A Critique of Charles Taylor's a Secular Age By
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Varieties of Religious Naturalism
Varieties of Religious Naturalism Wesley J. Wildman — Boston University — Spring 2010 — STH TT861/TT961 Course Description The aim of this course is learn about varieties of religious naturalism and how they have been, and can be, incorporated into philosophical and theological reflection. The seminar will read a variety of works in contemporary religious naturalism, from twentieth-century classics to current contributions, and from theoretical analyses of the meaning of naturalism to surveys attempting to map out the territory of plausible viewpoints. We will also track the close relationship between religious naturalism and both ecologically-rooted forms of spirituality and nature-centered forms of mysticism. The class is intended for advanced masters students and doctoral candidates interested in contemporary forms of philosophical and theological reflection on nature and God, and in forms of spirituality rooted in the natural world. Students registered at the 900-level have readings and a bibliographic task to complete over and above the obligations of students registered at the 800-level. Classes will meet once a week on Wednesdays from 8:00 to 11:00 in STH 319. Each class will be conducted in the seminar discussion format with lectures given by the instructor as needed or requested. The 800-level version of this course counts (1) as an MTS Core Concentration course for Science and Religion, for Theology, and for Area B; and (2) as an MDiv Theology 3 Core Elective. It may also count (3) as a requirement for a BTI Certificate program in science and religion. The main product of the course will be a research paper on some aspect of the course material, topic to be approved in advance by the instructor (50%; 3,000 words for 800-level students, 5,000 words for 900-level students). -
Clarifying the Task of the Church in a Secular Age
Lumen et Vita 10:2 (2020), doi:10.6017/lv.v10i2.12499 Clarifying the Task of the Church in a Secular Age Grace Mariette Agolia Abstract This paper argues that a proper theological understanding of the church-world relationship must avoid the tendency to dichotomize the two. Instead of regarding the world as a godless place, Christians must affirm in faith that the world is fundamentally graced, since it is the product of God’s desire to communicate Godself. First, this paper draws upon the work of philosopher Charles Taylor to elucidate the meaning of “secularity” in the Western context. Then, the paper appeals to Karl Rahner’s theology in exploring the prophetic and dialogical functions of the church with respect to society, which entails the church’s own self-critical task as a listening, discerning, and synodal church. Rather than privatizing faith, the minority status of the church in society allows it to fulfill its mission more authentically as servant and sacrament of God’s kingdom. Finally, this paper proposes that any impingement of the ostensible sacred-secular divide starts with the works of mercy because these directly confront the contingencies and vagaries of human life, touching upon our innate need for one another. Text Introduction The church’s task in a secular age is no different from its mission in any other time: 1 proclaiming the good news of salvation from God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. This mission is oriented both toward the world (ecclesia ad extra) and the ecclesial community itself 1 In this paper, I use “church” to refer to the universal church and “Church” to designate the Catholic Church in particular, my own faith tradition. -
Discipleship in a Secular Age Curriculum
Discipleship in a Secular Age: Engaging the Culture with Charles Taylor and James Smith Curriculum by Billy Boyce Table of Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………1 Curriculum Week One: Landscape of Our Secular Age (Preface and Introduction)……………3 Week Two: Twisted Tales – The Creation of Secular (Chapters 1&2)…………….7 Week Three: Gut Check – What the Secular Feels Like (Chapters 3&4)…………12 Week Four: Film Interlude – Garden State………………………………………..17 Week Five: Re-Framing – “In,” but not “Of” this Secular Age (Chapter 5)………18 Week Six: Film Interlude – Blue Like Jazz………………………………………...23 Week Seven: Conclusions – Discipleship in a Secular Age (Conclusion)………...24 Appendices Selections from “The Unbeliever and Christians” by Albert Camus “What is Common Grace?” by Dr. Timothy Keller Introduction to Discipleship in a Secular Age Charles Taylor’s award-winning work, A Secular Age, has caused ripples in the academic world with its bold analysis of Western history and its powerful argument against modern enemies to the Christian faith, such as the vaunted New Atheists. It has tremendous resources for the Western Church, as we seek to both understand and reach our culture with the Gospel. However, its 800+ pages of highly academic writing make it inaccessible for many who would benefit from its reflections. Thankfully, James K.A. Smith has sought to distill its message for believers outside of the Academy. In How (Not) to be Secular, Smith brings out the heart of Taylor’s message, and his reflections help us more faithfully live out our faith in this secular age. This study guide comes out of a summer wrestling with James Smith and Charles Taylor in the context of the local church. -
Calvinist Natural Law and the Ultimate Good
Vol 5 The Western Australian Jurist 153 CALVINIST NATURAL LAW AND THE ULTIMATE GOOD * CONSTANCE YOUNGWON LEE ABSTRACT Calvin’s natural law theory is premised on the sovereignty of God. In natural law terms, the ‘sovereignty of God’ doctrine prescribes that the normative standards for positive law originate from God alone. God is the sole measure of the ‘good’. This emphasis allows for a sharp separation between normative and descriptive dimensions. In this context, it would be a logical fallacy to maintain that anything humanly appointed can attain the status of self- evidence. However, in recent years, new natural law theorists have been guilty of conflating the normative and descriptive dimensions – a distinction that is critical to the discipline of natural law. This may stretch as far back to Aquinas who set human participation in the goods (‘practical reason’) as the rightful starting place for natural law. This paper explores Calvin’s natural law theory to show how his concept of ‘the ultimate good’ harnesses the potential to restore natural law theory to its proper order. By postulating a transcendent standard in terms of ‘the ultimate good’ – God Himself – Calvin’s natural law provides a philosophical framework for compelling positive laws in the pursuit of a higher morality. I INTRODUCTION “There is but one good; that is God. Everything else is good when it looks to Him and bad when it turns from Him”. C S LEWIS, The Great Divorce1 * Tutor and LLM Candidate, T C Beirne School of Law, University of Queensland. The author would like to acknowledge the contributions of several scholars, particularly Associate Professor Jonathan Crowe for his insightful remarks. -
The Implications of Neurobiology on the Study and Interpretation of Scripture
READING THE BODY, READING SCRIPTURE: THE IMPLICATIONS OF NEUROBIOLOGY ON THE STUDY AND INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE David Cave This paper considers what the neurobiological reading of the body implies for the reading of scripture. By ‘the neurological reading of the body’ I refer to how modern science and culture draw upon cognitive science and genetics to explain and to understand what it means to be human. And by the ‘reading of scripture’ I refer to the practice of the various religious traditions to understand our humanity based on claims of inspired and revealed insights, said to come from some agency transcendent to our naturalized mind and body. I contend that within a naturalistic system these two readings are not mutually exclusive but interrelate such that the reading of one informs and illumines the reading of the other. Among many quarters, the reading of the body has come to rival, even replace, the reading of scripture (and here I refer to scripture broadly understood, of no particular religious tradition) for defining and guiding us in what it means to be a human being. In a recent opinion piece in the New York Times, columnist David Brooks, in “The Neural Buddhists,” comments on the widespread interest in neuroscience and genetics and surmises that its proponents will not so much undermine a belief in God as undermine the claims of scripture. He says, “The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution can change public cul- ture . and yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a side- show. -
Naturalistic Theism Teed Rockwell
Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism 25.2 (2017) 209–220 ISSN 1522-7340 (print) ISSN 2052-8388 (online) https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.34830 Naturalistic Theism Teed Rockwell Sonoma State University [email protected] Abstract Many modern theological debates are built around a false dichotomy between 1) an atheism which asserts that the universe was created by purposeless me- chanical processes and 2) acceptance of a religious system which requires both faith in the infallibility of sacred texts and belief in a supernatural God. I propose a form of naturalistic theism, which rejects sacred texts as unjustified, and supernaturalism as incoherent. I argue that rejecting these two elements of traditional organized religion would have a strongly positive impact on the beliefs and practices of religion, even though many religious people feel strongly attached to them. It is belief in sacred texts that is responsible for most of the evil done in the name of religion, not belief in God. Many of the strongest arguments for atheism work only against a supernatural God, and have no impact on the question of the existence of a natural God. Keywords atheism, theism, agnosticism, naturalism, supernaturalism, sacred text, Shook, Dennett, Dawkins, Kuhn, Quine, Neurath, Koran, Bible, Islam, Buddhism, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent, miracles, Marxist atheism I agree with many of the criticisms of established religions voiced by promi- nent Atheists. That is why the only form of Theism I could accept would be what I call Naturalistic Theism. For many Atheists, this will appear to be a contradiction in terms, but I will argue that this kind of theism is as com- patible with science as nondogmatic Atheism.1 As far as I can tell, Natural- istic Theism is essentially identical to what John Shook calls either Religious 1. -
Plantinga Argues That There Is Superficial Conflict but Deep Concord Between Science and Theistic Religion
This is an accepted manuscript of an article published in Philosophia Reformata, 79 (I) (2014), 66-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/22116117-90000563 Where the conflict really lies: Plantinga, the challenge of evil, and religious naturalism Elizabeth D. Burns, Heythrop College, University of London In this paper I argue that, although Alvin Plantinga’s Felix Culpa theodicy appears on only two pages of his recent book Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion and Naturalism (2011) (i.e. 58-59), it is of pivotal importance for the book as a whole. Plantinga argues that there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science and monotheism, and that there is superficial concord but deep conflict between science and naturalism. I contend that the weakness of the Felix Culpa theodicy lends support to the view that there is more than superficial conflict between science and monotheism, and offer an alternative response to the challenge of evil which suggests that there might be, after all, concord between science and (religious) naturalism. 1. Plantinga and the challenge of evil In order to show that, although there is superficial conflict, there is deep concord between science and monotheism, central to which is ‘the thought that there is such a person as God: a personal agent who has created the world and is all-powerful, all- knowing, and perfectly good’ (ix), Plantinga argues that God creates by means of the process of natural selection (39), that Michael Behe’s writings about irreducible complexity constitute a series of ‘design discourses’ for which there aren’t any defeaters (258), and that God’s miraculous interventions are not incompatible with an interpretation of natural laws as ‘descriptions of the material universe when God is not treating what he has made in a special way’ (119). -
1 Remembering Marx's Secularism* Scholars Engaged in the Critique Of
Remembering Marx’s Secularism* Scholars engaged in the critique of secularism have struggled with the numerous meanings of the secular and its cognates, such as secularism, secularization, and secularity. Seeking coherence in the secular’s semantic excess, they have often elided distinctions between these meanings or sought a more basic concept of the secular that can contain all of its senses (Asad 2003; Taylor 2007; see Weir 2015). Numerous scholars have observed strong similarities between secularism and Protestantism (Fessenden 2007; Modern 2011; Yelle 2013; see McCrary and Wheatley 2017), at times echoing a Christian theological tradition that has long been anti-secular (Taylor 2007; Gregory 2012; see Reynolds 2016). Unlike this anti-secular tradition, the strongest version of the critique of secularism is a critique of the conditions that produce a distinction between secular and religious and a critique of the ways that empire benefits from this distinction. Overcoming a tidy separation between secularism and religion requires fracturing both and reassembling them in new ways that allow messy life to exceed governance (Hurd 2015, 122- 27). Remembering Karl Marx’s secularism provides an opportunity to recover the differences within secularism and its difference from Christianity, but also its odd similarities with religion. This recovery can help refine the critique of secularism and preserve some important tools for improving material conditions. * Joseph Blankholm, Department of Religious Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA. E-mail: [email protected]. I owe thanks to several PhD students at the University of California, Santa Barbara for their valuable insights and feedback, including Matthew Harris, as well as the students in my seminar on materialism: Timothy Snediker, Lucas McCracken, Courtney Applewhite, and Damian Lanahan-Kalish. -
Royce and Religious Naturalism Royce E O Naturalismo Religioso
Royce and Religious Naturalism Royce e o Naturalismo Religioso Robert E. Innis Department of Philosophy University of Massachusetts Lowell - USA [email protected] Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to compare and contrast the orienta- tion proposed by the American philosopher Josiah Royce, which puts an infinite, absolute, and saving consciousness at the center of religion and the orientation set forth by a broad range of thinkers who have developed and defended various forms of religious naturalism where it is nature fundamen- tally in the form of natura naturans, not a center of consciousness, that is the focal point of religious concerns. The paper examines the key features of Royce’s notion of the Absolute and its relation to the three pivots of the religious problem as Royce saw it: an experienced fault lying at the heart of existence, a need for a beloved community of interpreters who would be loyal not just to one another but loyal to loyalty itself, and practices of atonement that would heal the broken world of human existence in time. I show how it is possible to reconstruct these pivots in religious naturalist terms: ‘fault’ can be reconstructed as the sense of ‘creatureliness,’ ‘atonement’ as ‘healing the rift’ in human existence by the ‘free creation and preservation of values’, and the ‘beloved community’ as a variety of interpretation communities open to the appearance of meaning and value in all the ways they emerge from natura naturans. Various ways of reconfiguring other elements of the Roycean position are also developed in the course of the paper. -
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations
UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Intention and Normative Belief Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8725w3wp Author Chislenko, Eugene Publication Date 2016 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Intention and Normative Belief By Eugene Chislenko A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in Charge: Professor Hannah Ginsborg, Co-Chair Professor R. Jay Wallace, Co-Chair Professor Hubert Dreyfus Professor Tania Lombrozo Spring 2016 Copyright by Eugene Chislenko 2016 Abstract Intention and Normative Belief by Eugene Chislenko Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy University of California, Berkeley Professor Hannah Ginsborg and Professor R. Jay Wallace, Co-Chairs People can be malicious, perverse, compulsive, self-destructive, indifferent, or in conflict with their own better judgment. This much is obvious—but on many traditional views, it seems puzzling or even impossible. Many philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Kant, Davidson, and others, have thought that we act only “under the guise of the good,” doing only what we see as good, or best, or what we ought to do. These “guise-of-the-good” views offered a way to make sense of the attribution and explanation of action, while maintaining a generous view of human nature as essentially pursuing the good. But are they not hopelessly narrow and naïve? It seems clear that we often do what we do not see as good, and even what we see as bad. -
Confucianism As a Form of Religious Naturalism
CONFUCIANISM AS A FORM OF RELIGIOUS NATURALISM Mary Evelyn Tucker Confucianism religious naturalism encompasses a dynamic cosmological ori- entation that is interwoven with spiritual expressions in the form of communi- tarian ethics of the society, self-cultivation of the person, and ritual expres- sions integrating self, society, and cosmos. This tapestry of spiritual integra- tion, which has had a long and rich history in China and in other countries of East Asia deserves further study. The author thinks such studies will also point the way toward future forms of Confucian religious naturalism in new and creative expressions. Keywords: Confucianism, religious naturalism, self-perfection, communita- rism, cosmology. Introduction The art of Confucian religious naturalism might be described as discovering one's cosmological being amidst daily affairs. For the Confucian the ordinary is the locus of the extraordinary; the secular is the sacred; the transcendent is in the immanent. What distinguishes Confucianism is an all-encompassing cosmological context that grounds its world-affirming orientation for humanity. This is not a tradition seeking liberation outside the world, but one that affirms the spirituality of becoming more fully human within the world. The way of immanence is the Confucian way.1 The means of self-transformation is through cultivation of oneself in relation to others and to the natural world. This cultivation is seen in connection with a tradition of scholarly reflection embedded in a commitment to the value of culture and its myriad expressions. It aims to promote flourishing social relations, effective educational sys- tems, sustainable agricultural patterns, and humane political governance within the con- text of the dynamic, life-giving processes of the universe. -
Are All Socialists Anti-Religious?
CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by Lirias Are all Socialists Anti-religious? Anti-religiosity and the Socialist Left in 21 Western European countries (1990-2008). Egbert Ribberink1 Peter Achterberg Dick Houtman February, 2015 7953 words Please direct correspondence to: Egbert Ribberink, Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven, Parkstraat 45, box 3601, 3000 Leuven, Belgium. E-mail: [email protected] The data used in this article comes from the ZA4804: European Values Study Longitudinal Data File 1981-2008 (EVS 1981-2008) dataset, which can be found on the Gesis.org website. 1 Egbert Ribberink is a PhD-student at the Centre for Sociological Research, University of Leuven, Belgium. His primary research interests include atheism, anti-religion and the secularization of Western Europe. Peter Achterberg is Professor of Sociology at Tilburg University, the Netherlands. He is a cultural sociologist with a general interest in studying cultural, political, and religious change in the West. For more information, please visit www.peterachterberg.com. Dick Houtman is Professor of Sociology of Culture and Religion at the University of Leuven, Belgium. His latest book is Things: Religion and the Question of Materiality (Fordham University Press, 2012, edited with Birgit Meyer). 1 Are all Socialists Anti-religious? Anti-religiosity and the Socialist Left in 21 Western European countries (1990-2008). Abstract The political situation in the Soviet Union during the twentieth century has led some to suggest that socialism is some kind of secular religion as opposed to ‘normal’ religion. In modern Europe, however, there have also been vibrant Christian socialist movements.