More of Mueller's Chips

These are from 'The Science of Religion: Lecture One.' Enjoy!

'In these our days it is almost impossible to speak of religion without giving offense either on the right or on the left. With some, religion seems too sacred a subject for scientific treatment; with others it stands on a level with alchemy and astrology, a mere tissue of errors or hallucinations, far beneath the notice of the man of science. In a certain sense, I accept both these views.'

'No one-this I can promise-who attends these lectures, be he Christian or Jew, Hindu or Mohammedan, shall hear his own way of serving God spoken of irreverently. But true reverence does not consist in declaring a subject, because it is dear to us, to be unfit for free and honest inquiry; far from it! True reverence is shown in treating every subject, however sacred, however dear to us, with perfect confidence; without fear and without favor; with tenderness and love, by all means, but, before all, with an unflinching and uncompromising loyalty to truth'

'But for the discovery of truth there is nothing so useful as the study of errors, and we know that in alchemy there lay the seed of chemistry, and that astrology was more or less a yearning and groping after the true science of astronomy'

'People ask, What is gained by comparison? Why, all higher knowledge is gained by comparison, and rests on comparison. If it is said that the character of scientific research in our age is preeminently comparative; this really means that our researches are now based on the widest evidence that can be obtained, on the broadest inductions that can be grasped by the human mind'

'As there is a faculty of speech, independent of all the historical forms of language, so we may speak of a faculty of faith in man, independent of all historical religions. If we say it is religion which distinguishes man from the animal, we do not mean the Christian or Jewish religions only; we do not mean any special religion, but we mean a mental faculty, that faculty which, independent of, nay in spite of sense and reason, enables man to apprehend the Infinite under varying disguises. Without that faculty, no religion, not even the lowest worship of idols and fetiches, would be possible; and if we will but listen attentively, we can hear in all religions a groaning of the spirit, a struggle to conceive the inconceivable, to utter the unutterable, a longing after the Infinite, a love of God'

'There is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason, but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world, how neither sense nor reason have been able to overcome it, which it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense'

'Lastly, and this, I believe, is the most important advantage which we enjoy as students of the history of religion, we have been taught the rules of critical scholarship'

'The Buddhist legends teem with miserable miracles attributed to Buddha and his disciples-miracles which in wonderfulness certainly surpass the miracles of any other religion; yet in their own sacred canon a saying of Buddha;'s is recorded, prohibiting his disciples from working miracles, though challenged by the multitudes who required a sign that they might believe. And what is the miracle that Buddha commands his disciples to perform? 'Hide your good deeds,' he says, 'and confess before the world the sins you have committed.'

'It was only after Buddha had left the world to enter into Nirvana, that his disciples attempted to recall the sayings and doings of their departed friend and master. At that time everything that seemed to redound to the glory of Buddha, however extraordinary and incredible, was eagerly welcomed, while witnesses who would have ventured to criticize or reject unsupported statements, or to detract in any way from the holy character of Buddha, had no chance of even being listened to. And when, in spite of all this, differences of opinion arose, they were not brought to the test by a careful weighing of evidence, but the names of 'unbeliever,' and 'heretic' were quickly invented'

'We here learn a lesson, which is confirmed by the study of other religions, that canonical books, though they furnish in most cases the most ancient and most authentic information within the reach of the student of religion, are not to be trusted implicitly, nay, that they must be submitted to a more stringent test than any other historical books.'

'Those who would use a comparative study of religions as a means for debasing Christianity by exalting the other religions of mankind, are to my mind as dangerous allies as those who think it necessary to debase all other religions in order to exalt Christianity. Science wants no partisans. I make no secret that true Christianity seems to me to become more and more exalted the more we appreciate the treasures of truth hidden in the despised religions of the world. But no one can honestly arrive at that conviction, unless he uses honestly the same measure for all religions.'

Mueller's Reasons for a Constant Critique of Personal Religious Faith

So it's my first semester of graduate school at Western Michigan University (I ended up getting a BA in my first graduate school course, Empiricisms, and pretty much A-ced the undergrad course, deductive logic, that i was auditing to fulfill the symbolic logic (but really predicate logic) requirement for the master's degree in philosophy I will hopefully be getting in two years :) and I'm taking a course called Classics in Comparative Religion. We are reading 'The Essential Max Mueller: On Language, Mythology, and Religion' and I really like some of the things he talked about in his Preface to Chips From a German Worshop, so I thought I would repeat them here, while I'm watching #1 OSU beat #2 Texas 17-7 with 10 minutes left to go in the 4th quarter, but first, you must understand that Mueller was a Christian and this is given from the perspectifve of him trying to defend his own Christian faith from the field of comparative religion, which he practically invented, so in a way, it's his own faith and reason at war with each other, check out what I mean

'Nothing is more difficult to seize than the salient features, the traits that constitute the permanent expression and real character of a religion...

We speak glibly of Buddhism and Brahmanism, forgetting that we are generalizing on the most intimate convictions of millions and millions of human souls, divided by half the world and by thousands of years...

The Fathers of the Church…admitted freely that a comparison of Christianity and other religions was useful. ‘If there is any agreement,’ Basilius remarked, ‘between their (the Greeks) doctrines and our own, it may benefit us to know them; if not, then to compare them and learn how they differ, will help not a little towards confirming that which is the better of the two. But this is not the only advantage of a comparative study of religions. The Science of Religion will for the first time assign to Christianity its right place among the religions of the world; it will show for the firm time fully what was meant by the fullness of time; it will restore to the whole history of the world, in its unconscious progress towards Christianity, its true and sacred character…

[Note from me: this next passage is crucial to understanding Nietzsche’s view on religion] We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge for it the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he instructs his own life, and the lives of those who are most dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, not claim any immunities for Christianity…

And while watching their [religions] appearance in different countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home…

If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, i.e., without a constant return to its fountain-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others, suffers from its contact with the world…

Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases….What they (the founders of the worlds religions) desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and matured in the his communings with his God…

Never shall I forget the deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found everything different from what he had imagined in his lonely meditations…It was the Bible only that saved him from returning to his old religion, and helped him to discern beneath theological futilities, accumulated during nearly two thousand years, beneath pharisaical hypocrisy, infidelity, and want of charity, the buried, but still living seed, committed to the earth by Christ and his Apostles…

But to the true believer [the believer in Truth], truth, wherever it appears, is welcome, nor will any doctrine seem the less true or the less precious, because it was seen, not only by Moses or Christ, but likewise by Buddha or Lao-tse…

But in the history of the world, our religion, like our own language, is but one out of many; and in order to understand fully the position of Christianity in the history of the world, and its true place among the religions of mankind, we must compare it, not with Judaism only, but with the religious aspirations of the whole world, with all, in fact, that Christianity came either to destroy or to fulfill…

Justin Martyr, in his Apology (A.D. 139), has this memorable passage: ‘One article of faith then is, that Christ is the first begotten of God, and we have already proved Him to be the very Logos (or universal Reason), of which mankind are all partakers; and therefore those who live according to the Logos are Christians, notwithstanding they may pass with you for Atheists; such among the Greeks were Sokrates and Herakleitos and the like…they who have made or make the Logos or Reason the rule of their actions are Christians, and men without fear and trembling…

Clement said ‘Philosophy, therefore, prepares and opens the way to those who are made perfect by Christ’…And again: ‘It is clear that the same God to whom we owe the Old and New Testaments, gave also to the Greeks their Greek philosophy, by which the Almighty is glorified among the Greeks’…

[and finally,]

Every religion, even the most imperfect and degraded, has something that ought to be sacred to us, for there is in all religions a secret yearning after the [Truth, or] true, though unknown God.’

Great Stuff in my opinion!

Man's participation in being

Alex sent this article to all of us and I thought I would post it on my blog, along with the responses to it. Enjoy!

"If we look at man as he really is known in our concrete experience, we see that his reality is built on the metaphysical fact that his being has its origin in participation in being. His nature craves further participation in being and all his activities are a driving toward a goal which consists in perfect participation in being, in communion with his fellowmen and with the Transcendent. We see that each person's dynamic, physical and metaphysical nature, from its very conception, grows up automatically, spontaneously reaching out for more being, for the plenitude of being. At the moment when the person dramatically breaks the barrier of the womb and appears on the state of world history, he is caught in the acts of crying, clutching, straining to grasp, to be with other persons and things, to attain greater degrees of being. This spontaneous language of cries and gestures revealing the hunger for greater being testifies to man's innante drive to transcend himself, not merely horizontally to men and things but also vertically to God. Thus, 'to be' means 'to be with'; for man especially, esse est co-esse. Human existence, if it is to be authentically human, must be existence in communion. Isolatioin and alienation are the death of human persons. In a metaphysical depth far below the sociological surface, 'No man is an island.'

As a man grows up through physical to intellectual awareness, he is called upon to translate the natural, spontaneous attraction of his nature for greater being into a reasonable, conscious, free, loving decision to be with the other; he is called upon to donate himself to the other --- to things, his fellowmen, God. Only in giving himself in this reasonable manner does man discover and develop his full person, his subjecthood, his I. Now the fact that man is free and able to refuse to be with the other renders the future of man ambigious. Sooner or later, and indeed quite frequently in his life, the great crisis and challenge comes to every man: Shall I say Yes or No to the Thou? And this brings us full circle to our explanation of atheism. Communion is a form of freedom, of love; it is not a problem; it is a mystery in which every man is involved. Communion is the free gift of the self offered and accepted between an I and a Thou; it is mutual surrender of love. No matter how often experienced, communion is an inexhaustible mystery of love; it will always be the cause of eternal wonderment. Now atheism is the contrary of communion vis a vis the Absolute Thou; it is the mystery of the great refusal. Yet man's greatest dignity consists in this: His metaphysical need and hunger for great being, for the plenitude of being, testifies to the infinite goal to which he is called. He is called to consummate conversation and communion with the Absolute Thou. The atheist deliberately attempts to break his vital, intimate bond of communion with God. He refuses to transcend, to go up higher at the invitation of his nature and the Author of his nature. The atheist says: 'I will not ascend.'

To the believer the atheist is a mystery; to the atheist the believer is a mystery. Somehow man must try to understand both to the best of his ability. What the atheist does not see is that in rejecting God he rejects himself. In refusing to give himself in spiritto God, he refuses to transcend himself in the experience of a felt and lived communion with God. In effect he banishes God from his own horizon and exiles himself from the infinite visibility of God. He determines to contract his vision within the blinders of time. God no longer influences his life or his world because God, by man's decree, no longer lives or indeed exists anywhere."

- Fr. Vincent P. Miceli, SJ; The Gods of Atheism

My Response:

Hey man, you sent this to me like a month ago and I haven't really had time to respond until now. With all the discussions going on on email, I figure if I don't get to this now, I'll never get to it, so here goes. I think that the first paragraph is awesome. Metaphysical poetry, it's really beautiful. The quote 'This spontaneous language of cries and gestures revealing the hunger for greater being testifies to man's innante drive to transcend himself, not merely horizontally to men and things but also vertically to God' reminds me of Nietzsche and Plato and Maher's Being Is. Nietzsche had hidden in his writings this same desire of man to transcend himself. That's how Nietzsche wrote, he didn't come right out and say what he meant like so much philosophy nowadays, he hid his true meanings in his work so that only those with 'eyes that see and ears that hear' would be able to understand him. He even says this himself. The man knew the Bible better than maybe anybody else in history up to that point (I'm very convinced of this) and used the different levels of meaning embedded in scripture as a literary device for his own work, truly the work of a spiritual master.

Anyways, I'm done praising Nietzsche, at least for now. I think your article takes a strange turn when he talks about atheism. It took me by surprise that he introduced this subject matter, I thought he was just going to keep talking about man's desire for communion with being, which, as a self-proclaimed mystic philosopher, I can never get enough of. I guess my main problem with the latter half of this article is the definition of atheism that he gives. I think what he says seem to attach a lot more things to atheism than the defintion of atheism would allow. Atheism, in it's strictest sense, only means a non-belief in the theistic version of God. So most Eastern religious systems are atheist in this sense, but pantheistic in that they believe in other versions of God. These eastern religious people can still practice what this author calls communion with the Thou, although I think they do it differently and they have different names for it. Does that mean they are atheist, in this man's definition of the term? I think not.

In fact, one of the philosophers that teachers here at WMU, Quinton Smith, is probably the most spiritual atheist I have ever become acquanted with. He believes in communion and ascension, although no in the Christian sense. He would say he's an atheist, but I would disagree. Anyways, the last problem I have with this article's definition of atheism is when it states 'The atheist deliberately attempts to break his vital, intimate bond of communion with God. He refuses to transcend, to go up higher at the invitation of his nature and the Author of his nature. The atheist says: 'I will not ascend.' this is not necessarily true. I guess it all depends upon the definition of ascension. A lot of atheists are very intellectual and do a lot of reading and writing, so one could say that they ascend intellectually, and couldn't one say that intellectual ascension is a form of spiritual ascension. I think that argument could be made and thus, according to the article's definition of atheism, these atheists wouldn't be atheists.

I think to be an atheist according to this article would take a lot more effort than most atheists give in behalf of their being atheist. They would have to reject, not only communion with the Transcendent Thou, but communion with their fellow man, because communion with their fellow man, in my opinion, is a version of communion with the Transcendent Thou. Also, they would have to refuse to ascend, but is this really possible? Doesn't everybody learn something everyday? Even if it's what time Mork and Mindy comes on at in the middle of night or how long you should pop your popcorn bag in the microwave. Isn't this some type of learning and isn't all learning a form of transcendent, ascension-like behavior? I guess I would like to hear this articles definition of ascension before I could really make these judgements. But to me, his entire article rests upon some very strict and rigid defintions of atheism, communion and theism and I think they are too strict and in some cases, incorrect.

On that note, I do like how the article ends, especially the line 'What the atheist does not see is that in rejecting God he rejects himself.' this quote is more true than any of us can ever truly know.

Sara said:

I don't think anyone on this list is an atheist. Some are just not as confident in being able to read Gods will as others who seem to think they are in constant communication with him.

Alex said:

I did not post this because I thought anyone was an atheist...I do not seek needless arguments. I only posted it because I thought it was an eloquent expression of the relationship between the creature and the Creator.

Maher said:

I could not help but wonder if it was not for religion and the selfish claim of the ownership of God, do atheists exist? I don't think so..the atheists i know are such because they escaped religion and the ones i know are the among the most wonderful beings i have ever encountered!.

Dave said:

Perhaps once you get beyond the point of wondering if there really is a God or actually believe that he has a purpose, perhaps you will be able to feel his presence.

Dave said:

I too have suffered because of religion. It nearly destroyed my parents, and left a mark on me. I did not stop believing in God, but man. This is why I do not consider myself religious. Religious behavior is for man’s benefit to others. It is to impress others. It is to say “looky at what I have done”. I am a believer and attend a local congregation, but I don’t consider myself religious. Religious zealots are the cause of the worlds’ problems. Religious zealots crucified Christ. Religious zealots hunted Ghandi. Religious zealots killed most of Jesus’ friends(apostles). I have a personal opinion on organized religion and am very cynical. This is why I agree it’s a crutch for the weak minded. Ask yourself this one question…specifically Alex. Could you be where you want to be in your “religious walk” if you did not or could not attend church?. If your answer is NO, I feel for you. That is not true Christianity. Being wrapped up in ceremony and traditions only wastes your time and money. You have not yet begun to scratch the surface. Just my opinion, but as most of you have pointed out, I think I am the only one that’s right.

Alex said:

I am sorry for your suffering and I admire your perseverence in belief of God. The thing is if one thinks religion is all about

Being wrapped up in ceremony and traditions only wastes your time and money.

then that is wrong. Those things are accidental and are only meant to help the person elevate its mind and heart to God. If I did not have the saints to look up to who perfectly understood "religion" then I would perhaps not be Catholic. They knew how to love and gave themselves entirely for the love of neighbor and the love of God which is the greatest commandment. That is what I am trying to do although I know I fail all too often.

Sara said:

do you read my emails? my one certainty IS that there is a God.


Alex said:

Hey Jason. Thanks for giving a well-thought out reply. I have to admit that it was probably unfair of me to single out this passage from a work that is nearly 500 pages long which strangely enough I have not finished reading (I am only on page 23....sigh) Since I am not a philosopher (unlike you Jason, lol) I will have to ponder what you have said before I attempt some sort of reply which I will not do in a combatative spirit. Nonetheless I think we can all agree that contemplation of these things is the highest act a rational being can perform!

I said:

Yeah, I guess I just didn't like this guy's characterization of atheism. In his view, atheists don't commune with God, which most atheists would probably agree with, but on my panentheistic (not pantheistic, the two are often confused) view of God, I don't know if this is possible unless you live in a cave and even then you'd still probably have some form of communion with the animals there and thus, would have some form of communion with God, although not very much. On my view of God, the only way to not have communion with It is by complete, total and utter isolation from almost everything in the Universe, which is probably impossible. Also on his view, atheists don't ascend, which some atheists might say is correct because there is nothing to ascend to, but again, what is ascension and how does one ascend? If learning is a form of ascension, and I believe it is, everybody ascends a little everyday, unless of course, one lives in a cave and never learns anything ever, which again, is probably impossible. I guess, like always, i'm asking for the criteria here, the criteria for ascension and the criteria for communion. Read some more of this guys book, let me know what his answer is to this criterion question, and we'll go from there. Talk to you soon