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fpbThe fact that three of the most active and intelligent members of my f-list have been more or less repeating each other's errors about something they call "religion" means that I am no longer allowed to avoid the subject, as I have been more or less wishing to. A man who allows his friends to go on talking nonsense does not do them any favours, even if it would be more comfortable for him to go on doing so.
Your error is at the most basic level. You speak about "religion" without knowing what it is; you speak about "religion" when you mean "Christian practice". You have never asked yourselves what religion actually is, what it amounts to. You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence. It is an explanation - any explanation - of the existence of the universe and of the existence of life within it. Think about it. What is Christianity? Christianity is not the Church buildings, or the clergy, or the laity, or the daily and weekly rituals; these are, at best, its manifestations. Christianity is the doctrine that the universe, existence itself, is the result of an act of will by a transcendent Creator - God - who, having once created the universe - and, especially, beings "like Himself" in being intelligent and aware of good and evil - could not disinvolve Himself from it, and Who once performed an extraordinary act to redeem the souls He had created. Buddhism is the doctrine that the human self is born and dies through several succeeding lives, in a universe that has no beginning or end but is recreated through successive cycles, until each soul achieves, through generations of wisdom and self-perfecting, union with the Uncreated. In both cases, it is the doctrine that is the absolutely central, motivating fact; everything else simply descends from the doctrine, makes it manifest, makes it active in the world. Religion is the doctrine, the theory if you will; and the theory it concerns is a theory of existence. Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, all give a picture of the essential nature and relationship of things which claims to be matter of fact, to be a real description of real things. One says that reality is created, another that it is everlasting; both have clear relationships with reality, and implications in the way that reality is understood and apprehended.
It follows that there is no such thing as a person without religion, unless of course we are speaking about a person without a mind. For there is no such thing as a a person who does not make assumptions about the meaning of things and of life. When Ayla Pascal declares herself dissatisfied with the current state of mankind and hopes in some sort of eugenic revolution, that is a religious statement: a statement about the nature and value of human life. Anyone who uses the imprecise word "atheist" (a word which could and does cover Buddhism) is, as a rule, what philosophers call a "monist", that is a believer that only one reality exists, and that this reality has no transcendent or immanent extra dimensions. But this is just as much a statement about reality as Buddhist immanentism or Christian transcendentalism; and a monist has just as much a religion as any Christian. He only claims that his view of the universe is different from any other, being more "rational"; he chatters about the opposition between reason and faith. But his faith in monism is just as much a faith as that of the Christian in certain historical documents. Among the competing views of the universe it is impossible to make a choice that is based purely on reason; reason does not stretch far enough. At the end of the day, there has to be a leap of faith, quite simply because the opposite is possible.
What I mean is: even if I managed to show you, with all my skills and experience as a historian, that the early Christian documents are, as I believe they are, records of fact, even if you accepted as a fact that they were written in the first century, you would still have one resort open to you: "I don't believe it." You could simply say that dead men do not rise from the dead, and that if anyone claims to have seen otherwise, there is a reason for it other than the claimed one. Call it fraud or call it delusion, it is open to you to simply reject the documents. It is bad practice, it is bad history, but plenty of historians do it to plenty of documents. Your faith in monism would simply overcome your faith in historical documents. But one way or another, it would be a matter of faith. The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts. You are starting from a presupposition, not from the rational examination of facts.
Most of what you have said in your various rants, then, is simply irrelevant to the issue. The issue is simply this: WHICH RELIGION IS TRUE? Which doctrine adheres to the facts about life, which makes sense of the universe and of life as we experience it? You may say that there is none among those known to people at present (including monism) that is actually true; but you cannot exclude the possibility of a true religion, for that would be the same as excluding the possibility that life and the universe can be understood and that true statements can be made about them. In other words, the one thing that you cannot reasonably do is exclude the possibility of a true religion. And that means that any religion that presents itself to you must be examined, not in terms of whether it is good or bad for society, good or bad for you political views, whether it makes you feel good or not, but whether it is true. And that is the only issue that matters.
All right. End of the first essay. I have no doubt that you and others will have something to say, so I expect that I will be dealing with these issues again.
Your error is at the most basic level. You speak about "religion" without knowing what it is; you speak about "religion" when you mean "Christian practice". You have never asked yourselves what religion actually is, what it amounts to. You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence. It is an explanation - any explanation - of the existence of the universe and of the existence of life within it. Think about it. What is Christianity? Christianity is not the Church buildings, or the clergy, or the laity, or the daily and weekly rituals; these are, at best, its manifestations. Christianity is the doctrine that the universe, existence itself, is the result of an act of will by a transcendent Creator - God - who, having once created the universe - and, especially, beings "like Himself" in being intelligent and aware of good and evil - could not disinvolve Himself from it, and Who once performed an extraordinary act to redeem the souls He had created. Buddhism is the doctrine that the human self is born and dies through several succeeding lives, in a universe that has no beginning or end but is recreated through successive cycles, until each soul achieves, through generations of wisdom and self-perfecting, union with the Uncreated. In both cases, it is the doctrine that is the absolutely central, motivating fact; everything else simply descends from the doctrine, makes it manifest, makes it active in the world. Religion is the doctrine, the theory if you will; and the theory it concerns is a theory of existence. Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, all give a picture of the essential nature and relationship of things which claims to be matter of fact, to be a real description of real things. One says that reality is created, another that it is everlasting; both have clear relationships with reality, and implications in the way that reality is understood and apprehended.
It follows that there is no such thing as a person without religion, unless of course we are speaking about a person without a mind. For there is no such thing as a a person who does not make assumptions about the meaning of things and of life. When Ayla Pascal declares herself dissatisfied with the current state of mankind and hopes in some sort of eugenic revolution, that is a religious statement: a statement about the nature and value of human life. Anyone who uses the imprecise word "atheist" (a word which could and does cover Buddhism) is, as a rule, what philosophers call a "monist", that is a believer that only one reality exists, and that this reality has no transcendent or immanent extra dimensions. But this is just as much a statement about reality as Buddhist immanentism or Christian transcendentalism; and a monist has just as much a religion as any Christian. He only claims that his view of the universe is different from any other, being more "rational"; he chatters about the opposition between reason and faith. But his faith in monism is just as much a faith as that of the Christian in certain historical documents. Among the competing views of the universe it is impossible to make a choice that is based purely on reason; reason does not stretch far enough. At the end of the day, there has to be a leap of faith, quite simply because the opposite is possible.
What I mean is: even if I managed to show you, with all my skills and experience as a historian, that the early Christian documents are, as I believe they are, records of fact, even if you accepted as a fact that they were written in the first century, you would still have one resort open to you: "I don't believe it." You could simply say that dead men do not rise from the dead, and that if anyone claims to have seen otherwise, there is a reason for it other than the claimed one. Call it fraud or call it delusion, it is open to you to simply reject the documents. It is bad practice, it is bad history, but plenty of historians do it to plenty of documents. Your faith in monism would simply overcome your faith in historical documents. But one way or another, it would be a matter of faith. The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts. You are starting from a presupposition, not from the rational examination of facts.
Most of what you have said in your various rants, then, is simply irrelevant to the issue. The issue is simply this: WHICH RELIGION IS TRUE? Which doctrine adheres to the facts about life, which makes sense of the universe and of life as we experience it? You may say that there is none among those known to people at present (including monism) that is actually true; but you cannot exclude the possibility of a true religion, for that would be the same as excluding the possibility that life and the universe can be understood and that true statements can be made about them. In other words, the one thing that you cannot reasonably do is exclude the possibility of a true religion. And that means that any religion that presents itself to you must be examined, not in terms of whether it is good or bad for society, good or bad for you political views, whether it makes you feel good or not, but whether it is true. And that is the only issue that matters.
All right. End of the first essay. I have no doubt that you and others will have something to say, so I expect that I will be dealing with these issues again.
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Date: 2005-03-06 02:44 pm (UTC)The monist atheist could not claim for his position any extra value of rationality, for there is nothing rational about rejecting a set of historical accounts.
I think it's more like questioning the documents than rejecting them. I hope I didn't sound like I was stating that I would stubbornly stick to my opinions if concrete proof landed in front of me. :) The people who wrote the historical accounts are no longer alive. Therefore, they would be able to stretch things a bit, right? Even if there are multiple documents lying around saying the same things, we can't really rule out fabrication. So it could have been that there was a man named Jesus who worked as a carpenter and was a major leader who was crucified... but how likely was it that his mother was a virgin? And perhaps he never died. Maybe it was a coma, and he woke, and the first century people thought of that as rising from the dead. So really, they truly believed that Jesus was the son of God, and that opinion was strengthened by things that made him seem like a living miracle, but were just things that couldn't be explained by (at the time) current knowledge.
You simply assume that "religion" is a system of worship. Which, of course, is nonsense. I put it to you that religion, if you want to include such a phenomenon as Buddhism in its definition, is simply this: a doctrine that explains life and existence.
Yes, I agree with your definition. Religion is a doctrine. Now, I'm assuming that doctrines are set and not changeable; otherwise, they become different doctrines. Under that assumption, science is not a doctrine. It is always changing, yet it is still keeps the same name. Whereas, say, Catholicism was modified by Henry VIII and from then on called the Anglican Church. A very shaky argument, I'll admit, but it somewhat separates science from religion.
But if this assumption is incorrect, your second to last paragraph is completely correct, because then whatever causes the universe to run, that mysterious force, is the head of the true religion, be it God, Allah, or energy.
I do hope I haven't got half my facts incorrect. :D