I’m going to start with Mary Helena Basson’s definition of religion, because I think it is important to foreclose on the direction that would enforce on us. Here it is:
My basic definition of religion – a definition that I have previously articulated is:: Religion is our human capacity for spiritual values – however individually we might define our spiritual values. Spiritual values = non-material values. love, kindness, charity, compassion, empathy; meaning, purpose, depth, sense of life, spiritual as opposed to material values; joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity; a sense of what is does not have to be; hope, etc. The intangibles that give our species a sense of life as opposed to mere existence.
By that definition, everything is really religion, because everything significant about human beings is, in some sense, mental, and most of us think about the mental as, in some sense, non-material, though people like Dennett would (rightly I think) say that the brain and mind are somehow identical.
However, if the word ‘religion’ is going to pick out anything of importance, instead of waving rather nebulously towards “non-material values … [like] love, kindness, charity, compassion, empathy; meaning, purpose, depth, sense of life,” we are going to have to do better than this. Quite aside from this, I’m not sure that I understand what it is about values like “joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity” that is particularly material. [For a correction of this see the comments. There is what seems to me an odd break in MH's list, and it follows through with 'joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity', which are also spiritual.]
Those of you who are following this discussion may remember that the reason for our having gone in this direction at all lies in the fact that Mary Helena (very early in this blog’s existence) brought up her contribution to an earlier post on R.J. Hoffman’s “New Oxonian” blog. That post was a criticism of the New Atheism, and here is how Hoffman himself sums up his point:
Ms. Basson is right when she implies that Richard Dawkins missed a golden opportunity to highlight the complexity of religion and to distinguish between the theological axioms that are really the target of modern atheist critique and the less cooperative subject matter called religion.
Perhaps this puts into perspective what we are trying to discuss here, although, now that I have seen Mary Helena’s working definition of religion, I recognise why we have been at such cross purposes, for the definition is so broad as to make it unlikely that we will ever be able to account for anything by talking about religion as such, in these terms, for religion as such encompasses the whole of human creativity. If religion is merely our capacity for “spiritual values” as Mary Helena suggests (that is, as excluding things like joy and dignity — but why would we want to exclude those?), then the problem becomes: What is not religion?
From my point of view the reason for defining religion is to delimit the scope of what we are talking about or investigating, as when Scott Atran defines religion in this way (his rough definition limned at the very beginning of his book In Gods We Trust):
Roughly, religion is (1) a community’s costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agents (3) who master people’s existential anxieties, such as death and deception. [4]
Now that I have considered some of the proposed definitions, this seems to me one worth sticking to. This is what I mean by ‘religion’, and what I will continue to mean. It explains various things. First of all, religion is something adherence to which is a form of commitment (let’s call it faith). Second, it is commitment which is hard to fake, so it is a good test of whether the committed person really belongs. Third, it concerns things that are of central existential importance, summed up in ideas of faithful belonging to the group, as well as allaying anxieties about life’s most frightening and confusing realities, such as death and extinction.
Notice something very important about this rough and ready definition of religion. It captures what most of us intuitively identify as religion, and excludes such things as Einsteinian or Spinozist religion which are religions only by association. It concerns other worlds or conterfactual entities, such as gods, demons, angels, ghosts, spirits, jinn, and so on. It includes solidarity and belonging to a group, membership in which requires a sacrifice which is hard to fake. You either believe or you don’t, and people are very sensitive to whether or not you really do believe, and are ready to sacrifice intellect, and possibly even your sense of what is right and wrong, in order to claim membership of the group. And, last, if it works, it is going to provide some kind of resolution to your deepest fears and anxieties. It will offer comfort in affliction.
Central, of course, to religion so understood is the sacrifice of intellect. This is Philosophical Primate’s preferred way of identifying what it is we are talking about when we have religion, to speak in Palinesque terms, in our sights. This is faith. But faith includes so much more than just intellectual assent to propositions about conterfactual entities or events (such as the resurrection). Belief without evidence is certainly foundational to religion as I understand it, but faith also includes a mechanism of belonging, what most people who talk about faith call trust. “Trust and obey, for there’s no other way, to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.” I’m not sure the words are right, but these are dredged up from a deep place in a fairly distant past — my past — in a time long before I became an Anglican. And I became an Anglican because I could not imagine not belonging, but at the same time, I could no longer sacrifice intellect to the degree that seemed to be expected, and Anglicanism was — or at least I saw it as – the thinking person’s version of faith.
One thing that faith never did for me, however, was to resolve the confusions and anxieties about personal identity, transience and death. Nor, in one sense, did it resolve problems having to do with sacrifice of intellect. So, though exhibiting outwardly all the costly signs of faith, and through them being bonded in community, I always felt, in a measure, on the outside looking in, because I could not surrender myself fully to the counterfactual beliefs which form the bedrock of religious faith. I will try to explain in the next few days why I think this means that liberal religion can never be entirely successful as religion, and why it is parasitic upon more ex anima types of believing. But I can say now that, during all the period in which I would have counted myself as religious — and that includes most of my life — I never, for one moment, accepted either (i) that Jesus rose from the dead, or (ii) that anyone survived death. Nor in any serious way did I think that prayer achieved anything in terms of what might be called external benefits. In other words, while prayer might be thought, in a Stoic sense, to transform the inner person, so that one accepted things as the inevitable outcome of transient and unstable conditions, so that one could face the vicissitudes of life with some tranquility, prayer was not answered in any positive sense.
I think that, in a general way, this is what New Atheism has had in mind when it sets out to criticise religion, and this is how I understand religion. It is also why I think religion is dangerous, especially in the populous earth of the present day and the enhanced ability we have to destroy each other with modern technology. We now have the power to destroy each other in ways that will make the Nazi Holocaust of European Jewry look like child’s play, but we are still functioning with moral commitments and types of social belonging that are embedded in religious traditions emanating from the bronze age.
I think it is fairly evident, observing the behaviour of religions around the world today, that religious belonging, though it has adapted itself in various ways and in varying degrees to modernity, is still fundamentally tribal. This derives from the costly and hard to fake commitment to belief in counterfactual worlds and entities, a commitment which varies inversely with the degree to which it has become self-conscious and theological. The more theological, the less unquestioning is the commitment. That is why the Qu’ran is full of warnings to those who do not submit unquestioningly to the authority of the Prophet and his message. That is why Jesus condemns Chorazin and Bethsaida, because they did not believe on the basis of the wonderful things that were done amongst them, why Thomas’ questioning belief is belittled in comparison to the faith of those who have not seen and yet have believed. This is why the pope keeps harping about relativism, because to his mind the only way to resolve problems of relativism is to have the whole world subject to the authority of Rome.
Now, this has already become longer than I had intended. Tomorrow, I will start discussing Philip Kitcher’s ideas regarding a possible middle way which would preserve what is valuable about religion, all the time recognising that the costly commitment to counterfactual beliefs is indefensible. It is, to my mind, the only criticism of the New Atheism so far that stands any chance of providing an alternative way forward. Religion, simply as costly commitment that binds people in community, has become too dangerous to preserve without massive change. It may be, as I suspect, too late to make the changes necessary. Our capacity for self-destruction has simply become so great, at the same time that people still regard primitive religious allegiances with respect and reverence, that avoiding a cataclysm seems to me to be fairly remote. The so-called “balance of terror” seems to me to have become treacherously unbalanced. Whether the present ferment in the Arab world will mean a growth of freedom or the triumph of fanaticism awaits the outcome. However, it is my belief that, if we cannot contain the forces of religion, the future will be very uncertain indeed. Here, the New Atheists are, in my opinion, certainly right. We must either transform our religions or defeat them.
Let’s not forget what Scott Atran also wrote:
“The cognitive perspective I have chosen for this book is a biological and scientific perspective that focuses on the casual role of the mind/brain in generating behaviour. From this vantage, religion is not doctrine, or institutions, or even faith. Religion ensues from the ordinary workings of the human mind as it deals with emotionally compelling problems of human existence, such as birth, aging, death, unforeseen calamities, and love. In religion, these ‘facts of life’ are always inherent problems of society, caused by the very same intentional agents that are thought to constitute society. For religion, there is always an intentional, socially relevant reason for this particular person to have been born a man rather than a woman, for a wave to have knocked over and drowned a person at a specific place and time”. (page viii)
Eric, interesting point at the end of your blog post –
“We must either transform our religions or defeat them.”.
Methinks the effort would be more productive on transformation than the hopeless delusion of defeating religion.
Eric: “If religion is merely our capacity for “spiritual values” as Mary Helena suggests (that is, as excluding things like joy and dignity — but why would we want to exclude those?), then the problem becomes: What is not religion?”
Eric, Eric, I did not “exclude””things like joy and dignity.” Please re-read my basic definition:
“My basic definition of religion – a definition that I have previously articulated is:: Religion is our human capacity for spiritual values – however individually we might define our spiritual values. Spiritual values = non-material values. love, kindness, charity, compassion, empathy; meaning, purpose, depth, sense of life, spiritual as opposed to material values; joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity; a sense of what is does not have to be; hope, etc. The intangibles that give our species a sense of life as opposed to mere existence.”
Thank you, Eric.
I stand corrected. I took a semicolon as a colon. I think it would have been clearer if you had carried on with “joy, beauty, etc., after ‘sense of life’.
Yes, from Scott Atran’s point of view that is an important distinction. However, from the point of view of those, like me, who are concened about the immediate effects of religion on the relationship between peoples and nations, this is not an important point. This is something that Atran forgets about as soon as he enters the political sphere, and forgets that he is more than an anthropologist. The whole problem of “faith” arises with the last sentence in this quote.
From an empirical-rational point of view this is imply false. There is no always an intentional, socially relevant reason… etc. This is where counterfactual worlds and entities enter the picture.
As for transforming our religions. I’m not sure there’s time enough. If this makes me pessimisitic — well, I am.
Yes, it looks to be badly worded now that I look at it…
“Spiritual values = non-material values. love, kindness, charity, compassion, empathy; meaning, purpose, depth, sense of life, spiritual as opposed to material values; joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity; a sense of what is does not have to be; hope, etc. The intangibles that give our species a sense of life as opposed to mere existence.”
I’ve already said – spiritual values = non-material values – so the inclusion of the phrase, “spiritual as opposed to material values” in the middle of the definition is actually superfluously as it adds nothing to my definition – except, seemingly, to have caused a little confusion your way…
(methinks I might have been doing a bit of a cut and paste job and missed the double reference…..)
So, if you like – feel free to remove the “spiritual as opposed to material values” in the middle of the definition.
Terrific once again. Please keep going!
Eric, if your going to discuss my definition of religion, please do me the courtesy of correctly attributing to me what I have written. There is“no odd break” in my list. You have inferred something that is not there. I suggested a better wording, actually not even that, I suggest that you remove a few words that were causing you to infer something that I was not infering and something which the paragraph and the context explicity did not say. You have not implemented my suggestion regarding clarification of the wording of the definition – instead remarking on a “correction” – which is not what I indicated at all.
[For a correction of this see the comments. There is an odd break in MH's list, and it follows through with 'joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity', which are also spiritual.]
“If religion is merely our capacity for “spiritual values” as Mary Helena suggests (that is, as excluding things like joy and dignity — but why would we want to exclude those?), then the problem becomes:”
Yes!! PF (that means ‘pumps fist!). One point to add, following on your mention of ‘trust’: One of my preacher-dad”s favorite hymns was “Trust and Obey”. He believed implicitly in the Psalmist’s promise that ‘there shall no plague come by thy dwelling.’ Towards the end of his very long life, as he was losing control of his sphincters and his memory, he said to my mother one day, “What have I done wrong? Why is this happening to me?” He had spent his life in what he saw as his duty to his God, and now the promises were failing, clearly worthless. It was an incomprehensible punishment as he saw it, and for what? This was one of the final nails in the coffin of my tolerance for this life-long deception of the most vile variety.
Aren’t things like hate and spite non-material?
Good point. Anger, envy, jealousy, cruelty, selfishness, vulgarity… and so many more. All spiritual. Religious? Well, if you consider the OT, God is responsible for everything. He brings life and death, health and sickness, happiness and sorrow. In Don Cupitt’s words, God simply is “It All”, and in a couple of books he argued that this is something that our ordinary language recognises, such as The Meaning of It All in Everyday Speech.
Terry Pratchett on “spirituality”:
Mary Helena Basson equates religion and spiritual values, and defines “spiritual values” as: “non-material values. love, kindness, charity, compassion, empathy; meaning, purpose, depth, sense of life …; joy, beauty, loyalty, integrity, dignity; a sense of what is does not have to be; hope, etc. The intangibles that give our species a sense of life as opposed to mere existence.”
I have two problems with this. I possess all of those values (to a greater or lesser extent) but I don’t accept that I am “religious” or “spiritual” – it seems I am being classed as “religious” simply by being human. It is the old theistic canard “you can’t be good without god” – it might be wearing a tuxedo and be more subtle, but in the end it comes from the same mindset.
The second problem is with the words “non-material” and “intangible.” Love, loyalty, etc. may be non-material, but they come from a material base, the brain. However, religion and spirituality do not only concern themselves with this type of non-materiality – to a greater or lesser extent, they add a non-material, “supernatural” realm, populated by entities ranging from the Supreme Commander of the Universe (often with various lesser minions able to do the Being’s bidding) to a nebulous transcendence. This conflation means that the “spiritual” can imply the second meaning in conversation but can be reverted to the first meaning when challenged. Once again, regardless of subtlety level, it‘s still the old theistic bait-and-switch.
MF
“Aren’t things like hate and spite non-material?”
But are they values?
Don’t forget the other part of statement – spiritual VALUES.
Spiritual values = non-material values.
Our bodies get sick and suffer – but I don’t think anyone would want to look upon these as values – it’s health that is a value. Sure, it’s possible for some people to have some twisted ‘values’ – but that does not negate real values. Values that contribute meaningfully to a life of flourishing.
Atran: “Religious behavior often seems to be motivated by sacred values, that is, values which a moral community treats as possessing transcendental significance that underlies cultural identity and precludes comparisons or tradeoffs with material or instrumental values of realpolitik or the marketplace. As Immanuel Kant framed it, virtuous religious behavior is its own reward and attempts to base it on utility nullifies its moral worth. Instrumental decision-making (or “rational choice”) involves strict cost-benefit calculations regarding goals, and entails abandoning or adjusting goals if costs for realizing them are too high. A sacred value is a value that incorporates moral and ethical beliefs independently of, or all out of proportion to, its prospect of success.”
(I don’t know if this post will get through – an earlier post has again been put on moderation…” Your comment is awaiting moderation” )
Eric, since you did not post a link, in your blog post, to my post to your blog from which you have taken my definition of religion – I think I’ll add some points from that post of mine that adds more background to my position on religion.
———————
And what religion is, at its root, it is not is a set of intellectual dogma. Words are inadequate as vehicles to express human emotions. Sure, we can try and poetry perhaps comes closest. But the words are only a reflection, they are not the emotion; they are not the spiritual values that lie beneath the words. A differentiation needs to be upheld. Words can be empty, mere words – as one may sometimes feel when being offered an apology, for instance. How does one define love – again words often fail us. With defining religion it is this type of differentiation that I think needs to be kept in focus. Words, theological words, will be inadequate vehicles to express or reflect our spiritual values. Thus, while we can reject many of the words, the dogma, the beliefs, of theology, this rejection does not lead to a negation of the underlying reality – our capacity to seek and to uphold spiritual values, our capacity for religion. Love is there however inadequate our words are to convey it. Sure, all we have are words – but we can learn to speak better, we can learn to change the manner in which we communicate our hopes and values. We can change our diet but we cannot change our need for spiritual values, our need for spiritual nourishment. This is why I think it is really important to keep in mind a differentiation between religion and theology – they are not synonymous terms.
If one keeps in mind that there is a real differentiation between theology and religion – then it’s impossible to assert that religion killed Salman Tasser. Religion is about spiritual values, sacred values. (I really do think Scott Atran is on to something important here when he uses this term. Not only using it in his writing of course – he has plenty of field experience in using it; hence is able to support his intellectual position with actual data.). Religion is about the intangible values that elevate human life; the values that see a win/win experience of living. Theology, dogmas and beliefs, based upon ideas, based upon intellectual flights of fancy, have the inherent capacity, when translated into real time action, to negate spiritual values. The capacity to negate the most cherished value of all; that incompressible value, human life itself.
Yes, so you keep saying, over and over and over again. And so you keep not supporting, over and over and over again. I don’t think there’s any mistaking that you really, really, really, think that this is what religion is; one merely wonders why you have no interest in explaining why anyone else should agree with you and your semantic position.
Here you hand-wave something about Atran being “able to support his intellectual position”—by which you presumably mean the semantic point you are beating like the proverbial dead horse, yes?—”with actual data.” As noted previously, it’s a little hard to understand how one supports a matter of semantic definition with “actual data” (unless you’re talking about surveying what it is that actual people actually understand “religion” to mean—but of course you’re well aware that that “data” wouldn’t help your case at all).
But never mind that for now. You contend Atran has “actual data” to support your lucubrations about semantics. I suggest that you present that data. Absent that, all we’ve got is you talking in swimmy terms about a semantic approach that (to coin a phase) you have yet to explain why anyone should take seriously.
I think a distinction needs to be made between ‘the ordinary workings of the human mind’, which are not necessarily religious, but whose tendencies – that of perceiving agency even when there is none, for instance – readily give rise to what we call religion and to what Atran elsewhere defines as religion. Please note that Atran says ‘religion ensues’ from these workings; he is not saying that these workings are in themselves religious.
Mary Helena, I’m afraid I have to go with Rieux here. I can see that we can list “spiritual” values, qualities of mind and personality which are “elevating” in some sense. I am reminded of Paul’s exhortation: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4.8) But once you have done that, do you have a religion? Not necessarily, for religions are also, in some sense, ways of belonging. As Atran keeps saying, the root of religion lies in hard to fake commitments which identify the individual with the (religious) group. He does not make a clear distinction between the values and the beliefs which accompany them. And besides, not all the values that religious people espouse are necessarily the uplifting ones, the ones that Rieux so effectively calls swimmy.
I acknowledge there is probably an unreflective level at which religion is about feelings, basically. However, those feelings are not always the elevating ones suggested in Paul’s list. There are the ones that lead people to kill their neighbour who has not displayed that hard to fake commitment. There are also feelings of guilt and sinfulness that lead people to sacrifice their children in propitiation.
It is probably at the theological level that we find distinctions being made, theology which can moderate the intensity of people’s feelings, as well as theology which becomes rigid and dogmatic.
In other words, I don’t see theology quite as you seem to see it, nor do I think you can separate religion and theology in the way that you wish to do. — Yes, we seem to be right back at the start, and so I begin to wonder whether this is profitable. — You want to preserve a sacred centre of religion which is neither dangerous nor inhumane. I don’t think there is one. The “values” that you place at the centre of religion, are just good feelings, which, of course, we can have in the absence of any religion at all. If they’re not, and we have to take into consideration spite and malice and the other negative emotions and “values” as well — which play a surprisingly large part in religion I suspect — then we have to have some reason for thinking that just these values are the ones that we need to treasure, and this is going to lead us into theology.
Take the conflict between Christianity and Islam at the moment. In one sense, you might say that this is just a conflict of theologies. Well, yes, it is. But it’s also a conflict over what values we think are more important. Christians, for example, accustomed, not entirely without reason, to thinking of their god as one of love, tend to favour the peaceable values. Islam, on the other hand, born in conflict and growing by conflict, tends to favour values that focus on the Ummah, as the perfect community of believers, and to encourage values (or feelings) that exclude those who do not submit. The value of faithfulness to the community is also an excluding value. It helps to make distinctions beteen in and out. So the values here are very different, and the difference is made, largely by theology, by how one regards God, and God’s wishes.
But religions which are just about values, without any reflective (theological) way of ranking those values, may be very oppressive and disagreeable. I just don’t think you can make the distinctions you want to make, preserving all that is best for religion, and shunting onto a siding all that you want to describe as theology. And so we are right back where we started.
In my experience theology has tended to be a moderating influence, damping down the intensity of feelings and trying to channel it into constructive activity. The reason for this is not far to seek. Atran himself, if you remember, speaks of theology as working at cross purposes with the counterintuitive/counterfactual aspects of religion, so that it cannot ever be reduced to a system. This can result in dogmatism and rigidity (dogmatic theology) on the one hand, or, on the other, to a loosening of the belief system itself, and a reflective disequilibrium which makes some beliefs unstable. This can result, as it has in liberal Christianity, to doubts and questions, rather than in rigidity. I don’t think Atran himself acknowledges this, but I think it is an important movement in the theological development of religious traditions.
However, a word of warning. Helpful as Atran is in getting a grip on what religion is, he isn’t the last word on the subject. Pascal Boyer also has much to say that is interesting about how the various cognitive “modules” are brought into play in the development of religious ideas and belief. His Religion Explained is a minor classic, and well worth while reading. And of course there is so much more. Daniel Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell is also worth some time, and, interestingly, he thinks of theology as a process of scratching the sceptical itch (very much as I do).
But I will say that I do not think your confidence is justified, as when you say: “If one keeps in mind that there is a real differentiation between theology and religion.” You may keep it in mind, but I do not think you have shown this to be true. Aristotle’s claim that by nature we seek to know means, I think, that, even in religion, theology — that is, reflective awareness of our beliefs — is bound to go hand in hand with religion and to be a part of it. I also think that what killed Salman Taseer is much more likely to have been religion, and that a bit of theological reflection would have helped his killer to see things more steadily and to see them whole.
Yes, an Atran’s work is incredibly complex, so in order to understand what he means by religion — and I don’t think I’ve achieved this understanding, and haven’t read his work for a couple years — a fairly concentrated study of his work is necessary.
“If one keeps in mind that there is a real differentiation between theology and religion…”
It seems that you are the only one that sees this differentiation, Mary Helena, owing to your idiosyncratic definition that is overbroad and inconsistent with everyone else’s!
Elsewhere you seem dismissive of the “man in the street”: “The issue is not about what some people think religion is…” I’d disagree. The issue (re, eg, Baggini) is two-fold: What the believer in the street thinks “religion” is – and, more particularly, what they think /their/ “religion” is. And what New Atheists think “religion” is.
As I noted in a comment on another post: “But I don’t think what the New Atheists mean by ‘religion’ is what you mean by ‘religion’ (now that that’s clear(er)). I think what the New Atheists mean by ‘religion’ is, in fact, pretty much what you mean by ‘theology’.”
I’ve supposed what you mean by “theology” is very close to the NOAD definition that I quoted before: “religious beliefs and theory when systematically developed.” I don’t see how you disentangle this from religion. Isn’t it the system of beliefs and theory – the dogma — that distinguish one religion, sect, or denomination from another? And this is “real” – it lies at the heart of how adherents of one view those of another (“Splitters!”) and of their views of morality that are at odds with each other and with secular law (as shown in, for example, McFarlane v. Relate Avon Limited).
If “religion” were just about your wishy-washy “intangible values that elevate human life” then you’d be right, it would be futile for the New Atheists to oppose it. But it isn’t. It is this intrusion of religion into public policy, the classroom, and so on, driven by dogma, that is what they oppose.
If you want to criticize the New Atheists, you must pay attention to how they – the Four Horsemen and their outriders – define this “religion” that they oppose. Someone else already cited Dennett’s definition. A.C. Grayling (in _Ideas that Matter : A Personal Guide for the 21st Century_) offers something very similar:
In fact this is very close to a dictionary definition (and bear in mind that dictionaries reflect idiomatic usage; they’re descriptive not prescriptive); e.g., NOAD:
You’re free to go out on a limb and use the term “religion” to denote something very different from these things. But that freedom decouples you from meaningful discussion of, inter alia, the New Atheists aims and objectives and their strategy and tactics.
Designation of those values as “spiritual” or “non-material” rather than “material” is completely arbitrary and not borne out by current lessons from cognitive science, neurobiology, and the like. There are perfectly natural — read: material — explanations of all of these values. They are not tangible in the same way, say, an apple is, but that doesn’t mean they’re spiritual or non-material.
(I see SinSeeker has said this above, but it’s an important point, so I’m saying it again.)
They may not be “values” as you understand them, but they fall under the standard understanding of value. Remember that things can be both positively and negatively valued — value theory is about the good and the bad, the right and the wrong, etc., all along the spectrum. You do yourself a disservice simply replying to the point by questioning whether hate and the like are values. Yes, they are, and they’re valued negatively.
The negative corrolaries of each of your “values” are part and parcel of the same capacity you identify as the source of our universal human religiousity. Our capacity for love is inextricably linked to our capacity for hate. Whether you like it or not, the challenge is substantial, and it is a serious inconvenience for your notion of the religious.
OK – if you don’t like hate – what about obedience and conformity? These are major components of religion and often they do not produce flourishing.
(Warning: heavily meta comment follows.)
Eric:
Indeed. That seems to me inevitable in light of the form of discussion being utilized.
The archetypal argument includes premises, inferences, and conclusions. (Real life blog posts and comments, among other kinds of persuasive writing, don’t always set these out explicitly—but presumably a reader ought to be able to infer what they are from what has been written.) This form implies a process, a movement from a figurative point A to a point B. It also presents opportunities to identify both agreements and disagreements between people who, for whatever reason, find themselves in different positions on a point at issue.
But when that form breaks down—when, for example, an advocate is simply uninterested in the very idea of premises and inferences and presents only raw conclusions—then there’s no story to tell, no process for readers to examine, no point B to drive toward. In that situation, we are always, inevitably, “right back where we started”—because there is no other “place” to be. The start is the finish, is the entire (substitute for any) logical process.
As long as an advocate’s case consists of unadorned assertions (in my profession we call them “conclusory allegations”), one is unavoidably “back where we started,” permanently and forever. It’s not exactly productive.
(As a postscript, I hope it’s clear that I am not referring to your posts or comments, Eric, which I find consistently well reasoned and written.)