An Introduction to Philosophy

by George Stuart Fullerton

CHAPTER XX

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

76. RELIGION AND REFLECTION.—A man may be through and through ethical in his thought and feeling, and yet know nothing of the science of ethics. He may be possessed of the finest aesthetic taste, and yet may know nothing of the science of aesthetics. It is one thing to be good, and another to know clearly what goodness means; it is one thing to love the beautiful, and another to know how to define it.

Just so a man may be thoroughly religious, and may, nevertheless, have reflected very little upon his religious belief and the foundations upon which it rests. This does not mean that his belief is without foundation. It may have a firm basis or it may not. But whatever the case may be, he is not in a position to say much about it. He feels that he is right, but he cannot prove it. The man is, I think we must admit, rather blind as to the full significance of his position, and he is, in consequence, rather helpless.

Such a man is menaced by certain dangers. We have seen in the chapter on ethics that men are by no means at one in their judgments as to the rightness or wrongness of given actions. And it requires a very little reflection to teach us that men are not at one in their religious notions. God and His nature, the relation of God to man, what the religious life should be, these things are the subject of much dispute; and some men hold opinions regarded by others as not merely erroneous but highly pernicious in their influence.

Shall a man simply assume that the opinions which he happens to hold are correct, and that all who differ with him are in error? He has not framed his opinions quite independently for himself. We are all influenced by what we have inherited from the past, and what we inherit may be partly erroneous, even if we be right in the main. Moreover, we are all liable to prejudices, and he who has no means of distinguishing such from sober truths may admit into his creed many errors. The lesson of history is very instructive upon this point. The fact is that a man's religious notions reflect the position which he occupies in the development of civilization very much as do his ethical notions.

Again. Even supposing that a man has enlightened notions and is living a religious life that the most instructed must approve; if he has never reflected, and has never tried to make clear to himself just what he really does believe and upon what grounds he believes it, how will it be with him when his position is attacked by another? Men are, as I have said, not at one in these matters, and there are few or none of the doctrines put forward as religions that have not been attacked again and again.

Now, those who depend only upon an instinctive feeling may be placed in the very painful position of seeing no answer to the objections brought against them. What is said may seem plausible; it may even seem true, and is it right for a man to oppose what appears to be the truth? One may be shocked and pained, and may feel that he who makes the assault cannot be right, and yet may be forced to admit that a relentless logic, or what presents itself as such, has every appearance of establishing the repellent truth that robs one of one's dearest possession. The situation is an unendurable one; it is that of the man who guards a treasure and recognizes that there is no lock on the door.

Surely, if there is error mixed with truth in our religious beliefs, it is desirable that we should have some way of distinguishing between the truth and the error. And if our beliefs really have a foundation, it is desirable that we should know what that foundation is, and should not be at the mercy of every passer-by who takes the notion to throw a stone at us. But these desirable ends, it seems clear, cannot be attained without reflection.

77. THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION.—The reflection that busies itself with these things results in what is called the philosophy of religion. To show that the name is an appropriate one and that we are concerned with a philosophical discipline, I shall take up for a moment the idea of God, which most men will admit has a very important place in our conception of religion.

Does God exist? We may feel very sure that He does, and yet be forced to admit that the evidence of His existence is not so clear and undeniable as to compel the assent of every one. We do not try to prove the existence of the men we meet and who talk to us. No one thinks of denying their existence; it is taken for granted. Even the metaphysician, when he takes up and discusses the question whether we can prove the existence of any mind beyond our own, does not seriously doubt whether there are other minds or not. It is not so much what we know, as how we know it, that interests him.

But with the existence of God it is different. That men do not think that an examination of the evidence can be dispensed with is evident from the books that are written and lectures that are delivered year after year. There seem to be honest differences of opinion, and we feel compelled to offer men proofs—to show that belief is reasonable.

How shall we determine whether this world in which we live is such a world that we may take it as a revelation of God? And of what sort of a Being are we speaking when we use the word "God"? The question is not an idle one, for men's conceptions have differed widely. There is the savage, with a conception that strikes the modern civilized man as altogether inadequate; there is the thoughtful man of our day, who has inherited the reflections of those who have lived in the ages gone by.

And there is the philosopher, or, perhaps, I should rather say, there are the philosophers. Have they not conceived of God as a group of abstract notions, or as a something that may best be described as the Unknowable, or as the Substance which is the identity of thought and extension, or as the external world itself? All have not sinned in this way, but some have, and they are not men whom we can ignore.

If we turn from all such notions and, in harmony with the faith of the great body of religious men in the ages past, some of whom were philosophers but most of whom were not, cling close to the notion that God is a mind or spirit, and must be conceived according to the analogy, at least, of the human mind, the mind we most directly know—if we do this, we are still confronted by problems to which the thoughtful man cannot refuse attention.

What do we mean by a mind? This is a question to which one can scarcely give an intelligent answer unless one has exercised one's faculty of philosophic reflection. And upon what sort of evidence does one depend in establishing the existence of minds other than one's own? This has been discussed at length in Chapter X, and the problem is certainly a metaphysical one. And if we believe that the Divine Mind is not subject to the limitations which confine the human, how shall we conceive it? The question is an important one. Some of the philosophers and theologians who have tried to free the Divine Mind from such limitations have taken away every positive mark by which we recognize a mind to be such, and have left us a naked "Absolute" which is no better than a labeled vacuum.

Moreover, we cannot refuse to consider the question of God's relation to the world. This seems to lead back to the broader question: How are we to conceive of any mind as related to the world? What is the relation between mind and matter? If any subject of inquiry may properly be called metaphysical, surely this may be.

We see, then, that there is little wonder that the thoughtful consideration of the facts and doctrines of religion has taken its place among the philosophical sciences. Aesthetics has been called applied psychology; and I think it is scarcely too much to say that we are here concerned with applied metaphysics, with the attempt to obtain a clear understanding of the significance of the facts of religion in the light of those ultimate analyses which reveal to us the real nature of the world of matter and of minds.