Hi DMB, Thanks for your response. A few more questions...
I think what you are saying is that the pragmatists answer is simply to try to figure out what religion is supposed to do and see how well it does it. The tack that most people would like to take in conversations with theists is to argue that what theists believe just isn't true. I'm wondering if the pragmatist can argue in that vein or if he is constrained in such conversations by his use of the word "truth" or his denial of there being a way things really are. Though "the MOQ rejects beliefs based on faith, tradition and authority" it suggests that there is such a thing as intellectual quality that is independent of those things and has its own measures of goodness in terms of coherence with other beliefs, parsimony, and agreement with experience. Though pragmatists may agree that truth is what is good in terms of belief, pragmatists don't separate the terms by which beliefs should be evaluated from the terms by which social patterns should be evaluated (e.g. authority versus agreement with experience, coherence versus tradition). Could this explain James' and Dewey's ambivalence about religious dogma?
Regards, Steve 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/
