more thinking on theology

To Dominic Marbaniang

The huge import of theology and its tremendous consequences among seven billion people -- or six, if it is true that atheism / agnosticism is the third largest 'religion' in our time -- demand thoughtfulness and philosophic criticism and understanding.  

But why are you studying modes of claim-making, i.e. methodologies, styles, traditions of thological argument? -- is this a taxonomy of the odd varieties of god-speech?  -- a proposed alphabet, or ground-logic of god-speech? 

This sounds like an ambitious project.  But there may be a few good questions to ask before we devote more time to cataloging the varieties of religious argument.  Philosophy lets its curiosity loose in this intriguing field -- but to what end?  Perhaps the point is to help people identify and assess religious arguments, since all of us are exposed to them, and many are oppressed by them.  We all need some help.  If that is your project, then it seems worth doing -- it offers an important service.  

The idea of a taxonomy of atheisms, alongside another project in which theology was the subject being divided up into meaningful categories, might offer results.  If there is a rationalist atheism (perhaps the Carvakas or Daniel Dennett), and also a rationalist form of theology (Parmenides and Zeno, who you cite above -- perhaps we should include Spinoza), then some questions follow:

--- is the 'rationalism' more a common factor than the difference over theism?  Perhaps rationalists of all stripes share a common orientation to the world.  God-speech is not therefore a defining orientation for these thinkers.  Regardless of the prime denial, or prime assertion, these thinkers think about the world in fundamentally similar ways

--- if this is the case, what light does this throw on the subject of theology?  Is the prime assertion merely one sort of assertion among many other examples?  Or perhaps it makes no assertions at all -- its significance is not propositional -- here perhaps we would begin talking about kenosis and sunyata and like ideas about unknowing and emptiness.  

--- rationalism is just one case; presumably the principle of the 'parallelism between theism and atheism' is general; thus there are empiricist theologies and empiricist atheisms -- Aquinas argues from observing the world, and so does Richard Dawkins.  Dawkins and Aquinas may therefore be kindred thinkers.  Their antagonism is an artifact of current politics, current trends in popular culture -- in the thirteenth century and presently.  Likewise there are perceptualists among believers (Berkeley) and atheists (Russell).  

This kind of analysis argues for the primacy of philosophical orientation, deeper even than theology.

What is our relationship to the transpersonal -- is it personal, impersonal, or non-personal?  Whatever these relationships or our imaginings about them may be, whatever connection human beings make to the transpersonal, to 'Ultimate Reality,' to God -- to the ineffable -- in whatever case, perhaps we can say: rationalists of one kind denounce this idea and rationalists of another kind assert it.

How can we reconcile transcendence and immanence?  There is the maya theory, that the world is an illusion, and the counterpart idea, the dukkha theory, according to which, whether suffering is real or merely imagined, it is our duty to treat it as if it were real and offer service to suffering.  Suffering supersedes our scruples about reality.  Perhaps that is a theology.  

Theisms and atheisms stand on the same ground, as it were ... they are antagonists about the same proposition ... but more primarily, the prime assertion precedes the prime denial.  Therefore disbelief is a function of belief.  Belief precedes doubt and makes doubt possible (Wittgenstein makes this point).  Strictly speaking, atheisms are forms of theisms.  Both forms work in the same frame of reference, but assertion precedes denial.

Philosophy is more comfortable with openness and theology is more attracted to exclusivity.  (Whatever my 'philosophy' is, it makes sense that there are others.  But perhaps it doesn't seem like 'worshipping' if the object of my worship is mine alone). 

The believing mind does not -- save in exceptional cases -- freely give up its history, symbols and sacred places.  It rarely has the confidence that it will find a new way to express the prime assertion.  

In a sense, even a consistent materialist has a theology -- but 'theology' in this case is roughly equivalent to cosmology: a general theory of the universe.  

Socrates would argue that theism and atheism and cosmology and like studies are all pretty far from the immediate problems of human ignorance facing moral demands.  Philosophy in Socrates' version is simply the obligation to think.  But as we have noted in our discussions, if this stripped-down Socratic quest (to become and remain thoughtful) evolves into a definite philosophy, such as rationalism or skepticism or empiricism, then this new creation is on a par with atheisms, theisms, and other isms … categorized as a definite kind of ism or view.  Then the taxonomic work you are proposing can begin. 

Philosophy descending into 'philosophies' and 'isms' is unproblematic as long as the new creation (whatever it may be) then becomes a new object of scrutiny and has to answer the Socratic elenchus and cross-examination.  This activity seems to me the core concern of philosophy, though we often let our curiosity wander off into distant corners of the intellectual universe.  We just have to learn how to get back to the core concern of thinking.