Sep 02 2008
Religion as a Replaceable Raison D’être (Reason for Being): Part III
Besides being individuals with unique needs and desires, human beings are social animals. We are drawn to groups: we feel comfort when part of a group; we live and work as group members. Besides personal reasons for being, we can have social reasons for being. Social reasons include the ideas and customs that justify and maintain group formation and inclusion.
A group’s canon and beloved texts may not reflect the current values of its members, yet they nonetheless provide an umbrella to converge beneath. What the group provides and encourages among its members is a product of the group’s values. Religion does not so much determine values as it proposes potential values and provides the reasons for the dissemination and encouragement of the values the group and/or its leaders already holds or wants to hold. That is why there are Christian groups of all stripes: liberal, conservative, peaceful, violent, you name it.
As a mildly introverted person, I feel no strong push to participate in group activities beyond family gatherings. The groups I do join and enjoy generally involve education and/or perceived threats to secular education: freethought, humanistic, atheistic. I have other concerns and emotions that draw me, with some success, to groups such as the Audubon Society. My reason for being an Audubon Society member includes a conservationist bent and an avid interest in birds.
While I believe it is inappropriate to poke your uninvited nose into personal reasons for being, social reasons are another matter. Social groups carry political clout. They also lead to the drawing of lines between “us” and “them.” To those outside a group, if a group’s social reason for being is benign to society at large, or better yet – beneficial – that is certainly a different story than groups whose reasons set them at odds with others. If the social raison d’être of a group threatens nonmembers, the appropriate response is open criticism. Dangerous values, and any reasoning used to justify them, should be opposed.
In the wake of the recent controversial books mentioned in part II of this three-part series, I have heard a number of criticisms. Two of these could be worded as 1) People need religion. You shouldn’t try to take it away from them. 2) People aren’t going to change; religion is here to stay. In an issue of Free Inquiry magazine, Sam Harris invited readers to offer their answers to charges like these. Here are mine as they pertain to the theme of religion as a raison d’être.
Don’t take away their religion seems akin to saying don’t take away their reasons because people need reasons. When stripped of reasons, however, people don’t respond, gee, now I’m reasonless, I guess I’ll wander aimlessly through life or maybe just end it all. They find or create others – given time and opportunity.
Some well-intentioned thinkers have suggested that atheists/scientists should synthesize cogent and appealing alternative reasons in anticipation of need. While publicly condemning dangerous/unhealthy values is justified, determining which reasons and values a person should hold, or even giving a sales pitch about the benefits of your own, strikes me as arrogant.
On a tangential note: when we do criticize, must we “make nice”? For the validity of an argument, delivery matters not. But in terms of persuasiveness, it does. Yet we mustn’t forget that there are many different degrees and types of believers. Each human being has a unique personality and differing tastes. To effectively reach others, rather than a unanimous chorus, perhaps numerous distinct voices would succeed better: brazen, polite, romantic, irreverent, academic, diplomatic, tentative, enraged, comic, etc.
As for the second claim, that “people are not going to change,” I ask, has the monotheism of developed countries been practiced by all cultures for all of time, and is thus inevitable? A wider anthropological and historical perspective will show greater plasticity, over time, than is presumed.
Furthermore, with little effort we can discover that it is possible for individuals to live, gather, and act for reasons other than religion. Millions do it. What are these reasons? They are familial, political, humanistic, scientific, entrepreneurial, hedonistic, philanthropic, etc. To argue that religion and religion alone provides reasons for being is to assign it a special, undeserved status. From the data I’ve seen, less-religious social groups and nations tend to do just fine in all important measures of health and happiness.
When discussing religion, whether in terms of the danger it poses (motivating/justifying violence, placing barriers of dogma before the possibility of a more accurate understanding of the universe) or in terms of potential benefits it may provide (rallying individuals to a humane cause, bringing personal comfort and health benefits) we are essentially referring to the work of social groups bonded by shared concerns. The frequently superfluous official creeds and supernatural elements can distract us from the more crucial issue: the values embedded in a person or a group’s reasoning about life and the world.
