Functions of religion

I spotted this on Twitter this morning, retweeted by my friend Mike Hitchcock:

"Religion is man’s quest for assurance that he won’t be dead when he will be."

I like that.  From my funeral experience as well as from my study of religion, that seems to me to be the case, although not the whole case. The desire for reassurance that death is not the end is very strong, even in non-believers. Another factor, which also applies to magic, is the quest for control over nature, such as through praying for rain. Both of those primitive desires or needs are very understandable.

Another primitive desire behind religion is the quest to understand, for example "where did all this come from?" Religions are loaded with attempts to answer that kind of question. And why not? For some reason we desire, maybe even need, to know. The only caveat with such a reasonable attempt is the necessity of the ability to move on when the answers given prove to be inadequate.

Nowadays, and for a very long time, religion has at least two other functions. First it bestows political power on its leaders and underwrites the power of the secular rulers, who always seem to be in cahoots with some kind of religious belief. Second, it provides reassurance that what you are comfortable with will not change.

The first of these keeps people ignorant and subservient and must be challenged. The second tells them everything is alright when it isn't and so hinders human growth and responsibility. So that too needs to be confronted.

Religious belief

I am as horrified by the events in Bangladesh in the news today as everyone else. Believers in anything calling for those who do not share their beliefs to be hanged is about as ghastly a thing as can be imagined, except that their wish should become reality.

But it is a sign or symptom of what I am for ever banging on about. Religion is not an intellectual commitment, it is an emotional one, held in the guts, and therefore the irrational motor of extreme feelings and actions.

Just consider a few examples of very clever people justifying their religious commitment with serious argument. The one I know most about is Augustine, Bishop of Hippo and intellectual giant of his time. In his writings you can find clearly set out his struggle with himself and his attempt to justify and develop doctrine through philosophy. His influence is still being felt today. But deeply as Augustine's thought ran, it's hard to see him other than as a man who felt, and felt deeply, first, and thought after.

I know very little about the Jewish philosopher Saadia Gaon, or the Arab philosopher Abū Bakr al-Rāzī. In fact, only what I've learned from Peter Adamson's podcasts. But it seems to me that both these learned and intelligent men were reasoning from within an established philosophical background in order to support their religious beliefs. It would be possible to make the same argument about many others, including such greats as Thomas Aquinas, right down to the present day.

As a theological student I was taught by a lady for whom I had the greatest respect and affection. She was unremittingly rigorous in following hard questions where ever they led. If I owe my move into atheism to anyone, it's her. But even she started from her religious conviction and argued in support of it, sometimes very radically. So much so she was on the fringe of being called, with al-Rāzī, "The Heretic".

If this is the case even for the most subtle thinkers how can it be less so for the rest of us? Without the intellectual capacity of philosophers, most believers don't actually reflect critically on their faith to any significant extent. This may be a sweeping generalisation, but my experience as a clergyman convinced me that there are some who are prepared to think hard, and to shift their position within the faith when forced by the line their thinking travels. There are some who find thinking about religious issues threatening, and who may join a Lent course once every few years, but largely they don't want to think in a way that challenges belief, they want to be confirmed and comforted. And there are the rest who don't think critically about their faith at all. For them, faith is a given, a fundamental emotional commitment. And when it is attacked, or perceived to be attacked, it is an emotional, sometimes violent, response that is provoked.

It seems to me that this holds true for every religious person that I have ever discussed the content of belief with. Once, long ago, when my own reflections on religion were beginning, I heard an august member of my local church say that science was no problem for his belief - there was nothing in scientific discovery that he could not reconcile with his faith. Then he paused - I remember clearly (but not necessarily correctly) the room, the time of day, the elder he was talking to: it made such an impression on me. And after the pause he said "If scientists could create life in a test tube, that might be the end of belief for me". I was 14 at the time. I have never met another believer who could say that there might be a rational cause for the end of faith.

Look at me: I had long realised that my beliefs did not stand examination, certainly not the kind of rigorous critical questioning that my doctrine teacher had encouraged. I recognised that all the evidence I knew about was that the Universe was very far from the place religion described. I was convinced by people like Don Cupitt that religion was a human invention. And still, I was a clergyman, taking services, to which I now think I was addicted in some way, for years after reaching that point. It was an emotional experience, the death from cancer of a friend, also a clergyman, who, with only days left to live asked me where I though God was "in all this", that finally killed what I had grown up with and been motivated by all my life.

Criticising the content of belief on rational grounds convinces no-one. Believers are satisfied that much of religion is and will always remain a mystery, and they don't expect to make sense of it. What remains important is criticising the pernicious effects that religion often has, which we see, sadly, all around us.