Dealing with existential nihilism

[Neo-Scholastic]

But I don't think it's true that religion is ultimately about anything.  Religion is the linguistic expression of the human capacity for awe, a lack of knowledge about the nature of reality, and a sense of mystery.

I agree that humans have the capacity for awe and a sense of mystery. That much is obvious. The question I have is to what is awe a response and what is our relationship with that sense of mystery. I will also acknowledge that such feelings do not prove much. At the same time, I say that such feelings do legitimize belief in the divine and if an mentally competent believer has reasonably examined various objections and potential defeaters then that belief is warranted.

In other words, he's [MK] bullshitting….He cannot accept that people see his view as a cultural artifact-- he thinks we are deliberately ignoring the truth.

YMMV. There is always a danger of that in philosophy. At the same time, MK is a special case because his diction is distinctly non-Western. I find myself translating his arguments into terms that more closely correspond to the nomenclature of Western philosophy. For example, when he says “praiseworthy”, I hear “perfection”.

The truth is that there are clearly great mysteries at work-- but the mysteries of creation, of consciousness, and so on, do not require a personal God idea.  They require diligent real investigation much more than the suspension of disbelief.  To be frank, your religion hasn't really progressed much in the past 2000 years-- right or wrong, it is not growing in interesting ways, and not adding new contributions to our society…My position is this: a real believer in God must look to facts as the expression of God's truths.  That means dropping mythology and investigating actual truths through observation and experimentation.  In other words, if you aren't primarily interested in Scientific inquiry as the best tool for learning the truth, you are shouting about God while covering your eyes and ears to avoid being exposed to the truth.  The deliberate suspension of disbelief, then, isn't service to God-- it's evidence of a lack of faith that wherever in the Universe you look, you will necessarily find God written in everything from QM particles out to the farthest reaches of the Universe.

That sounded a bit hyperbolic to me. I often write in a more polemic style to make a point. I will assume you were doing the same.

Many skeptics suggest that believers have failed some epistemic obligation. They wrap this idea with the dubious moral imperative that no one should believe anything without proof as some kind of cognitive obligation. In their opinion, anyone who fails in that moral duty must be either dishonest or indoctrinated or mentally deficient for not adhering to the tenets of classical foundationalism.  It’s text book circular reasoning – claiming that classical foundationalism is true by appealing to classical foundationalism. (and then insulting those who don't agree)

So in the end, Benny, your appeals to Science TM as the only reliable means to arrive at truths stands on feet of clay. There really isn’t any proof that classical foundationalism exhausts all the means by which people can gain knowledge. What if, instead of being the opposite of knowledge, true faith is a special kind of knowledge, in the same category as self-evident principles and incorrigible experiences. Or to see it from another angle, true skepticism has no downward limit and ultimately undermines even classical foundationalism. What if our incorrigible experiences are illusions? What if self-evident propositions are cognitive tricks aimed only at fitness and not truth? At some point a fellow must grant that he has only made an existential choice, completely without appeal to outside principles, about how he goes about understanding the world.

Next I submit to you ( and some of my Christian brothers) that your observations about religion look in the wrong direction. Religion is not a form of inquiry about the natural world. That is indeed the domain of the sciences and the humanities. Religious practice is a way to cultivate a relationship with the divine and truths it reveal do not progress because they are timeless answers to the most primal longings of the human heart.