RE: Reflecting on Atheism.
November 20, 2013 at 7:34 pm
(This post was last modified: November 20, 2013 at 8:29 pm by arvind13.)
and by the way, Genkaus, another way you misunderstood my claim: I don't claim that Hinduism is not a religion. My claim is that Hinduism doesn't exist. It is just a conceptual gestalt that westernized scholars used that helped them make sense of the various traditions in India. The different parts that went into the creation of such a gestalt are real like temples, statues, festivals, pujas etc are real. But there is no unity between these different parts that make them into a coherent unit called hinduism. The theory that guided these scholars was Christian theology.
Now the question is: why did so many brilliant minds over all these years consistently make the same mistake without realizing they were operating under a christian framework?
Since Christianity claims to be the truth about the cosmos, and this truth is for all humankind, it is compelled to spread and universalize. This process of universalization has a double dynamic.
One of the methods it spreads is something everybody is familiar with: proselytization and conversion. There is another way that Christianity spreads. It is called Secularization:
On one hand Christianity is ‘a’ religion. A specific religion with specific features and doctrines. On the other hand, because of its claim to be THE truth about the cosmos (everything there is, was, will be), it is also an all-encompassing worldview.
Because of this, Christian theological doctrines and beliefs gradually start breaking out of the confines of Christianity and becomes the common sense of the society in question (western culture); to the point where they don’t see them as Christian anymore, it just becomes a self-evident truth. Self-evident truths like: all human actions are based on belief/intentional states. In other words, Christian doctrines shed their “Christianness” and spread in a secularized form . This is what is called secularization.
In fact the very distinction between religion and secular is a distinction drawn by a religion within a religion and is part of the double dynamic of religion. Two worlds are created within a religion: the world of religion and the world of human beings. The latter includes Law, State, child-rearing practices, working as a computer engineer, building cars, setting up factories, designing and building cities. The world of religion is, of course, the world of God’s Will, His creations, His creatures. That means, it necessarily includes the `secular world’. That is to say, the `secular’ world of ours is how the religious world brings it forth, as a secularised religious world.
This double dynamic of religion has shaped western culture for the past 2000 years. The Christian theological framework becomes the foundation for studying and understanding human beings, their societies and cultures.
I can give a long list of examples to support to demonstrate this claim:
Rights, Nation State, the notion of ‘person’ and personality, freedom of choice, rule of law, capitalism, the social sciences themselves (anthropology, psychology, sociology) and yes Atheism
All of these were born out of a Christian framework. If anyone is interested, I can elaborate.
Now the question is: why did so many brilliant minds over all these years consistently make the same mistake without realizing they were operating under a christian framework?
Since Christianity claims to be the truth about the cosmos, and this truth is for all humankind, it is compelled to spread and universalize. This process of universalization has a double dynamic.
One of the methods it spreads is something everybody is familiar with: proselytization and conversion. There is another way that Christianity spreads. It is called Secularization:
On one hand Christianity is ‘a’ religion. A specific religion with specific features and doctrines. On the other hand, because of its claim to be THE truth about the cosmos (everything there is, was, will be), it is also an all-encompassing worldview.
Because of this, Christian theological doctrines and beliefs gradually start breaking out of the confines of Christianity and becomes the common sense of the society in question (western culture); to the point where they don’t see them as Christian anymore, it just becomes a self-evident truth. Self-evident truths like: all human actions are based on belief/intentional states. In other words, Christian doctrines shed their “Christianness” and spread in a secularized form . This is what is called secularization.
In fact the very distinction between religion and secular is a distinction drawn by a religion within a religion and is part of the double dynamic of religion. Two worlds are created within a religion: the world of religion and the world of human beings. The latter includes Law, State, child-rearing practices, working as a computer engineer, building cars, setting up factories, designing and building cities. The world of religion is, of course, the world of God’s Will, His creations, His creatures. That means, it necessarily includes the `secular world’. That is to say, the `secular’ world of ours is how the religious world brings it forth, as a secularised religious world.
This double dynamic of religion has shaped western culture for the past 2000 years. The Christian theological framework becomes the foundation for studying and understanding human beings, their societies and cultures.
I can give a long list of examples to support to demonstrate this claim:
Rights, Nation State, the notion of ‘person’ and personality, freedom of choice, rule of law, capitalism, the social sciences themselves (anthropology, psychology, sociology) and yes Atheism
All of these were born out of a Christian framework. If anyone is interested, I can elaborate.
