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more adequate description of how we become theists than agency detection

If I were to try to explain the origin of theism as naturalistically as possible, my starting point would not be trying to explain causes of natural phenomena (which D'Souza points out, is an anachronistic reading of history) but look at something like the communion of the saints as natural to human society. And that communion, as a community, has a leader: the Holy One.

This theme is not utterly independent of seeking causes of nature. But an adequate explanation must include both.

By "natural" I don't mean "non-supernatural," for nature itself points to God. Especially human nature: if there is freedom, then there is more to nature than an ontological-naturalist (as in anti-supernatralist) is willing to recognize; and there is more to nature than a methodological-naturalist (that is, one who as a matter of principle, when doing science admits only of materialistic explanations) is able to recognize.
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Unknown said…
Interesting - human community as something animals don't have, and thus, where did this come from, etc.

Walker Percy, in Lost in the Cosmos, has this great section where he describes the human need for religion as self-understanding. The first man would be walking around naming things according to their apparent purpose. Then he sees himself. How do I "name" myself properly? What is my "name"? How would I "name" Everything? What do I have to do with nature? Why am I not like all these plants, animals, and rocks I'm naming? Thus the first phase of religious development is totemism - I become "Flying Eagle" or whomever, I identify myself with something in Nature. Conversely, I see persons in Nature, seeing it populated with spirits. Then successive stages of religious evolution come. According to Soloviev (I'm jumping around authors here) the highest religious thought attainable through reason is Platonism. And then you await Revelation...
4:29 PM
Leo White said…
I like what you say about naming and the difficulty of naming the namer-of-all. Reminds me of what Aristotle said of the human psyche/soul, i.e., that it is all things. Meaning that we think of the totality... not far from saying that we name each part of that whole.
In any case, you capture the sense that humans have always had that they are kind of strange compared to the rest of nature. JPII talks about this as "original solitude" or something like that. It becomes the basis for bonding with other humans... they have the same inner depth which can first be experienced as a kind of emptiness but then becomes the capacity to be filled with the other in a way that the non-strange don't experience.

As for totemism... there was a time when I knew what that is, but I plumb forgot, but it seems that you are saying that we name ourself according to that part of nature that we are like/is like us: something like that? And at the same time, parts of natures are personalized: right?

I definitely like the depiction of Platonism as the final philosophical stage... even though I am not exactly a Platonist, he better than any other writer gets one to recognize that there is another dimension to reality.
8:35 PM
Unknown said…
I don't know what totemism technically is, either, but the image is of a nature-religion where you identify with a particular animal in s special way - the way an American Indian will dress as a particular animal and take a name in relation to it.
10:49 PM
Unknown said…
Soloviev:


If
one were to ask me to define
man by a sign as characteristic
as it is ap-
parent,
I would call him "the being that
laughs."
We will soon see that
this
returns
us to the previous
definition
of inan as a inetaphysical
being.
An animal,
coinpletely
absorbed
by
reality
at hand, cannot place itself
in
a critical
and negative
position
toward
that
reality,
and, for
this
reason,
cannot laugh. Laughter supposes a state of freedom;
a slave does not
laugh.
2:02 PM
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