ABSTRACT
Religion, some think, is believing in doctrines, belonging to an organization, saving one’s soul through an attitude or works. For the commitment to a sense of reality and a story is much more deeply buried in the person than a commitment to a theory or to a set of facts. Many arguments about important human matters—love, politics, religion—go astray because they are conducted as if only facts and theories were at issue. A standpoint in humanistic thinking is different from a standpoint in scientific thinking. Even in scientific thinking, to be sure, creative thought and invention and judgment are eminently personal. A story ties a person’s actions together in a sequence. Clinical psychology has by accumulated masses of data about shifts in persons’ sense of reality and story. The most interesting arguments in the world concern senses of reality and story.
