Michael Pyes Religion: Shape And Shadow - Essay Example

Michael Pye's Religion: shape and shadow The paper is a written version of a lecture given at Lancaster in May 1992 by Michael Pye. Thereare three parts to this paper. The first part distinguishes between the "shape" of religion as reflective observers seek to discern it and the shadow cast upon it by the assumptions of the various religions. The question in shape in religions is very important. New religions are coming at a faster rate than new languages, and new languages are dying faster. Study of the shape of religion involves not only merely listing all available data from history, but knowing the far-reaching theoretical problems to be solved. Pye says that we are short of good theory of the study of religion. And without theory there is no shape. Religion and the study of religion are affected by ideological fashions. Religion has been studied, or the study of religion is used for other reasons, such as promoting mysticism, or spreading missionary religion, assisting race relations, or solving philosophical problems, without studying philosophy, developing the intellectual defences of a new religion, defending established religions, or finding out how to use religion to promote economic development, etc. Pye advises that everyone must take an active part in the study of religion, or play an active role. For his part, he is involved as General Secretary in the International Association in the History of Religions, which he said is not a religious organization. The second part offers a new view of the "shape" of contemporary Japanese religion, in order briefly to illustrate what is meant by discernment of the shape of religion. There is a wide variety of distinguishable religions in Japan. These include Shint in its various historical stages and significant vestiges of the Chinese traditions of Confucianism and Daoism. Buddhism is present in what may seem to be a bewildering range of forms. Other Buddhist denominations of great popular appeal include Pure Land Buddhism, True Pure Land Buddhism and Nichiren Buddhism, based on the mantra-like utterances Namu Amida Butsu. The question as to whether there is a common field of Japanese religion, Pye's assessment is that there is such a common field which has resilience independent of the specific religions mentioned. Pye speaks metaphorically on "the common language of Japanese religion" which is a pattern of symbols and actions widely understood and may be found in various forms within the various denominations. A votive tablet (ema), for example, is used for giving expression to prayers and aspirations both at Shint shrines and at Buddhist temples. Every year millions of them are bought, inscribed with a felt-tip pen and left behind in the shrine or temple grounds for the various divinities and other visitors to peruse. There are various overlapping systems of religion in Japan. Pye says that organized Shinto is no longer the primal religion of Japan, although it contributes to it and draws upon it, but it has not been for a long time. Shinto can not be regarded as an "adjusted primal religion". But Pye mentioned the recently launched religion "Science of Happiness" proclaiming utopia on Earth, demonstrating how religions start in Japan. There is an important general problem about the relationship between new religious trends or movements and the existing religious context. At present, there are those who worry that the ordination of women to the priesthood could lead to the end of Christianity. Pye says that he is in favor of gender-oriented reforms in the Roman Catholic Church. The question, he asks, is would such reform lead to the end of the Roman Catholicism The third part of the lecture is on religious studies. Pye asserts that Religious Studies is not religion (with a singular verb). The study of religion has come out from under the shadow of religion. Religious studies should be distinguished from Theology and from Biblical Studies. Pye says that there should be an independent and open study of religion concerned with its factuality and matters arising. The welfare of a programme of teaching and research in Religious Studies not determined by religion itself is also important for wider reasons. (Word count: 690) Karl Marx's On the Jewish Question This is Karl Marx's comment on Bruno Bauer's The Jewish Question which purported to answer one of the most intriguing questions at the time. What is the Jewish question It is fit to note that at the time, there was still no state of Israel. The Jewish people were scattered, living in countries not their own. The Jewish Question, dated late 1842 and early 1843, elaborates Bauer's critique of the religious consciousness and of political reformism. Marx analyzes Bruno Bauer, a philosopher, historian and theologian. The question was whether the explicitly Christian state of Prussia could eliminate restrictions on Jewish participation in civil institutions. Bauer's interventions attacked the state for defending privilege, and claimed that it used religion as a mask for its interests in maintaining relations of subordination. He critized Jews and their supporters for claiming freedom on the basis of a particular identity. Political and social freedom required the renunciation of all particularistic ties with the past; thus, as a precondition of juridical equality, Jews must renounce their religious allegiance, as must Christians. Christianity demonstrated a historically higher degree of consciousness, since it cancelled the externality of the deity. But this was not a unilateral progress upon Judaism, because Christianity, and especially Protestantism, universalized alienation to encompass all aspects of life. The superiority of Christianity consisted in its radical negativity, making requisite a transition to a new and higher form of ethical life. These interventions were censured by Marx, and by leading liberal spokesmen. (Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) The Jew wanted emancipation, said Karl Marx. They desire civic and political emancipation. From here on, an attempt to define the word is done, and other related topics about the Christian religion and Judaism are discussed. Marx expounds that emancipation of the Jews was impossible, not unless the Jews denounced Judaism, and in the words of Karl Marx, "So long as the state is Christian and the Jew is Jewish, the one is as incapable of granting emancipation as the other is of receiving it." There was no way that the Jews could be emancipated. Karl Marx asks that on what grounds could they be emancipated, not on their religion Judaism nor on their claim that they were a chosen people. Marx examines Bauer's contention. In France, universal freedom was not yet the law (this was in the 1840s) because legal freedom was restricted in actual life and was still dominated and divided by religious privileges. This could compel the law to sanction the division of the citizens. Therefore, the Jewish question could not be solved in France. The law of the Sabbath, for the Jew then, could not work on the Jew, i.e. if he had to participate in civil institutions which were dominated by Christians. But the Jew wanted emancipation. Therefore, said Marx, the Jew had to renounce his religion. But how could this be If he renounced Judaism, then he ceased to be a Jew, and he ceased to the chosen people Marx said on Bauer that the Jew should renounce Judaism, and that mankind in general should renounce religion, in order to achieve civic emancipation. "The state which presupposes religion is not yet a true, real state." Marx heavily criticized the Jews as egoistic and full of greed for money. The monotheism of the Jew is in reality the polytheism of the many needs, a polytheism which makes even the lavatory an object of divine law. The god of practical need and self interest is money. He concludes that the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Judaism. (World count: 633) Alvin Plantinga's The Ontological Argument The Ontological argument discusses on the existence of God in a philosophical way. It was first stated by Anselm of Canterbury in the eleventh century. Plantinga stated that this argument looks like a parlor puzzle or word magic, but it has a long and illustrious line of defenders extending to the present. Many of the difficult problems in philosophy meet in this argument; and no one philosopher has refuted it. The argument states that God exists or it is possible that God exists. The outline first states that God exists in the understanding, which means that someone may have thought that God exists. Then, something exists in the reality means that the thing in question really exists. The conclusion of a long line of argument is that it is possible that God exists and that "it is possible that there be a being greater than the being than which it is not possible that there be a greater." (1) God exists in the understanding but not in reality. (reductio assumption) This is the assumption from which Anselm means to deduce a contradiction. (2) Existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. (premise) This is a premise, and presumably necessarily true in Anselm's view (3) God's existence in reality is conceivable. (premise) Kant argues that no existential proposition, or that which asserts the existence of something or other, is necessarily true. And Anselm's proposition has to assume that God exists or that "God exists" is a necessary proposition. If we deny the existence of something or other, we can't be contradicting ourselves, or no existential proposition is necessary and no contra-existential is impossible. This all means that if we say God does not exist, there is nothing that would then be contradicted, "in rejecting the thing itself we have at the same time rejected all its internal properties." The claim that God does not exist, Kant argues that if it is necessarily false, it would contradict some object external to God, or contradict some internal part or aspect or property of God. There is a confusion here, as many propositions do contradict God does not exist. The example here is the world was created by God. Kant argues that the proposition "God is omnipotent" contains two concepts, each of which has its object, God and omnipotence. The small word "is" adds no new predicate, but only serves to posit the predicate in its relation to the subject. If we take the subject God with all its predicates among which is omnipotence, and say "God is," or "There is a God," we attach no new predicate to the concept of God, but only posit it. The content of both must be one and the same. Kant points out that it's not possible to define things into existence, which is what the ontological argument is - defining God into existence. Kant says that "being" is not a real predicate or property, which is to say that in defining a concept, one lists a number of properties, and if thing does have them all, then the concept in question applies to it. Another feature in the argument is this: existence in reality is greater than existence in the understanding alone. There are properties in virtue of which one being is greater, just as a being, than another. There seems to suggest that a nonexistent being exists. An object may exist in some possible worlds and not others. There are possible worlds in which you and I do not exist. If you are a good player (or a good worker) in the other world, there are worlds in which you win a trophy or a champion. We can say that God does not exist in the actual world, but we can also say that that there is a possible world in which God exists. If God does not exist in the actual world, then there is a world such that the greatness of god exceeds the greatness of God in the actual world. There are many versions to the ontological argument which are interesting on the topic of God and our existence and which have not been refuted all too clearly. (700) J.L. Mackie's Evil And Omnipotence J.L. Mackie says that "the most important proposed solution to the problem of evil is that evil is not to be ascribed to God at all, but to the independent actions of human beings, supposed to have been endowed by God with freedom of the will"(Mackie, 93). If it is possible to imagine a heaven in which people do no do evil, doesn't this show that there can be free will without anyone's doing evil The quest to find out who we are, where we came from, where we will go after we die and what, if anything, controls our world has fascinated mankind throughout the centuries. J.L. Mackie was one of the major philosophical opponents of religion in the twentieth century. He claims that theism is logically inconsistent, thus irrational, in combining these three judgments: that God is omnipotent, God is wholly good, and Evil exists. "The problem of Evil, in the sense in which I shall be using the phrase, is a problem only for someone who believes that there is a God who is both omnipotent and wholly good."(Mackie pg. 90) Can not God prevent all and every evil if he were truly omnipotent There would have been no evil. So, is it possible that there would have been no omnipotent God Logically there is a God, and he is both omnipotent and wholly good, in which technically there should be no evil. Some theists feel the existence of free will; can solve the problem of evil. If free will were allowed, there would be decisions and actions in which God could not know due to the person's choice. This would limit God's omnipotence, which is unacceptable to some. If He is omnipotent, He must know everything. What is free will It is the mind's ability to choose with intelligence. That doesn't mean that our choice has all the freedom in the world. Our choices cannot and obviously should not be totally free from our knowledge, values and perceptions of everyday life and the things around us. The freedom in freewill is not the dismissal of these influencing factors: our self-awareness, our imagination, our ability to seek out knowledge and project the future, and our awareness of and observing our own thinking. This is our source of freedom. The proper understanding of free will is that choices are not free from influences, but free to make intelligent choices. Free will is a measure of self-determination that people feel themselves to possess and by which they make moral judgments. Mackie raises many objections to the free will solution. Some theists also state that evil results from the abuse of free will, but it is better to have free will and sometimes act wrong, than to be robots and act right all the time. A good God would allow our free good choices but stop our free bad choices. Mackie also states, "Humans always freely do the right thing" which is logically possible. "Perhaps the most important proposed solution of the problem of evil is that evil is not to be ascribed to God at all, but to the independent actions of human beings, supposed to have been endowed by God with freedom of the will"(Mackie pg 95). This solution is combined with the theory, "The universe is better with some evil in it than it could be if there were no evil." Certain evil leads to higher goods, an example would be pain (a first order evil) that leads to sympathy which is a second order evil. This is a logical example of a world with some evil in it; certain evils are highly unjustified such as cruelty. Cruelty, second order evil, has no third order good to lean upon, so it is proven unnecessary and unjustified. Mackie also says the notion of free will is incoherent. If it is possible to imagine a heaven in which people do not do evil, doesn't this show that there can be free will without anyone's doing evil Word count: 672 References Blunden, A. (2005). On the Jewish question: Works of Karl Marx 1844. Available from: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/jewish-question [cited 12 Nov 2007] Mackie, J. L. Evil and Omnipotence. In God and Evil. Prentice Hall:1964 Pye, M. Religion: Shape and shadow. Numen, Vol. 41. 1994 Plantinga, A. The ontological argument. Available from: http://mind.ucsd.edu/syllabi/02-03/01w/readings/plantinga.html [cited 12 Nov 2007] Standford Enclopedia of Philosophy (15 Sept 2005). Bruno Bauer. Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/bauer/ [cited 12 Nov 2007] Read More