Comments on Articles by Professors Friess and Winter

Abstract

COGENT CHALLENGES to the view of religion presented in my October article come not only from Horace L. Friess' direct comments but also from Gibson Winter's article which appeared in the same issue of the Journal. I will begin by giving my reactions to some of Professor Friess' comments. He presents a sound criticism when he questions my use of the word supreme in the affirmation that one characteristic of religion is the belief-attitude that certain aspects of life are of supreme importance (at least potentially) (p. 8).1 The word is badly chosen. I wrote thinking of it as plural rather than as singular, intending it to modify a number of aspects of life. However, to some readers the word supreme has the meaning of the in a rank order; according to this usage, only one aspect of life could be considered to be religious, at any rate at any one time. Moreover, the supreme concern of many people, the one concern they rank highest, is secular, according to the proposed definition of secular (p. 12), while some of their lesser concerns would meet all of the criteria proposed for religious except the quality of being in a rank order. For example, a person could rank loyalty to the use of the scientific method as highest among his values, and view it as deriving from the Ultimate. Yet it could be for him a secular concern in that it could be thought of as demonstrable empirically. This same person could look on the quality of, say, humility as deriving