The End.

When I decided to take Philosophy as my segment 3 cluster, I had hoped to find some kind of peace in my professed agnosticism. I found that my first class, the Philosophy of Religion, was extremely important in my understanding the various world religions. After its completion, I had groundwork to use to find my own place in the realm of spirituality. My second class, Native American Religions, focused on a specific stream of religious thought that I felt I had not found in the previous class. When I signed up for Phil 525, I went into it hoping that it would tie up some loose ends and leave me with a neat little package that I could call my own personal religious view. Not so!
If anything, the Varieties of Religious Experience has left me with more questions than ever and put me in a constant mode of questioning everything about my previously held beliefs. I must thank Professor Hood for prodding me into this state as I now see that my quest for religious and spiritual enlightenment will continue to be an ongoing process. Thanks also for introducing me to some incredible books and especially to the concept of the hermeneutics of contemplation. It has given me a place to dwell in my skepticism about both religious and atheistic dogmas.

To review:

Tylor and Frazer got me very excited about the prospect of explaining religion as an evolution of beliefs. Though their methods were flawed, they did uncover shreds of truth and gave subsequent thinkers a place to start in there own investigation.
Freud, for all his self glorifications, caused me to see religion as something that comes from within (which was later reinforced by Hume’s writings). Though I disagree that religion is ALL bad, it does play a role in much of the human suffering that we see today. I also find truth in his idea that we are set up to be religious believers based on our early experiences with our own parents. Thanks Freud!
James gave me a sense of peace in that he points out that religion serves a definite purpose in the lives of many. He also reinforced my thought that the logic of religions may be flawed, but it is invaluable to the mental health and spiritual well being of those who subscribe to it.
Durkheim is my man in the agnostic department. His support of the idea that religion is a social phenomenon opened my eyes to the function that it plays in the progression of civilizations though the ages. Religion=Society takes a leap in my awakening that the concept of god may stem from our earthly human interactions.
Marx was the one thinker whose ideas I had been familiar with prior to taking this class. Religion IS the opium of the masses! But this is not all there is to it in my opinion. I find his belief that religion grew out of economic need a little hard to follow, but indeed it plays a huge role in the suppression and exploitation of the underprivileged today.
Evans-Pritchard was extremely well thought and I admire his hands on approach to looking at various religious phenomenons. He was also the most disheartening in that he points out, accurately I think, that there may never be a satisfying explanation to how and why religion has become the driving social force that it is. I too wish that he had taken that final step at the end of his research in offering some kind of theory to bind the weight of his work.
I have just written on the specifics of Phillips and his interlocutors, but in summary I feel that Phillips goes too far in his criticism of his predecessors. As I read each of the chapters in his book, I kept finding myself lost in the forest for all the trees. I understand that we must be critical in our readings of great thinkers, but at some point I feel we must appreciate the accomplishments for what they are and not digress into heady departures from the subject at hand. Phillips might try using contemplation in his readings of other philosophers in the way that he does the readings of religious documents.
To conclude, I come away from the “Nature of Religious Experience” a better rounded thinker and with a base on which to ponder my existence more thoughtfully. I have also gained a great appreciation for the work of the great thinkers that we have examined, and I will continue to pursue my readings in philosophy after my Gator days come to an end.

Phillips Vs. Feuerbach

Feuerbach, in his assertion that humanity creates god as a projection of our own attributes, rings truer to me than Phillips’ criticism of it. Reification was a big word in our discussions in class and more than the other philosophers we covered I think Feuerbach was really onto something here. It echoes the material we covered about totemism, and I feel that though this approach to explaining religious thought has its weaknesses, there is something irresistible about it to me. Looking at the concepts of god, from the ancients to modern day, it is evident to me that man is reaching for descriptions of god through reification of what we see as important in ourselves.
This is also one of the spots in Phillips’ book where I found myself lost in his word and missing his points. His arguments for Feuerbach are wordy and cerebral to the point that I begin to shut down on considering his opinions. I do agree with him on the point that Feuerbach’s theories are incomplete, but then again, so are Phillips’. He spends so much energy on deconstructing the philosophers who offer an original and forward moving theory that he doesn’t do much in the way of positing his own. C’mon Phillips, your killing me!

Phillips Vs. Hume

I really like Hume’s points about the human position in the search for the evidence of a creator god. His views really echoed with my own in that we both feel that the existence of a god and his/her workings are beyond the realm of human experience. Before the advent of modern technology, it was a reasonable assumption to think that the goodness of fit between man, animals, and nature could have been the work of a creator god, but when supplanted by Darwin’s theories the inferences about him/her melt away.
I also must agree with Phillips on this one. He states that Hume’s arguments are weak in that he does not offer anything else to replace the creation theory, and in doing so misses out on an opportunity to practice the hermeneutics of contemplation. I feel that it is all well and good to offer criticisms of a theory when there are glaring faults with them, but to do so is to lack appreciation for alternative explanations. In insisting that there is no evidence that god exists, but not considering the alternatives, he becomes just as dogmatic as the religious theorists that he denounces.

Phillips Vs. Bernard Williams

I must say from the start that I have some real difficulty understanding Phillips. I read each chapter we covered, sometimes twice, and I come away with little comprehension. Up to this point, I have been able to read each philosopher in turn and take something away, but Phillips focuses so intently on minutia that I lose hold of the bigger picture.
In this way I read and considered the section Williams and I get the 8 assumptions about the gods. The ancients had so thoroughly built their reality and worldview around the framework that the gods play a part in everyday life that they could not have reasoned without it. I feel that Williams is correct in his critique of the errors made in the assumptions, and that the logic of the ancients has lost all its relevance for today’s thinkers. This is not to take anything away from the accomplishments of the Greeks and their contributions to philosophy.
Here, Phillips critique takes so many varied and wild shots at Williams’ work that I found myself getting angry as I read him. A good analogy would be to criticize the work of a painter because you don’t like the architecture of the building it is hanging in! I would really need to read Williams outside of a Phillips text to be able to appreciate what is really being said. I found myself pining for Pals and his approach of letting the philosopher speak for himself, and then adding the criticism almost as a postscript.

Wittgenstein

I was really intrigued with our reading and discussion of Wittgenstein. He comes across really abrasive and controversial, but some of his radical ideas seem to ring true in their effort to shake up philosophy’s role in describing religion. So I went ahead and read some more about him online.
Though much of his work is extremely heady, to include the concepts that we discussed in class, what I really latch onto in his thinking is what many of his critics see as flawed. Wittgenstein upheld his belief that language is extremely limiting when it is used to describe things that are beyond the experience of human beings. He also maintains that there is a limit to the potential of empirical investigation.
To me, this is the meat of the discussion about the usefulness of “hermeneutics of contemplation”. As I have noted before, I consider myself an agnostic (though this class has pulled me in either direction at times). To describe what that means to me is to say that: I am doubtful that there is an omnipotent being out there that is pulling the cosmic strings, but I see that the ability of science to offer up a satisfying explanation of the meaning of the universe as finite.
Wittgenstein’s viewpoint that science may never be able to accomplish that feat is a belief that I have held for some time, and it was reassuring to find my humble belief echoed by a mind as talented as his. He may have taken his stance too far, and in doing so alienating much of the philosophical community, but I think that the controversy that he generated is an important part of his legacy. It is both a challenge and a statement to the thinkers that follow him.

E.E. Evans Pritchard

As we have read through the Pals text, I have gotten really excited about each theorist in turn. The lens through which they each view religion has opened my mind and given me great new insights. Unfortunately, at the close of each chapter their theories are all shot full of holes, and I come away from them with a sense of being even more lost in the philosophical wilderness. Finally, with Evans-Pritchard I finshed reading and found myself right back where I stared at the beginning of this course! Which is a good thing. With each of the previous theorists, they talk a good game and make some really interesting connections and observations, but at the end of the day, that is all they are. With Evans-Pritchard it becomes clear that there can not be any overarching theoretical framework for all of the worlds religious beliefs. Some may find this unsatisfactory, and admittedly it is a bit dissapointing, but Evans-Pritchard demonstrated that one can dedicate an entire career to examining ONE religion and still come away with only a single theory in which to explain it. The early attempts to explain religious phenomenon are way too grandious. In a way they remind me off the weakness of religioous dogma in the way they attempt to wave a hand say "this is why everything is the way it is." In reality, the cosmos is far too complex and complicated to be described in any simple terms.

Wow, its been a few weeks since I have worked on my Blog, as I have been reading furiously trying to get a grasp on all of this stuff! It usually takes me 2 or 3 times to get the gist of most of the readings, so I have been focusing on that.
As for Marx, I have been familiar with his work since I was about ten years old when I accidentally read Orwell's Animal Farm because I thought it was a children's book! I think his philosophies are really compelling and I have had an evolving position on communism ever since my interest was accidentally triggered.
I must say that I agree with most of his basic tenets. I do see the source of human suffering to be grounded in economic disparity, and that religion is a way for the oppressed to relieve the pain of daily life. The creative work of the working class is transformed into a commodity for the benefit of the ruling class, and it is coupled with the exchange of happiness in this life for the hopes of a better life after death. In this way, humans really do fail to live up to their potential by being cheated of a satisfying existence in the now.
I find fault in Marx's ideas on several fronts. In order for Marxism to succeed, an unrealistic reliance on uniform human solidarity is taken for granted. As is seen in the record of history, people have the ties of nationalism and race that have superseded ties of class. To counteract this, there needs to be an oligarchy in place that makes decisions for the people that is paramount to fascism. Lastly, Marxism, in its goal of removing religion as a blindfold, sets itself up to become a religion in and of itself. All hopes and aspirations of mankind are still dependent on a higher power, this time in the from of government.

I really got excited about Durkheim's theories on religion as a purely social phenomenon. I was ready to become a devout follower of his ideas until reading that he never even set foot in Australia! This fact forced me to re-read Durkheim in Pals book with a little more skepticism. As I wrote in the ilearn forum, it seems to me that religion has grown into a purely religious phenomenon not necessarily out of it. In the earliest days of humanity, religion was science. So to say that their way to explain the natural world was purely social is like saying that today's science is purely social. I think religion then, as today, has at least a dual purpose. It is both a social binding and a way for individuals to come to terms with the world.

James

"‘Religion’ means the feelings, acts, and experiences of individuals men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."

-William James

Of all the theorists that we have covered thus far, James' viewpoint rings the most true to me. I have always felt some reluctance in prescribing to any organized religion. This is due in part to my Catholic upbringing. Though my father was not a "strict" practicioner, I was aware of the belief that there is "NO salvation outside the Catholic church." This idea was always in the back of my mind as my mother was a practicing Protestant! As a young child I was deeply concered about the fate of her soul, and as I grew older I rejected the Catholic dogma. It was replaced by my feeling that if whatever belief system you follow helps you to be a better person then so be it. Reading James has help reaffirm my stance, and he has even helped me to reopen my mind toward followers of organized religion.

Freud

Was "Illusion" written during Feued's cocaine period? I really like the concepts, and for a philosophy reading, it is succinct, but I could't help but be annoyed at his grandiosity. His technique of providing both sides of the argument reminded me very much of being stuck in a conversation at a party with the guy who has just exited the bathroom after "powdering" his nose.

My 1st attempt!

O.K. people let's start bloggin'. I am fascinated with the diversity of belief systems across the planet, but I have a really tough time keeping them all straight. I find this site and those like it a useful and easy way to take a look at the big picture.

http://www.religionfacts.com/big_religion_chart.htm

Speaking today in class of hermeneutics, I was inspired to seek "Just the facts on the world's religions." Take a look and let me know what you think?