Posted: Oct 16, 2010 5:50 pm
John P. M. wrote:True, but in the analogy to Christianities then, this would have to be only a belief in what Jesus stood for, for example, and as such, that belief could be held by an atheist as well ("atheists for Jesus" comes to mind).
Depends on your basis for admiring Jesus' teachings (or rather, the teachings of Jesus & the various people who wrote his lines). Admiring them is a necessary, but not sufficient, basis for claiming that they contain metaphysical truth.
As you say, King Arthur isn't running the afterlife (although Arthurian myth sometimes seems to come close). This is a substantive difference between that myth and Christianity, although for a Christian who believes in universal salvation, the import of what comes after is reduced.
Or there are Christians who have an even more abstract view of metaphysics, and see the religion's truth as being closer to truths about human nature found in Hamlet or Orwell. At this stage, it's hard to distinguish Christianity from humanism (and a trip to Unitarian Universalism is surely on the cards!).
Granted, people do believe in Jesus as God without evidence, but they do base it on something, and I think that if they could find some material evidence to 'scaffold' that faith, they wouldn't hesitate to use it.
If that "something" is metaphysical, it's likely more powerful than any materialistic foundation. You can claim materialistic corroboration ATM. No-one can currently disprove it. That some Christians have abandoned it entirely suggests that this isn't a road they're interested in traveling.
I'm all for retaining sanity via a connect between materialism and metaphysics (if there is such a thing as metaphysics). The fewer mad philosophers, the better.
In a Christian context, I guess this would come through the efficacy of transcendent spiritual experience in improving our material experience of the world, although some mystics value it entirely for its own sake.