>>> Pragmatism is a way of establishing meanings, not a theory of metaphysics or a set of truths - Charles Sanders Peirce <<< Peirce's "pragmatic semiotic realism" --- not like the vulgar pragmatism of Rorty --- approaches reality as a vague phenomenology, ontologically, as an axiological venture, epistemologically. In other words, it involves epistemic risk amplifications ordered toward value-realization augmentations, More simply, it involves what Viktor Frankl called "wo/man's search for meaning." It intuits essentialism's aspiration for conceptual correspondence with reality as a meaningful theory of truth and social constructionism's (and nominalism's) aspiration for conceptual coherence as a meaningful theory of knowledge, transcending the pseuodo-problems that pit empiricists and rationalists, realists and idealists, Aristotelians (empirical realists) and Humeans (empirical idealists) over against each other, otherwise probing our conceptual distinctions for the differences they make (or not) in our human value-realizations like beauty, goodness, freedomand love. When these other value-realizations are augmented, our epistemic risk ventures, in a weak truth-indicative way, have a higher chance of being truthful. (This is quite different from saying that what is useful is what is true.) The dress was, among other things, beautiful. Matthew's article was meaningful. Our Great Traditions are polydoxic. Often, I try to write in E-Prime, which eschews all verb forms of the infinitive "to be" and especially me is." It helps us cut to the metaphysical chase. Actually, you're getting close. While from my own emergentist stance, | remain metaphysically agnostic regarding proximate realities, such as philosophy of mind, and wouldn't lose any sleep over cartesian vs physicalist accounts (leaning toward a nonreductive physicalism but not heavilyinvested) —-- When I refer to ultimate reality, I'm talking about reality's initial, boundary and limit conditions and the epistemic open space that gifts us ontological undecidability regarding primal realities. So, while I eschew a metaphysics of the gaps or god of the gaps, opting for a methodological naturalism, neither would I countenance Nietzsche, Sarte or Camus standing guard at reality's perimeters, issuing epistemic promissory notes, the value of which remains hard to cash-out. The fact that certain methodological stipulations like methodological naturalism, principles of causation and sufficient reason remain indispensable for inquiry does not mean that they must necessarily universally obtain but, rather that, if they do not, we shall in one way or another, epistemically, be unfortunate. The Resurrection Event does not refer only to Jesus’ body but to a huge cluster of realities beggingquestions, which Luke Timothy Johnson best addresses, in my view, for any interested. Because primal realities invite competing plausible interpretations, requiring a leap of faith, yes, for one who's thus leapt, not unreasonably, the Resurrection Event enjoys more plausibility, Again, though, it involves a vague reference THAT something (a whole series of somethings) happened, plausibly, and not a robust description of HOW something happened, probabilistically. In that sense, the inference is more closely related to putative atemporal realities like a quantum vacuum fluctuation and not so much emergent proximate realities like life or consciousness. So, not anything goes but some things justifiably do. There was another point, more salient, perhaps --- that a given interpretive stance gets normatively justified relative to what one proposes to do with same. Not anything goes performatively. Not by a long shot. What an impoverished notion of prayer, as if it wereall petitionary, as if manifold and multiform efficacies wouldn't or couldn't flow from supplication or other forms, for as St Teresa offers: Let us desire and occupy ourselves in prayer, not so much to gain its consolations, but, so as to gain the strength to serve. In the East, the pursuit of Enlightenment, for its own sake, subverts the process. Awakening to our solidarity, East or West, compassion thus ensues. The larger point, however, is that this shallow, armchair critique of religion lacks sociologic rigor and scientific anthropological insight per David Eller. Those atheists known as religious naturalists know how specious your silly little syllogism is and demonstrate it in the manner of their own practices. To wit, from the wiki: "Professor of Anthropology and Sociology Jack David Eller believes that the four principal New Atheist authors - Hitchens, Dawkins, Dennet and Harris - were not offering anything new in terms ofarguments to disprove the existence of gods. He also criticized them for their focus on the dangers of theism, as opposed to the falsifying of theism, which results in mischaracterizing religions; taking local theisms as the essence of religion itself, and for focusing on the negative aspects of religion in the form of an ‘argument from benefit’ in the reverse." The more substantive point might be that we're not dealing with descriptive probabilities, which lend themselves to empirical measurement, inductive testing and rational conclusions ... but, instead, interpretive plausibilities, which lend themselves only to weak abductive inferences and deductive clarifications, which, being tautological, add no new information to our modeling power ... which doesn't make prayer necessarily untrue but does make it uninformative, scientifically. Only if one narrowly defines prayer as petitionary, ignoring praise, adoration, liturgy, devotions, thanksgiving, memorial, covenant, celebration, presence, eucharist, meditation, contemplatio, lectio,oratio and so on would one mislabel most of its efficacies as confounding (or accidental) effects rather than as essential aspects. For it's part, petitionary prayer has been overexplained by many believers and, while it's not wholly unrelated to other prayer forms and while it can effect many of the very same efficacies, I personally resist facile interpretations of any divine interactivity, in particular, because it suffers from well known theodicy maladies (the problem of evil, evidentially, cannot be distinguished from the problem of good), risking trivializing the enormity of human pain and the immensity of human suffering and risking blasphemy in arrogantly diving God's ways & means, which remain largely inscrutable and wholly incomprehensible, although not wholly inapprehensible. Explanations of prayer, then, like answers to the problem of evil, can be logical, i.e. a defense of possibilities, or evidential, i.e. an evidential theodicy of plausibilities. Theodicies are off-putting to me.In either case, while theologic interpretations are probabilistically uninformative, that's not the same thing as saying that they are axiologically unmeaningful, except from within a radically empirical or ignostic stance akin to logical positivism. >>> And supplication is a synonym for petition, <<< I was employing it as a synonym, suggesting manifold efficacies flow also from petition, >>> Simply begging the question of there being a Whom to serve. <<< Was not a reference to God but to service of others. >>>>"The larger point, however, is that this shallow, armchair critique of religion lacks sociologic rigor and scientific anthropological insight per David Eller." I'm afraid this armchair critique of a critique doesn't have the substance to be shallow. <<<< David Eller is himself an atheist making appeals to others to beef up their own atheological critiques, soas not to embarrass their co-areligionists or themselves. >>> It's a bit tiring to endlessly reduce atheism to the 'Four Horsemen’, but none of them ever claimed to be advancing new arguments against God's existence,<<<< I was not responding to a caricature or to atheists in general, I was responding, as per my ordinary focus, to a particular idea. The form of the argument under consideration here, precisely, was the pragmatic argument against religion, which just so happens to also be the thrust of The 4, the force of which Eller seriously calls into question. >>> The old arguments are quite sufficient, but as long as religious proselytism lasts, new audiences are in need of hearing them.<<< The old arguments are sufficient only if, by sufficient, you mean they offer --- not unreasonably --—- competing tautologies about primal realities, which, as with the interpretive stances of religions writ large,are not necessarily untrue but are, probabilistically speaking, uninformative. You close, persisting with a pragmatic thrust, regarding the need to dispossess audiences of their own interpretive stances and replace them with your own, I have visited SN and EN, not with the aim to proselytize, but, with the desire to advance mutual understandings. I likely share your disillusionment that others might only desire to engage others' worldviews in an over against polemic. I do aspire to defend my worldview but not to take down others’. I'm not sure the tone and tenor of my rhetoric always reflect that sentiment, but I certainly apologize for any lapses. religious epistemology, strange notions, estranged notions, atheism, new atheism, atheological critique, efficacy of prayer, divine interactivity, miracles, logical defense of problem of evil, evidential theodicy of problem of evil, new atheism, ignosticism, radical empiricism, logical positivism, david eller, daniel dennett, sam harris, richarddawkins, christopher hitchens, resurrection event, charles sanders peirce, pragmatic semiotic realism, luke timothy johnson, nietzsche, camus, sartre, metaphysics of the gaps, god of the gaps, e-prime, aristotelian, humean, social constructionism, nominalism, essentialism, rational realism, rational idealism, empirical realism, empirical idealism, phenomenological philosophy, platonic, kantian, rorty's vulgar pragmatism