© Roger M Tagg 2013
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This chapter of Kenny's 'big book' is concerned with the idea of God. Kenny himself was trained as a Catholic priest, but now confesses to being an agnostic. He became a 'Sir' (i.e. a UK knight) in 1992.
| Section | Page | Highlight |
|---|---|---|
| Feuer- bach | 977 | Feuerbach saw God as a projection of the human mind. [RT: I remember in the Cambridge Scholarship exam which I sat in 1958 that one of the questions in the general paper (which I in fact attempted!) was "Man created God in his own image. Discuss."] |
| & Marx | "The monotheistic idea of a personal God arises when humans become conscious of themselves as possessing reason, will and love. In religion, man contemplates his own latent nature, but is something apart from himself." | |
| 978 | "Feuerbach agrees with Hegel that religion represents an essential, but imperfect, stage of human consciousness." | |
| Marx, by 'opium of the people', meant not "that religion was a pipe dream ... but that belief in a happier afterlife was a a necessary stupefacient to make labour under capitalism bearable". | ||
| Kirke- gaard | 978 | Kirkegaard (K), on the other hand, "placed faith at the summit of human progress, and regarded the religious sphere as superior to the regions of science and politics. Ethics too, he taught, must be strictly subordinated to worship". |
| 979 | According to K, "Abraham's heroism (in being prepared to sacrifice his only - and 'last chance' son Isaac) lay in his obedience to an individual divine command". | |
| 980-1 | According to K, Faith cannot be based on objective history - there's always doubt involved in that, and it often gets revised. K says: "Faith must be a passionate devotion of oneself, but objective inquiry involves an attitude of detachment". | |
| 981 | K: "The greater the risk of falsehood, the greater the passion involved in believing." | |
| Jaspers and Sartre "found attractive his (K's) claim that to have an authentic existence one must abandon the multitude and seize control of one's own destiny by a blind leap beyond reason". | ||
| Darwin | 982 | Mill thought that the 'argument from design' might have some value, but not for the existence of an omnipotent or benevolent creator. |
| 983 | "A non-literal interpretation of Genesis was adopted long ago by theologians as orthodox as St Augustine." | |
| "It is more difficult [RT: "What is more difficult is ..."] to reconcile an acceptance of Darwinism with belief in original sin." | ||
| 984 | Darwin "believed that it was not necessary, in order to account for the perfection of complex organs and instincts, to appeal to 'man's superior to, though analogous with, human reason' ". | |
| "It was special creation [RT: i.e., each species being created separately from scratch], not creation, that Darwin objected to." [RT: my italics] | ||
| 986 | How do we answer the question "how did the universe come into existence?" - if not by considering an extra-cosmic agency? But even then, that's not an argument for "God as defined in the great monotheistic traditions". | |
| Newman | 987 | Newman pointed to a "mismatch between evidence and commitment". |
| 988 | Newman believed that one needs to be already predisposed - possibly through recognizing one's conscience - to believe in God. [RT: But as with the argument about how the universe came into existence, this isn't an argument for any particular religious 'story'.] | |
| 989 | Today (post Freud) we can't be satisfied by such "intimations of the existence of God". | |
| Frege: "Existence is a property of concepts and not of objects." | ||
| Nietz- | 990 | Nietzsche (N)'s view was that "now (God is dead) we are free to express our will to live". |
| sche | N didn't like George Eliot "clinging to a respectability after being emancipated from theology". | |
| William | 990 | William James (WJ) asked: "Shall the seen world or the unseen world be our chief sphere of adaptation?" |
| James | 991 | WJ: "Mysticism (is) too private and too various to make any claim to universal authority." |
| 992 | WJ: "It is not reason that is the source of religion, but feeling." | |
| WJ: "The theologians' enumeration of divine epithets is not worthless, but its value is aesthetic, rather than scientific." | ||
|
Matthew Arnold | 992 | God is "the stream of tendency by which all things seek to fulfill the law of their being." [RT: that sounds about right, but it's probably too nebulous for most people.] |
| Freud | 993 | Religions (as far as he is concerned, as illusions) are "fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind" - including the need for father-like protection in helpless childhood. |
| 994 | "Comparative research has been struck by the fatal resemblance between the religious ideas which we revere and the mental products of primitive people and times." | |
| Wittgen -stein | 995 | Wittgenstein (W) saw religion as a narrative ... but said "Don't take the same attitude as you take to other historical narratives. Make quite a different place in your life for it". |
| W: "Don't be afraid of talking nonsense ... (but) ... you must keep an eye on your nonsense." | ||
| Alvin Plantinga | 996 | Alvin Plantinga's revival of the ontological argument depends on "the premise that it is possible for maximal greatness to be exemplified". |
| Chapter |
11 | A few points from Kenny's description of Rawls' Theory of Justice |
| 975-6 | If we didn't know where we would sit in a social system, like assuming "we are all initially equal", and don't know where we might become [RT: come to sit - see 'Veil of Ignorance'], two principles of justice are: | |
| 1) "Each person should have the right to the most extensive basic liberty compatible with a like liberty for all." | ||
| 2) "Social and economic inequalities are to be attached to office and positions that are open to all in fair competition, and these inequalities are only justified if they can be arranged so that they are to the benefit of the worst off." | ||
| "If the two principles come into conflict, the principle of equal liberty trumps the principle of equal opportunity." | ||
| "In a pluralistic society ... there is little chance of achieving total unanimity in ethics; the most we can hope for is a set of shared values ... an 'overlapping consensus' on ethical issues." | ||
| "The goal ... is a state of 'reflective equilibrium'." |
I respect Kenny's viewpoint as someone who has looked at religion from both inside and outside, someone who declares himself an agnostic but still attends Mass (in spite of having been excommunicated for marrying).
Index to more highlights of interesting books
Some of these links may be under construction – or re-construction.
This version updated on 6th March 2013
If you have constructive suggestions or comments, please contact the author rogertag@tpg.com.au .