Conversations on Peirce: Reals and Ideals

Twelve Developmental Theism A Peircean Response to Fundamentalism

twelve developmental theism A Peircean Response to Fundamentalism Doug Anderson  In discussing Peirce’s overall method of inquiry, we routinely used Christian fundamentalism as a marker of tenacious belief and as exemplary of blocking the road of inquiry. This essay resulted from considering what is so problematic about fundamentalism. Having brought matters of heart and mind into relation in chapter 10, I turn here to apply this relation to an issue that that has important political import for contemporary culture. The specific issue I wish to explore—religious fundamentalism—is a complex one, open to several avenues of investigation. Though the term fundamentalism was not available to Peirce, he was concerned with its pragmatic meaning in several ways. My purpose here, therefore, is not to propose any radically new interpretations of Peirce’s thought, but simply to examine some of the ways Peirce might have responded to fundamentalism. I also make no attempt at completeness; Peirce’s response not only to fundamentalism but to theologism in general {  }  doug anderson cuts deeper than at first appears, and will not be fully captured in the confines of a single chapter. The Peircean response I have in mind is double-edged. On the one hand, I will argue that Peirce would reject fundamentalism on the ground that it is unscientific. While this appears to be a rather standard attack on fundamentalism, given the Scopes Monkey Trial and like cases, I will try to show, following our discussions in the preceding chapters, that a Peircean version of this argument involves an approach sometimes neglected by other critics of fundamentalism . On the other hand, I will argue that Peirce would also reject fundamentalism on the ground that it is nonreligious or, at least, is insufficiently religious. This rejection involves the establishment, for Peirce, of religion proper as a sentiment, as well as the establishment of science as an avenue for further critical articulation of the concepts that arise in religion proper. I take this Peircean marriage of science and religion to constitute a developmental theism that attempts to avoid the dogmatic overdetermination of religious ideas found in fundamentalism. In all of this my purpose is neither to demonstrate the truth of Peirce’s view nor to identify Peirce as something of a contemporary liberal. On the contrary, I mean simply to develop the central Peircean feature of scientific-mindedness —his Aristotelian-like commitment to the pursuit of truth—as a way, and perhaps an important way, of addressing the intellectual position of Christian fundamentalism.1 The coining of the term fundamentalism seems to have occurred some six years after Peirce’s death in 1914. Yet, as historian of religion George Marsden points out, the general intellectual or theological view ascribed to Christian fundamentalism as we know it today had been extant in America for some time prior to 1920.2 Thus, while Peirce was not familiar with the term, he was certainly familiar with New England Calvinism and with the reality of fundamentalist Christianity . As we might well expect, the theory and practice of fundamentalism in America has been, and is, no more univocal than the practice and theory of pragmatism. Nevertheless, in examining the series of essays in pamphlet form called The Fundamentals, from a peircean response to fundamentalism  which fundamentalism acquired its name, we can find at least two tenets that appear central to most forms of Christian fundamentalism : 1) that the Bible ought to be the final measure of all claims to knowledge; and 2) that the Bible is without error.3 In offering a Peircean response, therefore, I will focus on these two beliefs and some of the considerations they seem to involve. To set the stage a bit more fully, let us examine some claims made in The Fundamentals. Fundamentalists, not unlike Peirce, tend to place a heavy emphasis on the importance of religious experience, so that religion is not reduced to a cold intellectualism. This emphasis is evident in the very style of much contemporary television evangelism, a good part of which is fundamentalist in nature. At the same time, and as we shall see with some difficulty, fundamentalism requires of a ‘‘true’’ religious experience that it be tied to Christian doctrine, that is, to the Bible. For the fundamentalist this is no minor restriction, for as James M. Gray put it in his contribution to The Fundamentals, with an almost...