PARK: THE DEBATE An Unreasonable Distinction evangelicalism very much indeed and agree with a lot of what he says.
Unlike David Boulton, I don’t think his position is irrational or unreasonable. I would not, however, go anywhere near his church.
It seems to me to be obviously true that all forms of religious realism are equally irrational and that all forms of non-realist religion are equally rational.
Once you have settled on rational nonrealism, the options are wide open. Noone has put in a good word for fundamentalism so far, so I hope that a nonrealist fundamentalist will soon write in, defending reactionary views and supporting them with nit-picking references to Biblical texts.
So how do we, as non-realists, choose between churches? We choose them in the way that we choose our friends: to say that we don’t do that by careful use of the scientific method is not to say that we act unthinkingly, unreasonably or by emotional spasm.
The choice of friends or church is not guided by the rules of logic, but that doesn’t make it arbitrary. We are guided by reasons: reasons of temperament, personality and our own particular ordering of values. Any church will do, just so long as its style and its values appeal to us.
How far should the rational thought-processes, which led to our becoming non-realists in the first place, then permeate our relationship with our chosen church?
How much should it influence our attitude towards the other members and how much should it affect our own behaviour? I think the answer in both cases is: however much you happen to like.
David suspects — and I rather suspect the same — that Duncan’s evangelicals are thorough-going realists. Given a Mori poll, I think the majority would answer “yes” to the “Real God” question rather than tick the “Don’t care” box. I think that is also probably true of the Jen Duncan Park’s defence of ) os iS i (") y iy | y> WORN |. 4 Spoul | ROLF & GC.
G Wee ” y (oy y) % Pa a “Tell you what, you tick Don’t Know and I'll tick Don’t Care” majority in every religious group, including Quakers and Buddhists. But the point is that, whichever boxes they ticked, Duncan, presumably, wouldn't mind. Whether or not they've noticed the stage-set is not a matter of importance to him. They could be realists or non-realists or never have given the matter a passing thought. I have a nonrealist Quaker friend who says she has no idea what the rest of her church believe and has no interest in finding out. It doesn’t seem to me either irrational or unreasonable not to mind what the people in the other pews have or don’t have in their heads. Whether you can sit happily in the midst of others with different beliefs or whether you feel impelled to rush about challenging them depends on your personality.
But not only does Duncan not care about the others’ beliefs, he puts his own rational conclusions to the back of his mind in order to get on with the dancing. For him, religion is a passionate celebration of living which leaves no room for dry theology. And this is the bit which David sees as a dangerous abandonment of reason, fearing that it leads to an irresponsible self-indulgence and a failure to do anything towards building a better world.
However, I think that this, too, is not really an argument about rationality, but rather a clash of values. There’s a Mary-set of values which prizes passion, joy and celebration and a Martha-set which prizes good works and carefulness. Each can come unstuck in its own way: Marys can get self-indulgent as Marthas can get self-righteous, but it is part of the relevant church’s job to watch out for that and nobody has to fall inevitably into sin. But neither of these sets of values is inherently more “rational” than the other. Two of the non-realist’s favourite pin-up philosophers endorse the notion that religion is about a passionate response to life and precisely not a careful thinkingthrough. Wittgenstein talks about it in Culture and Value (eg p.64) and Kierkegaard talks about it non-stop.
The problem for me is not that Duncan’s position is either untenable in theory or dangerous in practice, but just that my temperament is about a hundred miles in the opposite direction from his. I could no more sit among a congregation of realists than I could sit in an ant-heap. And I could no more push my non-realist thoughts out of my mind in church than I could take my head off and leave it outside the door.
Its not that I think that to push one’s philosophical preconceptions into the background is either unreasonable or hazardous, it’s just that — psychologically speaking — I can’t do it.
My ideal church would have fierce membership rules — it would admit only card-carrying non-realists (no-one ticking the “Don’t know” or “Don’t care” boxes would get in) and, although the service would include singing and dancing, this would be immediately followed by long, earnest discussions about what we were doing and why. There are plenty of potential sins here (intolerance, intellectual fascism and general uptightness, to name just a few) but my choice is also equidistant from our joint non-realist starting-point, and is neither more nor less illogical, irrational, unreasonable or potentially dangerous than Duncan’s or David’s. My ideal church will never exist, but I would be happy in an SoF church (started by Mike Jenkins?) or an openly non-realist wing of an established church (started by Jim Davies?).
Meanwhile, I shall continue (but sadly) to be a non-churchgoer.
We choose the churches which give priority to the values which are most important to us. When we come across child-sacrificers, it’s not their logic we object to — and they could be realist or non-realist — its their values which offend. (Flat-earthers are a different case, because they are not, as far as I know, a religious group. Debates between non-realists in religion and non-realists in science could start here.) When a value-clash is serious, then we go to war. But, since we are non-realists, we don’t believe we have Divine Right or Divine Reason on our side when we do. We simply punch the other guy.
But I don’t think that it has quite come to that. I positively enjoy Salvationists from a safe distance — their warm enthusiasm is fun to watch — but when they start advancing towards me in the street, whilst I have no desire at all to rip their throats out, I do run away very suddenly and very fast.
Anne Padley is a member of Kent SoF group and has never been a member of any church POSTBAG You’re Telling Us!