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<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Lee—I agree with Ed. A very well written post
that sharpens the lines of discussion. You make an excellent case for parallels
between what you call the Christian Church and the Church of the Enlightenment.
This is also a claim that has been made by Karen Armstrong against the New
Atheists (who I’ve argued are both wrong in significant ways—but this is not
the place for that discussion; for those interested there is more on this theme
here: <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Atheism-New-Spirituality-Metaphysical-ebook/dp/B005ZJJLDI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415037845&sr=1-1&keywords=Desilet+Radical+Atheism">http://www.amazon.com/Radical-Atheism-New-Spirituality-Metaphysical-ebook/dp/B005ZJJLDI/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1415037845&sr=1-1&keywords=Desilet+Radical+Atheism</a>).
<o:p></o:p></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">As well as you make your case, though, I think
you are misunderstanding where I am coming from. I have no dog in the fight
between the naturalists and the supernaturalists. Though I lean toward the
naturalist position, I am still open to the possibility of the supernatural (but
I would argue there is really nothing that exists that is “supernatural”
because if it exists wouldn’t it be in an important sense “natural”?). I don’t
see much evidence for it (the supernatural) but then I have not had all the
experiences there are to have. I don’t think any of us fully understands what
is “natural” sufficiently well to make hard claims about what is possible in
nature and what is not. </span><span style="font-size: 14pt;"> </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">So I disagree when you say this about me: “As a
good member of that church [the Church of the Enlightenment], or so I imagine
you to be, you wish to continue to exorcise the demon of "belief in the
supernatural" from the thought and policy of societies and government.” I
draw the lines a little differently.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Belief in the supernatural is not my target. In
my view, the lines needing to be drawn are between accountability and
unaccountability regarding authority. There is more than enough evidence to
suggest that societies and governments do not fare well when authority is
unaccountable. In this regard, divinely inspired texts are within the circle of
my target but are not the sole target. Here I think Bob misunderstands me as
well when he suggests that I am “interested in finding the motivation of
authoritarianism and locate it in the belief that text X is divinely inspired.”
I don’t believe such texts are the sole source or perhaps even the primary
source of motivation for authoritarianism. But I do believe that as soon as a
group of people believes a text to be the word of God it amounts to stepping on
a banana peel and initiates a skid straight into authoritarianism. And there may also be
a bundle of motivations involved in believing a text to be divinely inspired,
but one clear consequence is authoritarianism—even where the text in question
may claim to be, as you claim for the New Testament, anti-authoritarian. You
can’t fight the authoritarian fire with more fire. And the history of the
Catholic Church as an institutional religion perfectly illustrates this.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">I was raised Catholic and I also find the
current Pope to be a somewhat agreeable figure. But the interesting steps he
has taken since becoming Pope have all been steps toward the de-sacralization, de-divinization
of the Bible insofar as he has opened the Bible to interpretation by human
agents such as himself. And I suspect he will also get around to altering
Church dogma on the infallibility of the Pope! All of these steps are steps
toward making the authority of the Church accountable—which is to say, subject
to human revision, correction, and oversight.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">To repeat my position, the health of human
community and governing authority is very much contingent on adopting the view
that all persons are created equal and all texts are created equal. This
ensures that every authority figure and every authoritative text (law) is
accountable—subject to revision and modification by other human actors.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Initially in this series of posts I targeted
religion because I expressed an interest in Burke’s alignment of religion and
fascism—the latter as a perversion of key elements of the former. I argued that
the “perversion” comes into play in those cases where the religion is practiced
by way of adherence to a text claimed to be of divine source.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 19px;">There are cases, such as that of the Catholic
Church mentioned above, where the religion in question, historically based on
claims that its text is the word of God, adopts what is essentially the
position that a text is accountable and therefore subject to human
interpretation. When, for example, Pope Francis says, referencing the Book of
Genesis, that God is not “a wizard with a magic wand”—this must be understood
as making the text accountable. Here the Pope makes the Bible accountable to
science. (Search “the Pope and Genesis” to see the hell his views are raising in Christian circles). </span><font size="4"> </font></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">This is a positive development with respect to moving toward a
healthier culture of authority that at the same time undermines the
consequences of believing a text to be in any significant way the words of a
divinity. Along these lines, it has always been my belief that Jesus becomes a
greater force of anti-authoritarianism when viewed as a man and a spiritual
philosopher rather than the son of God. Too much ugly political and spiritual
mischief has resulted from believing him, literally, to be the son of God.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">My arguments here do not speak against belief
in the supernatural. Instead they speak only against using the supernatural as
a basis for earthly authority. And, to repeat, with regard to earthly
authority, there are many other ways to justify making such authority
unaccountable other than by way of grounding it in supernatural authority. But
the latter has been a very popular and successful means of doing so throughout
history and therefore the conversation Burke opens to this phenomenon by
discussing how and when fascism and religion are closely related is worthwhile. This may be one reason why the Catholic Church never
took an openly opposed stance against Nazism and, as many have illustrated, was
arguably seduced by its radical authoritative stance and consequently complicit
in many of its actions. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;">Greg</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 14pt;"><br></span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><br></p></body></html>