I’m currently leading a reading group at Phoenix Seminary on Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age. He is working to answer this question: why was belief in God the norm in 1500 and now it is not. It is now very acceptable to not believe in God. In 800 pages he endeavors to explain this history.
I’m working through his chapter on the immanent frame. I’ll share a few of my thoughts as I’m going along. Let me give some context. He is explaining how we come to hold our beliefs about matters like God, the self, the good. There is a background sense of the world that we have which then produces, or out of which grow, our beliefs. He is giving us an “origins” story about our beliefs and it does seem true that many of our beliefs are formed this way (unconsciously and uncritically).
But once we have our beliefs and are more conscious of them and their implications we can then critically analyze them. However we “got them,” we don’t have to keep them. Let me give an example from Taylor.
He says that an understanding of his “immanent frame” can go one of two ways. It can be open or closed. It can be open in that there is more than the immanent frame, there is something transcendent. Or it can be closed and this is all there is. Which way a person goes has to do with these background sensibilities.
That description might be true. Even if it is, it doesn’t tell us which view is true. Is there anything transcendent? The belief that the immanent frame is closed is the belief that “all is one.” We can use reason to analyze this claim. It is to say “nothing is transcendent,” or more specifically, “all is eternal.” I have posted lectures here arguing that not all is eternal, only some is eternal. That “closes” the “closed” view to us.
So however we got our beliefs, whatever other sensibilities we have, irregardless of our preferences about the matter, we can lead the examined life. We can critically analyze the claim that “all is one,” or “all is eternal” for meaning and truth. That’s where philosophy begins.