[MD] False Messiah

[ian glendinning]

Ant and Scott,

I suspect Sam might chime in anyway, but this is a good exchange.

What we've identified again, is that the problem is static baggage.
And that is as true of religion as it is of science (as it is of any
branch of philosophy I'd say).

Fundamentalists (in science as well as religion), suffer from too much
static baggage - they believe in the existence of "fixed foundations"
- the clue is in the name.

Having learned the lesson (mentioned in Scott's mail) that most
thoughful god-talk is metaphorical (like everything else, by the way),
I have to say the community that least gets it is the rational,
objective, scientific community, rather than the spiritual one.
Dawkins is my favourite such target, but he's not alone.
http://www.psybertron.org/?p=1265

Ian

On 3/22/06, Scott Roberts <jse885 at localnet.com> wrote:
> Ant,
>
> Ant said (to Marsha):
> I would tend to agree with this if only because modern religious training
> has so much static intellectual and social baggage already with it even
> before you start.  Maybe Sam can throw more light on this subject?
>
> Scott:
> Since Sam has left, I'll take a shot. The answer depends, of course, on
> which religious training you mean. Most has this problematic baggage, but
> then one can say the same about contemporary non-religious training as well.
> The question, I think, is whether religious training has the potential for
> discarding this baggage. Within, say, Catholic training, the answer is yes,
> since it is the official doctrine of the Catholic Church that not only does
> reason require faith, but also faith requires reason, that is, the critical
> thinking we all call for. Another source for improvement is that all
> theologians, other than fundamentalists, recognize that God-talk is
> necessarily metaphorical. Only fundamentalists and anti-theists take it
> literally, and their problem is to privilege the literal over the
> metaphorical. In this regard, religious thinking is ahead of, say, the
> scientific materialists, in questioning the value of "being literal".
>
> There is, of course, a huge difference between theory and practice in this
> regard. But things are changing. Even among evangelical Christians, there is
> movement, as a search on "emergent Christianity" will tell you. Also see the
> Sea of Faith stuff (www.sofn.org.uk). Among intellectuals, there are various
> post-modern or post-secular thinkers of interest, such as Gianni Vattimo and
> John Caputo ("The Prayers and Tears of Jacque Derrida: Religion without
> Religion"). There is a book called Religion After Metaphysics, which
> contains essays by these two and others, which might be of interest. Whether
> such ideas ever get into the mainstream is, to be sure, not foreseeable --
> not soon, at any rate.
>
> In short, there is much of the Dynamic going on in religion, or at least in
> Christianity in developed countries.
>
> - Scott
>
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