Gospel & Universe ⏯ Systems

Churches of Thought

The Metaphor of Churches - The Pendulum - Core & Secondary Messages

⏯

The Metaphor of Churches

Critical thinking and agnosticism aim to tear away the veils that separate us from truth, whether written with a small t or a large T. Speaking metaphorically, critical thinking abides in the church of scholarship, which has traditionally been located in secular schools, and especially in colleges and universities. The metaphor is useful, since this church of scholarship is an institution, as is the church of religion. And like the latter, it also has a set of values, and is subject to obsessions, fads, and biases. Often the biases of the two churches are related, which isn’t surprising since both are creations and reflections of the societies in which they operate. For instance, only recently were women allowed to fully participate in university life. Only more recently have they been allowed into the highest levels of most protestant churches. Even now women aren’t allowed into the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

Other hindrances to academic objectivity include corporate and personal interests which might warp the directions a university takes, the applications that can be made of its research, as well as the types of people a university accepts or promotes. This problem is common to all institutions, yet is of particular concern at a university, where the institution is itself supposedly dedicated to the idea of impartial exploration and universal access. Yet universities are also publicly funded and ought to prepare citizens for the companies and systems which are the working engines of the economy. This is why the question of private universities and the question of corporate funding at public universities are big issues.

Other hindrances to the unhindered exploration of truth with a small t include relying too strongly on tradition or discarding tradition too lightly in favour of recent trends. Like critical thinking, the church of scholarship thrives when it doesn’t stick dogmatically to any formula or pre-determined outcome, such as the promotion of any particular gender, class, economic theory, or political model. The only dogma that might be helpful is following reason, both in the sense of being rational, logical, and scientific, and in the sense of being reasonable, fair, practical, compassionate, and humane.

The School of Athens (Raphael, 1511) above, with its comic counterpart below: Parody of Raphael’s ‘School of Athens’ (Joshua Reynolds, 1751)

In general, fads and biases in the church of scholarship differ from those in the church of religion, whose aim is usually to explore and protect a pre-determined belief or theological system. If, for instance, a revered theological text asserts or intimates the superiority of men over women, it’s difficult to stay true to the original message of the text and yet remain fair and reasonable at the same time. The universities don’t run into this problem because they don’t have an unchangeable original message or aim. Or, if they do, one might say that they aim to explore reality, come what may. They aim to improve human life by rigorously confronting the questions and problems that life presents in the past, the present, and the future. The lack of specificity is key here. For instance, they don’t take a statement of Socrates and turn it into a fundamental principle that can’t be changed. They’re certainly not constrained to take seriously statements like that found in Ephesians 5:24: “as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.” As a result, the church of the university is, in general, more flexible than the church of religion in rejecting archaic ideas and in accommodating new forms of thinking.

And yet, human nature being what it is, often the professors at university forget the most basic premises, and start thinking that they know it all. They would do well to remember Socrates’ saying, “Intelligent individuals learn from every thing and every one; average people, from their experiences. The stupid already have all the answers.”

⏯

The Pendulum

The church of scholarship can at times be too open to new ways of thinking. At times the pendulum can swing too far — for instance, from the outdated conservative to the faddishly correct. The recent extremes to which some people have taken the theories of deconstruction, post-colonialism, and identity politics are hopefully the widest swing of the pendulum. Like previous trends, they’ll hopefully go through a winnowing process. Ideally or eventually, scholars will keep what’s valuable and throw out the rest. For instance, deconstruction is an intellectual tool that helped to re-examine discipline bias, yet this tool shouldn’t be confused with the magical decoding ring some made it out to be in the late 20th Century. Equality of race and gender is an enormously important value that’s strongly aligned with post-colonialism, yet it shouldn’t be confused with silencing traditional, conservative, or dissenting views.

My notion that identity politics is just a fad and will surely pass may be too optimistic— at least according to Camille Paglia in a 2018 interview (here):

Most established professors in the 1970s probably believed that the new theory trend was a fad that would blow away like autumn leaves. The greatness of the complex and continuous Western tradition seemed self-evident: the canon would surely stand, even if supplemented by new names. Well, guess what? Helped along by a swelling horde of officious, overpaid administrators, North American universities became, decade by decade, political correctness camps. Out went half the classics, as well as pedagogically useful survey courses demonstrating sequential patterns in history (now dismissed as a “false narrative” by callow theorists). Bookish, introverted old-school professors were not prepared for guerrilla warfare to defend basic scholarly principles or to withstand waves of defamation and harassment.

However, it is indeed difficult to understand why major professors already in safe, powerful positions avoided direct combat. For example, although he had made passing dismissive remarks about post-structuralism (“Foucault and soda water”), Harold Bloom never systematically engaged or critiqued the subject or used his access to the general media to endorse debate, which was left instead to self-identified conservatives.

The problem of liberals who dislike identity politics, but leave it for conservatives to fight, is a real one. Perhaps reading comfortably in an armchair or discoursing at cocktails parties has weakened a fair number of spines. Or perhaps obsessions were coddled to the point that the obsessed could no longer see the obsessions of those around them. Or perhaps the academic elite wasn’t that bright to begin with. All these possibilities are at play in the wonderful parody by Reynolds:

It’s hard to say at the present moment when the pendulum will swing back in academia, especially given the pull at the conservative end, which can itself morph into a more extreme attraction, which in turn can create a more extreme form of identity politics — hopefully not ad infinitum. Yet this swinging of the pendulum doesn’t change the fact that the universities have always been prone to fads and fashions which get winnowed in time. What will remain, hopefully, is 1. the ideal of education, which includes exploration, critical thinking, and open debate, and 2. the core notion that universities are funded by society because they prepare adults for a deeper understanding of the many fields of study that are essential for the progress of society. We don’t need identity politics, but we need equality. We don’t need the Queen’s English, but we need clear communication. We don’t need politically correct art, but we need art. And of course, we need doctors, lawyers, biologists, chemists, physicists, engineers, translators, political scientists, historians, sociologists, psychologists, playwrights, librarians, etc. — the training of which is the continued responsibility of the college and university system.

⏯

Core & Secondary Messages

The churches of religion and scholarship both aim to benefit society, yet the core philosophies — otherworldly in religious churches and worldly in scholarly churches — remain distinct. In general, the more true religious churches stay to their core message, the more they’re considered churches. The more true universities stay to their goal of critical thinking, the less they’re called churches and the more they’re called universities.

I like to think that the more expanded the thinking that goes on at a university, the closer it comes to being a universe city, that is, 1) a place where thinking isn’t defined by certain creeds which are associated with certain parts of the world, and 2) a place where people can think beyond human definitions (for instance, to explore the rights of animals or the possibility of complex civilizations beyond Earth). As Socrates said, “I am not an Athenian or a Greek, but a citizen of the world."

It’s no surprise that the church of scholarship was once very close to the church of religion: most early universities were organized by religion and were a humanistic extension of the more religion-centred scholarship of the Middle Ages. It’s also no surprise that as religious positions diverged around the 16th century, a form of secularism emerged that gave critical thinkers, scientists, and free thinkers a path to the Modern world.

The preacher continued to preach, yet his message was increasingly challenged by critical thinkers if it continued to champion myth over reason, if it continued to glorify a particular group of Elect believers over a growing mass of dissenters and non-believers, and if it continued to privilege men over women, Caucasians over Africans or Asians, heterosexuals over homosexuals, or any one group of people over another. In this sense, critical thinking, secularism, and democracy went hand in hand, together challenging religion to keep its moral and hopeful ideals and yet respond to the equally difficult demands of logic, justice, and science.

The core notions of critical thinking and religion appear the same — truth — yet because critical thinkers and religious thinkers define truth so differently, the similarity is in some ways an illusion. I say in some ways because the illusion applies more to primary core messages or doctrine than it does to secondary messages or morality. The core messages of religion are already revealed. For instance, the Jewish people had a special covenant with God, and Jesus is the Son of God. These are already fixed and hence don't resemble the ever-changing, many-headed primordial beasts still encountered in the scholarly realm. Yet the moral integrity of the secondary messages — striving for truth and respecting truth — are strikingly similar. Of course, they take many directions, yet, even then, many of these are parallel. Religious and secular people both approach the world with an altruistic aim: to see what's true or right, and to act with discipline and understanding. For instance, if one reads in the Bible that one shouldn't steal, one feels compelled to follow this moral code. Likewise, if one learns in a science text that the environment is in danger, one feels compelled to do something about it. Religious thought may be otherworldy and spiritual yet it isn't detached from caring for others; indeed, much religious instruction is moral rather than doctrinal. Likewise, critical thought may be detached and intellectual, yet it isn't disinterested in its relation to people and the issues affecting them. 

Despite this unifying morality, the core messages of religion and critical thought remain distinct, and this leads to at least one major difference in outcome. While religious messages stay the same and hence for some are able to offer a stable and comforting Truth, critical thinking doesn't necessarily lead to comfort, seldom finds stable truths, and never leads to an overwhelming, all-encompassing Truth with a capital T. There may be excitement in exploring new directions and new ways of being, yet there's also danger and anxiety. Not everyone feels comfortable charting new courses. While there may be a sort of ruthless comfort in distancing oneself from merely hopeful or opportunistic philosophies (which can give comfort with one hand and steal authenticity with the other), there’s also angst and alienation. This isn't to say that religion is always comforting: some feel a Jesuit sort of pressure to act in saintly ways, and some feel intense guilt because they’re unable to act in these ways. There’s also an uncomfortable emphasis on sin, which is hard to get rid of historically, since it goes back at least to Augustine's doctrine of original sin. This notion is hard to get rid of personally or psychologically, since it's often inculcated at an early age. Yet there's also repentance and redemption, which largely releases the sinner from guilt and anguish. Critical thinkers, like agnostics and atheists, must live without this miraculous release from imperfection.

While religious thinking claims to lead to Truth with a capital T, agnosticism and critical thinking never claims to have even sighted such a Truth. Agnosticism and critical thinking may not lead directly to truth, even with a small t, yet they point in its general direction. 

⏯

Next: Unlimited Agnosticism

Back to Top

Table of Contents - Annotated Contents - Layout - Core Beliefs