FIRinG Line. SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIA TlON GUEST: MORTIMER ADLER SUBJECT: "ARE ALL RELIGIONS EQUAL?

Transcription

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2 SECA PRESENTS FIRinG Line HOST: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR. The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Communications Association, PO Box 5966, Columbia, SC and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area. MODERATOR: GUEST: SUBJECT: ROBERT SHRUM MORTIMER ADLER "ARE ALL RELIGIONS EQUAL?" FIRING LINE is produced and directed flv WARREN STEIBEL This is a transcript of the Firing Line program taped January 8, 1991, in New York city and telecast later by PBS. SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION Board of Trustees of the eland Stanford Jr. University.

3 MR. SHRUM: Welcome to Firing Line. I'm Bob Shrum, a Democratic political consultant who has been trying mightily, and will continue to try, to elect a president that Bill Buckley can heartily detest. In a sense, it's very hard for me to introduce Mortimer Adler--not because there is too little to say, but far too much. He is a philosopher, the guiding spirit of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the Great Books, a teacher and the author of nearly 50 books of his own. Yet there is a common thread that runs through everything he has done: Mortimer Adler has sought to rescue reason, faith and sometimes God himself from what many regard as the agnostic, chaotic rubble of modern thought. In the past he's written a book arguing that the existence of a Supreme Being can be proved logically, and then, like a 20th century Thomas Aquinas, he turned his formidable gifts to the task. Now, in his newest book, Truth in Religion, he has put faith to the test of reason and argued that the plurality of beliefs must be measured by the unity of truth SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION When I was growing up, and I think when Mr. Buckley was growing up, we were both taught about an error called indifferentism, the heresy that all religions are equally valid, the notion that tolerance is equivalent to truth. Mortimer Adler is not an indifferentist. In his new book he doesn't tell us which religion to choose, but sets out how we ourselves should decide. He describes the quantum theory and the limits of science, and seeks to restore philosophy to its central role as logic, metaphysics, the key to ultimate truth. Philosophy, in short, can take us where science cannot go. Each of three world religions--judaism, Christianity and Islam--claims a singular divine revelation. And Mortimer Adler leaves us with this question: Which of them has a greater claim to truth? So now we begin with a question for Mr. Buckley. you believe that there is only one true religion. it can be proved by reason alone? And if it can, there for faith and grace? Bill, I assume Do you think what role is MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's a double-barreled question. I think, if I may, I will take the liberty of Whittling off a part of it in order to address the theses of Dr. Adler's book, in which he insists that certain things about religion are specifiable and provable; certain other things--he uses the word "poetical"--belong to that poetical part of religion, in which of course faith and imagination playa larger part. But then you go on to say something very interesting, which is that that much of poetry which conflicts and makes incompatible the basic philosophical postulates of religion have got to be discarded. Now, what do you mean by that as a practical matter? The isolation of superstition? DR. ADLER: No. It's demythologizing religion. But that is Board of Trustees of the land Stanford Jr. University. 1

4 really a side point, I think, Bil~. The rea~ problem.is that the extraordinary thing about art1cles of fa1th, and 1~ a s7nse what faith is no article of faith can be proved. It 1S fa1th because it is' beyond proof. But though articles of faith in any religion are unprovable, they are capable of being, shall I say, challenged by science and by philosophy, because all truth must be consistent. And if any article of faith is contradicted or contrary-- MR. BUCKLEY: It becomes superstition. DR. ADLER: Yes that's right. And the reason why in the book I am so in~istent upon the challenge of Averroism is the other claim that truth is not one, that there can be two truths. MR. BUCKLEY: Why don't you define Averroism before you go forward? DR. ADLER: Well, Averroes was an Arabic philosopher in the century before Aquinas. And he was challenged by al-f~rab~, another Arabic philosopher, who was a very devout Musl1m~ 1n a book called The Destruction of Philosophy. Al-Farabi sa1d that only the faith was true, that Aristotelian philosophy was not true. In reply, Averroes wrote a book called The Destruction of the Destruction, in which he argued that there were two truths, the truths of faith and the truths of reason, and they didn't come into conflict. What he meant by the truths of faith, those which are poetically true, truths of the imagination, and the truths of Aristotle, or the truths of reason. And so Aquinas challenged him on the grounds that the truths of faith were not just poetical, they were logically true factually true, in the same sense that truths of phil~sophy and science were true. That kind-- If you stick to the realm of logical or factual truth, there is only one realm of truth, and all parts of it--mathematics, history, the hard sciences-- MR. BUCKLEY: Art? DR. ADLER: --philosophy--must be consistent. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, now, let's apply what you just said to the conflict involving Galileo. Galileo, as I remember, said, "That which we know circumstantially, empirically, is as certain as though it were told to us by God." He then made the spectacular misapplication of this in a cosmology.whic~ wa 7 believed for a few centuries, but was proved by E1nste1n, 1n fact, to be incorrect. DR. ADLER: Yes. Just think for a moment. At the time of Galileo and of the century before that, the world was very small, the cosmos was very small. Really the solar system was the cosmos, and so that when Aquinas talks about heaven or hell, he's thinking of places, and of course they are not places. They can't be places, because they were the imagination of the Middle Ages. with what we know about the far-flung galaxies of this extraordinary, expanding cosmos, you can't talk about heaven or hell as places. MR. BUCKLEY: Was that-- Now, wait a minute. You say you can't talk about it. Does that mean that the metaphors have to be jettisoned? DR. ADLER: You must not say-- When, for example, in the Creed, you speak of Jesus on the third day ascending into heaven and sitting on the right hand of the Father-- DR. ADLER: --that cannot be literally true. It can't be factually true, because there is no sitting in heaven and God has no right hand. I mean, that's metaphor. So that you must interpret that in such a way that it is consistent with the cosmology realm. MR. BUCKLEY: It's anthropomorphism, isn't it? DR. ADLER: That's right. It is perfectly understandable why the Creed should have said that at a time when the cosmology was as poor as it was. MR. BUCKLEY: Now, wait a minute. Are you saying that we can't read Milton in this century with profit? DR. ADLER: Oh, sure we can. It's wonderful poetry. But you must not read it as though it were making-- MR. BUCKLEY: As though you were getting the celestial architecture. DR. ADLER: That's right, as if it were making literal statements of fact. Because any statement of fact must be consistent with every other statement of fact. You can't have two truths-- MR. BUCKLEY: One must exclude the other. DR. ADLER: That's right. For example, let me put the hard test on this one. Let's suppose that--as I think is the case in that book I wrote about How to Think About God--that philosophical theology is transcultural. What that proof asserts, that one can prove the existence of an infinite spiritual being, is true worldwide. DR. ADLER: If that is true, if that's philosophically true and logically true, then the Eastern religions-- MR. BUCKLEY: Are false. DR. ADLER: --some of which are non theistic, are false, some of those which are polytheistic are false. In other words, polytheism is false and the cosmological religions of the Far 2 3 Board of Trustees of the eland Stanford Jr. University.

5 East that have no God at all. MR. BUCKLEY: To the extent that they are derivative. DR. ADLER: That's right. DR. ADLER: So that if you use Western philosophical theology as a factual truth everything must be consistent with, there are only three religions that can claim to be true: JUdaism, Islam and-- MR. BUCKLEY: Christianity. DR. ADLER: --Christianity. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, now, this transcultural becomes almost a truism. DR. ADLER: That's right. MR. BUCKLEY: What is it, other than invincible ignorance, that would account for the failure of these other cultures to acknowledge your point? DR. ADLER: I don't know the answer to that question. These are all relatively ancient religions with a long history, and-- MR. BUCKLEY: religionists. But they have modern exegetes and modern DR. ADLER: That's right. But I don't think the logical truth is accepted in the East. You see, I think all of the Eastern CUltures, the Hindu CUlture, the two Buddhist CUltures, the Chinese Taoism and Confucianism and Shintoism, are all Averroist in some sense. They are willing to-- I gave a lecture, as the book contains, a lecture I gave in Tokyo, to a very interesting audience at the International Club. And I challenged them about the fact that they could not keep their religions in one part of their mind and their physics and technology in another. They are not in any way disturbed by the inconsistency of those two things. MR. BUCKLEY: But in your book you also say that this attempt to maintain two incompatible truths as your lodestars cannot work. Now, if it cannot work, then mustn't the day be predictable when the truths of the rational structure overwhelm the superstitions? DR. ADLER: I would think so. I remember one of the last things that Toynbee wrote was an essay that predicted the imminence of a world religion. I would think that it's only in this century that technology, physics and mathematics have become effectively transcultural. I mean, there is no Chinese physics, there is no Japanese physics, no Hindu physics or mathematics or technology. MR. BUCKLEY: Was he in a preceding century? I mean, the wheel was always round, wasn't it? DR. ADLER: Yes, but the point I'm trying to make, the cultures did not adopt Western technology until-- MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I see, I see. Yes, yes. DR. ADLER: I mean, in some sense the whole world has been Westernized by technology, has it not? It's our Western technology, our Western mathematics and our Western physics, and those SUbjects are in China or India as well as they are in Southeast Asia and South America and Africa, correct? MR. BUCKLEY: And do you predict that there will in due course-- DR. ADLER: In due course people will be aware of the fact that acting and living and using the truths of these transcultural elements of their culture requires them to face up to the inconsistency between what is asserted logically in technology, in physics and mathematics and what they hold in their religions. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, now, are you talking about the conscientious intellectual elite? Because after all, you can really say that there has been a dissipation in our own culture of people who make the logical connections during the past 75 or 100 years. DR. ADLER: Let's take Campbell. Of the various alternatives that I presented in my book, one is that no religions are true. According to Campbell, all religions are misinterpreted mythologies. They should be taken as poetically true or as forms of poetry, but not as having any logical warrant at all. Let me read you the alternatives for a moment. Campbell is one of them: All religions are misinterpreted mythologies; none is true. We're using the word "truth" now as logical, factual truth. DR. ADLER: Here are the other alternatives: Only one of the world's religions is completely true; all the others share some of that truth, admixing it with falsehood and mistakes. Second: All of the world's great religions contain admixtures of truth and error, with one of them truer than any of the others. All can be graded in the degree of truth they possess from more to less. Three: with regard to its orthodoxy, the one religion that is truer than any of the others is not yet completely true, but can and should look forward to further development in which certain of its beliefs are expunged and others are added to it, making it as nearly as possible completely true. And four: With regard to its orthopraxy--that is, I make a distinction from orthodoxy, right belief, and right ceremonials, right rituals, right precepts--with regard to its.. 5 Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

6 orthopraxy, a religion that is false in its factual or descriptive beliefs, may be true in its moral or-- You see, I think common to all religions of the world, there are certain simple moral precepts that are common. MR. BUCKLEY: What you call the common law, yes. DR. ADLER: Right. And five: While some of the world's great religions are true in certain respects and false in others, some religions are completely false. Now, I would say that no religion is completely false. None of the world's religions are completely false on the grounds of their, should I say, their precepts. I mean, in some sense they all share the golden rule, in some crude, loose sense. And they all have the natural moral law in them somehow. So it is only in their orthodoxy, their beliefs, their assertions of what is-- See, they all are full of factual assertions, are they not? MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. Sure. But also some of them lend themselves to certain practices-- DR. ADLER: Oh, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --that are forbidden by competing religions. DR. ADLER: Yes, after all, just think of the three Western religions. The ceremonial precepts of JUdaism, the ceremonial precepts of Islam, and the ceremonial precepts of Christianity are all inconsistent. I mean, think of the dietary laws in Judaism. Think of prayer requirements of Islam. Think of the forms of worship in Christianity. They are not consistent with one another, are they? MR. BUCKLEY: No, they are not consistent. But do I understand you to be saying that that inconsistency doesn't stand in the way of the principal postulates, reasonable postulates of their faith? DR. ADLER: You see, if the Jewish religion declares that the Old Testament is the word of God and that the first five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, is the heart of the Old Testament, the prophets following in the historical books, then the dietary laws, the dietary prescriptions, are part of orthodox Judaism. When Christ says that there are two precepts of charity: Thou shalt love thy God with all thy heart and all thy soul and all thy mind; and thy neighbor as thyself, on these two precepts hang all the law on the prophets. He's dismissing the Old Testament law and saying, "Substitute these precepts of charity," is he not? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, was he understood to be saying that? DR. ADLER: I think so. You see, I think Paul is saying, Paul follows him in saying, that if you're a Christian you're dispensed from observing the Jewish precepts. Because when you t9-ke Christ's two precepts of charity, he says, "On these hang all the law on the prophets." But what I want you to answer a little bit more directly than you have is the following question. If you can foretell the collapse of the non-rational aspects of the religions you cite, the Hinduism and the Shintoism and-- DR. ADLER: There are about ten, seven at least. --then why can you not forecast a recognition of the truths of religion within our own culture? DR. ADLER: Because our own culture, I think, in the 20th century particularly, is dominated by a philosophy that's made a mockery of truth: positivism. The assertion that, "The only truths we have are the truths of science," will not do. The word "truth" has become the most unused word in our universities. The logic of truth is so exacting that most professors will have nothing to do with it. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, most of them don't believe it exists. DR. ADLER: That's right. The greatest of the-- The most extraordinary of the modern philosophical errors is idealism, that the world is of our making. There is no independent reality to which we are responsible. That is, without an independent reality, truth becomes a kind of figment. MR. BUCKLEY: So therefore you acknowledge that there are sort of Miltonic forces of corruption-- DR. ADLER: Oh, yes, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: --that stand in the way of a penetration of the correct paradigms. DR. ADLER: I think in the 20th century-- I think this book of mine is really the first book in the philosophy of religion that takes truth very seriously. Most of them are sociological books, most of them are comparative religious books, most of them say all these religions-- Indifferentism. Indifferentism is one way of sort of throwing truth out the window. MR. BUCKLEY: That's what Mr. Shrum said, yes. Right, right. And in order to rout that, do you need ratiocination or do you need evangelism or both? DR. ADLER: I think--i really shouldn't say I think--i hope that in the century to come, we not only will see an approach to one world, politically and economically, but also in the West, a defeat of modern positivism. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, why do you conjoin the one to the second? Why do you have to have one government? DR. ADLER: You don't. MR. BUCKLEY: You don't have to. So you're simply 6 7 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.

7 expressing a basket of hopes, not a related-- DR. ADLER: That's right. That's right. MR. BUCKLEY: This one world/one government business goes back to an old fancy of yours, doesn't it? DR. ADLER: That's right. And I shall have something to say about that in the book I have coming out in March. MR. BUCKLEY: Which we will discuss on this program. DR. ADLER: I sure hope so. MR. BUCKLEY: So there are then grounds for being intellectually optimistic, as I understand you. To the extent that technological truths and scientific truths have irradiated throughout the universe, one would assume that-- DR. ADLER: I don't think-- MR. BUCKLEY: Corollary truths. DR. ADLER: --at the moment, if one looks at the academic world of Europe, England and the united States, there is much hope for philosophy. I see no signs of any correction of the 20th century errors. But if the argument goes on, the truth must win, must it not? That is, if we can carry the argument on, the only way in which the truth can be defeated is by people who say there is no truth, which again, that is something that has to be defended. But anyone that is willing to admit that there is truth in areas of science is caught by that much at least of an invasion of skepticism. And one has to show the same kind of evidence that makes some scientific hypotheses false and others correct, or one more correct than another, applies to philosophical conclusions as well. In some sense the burden of all my writing in the last ten years has been that way, and I am hoping that I convince my opponents, or persuade them-- But you're saying are there signs of hope at the moment? No, there there are not. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Dr. Adler, in three or four books, has slowly narrowed the field. Two volumes back he concluded that there must h~ve been a prime mover, that ex nihilation is a necessary phllosophical concept. Now he comes in this book fu:the: ~arrowing the field, by insisting that that which i~ ~clentlflcally pr~vable has got to be compatible with that which ls thought or belleved. All of us who have read these books have a feeling that there is a momentum gathering, which will explode when? DR. ADLER: I think after I am dead. MR. BUCKLEY: I hope that will never happen. DR. ADLER: I'm not planning on it. [laughter] MR. BUCKLEY: Is there any way of repealing that? Well do you feel free to tell us simply the title of the book that will conclude, so to speak, this particular narrative, philosophical narrative? DR. ADLER: Yes. A book that will appear in March in 1992 called A Second Look in the Rearview Mirror, the second part of my autobiography, in which my own dealings with religion will be -- MR. BUCKLEY: And when was the first one published? DR. ADLER: In So it's about 20 years later. MR. BUCKLEY: So the hegira was 13 years. Well, we'll close the program without asking you to give us a preview of that book. Thank you very much, Dr. Adler the author of Truth in Religion; and thank you, Mr. Shru~; and thank you, gentlemen. If you play golf and there isn't a hole in which to drive the ball, then you are helpless, aren't you? DR. ADLER: That's right. Yes. MR. SHRUM: Gentlemen, our time is up. But I believe this half hour has probably provoked people to think more deeply about some timeless truths. I am struck by Mr. Adler's optimism that religion can survive the test of truth, that it is not an act of blind faith, a simple assertion of will in the darkness inconsistent with the work of intellect. But I am not sure how much closer this brings us to any sense of certitude about religion, so I think I will put the question to Mr. Buckley. Is it getting harder or easier to believe that there is one true faith? 8 9 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.