Given the rather
startling popularity of yesterday’s posting of Mortimer Adler’s appearance on Firing
Line and his grilling by William F. Buckley, we decided today to answer the
question that Buckley asked Adler, but which Adler was not able to answer
completely. This was not because Adler
could not answer, but because Buckley tried to get Adler to say what he, Buckley,
wanted Adler to say, rather than what Adler needed to say.
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| Mortimer J. Adler |
The specific
question (which Buckley turned to other matters) was whether all religions are
equally true, to which the common sense reply is, “No, for they all say
different things.” The more nuanced
reply (that Adler started to give) is, “Yes — and no.”
As Adler started
to explain, there are true elements in all faiths and philosophies. These elements are those based on reason,
that is, by applying the human intellect to empirical evidence and drawing
logical conclusions. The common truth in
all faiths and philosophies that are based in any degree on reason is
twofold. One, there is a God (what Aristotle
called “the God of the philosophers”), and, two, there is a general code of
human behavior, the natural law.
There are thus
absolutes in different religions that all acknowledge, what C.S. Lewis called “the
Tao” in his book, The Abolition of Man (1943). Principally, this is the Golden Rule, which
every faith and philosophy that acknowledges reason admits as valid: Do unto
others as you would have them do unto you.
There is often a problem in how people define “other,” but the principle
itself remains the same.
Adler then began
answering the “no’ part of the question, which is when Buckley effectively
derailed the discussion. It remained
interesting and insightful, but it didn’t answer the original question.
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| G.K. Chesterton |
What Adler started
to say is that where the different religions differ is in their “poetic”
elements, those that are not derived from or based on reason. He got as far as pointing out that where
these “poetic” elements contradict reason, they are clearly false, and began
getting into the curious bifurcation that separates faith and reason in a
number of “eastern” religions and philosophies, what Adler called Averoeism and
G.K. Chesterton called Manicheism or “the Double Mind of Man,” which accepts
faith and reason as occupying different compartments, so that faith and reason
can contradict one another.
Of course, in
modern times especially in the West we don’t usually see people holding
incompatible truths consciously.
Instead, non-theists (“atheist” is too strong a word for most
non-believers today, as they’re not willing to accept either theism or atheism
entirely, and back off from each, preferring some equivocation such as “spiritual
but not religious”), look with condescension on religious believers, all the
while admitting some of what theists believe may be true, “but.” Unwilling to take a stand one way or another,
non-theists will often join with atheists to prevent public expression of
anything they regard as “religion.”
Since this inevitably includes fundamental precepts of natural law
common to most religions, they end up rejecting both faith and reason, although
ostensibly only rejecting faith.
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| Msgr. Ronald Knox |
Some theists are
in even worse shape, for a non-theist who starts to reason can be brought to
realize the illogic of his or her position, and finally be brought to take a
stand in order to resolve the contradiction one way or another. The modern theist who rejects or denigrates
reason (obviously this is nowhere near all theists, but a vocal minority is
still vocal), however — what Msgr. Ronald Knox called the enthusiast or
ultrasupernaturalist — already admits the validity of faith and religion. The enthusiast also admits the validity of
reason . . . but only up to a point.
The modern enthusiast
theist’s error is far more subtle than that afflicting the non-theist. The modern enthusiast theist does not reject
reason. He rejects reason that
contradicts his predetermined position which he knows is correct because he has
discerned God’s Will. (In the category
of modern enthusiast theist, of course, we include the secularist and certain
equivocal atheists who treat atheism as a religion; “God” can be the People,
the State, or even “the Inner Light” of which Chesterton spoke in Orthodoxy.)
Modern enthusiast
theists who reject reason thereby appear to be accepting it. They just assign it a lower place or value
than faith. Their opinion of God’s Will
(or the State’s, the People’s, or whatever) is the final authority, not what
can be demonstrated empirically or proven logically. If your reason contradicts their faith, then
obviously your reasoning is wrong, not their fidelity.
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| C.S. Lewis |
Thus, for the
modern Manichean or Averoist, faith and reason can contradict one another. The modern mind, as Chesterton put it, has
been split in two as with a battle ax.
When that happens, you have a false religion.
That does not necessarily
mean that the faith which someone professes is false, just that the faith of
the individual is false, or his or her understanding of that faith is in
error. That, however, was not the main point
Adler started to make.
No, Adler’s main
point was that a religion is false if its official tenets or doctrine contradict
reason. That does not include some enemy’s
or some disgruntled or poorly educated
believer’s statement of a doctrine (which usually turn out to be straw men). No, it means a religion that advocates, say,
human sacrifice or theft is a false religion because it contradicts natural law.
But what about a
true religion whose tenets go beyond but do not contradict reason? For example, Christians believe God is one
God in Three Divine Persons. Jews and
Muslims believe in one God in One Person.
Which belief is true? It cannot
be proved by reason that God is One Person or Three, so it must be left to what
is crudely termed personal opinion — which is why faith-based religious beliefs
(Triune God, Original Sin) cannot be coerced, while reason-based religious
beliefs (do not murder, do not steal) can be coerced. (It is a triumph of modern secularism to
equate faith-based and reason-based religious beliefs, to everyone’s detriment. Yes, both are true, and true in the same way,
but they are still not the same truths.)
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| William F. Buckley |
Thus, Adler never
got to the main point he wanted to make, which was to give a rational basis for
rejecting modern rationalism that claims all religions are equally true — which
(as C.S. Lewis pointed out) means exactly the same thing as saying all
religions are equally false, which is the mantra of modern secularism. What Adler started to say at one point (and
almost finished) is that the danger in the modern Manichean who divides faith
from reason, therefore, is that his compartmentalizing faith and reason allows
faith and reason to contradict one another, and all without causing a problem
because “religion” is in Box A, while “real life” (or whatever) is in Box B.
As Chesterton put
it, this allows people to be “good” Christians, Jews, Muslims, or whatever by
accepting that what they believe as a religious teaching makes nonsense of
science, and when they are being “good” reasoning creatures, to reject all that
religion stuff as something for Friday, Saturday, or Sunday (or Thursday,
Wednesday, Tuesday, or Monday if you happen to worship the Thunderer, the
Wanderer, War, or the Moon. . . .), but not something to interfere with real
life.
That’s what
happens when you have someone like Adler, who is trying to teach, square off
against someone like Buckley, who is trying to score points. Of course, it must be admitted that Adler,
who was in his 90s when he appeared on Firing Line, was not at the top
of his game. He was not as quick as he
was formerly to get the discussion back on track, and he paused too often to
try and sort out what amounted to non sequiturs by Buckley. Still, a worthwhile discussion, if not what
it could and should have been.
#30#