Idealism, Ignorance and Ridicule in the Critique of Religion

(N.B. this turned into a giant semi-coherent rant. Read at your own risk. The following constitutes venting.)

The enthusiastic rejection of the claims of religion, the critique of historical events, and the debunking of worldviews and religious axioms are all pretty typical in the first few years of religious studies. They usually arise from the lack-of-fit perceived between the confessional perspective the student is familiar with, and the new academic, social scientific perspective they are being introduced to.

As natural as this stage may be, it’s tragic to me that some people never really get beyond it. Not only is it unfair, and unrealistic, I think that it’s personally damaging and dishonest in the long run.

I don’t think I need to find a boat-load of examples of smarties trying to ridicule religious people for the goof-ball things they believe for you to know what I mean. I have done it myself, when something gets under my skin. A good rant along the lines of “I don’t see how someone can believe something so patently ridiculous” can be a lot of fun. The trick is to have enough self-awareness to realize it’s more of an exercise in ironic self-flagellation than anything else.

The basic problem is that these types of rants are built on faulty logic. It may sound compelling depending on your audience (notably: if it is composed mostly of sycophants) but it’s still irrational. Smarter people than I call this sort of thing an Argument from Incredulity, a form of the fallacious Argumentum ad Ignorantiam. (‘Smarter people than me’ means the people who make wikipedia entries.)

Commonly in an Argument from Personal Incredulity or Argument from Ignorance, the speaker considers or asserts that something is false, implausible, or not obvious to them personally and attempts to use this gap in knowledge as "evidence" in favor of an alternative view of her or his choice. Examples of these fallacies are often found in statements of opinion which begin: "It is hard to see how...," "I cannot understand how...," or "it is obvious that..." (if "obvious" is being used to introduce a conclusion rather than specific evidence in support of a particular view).

Now, when I think of something being ‘proven true’ I, usually, think of something I have proven for myself. My certainty about things, my confidence in how true something is, depends on my experience, my understanding, my values, etc… There’s a sphere of diminishing confidence that radiates out from me, through the people I trust, to the people whose methods I agree with, to the sources of authority I have never thought to question, and out to the matters I don’t personally care about or don’t affect me. This means my knowledge base is in constant flux. The things that I think are plausible or reasonable have changed/will change.

For this reason, there needs to be some room to be wrong and to learn. The things I believe to be true, and the methods I use to justify those beliefs, are imperfect and provisional in regard to certainty. On the one hand, I have all my biases and delusions complicating the clarity of my personal experience, on the other hand, are all the difficulties with authority and responsibility that comes with accepting someone else’s claims about the truth.

So what does this have to do with ragging on Religion for the things it has done? Or the beliefs it promotes?

Well, first of all, these types of discussion usually unfold with two people adopting the roles of ‘Religion’ and ‘Science’ or ‘Reason’ or ‘Heresy’ or whatever, and abandoning their true identities as flawed, mixed-up people trying to figure things out. People defending their personal viewpoints will say things like “Christianity doesn’t promote X”, “History has shown that Y”, “Science tells us that you are full of Z” and so on… Impersonal abstractions replace the flawed individual comprehension of those things, and dishonesty ensues. I realize arguing against the resurrection is a lot easier if you pretend the things you believe are actually the things Science tells people, but are you sure Science told you that? Maybe it was some dude you thought was Science… try to remember, it makes a difference. Not everyone accepts the same sources of authority. Similarly, if you are under the impression Christianity has told you something, you may want to retrace those memories. It was probably a guy in a robe, or something you read in a book written by a guy in a robe.

Idealism is at its worst when abstract universals tell people stuff. I have never found those abstractions trustworthy. So, having made a short point longer than it needed to be, Religion doesn’t do things, or make claims about things. This is important to understand because it unfolds a whole new layer in the history and philosophy of religions for students. Namely, that religion is made out of people, people who screw up, people who get cheesed off, people who lie, people who steal, people with stupid ideas, the whole nine yards. The guys who wrote scripture, ran institutions, wandered around preaching stuff, etc… are no better than the people sitting around you on the bus, or in class, or at the dinner table. The same goes for scientists, they’re no better than you and me, no taken-for-granted reason to substitute their judgment for yours. You need to examine everything, weigh it, finding out who really said what, and why. Frankly, it’s amazing religion and science have accomplished as much as they have…(It’s so easy to slip back into that idealism…) it’s amazing that we have accomplished as much as we have.

I think that covers ‘unfair’ and ‘unrealistic’ and ‘dishonest’.

Now about damaging, pretend you are someone who thinks about things. Just because someone has said something is true doesn’t make it true, right? Even if you’re that ‘someone’, you’ve fooled yourself before, misinterpreted stuff, failed calculus classes, etc… You’re not perfect, but you are moving toward a better understanding of the stuff that interests you. Different people with different skills and interests are all moving along around you pursuing their own junk, at their own speed, and there’re discussions going on where people’s interests collide.

Now imagine you get into a discussion about something you are interested in, with someone who believes things that are completely ridiculous to you. It’s not pure chance that the argument from personal incredulity is also an argument from ignorance. Those beliefs are ridiculous to you because you are ignorant, you don’t understand the person you are talking to, you don’t understand the beliefs they are trying to share, or something…there’s a disconnect.

Now is a good time to ask yourself why you are engaged in this discussion. If you want to learn more about the thing you are interested in, there’s apparently a whole new, wildly different, perspective you could find out about if you engage this person honestly, keeping in mind your own uncertainty, your history of being wrong and the learning that arose from it.

Letting your incredulity act as a sign of dismissal is seriously damaging to your learning opportunities.

On top of this is the damage you do to yourself by ridiculing someone else’s beliefs. The person might be wildly wrong, illogical, with bad grammar, and it’s still kicking yourself in the teeth if you ridicule them for it. What’s important is that you are able to continue to learn, and to do that you need to be wrong, you need to work on your logic, and your communication skills. Every student needs that space to be wrong and grow. Don’t think you are ahead of some people or behind others. That’s not possible without shared goals. Our individual growth isn’t headed in a unified direction.

Learn what you can and let them be wrong, you can’t learn for them.

That’s about as close to stream-of-consciousness writing as I’ll ever get.

Playing Cards - Popular Scripture

From the fifteenth century on, people have found meaning in the combination of symbolism and numerical values represented in the humble playing card deck.


.queen.of.the.eternity. by =noah-kh on deviantART

The Queen of Hearts, the Ace of Spades, the Trumps and Jokers. I recently found an interesting site, trionfi.com, with several good articles on the cards, their history, and iconography.

It's interesting to me as a former card game player and tarot deck user, to think of the hold some of the ideas present in the deck still have on our imaginations, the trump suit, in particular, absent from modern playing card decks apart from the joker/fool.

Anyway, there are a number of ways of parsing the meaning of these games/divination practices. They might be expressions of Jungian archetypes, records of aesthetic transmutation, testimonials on the human love of chance and order or maybe rituals of inclusion.

For some reason they remind me of two other medieval practices:

Stain Glass Windows, like this 13th century one from Speyer displaying the temptation of Adam and Eve:


















And the images from the spiritual exercises of Ignatius of Loyola:



It's more than just the style or composition that reminds me of trump cards... There's something about the theory behind the imagery. I think it has to do with a personal experience of the sacred, some unmediated access in a time when the record of revelation was still withheld from the lay people of Christian Europe. There is something different about art that has to stand in for a withheld document, a mnemonic link in the form of an experience of art.

Religious Studies and Bias

One of the trickiest parts of studying religion at the university level is the struggle to maintain clear boundaries between your religious beliefs and your growing and changing understanding of religion. The effort must be made to understand the biases that, for most people, go largely unexamined. In order to understand the beliefs of others, in order to attempt to bridge worldviews, historical periods, differences in language and culture, each student of religion must be prepared to turn themselves into objects of study, always remembering that some portion of the mind goes unexamined.

Students will often talk about ‘being objective’ or ‘having an open mind’, but it is fairly common to see beginners and veterans alike struggling with their assumptions and stumbling over their blind spots.

People’s approach to the study of religion usually reflects their personal interests: the topics they focus on, the information they see as significant, the relevance they find in particular ritual or philosophical elements of particular religions. Their bias warps their reception of other people’s beliefs. At the same time, this bias is the basis of their desire to study religion. The passion and commitment required depend on the student’s understanding of what is valuable and interesting about religion.

The real difference, I think, between doing confessional research into your own religion (Sunday school, seminary, etc…) and the study of religion from a social scientific perspective lies in the constant challenge to acquire an understanding of beliefs that you do not hold. You may use psychological theory, a critical historical method, perform ethnographic research, but in the end you are attempting to communicate with some distant individual, or community, and learn about their beliefs. This dialogue requires self-knowledge.

Ninian Smart called his approach to religious studies ‘methodological agnosticism’. This stance describes the scholar who, ignorant of the actual truth of any religious claims, approaches every such claim with respectful suspicion.

This is an accurate description of the appropriate approach to the academic study of religions, I think. The student, whatever her level of study, needs to recognize the level of uncertainty in the information she possesses, not just about religion but about the ‘truth of things’. This recognition of our lack of knowledge about the ‘truth of things’ is what creates the possibility of taking other people’s beliefs and practices seriously.

Although we cannot remove our biases, and ignoring them is not safe, we should attempt to grow in our awareness of the impact of our biases on our program of study. We should attempt to take seriously Socrates’ observation: "The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."

This is not a thing you learn once. There is no safety from personal bias at any point in religious studies.