05.25.09
Religion within the limits of reason
Faith in the future: John Gray reviews ‘God is Back’
The question of the ‘secular’ is confused by the changing meanings of the word. As noted in previous post, the Protestant Reformation almost defined the ‘secular’, which meant a new age of civilization, a change of ‘saeculum’.
But the implications of that Reformation required a deeper insight, into the nature of human autonomy.
We can see the real conflict of religion and secularism in, ironically, Kant, who was no atheist, nor quite the typical theist, who spoke of ‘religion within the limits of reason alone’, and the premise here, as in his ethical thinking, is on human autonomy. On this question the traditional religionists are indeed a trojan horse gang leading us backwards.
The great irony is that without autonomy we cannot truly be religious. Thus it is in the context of secularism that true religion might come into being.
The issue is not secularism vs religion but false religion vs the possibility of real human self-consciousness (which you can call religion) and development without the tyrannizing self-aggrandizement of traditionalist religion.
Those who critique secularism need to go back and study Luther’s world, and Luther’s reluctant break with the hopeless corrupt world of Catholicism in his time.
Debates over secularism | Kant’s Challenge said,
May 25, 2009 at 1:20 pm
[...] Religion within the limits of reason [...]
James said,
May 25, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I don’t think the goal of either side is to support human autonomy (despite the animosity that these two sides have for one another, they really represent two sides of a single coin). One side wants us to believe that we are mechanistic robots and the other side wants us to believe that morality is only possible with the belief in some divine law giver. Either way, their prescriptions for action represent the antithesis of human autonomy.