[MD] New Model Army, Mystic(DQ) Experience, and Religion (SQ) as Power

[david buchanan]

Ian said to David M:
OK, so the point at which natural science breaks down is in the existence of 
anything at all ... as a given, a gift from God. That's the "hole" in any 
metaphysics that cannot be viewed from the other
side, no one (with any sense) can presume to make strong argument for or 
against anything in that hole. A theistic metaphor is as good as any, in 
that context, even a sentient, intentional being. ...Other holes are merely 
circumstantial and any god vs science debate in these cases is meaningless.

dmb says:
Speaking of holes, as you know by now, this way of playing things down the 
middle really bugs me. And thanks to my professor's current reading 
assignment I can be a little more specific about why it bugs me. I just 
finished reading the first part of Terry Eagleton's LITERARY THEORY, where 
he explains American New Criticism as "a full-blooded irrationalism", "one 
closely associated with religious dogma... and the right-wing 'blood and 
soil' politics of the Agrarian movement" (49). Terry Eagleton, by the way, 
is known as "the high priest of crit lit" and is considered to be an 
academic superstar. As he explains it, this reactionary critics developed a 
way of reading that "displays an extraordinary lack of interest in what 
lierary works actually say" (51). This school of criticism was founded on 
the belief that middle-class liberalism was to be "ousted" and replaced with 
"an extreme right-wing authoritarianism" (39). I was shocked to learn that 
this is exactly what T.S. Eliot was up to. And their approach to the 
examination of written works was a lot like yours, Ian. As Eagleton puts it, 
"the New Critical way meant committing yourself to nothing" (50), so that 
McCarthyism and Civil Libertarians are construed to be "complimentary 
opposites" and served as "a recipe for political inertia and thus for 
submission to the status quo" (50).

And that's pretty much what I see in your constant equivocations on the 
conflict between science and religion, Ian. I see an unwillingness to commit 
yourself to either side. Rather than being fair-minded or accomodating, I 
see this as a kind of grotesque even-handedness where hateful 
anti-intellecutalism is given the same value as rational, empirically based 
beliefs. And as Eagleton points out, this is less than unhelpful. I think 
that we ought not pretend that there are no important differences between 
fascism and democracy, between religion and science, between myth and 
history, etc., etc.,. I don't think anyone needs to engage in simplistic, 
black and white thinking in order to make distinctions or to pick sides. It 
only takes the willingness and ability to make some basic distinctions, not 
least of all the distinction between what's good and bad, or at least better 
than worse, in the way of beliefs. You know, because some things are better 
than others.

Please get off the fence before you get a white pickett up your ass, eh? 
That's one hole you'll probably never want to fill, at least not with a 
pointed wooden spike.

Hope you're splinter-free and otherwise well,
dmb

_________________________________________________________________
Be seen and heard with Windows Live Messenger and Microsoft LifeCams 
http://clk.atdmt.com/MSN/go/msnnkwme0020000001msn/direct/01/?href=http://www.microsoft.com/hardware/digitalcommunication/default.mspx?locale=en-us&source=hmtagline