{"id":1412,"date":"2004-03-24T10:07:26","date_gmt":"2004-03-24T14:07:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/03\/24\/faulty-leap-in-ryans-logic\/"},"modified":"2004-03-24T10:07:26","modified_gmt":"2004-03-24T14:07:26","slug":"faulty-leap-in-ryans-logic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/03\/24\/faulty-leap-in-ryans-logic\/","title":{"rendered":"Faulty leap in Ryan’s logic"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Ryan contends the following<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[F]or people without a deracinated, ecumenical God, religion actually means something<\/em>, and scriptures should be taken literally.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Let us play opposites here.  For people who don’t have a
\nhyper-particularized God, can their religion actually mean
\nsomething?  And if religion actually means something, must its
\nscriptures be taken literally?<\/p>\n

I don’t think either of his contentions bear up.  By “mean
\nsomething”, Ryan has generally opined that for a religion to mean
\nsomething, it must spur its adherents to extreme acts, but acts of a
\nparticularly negative character.  Ryan often talks about “strong
\nreligion,” but the ways in which it spurs its followers to act, in his
\ncitations, are generally destructive acts.  My two beginnings of a
\ncounter-example are the following questions.<\/p>\n

First, can religion that “means something” — so-called “strong”
\nreligion — spur its adherents to acts, not of superhuman brutality,
\nbut acts of superhuman charity and love?  (Yes, I opine.  And
\nI can cite a couple of examples.)<\/p>\n

Second, why must an act require extreme (in time or in impact) action
\nto “mean something”?  In other words, can there be meaning in
\nactions and attitudes that are not extreme?  Why or why not?<\/p>\n

As for Ryan’s project of poking fun at people’s seriousness about God
\nand their images of Him\/Her, I’m all for it.  If people are threatened
\nby it, they’re probably done exactly as Mark Twain said we do with
\nGod.  “God created man in His own image, and man, being a
\ngentleman, returned the favor.”  We’ve gotta kill our Buddha, as
\nit were, and humor provides one of the best ways to do that.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ryan contends the following: [F]or people without a deracinated, ecumenical God, religion actually means something, and scriptures should be taken literally. Let us play opposites here.  For people who don’t have a hyper-particularized God, can their religion actually mean something?  And if religion actually means something, must its scriptures be taken literally? I don’t think […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-rayleejun"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-mM","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1412"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1412\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}