home | 1945-21st century

FAITH and JUSTIFICATIONS (2 of 6)

Huston Smith. He has the same look as his fellow searcher of bliss Hugh Hefner, age 84, recently photographed with his new bride.

Huston Smith is a religious studies scholar who has held academic chairs at Washington University, MIT, Syracuse and UC Berkeley. In 1996 the journalist Bill Moyers devoted a 5-part PBS special to Smith's life and work, "The Wisdom of Faith with Huston Smith," available on video on the internet.

Smith has practiced Vedanta Hinduism, Zen Buddhism and Sufism. His interest is in the spirituality that is common in various religious practices. In his book Why Religion Matters he describes himself as using "the terms metaphysics, worldview, and Big Picture interchangeably."

Smith holds that the spiritual oceanic sense within him is a real universal force existing outside his head. He believes in scientific methodology but he criticizes what he calls scientism. "Science is on balance good," he writes, "whereas nothing good can be said for scientism." By scientism Smith refers to those who see their ability to know as limited and do not want to go beyond what can be revealed empirically.

Smith complains about university philosophers dismissing all the old theologies. He writes that "...the once-pervasive presence of religion on campuses has all but disappeared." He writes that since nature abhors a vacuum, people keep trying to fill the one inside them. His justification for believing differently from the other professors he complains of is not done with a Middle Ages style scholasticism -- an attempt at mentality architecture that hangs together logically. Rather, he holds to an effect argument: something is true or not true based on whether it has a beneficial effect on the person doing the thinking. Beneficence for Smith is the bliss that accompanies an oceanic sense acquired through contemplation.

Those who enjoy Smith's books also focus on personal experience rather than epistemological argument. A customer review at Amazon.com who read Smith's Tales of Wonder: Adventures Chasing the Divine, writes: "Reading Huston's autobiography will leave you grateful for a religious life well-lived and well-told." This is what Smith appears to have been trying to communicate: spirituality as a key element in one's life.

As a professor who taught world religions he focused on personal experience, and one customer reviewer complains that Smith should also have written about shamanism, South American tribal and African tribal beliefs. Another reviewer, a Jew, complains that Smith's chapter on Judaism is full of dozens of very basic errors and lack of knowledge.

Another, perhaps more youthful reviewer, was also unconvinced by Smith's writing.

I really cannot stand this book. It's my textbook for my religion class and it is the most difficult thing to read. He just rambles on and on...just get to the point! I have to read a section 3 times before it makes sense. What kind of a book is that. I know I'm not the only one with this opinion because that is what everyone in my class says as well. If you have to buy this for college, that's unfortunate. If you're making this purchase for pleasure, I advise against it.

The issue here is Smith's ability to justify his being a cheerleader for a variety of religions. Those who seek more than to share in Smith's warm and oceanic sense of bliss are of course going to be disappointed. This includes those who find pleasure in the knowledge they are seeing the world for what it is and reject what they see as wishful thinking and delusion.

And there are those Christians who must be disappointed with Smith because of his inadequate focus on what they believe makes Christianity superior to other faiths.

Smith's justification of faith based on its effect on the believer remains, however, common.