The Religious Impulse and the Future: Two of the Best Takes.

I'm impressed. The atheists are really getting their act together. They now have as coherent, articulate, and well-established a worldview as any religion, and one that's much more logical. The leading lights like Dawkins and Dennett can be quite dogmatic, but many of the rank and file are remarkably thoughtful and open-minded, as witness this post at (blog title notwithstanding) God is for Suckers. (Hat tip to The Mighty Middle, who found it via skeptic rising star The Uncredible Hallq.) There's no question that atheism is one of the fronts of intense inquiry into the nature of life and the universe.

However, the current prominence of "scientific" atheism as fundamentalism's media sparring partner obscures the fact that it is very much a minority position, and almost certain to remain so. A 2003 Gallup poll asked broadly whether respondents believed in "a personal God, universal spirit, or higher power." Five percent said no, 4 percent said "not sure," and a staggering 91 percent said "yes." Of those, however, only 66 percent belong to a religious organization or congregation. If we are to have a snowball's chance in hell of staving off theocracy, it's the 25 percent whose free inquiry ventures beyond the shores of the material who will have to be the wave of the future.

In my current book project (tentative title OUTSIDE: Spiritual Nomads and the Way Beyond Religion), I'm trying to demonstrate to the 25 percent that despite the riotous diversity of views that is a sine qua non of life outside tradition's walls, they -- we -- too actually have a coherent and well-established worldview; it just hasn't been articulated yet.

It is being articulated, however, most brilliantly by Jack Whelan at After the Future. Please go over and read his latest essay, Some Post-Secularist Thoughts. I'll quote it at some length (having received blanket permission from Jack a while back), but these excerpts are no substitute for the full sweep of reasoning. Jack thinks (and I do too) that not only old-time religion, but also secular materialism, is an artifact of the past. The 19th and 20th centuries are as gone as the 3rd and 12th and 17th. We should not mistake their proximity and seductive familiarity for signs of life. Jack:

The culture war between the religious right and the secular left has more to do with the past than the future--it was a modern battle, and we are no longer moderns. [ . . . ]

We are entering an era in which anything goes--we're already in it. It's an era in which there will be no consensus about anything, and people will believe pretty much whatever they want, whatever suits them. The human mind [ . . . ] can come up with the cleverest ways to justify the most absurd ideas. All any argument needs is a splinter of truth, and with it an elaborate fortress of delusion can be built.

And yet there is something in all of us that, despite our proclivity toward delusion, knows the real thing when we find it. And we are more likely than not to find the real thing in those elements in our culture that, even if a little tattered and worse for wear, have withstood the test of time. [ . . . ]

[O]ne such invaluable source of ballast is the world's great religious traditions, east and west. It doesn't matter what the officials of these traditions say or how they try to control things, because they cannot control the uncontrollable. Everything we need is available to us or is implied in these traditions; the question only remains whether we have the will to undertake the quest to find there what will do us any good.

The definition of authority is changing. Too great a proportion of the world's population is now and will continue to be too well informed, to have too easy access to too much information. People will not consent be told what to believe, but they will hearken to those who have found a way to live deeply, authentically from that which has been retrieved from that which sleeps in the tradition. The new authorities will be those who live something that demonstrates that a robust alternative exists which is plausible to the mind, resonant with conscience, and refreshing to the soul. [ . . . ]

The future lies with [those] who can no longer be satisfied by the rationalist/materialist straitjacket of the cultural left or the dead, abstract fundamentalism/dogmatism of the cultural right. They will demand something real, something that lives, that's intellectually honest and yet warm and fertile. [ . . .]

We cannot live as the ancestors lived, but the rationalist prejudices of the moderns caused much that our premodern ancestors valued to be discredited and lost. Our job now is to retrieve the lost gifts, and to adapt it to our life now lived in circumstances unimaginable to the premoderns. [ . . .]

We no longer can maintain a "first naivete", which is the state of the believer before critical consciousness. We must search out what has been forgotten or lost with a second naivete, which is the attitude toward the superrational that is childlike in its receptivity, but, because we must travel lightly, shrewd in its judgments about what is necessary and what superfluous.

That just gets from me a huge YES.

An essay at The Futures Foundation, "Religion: Why It's Here to Stay and What to Do About It", is more reductive than I'd like in locating religion strictly within the human brain, as a sort of hyperfunctioning of its its survival-crafted structures. Most hard-line atheists and philosophical materialists would agree that this is all religion is -- not a perception or intimation, but merely a projection -- a point of view that one day may be proven quite primitive and stupid. However, this essay does conclude, in accord with Jack Whelan, that the religious impulse does much too much for human beings to go away any time soon, and that rather than try to "destroy" it (á la Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett), which just makes it as crazy as a cornered animal, we should try to mature it:

Perhaps the answer lies not in expecting to do away with religious beliefs, but rather in attempting to evolve them. [ . . . ]

If the structures of religious belief are indeed permanent residents in the minds of humans, as research suggests, then perhaps our challenge is to evolve these religious tendencies towards a positive, embracing spirituality, at the same time as steering away from a destructive, fanatical and exclusive fundamentalism. To do so, we must better understand the deep spiritual potential of human beings, and the conditions under which the opposite possibility dominates. This evolved spirituality will help us understand ourselves and our world, and better cope with the human condition at the same time as it facilitates exploration of our expansive spiritual potential. Such a maturation of our innate religious tendencies is but one of humanity's many future challenges.

Comments

[Alan]

Fascinating post.

I'd say the lesson here is that we should not be affraid to believe in the existence of that which we cannot prove, so long as we comprehend the limits of our own beliefs and use such spirituality as a means to enrich our lives rather than as a means to separate us from others.

And that belief doesn't have to be religious. It could just a belief in a set of ethics or a moral structure--anything that brings greater meaning and purpose to our lives and the material things surrounding us.

[Pastor_Jeff]

"If we are to have a snowball's chance in hell of staving off theocracy..."

Amba - Do you really believe this is a danger? I think there is a general agreement that Americans are becoming less religious while remaining just as spiritual.

Maybe I should ask what you mean by theocracy?

[realpc]

I don't agree that scientific materialism is dead. Secularists may be acknowledgiing the need for spiritual faith but, as in the above post, they are not rejecting their naturalist/rationalist philosophy.
In order to whole-heartedly believe you are part of something greater, you need to believe there are levels beyond the physical. On the physical level, we are separate and isolated.
Feeling connected to human society is not at all the same as feeling that you are a node on an immense network of multidimensional intelligence.
There are things I don't like about this particular civilization, and I am not always thrilled to be part of it. But I can always feel perfectly at home in the intelligent creative universe. It is always there inside me and inside everyone else, and we are all inside of it. Our minds are constantly connected, even though our conscious egos are separate.
There is always infinite meaning behind everything that happens, and each of our lives has purpose and direction. But without complete faith in this infinitely creative network, it can be hard to find your way, hard to surrender and go along with its mysterious currents.

[amba]

Pastor Jeff -- by theocracy I mean what the hard-core evangelicals are aiming for -- what they were trying to achieve at the Air Force Academy, for instance -- an officially Christian nation.

[Pastor_Jeff]

Amba - Thanks for the clarification.

There is an unfortunately loud part of evangelicalism that feels America has been stolen by the secularists and Christianity pushed to the edges of the culture. Their cry is "Regain America for Christ." I don't think there's much popular support for turning America into Jesustan, though.

Your comment made it sound like we'll have to work hard to avoid that outcome. Do you really think we're headed in that direction?

[amba]

Here's what I think: evangelicals of that stripe are aggressively saving souls, especially in the lonely exurbs where the church is becoming the central social institution (in itself not a bad thing), and are also very good at motivating people to vote. Their constituency, if you count a a penumbra of equally devout but more old-fashioned believers, might be in the neighborhood of 40 percent of the population. Less than 50 percent of the country votes at all. If the more diverse and less absolutely certain sectors of the population vote at much lower rates than these evangelicals . . . ? We could see a sort of takeover, simply because they are better-organized and more motivated.

[Pastor_Jeff]

Amba - Thanks again for helpful explanations of your thinking.

I agree with your assessment generally, except that I don't think evangelicals are aggresively saving souls. Rates of church attendance and people self-identifying as evangelical have been flat for decades.

A lot of what's going on is attendance shifting to mega-churches as small churches die off (I've had experience on both ends). And a church of 10,000 has more impact than 100 churches of 100. I think evangelicals are louder and more visible, but not necessarily more effective.

Take abortion as an issue, for example (BTW - your two essays have been excellent). Most evangelicals may vote Republican, but ask any pastor how often they talk about abortion (rarely) or how many of their members are active in pro-life in any way (5-10% would be huge).

Many evangelical leaders bemoan the movement's self-centeredness. Sadly, for many evangelicals, faith is more about meeting their needs than changing themselves or the world. I don't think evangelicals will take over America any time soon.

I've enjoyed the discussion. Thanks for engaging, expecially in the middle of everything else.

[amba]

One thing I'm quite sure of: you know a lot more about it than I do. I'm at the mercy of media sensationalism -- particularly some of the big recent stories about megachurches and workplace proselytizing.

I have a close friend who's as born-again as it gets. I see how beautifully that worldview works for some people, the good it can do, and I am happy to coexist with it. But by definition, that worldview believes it is the only true and right one. I don't mind being told I'm headed for hell if I don't accept Jesus as God AND all the intellectual baggage that comes with. But I wouldn't want that worldview legislating over me.

[realpc]

amba,
I think there will always be born-agains, or something like that, and they will always be claiming to know the one truth. Feeling you know the whole truth is the only way to have complete faith, and faith is the most powerful force in the universe. Being a born-again, and getting a ride on the powerful Christ morphic field, depends on self-righteousness, unfortunately.

I am not a born-again or anything like that. I am a believer without a church, because like you I can't buy irrational dogma. But I think I understand why people become fundamentalists -- there is tremendous power in belonging to something like that.

I don't think Jesus is God, but I have a theory about why so many people believe it. I think Jesus, and many other mystics like him (who we have mostly never heard of because their stories were not recorded in writing), perfected his faith in Yahweh. Because of that, he was able to unite with the Father in Heaven -- or, in more scientific terms, he tuned in to the God Field. That's what he was trying to teach his followers, how to let go of all worldly attachments (including family, by the way!) and become One with the infinite.

I think a lot of other mystics have taught the same thing. The born-agains of today are right, in a sense. Yes they can be obnoxious, but perfect faith might be the only way to attain salvation. I have become skeptical about the New Age spirituality I used to like so much. I think it's too easy, and does not recognize how strenuous and demanding salvation probably is.

[amba]

Real,

I agree with just about every word of that, including the part about New Age spirituality being too easy, too shallow, merely fanciful and, as they say, "ego-syntonic."

My Pentecostal friend has transmitted the felt experience of Jesus's love to me, and I'm convinced that it was real, because it was not something I would have been able to imagine, and it was not like anything I've ever felt from (as opposed to through) any mere human being.

The problem is that the "pipeline" through which she transmits that love is partly made up of beliefs that I cannot accept even for the sake of such amazing love, because I would simply be pretending or lying if I tried to believe in the virgin birth, the bodily resurrection, the End Times, or that I'm going to hell if I don't believe it all.

I don't accept that those beliefs are the only "pipeline." However, you're right, faith is; and for some people, accepting such an authorized, officially one-and-only, and therefore utterly trustworthy set of concepts is what enables faith. There is the paradox.

[amba]

And, by the way, I also understand it in terms of morphic fields!

[Pastor_Jeff]

Real,

Being a born-again, and getting a ride on the powerful Christ morphic field, depends on self-righteousness, unfortunately.

While there are many self-righteous Christians, self-righteousness is the exact opposite of Christian faith. Evangelicals have strong beliefs and convictions. But the core of that belief is grace: "God has been good to me and I don't deserve it. I was lost, but God rescued me in Christ and gave me his love. And you can experience that, too."

I know it doesn't always come across this way, but Christians are acutely aware that we are not righteous in ourselves - far from it.