“This is the worldview reflected in the Bible. In this conception, everything earthly has its heavenly counterpart, and everything heavenly has its earthly counterpart. If war begins on earth, then there must be, at the same time, war in heaven between the angels of the nations in the heavenly council. Likewise, events initiated in heaven are mirrored on earth. This is a symbolic way of saying that every material reality has a spiritual dimension, and every spiritual reality has physical consequences…
“Not only the writers of the Bible, but also the Greeks, Romans, Egyptians, Babylonians, Indians, and Chinese — indeed, most people in the ancient world — shared this worldview, and it is still held by large numbers of people today.”
(From Walter Wink’s The Powers That Be, p.15-16.)
To AKMA and the Happy Tutor: How is “Truth” not the talisman used by philosophers to ward off the troublesome incongruities of polytheism? For me, the question has long been theological: does god need “Truth”? What use does the Trickster Yhwh have for “Truth”? What use is “Truth” to the all-loving god? Does “Truth” protect from the endlessly empty well of sunyata or from the whims of Nemesis?
In place of “Truth,” I’m content to subsitute these three: coherent, useful for, life-giving. What, in your “Truth,” is missing from these three combined? If “Truth” is more than these three, what more is it? If “Truth” is less than these three, what use is it?
Are eudaimonia and shalom possible without “Truth?” If not, why do they depend so vicariously upon it? If not, who needs “Truth”?
“Truth” seems too lethal a weapon, too casually used. If there is “Truth,” wouldn’t it be ineffable? Wouldn’t it be blasphemy to speak its name, assuming we are even worthy to know it?
How is “Truth” not a lie?
The other night I dreamt that Donald Rumsfeld had started working with me. He was being an asshat.
As is the custom in our small office, I first went to a colleague to make sure I wasn’t way out in left field (no pun intended). She suggested I confront him.
So I did. I walked into his office, which was much nicer than mine, much nicer than our director’s. He smiled. I told him (in polite office-speak) to quit being an asshat. We talked about the variety of ways he was being an asshat. He agreed that since this was not the Pentagon, it would be better for all concerned if he kept his asshat to himself, as much as possible.
As we were winding down, his family started to file through his office door. All ten of them. The place where I had been standing was now a long conference table with elaborate place settings. His family seemed quite nice, not at all asshats.
I declined his wife’s invitation to stay for dinner.
This week the Arby’s Oven Mitt learns that he doesn’t have a nose. Panic ensues. Upon looking in the mirror to behold the horror that is his nose-less face, he discovers that he has no ears. Panic ensues (again).
Poor Arby’s Oven Mitt.
Been reading Richard Rorty’s Philosophy & Social Hope, a collection of essays wherein he argues that belief is a habit of action. (Not too different from Foucault’s assertion that thought is the form of action.)
The trick here is American pragmatism’s assertion that there is no inherent correct or incorrect: there is only correct and incorrect within a certain context. The best question we can use to test a belief’s correctness, says Rorty, is to ask, “For what purposes would it be useful to hold that belief?” (If your purpose is to replace a light bulb, an incorrect answer would be to stick your tongue in the socket. So he’s not being a relativist, just a contextualist.)
Following William James, he argues that the obligatin to justify your own beliefs only arises when one’s “habits of action” interefere with the fulfillment of another’s needs. And so “by their fruits ye shall know them” is placed side by side with a belief’s consequences. Until your beliefs start messing on another’s life, your beliefs are your own private business — and should stay that way.
Unfortunately, Rorty has allowed the catechist to define religion. Rorty cannot imagine religious belief without anthropomorphic monotheism, without sentimentalism, and without the literalization of symbols. You would think that if belief is habits of action, the best way to characterize religion would be to observe and ask self-described religious folk how their religions inform and shape their life habits. In other words, to know them by their fruits.
But instead Rorty decides that — for religious folk — it is enough to know them by their rhetoric, and at that the rhetoric they feed to twelve-year-olds before confirmation/baptism/bar mitzvah. In Piaget, this is the concrete-operational phase, when everything means what it means and nothing else. It’s no wonder, then, that Rorty goes on to praise religions’ “demythologizers” as heroes, because they “know” that the rhetoric is only rhetoric. But why does it matter?
Click to continue reading “Religion & social hope”
Presidential candidate, former Vermont governor and physician Howard Dean called for the immediate resignation of all White House officials who knew that Bush’s State of the Union address calling for war in Iraq contained lies. You can sign a petition at his website to that effect.
