From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Apr 27 2003 - 19:15:53 BST
Scott, Sam and all interested persons:
dmb says:
I don't know why I didn't think of it before now. Ken Wilber wrote a book
that relates very much to our topic. Its called THE MARRIAGE OF SENSE AND
SOUL: Integrating Science and Religion. Sure, science and religion is not
precisely the same as philosophy and theology, but its close enough that I
feel kinda dumb for failing to introduce it until now. Wilber, I think,
provides some real clarity about these things. Please take a look and then
we'll chat some more, eh?
In chapter 12, Ken Wilber says:
I am not claiming that these beliefs (in the virgin birth, bodily ascension,
the parting of the Red Sea, the earth resting on a divine Hindu serpent and
the the other mythopoetic themes) are unimportant or that they serve no
function at all. In fact, they serve a very important developmental or
evolutionary function; but as we will see, with the irreversible
differentiantions of modernity, most of those premodern beliefs and
functions of religion are no longer legitimate and can no longer be
sustained in modern consciousness (except among those who remain at a
premodern level oin their own development).
Religious mythological proclaimationss are clearly DOGMATIC, which menas
that when they are taken to be literal truths, they are simply asserted
without any supporting evidence. As such they fail the test of the three
strands of all valid knowledge. At one time, those beliefs performed various
important cultural functions, such as maintaining social cohesion, because
they formed the basis of a legitimate (or consensual) intersubjective
worldview. But with the differentiations of modernity, a more sophisticated
truth disclosure placed these mythological claims in irreversible doubt.
With each developmental unfolding, the truths of the higher domain place the
truths of the lower domains into a prodoundly different context, a context
that, because it transcends and includes its juniors, also PRESERVES many of
the aspirations, ideals and values expressed in the best of mythology (such
as retribution and justice) but NEGATES most of its literal contents (such
as the notion that we actually descended from Adam and Eve).
Mythology is true enough in its own world-space; its just that perspectival
reason is "more true": more developed, more differentiated-and-integrated,
and more sophisticated in its capacity to disclose verifiable knowledge.
Thus the higher truths of rationality pass judgement on the lower truth of
mythology, and for the most part mythology simply does not survive those
sophisticated tests. Moses did not part the Red Sea, and Jesus was not borne
by a biological virgin. Those claims, in light of a higher reason, are
indeed bogus.
Authentic spirituality, in short, must be based on direct spiritual
experience, and this must be rigorously subjected to the three strands of
all valid knowledge; injunction, apprehension, and confirmation/rejection -
or exemplar, data and falsifiability.
With the differentiations of modernity, premodern religions of every variety
faced an unprecedented situation: precisely because modernity differentiated
the value spheres and let them proceed unencumbered and with their own
dignity, these newly liberated spheres quickly outpaced in most way anything
the premodern religions could offer. When it came to the world of sensory
facts, the ansers given by premodern religion (e.g. the earth was created in
six days) now faced modern empirical science, and it was no contest. When it
came to the mental sphere and its operations, religion faced modern
developments in mathemathics, logic, critical philosophy, philology, and
hermeneutics (including the REAL sources of the biblical narratives), and
once again premodern religion was no match.
It is only when religion emphasizes its heart and sould and essence - namely
direct mystical experience and transcendental consciousness, which is
disclosed not by the eye of the flesh (give that to science) nor by the eye
of the mind (give that to philosophy) but rather by the eye of contemplation
- that religion can both stand up to modernity and offer something for which
modernity has desperate need: a genuine, verifiable, repeatable injunction
to bring forth the spiritual domain.
Religion is the modern and postmodern will rest on its unique strength-
namely contemplation- or it will serve merely to support a premodern,
predifferentiated level of development in its own adherents; not an engine
of growth and transformation, but a regressive, antiliberal, reactionary
force of lesser engagements.
But the thorny question remains: Can religion recognize itself if it
brackets (or temporarily sets aside) its mythic baggage? For an answer, I
suggest we look at the example, not of the followers, but of the founders,
of the major religions themselves.
The first thing we can't help but notice is that the founders of the great
traditions, almost without exception, underwent a series of profound
SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES. Their revelations, THEIR DIRECT SPIRITUAL
EXPERIENCES, were NOT mythological proclamations about the parting of the
Red Sea or about how to make the beans grow, but rather direct apprehensions
of the Divine (Spirit, Emptiness, Diety, the Absolute). At their peak, these
apprehensions were about the direct union or even identity of the individual
and Spirit, a union that is not to be thought of as a mental belief but
lived as a direct experience, the very summum bonum of existence, the DIRECT
REALIZATION OF WHICH confers a great liberaton, rebirth, metanoia, or
enlightenment on the soul fortunate enough to be immersed in that
extraordinary union, a union that is the ground, the goal, the source, and
the salvation of the entire world.
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