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Where Have We Got To? : A Summary of The Blog So Far – Religion

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Today’s Post

Last week’s post summarized the first two segments of the blog, Evolution and Science.  Today’s post will summarize the third segment, Religion.

Religion (September, 2015 to April: 2016, What is Religion?)

We have seen that the general rise of complexity as observed by science requires a ‘principle’, just as do the play of the forces identified by Physics, Chemistry and Biology.  However, extrapolating from this general observation to a God as reflected in the many conflicting religious creeds is quite something else.  The spectrum of ‘belief’ is very broad indeed, and each creed reflects a different perspective on ourselves as well as the reality that we inhabit.

In this third segment, we looked at Religion from a secular perspective, as the human attempt to make sense of our environment and the part that we play in it.   From this perspective religion can be seen to evolve, not in the physical sense of slow changes to our physiology, but through the cultural structures by which acquired knowledge and wisdom are passed from generation to generation.

These posts (Sept 3 – Jan 7, The Evolution of Religion) went on to examine religion as an evolving, living thing, tracing its emergence from ancient myths and rules for society, through the influence of early historical modes of thought, and on through the confluence of the great Greek and Hebrew civilizations to their impact on Western society.

With this historical perspective in mind, we went on to offer a multifaceted definition of religion.

We noted that in general, evolution in the human can be seen in the increasing skill of applying the neocortex brain to the stimuli of the lower limbic (emotions) and reptilian (fear, antagonism) brains. (February 4– What is Religion? Part 2: The Evolution of Understanding)

With this perspective in mind, we explored other areas of human existence in which religion contributes to our understanding,

–          a basis for human action (February 18– What is Religion? Part 3: Enabling Us to Act)

–          contributing to our sense of place in the scheme of things, (March 3– What is Religion?  Part 4: Belonging)

–          understanding of our potential and the basis for it, (March 17 – What is Religion?  Part 5: Transcendence)

–          as both a contributor to the stability of society (March 31 – What is Religion?  Part 6:  Stability, Part 1), and its flip side, as often an inhibitor to this stability (April 14 – What is Religion?  Part 6:  Stability, Part 2).

From these posts, religion can be seen as a plethora of assertions about ourselves and our place in the universe.  Many of these assertions are clearly in contradiction:

The Eastern emphasis on the diminishment of the uniqueness of the human person as it approaches the ‘all’, versus the Western emphasis of the enhancement this uniqueness as it approaches the ‘all’

In the Western (Judeo-Christian) tradition:

The ‘monotheistic’ assertion, in which a single God is the root of all reality, versus the ‘duality’ necessity for a second such ‘root’ to explain the existence of evil

And, closer to home:

The ‘left’ Western understanding of scripture as metaphorical truth, versus the ‘right’ Western understanding of scripture as literal truth

Nonetheless, all these systems of belief have a core which embraces a transcendent aspect of reality, the open-endedness of human person and the need to overcome the restrictions of ego to be able to be able to capitalize on human potential.

On To the Final Segment

In preparation for the final segment, in which we will re-look at many of the basic precepts of Western religion, we will employ the observations, assertions and perspectives that we have gathered in the first three segments.  In summary:

–          The universe unfolds from principles identified by Physics, but advances in the direction of increased complexity

–          Understanding that each new product of evolution contains the potential for this increased complexity is to perceive an ‘axis’ along which evolution proceeds

–          To acknowledge this principle of increasing complexity as an addition to those principles recognized by science is to recognize the existence of a principle by which we come to be as evolutionary products aware of their consciousness

–          All human thought addresses this principle by attempting to

o   articulate this principle: to describe, measure, and in general, understand how it is manifested in our lives

o   understand how our lives can be lived in order to see it more clearly

o   learn how to take full advantage of it: to maximize our potential, and therefore live our lives more fully.

–          Of all human thought, Religion comes closest to addressing this principle most explicitly.  In Teilhard’s words, religion consists of an attempt to ‘articulate the noosphere’.

So given that reality does indeed contain a thread which, if recognized and followed, will lead on to an enhancement of our lives, can the many manifestations of understanding presented by our Western religions indeed be leveraged for such ‘articulation’?  If so, how?

The fourth and final segment of this blog will explore such leverage.  While the bewildering array of dogmas, theological statements, rituals and historical twists and turns found in Western religion are often contradictory and indeed often antagonistic, there are many basic concepts which are potentially compatible and even integrated at their historical base.   As quoted previously, from Karen Armstrong:

“Instead of jettisoning religious doctrines, we should look for their spiritual kernel.  A religious teaching is never simply a statement of objective fact: it is a program for action.”

Further, and this is the goal of the final segment, the perspectives developed in the first three segments of this blog offer a basis of reinterpretation of the traditional teachings of Christianity.  Such reinterpretation offers the prospect of clarifying their relevance to human life.  By seeing the ‘spiritual kernel’ which shines through the often clumsy statements of belief offered by our Christian expressions, it is possible to understand the potential that they offer to our human existence.

Borrowing from Maurice Blondel, the perspectives of the first three segments of the blog offer ‘principles of reinterpretation’ that seek to understand ‘statements about the divine’ (as expressed by traditional Christianity) in terms of ‘statements about the human person’.

The Next Post

In the past two weeks, we have summarized the first three segments of the blog.  Next week we will move on to the fourth and final segment of the blog in which we will address the many statements of Western belief and explore the means of reinterpreting them in the light of the perspectives offered in the first three segments.

In this way, we will explore how religion can be seen to take on the secular task which powers the continuing evolution of the human person and his society.

What is Religion? Part 1: Making Sense of Things

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Today’s Post

Having taken a brief look at the evolution of religion over the last several weeks, today we will begin a final look at religion by addressing the question, “what is religion”?

The Many Manifestations of Belief

In previous weeks, we have looked at religion from a secular point of view: as simply the ongoing human attempt to make sense of our surroundings and develop strategies to help us cope with it.  Both history and even the most casual look at the world today, however, shows these attempts to result in a bewildering array of beliefs, practices and social structures which fall into the general category of ‘religion’.

Ian Barbour proposes a general definition of the term ‘religion’:

“A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a superhuman agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.”

This sort of definition rolls up an understanding of our environment into beliefs about the causes of this environment and the practices to be observed for us to appropriately deal with it.

East vs West

The content, modes and expressions of such beliefs, however, vary significantly among the many manifestations to be found among the many cultures in the world.  The differences between East and West beliefs and practices, for example, are significant enough to suggest that conventional definitions of the term ‘religion’ will not stretch sufficiently to encompass them all.

For example, there are significant differences between understandings of the human person and his place in society between the West and East.  In the East, ultimate fulfillment of the person consists in ‘dissolution’ into the ‘whole’, while in the West, it consists of articulation of the person in the form of a ‘soul’, which is gathered into the ‘whole’ intact.

Even the basic understanding of time is different between East and West.  The Western understanding of time as an ‘arrow’ preceding from a beginning and eventually coming to an end.  This is contrary to the Eastern understanding of time as cyclical, with its vision of the unending repetition of birth, death and rebirth on both the personal as well as the cosmic level.

Karen Armstrong comments on such differences:

“The idea of religion as an essentially personal and systematic pursuit was entirely absent from classical Greece, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Iran, China and India.  Nor does the Hebrew Bible have any abstract concept of religion; and the Talmudic rabbis would have found it impossible to express what they meant by ‘faith’ in a single word or even in a formula.”

All expressions of belief, however, having occurred over such a great span of time and including the thoughts of so many thinkers, have accumulated diverse and often bewildering explanations and claims to truth.  The evolution of religion as the human attempt to make sense of his surroundings has gone on for such a long time that every possible belief (attempt to make sense) has evolved along with it.

Understanding Ourselves

The history of religious thinking, therefore, can certainly be seen as an often clumsy, un-integrated and contradictory attempt to articulate the personal aspect of the forces by which we, and the rest of the universe, have come into existence.

Teilhard noted the need for an understanding of both these forces and the persons which emerge from them:

“To explain the workings of the universe we must understand the forces and process by which it comes to be, and this understanding must include the human person.”

This simply stated approach to such an understanding is also the basis for our approach to God from the perspective of science (“understanding the forces and processes”) and extending this perspective to religion (“including the human person”).

So, In keeping with the insights of Teilhard de Chardin, one way of understanding religion is to place it into the context of human evolution.

The Next Post

Next week we will address the question ‘what is religion’ from this point of view.