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Before asking whether any religion is true, this lecture asks something more personal: what does religion actually do for a human being? Academy of Ideas sets aside doctrine and institutions to explore the private search that drives us toward the divine, the unknown, and what comes after death. Drawing on William James, Dostoevsky, and Maslow, it shows that religion is not really about the building on the corner — it is about an inner stand we take against fear and the riddle of our own existence. Whether you are a believer, an atheist, or somewhere in between, this is an honest look at a need that never quite goes away.
Full Video Transcript
Religion has played an immense role in sculpting civilization throughout history.
It is also a topic of a lot of controversy and debate.
In this lecture, we are not going to examine the validity of different religious beliefs,
nor the role organized religions play in current day society.
Rather, building on the ideas of thinkers like William James, Ludwig Wittgenstein,
Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Abraham Maslow,
we will examine the role religion plays in the life of the individual.
More specifically, in this lecture, we will examine questions such as
what exactly is religion?
Why the central role in all civilizations throughout history?
What is its place in the life of an individual?
What is the relationship between science and religion?
As well as examining the interesting question as to whether an atheist can adhere to a religion.
In general, when people speak about religion, they often, whether they realize it or not,
are speaking specifically about religion in the sense of the major or organized forms of religion.
In the West, the first one that usually comes to mind is Christianity.
However, in order to grasp the fullness of the phenomenon of religion,
it must be stressed that these organized forms of religion are but a part of a larger concept.
The reason this needs to be stressed is that all too often people cast judgment on religion as a whole
based on their opinions of the major organized religions.
If these views are negative, they will sometimes write off religion as something of little or no value.
So it must be remembered that throughout history and to the present day,
there have been thousands of religions practiced by small groups of people,
and even personal religions, with little to no formal organization.
Another idea that often comes to mind when thinking about religion is the belief in a god or gods.
This is not surprising, as the majority of the major religions in history have worshipped at least one god.
However, again, this should not be seen as the defining essence of religion, as not all
religions adhere to belief in supernatural beings.
For example, one of the major religions of the present day, Buddhism, is in fact a godless
religion.
But is there an essence or definition of religion that is applicable to all the diverse forms
of religion, past and present?
Over time religion has been defined in many ambiguous ways, and while it is unlikely that
one definition could encompass all there is to know about the nature of religion,
there are certain elements of religion that seem to be essential.
The great philosopher William James, in his lecture series,
Varieties of Religious Experience,
attempted to capture the essence of religion when he said,
Religion, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it,
shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude,
so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider
the divine. It is important to point out that in Varieties of Religious Experience,
James stresses that the word divine in his definition leaves open what one may consider
divine. It could be a god, but it also could be nature, the unknown, or any number of things.
Here James, with his reference to man in his solitude, emphasizes the personal nature of
religion, and this seems to be a common characteristic to one degree or another
of all religions, even the mass-organized ones. For not only do organized religions attempt to
elicit personal experiences and emotions in their followers through rituals and worship,
but as James points out, the major religions of the 20th century were founded by the personal
religious experiences of a handful of individual prophets. Robert Bella, in his illuminating work
titled Religion in Human Evolution, draws on the work of the American anthropologist Clifford
Geertz, to define religion in a similar manner to William James. As Bela writes,
religion is a system of symbols that, when enacted by human beings, establishes powerful,
pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations that make sense in terms of an idea of a general
order of existence. Similar to the definition James put forth, Bela does not emphasize the
worship of gods in his definition. And again like James, he stresses the importance of powerful
emotions which all religions attempt to elicit in their followers. Furthermore, for both James and
Bella, these powerful emotions are elicited when the individual feels himself to be in a relationship
with something he considers to be all-important. James labeled this the divine, while Bella called
it an idea of a general order of existence. Such a relationship plays a crucial role in religion,
As it is through this relationship, one is granted answers to certain existential questions,
which have plagued the minds of humans since the dawn of civilization.
In other words, another primary characteristic of religion is the attempt to answer fundamental
questions about the existence of human beings in the universe.
But this raises the question as to why it is that we as humans have for so long been
concerned with such questions, and why we need religion to provide the answers.
A common suggestion put forth is that we look to religion for answers to these questions
because of the inadequacy of the world of daily life.
The world of daily life can be seen as that in which the majority of us spend most of
our waking lives.
It is in this world that we work, see to our practical interests, and use means to strive
towards our desired ends.
However, as this theory goes behind the veil of our everyday lives, we are haunted by a
fundamental anxiety, usually unconscious, of which our daily lives provide no relief.
This deep-seated anxiety is none other than the fear of death. The fact that in the blink of an
eye our existence, or the existence of those we love, could be completely annihilated is not a
comfortable thought for anyone. But if we allowed such a fear to consume us all the time, we would
scarcely be able to function. So in order to act in what is considered a socially normal manner,
most of us push the existential questions out of the way.
But we cannot escape this anxiety forever.
Inevitably, such existential fears creep in at one time or another,
be it after the death of a close friend or even just from a spell of boredom
which causes our mind to wander.
And when these fears are stimulated,
we as human beings are driven to search for an escape or a place of comfort.
Throughout history, such an escape has predominantly been found
in what some have called a religious reality.
Religions provide narratives, stories, and beliefs which ultimately quell the existential fear and doubt which inevitably come creeping in.
For example, a religion will often provide answers about our place in the universe, the purpose of our lives, what happens after death, and how we should go about living this life in the face of so much uncertainty.
In other words, through rituals, forms of worship, adherence to certain moral codes, or relationships with what we consider divine, religions attempt to provide a realm of certainty in contrast to the world of daily life which provides no certainty but rather uncertainty, doubt, and fear with respect to such existential questions.
questions. Up until a few centuries ago, religion was largely unchallenged in its role in human
life. However, as is well known, that changed following the Age of Enlightenment. Since
the scientific revolution, the belief in religious dogma has undoubtedly been called into question
like never before. Some go as far as to say that science seems to be slowly but surely
destroying the foundations on which religion was built, by revealing the flaws in religious
dogmas. But is this a fair characterization of the relationship between science and religion?
As the American psychologist Abraham Maslow astutely pointed out in his work Religion,
Values and Peak Experiences, in reference to the relationship between science and religion,
though the scientist must disagree with most of the answers to the religious questions
which have been given by organized religion, it is increasingly clear that the religious
questions themselves, and religious quests, the religious yearnings, the religious needs
themselves are perfectly respectable scientifically, that they are rooted in human nature.
Though the answers were not acceptable, the questions themselves were and are perfectly
acceptable, perfectly legitimate.
But that still leaves open the question as to whether science can provide the answers
to the religious, or what we have been calling the existential questions.
Science like religion has also searched for certainty, but the knowledge or certainty
science has traditionally searched for deals with questions usually related to the workings
of nature, which appear to be of a fundamentally different type than the existential ones confronted
by religion.
Such an idea seems to have been suggested by one of the most influential philosophers
of the 20th century, Ludwig Wittgenstein, who said,
The solution of the riddle of life in space and time lies outside space and time.
It is certainly not the solution of any problems of natural science that is required.
Wittgenstein, in a related manner, says,
There are indeed things that are inexpressible.
They show themselves, they are what is mystical.
Summing up the thoughts of Maslow and Wittgenstein,
Religion attempts to answer questions outside the realm which science deals with,
and these questions are rooted in the human condition,
and so cannot be destroyed no matter how powerful science becomes.
This brings us to the important question of how religion, in the sense we have been using
it, differs from philosophy.
Obviously the existential questions we have suggested that religions attempt to answer
are similar to those dealt with by certain branches of philosophy.
However, while a philosophy is developed through the use of reason and argument, the beliefs
of a religion may come from different sources.
Myths, narratives, revelation, or even just feelings which, as Wittgenstein suggested,
be inexpressible, can be used to form a religion.
For religion the most important thing is not how the ideas were arrived at, but the experiences
and feelings they produce in the individual.
While we have been concentrating on the more personal aspects of religion, an interesting
question arises as to why belief in a handful of religions has become so dominant.
In other words, why do people have a tendency to congregate together into mass organized
instead of attempting to answer the religious or existential questions on their own.
While this question is obviously too complex to deal with in any depth at the moment,
a quote by Fyodor Dostoevsky points to a possible explanation.
He wrote,
So long as man remains free, he strives for nothing so incessantly and painfully as to find someone to worship.
But man seeks to worship what is established beyond dispute,
so that all men will agree at once to worship it.
For these pitiful creatures are concerned not only to find what one or the other can worship, but find something that all will believe in and worship.
What is essential is that all may be together in it.
This craving for community of worship is the chief misery of every man individually and of all humanity from the beginning of time.
Before we finish, we will briefly address a phenomenon that has seen massive growth in the recent decades, that being the popularity of atheism.
Atheism can be described as a view which rejects belief in a deity, or in other words, the belief in a god.
Theism, on the other hand, is the belief in a deity.
Often people mistakenly believe that atheism is a rejection of religion.
And indeed, if one were to define religion in a sense that required belief in a god, then this would be the case.
But as we discussed earlier, such a definition is too narrow, and rather religion in the more personal sense,
or in the sense suggested by William James and Robert Bellah, does not necessarily require
adherence to the belief in a god. What this means is that atheism is not a complete rejection of
religion. An atheist, like all human beings, is still plagued by the existential questions we
discussed above. Questions which, according to Wittgenstein, are outside the realm of science.
What characterizes an atheist is that they search for the comfort associated with existential
certitude in a way that does not require belief in a god. Whether one adheres to an organized
religion, or if one finds such dogmas difficult to believe in and thus strives for answers to
the existential questions in a more personal manner, the goal for the individual is the same,
to find comfort in a life filled with so much uncertainty. We will conclude this lecture with
another quote by William James which nicely sums up how finding certainty in the face of such doubt,
even if such certainty as fleeting can improve one’s life.
Religious feeling is thus an absolute addition to the subject’s range of life.
It gives him a new sphere of power.
When the outward battle is lost and the outward world disowns him,
it redeems and vivifies an interior world which otherwise would be an empty waste.
Source: Academy of Ideas