Archive for November 2008
Religion ain’t what they say it is
What secular fundamentalists don’t really seem to get is that religions are just systems of thought — like political ideologies and scientific rationalism. Although the claims of scientific rationalism to objectivity seem overwhelmingly convincing for those of us steeped in this milieu, so too did the claims of Catholicism for people in 1400, of Calvinism in 17th century Geneva, etc.
William Blake’s Ancient of Days, an image that somehow fuses the divine and the rational. (Was Blake just a good illustrator?)We might redefine religion as a system of thought that dominates the worldview of an individual or community.
So, for example, the renowned British historian Arnold Toynbee described the three great religions of the 20th century as being communism, nationalism and the belief in the inevitability of progress through the application of technology. Note that he did not list even one of the theistic faiths that pre-occupy our newly energised atheists.
It’s when we forget that all these paradigms are simply metaphors, or systems of metaphors, that we seem to get confused or confrontational. In some ways, Richard Dawkins and his allies are re-running a debate that for some was settled over a hundred years ago. Many Victorian scientists, like many (rather quiet) contemporary scientists, concluded that Darwin’s theory best explained the evolution of species, but continued to find great meaning in Christianity — because it does hold great meaning. They were broad-minded enough to find ways of reconciling the differences, broad-minded in ways that seem to escape participants in our renewed debates on the matter. Read the rest of this entry »
