Definition of religion馃挮
In the following lectures I propose to consider the various possible justifications for religious belief. Every generation must face this concern in one way or another. It is characteristic of religion that humanity constantly changes its attitude towards it.
The contrast between religion and the elementary truths of arithmetic illustrates what I mean. Countless ages ago, the basic doctrines of arithmetic sprang from the human mind; and since then the dogma that three and two make five has exercised unlimited sway. We all share the same doctrine; and it is not necessary to study its historical evolution to understand it.
Now, we have no idea what, in the realm of doctrine, religion implies. There is no blanket definition of religion we can agree on, no way to distinguish "good" from "bad" religion; there is no consensus as to what can be a valid religious belief; not even in what we mean when we speak of religious truth. For all this, we need to show whether discussing its general principles is of value, given that religion has been an unquestionable factor in human history.
There is still another difference. As far as general truths are concerned, what is usually in dispute is doubtful; and, other things being equal, the doubtful is relatively inconsequential. We guard against guiding our actions under uncertain principles. If we don't know what 69 times 67 is, we defer action until we find out. We can put this little arithmetic riddle aside until it is answered; and we can answer it without much difficulty beyond any doubt.
But there is no level playing field between religion and arithmetic. Arithmetic is used while being religious. Insofar as one's nature includes a multitude of elements, it also includes arithmetic; but as a necessary condition, not as a transforming agency. No one can "justify" their beliefs in the multiplication table; More than one way or another, justification is the basis of all religion. Character grows according to faith. This is the fundamental religious truth from which no one can escape. Religion is the force of belief that internally purifies the believer. And therefore the fundamental religious virtue is sincerity, the most penetrating sincerity.
Thus we may define religion, in its doctrinal aspect, as a system of general truths which, if sincerely cherished and courageously grasped, profoundly transform character.
In the long run, character and conduct depend on the most intimate convictions. Life is, in itself, an internal fact, before externalizing and relating to others. The external conduct of life is conditioned by the environment; but its climax, on which its value depends, comes from the inner life, from the self-realization of what exists. Religion is the art and theory of the inner life of the human being, insofar as it depends on the human being himself and on what is permanent in the nature of things.
This theory is opposed to the notion that religion is primarily a social fact. There is no such thing as isolated and independent existence; therefore, social facts are of great importance for religion. Society cannot be abstracted from the human being, and although a large part of psychology is mass, herd behavior, collective emotion leaves intact the tremendous and last fact of the human being aware of himself, alone with himself, with his own nature.
Religion is what the human being does with his loneliness. If it evolves satisfactorily, it goes through three stages: from God, the void, to God, the Enemy; from God, the Enemy to God, the Companion.
Therefore, religion is loneliness; and if you are never alone, you are never religious. The collective enthusiasm, the festivals, the institutions, the churches, the Bibles, the moral codes, are the traps of religion, its fleeting incarnations. They can be useful, and also harmful; They can be authorized decrees or momentary records. The purpose of all religion lies far beyond.
Therefore, what religion must engender is the value of individual character. But this value can be positive or negative, good or bad. Religion does not necessarily have to be good and can, in fact, be terribly bad. The evil that is woven into the world's tapestry demonstrates that there is also a potential for degradation in the nature of things. One can have religious experiences with the God of Destruction, the God who crushes any transcendence in his wake.
We should not be blinded by the idea that religion has to be good, a dangerous illusion. What we must keep in mind is its great importance, which is evident in human history.
The rise of religion馃挮
When religion receives an expression in human history, it shows itself in four facets: ritual, emotions, belief, rationalization. There is an organized and defined procedure, the ritual; there are definite types of emotional expression; there is a determined series of beliefs; and there is the adjustment of these beliefs within a system, coherent with itself and with the rest of the ideas.
The influence of each factor throughout the ages has been uneven. The religious idea emerged gradually, at first almost indistinguishable from all other human interests. The factors appeared in the opposite direction to their importance: first the ritual, then the emotion, then the belief and finally the rationalization.
The emergence of each stage was gradual; consisted of an increase in emphasis. It is perhaps wrong to claim that the last two factors were once absent; but, if we go back far enough, we discover that they are inconsequential, and that the emotion is only a side effect of the ritual. Later, emotion takes over; and ritual is used to generate it. Then the belief appears, in an attempt to explain the ritual-emotion set; and in it we can glimpse the seed of rationalization.
Only when belief and rationalization have been established can the value of solitude at the very heart of religion be discovered. The great religious conceptions that haunt humanity are solitary scenes: Prometheus chained to the rocks, the preparation of Muhammad in the desert, the meditations of the Buddha, the secluded Man on the Cross. In the depths of the religious spirit is the feeling of helplessness, of having been abandoned by God himself.
Ritual and emotion馃挮
Ritual precedes humanity. We find it in animals, in their individual habits and their collective evolutions. It can be defined as the habitual execution of defined actions that have no direct relationship with the organic preservation of its actor.
Flocks of birds perform their ritual evolutions in the skies; so do, in Europe, the rooks and the starlings. Ritual is the most primitive result of excess energy and idleness. It exemplifies the tendency of living beings to repeat their own acts. Thus, the actions necessary for hunting food, or other beneficial purposes, are repeated without further justification, and with them the pleasure of the exercise and the emotion of success are also repeated.
In this way, the emotion depends on the ritual; and the ritual is repeated and perfected in pursuit of the emotion that accompanies it. Human beings became ritual artists. It was a tremendous discovery: they learned to arouse emotions, not out of compelling biological necessity, but simply by feeling them. But the emotion sensitizes the organism; consequently, involuntarily, the human organism became sensitive to harmonies that mere survival activities would never have accentuated.
There humanity began its adventure of curiosity and feeling.
According to this hypothesis, both religion and play and theater were born from ritual; for the ritual is the stimulus of emotion, and a repeated ritual can become a religion or a game depending on the emotion it triggers. Until comparatively modern times (5th century BC), the Greek Olympic Games were tinged with religiosity; and the Dionysian festival in Attica concluded with a comedy. Still, in the modern world, Sunday is "the Lord's day" (dominus).
There are other ways, apart from ritual, to artificially stimulate emotion; drugs, for example. Happily, the primitive races could not choose among many kinds of drugs. There is, however, ample evidence of the religious use of drugs, in conjunction with the religious use of ritual. According to Athenaeus of Naucratis, it was a sacred duty of the Persian king, at the annual festival of the god Mithra, to appear in the temple in a state of intoxication. A remnant of religious sentiment in the face of intoxication is the use of wine at mass, testimony to the ritual's tendency to turn a crude and primitive association of ideas into sublime symbolism.
In this primitive phase of religion, dominated by ritual and emotion, we come across essentially social phenomena. The ritual is more impressive, and the emotion more intense, when it is practiced by the entire society. Concomitantly, rituals and collective emotions are the forces that unite the savage tribes. They are the first glimpses of the spiritual life that rises above the animal tasks of survival. Reciprocally, when religion deteriorates, it sinks back into sociability.
Belief馃挮
Ritual and emotion cannot be kept apart from the intellect. The idea of repeating the ritual for the sake of emotion may explain the unconscious psychology of primitive tribes; but it is too abstract for them to notice. The myth satisfies the incipient need for rationality. Human beings discovered that they practiced rituals, and that these generated emotions; the myth explains the purpose of both. It is born from the vivid fantasy of the primitive in an incomprehensible world.
For the primitive (like the primitive in us), the universe is not so much incomprehensible as misunderstood; that is, indiscriminate, not subject to analysis. It is not a set of defined and unexplained events, but a vague background dotted with objects and emotions. The minimal conditions of rationality, the interrelationships that sustain it, are absent. But the initial stage consists of a vague background dotted with vivid acts, discrete but isolated from each other. Tribal needs-satisfying routines are the exception to this rule. But what lies beyond these routines is indeterminate and uncertain; and when it is vivid, it is also isolated.
The myth that complements the ritual is an especially vivid fantasy, or the distorted memory of such a fantasy, which not only explains both the ritual and the emotion but also generates the emotion when associated with the ritual. Thus, the myth not only allows us to understand the ritual: it also reinforces its hidden purpose, obtaining emotion.
In this way, ritual, emotion and myth interact; and myths have varying degrees of parallelism with real events and with symbolic truths, truths of such magnitude that they can only be apprehended through parables. Sometimes the myth precedes the ritual; but, in general terms, ritualization precedes mythology, since even animals show ritualizations devoid of myths.
Myths emphasize the importance of a particular person or thing, real or imagined. In a way, therefore, the ritual, added to the mythological explanation, is the primitive worship of the heroic thing or person. However, worship among primitives is almost never disinterested; So from the belief in myth follows the belief that something must either be achieved by it or avoided by it. Thus emerge the incantations, the prayer, the praise and the ritual absorption of the hero. When the hero is a person, we call the myth and its concomitant ritual religion; when it's a thing, we call them magic. In religion you pray, in magic you command. One important difference is that religion is progressive and magic is not (except insofar as science is derived from it).
When belief reaches this level, religion becomes a new formative agent of human evolution. For just as ritual pushed emotion beyond the response to basic needs, religion gives rise to ideas independent of the pressure of circumstances. Here the imagination was propped up on its upward path; thus the thought was separated from the present objects. His conceptions, though hideous and crude, were no longer subject to the sensitive perception of immediacy.
This is the stage of disorganized beliefs. He has a peculiar tolerance: the most dissimilar beliefs coexist without difficulty. There is so little coordination that they all have a place. Yet religion is still an entirely social phenomenon. The cult extends to the tribe, or at least to a well-defined social group. One cannot give up his sect; but the sects do not argue among themselves. A tribe at the highest stage of this stage has several gods and a chaotic plethora of myths and rituals.
Religion can be a source of progress, but not necessarily, especially if it is of this kind and consists of a collage of unexamined beliefs. It is not difficult for a tribe to become stagnant with its collection of myths; there may be no external factor that stimulates evolution. In fact, it is here that the mass of semi-civilized humanity finds itself: in the ritual that satisfies, in the satisfied belief, without any desire for transcendence. This religion passes the pragmatic test: it works, and can therefore claim the status of truth.
Rationalism馃挮
With the rise of rationalism, the martyrs enter the scene. The previous phases have been essentially social: many were called, and all were chosen. This final phase introduces loneliness: And the gate is narrow and the road that leads to life is narrow, and few find it (Mt 7, 14). The religion that forgets this fact regresses towards an atavistic barbarism: it appeals to the psychology of the herd and not to the intuitions of a few.
This is a very modern phase of religion: about the last six thousand years. Obviously, there is no point in fixing an exact duration: we can extend it to include some early movement or reduce it to exclude the remains of the previous phases. This movement has spread to all the civilized races of Europe and Asia. At first, Asia was a prolific terrain; but, in the last two thousand years, Europe has set the pace. It should be noted that the two best examples of rationalist religion have flourished above all outside their native countries.
The Bible is undoubtedly the most complete document of the rationalization of religion; although it is only relevant as such to the region between the Tigris and the Nile. It displays the progressive loneliness of religion: at first, predominant ways of thinking; then, the protest of the prophets, isolated figures who denounce and agitate the Jewish nation; then, the appearance of a man, with twelve disciples, who suffered the almost total rejection of his society; lastly, another man who adapted his doctrine for the common public, a man who (and this is of great importance) did not access it firsthand. In his hands, the doctrine gained some things and lost others; fortunately we also preserve the Gospels.
It is obvious that the period of six thousand years that I have advanced, apart from agreeing with the available evidence, corresponds to the Biblical chronology. We, the Europeans and the Americans, are heirs of the religious movements condensed there. To be relevant, the discussion of religious methods and their justifications must take the Bible as its example. However, the general claims must also be contrasted with Buddhism and Islam, even if they are not explicitly discussed.
In rational religion, beliefs and rituals have been reorganized to make them the center of a coherent and orderly way of life. This coherence applies both to the elucidation of thought and to the need for action to be directed toward a common purpose that ethics has approved.
Religion occupies a peculiar position between the most abstract metaphysics and the particular principles that govern the most concrete realms of experience. The relevance of his concepts can only be discerned in rare moments of lucidity; and, at least for most of us, only at the behest of external signaling. Thus, religion is founded on a narrow range of the totality of experiences of a people. On the one hand, religion is one more of the specific interests of humanity whose truths are of limited validity. On the other hand, religion affirms that its concepts, although derived from particular experiences, have universal validity, and must be used to order the totality of experience by virtue of faith.
Rational religion appeals to the direct intuition of exceptional occasions and to the clarifying power of its concepts for other occasions. It is born from what is exceptional, but extends to the general. The doctrine of rational religion claims to be a metaphysics derived from the unusual experience of the human spirit at its most penetrating moments. In theory, rational religion could have arisen without the need for the social religions of ritual and mythical belief. This was how theologians defended their religions before the appearance of historical meaning. However, the history of religion in general, and that of the Bible in particular, belies that assumption. Rational religion sprang from transformations of previous religious forms. There came a time when the old ways could not encompass the new ideas; modern religions stem from such crises of development. And the development did not stop: it only acquired better forms of expression.
The appearance of rational religion was determined by the general progress of the races that gave birth to it. For this, ethical intuitions and general ideas were needed; ideas that, coming out of the brilliant individual minds, were embodied in stable forms of expression that made it possible to remember and communicate them. One can only speak of "mercy" with people who are already merciful in some area of their lives.
A language does not allow the expression of all possible ideas. It is a limited medium that expresses the most current and necessary ideas of the group that developed it. It has been a very short time, comparatively speaking, that language has general terms. And these terms need a literature that, keeping them in circulation, permanently defines them through use. Therefore, the manipulation of general ideas is a recent acquisition. I do not want to say that the brains of human beings were not capable of conceiving them; but several ages were necessary for them to develop, first, the utensils, and second, the habits, which have made generalizing thought possible and common. This process could have been shortened if human beings had come into contact with a superior race, directly or through their literature. In fact, this is how the breeds of northern Europe have been developing. Likewise (and as has happened in reality) a social system that promotes the development of thought can accelerate this process. Language and society have grown together.
Great has been the influence of earlier religious forms based on ceremonial, myth, and sociality; and unequal the value that has been attributed to them. Rationalism struggled to transform the most primitive modes during the thousand years before the Christian era. The result was the synthesis that we have inherited in the form of the great contemporary religions. Religious ideas became more rational and general; and the myths became descriptions of historical events that exemplified the general ideas perfectly.
Great has been the influence of earlier religious forms based on ceremonial, myth, and sociality; and unequal the value that has been attributed to them. Rationalism struggled to transform the most primitive modes during the thousand years before the Christian era. The result was the synthesis that we have inherited in the form of the great contemporary religions. Religious ideas became more rational and general; and the myths became descriptions of historical events that exemplified the general ideas perfectly.
This is how rational criticism was received; it went from tribal custom to direct individual intuition, be it ethical, metaphysical or logical: Because I want love, not sacrifices; knowledge of God, not holocausts, exclaims, through the mouth of Hosea (6, 6), Jehovah, when he appeals to individual criticism (based on direct ethical intuition) of tribal custom.
In this way, religion abdicated its communal aspects to approach individualistic forms. The religious unit was the individual, not the community; tribal dancing became less important than private prayer; and this became (at least for a minority) an attempt to justify oneself through self-discovery.
Thus, today, it is the French who go to heaven, and not France; the Chinese who achieve nirvana, and not China.
In this period of struggle, the innovators judged the traditional religions very harshly. The Bible is full of condemnations of idolatry; and it contains hints of an even greater rejection: I hate, I hate your festivals, and I take no pleasure in your solemnities, says Jehovah through Amos (5, 21).
Today we need this critical spirit. History is a record of horrors committed in the name of religion. Human sacrifices (especially of children), cannibalism, orgies, superstitions, hatred of other races, degrading habits, hysteria, fanaticism: all this and more can be attributed to it. Religion is the last refuge of barbarism. The facts belie the association between religion and goodness. Religion can be (and has been) the main instrument of progress. But this has been the exception rather than the rule: Because many are called, but few are chosen. (Mt 22, 14).
The rise of the human being馃挮
In each age, new factors emerge that will influence the rise (or descent) of humanity. During the millennium before the birth of Christ, communal religions ceased to be engines of progress. In general, they had a beneficial effect: revitalizing feelings of unity and social responsibility. The emotion of being fully devoted to the tribe was expressed in community cults, which in turn fostered the appearance of interests other than mere survival. And concrete beliefs arose that justified these emotions.
But there was a moment when they stopped their advance, although they were still necessary to preserve the social structure. They had accomplished their task. They protected the traditional virtues that had brought their race to greatness; but they were opposed to the new virtues that tried to convert the world into the City of God. They were middle ground religions; and the middle term is at odds with the ideal.
Human thought had transcended the limited horizon of its own society: the notion of the world in its entirety penetrated human consciousness, thanks, in part, to the facilities (previously non-existent) to travel alone freely. The tribe traversing dangerous territory may acquire new ideas; but their sense of tribal unity is strengthened by this hostile environment.
Instead, the traveling individual enters into relationships with strangers on benign terms. And when he returns home, his life and his example promote the habit of thinking dispassionately about what lies beyond the tribe. There are many stories in the history of rational religion of people disengaging from their social routines. In the Bible, for example: Abraham wandered, the Jews were exiled in Babylon for two generations, Saul became Saint Paul in the middle of a journey and elaborated his doctrines along many others. His was the millennium of travel: Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, Xenophon, Aristotle, to name the Greeks. Empires and the mercantile infrastructure made travel a common occurrence: everyone traveled to meet a new world. Global consciousness was born.
India and China obtained it in different ways, although in relation to the same factors. The separation of the individual from his immediate social environment gave a great impetus to thought.
Now then: with regard to religion, global consciousness and social consciousness differ in their respective conceptions of good. Social conscience is concerned only with individuals one knows (and esteems) personally; therefore, good is linked to survival. Behavior is good if it moves superior forces to protect us, and bad if it irritates them against us. This religion is a form of diplomacy. Global consciousness is detached; It assumes that things possess an essential goodness. Individuals do not matter, because they are not known. The (somewhat profane) idea of God's goodness displaces that of divine will. In a communal religion, the divine will is studied in order to obtain its approval; in a rationalized religion thanks to the global conception, the goodness of him is studied in order to approach it. This is what distinguishes the enemy one appeases from the partner one imitates.
The final contrast馃挮
We see, thanks to this historical summary, that rational religion is a consequence of global consciousness. The conscious reaction of human nature to social organization dominates the later phases of communal religion. This reaction is partly emotion clothed in belief and ritual, and partly the rational justification of behavior that contributes to the maintenance of society. Rational religion is the conscious and comprehensive reaction of human beings to the universe of which they are a part.
Communal religion reached almost to the rational. Its last phase in the West was the religion of the Roman Empire, which took an extremely broad view of social structure. The cult of Empire was more or less the religion that a university law school could invent today, aware that mere penal repression does not prevent the scourge of crime. In fact, it is enough to study the mentality of the Emperor Augustus and his collaborators to see that this is not far from the truth.
The Jews found another form of communal religion, the ideas of which made the nature of things depend on their importance to the Hebrew race. This was an effective but unstable compromise: the kind of religion to which societies tend to return for refuge. It is the religion of the contemporary statesman, industrialist, and reformer. Among the Jews it resulted in the birth of Christianity and the Diaspora at the hands of the Roman army; between us contributed to the advent of our last Great War. It carries with it the morbid exaggeration of nationalist self-consciousness; it lacks the ingredient of rest. Globality is the salt of religion.
After the Christianization of the Roman Empire, the world could choose between two rational religions: Buddhism and Christianity. Of course, both had plenty of competitors; but they were left behind in clarity, generality, moral respectability, survivability, and expandability. Then they had to face the challenge of Islamism. But they are, even today, the two truly "Catholic" religions (that is, universal); and if we compare their current situation with their history, we must conclude that they are in decline. They have lost their influence over humanity.
Whitehead, A. N. (2002). La religi贸n en la historia. Athenea Digital Revista de pensamiento e investigaci贸n social, 1(1). https://dialnet.unirioja.es/servlet/articulo?codigo=6927376https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/athenead/v1n1.26
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