Redefine
It’s interesting how willing people often are to redefine religion in order to defend it, and how thoroughly they’re willing to redefine it for that purpose. In fact they do such a thorough job of it that one would have thought there was nothing left that needed defending. Who would bother to argue against feelings of awe or wonder, or an appreciation of stories and myths and poetry? I certainly wouldn’t, in fact I think those are fine things. But they’re not what I take religion to be, and I don’t think they’re what people generally mean when they talk about religion, either. If that’s what religion means, then what do we call what I mean by religion, to wit: belief in the existence of a supernatural being who created the universe, and perhaps personal immortality for humans?
Richard Dawkins discussed this issue in his usual incisive way a few years ago in an article that is also included in his most recent book, A Devil’s Chaplain. I urge you to read the article, it makes my point for me. I feel like quoting the whole thing but will restrain myself.
If you count Einstein and Hawking as religious, if you allow the cosmic awe of Goodenough, Davies, Sagan, and me as true religion, then religion and science have indeed merged, especially when you factor in such atheistic priests as Don Cupitt and many university chaplains. But if the term religion is allowed such a flabbily elastic definition, what word is left for conventional religion, religion as the ordinary person in the pew or on the prayer mat understands it today–indeed, as any intellectual would have understood it in previous centuries, when intellectuals were religious like everybody else?
Just so. Very well, if I’m quite wrong about what the word ‘religion’ means, and it’s really just a word for some attitudes and emotions rather than a set of supernatural truth claims, fine. That’s not what I’m talking about then in the ‘Science and Religion’ In Focus. I’m talking about something else – you know – that familiar stuff about God and Jesus and Allah, prayers and the soul and heaven, resurrection and immortality and sin and atonement. I don’t know what the right word for that is if it’s not religion, and I’m not at all convinced that people who claim that’s not what the word ‘religion’ refers to are correct, but at any rate that is the subject I’m talking about.
If God is a synonym for the deepest principles of physics, what word is left for a hypothetical being who answers prayers, intervenes to save cancer patients or helps evolution over difficult jumps, forgives sins or dies for them? If we are allowed to relabel scientific awe as a religious impulse, the case goes through on the nod. You have redefined science as religion, so it’s hardly surprising if they turn out to ‘converge.’
Just so, again. It’s sheer Humpty Dumptyism, is what it is. ‘Religion is whatever I say it is for the purposes of this discussion so that I can claim that atheists and secularists are silly and shallow, dogmatic and ignorant, stubborn and perverse.’ Only in Looking-glass Land where words don’t mean what they mean.
And the religion that isn’t sheer Humpty Dumptyism – I love the phrase, by the way – are you actually going to engage with that?
Religion as poetry, as an emotional reaction or expression, or simply as a ritual of singing and swinging, is part of the increasing influence of popular nonsense; scary stuff – thanks and welldone for taking a stand against it.
But a lot of what is on the website grossly misrepresents faith as understood by many.
Consider: the impetus for faith includes, and is inseperable from, a belief that a critical study of history can produce not only an intellectually respectable consistancy with the bible but also positive evidence for Jesus’ life.
I am having a difficult time finding out how accurate this belief is. But if you, dear OB, are going to dismiss all christianity so flippantly I might be tempted to accuse you of misrepresentation, insincerity or inconsistancy.
The point you stand on is that it’s ridiculous to form belief on any other criteria than evidence. Righto. Well, what of the historical jesus evidence?
Hi Marco.
But the historical Jesus is a completely different matter! Precisely because it is based on evidence and not on faith.
“The point you stand on is that it’s ridiculous to form belief on any other criteria than evidence.”
You know, I didn’t actually say that. And it’s not quite what I think. It seems to me there are realms where belief without evidence, or using other criteria along with evidence, is perfectly reasonable, indeed almost required. Personal relations for example: love, trust, loyalty.
Where I want evidence is in the case of factual assertions. And even there I didn’t say it’s ridiculous to form belief without them, I asked why I should. It’s a real question. Maybe there is a reason, but I’ve never seen a convincing one yet.
The historical Jesus actually interests me quite a lot, I’ve read a fair bit about the subject. There’s quite a lot of evidence that he existed, that he kicked up a row in Palestine, that the Romans executed him. I’m actually not sure faith or Christianity as generally understood are inseparable from that, but it’s interesting all the same.
How do we misrepresent faith as understood by many? Apart from pointing out when faith gets things wrong, of course.
It seems that most (possibly all communicable) religion relies heavily on language that schematises ideas such as ‘faith’ and ‘belief’ in traditionally non-scientific and empirically inert idealistic assertions. The question of how to argue with these assertions as a foundation for furthering the religious cause employs many fallacies of which there are seemingly endless new twists and variations. Maybe if the so-called ‘religious experience’ were less traumatic, there would be a less immediate need for counter-assertions (however valid they may be). ;)
“traditionally non-scientific and empirically inert idealistic assertions.”
Just so. Which are not falsifiable, so religion is indefinitely able to fall back on its unfalsifiable assertions. Which would be all right if only believers would recognize them for what they are, but they don’t.