NYTimes Article
SO I thought I'd make just a few comments in response to Stanley Fish's article by way of responses to the comments to the previous post, now that I have a little more time.
(Edit: sometimes I sort of run in a direction with an idea in these responses, and I don't mean to direct it at the person, as though to say they said otherwise, so please don't read it as in any way polemic--I in fact largely agree with the comments made before. Instead, I'm inserting thoughts relating to the various kinds of things I'm currently trying to work through relating to religion and public life.)
Elizabeth:
I agree with you that he makes a good (and often ignored) point that faith and reason are interwoven. To statements like "religion is just irrational" I can only respond that it, just like any other mode of inquiry or way of knowing, has an axiom, and other things which proceed logically from it. That axiom may be different for different believers, but in general, say, for Christianity, it has something to do with either(/both) the validity of the Bible (however conceived) or(/and) something like the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. (Baptists hold to 'no creed but the Bible' but my experience (which is, of course, far, far, far from comprehensive), they wouldn't really disagree with the contents of these creeds.)
I also agree with your statement about the faulty second step that he takes. Reason is not by nature shallow. Whereas sure, if you have no axioms, reason is useless, it also stands that without reason, you have axioms that don't extend very far. To call science out as being shallow or valueless is to make just as much a straw man of science as 'Ditchkins' often makes of religion. It's just as ridiculous to claim that atheists cannot have morals as it is to claim that Christian morals are arbitrary. It may seem to some Christians that atheists don't have morals because they don't have the same morals; similarly, it may seem to some atheists that Christian morals are arbitrary because they are complicated and often ill-explained. But we should all remember that on both sides of this divide, as it were, many of the people talking the loudest are not the people who have really sat down and thought about it; and we should also remember that, though on both sides this may not make for the best, most peaceful, or always the most intelligible conversation across the divide, not everyone has to be an academic to lead a good life. (And those on the secular side can just as easily be part of an uninformed and nonacademic public as can those on the religious side.)
I will resist talking about the 'reasonability' of axioms, or what bounds we may set around what kinds of axioms make sense to adhere to, which I do think is interesting and worth thinking about another time; but I do want to say that I think we cannot turn this idea into pretending that axioms are reasoned to, as then, of course, they would cease to be axiomatic, and something else (perhaps even less reasonable!) would be the axiom.
And, finally, I totally agree that all sides on these various debates have gotten angry unnecessarily. I also think we should all probably try to be as generous as we can and look past that to see what people are saying, rather than how they are saying it.
Alex:
Though I agree largely with what you mean, I disagree with the idea that moral frameworks based on the good of humanity need be swapped for God or Science; in fact, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that they are often combined, just with different ideas as to what the good of humanity is. Christian moral claims (particularly from conservative Christians) often look very odd to non-Christians, but they come down to the idea that if God made humankind in a particular way, and God is good, then the things God wants for humankind are good for humankind and are in line with the way humans are hard-wired, to put it somewhat simply. Even if Christians cannot explain every single turn in the mechanics of how it works out to human advantage, there are certainly plenty of people who have ideas on the matter, and good ones, even if people disagree. What I think happens is, unfortunately, that non-Christians hold Christians to standards of explanation that are unreasonable for any kind of system of thought, and which is not held to by the non-Christian critics--saying that people want to do something and that outside of a Christian worldview, one cannot understand why it would be bad or wrong or harmful does not count as an actual refutation, so much as it is a statement of disagreement.
Though I sort of ran in a different direction than you had originally meant, this leads in to other comments you make, such as that someone's axioms can change based on their logical outcomes. Which I absolutely agree about, both in scientific and in religious ways of thinking. But usually there needs to be a conflict, either with another axiom or with an actual refutation of the reasonability of the outcome--and many critiques of Christian morals are simply not that, but statements that the claims come seemingly from nowhere--and, of course, often it is not realized that many Christians will agree, for Christian reasons, with the critics of conservative Christian moral claims. Many of these issues have Christian arguments on both sides. Which is partly why I absolutely agree, 100%, with your hope that we might learn more about what people who disagree with us think, and approach better understanding of those people we live next to.
Finally, I do disagree with you on your suggestion that the disagreements between atheists and theists are the same as those between different religions or different groups within a religion. The kinds of arguments between religions usually are very similar to those kinds of disagreements between atheists and theists, but those between Catholics and Anglicans, etc., are of a different sort. Of course, everyone understands her own cultural or religious point of view differently, even when she agrees with someone else, but much of what separates Christian groups is how they read the bible. Not whether it is valid, or whether Jesus really came, or whether God really exists, but exactly how to appropriate the Bible--whether one or another idea is more importantly bearing on a given, complicated, real-life situation, or even whether a verse is to be taken in one way or another--largely the difference between me and Catholics (with whom I have many disagreements, though i very much respect Catholicism) is how we read various portions of scripture--for example, whether, when Jesus tells Peter that what he binds on earth will be bound in heaven, and what he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven, this applies to Peter in particular (and, afterwards, his successors, the popes), or whether it applies to the apostles generally (and this can then be taken either to apply to church leadership or the Christian body as a whole). The differences between the multitude of opinions on this are based on different reasoning on very, very similar (and usually the same) axioms.
Though this is only true if one does not make an axiom of the way one reads everything in the bible, which becomes, essentially, fundamentalism. To fundamentalism, I prefer to comment the way Paul Tillich does, which is to say that it makes an idol of one's own understanding--the fundamentalist decides they cannot be wrong about anything, or even about most things, which, in religion or science or anything else, is usually just flat-out incorrect.
Unshrout (Name concealed!):
I would argue that even big-f Faith, or religion, does have that critical mechanism. Again, as I mention in my response to Alex, the fundamentalist does not, but most do. It's still true that both religious and scientific communities have ideas which are reasoned from their axioms and which it is weird to disagree with, but that has to do with the reasoning behind them being pretty solid and agreed-upon by the general prevailing viewpoint, rather than it lacking a critical mechanism. And, similarly, in both kinds of communities, you can have people who advocate change which can later be implemented but at first were laughed-at or ousted. That's just a human thing--people don't like hearing they're wrong. But the task of the theologian is not to assert what the church already believes but to work out reasoning based on the axioms; they may ultimately disagree with something their church community holds, and the discussion is had.
An argument could be made against me regarding Catholicism, particularly since the role of theologians as viewed historically is often portrayed as being in the service of intelligently agreeing with the church. But I do not wish to go into that here, both because I don't know enough about Catholicism, not being Catholic myself, and because I would assert from what is evident that the Catholic church still does possess mechanisms for self-correction, particularly in the form of church councils. The changes that took place at Vatican II, this past century, were by no means insignificant.
I agree with you that there is a problem with that slippage, though. I've tried to use 'axiom' instead of 'little-f faith' just to keep it clearer, though I may have slipped up here or there. I, for one, do think the little-f faith can be taken seriously, so long as it is made clear what it actually is.
Thanks, each of you, for responding. I really enjoy having these exchanges. So, actually, if you want to respond further, please do; I'd be interested to hear what you think about what I said, so let's keep it rolling. But if not, that's cool, too.
(Edit: sometimes I sort of run in a direction with an idea in these responses, and I don't mean to direct it at the person, as though to say they said otherwise, so please don't read it as in any way polemic--I in fact largely agree with the comments made before. Instead, I'm inserting thoughts relating to the various kinds of things I'm currently trying to work through relating to religion and public life.)
Elizabeth:
I agree with you that he makes a good (and often ignored) point that faith and reason are interwoven. To statements like "religion is just irrational" I can only respond that it, just like any other mode of inquiry or way of knowing, has an axiom, and other things which proceed logically from it. That axiom may be different for different believers, but in general, say, for Christianity, it has something to do with either(/both) the validity of the Bible (however conceived) or(/and) something like the Nicene or Apostles' Creed. (Baptists hold to 'no creed but the Bible' but my experience (which is, of course, far, far, far from comprehensive), they wouldn't really disagree with the contents of these creeds.)
I also agree with your statement about the faulty second step that he takes. Reason is not by nature shallow. Whereas sure, if you have no axioms, reason is useless, it also stands that without reason, you have axioms that don't extend very far. To call science out as being shallow or valueless is to make just as much a straw man of science as 'Ditchkins' often makes of religion. It's just as ridiculous to claim that atheists cannot have morals as it is to claim that Christian morals are arbitrary. It may seem to some Christians that atheists don't have morals because they don't have the same morals; similarly, it may seem to some atheists that Christian morals are arbitrary because they are complicated and often ill-explained. But we should all remember that on both sides of this divide, as it were, many of the people talking the loudest are not the people who have really sat down and thought about it; and we should also remember that, though on both sides this may not make for the best, most peaceful, or always the most intelligible conversation across the divide, not everyone has to be an academic to lead a good life. (And those on the secular side can just as easily be part of an uninformed and nonacademic public as can those on the religious side.)
I will resist talking about the 'reasonability' of axioms, or what bounds we may set around what kinds of axioms make sense to adhere to, which I do think is interesting and worth thinking about another time; but I do want to say that I think we cannot turn this idea into pretending that axioms are reasoned to, as then, of course, they would cease to be axiomatic, and something else (perhaps even less reasonable!) would be the axiom.
And, finally, I totally agree that all sides on these various debates have gotten angry unnecessarily. I also think we should all probably try to be as generous as we can and look past that to see what people are saying, rather than how they are saying it.
Alex:
Though I agree largely with what you mean, I disagree with the idea that moral frameworks based on the good of humanity need be swapped for God or Science; in fact, I think it makes a lot of sense to say that they are often combined, just with different ideas as to what the good of humanity is. Christian moral claims (particularly from conservative Christians) often look very odd to non-Christians, but they come down to the idea that if God made humankind in a particular way, and God is good, then the things God wants for humankind are good for humankind and are in line with the way humans are hard-wired, to put it somewhat simply. Even if Christians cannot explain every single turn in the mechanics of how it works out to human advantage, there are certainly plenty of people who have ideas on the matter, and good ones, even if people disagree. What I think happens is, unfortunately, that non-Christians hold Christians to standards of explanation that are unreasonable for any kind of system of thought, and which is not held to by the non-Christian critics--saying that people want to do something and that outside of a Christian worldview, one cannot understand why it would be bad or wrong or harmful does not count as an actual refutation, so much as it is a statement of disagreement.
Though I sort of ran in a different direction than you had originally meant, this leads in to other comments you make, such as that someone's axioms can change based on their logical outcomes. Which I absolutely agree about, both in scientific and in religious ways of thinking. But usually there needs to be a conflict, either with another axiom or with an actual refutation of the reasonability of the outcome--and many critiques of Christian morals are simply not that, but statements that the claims come seemingly from nowhere--and, of course, often it is not realized that many Christians will agree, for Christian reasons, with the critics of conservative Christian moral claims. Many of these issues have Christian arguments on both sides. Which is partly why I absolutely agree, 100%, with your hope that we might learn more about what people who disagree with us think, and approach better understanding of those people we live next to.
Finally, I do disagree with you on your suggestion that the disagreements between atheists and theists are the same as those between different religions or different groups within a religion. The kinds of arguments between religions usually are very similar to those kinds of disagreements between atheists and theists, but those between Catholics and Anglicans, etc., are of a different sort. Of course, everyone understands her own cultural or religious point of view differently, even when she agrees with someone else, but much of what separates Christian groups is how they read the bible. Not whether it is valid, or whether Jesus really came, or whether God really exists, but exactly how to appropriate the Bible--whether one or another idea is more importantly bearing on a given, complicated, real-life situation, or even whether a verse is to be taken in one way or another--largely the difference between me and Catholics (with whom I have many disagreements, though i very much respect Catholicism) is how we read various portions of scripture--for example, whether, when Jesus tells Peter that what he binds on earth will be bound in heaven, and what he looses on earth will be loosed in heaven, this applies to Peter in particular (and, afterwards, his successors, the popes), or whether it applies to the apostles generally (and this can then be taken either to apply to church leadership or the Christian body as a whole). The differences between the multitude of opinions on this are based on different reasoning on very, very similar (and usually the same) axioms.
Though this is only true if one does not make an axiom of the way one reads everything in the bible, which becomes, essentially, fundamentalism. To fundamentalism, I prefer to comment the way Paul Tillich does, which is to say that it makes an idol of one's own understanding--the fundamentalist decides they cannot be wrong about anything, or even about most things, which, in religion or science or anything else, is usually just flat-out incorrect.
Unshrout (Name concealed!):
I would argue that even big-f Faith, or religion, does have that critical mechanism. Again, as I mention in my response to Alex, the fundamentalist does not, but most do. It's still true that both religious and scientific communities have ideas which are reasoned from their axioms and which it is weird to disagree with, but that has to do with the reasoning behind them being pretty solid and agreed-upon by the general prevailing viewpoint, rather than it lacking a critical mechanism. And, similarly, in both kinds of communities, you can have people who advocate change which can later be implemented but at first were laughed-at or ousted. That's just a human thing--people don't like hearing they're wrong. But the task of the theologian is not to assert what the church already believes but to work out reasoning based on the axioms; they may ultimately disagree with something their church community holds, and the discussion is had.
An argument could be made against me regarding Catholicism, particularly since the role of theologians as viewed historically is often portrayed as being in the service of intelligently agreeing with the church. But I do not wish to go into that here, both because I don't know enough about Catholicism, not being Catholic myself, and because I would assert from what is evident that the Catholic church still does possess mechanisms for self-correction, particularly in the form of church councils. The changes that took place at Vatican II, this past century, were by no means insignificant.
I agree with you that there is a problem with that slippage, though. I've tried to use 'axiom' instead of 'little-f faith' just to keep it clearer, though I may have slipped up here or there. I, for one, do think the little-f faith can be taken seriously, so long as it is made clear what it actually is.
Thanks, each of you, for responding. I really enjoy having these exchanges. So, actually, if you want to respond further, please do; I'd be interested to hear what you think about what I said, so let's keep it rolling. But if not, that's cool, too.
posted by Anonymous at 21:16
3 Comments:
More Commentating(xors)?
I'm basically entirely with you on most points. One concern I had, however, is with one comment you make: "...not everyone has to be an academic to lead a good life."
Now, I think I know what you mean, and if what you're saying is that even if you aren't a philosophy professor, or haven't gone to divinity school, or even don't have a liberal arts education, you can still be a thoughtful person and lead a very good life, then I am of course 100% with you. I also believe that you don't need to have a liberal arts education to /think/ about moral issues instead of regurgitating pre-packaged moral philosophy. And in as much as I believe that in order to lead a good life you /do/ have to think about hard issues, you /do/ have to carefully consider your morals, and you /cannot/ simply take something for granted because that's what your parents (or anyone else) told you, well, in simply that extent I think that everyone does have to be a moral philosopher (if not an academic). The contemplative life is not the only good one, but a life without contemplation is not good.
On a similar note, and for similar reasons, I think that even getting people to admit that they act from certain axioms, and build a moral philosophy using rational precepts from those certain axioms is, in most cases, a large part of the way towards consensus. It means that you can differentiate something truly fundamental -- God is Good; the Universe can be explained -- from something dogmatic -- young-earth creationism; Newtonian determinism. And as such, it allows people to argue and debate and potentially revise their (dogmatic) beliefs without feeling like someone is stepping on their core axioms. In personal experience, I no more believe in God than I did in middle school, but I have become much more moderate in many of my more dogmatic, smaller-scale views.
I would also agree that while an argument of "Well, not everyone agrees with you" proves absolutely nothing morally, it is often true that what the debater is really trying to argue is "Because reasonable people differ on the moral value of x (and hopefully for some other reasons as well), I feel that intolerance of x is a bigger sin than x itself." (Where x is any one of a number of potentially contentious issues: abortion, using human embryos in stem cell research, homosexuality, teaching evolution in science class, prayer in school, eating meat, animal research, the words "Under God" in the pledge of allegiance (or "In God We Trust" on money)... you get the picture) Now, again, the argument 'not everyone thinks x is a sin' doesn't necessarily mean that intolerance of x is a bigger sin than x itself, but it might be a sign that we should at least look at act x carefully. Anyway, it's always a balancing act -- no one (except Christ?) can be perfectly tolerant, or perfectly sinless; we can only find what we think is the best balance, and give a good faith effort.
I agree with you 100%, actually, on both points. The way you took what I meant with which you agree, which is to say you don't have to have a liberal arts education/other things to be a good person, is what I meant. I also agree that it's crucial that people think about what they believe/do in crucial ways.
As for your second point, I perhaps had in mind a different base scenario than you, in that in my mind, I was assuming tolerance despite disagreement, which can not necessarily be assumed. But I agree with what you say--that it needs to be inspected whether intolerance is being advanced alongside disagreement. The problem, though, is that many critics of conservative Christian morals do not draw the distinction--simply thinking that the way someone orders their life or identity is wrong, even if you can be totally genuinely respectful and tolerant of that person, is often considered 'hate' or 'intolerance'. We've largely forgotten, I think, as a culture, how to disagree about important things without being snarky and hateful, and so when someone isn't being snarky or hateful but still disagrees, even strongly, it is assumed that an intolerant, hateful attitude accompanies the disagreement. Which is unfortunate.
By which I don't mean that Christians cannot be intolerant. (Anyone from any portion of the social or political spectrum can be.) I think it's incredibly unfortunate when blanket intolerance is advanced by Christians--Jesus famously kept intimate company with tax collectors (seen at the time as those who had sold Israel out to the Roman Empire) and sinners. I'm not saying it's easy or anything, but I do think some Christians need to figure out how to lovingly engage with people they strongly disagree with, even when they disagree about how they orient their lives (as do many non-Christians, but the parallel to Christ isn't as useful there). Anyway. Brief clarification.
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