Enlightenment does not mean merely shining a light into the darker recesses of the world but must also mean a liberation of people out of darkness into the light. What progressive religious thought has to contribute to that process of liberation in an age of tumultuous social change is the preservation of human dignity against both reactionary religious obscurantism and value-free scientistic rationalism. To label all forms of religion as part of a general delusion, therefore, does a disservice to both progress and reason. Where we are offers us no home. That is why we constantly feel it is time to move on. As long as that is the case there will be the need for religion. The point, however, is to make it a religion which will be happily complicit in its own earthly fulfilment. And I say that as a good atheist.
Peter Thompson: Religion is not a delusion but a quest for home
Posted in * Culture-Watch, Religion & Culture
This article is almost too simplistic to make comment on. But I still feel like commenting
The difference between fundamentalism and progressive religious belief, however, is merely the difference between looking backward or looking forward in order to find the way home.â€
Since Thompson assumes that all that is not progressive is fundamentalist I won’t bather arguing with this point. What would progressives have to look forward with if it were not an abstract form of the faith of fundamentalists?
Those who have a true faith in Christian teaching do not merely look back. Our traditional teachings are a lese through which we perceive the way ahead. Sure we sometimes get stuck in ruts. I do not know that the progressive movement always lives up to its name.
“The point, however, is to make it a religion which will be happily complicit in its own earthly fulfillment. And I say that as a good atheist.â€
Thompson has no idea what faith is. It is not something you can just borrow the good bit from to give you meaning when secularism gives you none. ‘Made’ religions are not religions, they are philosophies. In no other area of discussion can people get away with such carelessness.
But his opening remark is telling: Make home here on the earth. It is important that this conclusion is at one with ++ Schori’s. This is, after all, what science is for, to make Eden possible right here and now by solving the life problems of the living.
This posture may be essential to all liberalism, the notion that this world can indeed be perfected and we are capable of doing the perfecting. But, on e may ask, how can they be so unaware of the real world and man’s preference for imperfectability? This is the blindness inherent in all sincere liberalism. But can this world be perfected? Can science do this job? Can gene manipulation make a perfectable man completely well suited to world he lives in? This are the essential questions, right now, and the Anglican’s are not struggling with them right now. AS #1 said, this is a very poor essay, but the issue is not to be avoided, especially by endless debates about whether Armstrong is guilty or not or whether Sydney will or will not go to a meeting. LM
The parasitic nature of liberalism, pluralism, and this new kind of atheistic spirit-borrowing of Thompson’s needs to be named. We are led, in a spirit of fairness, to see all views as different approaches to the same thing. However, Orthodoxy is the host that these others feed off. Without true faith there would be nothing to tweak, pluralize, or abstract essential meanings from. Often in progressive views we find a trick played in order for the doubtful to access the benefits of faith without belief. Remove the Apostles and their apostolic faith and what is left to play with?
Science is the god of our age. As Lewis observed good taken to an absolute extreme becomes a demon. Science is becoming a form of witchcraft – the control of circumstances.