{"id":267,"date":"2008-11-30T09:17:29","date_gmt":"2008-11-30T17:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/wordpress\/?p=267"},"modified":"2008-12-05T17:44:54","modified_gmt":"2008-12-06T01:44:54","slug":"ilana-counterblogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/ilana-counterblogs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ilana Counterblogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ilana Mercer counterblogs<\/a> (read down a bit) to my post on “Theology Outside the Tribe<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

To her points:<\/p>\n

Yes, indeed, Islamic theology is interesting to a lot of people, as the excellent sales of Robert
\nSpencer’s books<\/a> show. That is a clinical interest, though\u00a0\u2014 a hostile one, in fact.\u00a0 Psychiatrists are interested in insanity, but they don’t want to be insane.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I said that “Any given theology is of zero interest to anyone outside the tribe,” I meant of interest in the way that a real<\/em> intellectual discipline\u00a0\u2014 math, biology, history\u00a0\u2014 is of general interest. From the fact that a person wants to study microbiology, I can deduce nothing about his tribe or fictive tribe (e.g. religion). From the fact that a person wants to make a serious, engaged, non-hostile study of Islamic theology, I can deduce with high probability that he is a Muslim.<\/p>\n

Talmudic study “involves logic and law.” Sure it does. As I said, it is intellectually formidable, as are the other high and ancient theologies. However, my space-program analogy applies:\u00a0 If you want non-stick frying pans, go develop them\u00a0\u2014 the Saturn V rocket is not a necessary piece of equipment. If you want to train kids in law and logic, go train ’em. The Gods and the Afterlives aren’t necessary parts of it.<\/p>\n

(You can make a case that they might once have been.\u00a0 Perhaps you can’t, in the historical development of a culture, get to law and logic without going through theology.\u00a0 I think that’s possible.\u00a0 As an argument for persisting<\/em> with theology, though, it falls to the midwife counter-argument.\u00a0 You need a midwife to deliver a baby, but she’s no use to you thereafter, and just gets in the way.\u00a0 Pay her off gratefully and send her home.)<\/p>\n

Now, a conservative might say to that:\u00a0 “Well, the religious-based teaching is our customary approach. It’s worked well for us in the past, and we can’t see why we should change it.” I’m sympathetic to that. I’ll only note that properly theological study is founded on supernatural precepts\u00a0\u2014 on fantastic and miraculous things that are supposed to have happened in the remote past. That has to subtract something from a student’s appreciation of logic and natural science.<\/p>\n

(Though from what Ilana says, the Talmud she studied seems to have had the supernatural stuff taken out, like Jefferson’s Bible<\/a>. That doesn’t remove the tribal element\u00a0\u2014 nobody not Jewish is going to learn logic and law in just that way\u00a0\u2014 but it makes it pretty innocuous.)<\/p>\n

Ilana quotes Paul Johnson: “The Bible is essentially a historical work from start to finish.”<\/p>\n

If that were true, every Jewish and Christian theology course would really be a history course. Which is not the case. The Bible is a religious document, with lots of history (and some really good stories, beautiful verse and prose, and first-rate expositions of ethics.) Paul Johnson is a committed old-school RC:\u00a0 see his book of apologetics<\/a>. His opinions about the Bible are correspondingly colored. If you think that Christianity is all true, then of course the Bible will, for you, be as factual as an auto-repair handbook. And if not, not.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The central error of anti-religion crusaders is that they consider the Jewish and Christian traditions systems of ideas, denuded of historical context, to be accepted or rejected on the strength or weakness of their intrinsic logic (or lack thereof). Judaism and Christianity, however, are who we are historically (the same is true, unfortunately, of followers of Islam). One can no sooner denounce them than one can disavow history itself.”<\/p>\n

Ilana loses me here. From the point of view I was applying\u00a0\u2014 i.e. casting a critical eye on the claims of theologians\u00a0to have anything useful to tell us about non-theological topics\u00a0\u2014 the Jewish and Christian traditions are<\/em> systems of ideas. What else are they?<\/p>\n

“What we are historically” is a mess of stuff:\u00a0 Jewish and Christian religion, Greek philosophy, Roman law, Enlightenment science, and all sorts of lesser tribal threads\u00a0\u2014 the moots and parliaments of the Teutonic forests, their<\/em> religion (I am at this moment listening to Das Rheingold<\/em>\u00a0), Arabic numerals, and so on. No thoughtful person accepts the whole shebang uncritically. Probably I’d find Wagner more thrilling if I actually believed<\/em> in Wotan and Fricka. Alas, I don’t. You can cast a wistful, even loving, eye back on the traditions of
\nhumanity while rejecting some of them as untenable in light of later understanding.\u00a0 You may even “denounce”\u00a0aspects of our tradition\u00a0without having “disavowed history.”<\/p>\n

I must say, though, I think Ilana would make a splendid Rheinmaiden; and if she mocked me, I’d be just as upset as the Nibelung dude.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ilana Mercer counterblogs (read down a bit) to my post on “Theology Outside the Tribe.” To her points: Yes, indeed, Islamic theology is interesting to a lot of people, as the excellent sales of Robert Spencer’s books show. That is … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[6],"tags":[39],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":552,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/552"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}