First, a Netfriend posted this:

The domain of the religious, I submit, is evocative, expressive, emotive. It presents moral poetry, aesthetic inspiration, performative ceremonial rituals, which act out and dramatize the human condition and human interests, and seek to slake the thirst for meaning and purpose. Religions-at least the religions of revelation-deal in parables, narratives metaphors, stories, myths; and they frame the divine in human (anthropomorphic) form. They express the existential yearnings of individuals endeavoring to cope with the world that they encounter and find meaning in the face of death. Religious language in this sense is eschatological. Its primary function is to express hope. If science gives us truth, morality the good and the right, and politics justice, religion is the realm of promise and expectation. Its main function is to overcome despair and hopelessness in response to human tragedy, adversity and conflict, the brute, inexplicable, contingent and fragile facts of the human condition. Under this interpretation religions are not primarily true, nor are they primarily good or right, or even just; they are, if you will, evocative, attempting to transcend contrition, fear, anxiety, and remorse, providing balm for the aching heart-at least for many people, if not all.

http://www.csicop.org/si/2002-03/science-religion.html

~~~

Which got this response:

Wishy-washy nonsense!

Sometimes the people who take up this theme have absolutely no sense of history and an appreciation of how science grew out of religion, or more specifically, the *Christian* religion. At the beginning of the second millenium theologians began to see two sources of revelation, the Book of Scripture and the Book of Nature. Empirical science grew out of the latter endeavour, and for many of us, it still is an eye-opener on the mystery of the divine.

~~~

And this:

I agree

Such drivel usually comes from those who never read any history.

~~~

Then this:

G’day

Hmmm, can I assume that, as good students of both science and history, we have all read Paul Kurtz’s article rather than just judged it from original quote?

It’s short and I found it heavy going but interesting. It’s deliberately provocative, and Stephen has chosen a particularly provocative section to quote. But there’s also an illustration, for example, that shows two boxers going for it, one bearing on his belt and gloves a cross, the other bearing the stylised and inaccurate sketch of a Lithium atom often used as a symbol of nuclear science and more rarely these days of science in general. As one of the few vocally pro-nuclear members of the [my mainline denomination] (or any other church it seems) that is something I particularly noticed.

Kurtz is taking a position he claims is unusual at the present time. He’s a skeptic in favour of religion. This raises the interesting question of which religion, or will any one do?

I think this is a far more difficult problem for his viewpoint than the one Greg and Geoff raise. It’s an interesting one for us too, surely. What is it that makes us Christian? What, if anything, makes our religion Christian not, say, Buddhist?

And if as Kurtz claims neither is “true”, and how do we decide which to follow? He says a little about this, and it’s not a new question, and it seems to arise logically from his discussion. Personally I would not go as far as he does. I think “truth” is an appropriate claim for a religion, and it is certainly one the Bible makes!

Robert Heinlein said (in “Time Enough for Love” I think but this is from memory) that it was the purpose of science to understand the universe, and the purpose of religion to fit human beings into the picture. I think that’s what Kurtz is getting at too.

Isn’t it exciting when so many people who don’t seem to have a religion confess that they’d like one!

You both seem to object to the style rather than the content. It’s mainly global thinking, rather than linear. The linear parts of it are very similar to what Paul van Buren suggested in his 1972 book “The Edges of Language”.

So there’s really not a lot new here. And while it’s a lot shorter than van Buren’s monologue, it’s still heavy going!

But I found it stimulating, and so far as it goes, sound I think. I could quibble about what individual words mean. My main problem with it is it doesn’t provide any new answers to the questions it asks, and certainly no new questions.

In particular, I think the proper role of the global-thinking approach could be explicitly investigated here. I think this is the real problem you both have.

There is a sense in which global thinking, this waffly, emotive, anecdotal way of writing which Kurtz includes, is logically prior to linear thinking. We believe logic, science and all that because of our experience and our waffly, global guesses of what can be learned based on that experience. Global thinking does not, however, depend on linear for its validity in the same way.

I think the unashamed use and exploration of global thinking is the most exciting challenge and opportunity of our current intellectual climate. It should not represent a rejection of linear thought. Rather, it puts linear thought back into its proper context.

So after more than a millenium of misuse and abuse of our brains, we are finally learning to use both halves of them at once!

Whew! Food for thought?

Yours in Christ

[Names withheld]