Why the Philosophy of Religion Should No Longer Be Taught

[rug]

November 30, 2016
by Hemant Mehta

We would all laugh at the idea of Creationism being taught as part of a university’s science curriculum, yet many philosophy programs include classes on religion. Author John Loftus argues in his latest book Unapologetic (Pitchstone Publishing, 2016) that the philosophy of religion needs to end. We should take it no more seriously than a class on the philosophy of fairies.

In the excerpt below, Loftus lays out his argument for why we should no longer take this discipline seriously:

This book is a call for atheist philosophers of religion to end their own discipline by being brutally honest about it. That about sums it all up in a nutshell. They just have to ask themselves how they would treat a deity if he was believed to be Baal, Ishtar, Hathor, Zeus, Odin, or any number of other dead gods and goddesses. How seriously would they consider them? Would they push for a subdiscipline of philosophy classes to discuss the attributes, abilities, and existence of these deities? What if the history of the philosophy of religion was little more than a history of discussing the rationality, existence, attributes, and actions of fairies? What if it was about the attributes, abilities, and existence of Superman? What if one day as a philosopher you awoke from your dogmatic slumber and realized this is what you have been teaching for decades in your classes? Well then, this book is a call for you to wake up and smell the roses. For the truth is that the history of philosophy of religion is little more than a history of discussing the rationality, existence, attributes, and actions of fairies. Fairies don’t exist. Neither do Baal, Ishtar, Hathor, Zeus, or Odin. Neither does Yahweh, the supposed Father-god of Jesus.

Just consider what the philosophy of religion would be like if no “revealed” religion ever existed. No written revelation was compiled either. No scriptures were ever written down. There never was a Bible, or a Koran, or a Bhagavad Gita, or a Book of Mormon. The only god worthy of being discussed in philosophy of religion classes would be a philosopher’s god—one that was uninformed by the content of any ancient prescientific “sacred” text or current religion. What would there be to discuss? What would a class on the history of philosophy of religion look like if that was the only god to discuss? In our scientific era what could justify having a whole subdiscipline on such a god or goddess when there are other disciplines we could look to for answers? Well then, here too, this book is a call to wake up. There really are no sacred scriptures. They do not exist. No deity inspired anything because no deity exists. All so-called revealed religions are false.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2016/11/30/philosophy-religion-no-longer-taught/

[DetlefK]

1. Religion is "Science 0.0", magic is "Science 1.0", modern science is "Science 2.0"

Religion had a good run until the 15th Century. Then it turned out that it wasn't capable of offering satisfactory answers to certain questions.

And so the movement of Renaissance-magic was born, as a new branch of Christianity: "Christian Occultism". It was a huge jump forward in terms of philosophy and new ways of thinking. But by the 18th century it turned out that it wasn't capable of offering satisfactory answers to certain questions.

And so "science" was born, when the magical movement split into an occult, supernatural path and a freethinking, materialistic path.



IMO the philosophy of religion should continue to be teached, but only in the wider context of the philosophies it is connected to.

For example:
The concept, that science can bring us a "world-formula" that will explain everything? That concept is rooted in the ancient greece religious philosophy of the "demiourgos" and eventually became one of the pillars of science via the works of the medieval kabbalist Raimundus Lullus.

[rug]

2. Ibn al-Haytham was performing experiments in optics and physics a thousand years ago.

He was also a devout Muslim.

I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.

Roger Bacon, "the father of modern scientific method", was a Franciscan friar two hundred years later.

[DetlefK]

4. There's a difference between research and science.

There was research throughout history, but science as a philosophy and codified method to gain knowledge was developed in 18th/19th-century Europe.

Another pillar of the philosophy of science is that experiment trumps theory. That was unthinkable for religious researchers. The premise of this pre-scientific research was not to understand the world per se, but to understand the connection between the world and God.
And if your experiment didn't reproduce what the holy scripture said, then you had done the experiment wrong.



What I would really like to know... Religion begat Magic, Magic begat Science... Is there something beyond science? Is there a method of gaining knowledge that's even more robust than science?
Is it possible, from what we know about the world, to develop a method that allows us to experience the world more accurately? Without the philosophical and mathematical limits of the scientific method?

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Pretty broad brush. Religion isn't just about gods...

Spiritualists, Buddhists, Unitarians... God has little to do with them. Even Quakers are becoming more atheistic all the time.

Religion fills that part of us that is spiritual and not entirely satisfied by the physical and material world. It has been unifying and peaceful as much as it has been violent and destructive. It has been our dreams, and our nightmares.

There is a 6,000 year history of Jewish thought and ethics that shouldn't be thrown out with the trash. They were around for Ishtar, Baal, Zeus, and Jesus and were listening to Aristotle and Mohammad. Is there nothing we can learn form them?

No, we don't accept the violence or the crazies in any religion, and we certainly don't teach it, but not teaching creationism doesn't mean we reject spiritual thought.

And, speaking of creationism, it should be discussed, if not explicitly taught. While highly unlikely, there is no good reason why this all couldn't have been created by a being from a higher dimension. Science fiction is full of stories of us being a children's playground. Makes as much sense as Heidegger, and could end up being the grand unified theory after all.

[AtheistCrusader]

5. It should still be taught under sociology.

If people out there, in large numbers, still believe this claptrap, it behooves us to understand them and their motivations.

[Igel]

6. Same for literature classes.

Why study something that's basically made up stories of no worth?

Gee, that gets rid of a lot of majors, and English departments are then down to teaching grammar, rhetoric, and non-fiction writing.

Then again, same with French, Spanish, Italian, Russian, German, and East Asian languages. No more lit. No more poetry. All made up shit.


But most of history are just a set of facts that stories are hung onto. Gets bad, getting rid of history, poli sci, literature, art (apart from actually teaching technique and producing stuff that sells well). You're left with science, at least some maths, grammar (only descriptive, natch), engineering. All those fields that tend to be disproportionately not-left-leaning.