Questions and Lecture on Dewey's Religion vs. the Religious
William O'Meara (c) copyright, 1997
1. What are the two approaches to religion? Do they share anything in common?
2. What is Dewey's thesis about religion and the religious?
3. What is the Oxford definition of religion. give an example from a religion which you know which exemplifies the three aspects of religion.
4. Do all the ways of exemplifying this deinition fit into a consistent set of beliefs and practices that can be held without contradiction? Explain.
5. Why does Dewey hold that there should be a continuing change and development of our understanding of religion?
6. Is religious experience proof that one's concept of God is the truth?
7. Draw upon Stace's essay in our text on mysticism to give some reasons for Dewey's view that religious experience, even in the form of well developed mystical experience, does not prove that God exists.
8. Explain what is the religious aspect of an experience?
9. Explain why the sense of the whole universe or whole self is an imaginative sense of the whole.
10. When is morality religious in quality?
11. Explain whether or not Dewey's grasp of the religious exemplifies the Oxford definiton.
12. Why does Dewey hold that faith in the continued disclosure of truth through cooperative human inquiry is more religious in quality than is faith in a completed relevlation.
13. Distinguish with Dewey two ways of conceiving of God.
14. Why does Dewey reject one conception of God and accept the other?
15. Why does Dewey raise the problem of evil and suffering?
16. How does Dewey explain why evil occurs, and how does he respond to the problem of evil and suffering with his view of religious faith?
17. What deep connection does Dewey find between the evolving human community and all the things in civilization which we value the most?
18. Give examples of such things in your life which you value hioghly and which are deply connected to the evolving human community.
Lecture on Religion vs. the Religious
There are two genera1 approaches to religion: both wrong: (1) the necessity for a Supernatura1 Being and for an immortality that is beyond the power of Nature, and (2) the opposed view which believes that the advance of culture and of science has completely discredited the supernatural and with it all religions that were allied with belief in it. Both groups identify the religious with the supernatural. Dewey suggests that the religious aspects of natural experience can be freed from the supernatural aspects of religion.
Dewey begins his argument, stating the Oxford definition of religion in order to criticize it and to develop his concept of the religious in order to show how it exemplifies the definition. The definition is: "religion is the recognition on the part of man of some unseen higher power as having coDtro1 of his destiny and as being entitled to obedience, reverence, and worship." There are three elements in this definition: creed, code, and cult. As for creed, the unseen higher powers have been conceived in a multitude of incompatible ways. There have been the vague and undefined Mana of the Melanesians, the Kami of the Shintoists, and the Nirvana of Buddhism. As for code, there have been diverse moral practices: prostitution and chastity, sensual delight and extreme asceticism, persecution and love of enemies. As for the cult, there have been worship of animals, worship of ghosts, worship of ancestors, human sacrifice, sexual orgies, and the offering of humble and contrite heart.
Since there have been developments from primitive to civilized religions, is it not possible that change and develop in religion should still occur? There is no such thing as religion in the abstract; we should turn to human experience and discover the function of religion and the religious there. But we immediately run into a difficulty. Religious experience has been taken by religious believers to be a proof of the supernatura1 being. For example, one man writes:
I broke down from overwork and soon came to the verge of nervous prostration. One morning after a long and sleepless night ... I resolved to stop drawing upon myself so continuously and begin drawing upon God. I determined to set apart a quiet time every day in which I could relate my life to its ultimate source, regain the consciousness that in God I live, move and have my being. That was thirty years ago. Since then I have had literally not one hour of darkness or despair.
Dewey argues that this experience does not prove that God exists but that it only proves that a specific set of conditions has operated to effect an adjustment in life, an orientation, that brings with it a sense of security and peace. Dewey has some support from Walter Stace, who in our text in his discussion of mysticism, identifies the various experiences of theistic religious believers, pantheistic religious believers, and agnostic ways of life such as early Buddhism and its experience of nirvana. Stacxe finds a coomon core to all these experiences which is capable of diverse interpretations. Stace identifies two kinds of mysticism, extrovertive and introvertive. In extrovertive mysticism, there is a sense or awareness of all things as one, while differences between things of are still perceived. In introvertive mysticism, there is an awareness of Unity without any awareness of spatial and temporal differences. See the essay for further details.
Dewey argues that the religious aspect of the experience does not consist in the cause of the experience but in the effects it has on the person. The cause could be a passage of poetry, and ocean or mountain view, a sunset, a beautiful person, a philosophical dialogue. The cause could be anything. We may feel a sense of harmony with the Universe or a profound joy at the wonder and mystery of the universe or a persona1 relationship that resolves our anxieties and brings about personal growth. The effect of these experiences is similar. The religious attitude involves a conscious harmony with the whole world. This attitude involves faith or imagination in order to go beyond the particular details of our present world in order to place thc self in relation to the world as a whole.
The idea of a whole, whether of the whole self or the whole world, is an imaginative, not a literal idea. The limited world of our observation and reflection becomes the Universe only through imaginative extension. The whole self, past, present, and future self, is not something directly experienced since I cannot directly experience my future self. The whole self is an ideal, an imaginative projection. It is imagination which creates the idea of thorough-going and deep-seated harmonizing of the self with the Universe.
Faith is involved in this religious experience of the harmony of the self with the world. Faith is not the acceptance of something as true on the word of another, for Dewey primarily, rather faith is a commitment to a person or an ideal. Faith is either commitment to God as a being outside of Nature or a commitment to the moral ideals that people choose to live by. He takes this last meaning of faith and defines it as the unification of the self through allegiance to inclusive ideal ends which imagination presents to us and to which the human will responds as worthy of controlling our desires and choices.
Not all moral faith in ideal ends is religious is quality. The religious is morality touched by emotion only when the ends or moral convictions arouse emotions that are not only intense but are actuated and supported by ends so inclusive that they unify the self.
Dewey points out that this concept of the religious does exemplify the Oxford definition of religion. The 'unseen higher power' is the unity of mora1 ideals. This power should have 'control of our destiny.' He believes that these ideals give the unifying or religious perspective to his life and as such are worthy of 'obedience, reverence, and worship.' The essentially unreligious attitude is that which attributes human achievement and purpose to people in isolation from the world of physical nature and our fellows. Our successes are dependent upon the cooperation of nature. The sense of dignity of human nature is as religious as is the sense of awe and reverence when it rests - upon a sense of human nature as a cooperating part of a 1arger whole. Natural piety is not of necessity either a fatal acquiescence in natural happenings or a romantic idealization of the world. It may rest upon a just sense of nature as the whole of which we are parts, while it also recognizes that we are parts that are marked by intelligence and purpose, having the capacity to strive by their aid to bring conditions into greater consonance with what is humanly desirable. Such piety is an inherent constituent of a just perspective in life. Essential in this religious commitment of Dewey to the development of human ideals in our world is his commitment to self-knowledge. Faith in the continued disclosing of truth through directed cooperative human endeavor is more religious in quality then is any faith in a complete revelation. This faith does not limit access to truth to any channel or scheme of things. This faith does not depend for assurance upon subjection to any dogma or item of doctrine. It trusts that the natural interactions between people and their environment will breed more intelligence and generate more knowledge provided the scientific methods that define intelligence in operation are pushed further into the mysteries of the world, being themselves promoted and improved in the operation.
God could be conceived as the unity of moral ideals (love, wisdom, mercy, justice) inspiring people to moral action and giving them a sense of unity with world and their fellow human beings, or God could be a particular being who is the divine Personification of these moral ideals. Dewey argues that these ideals do not have to be personified in order to have a real effect upon people. In fact, he argues that religious faith in God as the Divine Peresonification actually exhibits a lack of faith in those ideals themselves sinc epoeple claim to need the almighty power of God toi pounish them when they break those ideals, as if the ideals themselves were not inherently beautiful and worth attaining for their own sake.
If the objection is raised against Dewey that people should start as he suggests with the primacy of the ideal ends he identifies but continue to search in nature, human experience, and history for evidence that there is a Divine Personification of these ideals, this is Dewey's reply:
Such a search involves us in all the problems of the existence of evil. But if we do not identify moral ideals with a Divine Person, there is no problem of evil. The possibility of the ideal occurring is also the possibility of the tragic occurring. Also, such a search detracts from people's abilities to advance their ideals. They have never fully used the powers they possess to advance the good in life because they have waited upon some power external to themselves and to nature to do the work they are responsible for doing. Belief in the supernatural has been disbelief in the natural. People have not understood the relation of matter to life. So they argued that God does it mysteriously. People have not understood the relation of the brain to thought. So they believed that God makes the soul mysteriously. People have not understood the relation of heredity and environment to socially deviant behavior. So they argued that God mysterious1y gives grace to some but not to others. Dewey argues in contrast that we should believe in ourselves and work to solve their own problems without introducing a theoretical solution, God, which doesn't help them at all.
Dewey concludes his argument by examining the relationship between the evolving human commiunity and the things in civilization which we value most highly:
We who now live are parts of a humanity that extends into the remote past. The things in civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community of which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying, and expanding the heritage of values we have received that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared, than we have received it.
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