religious obedience must be
in radical opposition to moral duty. However that may be, religious men often
may be only too well aware of their moral lapses, their sins,
and for this very reason they seek the grace
and power of God. The good that they would do they do not do, and the evil that
they despise they continually do, as St. Paul noted in his letter to the Romans.
In this moral predicament, those with a Christian commitment believe that the
grace and power of God comes to inspire and release them from the dominion of
sin. This does not mean that the Christian never sins, but it does mean that he
is assured of ultimate victory over sin. The Christian Church is viewed not as a
society of saints but a school for sinners. (see also good
and evil) |
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The exclusiveness
of religious sects is regarded by those outside the sects as hardly to the
sectarians' credit. For Christians, sectarian exclusiveness is viewed as a
scandal to the gospel that they preach. On the other hand, the criticisms of
Puritanism that hold it as inevitably negative and oppressive sometimes fail to
see that it may be neither negative nor oppressive if it is grounded in a
spiritual and religious vision. |
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The doctrine of
grace (the view that God grants man abilities that man does not merit by his own
efforts) has sometimes appeared to make God himself--interpreted as the spirit
dwelling in a man--the actual agent of good behaviour. In this way, some
interpretations of the doctrines of grace have compromised man's freedom and
come close to denying man responsibility for his actions. |
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Outside
Christianity, critics have pointed to the gap between religious profession and
moral action, though within Christianity, with its strong emphasis on moral
transformation, the gap has been very wide and the criticism most challenging.
In Hinduism for instance, Gandhian reformational and nonviolence ideals have not
mixed well with social corruption or with the type of neutralism that allowed
China to persecute Tibetan Buddhists. Again, the Buddhist who goes to a temple
is not necessarily compassionate as his religion dictates, and the Muslim who
attends services in a mosque may be less filled with an inner sense of justice
and patience than with thoughts of a holy war. In Sri Lanka (Ceylon) and Vietnam
nationalist loyalties have given rise to a violence untypical of Buddhism. In
the last resort, however, each religion will appeal to its doctrine of salvation
when presented with a gap between its moral ideals and the actual actions and
behaviour of its adherents. |
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5.1.7.2.1
Rejection
of historical beliefs, practices, and institutions as spurious or irrelevant.
When a religion
appeals to historical events, other grounds for its rejection arise. The Old
Testament view of history appears to have been exceedingly selective
in order to emphasize a particular point about God and his activity. The miracles
of Jesus--both those relating to his own person (his birth and Resurrection) and
those that he himself performed (especially nature miracles)--conflict with what
men experience in the normal course of their natural lives and experience.
Prayers requesting favourable weather, plentiful crops, or safety in a journey
are characterized by many as spurious and irrelevant. Ideas of God intervening
in the universe, according to such critics, satisfy neither science nor
religion. From a scientific point of view, "laws" of nature are no
longer viewed as divine prescriptions; and the word law becomes, in fact,
misleading. Furthermore, in order to allow for miraculous intervention of this
kind, God's providential care is viewed as a compromise. He thus becomes the
absentee landlord who absented himself from the world, which must take care of
itself except for some spectacular visitation. According to this view, the only
coherent way to speak of an intervention of God is to interpret it in the
context of personal intervention. (see also Index: science,
history of) |
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Religious
institutions have been criticized on the grounds that they conflict with the
ideas of the founder and are supported by claims that cannot be historically
verified. These claims, according to critics, depend on taking certain
historical events on which the religion is founded, and reinterpreting them by
theological speculation or a very full imagination, to produce, for example, a
doctrine of papal supremacy according to which Christ is believed to have given
explicitly to the successors of St. Peter final jurisdiction over the church. |
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According to some
views, anyone who prizes "another world" must despise this world and
be uncertain in his attitude toward the world around him. In this way, it is
said, religion dries up the sources of its activity and attacks such happiness
as this world can provide--though promising happiness hereafter, which has been
called "pie in the sky" or "opiate of the people" by critics
of religion. A humanist concern to liberalize and relax laws (e.g., on
abortion and divorce), to abolish capital punishment, and to encourage birth
control has always been opposed, according to humanists, by Christian orthodoxy,
which they interpret as having a negative and conservative attitude that has
proceeded from a nervous fear of a decline in moral standards. At the same time,
humanists would continue, moral standards have hardly been upheld by sectarian
strife and persecutions. Further, they point out, too often the church, in its
desire to indicate what abides, has confused what is abiding with current social
and political institutions and traditions inherited from the past, generally
resulting in an illiberal obscurantism and a reactionary outlook. (see also humanism)
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Some critics of
religion have contended that almost all scientific progress has been hindered by
religious beliefs and attitudes. Biology, physics, and geology, they have
claimed, only made the rapid progress that they did when they were freed from a
context of religious belief by the 17th-century philosopher Ren?Descartes,
who devised a metaphysical myth of the separation of mind and body. |
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In the matter of
the origins and development of religion, many (e.g., the psychologist
James Henry Leuba in his Psychology of Religious Mysticism [1925]) have
argued that there is a close connection between mysticism
and hallucination, between hysteria
and ecstatic institutionalized inspiration as, for example, in Pentecostal
churches. Religious people, according to such views, often have personality
weaknesses and are psychologically disturbed. Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis,
maintained that inner conflicts--often the result of repression,
particularly in relation to sex--become expressed in peculiarities of behaviour
and mood, especially in the vivid imagery of dreams that erupt from the unconscious
area of one's personality. By comparing the symbolism of dreams and mythology,
Freud held that belief in God--in particular, the father image--merely
perpetuates in fantasy what
the individual must in actual fact overcome as part of his growth to maturity,
thus giving religious belief a treatment that not only made belief in God
unnecessary but positively unhelpful. (see also Skepticism)
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Carl
Jung,
a former disciple of Freud, gave a different account of the psychology of the
unconscious. Each person displays a libido,
a fundamental striving that is creative and purposive and of which there is
evidence in the symbolic language of dreams. Behind all such symbolic language
are archetypes (innate tendencies to form symbolic images), which all humanity
shares and which inspire a person to move toward a balanced integration to which
the energy of the libido would creatively move, if given proper freedom and
encouragement. Thus, Jung posits a racial or impersonal unconscious in which, at
the deepest level, all individual human beings share. Jung's archetypes
raise the metaphysical question of whether they are symbols of an existent God
or gods--a question that psychology leaves open. For many psychologists it is a
question of little interest, because for them the archetypes themselves suffice
in practice. (see also Index: collective
unconscious) |
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In addition to such
naturalistic or skeptical views about the origin and development of religion are
other claims that religion is merely an infantile reaction to fear,
a more or less harmful sublimation
of sex, a projection of
wishful thinking, or a social device for use in the class struggle. On the other
side, however, it is likely to be pointed out that one must be careful not to
indulge in the genetic fallacy: no account of the origin and development of
anything, of religion in particular, is necessarily a reliable analysis of what
that particular phenomenon is now; a single explanation of the origin and
development of a phenomenon as complex and variegated as religion is difficult
to describe and maintain. It is also necessary to beware of the "really
only," or reductionist,
fallacy. To say "x is really only y" is, in effect,
denying the significance of y language despite the fact that y-talk
as well as x-talk already occurs; e.g., persons are really only
"machines," or worship is really only a social occasion.
Over-simplification streamlines discourse at the cost of adequacy and truth. |
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Some have thought
of religion as no more than a body of stories designed to encourage a noble attitude
toward life and humanity. If, however, one asks why or how these attitudes
encourage and why a particular attitude is valued, what begins as a simple
account of religion becomes, in the end, as complicated as any. Another
criticism of religion, arguing for its redundancy, claims that the progress of
man in society can and should be determined by scientific considerations. This
contention, however, goes beyond the particular conclusions of the individual
sciences; it is to make a philosophy out of science. On the one hand, such a
scientific view of man and society would be open to philosophical criticism, not
the least if it were suggested that man's subjectivity--that which makes him the
unique person he is--has to be analyzed in terms of the objects of science. On
the other hand, if science becomes a philosophy, it might be said to have
assumed a religious dimension itself. |
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In the realm of
religion in the latter part of the 20th century, in what might still be called
the Christian societies of the West, the attitude of very many people lies in an
intermediate zone between religious belief and atheism,
but the content appears rather to be given to agnosticism.
Such persons believe in God but dislike any kind of formal worship, pray only on
exceptional occasions, and find it difficult to have a sense of sin but admire
saintliness. They are critical of the need for a Christian ministry except
insofar as a priest or pastor can show sympathy and act as a vehicle of social
concern. They are distrustful of dogma and critical of Christian sectarianism.
They may be uncertain of Christ's divinity, but the words and example of Jesus
are viewed as a guide to the good life. This outlook has many affinities with
the "natural religion" of the 18th century in which the ethical
example and teachings of Jesus were emphasized. Though, as in the 18th century,
there may be an intent to reject revelation, persons holding such an outlook may
rather be rejecting certain stylings of Christian revelation. |
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Examples of
occurrence of such a "natural piety" can also be found in religions
other than Christianity, though significantly not in Islam--unless the
Baha'i movement be taken as an approximation of this outlook. This attitude, for
example, has provided the basic cohesion for the State of Israel in the latter
half of the 20th century. Further, the spread of technology has gradually been
alienating many Hindus and Buddhists from their traditional beliefs, but the
Hindu has continued to treasure his spiritual ideology, which may well give to
technological development its needed direction and wider setting. Buddhism in
Japan, and perhaps elsewhere in the East, is still valued in the 20th century
insofar as it supplies a local religious dimension to a society whose public and
industrial life has been increasingly Westernized. Thus, an attitude has arisen
that is sympathetic to the broad claims of religion, but has been critical, if
not disdainful, of theological dogma and rivalries. |
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5.1.8.1
Traditional justifications.
5.1.8.1.1
Religion
as pointing to an ultimate power, being, or value.
More generally,
persons who are outside the particular religions and who have nevertheless
acknowledged religion as significant often seem to base their views on a
fundamental feeling of absolute dependence. The grandeur of the universe, the
character of the moral struggle, reflections on human nature, and an awareness
of moral values inspiring men to reform society have all joined together to
point men to an ultimate power or being--a "power, not ourselves, which
makes for righteousness," according to the 19th-century English poet Matthew
Arnold. |
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The fundamental
difference in the latter part of the 20th century between the secularist and the
religious person most likely has been between someone who takes a narrower and
someone who takes a wider view of humanity. That there is an acknowledged need
in modern times to give a moral direction to technology seems to many to bring
with it the need for a religious view of the universe, even though they may not
themselves be adherents of a particular religion. |
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Others point to
examples of the wholesome moral and spiritual effects that religion has had.
They mention that society has ceased to practice child exposure and there has
been a notable development in the status of women in society. Religion, where it
is not parodied, misrepresented, or misunderstood, broadens rather than narrows
vision. Insofar as human nature is inadequately understood, if no place is
granted to the spirit of man, human nature, it is argued, will never find
satisfaction except through the self-realization and self-fulfillment that come
from responding to the inspiring ideal. |
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5.1.8.2.1
The quest
for authentic existence.
In the 20th century
various alternatives to traditional religious beliefs, practices, and
institutions have become apparent. Chief among these is the quest for authentic
existence. This has been encouraged and portrayed by various Existentialists
(those who view man in terms of his existing thoughts and actions rather than in
terms of his "essence"), who have been concerned in one way or another
with emphasizing the significance of certain situations. In this way, they have
given their own versions of salvation--that situation in which a person finds
his true significance. For some, such as the German philosopher Martin
Heidegger, a sense of authentic existence is given to each person
when he realizes his true subjectivity, which his life in the world and his
social transactions so often conceal. Authentic existence is often contrasted
with cosmic anxiety--i.e., anxiety
of a deep and far-reaching kind to which the antidote is to find oneself and
one's freedom in a total commitment to what is called the ground of Being. |
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Existentialists of
an atheistic persuasion, such as the philosopher and Nobel laureate Jean-Paul
Sartre, regard human existence as absurd and other people as hell,
because, though one needs other people, they can never be other than "other
people"--their subjecthood, their freedom is inaccessible. Love is, thus,
doomed to permanent frustration. The need to know others like oneself is matched
by its impossibility. According to Sartre, this condition only reflects the absurdity
of man's own existence, which is always attempting to overcome a radical
estrangement between man as the object of scientific study and man himself (en
soi) and the subjectivity man knows in consciousness
(pour soi). Suicide
is the final absurdity, for in getting rid of en soi, what man is, pour
soi disappears at the same time. |
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This pessimistic
estimate of human life and its apparent absurdity, however, has been converted
into a religious view by other Existentialists, such as Gabriel
Marcel, another French philosopher, who point to a participation--a
mysterious self-involvement that persons can have intersubjectively with each
other--in a kind of fellowship that is viewed as God-given. According to this
view, man needs to open himself to the presence and grace
of God for a dynamic transformation in which the mysterious transcends the
purely problematic. Common to all Existentialists, however, is the view that the
authentic man is not merely satisfied with playing a role, with being a cog in
industrial society. One way or another, the quest for authentic existence is to
discover the means by which man can recapture and enjoy occasions of
self-disclosure. So significant are these occasions that they have been viewed
by some theologians to be the paradigm for the kind of situation that the
Christian gospels recount. |
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Another feature of
20th-century development has been society's rediscovery of the significance of
the secular. This change has led to an outlook and attitude that has been
characterized as "religionless Christianity," a Christianity
influenced by its residual social and political ideal, but bereft of its
specifically religious practices, doctrines, or institutions. Such practices as
traditional intercessory prayer are dismissed as empty approximations to magic;
doctrine is condemned as outdated and expressed in terms of past cultures;
institutions are criticized as oppressive and conservative. (see also secularism)
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Behind all this
suspicion of structures and doctrinal schemes and practices, however, is a
desire to get back to basic principles and origins, to learn again what is
distinctive about the religious point of view. According to some proponents,
such a goal might be attained by beginning with the secular, with activities in
the secular world, not least with compassionate service, by seeing where the
need arises for religious conviction and by ascertaining what contribution faith
will make to secular endeavour. Though secular religion broadens out into a more
sympathetic and a more positive attitude than agnosticism, it is never as
explicit or particularized as orthodoxy. |
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Marxism, which
provides remarkable evidence of the power of dominant key ideas to inspire and
direct man, is undoubtedly one of the greatest challenges to traditional
religious belief. Based on the socio-economic philosophical thought of the
19th-century thinker Karl Marx, Marxism can be said to be a quasi-religion on
two counts. First, Marxism had connections with the metaphysics
of G.W.F. Hegel, an
18th-19th-century German philosopher who interpreted reality in terms of a
spiritual Absolute. Furthermore, the thinking of Marx had religious overtones,
whether from his own Jewish background or from a Christian atmosphere, not least
in Britain where he lived from 1849 to 1883. Second, Marxism can be called a
quasi-religion insofar as it calls from its followers a devotion and a
commitment that in their empirical character greatly resemble the commitment and
devotion that characterize religious people. Marxism has undoubtedly fired the
spirit of man and given to revolutions,
whether in Russia or China, a powerful direction that has maintained stability
and avoided anarchy. Furthermore, like a religion, it has provided themes of
fulfillment and hope--a revolution interpreted as the initiation of a Communist
world society that would be a final consummation. There are many logical
similarities between the doctrine of the Marxist millennium
and the Christian doctrine of Christ's Second Coming. Marxism has also stressed
the significance of cooperating with the immanent spirit of the times--something
comparable to the providence of God--in economic and military struggles that are
viewed as the travail by which society would be reborn. The main difference
between Marxism and Christianity in the 19th and early 20th centuries, according
to some scholars, was that for many the Christian vision encouraged men to
endure tyranny, while the Marxist view inspired men to rebel. Yet, once it can
be established that religion is not the servant of oppression, is not
necessarily linked with an illiberal regime, and does not use concepts of
"other worldliness" to make men content with tyranny and injustice,
then religion may yet have a place in the Communist state. Such a religion would
not have to concern itself with the kind of supernaturalism that Marxism now
rejects; it would not have to appeal to an invisible world entirely other than
the present world. It is not without significance that Marxism has its own form
of public ceremonial and its own language of glorification. If it has to be
granted that many religions have a ceremonial, a symbolism, and a moral code
that has lost the vision they once had, Marxism is a social program, a doctrine,
and a ceremonial searching for a vision that haunts it and that may at some time
bring it to fruition. In this regard, Chinese Marxism is particularly
significant insofar as Marxism in China cannot escape some interweaving with
Chinese Buddhism. Chinese Buddhism brings with it a natural framework of
absolute Idealism, which may yet supply Marxism with the spiritual dimension
that for many critics appears to be Marxism's main inadequacy, something it lost
when it shed its Hegelian metaphysics and became the anti-God Materialistic
world-view of the U.S.S.R. |
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Most philosophies
have incorporated religious views in the wide sense of being concerned with a
reality beyond appearance, and in this sense they have provided a philosophy of
religion. |
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5.1.9.1
Developments in the West.
5.1.9.1.1
Ancient
and medieval concepts.
For the Greek
philosophers Plato and Aristotle,
wonder was the beginning of philosophy. From such wonder, according to Plato,
emerged religious knowledge that was also mediated through Ideas,
eternal entities or concepts in which the things of time participate. In
performing every good act, man realizes his link with eternity and the Idea of the
Good. For the moment, however, man, as in a cave, is chained by his
earthly existence so that he cannot see the light outside; he can only see
shadows on the wall, which are signs and tokens of the eternal light behind him.
This was Plato's way of styling the relationship between time and eternity,
between appearance and reality, and it is a styling that found a particular
welcome in the Christian tradition and not least by Christian Platonists,
whether of the 2nd or 17th centuries. Plato's philosophy also led to belief in
God, and his Timaeus is a philosophical creation story. |
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Aristotle,
impressed with organic life in man and animals, took as his fundamental category
growth and development. The nature of anything was thought of as a form by which
its movement and development as an organism was to be understood. It was as if
the form supplied the driving force. In this context, God was thought of as pure
form, as final cause, and as prime
mover. Aristotle provided for St.
Thomas Aquinas, the great medieval philosopher of Western
Christendom, the foundation on which he developed Scholasticism,
which has been a distinctive feature of Christian philosophy of religion since
the 13th century. Other medieval philosophers, such as Erigena, with his
pantheism (God in all); Abelard, with his critical questions; Eckehart, with his
mysticism; and Duns Scotus and Bonaventure, with a wider view of reason than
could be contained in the Scholastic philosophy, all illustrate the variety and
independence of Christian thinkers. |
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Descartes,
the "father of modern philosophy," is significant in terms of his
reacting against external authority in matters of belief, seeking a fresh basis
for certainty, and finding it in the existence of his own mind.
He must think in order to doubt
his existence, hence his famous statement, Cogito
ergo sum ("I think, therefore, I am").
Henceforward, much significance was given to the individual mind, and the
resulting myth of the body-mind separation enabled both physics and biology to
develop without the risk of ecclesiastical interference. Only in recent years
has the inadequacy of the Cartesian body-mind myth come under general criticism
not only because of the metaphysical problems it poses but also because it fails
to do justice to the unity of personality that recent developments in medicine,
such as those pertaining to psychosomatic disorders, presuppose. (see also mind-body
dualism) |
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Many of Descartes's
17th- and 18th-century successors can be best understood by reference to him. Nicolas
Malebranche, a French Cartesian philosopher, and the occasionalist
philosophers, were more radical than Descartes; they dispensed with any unity
whatever in man himself and linked together man's mind and body by means of the
constant correlation effected by God himself, claiming that mental events were
merely "occasions" for God effecting material change. For Spinoza,
the whole universe had not only Descartes's two attributes
of mentality and materiality but an infinite number of attributes, and it could
be alternatively named God or Nature. Each existent in the world could be
pictured as a particular whirlpool in an infinitely deep sea made up of endless
layers of particular fluids of which man knows only two--mentality and
materiality. Gottfried Leibniz
viewed Descartes's minds as the only ultimate existents, so that even material
things were colonies of souls. God was viewed as the supreme monad
(the ultimate substance) that establishes coherence and harmony among all other
monads. What appears to men as the external world is, so to speak, the result of
blurred vision on the part of those groups of monads that are human beings. (see
also Cartesianism)
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After Descartes
there appeared the British Empiricists:
John Locke, George Berkeley,
Joseph Butler, and David Hume.
Locke, though rejecting some of Descartes's characteristic doctrines,
nevertheless took over Descartes's view of the human mind and then concerned
himself with the philosophical psychology of how the mind comes to have the
ideas it possesses. By the time of David Hume (died 1776), the mind was viewed
as nothing more than a collection or bundle of ideas thought of as very similar
to images, which means, as Hume frankly admitted, that it becomes impossible to
do justice to the subjectivity that makes each person distinctively the person
he is. The significance of Berkeley
(died 1753) in this sequence is that he saw the need for an extended Empiricism
that took the notion of personality seriously and that regarded activity as a
key concept. Indeed, for Berkeley the fundamental unit for thought was
"activity-directed-towards-and-terminating-in ideas," and it was the
activity of God directed to those ideas, which make up the external world, that
gave to this world its continuous independent existence. His contemporary Butler
also argued for a broader Empiricism, which for him centred on the significance
of man as a moral agent and on a reasonableness that need not always conform to
a mathematical paradigm. In a matter of great consequence, a man's action can be
reasonable even though there may be little supporting evidence for his decision
and though, indeed, the evidence may be very much against it. It may, thus,
often be a moral duty to act in such problematical circumstances. This led to
Butler's famous doctrine of probability--"probability is the very guide of
life"--a view that influenced the treatment of belief in The
Grammar of Assent (1870), by the English theologian John
Henry Newman. |
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Immanuel
Kant
has been called the second founder of modern philosophy. With Kant, late
18th-century philosophy began to take an interest in human knowledge, its
varieties, scope, and limits. In Kant's critical philosophy, which emerged in
his old age, he showed how scientific knowledge left room for morality.
Though he was inclined to interpret all religious assertions in terms of
morality, belief in God was justified as the holding of a regulative idea that
brings coherence into all of man's thinking. The foundation of this idea is to
be found, in fact, in those experiences of unity to which moral ideals, beauty,
and the notion of a purposive universe all point. This idea of unity, largely
implicit in Kant, was developed by Hegel, who came to regard the universe and
its cultural, social, and political progress as but manifestations in time of an
unchanging absolute spirit. In this way, Hegelianism
provided a spiritual interpretation of the universe, but it regarded particular
religions as no more than visual aids toward understanding Hegelian truths. A
century later, the British philosopher F.H.
Bradley was able to use a Hegelian approach in a much more empirical
and far less intellectual context. Whatever form Hegelianism took and though its
spiritual insights seemed on first view to make it a friend to religion, it has
proved to be a position in opposition to Christianity, whether by its minimizing
the historical element or by the way in which it compromises belief in a
personal God. (see also science,
history of) |
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Since the absolute
Idealists, there has perhaps been only one philosopher in the mainstream of
tradition--Alfred North Whitehead--who,
in taking becoming rather than being as the fundamental category, made "process
philosophy" possible. This philosophical view maintains a
metaphysics that not only provides an interpretative scheme linking God, man,
and the world but one that incorporates scientific and historical thinking,
though in taking growth and process as fundamental, Whitehead seems, to some, to
have an evolutionary God. |
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There were two main
reactions against Hegelianism. The first, initiated by Kierkegaard,
viewed Hegelianism as altogether too detached and objective and its ways of
reasoning entirely unsuited to the deepest experiences of human life, the tragic
situations in which human beings find themselves. From Kierkegaard, the
Existentialist movement began. Also, in reaction against Hegel, were the modern
Empiricists, such as Bertrand Russell and G.E. Moore from England, whose
watchword was clarification in their attempts to create a straightforward,
unambiguous language. This movement passed easily into Logical
Positivism (a philosophical position that accepts only scientific
knowledge as factual and rejects metaphysics), which challenged not only the
truth but the meaning of theological assertions. |
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5.1.9.2.1
Buddhist
concepts.
Among the religious
philosophies of the East, the conservative Theravada
(Way of the Elders and another term for Hinayana) Buddhism
regarded all existence as a succession of transitory states: what alone was
permanent was Nirvana, a
deathless realm the existence of which was revealed to the Buddha himself in the
Enlightenment that came to him while he meditated beneath the bo tree (late 6th
century BC). About Nirvana, the wise will say little more except to
affirm its existence and to express their conviction that the plurality of
individual souls that man knows in this world cannot in the same way exist in
that deathless realm where there is no rebirth. Such ideas find a natural home
in the philosophical standpoint of absolute Idealism, and Nirvana can be
regarded as an alternative word for the Absolute.
Broadly speaking, Buddhism is agnostic both about a personal creator and
personal immortality, though Theravada Buddhism explicitly rejects belief
in a creator. Undoubtedly, the dominant theme of Buddhism is the quest for
release from the changes and chances of this world, which will lead to the
serenity and peace of Nirvana. A Buddhist saint is someone who has indeed
become the Absolute, which thus incorporates and transcends all human
imperfections and struggles and all the imperfect ideas, ideals, and deities of
popular religion and popular ways of thinking. The difference between the arhat
of Theravada, and the bodhisattva of the Mahayana is one
between two different routes of realizing Nirvana--the one through
self-concentration; the other through self-sacrifice for the welfare of others.
The difference is one between two "saintly" routes to the one
saintliness--being possessed by and dwelling in the Absolute. |
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Thus, Buddhism, by
embracing what is, in effect, a metaphysical concept of the absolute, not only
could but did hold together a complex mythology
within a unifying philosophical insight and was able, as in Japan and China, to
incorporate a complex popular pantheon of the cult of ancestors. Furthermore, it
could combine a popular devotion to a personal lord with a mystical
contemplation that had encouraged the development of Buddhist monasteries. In
sponsoring such a broad synthetic (all-embracing) view, the philosophical
significance of Mahayana (Greater Vehicle) Buddhism emerged. Such
developments began about 100 BC and lasted for several centuries; it was Mahayana
Buddhism that spread to China and East Asia to influence and modify the
religions native to those areas. In Mahayana, the humanitarian
saviour notion of the bodhisattva has some echoes in Kenotic Christianity
(i.e., emptying oneself to become a suffering servant), and attitudes to
the Buddhist scriptures have
parallels with those of Christians toward the Bible. Common to both is the view
that revelation can express
itself in developing forms and that it is a mistake to concentrate on the texts
themselves, sacred though they are, rather than on that which transcends them
and of which they are symbols and to which they point. In this respect, one may
contrast the open and exploratory attitudes of many Buddhists and Christians
toward their sacred books with the closed and rigid attitudes of most Muslims. |
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Prior to the
introduction of Buddhism into China in the 1st century AD, the two main strands
of religious thought in that country were represented by Confucianism
and Taoism. Confucianism
displays a reverential propriety that is expressed and developed in social
relationships and fulfilled in Heaven. Taoism claims that the wise man will
constantly seek harmony and rapport with Tao
(the Way), which, at one and the same time, is the way for men to follow if they
would reach blessedness and the principle that underlies and sustains the world.
As a concept that is both moral and cosmological, Tao has a logical status
similar to that of the Logos
(or Word, the active principle of God in creation and revelation) in Christian
philosophy. The Taoist thinks little of the ways of the world, including the
decorum of the Confucianist; his outlook rather encourages a laissez-faire
policy toward the world and even withdrawal from its affairs. The immediate
mystical experience of Taoism or the inspired behaviour of Confucianism can
easily blend with Buddhism, which sets both within a metaphysics of the
Absolute. |
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In Japanese
religion are found the same two themes that are found in most
religions, though in their extreme forms they are mutually exclusive. On the one
hand is mysticism--specifically,
nature mysticism, of which the mysticism of the Zen
practitioner belonging to an intuitive meditative form of Buddhism is a specific
example. In Zen Buddhism, religion is scarcely distinguished from an aesthetic
experience in which shrines, gardens, mountains, woods, and streams reveal a
mysterious beauty and in which the exercise of the intellect is at a minimum. In
contrast to mysticism, there is devotion to a supreme personal lord, at one time
symbolized in the emperor as a descendant of Amaterasu, the Sun-Goddess. At
other times Shinto
("Way of the gods") devotion focussed on particular shrines and
particular deities, just as Zen Buddhism could concentrate on a particular image
or on particular events. In both types of devotions, however, it could be argued
that such particularity was fulfilled and transcended in the unity revealed to a
mature mystical insight. These different philosophical positions have an
interesting reflection in the Christian position in which the Christian claims
to find evidence of God's presence and activity in particular places and
situations (especially in the incarnation of Christ), though at the same time
allowing for God to be omnipresent. |
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This mixture of a
mystical contemplation, which sees the divine everywhere, and a personal
devotion to a particularized divinity recur in Hinduism.
The most characteristic feature of Hinduism, however, is the doctrine of an
eternal soul and its
rebirth. The universe is pictured as the arena in which the immortal soul
engages in a succession of incarnations from which man seeks release, a release
that true contemplation can give him, especially when approached through Yoga
(a mental, physical, and spiritual meditation technique). At the same time, a
sensitivity to the numinous (spiritual) has left open the possibility of and
certainly encouraged personal devotion. The most famous of Indian scriptures,
the Bhagavadgita ("Song
of God") has for its recurrent theme the majesty, glory, and terror of God
and the devotion due to him, though as in Christianity these attributes are
compatible with a loving God. In the matter of revelation and incarnation, it is
an open question as to how far the Hindu conception of revelation is the same or
similar to Christian or Muslim conceptions. The Hindu view of avatara
("incarnation"), however, implies many incarnations and in a
Christian context would demand many Christs; thus, the concept of avatara, a
salient feature of Vaisnavism (centring on the veneration of Vishnu, the
preserver), cannot be easily reconciled with the uniqueness attributed to Jesus.
(see also samsara) |
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Depending on the
particular questions that determine a particular content of discussion, Hinduism
can talk of a plurality of souls, when it would concentrate on the theme of
reincarnation, but, especially when influenced by Buddhist (and also
pre-Buddhist) ideas, it can also sponsor an absolutism, or a monism; yet, again,
it can come very close to a traditional Western theism. On the whole, however,
it might be said that Hinduism holds together in a creative tension both theism
and monism, though often it appears that in conceptual foundations and
philosophical discussion the theistic strand predominates. Even in its classical
period (600 BC to 450 BC) Hinduism was characterized by an astonishing variety
of doctrines and cultures. Indeed, it well illustrates a characteristic of
Indian thought that is becoming more acceptable to Western ways of thinking--the
notion that there are many different approaches to the truth, which matches the
concept of a multiple theology. It was regarded, however, as a retrograde step
when these varieties of culture, ritual, and mythology became hardened into
social strata and castes. |
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In the medieval
period, Shankara (c. 788-820),
the leading exponent of Advaita Vedanta, or nondualism, is the most
significant Hindu figure in the philosophy of religion. Arguing in a way very
reminiscent of absolute Idealism, he claimed that the only existent was an
absolute and that all else was an illusion. In this context he equated atman
(the individual soul) with Brahman
(the universal or absolute soul). Both were viewed as one in a cosmic
consciousness. For Shankara, only ignorance or lack of insight
into the nature of being prevents a man from realizing his identity with Brahman
and thus becoming here and now aware of the freedom that is his. Shankara
also allows as permissible, without being accepted as the truth, talk of God as
personal and as creator and of men as separate souls related to one another and
to him. This, however, is only considered a way of talking--salvation in the
Absolute transcends all such imperfect discourse. The same logical problems
recur here in the concept of Nirvana in Buddhism. In Hinduism, the Upanisads,
Hindu philosophical treatises, and the Bhagavadgita use the imperfect
language of finite man, who has not yet found release, and in this way they can
only point beyond themselves to that which they cannot adequately express. Here
again are ideas reminiscent of some of those in Western philosophy of religion
in the modern world: the importance of theological reticence, the limitations of
theological language, and, in another context, the significance of
"existential situations." |
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Twentieth-century
Hinduism has been chiefly characterized by attempts to purify and reform the
doctrines of its medieval period, to deepen its spirituality, to reassert its
moral dimension, and to inspire social reform. Mahatma
Gandhi and Sri Aurobindo,
the founder of a spiritual community and a Communist, were significant in such
ventures. Aurobindo has been compared with the French Jesuit paleontologist and
theologian Teilhard de Chardin
insofar as both have a repeated experience of cosmic consciousness and a
profound belief in evolution, both of which point to a divinization of man. |
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At the heart of Islam
is an experience of awe before the one, all-powerful, mysterious creator Allah.
Thus, its dominant theme has been surrender, though it must not be forgotten
that it has nurtured mystics to whom the mysterious and awesome God has revealed
himself through created things. Allah controls man's destiny, whether to salvation
or damnation, which points to the ultimacy of God, to his majesty and power. The
concept of heaven inspired warriors to fight to the death; the concept of hell
encouraged loyalty by showing what terrible punishments awaited the disloyal.
The Qur`an (the Islamic
sacred scriptures) is regarded as an infallible book -- a transcript of a tablet
that is eternal in the heavens. Islam shows pre-eminently the strength
and limitations of a total surrender based on clear-cut beliefs, themselves
arising from a basis in infallible texts, the whole being translated into
vigorous political and social practices associated with a rigorous ritual and
ceremonial discipline. Its mixture of both rigour in theology and vigour in
politics in India and the Middle East from the Middle Ages to the 20th century
can perhaps be compared with the same mixture as has been seen in the Protestant
and Catholic communities in Ireland since the 17th century. However much the
concept and practice of holy warfare is repugnant to many minds today, in the
context of Islam it implies a sensitivity to evil and a conviction that
evil has to be resisted and overcome in a total dedication. In this way the
faith of Islam has shaped human history by obedience to a resolute and
powerful God. Islam also illustrates the point that predestination
need not bring with it a submissive fatalism. Furthermore, it has to be granted
that Islam has allowed, within itself, for some allegorical
interpretations of the scriptures--explicitly by the Sufis
(mystics)--and it has also allowed for differences of piety and beliefs and even
intellectual exploration on the part of particular disciples. Nevertheless, to
other religions Islam has shown itself to be very conservative and with a
distrust of compromise and a passionate desire to proselytize. (see also Islamic
philosophy) |
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In reviewing the
different philosophical understandings of religions in both East and West, two
points clearly emerge. First, that however great the variety, there is almost
universal agreement that "what there is" is not restricted to the
facts and features of the world as they are given to or received by man's
senses. Secondly, what has been for the philosophy of religion in the East
almost a permanent problem is coming to be a crucial problem for the West, viz.,
how to preserve both the concept of absolute spirit and the significance of
personal individuality or, alternatively, how far one can speak reliably of God
as a person. The West is becoming aware of the problematic character of
religious discourse. If, in such ways, Western philosophy of religion can
benefit from some of the insights of the East, so also can the East--as a
growing interest in the Empiricists of the West demonstrates--gain from the
West. Not least, scientific developments have created Eastern interest in the
English Empiricists, particularly John Locke; Eastern philosophers also have
been impressed by the political liberalism of some modern Western Empiricists,
such as Bertrand Russell. The Empirical philosophy of religion, as it has been
recently developed in the West, may provide basic approaches and techniques for
a closer mutual study of religions in East and West. |
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5.1.10.1
The problem of God, the Absolute, or the supreme value.
5.1.10.1.1
The
existence of God.
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The so-called
proofs of God's existence are of two kinds: independent logical exercises or
particular conclusions set within an overall metaphysics. Either way, the
discourse of these independent proofs or metaphysical schemes is best viewed as
speech designed to evoke a disclosure. A particular argument recommends, as a
way of speaking about what the disclosure discloses, a particular brand of
discourse offering an interpretation of the world and man and one that develops
from a specific key idea grounded in the disclosure. The existence of an
Absolute or a supreme value has never been concluded as a result of an isolated
logical exercise but has always arisen in the context of a total metaphysics.
Thus, a quasi-mathematical structure, for Spinoza;
a dialectic method, for Hegel;
and evolutionary considerations, for the modern French philosopher Henri
Bergson, determined the discourse that these three philosophers used
in order to evoke that situation to which God or Nature, the Absolute Spirit, or
the life force became for them respectively key concepts of interpretation. Bradley
similarly reached a belief in an Absolute Spirit by reflecting on the logical
problems of relatedness.
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The following are
some traditional arguments for the existence of God restyled along the lines
suggested above: |
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The ontological
argument of Anselm of
Canterbury (c. 1033-1109) takes a phrase "that than which
nothing greater can be conceived" and uses it as a technique for
disclosure, directing one without limit to an ever-increasing perspective, in
the hope that at some point the light will dawn, whereupon the phrase
"necessary being" will be used to develop talk of the God. |
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The cosmological
argument uses as a technique for disclosure such questions as
"Why is this thus?" or "Why is there anything at all?" In
receiving replies to these questions in causal terms, the cosmological argument
builds up an ever-increasing causal spread until a disclosure occurs, whereupon
the phrase "first cause" specifies what is disclosed and advocates
certain ways of talking. |
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The argument
from design takes a story with acknowledged disclosure
possibilities--e.g., the interrelated parts of a watch--and uses this as
a catalyst to evoke a disclosure around some ever-broadening purpose patterns of
the universe, in relation to which one can speak of God in terms, for example,
of eternal purpose. |
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What is, in
different ways, implied by these arguments is that the word God is unique in its
logic, that it works in discourse as no other word exactly works. Thus, one
cannot say "God exists" but rather "God necessarily exists."
This is sometimes expressed by remarking that the existence of God is not the
existence of a physical object or even the existence of a person, though what
can be said about persons is less misleading in speaking about God than in
speaking about the logic of things. This point is sometimes made, albeit
misleadingly by saying that God does not exist, but this is only a picturesque
way of saying that he does not exist in the way that a table exists. |
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These reflections
are of wider applicability in relation to the nature and attributes of God. Such
attributes are spoken of in terms of personal models, such as wisdom, goodness,
power, love, mercy, righteousness, and so on. These models, however, will always
need qualification by words such as infinite, perfect, and all. What is quite
clear is that grammar itself is no clue to the logic of phrases such as
"infinitely wise." Although that phrase is similar in grammar to one
such as "exceedingly wise"--a phrase that is entirely descriptive in
its logic--it is logically quite different, because "infinitely wise"
has both descriptive and what has been called performative force. In other
words, it not only describes some matters of fact--some specimens of
wisdom--because of the word wise, which works descriptively as a model, but it
also generates something--the word infinite acting as an operator, continually
directing persons to expand their understanding until a moment of vision
emerges. Alternatively, the point that God is not a being has sometimes been
made by saying that God is the ground of Being--"the
ground of" functioning as a qualifier, operating as the model of beings, or
things. The emphasis of such qualifiers is twofold. First, they remind one of
the inadequacy of all language used to speak of God--language authorized by
particular models that, arising in a moment of vision or disclosure, naturally
originate speech about what the disclosure discloses. Secondly, qualifiers
constantly point one back through developed discourse to that moment of vision
in which the discourse originated and in which alone one knows what the
discourse is speaking about. The logic of models and qualifiers is a way of
combining the intelligibility and mystery that any philosophy of religion must
preserve. |
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Language about God
thus develops as a multiple discourse, having various strands of which each is
authorized by a particular model and of which each must, somewhere along the
line, be modified by the presence of the others. Thus, theological understanding
is a complex interweaving of different strands, and not least is the task of the
philosopher of religion to produce the most comprehensive, coherent, consistent,
and simple discourse he can. When problems arise that seem to be problems about
the nature of God--for example, the conflict between different attributes--these
are most profitably translated into problems of language. They then become
problems of how to create discourse of the kind that in the end produces the
best understanding of a cosmic disclosure with a single individuation, in which
all the pertinent discourse originates and about which all the different strands
endeavour to speak. |
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Natural
theology is the name given to the kind of discourse about God and the world that
originates in natural moments of vision without reference to God's revelation of
himself in an incarnation, and in this sense "natural theology" is
distinguished from "revealed theology." Among some philosophers--e.g.,
Locke--the distinction
is one between general and special revelation. In natural theology are generally
included the "proofs" of the existence of God, discussions about the
immortality of the soul, and discussions about God's providential control of the
world, which provides for man a state of moral probation. |
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Some have viewed
religious experience as affording direct evidence for the existence of God. In
any discussion of religious experience, however, it is important at the outset
to distinguish religious experience in general--a sense of awe or reverence, or
a sense of the numinous--from mystical experience. The language of mystics is
notoriously confusing to those not accustomed to the mystical idiom, and a
leading question is how far mystical experience can establish the kind of
objective reference it claims. Words such as immediate, direct, and intuitive
refer rather to the way in which the experience occurs as a disclosure rather
than justifying one in taking as guaranteed the interpretation that this
disclosure appears to bring with it. If one already has an interpretative
scheme, then mystical experience may provide an instance of such a scheme, but
this has been rightly described as supporting belief in God "on the way
back" rather than "on the way out." The concept of revelation
is used by Christians to describe the way in which God's activity is uniquely
disclosed in Christ, and faith relates to the human attitude and response that
matches revelation subjectively. Revelation is sometimes contrasted with
discovery, the former being said to relate to a passive subject, the latter to
an active subject, but the distinction is largely one of emphasis. Philosophers
of religion are now inclined to view revelation in terms of activity that waits
to be interpreted rather than as a revelation of propositions. Revelation thus
relates to events rather than to doctrine. According to this view, doctrine
could never have the ultimacy and finality that necessarily belongs to the
givenness of God in his incarnation or incarnations. (see also mysticism,
religious experience) |
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5.1.10.2.1
Freedom.
Among the classical
problems in the philosophy of religion are those of free
will, self-identity, immortality, evil, and suffering. The freedom of
the will is a claim for the uniqueness of the subject, known in occasions of
activity in which the subject "comes alive" and realizes his
subjectivity as that which cannot be reduced to the behaviour patterns and
facts--i.e., the objects--of the natural and social sciences. Such
freedom is realized in responding to a situation that has equally come alive
objectively to inspire a person and call forth such response. Some claim the
predictable character of human behaviour rules out man's freedom; others state
that the extent to which human behaviour is unpredictable argues for freedom.
This controversy, however, does not in any way solve the problem of freedom; it
only makes evident what kind of problem the problem of freedom is, viz., how far
human nature is capable of being analyzed into behavioral terms without any
residue. |
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When there has been
a self-disclosure of transcendence,
of what cannot be characterized in space and time, one cannot say that any self
so disclosed entirely comes to an end. In this sense, there is an argument for
personal immortality, though
one can only talk sensibly about it by expressing immortality in terms of
continuing personal life. In Christianity this becomes speech about the
resurrection of the body, and in Hinduism
it becomes speech about reincarnation in this world or in the universe at large.
All detailed talk about a future life, whether in Christianity or other
religions, is only a way of spelling out and pointing back to that experience of
man's transcendence here and now, in terms of language that expresses the claim
that such a transcendent element is not annihilated by death. To be articulate
about immortality, emphasis is placed on features of life that, at first view,
have high significance and point here and now to experiences in which man's
self-disclosure is most often found--e.g., inspiring music or the
intimate and deep fellowship of a particularly significant meal. General claims
for immortality in relation to an objective disclosure (whether it be spoken of
in terms of God or moral ideals) have to be distinguished from, though they have
evident similarities to, the Christian claim for eternal life. Eternal life is,
according to the Christian view, a subjective self-disclosure alongside the
objective disclosure of God's activity in Jesus Christ, and it is as unique as
the uniqueness of God in Christ, a uniqueness that is, however, an inclusive,
and not exclusive, uniqueness. (see also Christianity)
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The problem
of evil arises (1) from the loss of a sense of God's presence in the
face of evil or suffering and (2) from an apparent conflict between the language
used to describe God (e.g., all powerful, all good, and all wise) and
that to describe the world as being characterized by evil and suffering. The
solution proffered by the Book of Job in the Old Testament is that of evoking
such a sense of awe around the created universe that, discovering in this way a
renewed sense of God's presence, one accepts both evil and good and contents
himself verbally by acknowledging a final incomprehensibility. |
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Other solutions
relate good and evil to God and thus seek consistency by relating good and evil
to God's primary and secondary will or to God's willing and permitting,
respectively. In demanding some overall purpose to complete such a story,
however, these solutions point to others that seek to resolve the conflict
between good and evil within some reconciling model, which is then used to
specify, with suitable qualification, a purpose or attribute of God. Thus, the
conflict necessarily involved in the creation of a community of freely
responsible persons is used as a model to illuminate a personal conflict
exhibited, for example, by war. Also, the conflicts resulting from general rules
imposed for the sake of training are used to provide a model to illuminate the
disharmony exhibited in, for example, earthquakes or floods. These models are
then developed and amplified in order to lead one to a renewed disclosure of
God's presence. These solutions--by raising questions about God's
character--perhaps point to another solution that attributes to God redeeming
love--something that, as directed to evil, can be creative of personal maturity
and fulfillment in a way not otherwise attainable. This attribute must then be
appropriately qualified so as to lead to a renewed disclosure of God's presence,
in this way enabling one both to face evil and to talk of it more coherently in
relation to God. |
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In the matter of absolute
Idealism, which is the kind of metaphysics implied in Eastern
religions generally, evil and good are transcended in the Absolute
Spirit that is beyond good and evil.
Logically, this is akin to the solution of the Book of Job. |
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In the latter part
of the 20th century in western Europe and the United States there has been an
Empirical philosophy of religion, the interest of which has been in religious language
and the kind of Empirical basis there can be for religious discourse. The
definitive question has been concerned with what are the patterns of religious
reasoning and what is the character of religious language if such discourse
points back to and articulates situations of the particular kind that have been
discussed above. The approach originated in what has been called Logical
Positivism. According to the verification principle, which gave what
the Positivists considered to be the touchstone of meaning,
an assertion had meaning if and only if it was verifiable at least in principle
by sense experience. Logical Positivists were not at all daunted when this
seemed to exclude the whole of theology and a good deal of ethics from
meaningful discourse. (see also verifiability
principle) |
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Since the 1950s,
however, there has been a reaction against the Positivist's veto, and the works
of the Austrian British philosopher Ludwig
Wittgenstein are symptomatic of those who broadened Empiricism so
that it has become interested in displaying and elucidating the variegation of
language, in setting language in actual contexts, and in relating it to specific
situations. Significantly, this mellowing of Empiricism has been accompanied by
a growing interest in personality
and the self. This newer emphasis of Empiricism unites with Existentialism in
suggesting that personal situations may very well provide helpful parallels to
religious situations. There has been introduced into the philosophy of religion
a renewed sense of the significance of mystery
and a new emphasis on theological reticence. With this has come a renewed
awareness of the significance of metaphor, myth, and symbol, and there has also
emerged a significant use of the concept of the model. The use of terms like myth
and mythological, it is important to recognize, does not mean that the
assertions so called are false. Myth includes stories that try to articulate
what is objectively given in a certain religious situation. Myths also relate to
historical events--though the myth may be selective in its choice of such
events--when speech about these events is used to articulate a claim of a
transcendent kind. In other words, myth, metaphor, symbol, and model are all
ways of expressing in ordinary language an extraordinary point. (see also religious
symbolism) |
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The present stress
on metaphors and models in religious language, however, inevitably raises two
far-reaching questions: the question of reference and the question of criteria.
The former concerns the possibility of the assurance that one is talking about
anything at all. The latter concerns what the criteria are for better and worse
ways of talking. The question of criteria has been answered in terms of the
logical character and the empirical pattern of the multimodel discourse to which
the different strands arising from the different metaphors or models give rise.
That this discourse talks about something must in the end rest on the claim
that, in a disclosure situation, a subject is relatively passive--i.e., aware
of an activity bearing on his own and thus aware of something other than himself
about which he is talking. |
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In this context the
significance of the Existentialist
approach is to underline, as does recent Empiricism, the importance of a wider
view of human experience than ordinary scientific experience might allow and to
point one to highly significant personal situations that cannot be netted in
scientific terms. The phenomenological
approach, as developed by the Moravian philosopher Edmund
Husserl, represents an attempt to be objective and scientific about
experience, an endeavour to set out facts uncompromised and unprejudiced by
metaphysical frameworks. As an endeavour to reach agreement on what is being
talked about and as an attempt to seek the simplest and clearest
interpretations, the phenomenological approach has been applauded by many
philosophers of religion and theologians. There can be no question, however,
about a purely scientific account of a religious situation--that would be a
contradiction in terms, and, though there can be a phenomenological approach to
religious situations, there can be no phenomenological explanation of them that
claims to be adequate. The main contribution of Phenomenology is that of
encouraging scholars to describe situations with as much critical analysis as
possible. |
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Logical Empiricism,
it might be said, has absorbed something of the Phenomenologists' concern. It
has certainly raised questions about and directed interest toward the way
situations are talked about and interpreted, the possibility of there being
different interpretations of the same situation, and so on. In this way it has
provided the tools for and greatly stimulated contemporary interest in
hermeneutics (critical interpretations)--a second order appraisal of
interpretations together with an interest in their empirical bases. |
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As to the future of
the philosophy of religion, a merging of the Empirical and Existential strands
may well be expected. Metaphysical
and religious views of the future most likely will combine conviction with
tolerance and commitment with openness. The commitment and the conviction will
probably come from moments of vision. Claims to finality, fanaticism, and
bigotry will disappear, it is hoped, when it is made obvious that no
self-guaranteed translations of what disclosure is are given, and tolerance and
openness will arise from the acknowledgment that all understanding of these
moments of vision is a multiple exploration, an exploration yielding different
strands of discourse. Solutions to contemporary problems, social and
intellectual, demand a multiple consideration by scholars from many disciplines
of all the issues involved in the problem, a consideration set within a
framework of faith and morality in which man is interpreted as distinctively
human, characteristically a person. From such interprofessional,
interdisciplinary groups may emerge a new metaphysics and a new theology linked
with, but by no means prescriptive of, assertions in other subjects. In this way
there may be created a new culture--scientific, moral, religious, and
technological at the same time. To be involved in such groups would seem to be
the main task of the philosopher of religion, as of the metaphysician, today. If
he is successful and if these interdisciplinary groups are creative, the modern
period will then take its place among those that have marked crucial turning
points in the history of mankind and its culture. (I.T.R.)
(see also Empiricism) |
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