Before I get to any analysis, however, let me clarify a few things. As to the question: can religion interfere with science, my answer is yes it can and it most likely has. But so have a lot of non-religious – or at least non-proselytizing – people. I’d say that the Visigoths probably had a hand in setting science back a bit and, as have we discussed earlier, so have the Mongols. So, there’s been a lot a bad behavior all around. One thing I readily concede is that religion – as remarkable as it is – cannot insulate anybody from wickedness and stupidity. Whatever religion teaches, people tend to do and think what they want.
The next question might be: so, on balance, has religion helped or hindered science across the globe throughout all history? I have pointed out previously that, at least during the dark ages and subsequent Middle Ages, religion seems to have exerted a positive influence on scientific development. Plus, science and math flourished in Arabic culture at the same time Islam was also vibrant. But, I’m not an historian, and can’t answer the “on balance” question. After all, we’re still pondering the causes of World War I. More likely, this question probably qualifies as topic for a bargument – a passionate debate over a question which has no answer, usually fueled by a few beers (like, who would win in a war between New York and Los Angeles, or which superpower would you rather have, the ability to fly or be invisible). In any event, I think it’s a bit simplistic to say that the evidence is clear that religion always and everywhere shows up being a hindrance to science.
But, on the different question of whether religion must necessarily clash with science, or put a different way, if religion is doing its job, should it be inhibiting science, I happen to have a viewpoint. And I’m also happy to answer the related issue, could science ever discover anything that would definitively diminish the value or importance of religion – that is, does science pose a threat to religion? My answer to all three questions is – no.
Quite by accident I ran across a video clip of part of a conversation among the current and now infamous four horsemen of the apocalypse (Dawkins, Dennett, Harris and Hitchens), and I actually experienced a revelation. In this particular clip, Harris, without apology, admits that he still uses the terms mystical and spiritual to refer to “a range of experience that is rare and that is only talked about without obvious qualms in religious discourse.” He goes on to say that it was a shame that only religion ever took these experiences seriously. And then Hitchens says that, “If one could make one change, and only one, mine would be to distinguish the numinous from the supernatural.”
And, boom, there was the revelation, from that one throwaway line of Hitchens. My thinking on this suddenly fell into place. What I realized is this: I believe in the numinous; I do not believe in the supernatural. In fact, my view is that belief in “the supernatural” is just a crass form of idol worship – another golden calf – and doesn’t qualify as religion at all. The supernatural realm appears to work much the same as our own: it follows the same laws of cause and effect and, like our world, things apparently can be “designed” there. The only difference between the supernatural and the natural world is that one more force exists – a force that, while otherwise outside the natural realm, can be influenced in much the same way that people are influenced, either by buttering somebody up or doing nice things for him. And, it must be added, the intelligent design of the supernaturalists is only “intelligent” because it’s intelligible to us humans.
In other words, God is just one of us, but really, really powerful. That’s not religion; that’s idolatry – taking something that’s familiar and profane, and setting it up as divine. It’s this kind of thinking that might prompt someone like Edmond de Goncourt to say “If there is a God, atheism must seem to Him as less of an insult than religion.”
Rudolf Bultmann puts this supernatural thinking in the category of myth rather than religion: “Myth talks about gods as human beings, and about their actions as human actions . . . Myth thus makes the gods (or God) into human beings with superior power, and it does this even when it speaks of God’s omnipotence and omniscience, because it does not distinguish these qualitatively from human power and knowledge but only quantitatively.”
Religion’s job, however, is to smash idols and open us up to the numinous. Indeed, the word religion comes from the Latin religionem, meaning “respect for what is sacred.” Jews observe the Sabbath. Muslims pray five times a day. Hindus practice yoga. Sufis dance. These practices were intended to heighten people’s awareness of the numinous – the presence of the sacred.
For me, the numinous is not just some psychological category. The experience of the holy, or transcendence or – dare we pull out the phrase now – the mysterium tremendum, is the experience of something real. I concede that this for me is an article of faith, but, like Old Marley’s death, “this must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate.”
And so you might ask, if that’s religion’s task, why is it so bad at it? Among other reasons, often times the use of supernatural language by religion is an honest yet clumsy attempt to describe the numinous. Transcendence is so elusive that it must be described by metaphor, poetry or analogy. And people forget that they’re using metaphors. Add that difficulty to what else we know about religion from Huston Smith: “Institutions are not pretty. Show me a pretty government. Healing is wonderful, but the American Medical Association? Learning is wonderful, but universities? The same is true for religion... religion is institutionalized spirituality.” So, religions often betray their mission. Nevertheless, Smith insists, “If we take the world’s enduring religions at their best, we discover the distilled wisdom of the human race.”
Quoting Einstein in the blog seems to be in vogue these days, so here I take my turn:
A human being is part of a whole, called by us the ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.
This might seem like a tall order, but my view is that the purpose of religion is to expose the delusion of separateness and free us from that prison, both in terms of our fellow humans and the cosmos. Hence, its two primary concerns: compassion for others and a reverence and awe of the sacred. In other words, love of God and neighbor.
If properly understood, religion has nothing to do with filling in the gaps of science. Its purpose, rather, is to put us in touch with reality in a profound way -- and to urge us to overcome divisions among people and see to it that our fellow humans get a decent life. According to Huston Smith, religion “calls the soul to the highest adventure it can undertake, a proposed journey across the jungles, peaks, and deserts of the human spirit. The call is to confront reality.”
Sin abounds, of course, and religion will always be forgetting its way and will start gap-filling, and we will have to cajole or prod it back. But in this period of late-capitalism, when the cultural tide sweeps us toward endless material acquisition, an increasing sense of self-entitlement and contempt for the outsider; when wars and unimaginable cruelty persist; and great wealth exists beside crushing poverty, religion's radical suggestion that “[if I] have not love, I am nothing,” may be the most urgently needed message of all.
10 comments:
Very well put.
Hitchens has said "I could not personally be happy without, say, the poetry of John Donne or George Herbert, to mention just two very beautiful devotional poets" and "We have a need for what I would call "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or even "the ecstatic," which comes out in love and music, poetry, and landscape. I wouldn't trust anyone who didn't respond to things of that sort. But I think the cultural task is to separate those impulses and those needs and desires from the supernatural and, above all, from the superstitious."
I think that Hitchens's second quote speaks to the nuance you've just uncovered, Myk, namely that the feelings of awe, mystery, and connectedness are all affirmations of what it means to be human. As you've said, your position is closer to Hitchens's than one might initially suspect, and you're perhaps closer to Hitchens than you are to many Catholics. (I've heard Hitchens say to progressive, liberal-minded Catholics that they're not in any meaningful sense a Christian if they don't believe in the supernatural aspects of it).
I'll leave with this quote by Steven Weinberg, which, as you've said, will be forever debated over beers at Harvey reunions with no satisfactory conclusion: "With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
I second James' "well done." To add a historical perspective, what Myk is saying is not new. In fact it was pretty much the Harvey canon growing up at 245 Jefferson—but ne'er so well expressed. Ah, the fond memories of unmercifully rebuking those who believed in the supernatural. Didn't they know that was witchcraft? Magic and religion do not mix. Of course, we got our ideas from the priests and professors at college. But times have changed. The mood of the Catholic Church certainly has.
I hesitate to add anything other than to express publicly something James mentioned privately—that it is a pleasure, as well as a challenge, to be able to write, read and respond to the intelligent words on this blog. I wish there were more who contributed, but we have, at least, some variety to keep ourselves honest. I certainly have learned a lot from all of your efforts.
I hope I continue to learn and modify my own views, for there is one thing we know about our beliefs—they are wrong! Hopefully, one of life's struggles will be to bring them closer to the truth or, if you will, make them more meaningful.
James, let me add to you Weinberg quote, mine from Blaise Pascal.
Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction.
In a more serious response, I have two points. One, if Hitchens truly beleives that there is another dimension of life which can't be fully accounted for by the laws of physics, namely, "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or "the ecstatic," why is he not willing to engage those relgious thinkers who also reject superstition as a basis for a relgion.
Second, I would re-write your quote: "With or without nationalism you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes nationalism." Certainly, more evil has been done out of patriotic fervor than relgious fervor.
One last thing, Paul Tillich comment on the religion and the intellectual:
Now let me close with one idea which came to me while I was thinking about these problems. The most important thing religion can do about the intellectual critic is to take him into the religion itself, to take him into the totality of the religious life. That was done by the early church and has been done ever since in the churches. And the name of this man who is an intellectual and is taken into the totality of the religious experience is "theologian." And from this follows the meaning and the significance of the theologian. The theologian is both . He is the intellectual critic, and he is the representative of what he criticizes. The theologian is he who represents in himself the whole conflict, the whole weight and difficulty of the conflict which I have been describing. This is his misery and perhaps sometimes his glory.
....Our country is in a situation in which the intellectuals are, generally speaking, under attack. (written in 1955).
Many church people are happy about this removal of the intellectuals from public influence and from the permission to ask the radical questions. But do not be happy about this in the name of religion. It is a fascist form, to use this general word, which always, and I can speak out of my experience from Nazism, first turns against the intellectuals because radical questions should be excluded. But even more important than this political danger is the spiritual danger of the fight against the intellectual critic, namely, the danger that religion become superstition. Every religion which cannot stand ultimately the radical question that is asked by the intellectual critic of religion, is superstition.
I would say that nationalistic fervor and religious fever are not mutually exclusive. And I would go a step further and say that nationalism is quite often exacerbated by religious justification (Bosnia, Ireland). Nationalism, at least as it's understood in the pejorative sense, seems to be an umbrella term under which any number of arbitrary differences- race, ethnicity, religion, language- sit. Not a single characteristic is a meaningful difference or a valid excuse for hating another human being, and of course, Hitchens has made a vocal stand against all racism and bigotry and exceptionalism. It just so happens that he focuses much of his time on religion because he feels it is now the greatest instigator of modern global conflict.
Hitchens writes in "The Narcissism of Small Differences":
"In numerous cases of apparently ethno-nationalist conflict, the deepest hatreds are manifested between people who—to most outward appearances—exhibit very few significant distinctions. It is one of the great contradictions of civilization and one of the great sources of its discontents, and Sigmund Freud even found a term for it: "the narcissism of the small difference." As he wrote, "It is precisely the minor differences in people who are otherwise alike that form the basis of feelings of hostility between them.
The partition of India and Pakistan, for example, which gives us one of the longest-standing and most toxic confrontations extant, involved most of all the partition of the Punjab. Visit Punjab and see if you can detect the remotest difference in people on either side of the border. Language, literature, ethnic heritage, physical appearance—virtually indistinguishable. Here it is mainly religion that symbolizes the narcissism and makes the most of the least discrepancy."
And later:
"[I]t doesn't take long for one population to start saying that the other one has too many children, takes too much leisure, is too casual about hygiene. Every time he heard a Shiite or Sunni Iraqi saying that religion didn't really count, said my friend Patrick Cockburn in his book on Baghdad, he noticed that every single one of them knew the exact faith allegiance of everybody else in the room. And if you want to see an expression of sheer racial disdain, try giving to an Iranian Shiite the impression that you think he and his Iraqi co-religionists are brothers under the skin."
So, I would say that he is aware of the distinction that conflict arises not from just religion, but other, equally bad ideas. Hitchens's point is that it seems religion is found more often than not at the root of these conflicts, and unlike racism or bigotry which are more forcefully challenged, it is religion that is respected or excused away, and thus better shielded from criticism and change. I think I'm at my word limit, so I'll address the other point in a different comment.
If Hitchens truly beleives that there is another dimension of life which can't be fully accounted for by the laws of physics, namely, "the transcendent" or "the numinous" or "the ecstatic," why is he not willing to engage those relgious thinkers who also reject superstition as a basis for a relgion.
Oh, he does. And, in his words, he has no quarrel with those types of religious thinkers. I know I've touched on this before, but here's an excerpt from conversation with a progressive unitarian (emphasis mine):
Interviewer: The religion you cite in your book is generally the fundamentalist faith of various kinds. I’m a liberal Christian, and I don’t take the stories from the scripture literally. I don’t believe in the doctrine of atonement (that Jesus died for our sins, for example). Do you make and distinction between fundamentalist faith and liberal religion?
CH: I would say that if you don’t believe that Jesus of Nazareth was the Christ and Messiah, and that he rose again from the dead and by his sacrifice our sins are forgiven, you’re really not in any meaningful sense a Christian.
Interviewer: Let me go someplace else. When I was in seminary I was particularly drawn to the work of theologian Paul Tillich. He shocked people by describing the traditional God—as you might as a matter of fact—as, “an invincible tyrant.” For Tillich, God is “the ground of being.” It’s his response to, say, Freud’s belief that religion is mere wish fulfillment and comes from the humans’ fear of death. What do you think of Tillich’s concept of God?”
CH: I would classify that under the heading of “statements that have no meaning—at all.” Christianity, remember, is really founded by St. Paul, not by Jesus. Paul says, very clearly, that if it is not true that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, then we the Christians are of all people the most unhappy. If none of that’s true, and you seem to say it isn’t, I have no quarrel with you. You’re not going to come to my door trying convince me either. Nor are you trying to get a tax break from the government. Nor are you trying to have it taught to my children in school. If all Christians were like you I wouldn’t have to write the book.
I guess "progressive unitarian" is redundant.
So the question seems to be, can one be religious and not superstitious? a Christian without being a Paulist (if he insists in miracles)?
Hitchens would say no—it is meaningless to have religion without superstition. Tillich would say yes—that is a theologian.
It is an interesting question whether or not a theologian should get a tax break. I wouldn't mind them publishing or teaching. It's not that Hitchens will not engage with such a theologian, it's just that he does not consider them the problem, so it is a waste of his time. It is meaningless in the sense that there is little or nothing to fix.
Hitchens wants to solve the problem of superstition by getting people to realize that their religion is contradictory, false, and devastatingly hurtful, and to reject it. Tillich wants to solve the problem of superstition by getting people to radically question their religion and to change it. Both trying to get people to intellectually reject superstition. One by throwing out religion, the other by changing it.
Certainly, there is a long history of both. Unfortunately, neither have worked very effectively.
I suppose that Hitchens never got the Bultmann memo:
"Though Bultmann acknowledged that the earliest disciples believed in the literal resurrection of Jesus and that Paul in I Corinthians 15 even attempts to prove the resurrection, he nevertheless pronounces such a procedure as "fatal." It reduces Christ's resurrection to a nature miracle akin to the resurrection of a corpse. And modern man cannot be reasonably asked to believe in nature miracles before becoming a Christian. Therefore, the miraculous elements of the gospel must be demythologized to reveal the true Christian message: the call to authentic existence in the face of death, symbolized by the cross. The resurrection is merely a symbolic re-statement of the message of the cross.... To appeal to the resurrection as historical evidence, as did Paul, is doubly wrong-headed, for it is of the very nature of existential faith that it is a leap without evidence. Thus, to argue historically for the resurrection is contrary to faith."
Also, I don't buy Hitchen's crudely essentialist thinking that somehow there's a normative definition of a Christian out in the ether. I'm enough of a phenomonologist to reject the notion that somewhere in the abstract world of ideas, a pure Christian exists. A Christian is anyone who shows up saying that they are a Christian and Christian beliefs are the beliefs of those people.
If we criticize people for referring to Muslim murderers as "muderers calling themselves Muslims," (Leon Wieseltier) we should likewise criticize those who, like Hitchens, in so many words refer to Christian intellectuals as "intellectuals calling themselves Christians." Paul Tillich is no less motivated by his religious beliefs than the 9/11 crews.
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