CAN WE REALLY LIVE WITHOUT ANY BELIEFS AT ALL? [Part 1]

Despite being a minister of religion, I have no religious ‘beliefs’ as such. I’m deadly serious.

Now, more than a few people have said to me over the years, ‘How can you be a minister of religion, and say you have no religious beliefs at all?’ A good question. My reply? Well, I usually say something like this: ‘I am a religious naturalist. I hold no beliefs, but there are a number of concepts, propositions and principles that I affirm as true. I affirm them as true because they are true, in that for the most part they are convictions in the nature of self-evident truths or what may be called 'axiomatic eternal verities.’ (By the way, there are also some delightful souls who write to me saying things like, 'You will burn forever in a lake of fire, you heretic, you wicked apostate!' I just say to them, 'May you find the peace of mind you're so desperately seeking,' then I continue doing what I'm doing.)

While some of the concepts, propositions and principles I affirm are what one may call 'working hypotheses,' the majority of them, as already mentioned, are self-evident truths. A self-evident truth is one that is such that, if you understand it, you are justified in believing it. Now, I know these convictions to be true. There is, therefore, no need to believe in them at all, for they neither require nor demand belief. (People believe things that have not been proven to be true, including many things that can never be proven to be true, but I say ... why do that?) 

Here are a few of the self-evident truths which I affirm as true but don't believe. I affirm the inherent worth and dignity of every person. I affirm justice, equity and compassion in human relations. I affirm that unnecessary suffering, as well as the unnecessary destruction of value, are wrong. (Yes, I admit that there are some problem words there. There always is, and always will be.) I affirm the right of conscience, the democratic process, and the right to pursue a free and responsible search for truth and meaning. I also try to show respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. I affirm the principle that equals should be treated equally, and like cases should be treated alike. I have several other such convictions.

I know these convictions to be true. Those convictions that are not expressly or obviously self-evident or axiomatic I have come to know as true by a process of free inquiry and the use of reason (in other words, by evidence). These convictions collectively constitute the foundation of my desupernaturalized faith. By 'faith' I do not mean beliefs or trust, but rather living with hope, courage, and confidence.

Now, it is true that the word ‘belief’ is seems to be a word people struggle with, no doubt because of its connection to belief in God, and the shorthand of ‘believers’ and ‘non-believers.’ Apparently, the term ‘non-believers’ goes back to the 19th century. John Stuart Mill [pictured left] in his Autobiography makes the point that the word ‘non-believer’ is not a reasonable term since it implies lack of any belief and, using standard definitions of belief, he could not perceive of anyone as being without belief. Well, Mr Mill never met me.

There is a school of thought to which some of my more learned friends belong which asserts that the word ‘beliefs,’ in the plural, refers to the totality of the current state of one's beliefs (religious, political, or otherwise), opinions and ideas, including scientific opinions and ideas as well as factual or evidence-based opinions. Now, if this be one’s definition of ‘beliefs’, then there is no distinction whatsoever between facts and beliefs. However, as I see it, facts (that is, occurrences in space-time) are not opinions, but merely the basis for forming opinions. Despite the views of many these days, (no) thanks to grubby postmodernism, one opinion is not as good an any other opinion. For an opinion to be ‘valid,’ it needs to be supported by facts that are sufficient to support and ground the opinion held.

Now, the school of thought to which I have referred, which makes no distinction between facts and beliefs, asserts that when we ‘adopt’ an opinion---legitimately evidence-based or otherwise---we hold it as a belief. Of course, upon proper inquiry some beliefs will be found to be countered by certain facts, for it is the reasoning and beliefs formed from understanding those facts that we actually use to counter certain beliefs that are not evidence-based.

My usual response to this school of thought is that if one has beliefs at all they ought to be all based on logically probative evidence. When they are so supported, they are no longer beliefs but convictions or truths. However, according to the opposing school of thought, we all have beliefs. For example, when we go to the garage, and put the ignition key in our car and start the ignition, we may very well not have an adequate, evidence-based understanding of what is happening, but we believe---note that word believe---that the car will start and carry us down the road. Even if we do ‘know’ how a car works sufficiently to be able to explain it accurately, that does not mean our knowledge comes from evidence. More likely, it comes from studying and listening to people who have some authority on the matter.

So, my opposition says, we do not have to have all of our beliefs backed by demonstrative evidentiary experience, and that would be true for most of us. So, we would never ask a mathematician to present evidentiary proof that a line is a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness being a straight one-dimensional figure having no thickness (that is, width) which extends infinitely in both directions but ordinarily in practice connects two points. Such belief as a mathematician has, particularly those beliefs that are axiomatic, is clearly rational and not empirical. (Ah, that annoying supposed distinction between rationalism and empiricism again. I won’t go there.)

My response to the assertion that we do not have to have all of our beliefs backed by demonstrative evidentiary experience is usually as follows. If I get on a bus it is because I know that it is more probable than not that I will get to my destination safely. Of course, the bus may crash or break down along the way, but that doesn’t mean that it was not more probable than not that that I would get to my destination safely. I never said it was certain that I would arrive safely. I did not hold a belief that I would get to my destination safely. It was simply a state of mind based on factual (relevantly, statistical) probabilities. Call it an opinion if you like, but not a belief. No, I am not playing word games here. My state of mind was simply a confidence based on factual probabilities. When I get onto a bus, or travel to work as a passenger in a car driven by a friend, I simply have confidence in the truth or existence of a state of affairs not susceptible to immediate proof but based on statistical probabilities. If and when I get to my destination safely, the existence of the hoped-for state of affairs will have been proven ex post facto, that is, it will by then have been actualized.

In the case of mathematical propositions (eg the above mentioned definition of a line, or the definition of a triangle as a polygon with three edges and three vertices), we are simply dealing with what are known as analytic propositions, that is, propositions the truth of which truth depends solely on the meaning of its terms, that is, they are true or false by definition. They are grounded in meanings, independent of matters of fact. Indeed, all definitions are ultimately circular or tautological in nature, since they depend upon concepts which must themselves have definitions, a dependence which cannot be continued indefinitely without returning to the starting point. Now, to call these propositions beliefs strains credulity.

I do of course agree that we all have opinions on various matters. We find facts, but rarely do the facts speak for themselves. In order to know something we are often forced to draw conclusions and inferences from objective facts, and often it is the case that different people can quite reasonably draw different conclusions or inferences from the same set of facts. Such is the nature of things. But, as I see it, beliefs are different things altogether. A person believes something when, not only do they not know whether that which is believed is true or not, there is actually no possibility of a person ever knowing whether the thing believed is true. In other words, the thing believed is not susceptible to rigorous proof at all. It is not a case of the thing believed being not immediately susceptible to rigorous proof. It cannot be proved at all. That is why it is ‘has’ to be believed. (Of course, it is not obligatory to believe it at all, and I wouldn’t believe it anyway.)

Take, for example, a literal belief in the bodily resurrection of Jesus Christ. Now, not all Christians hold that belief but many do, and many of those who do regard that belief as an essential tenet of the Christian faith. Speaking personally, I don’t believe that Jesus literally and bodily rose from dead. I like what the iconoclastic Anglican bishop Dr David Jenkins [pictured left] said about the Resurrection. He called the notion ‘a conjuring trick with bones.’ How wickedly funny! Be that as it may, the question of whether or not Jesus physically rose from the dead is a question of fact but it is a matter that is not something capable of rigorous proof. 

However, for something to be provable it must be repeatable, and any event or supposed event in the past is something that cannot be repeated. For that matter, we can’t even prove that Jesus or Napoleon or any other person from the past was born or lived. In the case of the supposed historicity of Jesus, it has been argued, with considerable justification in my view, that there is insufficient independent historical evidence to safely conclude that the person known as Jesus Christ, as depicted in the New Testament, ever existed. In that regard, there is not even one single demonstrably authentic passage purporting to be written as history within the first 100 years of the Christian era that shows the existence at or before that time of such a person as Jesus of Nazareth, called the Christ, or of such a set of persons as could be accounted his disciples or followers. Further, there is no non-Christian record of Jesus before the 2nd century. That is fact. 

Not only that, there is the added problem that the physical world in which we live yields no contemporary reliable evidence that people who are dead can be supernaturally resurrected. I speak as a lawyer here. (I wear a number of hats, sometimes more than one at the same time. It's fun.) If a jury were permitted to even consider such a proposition, it would require expert testimony by someone scientifically qualified to testify to the likelihood of the supernatural resurrection of one particular dead person some two thousand years ago. However, there is no objective, verifiable evidence, based on scientifically sound principles, which could be adduced in a courtroom today that would establish the singularity of supposed Jesus' alleged 'supernatural' resurrection some two thousand years ago. In order for an expert's opinion to be reliable and thus admissible, it must be grounded in verifiable propositions of fact, but in light of the logically probative material available to us there are no reliable grounds upon which to assert that supposed Jesus' alleged supernatural resurrection is based upon any verifiable proposition of fact. 

All other religious beliefs---and many beliefs that are not religious in nature (eg political and ideological beliefs)---are susceptible to the same sort of robust challenge. Now, some people say to me, ‘Well, you can’t prove it [that is, the supposed state of affairs believed in] isn’t true.’ Of course, what these people fail to realize or admit is that the onus of proof in these matters is on those who assert the existence of some supposed state of affairs. Sometimes a more sophisticated argument is advanced to the effect that the absence of evidence for some supposed state of affairs is said not to be evidence of absence---that is, not evidence of something not being the case. So, the absence of evidence for Jesus’ resurrection is said not to be evidence that the resurrection did not happen. However, the absence of evidence for some supposed state of affairs is indeed evidence of absence where the ‘negative evidence principle’ is satisfied. That principle has been stated as follows:

A person is justified in believing that p is false if (1) all the available evidence used to support the view that p is true is shown to be inadequate and (2) p is the sort of claim such that if p were true, there should be available evidence that would be adequate to support the view that p is true and (3) the area where evidence would appear if there were any, has been comprehensively examined. [Michael Scriven, Primary Philosophy (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1966), p 102.]

But, leaving all of the above aside for the moment (assuming we can really do that), what exactly is the problem with 'beliefs,' you may ask? Well, Shakyamuni Buddha referred to beliefs as being in the nature of thought coverings or veils (āvarnas). These thought coverings or veils do not reveal reality, indeed they distort reality. How? Well, they prevent us from knowing and experiencing things as they really are in all their directness and immediacy. Belief is conditioning. Knowledge is experiential. A belief-system is a distorting lens which experiences, processes and interprets but then  distorts what happens through an amalgam of beliefs, all of which are the past and conditioning.

I have always found helpful these words attributed to the Buddha: 'Do not believe, for if you believe, you will never know. If you really want to know, don't believe.' There is also this sound advice from the Pāli texts:

In what is seen, there should be only the seen;
in what is heard, only the heard;
in what is sensed, only the sensed;
in what is thought, only the thought.

However, when we see something through a belief-system what is seen is filtered, interpreted, analyzed and judged through the belief-system. No longer is it a case of  that which is seen being only that which was seen, or that which is heard being only what was heard, or that which is sensed being only what was sensed, or that which is thought being only that which is thought. Reality immediately becomes a new and altogether different reality. This is not living mindfully.

We need to safely and mindfully 'navigate' our way through life, but beliefs in the supposed existence of states of affairs in respect of which there is no possibility of one ever knowing whether that which is believed is really true stand in our way and hold us back. What we really need is knowledge and understanding. The very nature of a belief is a mental construct based on an already past presumed reality. That is, by the time a particular belief has been formulated, the presumed reality upon which that belief is purportedly based is no longer a present reality, if it ever was a reality. It is now the past. Beliefs lock us into the past. Beliefs imprison. They do not liberate. They are chains that bind us. Eschew beliefs. You don't need any.

To be continued.

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RELIGION WITHOUT SUPERNATURALISM

Can there be religion without supernaturalism and superstition? Of course. Surely you’ve heard of religious naturalism? Now, naturalism takes various forms including but not limited to cosmological naturalism, methodological naturalism, ethical naturalism, scientistic naturalism, social naturalism, and religious naturalism. I am only concerned with the latter here.

The American philosopher and theologian Jerome A Stone [pictured left] offers the following definition of religious naturalism:

Religious naturalism may be defined as the affirmation that there are one or more aspects of the world to which religious responses are appropriate.

Religious naturalism exists in its own right as a religious movement, and it also subsists in a number of the world’s religions including (most especially) Buddhism but even Judaism and Christianity. However, even in the case of those religions that are supernaturalistic in their orientation and thought forms, the natural world is by no means unimportant, and most religions in their earliest forms were naturalistic in orientation and thought form. Indeed, as David Suzuki has pointed out:

All religions explore the place of people in the natural and social worlds around them.  They provide explanations for mysteries such as death and disorder, and use myths and moral teachings to relate human and nonhuman spheres. The earliest forms of contemporary world religions, such as Hinduism, Christianity and Islam, presented an animated, integrated world similar to that of traditional worldviews.  As Lao Tzu puts it in the Tao Te Ching:

    

The virtue of the universe is wholeness,

It regards all things as equal.

But some of those world religions have shifted ground over the past centuries, supporting the development of a very different picture of reality and our place in it.

The prominent theologian James Luther Adams [pictured right] saw Jesus as a leading exponent of naturalistic religion, at least as regards his teachings and his methods of teaching. Despite the assertions of many in the mainstream churches, Jesus for the most part used a rational method of analogy---he always taught in parables, and taught nothing but parables---appealing to empirical experience self-evident to any Jew, gentile, or Samaritan. You may also recall that when the Scribes and Pharisees went to Jesus, asking that he show them a ‘sign’---that is, some miracle (whatever that word means)---so that they might be convinced he was a true prophet, Jesus said to them, ‘Only an evil, adulterous generation would demand a miraculous sign’ (Mt 16:4). 

Jesus left them and went away, but he made it clear that the only ‘miracle’ that can attest a prophet’s teachings to be true is the change---a change for good, that is---that the prophet makes in the hearts of his hearers. I could give you many other examples in the scriptures of where Jesus repudiated the proposition that a belief in the supernatural is necessary in order to attest to spiritual truth. The English poet and critic Matthew Arnold wrote,’ Suppose I could change the pen with which I write this into a pen-wiper, I should not make what I wrote any the truer or more convincing.’

Insofar as the Jewish scriptures are concerned, a Baptist minister, the Rev Geoffrey Thomas, has rightly noted:

                                                                                                

There were just three periods of miraculous activity during the Old Testament dispensation. There were virtually no wonders wrought by Abraham and the patriarchs, or the judges, nothing during the reign of David, in the period of Isaiah and Jeremiah, or at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah. The first period of miracles was during the exodus from Egypt, and the second was under the prophesyings of Elijah and Elisha, and finally in the Old Testament during the time of Daniel in Babylon there were some extraordinary signs.

Even the prophecies contained in the Hebrew Bible were not really about fore-telling but about forth-telling, that is, speaking out on issues immediately at hand. Enough said.

For religious naturalists such as the cell biologist Ursula Goodenough [pictured left] and the philosopher Donald Crosby nature is both ultimate reality and a religiously ultimate object in and of itself.  In the words of Professor Crosby:

I regard nature as both ultimate reality and as religiously ultimate.  There is nothing beyond it, outside of it, or over against it that is needed to explain its origin, continuing existence, or irrepressible creativity. Nature itself, without a God, Goddess, gods, or animating personal spirits of any kind, is for me an appropriate and, indeed, the most appropriate focus of religious commitment and concern especially for our ecologically conscious times. Thus, I am neither a monotheist, a polytheist, a pantheist, a panentheist, nor an animist, and yet I claim profound religious value and meaning for the immanent, self-contained powers of nature admittedly impersonal though they be that produce, suffuse, and sustain us and all other forms of being.

Religious naturalists are not all a bunch of godless pagans or earth worshippers.  They may be ‘God people’ or ‘non-God people.’ As to the former, Professor Goodenough, who incidentally belongs to the latter, has written:

There are two flavors of God people: those whose God is natural and those whose God is supernatural. Certainly there are a lot of people within religious naturalism who have no problem with God language - God as love, God as evolution, God as process. People see God as part of nature and give God-attributes to the part of nature that they find most sacred. I encounter people like that all the time.

However, few modern religious naturalists would view nature itself as ‘God.’  Most religious naturalists don’t deify the universe. In his book The Humanist Way Edward L Ericson writes:

The philosophical and religious naturalist refuses to divert human idealism and effort to the vain and untestable attempt to account for the existence of reality as a whole by postulating some external ‘divine’ or ‘supernatural’ power that, as popular religious supernaturalism contends, must be propitiated and worshipped. The naturalist sees no ground for supposing such a being to exist, or for investing human resources in pursuit of a will-of-the-wisp so footless in logic or meaning.

Religious conservatives, even a few religious liberals, and many militant atheists object to claims by religious naturalists from time to time that the latter are ‘religious’ and have ‘religious faith,’ but the phenomenon of religious naturalism is nothing new. With its historical roots going as far back as Baruch Spinoza in the second half of the 17th century---not to mention its long association with and embodiment in various eastern religions---the phenomenon now known as religious naturalism has a long, well-established and, for the most part, distinguished history, particularly in the United States of America. Its ‘spokespersons’ include such notables as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, Mordecai Kaplan, George Santayana, John Dewey, and Henry Nelson Wieman (who called his belief-system ‘naturalistic theism’). William James [pictured below], although not a religious naturalist in the strict sense, nevertheless favoured empirically-based naturalistic reinterpretations of supposedly supernaturalistic phenomena.

Naturalistic religious faith----faith being understood as living with courage, confidence, and hope---involves all of the key elements of a supernaturalistic religious faith, such as piety, awe, reverence, devotion, mystery and surrender, contains elements of both immanence and transcendence, and satisfies the tests of both ultimacy and intimacy.  Further, religious naturalism is and can genuinely claim to be concerned about what is truly sacred---life itself. Show me anything more wonderful than that!

Any attempt to define or otherwise understand religion that does not take into account the phenomenon of religious naturalism is bound to be inadequate not to mention downright misleading.

I mentioned the words ‘immanence’ and ‘transcendence’ above. Can those terms really apply to religious naturalism? I think they can. Donald Crosby sees immanence and transcendence as being the two things that permit appreciation or recognition of a thing being a religion, and he has demonstrated that religious naturalism satisfies both of those things. Its immanence can be found in its rejection of all notions of supernaturalism and its repudiation of all theories of intelligent design or underlying purpose, while its transcendence is three-fold: first, we human beings, as ‘creatures of nature,’ have the capacity for self-transcendence; secondly, there occur transformative events that transcendent our expectations and lie outside or beyond our conscious will or control; and, thirdly, there is the transcendence, both in time and space, of nature itself over human beings, together with our utter dependence upon nature for the continuance of our lives both physically and otherwise. 

I have often written that supernaturalism is the enemy of all true religion and all that is good and meaningful in it. There, I’ve just said it again.

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