The Broader Context of the Theism Question
Originally published on Medium on Apr 2, 2019.
Some background—this is one of two essays I wrote for my philosophy course at the University of British Columbia (PHIL 101). This first one deals with theism, the second with free will.
“The year walk, or Årsgång is a pseudo pagan ritual undertaken by Swedish people from medieval times to the 19th century. On certain holidays, the “year walkers” would abstain from feasting by locking themselves in dark rooms. At midnight, they would emerge to walk through the woods to the village church. Within the forest lurked strange, harrowing creatures, embodying the provincial fears of wanton lust, death, infanticide, misfortune and sacrilege. The walkers could not predict which of these they might encounter, but in each and every combination of these fearful communions lay either a gruesome death, or a vision of their future in the coming year.”
— ”Simogo and the Modern Myth”, Polygon
Contemporary philosopher Elizabeth Anderson wrote an essay titled “If God Is Dead, Is Everything Permitted?”, which takes on the debate surrounding the belief in God. She makes the case against theism in all its forms by turning the moralistic argument — arguing from morality — back on theistic beliefs. Anderson is right to claim that Scripture is morally contradictory. However, the conclusions that she draws from it — that one should reject religion and theism altogether — are rather short-sighted. The real value of theism comes from the degree to which these stories resonate with individuals. I would like to explore this here, and talk about how myths in general encourage risk-taking and adventure for the betterment of the community — like the Swedish year walkers.
I am categorizing Scripture as myth, and not a source of empirical claims. Anderson, on the other hand, takes Scripture to contain empirical claims. She argues that as a result, one can use Scripture as evidence to prove or disprove theological claims. She also considers Scripture to be the primary source of evidence for religious claims, so by disproving it you can disprove theism. At its core, Anderson’s argument centers around the fact that the moral prescriptions found in Scripture are faulty and therefore unreliable. Furthermore, she states that “people figured out [moral] rules long before they were exposed to any of the major monotheistic religions” (p. 216) through negotiating with each other. Because the moral claims are unreliable, she argues that it is then reasonable to question all of the other content found in Scripture, including the existence of God. One should reject the gods of polytheistic religions as well. Quote: “Indeed, [evidence cited on behalf of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam] is on a par with the evidence for Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone” (p. 227). Why should everyone reject theism, in Anderson’s view? She reasons that not only is there no good evidence for religious claims, but also that religious and mystical thinking is part of a deeply ingrained cognitive bias that prevents individuals from taking rational actions that would be more beneficial to everyone involved. If Anderson considered religion harmless, it’s hard to imagine her writing her essay. She further writes (p. 225):
“This mode of explanation is universally observed among people who lack scientific understanding of natural events. It appears to be a deeply rooted cognitive dissonance and bias of humans to reject the thought of meaningless suffering. If we are suffering, someone must be responsible for it!”
This is Anderson’s claim with which I disagree: that religious thinking is a cognitive bias and is inferior to scientific thinking — a bug and not a feature, so to speak — and that evidence can be reasonably used to prove or disprove theological claims.
I recently came across the work of history professor James P. Carse. It helped me hone my thinking on this subject of myth and religion, so I feel that it would be useful to introduce his perspective here. In his book Finite and Infinite Games, Carse describes myths, including religious myths, as essential tools that shape culture and encourage individuals to set out on adventures to bring useful knowledge back to society. He writes that “Explanations establish islands, even continents, of order and predictability. But these regions were first charted by adventurers whose lives are narratives of exploration and risk. They found them only by mythic journeys into the wayless open” (p. 139). Whatever this mythical, symbolic realm of reality is, it’s completely distinct from the empirical world described by scientists — and it seems to be as integral to the true nature of reality as empiricism. If empiricism deals with causality and the physical world, symbolism ascribes meaning to the physical world and lets our imaginations run wild. It is the realm of the creative, the mysterious, the meaningful.
Carse also draws a distinction between what he calls resonance and amplification, and notes that a myth cannot and should not be fully resolved. A myth’s power comes from its mystery, and different parts of a myth resonate with and inspire individuals for different reasons. One must always contend with the narrative, treating it as a pool of wisdom from which he can continually draw. Honing in and amplifying one interpretation over others, on the other hand, defeats the purpose of the myth. Like in a dream, by holding onto one particular thought or image, you lose the essence of it. “A choir is the unified expression of voices resonating with each other; a loudspeaker is the amplification of a single voice, excluding all others. … Ideology is the amplification of myth. It is the assumption that since the beginning and end of history are known there is nothing more to say. History is therefore to be obediently lived out according to the ideology,” as Carse puts it (p. 145). This type of dogmatic amplification would in theory apply to both fundamentalists and atheists, because they both collapse myth into a single interpretation.
What Carse lays out seems to me like the best way to conceptualize Scripture. Religion exists in the realm of story and symbolism, not empiricism. Anderson mentioned the idea of Scripture being like a Rorschach test — it does not exist independent of the reader, but has to be interpreted by the reader. This isn’t as bad as she makes it out to be because as we established before, that is what gives stories their power. When a work of fiction resonates with you, what happens is that your personality interfaces with the work, in a way. Connections are made in your mind that would not be otherwise, and your personality is honed by the text, but only to the extent that the text resonates with you. You go into the text with certain facts about your personality, biases and preferences, and they determine how the text resonates with you. It’s a feedback loop, in other words.
The problem as I see it arises when people resort to dogma and breaking the law, and use stories as justification for it. However, this has more to do with actions than with the stories themselves, and is not connected to our discussion. It is illegal to break the law and, say, engage in violence. Of course, there is always this question: what if the way in which a story resonates prompts someone to commit acts of violence? I’ll admit, this is not something that I have fully resolved — perhaps it is the topic for another post entirely. For the purposes here, I’m assuming that it’s wrong to break the law, regardless of any personal convictions. But, like I said, there’s nuance there and it’s a topic for another discussion. In regard to dogma — dogmatic interpretations defeat the purpose of the text. Anderson seems to also be against dogma in all forms. On the other hand, if one remains open minded and approaches situations from first principles, then every new bit of information he encounters improves his model of how the world works. The empirical and symbolic realm play different uses in life — empiricism deals with what is, symbolism deals with stories, metaphors, purpose, curiosity, adventure (the tendency to explore new territory), and our system of ethics.
In this context, I’m taking dogmatism to generally mean valuing conclusions over evidence and being resistant to having your mind changed in light of such evidence. On the other hand, first principles thinking generally involves looking at the root causes and reasoning up from there.
I found it helpful to visualize the issue using this graph:
I consider everything in this region to be okay — both empiricism and myth are valuable in their own ways:
Now, Anderson makes the claim that one should reject all theistic belief — something that would, if stripped of dogma, fall into the first principles / symbolism quadrant. This is the central point here — contention about the first quadrant. It seems to me that theology can be salvaged despite Anderson’s criticisms — most of which I happen to agree with — and play a beneficial role in society, because of the fact that it deals with this risk-taking/adventure dimension.
Another important note is that in order to venture out into the “wayless open” in the hopes of bringing back something useful, you have to have faith in the notion that you will bring back something useful. This is why it is imperative to salvage belief itself, not just the good practices from Scripture. You can believe without acting, but cannot act effectively without believing. By belief, I mean faith that something is correct on some deeper level, without necessarily having direct evidence for it. You can believe in people or ideas, and by the same token you can have theological beliefs. Those men and women who ventured out into the hostile Swedish forests had faith in the fact that what they were doing was of use, and as a result discovered profound things about themselves and the world around them. Belief, in this broader context, does not require evidentiary claims, but has much more to do with the concept of resonance. When a piece of text resonates with you, you accept it as true on a level deeper than empiricism. Of course, you should always keep updating your “what is true” pile, but that does not mean that everything in there can be viewed in evidentiary terms. For example, I cannot explain in evidentiary terms why green is my favorite color, or why I preferred Orwell’s 1984 to Huxley’s Brave New World, or why I like a particular Richard Feynman quote. I can, however, explain these things in terms of resonance and aesthetics — how moved I am my these things. The degree to which I am moved is the degree to which I incorporate these bits of information into my worldview.
I am interested in honing in on what the true nature of reality is, and it seems that this mythical, symbolic component plays a significant role. Reality has a texture to it that’s not just numbers and pure empiricism, and some aspects of it — like myths and stories — cannot be looked at through an evidentiary lens. Because of this, it seems that Elizabeth Anderson is missing out on a bigger picture when she asserts that we, as a society, should dispense with theology and embrace the empirical world. We need myths to bring useful knowledge back from the unknown, and as a result move our culture forward. As Carse puts it (p. 140), “the very liveliness of a culture is determined not by how frequently these thinkers discover new continents of knowledge but how frequently they depart to seek them. A culture can be no stronger than its strongest myths.”