Let's Talk About Religion
A few perspectives on why religion matters for you and your family, along with links and recommendations.
Hello Bar-setters!
Last week, I continued my focus on the importance of standards and judgment. I quipped that this news was coming just in time for Thanksgiving.
Today, in this spirit of inciting contentious holiday gatherings (this is humor), I’ve decided to share a few thoughts on why religion matters. My hope is that those who are undecided on this matter will find this thought-provoking and those who are prone to agree with this premise will find that this post helps deepen their thinking.
There is a lot I could write on this topic. But for today, I’m just going to include a few great excerpts I’ve come across lately on why religion matters. Then I will finish with a thought from me and some links and recommendations. Onward!
On The Essentiality of Religion
Every living culture in history, from the smallest tribe to the largest civilization, has been built around a spiritual core: a central claim about the relationship between human culture, nonhuman nature, and divinity. Every culture that lasts, I suspect, understands that living within limits—limits set by natural law, by cultural tradition, by ecological boundaries—is a cultural necessity and a spiritual imperative. There seems to be only one culture in history that has held none of this to be true, and it happens to be the one we’re living in.
Now I started to dimly see something I ought to have seen years before: that the great spiritual pathways, the teachings of the saints and gurus and mystics, and the vessels built to hold them—vessels we call “religions”—might have been there for a reason. They might even have been telling us something urgent about human nature, and what happens when our reach exceeds our grasp. G. K. Chesterton once declared, contra Marx, that it was irreligion that was the opium of the people. “Wherever the people do not believe in something beyond the world,” he explained, “they will worship the world. But above all, they will worship the strongest thing in the world.”
Source: Paul Kingsnorth, The Cross and the Machine
If Your are Blessed With Faith in God, You Have an Anchor
This is a scary, scary world. And I can’t tell you that there won’t be a nuclear war, or that there won’t be conditioned Venus runaway greenhouse… or that AI won’t wipe us out one way or another.
You need to hold your psychological balance in these conditions. It helps if you believe in something that’s not only bigger than you, but bigger than the United States government, and bigger than the whole human race.
And you can say, well that’s an illusion, and, well, people can feel that way. But if you are blessed with faith in God, you have an anchor. And that’s really important. I think it’s important too on things like the meritocracy. How many people do we know that basically sort of think, people who… get higher SATs than other people are better than other people…
If you believe in a God who made all human beings in his image and that my great nephew, Peter Joseph, who has Down’s Syndrome, is as much made in God’s image as I am and has as much right to walk the earth and be happy as I do, and, furthermore, is better than me in some ways and maybe not as good in others, but we are equal.
And if I have extra talents, am I supposed to use them simply for my own joy and benefit and to create a privileged place around my own family? Or do I have a duty to go out there and do things? Are they given to me for a purpose that is greater than me?
Source: Walter Russell Mead, Honestly Podcast
A Personal and Societal Call to Faith
Years ago, I read Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s fantastic memoir, Nomad, which chronicles her upbringing in Somalia, her escape to The Netherlands, her rejection of Islam, and so much more. Last week, she published a powerful piece titled, Why I Am Now a Christian. I highly recommend reading the entire article. An excerpt:
Yet I would not be truthful if I attributed my embrace of Christianity solely to the realization that atheism is too weak and divisive a doctrine to fortify us against our menacing foes. I have also turned to Christianity because I ultimately found life without any spiritual solace unendurable—indeed very nearly self-destructive. Atheism failed to answer a simple question: What is the meaning and purpose of life?
Russell and other activist atheists believed that with the rejection of God, we would enter an age of reason and intelligent humanism. But the “God hole”—the void left by the retreat of the church—has merely been filled by a jumble of irrational, quasi-religious dogma. The result is a world where modern cults prey on the dislocated masses, offering them spurious reasons for being and action—mostly by engaging in virtue-signaling theater on behalf of a victimized minority or our supposedly doomed planet. The line often attributed to G.K. Chesterton has turned into a prophecy: “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
Source: Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Why I Am Now a Christian
The Argument From Consequences
All of these quotes speak to the essential role that religion has played in our culture and the many benefits it has for both communities and individuals. But these arguments have an obvious flaw. To some degree or another, they all rely on a logical fallacy known as the argument from consequences. This fallacy is an argument that says either:
I believe this because the consequences of it being true are desirable, or
I don’t believe this because if it is true, the consequences are undesirable.
Many people do not want to believe that Gatorade and other sugar-packed “natural” foods are actually closer to sweets than health foods. They don’t want to believe that their “natural” granola bars have more sugar than a donut. They might not want to believe it if they are diagnosed with diabetes. But just because you don’t want to believe something doesn’t mean it isn’t true.
Similarly, these quotes argue that the consequences of religious faith are desirable, but that doesn’t necessarily make them true.
Many people get stuck right there.
A Response to People Who Are Stuck Right There
I could write a book dedicated to people who are stuck there. I’ve been there. For today, I’ll keep my responses brief.
The easy thing would be to turn from faith and turn from community and just live your life as you want. That is what most people do and it is a formula for misery.
We are only fully alive in community with others and real community requires shared values, commitments, tradition, and ideals. You have to be honest with yourself and you may find your views don’t perfectly match those in the pew next to you, but you need him and he needs you.
I can’t imagine building a life, a marriage, or a family without my wonderful church. Part of that, I believe, is because I wasn’t supposed to.
Still, I completely understand and sympathize with those that find the blind dogmatism and un-reflective belief characteristic of some religious people to be unpalatable. It is immature, shallow, and easily perverted towards negative ends. But that is not everyone, everywhere. That is a strawman.
If you commit, wrestle, and persist, you’ll find scores of people who asked the same questions. And you’ll find traditions full of unfathomable depth.
For those interested in this topic, I recommend these books:
The Universal Christ, by Fr. Richard Rohr
Here All Along, by Sarah Hurwitz
Dominion, by Tom Holland
Also, some great related, articles:
Why I Am Now a Christian (a must read), by Ayaan Hirsi Ali
Why I Ran Away from Philosophy Because of Sam Bankman-Fried, by Ted Gioia
Does Jordan Peterson Believe in God? (a great read from a nuanced thinking once-atheist philosophy student who became a Christian priest)
William James’ The Will to Believe: God and the Good Life, by Meghan Sullivan
Thank you for reading and sharing with any kindred spirits!
Carry the fire!
Shane