I know it’s a bit unfair to take one of my comments and elevate it to the status of a post, but it seemed to me probably worth saying to a wider audience. But I’ve just come back from a day of being unplugged, and I thought I should have something to continue the discussion. We have been discussing the relationship between theology and religion, Mary Helena Basson very spiritedly defending a definition of religion in which religion is separate from theology, in which, indeed, theology is seen as undermining religion. Indeed, religion, for Mary Helena has to do with the spiritual, with all the good things, like love, joy, peace, beauty, and so forth, all the “spiritual” values that we recognise as good. Of course, religion so understood seems to encompass everyone, for we all have spiritual moments, moments lived in the shade of those values, whether it has anything to do with “religion” as we commonly understand that word. And this is my jumping off point for the following brief reflection.
Mary Helena, I’m afraid I have to go with Rieux here. I can see that we can list “spiritual” values, qualities of mind and personality which are “elevating” in some sense. I am reminded of Paul’s exhortation: “Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.” (Philippians 4.8) But once you have done that, do you have a religion? Not necessarily, for religions are also, in some sense, ways of belonging. As Atran keeps saying — so long as we remember that there are no authorities here — the root of religion lies in hard to fake commitments which identify the individual with the (religious) group. He does not make a clear distinction between the values and the beliefs which accompany them. And besides, not all the values that religious people espouse are necessarily the uplifting ones, that is, those values that Rieux calls swimmy.
I acknowledge there is probably an unreflective level at which religion is about feelings, basically. However, those feelings are not always the elevating ones suggested in Paul’s list. There are the ones that lead people to kill their neighbours who have not displayed that hard to fake commitment. There are also feelings of guilt and sinfulness that lead people to sacrifice their children in propitiation. There are feelings that send people off on jihad, or crusades, or pogroms.
It is probably at the theological level that we find distinctions being made, theology which can moderate the intensity of people’s feelings, as well as theology which becomes rigid and dogmatic.
In other words, I don’t see theology quite as you seem to see it, nor do I think you can separate religion and theology in the way that you wish to do. — Yes, we seem to be right back at the start, and so I begin to wonder whether this is profitable. — You want to preserve a sacred centre of religion which is neither dangerous nor inhumane. I don’t think there is one. The “values” that you place at the centre of religion are just good feelings, which, of course, we can have in the absence of any religion at all. If they’re not, and we have to take into consideration spite and malice and the other negative emotions and “values” as well — which play a surprisingly large part in religion I suspect — then we have to have some reason for thinking that just these values are the ones that we need to treasure, and this is going to lead us into theology. Because, in the end, come what may, we’re going to want to be reflective and thoughtful about our values.
Take the conflict between Christianity and Islam at the moment. In one sense, you might say that this is just a conflict of theologies. Well, yes, it is. But it’s also a conflict over what values we think are more important. Christians, for example, accustomed, not entirely without reason, to thinking of their god as one of love, tend to favour the peaceable values. Islam, on the other hand, born in conflict and growing by conflict, tends to favour values that focus on the Ummah, as the perfect community of believers, and to encourage values (or feelings) that exclude those who do not submit. The value of faithfulness to the community is also an excluding value. It helps to make distinctions between in and out. So the values here are very different, and the difference is made, largely by theology, by how one regards God, and God’s wishes, what we take to underwrite the values that we express in our lives.
But religions which are only about values, without any reflective (theological) way of ranking those values, may be very oppressive and disagreeable. I just don’t think you can make the distinctions you want to make, preserving all that is best for religion, and shunting onto a siding called theology everything that you want to reject. And so we are right back where we started.
In my experience theology has tended to be a moderating influence — because, within its limits, it is a rational undertaking, although its foundations may be shaky – damping down the intensity of feelings and trying to channel it into constructive activity. The reason for this is not far to seek. Atran himself, if you remember, speaks of theology as working at cross purposes with the counterintuitive/counterfactual aspects of religion, so that it cannot ever be reduced to a system. This can result in dogmatism and rigidity (dogmatic theology) on the one hand, where theologians insist on producing systems though the heavens fall, or, on the other, in a loosening of the belief system itself, and a reflective disequilibrium which makes some beliefs unstable. This can result, as it has in liberal Christianity, in doubts and questions, rather than in rigidity. I don’t think Atran himself acknowledges this, but I think it is an important movement in the theological development of religious traditions.
However, a word of warning. Helpful as Atran is in getting a grip on what religion is, he isn’t the last word on the subject. Pascal Boyer also has much to say that is interesting about how the various cognitive “modules” are brought into play in the development of religious ideas and belief. His Religion Explained is a minor classic, and well worth while reading. And of course there is so much more. Daniel Dennett’s book Breaking the Spell is also worth some time, and, interestingly, he thinks of theology as a process of scratching the sceptical itch (very much as I do).
But I will say that I do not think your confidence is justified, as when you say: “If one keeps in mind that there is a real differentiation between theology and religion.” You may keep it in mind, but I do not think you have shown this to be true. Aristotle’s claim that by nature we seek to know means, I think, that, even in religion, theology — that is, reflective awareness of our beliefs — is bound to go hand in hand with religion and to be a part of it. I also think that what killed Salman Taseer is much more likely to have been religion without much theology at all, and that a bit of theological reflection would have helped his killer to see things more steadily and to see them whole.
Tomorrow, back to Philip Kitcher, which some of you have been discussing very profitably in my absence.
I am honored to be cited on such a terrific blog. The comment of mine Eric references is here.
Use of the word “spiritual” and its cognates in any reasoned argument deserves its own version of Godwin’s Law: If you use it, you automatically lose the argument. The word “spiritual” is the ultimate tabula rasa, a void on which any and every possible interpretation can be and has been hung. “Spiritual” is a Humpty Dumpty word that might signify anything, and therefore signifies nothing — but it is not full of sound and fury! Oh no, the realm of the spiritual is only sweetness and light; it is the ultimate empty valor word, a rhetorical slight-of-hand that’s meant to evoke warm fuzzy feelings in the reader/listener without having any concrete content. The only reason anyone ever introduces the word “spiritual” into a discussion is to engage in obfuscation and equivocation. (I won’t say that the word “spiritual” is only used to DELIBERATELY obfuscate and equivocate, but I will say that there is a parallel of Poe’s Law here as well: Use of the word “spiritual” is by its very nature so obfuscatory and equivocating that there is no reliable way to distinguish between deliberate and unintentional obfuscation and equivocation in its use.)
When someone is pressed to give the adjective “spiritual” some actual content, as Eric pressed Ms. Basson to do in dialogue here, a bunch of vague and positive-sounding concepts are shoveled under its umbrella without regard to whether the noun in question is in any way accurately described by such a glowing adjective. Religion as it is actually manifest in human cultures, traditions, and institutions is not primarily — let alone exclusively — characterized by “love, joy, peace, beauty,” an so on (although I won’t deny that some believers root some of those emotions in their religious practice). Ms. Basson’s attempt to claim such nose-bleedingly high ground for religion and slough all the bad stuff onto “theology” — as if the latter were somehow a wholly separable phenomenon from religion! — is nonsense on stilts that only Eric would be gracious and patient enough to engage seriously for as long as he did. Ms. Basson’s efforts are nothing more than another Karen Armstrong-ing of the discussion of religion, where bald assertion, cherry-picking so blatant that professional cherry-pickers would blush for shame of it, and obfuscatory rhetorical tomfoolery is advanced in place of any sort of reasoned argumentation.
Incidentally, something about this discussion of the emotional motivations for religion reminded me of a very interesting and fruitful discussion about the distinction between emotional and cognitive doubt you (Eric, that is, our illustrious host) and I had at B&W some time ago. Let me see if I can find it and remind you of it… [shuffles off to search the internets] Ah, here it is!
It seems to me that the transparent value of epistemological doubt (withholding assent from beliefs insufficiently supported by evidence and reasoning) in everyday life, combined with religious adherents’ powerful emotional attachments to faith-based beliefs unsupported by or even flatly contradicted by evidence and reasoning, must inevitably give birth to theology. To stretch the birth metaphor, theology is a sterile hybrid: It resembles reason enough to fool the casual observer, but its heritage of genuine doubt is diluted by faith. Theology fixes all its “conclusions” in advance; it carefully selects evidence and frames premises to rationalize those foregone conclusions, so it can produce nothing new, an intellectual dead-end.
Ah, thank you for reminding me of that exchange. All the elements of our present discussion are pretty thoroughly dealt with there. I had completely forgotten. One of the disabilities of increasing years, I’m afraid!
Come on now! Don’t be a shrinking violet: Say what you really think!
I have no doubt that atheists, theists, and other -ists have similar experience of what I and, I think, others would understand as “spirtual”: What Christopher Hitchens, in his debate with Tony Blair, described as, “What you could call the numinous or the transcendent, or at its best, I suppose, the ecstatic.”
In another thread (I’m loosing track now!), I posted a quotation from Terry Pratchett, ending, “I don’t think I’ve found God, but I may have seen where gods come from.” Pratchett is, I think, describing exactly the kind of thing Hitchens had in mind.
But I certainly wouldn’t describe any of those “values” that Paul or Mary Helena lists as “spiritual”: They seem much more grounded in quotidian experience. The “truly” “spiritual” experience seems to me to have quite a different emotional register. Hence, for certain people, in certain scenarios, the conviction that they have found God.
That said, there are so many other uses of “spiritual”, especially those with supernatural overtones, that you are probably right to deprecate it.
Re Mary Helena: She seems to be taking the New Atheists to task for (naïvely) opposing “religion” rather than “theology”. But this doesn’t hold water, for it is clearly not Mary Helena’s “religion” that they oppose, but something that is already rather closer to her “differentiated” “theology”. I’ve already gone on about this elsewhere.
TPP, please stop beating around the bush and tell us what you actually think.
(…Joke!)
Rieux: As my earlier comment is still awaiting moderation, I shall forgive your near plagiarism!
Eric: Why do some comments get hung up in moderation and others not? Length? External links?
Anatallan, I have no idea. Usually, once I approve of one comment, all the rest simply sail through, so I assumed that one had as well. Sorry. It should be up now.
Religious values mean very different things to others. A group like Focus on the Family would like view such things as patriarchy, strictly defined gender roles, temperance, patriotism, heterosexuality, etc. as the standard.
The idea of maximizing well-being is also intriguing – especially if we think about it biologically. Living systems are arranged hierarchically: organisms comprised of cells, populations comprised of organisms, and communities comprised of populations. These systems are maintained largely by feedback loops and mostly negative feedback loops like a thermostat uses to maintain a constant temperature. Predator/prey relationships are a common negative feedback loop in living systems.
What I am trying to get at, after a long-winded introduction, is that in order to maximize the well-being of an organism, individual cells are groomed for a specific role, held in check, or even killed to maintain the functioning of the system at the organismal level. At the community level, someone gets to be the predator and someone the prey – sure mutualism exists, but is inevitably held in check by predation and competition. In these cases well-being is defined by sustainability – can the system last. If a cell reproduces out of turn leading to cancer, then the organism’s well-being is compromised. If you remove a predator from a community, the prey population explodes until it outstrips its food supply or other limiting resource.
What it comes down to is well-being at the individual level is not the same as it is at the population or community level.
*sigh*
It’s one thing to demand that Dawkins, et al. better tackle the theological axioms of the religions they challenge, it’s quite another to reinvent categories to fit your own idiosyncracies in understanding and expect — on the strength of that reinvention alone — that evenyone ought to go along with you. MH’s sharp distinction between religion and theology is complete and utter nonsense. She hasn’t offered a shred of actual argumentation for her position.* I’m completely baffled as to why she’s been given as much attention as she has been.**
Of course religion (not theology) killed Salman Taseer — and most likely killed David Kato, too (though the police not-so-cinvincingly insist it’s “robbery”). We all, but MH, understand this.
*Seriously, MH, can we please get an argument? I don’t mean by this a list of quotations that may or may not be relevant or endless clarification of the conclusion you want us to accept.
**Eric, this is not intended to be a criticism of the posts the discussion has generated here — your posts on the topic have been useful (and you even seem to have satisfied Uzza!).
TPP:
No, no, no… You clearly don’t understand. “Spiritual” is a magical incantation, intended to ward off any and all criticism.
Oh, wait… It doesn’t work that way?
— Aristotle, “The Aim of Man”
— John 11:49-50
— Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
But, in Star Trek IV: The Journey Home, Kirk declares to the revivified Spock that the reason that the crew came for Spock – at the cost of the life of Kirk’s son – was: “the needs of the one exceeded the needs of the many”.
Yes, but…
If Spock had asserted that, it would be a counterargument.
But what Kirk was really saying (had he known it!) was, the need of the many (the Enterprise crew, maybe even the Federation) for the one (Spock) outweighed the needs of the few (Kirk, Kirk’s son, etc.)
Just as in Saving Private Ryan: Ryan wasn’t saved, at the cost of many lives, for his own sake, or his mother’s, but for the sake of the USA (in some nobly symbolic way).
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