I have just had a very pleasant meeting of the minds with Justin Barrett here in Oxford, who gave me some of his time. We agreed on a lot, and this has set me thinking that I should document some of the claims I intend to make in my research, or at least try to defend.
I believe that there is no such thing as a monotheism. No religion in existence lacks any nondivine or demonic entities other than the central or highest deity. If the saints and angels and demons of modern Catholicism or any other flavour of Christianity were represented in Greek mythology, we’d call them gods. So they are gods (a view that Justin argues in his book).
Much of the trouble lies in taking modern religions at their word – that they are somehow “typical” of religion or that their own account of supernatural beings is the one to adopt. But none of the world religions, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism and Confucianism, are typical of religions in general. They are all highly derived religions which have, in my opinion, both spread through the cosmopolitan civilisation of the modern imperial world because of their “preadaptedness”, so to speak, to the social ecology in which they found themselves, and also have evolved while this was happening to be more useful in those ecologies.
A social ecology, by the way, is the totality of all the social needs and pressures of the society in which religions exist; including economic and political pressures as well as ritual psychological needs, and community building roles. And just like in biological evolution, social “species” can construct an ecological niche for themselves. One way to do this is to set up a problematic which they and only they resolve (like Original Sin).
The reason why no religion is monotheistic, not even Islam (djinn, remember, and angels), is that we have a disposition towards dramatic narratives, and a god with no peers is largely going to be boring. This is why Buddhism, which in theory has no deity at all, nevertheless has scores of devas and demons in folk theology, and why the Buddha himself has been made divine. This is why the Christian god, who in theory is infinitely powerful, can be challenged by an angel of his own making. Even secular and supposedly non-supernatural “religions” like Confucianism and Stalinism have their divinities. In Confucianism, Kung FuTzu is not a divine figure, but all Confucianists practise ancestor worship and believe in various kinds of supernatural beings.
Stalin himself is the deity, and the reason I mark him out that way is that he was supposed to have attributes no physical person could have, such as knowledge of what would make things work when nobody thought anyone could know what was going on economically. Such super-stimulus properties are the mark of a deity. They transcend what we ordinarily think of as human capacities. Justin calls this the minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concept of gods, in which they are slightly, but not totally, unlike human beings in their capacities. Even the high and distant Christian god still has emotions, intentions and acts. This is an MCI deity.
There is an important distinction to make between “religion” as a group of largely heterogeneous ritual behaviours, as a set of modern institutions, and as a psychological disposition. These are not the same phenomena, and call for distinct explanations. Justin said that he and Pascal Boyer often wish they could give the phenomena they are discussing abstruse names like DFX43, because religion is so overloaded. This is part of a general problem of classification on which I have often discoursed on this blog, so you either know what I think about trashcan classification or don’t care. It’s very important, to avoid confusions of inference, to be sure that what you are explaining remains the same at the end of the explanation as it was when the explanation was called for. Sliding between senses causes no end of trouble.
I would index the phenomena – social religion, psychological experiential religion, and so forth. For instance, what I wish to explain is why all human societies have religious institutions, but not all human societies have the same kind of these institutions, so I wish to explain why hierarchical priestly religions exist in sedentary agrarian societies. I index that with the adjective binding religions. It implies that nothing much is to be gained by discussing so-called “religious rituals” in foraging societies, because the “religion” is of a piece with political and social organisation, economics and interaction with the nonsocial environment. One might as well call hunting behaviours religious in such societies (and before I am accused of exaggeration, such things are said).
One aspect of this debate that I was shocked by Justin’s comments on, is that the cultural anthropologists still insist on the tabula rasa (blank slate) view of social construction of religion. If you tried that in biology, you’d be laughed at. There is a thing in the philosophy of biology called an interactionist consensus, that genes, development and ecology all work together to generate the organism. Likewise, biology, social and nonsocial ecology, and human history all work together to generate society, and that includes religion. Thinking otherwise is, to put it mildly, blind.
I do not know how those who accept this and are religious reconcile naturalism of religion with their beliefs. That’s really not my concern (it’s theirs). Justin holds to some sort of religious beliefs (he has C. S. Lewis and other religious writers on his shelves), and admits to it (in fact is rather proud of his religion) in the final chapter of his book. He seems to be a really well informed and intelligent, rational, person. My own view is this:
If you are for other reasons an atheist, the naturalisation of religion will give you comfort (although, as Justin observes in his book, atheism is an unstable and hard view that runs counter to the biological dispositions we all share). If you are for other reasons religious, it will make it clear to you that religion really is natural (and you might be inclined to use it as evidence of a god). If you are an agnostic like me, then it is an interesting fact about the nature of human beings. It has no metaphysical implications one way or the other.
Your mileage may vary…
This is the most interesting post – and comment thread – I have read anywhere, in ages. Keep it up, chaps. Perhaps tangentially, I went into Crox Minor’s school today to be a fly-on-the-wall in her favourite class of the week, which is called ‘philosophy’, and is what we’d have called ‘divinity’. (Crox Minor is 11). Basically, it’s comparative religion in its broadest sense, including atheism, ethics, environmental ethics and so on. It was very impressive, and the standard of debate among the students – their knowledge, and spirit of enquiry – was hearteningly high. A hopeful sign. I should say that Crox Minor’s school is a state comprehensive whose headline achievements in terms of grades at exam time are, to be charitable, extremely modest. What do they know, huh?
Children are always able to argue these things with verve and interest until they are corrupted by us philosophers, and educators, and other authority figures.
But it can’t hurt for kids to know there even are other religions. I have met Protestants in their 50s who thought that the other religion was Catholicism, and a few mad arabs who were Muslims.
A follower of an Abrahamic religion believes in a God who is omnipotent and the cause of everything else that exists. There can be no more than one such being, and there would seem as great an ontological gulf between Him and other supernatural beings as there is between Him and us. The Greek myths had it that their gods could be physically injured (eaten! castrated!); Greek popular religion had gods but not God.
John writes, “I am, when studying “religion”, concerned with religions as they occur as social traditions and institutions, so the “god of the philosophers” is irrelevant.”
But this “God of the philosophers” is part of the social tradition. It’s not as if the official theology is always sealed off from popular religion. In particular, I would cite evangelicalism. We don’t have anything like the Catholic concept of “sainthood” (we follow New Testament usage in counting all believers as saints, and don’t consider dead saints as able to act as intermediaries, much less act on their own), and don’t generally have or desire any dealings with angels. The religion as experienced only has one object, and as thought puts the most important distinction where there is only one being on the other side from us. In what meaningful way is that not monotheism?
The Greek myths had it that their gods could be physically injured
And Christianity has it that the Incarnation was killed.
In what meaningful way is [Christian evangelicalism] not monotheism?
Most evangelical denominations are still Trinitarian, which, despite the insistence of its adherents of the unity of the Trinity, looks from the outside to be a significant departure from monotheism.
I always thought the concept of angels and demons was still very much a part of the evangelical experiance for many. “Stronger and more powerfull” than mere humans certainly.
http://wesvanderlugt.wordpress.com/2008/02/04/a-biblical-view-of-angels-and-demons/
“Bold and arrogant, these men are not afraid to slander celestial beings; yet even angels, although they are stronger and more powerful, do not bring slanderous accusations against such beings in the presence of the Lord. But these men blaspheme in matters they do not understand. They are like brute beasts, creatures of instinct, born only to be caught and destroyed, and like beasts they too will perish.”
And isn’t the God of the philosophers the product of naturalistic processes, just as much as the God of popular tradition?
To clarify my last post: philosophy itself is a product of naturalistic processes, since a philosopher’s brain came about like everyone else’s.
As I understand you are asking whether or not the more rarefied traditions aren’t part of the thing I am trying to explain, and that is correct, they are. But they are not a deeply or widely held part of those traditions and excising them from the explanandum doesn’t materially affect the problem. In another sense we can say that once we have explained the mass of religion, the rarefied versions can be dealt with as a subsidiary problem. Another way to express that is that the existence of philosophers is a separate concern to the existence of religious adherents.
Do philosophers really exist?
jackd;
Your refusal to attend to the content of Christian theology does not cause that theology to simplify itself into a strawman for you.
Greek popular religion had it that the gods were injured in their own native forms, something quite impossible for the God of an Abrahamic religion. The Incarnation, of course, means the addition of something else, other than divinity, which means something beside the point in this specific connection. It doesn’t really matter how Trinitarianism looks to you; “monotheism” is not synonymous with either unitarianism or tawhid.
Jeb;
Certainly no evangelical worships demons, even apotropaically. But more fundamentally, most evangelicals aren’t into “spiritual warfare” at all. Therefore the argument still fails.
Mal Adapted;
Eh, so? That’s irrelevant to the point I was making, even if true.
“As our Religione obleidges us not, to make a peremptory & curious search into these abstrusenesses; so the Histories of all Ages give us many plain exemples of extrodinary occurances as make modest inquiry not contemptible. How much is written of pigme’s, faries, Nymphs, Syrens, Apperitions, which thou not the tenth part true, yet could not spring out of nothing?”
Robert Kirk “The Secret CommonWealth or a Treatise Displaying the Chief Curiosities Among the people of Scotland As They Are in Use to This Day”
Aaron in the late 17th century when the new sciences were causing some concern to the faithfull an examination of such species as pigmies, faries, nymphs, syrens and subjects like second sight and prophecy were substantives that would demonstrate something else.
Using the new sciences an investigation of such subjects was bound to yeild empirical proof of the supernatural realm.
“Some things (tho nothing Demonstrative) perswade me still to suspect that the Qualities of the eyes and air in these places, May contribute much to this sight, for as to the emission of species especially from moving bodies, Beings are to be little doupted But that the species should flow from things before they existed whilst they are only potentiall… Requyrs a new system of phillosophy for explcating it.
Lord Reay letter to S Pepys 1699
Its a tangled web that constricts and conspires to lead thought to the centre of the network and the home of a somewhat singular creature.
I put things in an overly complicated fashion before. Here’s the thing: a God without company is just a thing, a substance, not a subject.
When God says, “Let there be light!” who is he talking to?
I look at it like this, if there was only one deity and no bad guys, who is he going to save us from? if its from ourselves doesn’t that sort of point to the fact that he/she didn’t do such a good job in the first place?
The entity that created God, obviously.
Jim Harrison;
Which is a very good point to make, but not at all the same thing as saying there’s no such thing as monotheism unless you’re entitled to decide for others what they mean by “god”. You aren’t.
Aaron,
I’m not telling anybody what they ought to mean by the word “god.” I’m just pointing out that a radically solitary god is rather like a naked light bulb in an infinite basement.
The characteristics that an entity needs to possess to be a person that can make, do, care, suffer, feel, think, know, judge, or demonstrate any other form of intentionality seem to require something like membership in a community simply to make sense, let alone to constitute a marketable protagonist.