You are right to consider this a nondebatable topic. All of this, whether faith in church doctrine, biblically inspired stories, or reason (with its generally heavy dependence on something called universal truths), all of it is faith based. One is, in effect, confessing to an understanding of what works for oneself. Which is what you've done.
Sam, on the other hand, is making a claim of a different sort. It's less a statement of faith than a brief but superb summary of the results of scholarship.
How each of these, philosophy or scripture, are then used conversationally to insist folk should believe thus and so (dogma) or I believe thus and so (confessional) is a different matter.
The philosopher which makes the most sense to me, Richard Rorty, of course, argues for the superior confessional qualities of narrative. It is a better vehicle for conveying how to lead one's life and what sense to make of one's life. And argues, in effect, that philosophy which grounds its claims in the superior power of rationality is simply a different confession.
Again I agree with you that this forum is definitely not a good place to discuss the claims that get Rorty to this point. But if one were interested, it's easy to check out his Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature and Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. The last is far the more readable. |
