The Idolatry of Modernity and the Impossibile State

In the concluding chapter of his book The Impossible State, Wael B. Hallaq argues that the crisis of the Muslim world is not a uniquely Muslim crisis, but is the crisis faced by all of humanity in our present times. This crisis stems from modernity, from Enlightenment philosophy, from a humanism that says “man is the measure of all things”.

Hallaq presents two worldviews in fundamental contradiction to one another. On the one hand, we have a theology that says we live in a universe saturated with moral values, with reasons that make normative demands of us (165). These moral demands transcend human subjectivity: they are part of the created world in which we live, and they come from God, the only Sovereign. On the other hand, we have a humanism that says we live in a value-free universe, and that the only moral constraints on us have their origin in human Reason.

Methodological Naturalism and an expanding ontological boundary

"I believe it is best to embrace methodological naturalism as more open minded and more expansive [than substantive naturalism], while using it to evaluate the controversial hypotheses of substantive naturalism. It is more consistent with the fallibilism that follows from a view of ourselves as one species among many, learning more about the world as we continue probing it, and therefore not insisting on a fixed boundary around what there is. That boundary may need to be expanded in the course of inquiry, depending on what is needed to make sense of everything that is so in the world."

(David B. Wong, Natural Moralities, p. 32)

Almost thou persuadest me to be a methodological naturalist! :)

In principle, could methodological naturalism be compatible with an interpretation of religious experience (and other experience) that locates that experience in a supernaturalistic framework of meaning and ontology? Could the methodological naturalist believe there is a transcendent Being who stands outside of the single, natural world we all seem to occupy?

That is: can the naturalist be a theist?