THE REAL GOD

Theological phenomenology and speculative realism are both unsatisfactory when it comes to the  question of cosmogony.  Theological phenomenology transplants God from its rightful perch beyond and outside the universe to a sort of always-already inner outside, the ideal limit of the phenomenological brackets.   Certainly there is a place for secularized mysticism, but I think that this place (i.e. no place at all, the place from which unaccountable givenness comes) doesn't do much for religion in terms of its connection to ethics and politics.  

A properly secularized theology would need more of a connection to reason, so that it could have a basis for fighting against Christian and Muslim fundamentalism - two of the greatest evils in the world - as well as liberal-democratic nihilism.    There needs to be a God in the strongest sense of the term - a God who, on the one hand, created the world, and, on the other, is the source of value and norms.   Accepting that there is a creator-God who is the source of astonishment and love, thought would then subject religion to a purifying critique from the perspective of the history of art, science, and emancipatory politics.

Religion needs to be constrained - severely.   Dogma is oppressive and prophets are charlatans - these are all-too-human adulterations of the nectar of true religion, which can only be art (which is in essence communion with God qua love) and music (which is in essence communion with God qua astonishment).  

If we reject living religions because of their danger and falsehood and also reject theo-phenomenology on account of its impotence, theo-realism is the only really sensible path to take. The scientism of atheist thinkers is not much more satisfying than the mystification of phenomenology.  Grounded only in erudition and requiring quite a bit of obscurantism to seem consistent or even interesting, atheist scientism is in no way able to connect thought to genuine ethics.  Or rather, it only is able to if it sneaks in some kind of theology through the back door (for which, for example, many people criticize  Badiou - but usually from the atheist perspective I am opposing here).  

What's needed then is a proof of the existence of God (using syllogistic logic and contemporary results from mathematics and science) supplemented by a critique of religion on the basis of art and emancipation.  

I haven't mentioned non-Abrahamic religion, like the Indian and Chinese complexes of religions and religious philosophies and the various types of shamanism existing throughout the world (and contemporary repetitions of hermeticism and cabala in various cults and orders).   Broadly speaking I'd say that these complexes provide materials for the artistic and musical reinscription of religion, but that without grounding in an established creator-legislator god they are easily co-opted as grease on the wheels of the capitalist assembly line, at least in the West.   The mindfulness of American yogis and the cosmic thrill seeking of the counterculture, if we're really being honest, are in the last instance a diversion of attention from the exploitation and destruction in the world - from the real issues.  I'm quite sympathetic with both of these stances, but there is a certain militancy in Christianity and Islam that I think is actually worth keeping.   The question is what the war is about.