(Ir)religiosity

Hope you don't mind my laziness, Blake, as I cut and paste my FB comment to your blog…

What we hear a lot here at Duke is how truth resides is our embodiment or performance of the narrative. Usually this is in reference to Scripture. Scripture is true not because it claims to be true but because our lives and more importantly our communities are transformed by it. We attest to the truthfulness of Scripture by our performance of the text.

That's what I'm hearing in Peter's quote. I like it.

Another discussion along the same lines, from the other end of the theological spectrum, can be found here:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/07/the_…

“Scripture is true not because it claims to be true but because our lives and more importantly our communities are transformed by it. We attest to the truthfulness of Scripture by our performance of the text.”

This seems like a rather broad definition of truth. Do Islamic fundamentalists attest to the truthfulness of their ideas when they blow themselves up in Baghdad street markets? If we accept as truth anything that transforms lives and communities, we aren't left with much that isn't truth.

After reading that article you linked I am tempted to answer your question with another question:

What is the difference between the Islamic fundamentalist who blows himself and others up and the scientists employed by DoD or some other defense or weapons contractor with the purpose of devising more efficient ways of blowing others at a large scale?

I have no interest in defending fundamentalism (be it religious or atheist). Likewise, I have no interest in rejecting science. Religion and science aren't mutually exclusive for me, there are merely two different ways of understanding and I believe I'm better of with both rather than one.

Science alone cannot lead one to morality any more than religious fundamentalism can. I think those two examples only demonstrate the fragile and malleable character of human nature.

Of course religion fails and continues to fail miserably at address
moral issues when appropriated as a type of fundamentalism. I won't
deny that.

But you're painting with a pretty broad brush (as most of the
Pharyngula posts appear to do) when you refer to theology as a “rather
pointless activity, inherently untestable, as likely true as false
with no way to tell which.” You could say the same thing about
philosophy there

I think intolerance is equally repugnant whether it comes from
religious fundamentalists or scientific evangelists. In fact, there
is an interesting parallel between the two in that respect.

As for objective reality, I think we're kidding ourselves if we think
we can decipher what that is, which is why science, religion,
philosophy and anything else can't claim complete hegemony. So I
follow the philosophical tradition since at least Heidegger when I
maintain that everything is mediated through our ideological lens.

Stanley Fish and Terry Eagleton have similar thoughts on this area as
does Philip Clayton when it comes to science and religion not being
mutually exclusive.

I have no interest in rolling back the clock on the Enlightenment to
some sort of pre-rational cosmology; however, I don't want the
Enlightenment to crust over into dogma. I think we would be served
well if we all became enlightened about the enlightenment, to borrow
from Jacques Derrida, while realizing that the Enlightenment critique
has been turned on itself. If there is anything that 20th century
continental philosophy has taught us, it is that secular reason plays
by its own language game. Which is fine as long as we realize that
that is what it is. It may help us get a little closer to
“objectivity” but it doesn't reveal the way thing-themselves actually
are.

At the risk of oversimplifying I will say that for me science answers
the questions about the world while philosophy and theology help
answer the questions of how to be in the world. Science is very
helpful but it doesn't answer everything for me.

So far I've managed maintain that position without blowing myself up
and without becoming an ignorant, uneducated backwoods
supernaturalist. Religion at its worst creates that type of person,
but you do a disservice to a whole swathe of people who are working to
make the world a better place when you lump us all together like that.

So as there is no confusion…..Heidegger's exegesis of aletheia is from ancient Greek sources, philosophical/classic Greek, not from New Testament (Koine) Greek…..Classical Greek preceded Koine by a few hundred years or so.

I like Zizek as well….but at this point I still resonate with the postmodernist approach…..call me old fashioned! lol

As I understand it, the “Greek influence” on the NT has been overstated. Not to say that it isn't there, of course. But the NT writers were steeped in Judaism, as a whole.

IMHO, theology is always going to have cultural biases brought to its table because humans are never fully objective. Humans are, for the most part, subjective and selective! Our ability to say what is true or not true is limited by our humanity and subjective licensing. Hope that makes sense!

You said, 'And I would even go so far as to say that we can replace
“theology” with science, philosophy or any other enterprise that
attempts to make truth claims.' i concur!

Blake,

I did a fair bit of research on the New Testament us of aletheia a few years back. I focussed on the Gospel of John (where the word occurs almost forty times!). The results were interesting. The word has a wide range. In the words of bib scholar Anthony Thiselton, aletheia is “polymorphous,” that is, it carries “many meanings.” Everything from a person's testimony being “good” or “genuine” (the person who witnessed events in the crucifixion, for example) to Jesus himself being “the way, the truth, and the life,” and then to more abstract and mystical senses in which truth is a spiritual state of being. There is even a passage about “doing” aletheia, that is, that actions can be truthful or not.

Heidegger, of course, has intriguing thoughts on this. I've read him on how aletheia is an “uncovering” or “un-hiddenness.” He etymologically suggests that letheia or “hiddenness” is more basic, hence he likes Plato's Cave Analogy.

I recently read a bit of Zizek who was intrigued by Heidegger's idea of “hiddenness” and how there are these traces of something sinister and almost evil in our basic way of being in the world. Really interesting stuff. It seems like a take on depravity and/or original sin that I might be able to get into at some point.

So, I want to re-read Heidegger on some of these points.

All that to say that “truth” is vague and ambiguous, even from a (so-called) biblical perspective.

I haven't done as much research, or even a word study, on the subject,
but I have to say that I'm not at all surprised that at what you
found. It sounds very Hebraic.

My suspicion is that I different meaning was imported into the text
once Christianity came into contact with Hellenistic culture and had
to cope with Greek thought. Not to mention the Enlightenment much
later.

I'm really getting into Zizek's thought on this. He has a perspective
that I haven't come across anywhere else. One that surely not modern
but still avoids the usual posture of postmodernism.

It may just be because I am more versed in it, but I tend to resonate
with the postmodern position as well.

To be sure, when I refer to the Greek influence I don't mean the NT
writers alone (though I'm sure it was there) but the interpretation of
the text later in time has the ancient world became more Hellenized.
Exhibit A would be the codification of Christian Neoplatonism. But,
I'm no NT scholar so I really don't know much about the specifics.

Exactly. And I would even go so far as to say that we can replace
“theology” with science, philosophy or any other enterprise that
attempts to make truth claims.