Will atheism supplant religion?

According to a blog at Psychology Today, atheism will replace religion because it provides a better explanation of how the world works. This is based on a Frazerian/Tylorian assumption that the primary function of religion is to explain how the world works.

I would argue that the primary function of religion is to provide a community of shared meaning, values and practice. Belief is secondary to these functions. Of course fundamentalists' explanations of how the world works (both morally and physically) are way off reality as evidenced by scientific research, personal experience, and any sense of spirituality.

The article suggests:

The reasons that churches lose ground in developed countries can be summarized in market terms. First, with better science, and with government safety nets, and smaller families, there is less fear and uncertainty in people's daily lives and hence less of a market for religion. At the same time many alternative products are being offered, such as psychotropic medicines and electronic entertainment that have fewer strings attached and that do not require slavish conformity to unscientific beliefs.

Not all religions require "slavish adherence to unscientific beliefs". The liberal and mystical tendency in religion has been questioning dogma for centuries. In the West, this questioning has resulted in four great liberal traditions: the Society of Friends (aka Quakers), the Unitarians, liberal Judaism, and the Pagan revival (which includes various traditions). None of these traditions requires adherence to a creed or even belief in God(s). They are about exploring the meaning of life (drawing on both secular and sacred sources of inspiration) among a community of shared values. In Islam, the mystical tradition of Sufism fulfils a similar role; and Buddhism, Sikhism and Hinduism are similarly diverse and include liberal perspectives. Please do some research before dismissing all religion as irrational and dogmatic.

The second aspect of this argument, that religion is about providing reassurance in an uncertain world, depends on what is meant by reassurance. Liberal religion provides the reassurance of having a community of shared values and interests, but it does not provide reassurance on the subject of life after death. Liberal religion is about enjoying being alive now, not about a future existence which is very uncertain.

Should school visits to religious buildings be compulsory?

A Catholic schoolgirl has been branded a truant for refusing to wear a headscarf and trousers to visit a mosque.

The way this story is presented seems unduly alarmist to me.

If I visited a Christian church that had certain modesty requirements (e.g. Orthodox churches in Greece), I would comply with them out of respect to that tradition, even though I am not a Christian. Surely Christians can pay the same courtesy to other religions, even if they don't agree with them.

When I have visited mosques, gurdwaras etc I have sometimes been asked to cover my head, sometimes not, but whilst I am not keen on doing so (for feminist reasons), I comply with the request out of courtesy.

The Catholic girl was not asked to take part in Muslim worship.

On the other hand, I suppose that whether or not you are prepared to visit the religious buildings of another faith is up to your own conscience. I would decline to visit a Wahhabist mosque, for instance; and I know some Pagans who won't go into Christian churches. So I would support the right of a member of any faith to choose not to visit the religious building of another faith, even if I disagreed with their reasons for declining to visit. The schoolgirl in this case could have learnt about Islam in another way. So I think the school has overreacted. Parents have to the right to withdraw their children from religious assemblies; surely this is the same sort of choice, and the pupil in question is entitled to make it?

Mythology and religion

New Scientist: The imperfect universe: Goodbye, theory of everything

But are we really getting any closer? Do we dare ask whether the search is fundamentally misguided? Could belief in a physical theory that unifies the secrets of the material world - a "hidden code" of nature - be the scientific equivalent of the religious belief in oneness held by the billions who go to churches, mosques and synagogues every day?

Even before what we now call physics existed, ancient Greek philosophers pondered whether the diversity of nature could radiate from a single source, a primal substance. Thales, regarded by Aristotle as the first philosopher in the Greek tradition, proposed that everything was made of water, a substance he believed represented nature's dynamic essence. Later, Pythagoras and his followers believed that nature was a mathematical puzzle, constructed through ratios and patterns that combine integers, and that geometry was the key to deciphering it.

The idea of mathematics as a fundamental gateway to nature's secrets re-emerged during the late Renaissance. Galileo Galilei, René Descartes, Johannes Kepler and Isaac Newton made it clear that the mathematical description of nature succeeds only through the painstaking application of the scientific method, where hypotheses are tested by experiments and observations and then accepted or rejected. Physics became the science of the "how", leaving the "why" for philosophy and religion. When Newton was asked why matter attracts matter with a strength that weakens with the square of the distance, he answered that he "feigned no hypotheses"; it was enough to provide a quantitative description of the phenomenon.

That, however, is only half the story. To Newton, God was the supreme mathematician and the mathematical laws of nature were Creation's blueprint. As science advanced, the notion that god interfered explicitly with natural phenomena faded away, but not the idea that nature's hidden code lay in an all-encompassing mathematical theory. Einstein's "God" was far removed from Newton's, as he famously said: "I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists." His search for a unified field theory was very much a search for the essence of this natural god.

I agree that many of the assumptions made by physics and other sciences are hangovers from religious discourse. For example, the idea that the universe has laws seems to be a hangover from the idea of a Lawgiver (i.e. God).

But the passage quoted above runs together some very different theological concepts. The "oneness" allegedly espoused by "the billions who go to churches, mosques and synagogues" is very different depending on which of those billions you ask. Many members of the Abrahamic traditions believe that God is the ground of all being and not literally a person.  Christians are usually Trinitarians (that's a very different idea of "oneness", and interpretations of the Trinity vary wildly, even among people who are supposed to subscribe to the same doctrine on it). And neither Muslims nor Jews nor Unitarians believe in the Trinity. 

The idea of the single source of all existence is a neoPlatonic concept, again very different from Abrahamic ideas of God, both then and now. And Spinoza was a pantheist (though the article does point out that his idea of God was different from that of Newton).

The tweet alerting readers to the posting of the article said:

The quest for a "theory of everything" is driven by the same urges as religion - so we should stop http://bit.ly/ckZJX1

... implying that if religion does it, it must be wrong for scientists to do it (or am I being paranoid?)

My response was:

please don't lump all religion together - not all practitioners of religion believe literally in their mythology

followed by this:

do you have any scientific evidence for the urges that drive what you refer to as "religion"? #SoBoredOfLiteralMindedPeople

Anyway, the article is really interesting, and the author seems to know a bit more about theology than the sort of people who usually write these things; and I appreciate that it's difficult to be subtle in a tweet. But I'm fed up with the way some scientific commentators persist in lumping all practitioners of religion in one box, marked IRRATIONAL, DO NOT OPEN.

Also available on my Tumblr blog.

Happy St George's Day

There's quite a bit of interesting folklore about St George. In Russia, apparently, women leave clothes under bushes on St George's Day. If a leaf falls on their item of clothing, they believe they will get pregnant. George is also (possibly) associated with Khizr or Khidr, the Sufi saint and inner Friend in Islam. So George is a symbol of verdant renewal.

In Orthodox Christianity, George's title is Holy Glorious Great Martyr, Victorybearer and Wonderworker George - now that's what I call a proper title.

The patron saint of England was originally Edmund Martyr, who was murdered by Vikings. They chopped off his head, which was then guarded by a wolf until some Christians came to bury him (at Bury St Edmund's).

The next patron saint of England was Edward the Confessor, who married a Norman lady and thereby paved the way for the Norman Conquest. The Normans presided over the increasing Catholicisation of the English church, which had been doing liturgy in a unique Saxon style. Obviously the Synod of Whitby had scuppered the Orthodox date of Easter and the Celtic tonsure, but there were still some differences in liturgy which may have been more similar to Orthodoxy.

George only got made patron saint of England during the reign of Edward III.

The Bible: take it or leave it?

I have just been followed on Twitter by an atheist whose slogan is "The Bible... Believe ALL of it, or, Believe NONE of it!"

That is such a simplistic attitude that I nearly didn't respond, thinking it was scarcely worth it. However, I had one of those xkcd moments... so here goes.

The Bible is a book (or better, a collection of books) with different authors, all of whom seem to have had very different ideas about God, and what God wants. The earlier books of the Bible have YHWH demanding blood smeared on the horns of his altar; then the prophets bemoan the hard-heartedness of Israel and their inability to just be nice to people for a change (see Amos 5:24 for example). The theology expressed by Jesus is quite different from that of Paul, which is different again from James and Peter. (I think that's why I found it so very confusing when I tried, a very long time ago, to take it at face value.) All this is well-documented by liberal biblical criticism.

If you don't want to take liberal biblical criticism as your source, try Richard Dawkins, who says we should regard the Bible as a work of literature. Quite right - it is a work of literature, and has just as many insights into human nature as any other pre-modern work of literature.

Obviously (if you read other things I have written on this blog), I do not literally believe the cosmological accounts given in the Bible. They are metaphors, just as Pagan creation myths are metaphors. I also don't believe in the resurrection of Jesus, but I do think his mythology is a version of the stories of other Middle-Eastern dying-and-resurrecting vegetation gods, and if you read it as mythology, it is a good account of the archetypal experiences of the human psyche (the death of the ego and resurrection of the greater self, as outlined in the Hero Journey).

The method I use for interpreting the Bible is to compare it with the wisdom texts of other spiritual traditions. If you read what Jesus and other prophets said in the light of what the Buddha said, or what Lao Tsu said, it makes a lot more sense. Personally I find it easier to read the Buddha and Lao-Tsu, because I don't have to filter out the noise of conservative interpretations of Jesus' thoughts that I was brought up with. But this doesn't mean that the Bible is worthless. It means that if you're going to read it, you should read it carefully to see if its ethical guidance resonates with your own experience. And if it doesn't (as in some of the very dodgy statements in the Pentateuch), then reject it. It's not a supernaturally inspired book, it's a document of the spiritual journeys of a bunch of people, and should be read as such.

As the Buddha said,

"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense."

I wonder if this is what Jesus meant when he said "He who has ears to hear, let him hear". If so, I wish he had been a bit less cryptic!

The Houdan Hen

The Houdan hen was never drawn into the cult of Sredni Vashtar. Conradin had long ago settled that she was an Anabaptist. He did not pretend to have the remotest knowledge as to what an Anabaptist was, but he privately hoped that it was dashing and not very respectable.

(from Sredni Vashtar by Saki)

Some Anabaptists are certainly dashing and not very respectable. Others sound quite conservative. I suspect that the Houdan hen was a Universalist or a Unitarian. I was going to suggest that she might have Humanist leanings, but then she's a chicken.

Religious civil partnerships are on!

Equality Bill Passed
I am pleased to report the successful passage of the Equality Bill through its final Commons stages on 6 April 2010, in what is known as the 'wash-up' before Parliament was dissolved yesterday for the General Election. This will mean civil partnerships can be celebrated on some religious premises as supported by the [Unitarian] denomination, the Quakers and Liberal Jews. Looking to the future the Bill provides for an order-making power to register religious premises for conducting civil partnership ceremonies in England and Wales.
Derek McAuley, Chief Officer, Unitarians

Oh that is marvellous news, I am so pleased. How wonderful. (Next goal - marriage & civil partnership available to all, whether same-sex or opposite-sex relationships.)

religion and science

Just been watching the absolutely marvellous Wonders of the Solar System (episode 1). Lots of beautiful imagery, lots of fascinating information about the solar system, and how the cycles of the sun drive river systems, and how to work out how much sunlight actually falls on the Earth.

Only one teensy little quibble. In the first five minutes of the programme, Prof Brian Cox says "science is different from all the religions that have been practised here in Varanasi; you can test science's explanations for things, you don't have to take them on faith".

Yep, that's true. Except that most religion is not about explaining how the universe works. Hinduism, the main religion of India, has multiple creation stories, all of which exist happily in parallel with each other and with science. They are symbolic stories.

I know there are lots of mad fundies who think that their religion explains how the world works, and I know they shout really loudly, and grab all the media attention, because for some reason journalists just love watching religious people frothing at the mouth (look how much media attention that old hypocrite Ratzinger gets).

But lots of religious people belong to a religion because they want the sense of community, and the mythological structure, the shared values, and the spiritual practices that go with it (meditation, prayer, singing, contemplation, yoga, whatever).

Most Unitarian Universalists and many Pagans and Quakers do religion because it reflects the inner reality of the psyche and they can share their spiritual journeys with others who share the same symbolism. It's not about belief, it's about spiritual practices (the efficacy of which can be verified empirically, by seeing if the people who do them are happier, calmer, etc.)

Many liberal people of religion enjoy science and find it fascinating and beautiful. I enjoy science very much, and wish that some scientists didn't think that all people of religion are nutters, just because some people of religion are out-and-out bigots and fools.

As Carl Sagan once said, "A religion old or new, that stressed the magnificence of the universe as revealed by modern science, might be able to draw forth reserves of reverence and awe hardly tapped by the conventional faiths. Sooner or later, such a religion will emerge." (But this should probably be taken in context with everything else that he said about religion.)

That Jesus character

The thing that both atheists and fundamentalists fail to realise about the likelihood that the gospels' account of Jesus is almost entirely fictional is that it really doesn't matter - in fact it's better as myth than as history.

It’s taking myth literally (whether you're an atheist or a believer) that is the problem. That's what causes all the wars and arguments.

Just because something is a myth, that doesn't make it irrelevant. Myths are powerful stories that inspire people. Robin Hood and King Arthur were probably entirely fictional (or very exaggerated versions of historical figures) but they have inspired people down the ages to emulate their values. Jesus may well be entirely fictional too (and I am certain that his miracles are entirely fictional and symbolic), but he is still an inspirational figure. (And the same goes for the other solar dying-and-resurrecting vegetation gods such as Horus, Mithras, Attis, Adonis, Tammuz, Dumuzi etc.) Unfortunately there are things which Jesus is reported as having said that inspire fundamentalist bigots. But Jesus’ message of non-violence also inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King. It’s a mixed picture.

Most of the stories about Jesus can be given a mythological reading which fits in well with the archetypal stories of the Hero Journey, or other myths. The same stories (virgin birth, massacre of the innocents) are told about other deities such as Krishna, Mithras, and so on.

Bill Darlison has shown how the Jesus myth fits in with an astrological initiatory system. Joseph Cambell showed how it fitted with other versions of the archetypal Hero Journey. The gospel of John in particular can be read symbolically (and was various scholars have shown that it was intended to be read symbolically). Various authors (notably Timothy Freke) have explored the similarities between Jesus and pagan gods. It's all mythology, and that's good.

Finding Ada: Lisa Barone

This blogpost is part of Ada Lovelace Day, which is an international day of blogging to draw attention to the achievements of women in technology and science.

But many women go on to achieve great things in site of all this, and Lisa Barone is one of them. She writes:

I hate talking about gender. I hate talking about what it feels like to be “a girl” in tech or on the Web because it all feels like a bunch of crap and silly excuses. I’ve never felt hindered by my gender, never felt like I was looked down upon or treated differently. Never felt like I wasn’t put on a panel because I pee sitting down. But there are also a couple of things I’ve had working in my favor.

1. I’m 27. I entered a workplace where ceilings were semi-shattered. I know that my mother did not.
2. I’ve never treated myself or acted like I was inferior.
3. I’ve never allowed others to make me feel that I was.

According to her profile:

Lisa Barone is Co-Founder and Chief Branding Officer of Outspoken Media, Inc. Lisa has been involved in the SEO community since 2006 and is widely known for her honest industry observations, her inability to not say exactly what she’s thinking, and her excessive on-the-clock Twittering.

Notable Achievements

• Selected as a ‘Person to Watch’ for 2010 by Hudson Valley Magazine
• Invited Guest, Google Search Relevancy Panel, Google Corporate Headquarters
• Blog Editor, SmallBizTrends
• Columnist, Search Engine Land
• Columnist, Search Engine People
• Columnist, Search Engine Guide
• Nominated, Search Engine Journal’s Best Overall Search Marketing Blog, 2007
• Nominated, Search Engine Journal’s Most Giving Search Blogger Award, 2007
• Winner, 2007 SEMMY, Category: Best Search Tech
• Winner, 2007 SEMMY, Category: LOL Funny
• Expert Judge, 2008 SEMMYs
• Expert Judge, Search Engine Strategies Awards 2008
• Expert Judge, Search Engine Marketing Scholarship 2008
• Featured Entrepreneur, All Over Albany

My other Finding Ada blogposts:
Hedy Lamarr
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

Hooray for Philip Pullman

I was talking to some fellow Unitarians on Sunday and we all said how much we are looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, as the ideas in it sound very Unitarian. We also remarked that the Unitarian concept of God is far closer to Dust than to the Authority, since many Unitarians are pantheists or panentheists who believe that the Divine is immanent in the world.

Unitarians have been in existence as a denomination since the 1500s in Poland (they were driven out of Poland for their heretical views), the 1600s in Transylvania, and the late 1700s in Britain, and throughout that time have asserted that Jesus was just a man. He may have been special and inspired, but he was just a man.

Unitarians and others in the 19th century learned much from the new Biblical criticism coming from Germany in the 19th century, and realised that the Bible is a palimpsest of different voices and editors. Nowadays atheists and humanists and agnostics are welcome to be members of the Unitarian movement.

Pagans also love Philip Pullman for his positive portrayal of witches, and the wonderful idea of daemons, which are rather like the concept of totem animals which is popular with many Pagans.

So it was with some dismay that I just heard that fundamentalist Christians have been issuing death threats to Philip Pullman because they don't like his latest book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Stupid, ignorant, narrow-minded, bigoted fools. It is fairly obvious to anyone who has read the Bible with an open mind that the Jesus of the gospels and the Christ promoted by Paul are very different. Christ is a mystical entity whose body is the church (and who should never have been conflated with Jesus). Many liberal Christians say that Christ is an archetype within the psyche (or words to that effect).

In any case, even if you think Christ is the supreme ruler of the universe, issuing death threats is not the way to convince non-believers that your faith is worthwhile - quite the opposite. And if Christ really was the supreme being, I daresay he could look after himself. "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"; "Judge not, that ye be not judged." (Goodness me, haven't these people actually read the Bible?)

I am very much looking forward to reading Philip Pullman's new book, and hope that these evil people do not carry out their threats. I am sure that all decent people will be praying for his safety and protection.

Email disclaimer

Annoyed by email disclaimers? Add this to your email footer, and get your own back!

Holden's Disclaimer

IMPORTANT: This email is intended for the use of the individual addressees named above and may contain information that is confidential, privileged, or unsuitable for overly sensitive persons with low self-esteem, no sense of humour, or irrational religious beliefs. If you are not the intended recipient, any dissemination, distribution or copying of this email is not authorized (either explicitly or implicitly) and constitutes an irritating social faux pas. Unless the word auscultation has been used in its correct context somewhere other than in this warning, it does not have any legal or grammatical use and may be ignored. No animals were harmed in the transmission of this email; although the Collie next door is living on borrowed time, let me tell you. Those of you with an overwhelming fear of the unknown will be gratified to learn that there is no hidden message revealed by reading this warning backwards, so just ignore that Alert.

Notice from Microsoft: However, by pouring a complete circle of salt around yourself and your computer you can ensure that no harm befalls you and your pets. If you have received this email in error, please add some nutmeg and egg whites, whisk, and place in a warm oven for 40 minutes.