dreamer_easy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dreamer_easy) wrote2006-10-21 05:29 pm
dreamer_easy) wrote2006-10-21 05:29 pm
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Certain credal propositions
I read a great New Scientist article (30 July 2005) in which Karen Armstrong reviews Michael Ruse's book The Evolution-Creation Struggle. She remarks:
"There is a widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious truth frankly incredible. But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption; that faith is synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development, one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the west... Even Martin Luther... did not define faith by belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable, meaning and value."
Now this follows on from an outline of Richard Dawkins' opposition to religion on the grounds that faith is "belief that isn't based on evidence". In one of those odd leaps my mind makes, I suddenly thought of how Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon were often attacked for their criticism of "pornography" by people who used the word in a vague, general sense, not in the extremely specific way Dworkin and Mackinnon defined it. Similarly, Dawkins has made a strawman version of religion by creating his own definition, then attacking that definition, with little reference to the actual thinking of religious people.
"There is a widespread, popular conviction that science and religion are diametrically opposed, and that science has rendered most religious truth frankly incredible. But this conviction is based on an erroneous assumption; that faith is synonymous with belief, and that to be religious, people must accept certain credal propositions. This is a relatively recent development, one that has arisen since the Enlightenment, and then only in the west... Even Martin Luther... did not define faith by belief; he had in fact very little time for dogma and creeds. Faith was a heroic cultivation of trust in the idea that, against all the evidence to the contrary, life had some ultimate, though ineffable, meaning and value."
Now this follows on from an outline of Richard Dawkins' opposition to religion on the grounds that faith is "belief that isn't based on evidence". In one of those odd leaps my mind makes, I suddenly thought of how Andrea Dworkin and Catherine Mackinnon were often attacked for their criticism of "pornography" by people who used the word in a vague, general sense, not in the extremely specific way Dworkin and Mackinnon defined it. Similarly, Dawkins has made a strawman version of religion by creating his own definition, then attacking that definition, with little reference to the actual thinking of religious people.