Chapter 2 points: Methodologies and consequences

Summary:
A. Religions
	1. Fundamentalisms: Goal is to find single, absolute, inerrant truth. Methods include study of inerrant texts and through 	faith, including prayer.
	2. Mystical religions: Meditation
B. Science 
	'Truth will out'
	Credit
C. Art
	Creating enduring images. Use non-logical parts of brain and archetypal myths. Use exact analogy of prayer.


Details:
A. Fundamentalist religions
	1. Three premises:
	* Text is the literal, inerrant word of God;
	* Summaries of the text- Creeds- are also absolutely true;
	* Believers must live their lives subordinate to the truths contained in these sacred texts.

	2. Faith
	Belief without physical proof. Sometimes discredited because of how it has been, and is, used.

	3. Consequences
	a. Literature: Sacred text source of great literature. Example: Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, November 19, 1863:
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

	b. Revelation: Revealed truth, both from the sacred texts and from faith (often prayer).

	c. Women: With few and rare exceptions, women are subordinate to men in fundamentalist religions.

	d. Dominion: Rather than stewardship, it is dominion that the fundamentalist Levantine faiths encourage and endorse.

	e. Intolerance: Seems from history to be virtually an inevitable concomitant to fundamentalist views, not merely religious but political, economic, social as well.

	f. Education: Fundamentalist doctrines have two deplorable attitudes toward education. First, treat knowledge outside doctrine as having no value or impact on doctrine. Second, don't teach what contradicts or leads to questions about doctrine.

B. Mystical religions
	1. Method: meditation. Goal: clear view of the world as it is. The highest experience is a sort of void, a constant question.

	2. Mystics aim to retain consciousness while removing all ego-based self-absorption.

	3. Reality: Here many mystical religious traditions argue there is more to reality than our five conscious senses can perceive.

	4. Enlightenment: This word has two different meanings. On the one hand, it is the perception of the world arrived at by mystics via meditation. On the other hand, it is the rational view of the world developed in Europe in the 18th century.

	5. Education: For mystical religions, education must include teaching about human myths and archetypes, about science (both method and ideas) and about what is currently known regarding cosmology.

C. Science
	1. Methods:
	* The truth will out.
	* Credit

	2. Social effects
	* Matthew effect: People with higher status receive recognition more easily than unknowns.
	* Halo effect: Associates of the famous are recognized more easily.

	3. Credit: Receiving credit for first discovery; no direct analog in religion or the arts.
	--> Leads or is the impetus for Fraud

D. Art
	1. Methods:
	* Enduring images
	* Depends on the non-conscious, non-logical parts of the mind

	2. Proposal: Artists and fundamentalists use the same process in "talking to God".