Reason and Religious Beliefs

In the spring semester of 1991, McShane gave a seminar “Reason and Religious Beliefs” at Mount St. Vincent University, Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 1.1

In this first lecture, McShane asks students in “Reason and Religious Belief” some basic questions: “Are you genuinely interested in anything or anyone? Have you died already? Do you know what you’re doing or why?” He also gives an overview of the course: 1) Teasing Towards Transfer or Thought; 2) Title/Topic; 3) ? Trivial Trial; 4) Texts and Talks; 5) Thankful Tasks; 6) Theorem; 7) Techniques; 8) Transformation; 9) Try Twice, Thrice, Thousands of Times. He notes that understanding is a slow difficult climb, and he emphasizes and demonstrates the importance of jokes and laughter as examples of having insights. As a helpful spiritual exercise, McShane presents a puzzle within a puzzle, adding that “we’re trying to find out what we do when we reason.” The first lecture ends on topic 7, Techniques.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 1.2

In the second part of the first lecture, McShane follows-up on an exercise that he left for the students. He found the exercise on a British exam for eleven year-old schoolchildren.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 2.1

What does it mean to be human?
Topics in this lecture include: 1) Prevision, 2) Identification of Elements of MEaning, 3) Horizons, 4) Techniques again, 5) Helen Keller, 6) Molly Bloom: Minding Minding, 7) Reasoning towards FACT. A first horizon of understanding is common sense, another horizon is serious understanding, and a third is understanding one’s self and one’s own understanding.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 2.2

What is one doing when talking? How did Helen Keller learn her first word? To what do words point? Do they point to understandings? Is understanding memorization? Is understanding slow, circular, and sometimes humorous? In what way might understanding be a peek at a peak?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 3.1

Have you heard the Good Gnus?

The main points treated in the 3rd lecture are: (1) Emma in the Land of Nod; (2) Nod-data; (3) All Mah Aye; (4) Finding the Way that AM ME. McShane explores the meaning of “Yes,” the meaning of being human, and the lives of fictional women, such as Emma Bovary. He talks about the five levels of consciousness (and awareness and self-awareness): (1) Sensibility; (2) What-ing (also written as ‘?’); (3) Is-ing; (4) What-to-do-ing; (5) Am I to do?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 3.2

What is it to mind? In the second half of the lecture, McShane poses the question: “What is it to mind?” and notes that the topic of the elements of minding (of being human) is absent in our culture. Is knowledge certain? What is it to know? What is it to nod? What is “nod-data”? The problem of philosophy is how we study minds.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 4.1

McShane continues to invite discovery of the thirteen elements that make us human. Discovery pivots on taking a creative interest in our creative interest. This is the Socratic philosophical adventure. The spontaneity and swiftness of these thirteen elements make them elusive. McShane contrasts the traditional definition of reason–“Going from premises to conclusions”– with his own: “Reason is a dim light of our embodied loneliness.”

Reason and Religious Beliefs 4.2

McShane continues exploring the dynamics of belief with illustrations, e.g., of asking for bus directions to get to a certain destination. Belief plays an important role in both practical and scientific inquiry. On the other hand, appreciating oneself as a lonely quest is knowable through correctly understanding experience. McShane notes that among the various obstacles to such self-appreciation are inherited pressures within culture, literature, and language itself. An example is the way Sherlock Holmes slips into the language of deduction and logic when talking about how he solves crimes.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 5.1

Topics in the fifth lecture include: (1) Maybe, Minding, Meaning, Mystery; (2) Self-Discovery and the Christian God; (3) Faith and Art; (4) Cosmogenetics; (5) The Quest

McShane explores the questions “Who are we? What are we doing? And Where are we going?” and comments on the problem to restore these questions to our normal living. Our various institutions, roles and tasks, often oppose our human capacities. These problems take a lot more than 10 years to understand.

He also expands on the Christian tradition, especially in regard to understanding. As Aristotle discovered, insight emerges from puzzling about experience; the Supreme, the Good, the Ultimate is understanding understanding.

 

Reason and Religious Beliefs 5.2

In this session, McShane focuses on the works of Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) and remarks that the difficulty in reading the Summa Theologica is that it requires contemplative self-attention. He adds that the “five ways” (S.T. I, Q. 2, art. 3) to reach God can be connected with the “five whys” of the five levels of human consciousness. McShane identifies four conversational questions:

1) When did you last have a real conversation?
2) When did you last understand? When were you last understood?
3) When did you last speak?
4) When did you last listen?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 6.1

What is faith? What is the leap of faith?
The topics for Lecture six:

1. Four Props
2. The Five Whys
3. Faith: Basics and Complexities

  • Faith and Beliefs
  • Institutions
  • Development (some may say “moral development”)
  • Scriptures
  • Failure and Success
  • Mystery

4. Examination
5. Plato’s Cave

Reason and Religious Beliefs 6.2

Where are our precepts? Are they personal and cultural? Where is the seen Phil?

If K=CUE (Knowing is Correctly Understanding Experience), then the inner dynamism of astronomers gets them at the universe, but it is not “out there now.” In this lecture McShane says: “I am not asking you to believe me; I am inviting you to discover something scientifically.”

McShane invites students to discover their own processes of knowing by mucking around with some puzzles, such as “Why is a cartwheel round?” 

Reason and Religious Beliefs 7.1

Some of the questions Professor McShane explores in the seventh lecture:

  • What is science? What is scientific?
  • Are ideas more real than what we see?
  • Can a definition be seen?
  • Is faith a conviction of friendliness?
  • Does faith seek understanding?
  • Is the Spontaneous “I” ethical?

McShane claims that real science is when you do not have a hypothesis, but you have a puzzle. He adds that it is a terrific gain to realize you are not understanding, and recognize when you are not being human and not being treated as human.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 7.2

McShane reminds those participating in the seminar that the course focuses on kindliness, which is tied to understanding.

Is a Christian, or anyone, allowed to question faith? To question is not always to doubt; if we are faithful to ourselves, we are always questioning, seeking to understand.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 7.3

McShane claims that real science is when you haven’t got a hypothesis, but you have a puzzle. He mentions convenient symbols, e.g., K=CUE (knowledge = correctly understanding experience), that are helpful for identifying Plato’s Cave. He underscores the relationship between kindliness and understanding. Some of the questions raised in this session:

  • Are ideas more real than what we see?
  • Can a definition be seen?
  • Is faith a conviction of friendliness?
  • Is it possible to question one’s faith without doubting it?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 8.1

In the eight lecture, McShane takes up the following questions:

  • Why do we think people are more obvious than electrons?
  • Is it possible to puzzle about the future?
  • What does it mean to be attentive?
  • What are some compatibilities and incompatibilities between convictions and puzzlings?

McShane uses the example of planning a dinner for friends, involving what-questions stretching beyond our present sensibilities. He adds that alongside faith seeking understanding, there is understanding seeking faith.

Reason and Religious Beliefs 8.2

McShane comments optimistically about coming out of oppressive institutions that merely pay lip-service to Socrates.

The challenge of personal development is contorted by these institutions. We face a paradox of not noticing the vulgar face of modern urbanization. The dynamics of faith seeking understanding as redemptive questioning is what might be, but it is sadly not, a topic within stagnated institutions.

Within the Christian tradition, faith seeking understanding has produced minimal statements, elementary replies to the questions: “Who are God?” and “Who is God?”

Reason and Religious Beliefs 9.1

“Art draws attention to the possibilities of human living.”

In the ninth lecture, McShane speaks about friendliness, faith, art, and artists. He details the subtleties and profundities of how artists relate with space, time, and other people. He expands on different types of art and refers to Joyce, Degas, Cezanne, Picasso, Mozart, and others. In addition, he poses the question: Why do we elevate people like this, while, generally, they do not fit into our institutions?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 9.2

“… the eternity tasted in every aesthetic apprehension …”

“The concrete being of man … his sensitivity matches the operator of his intellectual advance with a capacity and a need to respond to a further reality than meets the eye and to grope his way toward it.”

Reason and Religious Beliefs 10.1

In the tenth lecture, McShane comments on the meaning of theology, remembering that faith is a human conviction related to the friendliness of the cosmos. He also comments on desire and the Indo-European, Hindu, and Christian traditions.

Questions taken up include:

  • Do faith and hope reveal beauty?
  • What is fundamental self-worth?
  • Do human cultures and institutions need to ask more and talk more about questions?

Reason and Religious Beliefs 10.2

In the final lecture, McShane speaks about the transformative power of finding one’s place and patterns of individual and communal growth. He elaborates on two different kinds of rhythms — natural economic rhythms and African religious rhythms of self-enjoyment. Towards the end of the lecture he comments on the hope in the beauty of the self and basic self-worth. Throughout this lecture, he refers to passages in chapter 4 of Process: Introducing Themselves to (Young) Christian Minders.