David Eller Responds to My Critique
All of the following is his email reply:
“My only comment on your new work is the same as my fundamental comment on all of your work: it is completely prejudicial in favor of the religion that you have decided in advance to defend. As a crucial example, your definition of religion, explicitly and intentionally, privileges your religion over other religions. But as an intelligent scholar, you know that that is unfair and invalid. While, to be sure, definitions are not objective things but man-made tools, some are better than others in being (1) inclusive and (2) productive. Your definition is higly exclusionary and totally unproductive. Here, and in all your other assertions, you are deeply immersed in the ‘language game’ of christianity. I am sure you are familiar with Wittgenstein and the concept of language game. The grammar of christianity allows and compels certain utterances, about ‘faith’ and ‘grace’ etc. It also forces Xians to say slanted things about concepts like relativism and agnosticism. However, outside that linguistic universe (which Xians usually think of as the ‘community of belief’) those terms, concepts, and utterances are not so much false as completley meaningless and inappropriate. Not all religions (your dismissive definition notwithstanding) have a concept of faith or grace or for that matter god or sin or prayer. But you must be able to see that you are trapped within your discursive world, not referring to or making any insights into the wider world outside your language game. And obviously, not only all other religions vary in their discursive realities, but all non-religions do too. For me, as a completely unreligious person, the Xian language game is as meaningless as the Hindu or Buddhist one. Your problem is that you–and your Xian interlocutors — are deep inside a box, and you do not even realize that you are in a box… or that a box exists.
“I say this to you as a concerned fellow scholar. One simply cannot make biased assertions in support of one’s own religion or language and expect those to stand as proof or argument for anything. Muslims advance their own ‘arguments,’ Hindus theirs, ad infinitum. They, and you, are stuck within a Kuhnian paradigm, and until they, and you, realize that they are purveyors and practitioners of paradigm and find a way to transcend their, and your, paradigm, then members of various religions cannot even talk to each other… and none of them can talk to me.
“I would like to ask you one question: can you name for me ONE element of the ‘method’ of metaphysics, and ONE discovery or fact that this ‘method’ has ever produced? Understand that the analysis of a concept like ’substance’ is not a discovery or fact; it is merely an elaboration on one lexical item in the language game of a particular discursive practice.”
July 28th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
Good Lord, where to start with this mish-mash. Grammar of christianity? paradigms? production of facts by metaphysics?
ugh.
July 28th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
Whose mish-mash, mine or Eller’s?
July 28th, 2008 at 9:47 pm
I’m going to guess NP means the mish-mash was Eller’s. And if so, I’ll second NP’s view. Seems rather flailing.
July 28th, 2008 at 10:18 pm
But we are getting somewhere with this. He considers talk of the Christian God to be meaningless, sort of like uttering “glanking stooches frumples their brokovitzes, lest the latter soorify.” That’s a familiar assertion. I think Eller might benefit from a quick review of various theological terms. I mean, there is an answer to the question “What is God?” found by natural reason alone.
July 30th, 2008 at 10:17 am
Yes, the mish-mash refers to Eller.
If talk of the Christian God is meaningless, everyday talk is even more meaningless. One thing is being humble and saying, “I don’t understand how we can speak of God,” and another is saying it don’t make no sense.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:55 pm
I’ve never met a good argument for why “God” cannot be considered a sign. This claim that the term is “meaningless” is simply false on its face. It is the same as denying that God is a word.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:56 pm
“Language Game” is a theory developed in Wittgenstein to account for how terms have meanings. Such games become superfluous if one distinguishes matter from form.
The problem of meaning is perfectly analogous to the problem of life, and it was even understood as such. Wittgenstein’s question was “what is it for a word to be alive?” If he had answered the question of what it means for a living thing to be alive, he would have been able to solve his problem without positing “language games”. Meaning is in words as a form, not as a function or use.
August 4th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Even if one thinks that “God” has no referent; even if one thinks that the concept of God is contradictory; to deny that the term “God” has a definitive meaning or meanings seems to me to be rather out there.