Buffalo Souljah
5th April 2010, 08:54
I have a friend who is an associate professor at a major American university and his discipline covers basically sociological and anthropological criticisms and interpretations of religious ideology, which means he's read his Marx, Freud, Foucault, Nietzsche, Weber, Hegel and the like (I would include Schleiermacher, Feuerbach and Strauss, but I assume most RevLefters are unfamiliar with these figures--I could be wrong). Basically, he proposes a theory which reduces religion to symbolic interchange and the manipulation of images/symbols. This is semiotics, an offshoot of structuralism.
I have been thinking about and reading about religion for much of my life and would be interested in what some of you have to say about the ideas that pertain to such disciplines. Religion is certainly a pivotal force in contemporary society, so I get a little frustrated at how easily some progressives & liberals dismiss it as irrelivant. I don't think it should be so easily dismissed. My thoughts aside, there has been significant speculation since we could write about what religion is and is not. Semiotics tries to ease this difficulty by referring to any symbolic ideation as "religious", so politicians are religious figures, as are CEO's, scientists, historians, and most other individuals involved with manipulating abstract ideas or concepts. Is this theory accurate?
I approach the problem with skepticism, but even that seems to get me nowhere since semioticians usually all have the same answer to the skeptic: this is true because we see it in practice; our theory is defined out of observations made of practice and corrections are made accordingly. That is pretty difficult to refute, except for 1) the argument that not all practice leads to truth and; 2)the linguistic skepticism of someone like Wittgenstein, who would argue that what we meant by any abstract concept--"religious ideation" or the like--is determined by the context in which it is used. This may negate any claim to possess 'absolute' truth, but is the theory thereby debunked? We still have religious communities practicing their various liturgical rituals every day around the world, so can some limited set of observational sentences be produced to at least describe the activities these people engage in? I suppose you could refute that question by asking "what do you mean by describe, but where would that get us? It is interesting to note that the most consistent argument against refuting skepticism is "I believe this to be true". There is very little that can be said in response to this statement.
So then, I suppose the two paths to take are to either deny that anything useful can be said about anything, that nothing ultimately will "stick", that statements are always dependent on context, or that we can infer from certain observations what religions do and do not convey and try as we may to ignore the whole problem of induction thing that sticks so glaringly out before us.
All of that aside, I would be interested in describing how one comes to understand religious conceptions as a child, as an "outsider looking in." It seems that there are certain aspects (and this might just be reification speaking here) of human existence--nourishment, dreams, love, energy, joy, community, hope--that all religious traditions attempt to somehow embody and engender in and for their particular adherents, which might seem strange or "alien" to someone not schooled in the vocabulary of that tradition.
I will name an example: a child is brought to his first communion. He hears the pangs of the organ and sees everyone standing witht heir hymnals, reciting "something strange", and the lecturn is "something strange", as are the processions, chants, responses, as well as the architecture of the building itself and the way the sound carries, etc. The child may be overwhelmed by all of these experiences, but may walk away from that place with the sense that there is "something strange" out there in the first place. Thus, the idea or concept of "something strange" becomes tangible and apparant in the child's mind, and he refers back to that experience from that point onward.
Whatever can be said about it, religion is certainly not a "closed box". It chnages as events in history leave their mark on the world. Certainly, you cannot speak of the German churches the same since Bonhoeffer's time and the events that transpired during the War. In the same way, what religion conveys to an individual over time changes as well. There is no formula we can apply- a brief Our Father or a reading of a missal--that represents and means religion at any particular instance, taking meaning in the broadest sense here.
So, whether semioticians are scientists or charlatans is dependent about what they are and are not saying about "religion". And I have certainly not read enough Derrida, Barthes, de Saussere and so forth to come down on either side on this issue, but I will hold that they cannot always be wrong about everything. If redeems them, I will leave up to you and your judgment.
I have been thinking about and reading about religion for much of my life and would be interested in what some of you have to say about the ideas that pertain to such disciplines. Religion is certainly a pivotal force in contemporary society, so I get a little frustrated at how easily some progressives & liberals dismiss it as irrelivant. I don't think it should be so easily dismissed. My thoughts aside, there has been significant speculation since we could write about what religion is and is not. Semiotics tries to ease this difficulty by referring to any symbolic ideation as "religious", so politicians are religious figures, as are CEO's, scientists, historians, and most other individuals involved with manipulating abstract ideas or concepts. Is this theory accurate?
I approach the problem with skepticism, but even that seems to get me nowhere since semioticians usually all have the same answer to the skeptic: this is true because we see it in practice; our theory is defined out of observations made of practice and corrections are made accordingly. That is pretty difficult to refute, except for 1) the argument that not all practice leads to truth and; 2)the linguistic skepticism of someone like Wittgenstein, who would argue that what we meant by any abstract concept--"religious ideation" or the like--is determined by the context in which it is used. This may negate any claim to possess 'absolute' truth, but is the theory thereby debunked? We still have religious communities practicing their various liturgical rituals every day around the world, so can some limited set of observational sentences be produced to at least describe the activities these people engage in? I suppose you could refute that question by asking "what do you mean by describe, but where would that get us? It is interesting to note that the most consistent argument against refuting skepticism is "I believe this to be true". There is very little that can be said in response to this statement.
So then, I suppose the two paths to take are to either deny that anything useful can be said about anything, that nothing ultimately will "stick", that statements are always dependent on context, or that we can infer from certain observations what religions do and do not convey and try as we may to ignore the whole problem of induction thing that sticks so glaringly out before us.
All of that aside, I would be interested in describing how one comes to understand religious conceptions as a child, as an "outsider looking in." It seems that there are certain aspects (and this might just be reification speaking here) of human existence--nourishment, dreams, love, energy, joy, community, hope--that all religious traditions attempt to somehow embody and engender in and for their particular adherents, which might seem strange or "alien" to someone not schooled in the vocabulary of that tradition.
I will name an example: a child is brought to his first communion. He hears the pangs of the organ and sees everyone standing witht heir hymnals, reciting "something strange", and the lecturn is "something strange", as are the processions, chants, responses, as well as the architecture of the building itself and the way the sound carries, etc. The child may be overwhelmed by all of these experiences, but may walk away from that place with the sense that there is "something strange" out there in the first place. Thus, the idea or concept of "something strange" becomes tangible and apparant in the child's mind, and he refers back to that experience from that point onward.
Whatever can be said about it, religion is certainly not a "closed box". It chnages as events in history leave their mark on the world. Certainly, you cannot speak of the German churches the same since Bonhoeffer's time and the events that transpired during the War. In the same way, what religion conveys to an individual over time changes as well. There is no formula we can apply- a brief Our Father or a reading of a missal--that represents and means religion at any particular instance, taking meaning in the broadest sense here.
So, whether semioticians are scientists or charlatans is dependent about what they are and are not saying about "religion". And I have certainly not read enough Derrida, Barthes, de Saussere and so forth to come down on either side on this issue, but I will hold that they cannot always be wrong about everything. If redeems them, I will leave up to you and your judgment.