210-219: Is God Necessary?

The Dewey numbers 210-219 are reserved for the intersection of philosophy, science and theology. Allow me to contrast a sample of the county library's holdings in this section:

with some from our church library:

I'm always up for CS Lewis or John Polkinghorne, but I also selected a couple of items from the public library. 

Honey from Stone, by Chet Raymo, is subtitled "A Naturalist's Search for God." It makes me wonder whether I could be reading Pilgrim at Tinker Creek in this Dewey decade. It recommended itself to me primarily because of its lovely woodcut illustrations. The search takes place on the Dingle Peninsula of Ireland, a geography about which I know absolutely nothing. The book was published by the Society of Saint John the Evangelist, a monastic order of the Episcopal Church about which I also know nothing. So, prime opportunity to branch out if this is the book I actually read.

God's Universe, by Owen Gingrich, is a slim volume published by Harvard and recommended by Polkinghorne. It looks like it might be appropriate for devotional reading, and, in any case, at 120 small pages, it would be faster just to read it than to try to guess exactly what the author is at. This may be exactly the kind of book I've been looking for-- an intersection of physics and theology. It seems so likely to me that physics IS theology, I've been surprised how much difficulty I've had finding books that would explain it to me.

In Praise of Learning Things You Are Pretty Sure Are Not True: Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero

After listening to Religious Literacy by Stephen Prothero, here is what I know:
The United States will always be a secular state by law because of the establishment clause. It will always be a religious country by choice because of the free exercise clause. So everyone can stop panicking. The Religious Right (whoever that is) will never make the US a theocracy, and the Godless Commies (or whoever today's Great Satan is) will never outlaw Christmas.

The reason nobody knows anything any more is not because of the Godless Commies. It's because of the Godfearing and truly nice people who thought it would be a good idea to focus on where we agree, not on those pesky doctrinal points that divide us. So back in the first half of the 20th century, Protestants united against Catholics, which meant they had to stop arguing about baptism and predestination. Then Protestants and Catholics united against everyone else, which meant they had to stop arguing about whether salvation is by faith or works and what to do about Mary. Then Jews joined the party and we started hearing about Judeo-Christian values, which meant we needed to stop talking about Jesus (VERY divisive!). And then, after the excesses of post 9-11 hostility towards Muslims, it just seemed so... well, so mean to insist that Islam was substantively different from Judaism or Christianity. After all, it's nice to be nice, and we can all hold hands and feel terrific. And so, while loss of consensus in schools meant no more Bible reading there, a desire to seek greater consensus among people of faith stripped weekend and evening religious teaching of its meatier content.

The fact is, people of faith don't all believe the same thing. We may not even be interested in the same goals. And the more we know about each other, the less we might agree! So, much more pleasant to focus on the big picture. And the more diverse America gets, the smaller the big picture is, until we reach the least common denominator of faith: a "Universe" which we all agree we live in and that we all hope is somehow benevolently disposed. Next thing you know, Christians think Sodom and Gomorrah were husband and wife, and Muslims think God got married, and we can't even have a conversation that makes any sense. And that's not even counting the growing number of Americans who claim no religion.

But Prothero argues that, like the students in Modesto, California who take a world religions class, we should all pull up our socks and just learn some facts. Even if a given religion, or religion in general, is not important to us, it is important to the people around us. Newsmakers are constantly giving Bible references and claiming religious motivations and practicing their unfamiliar customs in our civic spaces, so it would be worth knowing something about how their religions work. This is the case for religious literacy.

Here's the case against it: We will learn that Islam and Christianity and Judaism cannot all be true, at least not in all particulars, because, for example, they take mutually contradictory views on the identity of Jesus. We will discover that not all disagreements stem from misunderstanding; some of them spring from extremely accurate understanding!

But we're all grown-ups here-- can't we face the fact that people hold differing opinions? Are we that insecure -and that ignorant- of what we claim to believe that we are afraid to even hear other ideas?

As for me, I learned some facts about my own religion from Religious Literacy. Most startling was that the letters of Paul were written before the Gospels, and that Protestants and Catholics divide up the 10 Commandments slightly differently. I also learned some facts about other religions-- I think I almost can explain the difference between Sunni, Shiite and Wahabi Islam, and (at least today) I know the Four Noble Truths, if not the Eightfold Path, of Buddhism. Take this quiz and see if you know enough religious facts to read a newspaper intelligently!

Remember: you don't have to believe an apocalyptic interpretation of the Bible to learn what it is. You don't have to belong to any of the major sects of Islam to benefit from knowing what they are. "The truth will set you free," that's from Jesus Himself. It doesn't sound like He's afraid of information, and you don't need to be either.

200-209: Introductory Remarks about Religion

Many people complain that Dewey's system reflects a limited worldview, and point to the fact that 86% of the digits of the 200's are allocated to Christianity as an example thereof. Of course this is not a completely unreasonable observation; it never occurred to Dewey that English-speaking people would not be much more interested in the Bible than in, say, the Tao Te Ching. However, a quick glance at the 200s in my local library demonstrates that modern librarians are not limited by Dewey's assumptions, and that any religion that has left any record at any time anywhere can be studied in this Dewey decade. Below please find just a small sample of our county library's holdings in this department:

Even though they were available, I did not choose a book about creation stories, goddesses or animals. I chose Spirits Rejoice: Jazz and American Religion, by Jason Bivens, from the New Releases shelf, because my son-in-law is a jazz drummer. Check out the link; it provides a soundtrack to the book! I also chose Religious Literacy, by Stephen Prothero, because it was from the audiobooks collection. Turns out we already own a previous work of his, God Is Not One, dedicated to his theory that all religions are not, in fact, different paths up the same mountain, but rather climbing completely different mountains. 

I've never read God Is Not One and wondered why we owned it, but now I am more intrigued. After starting Religious Literacy, I realize that although I might be able to pass Prothero's little literacy quiz, I really don't know enough about the world's other religions, and maybe not even enough about my own, to properly compare and contrast! So whatever Dewey's original intent or limitations, his system has proved effective at organizing and presenting knowledge in such a way that when I go to the library, I get my limitations and prejudices challenged. 

PS: "JOHO" has a great summary of the complaints against the Dewey decimal system with respect to its handling of religion, along with the reasons that the system still works. Some people like the Library of Congress system better, but the reality is that it is not commonly used in local libraries, so, here we are.

190-199: Modern Philosophers One by One

Since "modern" philosophy picks up pretty much in the 17th century, I could have read about John Locke (from Lost) or Thomas Hobbes (not the tiger), but I went with Kierkegaard, because my husband has been studying him.

My husband's a huge fan. He likes the way Kierkegaard engaged with Socrates. He is interested in how Kierkegaard wrestled with his faith and with the difficulties of his upbringing. What he recommended I read had the inviting title of Kierkegaard for Beginners and was part of a series called Beginners Documentary Comic Books, so that sounded promising. But they aren't really comic books. At least Donald Palmer's overview of Kierkegaard was not. It had more of the vibe of an Usborne book, with pictures and text jumping all over the page, except that the pictures were just black and white line drawings, and rather snarky and unattractive ones at that.

So maybe it was just the graphics of the book, but as I was reading I couldn't help but be reminded of a student's summary of Sartre's comments on the burden of freedom: "So this guy just was depressed and negative and wanted everyone else to be depressed too." Palmer certainly made it seem as if Kierkegaard's philosophy was an effort to take his own maladaptive attitude towards life and make it normative. He presented him as the originator of the sentiment that if you are not depressed, you are not paying attention. As a (sometimes) depressed person myself, I do tend to feel that way, but at the same time we have to recognize that God made people with sunny dispositions for a reason!

Let's give Kierkegaard some credit, though, for inventing a phrase that I use a lot to describe my gloomier states of mind: "Existential Angst." It turns out I've been misusing that phrase, though. It doesn't mean exactly, "having trouble with the fact that you exist and that everything else exists and how sort of complicated and difficult everything appears at the moment." It is more accurately described as "the dread you feel when you realize that you are capable of doing and free to do absolutely anything, no matter how obviously bad an idea it is."

I have certainly experienced that sensation as well, although not as frequently. Based on how people react when I try to explain what it's like, I can state definitively that this sensation is not a universal experience. Most people, oddly enough to me, do not, when they find themselves standing at heights, consider that they might suddenly fling themselves down. Most people, apparently, have never driven down the road and vividly imagined crossing the yellow line into oncoming traffic. And unlike Kierkegaard, I say there is nothing wrong with those people! He and I should leave them alone and let them stay in their sunny land of unicorns and rainbows!

So I come to the end of my journey through Philosophy and move forward into Religion with a renewed sense of why I need transcendental help. It's been fun, but humans just talking to each other about The Meaning of It All can't help but have limited perspectives...