BURHOE AND SHAPLEY: A COMPLEMENTARITY OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Abstract. The development of Ralph Wendell Burhoe's philosophy of religion and science occurred in the shadow of the continuing dialogue about the place of science in American society. Like his friend and mentor, Harvard astronomer Harlow Shapley, Burhoe was distressed and intrigued by the troubled postwar relations between science and religion. Unlike Shapley, however, Burhoe sought to create a new modernism, a blend of religion and science that would allow each to develop and complement the other.     

The Greatest Christian Hero, Philosopher, and Poet: Christopher Dawson's Italian Trinity

Christopher Dawson (born 1889), a Catholic scholar and renowned philosophical historian, spent his academic life exploring the relationship of religion, sociology and culture. He believed that without an understanding of religion it is impossible to comprehend the culture of humanity or peoples. His magisterial work, Religion and Culture, established him as an historian's historian. He ended his days as Professor of Roman Catholic Studies at Harvard Divinity School, the first Catholic to occupy a chair there.     

Rationality in Religion

Religion can be defined narrowly as belief in anthropomorphic supernatural beings. For Levy-Bruhl this meant that prelogical ‘mystic participation’ preceded true religion. For Donald Wiebe and others it means that philosophical-scientific rationality has been struggling to replace religion since the axial age. A broader definition of religion interprets rational post-axial theology as a development within religion, not a replacement of true religion. Both definitions are legitimate. The narrow definition highlights a tendency to superstition in religion. The broader definition recognizes the possibility of an evolution of religious thought.     

WHAT EPISTEMIC VALUES SHOULD WE RECLAIM FOR RELIGION AND SCIENCE? A RESPONSE TO J. WESLEY ROBBINS

Abstract. Postmodernism in science rejects and deconstructs the cultural dominance of especially the natural sciences in our time. Although it presents the debate between religion and science with a promising epistemological holism, it also seriously challenges attempts to develop a meaningful relationship between science and religion. A neopragmatist perspective on religion and science is part of this important challenge and eminently reveals the problems and reduction that arise when pragmatist criteria alone are used to construct a holism that renounces any demarcation between different areas of rationality. In this pragmatist vision for a holist culture, the cognitive resources of rationality are bypassed in such a way that a meaningful interaction between theology and science becomes impossible.     

Rationality in Religion

Religion can be defined narrowly as belief in anthropomorphic supernatural beings. For Levy-Bruhl this meant that prelogical ‘mystic participation’ preceded true religion. For Donald Wiebe and others it means that philosophical-scientific rationality has been struggling to replace religion since the axial age. A broader definition of religion interprets rational post-axial theology as a development within religion, not a replacement of true religion. Both definitions are legitimate. The narrow definition highlights a tendency to superstition in religion. The broader definition recognizes the possibility of an evolution of religious thought.     

CONCERNING DIVERSITY AND PRACTICALITY

I raise issues about the scope and content of the religion‐and‐science field of study and suggest that cultural diversity has not been considered relevant or important. Adding it to the present foci of discussion yields different ideas and constructs about the nature and experience of religion than currently found in most of the religion‐and‐science literature. Consideration of cultural diversity not only broadens the ideas and constructs but also leads to practical (applied) considerations that have not been prominent in this field.     

The rationality of faith and the benefits of religion

Religions don’t simply make claims about the world; they also offer existential resources, resources for dealing with basic human problems, such as the need for meaning, love, identity, and personal growth. For instance, a Buddhist’s resources for addressing these existential needs are different than a Christian’s. Now, imagine someone who is agnostic but who is deciding whether to put faith in religion A or religion B. Suppose she thinks A and B are evidentially on par, but she regards A as offering much more by way of existential resources. Is it epistemically rational for her to put her faith in A rather than B on this basis? It is natural to answer No. After all, what do the existential resources of a religion have to do with its truth? However, I argue that this attitude is mistaken. My thesis is that the extent to which it is good for a certain religion to be true is relevant to the epistemic (rather than merely pragmatic) rationality of faith in that religion. This is plausible, I’ll argue, on the correct account of the nature of faith, including the ways that emotion and desire can figure into faith and contribute to its epistemic rationality.     

Three Ideological Traditions and the Psychology of Religion

This commentary on Heimbrock's essay on psychoanalytic understandings of religion notes that Freud thought religion was of inestimable worth to individual and collective development. Although psychoanalytic views of religion can never be irrefutably correct, they refute rationalistic reductions of religion. It should also be noted that, although psychoanalysis tended to emphasize unhealthy religion, there is a need for contemporary psychoanalysts to investigate healthy religion. Applications of these ideas to the South African situation are considered.     

Religious Problem Solving and the Complexity of Religious Rationality Within an Iranian Muslim Ideological Surround

Comparative rationality analysis formally examines the incommensurable social rationalities that theoretically exist within religions and the social sciences according to the ideological surround model (ISM) of the psychology of religion. This study extended these procedures to a new cultural context: 220 Iranian university students responded to the Religious Problem‐Solving Scales developed by Pargament et al. (1988). As hypothesized, the Collaborative Problem‐Solving Style was consistent, and the Self‐Directing Style inconsistent, with Iranian Muslim religious and psychological adjustment. The Deferring Style had ambiguous implications. Comparative rationality analysis demonstrated that sample interpretations of these styles explained greater variance in adjustment than did the original scales. These procedures also yielded the unexpected discovery that the Deferring Style included a secular as well as a religious form of Iranian rationality. These data most importantly support the ISM claim that “future objectivity” requires empirical analyses of the incommensurable rationalities operating within the psychology of religion.     

RALPH WENDELL BURHOE: HIS LIFE AND HIS THOUGHT

Abstract. This is the first of four installments by the author, presenting an intellectual biography of Ralph Wendell Burhoe. This first segment follows Burhoe from his college years at Harvard through the founding of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science in 1954. In this period, after his college and seminary study, Burhoe worked at Harvard's Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory and as executive officer of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Throughout his early life he had been concerned with how religion could maintain its credibility as a bearer of truth vis-à-vis the sciences, which were displacing religion not only among leading intellectuals, but also in other segments of society. The founding of IRAS provided an important instrument for dealing with this concern.     

The limits of religion: liberalism and anti-liberalism in the Islamic Republic of Iran

This essay investigates the ways that ‘religion,’ as a particular category of discourse, organised Muslim debates in the Islamic Republic of Iran during the 1990s and early 2000s. Recent work in the study of religion has highlighted not only liberalism’s privatised and largely protestant notion of religion, but also the ways that understanding of religion affects the representation of Islam in the West. Studies of Islam, continuing the critique of liberal assumptions regarding religion, often uphold a traditionalist understanding of Islam as an equally valuable way of being in the world. This article, in contrast, explores the ways that liberal religion figures in both liberal and anti-liberal Muslim debate. Specifically, it traces the ways that Muslim theology (kalām) draws upon and contests the rationality and secularity of the world and, in so doing, turns the gaze back to continuing discontents with liberalism in the West.     

Postfoundationalism and Interdisciplinarity: A Response to Jerome Stone

Abstract. In my recent work I argued that the religion and sciencedialogue is most successful when done locally and contextually. However, I also argued against theology's epistemic isolation in a pluralist, postmodern world, and for a postfoundationalist notion of human rationality that reveals the interdisciplinary, public nature of all theological reflection. I now want to explore the possibility that, when we look at what the prehistory of thehuman mind reveals about the biological roots of all human rationality, some forms of contemporary evolutionary epistemology may actually hold the key to understanding the kind of cognitive fluidity that enables true interdisciplinary reflection. Philosophically the religion and science dialogue benefits from this move when a postfoundationalist notion of rationality redescribes the dynamic interaction of our various disciplinary dialogues with one another as aform of transversal reasoning. Transversality in this sense justifies and urges an acknowledgment of multiple patterns of interpretation as one moves across the borders and boundaries of different disciplines.     

RELIGION AND THE MODE OF PRACTICE IN MICHAEL OAKESHOTT

Michael Oakeshott's religious view of the world stands behind much of his political and philosophical writing. In this essay I first discuss Oakeshott's view of religion and the mode of practice in his own terms. I attempt next to illuminate his idea of religion by describing it in less technical language, drawing upon other thinkers such as Georg Simmel and George Santayana, who share similar views. I then evaluate Oakeshott's view as a whole, considering whether his ideas about religion can stand up to careful scrutiny and whether they have value for present-day reflection on religion.     

Religion as Dialogical Resource: A Socio-cultural Approach

William James proposed a psychological study of religion examining people’s religious experiences, and to see in what sense these were good for them. The recent developments of psychology of religion moved far from that initial proposition. In this paper, we propose a sociocultural perspective to religion that renews with that initial stance. After recalling Vygtotsky’s core ideas, we suggest that religion, as cultural and symbolic system, participates to the orchestration of human activities and sense-making. Such orchestration works both from within the person, through internalized values and ideas, and from without, through the person’s interactions with others, discourses, cultural objects etc. This leads us to consider religions as supporting various forms of dialogical dynamics—intra-psychological dialogues, interpersonal with present, absent or imaginary others, as well as inter-group dialogues—which we illustrate with empirical vignettes. The example of religious tensions in the Balkans in the 90’s highlights how much the historical-cultural embeddedness of these dynamics can also lead to the end of dialogicality, and therefore, sense-making     

BEYOND BARBOUR OR BACK TO BASICS? THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE‐AND‐RELIGION AND THE QUEST FOR UNITY

Reflecting on the future of the field of science‐and‐religion, I focus on three aspects. First, I describe the history of the religion‐and‐science dialogue and argue that the emergence of the field was largely contingent on social‐cultural factors in Western theology, especially in the United States. Next, I focus on the enormous influence of science on Western society and on what I call cultural scientism, which influences discussions in science‐and‐religion, especially how theological notions are taken up. I illustrate by sketching the way divine action has been studied in science‐and‐religion. The divine‐action debates may seem irrelevant to theologians because the way divine action is dealt with in science‐and‐religion is theologically problematic. Finally, I analyze the quest for integration and unity of science and religion that underlies much of the contemporary field of science‐and‐religion and was stimulated particularly by the efforts of Ian Barbour. I argue that his quest echoes the logical positivist vision of unification and has a strong bias toward science as the sole source of rationality, which does not take theology fully seriously.     

Presidential Address: Religion and Power—A Return to the Roots of Social Scientific Scholarship

Early social scientists, including Karl Marx, Max Weber, and W. E. B. DuBois, recognized the importance of religion for power systems. Since the beginning of the 20th century, however, there has been a decline in scholars examining how religion matters for power. This address proposes that scholars bring religion back to the center of understanding the production, deconstruction, and distribution of power as religion is critical to the flows of power in the social world. I propose that furthering an agenda that interrogates the role of religion for power means we emphasize that (i) religion is an institution; (ii) religious ideas motivate action; (iii) our epistemology sources theories of power rather than those that invalidate the centrality of religion in societies; and (iv) ground‐breaking theoretical and empirical contributions to the social scientific study of religion and power demand that we broaden and diversify the standpoints from which this knowledge is produced.     

From "Civil Religion" to Nationalism as the Religion of Modern Times: Rethinking a Complex Relationship

Interest in civil religion periodically resurfaces in the academic world with renewed force, reflected in new theoretical contributions and empirical studies. Due to its long history, this concept has been given different interpretations and has been related to other social phenomena. One of these is nationalism. Several theoreticians have sought to explain nationalism as a manifestation of "civil religion" in modern times. This article examines the relationship between (civil) religion and nationalism. A brief review of the ideas of the main authors who have theorized about this relationship is followed by a criticism of theories concerning civil religion and nationalism as the religion of modern times. I demonstrate the significant shortcomings of those theories from a three-fold perspective: definitional, theoretical, and empirical-methodological.     

Philosophy of religion, fictionalism, and religious diversity

Until recently philosophy of religion has been almost exclusively focused upon the analysis of western religious ideas. The central concern of the discipline has been the concept “God”, as that concept has been understood within Judaeo-Christianity. However, this narrow remit threatens to render philosophy of religion irrelevant today. To avoid this philosophy of religion should become a genuinely multicultural discipline. But how, if at all, can philosophy of religion rise to this challenge? The paper considers fictionalism about religious discourse as a possible methodological standpoint from which to practice a tradition-neutral form of philosophy of religion. However, after examining some of the problems incurred by fictionalism, the paper concludes that fictionalism and religious diversity are uneasy bedfellows; which implies that fictionalism is unlikely to be the best theory to shape the practice of philosophy of religion in a multicultural context.     

Scientific empathy,American buddhism,and the ethnography of religion

This paper examines some of the current ideas and methods that have problematised the study of religion within a globalised community. Religion and culture cannot be considered bounded entities, to be described as unchangeable. However, their constant process of change is not something new. It becomes new due to writing patterns and contemporary ideas on the relevance of religion or the creativity of culture. By analysing some discussions on possession cults, the paper suggests that ritual and performance constitute the moments when culture and religion are mediated. It is through ritual that religious practices are adapted, and it is in a ritual performance where culture is contested and challenged. Religion becomes ‘confused culture’, that once again is re‐organised and made orderly by reflection on ritual practices. Finally, the paper suggests that the agenda for an anthropology of religion for this new century is two‐fold. Firstly, to try to become more conversant with ever changing localised practices of ritual, and secondly, to try to converse about those practices with other practitioners and scholars from different fields and in different fields.