The Way of the Agnostic

[rug]

January 20, 2013, 5:30 pm
By GARY GUTTING

Two of Simon Critchley’s recent Stone columns, “Why I Love Mormonism” and “The Freedom of Faith,” offer much-needed reflections, sympathetic but critical, on particular religions. Such reflections are important because religions occupy an ambivalent position in our world.

On the one hand, religions express perennial human impulses and aspirations that cannot plausibly be rejected out of hand as foolish or delusional. The idea that there is simply nothing worthwhile in religion is as unlikely as the idea that there is nothing worthwhile in poetry, art, philosophy or science. On the other hand, taken at their literal word, many religious claims are at best unjustified and at worst absurd or repugnant. There may be deep truths in religions, but these may well not be the truths that the religions themselves officially proclaim. To borrow a term Jürgen Habermas employs in a different context, religions may suffer from a “self-misunderstanding” of their own significance.

I read Critchley’s discussions of Mormonism and Catholic Christianity as good examples of how to think through the ambivalent nature of a given religion. Here I want to suggest a general framework for this sort of thinking.

To evaluate a religion, we need to distinguish the three great human needs religions typically claim to satisfy: love, understanding, and knowledge. Doing so lets us appreciate religious love and understanding, even if we remain agnostic regarding religious knowledge. (For those with concerns about talking of knowledge here: I’m using “knowledge” to mean believing, with appropriate justification, what is true. Knowledge in this sense may be highly probable but not certain; and faith—e.g., belief on reliable testimony—may provide appropriate justification.)

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/the-way-of-the-agnostic/

[cbayer]

1. Too dense for me. I discovered a new category yesterday which I find very intriguing.

It is apatheism. It describes those that recognize that god(s) can be neither proven nor disproven and don't really care either way. It describes people who wouldn't change much even if evidence of the existence or non-existence of god(s) became available.

[rug]

2. I don't think people would change much either way.

I also heard a sermon once that suggested people who know they are dying, try as they may, don't change the way they have lived.

[struggle4progress]

8. meh

[cbayer]

9. Meh, indeed!

[Flabbergasted]

3. Great second paragraph. nt

[rug]

4. So are these.

But the no-arguments view ignores the role of evidence and argument behind the religious beliefs of many informed and intelligent people. (For some powerful contemporary examples, see the essays in “Philosophers Who Believe” and “God and the Philosophers.”) Believers have not made an intellectually compelling case for their claims: they do not show that any rational person should accept them. But believers such as Alvin Plantinga, Richard Swinburne and Peter van Inwagen, to cite just a few examples, have well-thought-out reasons for their belief that call for serious discussion. Their belief cannot be dismissed as on a par with children’s beliefs in Santa and the Easter Bunny. We may well not find their reasons decisive, but it would be very difficult to show that no rational person could believe for the reasons that they do.

The cases intellectually sophisticated religious believers make are in fact similar to those that intellectually sophisticated thinkers (believers or not) make for their views about controversial political policies, ethical decisions or even speculative scientific theories. Here, as in religion, opposing sides have arguments that they find plausible but the other side rejects. Atheism may be intellectually viable, but it requires its own arguments and can’t merely cite the lack of decisive evidence for religion. Further, unless atheists themselves have a clearly superior case for their denial of theistic religion, then agnosticism (doubting both religion and atheism) remains a viable alternative. The no-arguments argument for atheism fails.

[Flabbergasted]

5. Church-goers don't go to church for theology. A pastor preaching intellectually nuanced views will

be greeted by empty pews. Modern theism has more to do with 'Marketing', as well as submission to tradition, than the bridge of understanding that could exist between the 'known' and symbolic. To atheism this is a feast: A literal translation of misunderstood and simplified theology, the literal forcing of theology into a fact based paradigm, resulting in pseudoscience, something it was never meant to withstand. Christianity missed the boat about a hundred years ago. Instead of accepting that dinosaurs and evolution exist "they" decided the bible must be taken literally. They still have not quite understood that this will eventually cause them to be extinct. The "correct" and easy outcome would be to accept scientific views as "proving" that God "exists" no matter where science leads. I would advocate more for a reworking of Christianity into allegorical and mystical/contemplative understanding if that were possible

[rug]

6. It's about living it, not talking about it.

Francis had it right:

"'This is My commandment, that you love one another, as I have loved you;''And let them show their love by the works they do for each other, according as the Apostle says: "let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.' Francis of Assisi, Rule of 1221, Rule 11

[Flabbergasted]

7. Yeah it is. Thanks for the reminder. nt