![[Under Construction]](../images/undercon.gif){kind=small}
Class Lecture April 26, 2006
Religious Studies 101
Bring: Bowl, candle, matches, Rumi DVD; Rumi poetry
Focus One—Chapter 12, Why Religion Matters
Increasing the value of religious knowing
- What is essential to the future restoration of religion as a valued way of knowing?
- Sharing the "knowledge project."
- That both science and religion are limited in their ways of knowing.
- Science cannot determine the boundaries of art, religion, love, etc.
- Religion cannot prove God in a controlled experiment.
- Both science and religion have great value in their ways of knowing.
- Science promotes better medicine, better space exploration, etc.
- Religion promotes better human beings—loving, forgiving, just and generous.
- What do you think about the charge, "Science has erased transcendence from our reality map?"
- The six things science cannot get its hands on.
- Values that are intrinsic [belonging to something as one of the basic and essential features that make it what it is] and normative [how things "should" be].
- Global Meanings
- Final Causes—The Why of things
1). Regarding smoking: Science can say that you will be healthier if you don’t smoke. But Science cannot say whether it is better of have good health or to satisfy a desire to smoke.
1). What is the meaning of life?
2). Is there an afterlife?
3). Is there a God?
4). Is there heaven and/or hell?
1). Aristotle’s four causes:
1. Material cause, or the elements out of which an object is created;
2. Efficient cause, or the means by which it is created;
3. Formal cause, or the expression of what it is;
4. Final cause, or the end for which it is.
Take, for example, a bronze statue. Its material cause is the bronze itself. Its efficient cause is the sculptor, insofar has he forces the bronze into shape. The formal cause is the idea of the completed statue. The final cause is the idea of the statue as it prompts the sculptor to act on the bronze. This
is an experienced quality and cannot be subject to the controlled experiment.1). Those which cannot be studied by observable effects.
2). Spiritual entities—God, angels, demons, ghosts….
1). Color can be identified through science, but its quality cannot.
Is the color pleasing? Is it well placed in a painting?
1). Gods, superior aliens. They must choose to allow us to know them.
Therefore, science leaves much of the world untouched.
1. Religion deals with the whole of things, science with the physical universe.
2. Science and religion should respect each other’s areas of competence.
- Science should make it clear that when they deny the existence of things outside the controlled experiment, that they are getting into philosophy and that this denial is not science.
- Religion should keep their hands off science as long as it is genuine science not burdened by philosophical opinions.
Houston’s Suggestion
- An organization such as an Equal Opportunity Center for Science and Religion.
- To be a watchdog on scientism vs. spirituality
- Provide for ongoing discussions between science and religion
1). Evolution vs. intelligent design
(Mention "Evolution, Intelligent Design", Sunday, April 30, 1-3pm, Our Lady of the Snows, 1200 S. Arlington St., Reno)
Focus 2
Spiritual Personality Types—Chap. 15, Why Religion Matters
- What are the spiritual personality types? (Houston believes these exist in all sizable communities.)
- The atheist
- The polytheist
- The monotheist
- The mystic
- Atheists see nothing but matter and the subjective experiences of biological organisms. The polytheists add "spirits." Monotheists put everything under a Supreme Being who creates and orchestrates everything. The mystic finds God everywhere.
- We all have all of these within us but to varying degrees.
- More on the atheist
- The atheist takes a negative stance toward worldviews that include God. That is, the atheist does not include God as an important value.
- More on the polytheist
- The polytheist refuses to settle for mundane existence and sees the world filled with gods, spirits and discarnates [disembodied entities]. Spirits would be seen as never having been embodied, while ghosts would be seen as once being human beings.
- More on the monotheist
- The god of the monotheist is knowable and personal.
- They think of God as richly endowed with the finest qualities that human beings exemplify. Love figures prominently.
- See Houston’s account of his grandfather, pg. 250.
- More on the mystic
- In the mystic’s world, evil drops from the picture and only good remains—there is only God.
- See Houston’s example, pg. 252
- The Sufi, the Muslim mystic, sees God everywhere in daily life.
- The mystic knows that God is fully present everywhere and in everything even if he/she cries out, My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me.
- Regarding evil, see Houston, pg. 254.
Preparation for Rumi—The father of Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam.
The circling dance of the Sufi dervish—read from article.
Rumi is known as "The poet of the heart."
He writes very human and very spiritual poetry—a kind of prayer.
As you listen to this DVD, listen with your heart, your intuition, your feeling.
Rumi was born in 1207 near Afghanistan and moved to Turkey.
He was a Sufi, a member of an ancient religious order. His father was head of that group.
Rumi met a teacher named Shams of Tebriz.
A great love relationship, not sexual, but deeply human.
There will be a lot on the problems translating from Persian into English and from the 13th Century into the 21st Century.—This is the problem faced by all translators of original languages of sacred scriptures.
The dominant theme of Rumi’s poetry is "the longing of the soul for the divine, for union.
Rumi saw what unified all religions was a single impulse to worship.
For Rumi, there was a "presence" in beauty, a presence inside us and a presence outside us, tending us in love. Felt in the glory of a radiant sunset, felt in seeing a child asleep.
See if you can sense this presence in Rumi’s poetry.