On Being Religious

On Being Religious

Essay by Charlie Obert, November 2020.

This essay originated with some thoughts I had after watching two online interviews – of Douglas Murray by Eric Metaxas, and of James Lindsay by Glenn Beck.

The same question came up in both interviews. Both Metaxas and Beck consider themselves religious – I am fairly sure they are both Christian. Neither Murray nor Lindsay believe in God or think of themselves as religious.

The question that was raised to both Murray and Lindsay was, where to you get the courage to be able to stand up against the crowd and speak what you believe, when you know you’ll be attacked and vilified for it?

Both Murray and Lindsay answered in about the same way. Neither said they thought of themselves as courageous. Both said they believe in truth, and believe in being loyal to the truth and having the responsibility to stand up for it.

That is what got me to thinking. There is some inner quality that both Murray and Lindsay have that they share in common with people who are religious and who live their convictions. It is that common inner quality that I want to explore here.

My Three Question Test

This next section in italics started out as a post on Facebook. The rest of the essay will be examining the implications of each of these questions. I invite you to pause for a minute after reading these, and meditate on them before moving on.

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The Word, Religious

I want to explain how I will be using the term religious here. I do not mean being a formal member of a church organization, or having to assent to a set of propositions like a creed.

These are the meanings given in an online Etymological Dictionary. I am highlighting the two senses of the term that I will be focusing on.

 

1) According to Cicero derived from relegere “go through again” (in reading or in thought), from re- “again” (see re-) + legere “read” (see lecture (n.)).

2) However, popular etymology among the later ancients (Servius, Lactantius, Augustine) and the interpretation of many modern writers connects it with religare “to bind fast” (see rely), via notion of “place an obligation on,” or “bond between humans and gods.”

3) Another possible origin is religiens “careful,” opposite of negligens.

4) In English, meaning “particular system of faith” is recorded from c. 1300;

5) sense of “recognition of and allegiance in manner of life (perceived as justly due) to a higher, unseen power or powers” is from 1530s.

 

I suspect that most people who say they are not religious are objecting to meaning 4, being part of an organization and assenting to a “particular system of faith”. Those who say they are not religious are taking the word as meaning membership to a church and allegiance to a creed as being true.

I am using the term primarily with meaning 5, which is broader – recognizing there are powers and laws greater than us that we owe allegiance to, who make a claim on our lives. Meaning 2 also is important – religion is that which binds the universe together, and binds us to the universe. and places an obligation on us to follow the larger laws of the universe.

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We will examine the four questions in order.

1) Does 2+2=4?

Mathematics is non-arbitrary. The universe has structure, and mathematical laws are part of it. If you take two stones, and add another two stones, and then count them, you will always end up with four stones. You can play games with the words, you can substitute other terms, but at the end of the day you will still have a pile of four stones sitting there.

Mathematics is a way of thinking about reality; it is mapping empirical data to conceptual structures in our minds. Assenting to this statement means you acknowledge the cosmos has structure, that it follows laws. Mathematics is a map in our minds, but it is a map that corresponds to something real. It is not JUST a map in our minds.

One of the best ways to approach these statements is to attempt to conceive what it would be like to live in a world where this did not apply. What would it be like if you lived in a world where you add 2 stones to 2 stones, and sometimes you end up with 4, sometimes with 5, sometimes with 3. It very rapidly breaks down and becomes unthinkable.

2) Is There Truth and Falsehood?

This is an expansion of rule 1.

The world operates by laws. These laws are non-arbitrary, and they work whether we acknowledge them or not.

Similarly, our use of language non-arbitrary. Language refers to something other than itself.

Our modern world claims there is no absolute truth and falsehood; that all truth or falsehood is relative; that words mean what I want them to mean; that rather than Truth, there is My Truth and Your Truth, that it boils down to a matter of personal perspective and opinion, and that we have no standard to judge.

This approach says that language is all about persuasion and expediency. The question isn’t, Is what I am saying true. Rather, the question is, Is what I am saying effective, does it accomplish what I want.

That word effective has some ambiguous connotations – it can be interpreted to mean that it is okay for me to lie, or to cheat, or to hide truth, or to deliberately deceive, if it gets me what I want. That is language as expediency, and it can include re-defining or deliberately blurring the meaning of words in order to manipulate, something that is very common in politics and in marketing today. That is dangerous, and self-contradictory, and sooner or later the system will break down.

Think about it – if there is no truth and falsehood then there is no such thing as lying.

Let’s push this further here.

If there are laws, that means there is a design or structure to the universe. One of the classic arguments for the existence of God is to say that any universe which created humans, or anything else, cannot be created by something less than humans. If we are conscious, than whatever created us must be conscious. If we have moral laws, than whatever created us must have moral laws. If we can create by design then the universe must be created by design.

This is the classic Argument by Design for the existence of God, and I find it to be the most compelling one. Using Tim Leary’s metaphor, to argue that our universe is the product of of something other than deliberate design is like arguing that a tornado could blow through a junkyard and assemble a 747 airliner.

If there is truth and falsehood – if there is structure and design to the universe – then if my language does not correspond to that structure I am breaking a law of the universe, and there are consequences for that. That is like sticking your hand in a fire and claiming you will not be burned since you do not choose to call fire hot. The fire doesn’t give a damn.

3 ) Is There Good and Evil?

This goes a step beyond saying the universe has laws and structure.This says that there is an inherent moral law to the universe, a law we can appeal to, a law that can be universally acknowledged.

For there to be a moral law there must be conscious intelligent living agents with free will who are able to choose to do good or evil, and that there are moral consequences for those choices. This claims that good and evil are not human inventions and confined to our minds. Good and evil are larger than us, they are part of the universe we inhabit. This means that the larger structure of the universe includes conscious intelligent agents that can make choices.

As humans, this means that we are conscious moral agents; that we can choose our actions; and that our actions have consequences.

Put these three principles together and you get conscious moral agents acting within a universe or order of shared principles – a shared framework. Since this framework includes moral laws you can think of it as a shared legal framework.

This implies a unity of design and structure, a framework within which we operate. This also implies individuals, conscious intelligent agents, choosing and acting.

Good and evil only have meaning to a consciousness that can perceive and evaluate it. If there is such a framework of good and evil in the universe this means that the universe operates within a framework of mind or minds that can reason, evaluate, judge good and evil.

Reason, judgment, needs a mind, a moral agent, in order to make any sense.

You can argue that points 1 and 2 don’t require a conscious evaluating agent. Point 3 does.

Trace that all the way back to our source, and it means that conscious agents acting according to laws, including moral laws, are part of the foundation of the universe.

If the moral laws are higher than us, then we are subject to them rather then our being able to arbitrarily choose the laws to get what we want.

This does not necessarily argue that our universe is a product of a conscious and evaluating god or gods. At the very least it means that our universe is based on Principles, including moral principles, and that those principles include consciousness, and intent, and ability to judge good and evil.

The people I used in my examples at the beginning may not believe in a Gaseous Vertebrate ruling over the cosmos. But, they do believe in laws, moral and physical laws, that rule over us, by which we must abide, and by which we are judged.

Again, to evaluate this law, try to imagine a world where there is no moral law, there is no moral evil. Try to imagine what it would be like to live in such a world. It gets very horrible very quickly. Without an agreed upon moral framework our interaction degrades down to the lowest level, what used to be called the law of the jungle, where good and evil is defined by who has the biggest club, the most powerful gun or bomb.

4) Do you live by these three rules?

Do we have moral laws that we are obligated to live by? Or, do we have only laws of expediency, where we do whatever gets us what we want.

Not, though shalt be moral, but, though shalt not get caught. If you can get away with breaking a moral law without getting caught then it’s okay.

This is a pretty serious point. It is one of the main topics of Plato’s Republic, the nature of justice. Do we abide by justice because it is good in its own right, or is justice an unpleasant feature of the world that we have to put up with, not for its own sake, but to get what we want. It is not an easy or self-evident call, which is why we still read and ponder the Republic thousands of years after it was written.

Do you fudge the rules to get what you want? Do you feel an obligation to be truthful even when it could cost you your friends, or your job, or your family? Do you say what you believe, or do you say what you think the people around you want to hear to make sure you’re accepted? Are you okay with stretching your resume just a bit to get that job you want?

Those are difficult questions.

Truth and Inner Strength

I want to go back to that issue of courage and inner strength.

Over the past four years, since 2016, I have been through a major revolution in what I think, in what I value, and in how I live my life and who I support. This has taken me in some, um, unpopular directions, so I’ve had to deal with the possibility of being attacked, or vilified, or ostracized, or slandered – the possibility of losing friends, supporters, family.

I’ve watched other people going through similar journeys. One of the common things I hear, is that deliberately lying or hiding your true thoughts to be “safe” rots and weakens you inside. It does something to your soul and your heart. Working past that fear, and going ahead and speaking up, is a strengthening and liberating process. When you do that you relax, expand and breathe inside. It feeds your heart. You’re more relaxed, you breathe more easily, you sleep better.

I am convinced that there really is a moral law to the universe. When we abide by that law it feeds, strengthens and supports us. When we break that law it weakens and destroys us from within.

Summing Up

I think that the people in my examples – Douglas Murray and James Lindsay, along with their interviewers, Eric Metaxas and Glenn Beck – believe there is such a thing as truth, such a thing as justice; that we must abide by those laws; that if we break those laws it does something to us as humans – it degrades us, it rots our consciousness, it weakens us mentally and spiritually.

You may or may not believe in a moral judgment after death. These principles say that this moral judgment is going on right now, in the present moment, and is always going on.

That is religion in the sense of what binds us all together, the set of laws and principles that we as conscious moral agents must abide by to be fully human and to lead good lives – and I mean the word good there in its full weight, as meaning positive and desirable, and also meaning morally good.

Final Note

As I was finishing up this essay, I spotted an ad for a game in my Facebook feed.

The game is called, Mafia City – “Fantastic world of mafia!You can do whatever you want in this game. Just have a try!”

You can do whatever you want in this game…

Welcome to the world where the three rules don’t apply. Get all the money you want, all the power you want, all the Babes you want – until someone else guns you down and trashes everything you control.

Would anyone be interested in such a world? The game has 1.5 million likes on Facebook, and 50 million downloads globally.

I went and looked at a review page, and I had to laugh – the players were bitching in the comments about how you need to spend thousands of real dollars to get strong enough to play in the game world, and even then stronger players will come in and bully you and wipe you out. In other words, they were complaining that a game about Mafia rules doesn’t play fair.

Here are a couple of the reviews. I confess I had to laugh.

The game is good and you get lots of updates every week but You can’t grow up without paying thousands in this game . The strong players always attack the weakest player, there are already enough strong player in every city so there is no chance to grow up free or with small amount of money. I am playing this game more than 6 months and without paying I can’t grow up.

I like the story of this one and feel that it’s entertaining enough, however just like with all the other games, I build up what I can and then every day some other larger, bigger player comes and completely destroys what I’ve built. I have no resources or troops left and I’m just stuck rebuilding. You start to feel like a supplier for whichever jerk wants to completely decimate your game that night. It’s frustrating. I will likely stop playing soon because the truces are expensive and there’s no reason for them not to farm lower level players…there’s no penalty or consequence for effectively bullying new players… I’ve been away from the game for 2 days and in that time higher level players savagely destroyed my turf for the resources. I’m disappointed that this is allowed to happen… I invested time and energy into this and because I step away for a weekend some mouth breathing jerks can completely destroy everything without penalty.

They’re complaining about the world of the game because it plays by its own rules. They are arguing that the game is unfair, in a game world where there is no fairness. They are appealing to a higher moral law in a game world that recognizes no moral law.

Here’s the irony – The reviewers are appealing to a higher, universally recognized moral law, a law of fairness. The reviews would make no sense if there were no such law to appeal to.

What is this game teaching you about the world? What are the rules that the world operates by? Does Justice rule the world – or is Justice for sissies who are afraid to go out and grab what they want?

Is Mafia City one of the responses to Plato’s Republic? It sounds a lot like the argument of Thrasymachus against Socrates in Book One. Basically the argument says that, in a contest of someone unjust with someone who is just, the unjust person wins every time, and makes a sucker out of the just person who is handicapped by having to follow rules of fairness. And that does seem to work, at least short term.

Notice another point here – “just like with all the other games”, after a certain point the established players get big and powerful enough, that they feed off of newbies and destroy them. That will reach a point, once the word gets out, that new people will stop signing up because the odds are too heavily stacked against them. The game will then eventually stagnate and collapse in on itself. Aside from the fantasy world rules, a game built on power with no fairness even as a game will eventually fail as a game.

This sounds a lot like the argument of Socrates in the Republic, that injustice may be apparently profitable in the short run, but that in the long run it is self-contradictory and destroys itself.

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1) Does 2+2=4?

2) Is there Truth and Falsehood?

3) Is there Good and Evil?

4) Do you live by these rules?