On 4/2/06, Christopher D. Green <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > It is hard to generalize about religion as a whole, for there are as > many kinds of religion as one would care to name. That said, if I were > to attempt to generalize about current *trends* in religious belief in > the US (i.e., which forms of American religious belief now seem to be > ascendant), I would say that the currently dominant forms of > (particularly protestant Christian) religious belief are almost > explicitly *irrationalist* (as opposed to, say, the Thomistic > Catholicism of the past) in that, for the most part, they view faith > alone (e.g., the literal interpretation of the Bible) as virtually the > sole epistemic criterion and appear to be largely disinterested > (contrary to the culturally predominant religious forms of the fairly > recent past) in integrating faith with either the dictates of reason or > of observation (i.e., the two foundational principles of modern science).
(this may be picking things apart too finely, but...) It seems to me that they're taking a particular interpretation of the Bible as the source of foundational assumptions, and then using a normal rationality to develop the remainder of their beliefs (for example, in deciding policy, as when the leader of the Catholic League took a pro-immigrant position in last week's debate rationally based on his understanding of his religious creed). I wouldn't describe it as "explicitly irrationalist" unless they said something like "clearly our interpretation of the Bible implies that [X], but despite that, faith tells us that [not X], and therefore [not X]". "Irrationalist" implies to me a belief that one can take certain assumptions, reason correctly from those assumptions, and then deny the products of that reasoning (which reduces to believing contradictions). I don't see that in the current common religious belief. Certainly notions of literal interpretation of the Bible and Biblical inerrancy are fully compatible with rationalism, in the philosophical sense. In other words, I don't see any incompatibility between the dictates of reason and a sense that the Bible is a source of ultimate truths, and I doubt that believers do either. Perhaps the issue is with our notions of rationalism, and not with our understandings of religious belief. Under my understanding of rationalism, anyway, the notion is that we come to our truths by reasoning from some set of givens, but even the most devout rationalists didn't believe that reasoning provides the givens, did they? If it's irrationalist to have foundational assumptions based in mere faith, then I don't think that anyone follows "the dictates of reason". In practice it seems that religious arguments are rational arguments with particular interpretations of the Bible as the source of foundational assumptions, and not arguments that rationality itself should be rejected (unless that's taken to mean that they're rejecting a claim that reason is the source of foundational assumptions, a claim which I'd reject as well). Paul Smith Alverno College Milwaukee --- You are currently subscribed to tips as: [email protected] To unsubscribe send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
