Introduction
I have been doing a deep dive into the nature of religion – trying to get my head around why it serves a purpose. It is a profoundly complex thing that maybe we can’t safely escape from. So, I have been musing about what a ‘fit for purpose religion’ might look like now.
Religion and religiosity have a deserved bad name. And it’s fair to ask whether rehabilitation is possible or desirable. I am imagining an affirmative answer only as a thought experiment – not with any intent to assert a definitive position. As I begin to write I don’t have any expectation of where I will be at the end.
Religion and religiosity should have a good name. But so should many other things. Politicians routinely are ranked near the bottom of a scale on trust but we all would rather they were near the top. Complex and messy reality gets in the way. Human psychology constantly serves up truths that we wish weren’t quite so unfortunately there. We have what we have. Understanding why we do so would be useful.
We have been educated to see religion in very unhelpful ways. Apologists can’t step back and confront weaknesses in their enthusiasm and opponents imagine they are being doggedly rational. So, I am going to attempt to craft a definition of religion that can be useful in helping me see whether it is something we should discard or renovate.
A worldview
These days religion is an optional extra. A few centuries back some people reacted against theological dogma and quit believing. Religion was seen to be irrational, intolerant and cruel. There was a growing affection for reason, evidence and tolerance. This was a genuine critical step in the evolution of western civilization.
But long before that what we now call religion was part of a worldview that was essentially animistic. The gods were real, as were spirits. Ritual was a vital part of life. Magic was real. Understanding and managing how humans thrived or survived in the world was critical. Cultures and communities made the best efforts they could to engage with the lives that surrounded them – material and immaterial. What we call religion wasn’t something apart from life tasks. It was wholly integrated into a single worldview.
Our perspective on our ancestors has been profoundly distorted. First our Christian roots induced us to imagine our spiritual superiority as adherents to the one true faith. Second, building on that, we saw others as inferior – as primitives or savages. We now imagine that we are ‘more evolved’ than our ancestors. True, we have created technologies that are unlike anything seen before – and through them we see the world in ways others could not. But what we have is a technology mediated sense of the world – not inherently a superior one.
The essential sense of being human hasn’t changed that much. Our psychology hasn’t ‘evolved’ at anything like the pace of our ability to make things out of stuff. We still honour the thinkers of ancient Greece, the Upanishads and the wisdom of shamans. To the extent that we are more evolved than our ancestors on a psychological level, it isn’t by very much at all.
So, thinking of religion as a separable part of an integrated worldview doesn’t help. But that’s a tough habit to break. It doesn’t even work in our present time when thinking about us. We just have a very complex worldview that gives us the luxury of imagining we can see religion as separate. And complex doesn’t mean better – by any means. Chess looks way more complex than Go on the surface.
Advances in our learning have made it necessary to develop highly specialised knowledge fields, but at the cost of understanding how that specialised knowledge is connected to myriad other knowledge domains. Now, rather than getting a balanced worldview, we can end up highly educated but intellectually isolated. The fact that, despite our great progress, we are confronting numerous environmental and systemic crises is testimony that something in our worldview is missing or unbalanced.
The error of the supernatural
The term supernatural was introduced in the 15th century. It started off as a theological idea but ended up as a materialist’s poke at anything disagreeable. Regardless of its origin it’s an unfortunate idea. Reality can be divided into the natural and the supernatural. Depending on who you listen to the supernatural is superior, scary or delusional.
It’s an idea that infests our culture and shapes how we think about the subtle levels of being. The ability to be attuned to subtle dimensions of anything comes down to natural sensitivity, interest and exposure. A worldview that incorporates ‘spirits’ may lead to intense engagement or just acceptance of their presence. That engagement might include rituals to seek aid, make peace or honour presence and influence.
Cultures that incorporate such a worldview might encourage observance of sacred times or participation in ritual actions regardless of whether there is any conscious sense of presence. People might claim perception of spirits with no means of confirming their perception. It might be that in any such culture there are those who lie, who are mistaken or who are deluded. There will also be those who do not agree with the worldview.
The idea of the supernatural draws a needlessly hard boundary that separates a subtle shade of reality from the not so subtle. The idea that the natural is whole and complex was universal until a theological benefit of destroying that universality was discerned. Early Christianity needed a means of distinguishing the faith on moral and intellectual grounds. It created the idea of the supernatural so it could elevate its claims and diminish all other ways of knowing.
We don’t have any serviceable theory of spirits available in our shared secular space. The idea of spirits is still with us, but our lives are so filled with intense input we scarcely have the opportunity to inadvertently encounter spirits. Our minds are so full of ideas that induce us to dismiss the merest hint of an encounter as unwelcome or unreal, regardless of our desire.
Spirits are not seen as part of nature – but apart – supernatural. Hence, they are evaluated by dogmatic and political instruments.
Natural humans
We humans have been animists for a very long time. When sensing your environment is essential for your survival or flourishing, finely tuned senses are critical – as a constant practice and shared commitment to getting it right. Materialists like to observe that our ancestors’ acute need led them to misinterpret natural phenomena as dangerous critters – and hence to imagine spirits where there were none. It’s a psychological phenomenon called pareidolia. It’s something we all know about, and maybe we have been scared by a shape that looked like a person as we were walking along a twilight path.
But the idea that our ancestors and members of animistic tribes were so dim-witted they couldn’t figure out the difference between something real and an illusion is beyond any civil critique. Acute awareness of landscape yields to many more perceptions of what is present than just what has physical form.
Our ancestors needed a theory of the world they were in that was highly serviceable. Their lives depended upon it. They didn’t invent materialism – and they were dedicated to empiricism. That should be instructive to us. What they came up with was a fusion of functional knowledge about where they lived, ideas about what made good tools, what made good food, what was useful or dangerous, what was good for their community – and so on. They invented shamanism, rituals and beliefs that worked together to sustain their lives. They invented codes of behaviour, morals and practices that strengthened individual characters and their group.
They developed an integrated worldview within which nothing stood apart.
Conclusion
The idea of Religion we know is an awful idea. It trades off an error – that reality is divided into natural and supernatural. It sees itself as a superior way of knowing that is distinct from other ways of knowing. It seeks to dominate a culture’s worldview and assert a privileged standing within it.
It’s not worth renovating.
Our ancestors didn’t have the idea of materialism available to them. Their acute senses told them that they were in a community of lives we have reduced to unsubtle terms like spirits or gods or ghosts or demons. Theological dogma has napalmed the subtle ecology of consciousness and materialism has cheered it on, adding its own arrogant condescension. Neither can get beyond pride and self-delusion.
Now, mercifully, we are beginning to think that panpsychism might be worthy of serious rational thought. While the intellectual bold step should be welcomed, we need to remember that we do not think in isolation but as part of a worldview. We need the cultural dimensions as well. That means being psychologically engaged with the baggage of deeply confused cultural senses of meaning that are our heritage – and which have shaped how we think and feel.
It isn’t our minds that get us into trouble. It’s our psychological states – shaped by suffering and immaturity. We have long dismissed emotions as unworthy and inferior to the rational mind. In the 19th century they were thought fit only for women and children. We struggled in the 20th century to emerge from this cell of conceit – and it remains, still, a job not completed.
So, what’s the alternative? An integrated and holistic worldview that is not distorted or hamstrung by biases or delusions – one crafted by a shared concern for a reality-based sense of our common good. It honours the whole person – on an individual level and as a community. It honours the whole world. Some variation of the idea panpsychism is a necessary container – whether articulated by modern thinkers or expressed through the rich legacy of human inquiry – such as The Upanishads. We really haven’t travelled far in the past 3-4 millennia.
Emma Restall Orr was a huge inspiration to me when I was exploring the idea of animism over 15 years ago. Her books remain a highlight in my inquiry. You can check them out here – https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=emma+restall+orr&crid=1US7KQT32NLH0&sprefix=emma+restall%2Caps%2C244&ref=nb_sb_ss_ts-doa-p_1_12
There are many other excellent sources of inspiration. I mention Emma’s works simply because they deserve way more interest than they get.
Note: I use Amazon because it uniquely lists books as 3D, ebooks and audiobooks. I am committed to accessibility as a person with a disability. Do please support your local bookstore where you can.