Human values and the methods we employ for attaining them are continuous

(w/neither epistemological nor ontological discontinuities, in other words,

nondual).

We can take Kant's interrogatories, for example, and map them such that our

probes (methods) regarding 1) What can we know? = the descriptive = literal

sense of scripture = awareness ; 2) What can we hope for? = evaluative =

anagogical sense of scripture = hope; 3) What must we do? = normative =

moral/prudential sense of scripture = love; 4) What does all of this mean? =

interpretive = allegorical sense of scripture = faith. In other words, the

hermeneutical spiral is essentially the same for the secular and the sacred. We

could also ask how any given group of humans is dedicated, empowered,

nurtured/healed and saved and map those enterprises, respectively, as the 1)

cultural or theological 2) social or ecclesiological 3) economic or sacramental

and 4) political or soteriological. Finally, we could map the 1) descriptive as

science 2) evaluative as culture 3) normative as philosophy and 4) interpretive as

religion.

This is to suggest, then, that a person with a pneumatological imagination, in

other words, who sees the Spirit at work always, everywhere and in everyone,

the secular will represent the Spirit at work, implicitly, in the descriptive,

evaluative, normative and interpretive, in science, culture, philosophy and in all

religions (although, from place to place and time to time, human cooperation

with the Spirit and the values thus realized - or frustrated - may vary in degree for

manifold reasons). Any explicit recognition of Spirit will amplify the epistemic

risks already undertaken (in epistemic virtue) through an interpretive lens that

engages awareness, hope, love & faith (a/theological virtue) toward the end of

augmenting the values of truth, beauty, goodness and unity.

Bottomline, Sagan realized the same values and employed, essentially, the same

methods any believer does. Believers would claim that they take more epistemic

risks (though not without epistemic virtue) than Sagan did with an aim toward

augmenting the values they might then realize. Perhaps many have but that

would have to be measured sociologically in terms of intellectual, affective,

moral, sociopolitical and religious growth (Lonergan's conversions), which is

more than a tad problematic. Many clearly have not, though, and that's easy to

see with simple common sense.

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