I recently had coffee with a Christian friend, and the subject was religion. I was all geared up for battle, but he had to go and spoil it all by being a non-fundamentalist non-loony liberal Christian, and a good guy whose conversation I quite enjoyed! ¿What fun is that?, I ask you.
Not being a fundamentalist means that he avoided making strong claims, and he didn't have to defend so many indefensible things. He doesn't hate gay people, thinks that not every part of the Bible is meant as history, and recognises the difficulty in discerning the intentions of biblical authors. Wouldn't it be somewhat better if more Christians were like this?
The one thing he kept saying, though, in response to my questions was: "I don't know." Was the flood literal? Will people get resurrected in some form after death? He didn't know. And he seemed rather relaxed about that.
It's good to say when you don't know, if you don't. People should do that in the sciences, too. But if there's something you don't know and it's a scientific question, you can find out by experimentation and observation. If it's a religious or metaphysical question, what do you do? Interpret inconsistent texts? Try to have a revelation? Those approaches have only ever yielded contradictory results. Metaphysical questions can't be resolved by observing physical reality, which is why every religion has a different answer to metaphysical questions. There's no court of appeal. Notice the difference between religion and science. Scientists eventually reach consensus; religions come to schism.
My Christian friend was honest about not knowing. What I wanted to communicate was that religions don't provide a reliable way to know. And they really should, if they're going to claim that they have the answers to life big questions.
Interesting. Conversation I keep having with a Christian friend--more of a fundamentalist than your friend--leads me to believe he is motivated primarily by a complete lack of tolerance for uncertainty. He Knows. He would be uncomfortable not knowing.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where I fit on your spectrum, but religions do not automatically 'come to schism' any more than other non-empirical science. Have you tried getting consensus among engineers and economists, both number-sciences?
ReplyDeleteThat was a cheap fundamentalist jibe.
At this moment in history, though, if we theolog's (I am a pseudo-intellectual :))demonstrate consensus it is called 'dogma', and if we acknowledge uncertainty, we are criticised for being divided. Not sure why we are copping it so comprehensively. Is it a battle for supremacy?
In short, the five categories of evidence, none of them stand alone, used by religions are:
a. is it consistent with what our forebears have agreed upon? e..g. the sacred texts (so that we are referencing a wider field of view, not just deriled by a passing season in philosophy. e.g. the era when science and others supported supremacy of the white race based on Darwinianism).
b. Is it consistent with our personal experience (so I am not just conforming to a neat idea or headbanging my intellectual ideology)? New paradigms are always rejected by the established order, and new ideas are always scary as your fundamentalist friend shows, and where your liberal mate is afraid to tread. THis criteria makes us critical and bold.
c. Is it consistent with our shared experiences (so I am not just personally projecting what i want on to the universe, the other, or god)I am talking with others?
d. Does it receive plausible historical support (that is the max that history can supply)?
e. What do science and philosophy say to this question? Critique matters a lot, but empirical science is not the king of all Reason, since there are other sources of data, and you may have seen many other libraries.
Your former religion might not have had a valid way to enquire about metaphysical truths, but what about the mystical branches of religions? They use various forms of meditation for this purpose.
ReplyDeleteCan metaphysical truth really be got to by exoteric religious teachings? Doesn't it make more sense for the mode of enquiry to be esoteric in nature? And if the "results" of revelations appear contradictory to you, maybe that's because from the outside one can only read words about an experience and already the unity has been cut up into various dualities. And if you didn't have the experience, how can you hope to know how the paradox resolved into the Truth?