Wondering what this new religion will be

28 Thursday Jul 2022

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Culture, New religion, religion, Secular religion

These are only general notes and questions to myself, and certainly not a final position on any of this.

I am working with the general proposition that Western history is moving along these lines: The largely Christian (broadly stated) world gave way to a “secular” world (see Charles Taylor for perhaps the most sustained account of this transition), in which the materialist atheist could be presented as the most reasonable person. The new atheism of 20 years ago would be the high water mark of this movement.

However, for whatever reason, that position has proved to be unstable. Even in the height of materialism and atheism, superstition and magic were always present and active among the most seemingly materialistic (see, The Myth of Disenchantment). Now, we are moving into the space of a new general religion (when a religion becomes the most common worldview in a culture, it will appear to be commonsense and not a “religion”: it is just the way things are).

Transgenderism as an ideology seems to partake of the rudiments of a religious system. I’m going to begin with a quotation Kathleen Stock:

Here are four axioms of modern trans activism, which I’ll be examining from different angles in this book.

1. You and I, and everyone else, have an important inner state called a gender identity.

2. For some people, inner gender identity fails to match the biological sex – male or female – originally assigned to them at birth by medics. These are trans people.

3. Gender identity, not biological sex, is what makes you a man or a woman (or neither).

4. The existence of trans people generates a moral obligation upon all of us to recognise and legally to protect gender identity and not biological sex.

Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 14). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

This paragraph which begins Material Girls lays presuppositions of transgenderism. What I find fascinating about this the extent to which this is an explicitly religious program.

First, it makes a profoundly metaphysical claim about a real self which is someone different than one’s current physical body. It is not merely that one feels a disassociation from one’s body, but rather that there is a more real self which is not the physical body. The materialist would contend one is only a physical body. A Christian (I’m not adequate to address other religions on this point) would contend the physical body is one’s “real self.” However, we would add the caveat that a description of the human being which is limited to the body is inadequate.

This metaphysical claim is an overarching claim that there is a reality which goes beyond the body in some way. I am not sure where or what this “real” self is. It is not completely clear to me that constitutes an incorporeal mind or soul; it seems to be an ideation.

Second, there is a sin of mis-matching the unseeable, incorporeal real self. That this is a sin is clear in that there is a moral obligation imposed upon all people to recognize the supreme reality of this ideation.

A metaphysical claim to an immaterial reality coupled to unbending moral obligation to recognize this immaterial reality contains at least the rudiments of a religion. Indeed, this metaphysic includes the proposition that language creates reality:

Butler makes the general assumption that anything at all humans can meaningfully think about is socially constructed, ‘all the way down’ as it were. This means she thinks there are no material facts before language – that is, prior to culturally specific linguistic and social constructions of them. Linguistic categories, including scientific and biological ones, aren’t a means of reflecting existing divisions in the world, but a means of creating things that otherwise wouldn’t have existed.

Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 23). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition. When seen from within a Christian perspective, this is an arrogation of the power of God to create reality by means of speaking. God says “Let there be light,” and there is light. But no such power appertains to human beings. Yet this ideology contends that language actually constructs reality. This is a profoundly religious sentiment.

When we look more broadly into the culture surrounding this belief system we see a number of rituals which fulfill the broad outlines of religious observance.

Early on in this movement, there were commentators (such as Mohler) who noted that transgenderism echoes the Gnostic idea of a secret real self beyond the body. There is another element common to Gnosticism, that of special knowledge held by only some. That special knowledge is critical to transgenderism: “A further influence in the background here is what is known in philosophy as ‘standpoint epistemology’. This is the idea that some forms of knowledge are socially situated, so that only if you are in a particular social situation are you able to easily acquire that kind of knowledge.” Stock, Kathleen. Material Girls (p. 34). Little, Brown Book Group. Kindle Edition.

In short, this is more than the imposition of civility. While this is only the briefest outline, it seems to me that this entails the rudimentary aspects of a “religion.”

It would not be difficult to take these 8 elements of a religion (found here) and find a corresponding application that the general pride and particular “transgender” world constitutes a religion:

EIGHT ELEMENTS OF RELIGIONS
1. BELIEF SYSTEM or WORLDVIEW: Many beliefs that fit together in a system to make

sense of the universe and our place in it.

That is unquestionable.
2. COMMUNITY: The belief system is shared, and its ideals are practiced by a group.

Again, this is a given.

3. CENTRAL STORIES/MYTHS: Stories that help explain the beliefs of a group; these are told over and over again and sometimes performed by members of the group. They may or may not be factual.

The transgender position insists on a story which is radically different than that held by Western Civilization just a few years ago.

4. RITUALS: Beliefs are explained, taught, and made real through ceremonies.

It could be contended that the entire work of physically transitioning constitutes a fundamental ritual, as well the wearing of certain clothing, et cetera.

5. ETHICS: Rules about how to behave; these rules are often thought to have come from a deity or supernatural place, but they might also be seen as guidelines created by the group over time.

Again, unquestionable.

6. CHARACTERISTIC EMOTIONAL EXPERIENCES: Most religions share emotions such as awe, mystery, guilt, joy, devotion, conversion, inner peace, etc.

The core emotional experience is the basis of the truth claims.

7. MATERIAL EXPRESSION: Religions use things to perform rituals or to express or represent beliefs, such as: statues, paintings, music, flowers, incense, clothes, architecture, and specific sacred locations.

Transforming one’s body.

8. SACREDNESS: Religions see some things as sacred and some not sacred (or profane). Some objects, actions, people and places may share in the sacredness or express it.

This might be the more difficult element, in that no god is explicitly invoked (at least not by all adherents). But there is an apparent element of being “special” or even transcendent in the idea of transcending one’s body.

Philip Rieff, The Triumph of the Therapeutic.2 (You are “sick” should ask if life is meaningful.)

09 Thursday Apr 2020

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Freud, Uncategorized

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Culture, Freud, Meaning, religion, Superego, Triumph of the Therapeutic

The prior post in this series may be found here.

Rieff, pp. 23-27

There are two interrelated issues which run through this section of his discussion of Freud. The two issues are not unrelated, but they are also not coterminous. One issue concerns the function of culture vis-à-vis impulse (the inherent desires of the human being). These two, the Superego and Id, are in conflict with one-another.

In wildly simplified terms, the ego is the negotiation and expression of this conflict. Freud’s work was to make plain the nature of this conflict and allow the individual who had obtained “maturity” (Rieff’s term) was to become aware of this conflict and to set the relationship between the two oneself: “Maturity, according to Freud, lay in the trained capacity to keep the negotiations from breaking down.” (24)

There is a related issue concerning, culture, religion and the superego. The superego functions as the cultural representative. The requirements and limitations of the culture become effective in the individual. The tools developed by Freud permit the individual to keep these tools at a distance.

It is for this reason, the “modern intellectuals” (26) find Freud appealing. His tools provide one a way to read and thence to disarm the culture’s effect upon the individual. Although not discussed here, this explains why Freud was so valuable in the literature departments in cultural criticism because his critique – even if not considered scientifically valid as a psychology – was practically valuable as a means of putting cultural limits at bay.

Essentially, one could critique moral standards as merely archaic residue of an earlier commonly held superego.

Concept of culture is tightly related to the concept of religion in this thinking. Adherence to cultural understanding permitted one to have “meaning.” But Freudian analysis sidesteps this issue and simply does not permit the question of “meaning” to arise. Life is neither meaningful nor meaningless. This is the religious question.

Freud held that to ask the question concerning “the meaning and value of life he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence.” (27)

More “Religions”

08 Thursday Feb 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Uncategorized

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Culture, politics, Politics as religion, religion, Sports, Sports as Religion

I previously posted on politics as religion. Here is yet another example:

Siegel: Liberalism has taken on a religious aspect. It’s a belief system, and not a system that represents political interests. Liberalism is seen as a source of grace, in religious terms. It is hard to talk to people, when you are effectively suggesting they are not among the blessed (or, to use Thomas Sowell’s phrase, the ‘anointed’), that they are in fact mistaken. Trump is wrong about many things, but you can argue with Trumpism. But it is very hard to argue with contemporary liberalism, especially in its West Coast incarnation.

Just prior to the Super Bowl, the Washington Post wrote on football as Tom Brady’s religion. This is nothing new. The Aztecs played a purposefully religious: “The Aztec ball game had a lot of ritual significance. It was mean to mirror the ball court of the heavens, this being the ball court of the underworld where the sun passed each night.” The games of the ancient Greeks were religious affairs such as the Olympics or Isthmian Games.

Sporting events as religious ceremony has been noted many times:

As Wann and collaborators note, various scholars discuss sport in terms of “natural religion,” “humanistic religion,” and “primitive polytheism” pointing out that “spectators worship other human beings, their achievements, and the groups to which they belong.” And that sports stadiums and arenas resemble “cathedrals where followers gather to worship their heroes and pray for their successes” (1, p. 200). Meanwhile, fans wear the team colors, and bear its flags, icons, and mascots whilst literally singing its praises.

Sport as Religion. Or as The Atlantic writes, “In short, if you look hard at sports, you can’t help but see contours of religion.”

Politics as Religion

23 Tuesday Jan 2018

Posted by memoirandremains in Politics, Uncategorized

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politics, Politics as religion, religion, Romans 1:18-25

A few recent articles have made the point that political positions can function as religion: a totalizing story of sin and sacrifice which gives some sort of meaning to existence. First, there Ta Nehisi Coates with a theory of original sin:

What does the philosopher teach? His philosophy can be summed up in a passing phrase from “Between the World and Me”: “I… felt that the galaxy was playing with loaded dice.”

It’s a passing phrase, but a concept that suffuses his work. At a cosmic level, existence itself is slanted against the flourishing of black people. Chance is not really chance. We already know how history will unfold before it happens: black people will suffer because of white people. That’s what being black means. That’s what being white means.

Here is New York Magazine asking if intersectionality is a religion

It posits a classic orthodoxy through which all of human experience is explained — and through which all speech must be filtered. Its version of original sin is the power of some identity groups over others. To overcome this sin, you need first to confess, i.e., “check your privilege,” and subsequently live your life and order your thoughts in a way that keeps this sin at bay. The sin goes so deep into your psyche, especially if you are white or male or straight, that a profound conversion is required.

The story continues with the obligatory swipe at the Puritans, which demonstrates that most people know nothing more about Puritans that what they can kind of remember from The Scarlet Letter and what they heard about The Crucible — neither of which has anything to do with the Puritans in reality.

Alan Jacobs asks if Wokeness is a Myth:

The term “woke,” for those who have managed to escape it, means being aware of racial, gender, and economic injustice. It is employed today either in mockery of the woke or in ironic reappropriation by the woke, and it is probably irrecoverable for serious use. But “woke” derives from “waking up” to how things are — and that ought to suggest that to commend wokeness is to invite people to participate in a mythical experience.

There is even redemption — sacrifice — required of this religion:

Go deeper into the cult, and the disciplines get more rigorous. Now white women must admit their role in oppressing women of color. This requires some of the groveling that white males must endure. But it offers the same benefit: a sense of forgiveness, and spiritual progress. Likewise black males must atone to women of color. All straights must bow down to gays. Even gays must make amends for their insensitivity to “trans” people. I am not sure to whom “trans” people of color must apologize. But give intellectuals time, and they’ll find someone. Or invent them.

With little work, I could find many more examples and certainly make a broader argument that all sides of political argument easily slide in a religious dimension — or that the arguments are informed by a story of fall, sin, punishment, sacrifice.

This is important to realize: just because a human being rejects some long-standing religious explanation does not mean that human beings change. The basic elements of fall-sin-punishment-sacrifice-possibly some escape/redemption are inherent in how we understand the world.

As a Christian, I would contend they are necessary for us our thinking. Paul argued for a hardwired, if you will explanation:

Romans 1:18–25 (ESV)

¹⁸For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who by their unrighteousness suppress the truth. ¹⁹For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. ²⁰For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. ²¹For although they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their thinking, and their foolish hearts were darkened. ²²Claiming to be wise, they became fools, ²³and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images resembling mortal man and birds and animals and creeping things.

²⁴Therefore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impurity, to the dishonoring of their bodies among themselves, ²⁵because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and worshiped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever! Amen.

Marriage and Religion

12 Monday Sep 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Uncategorized

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Hugh Macmillian, marriage, religion

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Hugh MacMillian, in his sermons (1882), The Marriage in Cana of Galilee, makes the following observation about the relationship between religion and changing marriage. I found it interesting in light of the West’s current work of fundamentally restructuring marriage in ways even more dramatic that the bigamy or forced celibacy condemned here. Macmillan would tie the change in marriage to “religious enthusiasm” — which is certainly the case in the West (and the fact that this new religion merely considers itself natural, common sense, not a religion does nothing to alter its fundamentally religious nature):

Marriage is the best and simplest test by which a religious sect or community can be tried. According as ti conforms or fails to conform to the Divine law in this primary relation of life, so ought it to stand or fall in the estimation of the world. It is a remarkable circumstance that every religious enthusiast who facing that he is inspired to proclaim a new faith, whenever he succeeds in impressing his convictions upon others, begins to tamper with marriage. The Mohammedanism of the East, the Mormonism of the West, proclaim themselves systems of imposture by their abuse of this all-important relation. The spiritual-wife communities which have sprung out of religious excitement and revivalism of America are based upon radical errors, and are as injurious to human nature as they are false to God. On the side of sensualism or on the side of asceticism, every false religion is sure to err fatally. Nature uniformly revenues the outrage upon her law in every case.

Pages 22-23

The religion of “sci-tech progress”

30 Wednesday Mar 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Hope, Psychology, Theology, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Culture, Hope, Psychology, religion, Romans 1, Sci-Tech, Thesis

This article from reason explains that hope — although it does not explain it in terms of hope — is the (?) basis for satisfaction:

Stavrova and company concluded that the “correlation between a belief in scientific–technological progress and life satisfaction was positive and significant in 69 of the 72 countries.” On the other hand, the relationship between religiosity and life satisfaction was positive in only 28 countries and actually negative in 5 countries. Similarly, belief in sci-tech progress correlated with a sense of personal control in 67 countries, whereas religiosity was positively associated with personal control in only 23 countries—and was negative in 10 countries.

Stavrova and her colleagues speculate that this negative association between a belief in God and a sense of personal control might arise from dispositional differences. Primary control strategies aim to change the external world so that it fits with one’s personal needs and desires; secondary control strategies seek to change personal needs and desires so that they fit with the external world. Earlier research has found that religious believers tend to score higher on secondary than primary control strategies. Stavrova and her fellow researchers suggest that future studies might “examine whether a belief in scientific–technological progress, in contrast to a religious belief, entails individuals to rely more on primary rather than secondary control strategies.”

So why do people who believe in sci-tech progress tend to be happier than the religious faithful? Stavrova and her colleagues propose that “achieving control over the world and mastering the environment has always been one of the major goals of science. Believing that science is or will prospectively grant such mastery of nature imbues individuals with the belief that they are in control of their lives.” This sense of personal control in turn contributes to a higher life satisfaction.

It turns out that people who rely upon the efficacy of the human intellect to solve problems have a greater chance of living satisfying lives than those who cling to the supernatural hope that an unseen sky-God will somehow save them from their troubles.

A few things here: I certainly don’t believe bare “religious belief” matters much at all. In fact, I would hold that his belief in “science” is a “religious belief”. Belief can never be better than its object: the study merely looks at “religious belief” as if all religious belief were interchangeable. It does not consider the certainty of that belief.

It is the Scriptural position that most “religious belief” is false and rebellious.

Second, there is no apparent control for circumstances. I suspect that most of the people who hold to the “sci-tech progress” and well-educated, relatively prosperous and younger. In such a circumstance “sci-tech” has relatively little work to do. A comfortable, sociable, reasonably attractive 30 year old is probably happier than other people: but such happiness hinges upon circumstance.

I would be curious of the satisfaction of a “sic-tech progress” believer on the day they learn their child has cancer.

As a Christian (and often a poor specimen), I know that there is no promise of endless happiness now. In fact, the promise is precisely the opposite. I am hopeful; but I also know the realism that this world as a painful one. I know that making a better device will not alter the human heart. I know that no amount of medical technology (for which I am very grateful) will ever ultimately put off death.

I know that cultist and idolators often begin joyful.

Another aspect: personal control. Any belief in “personal control” is on its face irrational — although the desire for personal utter autonomy has been a human goal since the Garden.

What is Worship?

10 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Sin, Soteriology, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Culture, Hope, religion, salvation, Thesis, Worldview, Worship

I have been trying to find a definition which captures the concept of worship when it expands out into “normal” activities. Without question, our relationship to various “idols” — sports idols, music idols, the famous, the beautiful, the powerful can constitute worship. A college football looks like worship.

But there is also the worship of the mall (James K.A. Smith’s first chapter in Desiring the Kingdom is brilliant on this point). How do we capture work as worship? And how do we distinguish appropriate human action is appropriate and not as sinful worship? How do I go to a football game or a concert and not “worship” the performer?

This is still tentative:

Every worldview — even if it is inarticulate — grapples with the “wrong” in the world, the way it is not supposed to be. The most thoughtless person still struggles against something wrong. There is some Fall, some Sin which haunts us all — even if we don’t think of it in “religious” terms.

There is a solution to that something wrong: If you will, there is Sin and there is Salvation.

The object of worship is that thing, person, whatever, which the human worshiper believes will resolve the “what is wrong with the world” problem. It might be the outcome of political election or new shoes.

The act of worship is that set of actions and affections which seek to obtain the benefit of the object hoped in.

There may be more than one object of worship necessary to resolve the problem as understood by the human worshipper.

Seen in this way, not all worship will entail distinctly “religious” means. The act of worship is fit to the object of worship.

“Religious” acts of worship take place where the object of worship is principally spiritual.

However, where the objet of worship is a material object the practice of worship will not appear to be “religious”. If it is an objection and action which is common to a particular culture, it will appear “normal” and be largely invisible.

God didn’t create, but elves and trolls ….

03 Wednesday Feb 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Uncategorized

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Creation, Culture, Iceland, paganism, religion, Science, secularism, Thesis

Iceland seems to be on its way to becoming an even more secular nation, according to a new poll. Less than half of Icelanders claim they are religious and more than 40% of young Icelanders identify as atheist. Remarkably the poll failed to find young Icelanders who accept the creation story of the Bible. 93.9% of Icelanders younger than 25 believed the world was created in the big bang, 6.1% either had no opinion or thought it had come into existence through some other means and 0.0% believed it had been created by God.

Read the rest

This story about Iceland seems related to this story about Icelanders: More than half of Icelanders believe in huldufolk, hidden people like elves and trolls.

Why are human beings inveterately religious?

27 Wednesday Jan 2016

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Romans, Uncategorized

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Atheism, religion, Religious, Romans 1, Romans 1:18-25

According to Dominic Johnson:

Reward and punishment may not emanate from a single omnipotent deity, as imagined in Western societies. Justice may be dispensed by a vast unseen army of gods, angels, demons and ghosts, or else by an impersonal cosmic process that rewards good deeds and punishes wrongdoing, as in the Hindu and Buddhist conception of karma. But some kind of moral order beyond any human agency seems to be demanded by the human mind, and this sense that our actions are overseen and judged from beyond the natural world serves a definite evolutionary role. Belief in supernatural reward and punishment promotes social co-operation in a way nothing else can match. The belief that we live under some kind of supernatural guidance is not a relic of superstition that might some day be left behind but an evolutionary adaptation that goes with being human.

It’s a conclusion that is anathema to the current generation of atheists – Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Sam Harris and others – for whom religion is a poisonous concoction of lies and delusion. These “new atheists” are simple souls. In their view, which derives from rationalist philosophy and not from evolutionary theory, the human mind is a faculty that seeks an accurate representation of the world. This leaves them with something of a problem. Why are most human beings, everywhere and at all times, so wedded to some version of religion? It can only be that their minds have been deformed by malignant priests and devilish power elites. Atheists have always been drawn to demonology of this kind; otherwise, they cannot account for the persistence of the beliefs they denounce as poisonously irrational. The inveterate human inclination to religion is, in effect, the atheist problem of evil.

But what if belief in the supernatural is natural for human beings? For anyone who takes the idea of evolution seriously, religions are not intellectual errors, but adaptations to the experience of living in an uncertain and hazardous world. What is needed – and still largely lacking – is a perspective in which religion is understood as an inexhaustibly complex variety of beliefs and practices that have evolved to meet enduring human needs.

Read the rest

I agree that this process is hardwired — although I hold that the source comes from a different direction:

Romans 1:18–25 (ESV)

The world is more intensely religious than ever before

10 Thursday Dec 2015

Posted by memoirandremains in Culture, Thesis, Uncategorized

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Culture, religion, Rodney Stark

Rodney Stark explains:

Many intellectuals insist that a worldwide triumph of secularization is inevitable, and they applaud whatever is interpreted as a sign of religious decline. Religious believers, meanwhile, lament these same signs. The crucial point is that both sides accept the premise that the world is becoming more secular.

Well, they are both wrong.

The world is not merely as religious as it used to be. In important ways, it is much more intensely religious than ever before. Around the globe, four out of every five people claim to belong to an organized faith, and many of the rest say they attend worship services. In Latin America, Pentecostal Protestant churches have converted tens of millions, and Catholics are going to Mass in unprecedented numbers. There are more churchgoing Christians in Sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else on earth, and China may soon become home of the most Christians. Meanwhile, Islam enjoys far higher levels of member commitment than it has for many centuries, and the same is true for Hinduism.