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Religious fictionalism: believers without 'the belief'?

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
First of all, I'm not arguing that adopting the Christ-myth would lead to "slavish adherence to the morals of a 2,000 year-old culture" as you put it. My argument is that Christian leaders, including Catholic leaders, would be offering their opinions on moral issues based on their interpretations of scripture which depicted a morally immature culture.

In the past, one pope in 1866, when much of the world had abolished slavery, told his faithful that he saw nothing in Divine Law opposed to the buying, selling and trading of slaves. He was right according to scripture but wrong according to conscience.

Currently, the Church is opposed to mercy killings. Since the intent is not to harm but to prevent suffering, conscience finds such acts justified.

Currently, the Church opposes abortion. But when a wrongful act causes serious harm, the judgment of conscience is confirmed by an urge to punish the wrongdoer. The fact that those opposed to abortion don't have the urge to severely punish the woman who terminates her pregnancy is evidence that their judgment is flawed.

If Aquinas was right that the judgments of conscience are the product of reason, then the Church is justified in its position that it can inform-teach the consciences of its faithful. But both logic and science are now running in favor of the position that conscience is moral intuition. Its judgments emerge immediately from the unconscious. If one believes in God, then conscience can be thought of as the voice of God. When it conflicts with conscience, the Church's moral guidance holds only the potential for bias.

But of the Dutch Catholics who identify as atheist or agnostic, how many do you reckon would abide by the sacral 'authority' of the church on things like abortion or contraception?

I doubt very many, if any, because that's not why they attend church and involve themselves in its ritual life or find meaning in the myth of a god that humbled himself in the form of a peasant tortured and murdered by the powerful, as a subversion of the social order.

We are talking here about religious fictionalism - not those who actually believe that the church has 'divine authority' in its moral guidance (that's a topic for a different thread). As such, I'm not sure that I follow your argument in the context of this particular thread.
 
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Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
Having only very distant awareness of the UU Church, I find myself very curious about what they are like. I would venture to guess that different parishes (if that is the proper term) display a considerable variety of takes on that dilemma.

Don't get me wrong; I happen to believe that there are very good, very exciting answers to those questions. But I do not particularly expect the random UU community to have well consolidated understandings of those answers, not least because it is all so new for so many people that would in practice frequent an UU Church.

UUism is a bit of a different breed; my experience there was a little different from my experience at a progressive mainline Protestant church. UUs for the most part have completely divorced themselves from the Christian label; you can be a Christian UU but UUism isn't a Christian church.

My other gripe about the particular UU community I attended was that the congregation was very old and very white, which made it tough to connect.
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
@Vouthon , speaking as a citizen of the place with the largest Catholic community worldwide, I can tell you with some authority that it is not at all unusual to find people that consider themselves Catholics yet don't necessarily trust the judgement of their priest or of the Pope.

And yes, many of them end up performing abortions.

I understand that those are good grounds to question their categorization as Catholics. But it is just as true that there is considerable peer pressure to "let it be" and not make too much of it.

Objectively, it is simple enough to acknowledge that there are (as you well say) many aspects to adherence to a Catholic community, and comparatively few people see any need to be strict or to make a statement out of how well attuned they feel to the formal goals of the Church.

It is easy enough to explain, too. Many families end up counting on the Church to fulfill certain roles that they deem necessary, including formal education (there are many, many Catholic schools here). There is also the perception that families ought to show a degree of cohesion that often involves some amount of Catholic ritual.

It is usual to listen respectfully to a Catholic priest speak at funerals. It is far rarer, and in questionable taste, to make a point of stating when we are not Catholics in such situations. Most people end up being discreet and going along the expectations, reasonably enough.

Quite frankly, many families end up expecting the Church (usually Catholic, but often other Christians denominations as well) to provide basic moral education as well.

Is any of that wrong? Perhaps. But it is certainly how things happen to be.
 
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Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
@Vouthon , speaking as a citizen of the place with the largest Catholic community worldwide, I can tell you with some authority that it is not at all unusual to find people that consider themselves Catholics yet don't necessarily trust the judgement of their priest or of the Pope.

And yes, many of them end up performing abortions.

I understand that those are good grounds to question their categorization as Catholics. But it is just as true that there is considerable peer pressure to "let it be" and not make too much of it.

Objectively, it is simple enough to acknowledge that there are (as you well say) many aspects to adherence to a Catholic community, and comparatively few people see any need to be strict or to make a statement out of how well attuned they feel to the formal goals of the Church.

It is easy enough to explain, too. Many families end up counting on the Church to fulfill certain roles that they deem necessary, including formal education (there are many, many Catholic schools here). There is also the perception that families ought to show a degree of cohesion that often involves on Catholic ritual.

It is usual to listen respectfully to a Catholic priest speak at funerals. It is far rarer, and in questionable taste, to make a point of stating when we are not Catholics in such situations. Most people end up being discreet and going along the expectations, reasonably enough.

Quite frankly, many families end up expecting the Church (usually Catholic, but often other Christians denominations as well) to provide basic moral education as well.

Is any of that wrong? Perhaps. But it is certainly how things happen to be.

This is an excellent description of what, at its heart, "religious fictionalism" amounts to for most people self-identifying as members of a religious community but lacking any propositional belief in the literal truth of its tenets.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
But of the Dutch Catholics who identify as atheist or agnostic, how many do you reckon would abide by the sacral 'authority' of the church on things like abortion or contraception?

I doubt very many, if any, because that's not why they attend church and involve themselves in its ritual life or find meaning in the myth of a god that humbled himself in the form of a peasant tortured and murdered by the powerful, as a subversion of the social order.

We are talking here about religious fictionalism - not those who actually believe that the church has 'divine authority' in its moral guidance (that's a topic for a different thread). As such, I'm not sure that I follow your argument in the context of this particular thread.
Aren't you are shifting positions on me?

In your OP, you reckoned that the adherents of 'religious fictionalism 'would be "living by the ethics" (Paragraph One) Now, you are speculating that they would probably not.
 
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Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
@Vouthon , speaking as a citizen of the place with the largest Catholic community worldwide, I can tell you with some authority that it is not at all unusual to find people that consider themselves Catholics yet don't necessarily trust the judgement of their priest or of the Pope.

On this point, I'd just like to note that this is by no means just a modern, post-enlightenment phenomenon either:


"...No one ought to act against his own conscience and he should follow his conscience rather than the judgement of the church when he is certain...one ought to suffer any evil rather than sin against conscience..."

- Pope Innocent III's (1198-1216)

As the scholar, Professor Alexander Murray, writes in his book Conscience and Authority in the Medieval Church:



https://books.google.co.uk/books?id...NAhWsCMAKHaKAB3IQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q&f=false


"Innocent III's letter would be duly preserved in Gregory IX's Decretals where it would calmly declare to every student of the subject, without ant special warning of the time-bomb it actually contained, the ultimate supremacy of conscience. Hostiensis himself, the most zealous apostle of the pope's fullness of power, expressly acknowledged that the authority of conscience was in the last resort even greater..."

That was actually tucked away as a 'precept' in medieval canon law. I expect there have been many people down the years who have found some value in the community, ritual life, mythos and morality of the church, yet not really believed in its tenets in the way of a 'true believer'. And it seems like even the medieval papacy was pragmatic enough to recognise that this happened on a private level (even if public expression of it might cause some problems, shall we say, at that time!).

There is far more to religious identity and practice than just "propositional belief" in a bunch of metaphysical tenets that are inherently unfalsifiable / beyond testability. This is what Philip Ball was getting at, and I'm happy to accept him as a Christian, a member of the community, even though he doesn't "propositionally belief" in the actual literal truth of the Trinity, resurrection and the other doctrines.

At various masses I've attended over the years, I've encountered a number of people like him myself.
 
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joe1776

Well-Known Member
...
"...No one ought to act against his own conscience and he should follow his conscience rather than the judgement of the church when he is certain...one ought to suffer any evil rather than sin against conscience..."
- Pope Innocent III's (1198-1216)


How does this advice make sense in light of the Church's position that it has the duty to inform-teach the conscience?
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Aren't you are shifting positions on me?

In your OP, you reckoned that the adherents of 'religious fictionalism 'would be "living by the ethics" (Paragraph One) Now, you are speculating that they would probably not be.

Perhaps my expression "living by the ethics", should have been better defined in retrospect. I did not mean by it quite what you have understood it to mean.

If I had said "adhere", I'd have meant subscription to the entire moral framework (including the elements dependant on "divine revelation", which a religious fictionalist rejects).

By "live by the ethics", I'm talking about the overall 'mindset' and attitude that the Christian myth is intended to inculcate and which many people who have renounced the superstition / supernatural, still find meaningful (as per Tom Holland and the like), even as they divorce themselves from the clearly 'superstitiously' derived norms.

This attitude is described by St. Paul as having "the same mind [or 'heart,' or 'action'] in you that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). To illustrate this, Paul relies on the 'myth' (the literal truth of which a religious fictionalist rejects) of the incarnation of the almighty God in the figure of a tortured peasant condemned by an empire as a criminal:


who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself...to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

This 'myth' is a subversive one: in the ancient context, 'divinity' had come largely in the form of conquering, hellenistic heroes (and indeed the Emperor Caesar Augustus). But the Christian myth upends this 'order' by having its 'god' come in the form of someone at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and dwelling among social outcasts and the poor and disadvantaged as one of them.

One can be moved by the power of this myth and its social implications, without believing in its literal truth.

And arising from this myth, a set of 'values' enunciated by Christ such as: "For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest." (Luke 9.48), just as the 'Christ-god' came in the form of the 'least' and not the mighty or temporally powerful.

Consider the atheist historical Jesus scholar Bart Ehrman, in this regard:


Ehrman's Statement: The New Testament Gospels Are Historically Unreliable Accounts of Jesus


Let me say here at the outset that I consider the Gospels of the New Testament to be four of the most beautiful, powerful, moving, and inspiring books ever written. I love the Gospels. Their stories of Jesus’s words and deeds have always been and always will be near and dear to me. Among other things, I have always strived to make the values they promote and the ethics they teach the center of my moral life, and I encourage others to do likewise. For me they are the most important books in our civilization and for my own life....

I think the Gospels are among the most brilliant, inspirational, and significant writings that have come down to us from the ancient world — arguably the most important books ever to have been written. I love these books, as do, literally, billions of other people in the world.

But they are fantastic stories...They are documents of faith, but they are not reliable historical sources.

It is important to know what Strauss meant by the term “myth,” since what he meant by it is not what most people today mean by it. Today, people often think of myth as a story that is not true. But not for Strauss. Strauss maintained that a myth was true. For him, a myth was a true story that didn’t happen.

What??? If a story didn’t happen, how can it be true? In fact, I would argue that all of us hold to true stories that didn’t happen. We tell it because we appreciate the “truth” that it conveys.

Ehrman writes at greater length (based on his historical Jesus research) in his book "Misquoting Jesus?":


"Jesus' disciples were not to engage in acts of violence now . In the Kingdom there would be no more poverty. Jesus' disciples were to give away all they had and give to the poor now.

In the Kingdom there would be no more oppression or injustice - Jesus' disciples were to treat all people equally and fairly now- even the lowest classes, the outcasts, the destitute; even women and children. In the Kingdom there would be no more hatred. Jesus' disciples were to be living examples of God's love now, giving of themselves completely in the service of others.

The ways Jesus' disciples were to live in the present in preparation for the coming Son of Man reflected life as it would be when the Kingdom fully arrived. They had not, obviously, yet begun to experience the Kingdom in its fullness. But they had experienced a foretaste of the glories that lay ahead... In a small way -a very small way- they had begun to see what it would be like when God once and for all established his Kingdom on earth

In the Kingdom there would be no more oppression or injustice - Jesus' disciples were to treat all people equally and fairly now- even the lowest classes, the outcasts, the destitute; even women and children. In the Kingdom there would be no more hatred. Jesus' disciples were to be living examples of God's love now, giving of themselves completely in the service of others.

The ways Jesus' disciples were to live in the present in preparation for the coming Son of Man reflected life as it would be when the Kingdom fully arrived. They had not, obviously, yet begun to experience the Kingdom in its fullness. But they had experienced a foretaste of the glories that lay ahead... In a small way -a very small way- they had begun to see what it would be like when God once and for all established his Kingdom on earth


[...] What mattered was the new thing that was coming, the future kingdom. It was impossible to promote this teaching while trying to retain the present social structure." (p. 181)​


What's wrong with believing in such a 'vision' while rejecting belief in the actual substance of the "Christ-myth"? (i.e. that a God literally incarnated in the peasant son of a Jewish girl through a virgin birth).

Myths can have meaning and truth, including the ancient Greek and Roman ones as well.

As an example, JRR Tolkien wrote his modern myth - The Lord of the Rings - with its protagonist Frodo the Hobbit being the unlikely hero rather than the great warrior Aragorn, as an illustration of a similar theme:


"Here we meet, among other things, the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, 'the wheels of the world', are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak ."

- JRR Tolkien (Letter 131, To Milton Waldman), 1951


In Tolkien's myth, the great lords and ladies bow down to the Hobbits after the Dark Lord is defeated by the destruction of the Ring, in recognition that they are the real heroes (although seemingly insignificant little people):



Even though it is obviously fantastical and mythical (as Tolkien intended as the father of modern 'fantasy', imitating the style of the ancient mythical epics like the Eddas), the story of LotR has meant a great deal to many people.

For a religious fictionalist, the symbolic system of religions is an even greater and more immersive version of this (i.e. the historical Jesus who lost his life as an executed peasant under the Romans, became 'mythologised' as part of a greater metaphysical divine drama, in the minds of the early Christian community, a myth that 'subverted' the ancient, inegalitarian social hierarchy).
 
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joe1776

Well-Known Member
Perhaps my expression "living by the ethics", should have been better defined in retrospect. I did not mean by it quite what you have understood it to mean.

If I had said "adhere", I'd have meant subscription to the entire moral framework (including the elements dependant on "divine revelation", which a religious fictionalist rejects).

By "live by the ethics", I'm talking about the overall 'mindset' and attitude that the Christian myth is intended to inculcate and which many people who have renounced the superstition / supernatural, still find meaningful (as per Tom Holland and the like), even as they divorce themselves from the clearly 'superstitiously' derived norms.

This attitude is described by St. Paul as having "the same mind [or 'heart,' or 'action'] in you that was [that you have] in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). To illustrate this, Paul relies on the 'myth' (the literal truth of which a religious fictionalist rejects) of the incarnation of the almighty God in the figure of a tortured peasant condemned by an empire as a criminal:


who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
7 but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
8 he humbled himself...to the point of death—
even death on a cross.

This 'myth' is a subversive one: in the ancient context, 'divinity' had come largely in the form of conquering, hellenistic heroes (and indeed the Emperor Caesar Augustus). But the Christian myth upends this 'order' by having its 'god' come in the form of someone at the very bottom of the hierarchy, and dwells among social outcasts and the poor and disadvantaged, as one of them.

One can be moved by the power of this myth and its social implications, without believing in its literal truth.

And arising from this myth, a set of 'values' enunciated by Christ such as: "For it is the one who is least among you all who is the greatest." (Luke 9.48), just as the 'Christ-god' came in the form of the 'least' and not the mighty or temporally powerful.

Consider the atheist historical Jesus scholar Bart Ehrman, in this regard:


Ehrman's Statement: The New Testament Gospels Are Historically Unreliable Accounts of Jesus


Let me say here at the outset that I consider the Gospels of the New Testament to be four of the most beautiful, powerful, moving, and inspiring books ever written. I love the Gospels. Their stories of Jesus’s words and deeds have always been and always will be near and dear to me. Among other things, I have always strived to make the values they promote and the ethics they teach the center of my moral life, and I encourage others to do likewise. For me they are the most important books in our civilization and for my own life.

I think the Gospels are among the most brilliant, inspirational, and significant writings that have come down to us from the ancient world — arguably the most important books ever to have been written. I love these books, as do, literally, billions of other people in the world.

But they are fantastic stories...They are documents of faith, but they are not reliable historical sources.

It is important to know what Strauss meant by the term “myth,” since what he meant by it is not what most people today mean by it. Today, people often think of myth as a story that is not true. But not for Strauss. Strauss maintained that a myth was true. For him, a myth was a true story that didn’t happen.

What??? If a story didn’t happen, how can it be true? In fact, I would argue that all of us hold to true stories that didn’t happen. We tell it because we appreciate the “truth” that it conveys.

Ehrman writes at greater length (based on his historical Jesus research) in his book "Misquoting Jesus?":


"Jesus' disciples were not to engage in acts of violence now . In the Kingdom there would be no more poverty. Jesus' disciples were to give away all they had and give to the poor now.

In the Kingdom there would be no more oppression or injustice - Jesus' disciples were to treat all people equally and fairly now- even the lowest classes, the outcasts, the destitute; even women and children. In the Kingdom there would be no more hatred. Jesus' disciples were to be living examples of God's love now, giving of themselves completely in the service of others.

The ways Jesus' disciples were to live in the present in preparation for the coming Son of Man reflected life as it would be when the Kingdom fully arrived. They had not, obviously, yet begun to experience the Kingdom in its fullness. But they had experienced a foretaste of the glories that lay ahead... In a small way -a very small way- they had begun to see what it would be like when God once and for all established his Kingdom on earth

In the Kingdom there would be no more oppression or injustice - Jesus' disciples were to treat all people equally and fairly now- even the lowest classes, the outcasts, the destitute; even women and children. In the Kingdom there would be no more hatred. Jesus' disciples were to be living examples of God's love now, giving of themselves completely in the service of others.

The ways Jesus' disciples were to live in the present in preparation for the coming Son of Man reflected life as it would be when the Kingdom fully arrived. They had not, obviously, yet begun to experience the Kingdom in its fullness. But they had experienced a foretaste of the glories that lay ahead... In a small way -a very small way- they had begun to see what it would be like when God once and for all established his Kingdom on earth


[...] What mattered was the new thing that was coming, the future kingdom. It was impossible to promote this teaching while trying to retain the present social structure." (p. 181)​


What's wrong with believing in such a 'vision' while rejecting belief in the actual substance of the "Christ-myth"? (i.e. that a God literally incarnated in the peasant son of a Jewish girl through a virgin birth).

Myths can have meaning and truth, including the ancient Greek and Roman ones as well.

As an example, JRR Tolkien wrote his modern myth - The Lord of the Rings - with its protagonist Frodo the Hobbit being the unlikely hero rather than the great warrior Aragorn, as an illustration of a similar theme:


"Here we meet, among other things, the first example of the motive (to become dominant in Hobbits) that the great policies of world history, 'the wheels of the world', are often turned not by the Lords and Governors, even gods, but by the seemingly unknown and weak ."

- JRR Tolkien (Letter 131, To Milton Waldman), 1951


In Tolkien's myth, the great lords and ladies bow down to the Hobbits after the Dark Lord is defeated by the destruction of the Ring, in recognition that they are the real heroes (although seemingly insignificant little people):



Even though it is obviously fantastical and mythical (as Tolkien intended as the father of modern 'fantasy', imitating the style of the ancient mythical epics like the Eddas), the story of LotR has meant a great deal to many people.

For a religious fictionalist, the symbolic system of religions is an even greater and more immersive version of this (i.e. the historical Jesus who lost his life as an executed peasant under the Romans, became 'mythologised' as part of a greater metaphysical divine drama, in the minds of the early Christian community, a myth that 'subverted' the ancient, inegalitarian social hierarchy).
OK, a simple misunderstanding then.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
How does this advice make sense in light of the Church's position that it has the duty to inform-teach the conscience?

Taking us out of the thread a bit (my fault, I guess) but the theology behind this is that the magisterium is divinely ordained, to help people to interpret the moral intuitions of conscience (which is supreme over the church, because it is direct access to the natural law of God) as applied in practical situations (which are often complicated), but that in cases where a person feels that their moral intuitions strongly conflict with church teaching, and they are incapable of reconciling this, then they should always follow their conscience over the church.

In medieval legal systems (in which the church was bound up with the state), the church failed to reconcile this with the 'societal' scourge (as it was deemed) of heresy, and this 'tension' persisted uneasily until modernity.

Scholars have long noted that, in 'canonizing' this principle, the medieval church lit a bonfire under its own edifice - as the supremacy of conscience (when it became an 'en masse' thing), eventually led to revolutionary rejection of the claims of the church itself in the Protestant Reformation, and then of Christianity entirely in the French Revolution.

But it was part of the canon law (and remains in our theology till this day). And, actually, its derived ultimately from Jesus and St. Paul i.e.


[Jesus said] And why do you not judge for yourselves what is right?" (Luke 12:57)

“For when Gentiles, who do not have the law, by nature do what the law requires, they are a law to themselves. They show that the the [natural] law is written on their hearts” (Romans 2:15).

How do you reconcile 'judging' for oneself what is morally right according to the intuitions of natural conscience (by which one is a "law unto himself")...with a divine magisterium?

There was always this inherent, unresolved doctrinal tension.

But that tension obviously wouldn't exist for a "religious fictionalist" who rejects the divine ordination of the Magisterium.
 
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Nakosis

Non-Binary Physicalist
Premium Member
What is your opinion of 'religious fictionalism', the stance which holds that religious doctrines / beliefs are fictional discourse but it is still worth living a religious life, practising religion, going to church / mosque / temple, participating in all the rituals, living by the ethics and using the 'language / symbols' of faith?

Religious fictionalism can come in "strong" and "weak" forms (its a scale of degrees): on the 'strong' end, an RF might believe God doesn't exist and neither do souls or anything else supernatural (i.e. Jesus did not rise from the dead, isn't actually the incarnate Son of God or perform miracles; Muhammad did not really have a vision of the archangel Gabriel who dictated Qur'anic revelations to him; the Hindu gods don't actually exist, nor do avatars or Atman etc.), while on the weak end the RF might believe in God in a kind of deistic fashion but not in any of the miraculous claims made for his religion (like the ones just mentioned, such as the resurrection!).

I am reminded of JRR Tolkien's words on the inherent 'truth' of mythology: "After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of human culture - since the days of the paleolithic cave-art - has been our facility for creating meaning, social identity and moral systems through the articulation of mythical stories and complex symbols.

Religious fictionalism is, apparently, by no means a negligible phenomenon. Research among self-identified Catholics in the Netherlands, published in 2007, found that only 27% of the Dutch Catholics could be regarded as a theist, 55% as an ietsist, deist or agnostic and 17% as atheist. Thus, the vast majority of Dutch Catholics were apparently "religious fictionalists" on some level.

The philosopher Philip Ball declares himself to be a 'Christian' religious fictionalist. He believes God to be a 'fiction', along with the resurrection of Christ, but attends church, prays (for his own mental wellbeing), reads the New Testament for moral edification and aspires to lead a Christlike life. Here he is writing about his framework:

Believers without belief - TLS


According to conventional wisdom, religions are systems of belief. Religious people are “believers”. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead; Muslims believe that Mohammed was the final prophet; Jews believe that the creator of the universe has a special affection for the children of Israel. These beliefs of the religious are often taken to be unsupported by, or even inconsistent with, available evidence. Indeed, many understand “faith” as a matter of believing without any evidence at all.

However, this belief-orientated – or “doxastic” – conception of religion is not universally accepted...As the philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder has argued in detail, the contexts in which Jesus talks of “faith” make it quite clear that he was concerned with the resilience of the religious commitment of the people around him rather than with their abstract theories of reality; in other words, with “belief” in the sixteenth-century rather than the twenty-first-century sense...

But suppose you think the arguments for the existence of God fail entirely. Or suppose you think we have very good reason to think that God does not exist...Could you still have some grounds for taking religion seriously? One might think not. Yet there is a philosophical position that combines out and out atheism with a positive commitment to religious practice; this is the view known as “religious fictionalism”.

Religious fictionalists hold that the contentious claims of religion, such as “God exists” or “Jesus rose from the dead” are all, strictly speaking, false. They nonetheless think that religious discourse, as part of the practice in which such discourse is embedded, has a pragmatic value that justifies its use. In fact, fictionalism is popular in many areas of philosophy. There are, for example, moral fictionalists and mathematical fictionalists, who think that there are pragmatic benefits to using moral/mathematical language even though such discourse fails to correspond to a genuine reality (there are, on these views, no such things as goodness or the number 9, any more than there are dragons or witches). Religious fictionalists merely extend this approach to the statements of religion.

What is the pragmatic benefit for the atheist of using religious language? The religious fictionalist Andrew Eshleman proposes that religious discourse can be understood as mythological, by which he means “a meaning-loaded narrative that has been adopted by a particular community to give expression to and foster a form of life defined by its guiding ideals”. The religious community is bound together across space and time by its stories, rituals, regular meetings and celebration of rites of passage. At a time when globalization has fractured communities and weakened our shared forms of life, there is arguably a real need for institutions that bring people together around a shared moral purpose. The rise of nationalism around much of Europe may, in part, speak to a deep human need for shared structures of meaning...

Moral character is cultivated and sustained, at least in part, through emotional engagement with fictional scenarios. For the fictionalist, immersion in the religious ritual is akin to losing yourself in a book or a film, the only difference being that the effect is accentuated through our active and corporate participation in the act of worship...

The New Testament scholar Marcus Borg – another late, great voice in liberal theology – developed in some detail a Hickian conception of Christianity. Although sceptical of the literal truth of the virgin birth and the resurrection, Borg believed that the Christian myth expressed what he called “the character and passion of God”. By conceiving of God as born into poverty, eating with outcasts, suffering a humiliating death at the hands of the unconquerable colonial power and yet paradoxically triumphing through that very suffering, we are led into a deeper and truer experience of the Real.

One might be forgiven for thinking that fictionalism was a new-fangled approach to religion, but in fact there are fictionalist elements in Christian theology going right back to the Early Church Fathers. Origen (c.184–253) and Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–395) were proponents of apophatic, or “negative”, theology, according to which the real nature of God is unknowable. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late fifth/early sixth centuries) wrote that God is “beyond every assertation” and “beyond every denial”. And the hugely influential late fourteenth-century text The Cloud of Unknowing guided Christians to a knowledge of God that left behind the superficial descriptions found in ordinary worship. If God’s nature cannot be captured in human language, it follows that talk of God as having personal characteristics – such as “wisdom” or “omnipotence” – although perhaps essential for regular practice, is strictly speaking a fiction.

Seems like a way to unite folks under common ideas without an assumption of universal authority. A person is free to adopt the ideals they feel are worthy without insisting anyone else has to adopt them.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
Taking us out of the thread a bit (my fault, I guess) but the theology behind this is that the magisterium is divinely ordained, to help people to interpret the moral intuitions of conscience...
When we consider a specific act that conscience judges immoral, it FEELS wrong. If we don't get that feeling of wrongfulness, we can assume the act is justified. We don't need the Church's help to interpret this feeling produced by the pain function in our brain.

But, I agree this discussion is off-topic.
 

Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
When we consider a specific act that conscience judges immoral, it FEELS wrong. If we don't get that feeling of wrongfulness, we can assume the act is justified. We don't need the Church's help to interpret this feeling produced by the pain function in our brain.

Perhaps we can discuss separately at a later date (as its beside the point for a 'religious fictionalist' anyway, and is properly theological!). For now, I'll say this: I think the studies by Haidt, Greene, Morelli and Paxton, among many other experimental psychologists and neuroscientists, have amply demonstrated that there is an intuitive or instinctual response to moral violations - "quick, automatic evaluations" ("feels" wrong, in your own words).

These intuitive evaluations have been replicated in study after study, and they are to quote Professor Joshua Greene: "implicit and the factors affecting them may be consciously inaccessible". Such moral intuitions come first and are born of emotional activation, before ratio or any operations of the rational, logical mind using controlled thought come into play.

This does not mean, as one might think if an emphasis upon intuitional morality is taken to an extreme (whereby it approaches mysticism), that ratiocination is entirely excluded from moral decision-making or indeed moral "progress" so to speak.

If one tries to derive morality solely from reason (without that initial intuitiuve, empathetic response - as unfortunately many Greek philosophers believed was the mark of "wisdom" or apatheia) it often leads to a narrow focus upon maximizing gain or obtaining the most desirable overall outcome (i.e. utilitarianism). This happens because the emotional parts of decision-making are ignored.

The converse, moral intuition without reflection, can lead to the kind of situation where "kill the child-molesters, all of 'em, no one who harms a child deserves life" becomes possible - because the person, understandably, is empathsizing with the child and automatically places him or herself in the victim's shoes - and sometimes the person subsequently, once they have initially been emotionally triggered, contemplates and comes to a more (ready yourself for this) "reasonable" response, that understand that such a vengeful response is not civilised (i.e. because civilised countries don't have capital punishment, for a start).

It is in this later phase that the church's 'magisterium' can be "useful".

In simple terms: as I've explained before, I subscribe to Greene et al.’s (Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene et al., 2001; Greene, 2012) "dual-process theory" (that human beings possess emotion-based and rationally-based cognitive subsystems that compete in moral reasoning processes.) This builds on Haidt's work in 2001 but refines it in light of advancements in neuroscience.


Reflection and Reasoning in Moral Judgment

Joseph M. Paxton,a Leo Ungar, Joshua D. Greene,


Department of Psychology, Harvard University. Stanford University School of Medicine

4 November 2010

We examined the roles of reflection and reasoning in moral judgment. Experiment 1 documented the influence of reflection on moral judgment by inducing people to be more reflective. In general, this reflectiveness manipulation increased utilitarian moral judgment, although there was one item for which this effect was not reliably observed. A follow-up study indicated that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. Both results are consistent with Greene et al.’s (2001, 2004, 2008) dual-process theory of moral judgment.

Experiment 2 examined both reflection and reasoning by examining the effects of argument strength and deliberation time on moral judgment. Consistent with the influence of reasoned reflection, we found that a strong argument was more persuasive than a weak one, but only when subjects were encouraged to reflect. These results are consistent with a recent study (Suter & Hertwig, 2011) showing that decreased deliberation decreases utilitarian judgment. The present results demonstrate a parallel effect in which increased deliberation influences moral judgment, making judgments more consistent with utilitarian principles. This effect depends critically on argument strength, thus implicating moral reasoning. Based on our reading of the literature (Paxton & Greene, 2010), these results provide the strongest evidence to date for the influence of reflection and reasoning on moral judgment
 
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Vouthon

Dominus Deus tuus ignis consumens est
Staff member
Premium Member
Seems like a way to unite folks under common ideas without an assumption of universal authority. A person is free to adopt the ideals they feel are worthy without insisting anyone else has to adopt them.

Well said, I like that description.
 

halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
What is your opinion of 'religious fictionalism', the stance which holds that religious doctrines / beliefs are fictional discourse but it is still worth living a religious life, practising religion, going to church / mosque / temple, participating in all the rituals, living by the ethics and using the 'language / symbols' of faith?

Religious fictionalism can come in "strong" and "weak" forms (its a scale of degrees): on the 'strong' end, an RF might believe God doesn't exist and neither do souls or anything else supernatural (i.e. Jesus did not rise from the dead, isn't actually the incarnate Son of God or perform miracles; Muhammad did not really have a vision of the archangel Gabriel who dictated Qur'anic revelations to him; the Hindu gods don't actually exist, nor do avatars or Atman etc.), while on the weak end the RF might believe in God in a kind of deistic fashion but not in any of the miraculous claims made for his religion (like the ones just mentioned, such as the resurrection!).

I am reminded of JRR Tolkien's words on the inherent 'truth' of mythology: "After all, I believe that legends and myths are largely made of 'truth', and indeed present aspects of it that can only be received in this mode; and long ago certain truths and modes of this kind were discovered and must always reappear.

Indeed, one of the defining characteristics of human culture - since the days of the paleolithic cave-art - has been our facility for creating meaning, social identity and moral systems through the articulation of mythical stories and complex symbols.

Religious fictionalism is, apparently, by no means a negligible phenomenon. Research among self-identified Catholics in the Netherlands, published in 2007, found that only 27% of the Dutch Catholics could be regarded as a theist, 55% as an ietsist, deist or agnostic and 17% as atheist. Thus, the vast majority of Dutch Catholics were apparently "religious fictionalists" on some level.

The philosopher Philip Ball declares himself to be a 'Christian' religious fictionalist. He believes God to be a 'fiction', along with the resurrection of Christ, but attends church, prays (for his own mental wellbeing), reads the New Testament for moral edification and aspires to lead a Christlike life. Here he is writing about his framework:

Believers without belief - TLS


According to conventional wisdom, religions are systems of belief. Religious people are “believers”. Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead; Muslims believe that Mohammed was the final prophet; Jews believe that the creator of the universe has a special affection for the children of Israel. These beliefs of the religious are often taken to be unsupported by, or even inconsistent with, available evidence. Indeed, many understand “faith” as a matter of believing without any evidence at all.

However, this belief-orientated – or “doxastic” – conception of religion is not universally accepted...As the philosopher Daniel Howard-Snyder has argued in detail, the contexts in which Jesus talks of “faith” make it quite clear that he was concerned with the resilience of the religious commitment of the people around him rather than with their abstract theories of reality; in other words, with “belief” in the sixteenth-century rather than the twenty-first-century sense...

But suppose you think the arguments for the existence of God fail entirely. Or suppose you think we have very good reason to think that God does not exist...Could you still have some grounds for taking religion seriously? One might think not. Yet there is a philosophical position that combines out and out atheism with a positive commitment to religious practice; this is the view known as “religious fictionalism”.

Religious fictionalists hold that the contentious claims of religion, such as “God exists” or “Jesus rose from the dead” are all, strictly speaking, false. They nonetheless think that religious discourse, as part of the practice in which such discourse is embedded, has a pragmatic value that justifies its use. In fact, fictionalism is popular in many areas of philosophy. There are, for example, moral fictionalists and mathematical fictionalists, who think that there are pragmatic benefits to using moral/mathematical language even though such discourse fails to correspond to a genuine reality (there are, on these views, no such things as goodness or the number 9, any more than there are dragons or witches). Religious fictionalists merely extend this approach to the statements of religion.

What is the pragmatic benefit for the atheist of using religious language? The religious fictionalist Andrew Eshleman proposes that religious discourse can be understood as mythological, by which he means “a meaning-loaded narrative that has been adopted by a particular community to give expression to and foster a form of life defined by its guiding ideals”. The religious community is bound together across space and time by its stories, rituals, regular meetings and celebration of rites of passage. At a time when globalization has fractured communities and weakened our shared forms of life, there is arguably a real need for institutions that bring people together around a shared moral purpose. The rise of nationalism around much of Europe may, in part, speak to a deep human need for shared structures of meaning...

Moral character is cultivated and sustained, at least in part, through emotional engagement with fictional scenarios. For the fictionalist, immersion in the religious ritual is akin to losing yourself in a book or a film, the only difference being that the effect is accentuated through our active and corporate participation in the act of worship...

The New Testament scholar Marcus Borg – another late, great voice in liberal theology – developed in some detail a Hickian conception of Christianity. Although sceptical of the literal truth of the virgin birth and the resurrection, Borg believed that the Christian myth expressed what he called “the character and passion of God”. By conceiving of God as born into poverty, eating with outcasts, suffering a humiliating death at the hands of the unconquerable colonial power and yet paradoxically triumphing through that very suffering, we are led into a deeper and truer experience of the Real.

One might be forgiven for thinking that fictionalism was a new-fangled approach to religion, but in fact there are fictionalist elements in Christian theology going right back to the Early Church Fathers. Origen (c.184–253) and Gregory of Nyssa (c.335–395) were proponents of apophatic, or “negative”, theology, according to which the real nature of God is unknowable. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (late fifth/early sixth centuries) wrote that God is “beyond every assertation” and “beyond every denial”. And the hugely influential late fourteenth-century text The Cloud of Unknowing guided Christians to a knowledge of God that left behind the superficial descriptions found in ordinary worship. If God’s nature cannot be captured in human language, it follows that talk of God as having personal characteristics – such as “wisdom” or “omnipotence” – although perhaps essential for regular practice, is strictly speaking a fiction.

Interestingly, Jesus encountered that many didn't like his words or actions because it wasn't the everyday norm they preferred to feel, the world they had mastered. He was speaking of another another level of being, and that made them feel uncomfortable, since it invalidated their positions --

Example:

Jesus said:
45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? 47 Whoever belongs to God hears what God says. The reason you do not hear is that you do not belong to God.”

They didn't seek the ineffable or transcendent, so they could not accept his words.

Jesus spoke on how only some would believe, even those present in person seeing people changed, healed, transformed, altered.

For instance:

31 Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, 32 but Jesus said to them, “I have shown you many good works from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?”

33“We are not stoning you for any good work,” they replied, “but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God.”

34 Jesus answered them, “Is it not written in your Law, ‘I have said you are “gods” ’ ? 35 If he called them ‘gods,’ to whom the word of God came—and Scripture cannot be set aside— 36 what about the one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into the world? Why then do you accuse me of blasphemy because I said, ‘I am God’s Son’? 37 Do not believe me unless I do the works of my Father. 38 But if I do them, even though you do not believe me, believe the works, that you may know and understand that the Father is in me, and I in the Father.” 39 Again they tried to seize him, but he escaped their grasp.
----------

They were far less concerned about the good works Jesus did than the fact he was disrupting their comfortable power and authority and status and position. Telling them in effect they were not better than anyone else, not better than the people they slandered.
 

PureX

Veteran Member
I think what is being described, here, as "religious fictionalism" is really just plain old religious faith. It is choosing to trust in the images, rituals, ideals and mythos of a given religion even in the face of grave doubt, simply because one finds that in doing so their lives are improved or improving.

I think you're describing a great many 'religious' humans of all sorts of religious traditions and cultures from all over the world.
 
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halbhh

The wonder and awe of "all things".
I think it's a mixed bag of advantages and disadvantages. For a disadvantage example for Christians, "living by its ethics" would entail following the immature ethical standards of a 2,000 year-old culture as interpreted by contemporary religious leaders rather than living by our moral intuition (conscience).
If only a higher portion of the people claiming to be "Christian" would actually do as the Christ said:

"Love your neighbor as yourself."

"In all things, do to others as you would have them do to you, for this sums up the law and the prophets."


If only they would (or more of them would) indeed believe what Jesus said -- believe in Him, really -- and therefore actually do what He said.

...That would totally transform the world for the better.

I'd go a little further. I think that any one nation has a good, civil society and good outcomes to the extent that the people in it do "In everything, do for others as you would have them do for you" -- to just that extent.

A direct proportion. That's my best guess at the real factor that truly decides the quality of life in a nation. Technology is more like an outcome, and not at all the basic cause in itself of continued civility and quality of life, in the long run. Rather, it's another outcome of the good Rule of Law and freedom and other such benefits that flow from that basic morality of the people in the nation.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
Perhaps we can discuss separately at a later date (as its beside the point for a 'religious fictionalist' anyway, and is properly theological!). For now, I'll say this: I think the studies by Haidt, Greene, Morelli and Paxton, among many other experimental psychologists and neuroscientists, have amply demonstrated that there is an intuitive or instinctual response to moral violations - "quick, automatic evaluations" ("feels" wrong, in your own words).

These intuitive evaluations have been replicated in study after study, and they are to quote Professor Joshua Greene: "implicit and the factors affecting them may be consciously inaccessible". Such moral intuitions come first and are born of emotional activation, before ratio or any operations of the rational, logical mind using controlled thought come into play.

This does not mean, as one might think if an emphasis upon intuitional morality is taken to an extreme (whereby it approaches mysticism), that ratiocination is entirely excluded from moral decision-making or indeed moral "progress" so to speak.

If one tries to derive morality solely from reason (without that initial intuitiuve, empathetic response - as unfortunately many Greek philosophers believed was the mark of "wisdom" or apatheia) it often leads to a narrow focus upon maximizing gain or obtaining the most desirable overall outcome (i.e. utilitarianism). This happens because the emotional parts of decision-making are ignored.

The converse, moral intuition without reflection, can lead to the kind of situation where "kill the child-molesters, all of 'em, no one who harms a child deserves life" becomes possible - because the person, understandably, is empathsizing with the child and automatically places him or herself in the victim's shoes - and sometimes the person subsequently, once they have initially been emotionally triggered, contemplates and comes to a more (ready yourself for this) "reasonable" response, that understand that such a vengeful response is not civilised (i.e. because civilised countries don't have capital punishment, for a start).

It is in this later phase that the church's 'magisterium' can be "useful".

In simple terms: as I've explained before, I subscribe to Greene et al.’s (Greene, Morelli, Lowenberg, Nystrom, & Cohen, 2008; Greene, Nystrom, Engell, Darley, & Cohen, 2004; Greene et al., 2001; Greene, 2012) "dual-process theory" (that human beings possess emotion-based and rationally-based cognitive subsystems that compete in moral reasoning processes.) This builds on Haidt's work in 2001 but refines it in light of advancements in neuroscience.


Reflection and Reasoning in Moral Judgment

Joseph M. Paxton,a Leo Ungar, Joshua D. Greene,


Department of Psychology, Harvard University. Stanford University School of Medicine

4 November 2010

We examined the roles of reflection and reasoning in moral judgment. Experiment 1 documented the influence of reflection on moral judgment by inducing people to be more reflective. In general, this reflectiveness manipulation increased utilitarian moral judgment, although there was one item for which this effect was not reliably observed. A follow-up study indicated that trait reflectiveness is also associated with increased utilitarian judgment. Both results are consistent with Greene et al.’s (2001, 2004, 2008) dual-process theory of moral judgment.

Experiment 2 examined both reflection and reasoning by examining the effects of argument strength and deliberation time on moral judgment. Consistent with the influence of reasoned reflection, we found that a strong argument was more persuasive than a weak one, but only when subjects were encouraged to reflect. These results are consistent with a recent study (Suter & Hertwig, 2011) showing that decreased deliberation decreases utilitarian judgment. The present results demonstrate a parallel effect in which increased deliberation influences moral judgment, making judgments more consistent with utilitarian principles. This effect depends critically on argument strength, thus implicating moral reasoning. Based on our reading of the literature (Paxton & Greene, 2010), these results provide the strongest evidence to date for the influence of reflection and reasoning on moral judgment
Except for the fact that moral judgments are intuitive, the social scientists involved with research on our moral sense don't agree with each other and I don't agree with them.

As David Hume pointed out a couple of centuries back we humans are much too proud of our ability to reason and Haidt, Greene, et al, are not immune. When we have a chance to discuss this, I'll try to explain how this bias is affecting their work..
 

LuisDantas

Aura of atheification
Premium Member
I think what is being described, here, as "religious fictionalism" is really just plain old religious faith.

Or a common, traditional and significant part of it, yes.

It is choosing to trust in the images, rituals, ideals and mythos of a given religion even in the face of grave doubt, simply because one finds that in doing so their lives are improved or improving.

That is not even remotely what I understand religious fictionalism to be. Fictionalism is all about not being vulnerable to doubt, let alone "grave" doubt. It does not necessarily involve perception or expectation of improvements, either.


I think you're describing a great many 'religious' humans of all sorts of religious traditions and cultures from all over the world.

That much I agree with. I even think that it is the norm for many creeds, and should remain so.
 
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