Wednesday, May 19, 2010

The War on Religion - A Declaration of Terms

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I've been thinking about this post for a few days. None of this is new to this blog - I've probably said all of these things before at some point or another. But I want to get the big ideas in one place, and make an argument on my stance toward religion. Essentially this is an extended rebuttal to the new atheists.

The new atheists (Sam Harris, Daniel C. Dennett, Richard Dawkins, Victor J. Stenger and Christopher Hitchens) have been waging a very loud and a very misguided attack on religion in all its forms and manifestations.

For those unfamiliar with their arguments, here is a summary from Wikipedia's entry on the New Atheism:

The new atheists write mainly from a scientific perspective. Unlike the previous philosophers, many of whom thought that science was indifferent, agnostic or even incapable of dealing with the "God" concept, Dawkins on the contrary, in his book argues that "God Hypothesis" is a valid scientific hypothesis,[10] having effects in the physical universe, and like any other hypothesis can be tested and falsified. Other prominent new atheists such as Victor Stenger also insist that the personal, Abrahamic God is a scientific hypothesis that can be tested by standard methods of science. They conclude that the hypothesis failed the test.[11] They also try to show how naturalism is sufficient to explain everything we observe in the universe from the most distant galaxies to the origin of life and species or even to the inner workings of the brain that result in the phenomenon of mind. Nowhere is it necessary to introduce God or the supernatural to understand reality. Many of the new atheists dispute the claim that science has nothing to say about God and argue that absence of evidence is evidence of absence when evidence should be there and is not. They rather conclude, the universe and life do not look at all designed (by either God or by any supernatural being), in fact, they look just as they would be expected to look if they were not designed at all.

The new atheists insist that many of the religious or supernatural claims (such as the virgin birth of Jesus, the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary, the resurrection of Jesus, the survival of our own souls after death etc.) are scientific claims in nature. They view, to have had a corporeal father for Jesus - is not a question of "values" or "morals"; it is a question of scientific inquiry.[12] The new atheists think science is now capable of investigating at least some, if not all supernatural claims [13] and many credentialed scientists are investigating the possibility of supernatural causes. Reputable institutions such as the Mayo Clinic and Duke University are studying phenomena that, if verified, would provide strong empirical support for the existence of some nonmaterial element in the universe.[14] So far, the experiment found no evidence that prayer works.[15]

Victor Stenger also tried to show in his book, God the Failed Hypothesis, that the God having omniscient, omnibenevolent and omnipotent attributes, which he termed as 3O God, cannot logically exist.[16] Similar series of logical disproofs of the existence of a God with various attributes can be found in Michael Martin and Ricki Monnier's The Impossibility of God,[17] or Theodore M. Drange's article, Incompatible-Properties Arguments.[18] Besides pointing out logical absurdities, Victor Stenger also claims, Abrahamic God (having some discrete attributes mentioned in Bible or Koran) is a scientific hypothesis which can be tested and Abrahamic God fails all the tests.[19]

The New Atheists are particularly critical about two non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA), the view advocated by Stephen Jay Gould that a "domain where one form of teaching holds the appropriate tools for meaningful discourse and resolution."[20] In Gould's proposal, science and religion should be confined to two different non-overlapping domains: science would be limited to the empirical realm, including theories developed to describe observations, while religion would deal with questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. The new Atheism leaders think that NOMA does not describe empirical facts about the intersection of science and religion. In one article published in Free Inquiry magazine,[21] and later in his 2006 book The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins shows that the Abrahamic religions constantly deal in scientific matters. Many other researchers have noted that Gould attempted to redefine religion as moral philosophy. Not only does religion do more than talk about ultimate meanings and morals, science is not proscribed from doing the same. After all, morals involve human behavior, an observable phenomenon, and science is the study of observable phenomena. There is indeed a lot of scientific research on evolutionary origin of ethics and morality.[22]

Of these authors (and many others mining the same terrain), two stand out above the rest - Dan Dennett attempts to see religion not as a blight upon humanity, but as an evolutionary adaptation that served a useful purpose (as does Robert Wright in his Evolution of God, but making the additional argument that as humans have evolved, so have their definitions of God) - and Sam Harris, who engages in a Buddhist meditation practice even while suggesting the we kill the Buddha.

For the record, both of them (in my estimation) offer partial truths that are important - and even the more militant anti-religion voices (Dawkins is heads and shoulders above the rest in this regard) have something valuable to say.

However (or maybe the big BUT), they all confuse the conversation by conflating organized institutional religion, mythic beliefs - and the horrors both have brought upon us in their worst manifestations - with ALL variations of spiritual practice, belief in something sacred, and the best that the human quest for meaning can offer us.

What is needed is a definition of the terms being used and a defense of what is valuable in religion and spirituality. In this post I hope to offer some short but useful clarifications.

* * * * *

Lets' start with religion - from my perspective, we need to distinguish religion as a cultural institution whose primary role is to create and enforce a set of cultural values and norms based upon the assumption of a implicit separation between this world (the profane) and an ideal world (the sacred) - see Durkheim.

Once any set of teachings becomes a religion (whether that teacher is Buddha, Jesus, or Muhammad), the unstated goal is to define the ideal behavior of its followers. Religions are socio-cultural institutions, not tools of transcendence for their followers.

In this role, religions can have a positive influence or a negative influence.

The new atheists have been focusing exclusively on the negative influence of religion in society - oppression of women, Jihad, the inquisition, the Crusades, assorted religious wars, suppression of science, and the list could go on and on. Yes, all of these things are true.

When religion is at the root of these types of behaviors, we are talking about a closed system: one that can not tolerate any other form of religion, one that requires strict obedience from followers, and one that has often taken on political and/or economic goals rather than spiritual goals.

On the other hand, religion has fed the poor, protected the weak, fought against injustices (such as slavery), sought equal rights for all human beings, provided cultural and personal boundaries for those who are transitioning from a tribal egocentric worldview to a more ethnocentric worldview, and on and on. This form of religion tends to be (though not always) a more open system, seeking to help others and not persecute others.

It may be argued that by providing a set of rules for personal conduct (such as the Ten Commandments or the Noble Eightfold Path), religions are also offering followers a path toward a better, happier life. On the other hand, all the major religions offer technology for transcendence, a set of practices that can transform consciousness in fundamental ways.

* * * * *

These technologies for transcendence are what we generally consider to be spiritual practices. Karen Armstrong offered a brief overview of these various technologies in a 2003 article in The Guardian (I'm bolding the major practices she cites):

Shamans probably used drugs to achieve their trance, but they were expert in the spiritual technology of transcendence. The most extreme states of ecstasy were not for the rank and file, and, indeed, in the course of their training shamans often experienced psychotic breakdown. Most people could cope only with the moderate rapture induced by ritual. An early Talmudic text tells the story of four distinguished rabbis who attempted the mystical flight to paradise: one went mad, one died, one became a heretic and only Rabbi Akiva emerged in peace and unscathed.

Not everybody is psychologically capable of the more exotic states. In all the world religions, anybody who aspired to the mystical life had to work with a guru, who closely monitored his progress and prevented him from getting out of his depth. You had to be exceptionally balanced and mature to succeed. Zen masters said that if you were mentally ill, meditation would only cause you to deteriorate. Masters of Kaballah insisted that their disciples were at least 40 and married: there must be no unresolved sexual tension.

In ancient India, yoga enabled skilled practitioners to achieve extraordinary states of liberation and bliss that were regarded as entirely natural to human beings. When Buddhists and Jains refined these yogic techniques in the sixth century BC, they gave them an ethical foundation. Aspirants could not even begin their training until they had achieved habitual serenity, benevolence, abstinence from drugs and stimulants, and absolute truthfulness. This, as it were, earthed ecstasy, prevented it from becoming selfish and self-indulgent, and gave it moral direction. All the major traditions have taught that peak experiences are unhealthy unless they can be integrated kindly, peacefully and truthfully into our ordinary lives.

Perhaps it is the risks that come with these various technologies that has prevented the various religions from making the higher practices widely available (although this has changed in recent years with Dzogchen and Tantra being widely available from the Buddhist tradition, as well as Kaballah from Judaism, and Sufism from Islam, to name a few).

All of the major religions have one or more techniques of transcendence:

Hinduism: The four forms of yoga - Bhakti Yoga (the path of love and devotion), Karma Yoga (the path of right action), Rāja Yoga (the path of meditation), Jñāna Yoga (the path of wisdom)

Buddhism: Meditations practices, including mindfulness, loving-kindness, shamantha, tantra, diety meditations, formless meditation, and so on, including chakra work that is also part of Hinduism.

Confucianism: While Confucianism is generally considered an ethical and political system, there are also mystical elements. One may see the practice of Confucian ideals as a kind on interpersonal path, since relationships are highly stressed in this tradition. In some ways, the philosophical concepts of Confucius are similar to the jnana yoga path in Hinduism, a path of understanding and wisdom.

Taoism: Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching (The Way) offers a path toward mystic realization, and as such it has influenced Chinese Buddhism and Confucianism. Within this tradition there are also practices similar to the Tantras of Buddhism and the Alchemy of the Western esoteric practices. There is also qigong, a more physical meditative tradition.

Judasim: Contemplative prayer and Kaballah (which is not explicitly mystical). There is much in the western Alchemical tradition influenced by Judaic beliefs, as well.

Christianity: Centering prayer, various forms of contemplative prayer, as well as the more radical and non-canonical Gnostic forms of Christianity. More recently, theosophy and anthroposophy are based in Christian beliefs, although both are more religions than technologies.

Islam: Sufism is the most developed form of mysticism in Islam, although there are other Quranic Suras that have mystical elements.

For each of these traditions, there are probably several more mystical paths that I am not aware of in that I do not follow these paths and as Armstrong noted above, the esoteric techniques are often not shared with outsiders.

It's important to note that all of these practices will be clothed in the cultural beliefs of their given religions and the socio-cultural environment in which they arose. However, as Ken Wilber illustrated in one of his more important books,
The Marriage of Sense and Soul: Integrating Science and Religion, each of these practices -when stripped of their cultural trappings - offers a set of injunctions that if followed will produce a specific spiritual result. These are the various technologies of transcendence.

While it is common to hear that all religions point to the same essential truths, I take issue with this idea. We are not yet evolved enough to cleanse ourselves of our particular cultural context - and I am not sure that we can. So while most of these practices move us toward higher, more complex, and more integrated states of consciousness (not stages, unless the states become permanent), the notion of God or divinity that one experiences is shaped by the cultural subtext in our psyches.

To clarify, we can get to the basic technologies of transcendence or ecstasy within each religion, free from the cultural accoutrements in which they arose, but our own minds are still embedded in our own cultural context and subtext - so if I practice as a Sufi, my ecstatic experience will be shaped by my modern American understanding of what a higher state experience entails.

A recent book by Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One, argues that it is mistake to assume that all religions believe in the same idea of God. I agree - we cannot strip the cultural context from religions. Each religion offers a different conception of God and/or the divine.

The arguments against religion and spirituality do not acknowledge any of this for the most part, although Sam Harris is transforming his own mind through his meditation practice.

* * * * *

The notion of states and stages brings up one more issue I want to discuss, which underlies the whole issue. In Who Owns God, Part 2, written following the 2004 election cycle (posted in 2006), I outlined a basic model of understanding God at different stages of development. I was into Spiral Dynamics at the time, a bio-psych0-social evolutionary model, but I have since adopted a more generalized model.

So what follows is an edited and condensed version of that post:
First Tier (Survival Needs)

I'll start this examination of "God along the Spiral" at the Spiral's base. At the Survival Stage, there is no idea of God at all. People at this stage are only capable of focusing on survival needs. There is likely very little sense of identity because the self is pre-rational and pre-egoic. A Survival worldview is typical of infants, the mentally-ill homeless, the senile elderly, and the earliest primal human cultures. People at this level are concerned only with day-to-day survival.

When the Tribal Stage begins to emerge, people perceive a world filled with spirits that can both help and hurt a person or tribe. There isn't one God but many spirits, each with a specific realm of power. Worship is centered on rituals, charms, and talismans. Many of the oldest discoveries of talismanic art originate in the period when the Tribal Stage first began to emerge (about 50,000 years ago). Most shamanic cultures also originated in this period, while many modern, neo-shamanic movements, with origins in the New Age movement, regress to this worldview (worst case, but most common) or seek to revitalize shamanic practices in a modern context.

With the arrival of the Predatory Stage (around 7,000 years ago), for the first time people are beginning to develop a self that is distinct from the tribe, which is then reflected in their view of the gods. Individual gods are imbued with human traits, perhaps nowhere better exemplified than in the early Greek and Hindu pantheons. These gods possess ultimate power over the fate of humans, but they suffer the same weaknesses as the rest of us--lust, greed, hubris, and so on (reflecting human egocentric development). The predominant mode of life is still tribal, however, and one's tribe defines one's worldview. Twenty percent of the world still operates within this stage, which is most obvious in some parts of South America (especially the Amazon basin), Africa, and the Middle East, especially in Iraq and Afghanistan, where centralized government has been weakened or eliminated and tribal worldviews have re-asserted their power.

When the Conformist Stage (variously known as ethnocentric, mythic or authoritarian) emerged about three to five thousand years ago, during the Axial Age, all of the world's major religious traditions emerged along with it. For the first time in Western history, there was one God - a jealous, angry, spiteful God who demanded strict obedience and did not tolerate belief in any other God. The Old Testament God of the Jews was intimately involved in human affairs from Genesis through the Book of Job. With the New Testament, God intervened one last time in human affairs and sent his Son to redeem all of humanity. This act affirmed Old Testament prophecies of the coming Messiah and established Christianity as a revolutionary Jewish movement that quickly developed its own identity in opposition to many Jewish traditions. With the emergence of Islam in the seventh century, Mohammed proclaimed himself the final emissary from God, while acknowledging Jesus and the Old Testament prophets as part of his spiritual lineage. Few seem to realize that Yahweh of Judaism, God of Christianity, and Allah of Islam are the same God seen through different cultural viewpoints.

In Eastern cultures, the idea of God was also narrowed to a single concept, but it generally wasn't a humanized God. Rather than an entity, God became a state of being, whether Nirvana or the Tao. However, many Eastern traditions, including Hinduism and Buddhism, still have their pantheons of gods, goddesses, and other deities, as well as heavens (Pure Land) and various hell realms. There are often strict rules for worshipping the various divine figures. In fact, in every culture exhibiting the Conformist religious stage, rigid social structures, distinct ideas of right and wrong, obedience to the social order, and a variety of other structures enforce conformist rule. Currently, about forty percent of the world's population operates within this stage, and it is this stage that the new atheists are generally attacking (as well as the previous stage to a lesser extent).

In the United States, the Conformist Stage is experiencing a resurgence in power as a result of the past two presidential election cycles (2000 and 2004) - when they got a born-again, fundamentalist Christian in the White House. The Christian version of the Conformity reflects the view that the Bible is the literal word of God, that creationism explains human origins, and that America is a Christian country blessed by God. This worldview rejects post-modern cultural relativism as secular, anti-religious, academic drivel. They opposes abortion but often support the death penalty. At its worst, this worldview becomes radical fundamentalism, whether Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Buddhist, patriotic, Communism - or atheist.

During the Enlightenment, three to four hundred years ago, alchemy and astrology evolved into chemistry and astronomy. The emergence of the Achiever Stage initiated the scientific revolution, and with it the parallel emergence of self-interest. As rational science grew out of Church-imposed superstition, the Biblical God became more symbolic than literal. However, science could not disprove the existence of God, and many scientists, most notably Einstein, saw within the marvelous mystery of our universe the guiding hand of a divine intelligence. Recently, a few scientists have aligned themselves with a new form of creationism, termed Intelligent Design, that allows for a divine creator who initiated and who guides evolution. Still, the majority of atheists are found within the materialist flatland (no vertical, spiritual dimension to human life) of the rational Achiever Stage. This worldview is held by about thirty percent of the world's population, but they maintain fifty percent (or more) of the political and economic power.

The weight of American culture is to be found within the transitional space between Conformist and Achiever. However, former president George W. Bush resided a half-step or more behind the majority of voters with his mixture of Predatory political control, Conformist religious beliefs, and Achiever economic policies, making him unique in the history of American presidents (who are typically a half-step or more ahead of the populace, according Beck and Cowan).

With the arrival of the Pluralistic Stage, about one hundred and fifty years ago, the first steps toward universal human rights emerged, exemplified by equal rights for women, gay rights, the civil rights movement, and various forms of socialism. Pluralism at its best is concerned with nurturing and freeing the human spirit through communitarian, ecological, and egalitarian modes of being. Equal value is given to all cultural viewpoints. At this point on the Spiral, God may become Goddess, Gaia (planet Earth as a living entity), Christian mysticism, Kabbalistic Judaism, ecstatic Sufism, or a variety of other approaches that loosen the mythical constraints on the experience of God and allow that God may be an experiential rather than a physical reality. Pluralism is represented by around ten percent of the population.
___

The first six stage represent the "first tier" or "basic needs" of human development. In the first tier, each stage believes that it offers the only true interpretation of the world. For example, traditional Conformism sees progressive Pluralism as godless New Age heathens. Rational Achiever sees both Conformist and Pluralistic as irrational and too focused on other people's concerns. Self-concerned Predators see all other stages as threats to its power and seeks only to bolster its strength. Each of these stages (also known as Values Memes) has built-in virus protection to prevent other Memes from corrupting its content. However, most people operate in several Memes, as the George W. Bush example illustrates, even though they may have their center of gravity in a specific worldview (or stage or Meme).

One brief note is necessary here. Each of these stages has a healthy and an unhealthy manifestation. For example, unhealthy Conformist becomes fundamentalism and seeks to impose its narrow worldview on everyone. Unhealthy Achiever's rationalism can become scientism and seek to reduce all forms of experience to the physical. Unhealthy Pluralism can become Beck and Wilber's "mean Green Meme," attacking most manifestations of Conformity as repressive and rejecting some forms of rational Achievement as reductionism. However, each Meme is crucial to development and a necessary stepping stone to the next stage. We must allow people to move through the stages as is their need, while trying to create life conditions that allow for healthy manifestations of the stages and opportunities to evolve (in the cultural sense).

Second Tier (Actualization Needs)

The second tier of development includes the Integrated and Holistic Stages, both of which are more worldcentric and cosmocentric in their worldviews. The second-tier stages have access to all of the earlier stages and can adopt the first-tier Memes as needed according to current life conditions. A person who has reached Integrated thinking in one or more areas of life may still have other developmental streams that operate only in first-tier stages. Less than one percent of the population on Earth has reached the second tier.

The Integrated Stage has appeared only in the last thirty to fifty years and is still taking shape. A person in this stage is concerned with learning to live as an adaptive organism in a constantly changing world. Accumulating knowledge and understanding how various systems work and interrelate is a priority. This stage understands that chaos and change are constants and seeks to establish and maintain equilibrium. At this stage, God tends to be conceptual and is often experienced as an impersonal, unified consciousness.

The Holistic Stage is emerging right now, and its major traits are becoming more focused each day. However, it is becoming clear that Holism seeks a unified existence in which body, mind, and soul are one. This stage understands that everything is interrelated and interconnected. At this stage, the self is seen to be both independent and part of an interdependent, cooperative whole. God at this stage is understood much as the previous stage understands the concept, but the Holistic person might experience God as more compassionate and loving.

Despite the relative infancy of these stages, it is clear that God at the second tier is seen as a consciousness permeating the entire universe that seeks to understand itself through its manifestation in creation. The jump to second-tier thinking is seen as the "great leap in human consciousness" (Clare W. Graves). Crossing that divide marks the first approach to the higher realms of spiritual awareness as exemplified by the great spiritual teachers: Jesus, the Buddha, Lao Tzu, Saint Francis, Saint Teresa, Zarathustra, and others.

For the one percent of the population that operates within the second tier, each stage of development is valued for its contribution to the whole and is crucial to the health and stability of humanity. Although no one stage is more important than another, the higher stages offer greater options and are more expansive in their understanding of the world. The second tier is the leading edge of human development at this point in history.
If the new atheists could grasp these ideas and that not all religions and religious practices are equal or equally dangerous, their war on religion might instead become a war on fundamentalism - in whatever form it emerges, including Dawkins' form of atheist fundamentalism.

What we see in America is a battle for power between the Conformist (mythic), Achiever (rational), and Pluralistic (postmodern) worldviews - but most of the wealth and power is in the Achiever worldview. The Pluralistic view is the home of the most progressive religious views, including many Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and others of the "spiritual but not religious" stance. And there is an increasing number of people becoming interested in more Integrated versions of religion, as well, but this is still a very small movement.

When we begin to understand that not all religions are the same, the arguments begin to fail and the war on religion becomes a war on closed models of thinking, on fundamentalism.


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