You’re probably familiar with it, even if you’ve never heard the word for it. “Fandom” refers to the subculture of people who are fans of any topic. Being a fan is more than simply liking something, and usually more than a hobby. Fans devote considerable time and energy to their fandoms, sometimes even creating works based on it. While people can be fans of anything from baseball to crochet, some of the most involved fandoms are the fandoms surrounding fictional works, particularly science fiction and fantasy. No doubt you’ve encountered at least one of these fandoms: Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, the Bible.
In some sense, these fandoms have always been with us. Before the internet, fandoms were widely dispersed networks of people who communicated by means of mail and conventions—meetings for fans to gather and discuss their favorite fictional works. The first science fiction convention was held in the 1930s, and modern science fiction and fantasy fandom evolved from that. Another milestone was the 1970s, sometimes called the “New Wave”, when large amounts of people became interested in science fiction and fantasy. One of the most popular fandoms—and the fandom that influenced so much of what came after—is another thing that you’re probably familiar with: the Bible.
Between 1967 and 1969, three books were published, called the Torah (Teaching, or the Five Books of Moses), the Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). These three books together formed one book—a fantasy novel about the history of the world and a group of people in it. The book is traditionally called the Tanakh.1
While a small group of people became highly invested in the Tanakh, publishers did not feel that they were selling enough copies. It went out of print after three years. Usually, that’s the end of the story: a book is published, a show is made; people like it for a while, and then it’s forgotten. But fans of the Tanakh were extremely loyal. They lobbied for republication of the book, and when that failed, they took matters into their own hands. For decades, they held conventions and produced fanzines—collections of fan works published in bound form, and sent to fans with subscriptions. Fan works included art and fan fiction, stories based on the characters and situations in the original novel.
While the public seemed generally aware that Tanakh fans existed, the fandom was largely ignored. Sometimes there was an outside interest in the conventions and fanzines; outsiders periodically commentated on the inexplicable nature of Tanakh fandom. Sometimes there was even ostracism, or outright condemnation: Tanakh fans were criticized for taking the book so seriously—particularly since Tanakh was very different from mainstream literature.
As a result, Tanakh fandom remained small, but loyal. Though marginalized, it became highly organized; fans created their own traditions and jargon, building on the original text even as they celebrated it. Tanakh fandom laid the foundation for much of fandom as we know it, but the biggest way it has influenced not only fandom, but modern culture, is the spin-offs.
In 1987, there were enough Tanakh fans and enough lingering interest to justify the creation of a new series set in the universe of the original series, called the Testaments. The Testaments are two books, generally called the Old and New. The Old Testament is basically a “reboot” of the original series (à la Moore’s Battlestar Galactica in 2004, or Moffat’s recent Sherlock), while the New Testament is a sequel. The sequel incorporates references to favorite characters, including God and Satan, while introducing a next generation. At the center of the next generation is a character called Jesus Christ.
The Testaments were a huge best-seller. Many fans of the Tanakh became fans of the Testaments as well, and many new fans were introduced to the universe through the updated works. Even people who aren’t “fans” in the obsessive sense of the word enjoy the Testaments. Furthermore, even people who have never read The Testaments or even actively dislike them, generally have a little knowledge of the universe. Basically, they were the Harry Potter of the late 1980s; the Testaments have been adapted into several feature length films, and have become integral to modern pop culture.
Fans of the Testaments are more often fans of the New Testament than they are of the Old Testament, though the re-imagining of the original text is highly respected. Christ, however, was the main draw for many fans, and Christ-based fandom remains one of the strongest and most active fandoms today. While a large population has read and enjoy the New Testament, and a large percentage of that would call themselves fans, there is a small, extremely active contingent of Christ fans who almost make rabid look tame.
In the last decade, these fans have received more attention than ever before. For a long time, fandom was peripheral enough that not only was it easily ignored, but it was difficult to observe. With the advent of modern media, particularly the internet, it has become possible to view fandom without being a part of fandom. The past fifteen years have seen a plethora of documentaries, articles, and scholarly work on these fandoms, while the fandoms themselves have grown, becoming highly organized and active.
Due to this, much of the practices that otherwise would not have been exposed to the public are now common knowledge. Documentaries such as Christies2, released in 1997, detail the behavior of active Christ fans. Some fans saw Christies as exploitive, but most agree that Christies treated the subject fairly. From the outside, many of the actions of Christ fans may seem strange or aberrant, but to those in the fandom, such actions are natural expressions of their love of a text.
One of the most common forms of said expression is the fannish gathering. Gatherings don’t always have to be conventions; it can be as simple as a couple of fans getting together to watch a television show or discuss a book. Although there is not an episode airing weekly to watch, weekly gatherings are a staple of Bible fandom, as they were in Buffy the Vampire Slayer when the show was airing. Instead of watching television, however, Bible fans come together to discuss the book, read passages, and even sing songs and play games–as fans do at Harry Potter parties.
Different fans participate in fandom in different ways, but for many, it’s the feeling of community that is as important as the text that draws them together. There would probably be Bible fans in a vacuum, but it’s definitely the case that sharing ideas and associating with like-minded people not only brings the fans who participate pleasure, but sustains the fandom itself. Some fans do not consider those who do not participate in gatherings active members of the fandom.
One of the largest types of fannish gatherings is the convention. Conventions are held year round by various branches of fandom, but the biggest ones recur annually at roughly the same date each year. While conventions are traditionally hosted at one venue, Bible fan conventions have become so large that they are held all over the world in many different places. Large numbers of fans turn out for these events. Some are highly devoted, and some are just people who enjoy the text and want to be a part of something. For some people, it is much like a holiday.
One thing you may see at a convention or fannish gathering is something called filk. Filk is music based on a fandom. Much like fan fiction, filk uses characters and themes from the stories, and weaves it into something new. While new filk songs are being written and performed all the time, some are so traditional that any Christ fan you ask knows the words.
Another thing you might see at a fannish gathering is cosplay, which often goes hand in hand with LARP. Cosplay is a portmanteau of “costume play,” and refers to people who dress up according to a particular fandom. While traditionally, people dressed up as characters they like, more often in Bible fandom people will dress in garb merely inspired by the universe. You may have even seen someone in cosplay; one traditional costume is a black suit with a white collar. Some people take cosplay to the extreme and remain in costume at almost all times.
LARP stands for live-action roleplay. In roleplay, like cosplay, people can “be” certain characters they like, not just by dressing like them, but by acting how they think they would act. While people can discuss how they think characters might act, they can also act it out, using props and sets made to look like things and places from the fandom text–thus the term, “live action”.
LARPing was not always a part of Bible fandom. In the early days, dressing up and acting out parts was restricted to something called morality plays. Morality plays could be performed at fannish gatherings and conventions. Most fans are no longer interested in that type of performance, although the performance of the birth of everyone’s favorite character, Jesus Christ, is a tradition at some conventions.
For some fans, however, LARPing is essential to the fandom. A central scene in the New Testament is when Jesus Christ eats his last supper, and tells his friends that the bread and wine is actually his flesh and blood. Some Christ fans act this out almost religiously; they have stand-ins for Christ offer them wine (or juice) and crackers to represent the bread and wine, and eat it at least once a week. While many people outside of fandom—and many fans within the fandom as well—consider this behavior extreme, the fans who practice this tradition see it as an essential part of being a fan.
A central aspect to some fandoms is what was called “the Game” in Sherlock Holmes fandom. Some fans believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. More often, fans are aware that Sherlock Holmes was an invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but they are still interested in thinking of Holmes as having existed. To this effect, they try to gather as many “facts” as they can about Holmes’ actual life. Using Doyle’s texts, they pull details about when Holmes solved which cases, when he was born, and when he died.
While many Christ fans know the events of the Testaments to be fictional, they still think of Jesus as a real man. Although most Christ fans are not as concerned as say, Holmes fans about getting dates, etc correct, a central part of LARP—and the Christ fandom as a whole—is the “reality” of Christ.
Another thing you will see in fandom is the “Big Name Fan,” or BNFs. BNFs are fans who are well known in the fandom for one reason or another, whether it is for holding gatherings, writing copious quantities of fanfic, or perhaps even having some influence on the industry that owns the copyright on the text. While not every fan is familiar with a particular BNF, enough people have heard of them that they are considered by some to hold a lofty position in fandom. Some are even considered to hold a certain amount of power, as though they have some influence over fannish interpretation of the text.
The BNF in some circles of Christ fandom is a man known by the handle “Holy Father”, AKA the Pope. Other circles of Christ fandom decry the Pope. Others don’t understand why he’s famous, and never read his meta3 on the Testaments. But there are some who regard the Pope as an authority in the fandom, feeling that only his interpretations are correct.
This and other disagreements between fans can lead to something called fandom wank. While “wank” was initially a term used in fandom to refer to works and comments that were self-congratulatory and aggrandizing, these days the term can also to refer to various kerfuffles that happen in fandom. It may seem strange, or even silly, that disagreements about a book can lead to such heated debate and sometimes even downright nasty verbal abuse, but many fans take fandom seriously. Wank can occur over anything from disagreements about the details of Christ’s “real” life, to differences of interpretation, to lack of respect for BNFs, fanfiction, and—as is most common in Bible fandom—disputes over canon.
The success of the Testaments inspired a slew of other spin-offs, including new re-imaginings, such as the Qur’an in 1993 and the Book of Mormon in 2009. There have also been an abundance of unauthorized sequels, and many, many fanfics, some published, some only famous online. One of the most divisive issues in Bible fandom is which of these text is “official”, and which is merely an interpretation—in other words, which texts are canon.
The term “canon” is derived from religion; it has been used for centuries to refer to the Star Trek works which are considered scripture. (For instance, The Original Series and Next Generation are canon; Spock, Messiah! is not.) The first use in a fannish context was in reference to Sherlock Holmes; works by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle were considered canon, while pastiches by other authors were not.
In fandom, “canon” refers to the material accepted as “official” by the fandom. This leads to wank because fans disagree as to who may dictate what is canon. Certainly publishing companies may claim such and such a work to be canon, but some fans prefer to decide their own canon. Disagreement over canon has even resulted in factions who refuse to communicate, or allow each other at each others’ conventions.
Perhaps obviously, fans take their fandoms seriously–sometimes too seriously. In some ways, fans take their love of fiction to an extreme level, giving it much of the same importance they might give to real world issues. If fiction were so formative as some fans make it out to be, surely we would not be fighting wars in the Middle East between Kirk lovers and Picard worshippers. People would be able to marry whomever they wished, and mothers would always be free to make choices about their lives and health, if fairytales and fantasy were really an essential component to people’s lives.
In the scheme of things, it’s difficult to feel that a little fictional story about gods and monsters is important. And yet, a fan would say that those things which are blatantly untrue–the fable, the farce, the fantasy–have the power to give us perspective. Whether that perspective would bring reality sharply into focus, or whether it would instead continue to obscure the truth in the chaos that is reality depends on the nature of the canon and the fandom. A fan would say that fiction, fantasy, falsehood–the blatant fabrication of the fairytale–has a profound influence on some people’s lives and their perception of the world. It is often said that fiction can be an escape, but a fan would say that fiction is also a framework by which some form themselves and their thought, at times more comprehensible than our insane reality.
Bible fans make this claim, many believing whole-heartedly that the themes and morals of the book are relevant. Some even claim that the Bible could teach us a thing or two about what our society could become, explaining that the Bible has underlying messages about peace and love of fellow men. That the Bible may influence how people live may seem ridiculous to us, and yet many Bible fans, despite the unusual extent of their obsession, are often well-intentioned, thoughtful people. By taking to heart what’s in the text, they try to live better lives.
The sense of community offered by fandom has also changed lives. Extremely different people from all walks of life come together due to a common interest, and some fans have even united in order to work at charity events, or raise money for areas torn apart by natural disaster. Many people are less lonely due to their participation in fandom; fandom gives them a family, and makes them feel loved.
While fandom may seem strange, even irrational, it is only human. In some ways, a fan’s need for fiction is more comprehensible than another man’s attempt to explain the ugliness of our world using only fact. Perhaps, in light of this, it is story-telling that is man’s greatest endeavor, and his most powerful weapon.
*
1(Tanakh is an acronym of the three books. Acronyms are a common shorthand of most fandoms; Lord of the Rings fans call Lord of the Rings LOTR; Harry Potter fans HP, etc. While the comparison between the Tanakh and Lord of the Rings is obvious, the sequence of LOTR’s three books forms a linear narrative. The Torah, Nevi’im, and Ketuvim are far less sequential. However, just like LOTR, the Tanakh is considered one book as a whole, though the Torah is by far the favorite among fans.)
2(N.B. Some Christ fans do not enjoy the word “Christies”, feeling that it is derogatory and dismissive of the text, or that it lumps them in with fans whose behavior is extreme. They prefer the term “Christers” or “Christians.” In this essay, the term “Christ fans” has been used exclusively in order to avoid offense.)
3“Meta,” the pretext which means “on” or “about”, is used in fandom to refer to thoughts and interpretations of the text. Meta can be discussed or recorded, and often appears in the form of essays, or in the case of the Pope, edicts.
This is fantastic. Loved the part about Star Trek scripture.
You should read my Paul/Judas slash it’s on my livejournal page
Didn’t Christ show up at one of their conventions and tell ’em all to “get a life”?
Very nice piece, the HU deserves a free get-out-hell card for this one.
I just can’t get into this fandom anymore. Did you read the last book in the series? “Revelations” is one step removed from L. Ron Hubbard.
I enjoyed this piece; it’s a thoughtful look at an obscure fandom. But just to be cranky, maybe — the piece does do something which often rubs me the wrong way about sociological fandom criticism, which is that it more or less ignores aesthetic issues when discussing aesthetic issues. I’m not a Christ fan, but I think there’s a pretty strong case to be made that the Bible is much, much superior aesthetically to Star Trek, or Harry Potter, or most of the other fandoms mentioned here. The Book of Job, for example (which is the one I’ve read most closely) confronts the problem of evil in a much more complex and thoughtful manner than the much-vaunted-but-really-pretty-cheesy-and-ultimately-quite-boneheaded doppelganger-Kirk episode. “There’s good and evil in all of us and we need both” just seems awfully pat compared to Job’s questioning of the human ability to understand evil, and of the moral problems attendant upon even making the attempt.
Obviously aesthetics are subjective in a lot of ways — but they’re not entirely subjective, I don’t think, and in any case, it seems odd to try to deal with what are essentially aesthetic issues or phenomena without taking any evaluative stand on the works being discussed.
I think that in some way, the real issue underlying the piece might be that this particular aesthetic “object” has created an immense amount of havoc and suffering for many people over the years, unlike Star Trek (well, except for the polyester suits).
But that’s already been taken care of, perhaps, because the Book of Job’s message is basically that its “author” gets an automatic pass on moral responsibility because, well, he just says so.
Nice work if you can get it, eh?
It’s not exactly clear that that’s the point of Job. I mean, I see that in it too…but I think the point is also that human beings aren’t in a position to judge the universe morally…and thus really aren’t in a place to judge each other morally.
Also, as Joy points out, Star Trek has caused a huge amount of harm in the Middle East. Bible fandom hasn’t done anything comparable, I don’t think.
Like Star Trek, The Bible is marked mostly by its inconsistency aesthetically. I mean, Job may be a “Trouble with Tribbles” or a “City on the Edge of Forever”–but if you’ve read Deuteronomy lately, it’s more on the same level as “Spock’s Brain.” They make about the same amount of sense.
I’ll take Tribbles over Job myself, to be honest.
Anyone may consider Star Trek as an object d’art, of course; however, to do so when discussing the nature of the fandom seems to suggest that fandoms arise based on the quality of the work. The idea that fandom is an “aesthetic phenomenon” even seems to suggest that fandom and aesthetic value have a direct correlation, as if the nature of the fandom–its size, longevity, etc–increase proportionally to the canon’s aesthetic value.
Such an argument would be fatuous, and I find it particularly intriguing you’ve brought Star Trek into it. Star Trek is a prime example of a work that did not become famous or well-loved solely by its aesthetic merit. While again, you are free to consider Star Trek from an aesthetic perspective, people have more often evaluate it from an ecclesiastic one, and did so even at the time of its creation.
I do think that Star Trek could not have become the cornerstone of a religion without aesthetic value, but it also has to do with zeitgeist, personality, ambition, and even money. The Original Series has endured not just because of it’s aesthetic value, but because Gene Roddenberry was relentless, because Shatner was a force of nature, and because Nimoy needed cash. The Next Generation is the foundation of another religion not because people were evaluating it objectively, but because Paramount is the rock on which the Church was built, and because of the dedication of Wil Wheaton.
It’s fairly easy to see that the reason for Star Trek’s “fandom” are cultural (should I be using the word societal?) just as much as they are (I would argue a lot more so) aesthetic. But the same could be true for the Bible, actually. I think a lot of people wish objects these days were popular based on aesthetic merit, but so much more goes into it. The success of the Bible has to do with the publishing company making the sales, with Paul, who was a marketing genius, with Constantine, who promoted it in other countries. It has to do with merchandising–think of all the rosaries sold over the years; it has to do with commercialism, and it has to do with power. Don’t make the mistake that Joseph Smith created the recent reboot just because he was a big old fan who loved canon for its artistic merit. Ron L. Hubbard even allegedly stated that he wrote fanfic for money.
I do agree that the nature of a fandom is somewhat related to aesthetic value, but that relationship is never quite clear. While I do not believe in objective aesthetic value, it would be very easy to point to many works created at the time of the Bible that are aesthetically superior, and yet have little to no fandom. The same could be said for Star Trek. Fandom is not an evaluative aesthetic phenomenon; it is a cultural one.
While we can argue about the aesthetics, I think that Star Trek’s meta answer to Bible’s Job is not the doppleganger, but Kobayashi Maru. It’s a much more sophisticated take on who is in charge, what is success, and can you ever know your own place in the system–can you know the purpose and the end point? In the KM scenario, the moral authority question gets thrown back on the protagonist, who has to face the consequences of his decisions in a way that the protagonist-god-figure in Job never does.
Joy, the point isn’t that aesthetics determine fandom, but rather than when evaluating the worth or meaning of a fandom, I think aesthetics plays an important part. So yes, of course Star Trek is dicey aesthetically…but it’s hard for me not to take that into account when thinking about what it does or doesn’t mean, and how that matters.
I would say that the KM is a good example of that. I see what VM is saying in terms of it’s comparison to Job. The difference is that the KM is man mad…which indeed is the point of Star Trek as a whole. It’s about the mastery of human beings; the optimistic control of the universe. Kirk’s cheating is kind of the ultimate expression of that…which is then kind of undermined with Spock’s death…and then un-undermined with his rebirth. Job has a much stronger sense of human limits, which is part of why I find it more appealing (though the antropomorphic nature of God in Job is something I do have some problems with.)
I understand the intention of the exercise is to lob a wry postmodern spitwad at the allegedly irredeemable legacy of Christianity (I assume primarily) and Judaism (I assume secondarily, since spitting on Jews is still slightly more taboo than spitting on Christians).
I encourage someone (because most people have now tuned me out because I don’t think the Bible is like, ugh, so lame) to look at how people arrange their lives around capitalist culture (Star Trek for example) and how they arrange their lives around something that might possibly be more important than their need to validate their consumer identity. If you really think they’re the same thing, I’ll ask you to remember that the next time you’re comparing all Christians to extremist fundamentalists who blow stuff up. or Nazis, or what have you– and decide if that’s really being consistent. Because if it isn’t, the Enlightenment will mock you on its blog.
*sigh*
Bert, I respect that the Bible is important to you.
I have a lot of experience living with, and surrounded by, people who value the Bible very highly. They do center their lives around it. It does not result in what I think you seem to be arguing for here, which I assume is something more positive than surrounding oneself with Star Trek would do.
I could tell you what I see in both of those scenarios, but I don’t think it would make you happy.
Isn’t it easier to spit on Trekkies than either Jews or Christians? And is the morality of Star Trek any more capitalist than that of the Bible? Certainly the former came out of capitalism, but it’s a genetic fallacy to assume that’s all it says.
“*sigh*”
I really appreciate that as an opener to constructive ecumenical dialogue.
I should mention that I have fan loyalty too– I love Terminator (which, despite James Cameron’s best intentions, is a totally Christian narrative), and the franchise has made a ton of money, like Star Trek. I think one could argue that different Star Trek “generations” have different ideological motifs– first there was certainly the Cold War, and then postcolonial pan-globalism, and then I stopped paying attention. But the Star Trek episodes I’ve seen, while they may have inspired very few Crusades or witch trials, have probably also inspired very few social justice movements– while Christianity has.
I’m open to being enlightened on the subtexts of Star Trek. But there’s a pretty major apples-and-oranges problem being elided by the conceit of calling Christians and Jews fanboys or otaku or whatever. Judeo-Christianity is just far, far more complex and diverse. A comparison to a particular religious movement in a small historical period, perhaps, but I don’t really think rational comparison is the point. It’s a joke.
And I know it’s a joke, but obviously we’re supposed to go “ha, ha, hmmmmmm… that’s insightful!” If the claim were coming from someone non-ironically engaged with Star Trek fan culture and drawing comparisons from experience, that would be one thing, but the point is clearly to reassure the reader of his or her superiority over the lobotomized masses who haven’t discovered Ayn Rand or whatever passes for philosophy among comics people.
“If the claim were coming from someone non-ironically engaged with Star Trek fan culture and drawing comparisons from experience, that would be one thing, but the point is clearly to reassure the reader of his or her superiority over the lobotomized masses who haven’t discovered Ayn Rand or whatever passes for philosophy among comics people.”
I don’t know that that’s exactly true. Joy does see herself as part of fan culture, I think. I think the piece is actually as much, maybe more, about defending fan culture as about poking Judeo-Christians.
I agree that there are some major differences between religion and fan culture which I think the piece is eliding…but I think it’s actually eliding them in part (not entirely, but in part) in the interest of ecumenical dialogue.
I was just at a Christian service, actually. It was both really moving and beautiful and infuriatingly hucksterish and narrow-minded.
“I was just at a Christian service, actually. It was both really moving and beautiful and infuriatingly hucksterish and narrow-minded.” Things that could be said about any given Comicon, presumably.
So, we’re supposed to believe the comparison between the Eucharist and LARPing as coming form a place from love for LARPing? I an skeptical.
It is noteworthy that Leonard Nimoy has become the NPR spokesperson for Jewish holiday programming, but that really says more about Leonard Nimoy than anything else.
Sorry, Mr. Nimoy. I meant to say, “that really says more about NPR than anything else.” I’m also sorry if I am overreacting to (I feel) an unproductive comparison… I’m sure there’s an acronym for what that makes me.
ORC – Over-Reactive Christian?
“But the Star Trek episodes I’ve seen, while they may have inspired very few Crusades or witch trials, have probably also inspired very few social justice movements– while Christianity has.”
That’s true, but has to do with accepting one fantasy as true, but not the other. A good idea is a good idea, regardless of where it comes from, I think.
Things that could be said about any given Comicon, presumably. No.
I’ll just be honest with you Bert. Christianity is in power in the presidency, both houses, the governorships, state and local governments, and most of the Western world.
You probably don’t know this, but I was forced to pray in (public) school. We had Church led public assemblies. I’ve been accosted on the street by Christians. At my current (state government) workplace there’s a huge display in the lobby, collecting donations for a Christian mission to Africa. My coworkers often use Christian scripture, send Christian holiday cards, use Christian greetings, and so on. My coworker plays Christian radio at work, and the theme is often that I’m an abomination (so is my boss, so I’m hardly alone in my Sinny Sin Sin.)
Considering that many of the times I have been directly oppressed in a real world way (up to and including graphic hate speech death threats at school, which was fun) it was in the Name of the Lord Our Savior Jesus Christ Amen.
It can get a bit, um, difficult to hear that a Christian doesn’t like a joke or to read that a Christian is feeling all alone, when in physical and governmental reality, you outnumber and outpower the heck out of agnostics like me.
And not only do you outnumber us, your religion (for better or worse) is making significant, successful efforts to reduce my liberties and restrict my life in the name of that religion.
It seems clear to me that you find the Bible a good, important work. I’m glad it can be a positive work for you. However, that teaching also says that women should be silent in Church, and that a woman’s role in the church is to submit to her husband. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been told that. (I’ve read the whole thing, btw, in Greek. So I’m not ignorant of its charms. It’s got some good bits.)
I was raised Catholic (quite unusual for here) so I also know that many devout believers do follow the teachings and literally give up all of their belongings to help the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit those in prison.
I don’t actually find fandom, of which I am a member, all that different in the community building or good works aspects. People, by their nature, gravitate to stories and build communities around those shared tales.
I’ve seen, first hand, a fandom come together to get a life-saving heart surgery to a man who had no health insurance. I’ve seen such communities foster life-long friendships, marriages, charities, good works, benefits for disasters. I’ve seen it save people.
I also think there’s a lot to be said for similarity between the Snape wives and some of the Saints. There’s Entmoot to match the travelling rapture preachers, even. People congregate around stories, and it’s always less about the story itself than what people make of it. War, or peace; wank or fic. Always a choice. Fandom isn’t perfect and it reflects the people who make it.
However. I’ve never had a fan tell me I’m an abomination. I’ve never had it tell my girlfriend that either. We’ve both been in various fandoms for most of our lives. Fandom may wear really stupid hats (no worse than the pope, I feel) and get heavily into goth perfume (better than smoked weasel butt, I also feel), but you know, it’s a hell of a lot better than the church which counsels women to return to the home and fags to seek forgiveness.
If you haven’t read him, you might enjoy Slactivist. Fred Clark is a Christian and wrote some good articles on why Christians today react to those who are disrespectful of their faith and why Christians may want to rethink their responses.
First, I just wanted to thank everybody for staying civil; it’s a pretty charged discussion, obviously.
Bert, I don’t really think it could be said about comicon exactly. I’ve only been at one comics convention very briefly, and I found it mostly mildly depressing. Kind of mall-like — I find that kind of hothouse of commerce claustrophobic, I guess.
I shouldn’t speak for Joy…but I know she has a lot of affection for fandom. I think that affection is apparent in the piece too…though I think there’s some of VM’s anger at Christianity as well.
VM, I don’t have a ton of experience in online fan communities either…but my limited experience suggests they can be fairly narrow-minded and intolerant in their own ways. Obviously, they don’t have the real-world power that Christianity does, but I don’t think Joy was wrong in suggesting that if they did you might end up with some unpleasant conflicts.
It’s true that certain kinds of Christian doctrine are tied up with certain kinds of governmental power. But…there’s a pretty strong Christian pacifist tradition, and communities that support it don’t exactly have a lot of say in the way the government is run. Christ also said some things about giving up all worldly possessions, and that’s clearly not the grounds on which the US is run either.
Christianity does have a really painful history in terms of women and gay people. Pointing that out is really important, and something that Christians have to deal with. It’s worth noting that anti-feminism and homophobia aren’t the only Christian attitudes though, as lots of feminist Christians and gay Christians would testify, I think. And, conversely, I’d argue that the solution to oppression isn’t always secularism.
Charles, what I was trying to say earlier is that I don’t think the difference between Star Trek and Christianity is just that one is viewed as true by some people and one isn’t. There’s a real difference in the kinds of issues wrestled with and the handling of those issues. I like Star Trek, and am even a fan of sorts — but it’s just not that good.
Hasn’t anyone seen the Westboro Star Trek club, with its “Q hates fags!” protest signs?
Well, I’m not a big fan of either, but I’ve read better commentary on the Bible than Star Trek. I don’t really think there’s much comparison there. There are whole cultural histories intertwined with the former, regardless of aesthetics. I actually don’t think aesthetics really has all that much to do with it. Look at Mormonism or Scientology, for some more recent examples. Aesthetically and philosophically, I prefer The Prisoner, but it’s still not spurring any religious fervor. For that matter, it’s much better written the Star Trek, but hasn’t come close to the level of fandom that Star Trek has inspired. More or less, I agree with Bert. Comparing faith to fandom is sort of like saying everyone has faith of a sort. I don’t like it when theologians do that (e.g., science relies on faith).
“I don’t like it when theologians do that (e.g., science relies on faith).”
I think you’ve got your theologians confused with your post-modern philosophers.
Paul Tillich is one such example.
Huh; that’s interesting. I haven’t read Tillich at all. You don’t have a quote easy to hand do you? I’m curious how he phrases that.
The folks I have read who see science as based on faith are people like Feyerabend and (more or less) Foucault/Derrida. I find their arguments fairly compelling…but they’re based in post-enlightenment skepticism about the bases of knowledge rather than in an effort to defend theology per se. The Radical orthodoxy people tend to attack science for its skepticism and hubris rather than its faith (if I understand them aright). I think (?) that’s a more typical stance…though there are also a lot of theologians who just argue that science and faith are fully reconcilable (I think that’s the position of the Catholic church now, pretty much.)
I agree with the ORC comment. I mean…if you read Joy’s piece, I don’t see it as an attack on Christianity at all. In the ST analogy, there’s clearly some affection for ST (or knowledge linked to one-time affection, anyway). Analogies work by transferring one set of associations onto another—and so there seems to be wry affection for those elements of Xianity that might be read as fandom. The “joke” on Xianity is merely “perhaps they shouldn’t be taking it quite so seriously”–but the same has been said about Star Trek. There’s no problem, really, with any sort of fandom (Christian or otherwise), unless that fandom is forced upon others–particularly violently. While I might try to convince friends, etc. to be fans of the things I am a fan of…my efforts to convert them shouldn’t, or don’t, involve violence, or mockery/dismissal of their own fandom as supported by society at large. It’s the imposition of one fandom on others that has vom rightfully upset/exorcised, not so much the fandom itself.
I think the analogy of Xianity to fandom doesn’t stand up fully, obviously…but it’s perhaps productive for thinking through what the similarities and differences.
Noah, of course I know there are feminist Christians and gay Christians. And of course religion can do good things. I acknowledged that in my previous comment, I think, as well as saying that fandom can be good or bad. Again, it’s less about the stories themselves as what the community chooses to do with them. You get Crusaders, you get Quakers.
But Bert is taking a common rhetorical approach that many Christians are taking now, which is that Christianity is under attack and must be defended, that no one listens to him because he’s Christian, that he’s in a minority, etc. When the factual reality is that Christianity is not under attack. Believers are not a minority but a majority. Most people do not think the bible is like, so lame. Most consider it an important religious text and have the power to back that up and are not only defending it successfully but using it as a sword against people, not in the past but right now, today.
Further, Bert is taking the position that detractors are dissing his text from some kind of hipsterish cynical approach or academic faddishness. I find this…problematic. I have really damn good knowledge of Christian texts, because they were beaten into me, and I’d like Bert to accept (as most of my feminist and gay Christian friends do) that dislike and distrust of Christianity often directly stems from negative behavior performed by Christians.
It’s frustrating to be treated as an Ayn Rander, having suffered what I’ve suffered. I’ve got reasons for why I see Job the way I see it. Maybe we could have a productive dialog about that book, but not unless Bert accepts that my views stem from deep inside a branch of his faith, from part of his own religious tradition, not a game of who’s cooler than whom.
I can see that for Bert, the bible is a beautiful, moving, loving work. I respect that. That text can and does bring out the best in some people. But not always.
“But Bert is taking a common rhetorical approach that many Christians are taking now, which is that Christianity is under attack and must be defended,”
I think you’re reading more of this into Bert’s response than is there? (Maybe as Bert is reading more animosity into Joy’s piece than I think is there.) I don’t think Bert would at all claim to be oppressed…and I know he really thoroughly rejects Christian homophobia (or anybody’s homophobia.)
Christianity’s power in culture is pretty complicated, I think. On the one hand, obviously lots of people in the U.S. identify as Christian. On the other hand, the U.S. is a secular society, and many of what I think are arguably the core beliefs of Christianity — turning the other cheek, eschewing worldly possessions — are daimetrically opposed to the American ethos. And especially if you’re a lefty liberal sort, who hangs out on lefty liberal sorts of places on the internet (like HU, more or less) you can run into a lot of animosity towards Christianity.
I guess the point is…I don’t really think Christianity is in power exactly, nor do I think that Christians are oppressed. Rather, I think the place of Christianity in American society is really quite hotly contested on a number of fronts and in a number of ways. The most obvious way this works is in the Republican politics = Christian vs. Democratic politics = secular…but I think it can be more complicated than that too.
Being annoyed at millions of people having their worldview(s) trivialized, people who are not mostly wealthy hypocritical hateful white politicians (whom anyone can mock as much as they like, awkwardly or not, with my full support), does not mean I hate women and gays and want to make anyone pray in school.
It’s just a lighthearted essay, and I don’t want to get all caught up in accounting for, apologizing for, justifying the vicious repercussions of all cultural values that rely on traditions rather than cosmopolitan commerce or utopian universality.
I was an atheist for 25 years, and started going to church largely because of the spirit of selfless community I encountered hanging out with gay people. Any religious view that involves ideological coercion is just as despicable as a secular view that does that.
But nobody gets to be mean just because people were mean to them. Which is sort of what Christianity says it’s about, and something I unequivocally support.
I’m sure that Bert’s against homophobia; he’s obviously a good person. But he is using rhetoric that’s popping up elsewhere in very similar contexts, so that will bleed into my reading. (I could provide examples of what I mean, if anyone is interested, and he did say in his comment that everyone would tune him out because he doesn’t think the bible is, like lame.)
I don’t really think Christianity is in power exactly I think that’s partly because you’re a straight guy living in one of most liberal areas of the country and I’m a queer woman living in the Bible Belt? Also, the far right has been saying that so loudly that it’s sunk in in some ways.
As I said, right in the middle of my government work lobby, we have a giant poster of Jesus and they’re gathering donations not for relief work, but for an honest to god mission to heathens in Africa. There is just absolutely ZERO chance of a Jewish missionary showing up there, much less a Muslim one.
I was forced to pray in public school, not just in class, but over the loudspeaker, attend Christ-based assemblies (the Power Team–they’re weight lifters for Jesus, and no I’m not making that up http://www.thepowerteam.com/ ), and so on.
If that’s not Christianity in power, I guess I’d like to know what you would call it? (There are lots of other areas we could talk about, but stick with that for now.)
I don’t think I’m a queer woman living in the Bible Belt, just to be clear. I think I’m on a particular comics blog responding to a particular essay before a particular audience. I’m not saying I’m being ignored in rural Georgia (which I would be, although not persecuted), I’m saying that statements have implications outside of intention.
But no, as it happens, I don’t feel tuned out in this discussion. Just slightly misunderstood, which is to be expected. And I am quite certain I have privilege (and anxiety about it)– but I also assert that many secular people have privilege anxiety that is then painted over by smug elitism.
Here’s an emo essay from the New Yorker that perhaps all of us will find equally unsatisfying.
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2011/08/15/110815crat_atlarge_wood?currentPage=all
I don’t think there are or have ever been Jewish missionaries. But that was probably not intended seriously either.
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Charles Reece says:
Comparing faith to fandom is sort of like saying everyone has faith of a sort. I don’t like it when theologians do that (e.g., science relies on faith).
…Paul Tillich is one such example.
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Noah Berlatsky says:
Huh; that’s interesting. I haven’t read Tillich at all. You don’t have a quote easy to hand do you? I’m curious how he phrases that.
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Not having read Tillich either (though of course I know of him), did a little research and was relieved to find that Tillich was vastly unlike the asinine Creationists who maintain that because science has not explained EVERYTHING IN THE UNIVERSE, therefore science is every bit as “faith-based” as religion.
Couldn’t find Tiilich quotes at first that captured the complexity of his thoughts on the subject, but here are some synopses:
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For Tillich, ‘ultimate concern’ is the phrase that best captures the meaning of faith and, in the broadest sense, of religion as well…
One can, according to Tillich, be ultimately concerned about anything, including but not limited to one’s personal success, a national sovereignty, a political and social vision, the quest for scientific truth, or the God of the Bible.
…Tillich maintained that the doubt involved in faith is not the same as the methodological doubt utilized by physical scientists, a doubt that systematically questions the truth or falsity of propositions.
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http://www.quodlibet.net/articles/smith-tillich.shtml
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Tillich defines and explores faith as ultimate concern. Faith is a centered act of being ultimately concerned.
This definition is ambiguous, and needs further explanation. If faith is ultimate concern, with what is it ultimately concerned? To be concerned, we must be concerned with something. Tillich says that the content of faith does not matter for the definition of faith. But, to resolve this ambiguity, Tillich’s definition of faith may be interpreted to mean that faith is a concern with ultimate reality.
…Faith is not simply the will to believe, says Tillich. It is a cognitive affirmation of the transcendent nature of ultimate reality. This is achieved, not simply by a process of intellectual inquiry, but by an act of acceptance and surrender.
…Tillich argues that doubt is included in every act of faith. The dynamic concept of faith helps to explain the interaction between faith and doubt. Every act of faith recognizes that there may be a possibility for doubt…
According to Tillich, the primitive mythological consciousness is convinced of the literal truth of myth, and resists any attempt to demythologize the mythological world, because it believes that the broken myth is deprived of its truth and power. But this insistence upon the literal truth of myth actually attempts to restrict ultimate reality to the level of the finite and conditional.
In discussing the truth of faith, Tillich examines the relation between faith and reason. Faith is not in conflict with reason. Tillich says that reason is a precondition for faith, and that faith is an act in which reason ecstatically transcends itself. Ecstacy does not deny rationality, but fulfills it. Reason fulfills itself when it brings an awareness of the presence of ultimate reality.
Tillich believes that the truth of faith does not conflict with scientific truth, unless faith claims to express scientific truth, or unless science expresses faith in a particular model of reality. The truth of faith is also independent of historical truth, and historical truth is independent of the truth of faith.
Tillich says that the truth of faith can neither be affirmed nor denied by scientific, historical, or philosophical truth. Faith is true insofar as it adequately expresses a concern with ultimate reality.
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http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tillich.html
Some nice quotes on science and religion and how they serve to complement each other at http://www.mirrorofnature.org/SRQUOTES.htm ; among which is…
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“Science and religion are two windows that people look through, trying to understand the big universe outside, trying to understand why we are here. The two windows give different views, but both look out at the same universe. Both views are one-sided, neither is complete. Both leave out essential features of the real world. And both are worthy of respect.”
(Physicist Freeman Dyson)
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Interestingly, when I finally found a batch of quotes from Tillich’s “Dynamics of Faith,” one echoed comments in the preceding site:
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“scientific truth and the truth of faith do not belong to the same dimension of meaning. Science has no right and no power to interfere with faith and faith has no power to interfere with science.”
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http://boxofquotes.blogspot.com/2011/08/dynamics-of-faith-by-paul-tillich.html
“f that’s not Christianity in power, I guess I’d like to know what you would call it?”
The U.S. just isn’t a theocracy. That isn’t to say that some people wouldn’t like it to be a theocracy, or Christianity (in some form or another) doesn’t have a lot of influence in various places.
I think there’s maybe a confusion between the church having power and the church being in power? As I said, Christianity certainly does have influence and standing and power. But that’s not the same as actually being ruled by the church the way that (I think) we are actually ruled by capitalism. The reigning ideology in the U.S. is capitalism and technocratic pragmatism, not (for most purposes) Christianity. There may be some Christian missionaries in Africa, but those countries are much, much more in thrall to the World Bank than to any particular church.
Which again…the point isn’t that christianity has no influence. It can have quite a bit in various situations. But I just don’t buy that we’re a Christian nation, no matter how much certain segments of the right want to claim that we are.
I mean…I am a straight guy, but the thing you left out there is “white”. And the fact that I’m white and have white skin privilege is actually pretty important. In an intolerant Christian nation, I wouldn’t be white; I’d be Jewish. But America has always been much, much (and again much) more obsessed with skin color as a vector of oppression than it has been with religion (though Jews did face more oppression in the past than they do today, of course.)
But nobody gets to be mean just because people were mean to them. I’ve stared at this and stared at this. I’ve deleted ten responses, none of them nice.
Bert, what are you saying here? What response are you hoping for from me?
I think there’s maybe a confusion between the church having power and the church being in power?
Sure. I’d agree that we’re not a theocracy. There’s lines between church and state, but the lines are sometimes blurry, and when the blur happens, it’s Christianity doing the blurring. And, yeah, you do get to be white, but there’s some Middle Eastern guys who are now Muslim, you know?
And my point about the missionary work isn’t that the US has money, etc, it’s that the government building is being coopted to be used to help spread a religion, not do any kind of charity work, and it’s not remarkable because Christianity is so much the default, but if another religion tried it, they would be denied on the grounds of separation of church and state.
Noah, to address an earlier issue, I have no particular desire, really, to evaluate the worth or meaning of these particular fandoms. In fact, my purpose in writing this essay was to take worth or meaning out of the picture. For a moment, let’s not think about whether the Bible is more complex, better written, or more worth getting riled up about. For a moment, let’s forget that the Bible has over two millennia of cultural significance attached. For a moment, let’s just observe that these two very different things mean a hell of a lot to a whole lot of people. Let’s observe that their behavior, in response to this great love of the text, can be very similar. Let’s observe that the narrative, no matter how good or bad you objectively believe it to be, is extremely powerful and has shaped the course of human history.
It doesn’t seem to matter if the text closest to your heart is the Koran or Twilight. In response to narrative, people feel strongly; they love it and they hate it and they fight over it. In response to narrative, they are beautiful and ugly (and yes, I have seen social movements for the benefit of others begin in fandom. And I have seen death threats). In response to narrative, our world has seen the best and worst of humanity. We were always going to love and hate each other, but it appears to me that in the course of human history, narrative has often been the catalyst.
There are many differences between religion and fandom, but I can’t help but believe that this visceral response to stories is something they have in common. I am not saying that fannishness excuses the Crusades or the myriad forms of violence and oppression religion has visited upon the world, but if you have ever felt that passion for a particular story or world that I have, perhaps you can understand that insanity at least a little better. And I am not saying that fannishness is the same as faith, but if you have ever felt religious fervor, perhaps you can understand that what I feel about a text can change my life too, and the lives of others, and that the way I feel is NOT trivial, no matter how trivial you find my text to be.
VM, your trauma is your trauma– it is completely real, your experiences are your experiences, and I would never dismiss anyone’s trauma or anyone’s experiences.
For many people, religion reflects their experience and makes sense of their trauma, and sneering at religion (which I do not accuse you personally of doing) means, in effect, sneering at real people’s trauma and real people’s experiences. It’s not a completely neutral act, nor is it a singular act by a heroic outspoken fringe of daring survivors from the Renaissance.
To clarify, I don’t intend any of my comments to be personal, either toward you or toward Joy, who wrote the essay. I am addressing a certain consensus in my comments, and I do not mean to belittle anyone the way the tone at times in this conversation belittles, say, the low-income African-Americans I work with, who are pretty uniformly churchgoing.
Poor people are a lot more religious, which, on the whole I claim, neither reflects or reinforces their relative ignorance, but it helps them deal with suffering. I don’t think their religion makes them more likely to be homophobic, but, regardless, homophobia is bad. Theocracy is bad. But Christians and Jews have been consciously reacting against the homogenization of the world by centralized power, in both good and bad ways, for a long time. It deserves reappraisal by thoughtful people, rather than the reactive scorn that I associate with dogma.
Also, VM, allow me to say that I greatly appreciate your sincere and deeply felt anger, versus the apathetic tolerance of that New Yorker article, or the sundry tiresome vulgar acts of profaning the sacred (many from within religion) that are really not hard to find.
Mike and Noah,
I might well be misremembering. I read Dynamics of Faith, but don’t have it for reference (here’s a summary, though). I didn’t mean to imply Tillich reduced science to faith, only that we all have faith in something, including scientists. The way I remember it is that Tillich sees faith as a sort of ontological commitment in general, an answer to non-being or nothingness. I have to admit that my interest has largely waned over the years (religion ain’t an open question for me), so even skimming that summary makes my mind go numb. Back when I used to read this stuff, my impression was that plenty of theological defenses of faith carry with them an implication that we all have a faith in something, which serves to make a faith in a god not all that different from being something other than a radical subjectivist (that’s how I took William James, for example — and, of course, there’s Berkeley’s radical subjectivism that’s saved by God as the ultimate subjectivity).
Anyway, here’s a more jargon-heavy explanation of Tillich’s position.
Joy, I think it’s absolutely true that narrative is central to Christianity — that’s a great and really insightful point. I would argue that what the narrative is is also really important. The fact that something is important to someone doesn’t necessarily validate it or make it interesting or worthwhile or not evil. People are invested in lots of things, from the puerile to the abominable. To me, the centrality of narrative to human experience (which I agree with you about) is something that demands more unforgiving criticism of narrative (which, as Bert says, is what VM is doing), not a bracketing of criticism (which seems to be what you’re asking for.)
But it’s an interesting and worthwhile conversation to have, either way.
Charles, I’ll try to get to more Tillich…my own sense is somewhat different than yours re reason vs. faith — and different from Mike H’s too. The point of creationist critics of evolution isn’t that science is faith-based; it’s that science is wrong, and that faith gives a better description of the world (or, actually, that faith-based science is more accurate than evolution.) The argument that science/reality is based on faith presupposes a skepticism towards reason/sense-perception that you don’t usually get from theologians…unless they’re rejecting reason altogether (like Kierkegaard) in which case they’d argue that science lacks faith and is therefore baseless/banal/confused, rather than that science and faith have the same bases.
Hopefully that makes some kind of sense…. The point is that it’s an odd theologian who is willing to put science and faith on the same level as religion the way you have to do if you’re claiming that science is based on faith. (Lots of theologians say that science and faith or reason and faith agree.) I’m pretty interested in both theology and post-modern theory, so I find these kinds of distinctions fairly interesting, though obviously there’s no reason anyone else should….
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Joy DeLyria says:
A central aspect to some fandoms is what was called “the Game” in Sherlock Holmes fandom. Some fans believe Sherlock Holmes was a real person. More often, fans are aware that Sherlock Holmes was an invention of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, but they are still interested in thinking of Holmes as having existed…
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Though, isn’t — in a very deep sense — Sherlock Holmes more truly, lastingly real than us here-today-gone-tomorrow phenomena talking here?
Alan Moore is the most eloquent and fascinating arguer for this concept:
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Storytelling and creation are very close to the center of what magic is all about…. All of humanity’s gods since Paleolithic times are in some senses fiction. That is not to disparage the entities in question, because I hold fiction in a very special regard. I think that some fictions have a life of their own…
[Gods might actually] be self-referential idea clusters that, upon broaching a certain frontier of complexity, have become either aware or apparently aware…. It is my belief that all gods are stories, or at least the ideas behind the stories, but stories or ideas that have become in some way almost alive and aware, or at least appear to be to all practical intents and purposes…. To my mind, one of the flaws of Christianity is its insistence upon the historical Jesus. What this means is that, should it ever be proven incontrovertibly that Jesus did not physically exist, the entirety of Christianity would collapse, its perfectly sound core of philosophies included, when there was never any need for such a collapse.
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http://powerofmyth.livejournal.com/22508.html
Researching Moore stuff (heh!), ran across this, partway down the page:
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Kooks and Quacks of the Roman Empire: a look into the world of the gospels (copyright 1997) Richard Carrier
We all have read the tales told of Jesus in the gospels, but few people really have a good idea of their context. Yet it is quite enlightening to examine them against the background of the time and place in which they were written, and my goal here is to help you do just that. There is abundant evidence that these were times replete with kooks and quacks of all varieties, from sincere lunatics to ingenious frauds, and there was no end to the fools and loons who would follow and praise them. Placed in this context, the gospels no longer seem to be so remarkable, and this leads us to an important fact: when the gospels were written, skeptics and informed or critical minds were a tiny minority. Although the gullible, the credulous, and those ready to believe or exaggerate stories of the supernatural are still abundant today, they were vastly more common in antiquity, and taken far more seriously.
…Even in Acts, we get an idea of just how gullible people could be. Surviving a snake bite was evidently enough for the inhabitants of Malta to believe that Paul himself was a god (28:6). And Paul and his comrade Barnabas had to go to some lengths to convince the Lycaonians of Lystra that they were not deities — for the locals immediately sought to sacrifice to them as manifestations of Hermes and Zeus, simply because a man with bad feet stood up (14:8-18). These stories show how ready people were to believe that gods can take on human form and walk among them, and that a simple show was sufficient to convince them that mere men were such divine beings. And this evidence is in the bible itself.
Beyond the bible, the historian Josephus supplies some insights. Writing toward the end of the first century, himself an eye-witness of the Roman destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D, he tells us that the region was filled with “cheats and deceivers claiming divine inspiration” (Jewish War, 2.259-60; Jewish Antiquities, 20.167.), entrancing the masses and leading them like sheep, usually to their doom…
Apollonius, Peregrinus, and Alexander are three rather interesting religious founders about whom we know even more than we do of Jesus. The first, Apollonius of Tyana, is often called the “pagan Christ,” since he also lived during the first century, and performed a similar ministry of miracle-working, preaching his own brand of ascetic Pythagoreanism–he was also viewed as the son of a god, resurrected the dead, ascended to heaven, performed various miracles, and criticized the authorities with pithy wisdom much like Jesus did…
…the age of Jesus was not an age of critical reflection and remarkable religious acumen. It was an era filled with con artists, gullible believers, martyrs without a cause, and reputed miracles of every variety. In light of this picture, the tales of the gospels do not seem remarkable at all. Even if they were false in every detail, there is no evidence that they would have been disbelieved or rejected as absurd by a people largely lacking in education or critical thinking skills. They had no newspapers, telephones, photographs, or public documents to consult to check a story. If they were not a witness, all they had was a man’s word. And even if they were a witness, the tales above tell us that even then their skills of critical reflection were lacking. Certainly, this age did not lack keen and educated skeptics. Rather, the shouts of the credulous rabble overpowered their voice and seized the world from them, boldly leading them all into the darkness of a thousand years of chaos…
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Much, much more at http://homepages.tesco.net/~kettlecup/amms/glycon.htm
Hmm; Charles, from the first source you cite:
“Tillich believes that the truth of faith does not conflict with scientific truth, unless faith claims to express scientific truth, or unless science expresses faith in a particular model of reality.”
That seems to pretty clearly place faith and science as different kinds of knowledge/truth claims, which is a familiar theological move.
I’m actually kind of thrilled you brought this up. I’d thought about the ways that Feyerabend’s and theologians’ arguments dovetailed, but not about the ways that they failed to overlap. I bet there are theologians who believe that science is just another kind of faith, but my guess is they’d have to be quite liberal — folks who are influenced by Derrida and (possibly) Feyerabend, in other words, rather than coming from more conservative/traditional theological traditions.
Sorry; geeking out pointlessly. I will now return you to your regularly scheduled comment thread….
Yeah, but what I was thinking was that a scientist’s commitment to materialism or naturalism was a form of faith (according to Tillich), not a particular evidential finding. I’m probably wrong about that, though. And the theology I read was either from the Middle Ages or influenced by modern intellectual trends, not your typical, modern-day creationists (although I’ve read a bit of the intelligent design stuff). What I mean is that I was thinking of the more philosophically oriented theology.
You might find Alvin Plantinga fascinating. He’s a hardcore analytic and very much a Christian. Those two things don’t mix very often.
“He’s a hardcore analytic and very much a Christian. Those two things don’t mix very often.”
This is definitely true as a general rule…but “analytic” philosophers of religion are a breed apart. They’re overwhelmingly theists, for obvious reasons…and, of the analytic theistic philosophers of religion that I can think of, most are specifically Christian.
But, yeah, Plantinga is interesting for non-believers. You’ve got to give him credit; he’s really worked through what else you have to believe if you want to stay in the analytic tradition and also be a Christian. By an amazing coincidence it turns out that (for instance) the best epistemological theory is one that also happens to make Christian faith epistemically permissible…
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Noah Berlatsky says:
“Tillich believes that the truth of faith does not conflict with scientific truth, unless faith claims to express scientific truth, or unless science expresses faith in a particular model of reality.” [ http://www.angelfire.com/md2/timewarp/tillich.html ]
That seems to pretty clearly place faith and science as different kinds of knowledge/truth claims, which is a familiar theological move.
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But hardly a tactic limited to theologians; aren’t evaluative/interpretive actions such as differentiating between a person who’s truly friendly or a manipulative phony, between a work of art that’s subtly thoughtful or heavy-handed, and the like, dependent on different methods and tools for analysis? Not at all the ones which a scientist would employ?
In other words, rather than evaluating strictly physical phenomena as a scientist does, instead there are different “dimension[s] of meaning”* — psychological, aesthetic, spiritual — for whose evaluation we must rely upon “instruments” such as sensitivity to mood, knowledge of human nature and the arts, intelligence and judgment.
Instrumentation not predictably accurate as an oscilloscope or gas chromatograph, but for such phenomena, it’s all we’ve got…
* From this quote from Tillich’s “Dynamics of Faith”: “scientific truth and the truth of faith do not belong to the same dimension of meaning…”
“They’re overwhelmingly theists, for obvious reasons”
They’re not obvious to me, I must shame-facedly confess. Can you expound?
I really do want to catch up and read more than the quotes you all pulled out, but I thought I would just point out a conundrum that occurred to me. Kirkegaard distinguishes faith from knowledge, but also makes empirical perception a matter of faith. I think the way that knowledge exists at all is through Platonic realism, murky apprehension of perfect truth through imperfect reason. On a theoretical level, doesn’t that allow truth (and presumably justice, eternity, etc.) an existence apart from and perhaps beyond God? On a practical level, you want to be able to incoporate things into morality (and cosmic narratives) like scientific refutations of racism and voluntary homosexuality, but also resist the institutional power of techo/scientist expertise– for no other reason than there’s nothing positive for believers in the supernatural to be gained by putting all of their eggs in the basket of positivism.
Sorry — it seems obvious to me because I’ve been bathed in the waters of academic philosophy. I should specify that by “philosophers of religion”, I meant to describe a professional specialisation — more or less philosophers who would have “of religion” on their business card.
Here’s what I took to be the obvious reason: most “analytic” philosophers would broadly agree with Wilfrid Sellars that the “aim of philosophy, abstractly formulated, is to understand how things in the broadest possible sense of the term hang together in the broadest possible sense of the term”. [There are big caveats here for non-cognitivists and other non-realists, but leave them aside for the time being]
So suppose you’re interested in these very general questions of how things fit together: what are you going to spend your intellectual effort on? You could think about, say, how we come to have knowledge — in general, or about a particular realm. You could think about how justice can be reconciled with compassion; or, at a more abstract level, how deontological facts fit together with consequentialist facts; or, still more abstract, what the hell these moral facts and properties are, and whether there even are any in the first place. etc. etc.
Faced with this massive range of things to “work on” (i.e. lie around and think about), why would you work on the philosophy of religion? Well, if you’re a theist, then you have a strong motivation. You were almost certainly raised in a particular doctrinal tradition, and that tradition almost certainly has very large chunks that are dubious factually, ethically, metaphysically etc. So one immediate thing to think about is how much of that doctrine you should jettison, and how much (if any) you should keep. You’ll want to know, for instance, whether it’s epistemically permissible to believe in a god for whom empirical evidence is, shall we say, weak. You’ll want to know how god’s goodness and omnipotence can be reconciled with the existence of suffering. And so on. Beyond that, you might want to know whether it’s not just permissible to believe in god, but *obligatory* — that is, whether there are arguments for god’s existence. And so you’ll spend time trying to construct such arguments; and, since you’re a theist, you’ll be very strongly motivated to devise very clever arguments for god’s existence.
But suppose you’re not a theist. Then why on earth *would* you be interested in philosophy of religion, any more than philosophy of (say) unicorns or pinhead-dancing angels? If you don’t believe in god, there’s no “there” there; there’s not really very much interesting to say in the philosophy of religion, especially when there are all these other things you could be working on instead. So philosophy of religion has about as much appeal for you as the philosophy of unicorns, viz. not a whole lot.
Long story short: “analytic” philosophers who gravitate to the philosophy of religion tend to do so *because* they’re theists.
Obvious response: “yeah, but isn’t there interesting philosophical work to be done about the role of religion in people’s lives, or what religious discourse means, or how religious beliefs are formed…?”
Answer: there certainly is, but people who do that kind of work don’t tend to be identified (or to self-identify) as “philosophers of religion”. There’s an obvious (to me!) contrast with philosophical ethics, which contains (1) people who work on first-order questions like “is abortion permissible?” and “what is the best general ethical theory?”, and (2) people who work on second-order questions like “are there moral facts?” and “how would we know them?” Group (1) are called normative ethicists and (2) meta-ethicists (of course heaps of people work on both types of question). But there’s not really that second group of people for the philosophy or religion, people who do, uh, meta-religion…at least there’s not one that’s recognised as such by the profession…
Okay, I’m interested now in this pre-existing belief chicken and egg question in philosophy-of-philosophy meta-philosophy, related to the theology/ontology as the chicken and egg questioni in regular non-meta-philosophy.
Right– so, why is the zero state non-theism, when most people throughout the world and in most periods of time have believed in supernatural causation for natural phenomena? Certainly that fact could be (and regularly is) bracketed as irrelevant, but that seems like a naggingly arbitrary omission. If all that’s determining your studies is your general interest and upbringing and proclivity, how is that not a completely subjective basis on which to rest this allegedly objective endeavor?
I always think of that Douglas Adams bit where the amazing exotic perfection of the universe stands as a definitive proof of the existence of God, but the philosophers of religion say that proof denies faith, and so God disappears in a puff of logic.
It seems like that illustration should give no undue comfort to nalytical default-athsist logicians. If the fabric of reality is dependent on a bunch of quantum probabbilities (for one contemporary description of chaos), how do you get to assume God either into or out of the picture?
Ah, I took you to mean they were obviously theists instead of deists, polytheists or pantheists, and they were so, because analytics tend to be British or American, two nations that are overwhelmingly theistic in their religion.
Hmm.. okay. I didn’t know polytheists and pantheists weren’t theists just because they weren’t monotheists. Well, that’s a whole other kettle of fish (either singular or plural, depending).
Bert, the god proposition is quite often the default culturally, isn’t it? I was raised a Christian as were all my family and friends that I grew up with. Logically, it’s not the default position, but rather a position that has to be proven, just like any other proposition.
“I didn’t know polytheists and pantheists weren’t theists just because they weren’t monotheists.”
True, but theism tends to be used as a shortened monotheism.
Bert: that’s a fair point in your second paragraph. It’s probably pretty clear from the tone of my comment where my sympathies lie; but, tone aside, I don’t think I said anything that assumes atheism is epistemically privileged over theism, either before or after one considers all the arguments/evidence/whatever. My long-winded point was just that theists are just much more interested in philosophy of religion than most atheists, and so they’re the majority in the sub-discipline. For most atheists, philosophy of religion is as appealing as philosophy of phlogiston; they’ve got better (by their lights) things to do.
Now, *is* atheism privileged over theism? That’s a fraught question, with much ink spilled on both sides. FWIW, I think it is…but I also think one ought to be somewhat epistemically humble, even sceptical, about one’s atheism, for (very) roughly the sort of reasons you point to, in combination with a particular epistemological theory about how we should respond to disagreement. Ironically, that theory is one that “analytic” Christians like Plantinga tend to deny, since it would also imply that you ought to be just as sceptical, if not more, about the truth of any particular religious creed.
I’m a much bigger fan of those Continental nominalist romantics, who are kind of willing to talk about God from a skeptical but not dismissive place, than the Anglo-American analytic thing. If Plantigna doesn’t want to talk about the possibility of God not existing a priori, then I’m probably not terribly interested in his thoughts. I just don’t really like a prioris very much.
I was an atheist for 25 years (and plenty of people go in and out of belief), and I had neither a magical vision or a logical insight, but my intuitive act of faith is worth talking about and scrutinizing, as is the presumed godlessness of the post-Enlightenment reality grid.
“Ah, I took you to mean they were obviously theists instead of deists, polytheists or pantheists, and they were so, because analytics tend to be British or American, two nations that are overwhelmingly theistic in their religion.”
This is also true. But I did mean “theism” in the broader sense of “belief in gods”, of which deism, monotheism etc. are particular variants. Most philosophers of religion are theists in this sense, and I *think* that most of those are monotheists, because of exactly the geographical facts you gave. 95% of philosophy is developing elaborate arguments to prove that you were right all along…
Jones, that’s interesting; it’s kind of a fandom argument, isn’t it? That is, nobody who isn’t a fan wants to pay attention, so you only get criticism from fans.
Still, in the Christian context, it’s a little odd to me, as somebody who is both an atheist and really interested in theology. It’s not like I’m alone either; Derrida, Nietzsche, Zizek, Badiou; there’s not really a shortage of extremely important theological thinkers who were (or are) atheists.
I just skimmed Plantigna (whose name I’m mangling…but one thing I did see him say was that there are huge professional barriers to philosophers (presumably meaning analytic philosophers) studying theology. You can’t get grant money for it, basically. It seems like that might well be the issue as much as any particular predilection?
Bert,
I don’t think it’s dismissive to find atheistic arguments more convincing than theistic ones (Bertrand Russell’s famous essay is famous for a good reason). Personally, I get really tired of Zizek and Badiou writing about Christianity when they’re clearly atheists. It tends to confound what they actually view as true. In a way, I think they’re more dismissive of the religion than someone like Russell.
Noah,
I knew a guy who was a very strict, conservative Christian with a PhD in analytic philosophy. There’s a few schools (Notre Dame) where it’s more accepted, but the majority do seem to find such a person a bit loony. What I’d regularly hear from other philosophers was that he was really intelligent, great at understanding arguments, so why couldn’t he apply that to this one ridiculous set of beliefs. I suspect that’s a pretty widely held view, interfering with grants, job positions and the like.
I should add: I’m not sure it caused problems with anything but the guy’s determination to largely write about his faith in an analytic context. Analytics tend to pretty good at keeping various arguments separate.
Charles, Zizek and Badiou’s beliefs get confused because they’re confusing. They think there are things in Christian theology that are really important and meaningful (as I do for that matter.) They don’t believe in God..but the way they don’t believe in God is also theologically implicated. Theology has a lot to say about doubt.
You’re account of analytical philosophers actually pretty much confirms what I was saying, yes? They’re dismissive from the get go of theology; they think that the analytic tradition can easily and obviously dismantle theistic arguments. That’s a pretty strong institutional prejudice, it sounds like. And, you know, who apportions grants if not other analytic philosophers? And…it’s the same as your prejudice, yes? You dislike Zizek’s forays into philosophy for the same reason, as far as I can tell.
There’s maybe something in that dismissiveness which gets back to Joy’s point? Other people’s passions around narrative are often easy to dismiss on the basis of logic or reason or whatever. But it’s worth asking whether a philosophy that is unable to engage with narrative can really be said to be understanding either itself or anything else.
I like Bertrand Russell for being a pacifist anti-imperialist. But not for presuming that all people lacking a deep interest in math are cattle barely worth the effort of slaughter. IF for no other reason than skepticism is just as widespread a phenomenon as credulity. Even idiots who trust conservative pundits do so out of mistrust for the government, not trust in the pundits.
Which makes it amazing rather than dismally obvious that so many people believe in some force of goodness and hope that they cannot see. Belief doesn’t make people subhuman– all sorts of animals rely on their instincts for perfectly explainable purposes, but not for explaining the cosmos.
What gives rise to philosophy is the calculation of the wily foraging mind applied to the devastating self-awareness of the religious mind. You can certainly call that an evolutionary advance, but getting rid of the core self-dissimilarity that engenders the whole reflective project is no minor matter.
Let’s not go overboard in bemoaning how professionally difficult it is to do “analytic” and theistic philosophy of religion. For one thing, there’s more money nowadays thanks to the Templeton foundation, and there are many places where you can’t get a teaching job if you’re philosophically hostile to theism. And there are lots of places that are outright hostile to the kind of naturalistic philosophy that I’m interested in.
For another, an anecdote: I had an interview for a job in a research project that was (inter alia) investigating the origins of religious thought, a project which was firmly based in “analytic” philosophy; the interview panel was clearly concerned that I not be dismissive of theism. (I didn’t get the job, but not for that reason).
Another anecdote: I went to a top-3 philosophy grad school, and a good proportion of the students were theists. They did a lot of pro-theistic (and, really, pro-Christian) work in metaphysics, and they also did straight-up philosophy of religion. I suspect that “analytic” philosophy is becoming more receptive to philosophy of religion again, in part because of people like Plantinga.
And let’s not forget that we went through a *lot* of centuries where philosophy was the handmaiden of theology. Even if it is hard nowadays to do philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition, so what? At any point in academic history, it’s going to be difficult to do one thing or another. Time, money and academic attention are limited resources. 70 years ago “analytic” philosophers of science were deeply concerned about the demarcation problem (how to distinguish science from non-science) and how to construct a theory-neutral observation language; nowadays no one really cares about either of those. Contrariwise, nobody was really doing virtue ethics 70 years ago, and it was hard to do naturalistic moral psychology as recently as 15 years ago; these are now boom areas.
Some of these changes are just changes in fashion; some of them are due to “rational argument”. I don’t think anybody nowadays is trying to axiomatise mathematics, which was the aim of Bertrand Russell’s most famous book; that’s because Godel proved that it couldn’t be done. For some (but not all) “analytic” philosophers, the decision not to engage with philosophy of religion is for similar reasons: i.e. they think there are compelling arguments (although obviously much weaker than Godel’s apodeictic proof) against believing in gods. Again, so what?
Finally, it’s odd that you give/have the impression that it’s hard to do theistic philosophy of religion. On the contrary, I’d say it’s hard to do *atheistic* philosophy of religion; most of the people who hand out grants for, hire people in, organise conferences for, and run journals for philosophy of religion are very theistic. I wouldn’t say it’s impossible to get a job in philosophy of religion if you’re an atheist, but it’s certainly not easy.
Also, Russell was an arsehole.
One more thing: I mentioned the “who gives a shit?” factor in atheistic “analytic” philosophers of religion not engaging in the field, i.e. if you’re an atheist, you probably think there are better things to do with your time.
To spell that out a bit more, much of it is tied to the professionalisation of philosophy. As “analytic” philosophy has grown and grown, and become more and more professionalised, so has specialisation grown. On many fields of philosophical interest, there’s just shitloads of arguments and counter-arguments. In “analytic” philosophy, as in much of the academy, there’s generally a professional norm that, if you want to be taken seriously in a given area, you’d better at least be familiar with the important prior and current work. You might think it’s all nonsense, but if you do want to publish in the area, that had better be an informed assessment. (Usually — there are exceptions where ill-informed outsiders have made important contributions, but these are indeed the exception)
So, to do “analytic” philosophy of religion, you need to be familiar with a lot of the literature. And, again, if you’re an atheist, you probably don’t want to put in the necessary work to get to that point. Lots of “analytic” philosophy of religion is only really interesting if you already believe in god. An issue like, say, the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with genuine free will is, at best, of a purely hypothetical interest to an atheist, and so they’ll generally decide to spend their efforts elsewhere.
Which is not being dismissive; it’s just putting your efforts where you think you’ll get the most bang for your buck. And that goes across the board: most analytic philosophers don’t spend much time worrying about (e.g.) Derrida or Zizek, because they don’t think it’s worth the effort, based on what little they do know about them. And I doubt, on the other side, that Zizek is much concerned about about whether, say, natural kind terms are rigid designators, or the existence of an analytic/synthetic distinction, for the same reason.
I’m not sure what the “so what” is supposed to indicate, I guess? Does it mean that changes in intellectual history have no social or moral implications, but are merely randomly distributed and equalize over time? That investigating those are by nature uninteresting? That the professionalization of philosophy, or the inability of people to talk to each other is not worthy of investigation, or just that it’s equally distributed, and therefore not really worth thinking about?
“the compatibility of divine foreknowledge with genuine free will is, at best, of a purely hypothetical interest to an atheist”
That’s only true if you have a philosophy that is uninterested in tradition or narrative or, really, culture. My interest in divine foreknowledge and free will is a ton more sincere than my interest in analytic philosophy. And you bet your ass my disinterest in analytic philosophy is dismissive.
I guess I just don’t see (a) why exactly atheism must be seen as determinative of an interest in theology for analytic philosophers, since the empirical evidence suggests strongly that it isn’t determinative for anybody else, and (b) why you seem to assume that interest or philosophical commitments are some sort of neutral quality divorced from social and moral positions, and, indeed, from passion. It’s possible I don’t understand what you’re saying, but you seem to be shrugging away a lot of issues (the professionalization of philosophy, for example) that seem really important to both philosophy and what might loosely be termed “everything else.”
Respectively: it’s supposed to mean that the general disinterest of”analytic” atheists in the philosophy of religion is neither sinister nor sui generis, but rather an example of a broader phenomenon; no; no; and no.
FWIW, there are many “analytic” philosophers who are deeply interested in the moral and political dimensions of the academic racket, philosophical or otherwise.
Well, fair enough…but I think making it part of a broader phenomena doesn’t mean that in this instance it isn’t meaningful (whether sinister or not.)
One of the things that happens if you’re a philosopher and you’re not interested in theology, whether you’re an atheist or not, is that you effectively cut out the majority of philosophy that’s ever been done in the Western world. Which, again, isn’t a problem if you don’t really care about tradition or narrative, but if you think those things are important for whatever reason, it starts to look like it might be a problem.
FWIW, the last person I read who I think comes in part out of the analytic tradition (or is at least in dialogue with it) was Alasdair Macintyre, who is pretty great.
——————-
Jones, one of the Jones boys says:
…if you’re a theist…You’ll want to know, for instance, whether it’s epistemically permissible to believe in a god for whom empirical evidence is, shall we say, weak…
——————-
“Weak”? If by “empirical evidence” you mean whether something can be weighed on a lab scale, or peered at under a microscope, sure, the evidence re God is bupkis. I’m reminded of one early Russian cosmonaut saying that when he went out in space, he looked around, and didn’t see any sign of God!
But, actually the definition is far broader than that:
——————-
Empirical research is a way of gaining knowledge by means of direct observation or experience. Empirical evidence (the record of one’s direct observations or experiences) can be analyzed quantitatively or qualitatively. Through quantifying the evidence or making sense of it in qualitative form, a researcher can answer empirical questions, which should be clearly defined and answerable with the evidence collected (usually called data). Research design varies by field and by the question being investigated. Many researchers combine qualitative and quantitative forms of analysis to better answer questions which cannot be studied in laboratory settings, particularly in the social sciences and in education…
———————-
Emphasis added; from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empirical_research .
Personal experiences of the divine are a phenomenon widely spread through varying cultures and times; and hardly limited to spiritual seekers and adepts. What is particularly interesting is how they consistently impart similar insights, such as:
– Separateness is an illusion
– What seems meaningless, actually has Meaning
– Utter bliss
– Understanding of how everything in the world, even destructive events, all fit into the “big picture”…
See, also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_experience . For a skeptical perspective, a gathering of stuff at http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/theism/experience.html .
I’m sort of torn. I do feel like philosophy and religion cannot be definitively distinguished, but if the tables were turned, I don’t know that I, a) really want to read lots of analytical philosophy, b) really care about analytical philosophy’s take on religion.
So, deferring to the Golden Rule, as much as I’d like to read a few, my forays into arguments against the existence of God– Dawkins, Dennett, Hitchens– make my face turn somewhat green. So, I wouldn’t press the matter.
Noah,
“And…it’s the same as your prejudice, yes?”
Well, I wouldn’t call it a prejudice. I came to atheism through reason. If rational arguments are prejudice, then that’s a good form of bias, for sure. But I don’t take an issue with people treating religion as a narrative; it’s when they make a jump to claims about reality that’s the problem. (But, of course, fiction can teach us about realworld morality and other issues, too.)
Bert: Dawkins’ book is an embarrassment. Dennett’s book was much better, I thought. Surprisingly respectful, since he doesn’t tend to pull his punches…but the section “Does God exist” is, like, nine pages long out of several hundred. The Cambridge Companion to Atheism has a nice selection of chapters on arguments against theism, mostly from “analytic” types.
Noah: Yeah, I liked MacIntyre’s “After Virture”, although I didn’t necessarily agree with much of it. I wish more people in the “analytic” tradition had his historicist spirit.
But maybe you could back up your claim that disinterest in theology cuts out the majority of philosophy that’s ever been done in the Western world? Because that looks totes false to me. You’d still be left with most of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the pre-Socratics, parts of Aquinas, much of Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau and Berkeley, all of Hume (you can still be interested in Hume’s writings on religion without being interested in theology), Locke, Hobbes, Machiavelli, Mill, Sidgwick and Smith, 90% of Kant and Nietzsche (as with Hume), much of Dewey and Pierce, much of natural philosophy…and that’s just whoever (a) came immediately to mind and (b) I know a little bit about. You’ve still got much or most of philosophy of mind, metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, aesthetics, (just about all of) logic, political philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of language.
On the other hand, you are probably going to have trouble engaging with Plotinus and Duns Scotus UHOH ATHEISM FAIL.
And what Jones says sounds plausible to me. But Zizek is far more interested in Kripke than vice versa.
Jones, I don’t mean to reveal my small mind by exposing its hobgoblin, but you said, ” we went through a *lot* of centuries where philosophy was the handmaiden of theology.” But then you listed pretty much the canon of WEstern philosophy above. I’m sort of more convinced by the notion that philosophy pretty much ignores (or squabbles marginally over) religion.
Bu– was philosophy oppressed or wasn’t it?
Pardon the “pretty much.” Not an attractive filler phrase.
Jones, I think it’s kind of odd to look at Aquinas or Kant and say, well, they were theists, and they thought that they were engaged in a theistic endeavor…but we can just cut those parts out and ignore the theism (which is the basis for the whole) and steal the rest for philosophy. That’s sort of part of what Macintyre is criticizing when he talks about philosophy ignoring history and tradition, isn’t it?
It’s not just Aquinas and Kant though; big chunks of Nietzsche are theology (anti-theology is still theology, I think.) Or, at the other end, even Descartes is very strongly engaged with theology from what I remember. And of course Hegel’s a theist…
I think I’d argue that philosophy came out of theology, or of a strong engagement with theology, and has been anxiously disavowing it ever since. I think that maybe reconciles both your initial statement (that philosophy was the handmaiden of theology); my statement (that you can’t cut out theology without losing big chunks of philosophy); Bert’s intuition (that philosophy ignores theology); and your last statement (that philosophy hasn’t been that reliant on theology.) I think all of those statements are true, depending on how you think about the traditions involved. The main point being…theology and philosophy have a fraught relationship, and that fraught relationship is ongoing, not least in philosophy’s more recent efforts to disavow the connection. Or, to get all Freudian (a philosopher who was an atheist but not I think disinterested in religion) philosophy’s statement of disinterest in religion can be seen as a kind of interest.
Ha–you totally got me!.
But I’d say the handmaiden years stretch roughly from the instalment of Christianity as the official religion of Rome to the onset of modern philosophy with Descartes. (The phrase “handmaiden of theology” is indirectly derived from Aquinas, I believe). So 400-1600CE-ish, which doesn’t cover most of the folks I listed.
Do I get a “No-Prize“?
I guess 1200 years is the majority of the time-history of philosophy– but if the dark ages of theology are sort of a hiatus from *real* philosophy, maybe the effective history is 300 or so years in Greece and 400 years post-Enlightenment. During which time theology wasn’t bothering the sages was it?
I also would like to be given credit for being the one to imply the evolution/devolution of philosophy from religion. Whether theology proper has existed outside of the Judeo-Christian tradition is a question I can’t answer.
Noah: like I said, you only get *parts* of Aquinas, and probably not the interesting parts. But I don’t know what the issue is with Kant; maybe we’re familiar with different parts of his work? The Kant I’m thinking of is the Kant that people in my tradition tend to engage with — basically the epistemology and metaphysics in the first Critique, and the ethics in the Groundwork and Metaphysics of Morals.
Kant’s theism is entirely orthogonal to his work there which, where I’m from, is considered to be his most interesting work. Like, I don’t remember that god is mentioned at all in the Groundwork, and the discussion of god in the first Critique comes off as very, very much secondary to what he’s really interested in, which is responding to scepticism about the external world, solving the determinism/free-will problem, proving the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge etc.
There are Q’uranic and Sutra commentaries, Chinese and Indian metaphysics, etc., but I assume we’re remaining in the whitey world.
I admit I haven’t read all the theology vs philosophy FIGHT commentary here, but I wanted to pop in and say–Bert, if you enjoy John, you might like reading up on Aristotle’s writings on god. I never read much official bible commentary, but I found (having read both in Greek) that there was a lovely echo and influence there. Logos, the word that’s usually translated as ‘word’ in John, can also mean story, argument, or thought.
Thanks VM! I do know that John is the most Platonic of the Gospel authors, but I should read some Aristotle, besides the sundry scraps on aesthetics and ethics I read for school.
Dale Martin (a queer Bible scholar at Yale) also credits him with the most homoerotic Gospel. So there’s that.
The “No-Prize” is truly dorktastic, by the way.
Jones…yeah, we may be reading different Kant. My main exposure was in a theology class in college, where we read the Critique of Practical Reason and some other bits. Very much theology…and quite interesting I think. Sort of a shame if those aren’t talked about, really…but that’s what I’ve been saying all along I guess.
But do we really need analytic philosophers talking about theology? I don’t mind it, certainly, but I’m more likely to read philosophy or theology that veers toward poetry rather than toward propane grill assembly instructions.
Although if it’s breezy and cheerful like the Jones Boys and Charles, I can certainly sustain my attenuated American attention span. It just won’t be about God.
If you were truly ecumenical, you would see the poetry in propane grill instructions. Not to mention the propane grill instructions in poetry.
I am never truly ecumenical without air-quotes– although they frankly seem redundant.