Postmodernity and christianity

[noel emits]

Was it 'rational' for Hitler to blame Jews for Germany's defeat in WWI? Was it 'rational' for early-20th-century scientists to pervert their fields of study to 'prove' the evolutionary superiority of white people?

Well this illustrates one of the problems of defining what is rational doesn't it? You could say both of those things were 'rational' from the point of view of achieving certain desired ends.

Isn't empiricism 'demonstrably better' more or less by definition?

Depends if you buy the demonstration doesn't it. And that hinges on deciding what is 'better', which is a value judgement.

But we have trouble staying on topic in this thread. This isn't / wasn't actually about religion as a historical phenomenon at all was it. It was about the way some scientists insist on Truth the same way some religios do, or something.

 

[Slothrop]

Well this illustrates one of the problems of defining what is rational doesn't it? You could say both of those things were 'rational' from the point of view of achieving certain desired ends.

That's a pretty broad definition of 'rational'.

 

[noel emits]

That's a pretty broad definition of 'rational'.

The point is that any definition of what is rational depends on establishing and declaring a set of values, aims, beliefs, assumptions etc.

Is rationality limited to self-interest? How does self-interest work? What exactly is my self-interest? How does it relate to and interact with the interest of the rest of society?

 

[Slothrop]

The point is that any definition of what is rational depends on establishing and declaring a set of values, aims, beliefs, assumptions etc.

But if you're going to declare the Holocaust to be a product of 'enlightenment rationalism' because it "acheived certain desired ends" then you could say the same thing of the First Crusade or the Punic Wars or the spread of Christianity.

If I was going to criticize rationalism based on 20th century history, I'd be looking at Soviet communism or Maoism. Or at the economic strategies adopted under capitalism - the failure of a scheme that is actually based on rationalist principles, not just the negative effects of something based on coercion, prejudice and dogmatism that took a bit of organization to run as effectively as it did - although people have been killing each other in very large numbers for a long time before they had rational means at their disposal anyway.

 

[noel emits]

But if you're going to declare the Holocaust to be a product of 'enlightenment rationalism' because it "acheived certain desired ends" then you could say the same thing of the First Crusade or the Punic Wars or the spread of Christianity.

Yeah - I'm not really criticising 'rationalism' on those grounds, more that it is hard to say exactly what is 'rational'.

If I was going to criticize rationalism based on 20th century history, I'd be looking at Soviet communism or Maoism. Or at the economic strategies adopted under capitalism - the failure of a scheme that is actually based on rationalist principles

This comes down to issues of defining self-interest doesn't it? If the whole system fails, or fails to include the 'human' then it is not really in anyone's interest. So there's a failure in defining the scope and aim of rational thought.

If we, because we believe it to be in our self-interest, all go around charging as much as we possibly can for the surplus stuff we don't immediately need then not only do we have to charge more for stuff in the future because what we need costs more, we also feel less than well disposed towards each other for all being a bunch of greedy exploitative bastards.

Oh wait, wrong thread.

 

[vimothy]

But we have trouble staying on topic in this thread. This isn't / wasn't actually about religion as a historical phenomenon at all was it. It was about the way some scientists insist on Truth the same way some religios do, or something.

It's not a big leap to make. I'm not sure why you're having trouble with this -- if religion is better at accepting the 'subjectivity of truth', then surely what religion is, is of relevance?

 

[noel emits]

It's not a big leap to make. I'm not sure why you're having trouble with this -- if religion is better at accepting the 'subjectivity of truth', then surely what religion is, is of relevance?

 

[noel emits]

It's not a big leap to make. I'm not sure why you're having trouble with this -- if religion is better at accepting the 'subjectivity of truth', then surely what religion is, is of relevance?

I don't think this even deserves a polite reply really but just for now...

I said the thread was going off topic, not that I was having 'trouble'. And it had got into talking about empiricism and rationalism, not 'what religion is'.

And no-one has claimed that 'religion is better at accepting the 'subjectivity of truth'' FFS.

The thread was / is about swears suggesting that Christians were not entitled to claim relativism when at other times they want to be intolerant of other's views. Also about Dawkins' view of religious belief as being incompatible with scientific thought / belief.

As so often vimothy you seem to want to turn the thread into an argument about some imagined idea you have, or choose to have, about what someone is saying, or what their position is, instead of the topic at hand. It's boring and counter-productive. Or maybe you just misunderstand, or think that there must be an ideological agenda behind whatever someone says, I dunno.

So can someone say something relevant about the thread topic, please?

 

[vimothy]

Ok.

...

 

[swears]

So can someone say something relevant about the thread topic, please?

Ok, if we're now living in the postmodern era, and you can believe in whatever pleases you: zen buddhism, nordic mythology, fairies and elves, anything... There's a "supermarket" of belief out there for you. Traditionally, christianity would be opposed to this, see this situation as a threat. But once you get a sort of popular atheism or rationalism on the scene, pointing out that it's all nonsense, a defence mechanism kicks in and christians will defend these "personal truths". So christianity is jossling for position on the supermarket shelf, rather than trying to get it bulldozed.

 

[swears]

(Not so much that this is a plan or conspiracy on behalf of christians, more that this is a situation that they've been forced into, this is how the game is played.)

 

[vimothy]

I am interested in the relationship between Christianity and postmodernity, though I'm not so concerned with Christians claiming that 'this is my truth' one the one hand and yet wanting to be regarded as a bulwark against moral relativism and decay on the other. Life is complicated and people are hypocritical, sure, sure -- but (FWIW) it’s not what I'd call the basis of a thread.

Christianity has had to come to terms with the conditions of postmodernity, with religion as 'mere religion' and not cultural hegemon or given point of reference. Christianity is no longer thought to be the basis for society or for civilisation. It is Christians, not atheists or agnostics, who are the odd ones out now, the minority, the special interest group. Religion must grapple with this shift in the socio-cultural landscape (witness the upheavals in the ME, e.g.) and find a new positions to occupy and functions to fulfill, if it is to remain relevant.

Happily (?) though, religion has changed, to the extent that religionists have no choice but to accept as significant the conditions of the secular age in which they live – as exemplified by swears’ quotes at the genesis of this thread. However, it is not the case that ‘postmodernity’ describes new physical laws that replace the old laws of intellectual absolutism, and you do not win points by being, in whatever sense, ‘more postmodern’. And still religion remains an ideology, sets of laws and norms governing social interactions, just one that rules in a more limited sphere than in the past – hence the tension between embracing relativism and condemning it.

The thread was / is about swears suggesting that Christians were not entitled to claim relativism when at other times they want to be intolerant of other's views. Also about Dawkins' view of religious belief as being incompatible with scientific thought / belief.

That's 'your truth', perhaps, but I thought it was about Christianity and postmodernity, and I think that to understand what religion is becoming you have to examine what it has been and what it is... (As far as I'm concerned, Christians are entitled to 'believe' whatever the hell they like, no matter how contradictory or indeed, right-on -- that's not what I'm writing about).

 

[Mr. Tea]

Ok, if we're now living in the postmodern era, and you can believe in whatever pleases you: zen buddhism, nordic mythology, fairies and elves, anything... There's a "supermarket" of belief out there for you. Traditionally, christianity would be opposed to this, see this situation as a threat. But once you get a sort of popular atheism or rationalism on the scene, pointing out that it's all nonsense, a defence mechanism kicks in and christians will defend these "personal truths". So christianity is jossling for position on the supermarket shelf, rather than trying to get it bulldozed.

This sounds like a pretty good summary to me.

A mate of mine said once that for most non-fundamentalist Christians these days, believing in God is basically a matter of 'choosing to believe' in nebulous hokum, even though they know, deep down, that it is nebulous hokum. Which I think is another good way of putting it.

 

[vimothy]

I hope noel comes and kicks both yr asses, given that I've been saying that all thread!

A mate of mine said once that for most non-fundamentalist Christians these days, believing in God is basically a matter of 'choosing to believe' in nebulous hokum, even though they know, deep down, that it is nebulous hokum. Which I think is another good way of putting it.

I dunno about that. My sister is a Christian and I'd say she's pretty convinced that God exists. Is there a difference between believing and thinking you believe?

EDIT: Ok, maybe not quite that, but there is a conradiction between trad religion as absolute moral arbiter and modern religion as 'mere religion' jockeying for power and influence...

 

[IdleRich]

"Traditionally, christianity would be opposed to this, see this situation as a threat. But once you get a sort of popular atheism or rationalism on the scene, pointing out that it's all nonsense, a defence mechanism kicks in and christians will defend these "personal truths". So christianity is jossling for position on the supermarket shelf, rather than trying to get it bulldozed."

Can't it be that some Christians are demanding the right to have a "personal truth" while others are still hoping for a return to a more comforting time when there was only one truth (theirs obviously)? I mean, have you actually heard the two seemingly conflicting positions being voiced by the same Christians? I guess if you see them as a whole block there are bound to be contradictions.

 

[Mr. Tea]

I hope noel comes and kicks both yr asses, given that I've been saying that all thread!

I dunno about that. My sister is a Christian and I'd say she's pretty convinced that God exists. Is there a difference between believing and thinking you believe?

It could be something they're not even really conscious of. Humans are capable of all sorts of self-contradictory beliefs and convictions. It could perhaps be expressed as "choosing to have faith (an inherently irrational/emotion belief) in something they don't really think (in a strictly logical/rational way) to be true". I can't speak for your sister, of course, maybe she *knows* God exists in the same way she *knows* Gordon Brown is the prime minister. It was, of course, a massive generalisation, but not an unsupported one, I think.

 

[poetix]

In the 1960s, Donald MacKinnon was talking about a "post-Constantinian" Christianity, in other words a Christianity no longer wedded (or prostituted) to the projection of imperial power. It can be seen that Rowan Williams, the present Archbishop of Canterbury, is a dedicated MacKinnonite on that point. But it's not primarily an epistemological question (having to do with the status of religious truth amongst other truths). MacKinnon was arguing that Christianity could only realize its own truth (that of "the cross") by subtracting itself from the Constantinian situation (Christianity as state religion, its "mission" confused with that of colonialism). That point was not so much to privatise Christianity's "truth claims" as to universalise them, in the first instance by applying them to its own attitudes and institutions.

Around the same time you get the interest in "religionless Christianity": a phrase from Bonhoeffer, much abused. In Bonhoeffer it is related to the theme of human maturity: "man" has outgrown the limited God he has made for himself, and needs to discard this idol. Rowan Williams, talking about Philip Pullman's staging of the death of God in the "His Dark Materials" trilogy, refers to a certain "necessary atheism" or iconoclasm which can release us from images of God that have held us captive.

To the extent that the movement stemming from this theology of the 60s has held sway (not total, and it has been hemmed in by reactionary currents, but most "liberals" are at least sympathetic to it), it has involved the disentanglement of Christianity from the "grand narrative" of imperial domination ("let all the world be Roman!") and a growth in ecumenism and inter-faith discussion; which is all to the good. The current difficulties within the Anglican communion are occurring in part because the hegemony of the English and North American churches is no longer taken for granted.

The relationship to "postmodern" delegitimation is fairly complex, because Christianity subtracted from its imperial "framework of legitimation" does not in fact lapse into a "pagan" rebranding as one option among others in the ever-unfolding plethora of spiritual styles. "Radical humility" might be one name for its contemporary calling; kenosis another. But this is its way of pursuing a truth.

 

[noel emits]

Ok, if we're now living in the postmodern era, and you can believe in whatever pleases you: zen buddhism, nordic mythology, fairies and
elves, anything... There's a "supermarket" of belief out there for you. Traditionally, christianity would be opposed to this, see this situation as a threat. But once you
get a sort of popular atheism or rationalism on the scene, pointing out that it's all nonsense, a defence mechanism kicks in and christians will defend these
"personal truths". So christianity is jossling for position on the supermarket shelf, rather than trying to get it bulldozed.

A mate of mine said once that for most non-fundamentalist Christians these days, believing in God is basically a matter of 'choosing to
believe' in nebulous hokum, even though they know, deep down, that it is nebulous hokum. Which I think is another good way of putting it.

I hope noel comes and kicks both yr asses, given that I've been saying that all thread!

I came into this on the 'what is atheism'* question really. Then mostly my disagreement was with some of the definitions of 'religion'. Until vimothy started trying to designate my stance variously as PoMo, New Age, Atheist, Utopian or whatever, and saying I didn't understand religion as a 'social force'.

But am I the only one here for whom stuff like this grates as being at least somewhat imprecise?

the religious mindset (accept scripture as revelation provided by God, privilege faith above scepticism and intuition above reason...).

Just the broadest of strokes and generalisations here. 'The Religious Mindset'. And why presume a privileging of one mode of thought or knowledge in all areas?

the major aspect of religious thought as I see them: accepting revelations as authenticated either by their extreme age or by the authenticity
of the 'divine experience' of the person to whom they were 'revealed' (and let's not forget that one man's prophet is another man's delusional schizophrenic...), as
opposed to empirically gathering information about the world and building theories about how it works by rationally analysing this information.

No talk of personal religious experience then? Wouldn't that be a rather large part of religion for a great many people?

And how exactly do you think religions came about if it wasn't for people 'empirically gathering information about the world and building theories about how it works'? What I mean to say is these things might not be as far apart and opposed as you might think. Different epistemologies working with different types of data for different reasons?

'encoded' in the form of myths, fables and prophecies for the benefit of a generally illiterate laiety.

Unlike Science which never deals in metaphors and always Absolute Realities? Careful...

they are still religions, they are still concerned primarily with man's relationship to something that fundamentally doesn't exit, rather than to his
fellow man.

Not true is it? A good part of most religions is concerned with relations amongst people, morals etc. In fact that's what vimothy was arguing for as being the basis for discussing religion here.

its still a set of codes and rules, *which mediate social relationships, with which sits some metaphysical teachings.
...
religion as a historical object, as an abstract machine, as an archiecture of social construction
...
Religion has always been about taboo, proscription, control, discipline, describing what is permitted, what is forbidden.

Which I don't entirely disagree with. I guess we were talking about 'religion' in quite different senses and for different reasons. The above weren't the grounds on which I was suggesting that some types of religious thought might have value anyway, but also I don't think that dismissing 'religion' per se based on how you view certain social effects, whose causal relationship with 'religion' alone is not entirely clear anyway, is a fair conclusion. Although of course we can criticise certain aspects of how religions, and in this context Christianities in particular, function in the broader sense. I saw the questions here as being more about the right to belief, what the grounds were for objecting to religious belief, and to 'believers' understanding their truths as being relative.

 

[noel emits]

I think you've got hold of the wrong end of the stick, you could argue that no belief is a belief system and it's nothing like you suggest, this I think you already know - to suggest it has to be anti is just silly.

That's cool, of course, but the problem comes with your assumption that atheism is a passive thing, because that would allow for it to be confused with agnosticism in the way I tried to outline before. Agnosticism can be a passive position as well so how do you distinguish the two?
...
They admit the possibility, sure, but they still lack an active belief in God, which was your definition of an atheist. Surely to be 'firmly convinced' of something, you must believe it? To be passively convinced about something, even a lack of something, seems... weird.. if the conviction is there.

I do still belief you are wrong about it not being a belief system, it's not as simple as not having a god/dawkin/fat bloke and not believing in anything (including the last statement) is based on a number of complex stances, these life stances become a belief system on which you act.

Innit, and I think agnosticism is the same. It can be a well thought through position based on complex reasoning and validation as well.. the lack of a belief is not necessarily passive.

Christians only have to believe in the existence of one god whereas atheists have to believe in the non-existence of countless deities, therefore atheism is the more religious and faith based belief system.

there's never going to be a violent schism between rival sects of atheists.

In some sense, atheists have more in common with believers than believers do with each other. Believers are also non-believers. The Christian doesn't believe in all gods but one: her/his own.

Good article on some of this from the AB of C here. I guess he's someone who's had to give the matter some serious consideration!

The point is that atheism is to be defined as a system only by some dramatic intellectual contortions. A number of intellectual and spiritual policies involve or at least accompany the denial of certain versions of the divine, especially the divine as an active and intelligent subject; but in each case the denial is not intelligible apart from a specific context of thought and image, representation and misrepresentation of specific religious doctrines, and the overall system of which the denial is a part is not necessarily shaped by it. This is why the recent proposal in the United Kingdom that religious education in schools should give attention to 'atheism and humanism' as 'non-faith belief systems' alongside the traditional religions was based on some serious conceptual confusions and category mistakes. In the background is the pervasive assumption of modernity that the intellectual default position is non-religious; but what this fails to see is that non-religiousness is historically and culturally a complex of refusals directed at specific religious doctrines, rather than a pure and primitive vision invaded by religious fictions. And if this is so, either religious education has to locate non-religious positions in relation to what it is that they deny, or it will end up treating atheism as the only position not subject to critical scrutiny and the construction of a proper intellectual genealogy: not a welcome position for a rationalist to be in.
http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/1176

 

[Dusty]

or it will end up treating atheism as the only position not subject to critical scrutiny

I think this is a fundamental misunderstanding of what atheism means to most atheists. Atheism as I understand it bases the conclusion of there being no God (or spaghetti monster) on some kind of scientific mindset - the search for evidence, the evaluation of evidence and the re-thinking of proposed theories. The AB of C is treating atheism as another form of blind-belief-based religion. Handy for his argument and not much else.

An athiest should only be so based on the current evidence at hand, but would be willing to reconsider should something demonstrating a higher force - some form of evidence - crop up all of a sudden. His religion won't alter its opinion based on scientific evidence, a sensible athiest would. Evidence takes us away from blind-belief systems and gives us something else. By its very definition atheism cannot avoid critical scrutiny. You start with nothing and build a working theory based on what you find. You do not come up with an idea and then go off to prove/disprove it.

If we can agree that athiesm is grounded in scientific thinking, then the AB of C needs to take on teaching science as 'truth' in schools as a problem as well if he wants to undermine athiesm as a belief system. That, as far as I'm aware is something the church gave up doing a long time ago... unless you live in the deep south of the US.


Atheism is the religion of modern scientific thinking. Do any atheists here disagree with that?