During the 21 year lifespan of this blog, I’ve devoted many posts to criticizing religions and religiosity. I’m fine with exploring the Big Questions of Life. It just seems to me that there are much better ways of doing this than through a religion.
Here’s a bit of a complication, though.
My wife, a fellow atheist, subscribes to the print edition of the Sunday New York Times. A few days ago she gave me a page from the Opinion section of the October 5 issue that contained The Problem Lurking Beneath Our Church-State Debates. That’s a gift link, so everybody should be able to read the piece by Kwame Anthony Appiah, a professor of philosophy at New York University.
The online title is “Students in Texas Need Something, but It’s Not the Ten Commandments.” I’ll share a PDF file if the link above doesn’t work for you.
Opinion | Students in Texas Need Something, but It’s Not the Ten Commandments – The New York Times
The problem Appiah discusses is that there’s no agreement on what religion is, either from a legal standpoint or a broader cultural view.
What has emerged over the decades is not a coherent doctrine but a kaleidoscope of differing intuitions: religion as inner conviction, as separate sphere, as communal culture, as a practice sanctioned by a nation’s inherited customs.
…None of these definitions, or any other, won the day. If you follow many disciples of Durkheim, religion can look like almost any system that supports social cohesion and provides psychological comfort — at which point patriotism or even psychoanalysis can slip into the category. If it involves spiritual beings, it leaves out Buddhism in its more austere forms. If, as the anthropologist Clifford Geertz proposed, religion is a “system of symbols” establishing powerful moods and conceptions of a “general order of existence,” it’s hard to say why nationalism or Marxism doesn’t qualify.
Well, those are all good points by an accomplished philosopher. However, I take a common sense approach to the question of what “religion” means. It is how people use that term in everyday life. Meaning, if something is given the name of religion, that’s what religion is.
Christianity is a religion. So is Judaism, Islam, Hinduism.
These faiths, and many others, all believe in the supernatural and some sort of divine being(s) existing in an ethereal realim beyond the physical. So I’d call any organized belief system with a substantial number of followers a religion if the tenets of that faith include either belief in the supernatural or divine beings existing in a supernatural realm.
Buddhism is a religion when it includes the supernatural. It is a philosophy when it doesn’t. I’d also add the caveat that a religion is taken seriously by followers. The Flying Spaghetti Monster isn’t a religion for that reason. By the way, after I found that 2007 post of mine via the Search box in the right sidebar, I saw that I said in the post that I’d describe my reasons for not deeming Pastafarianism a religion in my next post.
Searching the Archives, I found my promised What is religion? post. It looks like I haven’t changed my views on religion much over the past 18 years.
Some people want to be called “religious.” To them, this term is a honor. Others don’t. They see religions as relics of a pre-scientific superstitious age. I’m in the call me what you want, so long as it isn’t “religious” category. It’s difficult, though, to pin down what is, and isn’t, a religion.
Wikipedia takes a stab at it. Unsatisfyingly, in my opinion. Too many definitions fit just about any strongly held systematized belief or passion, as when someone says “Golf is my religion.”
So when I browsed through the table of contents for Christopher Hitchens’ “The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever,” my eye was caught by an excerpt from one of Daniel Dennett’s books titled “A Working Definition of Religion.”
Here’s what Dennett says:
“Tentatively, I propose to define religions as social systems whose participants avow belief in a supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought. This is, of course, a circuitous way of articulating the idea that a religion without God or gods is like a vertebrate without a backbone.”
Sure, it’s possible to quibble with this definition. But intuitively it feels right to me.
And it goes a long way toward explaining why, no matter how often I heard during my devoted Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) days, “this is not a religion,” the organization still felt like it was.
For if you’re expected to follow vows, commandments, rituals, or forms of worship because a supernatural being (in this case, God and/or the guru) will reward you with spiritual goodies, that sure seems like a religion – no matter the protestations to the contrary.
Recently on my Salem Political Snark blog I wrote about how a Trump memo on domestic terrorism singles out common beliefs as indicators of terrorism. One of the indicators is anti-Christianity. I noted:
I’m anti-Christianity in the sense that I’m anti-every-religion, as I’ve been writing about on my Church of the Churchless blog since 2004.
What’s interesting, of course, is how the criteria for being anti-religion differs in various parts of the world. This isn’t the case, say, for being anti-capitalist or anti-communist.
But in the United States being anti-Christianity gets you in trouble with the Trump administration, while being anti-Islam doesn’t. Yet in Saudi Arabia being anti-Islam is a no-no, while being anti-Christian would be no big deal. In India, criticizing Hinduism can get you in trouble, while I assume criticizing Buddhism wouldn’t.
This shows how subjective religious belief is. Every major religion considers that it alone holds the key that opens the door of divine truth. Wars have been fought over this. What makes sense to me is to assume that all religions are false, being based on the unprovable premise of a supernatural realm inhabited by divine beings.
That’s why I’ve advocated become a religion of one.
Discover more from Church of the Churchless
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Religion, as can any organization, serve many helpful purposes, both for the individual and society. But the real power that makes religious, and other, organizations actually helpful is that those involved submit to the rules and practices of that organization by free choice.
And what makes religious organizations unhelpful is when they alter the lives of people without their consent or against their will, or demand compliance under duress.
It’s not very difficult to understand this simple guideline. There is no need to define religion as X, Y or Z.
Any organization, religious or otherwise, that does not operate under the free consent of its members, and which acts in any way to impose its influence beyond its members is operating outside the healthy charter of any organization. Selling memberships is one thing, but not to swindle others into believing and committing. An honest marketing effort (though there may be few) is educational.
That would be the minimal legal requirement for any organization, even a corporation, as well as any religious organizations.
And we would all do well to support this simple but broad definition. Not so much for religion, but what can and should define any legal organization in any society.
There are stickier considerations of what constitutes consent and duress. But there are so many more instances where this guideline works beautifully.
If a school wishes to include any documents to educate the kids, their parents should naturally have a say in that, and where they prefer not to include some curriculum, the school does best to adapt their children’s program accordingly for their child.
Where they would like some special curriculum included for their own child, I think that the school, as a shared resource, can establish the minimum number of students’ parental consent required to build that into a curriculum for just those students.
Schools fail largely where they fail to offer such customization.
And of course, where the student wishes to learn something new that isn’t in the formal or customized curriculum, the school can offer assistance in getting to those resources for online self-education. And in fact the school can build in periods of time for students to engage in self-study online accordingly. Indeed they can create some accountability to confirm progress by the student in learning that material, as part of the student’s consent to spend time in the school.
Now as to a formal curriculum for religion, religions are very beautiful ways of understanding God, through metaphors and similes, that are invented by inspired human beings. They are a kind of fiction that reflects aspects of reality. Every belief is our best model of something else that is real.
So there is no reason not to have periods in school where students of like mind can study a religion of choice, and where the school may universally give introductions to various religions, including Atheism, to their students. We don’t know what will bring peace of mind and inspiration to young minds. Many find Atheism does this beautifully for them.
To be sure that these teachings are being represented well and with a degree of accuracy, it only makes sense to give guest speakers the opportunity to introduce students to their religion, whether Christianity, Buddhism, Atheism, Sikhism, etc., etc. This provides two great lessons. First, students get a closer look at these different beliefs, not through the lens of prejudice, but that of an actual practitioner. Second, they are in a structured place where the class teacher can help educate students on how to accept that different beliefs work for different people, and all such beliefs that others hold sacred should be respected, largely out of a respect for humanity. This brings up the third most essential lesson: respect for what we don’t actually know. Every scientist is a professional at that. And in this way, we bring an attitude that begins with respect, moves through appreciation and naturally to critical evaluation. ln fact these stages can be taught as part of developing a mature understanding of anything new.
The ten commandments are very beautiful (though there are more than ten in different chapters of the Bible). So are the teachings of LeoTze, the teachings of Christ and Nanak, and Russell. Why not open the door to these for all students, so that they can enjoy their value even as casual observers, world travelers, and not cloistered adherants.
Let them travel the world and all human history in their classroom unabated, and learn the deep pleasure in seeing the sacred stories of others, and in extracting, using their own mind, some truths for themselves.
Interesting question: What is religion, exactly?
While an abstract resolution might offer food for thought: but agreed, Brian, it’s probably good enough, in general, to go with what we actually find before us. Religions like the Abrahamic three, and Hinduism and its offshoots like RSSB, all of which are theistic. And pantheistic faiths like Kami and Tantric Buddhism as well. Dennet’s definition does cover those adequately.
———-
Chewing on the food for thought part a bit:
An interesting case study would be the subject matter of a recent post and thread, Scientology. Like I made a point to articulate clearly, it is just as batshit crazy as any other religion. And yet, it’s not theistic. It’s sci-fi writer Hubbard’s creation, that reads actually, literally, like a B-grade sci-fi plot, with the cargo-cult psychobabble of Dianetics thrown in as sidebar. (And there are those that take the latter as the primary, and the doctrine itself, that is taught much later stages, as sidebar.)
…My point is, Dennet’s definition definitely leaves out Scientology, for instance.
———-
Thinking about it, here’s how I might have a stab at defining religion. (I’ll borrow from your excellent point, Brian, that religion has to be seriously believed in, in order to qualify, unlike Pastafarianism for instance.)
1. Faith (with a capital F) can be defined as faith (with a small f) in what it is not reasonable (basis reason and evidence) to believe.
2. When Faith (with a capital F) is held to earnestly, and in large enough numbers, you get a religion, or at least a quasi-religion.
3. When #2 above lasts for some years, and gets institutionalized, then you get a religion. (A full-on religion, with no “quasi” about it.)
…So that, while very early adherents of Hubbard’s Scientology bullshit might make for only a quasi-religion, a cult already maybe but not quite a religion yet, but today it definitely is a full-on religion. #3 above is probably important, in that it captures that nuance.
———-
Yep, on re-reading what I’ve typed so far, I like this rough three-point formulation.
Dennet’s formulation, while it does cover most religions, but it betrays a theistic bias. (That is, I don’t mean a bias based in Dennet’s theistic worldview, but a bias based in Dennet’s familiarity with theistic religions, as opposed to Theravada, for instance, or indeed Scientology.) It is ill equipped to deal with new forms of institutionalized bullshyttery that might come up, based around, for instance, Bostrom’s simulation idea (which is not unreasonable, except it is unevidenced and fails Occam’s Razor); or indeed a Jedi cult built around a literal observance of the Stars Wars mythology. Or, indeed, Hubbard’s Scientology, which already is very much a thing.
———-
Combine the three points above into a concise snappy sentence or two, and I think we’d probably have a definition for religion that covers everything.
Like, maybe, this tentative attempt: Religion is faith in unevidenced irrational beliefs, held earnestly by large enough numbers for a long enough time, and so institutionalized.
…Yeah no. It’s functional, the sentence above, but clunky, particularly the last clause.
So anyway, the exact formulation can be polished up, but I think this should do?