Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Spiritualism and Religion

Spiritualism. You know the type.

"I believe in God but I don't believe in any organized religion."

By which they mean: I've chosen all the warmFuzzyHappy parts about religion and keep away from the oppressiveRegulatedScary bits.

 This is nonsense and worse than nonsense. Nobody believes in a God without the context of religion because that's how we learned about God in the first place. We read about Him. We saw the movie. The choice of the spiritualist isn't the choice of a genuine religious, it's the choice of the protester (not to say 'protestant'), the half-committed, the revisionist. It's a person who refuses to accept the discipline and instruction of an organized religion while stubbornly claiming that his happy-blanket is just as good or better. That may be a comfort to the individual, but it offers nothing to the human condition.

And the Smilin' Atheist says that if you aren't offering something to the human condition, then you aren't offering anything at all. Mysticism goes nowhere. Monasticism is the epitome of self-indulgence. "Get on up-a", to quote the sage, "get on the scene."

True, spiritualism doesn't necessarily imply quietism, but that's the direction in which it tends. As for me, give me that old-time religion. Gods and priests and rituals and rules ... I get that. I understand that, where it comes from, where it goes, and where it doesn't go. When you make up your own rules nobody gets to judge you; it keeps you safe, but it also checks you out from the human condition, which is fundamentally social. Man is a political animal, as a former rock star says, and only the idiot pretends he is not part of the polis. If you *are* going to drop out, at least do so to form a new society. That's what the Protestants did, and they get props for that at least.

The spiritualist, though, offers nothing, asks for nothing, abides by nothing, and yet claims to have something. What is it, you ask. It's personal, comes the reply. Oh. Well. Off you go then. The Smilin' Atheist sez: only religions have belief; spiritualists have make-believe. It's all nonsense, but there are grades of nonsense, ain't there?

Monday, August 09, 2010

How Religion Happens

I've been meaning to comment on this for a few months. Not long after the earthquake in Haiti, a few weeks after, I heard a news story. The reporter interviewed a local who talked about the destruction of this and that building. She spoke specifically of the destruction of churches, always a somewhat awkward bit when dealing with natural disasters.

Yes, she said, many churches were destroyed in the earthquake, and many of the faithful were having a hard time understanding why God should have allowed (or caused) such a thing. She went on to observe, however, that in her church, the crucifix didn't fall down, even though the rest of the building did. Moreover, the same had been the case in churches all across Haiti. The churches fell, but not the crucifixes.

Thus were the faithful justified in their faith.

Now, chances are, this nice lady did not go around Haiti personally verifying this little factoid. It's practically the very definition of faith that one doesn't check, one simply believes. I have no doubt that this "fact" has passed into legend, at least within her own circle if not more widely, where it will be immune from checking for ever more.

And it hit me then and there: this is how religion happens. Faced with calamity, we struggle to make sense out of the random cruelty of the universe. We see a thing, or think we see it, or we hear of a thing, and this thing both justifies and comforts us, so we cling to it and nurture it, and we would never dream of subjecting it to anything like objective verification. It's as if we believed we'd learned to fly by flapping our arms. Why would a fellow want to stop flapping his arms? Just to check? Get outta here.

So, in churches all across Haiti, the buildings fell but the crucifixes stood, and surely this Means Something, though people won't say what. They'll just repeat the story to one another and nod their heads and be comforted.

Flap, flap, flap.