David M said: ...From this place, the way a metaphysical reason dealt with religion and opposed itself to religion looks like it should be revisited. This makes people like Hitchens and Dawkins look like thinkers who have no idea about the death of metaphysics and the re-thinking of Reason that is post-metaphysical and post-essentialism/dualism, etc. Maybe this does not have much to say about or to fundamentalisms. But I wonder.
dmb replies: Dawkins and Hitchens aren't philosophers and neither is their audience. I understand that their critique of religion can be legitimately applied only to the crudest and most child-like forms of religious belief but, unfortunately, that means it can be applied to millions and millions of believers. You've seen the statistics. Anyway, I think its only reasonable to criticize their work within the context of journalism and popular non-fiction rather than philosophy. Same thing goes for the comparison between fundamentalists and post-metaphysical academic types. Unless you're drawing some interesting connections behind the scenes somewhere, those are two different topics. David M continued: ...I am more than happy to call myself a secularist. But did not secularism attempt to claim that its values had some sort of special support from Reason and logic and science? Did this not go too far? And did this unfair use of reason not damage the authenticity of reason? So that the religious were forced to attack and reject reason as the only way to defend their values? In other words do we not need to defend reason and science against scientism so that we can get on with discussing our different values without making inappropriate use of reason and science. To reduce this to a simple example: do we only have our selves to blame for 'intelligent' design and 'scientifically justified' creationism because we made the mistake of claiming that anything ever demonstrated or proved the death or non-existence of god? Or perhaps I am suggesting that SOM started a war with religion that perhaps MOQ can help to bring to an end, or at least a less hot war. So did SOM make the culture wars worse? That's my basic suggestion, I am not sure how useful this approach is but I think it is worth exploring. At least, can MOQ improve the poor quality of the current battles and debate? dmb says: I think I know what you're getting at and I'd agree that the "culture wars" might have been smoother. But I think you're conflating SOM with just about everything intellectual. It hardly seems fair to construe the conflict between science and religion as a contest between SOM and religion because that suggests traditional religion is somehow immune to or outside of SOM. I mean, what's more metaphysical and Platonic than the Church? And when we think about this in terms of the MOQ's diagnosis, as conflict between social and intellectual values, we can defend "a wall of separation" between church and state. That's why I mentioned religious freedom, freedom of conscience, freedom of speech and other MOQisms. These are among the "secular" values worth keeping and defending even within a system of thought that rejects SOM. I certainly do NOT think secularism is the problem. The MOQ doesn't reject science and I guess we all think that would be silly. Nor do I see reason as an enemy. I'm not sure what "Reason" with a capital "R" is, exactly, but I think the MOQ construes "reasonableness" as among the highest moral virtues. And even if we could conflate secular values, science and reason with SOM, it still would be no defense for religion because it is just as implicated in SOM as any other area of the culture. These are just a few of the reasons that keep me from sympathizing with your diplomatic impulse. From my perspective, this confusion has you working for the wrong team. I suppose there is no fast or easy solution. But it sure seems like the social-intellectual distinction and the diagnosis it affords really could help to sort things out. I'm talking about the solution to the culture wars, but it could sort out the issues in this conversation about it too. I mean, which of the standard claims of christian faith, for example, would survive the demands of radical empiricism? In the contest between creationism and any normal science textbook which represents intellectual values and empirical standards? There will always be hard cases to ponder but most of these so-called debates aren't even debatable. _________________________________________________________________ Instantly invite friends from Facebook and other social networks to join you on Windows Live™ Messenger. https://www.invite2messenger.net/im/?source=TXT_EML_WLH_InviteFriends Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
