Belief and Religion

It is possible to be religious and not believe in God, or gods: you just need to have religious practices but not theistic ontology. Atheistic religion is not a contradiction in terms. But can you be a theist and not be religious? That seems a more difficult undertaking: surely if you believe in God, you must be religious. Have you ever met someone who says he believes in God but isn’t religious? Might someone be a theist anti-religionist? Actually, I think this is possible, if never actual. A person might be convinced by a putative proof of the existence of God that there is a God—he can see no flaw in the proof—but find no attraction in religious practices, or even deplore such practices. He might even believe in the existence of the Christian God and still have no religious inclinations or feelings: no church, no prayers, no worship, no desire to please, no real interest. He might say, “Sure, there is a God, but frankly I’m just not that interested”. He might regard the existence of God as like the existence of other galaxies: they exist all right, but so what? He has other interests, is a busy man, prefers art and music. Religion leaves him cold. He never even thinks about God unless someone else brings the subject up.

If this is psychologically possible, why doesn’t it happen? It is true that people can believe in God and not be very religious in terms of religious practice, but is no one ever a believer but completely non-religious? I think the reason is this: people encounter talk of God only in a practicing religious context. They form their belief in God’s existence because of the religious practices in which it is embedded. They don’t first encounter talk of God in a seminar room discussing the ontological argument, or some other argument for God’s existence. The existential belief is practice-based. The two things are regarded as inextricable. And it is true that without the institutional backing a belief in God seems pointless and empty. Why believe in God if you don’t care for the corresponding institution, especially its moral component? Logically, the belief in God’s existence is separable from the religion associated with it; but socially the two are bound together. And it is difficult to be brought to a belief in God’s existence unless this belief is embedded in a religious practice, because the alleged proofs of God’s existence are questionable at best. Still, it is instructive to learn that God and religion are separable spheres, neither entailing the other. You can be religious and anti-theist, and you can be anti-religious and theist. The Abrahamic religions are steeped in theism, but other religions dispense with that hypothesis. I know of no sect that is both theistic and anti-religious, though it exists as a position in logical space. The closest we get are religions in which there is a belief in God but not much in the way of ceremony and pageant, or heaven and hell. A super-Protestant would be someone who believes in God but thinks it is impious to claim to know what God wants or what he is like. Perhaps he made the universe, but other than that we have no idea what he requires of us and has no role in determining morality. This would be a very thin religion and people would not flock to it.[1]

[1] People do sometimes believe in supernatural entities—angels, ghosts, spirits—but scarcely give them a second thought and don’t build their lives around them. Their actual religion might make no reference to these entities, being thoroughly naturalistic. They might worship a particular mountain, say, but accept that there are spirits lurking elsewhere (their dead ancestors). The human mind is nothing if not flexible.

Animal Dreams

I have a close relationship with my pet parakeet Eloise. She likes to climb on my fingers and be enveloped in my hand; we play together every day. We are friends, companions. At night I carry her cage (with two other birds) to my study where I place it in a high place so that the cat can’t get to them. The other night I began to wonder whether Eloise ever thinks of me while in this place. Does she think of absent objects, me in particular? I concluded that she very likely does, because birds have good memories. Then I couldn’t help wondering whether she ever dreams of me. It seemed like a crazy question, but reflection suggests that she does: birds do dream, apparently, and what would Eloise dream about but her closest companion? They have REM sleep and a limbic system: they dream emotionally, no doubt visually. But what does she dream? Does she simply replay our daily playful encounters, or does she wax more imaginative? Does she dream of flying with me, or being my size, or building a nest with me? We will never know: her dreams are private. For all I know, she has wonderful warm extravagant dreams about me. What a thought! What we have here is the problem of other minds in one specific department—dreams. It’s not the problem of whether parakeets have minds at all; the problem is that animal dreams are out of bounds epistemically. Maybe she wakes with fond memories of her dreams. Maybe she has a rich dream life centered on yours truly. I’ll never know. Somehow this increases my respect for my feathered friend. It makes me more religious about animals.

Naturephilia

What kind of society is best? We have come to accept the concept of the “open society”: this is deemed better than the “closed society”. These terms were introduced by Henri Bergson in the 1930s and then popularized by Karl Popper in the 1950s. The best society is the most “open” one. But what is it for a society to be open? There is no simple definition (it isn’t like a shop being open for business). Roughly, the idea is that an open society is one that is democratic, tolerant, liberal, critical, law-governed, and allows freedom of speech—as opposed to authoritarian, intolerant, illiberal, uncritical, lawless, and prohibits freedom of speech. In an open society you can act and speak as you please so long as you harm no one thereby. If we live in such a society, we will be happy; otherwise not. Nothing in this conception includes religion, so the good society can be an irreligious society. You can be religious, but you need not be. It has been felt that this ideal is a bit on the thin side: it is largely negative and ignores various human aspirations and needs. The gap is commonly filled by religion, typically but not necessarily Christianity. So, the maximally good society has been thought to be both open and religious. The trouble is that religion has been crumbling for years (or centuries), so that all that is left in our social philosophy is the secular notion of the open society. Is that enough? Do we need a return to the religious?

Religion is typically conceived as theistic. Specifically, we are told to love God and our fellow man. This directive is not easy to obey: many find it difficult to believe in God, and man is hard to love. We are exhorted to direct our love this way precisely because it is not natural to us; punishment is therefore threatened if we don’t obey the directive. We are not born loving God and the human race. So, are we limited to the etiolated conception of the open society? Not that there is anything wrong with that—it beats tyranny—but it seems humanly insufficient. There is an existential gap; the heart is not satisfied. Life in an open society is not ipso facto a meaningful full life. We thus seem condemned to a hollow existence (as existentialism maintained, heroically).  Put simply, the question is what to love. We can’t really love an open society; but we can’t believetraditional theistic religion. We seem stuck. When religion held sway, we lived in a religious community that bound people together and provided a vehicle for their deeper aspirations; but in a merely open society nothing binds us and nothing provides the requisite emotional infrastructure. Thus, we find fleeting fashions, popular culture, art and music, esoteric hobbies, cults, mass sports, the mobile phone—anything to fend off the ennui of normal human existence. Is there a solution to this predicament?

This is where nature comes in. Theistic religions instruct us to love God above all else—not nature. We are indoctrinated in a suspicion of nature, especially our own nature. We are to praise and worship God but not the natural world (so grubby, so material). Jesus had nothing to say about the love of nature, but plenty about the love of God. Nor was our love of other people supposed to be directed to their natural condition—certainly not their “animal nature”. Nature was on the other side—opposed to the supernatural world inhabited by God. Loving nature is accordingly deemed impious, unholy, degenerate. But this is not a natural way for humans to feel—hence the reprimanding character of traditional theistic religion (we are all born sinners etc.) We must “rise above” nature—the world of beasts and beastliness. Sex becomes taboo, or deeply problematic. Animals are to be deplored or exploited. But this is not the way we naturally feel about these things—especially as children. Children must be “cured” of their natural ways—their childish passions. There is only so much love in the human heart and it must be directed correctly—to the right intentional objects. Love God not your dog. If the choice is between going to church or walking your dog, do the former. Religion is thus conceived as a battle between natural inclination and virtuous conduct.

However, there is an opposing tradition: the love of nature as opposed to a supernatural God. Thus, we have naturephilia and biophilia[1]—love of nature as a whole and love of a particular part of it, viz. plants and animals. It is easy to caricature this kind of philosophy by restricting attention to certain aspects of nature, particularly what is called “wild” nature. But the idea isn’t to encourage love of the wild, i.e., the non-human; it is to encourage love of all creation, including the non-wild. We are not being instructed to go and live naked in the forest. Nature is here construed as everything but God: art, artifacts, games, sports, music, food, friends, family, sex, clothes, study, books, cars. We have an innate disposition to love nature—the physical things around us, whether found or man-made. Life without this kind of love would be dismally thin—the abstract love of God really doesn’t cut it. We like to walk in the woods, ride our bike, swim, pet our dog, eat our food, see our friends, play a game, read, sing, etc. We are passionate about these things. Sometimes we feel the majesty of nature—the night sky, the oceans, the mountains, the beasts of the jungle. So, let us applaud these passions, encourage them, refine them—instead of declaring them ungodly or worse. We should make a religion of our inborn natural passions. Some people choose to dedicate their lives to God; why not let people dedicate themselves to apes or insects or rocks? A life dedicated to philosophy is really a life dedicated to nature—to the existing natural world. We evolved in the natural world, both wild and civilized, and we are naturally adapted to that world (we didn’t evolve in a supernatural world); no wonder we feel deeply connected to it. We want to explore it, experience it, absorb it. Our human nature is a reflection of nature. Our emotions are the results of nature. No doubt other animals love their natural environment; they don’t hanker after some supposed non-natural environment (“paradise”). We just have to accept that what we naturally love we oughtto love. We should therefore embrace naturephilia and biophilia. That is our religion.

Will it be enough? If we combine love of nature with the open society, will we have the ideal world? Will we be perfectly happy? I don’t think so, but it will produce a life that is sustainable and tolerable. There will still be death, disease, disappointment, betrayal, violence, stupidity, and all the rest; but we won’t be condemned to the spiritual emptiness of the bare open society or the absurdities of traditional religions. The open society is just a protective framework for the full expression of human nature; it isn’t what we primarily value. You don’t wake up in the morning and thrill to the prospect of free speech or the rule of law (so what, you might say); but you do wake up and feel excited about the bounties of nature (in the full sense I described). You are not thrilled by being permitted to play guitar or read a book but by actually playing guitar or reading a book. You can’t make a religion out of the open society alone, but you can make a religion out of the natural world—and there is nothing wrong with such a religion. Our politics must include the latter as much as the former.[2]

[1] The term “biophilia” was coined by Erich Fromm and taken up by E.O. Wilson.

[2] We might refer to thin politics and thick politics, or procedural politics and substantive politics. We need rules to enable and preserve human flourishing, freedom being paramount, but we also need substantive concrete goals and values. We must be permitted to bird-watch and love to bird-watch. (I include humans as part of nature, so we can love them too, in so far as we can.)

Alcaraz versus Sinner

Yesterday’s French Open final between Alcaraz and Sinner was the greatest tennis match ever played. No adjective can do it justice. You might think I am exaggerating, but this is the consensus view. Sinner is 23, Alcaraz 22—at the beginning of their tennis careers. The match lasted over five hours and had many ups and downs for both players. It had to be seen to be believed; I feel sorry for anyone who didn’t see it. The two greatest players of all time are almost exact contemporaries. Sinner is number 1 in the world, Alcaraz is number 2. No one is a match for either of them, except each other. The final tiebreak in which Alcaraz was up 9-1 was truly astonishing. You might wonder if the recently retired greats, Federer and Nadal, would be able to give these two men some serious competition; but I really don’t think so. They are in a class of their own. Djokovic did well against Sinner in the semi-final, considering, but didn’t take a set and never looked like he could win. I think Sinner and Alcaraz amazed each other. The former is solid as a rock and virtually unbeatable, but the latter can bring the magic and then nothing can stop him (he made 7 double faults and missed many first serves, but he still won). For tennis enthusiasts, and any sentient human being, it was a truly remarkable performance from both players. I went out and hit some balls in a daze afterwards.