(Mis)Understanding Religion –– Part 3
Where do we go from here? Breaking out of naturalism's box to reconstruct the meaning of religion and some final thoughts.
If you have not read Part 1 and Part 2, I encourage you to do so. Part 1 outlines the scope of the problem, the accusations against religion, and the cultural confusion and misapplication of the word itself. Part 2 skims over ten caricatures of religions and compares world religions to matters often considered irreligious or secular in an attempt to show that the line between religion and secularism is not so cookie cutter. In this entry, Part 3, I summarize the notion that there is no religious neutrality, propose a new approach for how to move forward, and then provide a brief precursor on the origin of religion.
You can also download the full PDF here, if you’re super keen.
Giulio Romano, “Chamber of the Giants (Sala dei Giganti)” (c.1532-1535). Fresco on ceiling and wall and wall in the Palazzo Te, Mantua, Italy.
Is There a Bottom Line?
Though the instances above cover only a handful of the arguments, secular religious scholars and philosophers frequently use such arguments and examples to reinforce the notion that there is no single essence of religion, which in turn attempts to bolster their claim of religious ambiguity and religious pluralism as well as their philosophical stance of religious neutrality. Subsequently, finding a common property or behavioral characteristic of religious belief/experience has yielded no definitive results, which means there is also no defining line between secularism and religion. Yet, this flies in the face of our politicized conception of religion. Not all religions have God, deities, spirits, faith, moral codes, devoutness, rituals, afterlife, metaphysical or supernatural properties, and so on, and not all religions come out of a misguided desire of wishful thinking, fabrications of the imagination, irrationality, superstition, and so on. The method for determining a religion demands that scholars look for a single object that all religions have in common, which also supposes the object is independent of objective truth. This approach has proven extremely difficult given that all religions juggle different objects. The results are so obscure that religious philosophers tend to resign or even oppose the possibility of a precise account and, thus, end up subsiding to the belief that there is no pure religion–––secularism is true. But if religion is so pervasively obscure, how can we say what it is or what it isn’t without sleight of hand?
I hope it is evident by now that the modern wishy-washy caricature of religion does not hold any water against critical scrutiny, and also that the scholarly position of religious ambiguity does not preclude worldviews such as atheism, naturalism, panpsychism, and other secular stances like scientism or authoritarian statism (i.e., Communism, etc.) from becoming religions, given that not all religions are supernatural but earth bound, invoking a temporal telos or an earthly purpose/goal such as Buddhism, Taoism, Jainism, Epicureanism, et cetera. For instance, panpsychism appears to constitute a more intellectually sophisticated and satisfying revitalization of animism, if the notion of consciousness acted a substitute for the notion of spirit. Neither superstition, illusion, unfalsifiability, wishful thinking, faith, moral teachings, God and the like amount to religious properties necessarily, just as truth, fact, matter, time, energy, and the infinite are not irreligious either. Therefore, there is no justification to say religion is evil or false, that religion is stubborn, unreasonable belief or that it is blind faith, or any such chatter touted by secular fundamentalists. In fact, there is no rhyme or reason to say, one way or another, this way or that, that religion is something based on these standards. Scholars haven’t a clue, and laymen pick and choose. Even the notion of “family resemblance” is quite the stretch when you compare, say, Baptist Christianity to Wicca, or Islam to Buddhism. It makes you wonder why scholars are keeping the word at all. If it is, indeed, so equivocal and obscure, why preserve it?
By my assessment, the reason seems to stem from the secular presupposition and belief that philosophical naturalism is (almost certainly) true, which reduces sacredness to opinion and gives rise to the opinion that the lack of belief, or epistemological skepticism as it were, is the true default position. If you didn’t catch that, it’s quite the self-defeating position! Nevertheless, if it is true, then we should expect a plurality of subjective religious views (religious pluralism, as it were) rather than a concrete archetype or definition of religion. Simply put; naturalism is objectively true, so religion can only be a subjective, private opinion. Therefore, by maintaining religion’s ambiguity, one attempts to maintain their religious neutrality because religion is not actual but an illusion floating above the human condition. But this view drives forward without checking its blind spots, which imposes several difficulties: (a) It presumes that all religions, which have been determined by secular scholars as religious, fall under the same (social construct) category and are equally unfalsifiable and fictitious, which is, again, self-defeating: they made the list, and excluded naturalism; (b) it further presumes that naturalism is true without substantial evidence that proves God is false despite the strong evidence for God’s existence, which is, admittedly, a whole other essay in itself; (c) it is a pretense to claim that a lack belief in God is the true default position because, as Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga remarked, the same can easily be said about naturalism, “I lack a belief in atheism”, meaning the default position of a person is aatheism[1]. In this, the burden of proof switches to the skeptic or naturalist to prove that theism is not the true default position. It is insufficient to define religion in this way and, by my understanding, never will suffice.
Given that the current state of word religion is a loose social construct, we are left with two routes to take. Either (1) we embrace the scholarly consensus that there is no pure religion and let the word die (or actively kill it), certain that it serves no purpose except for its current political and cultural misuse, or (2) we attempt to identify a better use or precise account of religion, religious belief, and religious experience.
Admittedly, I am unsatisfied with the first route. This may come across as a surprise for some, seeing as how I chiefly presented deconstructive arguments; it was merely to underscore that secularism is defined by its contrast to religion, and if there is no pure religion, then there is no pure secularism[2]. If so, then the titanic contrast in understanding religion in pop-cultural polemic and conventional academia is even more staggering.
The truth is, while I disagree with the final conclusions had, scholarship is right in identifying a “family resemblance”. We all seem to implicitly understand, at some level or in some way, the heart of what religion is (or resembles), yet we cannot seem to put our finger on it. This implicit understanding of religion seems to be more than just cultural upbringing–––it is transcultural.
Thus far, the reductionist method has proven futile to grasp a single object that all religions hold, share, or have in common, but it is safe to say that we all sense that a juggling pattern is in motion (cf. 2 Timothy 1:13). And because of this, I don’t think the word is going to die anytime soon. And I cannot help but think that many pastors, priests, theologians, philosophers, and religious historians would also agree.
A Reformation?
This problem is larger than just existential warrant or ‘technical difficulties’. The vague and volatile meaning of the word religion has disseminated misinformation and double standards on all fronts. For instance, many (if not all) Christians consider naturalism a (quasi-)religious belief and yet most (if not all) naturalists believe they are free from any and all such belief when there is no rational evidence to support a lack of belief. Ironically, it is the secular world that ostensibly promotes rational justification as a virtue and chooses to ignore such rationalization when defining the very thing that may very well implicate them as religious! Even so far as to criticize those “essentializing” a single essence of religion. Defense mechanism or not, some Christians still go as far as to claim they are not even slightly religious (i.e., “choose Jesus, not religion”) based on vague preconceptions that religion means false, fake, “spiritually dead” or legalistic (lacking heart, just mechanistic protocols and rituals or barbaric impulses). Long story short, everyone is at arm’s-length when it comes to religion and yet use the word to smear, defame, or vilify opposing views. It cannot keep going the way it is. The word religion is a very pliable sociopolitical tool, especially when it is used to keep particular views out of the public square. Reform is in order.
I don’t think it’s very wise to posture or affirm religious neutrality like most secular scholars have boxed themselves into. It is an equivocal, ambivalent view that presupposes: (a) all religions are categorically private, subjective truths and therefore equally (in)valid or unfalsifiable across the world; (b) secularism is objectively true and naturalism is the default view of reality independent of belief. But as we already saw, properties of belief in naturalism, atheism, and secularism are not irreligious and overlap with common religious beliefs/experiences. It’s a catch-22: If no pure religion, then no pure secularism. A person cannot be agnostic regarding all possible religions. For instance, if a person claims “eating ice cream is secular”, to Epicureans and modern-day hedonists, many of which are naturalists who value pleasure above virtue (or as virtue), eating ice cream is most certainly a religious experience! However subtle the degree of religiosity it may be.
With everything in mind, then, religion is not equivocal or ambiguous, it is under a veil. And it is under a veil precisely because we have torn the shared universal human experience from objective reality and made it a private, subjective coincidence. And if it’s not ambiguous, the many arms of secularism (as personally identified) can no longer wield the word however they desire. It seems to me, at least, that many if not most of the arguments and examples used above to deconstruct religion and underscore religious ambiguity do just the opposite. The very pillar that secularism stands on is proof of its religiosity. All the arguments used to prove religious ambiguity effectively prove religion’s all-encompassing reality. Each instance above offers great reason to affirm we-are-all-religious-to-some-degree because none of the instances contradict other religions in the sense that it would revoke its status as a religion, but it does contradict our conception of secularism (hence, the seemingly subliminal aversion to adopt a definition for religion) and our peculiar sense that normality is somehow neutral. This has even been acknowledged by famous seculars like social atheist and psychologist Jordan Peterson as well as militant atheist and theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss[3].
This understanding of religion would also include a broader spectrum of possibilities, such as State worship and self-worship, which is often excluded as a religious constituent[4]. If self-worship is an integral aspect of, say, antitheistic religion, given that not all religions have a Supreme God or deities or supernatural transcendence, then secularism ceases to exist as anything but a social construct; the table turns, and secularism would be contingent upon religion. As secular psychologist and religious philosopher William James pointed out, religious experience can be “a larger and more godlike self” and that the “only thing that it [religion] unequivocally testifies to is that we can experience union with something larger than ourselves…. Anything larger will do, if only it be large enough to trust for the next step. It need not be infinite, it need not be solitary.”[5] The prophet Samuel also identified this similar dynamic when confronting the disobedient King Saul after building a victory monument for himself, “For rebellion is like the sin of divination, and arrogance [or presumption] like the evil of idolatry.” (1 Samuel 15:23. Emphasis Added.) What qualifies as a god in this sense of “idolatry” or “godlike self” still needs to be ascertained, and also by what degree of selfishness, arrogance, or pride is one committing idolatry. Is self-worship subliminal or grandiose? Is it akin to narcissism, psychopathy, or Machiavellianism or something much less subtle? From a Christian perspective, I suspect that any area in a person’s life not devoted in worship to Christ as a “living sacrifice” qualifies as idolatry to some degree – in fact, I don’t see how it couldn’t – hence the call to a persevering humility (Romans 12:1-3)[6]. With that in mind, then, the subliminal relationship between self-worship and naturalism would be, undoubtedly, at its strongest (cf. Romans 1:23). Autonomy is not neutral by biblical standards. It is often things most familial that hide in plain sight. Or, at least, if we lack consistent and concise introspection over the course of our lives, the presuppositions we hold can easily morph into a baseline of neutrality or a heartbeat of what’s true; albeit perceived. Still, religion is more than just identifying what is right under our nose.
Perhaps, instead of comparing common religious objects like a family photo album, which is a materialistic approach, we ought to look beyond the family resemblances, we ought to look at religion as a director looking through the lens of the camera to produce a film, given the inseparable relationship between consciousness and religion (and narrative, as well)[7]. So, rather than looking for common objects among all religions, we ought to isolate a single essential pattern all religions use that cannot be taken away, where both the positive and negative aspects of the pattern bind a set of objects together. Religion may very well depend on, if not, be how and why those common objects are harmonized and emphasized, rather than those common objects being the defining characteristics of religion. That is to say, religion is like a gestalt[8]–––a pattern of belief/experience that is greater than the sum of its parts. This seems self-evident. The desire for a unified whole self is unpurgeable. Religion is a necessary process of being human.
Moving Forward
To draw a conclusion on what religion truly is, then, or even to recognize religious aspects, certain presuppositions ought to be pruned and a course of action needs to be rendered. At this stage, given our lack of direction toward a precise account, it seems best not to discriminate any non-contradictory premise that may lead to a definition. Irrespective of those who prefer the universal ambiguity of inner religious experience as concrete, which is self-defeating, there needs to be a positive ground or objective end from which to navigate, however broad and unassuming, to permit a means to unify a sense of religion together and capture the depths of religious belief/experience between individual and group description lest it collapse into a glorified solipsism.
This does implicate everyone as partakers of religious belief and experience, the extent of which must be reconciled, for better or for worse. As a matter of principle, then, I think we must (all) assume from this point onward that we-are-all-religious-to-some-degree as a way to retain a positive basis and level of unified mutual honesty as opposed to the I-am-not-and-never-will-be-religious supposition that has failed to apprehend any kind of determination and, quite frankly, causes unnecessary moral division and political animosity, especially if we are to uphold unbiased analysis to obtain a clear description or precise account of religion. This also rules out the classical understanding of secularism, which imposed a neutral ground (i.e., the State, private unfalsifiable belief, etc.) amid a plethora of religious diversity that only led to false cultural presupposition that naturalism was almost certainly true: neutral, irreligious, and the default epistemic position of all humans. It posited materialism as the sole fact shared between religions and interfaith dialogues, as the necessary part of the human experience. By my estimation, there is no neutral ground if everyone is religious. There is no neutral ground in pursuit of truth, only ground that has not been overturned. Though this does require us to regain that lost sense of tolerance, which seems reasonable enough when epistemic and social survival is of little consequence.
If this were to be applied, then the objective to reconcile moves from differentiating between secularism and religion, or Athens and Jerusalem, to what really matters: Is there a true religion?[9] No doubt, you know my answer.
How the Biblical text elucidates this subject is in its universal simplicity and its total lack of dialogue on philosophical subject matter and peripheral issues. It’s very telling. It is either true or false, good or evil, light or dark, right or wrong. Yet, we are ultimately responsible for how we harmonize juxtapositional beliefs and experiences[10] in relation to matters of morality, meaning, and ontology: ultimacy, transcendence, and wholeness. It is from this vantage point I intend to move forward; albeit, at a later date.
In my view, this is remarkably important given the claims made within the epistles and its theological doctrines. Clear statements made by the apostles, such as Paul and James, are explicit in that “Those who consider themselves religious and yet do not keep a tight rein on their tongues deceive themselves, and their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God the Father is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world.” (James 1:26-27) That we share a universal conscience that must be applied in everyday life, that we suppress our conscience and the truth of God in evil, that we make life meaningless and worship our own wisdom or creation over the Creator (Romans 1:18-25), and it is precisely our implicit knowledge of God, truth, goodness, and conscience that holds us culpable before God on Judgment Day (Romans 2:14-16). Furthermore, positive claims of our innate moral sensibilities made in the Bible, such as the Pharoah’s “hardened heart” (Exodus 7:13; 8:15; 9:7; 10:27), strike against modern concepts that we are inherently neutral or amoral (that we lack a sense of universal morality as a natural default) and that our immediate culture bestows moral codes upon us. In order for a heart to be hardened, it needs to be there first (cf. Ephesians 4:17-19). And since the Hebrews and Egyptians, Jews and Gentiles, come from different cultures, it suggests that we all share a universal conscience, however subtle or suppressed it may be. But if our conscience is totally obscure, private, self-made, a social construct or a subjective experience of sorts, exempt from shared universal experience, then we are presumably free from all latter judgment. We are not “without excuse”. That said, I don’t think we can obtain a precise account of religion without a robust understanding of sin (hamartiology) and its intimate relationship with death.
Speaking candidly, I suspect this desire of moral, meaningful, and ontological escapism, to be free of a shared conscience and truth, and to assume religious neutrality, is an unwitting defensive barrier, and that the real, subliminal reason why many of us hide behind the veil of secularism is to escape conviction at the heart of their (our) true religion. There is an implicit juxtapositional arrangement and complex interplay, or conflict rather, within the inner self against God. It is pride and contention against our sensus divinitatis (“sense of divinity”), as John Calvin put it, that spawns or curves a variety of religious belief (semen religionis, “seed of religion”). We are polarized, slaves between Logocentric and egocentric ends – between God and man – subject to futility yet imparted with the desire and obligation for something that transcends this world: love, goodness, purpose, and truth. Without such, there is nothing meaningful to live for–––there is no true religion.
Matlock Bobechko | January 15, 2017. Revised on June 14, 2022 – 9:00 AM EST
[1] Michael Berhow, Did the New Atheists Rationally Lack Belief? The Gospel Coalition: Themelios, Volume 45, Issue 3. Published on April, 2021.
[2] Secularism ideologies include humanism, pluralism, scientism, naturalism, and that political idealism of Utopia.
[3] In a recent interview on the Jordan B. Peterson Podcast, Lawrence Krauss argues that science is pursued from a religious motivation to believe. He was engaged in a debate at Oxford University where the question was, “Are we all religious?” Krauss chose to speak in favour of it. His atheist colleagues were shocked as He argued, “If we weren’t all religious, we wouldn’t need science. If we didn’t all want to believe...”
Jordan B. Peterson Podcast. Season 4, Episode 36. “From the Beginning to Now | Lawrence Krauss | The Jordan B. Peterson Podcast - S4: E36”. YouTube. Recorded on May 7, 2021. Published on July 12, 2021.
[4] Three notable religious philosophers include self-worship as religious: Paul Tillich, William James, and Roy Clouser.
[5] William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study of Human Nature (by Modern Library, a division of Random House Inc., New York, 2002) 570. Emphasis added.
[6] In contrast to many world religions, say, Buddhism, Christianity is not self-centered, it is self-sacrificial.
[7] To further the analogy, take into account what is in the frame (i.e., mise-en-scène) as well as what is out of the frame (i.e., director, camera, constructed or natural set), how emphasis is harmonized in a sequence (i.e., deductive sequence, from wide shots to close-ups, impersonal to personal; inductive sequence, from close-ups to wider shots, personal to impersonal). One could extend the analogy further with the overarching categories of religion with types of film (experimental, narrative, or documentary), and then subcategorize by genre, the purpose, narrative and moral of the story, if applicable (cultural, spiritual, etc.), et cetera. William James also compares human consciousness to “filmiest of screens”. I am compelled to agree. I am suggesting we further this analogy to religion.
[8] Gestalt. (1) Psychology; a configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; an instance or example of such a unified whole. (2) A perceptual pattern or structure possessing qualities as a whole that cannot be described merely as a sum of its parts. A typical visual example is the arrow between the ‘E’ and ‘x’ in the FedEx logo.
[9] Further questions may include: (a) Is the religion under examination true or false? If false, what properties of it resemble truth or are any properties partly true? (b) Is humanity religious by default? If so, what is our natural religion and what does it look like? (c) If false religion is possible, does false religion, then, mean irreligious or secular? And does that mean our true religion is natural or complete? In regard to question (c), there is a subtle logical problem afoot. If we say there is one true religion, then it would mean all the false religions are, in fact, not religions! And if that is the case, what is the point of the word religion, then? If, say, Christianity is the true religion, why call it a religion at all? What would be the practical sense, reason, and use of the word religion? It would highly emotive and utterly meaningless. Unless, of course, a false religion is not entirely false, but utilizes or usurps true properties from the true religion to mask, hide, deny, or reject the implicit true religion within. In this way, question (a) and (b) are more applicable. Either way, it seems that dividing categories into true religion and false religion, with respect to the word religion, is problematic. It seems better to say objective religion and subjective religion in which the subjective obtains nourishment from the objective. More on this in a later entry.
[10] It seems that we must, out of the necessity of our humanness, harmonize juxtapositional beliefs and experiences – beginning and end, past and future, life and death, love and law, peace and war, servitude and authority, inwardness and outwardness, authenticity and appearance, spiritual and material, self and God, ego and cosmos, humanness and divineness, et cetera. We instinctively harmonize a juxtaposition between our present self and everything else into a unified whole, whether it is significant or mundane, superior or inferior. I think this is why religion plays a hidden role within all people – it is an essential part of being human; sort of like how the present moment is nearly impossible to pinpoint and articulate, yet it is undeniable. On the one hand, we deeply desire wholeness and yet, on the other, we seek transcendence for fulfilment, as if something “larger than self” will do the trick, or as if ultimate meaning in life or striving against the desire for ultimate meaning (i.e., naturalism) is necessary to live a fulfilling life.