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What do I carry away from my further study of Collingwood on religion?

Wiki MarkupAbove all, I carry away the conviction that, while Collingwood is certainly right that "the whole of life, regarded as a whole, is the sphere of religion, and ... the same whole, regarded as made up of details, is the sphere of science" (_Faith and Reason_: 145), he is almost certainly wrong that "\[t\]he proper sphere of faith is everything in the collective sense-\--everything as a whole," while "\[t\]he proper sphere of reason is everything in the distributive sense-\--every separate thing, no matter what" (142). In other words, Collingwood misleads in representing the distinction between religion and science as only another way of talking about the distinction between faith and reason-\--and vice versa. For just as faith, in its way, has to do with parts as well as the whole, so reason, in its way-\--in the way of- _{-}philosophical{-}{_}-, as distinct from scientific, reason-\--has to do with the whole as well as parts. There are passages, indeed, where Collingwood himself clearly says as much (e.g., 91), so his position on the matter is simply not consistent.

Wiki MarkupAnother thing I carry away is the conviction that Collingwood's treatment of the war between science and religion is as valid and important as Bultmann's, with which it closely converges. Especially helpful in this connection is Collingwood's clarification of "superstition." "To be superstitious," he says, "is to select certain finite things from among the rest and withdraw them from the sphere of reason \ [Of course, Collingwood should have said "science" here instead of "reason," for the reason given above.\]." But "\[a\]ll finite things are proper objects of \ [the\] scientific habit of mind," and "\[t\]here is no fact or class of facts which can be withdrawn from its analysis or spared its criticism." "\[I\]t is precisely the duty of reason \ [_sc_. science\!\] to fight superstition wherever it finds it, even if (as it always does) it shelters itself behind the name of religion" (142). "The defeat of superstition is a victory not only for reason but for faith too. Nothing could more thoroughly consolidate the position of religion than that science should systematically drive it from every position of detail that it holds, because nothing could more thoroughly enforce the lesson that if religion is to exist at all it must base its claims not on a reading of this fact or that but on its reading of human experience in its entirety" (144). "The war between faith and reason \ [_sc_.