Abstract
Scientism and religious fundamentalism are, for different reasons, totally inadequate answers to the quest for orientation. But even after these are ruled out as deficient, a plurality of comprehensive worldviews will remain. In modern, pluralistic societies they coexist and at the same time compete with each other, but they can also be related to the shared norms and values which are indispensable for functioning liberal democracies—a possibility I refer to as “middle-ground humanism.” Yet above this middle level, religions and worldviews remain alive as genuine options.
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- 1.
This statement implies no downplaying of the extensive pre-scientific knowledge about, say, the causal efficiency of medicinal plants nor of the astonishing technological achievements of pre-scientific societies, for instance the pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians and the Maya. What it does, though, is to claim that systematic, principled, and integrated insight into natural processes was enabled only by the kind of detached, experimental inquiry that (scattered earlier attempts in the same direction in many cultures notwithstanding) modern science developed for the first time in human history.
- 2.
Extensive conceptual and empirical research on fundamentalism has been conducted by the monumental Fundamentalism Project directed by Martin E. Marty and R. Scott Appleby. It led to the publication of a series of six books devoted to the topic, all published with Chicago University Press (1994–2003). The Marty–Appleby approach emphasizes that fundamentalism is a child of modernity. Though not uncontested, it is generally considered as having yielded a plethora of important results, both conceptual and empirical.
- 3.
Secularism can also figure as an official anti-religious doctrine as in militant communist regimes, in which case it appears in the form of an anti-pluralist, totalitarian worldview. Such cases of “secularism” must be distinguished sharply from the sociological concept, in which the differentiation of the political and the religious sphere are crucial.
- 4.
For a detailed reconstruction of the complex history of the Universal Declaration, cf. (Joas 2013, Chap. 6, especially Part 3).
- 5.
Hans Joas’ book Faith as an Option (Joas 2014) outlines a sociological and philosophical concept of this optionality as a modern development that should be accepted and even embraced by the Christian churches.
- 6.
In modern parlance, the term “hypothesis” is restricted to scientific contexts and corresponds to the disengaged self of the respective inquiry. Not so for James, who uses the term for any belief of possible practical value.
- 7.
It is true, though, that conventional forms of religious behavior and belief exist in which the element of personal decision and relevance is more or less absent. I wish to thank Tullio Viola for calling my attention to this point.
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Jung, M. (2019). Coda: Blocked Roads and Genuine Options. In: Science, Humanism, and Religion. Studies in Humanism and Atheism. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-21492-0_7
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