Religion and the Human Future An Essay on Theological Humanism

Masks of Mind^8

This chapter explores reflective goods and the human quest for meaning, recognizing that everywhere basic, natural, social, and reflective goods are intertwined. These goods arise within domains of conceptual, symbolic, linguistic, and practical meaning-systems. As noted in chapter 5, reflective

goods aim both tive goods are distinctive to self-interpreting beings. In acts of reflection, human beings bend back on their immediate relations to life in order to think about them, to express them, and to assess their worth under standards at truth in life and at a truthful life. More simply, reflec-

of truth and knowledge, goodness and right, beauty and meaningfulness. Reflective goods are thereby bound to human consciousness and judgment.seek to address. In our view, consciousness is the ground, art is a medium, The link between consciousness and reflective goods is the problem we

and modeling is a method of articulating reflective goods. The chapter begins by putting an account of reflective goods on trial with respect to a spirited debate over the nature and origin of human consciousness raging in the academy and the wider society. (^1) How does theological humanism enter the
debate about consciousness, its origin and good? What does that have to do with reflective goods?

The question of the relation of mind and matter is longstanding in Western thought. With the advances in modern biology and genetics, the old debate Terms of the Debate

has been reopened. Some thinkers have tried to isolate the “God” gene, that is, the biological origins of religious sensibilities. There are discussions of the

9781405155267_4_008.indd 1299781405155267_4_008.indd 129© Religion and the Human Future: An Essay on Theological Humanism2008 David E. Klemm and William Schweiker^. ISBN: 978-1-405^ -15526-7David E. Klemm and William Schweiker 5/2/2008 8:03:37 PM5/2/2008 8:03:37 PM