Letters to the Editor
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Calling a frog a god
At least we have a few 'religious' philosophers who are willing to stand up to their conservative bretheran. However, in the process, Haught changes the terms to try to win his more long-term argument with those devilish scientists.
First he claims three fellows he has no claim on. Camus was an existentialist who believed that man made his own meaning. Sartre agreed, and went further and became a Marxist. Nietzsche was an atheist of an earlier brand, inspiring both existentialism and fascism. Their answer to 'nihilism' was man, not religion or God. Nihilism is not the result of not believing in God - "man" is or can be. Haught borrows these people to try to get credibility, but the effort fails.
Hawkins, Harris and Hitchens are more narrowly concerned with the 'religion' debate than any of these 3 forerunning atheists, who were writers and full fledged philosophers as well. Comparing them is like comparing grapes to raisins.
Haught goes on to change the definition of religion. Now it deals with 1.) 'ultimate' concerns, which many atheists, writers or philosophers are concerned with too. This is not specifically religious. Since we do not know what the answer is to every question, the world is of course filled with 2.) 'mystery', which is not, again, specific to religion.
His third definition of religion is that it is with a 'personal' god. In trying to explain this, he shows how his meaning for the 'resurrection' is that 'everything ends up for the best" - not that anyone was actually revived from the dead, etc. That means that God answers our prayers, but perhaps not in a 'literal' way. To me, this sounds like Hallmark or Disney wrote the resurrection story, and prayers are no more than good horoscopes. "Hope" again, as an emotion, is not specifically religious, but is a product of the natural human life force. He dresses this up in religious clothes, but putting a cassock on a beautiful woman does not make her a nun.
Neuro-science is revealing more and more the biological basis of thoughts and feelings, and the unknown area of 'spirit' like the area for ultimate 'causes' is getting smaller and smaller. The debate on whether science can answer 'all' questions is not really made by atheists - it is another straw man. If the claim for God is on natural territory, than science does have a role to play. If the claim for God is in an area untestable by science, than it cannot determine an outlook. How things works can be more complicated than we can understand at the present. Other methods might have to be used, like political intuition or even, gasp, common sense.
Haught's religion is really watered-down secular humanism. I am quite astounded at how weak the arguments of this sophisticated philosopher of religion are.