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摘要
摘要
Huston Smith, the most eloquent and respected world authority on religion, offers a timely manifesto on the urgent need to restore the role of religion as the primary humanizing force for individuals and society. Weaving together insights from comparative religions, theology, philosophy, science, and history, along with examples drawn from current events and his own extraordinary personal experience, Smith gives both a convincing historical and social critique and a profound expression of hope for the spiritual condition of humanity.
Despite the widespread belief that these are halcyon days for religion and spiritual awareness, Smith shows how our everyday worldview is instead dominated by a narrow scientism, materialism, and consumerism that push issues of morality, meaning, and truth to the outer margins of society and our lives. In fact, he finds that too much of what passes as religion these days is actually a privatized and ungrounded debasement of true religion.
In the first part of the book, Smith traces the three great periods in human history: the traditional, the modern, and the postmodern; highlighting the achievements and deficiencies of each. Smith makes a compelling case to recover the spiritual and ethical riches of traditional religious wisdom and practices, while at the same time upholding the advances of the modern era in equal rights, democratic and personal freedoms, ecological awareness, and scientific and technological gains. In the final part of the book, Smith imagines a time when human beings move beyond the present materialistic and relativistic understanding of existence and recognize that consciousness, not matter, is the ultimate foundation of the universe.
Smith's historical knowledge and spiritual depth combine here with his understanding of science and the spheres of higher education, government, and law to produce a brilliant, comprehensive look at the embattled state of authentic religion in the world today. With the informed eye of a world traveler who is personally familiar with the best the world's religions have to offer, Smith challenges the dominance of the current technological worldview that so limits the full and true expression of the human spirit.
Why Religion Matters will open a new dialogue about the appropriate place of religion in human experience and society. The passionate and balanced perspective advanced here will help restore a respectful understanding of the undeniable primacy of religion, as well as give a fresh appreciation of the curative effects of correcting its marginal cultural status.
评论 (5)
出版社周刊评论
In this challenging but accessible book, Smith ardently declaims religion's relevance, taking on luminaries, such as Carl Sagan and Stephen Jay Gould, who hold that "only matter exists" and suggest that religion relates only to "subjective experiences." Smith defines such thinking as scientism, an unfortunate worldview distinct from science, which, in and of itself, he celebrates. But scientism, Smith says, contributes to "modernity's tunnel," a metaphorical structure that hides the metaphysical from view. He argues that "scientists who are convinced materialists deny the existence of things other than those they can train their instruments on," but in reality have "discovered nothing in the way of objective facts that counts against traditional metaphysics." Smith's arguments are reminiscent of Philip Johnson's Darwin on Trial; in fact, he nods appreciatively to Johnson's work. However, Smith's stature as a scholar probably affords him more credibility among scientists than evangelicals such as Johnson enjoy. Moreover, Smith's disarming toneDreplete with perfectly placed anecdotes and quipsDtempers the audacity of his theses and the difficulty of his subject matter. While he may be vulnerable to critiques that inevitably arise when non-scientists engage and challenge scientific claims, Smith demonstrates an impressive grasp of physics and biology, and defers to scientists who share his concerns. Most gratifyingly, after spending the book's first half implicating science, philosophy and the media in the marginalization of religion, Smith spends the second half elucidating and affirming metaphysical worldviews and imagining ways for science and religion to partner more equitably in the future. (Jan.) Forecast: Science and religion books are certainly hot right now (see PW's Religion Update, Nov. 20). That popularity, coupled with Smith's sterling reputation (buoyed by his recent five-part PBS series on religion with Bill Moyers) will propel sales. Harper San Francisco plans a 50,000-copy first print run and a $35,000 promotional budget. (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
《书目》(Booklist)书评
Smith, the dean of comparative religion studies in America, divides history into three periods, each dominated by its distinctive worldview--traditional, modern, and postmodern. Now is the postmodern period, but Smith believes the future should belong to tradition. Modernity has put the soul in a dark tunnel, from which postmodernity doesn't want to extract it, by insisting that reality is single and material and that the transcendent realities of spirit, creation, and meaning are illusory. Science, the instrumentality of modernity, can't answer or extinguish humanity's burning existential questions, exemplified by the title of Gauguin's painting Who Are We? Where Did We Come From? Where Are We Going? The traditional worldview, which is religious, can and does answer them. Smith's exposition of this argument, which first describes "Modernity's Tunnel" and then the light at its end, is as enlightening as Wendell Berry's similar Life Is a Miracle [BKL My 15 00], whose bete noire, E. O. Wilson's Consilience (1998), also irks Smith. As welcome as enlightening is Smith's cogent explanation of antireligious media bias. --Ray Olson
Choice 评论
Smith renews an argument he mounted in Forgotten Truth: The Primordial Tradition (CH, Mar'77)--that science cannot answer the most basic human questions. Thus, modern society, which has placed unfaltering trust in science and pushed religion to the periphery of life or excluded it, cannot meet the deepest needs of its members. That is why religion matters: it can meet those needs. Modern society instead moves within a tunnel of its own making, with scientism (the mistaken view that science has all the answers) as its floor, American higher education (locked onto scientism) as its left wall, the media (which do not take religion seriously) its ceiling, and law (which forces religion out of the public sector) as its right wall. Smith wants to allow science and religion their proper roles, but in arguing his case, he generalizes. Science has made great progress, and religion shares the blame in science versus religion controversies. Not all of US higher education is infected by the "scientific" method; numerous private and/or Christian colleges offer alternatives; the media are not always as perverse as claimed; and Smith traces the failure of government only to recent decades. The picture is not as grim as Smith says. All readership groups. P. L. Redditt Georgetown College
Kirkus评论
A senior scholar of religion offers a cautiously optimistic look at the prospects for the spirit at the turn of the millennium. Many Americans owe their first exposure to the study of comparative religion to Smith; his The Worlds Religions (originally The Religions of Man, 1958) is still among the most popular surveys in its field. Smith has had a long and distinguished career, and of late he has joined Joseph Campbell and Mortimer Adler in Bill Moyerss PBS stable of wise and telegenic oldsters. This present work, written in a relaxed, almost garrulous style, explores what Smith sees as the root of our spiritual crisis: the traditional, spiritual view of humanity and the cosmos has suffered a loss of plausibility under the assaults of modernity (with its scientific cosmology) and a loss of moral authority under the assault of postmodernitys fairness revolution. But modernity and postmodernity have their own problemsthey are incapable of satisfying the hunger for meaning that is the strength of the traditional view, nor can they accommodate the spiritual experiences that people will always insist on having. Smith sees our modern/postmodern work as a tunnel, with scientism as its floor, higher education and the law as its walls, and the media as its roof. He finds signs of light at the end of the tunnel, though, in science (which is beginning to sense its limits), in the optimism of the New Age movement (despite its sometimes indiscriminate enthusiasms), and in an increasing skepticism about such icons of modernity as Freud, Marx, Darwin, and Nietzsche. Finally, he explores ways of looking at reality that locate the world explored by science within the spiritual world of traditionwider than sciences cosmos, and far richer in meaning. Although there is something here that will interest almost any reader concerned about present-day religion, theres little to satisfy the hearty appetite. Smiths science is superficial, his social analysis journalistic at best. In the end, youll come away without an answer to the question Smith poses in his title.
《图书馆杂志》(Library Journal )书评
Smith, the respected author of the classic best seller The World's Religions and former professor of religion and psychology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technolgy, now adds a brilliant and accessible title that challenges the religious dimensions of human life. In the first part, he considers the accomplishments and deficiencies of each of three historical periodsDtraditional, modern, and postmodernDcritiquing how each era has contributed to our contemporary spiritual malaise. Not satisfied with simply judging the past, Smith focuses the second part on the future, offering hopeful alternatives to build renewed spiritual vigor. Passionate and inspiring, Smith employs personal stories and experiences with leading religious, philosophical, and scientific thinkers. This is truly a book of wisdom to accompany readers through the metaphorical tunnel into the light of a new millennium. Recommended for public and academic libraries.DJohn-Leonard Berg, Univ. of Wisconsin, Platteville (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
摘录
摘录
Why Religion Matters Chapter One Who's Right About Reality: Traditionalists, Modernists, or the Postmoderns? Wherever people live, whenever they live, they find themselves faced with three inescapable problems: how to win food and shelter from their natural environment (the problem nature poses), how to get along with one another (the social problem), and how to relate themselves to the total scheme of things (the religious problem). If this third issue seems less important than the other two, we should remind ourselves that religious artifacts are the oldest that archeologists have discovered. The three problems are obvious, but they become interesting when we align them with the three major periods in human history: the traditional period (which extended from human beginnings up to the rise of modern science), the modern period (which took over from there and continued through the first half of the twentieth century), and postmodernism (which Nietzsche anticipated, but which waited for the second half of the twentieth century to take hold). Each of these periods poured more of its energies into, and did better by, one of life's inescapable problems than did the other two. Specifically, modernity gave us our view of nature -- it continues to be refined, but because modernity laid the foundations for the scientific understanding of it, it deserves credit for the discovery. Postmodernism is tackling social injustices more resolutely than people previously did. This leaves worldviews -- metaphysics as distinct from cosmology, which restricts itself to the empirical universe -- for our ancestors, whose accomplishments on that front have not been improved upon. The just-entered distinction between cosmology and metaphysics is important for this book, so I shall expand it slightly. Cosmology is the study of 'the physical universe -- or the world of nature as science conceives of it -- and is the domain of science. Metaphysics, on the other hand, deals with all there is. (The terms worldview and Big Picture are used interchangeably with metaphysics in this book.) In the worldview that holds that nature is all there is, metaphysics coincides with cosmology. That metaphysics is named naturalism. Such is the historical framework in which this book is set, and the object of this chapter is to spell out that framework. Because I want to proceed topically -- from nature, through society, to the Big Picture, tying each topic to the period that did best by it -- this introduction shuffles the historical sequence of the periods. I take up modernity first, then postmodernity, leaving the traditional period for last. Modernity's Cosmological Achievement In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Europe stumbled on a new way of knowing that we refer to as the scientific method. It centers in the controlled experiment and has given us modern science. Generic science (which consists of careful attention to nature and its regularities) is as old as the hills -- at least as old as art and religion. What the controlled experiment adds to generic science is proof True hypotheses can be separated from false ones, and brick by brick an edifice has been erected from those proven truths. We commonly call that edifice the scientific worldview, but scientific cosmology is more precise because of the ambiguity of the word world. The scientific edifice is a worldview only for those who assume that science can in principle take in all that exists. The scientific cosmology is so much a part of the air we breathe that it is hardly necessary to describe it, but I will give it a paragraph to provide a reference point for what we are talking about. Some fifteen billion years ago an incredibly compact pellet of matter exploded to launch its components on a voyage that still continues. Differentiation set in as hydrogen proliferated into the periodic table. Atoms gathered into gaseous clouds. Stars condensed from whirling filaments of flame, and planets spun off from those to become molten drops that pulsated and grew rock-encrusted. Narrowing our gaze to the planet that was to become our home, we watch it grow, ocean-filmed and swathed in atmosphere. Some three and a half billion years ago shallow waters began to ferment with life, which could maintain its inner milieu through homeostasis and could reproduce itself Life spread from oceans across continents, and intelligence appeared. Several million years ago our ancestors arrived. It is difficult to say exactly when, for every few years paleontologists announce discoveries that "Set the human race back another million years or so," as press reports like to break the news. Taught from primary schools onward, this story is so familiar that further details would only clutter things. Tradition's Cosmological Shortcomings That this scientific cosmology retires traditional ones with their six days of creation and the like goes without saying. )Who can possibly question that when the scientific cosmology has landed people on the moon? Our ancestors were impressive astronomers, and we can honor them unreservedly for how much they learned about nature with only their unaided senses to work with. And there is another point. There is a naturalism in Taoism, Zen Buddhism, and tribal outlooks that in its own way rivals science's calculative cosmology, but that is the naturalism of the artist, the poet, and the nature lover-of Li Po, Wordsworth, and Thoreau, not that of Galileo and Bacon. For present purposes, aesthetics is irrelevant. Modern cosmology derives from laboratory experiments, not landscape paintings. Postmoderism's Cosmological Shortcomings With traditional cosmology out of the running, the question turns to postmodernism. Because science is cumulative, it follows UN a matter of course that the cosmology we have in the twenty-first century is an improvement over what we had in the middle of the twentieth, which on my timeline is when modernity phased into postmodernity. But the refinements that postmodern scientists have achieved have not affected life to anything like the degree that postmodern social thrusts have, so the social Oscar is the one postmodernists are most entitled to. Why Religion Matters . Copyright © by Huston Smith. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.目录
Acknowledgments | p. xi |
Preface | p. xiii |
Introduction | p. 1 |
Part 1 Modernity's Tunnel | p. 7 |
Chapter 1. Who's Right About Reality: Traditionalists, Modernists, or the Postmoderns? | p. 11 |
Modernity's Cosmological Achievement | |
Postmodernism's Fairness Revolution | |
The Traditional Worldview | |
Chapter 2. The Great Outdoors and the Tunnel Within It | p. 23 |
Worldviews: The Big Picture | |
The Decisive Alternative | |
Weighing the Alternatives | |
Sweetening the Sour Apple | |
How Much Is at Stake | |
Conclusion | |
Chapter 3. The Tunnel as Such | p. 42 |
The Flagship Book | |
The Tunnel in Question | |
A Disqualified Universe | |
Conclusion | |
Chapter 4. The Tunnel's Floor: Scientism | p. 59 |
The Flagship Book | |
Tracking Scientism | |
Spinoza's Conatus | |
Of Rocks and Pebbles | |
From Warfare to Dialogue | |
Colonizing Theology | |
The Tilt of the Negotiating Table | |
Chapter 5. The Tunnel's Left Wall: Higher Education | p. 79 |
The Flagship Book | |
What Happened | |
The Pull of Science on Other Disciplines | |
From Nonbelief to Disbelief | |
The Ineffectiveness of the Theological Response | |
The New Professionalism | |
Conclusion | |
Chapter 6. The Tunnel's Roof: The Media | p. 103 |
The Flagship Book | |
Kansas Update | |
The General Picture | |
Who Pays the Piper? | |
Conclusion | |
Chapter 7. The Tunnel's Right Wall: The Law | p. 121 |
The Flagship Book | |
Employment Division v. Smith | |
The Religious Freedom Restoration Act | |
Marginalizing Religion | |
Handling Creationism | |
Conclusion | |
Part 2 The Light at the Tunnel's End | p. 135 |
Chapter 8. Light | p. 137 |
The Physics of Light | |
Light Subjectively Experienced | |
Conclusion | |
Chapter 9. Is Light Increasing: Two Scenarios | p. 145 |
God Is Dead | |
The Eyes of Faith | |
Clearing the Ground | |
Chapter 10. Discerning the Signs of the Times | p. 154 |
Straws in the Wind | |
Counterculture and the New Age Movement | |
Four Modern Giants Revisited | |
Chapter 11. Three Sciences and the Road Ahead | p. 174 |
Physics. Biology | |
Cognitive Psychology | |
Chapter 12. Terms for the Detente | p. 187 |
A Glimpse of David Bohm | |
Science Rightly Defined | |
The Limits of Science | |
Division of Labor | |
The Cow That Stands on Three Legs | |
Chapter 13. This Ambiguous World | p. 205 |
Life's Cosmic Inkblot | |
A Sidewise Glance at the Social Scene | |
Chapter 14. The Big Picture | p. 213 |
The Great Divide | |
Subdivisions | |
A Hierarchical Reality | |
Topdown Causation and the Multiple Degrees of Reality | |
Return to the Inkblot | |
Chapter 15. Spiritual Personality Types | p. 234 |
Characterology | |
Ubiquity | |
The Atheist: There Is No God | |
The Polytheist: There Are Many Gods | |
The Principle of One-Way Mirrors | |
The Monotheist: There Is One God | |
The Mystic: There Is Only God | |
Chapter 16. Spirit | p. 255 |
The Self/World Divide | |
Tacit Knowing | |
Spirit and Its Outworkings | |
Consciousness and Light | |
Happy Ending | |
Epilogue | |
We Could Be Siblings Yet | p. 272 |
Index | p. 279 |