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Introduction 1 the Challenge of Comparative Religion

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Introduction 1 the Challenge of Comparative Religion NOTES Introduction 1. Google searches conducted on July 28, 2009. 2. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic Books, 2001); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006); Victor J. Stenger, God: The Failed Hypothesis: How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist (New York: Prometheus Books, 2007); Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006); Dean H. Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (New York: Anchor, 2005); Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006); David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). 3. Nonreductive functionalism is a term of art in the philosophy of mind. David Chalmers popularized the concept in his 1996 book The Conscious Mind. He argues that “consciousness can only be understood within a non-reductionist science of the mind.” Consciousness is “supervenient” on physical states of the brain. Chalmers argues for “property dualism,” that is, mental states cannot be fully reduced to and understood through biochemical, neuron-level analyses of the brain, contrary to the ambitions of physicalist reductionists such as John Searle and Daniel Dennett. See David J. Chalmer, The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). My use of the term is related but greatly expanded beyond the domain of the cognitive sciences and the philosophy of mind. 4. Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (Project Gutenberg, 1884). 5. Alfred North Whitehead, Science and the Modern World (New York: Free Press, [1925] 1967), 51. 6. “Metanexus Institute,” http://www.metanexus.net. 7. “Television” and “automobile” are examples of other modern bastard combinations of Greek and Latin words. 8. Edwin Schrödinger, “What Is Life?” http://whatislife.stanford.edu/Homepage/LoCo_files/ What-is-Life.pdf. 1 The Challenge of Comparative Religion 1. “Adherents.Com: National & World Religion Statistics,” http://www.adherents.com/ Religions_By_Adherents.html. 2. Another source puts the number of distinct religions in the world at ten thousand, of which 150 have 1 million or more members. These statistics are put together to support Christian mis- sionaries in David Barrett, George Kurian, and Todd Johnson, World Christian Encyclopedia (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001). The authors count some 33,830 denominations within Christianity. 3. Anthony F. C. Wallace, Revitalizations and Mazeways: Essays on Culture Change, ed. Robert S. Grumet, vol. 1 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003). 4. Daniel L. Overmyer, “Chinese Religion: An Overview,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (New York: Macmillan Reference, 2005). 222 Notes 5. See, for instance, Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason (New York: W. W. Norton, 2004); Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006); Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2003); Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything (New York: Hachette Books, 2007). For a thoughtful rebuttal, see John Haught, God and the New Atheism: A Critical Response to Dawkins, Harris, and Hitchens (Louisville, KY: Westminister John Knox Press, 2008). 6. Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991). 7. See Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religion (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1958); Eliade, The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, trans. Willard R. Trask (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1961); Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971); and Eliade, Myths, Rites, Symbols: A Mircea Eliade Reader, ed. Wendell C. Beane and William G. Doty, vol. 2 (New York: Harper Colophon, 1976). For critics of Eliade, see G. S. Kirk, Myth: Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973); Kirk, The Nature of Greek Myths (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1974); Guilford Dudley III, Religion on Trial: Mircea Eliade & His Critics (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1977). 8. Carl Gustav Jung, Psychology and Religion (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, [1938] 1966); The Portable Jung, ed. Joseph Campell (New York: Penguin, 1971). 9. It is not the case that Christianity and other religions necessarily reject the validity of other faiths, even as they might argue for their own superiority over other approaches. Part of the genius of Hindu civilization is its ability to absorb and incorporate many diverse religions and incompatible philosophies into its synthesizing spirit. Jews understand themselves to be a chosen people with a special covenant with God, but this is not to say that God does not also relate to other peoples and faiths. Islam also affirms the diversity of faiths as part of God’s plan: “We have created you male and female, and have made you nations and tribes that you may know one another. The noblest of you, in the sight of Allah, is the best in conduct” (Qu’ran, Sura 49:13). These are complex texts and traditions, so other verses and examples also can be cited to con- tradict this implied inclusivity. At this stage, I need only note that particular religions recognize and sometimes affirm the legitimacy of other particular religions. Concerns about orthodoxy and heterodoxy are historically mostly matters internal to particular traditions, not so much between traditions. 10. George Santayana, Life of Reason, vol. 3, Reason in Religion (New York: Prometheus Books, [1905–06] 1998). 11. John Bowker, The Sense of God (Oxford: Oneworld Publications, [1973] 1995), x. 12. Paul Ricoeur, Interpretation Theory: Discourse and the Surplus of Meaning (Fort Worth: Texas Christian University Press, 1976). 13. Jack Miles, God: A Biography (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1995). 14. Stanley H. Ambrose, “Late Pleistocene Human Population Bottlenecks, Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans,” Journal of Human Evolution 34, no. 6 (1998); Ambrose, “Volcanic Winter, and Differentiation of Modern Humans,” Bradshaw Foundation, http:// www.bradshawfoundation.com/stanley_ambrose.php. Accessed June 12, 2009. 2 The Old Sciences of Religion 1. Michel Bourdeau, “Auguste Comte,” in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta (Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University, 2008). 2. Ibid.; Frederick Ferré, Introduction to Positive Philosophy Auguste Comte (New York: Bobbs- Merrill Company, 1970); Andrew Wernick, Auguste Comte and the Religion of Humanity: The Post-Theistic Program of French Social Theory (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001); Henri de Lubac, The Drama of Atheist Humanism, trans. Edith M. Riley and Anne Englund Nash (San Francisco: Ignatious Press, [1944] 1983); Gertrud Lenzer, “Introduction: Auguste Comte and Modern Positivism,” in Auguste Come and Positivism: The Essential Writings, ed. Gertrud Lenzer (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008). 3. Auguste Comte, “Plans for the Scientific Operations Necessary for Reorganizing Society” (1822), in The Crisis in Industrial Civilization: The Early Writings of Auguste Comte, ed. Ronald Fletcher (London: Heinemann, 1974), 144. Notes 223 4. Ibid., 134. 5. Comte, “Philosophical Considerations on the Sciences and Savants” (1825), in The Crisis in Industrial Civilization: The Early Writings of Auguste Comte, ed. Ronald Fletcher (London: Heinemann, 1974), 192. 6. Comte, “Plans for the Scientific Operations,” 134. 7. Comte, “Philosophical Considerations,” 185. 8. Auguste Comte, The Positive Philosophy, trans. Harriet Martineau (New York: AMS Press, [1842] 1974), 558. 9. Comte, “Philosophical Considerations,” 185. 10. Ibid., 187. 11. Ibid. 12. Comte, Positive Philosophy, 36. 13. Auguste Comte, “Considerations on the Spiritual Power” (1826), in The Crisis of Industrial Civilization: The Early Essays of Auguste Comte, ed. Ronald Fletcher (London: Heinemann, 1974), 236. 14. Ibid., 241. 15. Comte, “Philosophical Considerations,” 199. 16. Comte, System of Positive Polity, or Treatise on Sociology: Instituting the Religion of Humanity, trans. Frederic Harrison, 3 vols., vol. 2 (New York: B. Franklin, [1852] 1968), 47. 17. Ibid., 296. 18. Richard McCarty, “Comte’s Positivist Calendar,” East Carolina University, http://personal. ecu.edu/mccartyr/pos-cal.html. 19. Comte, System of Positive Polity, 45. 20. John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Project Gutenberg, 1865). 21. This analysis of Comte’s significance in ten points in the thinking of other nineteenth- and early twentieth-century theorists of religion draws on primary-source material as well as the follow- ing books: Daniel L. Pals, Eight Theories of Religion, 2nd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Eric J. Sharpe, Comparative Religion: A History, 5th ed. (Chicago, IL: Open Court Publishing, 1986); J. Samuel Preus, Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud, ed. Terry Godlove, Texts and Translation Series, American Academy of Religion (Atlanta, GA: Scholars Press, 1996); and Ronald Fletcher, ed. The Crisis of Industrial Civilization: The Early Essays of Auguste Comte (London: Heinemann Educational Books,1974). 22. Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo (New York: Prometheus Books, [1918] 2000); Freud, Future of an
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