The Religious Case Against Belief

Last updated on: December 18, 2008 at 9:23 am by James F. McGrath

The Religious Case Against Belief 2008-12-18T09:23:00-05:00 James F. McGrath

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I just finished reading James P. Carse’s book The Religious Case Against Belief (New York: Penguin, 2008). Although there are occasional factual and other details one might quibble over, the major thesis of the book remains intriguing and provocative. In essence, the central thesis of the book is that there is a distinction that can be made between a religion and a belief system, and it is the distinction that, among other things, accounts for the longevity of religions. Indeed, Carse makes longevity part and parcel of his definition of what a religion is.

Early in the book, Carse introduces the notion of a “higher ignorance”. There is a natural, naive ignorance that simply doesn’t know things. But there is also an awareness of one’s own ignorance that can only be achieved (perhaps ironically) through study and learning.

Belief systems can be distinguished from religions precisely by their focus on beliefs, on doctrines and dogmas. Belief systems emerge regularly from and within religious traditions, but they are not simply identical to those traditions. “Belief systems thrive in circumstances of collision. They are energized by their opposites” (p.40). Belief systems are dependent on there being opposing beliefs against which to define themselves. Belief systems also carefully delineate a border at which thinking stops (p.44). We find “true believers” (as Carse calls adherents to belief systems) struggling against a real or imagined other, but ultimately also struggling against the challenge to their beliefs that comes from within. A striking example of this is presented in the case of Luther (pp.48-50), who is understood to have struggled not with the Church or an emperor but more fundamentally with himself. And it is at this point that we can distinguish belief (understood negatively) from knowledge: “The test is rudimentary: if I am a knower, I am open to correction; if I am a believer, I resist it” (p.60).

Carse identifies a “withering irony” in the use of authority by believers. “Authority does not precede its use, but is created by it. It does not present itself spontaneously; it is chosen by those whom it restricts, protects, authenticates and guides…Sacred scriptures are not sacred merely because they are printed on the page; they are thought to be so only when their readers elevate them to that status…Contrary to the popular notion, authority does not come from the top down but from the bottom up…Effective authorities are thoroughly obedient” (pp.96-97).

If these things can be said about the character of belief and belief systems, then what distinguishes religions? Religions are like poetry, Carse claims, and differ from belief systems precisely in their resistance to definition (pp.104-105). The Bible serves a similar function through its diversity, which is a key to its persistent vitality. So too does Jesus (pp.130-131), and quests for Jesus show a similar vitality: “He is both the best known and the least known of all human beings. He is that person about whom the most has been said and about whom we are the most ignorant” (p.131). And thus the vitality of religious traditions and their central figures and texts is precisely that they stimulate conversations about matters of great interest and importance, without ever thereby being exhausted or providing a definitive answer.

Carse offers reflections on death and immortality, interacting with not only the Biblical tradition but also Emily Dickinson. Carse’s identification not only of the notion of immortality as inherently absurd, but also of any imagined immortality as inevitably boring, is poignant (see e.g. p.168). Reflections on the nature of evil and goodness, and our inability to define them, are also offered. When he turns to the creation stories and their relationship to the controversies over evolution, his insights are articulated in a striking and helpful way: “Making a protoscientific treatise of this song, thus depriving it of its grand resonance, suggests that a “literalist” reading of the Bible is not reading the Bible at all” (p.192). And as he later writes about such approaches to the Bible more generally, “The Bible…provides no guide to reading the Bible. In fact, it is full of such inconsistencies, contradictions, lacunae, obscurities, baffling tales, and poetic imagery that to quote it at all is to select from conflicting alternative passages. Every quotation is therefore necessarily an interpretation. For this reason, a “literal” reading of the Bible is not a reading at all but an arbitrary choice of one passage over another, and a putting it to use of saying what the reader has already decided it should say (although that is also an interpretation, merely unrecognized as one by the reader)” (p.200).

Carse’s exploration suggests an answer to the question of why religious traditions persist: their provision of central texts and/or figures who stimulate but do not exhaust the exploration of important subjects enables the formation of community, in a way that preserves the balance necessary for life between an identity and a permeable boundary to the self. He also explains why belief systems regularly arise out of religions: “Far from providing false or unverifiable answers to our questions, the religions provide no answers at all. On this basis, one explanation for the proliferation of belief systems at the edges of the great religions is that they provide a shield against this absolute openness, a protection in advance against what might lie just beyond the horizon and so far unseen, or even imaginable. Believers, in short, are terrified by genuine expressions of religion, and respond to them by vigorously ignoring them. They take refuge in agreement, solidarity of membership, and the sense that they belong to something that exists independently of their participation in it” (p.210).

Carse ends his book with the recognition that his critique applies to his own statements (p.213). This, far from being a problem, is as it should be. He is not providing a definitive answer but a voice in an ongoing conversation, one that should provoke further discussion and voices that dissent from his view. The last sentence in the book’s “Coda” sums it up: “And the more clamorous the response the better” (p.213).

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