Creationists

ROGER SCRUTON ON THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS

By pure coincidence I happen to be reading, among others, Barry C. Smith’s “Questions of Taste: The Philosophy of Wine” (2007), a selection of essays on wine by noted contemporary philosophers. The first essay is by Roger Scruton, one of my favourites, who has written extensively on aesthetics. Scruton is a realist in respect to aesthetics, i.e., he maintains that a picture, for example, is beautiful (or not) for reasons which are independent of the particular likes or dislikes of the viewer. Beauty, in other words, rests upon objective epistemological criteria and, as a consequence, inheres in the artistic object regardless of what anyone thinks about it.

In his essay “The Philosophy of Wine”, Scruton maintains that wine has a distinct religious meaning which other forms of intoxication lack, a meaning inextricably intertwined with the nature of religious consciousness itself. This has a direct bearing on the bitch under review. Here’s Scruton:

“I suggest that there are two quite distinct strands that compose the religious consciousness, and that our understanding of religion has suffered from too great an emphasis on one of them. The first strand, which we over-emphasize, is that of belief. The second strand, which is slipping away from modern thought (though not from modern reality) is that which might be summarized in the term ‘membership’, by which I mean all the customs, ceremonies and practices whereby the scared is renewed, so as to be the real presence among us, and a living endorsement of the human community. It was through the cult and not the creed that the adept in the pagan religions of Greece and Rome proved his religious orthodoxy and his oneness with his fellows.” (p.19)

The problem for Scruton is that, “Western civilization has tended in recent centuries to emphasize belief – in particular the belief in a transcendental realm and an omnipotent king who presides over it. This theological emphasis, by representing religion as a matter of theological doctrine, exposes it to refutation. Theological beliefs are rationalizations of the cult, and the function of the cult is is membership”. (Ibid.)

For Scruton it is membership in the cult and not the creed in the form of some belief in the “transcendental garments of theology” which is primary. But it is the latter rather than the former with which the current bitch mistakenly takes issue.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!

ROGER SCRUTON ON THE RELIGIOUS CONSCIOUSNESS (II)

Well, I don’t know. I still think Roger Scruton – see my “Roger Scruton on The Religious Consciousness” (01/13, 10:21AM) – had an interesting point. If religion were not seen so much as a matter of exclusive and irreconcilable theological doctrines about some transcendental and often hostile bearded man-in-the-sky and more as a cult in which inclusive membership was the operative concept, then things might be a lot better. But maybe that’s expecting too much.

A pleasure as always.

Cheerio!