I have now started my directed studies and I am quite pleased with how in depth the discussions with my professor are. This is the kind of education that I love, it’s one-on-one and we can cover the material thoroughly. I wish all my courses could be this way.
These chapters cover two interesting figures in religious studies: Giambattista Vico and David Hume.
I am not going to go into detail as Wikipedia does much better, but I am just going to pose a few questions that arose as I was reading. I have discussed these with my professor and am satisfied with the answers, but as always, I find that questioning is more of a means to explore in different directions than inquiries that require resolution.
Vico described historical myth as poetic and used this as a framework for interpretation. His method introduced and relied on what he called “maker’s knowledge.” He suggested that since humans make society then humans can share in empathic-type knowledge about it. In fact, Vico sees religion as a human product necessary for social order. Though religion is man-made, he suggests that humans have a divinely implanted religious sense.
A key element of this perspective is a separation of meaning and causality, but how does this work if it is even possible?
The concept of salvation is paramount in religious studies discussions, but what is the framework of this concept? Salvation from what? From death? Sometime salvation refers to eternal life, other times it refers to transformation in present life, and sometimes both. Is it salvation from pain or suffering? I know what salvation means in an evangelical context, but where did this idea come from and why is it such a powerful force?
I was very interested to read about Hume. I did not realize the extent to which his work influenced atheism. Of particular interest was his critique of arguments for the existence of god based on analogy and directional causality. The analogy argument for god compares artifacts of human construction with naturally occurring objects. For example, one might say that just as a building has an architect so a flower has a designer. This of course is a bad analogy for numerous reasons not the least of which is that we can see the construction of buildings via workers whereas flowers seem to grow on their own. The directional causality issue undermines the notion that god as spirit or mind can create matter. Hume pointed out that matter leads to mind and not the other way around, thus the notion of creation is undermined in this instance.
As an aside, Hume draws on Ockam’s razor or the principle of parsimony to argue against the inclusion of god in natural explanations. While I do see his point, I am not sure why Ockam’s razor is itself justified. Why is the simplest the best?
