Religious considerations

Interestingly, there's a poll on the Telegraph website to find out if people support same-sex marriage.

The options are as follows:

No - It would be too offensive for many religious people 8.41% (2,927 votes)
No - And I think that even civil partnerships go too far 10.81% (3,762 votes)
Yes - Gay people should have the same rights as everyone else 43.61% (15,182 votes)
Yes - Religious considerations have no place in a modern society 37.18% (12,945 votes)

I selected "Yes - Gay people should have the same rights as everyone else".

I am a secularist because I think that it is the best way to guarantee religious freedom (the freedom to profess whatever religion you choose, or not to profess any religion). But is it true that "religious considerations have no place in a modern society"?

So people who don't think that religious considerations have any place in a modern society obviously think that people of religion should not criticise abuses of power by the rich and powerful, then? (Well, obviously not if the churchmen concerned are themselves rich and powerful, because then they would just be hypocrites.) Many people seem to have conveniently forgotten that many reforms and freedoms were won because of campaigns by people from liberal religious traditions.

• Unitarians have campaigned for women's education since the 1840s.
• Unitarians campaigned for the humane treatment of prostitutes.
• Methodists and Quakers (and many Unitarians) campaigned against slavery.
• Unitarians, Quakers, Liberal Jews, Pagans and the Metropolitan Community Church are campaigning for same-sex marriage.
• Missionaries in China campaigned against foot-binding.
• Rammohun Roy (Brahmo Samaj) campaigned against widow-burning (sati).
• Many Christians who support equal marriage support it because they believe that God loves everyone equally, or that everyone, LGBT or straight, is created in God's image

Anyway, for whatever reason, I am pleased that over 80% of respondents support same-sex marriage.

This is not a Christian country

Britain is not a Christian country.

The religion of Christianity was imposed by early medieval rulers who wanted to join the urbane club of the European ruling classes, all of whom had jumped on the Christian bandwagon.

In subsequent centuries, majority attendance at church was enforced by fines, and in some cases, imprisonment. The number of people who are interested in spirituality and religion is a minority. Among those who are interested, different models of how it works prevail; and fewer and fewer of them accept the Christian model.

Many of the values which are claimed to be Christian (compassion, forgiveness, love) are universal; and some values which are claimed to be Christian are either secular or come from another religious tradition (tolerance, inclusiveness).

Britain was originally a "pagan" country – that is to say, it had a number of indigenous autocthonic traditions. Now it is religiously and spiritually diverse.

As the recent survey by the Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science has shown, the majority of people who identify as Christian don't actually understand what they are identifying with. Now, I would like to see Christianity becoming more inclusive of different viewpoints, especially the view that other faiths are equally valid; but sadly, since the advent of fundamentalism, what it means to be a Christian has narrowed considerably.

In view of all of the above, I think that disestablishing the Church of England and reducing the role of Christianity in public life is desirable. However, I think there's nothing wrong with having contributions on spiritual and ethical matters by people from many different traditions (including humanism, naturalism and atheism) as part of public life, as long as lots of different traditions get access to the microphone, and not just Christianity.

Spirituality and religion are part of what it means to be human – but they are not exclusive to one religious tradition.

Dethroning Christianity

I posted my previous blogpost on Twitter, and received a response from an atheist commenter with a link to an article saying that most Christians do believe literally in the articles of their faith.

Did I mention Christianity in my previous post? (Feel free to read it again to check.) No, I did not. So why do atheists want to take Christianity (or indeed Abrahamic religions) as the norm for religion? I thought they wanted to dethrone it from its prominent place in Western discourse. Some news for you, atheists and Christians alike: religion is not synonymous with Christianity.

The notion that all religion is predicated on belief is a 19th century one, promoted by Christians and colonialists who wanted to discredit other religions, or insisted on seeing them through the lens of Protestant Christianity. This process is well-attested in the academic literature on the subject.

Karen Armstrong (if the New Atheists bothered to read her work properly, instead of relying on soundbites) is right -- belief was not always the most important thing about religion. It may have been the most important thing in Christianity for a great deal of its history; and indeed Western Christianity is rather well-known for murdering people for having the "wrong" beliefs. Though that behaviour gradually came to be regarded as uncivilised after the burning of Michael Servetus and other Unitarians.

In Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Paganism, Unitarianism / UUism etc there are a number of different schools of thought, giving rise to different practices and enjoying different mythologies. These different schools of thought co-exist happily and do not denounce each other as heretics. Nor do they take their mythologies literally.

There are many Christians who happily accept that they are not the only or the top religion, and who enjoy living in a world of pluralism where people of different faiths and none can learn from each other. Fortunately they are growing in numbers. Sadly, the New Atheists have either not noticed, or have wilfully misinterpreted the phenomenon. And they also don't get other religions, assuming that all religions must think theirs is the only truth and take their mythology literally. Funnily enough, not many New Atheists have studied the sociology of religion, or anthropology, or any other subject which might lead them to a more nuanced and accurate view.

New Atheism is so dim that it's no wonder many atheists and non-theists turned with relief to Atheism 2.0.

Review: Religion for Atheists

Religion for Atheists (like Alain de Botton's other books) is fluently and entertainingly written. The arguments are cogent and well made. I didn't agree with everything in the book, but it certainly put out some interesting ideas.

One thing that surprised me was that, unlike some of his other books (such as The Consolations of Philosophy), it did not reference many other writers or efforts in this field, although it generously acknowledged the efforts of Auguste Comte to invent a universal religion in the 19th century. The acknowledgements at the end did mention Richard Holloway, Daniel Dennett, Mark Vernon and so on. I was a bit surprised there was no mention of Karen Armstrong, since she has done much to move the debate on from whether religions are literally true to whether they are of value.

Perhaps a supplementary work could survey the history of religion for atheists, liberal religion, creedless religion, the development of humanism, pantheism, naturalism and so on.

The basic premise of the book is that many of the areas of endeavour for religions - encouraging us to be more compassionate, build communities, connect with nature, and spend time reflecting and meditating - have been badly secularised, and in some cases not secularised at all.

Where, asks de Botton, are the temples of values such as compassion, community and love? Where are the secular places where we can be reminded that we are not alone in our suffering, and thereby be cathartically relieved of it?

The book also points out the techniques by which religions inculcate values into their practitioners: by having special days and special rituals to enshrine these values in our hearts, and by repeating these festivals on a regular basis, and allowing us to share our responses to suffering, beauty and love in a communal setting.

Actually, many of these techniques have been continued in liberal religions which welcome atheists without trying to change their mind about being atheists, such as Buddhism, Paganism, and Unitarianism. But Western practitioners of these religions - which may have thrown the baby out with the bath water in some aspects of their religious life - would do well to read Religion for Atheists to see what we have omitted. One obvious thing is the use of images, which many Unitarian chapels do not have.

The bit I was not sure I agreed with was the idea that institutions are a good thing. In many ways they are, and it would be great if lone thinkers like Nietzsche could have been accommodated somewhere where they could get on with thinking and writing, and not have to worry where the next meal was coming from - but perhaps Nietzsche's thought would have been very different if he had been a tenured professor. Institutions can be stultifying, produce conformity and complacency, and persecute minorities.

I do agree that the most boring question you can ask of a religion is whether it is true. Taking the story literally, whether you decide that it’s true or false, kills the multiple meanings that can be teased out of the story. It also ignores the many other great stories which follow the same mythological pattern: Isis and Osiris, Orpheus and Eurydice, Inanna and Dumuzi. The endless arguments about whether miracles can really happen, whether the earth was created, and whether God was really a man in Palestine, are boring to people who want to move on from the question of whether the story is literally true, to whether it will help us to live well.

The section on Auguste Comte's universal religion was very interesting. I suspect that his religion failed for several reasons; the fact that it was the idea of one person; but also the fact that it did not grow and emerge organically. Religions are like languages - they evolve and grow in their particular cultural and historical context. Esperanto failed as a universal language because it was not wedded to a culture and did not grow organically. Latin succeeded in remaining the lingua franca in Europe for several centuries after it ceased to be the language of Rome because people wanted to buy into the values of Romanitas and perpetuate the order and culture of the Roman Empire. The religions that will emerge from the wreckage of traditional religious belief in the West will be ones that builds on the traditions of the past, not a newly-invented one. Alain de Botton may well be hailed as a prophet in this newly emergent religion, but I doubt that he will be regarded as its founder - and I'm sure he wouldn't want to be.

As Richard Holloway pointed out in his review, I suspect the people who will like this book will be atheists and agnostics who are already involved in liberal religious organisations like the Sea of Faith, Unitarianism, pantheism, Paganism, Buddhism and so on. I certainly recommend it, and hope that it will start a more thoughtful conversation about where religion comes from, where it is now, and where it is going.

Let's get this in proportion

In response to my previous blogpost about what I would ask the Pope, Steve posted a link to this article on spiked, How the New Atheists are abusing the truth, by Brendan O’Neill.

O'Neill is clearly not an apologist for the Catholic Church, but he points out that various newspapers are quoting excessive figures for "child rape" by "paedophile priests".

A similarly warped conflation has been made in relation to Ireland, now widely looked upon as a country where crazy priests spent most of their days handing out communion wafers and/or raping children. When the report of the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse was published in May 2009 - with its analysis of accusations of abuse made by individuals who had attended Irish reform schools between 1940 and 1999 - the media reported it as if it had uncovered apocalyptic, Caligulan levels of sexual depravity. ‘Thousands were raped in Irish reform schools’, said the Independent. ‘Thousands raped in Ireland’s Christian Brothers schools’, said the Belfast Telegraph. ‘Thousands raped and abused in Catholic schools in Ireland’, said the Guardian.

So were thousands of children - in particular boys, the main focus of the media reports - raped in Irish reform schools? No - 68 were, allegedly. Two-hundred-and-forty-two male witnesses made 253 reports of sexual abuse against the staff of Irish reform schools at the Commission to Inquire into Child Abuse - and of these, 68 claim to have been raped. Once again, not all of the allegations resulted in convictions. Some witness reports involved priests who had died, and out of the 253 male reports of sexual abuse, 207 related to the period of 1969 or earlier; 46 related to the 1970s and 1980s. How did 68 claims of anal rape made against the staff of Irish reform schools over a 59-year period translate into headlines about thousands being raped?  ...

Why is it worth pointing out these basic facts? Not in order to defend the Catholic Church, which clearly has a sexual abuse problem, or to minimise the suffering of those individuals who ‘only’ suffered being verbally abused, shown dirty photos or fondled over their clothing by Catholic priests - all of those acts are abhorrent and potentially punishable in a court of law. No, it is worth pointing out the reality of the extent of allegations against the Catholic Church in order to expose the non-rationalist, anti-humanist underpinnings of the current fashion for Catholic-baiting amongst the liberal, opinion-forming classes in the US and the UK.

It's worth reading the whole article, just to get this thing in proportion. It is bad, and there was widespread abuse of various kinds, but let's be sober and accurate in reporting it. It does not help the victims of this to exaggerate it - it means that once the exaggeration becomes apparent, it will be much harder for any future victims to be believed.

Finally, I want to quote part of Steve's comment:

I'm also reluctant to join in the fashionable chorus of condemnation of other religions because of allegations made by others. Some people allege that Wiccans sacrifice thousands of babies. I have no doubt that ritual killing of children for magical purposes does take place, but to make Wiccans a scapegoat for that would not be fair.

Because Wiccans have been victims of media feeding frenzies in the past (fuelled by right-wing evangelical Christians), we should be very wary indeed of jumping on any anti-Catholic bandwagon. As I said at the end of my previous post, I think much of the brouhaha about the papal visit is being fuelled by intolerance of religion in general and by a general Protestant feeling of anti-Catholicism. And I went on to point out that a lot of good is done by Catholics. Let's not lose sight of that.

redefining irony

The Jehovah's Witnesses redefine irony (Pharyngula - PZ Myers)

A new group of atheists has arisen in society. Called the new atheists, they are not content to keep their views to themselves.

That's right. The door-knockin', rabidly proselytizing cult is rebuking atheists for not keeping their views to themselves.

Wow, that really does redefine irony. I mean, you know, I have had quite a lot of atheists try to convince me that my participation in religion is deluded and strange, despite my constant explanations that my spiritual views and practices are consistent with reason and science, that I regard most theology as mythology and metaphor, and I'm only interested in practices that enhance my life. Also I have frequently pointed out to the atheists in question that religion is about practices and values, not beliefs (the idea that it is primarily about beliefs was introduced by Christian fundamentalists in the late 19th century, though sadly this attitude has spread to other groups).

But none of these atheists were complete strangers who were knocking on my door and trying to sell me irreligion. Though that might be quite fun - some of my best anecdotes involve the things that I and my friends have said to Jehovah's Witnesses and other doorstep evangelists. Let's face it, doorstep-evangelist-baiting is a national sport.

As I have said elsewhere, though, evangelism and proselytising are completely counter-productive and wrong. Interfaith dialogue is good; it's also good to communicate what your religion is about, so that other people can understand it, and join if (and only if) they feel the same way. And that goes for atheism too.

The thing that really annoys me about JWs is their rampant homophobia and the fact that they drag their kids around with them on their door-to-door evangelism.

The last time some JWs called at my house, I happened to have a copy of The Inquirer (Unitarian magazine) in my hand, so I brandished it at them when they tried to give me The Watchtower.

For the benefit of people who are unable to distinguish between different kinds of religion, may I refer you to my blogposts on liberal religion and non-theism? (for educational information only, of course).

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.

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.

Secular bigotry

• National Secular Society's 'seasonal message'
• Ekklesia's excellent analysis of it
• Church Mouse blog: And a miserable Christmas to you too

What the National Secular Society doesn't seem to realise is that the rise of religiosity is very different from previous such resurgences, as it's much more about individual spirituality and building community and being compassionate than the bigotry which is actually increasingly the preserve of a noisy few. For example: Stonewall did a survey recently and found that most Christians were far more tolerant of gays and lesbians than the doctrines of their churches would suggest. Needless to say this received almost no coverage in the mainstream media, whereas Lilian Ladele etc got loads of coverage.

Research has shown that most people think in terms of "occult" concepts like reincarnation and karma, rather than traditional Christian ones like salvation. Much of the renewed interest in religion and spirituality has gone into non-Christian practices, and even Christians do stuff like yoga and meditation and crystals.

A Short History of Medicine

"Doctor, I have an ear ache."

2000 B.C. - "Here, eat this root."
1000 A.D. - "That root is heathen, say this prayer."
1850 A.D. - "That prayer is superstition, drink this potion."
1940 A.D. - "That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill."
1985 A.D. - "That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic."
2000 A.D. - "That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root!"

(just received via email)

the privatisation of religion

Hell In Little Axe: An Oklahoma Mom’s Chilling Battle With Religious Bigotry (Americans United for Separation of Church and State)

The thing that interests me about this story is that the two mothers who didn't want their children indoctrinated were themselves Christians, but still got labelled as "atheists" by the bigots who ran the school.

The picture here seems a lot more complicated than atheism vs religion -- it's about the privatisation of religion and individual liberty vs state-sponsored religion.

Sociologists of religion (Heelas & Woodhead, The Spiritual Revolution, 2005) have identified four main categories of religious group, which "new" atheists would do well to take note of, since it seems counter-productive to lump all religionists in the same category - many people who practice a religion agree with atheists that secularism is a good thing.


Source: Spirituality in Counselling and Psychotherapy
By Dennis Lines
Published by SAGE, 2006
ISBN 1412919576, 9781412919579

Heelas and Woodhead also identify two main ways of engaging with spirituality: "subjective-life" in which the individual spiritual life is paramount; and "life-as" in which individuality becomes subsumed to the collective identity. These attract different types of people and have very different results. In the past, adherents of subjective-life spirituality were generally regarded as heretics and often killed or persecuted.