From: Elizaphanian (Elizaphanian@members.v21.co.uk)
Date: Thu Dec 05 2002 - 19:29:34 GMT
Hi Wim,
This was a very stimulating post. I think I want to articulate two things,
and then let you come back at me on those, before I answer your specific
questions. (In fact, if you want some of your specific questions answered,
please feel free to repeat them.I'm not trying to avoid answering them, I
just want to briefly go a bit deeper. As always, I agree with much of your
approach.)
1. My hermeneutic of suspicion.
I think it would be fair to say that I am habitually suspicious of the line
of argument that you present when you say "Another 'traveler may travel the
same 'road' in exactly the opposite direction to express his becoming a
'humble, meek, merciful, just, pious and devout soul'." In part this is a
suspicion of myself, in that for many years I held just such a 'pluralist'
perspective - and, indeed, on many counts I remain a 'pluralist'. However,
I'm now a little more committed to the beneficial and differential reality
of some approaches, so that an approach which 'goes in the opposite
direction' now makes me suspicious, not tolerant. If my understanding of the
Eucharist is focussed on certain things like friendship, community and being
conformed to the divine will, then an 'opposite' understanding will negate
that: negate friendship, negate community and negate the divine will. Now
some of the mystics' language sometimes sounds like that, but it needs to be
understood within its philosophical and social context (so, for example,
Eckhart continued to attend Mass). As soon as such language is taken out of
its particular context and is enacted (on, say, level 3) then I think it is
degeneracy (at best) or actively evil (at worst). In other words, I'm not a
relativist, and I think that under pressure religious pluralism collapses
into relativism. Put differently, I think there is all the difference in the
world between saying 'my way is good, but it may not be the only good' and
'all ways are good'. Now I don't think you actually are arguing for a
relativist position (or perhaps you are?) but that sort of language and
argument, as I say, makes me suspicious.
2. "Now that we have science, we don't need religion"
Or, to use the specific words of Richard Dawkins, "We no longer have to
resort to superstition when faced with the deep problems: Is there a meaning
to life? What are we for? What is man?" The book I am writing is in fact a
lengthy rebuttal of precisely this attitude, and, to be honest, it surprises
me that you argue for it. It's certainly not a position that I would find
easy to accept. In fact, it's something of a 'red rag to a bull' - and it
underlies much of what I was writing in my 'Sophocles not Socrates' thread.
Are you equating 'religion' with level 3 practices? In any case, I would be
very interested in exploring exactly what you are saying here. When you say
that science is better able to provide intellectual patterns of value, you
seem to be going back on (what we had agreed was needed:) a wider sense of
'intellect'. At the least, using 'science' in an unqualified fashion seems
to imply more reverence for SOM practices than I would expect. To be honest,
I find it so difficult to understand your approach here (although it has
raised its head before) that I'd better just stop and ask you to 'flesh it
out'!
Cheers.
Sam
"Ask yourselves when are we going to see the first journal of bio-hacking
oriented toward teenage males, so they can create molecules in their
bedroom. Well, that journal came out in 1998. Be very afraid." (Bill Joy)
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