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God and the Secular: A Philosophical Assessment of Secular Reasoning from Bacon to Kant (review)
- Journal of the History of Philosophy
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 20, Number 3, July 1982
- pp. 315-317
- 10.1353/hph.1982.0034
- Review
- Additional Information
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BOOK REVIEWS 315 all the problems related to the natural sciences of human nature and to the many ways in which American scientists have tried to explain how nature and nurture in fact cooperate. This history tells how American scientists in biology, genetics, psychology , sociology, and anthropology have tried to show that all these sciences contribute to the study of how natural and cultural factors are needed to acquire a well-defined idea of human nature. This is fascinating history well told, but too complicated for my review. HERBERT W. SCHNEIDER Claremont, California Robin Attfield. God and the Secular:A PhilosophicalAssessmentof Secular Reasoningfrom Bacon to Kant. (Cardiff, Wales: University College Cardiff Press in association with Christopher Davies Ltd., 1978. Pp. ~3 I. s o. Robin Attfield, the author of this densely argued book, displays wide-ranging historical knowledge in defense of his systematic theological thesis: "Secularisation... should not be opposed by the believers in God. On the contrary, Jewish and Christian theism is compatible with many of the more central tenets of secularisation and indeed positively implies them" (p. 211), Throughout the work Attfield equates secularization with "the progressive assertion of human independence from religious authorities and influence" (p. 9). In Chapters 1 and 2 Attfield argues that, despite the conflict and tension that the secular study of nature raised for the authority of the church and for God's place in the new naturalistic scheme of mechanical nature, there is a necessary connection between such theistic doctrines as, for example, creation and autonomous (hence secular) scientific methodology. In these two chapters, Attfield elaborates on his shorter article "Science and Creation" (Journal of Religion). In Chapters 3 and 4 Attfield endeavors to show that theism requires the secularization (i.e., autonomy) of rationally defensible moral standards if morality is to comprise anything more than a set of arbitrary, or revealed, injunctions. He concludes that secular ethical theory, such as, especially, utilitarianism, is required by theism. In the final two chapters, Attfield examines both the cosmological and the teleological arguments as grounds for belief in God and concludes that these two arguments, taken together, provide autonomous, independent (hence secular) rational grounds for belief in the theistic doctrine of creation. Here, too, Attfield draws on his earlier article "Towards a Defense of Teleology" (Ethics). Attfield's analytic approach falls prey to the always present danger of surreptitiously converting theism into a set of meaningful or meaningless beliefs susceptible to strictly logical analysis. Though Attfield's intended focus is on a "consistent critique " of some of the major manifestations of secularization (e.g., autonomous scientific methodology, autonomous ethical theory, autonomous rational grounds for belief in a good creator), his procedure tends to reduce theism to whatever beliefs are 316 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY defensible by autonomous, secular analysis. This approach is a legitimate one in the systematic philosophy of religion, which is what this book is, at least in part. But Attfield claims that it is something more as well. He seeks to head off the objection that his definition of secularization in regard to the tenets of theism is too narrow, when he stakes out his territory: "The philosophy of secularisation could be commended as a branch of philosophical enquiry on a level with the philosophy of education or the philosophy of mind; it is distinctive in having in part a body of philosophy as its subject matter. The current work is principally an essay in this branch of philosophy: at the same time it also delineates in some measure the theories , attitudes and spirit of the secularisers" (p. 1 1), Thus, Attfield attempts to escape the charge of reductionism because of the specific historical period and thinkers he has chosen "in some measure" to assess, the period "from Bacon to Kant," when theistic doctrines such as creation previously illuminated by faith now shine forth in the light of autonomous reason. Whether he is or is not guilty of reducing the process of secularisation into an altogether too easily analyzable concept, that is, the "progressive assertion of human independence from religious authorities or influence," his claims ultimately stand or fall in the present work on his historical interpretations. And it is precisely in...