Foreword by Stephen Fry
Posted: Mon Jun 03, 2019 8:20 am
Stephen Fry presents a typically witty Foreword, comparing the four horsemen to the four musketeers. I was prompted to buy the Kindle version of The Four Horsemen after finding the publisher has arranged for the youtube video to be removed for reasons of copyright, so this gives the added benefit of this Foreword and also the Introduction by Richard Dawkins.
Fry’s essential rapier thrust is “the suspicion that the worst aspects of religion could not be separated from the essential nature of religion itself.” Fry seems to suggest here that no hypothetical true religion could possibly separate itself from the manifest reality of false religion, casting the entire social method of religion under an intense besmirchment. Having already dusted off the No True Scotsman fallacy as a trusty standby of religious debate, it seems surprising that he should allude to such a flagrant breach of that logical principle.
He goes on to imply an answer to his question of whether religion could possibly be redeemed with his observation that we live by metaphor, so it could be possible to accept a mythological story irrespective of its truth. My thought on this point is that it offers a rational path to find the meaning concealed beneath the rubble of religious traditions.
It is difficult to see the scale of corruption and depravity that have pervaded human life. The psychological and political implication of this problem of depravity is that only a crudely simplified version of enlightened religiosity can penetrate the repressive carapace of public culture, and this simplification then strongly influences all discussion.
My view is that God is a metaphor for the orderly complexity of the universe as it relates to human existence. That means we are likely to find numerous parables in religious history that give voice to this perception. The violence of public religion means however that such metaphorical language is reserved for initiates and is largely absent from public discussion.
This problem of metaphor in religion reminds me of a discussion I had yesterday about a wonderful recent sermon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEWfhz ... ture=share - by Dr Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Dr Pagels is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, her study of the 1945 Nag Hammadi cache of rediscovered ancient religious texts. She preaches on the suppressed heretical document Gnostic known as the Gospel of Truth, explaining how it shows the early church saw God as male and female, but this teaching was suppressed by orthodoxy. She compares the cross to the tree of life, with Jesus as the fruit. She notes the key idea from the Gospel of Thomas that we must express what is within us in order to be saved.
My thought on this material is that hierarchical patriarchal monotheism was an adaptive theology in the context of extreme conflict of the ancient world, given its power to enforce social uniformity and conscription for purposes of military security. However, if humanity evolves into conditions of sustained abundant peace (hopefully), the conditions will gradually change to allow local autonomy in spiritual practice, with extensive dialogue to share wisdom. This is the world that the Gnostics looked forward to, where human dignity and self-realization for all will become core human values.
The point reminding me of Dr Pagels was her interpretation of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 3 as saying that the "milk" given to infants equates to the popular slogan "Christ Crucified", a crude public simplification, while the "solid food" Paul mentions equates to teaching the mysteries of the kingdom reserved for initiates.
The ironic metaphor in the title of this book, The Four Horsemen, is that this apocalyptic reference is among the most vivid and yet absurd images from the Bible. Revelation 6 presents these riders as plainly metaphorical, citing war, death, famine and plague as their results. So it is simple to see a symbolic meaning for this biblical text. It does not mean there will be four actual magical wraiths rampaging around the planet at the end of the age like Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings, but rather that war, death, famine and plague are predicted as the prime characteristics of apocalyptic collapse of civilization. Debate about whether the Four Horsemen actually exist misses the point as badly as debate about whether God exists.
Fry’s essential rapier thrust is “the suspicion that the worst aspects of religion could not be separated from the essential nature of religion itself.” Fry seems to suggest here that no hypothetical true religion could possibly separate itself from the manifest reality of false religion, casting the entire social method of religion under an intense besmirchment. Having already dusted off the No True Scotsman fallacy as a trusty standby of religious debate, it seems surprising that he should allude to such a flagrant breach of that logical principle.
He goes on to imply an answer to his question of whether religion could possibly be redeemed with his observation that we live by metaphor, so it could be possible to accept a mythological story irrespective of its truth. My thought on this point is that it offers a rational path to find the meaning concealed beneath the rubble of religious traditions.
It is difficult to see the scale of corruption and depravity that have pervaded human life. The psychological and political implication of this problem of depravity is that only a crudely simplified version of enlightened religiosity can penetrate the repressive carapace of public culture, and this simplification then strongly influences all discussion.
My view is that God is a metaphor for the orderly complexity of the universe as it relates to human existence. That means we are likely to find numerous parables in religious history that give voice to this perception. The violence of public religion means however that such metaphorical language is reserved for initiates and is largely absent from public discussion.
This problem of metaphor in religion reminds me of a discussion I had yesterday about a wonderful recent sermon - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPEWfhz ... ture=share - by Dr Elaine Pagels, Professor of Religion at Princeton University. Dr Pagels is the author of The Gnostic Gospels, her study of the 1945 Nag Hammadi cache of rediscovered ancient religious texts. She preaches on the suppressed heretical document Gnostic known as the Gospel of Truth, explaining how it shows the early church saw God as male and female, but this teaching was suppressed by orthodoxy. She compares the cross to the tree of life, with Jesus as the fruit. She notes the key idea from the Gospel of Thomas that we must express what is within us in order to be saved.
My thought on this material is that hierarchical patriarchal monotheism was an adaptive theology in the context of extreme conflict of the ancient world, given its power to enforce social uniformity and conscription for purposes of military security. However, if humanity evolves into conditions of sustained abundant peace (hopefully), the conditions will gradually change to allow local autonomy in spiritual practice, with extensive dialogue to share wisdom. This is the world that the Gnostics looked forward to, where human dignity and self-realization for all will become core human values.
The point reminding me of Dr Pagels was her interpretation of Paul's teaching in 1 Corinthians 3 as saying that the "milk" given to infants equates to the popular slogan "Christ Crucified", a crude public simplification, while the "solid food" Paul mentions equates to teaching the mysteries of the kingdom reserved for initiates.
The ironic metaphor in the title of this book, The Four Horsemen, is that this apocalyptic reference is among the most vivid and yet absurd images from the Bible. Revelation 6 presents these riders as plainly metaphorical, citing war, death, famine and plague as their results. So it is simple to see a symbolic meaning for this biblical text. It does not mean there will be four actual magical wraiths rampaging around the planet at the end of the age like Nazgul from The Lord of the Rings, but rather that war, death, famine and plague are predicted as the prime characteristics of apocalyptic collapse of civilization. Debate about whether the Four Horsemen actually exist misses the point as badly as debate about whether God exists.