Issues in the Philosophy of Religion 9783110321227, 9783110320985

Table of contents :
Content
Chapter 1ON FAITH AND BELIEF
Chapter 2THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF REVISITED
Chapter 3RELIGION AND PRAGMATISM
Chapter 5GOD’S PLACE IN PHILOSOPHYNon in Philosophia Recurrere Est ad Deum
Chapter 6CAN A SCIENTIST BE SERIOUS ABOUTRELIGION
Chapter 7DARWINISM AND INTELLIGENTDESIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF THEISM
Chapter 8AQUINAS AND THE PRINCIPLE OFEPISTEMIC DISPARITY
Chapter 9THOMISM: PAST, PRESENT, ANDFUTURE
Chapter 10RESPECT FOR TRADITIONAnd the Catholic Philosopher Today
Chapter 11IN MATTERS OF RELIGIONA Personal Statement

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Nicholas Rescher Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

Nicholas Rescher

Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

ontos verlag Frankfurt I Paris I Ebikon I Lancaster I New Brunswick

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For William Clancy In memoriam

Issues in the Philosophy of Religion Preface Chapter 1: ON FAITH AND BELIEF

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Chapter 2: THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF REVISITED

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Chapter 3: RELIGION AND PRAGMATISM

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Chapter 4: PROCESS THEOLOGY

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Chapter 5: GOD’S PLACE IN PHILOSOPHY

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Chapter 6: CAN A SCIENTIST BE SERIOUS ABOUT RELIGION?

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Chapter 7: DARWINISM AND THE INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF THEISM

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Chapter 8: AQUINAS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF EPISTEMIC DISPARITY

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Chapter 9: THOMISM: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE

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Chapter 10: RESPECT FOR TRADITION

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Chapter 11: IN MATTERS OF RELIGION

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Index of Names

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Preface

O

ver the years I have published various essays on religious issues from a philosophical point of view. The chapters of the present volume collect these together, joining to them four further pieces which appear here for the first time (Chapters 3, 6, 7, and 8). While these studies certainly do not constitute a system of religious philosophy, they do, I believe, combine to give a vivid picture of a well-defined point of view on the subject—the viewpoint of a Roman Catholic philosopher who, in the longstanding manner of this tradition, seeks to harmonize the commitments of faith with the fruits of inquiry proceeding under the auspices of reason. I am grateful to Estelle Burris for her help in preparing the material for the press, to Björn Bordon for his help in checking the proofs, and to Rafael Hüntelmann for his sympathetic interest in my work. Nicholas Rescher Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania April 2007

Chapter 1 ON FAITH AND BELIEF 1. APPROACHES TO THEISM

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t is possible—and plausible—to distinguish between two very different approaches to the issue of a person’s stance towards the existence of God—approaches which, for reasons of abbreviative convenience, may be characterized as doxastic (belief-oriented) and axiological (value-oriented), respectively. On the one hand, one can ask the following group of interrelated but very distinct questions: (1) Does X believe or disbelieve in the existence of God? (2) Just what sort of God is it in which X believes or disbelieves? (3) On the basis of what sorts of reasons does X believe or disbelieve in God? The approach reflected in these questions is what will here be characterized as doxastic, because of their focus on the issue of belief. (Greek doxa = belief, opinion.) And this approach contrasts with the value-oriented axiological approach, which takes a very different, distinctively evaluative line. (Greek axioô = to deem worthy, to value.) It pivots on the three further related, but nevertheless very different questions: (i)

Does X want God to exist—is this something seen as desirable (yearned for or hoped for)?

(ii)

Just what sort of God is it that X desires (yearns or hopes for)?

(iii) For what sorts of reasons is it that X desires (yearns or hopes for) the existence of God?

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

It is clear that distinctly divergent approaches are involved here, seeing that the first set of questions looks to beliefs, and the second to wishes—to hopes or desires with regard to the sort of God someone would want if they could have their way in the matter. The former issue pivots on a person’s convictions. But the latter pivots on a person’s values. Very different things are at issue. In principle, one can believe in the reality of a God whose existence one does not welcome, or on the other hand, one can yearn for the existence of a God in whose reality one does not believe. Thus someone could be a doxastic theist but an axiological atheist. Indeed, axiological atheism is a far more drastic position than doxastic atheism, seeing that the axiological atheist is someone who, irrespective of whether or not he believes in God, would prefer to have him nonexistent, and would do away with him if he could. For the axiological theist, commitment to God is a matter of valuebased desire and, at most, hope rather than a probatively assured confidence derived from the evidential impetus of revelation, a mystical encounter, or rational demonstration. In the backdrop of axiological theism there looms the large and absorbing issue of what sort of God one would have if one could get one’s way. This question looks towards something that is essentially utopian—a mind’s eye view towards an ideal order that one would have to exist if only one could manage it. A fundamentally evaluative position is at issue rather than one that bears on existence as such, a position that reflects one’s deepest hopes, wants, and fears. Does one want a God who would avenge one’s wrongs and wreak havoc on one’s enemies, a God who labors for the advancement of one’s tribe or clan (or who assures victory to one’s side in battle), a God of justice to punish wrongs and reward good deeds, or a God of love, understanding and forgiveness? Clearly, a great range of variation exists, and people betray much about themselves when they position themselves in such a spectrum. 2. DOXASTIC AND AXIOLOGICAL THEISM As regards the doxastic approach, three distinct positions are possible: to believe, to disbelieve, or to suspend judgment (that is, neither believe or disbelieve). Analogously with respect to the axiological approach, three comparable positions are possible, according as one is positive, negative, or indifferent on the matter of welcoming (wishing for, hoping for) the existence of God.1 The former, doxastic approach views the issue of God’s

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existence in a straightforwardly factual light, while the latter, axiological approach views the issue in an evaluative light. A belief-oriented approach to God puts prime emphasis on convictions and creeds; there is an aura of scholasticism about its endorsement of existential and descriptive theses with respect to the God-conception at issue. By contrast, an axiological approach to God proceeds on the side of will rather than intellect: its concern is with an evaluative focus on the issue on matters of desire, wish, and hope. For all these differences, however, both approaches have a concern in common, namely the central question of how God is conceived. And this is as it should be. For this matter of the conceptualization of God is obviously something pivotal for a person’s stance towards religion. Atheism—unlike agnosticism—does not as such relieve its exponent of the burden of articulating a conception of God. Denying the existence of God does not free one from coming to grips with the conception of God. Quite regardless of the matter of believing or disbelieving in God’s existence, there remains the significant, preliminary issue of the descriptive ideas that someone has regarding the God whose existence or nonexistence this person is disposed to endorse. Is it the God who dwells on the pinnacle of the Homeric Mount Olympus, the God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, the God of Plato’s Timaeus, the God of Aristotle’s Metaphysics, the God of a neo-Aristotelianizing St. Thomas Aquinas, and so on. There is of course enormous scope for variation here across the spectrum from crudity to refinement. In fact, from the standpoint of a thoughtful believer there is something to be said for preferring a disbeliever with an enlightened conception of God to a believer who conceives of God crudely, as a partisan Oriental potentate whose prime object is to promote this believer’s own personal interests and power and to punish his enemies. Deliberations about the meaning of life are sometimes beclouded by the idea that the existence of God is a requisite for human life to be meaningful. But this very problematic view ignores the difference between doxastic and axiologic theism. For the axiological theist, the crucial questions are not: (1) Does God exist, and (2) if so, does he approve of what I do with my life? Rather, the crucial questions are: (1) Do I have a conception of God that is worthy of this name, and (2) if this God, as so conceived, did indeed exist, then would he approve of what I do with my life? This distinction suggests that the existence of God is not as such a pivotal issue for the question of the meaningfulness of our lives. Rather, the crux lies in the hypothetical question: Do we conduct our lives in such a

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way that the sort of God we ourselves deem worth having would, were he to exist, approve of the way we manage the business of life? Here it is the idea of God that serves to set a high standard. And the question of whether one’s life is meaningful is in the final analysis the question of whether one’s way of conducting one’s life realizes the values to which such a standard calls us. The conception of God thus emerges as a point of reference for shaping our lives. It can play the role of something of a North Star that we see not with the eye of the body but the eye of the mind, and use to guide our journey in a difficult world. Contemplating the mere idea of God, will—in raising the question of how he would evaluate what we do—pose the question of how we should carry out this evaluation. It is, in fact, this aspect of the matter that makes religion so important a topic in philosophical anthropology. Clearly, the sort of God one is committed to is going to make an enormous difference for the sort of person one is. Be they atheists or believers, the conception that people have of God speaks volumes about their personality. For their conception of God generally serves people as a measuring instrument—a standard for assessing the value of human actions and the worth of all those other “things in heaven and on earth” that are encompassed in their philosophy. “By their gods shall ye know them” is by no means an implausible dictum: people’s ideas in this regard are immensely illuminating about their stance towards the world and man’s place within it. Even the atheist reveals a great deal about himself in his conception of the sort of God or gods that he proposes to reject. What makes people co-religionists in the setting of an axiological theism is not a commonality of belief but a commonality of desire. In this context, “the faithful” of a given orientation need not constitute a doxastic community of shared belief, but might instead constitute an axiological community of shared values and hopes. The operative theology is not so much cognitive as attitudinal. Axiological theism is not to be identified with what is generally known as fideism. For what is at issue is not a belief undertaken at the behest of the will rather than the intellect—of willing to believe or trying to believe (as per what St. Thomas Aquinas characterized as actum intellectus secundum quod movetur a voluntate ad assentiam; ST II, ii, 4, 2c).2 Something along the lines of a Jamesian “will to believe” is not required by an axiological theism. Its pivot—to reemphasize—is the evaluative matter of de-

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sire and hope, not the cognitive matter of belief. Accordingly, an all-out axiological atheism takes a very strong and not particularly sympathetic line. He goes beyond the daunting dictum that “God is dead” to add “And good riddance too.” His stance is that of the person who says “I just can’t think of any sort of being worthy of the name of God whose existence I would be prepared to welcome.” Such a position does not say much about God, but it speaks volumes about the person at issue. 3. PROBLEMS OF ATHEISM In principle, even a doxastic atheist can be an axiological theist. That is, even the person who thinks that God’s non-existence is a sure thing, can nevertheless regret this and wish with all his heart that the matter stood otherwise. The status of axiological theism would—to be sure—be substantially altered if the evaluative stance at issue were demonstrably futile, with all hope forlorn because one could somehow establish in a knock-down, dragout way that a God conceived of along a particular line was something altogether infeasible. If the ontological atheist could actually prove his case outright, then axiological theism would be reduced to mere wishful thinking. But outside of pure mathematics such demonstrations of nonexistence are difficult if not impossible to come by. For a shortage or even absence of evidence for existence does not transmute into a demonstration of nonexistence. And so, the axiological theist can occupy the ecological niche left by an absence of outright atheism. As long as one is agnostic—is prepared to consider as a viable prospect at least the possibility that a JudeoChristian God (say) might exist—axiological theism is a viable option. But can axiological theism not be foreclosed and the issue settled straightforwardly in atheism’s favor by mere considerations of burden of proof? Not really. To be sure, on the ontological side, the atheist can plausibly saddle his opponent with the burden of proof: “You believe that a God answering to description G exists. This is a positive contention, and it is up to you to prove it—subject to the old legal principle that the burden of proof lies with someone who takes a positive position on an issue (ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat). In the absence of appropriate evidence or argument for the existential claim, at issue, my negative position prevails. As long as you don’t dislodge me from it, I carry off victory in the controversy.” And so the atheist argues that a debate about the existence of God properly begins from a presumption of atheism, with the onus

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of proof on the side of the theist. And he takes this position substantial justice.3 For with such factual claims the burden of proof is, as usual, on the affirmative side. Clearly, an existential claim must receive the backing of evidential substantiation if it is to qualify as rationally warranted. However, this sort of probative strategy regarding factual contentions is not available to the atheist with respect to axiological approach. “A God of description G is desirable” and “A God of description G is not desirable” (or, more generally, “X has a high value,” and “X has a low value”) are contentions that lie on the same plane. Positive positions confront us on both sides of an evaluative controversy, and argumentation is called for either way. In the context of axiological theism, the atheist enjoys no probative advantage over his opponent. 4. ANTITHEOLOGICAL PSYCHOLOGY Of course, there still remains the well-trodden prospect of antitheological psychologizing. The general line is all too familiar: “You see the traditional monotheistic God as desirable merely because he answers a psychological need of yours. You have a psychological yearning for acceptance, validation, support. Your God is a mere parent-substitute to meet the needs of a weak and dependent creature.” So argues the psychologizing opponent of axiological theism. But this sort of facile sort of psychologizing ultimately cuts both ways. For the axiological theist can readily respond along the following lines: You see the traditional monotheistic God as undesirable because you find the very idea threatening. You atheists too are “God fearing,” but in a rather different sense. You are afraid of God. You have an adolescent’s fixated fear of and a condemnation by authority. Your atheism roots in self-contempt. Recognizing what an imperfect creature you yourself are, you have a fear of being judged and found wanting. The very idea of God is threatening to you because you fear the condemnation of an intelligent observer who knows what you think and do. You are enmeshed in an adolescent aversion to parental disapproval.

So runs the psychologizing counterargument. And this line is not without surface plausibility. Many people are in fact frightened by the prospect of a belief in God because they ultimately have contempt of themselves. They feel threatened by a belief that God might exist, because they feel that, were it so, God would not approve of them. For them, atheism is a security

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shield of sorts that protects them against an ego-damaging disapproval by somebody who “knows all, sees all.” Atheists are not infrequently people on whose inmost nature the vice of self-contempt has its strongest hold. Pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding, the atheist’s actual posture is generally not a self-confident independence of spirit, but a fear of being judged. In this regard, then, there is simply a stand-off in regard to a Freud-style psychologizing about religion. For those psychologizing arguments that impute rationally questionable motives that can be deployed against the believer are not difficult to revise and redirect as arguments against the atheists. Psychologizing is a sword that cuts both ways in regard to axiological theism. Both sides can easily play the game of projecting, on a speculative basis, a daunting variety of intellectually non-respectable motives for holding the point of view that they oppose. 5. DOXASTIC VS. AXIOLOGICAL THEISM So much, then, for the psychology of the matter. Be this as it may, the fact remains that from the angle of probative warrant—of justificatory validation—ontological and axiological theism stand on a very different footing. Ontological theism involves an existential claim for whose rational warranting some sort of evidence is needed—alternatively demonstrative (as per the ontological argument) or experiential (as per a mystical communion) or somehow inductive (as per the cosmological argument.) or based on a special cognitive source (such as revelation). One way or another, evidential confirmation is required. Axiological theism, on the other hand, is something very different. It involves no existential claim or presupposition. It pivots merely on a desire, a hope, or wish. But how can one rationally validate this sort of thing? Can a wish be legitimated and justified? The validation of wishes is no doubt a large and complicated topic. But, clearly, at the core of the matter lies the task of showing that the thing wished for actually merits being desired—that it is something valuable and deserving of preference. Hopes and wishes are properly validated in the order of values. For the rational person desires what he or she deems to be good. Such a person desires what is desirable—is worthy of desire. With such people— who may well be few and far between—the situation is exactly the reverse of what Spinoza maintained regarding ordinary mortals when he wrote:

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We do not endeavor, will, seek after or desire because we judge a thing to be good. On the contrary, we judge a thing to be good because we endeavor, will, seek after and desire it. (Nihil nos conari, velle, appetere, neque cupere, quia id bonum esse judicamus; sed contra, nos propterea aliquid bonum esse judicare quia id conamus, volumus, appetimus, atque cupimus. (Ethics, Pt. III, prop. 9, scholium.)

The rational person values things precisely because he is convinced that they are of value. Perhaps the most effective process for validating a hope or desire involves proceeding in a way that is at once experimental and experiential, namely, by trying and seeing and finding it suitably rewarding—in actuality or perhaps only by way of a thought-experiment. Our desire for something can in principle be legitimated as rational by looking at lives lived under the guiding aegis of this hope or desire and assessing how satisfying they really are to those involved. In general, one can verify the validity of desires experientially—by trying and seeing that a life based on pursuit of the desired object is found by those who actually live it to be worthwhile and satisfying. Axiological theism can and should meet the test of experience—essentially through “an experiment in living.” The validation of the position can be had by examining and assessing the quality of the lives lived by those who look upon God’s place in reality’s scheme of things with the eye of hope and desire. Thus while even the axiological theist must indeed—if rational— somehow validate the hopes and desires on which his position is predicated, there is no reason of general principle why this requirement cannot be met in a sensible way. The circumstance that the position is fundamentally evaluative certainly does not mean that the element of rationality is absent. For while the value orientation at issue indeed needs justification, it can receive it in principle along the experientialist lines just contemplated. 6. THEOLOGICAL UTOPIANISM But is axiological theism not just a matter of “wishful thinking”—on the order of investing hope in the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny? With respect to such “desirable beings,” after all, one does not really believe that they actually exist, but is merely inclined to agree that it would be nice if they did so. However, this skeptical analogy ignores a deep difference regarding the presently pivotal issue of the legitimating validation of such hopes. For

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with the Easter Bunny and its cognates, the underlying value rationale is of questionable propriety. After all, its basis is strictly selfish; if one desires the existence of such beings it is solely because of the material benefits that this would bestow on oneself or those near and dear—surely a very suspect and problematic justification for a hope or desire in point of fundamental values. With God, however, the situation is, or should be, very different. His realization is to be seen as desirable not because it would render the world more pleasant, but because it would render the world more excellent, and not because it benefits us in selfish advantage, but because it challenges us to make the best and most of ourselves. Realization of the hope at issue is not merely desired because it enhances our material advantage, but is desirable because it signalizes the significance of higher, “spiritual” values, the commitment to which need not please us but will improve us in stimulating us to a greater effort for the good, impelling us to make of ourselves the very best that we can be. The crucial difference is that the values at issue are not crass but elevating. From the angle of legitimation the two desires accordingly stand on a very different basis. The idea of God as a supreme being who loves, sustains, and cares about us reflects a supreme embodiment of significant values: parental solicitude, understanding, loving-kindness. Nothing comparable is at issue with the Easter Bunny, seeing that it “would be nice if” such a being existed simply and solely because of the pleasant things it supposedly does for people—in particular, children—on Easter morning, so that what is at issue is strictly merely self-serving material interest. With axiological theism, by contrast, what is at issue is a certain sort of utopian aspiration for ourselves and the conduct of our lives—a willingness to be challenged to make the best and most of our opportunities for the good in this world, an absence of fear in the face of an inspection of hearts and a preparedness to be held accountable by one who, while well-disposed to us, nevertheless knows us to the very depths of our being. Here, then, there is a commitment to certain goals and values which—unlike those of material advantage—conduce to our self-development on the basis of our best or real interests. And this circumstance distances the issue from that of the Easter Bunny. The validation of the appropriateness of the hope at issue with axiological theism stands on a very different, and far more solid footing. “Nevertheless”—so a skeptic may urge—“what you are doing here is merely justifying a desire for God’s existence. And that really does not address my concerns. What I really care about is validating a belief in his ex-

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istence, and not just legitimating a hope or desire for it. As I see it, hope and wish just aren’t enough for real religiosity.” In religion as in epistemology, the skeptic likes to ease his task by setting exaggeratedly high standards for his opponent. But so be it! We must consider also how hope and belief are interrelated. 7. THE INTERRELATIONSHIP OF HOPE AND BELIEF This question of how doxastic and axiological theism are connected with one another bears two very different aspects—the one logical, the other rather personalistic and, as it were, ethical. Logically the situation is straightforward. There is in fact no inferential transition between axiological and ontological theism. The sort of God one wants and would welcome is one thing, and one’s belief in God’s existence is something else again, something very different. From a purely logical point of view, the twain need never meet. But from a personalistic point of view the matter stands rather differently. A close, two-way connection detains. For, on the one hand, doxastic theism slides into axiology. If one genuinely believes in God—if the being whose existence one accepts is indeed a God worthy of the name (rather than some vast demonic power that stridently demands acknowledgment and obeisance)—then it is surely right and proper that the being one believes in be the sort of God that one values, the sort of God whose existence one would deem worthy of approbation. Accordingly, since whatever God one may believe in it must—if worthy of the name—be a being one regards as deserving of being desired by sensible people, it seems that an axiological approach should, at any rate, be a needed appendix to a doxastic theology. But what of the reverse situation—the transition from an axological to a doxastic theism? It is, of course, possible to view one’s axiologically geared conception of the sort of God one would welcome as representing something that is simply being “too good to be true” for actual belief. One may perhaps hardly dare to believe in the existence of so desirable a being. But understandable though this may be, it manifests a certain personal shortcoming, a defeatist failure of nerve. Such a failure is certainly not a failure of intellect, but rather is a moral failure of sorts that has something deeply regrettable about it. The failure to give reality the benefit of doubt on the matter of its containing a God is

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akin to the (understandable but unfortunate) attitude of someone whom others have let down and who turns misanthropic, no longer willing to invest hope in other people and unwilling to give them the benefit of doubt. It is certainly not in point of intellect but rather in point of character that such a person is deficient. For of the many forms of human failing, the failure of imagination is one of the saddest. And one of the gravest failures of imagination is that of the individual who cannot manage to project the conception of a God worthy of ardent desire—a God whose nonbeing would be the occasion from genuine grief. Compared to this, an inability to imagine a friend worth having or a spouse worth loving is a pale shadow— though all alike betoken a regrettable impoverishment of personality of the same general sort. Sensible people would clearly prefer to number among their friends someone who was willing to invest hope and trust in themselves, their fellows, and their world. To refrain, in the absence of preponderating reasons to the contrary, from letting hope influence belief—even to the mere extent of that sort of tentative belief at issue in a working assumption made for practical purposes—betokens a crabbed failure of confidence that has nothing admirable about it. Accordingly, the failure to make a transition from axiological to doxastic theism, though certainly not manifesting any deficiency in logic, does betoken a somewhat regrettable failure of moral nerve. In the absence of a conviction that its realizability is infeasible, the rational person seeks to implement his desires in action—and one of the ways in which we can implement a desire is by letting it guide our beliefs, by letting the wish be father to the thought insofar as the existing circumstances of the situation permit. 8. CONCLUSION Be this as it may, the fact remains that an axiological standpoint in relation to theism, while perhaps nonstandard and even unorthodox, is certainly not unprecedented. It reflects a recurrent leitmotif in Mediterranean monotheism. Its favorite Biblical text is the paradoxical “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And there is no shortage of other passages in the Old and New Testament alike, on which such a position can draw for aid and comfort—texts which betray deep doubts about our ability to know God. (As Job proclaims: “Oh that I knew where I might find him that I might come even to his seat. ... Behold I go forward but he is not there, and backward but I cannot perceive him.” Job 23, 38.) In the book of Psalms the stress is

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often not on what we know or believe of God, but on seeking, hoping, trusting. Merely to yearn for the Lord is, in the Psalmist’s view already to be well embarked on the road of faith. After all, a substantial part of the rationale of the traditional JudeoChristian emphasis on the mystery of God—as well as a substantial part of the message of religious mysticism, not to speak of the hidden God (dieux caché) of Pascal—is to de-emphasize the creedal aspects of religion, with its subscription to propositions so appealing to the philosophical mind. The axiological rather than doxastic approach reflects this ever-recurrent, though—given the great influence of theorizing philosophers upon the theologians—never even remotely dominant tendency within the great monotheistic religions.4 NOTES 1

Specifically one must distinguish two negative positions here. On the one hand, there is the position of the person x who does not yearn for a being answering to the god-description D to exist (perhaps only because he never even thought of this possibility): ~Wx(E!GD) On the other hand, there is the position of the person x who wants a being answering to the god-description at issue not to exist: Wx(~E!GD) It is clear that this second position is logically stronger than the first.

2

Compare also Kant’s “moralische Denkungsart der Vernunft im Fürwahrhalten desjenigen, was für die theoretische Erkenntnis unzulänglich ist” (Critique of Judgment, sect. 91).

3

For a fuller development of this position see Anthony Flew, “The Presumption of Atheism,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 2 (1972), pp. 29-46.

4

This chapter was previously published in the author’s Human Interests (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1990), pp. 166-78.

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Chapter 2 THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF REVISITED I began to ask myself whether there might be found a single argument which would require no other for its proof than itself alone, and would suffice to demonstrate that God truly exists. St. Anselm 1. PREFACE

I

t has long been the almost universal practice of philosophers to dismiss the ontological proof of the existence of God originally proposed by St. Anselm (1033-1109). Perhaps the most recent significant exception, surprisingly enough, is the brief acceptance of this argument by the young Bertrand Russell. In his essay on “My Mental Development,” Russell records: I remember the precise moment, one day in 1894, as I was walking along Trinity Lane [in Cambridge], when I saw in a flash (or thought I saw) that the ontological argument is valid. I had gone out to buy a tin of tobacco; on my way back, I suddenly threw it up in the air, and exclaimed as I caught it: 1 “Great Scott. The ontological argument is sound.”

This quaint episode apparently constitutes a high-water mark for the ontological proof in recent philosophical history. It is nowadays quite thoroughly and completely out of favor, among philosophers of religious and anti-religious persuasions alike. The major apparent reason for this general rejection of the ontological proof roots in a number of seemingly decisive objections which have been directed against its logical validity in the first instance, and its theological serviceability (even were it to be valid) in the second. These objections have now been advanced so repeatedly and so persuasively as to have become canonical, and their aggregate effect has proven quite fatal to the ontological proof. The aim of the present discussion, however, is to show that it is possible to reformulate the ontological argument in such a way that these traditional objections to it lose their

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force, so as to render the argument once again worthy of serious philosophical consideration. 2. THE ONTOLOGICAL PROOF OF SOME OBJECTS It will be convenient for present purposes to consider the ontological proof in the format given to it in Descartes’ Fifth Meditation: I clearly see that existence can no more be separated from the essence of God than having its three angles equal to two right angles can be separated from the essence of a triangle. And so there is no less absurdity to our conceiving a God (that is, a Being supremely perfect) to whom existence is lacking (that is, to whom a certain perfection is lacking) than to conceive a mountain that 2 has no valley.

In this Cartesian version, the ontological proof has two steps: (1) it is posited that the nature of the concept of God (i.e., the definitional explication of the term) is such as to embrace existence within its scope, and (2) it is contended that, as a consequence to deny the existence of God is to make a statement that is logically self-contradictory. Thus on Descartes’ formulation, the ontological proof concludes God’s existence deductively from the definition of the term as a necessary (that is, necessarily existent) being, or the perfect being (whose existence is automatically encompassed within perfection). From the very first, serious objections have been advanced against such an argument. Three criticisms in particular attained to the status of classical objections, and these seem to continue to carry the main burden of justifying the widespread current rejection of the ontological argument. The first objection turns on the logic of the definition of the term “God” that is basic to the ontological proof. The argument rests upon an explicit definition of this term per genus et differentiam which is such as to include existence within the set of attributes that constitute the defining, essential attributes. The logical admissibility of such a procedure depends upon the thesis that existence has the status of a predicate, i.e. an attribute-denoting term. But, as logicians from the time of Hume and Kant have consistently and convincingly argued, existence must not be classified as an attribute.3 This being so, neither can it be an essential attribute, and so cannot qualify as an item to be included in the defining content (i.e., intension) of a term. The second objection protests against the logic of the procedure of “defining into existence.” The point and objective that is at issue in a pur-

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ported ontological proof is, after all, God’s existence. To derive this desideratum from the definition of the term is, in effect, to settle the matter by fiat. For to insist upon defining a term in such a way as to preempt a question regarding it, and thereupon to claim the desired consequence as a deductive inference from the definition, is to engage in what is of necessity a circular procedure. The nature of valid deductive reasoning is such that we cannot by means of it extend the limits of the available fact: the information expressed in the conclusion must always be also asserted, however covertly, in the premises. If, therefore, an existential conclusion is drawn deductively from premises, these must be such as themselves to presume or presuppose the existential fact in question, so that we cannot by its means achieve any existential fact over and above one already covertly assumed or stipulated. The foregoing two objections to the ontological proof have been derived from logical grounds. The third traditional objection derives from theological considerations. The conception of God upon which the ontological argument proceeds is by no means satisfactory from a religious standpoint. The “God” of which it speaks is a logical amalgam adjusted to the logical convenience of an existence proof, and this makeshift is not recognizably to be identified with the deity worshipped in any operative monotheistic religion. The ontological argument finds God “at the end of a syllogism” and not “the hearts and souls of men”.4 Thus, even if this proof were logically sound its theological serviceability would be insignificant. For the “Being of which it speaks is not properly an object of worship, but a logically expedient makeshift that serves the purposes of ad hoc deductive convenience for the sake of an existence proof. Non in dialectica, wrote St. Ambrose, complicuit deo salvum facere populum suum. These three lines of thought appear to represent the main grounds for the current, virtually universal disrepute of the ontological proof. I propose here to show that, with appropriate alteration, it is possible to reformulate the ontological argument in such a way that these traditional objections (among others) are obviated altogether. 3. A REVISION OF THE ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT The leading idea on which the present revision of the ontological proof is based is the elimination of the argument’s use of and dependence upon an explicit definition of the term “God” (e.g. as “the perfect being” or “the necessary being”). For one thing, the scholastic ideal of explicit definition

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on terms of per genus et differentiam has in modern logic long given way to a more diversified theory of definitions. The theoretical feasibility and pragmatic desirability of alternative procedures of definition is no longer questioned by logicians. And as to theologians, there is a powerful and long-standing tradition of religious thought that denies altogether the possibility of presenting a satisfactory characterization of God in human language or in human terms (for instance the Scholastic doctrine of analogical predication). There is thus also a strong presumption that a rejection of explicit definitions is both warranted and plausible. But if we give up recourse to an explicit definition of the term “God”, how is the ontological proof, which appears to rest fundamentally and completely upon such a definition, to be maintained. To obtain a reasonable answer to this pivotal question, it is necessary to digress briefly into the logical theory of definition, and to see also how it comes about that propositions can be true “by virtue of” definitions. As has been adumbrated above, the theory of definition of current logic no longer has the simplicity and uniformity obtained by insistence that all terms be accorded an explicit definition per genus et differentiam. It has been recognized that many terms cannot be defined in this manner. Certain words, it is generally agreed, cannot be defined explicitly but are such that their meaning can only be grasped adequately on the basis and within the context of experience. Specifically this category includes, among other things, those words which themselves designate experiences or aspects of experience: perception words (names of colors, odors, etc.), sensation words (aches, pains, etc.), feeling words (alacrity, lethargy, etc.), emotion words (anger, gaiety, etc.). Such words, which characterize the modes and character of immediate experience, cannot be provided with an explicit definition. The meaning of such words can only be learned or indicated experientially, by referring them to the experiences themselves. There is thus a category of terms which cannot be defined explicitly and whose meaning can be accessed only through experience. The meaning of such experience-presupposing terms cannot be grasped by those who lack the experience that is relevant to them, just as a man blind from birth can have no concept of the color red. This of course is not to say that a person who lacks the experience appropriate to such a term can have no information at all regarding the item for which it stands. A blind man can know that the word “red” applies to a kind of experience that he does not have, and that this experience takes place when certain physical and physiological transactions occur, etc., etc. In short, he can

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have all sorts of information about seeing red. But he cannot see red, does not know what it is like to see red, and so lacks the experiential basis indispensably requisite for an adequate understanding of the term. One other point regarding these experience-presupposing terms is necessary. The experiences in question are, to be sure, themselves a wholly subjective matter. Yet there are perfectly objective tests as to whether or not an experience of the type in question has taken place. For example, a person who would not assent to “Red appears different from blue”, or who would not demur from “Orange is less similar to red than to green,” would thereby furnish us with evidence of gaps or lacks in his color experience. While we cannot examine other persons’ experiences, we can obtain substantial information regarding them by noting how the relevant experiencepresupposing terms are applied and employed by them. On this account, the status of a proposition like “Red is more similar to orange than to green” is in effect a synthetic a priori truth. It is synthetic in that it presupposes experience, namely that fundamental experience, indispensable for having a proper grasp of the very meaning of the key terms involved. Thus, since it is presupposed for the meaningfulness of the proposition, experience is, a fortiori, involved in its truth. On the other hand, the proposition is a priori because its truth “follows” from its meaning in the sense that, once a body of experience adequate as a basis for a grasp of the meaning of the terms is given, this of itself sufficient for claiming the truth of the propositions in question. It would be incorrect to construe dissent from such a proposition as expressive of disagreement on the facts, for it is properly to be taken as prima facie evidence that its meaning was not correctly understood, i.e., that there exist gaps or deficiencies in the visual experience of the dissenter that preclude a correct understanding of the terms and statements in question. It is now clear which way the wind is blowing, namely towards the idea that it is quite in order to apply all of these considerations regarding experience-presupposing definitions to the term “God.” For it is possible— and even plausible—to classify the word “God” within the category of words which cannot be given an explicit definition, but whose meaning can only be grasped within experience. On this view, a person whose history is devoid of religious experience simply cannot have an adequate grasp of the meaning of the word “God.” And, correspondingly, a person who does have a basis of experience adequate to an understanding of this term, also has, ipso facto, the experiential basis of evidence adequate to underwrite rational, warranted assent to the proposition that God exists.

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Thus God’s existence does, after a fashion, “follow” from the definition of the term, yet not in any deductive sense but in the sense that that body of experience indispensable to an adequate understanding of this (experiencepresupposing) word is necessarily also adequate to validate reasoned assent to this proposition. Thus the proposition “God exists” is, on the present concept, “inescapable in the sense that it is self-evident, that its truth or validity could, and indeed must, be grasped by someone who thought clearly and thoroughly understood the terms involved, without the necessity of deducing it from other propositions.”5 In consequence, a dissent from this statement is prima facie evidence of failure to grasp the meaning of the term, and indicates a lack in the religious experience of the person in question. From this standpoint we mark the cogency of J. J. C. Smart’s perceptive observation: “I suggest, the question ‘does God exist?’ has no clear meaning far the unconverted. But for the converted, the question no longer arises. The word ‘God gets its meaning from the part it plays in religious speech and literature [I would add experience—NR], and in religious speech and literature the question of existence does not arise.”6 Let us contrast this revision of the ontological argument with the classical version of Descartes. No longer is the purported attribute of existence held to be included among the essential, defining attributes compromising an explicit definition of the term “God,” and therefore the statement that God exists is no longer held to be analytic, nor is its denial logically selfcontradictory. Rather, the line of reasoning now is: (a) The word “God” is not susceptible of an explicit definition but is a term whose meaning can only be had on the basis of religious experience. (b) A body of experience adequate as a basis for an understanding of this term must also be adequate as an evidential basis for assent to the proposition that God exists.7 Therefore, (c) a denial of God’s existence is indicative of a failure to grasp the meaning of the word.8 On the basis of this revision, then, the statement “God exists” is no longer analytic, but is synthetic a priori—in just the same sense as such statements as, e.g., “Orange is more similar to red than green.” Apprehending the meaning of such a statement presupposes experience—and recognizing its truth does so a fortiori, so that the statement is synthetic. But the evidential basis for its truth does not call for any experience over and above that demanded by its meaning. Therefore the truth of the assertion can be said to “follow” from its meaning, assuring the a priori status of the statement. The medievals were at one in holding that a proper understanding of its terms is a necessary condition for rational as-

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sent to a proposition. But with the sort of proposition presently at issue it is a sufficient condition as well. The line of thought put forward here is a rejection of the practice of those philosophers who, behind Hume’s standard, hold that a belief in God rests on faith, where “faith”, they insist, is to be construed as a belief that is not justified or supported by evidence. In this sense, “faith” does not enter into the matter. For an intelligent and comprehending assent to the proposition that God exists can, on the present account, be forthcoming only where there is a foundation in religious experience to render meaningful the proposition in question, and such experience, if adequate to this task, must also provide a suitable body of supporting evidence for the statement. Thus what is at issue here is a religious empiricism, with this terms broadly understood to encompass a range of experience abstractly wider than that of the specifically sensory which traditional empiricists were prepared to recognize. 4. THE OBJECTIONS RECONSIDERED With this proposed experientially oriented revision, the ontological proof is at once freed from the three traditional objections we have considered above. First, the proof is no longer founded upon the supposed status of “existence” as a predicate, i.e., an attribution-denoting term. In giving up the use of an explicit definition of “God,” we also abandon the procedure of including existence among the defining attributes which comprise the intension of this term. We have shifted the argument on to a very different logical basis. For it is held, not that existence is an essential, defining attribute of God, but that the experiential foundation indispensable to an understanding of the term “God” must ipso facto provide adequate grounds for assent to the proposition that God exists. The second objection, that the deductive character of the ontological proof necessitates an assumption in the premises of the very point at issue in the conclusion, is also averted in the revision. The modified proof presented here no longer depends on the deductive consequences of an explicit definition, but on the fact that the experiential basis indispensable for an understanding of the term must inevitably comprehend the evidential grounds for assent to certain propositions in which the term occurs. In the face of a dissent from “God exists” as in the face of dissent from “Yellow is lighter than purple,” we are forced to a comparable interpretation, viz. that the key terms in question are not properly understood. And, of course,

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to say this is by any means the same as the circular procedure of claiming that the truth of these statements follows deductively from the formal definitions of the terms in question. Indeed on the present view these terms have no explicit definitions and can only be “defined” experientially. Finally, the third traditional objection, viz. that the ontological proof hinges upon interpreting the word “God” in a religiously trivial and irrelevant sense, also falls to the ground. For the revised proof depends pivotally upon the thesis that the term is not defined in any logically ad hoc manner whatsoever, and that its meaning is not to be caught within the net of any pat formula. In the context of the proof, as in the living religions, the meaning and significance of the name of the deity derives from a relationship to the sphere of man’s religious experience. And that the proposed revision of the ontological proof not only secures it against the well-conceived objection advanced by St. Thomas Aquinas, but indeed is actually in close accord with St. Thomas’ analysis of the problem. He wrote: No one can mentally admit the opposite of what is self-evident, as Aristotle states concerning the first principles of demonstration (Metaph. 1005bll). But the opposite of the propositional God is can be mentally admitted: The fool said in his heart, there is no God (Psalms LIII, 1). Therefore, that God exists is not self-evident. Now because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition [that he exists] is not self-evident to us, but needs to be demonstrated by things that are more known to us, though less known in their na9 ture—namely, by His effects.

St. Thomas thus rejects the ontological proof on the grounds that “God exists” is not analytic (i.e., “self-evident”) since its denial is no contradiction, but an intelligible assertion. However, St. Thomas’ analysis does not stop here, but probes more deeply into the concept of self-evidence: A thing can be self-evident in either of two ways: on the one hand, selfevident per se, though not to us; on the other hand, self-evident in itself, and to us. A proposition is self-evident because the predicate is included in the essence of the subject: e.g., Man is an animal, for animality is contained in the essence of man. If, therefore, the essence of the predicate and subject be known to us, the proposition will be self-evident to all ... If, however, there are some to whom the essence of the predicate and subject is unknown, the proposition will be self-evident per se, but not to those who do not know the meaning of the predicate and subject of the proposition. Therefore, it hap-

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pens, as Boethius says, that there are some notions of the mind which are common and self-evident only to the learned. And so I say that this proposition, God exists, is self-evident per se, for the predicate is in the subject, because God’s essence is His own existence as will be shown below. But because we do not know the essence of God, the proposition is not self-evident 10 to us.

What St. Thomas is here asserting is that an inherently sound understanding of the term “God” would in fact entail assent to the proposition that God exists, so that this proposition is self-evident per se, but that this proposition is none the less not self-evident simpliciter because not only is the term “God” not among the “common notions of which no one is ignorant,” but indeed “we do not know the essence of God.” To this position, the present recasting of the ontological argument requires solely the addition of the thesis that some men do have, on the basis of their religious experience, an (imperfect) understanding of this essence, which, albeit partial, suffices to make the proposition that God exists self-evident for them (just as, according to Boethius, some propositions are self-evident only to “the learned”). The present revision of the ontological proof is therefore in rather close agreement with the analysis of St. Thomas. 5. A SHORTCOMING The revised “proof,” not being a formal, logically valid demonstration from self-evident premises, lacks the power of compelling rational assent. It will not move the agnostic—let alone the atheist. Of course, if a logically strict proof of God’s existence, from wholly unobjectionable premises, were forthcoming—is the claim of the ontological argument in its classical formulation (cf. our motto from St. Anselm)—it would seem to provide a great theological weapon. For it would mean that rational persons could no longer withhold assent to the proposition that God exists, and would thereby provide a decisive means of refuting the skeptic and converting the unbeliever. And such compelling demonstrations is wholly lacking in the revised version of the ontological argument that is contemplated here. Since it sets up religious experience as a prerequisite for its reflections, it is eminently unsuited as a means of confounding the atheist, skeptic, and agnostic. The argument in its revised form is capable of carrying persuasive force only for those who actually do not stand in need of persuasion. With the proposed revision, the ontological argument has wholly lost its status as a proof. After demonstrating the existence of a prime greater than any des-

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ignated integer that is given, one can charge a person who persists in denying the existence of a prime greater than 1010 with a lack of intelligence or logical acumen. But no such charge can be brought against someone, who, in the face of the present recasting of the ontological argument, continues to deny its conclusion. (The only charge one could lodge against him is that of a lack of religious insight and experience—a lack which also precludes him from a sound understanding of issues as seen by religious people.) Now it must be granted that there is no way of refuting such an objection to the revision on the grounds of a loss of demonstrative force. However, in point of fact it is not properly an objection at all, but a pretty much unavoidable recognition of a fundamental epistemological fact. There is, and can be, no way of demonstrating existence and there is no escape from Hume’s thesis that only experience can provide knowledge of matters of fact an existence. Religious knowledge must ultimately root in religious experience, personal or vicarious. In religion, as in science, there is no viable alternative to empiricism, for God cannot be demonstrated by abstract logic. As theologians from St. Thomas to Pascal and beyond have insisted, logical manipulations cannot successfully be deployed for theological purposes to provide an adequate surrogate or shortcut for religious experience.11,12 NOTES 1

The Philosophy of Bertrand Russell, edited by P. A. Schilpp (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University, 1944), pp. 3-20, quoted from p. 10. Compare: “I shall venture to add an observation, that the argument a priori [for God’s existence] has seldom been found very convincing except to people ... who have accustomed themselves to abstract reasoning, and who finding from mathematics, that the understanding frequently leads to truth, through obscurity, and contrary to first appearances, have transferred the same habit of thinking to subjects where it ought not to have place.” Hume Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part IX.

2

Meditations on First Philosophy, Fifth Meditation, translation adapted from that of R. M. Eaton in Descartes: Selections (N. Y.: Scribner, 1927)

3

A useful synthesis of recent discussions is contained in William Kneale’s paper “Is Existence a Predicate?” Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 15 (1936) reprinted in Readings in Philosophical Analysis ed. by H. Feigl and W. Sellars (N. Y.: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1949), pp. 29-43. The basic idea of disqualifying existence as a predicate goes back to the Arabic philosopher Al-Farabi (ca. 873-950). See the present author’s “The Concept of Nonexistent Possibles” in his Essays in

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NOTES

Philosophical Analysis (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1969), pp. 73109 (see pp. 75-76). 4

See Chapter 8 of W. T. Stace’s fine book Time and Eternity (Princeton: Princeton University press, 1952). Herbert H. Farmer writes: “We might put it paradoxically by saying that if anyone succeeded in proving the existence of God he would by that very fact show that he had failed. For a God who could be thus proved would not be the God under discussion, but something else. The word would in fact have changed its meaning in the course of the argument” (Towards Belief in God [New York: Macmillan, 1943), p. 30). Similarly John Baillie holds that “it is not as a result of an inference of any kind, whether explicit or implicit, whether laboriously excogitated or swiftly intuited, that knowledge of God’s reality comes to us. It comes rather through our direct personal encounter with Him ...” Our Knowledge of God [New York: Scribner, 1939, p. 143].

5

G. E. Hughes in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. by A. Flew and A. MacIntyre (London: SCM Press, 1955), p. 63.

6

J. J. C. Smart, “The Existence of God” in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, (op. cit.), pp. 28-46; see p. 41.

7

In his essay “A Religious Way of Knowing” (New Essays in Philosophical Theology), (op. cit.), pp. 76-95, C. B. Martin argues that religious experience can never provide a basis for asserting God’s existence on the grounds that “the addition of the existential claim ‘God exists’ to the psychological claim of having certain experiences must be shown to be warrantable” and that this cannot be done. This argument misfires because experiences themselves can suffice as warrant for the existential theses based upon them, and, as Berkeley so elegantly argued, an extraexperiential link is never forthcoming as a bridge of guarantee between experience and its objects, even in sense-perception.

8

St. Anselm’s original presentation of the ontological proof makes use of much the same conception. Anselm writes: “But how has the fool, who says in his heart ‘There is no God’ (Psalms LIII 1) said in his heart what he could there is more than one way in which a thing is said in the heart or not conceive ... since it is the same to say in the heart, and to conceive. But ... there is more than one way in which a thing is said in the heart or conceived. For, in one sense, an object is conceived, when the word signifying it is conceived; and in another, when the very entity which the object is, is understood. In the former sense, then, God can be conceived not to exist; but in the latter, not at all ... So, then, no one who understands can conceive that God does not exist; although he says these words in his heart, either without any, or with some foreign, signification.” (Quoted from Anne Freemantle, The Age of Belief, [New York: New American Library, 1954]).

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NOTES 9

St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, ii, 2, 1.

10

Ibid.

11

Jesus’ remark to the doubting Thomas that “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29) does so much dismiss the relevance of experience as emphasized the need to place relevance on the experience of others.

12

This chapter is a somewhat revised version of a piece originally published in The Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 37 (1959), pp. 138-48.

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Chapter 3 RELIGION AND PRAGMATISM 1. PRAGMATISM AND ITS PROBLEMS

P

ragmatism is often characterized as the quintessential mode of American philosophy. And nevertheless Americans are often seen—by Europeans at least—as being extensively and perhaps even excessively religious. Accordingly, it becomes a matter of interest to ask what—if anything—is pragmatism’s bearing upon matters of religion. How does it bear upon the issue of religious faith and practice? The crux of pragmatism lies in the idea that the appropriate way of validating commitment to a belief or practice (be its nature cognitive or social, or agricultural, or whatever) is to proceed with a view to its efficacy in goal attainment. Success in matter of application and implementation is the pivot of validation. The proper medicament is the one that best cures; the proper meteorology is the one that best forecasts. The proof of the pudding lies in the eating: a belief or practice is rationally warranted to the extent that its acceptance and implementation yield results that align with the expectations that its acceptance underwrites. How if at all, does this sort of approach bear on the adoption of a religion of a particular sort? Certainly not in any way that is simple and straightforward. For it is clearly problematic to see purposive efficacy as the criterion of religious commitment, seeing that the idea of aim or purpose itself raises problems and faces obstacles in relation to matter of religious faith. To see this we have to take a step back to look at the matter in its larger perspective. 2. MEDIATIONS VS. SELF-SUSTAINING PROJECTS There are projects that people engage in for the advantages they provide in relation to something else. Thus for many of us exercise is not something we value for itself, but rather for its benefit to health and vitality. By contrast, relations of interpersonal affinity in matters of love or friendship are

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

valued by most of us for their own sake. No doubt they may be beneficial for psychological or even physical health, but if undertaken on this basis of “What’s in it for me” they will unravel as genuine love and authentic friendship. For sure, those self-sufficient projects may yield benefits, but there are collateral benefits, incidental to the being and value of these projects in and of themselves. Now religion commitment is by its very nature a self-sustaining rather than mediative project. The person who enters into it for the sake of the further benefits it may provide is not authentically religious at all. Only religiosity itself—in whatever form a given mode of religion may define it— can be an appropriate goal for the practitioner irrespective of whatever further benefits it may provide; they are merely incidental and can, as such, play no supportive role in relation to matter of validation and substantiation. Religion, in sum, is one of those projects that exists for its own sake: the idea of its facilitating other, extraneous goals becomes irrelevant and immaterial. For true religion, like true morality, must be its own reward. Immanuel Kant’s view of the matter is determinative here: the otherwise morally appropriate action undertaken for the sake of anything else—any other bereft or advantage—is thereby benefit of moral appropriateness. For moral authenticity there must not only be the right action but the right motivation as well. A morally mandated act done for reasons of personal benefit ipso facto looses moral credibility. And the same situation obtains for religion. The prayers made or alms given with a view to any of these collateral benefits is thereby devoid of religious merit. This line of thought would seem to indicate that pragmatism, with its insistence upon validating ways of proceeding via the realization of end and goals, has no relevance in religion. But this conclusion would be quite incorrect. For the matter is actually more subtle and complex than that. 3. PROJECT INTERNAL VS. PROJECT EXTERNAL—APPLICATIONS OF PRAGMATISM In the present context it becomes critically important to distinguish between internal and external matters in relation to applying pragmatic consideration in a field and applying them to it. Specifically in regard to religion, once one is emplaced within the setting of a religious faith, the idea of purpose are readily brought to bear. Some typical examples are:

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• to strengthen and justify one’s faith, • to foster one’s appreciation of the spiritual dimension of life, • to deepen one’s understanding of one’s religion, • to remove or limit the physical or mental obstacles to practicing one’s faith, • to better understand the world’s spiritual dimensions. A whole array of goals and purposes of this general sort will at once come into operation after one has made a religious commitment. And then, of course, relative to such objectives, a wide variety of measures can be outfitted with a pragmatic rationale in point of purposive efficacy. In this way, pragmatic reasoning can be brought into operation in its standard way to validate such practices as: • participating in services of worship, • prayer and meditation, • studying religious texts, • engaging with religious thought as thinkers, • fasting and self-discipline, • interacting with fellow believers. A considerable array of practices and activities can thus in principle be validated in the standard pragmatic manner of a recourse to efficacy in goal attainment. And in this way an inwards orientation to the aims and objectives that a religious commitment opens the way to a sphere where pragmatic deliberations can play a substantial and constructive role in regard to religion. However, when we consider applying pragmatism not in but rather to religion the situation assumes a very different aspect.

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To be sure, there is little doubt that a great many significant advantages attach to religious commitment and are carried along in its wake. These include such factors as: • the envisioning of a world order shaped through the creative agency of a benign power, • the deepest understanding is one’s place in the world’s ideas of things, • the peace of mind that comes with envisioning our life-setting as a benign and intelligible world-order, • the empowerment that confidence in a rational and user-friendly world engenders, • the sense of solidarity with the co-sharers of one’s human fate and opportunity, living and dead. And there is a multitude of analogous benefits and advantages that can be realized through a religious commitment. But all the same, there is a deep problem here. For all of these have to be seen as collateral benefits. The person who proceeds pragmatically on this basis, in treating such advantages as a means to validating religious commitment—who views accepting a religion as a means to realizing such extraneous and collateral benefits—is in fact not being religious at all. For to be authentically religious is to undertake this commitment on its own terms. 4. A BLOCK ON THE ROAD TO RELIGION Religion is not a matter of prudence—of facilitating the realization of personal or communal advantage. The person who takes up a life of religious practice—giving alms, saying prayers, reciting creeds, celebrating rituals, etc.—for the sake of its advantages is really not adopting a religion. Authentic religion is a matter of faith, of sincere and significantly disinterested belief. Authentic religious commitment has to root in the urgings of one’s heart and spirit. Motivation is the key here. Religiosity has to be prized for its own sake and not valued for the incidental benefits it brings.

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Unquestionably those benefits are there, but they are incidental and collateral advantages that cannot be seen as providing the rationale of the venture. Any pragmatic, beneficial-oriented motivation negates the authenticity of a religious commitment and blocks the pathway to any religiosity worthy of the name. And so to seek to validate a religious commitment on the pragmatic basis of its conducing to the realization of various benefits is not a viable procedure. It will not do to proceed pragmatically with respect to validating commitment to a religion, however useful such considerations may prove to the validation for practices in a religion. The advantages of religious commitments have to be seen as irrelevant to procedural justification, a matter of motive rather than rationale. The person who undertakes a religious commitment for the sake of its benefits is—to reemphasize—not being authentically religious at all. 5. THE STANCE OF PASCAL One qualification of this view is constructive, however. It emerges from the consideration, initially urged by Blaise Pascal, that even the person who is initially brought to religiosity for the wrong reason—and in particular for reasons of personal benefit and advantage—is opening himself up to the operation of religion’s magnetic power. Religiosity, as Pascal saw, exerts a powerfully attractive force, which, like gravitation, grows stronger as one is drawn further in. For once embarked on the road of religiosity even those who find themselves there by considerations of selfish advantage may well find that—quite despite their own ideas and inclinations—the spiritual influences of religion gain leverage for their salubrious work. There is unquestionably something to this Pascalian way of viewing the matter, and insofar as this is so it will enlarge and enhance the scope of pragmatism’s applicability in matters of religion.1 6. CONCLUSION The overall lesson of these deliberations is that the common view of an antagonism between pragmatism and religion cannot be sustained. Even in matters as far removed from crass, self-seeking as in the case with authentic religion, a pragmatism which outruns the limits of self-interest is in principle able to make a positive and constructive contribution. After all, a

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pragmatism that hitches its wagon to the star to functional efficacy certainly need not orient this to lower wants rather than to higher aspirations. NOTES 1

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This line of thought is set out more fully in the author’s Pascal’s Wager (Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1985).

Chapter 4 PROCESS THEOLOGY 1. GOD: SUBSTANCE OR PROCESS

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rocess theology is an important and influential component of process philosophy.1 To be sure, not all process philosophers are theists, seeing that process philosophizing has both a theists and naturalistic wing. The theists see God as a major player in the realm of cosmic process, accounting for the world’s order and intelligibility, its creative dynamism and its teleological normativity. Naturalistic processists, by contrast, see such cosmic macro-assets explicable in a nature-immanent way and view the world as a self-sufficient and self-managing system.2 The organismic and evolutionary tendencies of process thought afford some useful resources to the latter position. But as the present discussion will show, the process approach also provides theists with some potent conceptual and theoretical resources. The neo-Platonic sympathies of the Church Fathers impelled Christian theology to adopt Greek philosophy’s stance that in order to see God as existent one must conceive of him as a being, a substance of some sort. But to the enthusiasm of philosophers and the vexation of theologians, this opened up a host of theoretical difficulties. Consider, for example, the following line of reflection: (1) On the traditional conception of the matter, a substance must always originate through the causality of substances. Q: So whence God? A: He is internally necessitated and free from any and all external causation. (2) Substances standardly have contingent properties. Q: Does God? A: No, he is in all respects (self-)necessitated. (3) Substances standardly have spatio-temporal emplacement within the world’s causal order. Q: Does God? A: No, he, unlike standard substances, exists altogether outside space and time. And so on. No sooner had Western theology made God a substance in order to satisfy its ontological commitment to the predilections of Greek philosophy than it has to break all of the rules for substances, and take away with one hand what it seemed to give with the other. If God is to be viewed as a substance, then this will clearly have to

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

be a very nonstandard sort of substance that is at issue—so nonstandard that one begins to wonder about substantialism’s relevancy. Against this background, it is not surprising that process philosophy, with its characteristic abandonment of classical substantialism, comes to be in a position to put matters on a straighter, less convoluted path. The theoretical difficulties inherent in a substance theology offer an open invitation to a process approach in this domain. 2. THE PROCESS VIEW OF GOD The God of scholastic Christian theology, like the changeless deity of Aristotle on whose model this conception was in part based, is located outside time—entirely external to the realm of change and process. By contrast, process theologians, however much they may disagree on other matters, take the radical (but surely not heretical) step of according God an active role also within the natural world’s spatio-temporal frame. They envision a foothold for God also within the overall processual order of the reality that is supposed to be his creation. After all, active participation in the world’s processual commerce need not necessarily make God into a physical or material object. (While the world indeed contains various physical processes like the evolution of galaxies, it also contains immaterial processes such as the diffusion of knowledge or the emergence of order.) For process theology, then, God does not constitute part of the world’s manifold of physical processes, but nevertheless in some fashion or other participates in it. Clearly no ready analogy-model for this mode of participation (spectator, stage director, witness, judge, etc.) can begin to do full justice to the situation. But what matters first and foremost from the angle of process theology is the fact that God and his world are processually inter-connected—the issue of the manner how is something secondary that can be left open for further reflection. So conceived, God is not exactly of the world of physical reality, but does indeed participate in it processually—everywhere touching, affecting, and informing its operations. Thus while not emplaced in the world, the processists’ God is nevertheless bound up with it in an experiential process of interaction with it. In general, process theists do not believe that God actually controls the world. To speak, as one must, in analogical terms, the processualist God makes an impact persuasively, influencing but never unilaterally imposing the world’s process.

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Process theology accordingly invites us to think of God’s relationship to the world in terms of a process of influence like “the spread of Greek learning in medieval Islam.” Greek learning did not become literally spatialized in the Islamic world, but in a complex and diffused way exerted a substantial and extensive influence upon and within it. Analogously, God is not of the world but exerts and extends an all-pervasive influence upon and within it. After all, processes need not themselves be spatial to have an impact upon things in space (think of a price inflation on the economy of a country.) The long and short of it is that the idea of process provides a category for conceptualizing God’s relation to the world that averts many of the difficulties and perplexities of the traditional substance paradigm. Even apart from process philosophy, various influential theologians have in recent years urged the necessity and desirability of seeing God not through the lens of unchanging stability but with referenced to movement, change, development, and process.3 But, the process theorists among theologians want to go beyond this. For them, God is not only to be related to the world’s processes in a productive manner, but must himself be regarded in terms of process—as encompassing processuality as a salient aspect of the divine nature. To be sure, process theologians differ among themselves in various matters of emphasis. Whitehead sees God in cosmological terms as an “actual occasion” functioning within nature in a manner reflective of “the eternal urge of desire” that works “strongly and quietly by love,” to guide the course of things within the world into “the creative advance into novelty.” For Hartshorne, by contrast, God is less an active force within the world’s processual commerce than an intelligent being or mind that interacts with it. His God is less an operative force of some sort than a personal being who interacts with the other mind-endowed agents through personal contact and love. Hartshorne wants neither to separate God from the world too sharply nor yet to have him be pantheistically immanent in nature. He views God as an intelligent world-separated being who participates experientially in everything that occurs in nature and resonates with it in experiential participation. Such differences of approach, however, are only of secondary importance. The crucial fact is that the stratagem of conceiving of God in terms of a process that is at work in and beyond the world makes it possible to overcome a whole host of substance-geared difficulties at one blow. For it now becomes far easier to understand how God exist and function. To be sure, the processual view of God involves a recourse to processes of a very

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special kind. But extraordinary (or even supra-natural) processes pose far fewer difficulties than extraordinary (or let alone supra-natural) substances, seeing that process is an inherently more flexible conception. After all, many sorts of processes are in their own way unique—or, at any rate, radically different from all others. Clearly, processes like the creation of a world or the inauguration of its lawful order are by their very nature bound to be unusual, but much the same can be said of any particular type of process. Moreover, through its recourse to the idea of a mega-process that embraces and encompasses a variety of subordinate processes, process theology is able to provide a conceptual instrumentality for reconciling the idea of an all-pervasive and omnitemporal mode of reality with that of a manifold of finitely temporalized constituents.4 The processist view of nature as a spatio-temporal whole constituting one vast, all-embracing cosmic process unfolding under the directive aegis of a benign intelligence is extensively in harmony with the Judeo-Christian view of things. For this tradition has always seen God as active within the historical process which, in consequence, represents not only a causal but also a purposive order. After all, the only sort of God who can have meaning and significance for us is one who stands in some active interrelationship with ourselves and our world. (Think here of the Nicene Creed’s phraseology: “the maker of all things … who for us men and for our salvation …”) But of course such an “active interrelationship” is a matter of the processes that constitute the participation and entry of the divine into the world’s scheme of things—and conversely. And not only is it feasible and potentially constructive for the relation of God to the world and its creatures to be conceived of in terms of processes, but it is so also with the relationship of people to God. Here too, process theology sees such a relationship as thoroughly processual because it rests on a potentially interactive communion established in contemplation, worship, prayer, etc. In particular, for processists there is little difficulty in conceiving God as a person (or even as a complex of phrases).5 For once we have an account of personhood in general in process terms as a systemic complex of characteristic activities, it is no longer all that strange to see God in these terms as well. And when one joins processists in processifying the human person, then one can more readily conceive of the divine person as the focal source of a creative intelligence that engenders and sustains the world and endows it with law, beauty (harmony and order), value and meaning.

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Here the theology of process once more affords a natural way of taking traditional theological ideas on board. Then too, there is the problem of the Trinity with its mystery of fitting three persons into one being or substance, which has always been a stumbling block for the substantialism of the Church Fathers. A process approach makes it possible to bypass this perplexity. For processes can conflate with and interpenetrate one another. With the laying of a single brick a workman can be building a wall, erecting a house, and extending a village. One act, many processes; one mode of activity many sorts of agency. For process theology, then, God is active in relation to the world, and the world’s people can and should be active in relation to God. People’s relationship to the divine is a two-way street, providing for a benevolent God’s care for world’s creatures and allowing those intelligent beings capable of realizing this to establish contact with God through prayer, worship, and spiritual communion. Process theology accordingly contemplates a wider realm of processes that embrace both the natural and the spiritual realms and interconnect God with the vast community of worshippers in one communal state of macroprocess that encompasses and gives embodiment to such a communion. 3. GOD IN TIME AND ETERNITY: THE PROBLEM OF FREE WILL The relation of God to time and its changes provides another focal theme for process theology. Proceeding under the aegis of the substance paradigm of Greek philosophy, the Church Fathers placed God outside time in a distinctive order of eternity. And here the question arises about how God as an extratemporal being can possibly know—let alone comfort and commiserate with—the condition of beings existing in time? St. Thomas here used the explanatory analogy that of the spectator on a mountain watching the movement of travelers along the road in a valley below: the travelers cannot see around the twists and turns in the road to know what lies before them, but God, looking down from eternity, can see the whole in a single glance, all-at-once (totum simul). But of course any prospect of contingency or of innovation is blocked out on this picture, save as the misimpression of imperfect humans. For now, as with the theologies of Calvin or Spinoza, all that ever happens is foreseeable and indeed foreseen— everything is provided for from the start, so to speak. The process theologian rejects any such radical separation of God and world in the interests of making what William James called ontological “elbow room” for contin-

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gency, innovation, and impredictability. The processualists’ deity is not the God of the great absolutist omnis (omnipotence, omniscience, omnibenevolence). To reemphasize: process theology envisions a God who, though not of the world, is nevertheless present in it in a way that renders him too subject to the temporality that pervades its domain.6 As theologians of this tendency see it, God’s processual involvement in the world is of many sorts, preeminently productive, cognitive, and effective. Divine providence furnishes the reason for being of the world’s intelligible order, and God himself is linked to created nature by cognitive processes of awareness and understanding. Moreover God is linked to the world of created beings through a reciprocity of effective appreciation, and responds to the worlds eventuation by way of approbation or disapproval. (But what sorts of things in “his” world can God possibly approve or disapprove of? This sphere would have to include not only products of his own making gone away—why not foresee who may have to work with imperfect material?—but also, and most importantly, some of the free actions of intelligent creatures.) Yet if—as most processists agree—divine intelligence can know, and timelessly at that, about human free actions, then what becomes of our freedom of choice and will? Processists construe God’s omniscience in terms of his knowing everything that can be known, and regard human free actions as involving—at least sometimes—matters that cannot be known in advance of the fact. About such matters God, like the rest of us, can only learn in the fullness of time. (For processist, time is so potent a factor that even God is not wholly its master.) Process theologians accordingly incline to look with favor on Faustus Socinus (Fausto Paolo Sozzini, 1539-1604) who maintained that human freedom is incompatible with divine foreknowledge of our free acts, and that—since free action is an accomplished fact—there has to be room for a change in God (in particular, in respect to his knowledge) that is consequent upon the course of events. On this basis, processists abandon the idea of God’s absolute immutability along with that of a total separation from the world’s developments. From the angle of traditional Christian doctrines, the piety of process religiosity may be altogether orthodox, but its theology is not, the processists link between God and nature being somewhat too intimate.

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4. GOD IN AND FOR NATURE With Laplace, the processist theologian can say regarding God as explainer of the observed world: “We have no need for that hypothesis” (Nous n’avons pas besoin de cette hypothèse). For him the service that God renders us is not so much to make the world explicable as to provide an incentive for finding it appreciable and for endeavoring to make it more so. And so, while processists differ regarding the nature of God, they generally agree that the proper appreciation of the natural sphere and its modus operandi involves recourse to a world-transcendent factor—that from an axiological point of view nature cannot be seen as a wholly self-contained and autonomous. Nature may, in the end, possibly prove to be explanatorily self-contained. Individually and seriatim, the world’s particular phenomena can all presumably all be accounted for in terms of nature’s own processes, and no super- or supra-natural agency need necessarily be invoked. But explaining the phenomena of nature and appreciating them in terms of an apprehension of their worth and value are very different things. To be sure, the fact that people make evaluations is itself a natural phenomenon that has natural explanations. But the normative fact that (often) they do so rightly— that the things people factually prize are (often) normatively worth prizing—is something of a different order. The presence of arrangements in the world that we like and that please us can be explained naturally with reference to biological evolution that ensures an attunement of creatures to their environment. But the fact that the world’s arrangements that have worth and value in and of themselves cries out for reference to the divine. And here, process theology takes its hold. The service it sees the divine as rendering to human understanding does not lie in the order of causal explanation but rather in the order of evaluative appreciation—in enabling us to apprehend more correctly and realistically the grounds and indications of the fact that the world’s arrangements can have worth and value. Moreover, there is also the prospect—increasingly contemplated nowadays—of integrating the two realms of value and explanation by means of some sort of axiological exploration, not so much of nature’s processes as of nature’s processual laws.7 After all, while process philosophers grant God a particular role on the world’s idea of things, they see this less in terms of the efficient causality at issue with the scientific explanation of things than in terms of the final

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causality that endows the world with an axiological dimension by making a place for values in its idea of things. As process theology sees it, God is rather the source of inspiration for the world’s agents than a merely basis of explanation for what they do. The presence of chance, chaos, and choice on the world scene means that the course of the world’s development poses genuine alternatives— contingently open possibilities where the course of events can run in one channel rather than another. Things can evolve and eventuate for the better or for the worse. The course of physical, biological, and cultural evolution is strewn with endless contingencies. The restrictive necessities of physical process no more mean that things need go well than the restrictive necessities of chess rules mean that the game must be played well. The what and how of the world’s course of happenings are some sort of (factual) thing but their evaluative assessment is quite another (normative) one. The presence of value in a world of chance may not demand belief in a benign directive influence at work within the world’s processual flux (it could all be “pure luck”) but certainly invites it. We live in a world where there is not only change but also progress (= change for the better)—which, as we have seen, is geared to the process of evolution in its various manifestations. And this higher-level normative fact may be explained in terms of a three-cornered relationship between God, the world, and the intelligently evaluative beings that exist within it. The workings of evolution—cosmic, biological, and social—are all natural processes that operate in and through the world’s sphere of contingency and chance. But the (evaluative) fact that these processes function so as to yield something that has value is a circumstance which, as process theology sees it, profoundly manifests the presence of a benign intelligence at work in or through the phenomena of nature. As process theology sees it, it is in this relationship to the world as a locus of value, rather than to it as a manifold of phenomena, that the hand of God upon the world’s processes manifests itself most strikingly. To be sure, process philosophers differ from one another regarding the notion of God. Some take an immanentist line and view the divine as a force or factor at work within the cosmic processes to make for an ongoing enhancement of intelligible order and appreciable value. Other take a more transcendent line and view the divinity as a processual being or entity—a superprocess of sorts that works upon rather than within the worlds constitutive machine of processes. (Thus Whitehead admitted that while he indeed characterized God a “principle of concretion” he did not really mean

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to call God a principle but rather an actual entity that gives operative effect to such a principle.8 Thus it is not that process theology proposes to worship a different God or puts forward a different creed. In point of forms and formalities it is (or can be) substantially orthodox. What is at issue is a matter of the interpretation or construction of the traditional formulas that the process approach makes available. No radical lapse from tradition need be envisioned here. Process theology can take a position that is not so much revisionist as hermeneutic or interpretative, along the lines of the question: “If a God along the traditional lines exists, then how can a being of this sort be most effectively (most intelligibly and least problematically) be conceptualized?” In the final reckoning, then, the process approach has some distinct advantages for theology over against a substantial approach. Specifically it makes it easier and less problematic to understand the nature of God as a person and this being’s participating role in relation to the world. The process approach that proposes to characterize what God is on the basis of what he does thus affords a framework for conceiving of God in a way that not only removes many of the difficulties inherent in the thing-oriented, substantial approach of traditional metaphysics, but also makes it vastly easier to provide a philosophical rationale for many—even though not all—of the salient conceptions of Judeo-Christian theism.9, 10 NOTES 1

The major process theologians include Pierre Teihard de Chardin (1881-1955) in France, Samuel Alexander (1859-1958), Conroy Loyd Morgan (1852-1936), William Temple (1882-1944), and Lionel Spencer Thornton (1884-1947) in Britain, and Alfred North Whitehead (1861-1967) and Charles Hartshorne (1897- 2000) in the USA, together with their students and followers. For fuller information about process theology, which has been an increasingly active enterprise in recent years, the reader may consult: — Charles Birch, A Purpose for Everything: Religion in a Postmodern Worldview (Mystic, CT: Twenty-Third Publications, 1990). — John B. Cobb and David R. Griffin, Process Theology: An Introductory Explanation (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1976). — John B. Cobb, Process Theology as Political Ecology (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1982).

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— Charles Hartshorne, The Divine Relativity; A Social Conception of God (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1948). — Charles Hartshorne, A Natural Theology for Our Time (La Salle, IL: Open Court, 1967). — A. N. Whitehead, Religion in the Making (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1930). For useful anthologies on the topic see: Delwin Brown et al (eds.), Process Philosophy and Christian Thought (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1971); Douglas Browning, Philosophers of Process (New York: Random House, 1965); as well as Ewert H. Cousins (ed.), Process Theology: Basic Writings (New York, Newman Press, 1971), which seeks to fuse the organismic tradition of Whitehead with the evolutionism of Teilhard de Chardin. Also, the anthology on Modern Process Thought by James R. Gray (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1982) is focused largely on process theology. 2

Interesting deliberations by Donald W. Sherburne suggest for Whitehead himself the (declined) option of a naturalistic processism. See his “Whitehead Without God” The Christian Scholar, vol. 60 (1907), pp. 251-72.

3

See for example, Michael J. Buckley, Motion and Motion's God (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971).

4

On this aspect of process theology see also Josiah Royce, The World and the Individual, 2 vols. (New York: MacMillan, 1901-1902), Vol. I, chapter entitled “The Temporal and External.”

5

A complex process can contain constituent processes without difficulty, whereas the only way in which a substantial thing can enhance others is by way of component parts.

6

Compare Charles Valentine’s account of “The Development of Process Philosophy” in Ewert H. Cousins (ed.), Process Theology: Basic Writings (New York, Newman Press, 1971).

7

On this theme see the present author’s Studies in Metaphysical Optimalism (Frankfurt: ONTOS Verlag, 2006).

8

Cf. Process and Reality, p. 374. See the report by A. H. Johnson in L. S. Ford and G. L. Kline (eds.), Explorations in Whitehead's Philosophy (New York: Fordham University Press, 1983, pp. 4-10).

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9

The path to orthodoxy is significantly eased by the fact that process philosophers also convene of people in processualistic terms, so that they interpose no insuperable character to conceiving of God as a person—albeit obviously a pretty unusual one.

10

This chapter is a slightly revised version of one originally published in the author’s Process Metaphysics (Albany, NY.: SUNY Press, 1996).

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Chapter 5 GOD’S PLACE IN PHILOSOPHY Non in Philosophia Recurrere Est ad Deum 1. TWO OPPOSED INTUITIONS

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n considering the place of God in philosophy we have to come to terms with a conflict between two diametrically opposed intuitions. The first of these pivots on the fact that philosophy is supposed to deal with “the big questions” and that there just are no bigger questions than those that relate to the nature and role of God—his existence, his relation to ourselves and to the world, and in general his place in the grand scheme of things. These are issues on which systematically concerned philosophers are going to have to take a definite stand one way or another—be it theistic, atheistic, or agnostic. And this stand is likely to have significant implications for their position in matters ranging from metaphysics to philosophical anthropology. In this way, a prominent place for God is philosophy seems securely assured. The rival intuition moves in a different direction. Insisting that God should not be viewed as a mere philosophical instrumentality, it takes the line that God has far more important work to do than to involve himself in the disputes of philosophers. Apart, perhaps, from noting this fact itself, our philosophizing should proceed on a secular basis and keep God out of it. God is too important to be left to the tender mercies of philosophical disputation and uncertainty. God has better things to do than to function as a mere explanatory or interpretative resource for the convenience of philosophers. How are these divergent intuitions to be reconciled? 2. THEISTIC VS. NATURALISTIC QUESTIONS Ordinarily, conflicts between plausible propositions in philosophy are resolved by means of distinctions. Accordingly, the focal questions becomes: What sorts of distinctions are necessary and sufficient to harmonize and coordinate the views on the one hand of philosophical transcendentalists

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the philosophy of Religion

who insist on a prominent place for God in philosophy and on the other those of philosophical secularists who want to keep him out. To begin with, it is necessary to take note of the fundamental distinction between on the one hand explicitly theistic God-involving questions in which God is overtly and directly at issue and on the other those questions that are non-theistic and wholly addressed to strictly render matters. Now as regards the former category of issues, it is perfectly clear that there are philosophical questions about God. And, obviously enough, where the questions are about God the answers must be about God as well. The very fact that there are philosophical questions about God therefore means that we cannot keep him out. On this basis the operative principle would thus become that of question/answer coordination: If God is not referred to (explicitly and overtly) in the question, then he should not be referred to in the answer. In particular questions that are about the world and not about God should receive answers that are also naturalistic. Accordingly, the principle of a sensible and modest philosophical secularism will be this: If you are addressing naturalistic questions in which God is not mentioned, then see it as required to proceed in terms of answers of the same sort, with secular-style questions give secular-style answers. What can be said on behalf of such a position? And to what extent should philosophical theists feel called upon to resist it? 3. THE CLOSURE OF THE SECULAR REALM Observe, to begin with, that from the very start, Christian teaching has stressed that it is somewhere between difficult and impossible for mortals to reach God by ordinary cognitive means. The New Testament insists that “no one has ever seen God” (John 1:18) and that our knowledge of him is like “a confused reflection in a mirror” (I Cor. 13:12). And—as Aristotle had already insisted—a satisfactory explanation cannot account for what is clear and accessible on the order of knowledge in terms of what is less so (obscurum per obscurius) but must approach a cognitively problematic items via those that are less so. Explanation, in philosophy as elsewhere, has to proceed from what is in the sphere of cognition the more clear and accessible—from what is prior in the order of knowledge (even if not in the order of being). In giving directions for cognitive transit (as in giving directions for physical transit) we must connect the unfamiliar to the familiar. And this consideration alone speaks for minimizing recourse to God in philosophy.

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Moreover, the ironic (though not self-inconsistent!) fact is that nature’s explanatory closure and self-sufficiency itself admits a theological explanation. The operative principle runs thus: In the natural course of things God does not intervene in nature’s working directly but rather proceeds at arm’s length, so to speak, that is to say through the mediation of natural agents and agencies. The music he makes on the stage of the world’s occurrences is made in the manner of the orchestral conductor who directs but does not himself actually play any of the instruments.

Even if God is not exactly a hidden God, he is nevertheless surely not all that intrusive in philosophy. He certainly does not elbow his way into every corner of the philosophical terrain. In epistemology, in aesthetics, in the philosophy of mathematics or of sciences, he generally does not come upon the scene at all. In ethics his place is somewhat peripheral as far as the majority of issues are concerned. And although God is important in metaphysics even this field does not require this pervasive presence upon the stage of consideration. This line of thought points towards a principle of disciplinary autonomy: When we ask explanatory questions that lie within a domain we generally expect that the answer to lie within that domain. When we ask physics questions we expect physics answers, when we ask theology questions we expect theological answers, and when we ask secularly philosophical questions we expect secular answers. It would thus be strange to say that the sparrow fell because God foresaw it: the sparrow fell because Cock Robin shot it with his little arrow, and God did not enter into this transaction as an agent at all—what he did about it, and pretty much all that he did about it—was to foresee that it would happen. It is not that we have to be altogether naturalistic with regard to philosophy, but rather that we should be naturalists about nature. Explanatory questions with regard to nature’s ways and means should in general be answered by naturalistic means. “Give unto nature what is natures and unto God what is God’s” should be our motto in philosophy. Thus whenever the questions on the agenda are about God per se or are overly hermeneutical questions about explicating his relationship to us or the world, then it is clear that God will have to stand at the forefront of our deliberations. But when the questions on the agenda are explanatory questions that do not overtly relate to God, but to the modus operandi of nature, then there is neither need nor desirability to bring God into it. Only if we have questions that are not nature-internal but rather global questions such as those about

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the origins of physical existence or its reason for being then we may very well—and more appropriately—have to have recourse to theological considerations. Philosophy is thus substantially autonomous as a discipline in the sense that to the greatest possible extent its apparently secular issues should be addressed by secular means insofar as possible. Only with extraordinary questions should we expect extraordinary answers. 4. INTERNAL VS. EXTERNAL An important further distinction comes into operation here, namely that between local and global questions. Internal questions pose issues that are, as it were, domestic, regarding what happens within some particular sector or realm of nature—particular aspects of features about nature and its processes. They are in this manner concerned with local issues. External questions, by contrast, are global in nature: they pose issues about nature-as-awhole: why it exists, why its laws are as they are, or the like—totalitarian questions so to speak. Such questions transcend the domestic sphere of a particular problem area. Only when we want to push the probe for rationales through to the deeper or subtler level of synoptic totality—to the reasons why behind the reasons why—will we ever find ourselves in a position of rational constraint to a recourse to God in the settling of philosophical inquiry. Human agency is in this sense analogous to the divine. When I act within nature—say by moving this piece of paper about—I proceed by natural means. Of course it was I that moved the paper. But I did it by means of hands and arms, of muscles and bone and flesh. To explain that the paper moved then and there and how the paper moved then and there you need only refer to physical agencies. Only with the ultimate why that reaches outside the course of physical events need you ever make mention of me. But when the questions are about what happens within physical nature the answers are forthcoming in commensurate terms. Local questions regarding issues within the natural realm—must be answered in naturalistic terms when explaining the notion of billiard balls, so even as it would be absurd to bring God into it. God is not an explanatory instrumentality for deliberations about natural processes any more than he is a quantitative instrumentality for dealing with issues of mathematics or an information-theoretic mechanism for dealing with issues of communication. In this regard Laplace was right on target with his observation that in

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astrophysics “n’avait pas besoin de cette hypothèse [de dieu].” And the same goes for the vast bulk of issues in the information theory and various major branches of philosophy. However, issues internal to the natural realm have to be addressed with commensurate instrumentalities. Only the global, maximal, ultimate questions that pose issues involving the discipline-as-a-whole will (or should) force one to cross disciplinary bounds and look at the science “from outside” so to speak. And it is clear that such questions will always be rare and exceptional. Only when we look beyond the realm of given reality to ask about the ultimate why of it all—that is when we no longer confine our questioning to the domestic issue internal to the realm of nature itself—only then will we have to have recourse to God. 5. PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY There accordingly will be various issues that spill over from seemingly secular questions into theological ones. An example is the key issue of philosophical anthropology: the nature of man and his condition in the world’s scheme of things. While secularists would prefer to cast the issue in sociopsychological terms of how man thinks about his relationship to God, the question of the extent to which this thought is correct—of what man’s relation to God and thereby of God’s relationship to man actually is— ultimately becomes unavoidable. Even where God himself is concerned in a philosophical context, most of the subsidiary issues that become essential to the deliberators will have a purely secular nature. Take, for example, the ontological thesis that God exists because he is the necessary being. Consider the multitude of issues that have arisen in connection with the elucidation substantiation and critique of this argument. What is the nature of necessity? Do beings (substances) have definitions? Do they have essences? And do these essences consist of well-defined attributes? Must such always be represented by linguistic characterizable properties? Is existence a predicate? And so on. In none of these there is any overt or even tacit reference to God. Those big ultimate philosophical questions where God figures are surrounded by a vast penumbral cloud of subsidiary mediate issues that lack any transparently theological substance. And of course all those subsidiary questions are themselves subject to the same process of engendering further and generally nontheological issues.

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And this means that while God cannot, for the philosopher, be an altogether hidden God, who is ever and always absent, nevertheless his appearances in the field can and should be comparatively rare. From a statistical point of view those large-scale issues where God has to be brought into it are of comparative infrequency in philosophy. At this stage, an analogy may be useful. The mutual relevancy of theology and philosophy looks to be something like this: P

PT

T

Only a very small proportion of philosophical issues have theological involvements (although these are doubtless of great philosophical importance). By contrast, a substantially greater body of theology’s theoretical issues have philosophical involvements (although these are, for the most part, not the most crucial issues of the theological domain). Put differently, philosophical theology occupies a far larger sector of theology than it does of philosophy. 6. EXPLANATORY ECONOMY IN PHILOSOPHY Philosophical answers always engender new philosophical questions, new issues exfoliate out of the attempts to grapple with old ones. New issues constantly exfoliate from old ones. The connection of means-ends filiation—of needing to resolve issue B in order to resolve issue A—often carries us into new and difficult territory—a territory that is thematically far removed from that of our starting point. And even when the starting-point is God-involving, the issues into which we are propelled in its philosophical elucidation need not be. To be sure, frequency is one thing and significance another. And it would not be implausible to contend that those secular-seeming issues of philosophy that not only invite but require a recourse to God in the interests of their satisfactory resolution—however rare they may be—deserve to count among the most interesting and significant issues of the field. Nothing said here would in any way conflict with this view. On the con-

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trary, it would, if anything, serve to reinforce yet further the presently pivotal contention that issues of this sort are genuinely extraordinary. And there is a ready explanation for this. Philosophy is a work of reason, and what is at issue here is a fundamental ground-rule of rational procedure, a principle of cognitive economy to the effect: Do not use heavier machinery for your cognitive work than you actually need to deploy in the circumstances at hand. Accordingly our efforts in this area are governed by such maxims of practical rationality as: Don’t call on the big battalions when you don’t need to! Accomplish your objectives with the least powerful means! Don’t use a steamroller where a nutcracker will suffice! Only when he cannot manage on this basis—on those few occasions where God and God alone can provide the material that adequate issue resolution requires—need the philosopher take recourse to God without any hesitation or regret. But the fact of it is that this sort of situation is going to be relatively rare on the larger philosophical scheme of things. The philosophers who thinks he needs God to determine the prospects of a priori knowledge, or to assess the validity of the Categorical Imperative—to consider a couple of Kantian issues—is not doing justice to the powers of his God-given reason. After all, if a philosophical issue can be settled reasonably and adequately without bringing God into it, then this is not a loss but rather a victory for reason and for a reasonable theology alike. However pious the philosopher, he has no occasion for dissatisfaction when secular considerations can solve the problems on his agenda. 7. CONCLUSION The policy of theistic minimalism in philosophy is based on the maxim: “In transacting your philosophical affairs make do without God insofar as possible, and only bring him into it as a last resort, when there is no viable alternative.” What is at issue here is thus not odium theologicum or God aversiveness of some sort but the plain common sense of quotidian rationality based on the principle: Accomplish your objectives with the least elaborate means. It is only right and proper that God should be prominently present throughout the life and thought of the Christian philosopher. But the pages of his books are something else again. For He should only figure here insofar as his presence is indispensably required by the nature of the topic and the inner impetus of the lines of argument that it requires. Those who would invoke God to explain (say) the rapidity of cosmic development in

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the first few seconds after the initiating “big bang” or the eventual evolutionary emergence of intelligence had best make sure that all less preternatural explanatory alternatives have been exhausted. The lesson here is that the prohibitive injunction Non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum should not be interpreted as meaning “Never have explanatory recourse to God in philosophy.” Instead, a more sensible construction would be: “Only have explanatory recourse to God in philosophy when this is absolutely unavoidable for dealing adequately with the issues at hand.” The appropriate policy in philosophy is not to exclude God, but only to bring him into it when this is really necessary. God affords to the philosopher what is, so to speak, an instrumentality of last resort. He is not a convenient all-purpose tool: as long as lesser resources can do the job, they have to be allowed to do it. Moreover, the important different between explaining from God and explaining to God should be heeded. To move from premises about God to conclusions about the world is easy because explanatory power, like hydroelectric power, tends to flow downstream. Given God’s existence the world that is his creation can only be expected to have certain characteristics. But the reverse movement is more problematic. To argue that because the world has certain features various claims about God are warranted is a deeply problematic proceeding. The situation is analogous to what one encounters in a political context with ultimate measures: declaring “martial law,” proclaiming a “state of national emergency,” resorting to revolutionary measures against the established political order. Any or all of these measures may be necessary, but only in extreme circumstances where ultimate political values are at stake and all else has failed. They are desperate last measures to be employed only when the greatest of issues—the very existence and survival of the public order—are at stake. It is plausible to hold that a philosophical recourse to God is something similar. It will on occasion be necessary and unavoidable. But it is only a measure of last resort and not a means for managing our everyday affairs in the humdrum ordinary course of cognitive affairs. As this perspective sees it, when resorting to God for purposes of philosophical explanation or problem-solving we are in effect doing crisis philosophy. We have exhausted the resources of normal means and have to resort to desperate measures. Some historic examples are: • The occasionalist who could only bring thinking and extended substance together through divine intervention.

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• The neo-Newtonian natural theologians who could only maintain the stability of the solar system through periodic divine readjustments of the orbits or celestial bodies. • The Kantian who could only rationalize the world’s injustices through a divinely managed afterlife where sufferers are compensated. • The theological neo-Darwinist who could only explain the emergence of intelligence through divine intervention in the evolutionary process. Such theories are crisis-philosophical doctrinesthe sort of thing to which we might be driven in the end but which should by rights be seen as explanations of last resort. But does this idea that God should be deemed an explanatory instrument of last resort not unfairly imposed an unequal burden upon the theist? For surely we do not suppose such an ultimacy requirement in other explanatory resources. The reply here is that there is nothing unreasonable or improper about it. For it is only too clear thatas theorists all too readily acknowledgeGod is a unique and extraordinary being who is exempt from all the normal ground-rules that hold for more pedestrian existence. And on this basis it is only reasonable that extraordinary instrumentalities should only be deployed for extraordinary tasks. But who is really the target in this discussionjust whom does it argue against? Primarily the “natural philosophers”far more common in the 17th century than todayfor whom God is a convenient instrumentality of cosmological explanation. On the other side there are also thoseand their name is nowadays legionwho simply reject all reference to God and his works. To them the idea of God as an available instrumentality of last recourse is anathema. But so dogmatic a view is also something they will find hard to justify in a way that sensible open-minded bystanders will find convincing. After all, look at it from God’s point of view. Wise and benevolent parents prefer an inactive presence in the lives of their children: they yearn for offspring who can solve their problems on their own, without dragging them into it. They delight in relating to them but emphatically prefer to do so in ways that do not involve the onus of an active contribution to the solution of their offspring’s problems. In this regard they want children who

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can “stand on their own feet.” And it seems plausible to think that God would be no different. There is no good reason to think that theistic minimalism in philosophy would be anything but welcome to God.1 NOTES 1

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This chapter was originally published in Philosophy and Theology, vol. 12 (2000), pp. 95-115.

Chapter 6 CAN A SCIENTIST BE SERIOUS ABOUT RELIGION?

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hree points must be granted at the outset:

1. Science does not require God. To answer our scientific questions about the world we need not bring theology into it. 2. Science cannot prove God’s existence. We cannot ground theism on scientific facts regarding the observable features of the universe. 3. Scientists are nowadays largely atheists. Many or most of them manage to live successful lives without any religious commitments. But once these facts are granted we are at the beginning of the story, not at its end. For in the end the salient question is not whether science involves and requires religious commitment but whether it is compatible—or even congenial—with religion. Granted, science as such does not require God. (Neither does architecture!). But that of course does not mean that scientists do not need God (or for that matter architects). Human life is replete with important issues that do not belong to science. For science is limited by being the very thing it is as a functional enterprise of a certain particular sort. It is defined by its own characteristic aims and objectives, this being to explain how things work in the world—how a recourse to the laws of nature can account for the world’s phenomena. But it is (or should be) clear that man does not live by knowledge alone. There is, of course, more to human life than that— more than grasping how nature works. We are creatures not only of understanding but also of doing, not only of thought but of action. Science and religion have different jobs to do: they are human enterprises whose aims and objectives differ. Science deals with matter of how things happen in the world—that is with issues regarding the explanation, prediction, and control of the world’s occurrences. Religion, by contrast,

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

addresses normative issues and involves questions of meaning and value— questions bound up with the master question of what we ought to do within our lives and how we ought to conduct them. Regarding the universe that is our home science takes a cognitive approach of asking about the world and its doings. Religion by contrast takes an appreciative approach of affinity, awe, and wonder. The concern of religion is not from the world as such but from our personal place within it in relation to what is important and meaningful for us. Different enterprises with different goals are at issue: religion cannot do the job of science, nor science that of religion. Overall, both understanding and affectivity have a role in the human scheme of things. And so there is no need for the scientist to scorn religion. For if he is smart he will realize that his lab relates to the work of the inquiring mind whereas beyond this work of the inquiring intellect there yet remains the work of the appreciative spirit. Knowledge, after all, is just one component of the constellation of human goods—one valuable project among others, whose cultivation is only one component of the wider framework of human purposes and interests. Human life is a complicated business, replete with many needs and wants, necessities and possibilities. The prospect of understanding and explaining the world’s ways—of science in sum—is only one of these. The business of leading a satisfactory life: of achieving personal as well as intellectual (cognitive) satisfactions. The quality of our lives turns on a broad spectrum of personal and communal desiderata such as physical well-being, human companionship, environmental congeniality, social harmoniousness, cultural development, spiritual satisfaction, and so on—values toward whose attainment the insights afforded by science can often help us, but which themselves nevertheless fall outside its domain. The natural scientist deals with the workings of the universe; the fate of particular individuals, be they protozoa or people, does not concern him. But the fate of individuals does concern us—and in particular the fate of ourselves as intelligent agents with individual feelings and experiences, individual needs and morals, individual opportunities and aspirations. Science is based on generalizations that capture the structural relationship of natural processes. Religion is based on appreciations and inspirations (revelations included)—on personal experiences that makes a respect for the factors that enrich reality and our relationship to it with meaning, significance, and value. This “existential” level of our personal life and its spiritual attainment to existence at large does not concern science but nevertheless our religious sentiments can and should paint its enlightening pic-

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ture. It is not as inquirers but as agents that religion addresses us. Science looks on us—as it looks on all else—as instances of types. The uniqueness of particulars eludes our generality-geared science. And yet that is just exactly what we are: unique particulars. Religion addresses us as individuals. As far as science is concerned, there is nothing special about your parents, your siblings, your children. But the affective dimension of our nature takes a very different line. An objector may well ask: “But is religious experience and sensibility not itself a proper subject of scientific study?” Of course science can study us humans, and submit our thoughts and actions to its objectifying scrutiny. But now the normative dimension of things that is critical to actual being of a person will be left by the wayside. For observation can report “People think that X,” but of course “People rightly think that X” is something else. Again “People disapprove of Y” can be a perfectly appropriate as a scientifically factual report, but “People quite properly disapprove of Y” is something very different. It is one thing to repute and examine experiences and something quite different to have them. (There is little to optics that a blind person cannot learn—but he nevertheless missed out on something crucial.) The internalities of reflection and judgment human existence is something that science does not touch. The affective and spiritual dimension that is critically formative to our status as human persons addresses issues that just are not on the scientific agenda. Psychological science can say: “Those who have a religious or mystical experience claim it to give them contact with a nature-transcendent.” But of course it is only those who actually live this experience who will so claim. What people make of their experiences—observational or interpersonal of religions—is up to them—and not up to the external observers who report about it. A crucial difference in “point of view” is at issue in the contact between those who actually experience and those for whom these experiences are mere “phenomena.” And so while science is an internal study what religious principle thinks it will not—and for its own resources cannot—take a position on the substantive matters which themselves are at issue. When science considers religion it does so ab extra and not from within the experiential domain of the believer himself. Not only appreciation and evaluation but agency becomes a crucial factor with respect to religious orientation. Science tells us what we can do— can possibly manage to realize—given the talents and resources at our disposal. But it does not and cannot tell us what we should do. After all, religion is not a source of factual information about how things stand and work

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in the world. We will indeed need science to accomplish that job. But there is another job that has to be done: the job of life-orientation, of guiding us to a realization of the things that are important, to help us achieve appropriate goals, values, interests. And here it is religion that seeks to direct our efforts and energies in directions that endow our lives with meaning and rational contentment, to satisfy not just our wants but our deepest needs, to confirm and consolidate the spiritual side of our lives, to encourage us to make the most of choices and to be able to face the inevitable end of our worldly existence without regret and shame at the loss of opportunities to contribute to the greater good of things. It is, no doubt, part of scientific wisdom to discount the idea of God as an operative agency—a God-of-the-gaps whose intervention is invoked to offer a surrogate explanation of the things we do not otherwise understand. The scientifically relevant role of faith is not to provide a rational explanation what happens in the universe, but rather to underwrite the idea that such an explanation is always in principle available—something which science cannot quite manage on its own. Laplace was right. To do its own proper explanatory work, science does not need to bring God into it. Human agency is in this sense analogous to the divine. When I act within nature—say by moving this piece of paper about—I proceed by natural means. Of course it was I that moved the paper. But I did it by means of hands and arms, of muscles and bone and flesh. To explain that the paper moved then and there and how the paper moved then and there you need only refer to physical agencies. Only with the ultimate why that reaches outside the course of physical events need you ever make mention of me. But when the questions are about what happens within physical nature the answers are forthcoming in commensurate terms. Certainly, religion is not, or should not be, viewed as a substitution for science; rather it should—by rights—provide a goad and encouragement to scientific work—to motivating the effort to comprehend more fully the nature of God’s universe and to avail ourselves of the opportunities that existence upon its stage puts at our disposal. “But is a scientist’s dedication to knowledge not paramount to a degree where he could only accept a religion whose creedal commitments he would conscientiously consider as truths?” This is doubtless so. But even a conscientious scientist would do well to distinguish between literal and figurative truths, factual and normative truths, informative and orientational truths. After all, the question of what we as individuals should do

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with our lives and make of the various opportunities at our disposal is not a scientific issue. Once we decide this sort of thing science can undoubtedly help us to get there. But what our destination should be is a matter not for science but rather for our commitment to goals and values. And this sort of thing is simply outside the province of science which tells us what the world is like but not what we should do with our lives. There will, of course, be overlap issues where both religion and science will enter interactively. Religion calls on us to honor human life by according special treatment to the dead. By science will be needed to decide the question of whether Smith is in fact now dead so that these special procedures are to be instituted. And so, while religion and science are distinct enterprises they certainly can and should interact with one another. A further objection may well arise at this point: “Granted, science and religion have different roles to play and different questions to address. But there may well arise some issues in which they come into conflict, the age of the universe, the origin of the world, the origin of man, and perhaps others.” Now the first thing to note here is that such seeming disagreements are mostly or even generally the products of misunderstandings (as is often the case with disagreements of all sorts). A deeper understanding of just exactly what the religious claims are and a fuller understanding of the scientific issues will often or even generally dissolve the conflict as the product of insufficiently deep understanding, and thereby as more apparent than real. But even were this not the case, there remain various options for coming to terms with such disagreements: • Make religion give way to science. Reconstrue those scientifically problematic religious claims as symbolic, figurative, or metaphorical. • Defer judgment. Realizing that scientific understanding is a work in progress which has often changed its mind about things and thus awaiting with hopefulness a change that will put matters into alignment in the wake of further scientific innovation. • Simply combine the two and accept the resulting “inconsistency.” Take the line that we live in a complex, multifaceted world where science is true from its perspective and religion from its and accept that the two just don’t jibe—that different conceptual perspectives can be combined no more than different visual ones can. This in effect leaves their fusion as a mystery that passes our understanding.

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• Take recourse in humility. Acknowledge that there are many things we just don’t understand and that the reconciling presently seeming divergences between science and religion may just be one of them. (After all, who knows how hypnotism or acupuncture work.) Clearly, the “conflict between science and religion” does not leave one without options, so that a religion between can hold to the idea that in cases of conflict some sort of reconsideration will in the end prove possible. But now consider the objection: “I want to be a modern, scientific person, who bases his belief on the teachings of science. And science does not speak for religion: one cannot base theism on scientific facts.” Well, so be it. But the reality of it is that we stand committed to lots of things that we cannot base on scientific facts. Are the challenges and rewards of living ideas we base on science? We do—or should—have a special care for and about our parents, brothers, spouses. Does science establish them as more lovable and worthy of our affection than other people? We try to earn the respect of others. Does science teach us that other-respect—or self-respect for that matter—is a paramount value? Do we base our values on the teachings of science rather than the impetus of our natural human feelings? It is simply not through science that we configure out loyalties, our allegiances, our values. Science tells us about facts; but their significance—religious significance included—will and must come here from somewhere else. And it is just here that religious commitment comes into it. With respect to the question of the existence of God, the great physicist Laplace offered the remark that “I had no need for that hypothesis.” And this is certainly correct. For scientific questions have to be replaced on scientific principles. With respect to how things work in the cosmos the authority of science will be complete. If we want to know how it is that there are microbes in the world, we had best turn to biological science. But there are also questions which lie above and beyond the voice of science. And the question of why it is that that world is such that there are microbes in it is one of these. For what is basically at stake here is a value issue, presumably to the general effect that a world with microbes in it has some significant advantage over alternative publications. Of course someone might say that such a question is improper and illegitimate—that if an issue makes sense at all then science can resolve it. But this decidedly radical stance of scientism (as it is usually called) is matter not of good sense but of a rather radical and decidedly problematic ideology.

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Science-inspired anti-religionists often support their position by portraying theism as merely the response to a psychological need. Their reasoning goes essentially like this: “Man is a weak and vulnerable creature existing in a difficult and often seemingly hostile world. As such he has a psychological need for reassurance that the world is a user-friendly habitat functioning under the auspices of a benign creative agent or agency.” Now for one thing, to speak of something as “a mere psychological need of man” draws close to self-contradiction. For there is nothing “mere” about such needs. When a psychological need achieves generality it thereby achieves a sort of objective validity as well. Given the realities of human development it is bound to reflect something that has survived in the operations of a rational creative, thereby betokening an efficacy that serves to evidentiate objective validity. Even as our felt need for food would not be there if our bodies were not sustained by nourishment so our felt need for spiritual sustenance could not be there if the world’s spiritual forces did not sustain it. But there is also another problem about consigning religions to the limbo of a “mere psychological need.” For this argument effectively shoots itself in its own foot. The unbeliever who deploys it using a weapon that equally threatens himself since it can just a readily be deployed against the atheist. “Man is a willful and arrogant being for whom the thought of an allobserving and stern judge who condemns his wicked ways is intimidating and daunting. As such that he has a psychological need to be liberated from the prospect of a sternly paternal judge who realizes and condemns the evil of his ways, accordingly there is no more than the response to a psychological need.” The upshot is clear: The Argument from Psychological Need is a two-edged sword that cuts both ways—alike against theism and atheism. In the quarrel between the atheist argumentation from need is a wash. “But where is the evidence that speaks for the truth of religion?” This question has to be approached from the opposite end—from the angle of the question “If those religious contentions were indeed true, what sort of evidence for this fact could we reasonably expect to obtain for it?” After all, belief in God is the sort of thing that is not a matter of scientific observation and theory. We do not, cannot, should not expect astronauts to come back with reports of angelic encounters in outer space. (As Nikita Khrushchev once complained they did not.) It has to be through inner urgings and impetus of our hearts that people are led to religion, not through outer observation. So if there were indeed a benevolent God we would expect that at least in the long run (and not necessarily the short) and at least in the aggregate (and not necessarily everywhere) those who live lives mindful of

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God’s suppositions would derive some benefit thereby. And if it is miracles we demand, then is not our very life itself a constant reminder of the miracles in nature? Is not this sort of evidentiation the best and most one could reasonably expect? What is it you want? Tablets from the mountain? Voices from the clouds? Been there; done that; you just missed it, sorry. The best available evidence for physical theories is experimentation in the physical laboratory; the best available evidence for medical drugs is by clinical trials; the best available evidence for religion is by experimentation and trivial in the laboratory of life. Are nonbelievers happier, better, more contented people than believers? Or is it the other way round? Look about and see for yourself. Here as elsewhere we must allow the indications of the evidence to speak. The reality of it is that science itself is not exempt form “faith in things unseen.” Nothing guarantees that the phenomena are always and everywhere as they are within our range of observation. Nothing guarantees that the laws and regularities that have been in operation in cosmic history heretofore will continue unchanged in the future. Nothing guarantees that other universes (if such there are—and we presumably cannot get there from here) have any even remote resemblance of ours. That nature’s laws are as we think them to be is something we cannot know for sure but can only ... hope. To be sure, the hope that underpins the inductive proceedings of science are geared to the objectives of the enterprise—to expecting enhanced cognitive returns. And it is not for the sake of enhanced knowledge of worldexplanative facts that we turn to religion. But is not the source of the grandeur of scientific hopefulness also filled for the source of religion in relation to the distinctive character of this particular enterprise as a means to situating oneself meaningfully with a difficult and complex world? “But surely scientists are among the smartest people there are, and for the most part they are not religious.” This objection, too, is inappropriate. For one thing, religiosity just is not a matter of smarts—of calculation, of figuring things out by brain power! It is, rather, a matter of having a reflective perspective on matters of life, death, and man’s place in Reality’s great scheme of things—of having a certain stance toward the world we live in and in which reactions like awe and wonder are significant and responses like worshipful humility figure significantly. The idea that it is inappropriate for a scientist to be religious because the majority of scientists are not theists is quite misguided. After all, scientists

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themselves do not proceed in this manner. It is not part of the scientific mentality to “go with the flow” and accept what the majority thinks. Scientists try to figure things out for themselves as best they can. Moreover, the reality of it is that while the majority of scientists are (probably) atheists nevertheless a very sizable minority of them are theists of one sort or another. Certainly this has been so traditionally from Galileo to Newton to Maxwell to Einstein. But even today many fine scientists are theists, and in some fields—cosmological physics in particular—they often even put their theism in touch with their scientific work. “But the idea of an intelligent creator just doesn’t make sense. After all, the universe has developed by some sort of cosmic evolution. And any sort of evolutionary product is inefficient, slow, wasteful. Surely an intelligent creator would do better.” This sort of objection is predicated on the idea that an intelligent creator would not opt for getting the physical reality under way by a process of cosmic evolution proceeding developmentally from some ur-state inaugurated in a big-bang-like initiation event. The objector seems to think it would only be fitting to the divine dignity to inaugurate a universe by zapping it into existence in medias res, as a development-dispensing concern. It is, however, not readily apparent why this would be preferable. And it poses some distinctive problems of its own— for example, why the universe should not have been created five minutes ago completely fitted out with geological traces, human memories, etc. Yet what of slowness? What of wastage? Well, where our objector complains of wastage a more generous spirit might see a Leibnizian Principle of Fertility at work that gives a wide variety of life forms their moment. (Perhaps the objector wouldn’t think much of being a dinosaur, but then many is the small child who wouldn’t agree.) Anyway, perhaps it is better to be a microbe than to be a “Wasn’t that just Isn’t,” to invoke Dr. Seuss. But what of all that suffering that follows to the lot of organic existence? Perhaps it is just collateral damage that in the cosmic struggle towards intelligent life. But this is not the place or time for producing a Theodicy and address the theological Problem of Evil. The salient point is simply that the Wastage Objection is not automatically telling and that various lines of reply are available to deflect its impact. And as to slowness, surely the proper response here is to ask: What’s the hurry? In relation to a virtually infinite vastness of time, any finite initial timespan is but an instant. Overall, it would be profound error to oppose evolution to intelligent design—to see these two as somehow conflicting and incompatible. For

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natural selection—the survival of forms better able to realize selfreplication in the face of challenges and overcome the difficulties posed by the world’s vicissitudes—affords an effective means to intelligent resolutions. (It is no accident that whales and sophisticated counter-designed submarines share much the same physical configuration or that the age of iron succeeded that of bronze.) The process of natural relation at work in the unfolding of biological evolution is replicated in the rational selection we encounter throughout the history of human artifice. On either side, evolution reflects the capacity to overcome obstacles and resolve problems in the direction of greater efficiency and effectiveness. Selective evolutionary processes—alike in natural (biological) and rational (cultural) selection— are thus instrumentalities that move the developmental course of things in the direction of increasing rationality. “But in the light of such utilitarian considerations religion is perhaps simply a matter of evolution-engendered impetus to belief, leaving truth altogether by the wayside, and thereby bereft of rational legitimacy.” Yet does this conclusion really follow? Is conceding that a certain instinct has evolution’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval not already to concede to it a solid basis in fact? To say that religious belief is “no more” than the product of an evolutionary instinct is to have a strange idea about what can be considered “no more.” For to say to a belief-instinct that it is founded in evolution is automatically to concede to a significant evidential basis in the world’s operative realities. Evolution is not a process that favors the misguided, deceitful, and false. As Darwin himself already noted in his Descent of Man, “belief in allpervading spiritual agencies seems to be universal.” And on the basis of evolutionary principles it is difficult to imagine that this would be so if such a belief were not somehow survival conducive. Belief in an ultimately benign cosmos is clearly likely to benefit agents of finite intelligence who must constantly act in the expectation that things will turn out well. And this is going to require the suitable backing of fact. Are things that taste good generally edible and things that taste bad not generally harmful? Is not the tendency to believe that things as are our experience indicates them to be not in general correct as well as essential to the conduct of life? Does evolution itself not proceed via a systemic coordination of utility and correctness? Evolutionary grounding surely constitutes a positive credential rather than a refutation. After all, evolution will not back losers. For beliefmotivated agents, cognitive adequacy is bond to prove survival conducive. Evolution will not—cannot—imprint us with tendencies that are systemati-

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cally counterproductive—even optimal illusions root in processes that work to our advantage. Its motto is: survival of the most advantageous. And which is more advantageous for us: truth or falsehood? Will it advantage us to think that hostiles are friends and friends friendly, that poisons nourish and nourishments poison, that small objects are large and large ones small? There may be forces at work in the universe that engender tendencies to systematic error, but evolution is not one of them. “But what of the untold suffering that has been—and is—imposed on mankind in the name of religion?” All one can say here is that condemnation by associates is not sensible—any more than guilt by association is. Pretty well anything useful in human affairs has the potential of abuse as well. The knife that helps to feed us can murder as well. The medicine that can cure can also poison. The police that sustain our peace can be an instrument of oppression. The religions which should by rights sustain brotherhood can make for enmity. All this is true and regrettable. But there is nothing unique or different here—we confront a fact of life that obtains throughout the realm of human affairs. If we refrain from resort to those things which admit of abuse there is little we would be able to accomplish in this life. Moreover, people in glass houses should not throw stones. When complaining of harm due in the name of religion, one should not overlook entirely harm done under the auspices of science. Those greatest of all physico-experiments, atomic bombs, have killed far more people than the crusades. The medical experimentation of the German extermination camps killed more people than the Spanish Inquisition. The complex machinery of informed consent in matters of pharmacology and medicine represent so many ventures in closing barn doors after fled horses. “But what of all the wicked and even crazy things that people have done—and are doing—in the name of religion?” Here again condemnation by association does not work. Because some people pursue a project in evil ways does not mean that everyone need do so. The situation is akin to the injunction Find yourself a profession. Clearly, the existence of wickedness in the group should not deter one from being a doctor, baker, or candlestick maker. One need not be estranged from religion by the fact that some practitioners are nasty any more than an accountant or professor need be. And of course the same thing goes for scientists as well. The proverbial “mad scientist” does not annihilate the value of the whole venture. To reject being affiliated to the wicked is to resign from the human race.

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“But so far it has only been argued that a scientifically minded person can be religious: that various obstacles and objections can be removed. But it is one thing to hold that something can be done, and something else to hold that it should be done. So why should a modern scientificallyminded person adopt a religion?” The answer is that one should only do so if one wants to: only if there is urging in one’s inner nature that impels one in this direction. But of course human nature being what it is, this is something that is likely to be the case—at least potentially—with all of us. For when we consider our place in the world’s vast scheme of things, all of us are liable to that sense of awe and wonder that lies at the basis of religiosity and to yearn for a reassurance of our worth and dignity only faith (and not knowledge) can provide for us. Man—homo sapiens—is a rational animal. And what lifts us above the level of animality, is this very reason through which we come to knowledge—and preeminently scientific knowledge that includes us regarding the limits and limitations which call for a confirmation of meaning and value to which religious faith alone can adequately respond. “But can’t I lead an ethically good and evaluatively fruitful life without religion?” Certainly you can! Many people manage to do so. But it’s a bit harder. It’s like asking “Can’t I be a good violin player without lots of practice?” or “Can’t I be a fluent Mandarin speaker if I only start learning at 30?” It can be done. Some very fortunate people can bring it off. But it is not easy—and scarcely practicable for most of us. “But all these considerations are vague and directionally inconclusive. They speak for having a religion but do not resolve the issue of which one.” True enough. So what is one to make of the plurality of religions? The reality of different religions is a fact of life. Throughout the history of human civilization, different forms of religious commitment have coexisted on our planet. And it is perfectly clear why this should be so. For religions at once reflect and actualize how people relate to transcendent or “ultimate” realities that create and shape the world we live in and our destiny within it. But of course here as elsewhere how people relate to things is determined by their issue-relevant experience. And since people differently situated in variant historical and cultural contexts have different courses of experience, there are bound to be different religions. After all, some religions are simply unavailable to people for historical reasons. The ancient Greeks of Homer’s day could not have become Muslims or Christians. And cultural context will clearly be another limiting factor. Some religions are inaccessible to people because the whole issue of their experi-

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ence points them in altogether different directions. The Englishmen of the era of Pusey and Newman could be Non-conformist or Anglican—or Roman Catholic. They could not really have joined the Shinto faith, let alone that of the Mayans or the Aztecs. Cultural contexts limit the range of available options. And for particular individuals even one’s personal and idiosyncratic temperament will limit the alternatives that are realistically available to people. So it seems as though the issue of religious pluralism is going to have to be personalistically relativized. There being many religions, the question—seemingly—will be “Which one of these various possibilities is going to be right for me—or for X? For the individual there is going to be a limit to the range of what William James characterized as “live options.” In his characteristically vivid prose he wrote: Ought it, indeed, to be assumed that the lives of all men should show identical religious elements? In other words, is the existence of so many religious types and sects and creeds regrettable? To these questions I answer “No” emphatically. And my reason is that I do not see how it is possible that creatures in such different positions and with such different powers as human individuals are, should have exactly the same functions and the same duties. No two of us have identical difficulties, nor should we be expected to work out identical solutions. Each, from his peculiar angle of observation, takes in a certain sphere of fact and trouble, which each must deal with in a unique manner ... If an Emerson were forced to be a Wesley, or a Moody forced to 1 be a Whitman, the total human consciousness of the divine would suffer.

So while there indeed are various religions, nevertheless the reality of it is that the range of religions that are realistically available to a given individual is drastically curtailed. In adopting a religion as in adopting a profession or selecting a place to live you have to make up your own mind on the basis of the best information you have the time and energy to collect. And the range is confined by potent constraints and depends upon the person’s culture, environment, familial situation, personal disposition, and the like, to an extent that often as not narrows the range of alternatives down to one. The question “What religion is right for me?” is for most of us analogous to that of choosing a language. One’s culture context does the job for most of us. Of course there is some modest degree of choice—we can with great effort tear ourselves loose to go elsewhere. But only if you do so as a small child will the result ever be completely natural. The individual who shifts to another language as an adult will never speak it entirely as a na-

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tive. And those who are able to make even a halfway successful job of it are comparatively few and far between. “But is this sort of position not that of an indifferentist relativism (‘its all just a matter of taste and inclination—there is no rhyme or reason to it.’)?” No. It certainly is not. Rather, it is that of a reasoned contextualism based on what is appropriate for people given circumstances of their particular situation. And contexts can grow—especially under the impetus of expanding experience—personal and vicarious. And there is, of course, no reason why these circumstances should not include a critical scrutiny of the alternatives. For religions are not created equal. An intelligent and enterprising person should not hesitate to explore the options: a religion is not a gift horse into whose mouth one should not look critically. But what sense can one make of the question “Is there one single, uniquely best and appropriate religion?” What sort of cogent case could the antipluralist advocate of “one uniquely true religion” possibly have in view? To all visible intents and purposes this question comes down to: “Is there one religion which any rational person would accept given the opportunity—that is, would freely choose in the light of full information about it and its alternatives?” We are, to all appearance, driven back to Kant’s question about “religion within the limits of reason alone.” On this basis someone could well protest: “Does not this very approach seriously prejudice matters by prejudging a very fundamental issue. For does it not put Reason in the driver’s seat by putting it in the role of the arbiter of religion. And does it thus not ride roughshod over Pascal’s insistence that some human fundamentals are properly matters of the Mind and others of the Heart?” But this objection simply has to be put aside as contextually inappropriate. If that question about the one true and optimal religion is indeed meaningful then there will and must be a pre-commitment neutral, rationally cogent answer to it that is being demanded. We have no sensible alternative here. What sort of answer to our question could we want that is not reasonable? For sure, it would make no sense to assess the merit of religious on there own telling. Some commitment-neutral standpoint is needed. And what better place is there to go than the realm of reason? So what is it that our rationality has to say on the matter? If it is our intent and purpose to proceed objectively and appraise religions on a basis that involves no prior substantive religious commitments and proceeds from a standpoint entirely devoid of substantive religious precommitments,

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then we have no real alternative but to proceed functionally—to go back to square one and begin with the question of the aims and purposes that religions serve as modes of human belief and practice. And so there is really only one path before us. It is—prepare for a shock!—the way of pragmatism, that is, of a functionally oriented inquiry into the question of which religion it is which optimally accomplishes the aims and purposes for which religions are instituted as operative practices within human communities. For if what lies before us is the question of religious optimality—of which of those multiple religions is to qualify as best—then the question of “How for the best?” simply cannot be avoided. At this stage we have no realistic alternative but to view religions in a purposive light and inquire into the aims and purposes for which religions are instituted in human communities. We will—here as elsewhere—have to confront the question of the aims of the enterprise, asking: “Why is it that people should undertake a religious commitment at all? What sensible human purpose is realized by making a religious commitment a significant part of one’s life? What’s in it for us—to put it crassly.” In approaching religion from such a practicalist point of view—inquiring into the human aims and objectives which adherence to a religion can and should facilitate—one is going to come up with some such list as: • Providing a framework for understanding the world and our personal place within it that energizes what Abraham Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature.” • Providing a focus for the sense of awe, wonder, and worship as we puny creatures confront a natural world of vast extent and power, giving a sense of comfort in the face of the vast forces beyond our control. And possibilizing powerful interaction with the agency that govern the fate of all they hold dear. • Providing for an evaluative appreciation of the universe and giving an impetus to human productivity and creativity within it. Enabling a frail and vulnerable creature to feel “at home” in the universe and strengthening the sense of opportunity to have a “meaningful life.” • Providing people with a perspective that gives their lives a meaningful position in the universe’s grand scheme of things, providing them

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a world-view supportive of human aspirations and diminishing any sense of futility, alienation, and dehumanization. • Providing for a sense of social solidarity with our fellows and for an appreciation of the worth and dignity of human potential in a way that strengthens the fabric of mutual concern, care, and respect for one another and a diminishing of man’s inhumanity to man. Then too, there is the role of religion in easing people’s anguish and anxiety in the face of life’s frustrations and difficulties. The spiritual impact of “lifting people’s spirits” is a vibrant reality. In augmenting the quality of their lives and enhancing their performance in meeting life’s challenges religion can and should make a positive contribution to the quality of life. On this basis, it emerges that a complex fabric of potential psychological, social, and cognitive benefits are at issue with a person’s commitment to a religion. In other words there is—or can be—something in it for us. And a chain of natural connections links all of these by a line that runs from cosmic congeniality to individual self-worth, to the worth of our peers, to human solidarity at large. More than any other ideological posture, religious faith makes manifest “the power of positive thinking.” Without religion, in sum, it is somewhere between difficult and impossible to realize various salient positivities that are conducive, and perhaps even to some extent indispensable, to human flourishing. The issue comes down to the question of compassion where to all appearances the best we can then do is to apply the standard of humanity itself and ask: What form of religion is it that most effectively succeeds in calling forth the best in people and most supportively energizing them into a way of life that deserves our admiration and respect? Within the narrow confines that are now upon us this seems to be the best and most one can do to effect and “objective” comparison. For without serious commitment to cultivation of the great goods whose pursuit is an opportunity afforded us by human existence—goodness, happiness, virtue, beauty, knowledge— a religion builds on sandy ground. Even without question-begging precommitments we can look at religions not only subjectively in terms of their capacity to speak to us personally but more impersonally in terms of their capacity to address that larger issue that confront all of us humans relative to the challenges of creating an intellectually and emotionally satisfying life within the circumstances of a complex and often difficult world. Where entry into a community of faith is concerned, we humans, as

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rational beings, are not just entitled but effectively obligated to look for a religion that is intellectually satisfying, personally congenial, and societally benign. A religion whose theologians avoid the difficult questions, whose preachers do not engage the sympathy of our hearts, and whose practitioners are not energized to exert effort for the general good of mankind and the alleviation of suffering is surely thereby one unworthy of enlisting the allegiance of sensible and sensitive people. Admittedly, there is little doubt that, judged by the aforementioned standards, the record of all of the world’s major religions is rather spotty. Unquestionably, our religions—like all other human enterprises and mutilations—will reflect the frailties and imperfections of our species though the fact of its being a structure built up of and by the crocked timber of humanity. But the issue is not one of perfection. It is a matter of the seriousness of effort and the comparative extent of success. To be sure, someone who becomes religious only from considerations of “What’s in it for him” is not an authentically religious person at all. But the crux is that religious commitment is transformative. No matter how you enter in—even if for reasons of human solidarity, let alone for crass and self-advantaging motives—you will not manage to remain there. Commitment, no matter how modest at first, will undergo a natural process of growth. “But what if I can’t get myself to believe all those creedal doctrines and teachings that go with a religion?” You might begin by realizing that getting into a religion is not a matter of all-at-once. Make a start! Give God a chance! The odds are that he’ll help you work things out as life moves along. And get to know and interact with other believers; solidarity of association will help. (Reading Blaise Pascal’s Thoughts (Pensées) may give you good guidance here!)2, 3 NOTES 1

William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York & London: Longmans Green, 1902), p. 487.

2

A vast body of excellent material is available on the topic of this lecture. Michael Ruse’s Can a Darwinean be a Christian (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001) is a good example and the writings of William James afford a classic source. A fine contemporary anthology is A. R. Peacock ed., The Science and Theology in the Twentieth Century (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1985). The website of an organization of Christians in Science and

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engineering of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) at http://www.asa3.org/asa/topics/empty/WebList/List1WebBooks.html points to many excellent discussions of theses topics. Some stimulating deliberations are offered in such personal statements of Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006) and Owen Gingerich God’s Universe (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006). An interesting collection of interviews with twelve leading scientist is presented in P. Clayton and J. Schaal (eds.) Practicing Science, Living Faith (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007). Two scholarly journals of excellent quality are devoted to cognate issues: Faith and Philosophy and Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science. The Templeton Foundation has sponsored numberless conferences and workshops for constructive interchange between scientists and theologians. Many scientific investigators are nowadays pursuing lines of research that have religious ramifications. An example of a scientifically sophisticated paper of theological bearing whose general drift, at least, may be accessible to a scientifically untutored reader is Euan J. Squires, “Do We Live in the Simplest Possible Interesting World?” The European Journal of Physics, vol. 2 (1981), pp. 55-57. 3

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This essay is dedicated to my daughter Catherine, who encouraged me to discuss the question that it addresses. I am grateful to Robert Kaita, James V. Maher, and Aug Tong for constructive suggestions.

Chapter 7 DARWINISM AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN IN THE CONTEXT OF THEISM 0. IMPERIALISTIC DARWINISM

T

he most dramatic feature of Darwinism is its explosive expansion since its originator’s day. Darwin’s original work addressed the origin of the biological species on this planet and of the human species in particular. In this light it afforded a theory that is local and parochial. But nowadays evolution has come to be viewed in unrestricted scope. However, no serious biologist would question the idea that if organic life exists on other planets it, too, will be subject to evolution by natural selection. And more than that—vastly more. Cosmologists nowadays do not hesitate to envision a process of “cosmic evolution,” and indeed not a few of them are prepared to think of the temporal development of the cosmos—on its initial stages at least—as a matter of something very much like natural selection via a survival of the “fittest” among proto-possibilities. Then too, historians of ideas and cultural artifacts—the present author included—are prepared to regard the development of such items as a matter of cultural evolution through a process of rational selection subject to the pressures of functional efficacy. Evolution has become transmuted into an instrumentality of vast applicative scope. 1. DARWINISM VERSUS INTELLIGENT DESIGN? To some the title of this essay will seem a misnomer. They will think the “and” should be replaced by “versus” because mutually conflicting theories are at issue. But this view of the matter is very questionable because a plausible case can be made for regarding natural selection—broadly and comprehensively understood—as a means or instrument of intelligent design. To begin with it should be clear that two very different questions must be carefully distinguished.

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

1. Is the cosmos intelligently designed? Once we resolve the purely conceptual issues of what it is for a system to be intelligently designed (simple but pervasive laws, ontological economy, efficient processes, harmoniously symmetric structures, and what have you), the issue of whether the physical universe constitutes an intelligently designed system becomes a straightforwardly scientific question. It is simply a matter of resolving the strictly descriptive question: Is the universe like that? It is after all, one thing to say that the world is intelligently designed and something quite different to say that it is the work of an intelligent designer. And once it is supposed that we have some notion of how an intelligent designer would create a world if such an agent contrived it (and note that this is an entirely hypothetical matter), then the question of the world’s having such a nature would be wholly factual and scientific. For the question now is simply: is the world like that? However whether this feature—if indeed applicable—characterizes nature thanks to its imposition by an intelligent creator or whether it obtains because that is nature’s inherent way of things is something that lies beyond the power of an empirical (nature-observing) science to determine. Looking at how a mechanism works will not—cannot—reveal the circumstances of its initiation. On the issue of what the world is like, science can speak with authority. On the question of how and why it came to be initiated that way science is bound to remain silent. And it will do so not because of any defect or shortcoming on its part, but simply because that question lies outside the domain of its definitive mandate of elucidating the actual. If intelligence-favorable functioning does indeed characterize the modus operandi of nature we would not—should not—expect it to be discernable whether this was creation-imposed or naturally inherent in nature’s modus operandi. The question of whether or not there was a creation transaction at O in which the world’s nature was determined which the difference between creator is not something which an examination of natural history, however complete, could possibly decide. The world’s discernable nature cannot speak for its inauguration. For an inaugural instant is not a part of the process being initiated, any more than in counting objects, 1, 2, 3, etc. zero as the start of a count forms part of that count itself, or that the blank that is the start of a paragraph is part of that paragraph. The creation—if creation there is—is not a part of natural

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history. The time-axis of a created world is represented by an interval that is open to the left: ( O That particular initial point—the “origin” O—does not belong to that axis at all. It is simply that for any ∈-sized timespan after O—no matter how diminutively small—the world already exists and its processes are in play. The nature of those processes cannot determine the situation at O. Nature’s creation is not a theme for natural science. Origination precedes existence and a science that addresses the nature of existence does not—cannot— deal with it. What is at issue with the question of the why and how of ultimate origination is of a different sort—from that of modus operandi—one which by its nature is extra-scientific. (Thus science can certainly explain to us how it is that there are whales in the world. But the question of why the world is such that there are whales in it is something else again. And the question of why it is that the world exhibits intelligent design—supposing it to do so— is one of the same order.) So we will now also be faced with the very different question: 2. If it is indeed the case that the cosmos is intelligently designed, then how did it get to be that way? Many participants in the debates about intelligent design get things badly confused. Deeply immersed in odium theologicum they think that divine creation is the only pathway to intelligent design and thereby feel impelled to reject the idea of an intelligently designed universe in order to keep God out of it. They think that intelligent design can only come to realization through the intermediation of an intelligently designing creator. But this view is simply incorrect. A perfectly natural impetus to harmonious coordination could perfectly well issue in an intelligently designed result. And so could the natural selection inherent in some macro-evolutionary process. Consider the analogies. There are many ways in which an organic species can endure by achieving survival across generations—the multiplicity of sea turtles, the speed of gazelles, the hardness of tortoise shells, and the simplicity of micro-organisms all afford examples. But among these survival strategies intelligence—the resource of intelligent beings—is an

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adaptive instrumentality of potent and indeed potentially optimal efficacy and effectiveness. So in a universe that is sufficiently fertile and complex, the emergence of intelligent beings can be seen as something that is “only natural” under the pressure of evolutionary processes. What evolution by natural selection does is to take some of the magic out of intelligence—to help de-mystify that presence of intelligent in the cosmos. It is a profound error to oppose evolution to intelligent design—to see these two as somehow conflicting and incompatible. For natural selection—the survival of forms better able to realize self-replication in the face of challenges and overcome the difficulties posed by the world’s vicissitudes—affords an effective means to intelligent resolutions. (It is no accident that whales and sophisticated computer-designed submarines share much the same physical configuration or that the age of iron succeeded that of bronze.) The process of natural selection at work in the unfolding of biological evolution is replicated in the rational selection we encounter throughout the history of human artifice. On either side, evolution reflects the capacity to overcome obstacles and resolve problems in the direction of greater efficiency and effectiveness. Selective evolutionary processes— alike in natural (biological) and rational (cultural) selection—are thus instrumentalities that move the developmental course of things in ways selective of increasing rationality. 2. SOME OBJECTIONS TO EVOLVED DESIGN “But is evolution by variation and survivalistic selection not an enormously wasteful mode of operation?” And is it not cumbersome and much too slow? But where the objector complains of wastage here, a more generous spirit might see a Leibnizian Principle of fertility at work that gives a wide variety of life forms their moment. (Perhaps the objector wouldn’t think much of being a dinosaur, but then many is the small child who wouldn’t agree.) Anyway, perhaps it is better to be a microbe than to be a “Wasn’t that just Isn’t,” to invoke Dr. Seuss. But what of all that suffering that follows to the lot of organic existence? Perhaps it is just collateral damage that in the cosmic struggle towards intelligent life. But this is not the place or time for producing a Theodicy and address the theological Problem of Evil. The salient point is simply that the Wastage Objection is not automatically telling and that various lines of reply are available to deflect its impact.

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Now on to slowness. Surely the proper response here is to ask: What’s the hurry? In relation to a virtually infinite vastness of time, any finite initial timespan is but an instant. 3. INTELLIGENCE AS AN EVOLUTIONARY PIVOT An organically viable environment—to say nothing of a knowable one— must thereby incorporate orderly experientiable structures. There must be regular patterns of occurrence in nature that even simple, single-celled creatures can embody in their make-up and reflect in their capacities. Even the humblest organisms, snails, say, and even algae, must so operate that certain types of stimuli (patterns of recurrently discernible impacts) call forth appropriately corresponding types of response—that such organisms can “detect” a structured pattern in their natural environment and react to it in a way that proves to their advantage in evolutionary terms. Even its simplest creatures can maintain themselves in existence only by swimming in a sea of regularities of a sort that would be readily detectable by intelligence. Moreover, to emerge to prominence through evolution intelligence must give an “evolutionary edge” to its possessors. The world must encapsulate straightforwardly “learnable” patterns and periodicities of occurrence in its operations—relatively simple laws. A world that is too anarchic or chaotic for reason to get a firm grasp on the modus operandi of things will be a world in which intelligent beings cannot emerge through the operations of evolutionary mechanisms. In a world that is not substantially lawful they cannot emerge. In a world whose law structure is not in many ways rather simple, they just cannot function. On the other hand, however, in a world without significantly diversified phenomena intelligent creatures will lack opportunities for development. If their lifespan is too short, they cannot learn. If too long, there is too slow a pace of generational turn-over for effective development—a sort of cognitive arteriosclerosis. Accordingly, nature’s own contribution to the issue of the intelligibility of nature has to be the possession of a relatively simple, uniform, and systematic law structure—one that deploys so uncomplicated a set of regularities that even a community of inquirers possessed of only rather modest capabilities can be expected to achieve a fairly good grasp of it. A world in which intelligence emerges by anything like standard evolutionary processes must be a realm pervaded by regularities and peri-

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odicities regarding organism-nature interaction that produces and perpetuates organic species. On this line of deliberation, then, nature admits cognitive access not merely because it has laws (is a cosmos), but because it has relatively simple laws, and those relatively simple laws must be there because if they were not, then nature just could not afford a viable environment for intelligent life. The strictly hypothetical and conditional character of this line of reasoning must be acknowledged. It does no more than maintain the purely conditional thesis that if intelligent creatures are going to emerge in the world by evolutionary processes, then the world must be ratiophile, so to speak— that is, user-friendly for rational intelligences. It is not, of course, being argued that the world must contain intelligent beings by virtue of some sort of transcendental necessity. Rather, a conditional situation—if intelligencecontravening then intelligible—is quite sufficient for present purposes. For the question we face is why we intelligent creatures present on the world’s stage should be able to understand its operations in significant measure. And the conditional story at issue fully suffices to accomplish this particular job in view with linking evolution and intelligent design. In sum, then, we have the composite consequences of two theses: (1) that a complex world with organisms that develop by natural selection is going to be such that intelligent beings are likely to emerge, and (2) that a world which permits the emergence of intelligent beings by natural diverseness success is going to be an intelligently designed world. • The fact that the world’s realities proceed and develop under the aegis of natural laws: that it is a manifold of lawful order whose doings exhibit a self-perpetuating stability of processual function. • The fact of a course of cosmic development that has seen an evergrowing scope for manifolds of lawful order providing step by step the materials for the development front of the laws of physics, their theme of chemistry, their biology, their sociology, etc. • The fact that intelligent beings have in fact emerged—that nature’s modus operandi has possibilized and facilitated the emergence of intelligence.

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• The fact of an ever-deepening comprehension/penetration of nature’s ways on the part of intelligent beings—their ongoing expansion and deepening of their underlying of the world’s events and processes. And so, the key that unlocks all of these large explanatory issues regarding the nature of the world is the very presence of intelligent beings upon its stage. For if intelligence is to emerge in a world by evolutionary means, it becomes a requisite that that world must be substantially intelligible. It must comport itself in a way that intelligent beings can grasp, and thereby function in a way that is substantially regular, orderly, economical, rational. In sum it must be the sort of world that intelligent beings would contrive if they themselves were world contrivers, so that the world must be “as if” it were the product of an intelligent agent or agency. But there is no way to take that “if” out of it. 4. INTELLIGENT DESIGN DOES NOT REQUIRE PERFECTION “But does not reality’s all too evident imperfection constitute a decisive roadblock to intelligent design? For if optimal alternatives were always realized would not the world be altogether perfect in every regard?” Not at all! After all, the best achievable result for a whole will, in various realistic conditions, requires a less-than-perfect outcome for the parts. A game with multiple participants cannot be won by every one of them. A society of many members cannot put each of them at the top of the heap. In an engaging and suspenseful plot things cannot go with unalloyed smoothness for everybody in every character. Moreover, there are generally multiple parameters of positivity that function competitively so that some can only be enhanced at the cost of other—even as to make a car speedier we must sacrifice operating costs. With an automobile, the parameters of merit clearly include such factors as speed, reliability, repair infrequency, safety, operating economy, aesthetic appearance, road-handle ability. But in actual practice such features are interrelated. It is unavoidable that they trade off against one another: more of A means less of B. It would be ridiculous to have a supersafe car with a maximum speed of two miles per hour. It would be ridiculous to have a car that is inexpensive to operate but spends three-fourths of the time in a repair shop. Invariably, perfection—an all-at-once maximization of every value dimension—is inherently unrealizable because of the inherent interaction of evaluative parameters. In designing a car you cannot

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maximize both safety and economy of operation, and analogously, the world is not, and cannot possibly be, absolutely perfect—perfect in every respect—because this sort of absolute perfection is in principle impossible of realization. What we have here is a relation of competition and trade-off among modes of merit akin to the complementarity relation of quantum physics. The holistic and systemic optimality of a complex whole will require some of its constituent comportments to fall short of what would be content for it if abstractly considered in detached isolation. This suffices to sideline the objection: “If intelligent design obtains, why isn’t the world absolutely perfect?” The interactive complexity of value is crucial here. For it is the fundamental fact of axiology that every object has a plurality of evaluative features some of which will in some respects stand in conflict. And consequently in any multicriterial setting, “absolute” perfection is simply an impossibility. 5. HOW CAN ONE ACCOUNT FOR A NOOPHELIC UNIVERSE But why should it be that the universe is noophelic (“intelligencefriendly”) in being so constituted as to permit the emergence of intelligence. Three possible answers to the problem of nature’s user friendliness toward intelligence suggest themselves: • The universe is itself the product of the creative agency of an intelligent being who, as such, will of course factor the interests of intelligence. • Our universe is simply one item within a vast megaverse of alternatives—and it just so happens (by pure chance, as it were) that the universe we ourselves inhabit exhibits intelligent design and intelligence-friendliness. • Any manifold able to constitute a universe that is self-propagating and self-perpetuating over time is bound to develop in due course in the direction of an intelligence-favoring dimension. The same sort of selective developmental pressures that make for the emergence of intelligent beings in the universe make for the emergence of an intelligent design of the universe.

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Note that the first and the last of these prospects are perfectly compatible. But both are incompatible with the middle alternative whose bizarre character marks its status as that of a decidedly desperate recourse. To be sure, if the world is intelligently designed there yet remains the pivotal question: How did it get that way? Here there comes a parting of the way with two available routes, namely: by natural means or by super- or supra-natural means. There is nothing about intelligent design as such that constrains one route or the other. Intelligent design does not demand an intelligent designer—any more than an inefficiently designed reality would require an incompetent designer. A naturally emerging object need not —will not of necessity—be made into artifact by its possession of a failure whose artifice might also produce. Being intelligently designed no more demands an intelligent designer than saying it is harmoniously arranged requires a harmonious arranger or saying it is spatially extended requires a spatial extender. 6. DOES NOOPHELIA DEMAND THEISM? Insofar as intelligent designing is naturalized as an internal aspect of the modus operandi of nature it does not require an intelligent designercreator. As per the third alternative contemplated above, it can perfectly well, operate autonomously as a feature of natural process independent of any theological underpinnings. For the impetus to noophelia can be seen as analogous to the impetus to action minimality—simply as a fundamental aspect of nature’s modus operandi. On the other hand it is also perfectly compatible with theism, seeing that one would expect an intelligent creator to institute an intelligently functioning “noophelic” reality. Many aspects of animate and inanimate nature exhibit the characteristic hallmarks of intelligent design: orderliness, stability, uniformity, economy, and efficiency included. All these are things that an intelligent agent or agency will doubtless prize. But to be intelligently designed is to be as though an intelligent designer has contrived it. And this is just not the same as being designed with or by intelligence. The first has to do with the descriptive nature of the product, the other a matter of it genesis and mode of production. And there is no need to invoke a supra-natural agent to account for an intelligently designed product—nature herself is all too often up to the job.

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What optimalism maintains is that nature is intelligently designed by way of functioning in such a way as though it were the product of a creative rational intelligence—an intelligent creator. And “as thought” simply does not translate into “because.” No doubt God is necessary in the larger scheme of things. But though he would doubtless be sympathetic to a value tropic universe, he need not be invoked explicitly in its explanation. Optimalism can stand on its own feet: it does not require theism. There is no necessity to seeing optimalism realization as divinely instituted. It can in principle, be an entirely naturalistic theory that stands on its own footing and need not issue from a divine decree. The doctrine is altogether selfsupportive, able to stand on its own feet through obtaining on its own basis—because that’s for the best. It need not be seen as dependent on some external basis or realization—some productive agent or agency. A word of caution is however needed at this point. True, optimalism can sidestep the complexities of theological explanation. But the rationale for this is not an odium theologicum—an aversion to theological considerations as such. It is, rather, the idea of the medieval dictum non in philosophia recurrere est ad deum—that we should not ask God to pull our philosophical chestnuts out of the fire. The principle of rational economy is at work. There is no point in bringing heavy machinery to work where lesser mechanisms can do the job. Synoptically holistic questions like “Why is there anything at all?” pose philosophical problems and they ought ideally to be answered by merely philosophical (rather than theological) means. On the other hand, it must be stressed that optimalistic explanation is altogether congenial to theism. To be sure there is no reason of necessity why a universe that is intelligently designed as user-friendly for intelligent beings must be the result of the agency of an intelligent being any more than a universe that is clumsily designed for accommodating clumsy beings would have to be the creative product of a clumsy being. But while this is indeed true nevertheless, such a universe is altogether harmonious to theistic cosmogony. An intelligently construed universe does not demand obvious creation but is nevertheless altogether consonant with such an origination. And so: Optimalism is not only compatible with but actually congenial to theism. For in fact theism enjoins optimalism. A benign creator will surely act so as to assure the optimality of the creation. Moreover, optimalism retains the compliment and militates for theism. For if it is granted that it is for the best that God should exist, then optimalism’s insistence that what is for the best is actual, would speak for God’s existence as

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a logical consequence.1 So it would be difficult to be an all-out optimalist without being a theist. Be this as it may, the fact remains that it is only to be expected that if the world is created by such a God as the tradition encourages us to accept, then the world that this God creates should be one whose conditions are optimal for intelligent beings to exist and to thrive. NOTES 1

Our metaphysical invocation of a principle of value is akin to A. C. Ewing’s long neglected theological application of similar ideas in his interesting article “Two ‘Proofs’ of God’s Existence,” Religious Studies, vol. 1 (1961), pp. 29-45. Ewing there propounds the argument that God’s existence is to be accounted for axiologically: that he exists “because it was supremely good that God should exist” (p. 35), thus contemplating the prospect that value is so fundamental that the deity itself can be accounted for in its terms.

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Chapter 8 AQUINAS AND THE PRINCIPLE OF EPISTEMIC DISPARITY 1. THE PRINCIPLE OF EPISTEMIC DISPARITY

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here can be no doubt that ignorance exacts a price in incomprehension. And it is instructive to consider this circumstance in a theological light. The world we live in is a manifold that is not of our making but of Reality’s—of God’s if you prefer. It is quite definitively not our human agency that is at issue here and the principles at work are bound to stretch beyond the realm of our comprehension. The Old Testament is already strikingly explicit on these matters: For what is now at issue might be called Isaiah’s Principle on the basis of the verse: For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My way, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the Earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. [Isaiah 55: 8-9.] And again: Who has measured the waters ... and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure ... Who has directed the mind of the Lord, or being his counselor has taught him? [Isaiah 40: 12-13.] Christian theologians have often proceed along the same line of thought, as in clear in the teachings of St. Thomas Aquinas. He writes: The knowledge that is natural to us has its source in our senses and therefore extends just as far as it can be led by sensible things. But our understanding cannot reach beyond these matters to an apprehension of God’s essence. (ST., Questions on God, Q. 12, § 12.)

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

A fundamental law of epistemology is at work here namely what might be called the Principle of Epistemic Disparity to the effect that a mind of lesser power is for this very reason unable to understand adequately the workings of a mind of greater power. An intellect that can only just manage to play tic-tac-toe cannot possibly comprehend the ways of one that is expert at chess. Aquinas constantly reminds us of the important difference between knowing the that of things (scire an est) and the more demanding matter of knowing their what (scire quid est). And this is important in the present context. For while the weaker mind can doubtless realize that the stronger can solve problems it itself cannot—and on occasion recognize that it has done so—nevertheless it cannot understand how it manages to do this. The knowledge of limited knowers is inevitably restricted in matters of detail. To the lesser mind the performances of a more powerful one are bound to seem like magic. Even as there is no proportion between the finite and the infinite, so there is no proportion between our finite minds and the mind of God. (“Nulla est proportio intellectus creati ad deum” [ST 1a, Q 12, ş 1]). Of course proportion (proprtio) is not relation (relatio). But even there there are problems. What we know of the workings of God’s mind proceeds largely by the via negative: to say that God knows facts by immediate intuition is, in the end, little more than to say that his knowledge is not discursively inferential, it not seriously perceptual, is not this and is not that. For us, the operation of God’s knowledge is shrouded in mystery: we know a good deal of its that but effectively nothing positive about its how. Consider in this light the less radical illustration of the vast disparity of computational power between a mathematical tyro like most of us and a mathematical prodigy like Ramanujan. Not only cannot our tyro manage to answer the number-theoretic questions that such a genius resolves in the blink of an eye, but the tyro cannot even begin to understand the processes and procedures that the Indian genius employs. As far as the tyro is concerned, it is all sheer wizardry. No doubt once an answer is given he can check its correctness. But actually finding the answer is something which that lesser intellect cannot manage—the how of the business lies beyond its grasp. And, for much the same sort of reason, a mind of lesser power cannot discover what the question-resolving limits of a mind of greater power are. It can never say with warranted assurance where the limits of questionresolving power lie. (In some instances it may be able to say what’s in and what’s out, but it can never map the dividing boundary). And it is not sim-

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ply that a more powerful mind will know quantitatively more facts than a less powerful one, but that its conceptual machinery is ampler in encompassing ideas and issues that are quantitatively inaccessible in lying altogether outside the conceptual horizon of its less powerful compeers. Now insofar as the relation of a lesser towards a higher intelligence is replaced in analogous parallelism in to the relation between an earlier state of science and a later state. It is not that Aristotle could not have comprehended quantum theory—he was a very smart fellow and could certainly have learned. But what he could not have done it to reformulate quantum theory within his own conceptual framework, by restating its claims within his own familiar terms of reference. The very ideas at issue lay outside of the conceptual horizon of Aristotle’s science, and like present-day students he would have had to master them from the ground up. Just this sort of thing is at issue with the relation of a less powerful intelligence to a more powerful one. It has been said insightfully that from the vantage point of a less developed technology another, substantially advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. And exactly the same holds for a more advanced conceptual (rather than physical) technology. Since substantive knowledge is by definition knowledge of fact, we come here to confront he instructive implications of the analogy between God’s knowledge of truths and the manifold of actual fact about this real world of ours. For consider in this light the hopeless difficulties encountered nowadays in the popularization of physics—of trying to characterize the implications of quantum theory and relativity theory for cosmology into the subscientific language of everyday life. A classic obiter dictum of Niels Bohr is relevant: “We must be clear that, when it comes to atoms, language can be used only as in poetry.” And so, alas, we have to recognize that in philosophy, too, we are in the final analysis in something of the same position. In the history of culture, Homo sapiens began his quest for knowledge in the realm of poetry. And in the end it seems that in basic respect we are destined to remain close to this starting point. The principle at issue with the general epistemic disparity between lesser and larger intellects is not something that St. Thomas articulated expressis verbis, in so many words. He was, however, perfectly clear regarding the limitations of finite minds in relation to God and perfectly aware of the crucial distinction between the that of things on the one hand and the what and how of things on the other. Citing the authority of Dionysius,1 he agrees that “things of a higher order cannot be known through likenesses of a uniform order” (ST, 1a, Q. 12, ş 3), so that “God’s essence is unfathom-

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able [to us], combining to a transcended degree whatever can be signified or understood by a created mind” (loc. cit.). All in all, then, the salient point of man/God disparity is one that Aquinas grasps with admissible precision. And it is one of its prime implications that we just cannot wrap our minds around the real truth of things—that the extent and complexity of the real is of a magnitude that outruns our limited powers. 2. A PARADOX AND ITS RESOLUTION A paradox seems to emerge in this connection. On the one hand we are told that we cannot fathom the mind of God. On the other hand we are given all sorts of information about it: that it is omniscient, that it knows truths by immediate insight, that it does not proceed discursively, etc. Indeed whole chapters of the Summa are dedicated to God’s knowledge (viz. 1a, Q 14). How can this seeming conflict be resolved? Let us ask St. Thomas. He tells us: Whoever sees God in his essence sees something that exists infinitely, and sees it to be infinitely intelligent, but without understanding it infinitely. It is as thought one might realize that a certain proposition can be proved without realizing how one can to this. (ST, 1a, Q. 12, ş 7.) As is usual in philosophy—and was virtually universal in medieval philosophy—the problem is solved by means of distinctions. And with characteristic acumen, Aquinas puts his finger upon exactly the right distinction, namely that between product and process. For here too we know THAT God can do all sorts of things, while nevertheless lacking any and all information as to just HOW this is managed. (For instance we know that God is omniscient without having any clue as to how he goes about it.) Yet another crucial distinction also comes into it, namely that between positivity and negativity—as St. Thomas clearly recognizes. All of those things we know about God’s mind are actually negative in their bearing. • God is omniscient: that is, there is no fact that he fails to know. • God’s knowledge is immediate: that is, it is nowise discursive or inferential.

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• God’s knowledge is exact: that is, it is nowise approximate or imprecise In characterizing God we have little alternative but to use the via negativa because the entire terminology at our disposal regarding matters of mundane applicability does not—cannot—extend to God. And Aquinas emphatically endorsed the thesis of Diogenes that the terminology of ordinary usage does not pertain to God because “what they [ordinary words] signify does not belong to God in the way that they signify it, but in a higher way.” (ST, 1a, Q. 12, ş 13 ). The ontological chasm that separates the finite and the infinite means that a terminology that accommodates concepts devised to accommodate the cognitive needs of the former cannot function successfully in relation to the latter. 3. LESSONS Are there any broader, nontheological lessons to be drawn from the theologian’s doctrine of an epistemic disparity between men and God by those philosophers who are not theologically engaged—those who are atheistic or agnostic or simply reluctant to invoke God in philosophical deliberations? I do believe that there are and they run somewhat as follows. In characterizing the universe as designed intelligently we deal only with the product and not the means of its realization. It is one thing to consider the universe as designed by an intelligence and quite another to think it to be designed intelligently. After all, the feature of an item is one thing and the manner of its production another. (A house can be gigantic without having been built by giants.) To say that nature is so constituted as though a supreme intelligence had designed it is no more theistically committal than to say that a river’s course proceeds as though a palsied cartographer had planned it is anthropomorphically committal. Both modes of expression in fact merely describe the nature of the product and actually remain silent on the means of its production. To be designed intelligently is one thing—namely to exhibit intelligence IN design—but to be designed BY intelligence is something else again. To say that Nature comports itself rationally—that its modus operandi is so constituted as though it were the product of a creative intelligence—is to be descriptive and not explanatory about it.

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So let it be granted for the sake of discussion that—prescinding entirely from the issue of its productive origin—inhabit in a world that exhibits complexity, subtlety, and coherence to a degree that we can plausibly deem it as intelligently contrived. And now let us contemplate the purely hypothetical question: “If (even though perhaps contrary to your belief) this universe whose intelligent design you have conceded were to be the product of a creative designer, then would not this creator have to be of an intelligence vastly more powerful than that which we knowers can claim for ourselves—be it individually or collectively?” Clearly, the intelligent design of such a world sets the bar so high that we could not actually meet it. And so, given the almost inevitably affirmative answer to our purely hypothetical question, the Principle of Epistemic Disparity immediately comes into operation to indicate that in the final analysis we really cannot expect to achieve a fully and definitively adequate understanding of the modus operandi of nature. Against this background, then, the Principle of Epistemic Disparity strongly suggests that there may indeed be a limit to the extent to which we humans can realize the aspiration of achieving a final theory that comprehensively accounts for the endlessly vast tapestry of the phenomena of nature. And consequently, while there is no problem with the idea of improving our scientific understanding of the world, nevertheless the idea of perfecting it must be rejected as an unattainable pie in the sky. In science as elsewhere, coming to the end of our road does not necessarily mean coming to the end of the road. And so the lesson of these deliberations—even for those caught up in the unhappy state of odium theologicum—is given in a paraphrase of Hamlet: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your science.”2 NOTES 1

The Devine Names 4, IV, G. 3.588.

2

This is an address given by the author on the occasion of the award of the Aquinas Medal of the American Catholic Philosophical Association in Milwaukee in November of 2007. It is published in the Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, vol. 81 (2007).

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Chapter 9 THOMISM: PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE 1. THE PAST

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he journey of St. Thomas Aquinas through the realm of philosophical history has gone along a rocky road beset with many ups and downs. Within three years of his death in 1274, various propositions substantially identical with some of his main philosophical views were formally condemned as errors by Bishop Tempier of Paris. This episcopal condemnation was revoked a generation later in 1325, but Thomistic teachings nevertheless met with severe criticism in various quarters in the later Middle Ages—especially among the Franciscans. However, since Renaissance times, most of the popes have praised Aquinas’ teaching, and St. Pius V provided for the first collected editions of St. Thomas’ works along also with those of the Franciscan St. Bonaventure, diplomatically proclaiming both to be “Doctors of the Church.” Already by the time of the Council of Trent (1545-63) Thomas was regarded as the paradigm of Roman orthodoxy. In 1879 in his encyclical Aeterni Patris, Pope Leo XIII reemphasized the importance of the teachings of St. Thomas for Catholic thought characterizing him as “the chief and master of the scholastics.” This led to the establishment of the Academy of St. Thomas in Rome and the Institut Superior de Philosophie at the University of Louvain, both especially dedicated to the study of his thought. But in consequence, Thomas suffered one of the most unfortunate fates that can befall an intellectual innovator—his ideas became orthodoxy. The crowning misfortune occurred in 1914 when a group of Catholic professors drew up a set of 24 propositions which—as they saw it—encapsulated the essential of St. Thomas’ philosophy. The Sacred Congregation of Studies then proceeded to publish—and Pope Pius X to approve—these “Twenty-Four Theses” as the Canonical expression of the teachings of the Doctor of the Church. The poisoned chalice of official orthodoxy was pressed to the lips of academic Thomism with the unhappy result of a sterile formalization that has to be seen as a foregone conclu-

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sion. The philosophy of St. Thomas was widely accepted as standard fare in Catholic seminaries and institutions of learning and its teachings routinized into handbooks and manuals to create a neo-Thomism of a distinctly stultified character. And so matters came near to being the beginning to the end. But fortunately, as the 20th century unfolded, various efforts were set afoot in Catholic intellectual circles to break out of this formalized and sterile mode of thinking and teaching. And while Catholic thinkers now also looked in other directions for sources of inspiration—above all to phenomenology, to existentialism, to vitalism and elsewhere—nevertheless the influence of St. Thomas survived the disillusionment consequent upon that ossification of his teachings. The displacement of Thomism from the pedestal of orthodoxy has proved to be its salvation. Just how does the matter stand at present? What price St. Thomas on the contemporary market-place of ideas? It must be recognized that he does very well indeed. The existence of institutions is one straw in the wind. In North America alone, for example, there is a good deal of activity including a Center for Thomistic Studies (in Houston, TX), an academic journal called The Thomist, two Aquinas colleges and two St. Thomas Universities (in Miami, Florida and Fredericton, New Brunswick), as well as a University of St. Thomas (Houston, TX) with another of the same name in St. Paul, MN thrown in for good measure. Of course, institutionalism is not the real issue. More revealing is the matter of intellectual engagement within the larger philosophical community. The ongoing influence of St. Thomas is apparent not just in institutional terms but in more vividly in personal terms as well. Such outstanding—and outstandingly creative—Thomists as Jacques Maritain (1882-1973), Etienne Gilson (1884-1978), and Bernard Lonergan (19041984), and W. Norris Clarke (*1915) have produced a body of writing and teaching that has projected the doctrine as a live force well into the 20th century through the ongoing efforts of their students, followers, and admirers. And independently of these influences, various other Catholic philosophers of religion continue to lean heavily on St. Thomas as an energizer for their creative efforts. No less significant, however, is the fact that the work of St. Thomas has continued to exert a powerful influence on many first-rate thinkers who stand entirely outside the Catholic orbit. It is instructive in this regard to look at a baker’s dozen representative 20th century classics. Such a demarche yields the following number of mentions of St. Thomas:

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2—A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality 3—John Rawls, Theory of Justice 1—Bertrand Russell, Human Knowledge 2—Ernest Cassirer, Essay on Man 2—John Dewey, Reconstruction in Philosophy 5—Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method 3—Martin Heidegger, Being and Time 1—R. G. Collingwood, Essay on Metaphysics 1—J. C. C. Smart, Essays, Metaphysics and Mind 3—C. S. Peirce, Principles of Philosophy 1—W. V. Quine, Ways of Paradox To give some flesh to these skeletal numbers, let us consider a representative cross-section of how these 20th century philosophers have taken the ideas of St. Thomas into account in their diverse deliberations. In his classic tract on Pragmatism (1905), William James makes no mention of Aquinas at all. But in a fairly extensive outline for the pragmatism lectures that he presented at Wellesley he cites St. Thomas (along with Aristotle among the ancients) among one of those who rejected what he calls “the false opposition of philosophy and science” and who deserve credit for seeing natural and theoretical philosophy as being of a piece. In Process and Reality (1929), A. N. Whitehead makes two references to Aquinas. In the first of these St. Thomas is derogated as one of those philosophers who showed a prejudgment in favor of the deductive method of logic and mathematics. And in the second passage Whitehead contrasts his own view of the organic unity of mind and body as differing “from the Scholastic view of St. Thomas Aquinas, of the mind as informing the body” (p. 108). In both instances, Whitehead is not much interested in the

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positions of St. Thomas, but invokes his views simply as a reference point of contrast in expounding his own position. In his Essay on Man (1949), Ernest Cassirer referenced St. Thomas twice. In the context of setting out his own view of “The Crisis of Man’s Knowledge of Himself” Cassier pictures St. Thomas as holding that the Fall of Man obscured the original power of mankind’s cognition, which now stands in need of illumination and grace, since it cannot recover its power and glory by use only of its own unaided resources. The second reference makes the supplemental point that St. Thomas sees those needed augmentations as avoiding and empowering reason rather than somehow conflicting with it: inspiration and revelation are supra-rational and extrarational (and supra-natural as well), but not irrational or anti-rational. It is clear from the context that Cassirer cites St. Thomas not to refute his views but to invoke them as affording enlightening insight into the nature of the human situation. He not only refers but defers. In his Our Knowledge of the External World (1929), Bertrand Russell mentions Aquinas only once. The relevant passage runs as follows: To the schoolmen who lived amid wars, massacres, and pestilence, nothing appeared so delightful as safety and order ... The universe of Thomas Aquinas or Dante is as small a speck as a Dutch interior.

All one can say here is that if the absence of safety and order in one’s life environment constituted a cogent ground for adopting a cosmology, then the injunction “Back to Aristotle and Ptolemy” would currently have a good deal more impetus than seems to be the case. But the fact remains that even the utterly unsympathetic Russell takes St. Thomas’s position as an orienting point of reference. In a footnote in his Theory of Justice (1971), John Rawls lists Aquinas as one among various philosophers who accept liberty, opportunity, and a sense of self-worth as valid human goods. Additionally, in discussing the value of amusements and diversion, he approvingly notes that “although Aquinas believes that the vision of God is the last end of all human knowledge and endeavors, he [nevertheless] concedes play and amusement a [valid] place in our life” (p. 554). In discussing realism in his Essays, Metaphysics and Moral (1987), J. C. C. Smart wrote: The scientific realist [such as Smart himself] looks at the facts ... and asks why they are as they are. The answer “It is just a matter of fact” does not sat-

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isfy him. The theologian is not satisfied with an accidental world, as the scientific realist is not satisfied with an accidental ... [world]. Aquinas, in his Third Way, concludes to a final cause, God, who was in some sense necessary ... [However,] Aquinas’ argument depends on a notion of necessary existence which I find unintelligible. (p. 133)

In this passage Aquinas comes off with a draw. He gets applause for insisting on an explanatory rationale for the world’s facts but draws disapproval for insisting on the necessary existence of an extramundane world-explainer. But be all this as it may, our brief survey of some significant citationrationales indicates that St. Thomas continues to be read and noted in recent and contemporary philosophy. His work serves as a point of reference and an expository resource for a wide spectrum of recent philosophers— including those who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be characterized as Thomists. 2. THE PRESENT And so in answer to the question of where the philosophy of St. Thomas stands today, one could say that the issue of St. Thomas’ current place, like Caesar’s Gaul, has three distinct parts: (1) With regard to present-day Thomistic studies as such, much is astir and well. Spread across the globe there is a lively industry of diverse institutes, societies, journals, university departments, etc., devoted to the appreciation and study of St. Thomas’ works. (2) With regard to the place of Aquinas in contemporary Catholic philosophy at large, the situation is decidedly mixed. To be sure the heyday of rampant neo-Thomism exerting a preponderant influence on Catholic universities and seminaries is long past. But there is still a great bustle of learning and study in this area—in quantitative terms perhaps as much as ever. However, the buoyant state of Catholic philosophy on many other fronts has reduced Thomism’s proportionate role to comparatively modest proportions. (3) Finally there is the matter of the place of Aquinas in secular philosophy at large. And here the issue is one of curious duality. On the one hand, there is here a virtually total absence of secular neoThomists: theologically unattached philosophers who see the main

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source of their ideas and inspirations in the writings of Aquinas. But on the other hand, virtually every major-thinker of the period— irrespective of orientation—refers to St. Thomas in one connection or another, be it by way of invoking his authority or representing a position to be opposed. Aquinas accordingly serves as a point of reference for many—providing for some a signpost to truth and for others an indicator of the rocks and reefs of error. All in all, then, it is unquestionably the case that the work of St. Thomas continues to be very active and astir over the last century even in general and substantially secular philosophy. Then too, it could be said that St. Thomas is alive and well and living in cyberspace on the Internet. After all, the volume of “buzz” that an individual creates on the web reflects the extent to which he is alive and striving in the public mind where “to be is to be mentioned.” A convenient entry into this Tower of Babble is afforded by such search engines as Google or Yahoo. And here it emerges that, as regards the Nietzchean dogma of “the death of God” it is both newsworthy and noteworthy as a counter to such Zarathustrian arrogance that currently (March 2003) the number of Google items for Friederich Nietzsche is 170,000 while that for St. Thomas Aquinas stands at 190,000. (So there, Friedrich!) 3. THE FUTURE But what of the future? What are the prospects of Thomism? How will—or should—the thoughts of St. Thomas Aquinas figure in the future of Catholic philosophizing? In addressing this question it helps to begin with another: What is it that a productive philosopher of one era can derive from one of an earlier day? There are many possibilities here. The principal sorts of things for which someone’s own philosophical work can be indebted to a predecessor include: • concepts • problems and questions • doctrine and theses

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• methods • aims/goals/values The first thing to note about this list is that it provides for enormous flexibility. One can fail to agree with a single one of the philosopher’s doctrines and substantive conclusions and yet be deeply in his debt for concepts, questions, distinctions, methods, or aims. It is thus an error to think Platonists alone profit from Plato’s dialogues or Thomists alone profit from the Angelic doctor’s intellectual toil. Moreover, the fact that philosophy is not merely a kind of literature means that Thomism is something larger than the exegetical study of the writings of St. Thomas. If, as is indeed the case, Thomism is actually to represent a philosophical position, then its concern has to be with the ideas and arguments at issue in solving the philosophical problems and answering the philosophical questions posed by St. Thomas and not merely with the texts in which these were set out. Texts are historical fixities, their development ends with their production. But ideas, arguments and positions have a life of their own. They evolve over time and become reconfigured in the wake of the responses they evoke. When philosophical illumination rather than text elucidation is at issue, it is the impersonal matters of cogency and truth rather than the thoughts of a particular individual that constitute the determinative consideration. The crux here is a matter not just of scholarship but of inspiration. Moreover, philosophical doctrines and positions as such have a life of their own beyond the control of their inaugurators. They admit of refinement and development both in response to misunderstanding or criticism and in response to intellectual innovation on relevant issues. If they are not to be a mere piece of flotsam and jetsam of the past washed up on the shore of the present—inert driftwood and ready for decorative display—then they must be reexamined, refurbished and reworked to meet the needs and opportunities of changed conditions and altered circumstances. Any Thomism worth its salt should be able to emerge healthy and fortified from an intellectual encounter with the ideas and methods produced elsewhere in the philosophical mainstream. A position of perennial value must not only be restated in the changed condition of a later different thought world, it must be reconstituted as well. And one important consideration in particular must be stressed in this regard. There is one aspect of St. Thomas’s great project that is clearly of

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transcendent value and ubiquitous utility, namely its commitment to rational systematization. This theory and practice in the refusal to exile reason from philosophical theology carries a wider lesson. This may be favored in a regulative maxim: “Do not fragment and compartmentalize your thinking. Whenever there is no necessity for doing so, do not divide your thinking into separate and disjoined compartments. Develop your thought systematically, keeping all of its elements in productive contact and interaction with the rest.” This is assuredly a positive and productive policy from which nothing but good can come. Commitment to cultivating the integrative unity of thought is of ever-increasing value in an age of specialization and division of intellectual labor. If philosophers do not strive for a synoptic perspective in the realm of human understanding, then who will? And just here we encounter one of the prime object lessons of Thomistic philosophizing. Moreover, one of the most illuminating contrast of medieval/scholastic thought is surely that between the Thomistic emphasis on the power of reason and the seemingly contrary emphasis of Nicholas of Cusa on the inherent limitation of the human intellect. But just here one can also see an ironic testimonial to the doctrine of the “unity of opposites” of my great namesake, since it must surely be counted as a remarkable token of the power of reason that it is able to recognize and clarify its own limitation and to elucidate their source and nature. Of course the future’s detail is impossible to predict in intellectual and creative matters. Who can foresee where philosophy—or indeed even science—is going?1 The cognitive innovations of the future are hidden from present view. But one thing is clear. While the details of the future reception of Thomistic doctrines are well nigh impossible to foresee, the ongoing commitment to Thomistic ideas and methods of thought can be confidently expected. Contemporary philosophers sometimes regard the pursuit of philosophical wisdom as aiming at “a form of understanding that should bring mankind peace of mind.” But this envisions the decidedly unrealistic prospect of a completion or perfection. The reality of it is that the human situation cries out to be seen in a less optimistic light as a stage of struggle and striving. The battle against the forces of ignorance and incomprehension is unending. And, no less importantly, intellectual innovation also brings new challenges. Behind every “solution” there lurk further difficulties and behind every answer come further questions. The incompletability and imperfectability of our philosophizing is something with which we must come to

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terms. For in the intellectual as in the moral life we cannot manage to achieve perfection. The cognitive condition of man in this vale of tears is something we may come to view with resignation (Gelassenheit) but never with rational contentment (Zufriedenheit). And so, while it is assuredly the case that Thomism can and will make ever-continuing contributions to the ongoing development of philosophy, nevertheless this does not—cannot— alter the fact that there are no altogether permanent victories to be won in man’s intellectual struggle for understanding.2 NOTES 1

Think here of the incident of the jazz musician who, when asked where jazz was going responded: “If I knew that, we’d be there already.”

2

This chapter is an expanded and revised version of an essay originally published in New Blackfrairs, vol., 80 (1999), pp. 199-202.

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Chapter 10 RESPECT FOR TRADITION And the Catholic Philosopher Today 1. INTRODUCTION

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nce upon a time one friend promised another that he would introduce him later that day to Grimsby, the versatile musician. The next day— after the foreshadowed encounter had transpired—that second friend reproached the first saying: “How could you say that Grimsby is a versatile musician: on his own telling he can only play ‘Chopsticks’ on the Xylophone.” “Ah,” replied the friend, “but his musicianship shows itself in the fact that he plays it well, and his versatility is manifest in his ability as a chef, a chessmaster, and a connoisseur of the metaphysical poets.” This odd little story conveys a lesson. It is one thing to be versatile and a musician, and another, rather different thing to be versatile as a musician, that is to be a versatile musician. And just this distinction applies in the present context as well: It is one thing to be a Catholic and a philosopher but something rather different—and more—to be a Catholic philosopher. And so the telling question that arises is: Wherein does this something more consist. What is it that is required for being a Catholic philosopher, and in particular for being a Catholic philosopher in our present place and time: in 21st century America? The issues raised by this question are complex and many-sided. The present discussion will address only one small part of the problem. 2. RESPECT What is it that will nowadays demarcate the Catholic philosopher as such? In reading a philosopher’s work, what features would lead one to suspect that it has issued from the pen of a Catholic philosopher? It seems appropriate here to single out five features above all: 1. Awareness of and respect for the great tradition of Catholic philosophy from the Church fathers to the present day.

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

2. Concern for the big issues of philosophy and mindfulness that attention to matters of detail will exists for their sake. A reluctance to be caught up in the fashions of the moment. 3. A humanistic preoccupation with matters of morality, ethics, and philosophical anthropology—with the fundamentals of how life should ideally be lived. 4. Care for the classics: special attention for the philosophers, moralists, and thinkers of Greco-Roman antiquity and their subsequent Latinate continuations. 5. Breadth of sympathies: A positive inclination to look for merit in the work of other philosophers at large. And correspondingly, certain skeptical self-restraint through absence of cocksure certitude in philosophical matters. What is at issue here is not, to be sure, a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for being a Catholic philosopher. After all, matters of allegiance are never that clear cut. Nevertheless, taken together in collective conjunction these items constitute a pretty strong evidential indication. Thanks to the fundamental contrast between faith and philosophy, two distinct questions arise in the context of present concerns: • Question 1: What does a Catholic philosopher owe to the church and its teachings? Answer: Allegiance and acceptance. • Question 2: What does a Catholic philosopher owe to the tradition of Catholic philosophy? Answer: Not allegiance and acceptance, but something else and rather different, namely respect. And on this telling, the prime and paramount factor that characterizes the Catholic philosopher is a respect for the tradition. Accordingly, the focus of these deliberations will center on the question of just what this factor of respect for tradition is and what it involves. The ancient Romans paved the way for the English verb “to respect” via their verb revereor: to stand in awe (or even in fear) of someone, to revere and—in effect—“to look up” to them. However, with us moderns—who live in a society less given to hierarchy and subordination—the idea of re-

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specting someone is something a bit different. It calls not so much for being awed by them as for being prepared to acknowledge their claims to some significant merit or positivity. Respect, as so construed, is thus less a matter of looking upwards to something placed upon a pedestal this looking at it level-eyed in a spirit of affinity and appreciation. Respect accordingly represents a value concept. To respect something or someone is to prize it with some admixture of admiration—to see it as indicating the direction of what is to be striven for or emulated. Respect even in this relatively modest sense is a concept that is not particularly popular among philosophers nowadays. They incline to preoccupy themselves with this conception today only and exclusively in one context—that of the Kantian issue of respect for personhood. A look at philosophical indices, textbooks, and handbooks shows that it is here and virtually here alone that respect figures on the philosophical agenda of the day. Now it must, to be sure, be recognized and acknowledged that respect for persons as beings created in the image of God is a central precept of the Judeo-Christian tradition. And this insistence on respecting the special dignity of the human person continued in the more secular age of the enlightenment, where recognition of persons as the distinctive bearers of inalienable rights served as a focal idea. (Think especially of Kant in this connection.) All this, however, is a matter of an ethical respect of persons-ingeneral that abstracts from the issue of the distinctive particular individuals. And so this important issue of respect for personhood is not and cannot be the end of the matter. For it is—or should be—clear that we can and should respect not only personhood in general but also various people in specific. Such respect is a matter of the recognition of worth and merit—of the claims of other particular people to our recognition and consideration not on the basis of what they are but on the basis of what they do. Those who by dint of talent, effort, and seized opportunity manage to accomplish great and good things in this world deserve not just our admiration but our respect as well. To be sure, such respect need not be indiscriminate; it can and should be more narrowly targeted. We can respect an individual as a talented musician while nevertheless deploring his bumbling incompetence in matters of social interaction. We can respect the able actor while condemning the unscrupulous womanizer. And, of course, respect of this sort is not a matter of self-promotion. I can respect another not because of those features in which he agrees with or resembles me but because of features he may have that I neither do nor

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want to have for myself. Personal respect is a matter of recognizing and appreciating someone’s commitment to their project not of flaunting my commitment to mine. All the same, respect imposes a limit of egocentrism. After all, respect is the very reverse of self-aggrandizement and self-glorification. For insofar as we acknowledge the merits of others and their achievements we cannot see the doings of ourselves and our congeners, cohorts, and contemporaries as holding a monopoly on worth and value. To respect another is to admit that one is not oneself the pivot around which everything revolves— that others, too, have claims to a merit that is coordinate with and perhaps even superior to our own. In acknowledging the claims of others we assume the mindset of being prepared—at least in principle—to see ourselves in a more humble light. Respect, however, is not just a matter of subordination, submission, or obsequiousness. To respect someone is not automatically to see ourselves as their inferior. It is, rather, to see them as a bearer of value and thus as in some respect emulation worthy. People we respect are those we are apt to see as role models. Respect is thus not a matter of self-debasement and kowtowing. This, after all, is not authentic respect for in the end the only sort of respect worth having is the respect of those who respect themselves. Then too, individual persons quite apart, we can respect an office. Such respect may be marginal when the individual comes by the office without any specific merit-based claims—by lot, say or by inheritance. But when the office is one that must be earned on the basis of talent and effort, and represents a locus of responsibility and trust, then that office as such merits respect independently of the flaws and frailties of its transitory occupants. In general then, respect will have a rationale since there will and must be factors of general principle that rationally call it forth. Specifically three sorts of considerations are paramount here: (1) Respect for what a being is by nature (e.g., a rational being) or by fate (a mathematical genius). (2) Respect for what a person is by office either natural (a parent), or customary (a king), or earned (a teacher or a magistrate). (3) Respect for what a person achieves by effort—dedication to the realization of positive objectives.

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Of course, to respect a person or an office we need not agree with them. Respect does not demand endorsement. What it does call for is taking that individuals seriously, exhibiting concern for his or her views, taking them under sympathetic advisement, seeking out and emphasizing the good strong points, the instructive lessons, the constructive examples. What respect demands, in sum, is not agreement but seriousness of affirmative response: it is not an alignment of opinion that is at issue but a consilience of values. Another, more figurative mode of the concept relates to respect for a principle, such as the law or the custom of the country. This is the sort of “respect” that whose manifestation consists in “honoring” those laws and customs by way of following or obeying them. This should be seen as a figurative use of the term that rides in the analogy of emulating the practices and behaviors of those persons who we respect—taking them as our role models as it were. There is, however, yet another potential focus of respect—over and above persons, and offices—that needs to be taken into account. For there is reason for this narrowing of perspective. For while all of us should—and ethically sensitive people indeed will—respect rational beings—as such, nevertheless respect is possible and indeed required in other contexts as well. And it is this candidate for respect that will be the special issue for concern in our present context, namely respect for a tradition. Let us take a closer look at this issue. 3. TRADITION Just what is a tradition anyway? In general, tradition is a set of social practices hallowed by persistence over time. But what concerns us here is specifically an intellectual tradition. Such a tradition is defined by two interrelated components: (1) a set of texts (in the broadest sense of the term) constituting a common commonality of knowledge, and (2) a set of issues, ideas, theses, and arguments that constitute an historic commonality of concern. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that a crucial feature of a philosophical tradition relates not just to teachings but also to problems and questions. Constituting the agenda of concern as well as ordinarily particular doctrines is also a valid and proper mode of traditionary stance.1 Now in this regard what is definitive for the Catholic philosophical tradition is unfolding of thought defined by the writings of Aristotle, his Christianizers among the Church Fathers, the systematizers of these ideas

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among the medieval schoolmen, and above all St. Thomas, as well as the host of Catholic thinkers from those times to the days of Jacques Maritain, Etienne Gilson, Bernard Lonergan and beyond who strove to refurbish the relevant ideas of the bygone greats to the changed ethos of a modern world based on science, technology, and social massification. And what integrates this large manifold of thought and writing into a tradition is not its doctrinal uniformity but rather both a mutuality of concern on the part of the later workers for the work of the earlier and also—in a larger sense—a mutuality of involvement in a common project. This project is perhaps best defined through contrast and what it is not. It is not the Comtean project of dismissing religion as the characteristic product of an outdated era antecedent of the age of reason, nor yet the Kantian quest for a religion developed within the limits of reason alone, nor yet an “Averroism” that sees the work of religion and reason as “separate but equal” as it were, operating apart in distinct and disjoint jurisdictions of their own and having no bearing upon one another. Rather, it is the project of developing a perspective that enables reason and religion to exist in a holistic unity that fructifies each through its interaction with the other. 4. RESPECT FOR A TRADITION Against this background, then, there inevitably arises the question: What does a Catholic philosopher of the present day owe to this great tradition? And here it seems sensible to take the stance that what we owe to the tradition of Catholic philosophy is not so much agreement as respect. Once nature and nurture have so conspired as to make someone both a Catholic and a philosopher, it is only right and proper that the great tradition of Catholic philosophy should to some extent engage this individual’s interest and respect. And loyalty comes into it as well. Why, after all, should one align with any tradition at all? The answer is that this is part of our identity-definition, of our self-definition of the individual we are. For being a person is a matter of having a personality—of acquiring an identity. And attachment to a tradition is one important pathway leading to this distinction of personality definition. After all, even those who might wish to avoid any such affiliation through this very circumstance take their place within the tradition of eccentrics and individualists. In philosophy, as in life, what sort of person one is is in the first instance a matter of how one relates to others. And here proverbial wisdom is right: “Birds of a feather flock together”—by their cohorts and fellow travelers shall ye know them.

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The situation of traditionary attachment is akin to that of a family, where even if we do not agree with one another we nevertheless do—or, ideally, should—respect and care about one another. In sum, what the Catholic philosopher owes to these great figures of the tradition is not necessity agreement and endorsement of their teachings, but the sort of respect that any intellectual owes those whose talents and efforts have paved the way for his own work. Our duty as Catholic philosophers, that is to say, is not so much to endorse this or that particular thesis or teaching espoused by the great figures of our tradition, as to adopt a certain stance as regards the relationship between their work and our own. In sum, what we owe to the shapers of our tradition is not so much viewing them as fonts of authoritative truth as regarding them as role models in defining the key issues and guiding us to ways in which they can be profitably addressed. When we respect an intelligent tradition we must be prepared to see the thought orientation of those who work under its aegis as relevant to our own. We need not agree, but we must seek out and draw upon threads of relevancy. We must, that is, be prepared to devote to the work of its exponents attention, consideration, sympathetic response, and, above all, care. But just how is such care to manifest itself? In addressing this issue it is useful to begin with an analogy, namely that of architecture. How can one honor an architectural tradition? There are three prime possibilities here: 1. Preservation: reinforcing a structure with modern techniques. The visible finished result is virtually identical but the substructure is wholly different. Examples: Fitting out the White House or Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Falling Water” with an entirely new steel substructure. 2. Restoration: reconstituting or recreating a timeworn structure of the past with faithful reliance on traditional materials and modes of workmanship. Examples: Colonial Williamsburg or Warsaw. 3. Inspiration. Creating entirely new structures but in a way that revises the sprit of the past. Present fashion of occupant-friendly villages. Examples: Prince Charles in Britain or the “modern village” movement among sophisticated property developers in the USA.

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And in philosophy, too, it seems that there are three substantially analogous approaches to the appreciation of past work: 1. Preservation of issues. Reopening and reexamining its questions. Addressing its issues and problems with the methods and techniques of a later day. 2. Restoration and revival. Rejuvenation of its thesis and doctrines in the changed environments. 3. Revivification of its spirit. Working in the same spirit and with the same style of concern and the same objective in view. It makes sense to think that all three of these approaches—preservation, restoration, and inspiration—are perfectly appropriate and valid ways of honoring a tradition—and intellectual tradition included. Respect for tradition is in this regard a large tent that can accommodate a substantial variety of tenants. None has a monopoly of the project and there is ample room for difference. And irrespective of which approach we ourselves favor, there is no need and no justification for looking askance at those who have chosen to take a different approach. All three of these approaches seem to afford thoroughly appropriate and fitting ways of showing respect for the great tradition of Catholic philosophy. How should a Catholic philosopher react when discord arises between hoary tradition and the moderns between the teachings of the past and the ideas of the present? What is appropriate here is a perhaps odd sounding mixture of trust and skepticism. The larger issues of philosophy and philosophical theology are so deep and complex that we do well both to view our own ideas with some degree of skeptical tentativity and to expect instruction and insight from those whose thought and work has paved the way for our own. To reemphasize, then, the unifying thread throughout is a matters of caringof bringing to one’s work a sense of communion with these earlier thinkers in the common endeavor of bringing reason to bear on issues which are figuring an intelligible framework of understanding in the realm in which we have been placed by nature and nature’s God. And here it must be noted that the concept of authority impacts upon that of tradition in a complicated way. For authoritativeness is a force that can flow in different channels. Perhaps the most familiar of these is the

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probative authoritativeness bound up with the idea of a proof text. Here an authority is someone whose say-so functions evidentially: what such an authority says is something that the rest of us incline to accept as true for this very reason. But over and above such an authoritativeness of truth there is also an authoritativeness of value. The issues that such an authority considers are ought for this very reason to figure on our agenda of sympathetic concern: We need not necessarily agree with the theses of such an authority but should be drawn sympathetically to the orientation and spirit of his discussion. The dicta of the authority will in this case constitute grounds for concern and consideration rather than for endorsement and reiteration. There are, after all, two somewhat different sorts of authority, to wit, authoritativeness with respect to fact and authoritativeness with respect to value. We can credit a person with sagacity—that is, see them as extensively informed with respect to certain issues. But we can also credit a person with wisdom or good judgment—that is, see them as having sound insight as to what the important issues are, what we would be well advised to attend to and think about. Both of these issues are aspects of authoritativeness in a larger sense. *** And so, insofar as respect is a fundamentally evaluative matter, honoring a tradition involves prizing its concerns and in consequence looking to it both for ideas and for guidance for the conduct of our own philosophical efforts. And what this primarily involves is a rather diffuse and general affiliation rather to the objectives, tendencies, and methods of a philosophers deliberations than to endorsing the specific substantive contentions and arguments that he articulates. Respect for the tradition accordingly demands a sense of solidarity and colleagueship with these great thinkers who have formed this tradition that we respect. This certainly does not require agreement with the shapers of the tradition, who, after all, all too often do not even agree with one another. Rather, as with any colleagueship and scholarity, we feel affectively engaged. To see them slighted and marginalized—let alone scorned—is something we feel offensive to ourselves. Allegiance to tradition is in this way not a doctrinal stance but a matter of community and spiritual affinity—of colleagueship and collaboration in a common effort at rational inquiry under the aegis of shared values.

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The situation is much the same as it is—or should be—with that of our teachers or our senior colleagues in our own fields of endeavor. We do not owe them agreement and an endorsement of opinions but rather the respect that is due to those who have labored to make it possible for us to be what we are. And so in essence what we owe the great tradition of Catholic philosophy is a matter of acknowledging it as the first not only of the perennial problem-agenda of philosophical inquiry but also as a role model for us in our efforts to grapple with the problems it poses. An important aspect of the idea of colleagueship and community that should be at work here lies in the inherent implications of these very conceptions. For any sort of meaningful collaboration is predicated on foregoing any pretence to facile self-insufficiency—by acknowledging that we ourselves are not the pivotal end-all and be all about which it all revokes, but as only limited creatures constrained by difficult circumstances to do the best they can. There is a due sense of fallibility and incompleteness that recognizes that we are engaged in a large and difficult enterprise in which our own modest efforts are by themselves unavailing. In such a collaborative setting, we are prepared to welcome whatever help we can get in our attempts to wrestle with the difficult and challenging issues that preoccupy us in our philosophical concerns. The salient point is that we do no merely inherit a tradition but must work to appropriate it. As T. S. Eliot puts it: “Tradition by itself is not enough; it must be perspectivally criticized and brought up to date.”2 And here, as I see it—we have the crux of what the Catholic philosopher owes to the tradition, namely a caring that requires a perhaps somewhat confused-sounding mixture of metaphors, namely a recognition and acknowledgement that we both stand on the shoulders of those who have formed our tradition and follow in their footsteps along a road of deliberation and investigation for which they have paved the way.3 NOTES 1

On the formative role of tradition in inquiry see Alasdar MacIntyre, Whose Justice; Which Rationality (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988).

2

T. S. Eliot, After Strange Gods; A Primer of Modern Heresy (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1934).

3

This chapter served as the author’s 2004 Presidential Address to the American Catholic Philosophical Association.

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Chapter 11 IN MATTERS OF RELIGION A Personal Statement

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t is as a task of no little difficulty for someone of a fundamentally private and reticent nature to write about his religious beliefs, since this patently involves baring in public some part of one’s inmost soul. It seems to me that few other aspects of ourselves reveal so deeply and far-reachingly the sort of people we actually are as do our thoughts and actions in matters of religion. Then again, it is hard to say if such “confessions” are ever entirely truthful—not only in the case of others but even in one’s own case. As Tayllerand observed, “La parole a été donné à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée”: discourse serves as much to conceal as to convey thought. When it comes to explaining the major facts and decisions of our lives, it is perhaps beyond the powers of our insight—and candor—to “tell it as it actually was.” But one can try. For some, religion is as meaningless as poetry or spectator sports are for others. Some people are born into a religious community and settle into it as easily as they settle into the linguistic community that surrounds them. Others go along life’s route quite innocent of religions concerns, and then are unexpectedly claimed for religiosity—or its reverse—by a sudden experience of conversion that overtakes them unplanned and unasked for, like a summer cold. Still others find their religious journey long, circuitous, and complex. For better or worse, I myself belong to the last category. The family into which I was born in 1928 in the Westphalian district of Germany belonged nominally to the Lutheran-Evangelical church then predominant in that country. But this membership obtained on a rather minimal basis. The people in my family were christened, married, and buried by the church, and generally attended its services for Christmas and Easter—at the most. In my own case, there were also a few confirmation classes succeeded by the rite itself. But I really cannot say that during my “suggestible childhood” religion played a more than marginal role in the lives of my parents—or in my own. Nor did this situation change for some years after my leaving Germany for the USA at the age of nine in l938.

Nicholas Rescher • Issues in the Philosophy of Religion

My teenage period confirmed the common idea that the life of a student engaged in the play of ideas and theories tends to leave one unprepared for a serious engagement in religious concerns. But I eventually experienced military service during the Korean war in my early 20s (1952-54). While I never served at the front (and indeed never went overseas), nevertheless this experience—coming on top of my being a refugee from Nazi Germany—left me acutely aware of the contingency and uncertainties of human life. This sense of vulnerability and powerlessness served to make me more open-minded towards religion and more susceptible to its influences. Accordingly, religion did not become meaningful for me until I had become to some extent matured and settled in life—before the import of death had come home to me with the loss of my father, and the experiences of adulthood and its accompanying burdens of responsibility had matured me. By the mid-1950s, my mother had been drawn to Quakerism and had taken up work at the Friends’ International Center at the University of California at Los Angeles, where I, too, was living at the time. After a period of attending the Quaker Meeting in Santa Monica, I was ultimately motivated to join. Three aspects of the sect had a particular appeal for me: its utterly simple yet deeply meaningful mode of worship “on the basis of silence,” the absence of creed commitments that might jar on a critical philosophical mind, and its dedication to human decency and the peaceable resolution of conflicts. Moreover, the entry into active membership in a Christian community was eased for me by the warm personal qualities of some of the people who then constituted the Santa Monica Friends Meeting. The Quaker emphasis on heeding that small, still voice within which continually calls us to higher and better things appealed sympathetically to my own natural tendencies of thought. It was in “centering down” in the productive silence of the Quaker “First Day” services that I gradually came to find within myself an increasing degree of Christian commitment. In 1957 came a move from Santa Monica to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Throughout the period of my residence there, I attended the local Quaker meeting (Lehigh Valley Monthly Meeting). It came to mean a great deal to me, counting some fine individuals among its members. I served as one of the overseers after 1959, and thus had the chance to see at close range the inner workings of a Quaker “parish.” Perhaps this glance behind the curtain took away some of the magic. But I did continue to read widely in the literature of Quakerism and obtained a reasonable familiarity with its history and theology.

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After leaving Bethlehem for Pittsburgh in 1961, I once again joined the local Quaker meeting—but now with a gradually diminishing commitment. It is hard to say exactly what occasioned this. Perhaps the cause lay wholly in myself. Or perhaps it had to do with the change of the times from the quiescent 1950s to the more turbulent 1960s. (Emotionally and intellectually, I was drawn to the quietistic side of Quakerism, and the political ebullience of the then unfolding Vietnam era was not to my liking.) Be that as it may, in the course of the l960s, my Quaker connection drifted away into a not altogether contented inactivity in religious regards. After some time, however, I began to attend the Roman Catholic services conducted by the Pittsburgh Oratory at the University of Pittsburgh’s Heinz Chapel. And as this involvement continued, a gradual change came upon my religious outlook. Perhaps, ideally, the conversion of an intellectual to a form of religious commitment ought itself to be an intellectual product—a matter of secured conviction in theses and principles. But it certainly was not so in my case. Here it was primarily a matter of sentiment, loyalties, and feelings of allegiance and kinship. Perhaps Pascal was right. If you would be a believer, he said, just go and do the things that believers do: You desire to attain faith, but you do not know the way. You would like to cure yourself of unbelief, and you ask for remedies. Learn from those who were once bound and gagged like you, and who now stake all that they possess. They are men who know the road that you desire to follow, and who have been cured of a sickness of which you desire to be cured. Follow the way by which they set out, acting as if they already believed, taking holy water, having masses said, etc. All this will naturally cause you to believe ... (Pensées. sect. 233, ed. Brunschwicg.)

The message, in effect, runs: “Join a religious community in practice; associate with its people, attends its ceremonies, participate in its rites and rituals and socializings. Eventually you will then join the community in belief as well.” So recommends Pascal, and so it was in my own case. After all, people do not generally come to their other allegiances—to family, to country, or to culture—by reasoning but by association, custom, and acculturation. Why should the matter of religion be all that different? As I see it, the impetus to religion (like the impetus to our other human allegiances) eventually comes not from reason but from affects—from the emotional rather than intellectual side of our make-up.

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In any case, after I had spent several years sitting on the fence as an “unofficial Catholic”—attending Mass regularly and participating in various Church activities—the then Provost of the University Oratory, Father William Clancy, gave me a definite albeit oblique push. Taking my wife Dorothy aside one day, he asked her if I viewed him as somehow unsympathetic or unfriendly, seeing that in all those years I had never discussed my relationship to Catholicism with him. When I responded to this by arranging for a discussion, he put to me the question of what exactly was holding me back from joining the Church. As I reflected on this, I came to realize that the answer had, in effect, to be nothing. And so I talked with Father Clancy in this sense, indicating that if he was prepared to receive me into the Church, then I, for my part, was prepared to go ahead. And so, in March of l98l I finally did so. Bill Clancy was not only a scholar and a gentleman, but he had a deep and sympathetic insight into the heart of academically minded people. He spoke little (at least to me), but his sympathetic concern encouraged me to think things through for myself. There is no doubt that two intersecting factors were operative in inducing me to make a Christian commitment: a sense of intellectual and personal solidarity with those whom I could accept as role models among believers, and a sense of estrangement from those whom I deemed naively cocksure in their rejection of belief. For while I have lived almost my whole life as an academic among academics, I have always felt alienated from the easy certainties which they generally view the world about them—confident that “they have all the answers.” It has always seemed to me that the more we learn, the fewer answers we actually have, because the more questions open up. This aspect of things, which a religious outlook does or should encompass, seems to me to be something of deep and significant truth. I myself am not a person of easy certainties. Among my favorite Biblical texts is the paradoxical “Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.” And there is no shortage of other passages in the Old and New Testaments alike on which those alive to the mystery of things can draw for aid and comfort—texts that betray deep doubts about our ability to know God. As Job proclaims, “Oh that I knew where I might find him! that I might come even to his seat! ... Behold I go forward, but he is not there; and backward, but I cannot perceive him.” In the book of Psalms, the stress is often not on what we know or believe of God, but on seeking, hoping, trusting. Merely to yearn for the Lord is, in the Psalmist’s view, already to be well embarked on the road of faith.

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Of the many forms of human failing, the failure of imagination is one of the saddest. And one of the gravest failures of imagination is that of the person who cannot manage to project the conception of a God worthy of ardent desire—a God whose nonbeing would be the occasion for genuine grief. Compared with this, an inability to imagine a friend worth having or a spouse worth loving is a pale shadow—though all alike betoken a regrettable impoverishment of personality of the same general sort. Sensible people would clearly prefer to number among their friends someone who was willing to invest hope and trust in himself, his fellows, and his world. To refrain, in the absence of preponderating reasons to the contrary, from letting hope influence belief—even merely to the extent of that sort of tentative belief at issue in a working assumption made for practical purposes—betokens a crabbed failure of confidence that has nothing admirable about it. Religious belief alters our evaluative frame of reference, enabling us to view our own lives with a clearer and more enlightened sense of priorities. Its commitment to the larger, “spiritual” values helps us to realize the extent to which various issues that many people see as supremely important are actually trivia. This sort of view, at any rate, gradually became the substance of my religious outlook. But just what was it that led me to commit myself to Christianity in the Catholic configuration? Given that my wife was Catholic, it was perhaps partly a sense of familial solidarity—the conviction that a family should be a unit. But beside this something deeper and more ideological was also at work, something that lay deep in my emotional make-up. As a philosopher, I had to decide upon my spiritual kindred in life. Did I want to align myself with the religion-disdaining Lucretiuses, Voltaires, Humes, Nietzsches, and Bertrand Russells of the world, or with its theistically committed Platos and Plotinuses, its Anselms and Aquinases, its Leibnizes and Hegels. I was free to choose those who were to be my spiritual kinfolk, and I felt myself drawn towards these who saw humanity as subject to transcendent aspirations and obligations—and for whom forms of worship and religious styles of thought really mattered. Some people are led to deepen their religious commitment by thought— by reflection on the rational fabric of theological deliberations. Others are impelled by experience—by a reception of some sort of sign or signal. In my own case, however, it came by way of feeling—through awe and wonder at the mystery of existence and, no less importantly, by a sentiment of solidarity with those whom I admired and respected as part of a community

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of faith transcending the boundaries of dogma and doctrine. There was no dramatic episode of conversion—no flash of light came calling me from on high. I simply and gradually found myself sliding along the unbroken slope from mere participation to committed membership. Religious commitment, after all, has two aspects: valuation and belief. On the one hand there is belief-oriented creedal aspect of religion that is strongly emphasized in the cognitively-oriented monotheistic religions of the West which draw much of their theological impetus from Greek philosophy. But the evaluative aspect is also a significant factor—and has never quite been altogether absent from Christianity, which recognizes the pivotal role of a commitment to hope in God as the expression of a dedication to values above and beyond the ordinary selfish/materialistic self-advantaging range. The dedication to higher values reflected in our Christian yearning for a benevolent God whose concern is not directed at us alone, but at all our fellows (enemies included) is something that ennobles us, makes us into beings of worth—into individuals whom others can rightly regard as associates in a value-sharing community of faith based on a community of hope and aspiration and not merely as co-believers in certain formal articles of faith. In the final analysis, then, I have become and continue to remain a committed Catholic because this represents a position which, as I see it, is intellectually sensible, evaluatively appropriate, and personally congenial. Accordingly, the answer to the question of why I am a Catholic is perhaps simply this: “Because that is where I feel at home.” It is a matter of communion—of being in communion with people whose ideas, allegiances, and values are in substantial measure congenial to one’s own. In any case, it was not dogmas and doctrines that drew me to Catholicism but an inner impetus of a sort that it is difficult to describe. It was not a need for relief from a sense of sin, nor a need from relief from the intimations of mortality. Rather, it was a need for relief from a sense of isolation—the desire to feel oneself part of a wider community of spirits— living and dead—who are in some degree kindred, who shared with oneself a sense of values and priorities geared to the spiritual dimension of our species and to a sense of human insignificance in the awesome face of the mysteries of our existence. Yet what of the bêtises committed by the Church—nowadays as formerly? There they are, plain for all to see. But then what of the foolishnesses committed by our children—or our parents. Those who give their loyalties only to the flawless have in effect revolved to do away with any

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and all attachments. If we respected (or loved) only those who are perfect, there would be no scope whatever for such emotions. And anyhow, what right has an imperfect Christian to demand a perfect church? “But then you do not agree with the whole gamut of the teachings, practices, traditions, and teachings of the church.” Just so—I do not agree with the entire lot. No doubt this would displease my spiritual counselor, perhaps my bishop, and conceivably even the pope. But is this pivotal? Did Christ come into the world for the contentment of the hierarchy or the salvation of souls? The point is that—like them or not—I view those practices, traditions, and teachings with respect, take them seriously, and accommodate myself to them as best I can. After all, these are all issues on which easy certainties are quite unrealizable. Even where I am deeply out of sympathy I do not mock but respect and try to understand. If this is an uneasy compromise, then so be it. Here as elsewhere life itself is a matter of uneasy compromises between the realizable and the ideal. A church that does not want imperfect members wants none at all. Who is the discontented hierarch to cast the first stone? “But has religion changed your life?” In one way the answer is clearly yes. For one thing, it has humanized me, leading me to take a stronger and more sympathetic interest in the endeavors and concerns of my fellows. For another, it has enlarged my circle of acquaintances (“friends” would perhaps be too strong a word) by one very important member, namely God. Sometimes we converse. Very imperfectly, no doubt, like people communicating across the static and cross-conversations on a third-world telephone system. But still we converse—with me sometimes addressing him in prayer and he sometimes communicating with me via that medium called conscience. “How would God feel about you doing that?” is a question I occasionally ask myself—not perhaps as often as I should, but still sometimes. While it is largely how I feel about things that attracted me to faith in God, the effect of this faith is largely its influence upon how I think about things. (For better or worse, I am not one of those whose religiosity impels them to go forth and change the world.) It is clear to me from my own experience that philosophers—or at least some of them—need Christianity. But does Christianity need philosophers? It seems to me that the answer here is also affirmative. We humans are members of Homo sapiens. The need to comprehend and understand is inbuilt in our nature—ignorance and incomprehension are painful to us: we need knowledge for the mind as much as we need food for the body. And this is particularly true in matters which—like religion—bear in the fun-

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damentals of our lives. The clarity and cogency that philosophy brings as accordingly something that has a potentially positive role to play in every impartial area of human endeavor, Christianity by no means excluded. No church can exist in easy comfort with its intellectuals and theologians, but no church can be a thriving concern among thinking people if it dispenses with their services. Has being a Christian made a difference to my philosophizing? An affirmative response is indicated by the fact that religious belief has affected my professional work in two ways. On the one hand, it has stimulated my interest in the philosophical aspect of some religious issues. (These interests are particularly reflected in such of my books as Pascal’s Wager, The Riddle of Existence, Human Interests, and Scholastic Meditations.) On the other hand, it has also made me more sensitive to the evaluative and ethical dimension of human life. (These sensibilities are particularly reflected in Ethical Idealism, Rationality, and Moral Absolutes). Being a religious person has amplified my philosophical interests, moving them beyond the “scientific” to embrace also the “humanistic” side of philosophical concerns. European philosophical colleagues at secular institutions are almost invariably nonbelievers. And American philosophers, like American intellectuals in general, are quite predominantly so, and in this respect, as in many others—are out of tune with the wider society to which they belong. On the faculties of American universities, theists have generally been an embattled minority throughout my professional career. In view of this, I have always proceeded towards my own philosophical colleagues on a “to each his own,” “live and let live” basis. Not until the founding of the Society for Christian Philosophers in the 1970s did something like a support group emerge among professional colleagues. (Rightly or wrongly, I have viewed the far older American Catholic Philosophical Association as an organization catering to colleagues—principally clerics—serving at specifically Catholic universities.) And so it is among these philosophical fellow Christians that I have found some spiritual kinfolk. This leaves a very different question: “So you are a Christian. But are you a good Christian? In particular, do you live the sort of selfless life that a good Christian clearly ought to lead?” A painful question, this. “Works” are doubtless not the core of Christianity but they are clearly an essential component. A paramount duty of the good Christian is surely to be constructive, to make a difference, to make the world a better place in one respect than it would otherwise be. One certainly need not be a Chris-

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tian to have this object, but one does not qualify as a true Christian without it. And in this regard I have a deep sense of inadequacy. As an academic, my efforts have been far more directed towards understanding the world than towards trying to improve it. In my case, this inclination seems to lie deep-rooted “in the nature of the beast,” and I can only hope that a God who certainly realizes this will also be prepared to forgive it.1 NOTES 1

This chapter originated as a contribution to Kelly Clark (ed.) Philosophers Who Believe (Downers Green Ill: Inter-Varsity Press, 1993).

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Ontos

NicholasRescher

Nicholas Rescher

Collected Paper. 14 Volumes Nicholas Rescher is University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh where he also served for many years as Director of the Center for Philosophy of Science. He is a former president of the Eastern Division of the American Philosophical Association, and has also served as President of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, the American Metaphysical Society, the American G. W. Leibniz Society, and the C. S. Peirce Society. An honorary member of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, he has been elected to membership in the European Academy of Arts and Sciences (Academia Europaea), the Institut International de Philosophie, and several other learned academies. Having held visiting lectureships at Oxford, Constance, Salamanca, Munich, and Marburg, Professor Rescher has received seven honorary degrees from universities on three continents (2006 at the University of Helsinki). Author of some hundred books ranging over many areas of philosophy, over a dozen of them translated into other languages, he was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt Prize for Humanistic Scholarship in 1984. ontos verlag has published a series of collected papers of Nicholas Rescher in three parts with altogether fourteen volumes, each of which will contain roughly ten chapters/essays (some new and some previously published in scholarly journals). The fourteen volumes would cover the following range of topics: Volumes I - XIV STUDIES IN 20TH CENTURY PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-937202-78-1 · 215 pp. Hardcover, EUR 75,00

STUDIES IN VALUE THEORY ISBN 3-938793-03-1 . 176 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN PRAGMATISM ISBN 3-937202-79-X · 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-04-X . 221 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN IDEALISM ISBN 3-937202-80-3 · 191 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF LOGIC ISBN 3-938793-19-8 . 178 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL INQUIRY ISBN 3-937202-81-1 · 206 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN THE PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE ISBN 3-938793-20-1 . 273 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN COGNITIVE FINITUDE ISBN 3-938793-00-7 . 118 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN METAPHYSICAL OPTIMALISM ISBN 3-938793-21-X . 96 pp. Hardcover, EUR 49,00

STUDIES IN SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY ISBN 3-938793-01-5 . 195 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN LEIBNIZ'S COSMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-22-8 . 229 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-02-3 . 165 pp. Hardcover, EUR 79,00

STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY ISBN 3-938793-23-6 . 180 pp. Hardcover, EUR 69,00

ontos verlag

Frankfurt • Paris • Lancaster • New Brunswick 2006. 14 Volumes, Approx. 2630 pages. Format 14,8 x 21 cm Hardcover EUR 798,00 ISBN 10: 3-938793-25-2 Due October 2006

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