12.27.05
Chapter from Stark
In my email:
The New York Times, 25 Dec. 05, provides Jon Meacham’s critical review of
Rodney Stark’s controversial interpretation of the role of Christianity in
world history. It is accompanied by a link to the text of the first
chapter:chapters/1225-1st-stark.html?pagewanted=1>.
You can find my short review at Amazon.com. Here’s a breathtaking piece of sophistry:
To fully appreciate the nature of theology, it is useful to explore why there are no theologians in the East. Consider Taoism. The Tao is conceived of as a supernatural essence, an underlying mystical force or principle governing life, but one that is impersonal, remote, lacking consciousness, and definitely not a being. It is the “eternal way,” the cosmic force that produces harmony and balance. According to Lao-tzu, the Tao is “always nonexistent” yet “always existent,” “unnamable” and the “name that can be named.” Both “soundless and formless,” it is “always without desires.” One might meditate forever on such an essence, but it offers little to reason about. The same applies to Buddhism and Confucianism. Although it is true that the popular versions of these faiths are polytheistic and involve an immense array of small gods (as is true of popular Taoism as well), the “pure” forms of these faiths, as pursued by the intellectual elite, are godless and postulate only a vague divine essence-Buddha specifically denied the existence of a conscious God. The East lacks theologians because those who might otherwise take up such an intellectual pursuit reject its first premise: the existence of a conscious, all-powerful God.
This would indeed leave a lot of Buddhists shaking their head in wonder.
Don’t say such nonsense, they will get so fidgety they will try to take over Washington.
Such statements on the Tao, while they may reflect the confusions of some who claim to be Taoists, totally miss the point, which strongly resembles something that resurfaces in a figure such as Kant.
The point is that people become entangled in words and concepts, those verbal idolatries, and can’t clear their consciousness. Such Taoist sentiments are almost commonplace in traditions of meditation, but never appear in Christianity.
Stark’s claim that the study of rational theology somehow seeded the Western victory of reason is so bizarre it is hard to figure who would think that way. Answer: closed minds in closed Southern Baptist Universities, egged on by rightwing thinktank money.
Why not go back to the source of ‘Western’ rationality, as with the Greeks, before the Christians completely wiseacred the whole thing.