Thanks to Patrick O'Donnell for the comments he posted to my "Theology and Darwin" post. Here's some information that may be of interest to RLL readers--information posted by Bruce Ledowitz at his Hallowed Secularism blog:
Saturday, March 6, 2010
Calling all secularists Monday night
3/6/2010—This Monday night, 3/6, at 9 p.m.
ET, Tikkun magazine will sponsor a phone forum in which callers will be able to
ask questions about my contribution to the theme of this month’s issue: God and the 21st Century. (Call 1-888-346-3950
and enter 11978#).
The magazine issue is organized around Arthur Green’s upcoming book, Radical Judaism. His essay is entitled "Sacred Evolution: A Radical Jewish Perspective on God and Science". As the title suggests, Green is engaging in a form of religious naturalism. He writes of God, “I do not affirm a Being or Mind that exists separate from the universe and acts upon it intelligently and willfully.” What differentiates Green from a materialist or a pantheist (he calls himself a mystical panentheist) is that “this whole is mysteriously and infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, and cannot be known fully or reduced to its constituent beings.” This position sounds like the concept of emergence in biology. Holiness resides there. Almost all of the contributors to the magazine commenting on the theme of God seem to share Green’s framework: science first and religion adapts. Hans Kung, Aryeh Cohen and Zaid Shakir are exceptions. (For background, see Jerome Stone’s recent book, Religious Naturalism Today).
The magazine issue is organized around Arthur Green’s upcoming book, Radical Judaism. His essay is entitled "Sacred Evolution: A Radical Jewish Perspective on God and Science". As the title suggests, Green is engaging in a form of religious naturalism. He writes of God, “I do not affirm a Being or Mind that exists separate from the universe and acts upon it intelligently and willfully.” What differentiates Green from a materialist or a pantheist (he calls himself a mystical panentheist) is that “this whole is mysteriously and infinitely greater than the sum of its parts, and cannot be known fully or reduced to its constituent beings.” This position sounds like the concept of emergence in biology. Holiness resides there. Almost all of the contributors to the magazine commenting on the theme of God seem to share Green’s framework: science first and religion adapts. Hans Kung, Aryeh Cohen and Zaid Shakir are exceptions. (For background, see Jerome Stone’s recent book, Religious Naturalism Today).
I've not read Stone's book on religious naturalism but I'm wondering if the views of Green and kindred spirits might be simply descriped as formulations of "metaphysical naturalism." The difference here would be that the former term assumes the presence of what we might call, after William P. Alston, "religion-making characteristics,"* and I suspect (and thus may very well be wrong) that what is called "religious naturalism" lacks a significant number of the characteristics we typically associate with religion qua religion. In any case, I find the idea that religion should be the handmaiden of science as unattractive as the idea that philosophy is principally an underlaborer for science.
*Please see this post at Ratio Juris for one such list inspired by Alston's original version as found in his edited volume, Religious Belief and Philosophical Thought... (1963): http://ratiojuris.blogspot.com/2008/12/hinduism-selected-bibliography.html
Posted by: Patrick S. O'Donnell | 03/08/2010 at 06:44 AM