A reader responds to Truth Claims in Science and Religion:
The problem is that a Christian who claims that Jesus was (is) the messiah is not simply claiming that "Christians believe Jesus to be the messiah." Were that the case, there surely would be no argument. Rather, a Christian who makes this claim is claiming that "the God who promised the Jewish people to send them a messiah, sent them Jesus to play this role, but Jesus was not accepted as the messiah by most Jewish people."
This is surely a difficult claim to prove, for all kinds of reasons. But it is clearly more than a claim about cultural definitions. It entails a claim about the existence of a God who chooses to interact with human beings in history, a claim about Jesus' relationship to this God, and a claim about what God intended to do through Jesus, just to name a few.
Exactly.
When I wrote that the truth claims of religion were of a different kind than the truth claims of science, I was commenting on the ongoing Sullivan/Harris dialog, and, in particular, on Sullivan's latest post. Sullivan calls himself a religious moderate, and distinguishes his views from Christian fundamentalism, which he labels "Christianism".
I was addressing a possible stance that a moderate Christian, like Sullivan or readers who identified with him, might want to take. I can't claim to speak for Sullivan, or those readers, but I thought they might find the distinction worth entertaining—especially in light of the following Sullivan quote, which comes from the same post I originally responded to:
Oakeshott places religious life in the mode of practice, not in the mode of philosophy. I have struggled with this argument for a long time, but the older I get, the wiser it seems.
Nevertheless, I do think that my point applies to the entire religious spectrum, including everything between moderates and fundamentalists.
I also think that the reader is correct that many (even most) Christians on that continuum, when making statements like "Jesus is the Messiah" take them to be other than cultural claims.
This discrepancy underlines the point I made in the previous post: there is a great deal of confusion, in practice, between the two types of claim.
The nature of a truth claim is determined, not just by the literal meaning of the words, or even just by what the speaker thinks it means, but by it's actual function, and by its relationship to the world. Most cultural claims are phrased in language that could easily be mistaken for claims about the physical world, because much of our language originates in our encounters with that world.
But there are ways to tell.
For example, is the order of the letters in the alphabet—or, for that matter, the sounds they represent in English—a fact about the nature of the universe, or a fact about a particular human culture?
Here are some tests:
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that it is a fact about the nature of the universe. What if it were to change, without our knowledge?
Suppose that suddenly B comes after C as a fundamental fact about the universe, but no one knows that—we all still think B comes first. What difference would it make in our daily lives. Answer: None. As long as everyone still believed that C came after B, everything would go on as it does now.
But if our belief changed, even if the "fundamental fact" didn't, books would have to be reshelved, filing systems would have to be reordered, new dictionaries would have to be printed. And all of these would be cultural changes.
On the other hand, what if the gravitational constant changed, but no one believed it? There would still be enormous consequences. Orbits of planets, my weight in the morning (if I use a spring-based scale), the physics of air flight—all of these would be affected, whether anyone knew about it or not. And the changes would be physical.
But if we merely believed it had changed, when in fact it hadn't, there would be virtually no effect.
What if the God of Christianity was not, in fact, the same God who promised the Jews a messiah, but Christians never found this out? What would change?
On the other hand, what if the God of Christianity was in fact the same God, but Christians came to believe he wasn't? What changes would occur, and what kind would they be?
Another way to tell whether a claim is about culture or about the universe is to ask how you would confirm it.
If I want to confirm the order of the letters in the alphabet, I turn to the consensus of people who use the alphabet, now or in the past. I have recourse to practitioners, and to history—but ultimately to cultural sources: writings, art perhaps, creations of people and cultures.
If I want to confirm the gravitational constant, I go to universe itself. I make non-cultural observations. It doesn't matter whether the body that I observe falling speaks English or Greek or is even human.
If I want to confirm that the God of Christianity is the same God as the God of ancient Isreal, where do I turn?
In fact, such a claim is cultural by nature. A sheep still has four legs, even if you insist its tail is a leg.
I am not, in saying this, trying to diminish the claim. The idea that scientific truth claims are the only ones with dignity or importance is one of the sources of our current confusion. On the contrary, it is exactly the attempt to conflate the two types which makes religious claims seem ridiculous.
Take the claim that "the same God who promised ancient Israel a king was the God who made Jesus that king". If I mistake that for a scientific claim about the universe, rather than a cultural claim about Christian faith and practice, it quickly becomes absurd.
Consider:
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Anyone who seriously reads both the Hebrew and Christian scriptures could not for one moment think that they are talking about the same God.
The God of ancient Israel thought women caught in adultery should be stoned. Jesus thought they should be forgiven.
The God of ancient Israel demanded that enemies should be killed—women and children included. Jesus thought we should love our enemies.
The list could go on and on. To claim that these were one and the same unchanging God is nonsense, unless one also claims that that God has multiple personalities, or is subject to psychotic breaks.
In fact, the God of ancient Israel is not even the God of modern Judaism—if we insist on denying that the claim is cultural. -
It is impossible to make sense of the word "King", as applied to Jesus, even though it is, by its nature, a cultural term, without adapting it even further, to its role in the faith and practice of Christianity.
Jesus never had a throne or an army or a court, except in a metaphorical sense. The only crown he ever wore was made of thorns. Indeed, the office of King had not existed in Israel for ages, and Jesus never seriously tried to overthrow Rome, or to take back Jerusalem.
The entire claim only makes sense within the metaphors and models of Christian practice. There, it makes great sense, but only there.
It's the insistence that claims like these are not cultural, but scientific, which leads religion into the realm of Boojums and the consequent absurdities all that entails. And it's the confusion of matters of faith and practice with matters of science which leads to crusades and jihad, to terrorism and intolerance, to monkey trials, and, ultimately, to the ridicule of faith.
And, as the reader pointed out, most Christians don't make this distinction.
I just think it would be helpful if they did.
At least, that's what I think today.
