02/09/2022 – Three Religious Models of Ultimate Reality

Hey, we’re looking at models of ultimate reality today. I’ve got a cool chart to show you. We’re gonna even mention Santa Claus. Hang out here for a few minutes and check this out. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. This video is closed-captioned here on YouTube and the transcript is available at TenOnReligion.com. If you like religion and philosophy content one thing I really need you to do is to smash that sub button because it really helps out the channel. I also have a ko-fi linked in the description if you’d like to help support the channel and help me keep this baby going.

Recently, I’ve been covering several books in Wesley Wilman’s religious philosophy series and I just need to give an overview of the series to help you understand what’s going on here. It’s a six-volume series but they have not been published in order of the volume number. I’m not quite sure why, but I Professor Wildman probably has an explanation for that. The six volumes are Volume 1: Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for Philosophy of Religion; Volume 2: In Our Own Image: Anthropomorphism, Apophaticism, and Ultimacy; Volume 3: Science and Ultimate Reality; Volume 4: Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life; Volume 5: Religious and Spiritual Experiences; and Volume 6: Effing the Ineffable: Existential Mumblings at the Limits of Language. In publishing order, however, they look like this: Volume 4 was in 2009, Volume 1 in 2010, Volume 5 in 2011, Volume 2 in 2017, Volume 6 in 2018, and Volume 3, as of the posting of this video, is still in process. I’ve already done episodes on Volumes 1 and 6, and this episode will cover Volume 2, which is a very detailed set of philosophical arguments about three different models of ultimate reality. I’m going to introduce the book and some of its main themes, and if what you hear interests you and you want to jump into the deep end of the pool, you’ll just have to get a copy of the book and read it for yourself when you have some time. Okay, let’s get going.

In the first chapter on Ultimacy, Wildman describes four different types of philosophical theologians so he can sort of map out the territory. The first is what he calls “comparing inquirers” who have a mind open enough to grant that many interpretations or models of ultimate reality are more or less convincing. The second are those who reject inquiry into ultimate reality such that reconciling any conflict between models remains unresolved. This could either mean “mono-traditional investors” who are only interested in investigating from the perspective of one tradition, or “multi-traditional appreciators” who want to create a host of models to enjoy and look at, but are not really interested in comparing or contrasting them – kind of like taking a casual stroll through an art museum or something like that. The third are what he labels as “responsible worriers” who complain that philosophy is simply impractical. The fourth are “analytical ascetics” who believe we shouldn’t try to construct anything because no direct language describing ultimate reality is possible. These are scholars who like to deconstruct everything but instead of reconstructing, they just leave all the pieces on the ground for someone else to pick up. In case you haven’t figured it out, this book is for the first group of people, the “comparing inquirers,” so, if that’s you, keep listening.

Okay, a quick word about this idea of ultimacy or ultimate reality that Wildman talks about. It’s essentially a vague placeholder term which is intentionally undetermined and unconditioned so it can be used as a category to relate the three families, or models, along with the groups of religious traditions which fall underneath the umbrella of these models. So, what are the ultimacy models and how is any given religious tradition classified under these umbrellas? The first model is agential-being theories of ultimate reality. The second is subordinate-deity theories of ultimate reality. The third is ground-of-being theories of ultimate reality. There is also technically a fourth theory if one had no interest in describing ultimacy or for some reason didn’t see the point of it all, then that would be a “no-value” model. If a religious tradition views ultimate reality as an aware agential-being, then it’s classified as the first model. If a religious tradition has a deity or deities which are always subordinate to a larger category as a component of the whole, then it’s classified as the second model. If a religious tradition’s explanation of sacred or holy realities are entirely within the realm of nature without needing or describing them with a “supernature,” then it’s classified as the third model.

There are also three types of cosmologies which are supernaturalist, naturalist, or eliminativism. Supernaturalist and naturalist are mostly self-explanatory. Eliminativism means monist materialism, meaning everything is material, or monist idealism, meaning everything is idea, or in some philosophical circles, the word spirit is used instead.

When the three models of ultimate reality are cross-referenced with the three cosmologies, one can construct a grid or chart if you will. The agential-being ultimacy model when joined with a supernaturalist cosmology results in personal theism. Since naturalist or eliminativist cosmologies are largely incompatible or unnecessary with agential-being ultimacy models, there are no examples in the grid. When ground-of-being models are joined with a supernaturalist cosmology, the result is forms of perennial philosophy. When ground-of-being models are joined with a naturalist cosmology, the result is religious naturalism. Since an eliminativist cosmology is incompatible with ground-of-being ultimacy models, there is no example in the grid. Wildman terms the last category in the grid as “no coherent model” since no fully formed coherent model of ultimate reality results from these systems. When this is joined with a supernaturalist cosmology, the default evolutionary view of religion results which is kind of an older view of religion with ancient gods and deities somehow interacting with humans and nature in no specifically organized way. When this is joined with a naturalist cosmology, both the subordinate-deity model results as well as process theism from Alfred North Whitehead, for those of you who know who and what that is. When this is joined with an eliminativist cosmology, there is not much to talk about since explaining ultimate reality isn’t really that much of a concern. This is like William James from the late 1800’s or early 1900’s describing the myriad of religious responses from a psychological perspective without ever really coming to any substantial conclusions about the matter. So, that’s the grid of possible views when trying to make sense of religious philosophy.

Now we’re going to briefly shift and make a few comments about anthropomorphism followed by a slightly more in-depth description of the three models. Since ultimacy models are thought up by humans they always have a degree of anthropomorphism to them. Wildman suggests there are three ways of getting at the issue – either behind, between, or beyond anthropomorphism. Getting behind means trying to understand the motivational origins of anthropomorphism. We make our ultimacy models, under the impact of many influences and experiences, possibly including information supernaturally infused into the world in ways we can detect such as sacred scriptures or holy people. Getting between means a critical comparison of the relative strengths and weaknesses of each model. Getting beyond means going the route of mystical theology, or the more technical term of apophaticism, which means a denial of what can really be known about reality. The apophatic approach is a strategy for handling the conceptual challenges of modeling ultimate reality, which in principle ought to surpass human cognitive grasp anyways.

And now a few more words about the three models. Agential-being models are incredibly common and for good reason. We know from the scientific study of religion that human beings will spontaneously create supernatural personal beings to believe in, whether or not those beings actually exist, and that allegiance to such supernatural personal beings is tribal – beings of other groups are obviously false while ours are obviously correct. During what’s known as the Axial Age (roughly from 600 to 200 BCE), the development of the belief in an omnipresent, omniscient, morally interested divine watcher emerged capable of punishing wickedness and rewarding good, onto whom human beings could push much of the energy-draining burden of punishment necessary to regulate human group life. This is the so-called Supernatural Monitoring hypothesis, also known as the Santa Claus effect. He sees you when you’re sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows when you’ve been bad or good so be good for goodness’ sake. You’d better watch out. You better not shout. You better not cry. I’m telling you why. Because Santa Claus is coming to town. Okay, that was pretty horrible. Maybe you didn’t know that song…

Subordinate-deity models of ultimate reality largely deal with an ancient problem known as the problem of the One and the Many – how things differ while still being related to one another. Are multiple deities part of some larger reality? Another version is a confrontation between two deities equal in power but opposite in moral orientation (like a good god and an evil god). Yet another is process theology, which is quite complicated metaphysically, in fact, unnecessarily over-complicated imho, so we’re moving on.

Ground-of-being models work great in theory, but haven’t been popular because it’s hard to fight against the social and psychological strengths of agential-being models so entrenched in modern religious institutions of nearly all religions. Apparently, it is not easy to imagine a spiritual configuration other than the one we personally employ to make sense of our worlds. Consequently, we instinctively generalize from our personal experience outwards to principles that supposedly apply to all people. We do this even though in some other corner of our minds we know that people are extremely diverse regarding religious beliefs, behaviors, and experiences. Wildman describes this as a well-known cognitive error. Ground-of-being ultimacy models hold in common two important negations: they deny that ultimate reality is a being with determinate characteristics (like agential-being models) and they deny that ultimate reality is uninterpretable and religiously irrelevant (like the no-coherent category in the chart).

In perennial philosophy, all of the gods, angels, demons, bodhisattvas, jinns, and ghosts talked about in religious life really exist and the symbols name them more or less accurately. Its picture of ultimate reality is God beyond God, or God without attributes, and all religions are paths up the same mountain. In the naturalist versions of ground-of-being ultimacy models, all such symbols make sense only if understood non-literally as symbolic expressions of the religious significance of the world we experience, and their ultimate referent is the ground of being. It’s sort of the opposite of perennial philosophy in that the paths are down a mountain, trying to understand humanity. Naturalist ground-of-being models of ultimate reality must explain and supply careful interpretations of religious symbols whose literal, metaphysical sense is held to be mistaken even while the use of such symbols is deemed effective for engaging ultimate reality.

Let’s take a look one more time at the chart. There are agential-being models, ground-of-being models, and the no-coherent model, of which today the most dominant form are the subordinate-deity models.

So, what do you think about this way of categorizing models of ultimate reality? Is Wildman really on to something here? Is anything missing or left out? Leave a comment below and let me know what you think. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, support the channel in the link below, please like and share this video and subscribe to this channel. This is TenOnReligion.