The Myth of Religious Neutrality, Revised Edition: An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories

By Roy A. Clouser

Written for undergraduates, the educated layperson, and scholars in fields other than philosophy, The Myth of Religious Neutrality offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy. This new edition has been completely revised and updated by the author.

• Language: English
• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Release date: May 15, 2005
• ISBN: 9780268077013

Roy A. Clouser

Roy A. Clouser is professor emeritus of philosophy and religion at The College of New Jersey, Trenton.

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THE MYTH OF RELIGIOUS NEUTRALITY

An Essay on the Hidden Role of Religious Belief in Theories

Revised Edition

Roy A. Clouser

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

Copyright © 2005 by University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

www.undpress.nd.edu

All Rights Reserved

E-ISBN: 978-0-268-07701-3

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at [e-mail]

CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

1. INTRODUCTION

I. RELIGION

2. WHAT IS RELIGION?

2.1 The Problem

2.2 A Resolution

2.3 Some Clarifications

2.4 Replies to Objections

2.5 Some Auxiliary Definitions

2.6 Are All Non-Dependence Beliefs Religious?

3. TYPES OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF

3.1 The Basis for Typing Religions

3.2 The Pagan Type

3.3 The Pantheistic Type

3.4 The Biblical Type

3.5 Why Think Anything Is Divine at All?

II. THEORIES

4. WHAT IS A THEORY?

4.1 Introduction

4.2 What Is a Theory?

4.3 Abstraction

4.4 Aspects of Experience

4.5 Types of Theories

4.6 Criteria for Judging Theories

5. THEORIES AND RELIGION: THE ALTERNATIVES

5.1 Religious Irrationalism

5.2 Religious Rationalism

5.3 The Radically Biblical Position

5.4 Religious Scholasticism

5.5 The Conflict of These Alternatives

6. THE IDEA OF RELIGIOUS CONTROL

6.1 The Mistake of Fundamentalism

6.2 Presupposition

III. A CASEBOOK

7. THEORIES IN MATHEMATICS

7.1 Introduction

7.2 The Number-World Theory

7.3 The Theory of J. S. Mill

7.4 The Theory of Russell

7.5 The Theory of Dewey

7.6 What Difference Do Such Theories Make?

7.7 The Role of Religion in These Theories

8. THEORIES IN PHYSICS

8.1 Some Misunderstandings to Avoid

8.2 The Theory of Mach

8.3 The Theory of Einstein

8.4 The Theory of Heisenberg

8.5 What Difference Do Such Theories Make?

8.6 The Role of Religion in These Theories

9. THEORIES IN PSYCHOLOGY

9.1 Introduction

9.2 The Theories of Watson, Thorndike, and Skinner

9.3 The Theories of Adler and Fromm

9.4 Human Nature

10. THE NEED FOR A NEW BEGINNING

10.1 Introduction

10.2 Why Are Theories Unavoidably Regulated by Some Divinity Belief?

10.3 A Philosophical Critique of Reduction as a Strategy for Theories

10.4 A Religious Critique of Reduction as a Strategy for Theories

10.5 The Cappadocian and Reformational Theological Traditions

10.6 Replies to Objections

10.7 Conclusion

IV. NON-REDUCTIONIST THEORIES

11. A NON-REDUCTIONIST THEORY OF REALITY

11.1 The Project of Non-Reductionist Theories

11.2 Some Guiding Principles

11.3 The Framework of Laws Theory

11.4 The Natures of Things

12. A NON-REDUCTIONIST THEORY OF SOCIETY

12.1 Introduction

12.2 Fact Versus Norm

12.3 Individualism Versus Collectivism

12.4 Parts and Wholes

12.5 Sphere Sovereignty

13. A NON-REDUCTIONIST THEORY OF THE STATE

13.1 Introduction

13.2 The Nature of The State: What It Is

13.3 The Nature of The State: What It Is Not

13.4 Postscript

AFTERWORD

NOTES

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION

Back in the early 1960s someone whose name I can’t recall wrote a review of Dooyeweerd’s four-volume magnum opus, A New Critique of Theoretical Thought. The reviewer acknowledged the vast scope, enormous erudition, and striking originality of that work, but nevertheless closed with a wry observation. He commented that discovering Dooyeweerd’s work in the present philosophical climate was analogous to finding a huge oak tree in the middle of a desert. Although he couldn’t help being impressed by the oak, he said, he was left with the even stronger feeling of puzzlement as to what on earth it was doing there.

In this book I try to plant an oasis around the oak so as to diminish the wonder that it’s there, and thus allow the reader’s attention to be focused where it belongs: on the most original philosophical theory since Kant.

This second edition has allowed me to clarify points that were misunderstood, reply to objections, and offer more detailed arguments for the book’s main claims. The largest changes are to be found in chapters 2, 4, 10, 11, 12, and 13, although there are numerous smaller ones throughout the book. The notes are more complete.

I want to thank a number of people who aided these improvements. Dirk Stafleu and Gerald Barnes read and commented on the entire ms., while Walter Hartt, Bruce Wearne, and Martin Rice made valuable suggestions about a number of issues. I wish also to thank Luz María García de la Sienra for her excellent work in organizing and typesetting the text.

The first edition of this work was dedicated to Professor Dooyeweerd, who endured many interviews with me at his home for four months, and to my wife, Anita, who edited it. I now wish to rededicate this revised edition not only to them, but also to my mentors over many years:

William White

Robert Rudolph

T. Grady Spires

Johan Vander Hoeven

James Ross

Without their influence, patience, and instruction this work would not have been possible.

Roy Clouser

Spring 2005

FOREWORD TO THE FIRST EDITION

This book offers a radical reinterpretation of the general relations between religion, science, and philosophy.

Despite the fact that the idea of those relations which is defended here is virtually unknown among professionals in these three areas, it is not historically new. It can trace its lineage through the thought of John Calvin and back to the Bible itself. However, it is an element of Calvin’s thought that has not been preserved by the Protestant tradition, and is based on biblical teaching that has received short shrift by the vast majority of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim thinkers. Nevertheless, after undergoing a renaissance led by the Dutch Calvinists Groen Van Prinsterer and Abraham Kuyper in the nineteenth century, this idea was given an impressive development in the work of the twentieth-century philosophers Dirk Vollenhoven and Herman Dooyeweerd.

It is the thought of Dooyeweerd in particular that is reflected here, and is introduced in a way that is intended especially for those not already acquainted with its Dutch Calvinist background.

I am grateful to a number of people who have read the manuscript in part or whole and who made valuable suggestions for its improvement. These include Johan Vander Hoeven (Free University of Amsterdam), James Ross (University of Pennsylvania), Grady Spires (Gordon College), Danie Strauss (University of the Orange Free State, Bloemfontein), Paul Helm (University of London), Hendrik Hart (Institute for Christian Studies, Toronto), Rev. Richard Russell (St. Thomas a Becket Church, Bath), Jonathan Gold (West Liberty State College), Martin Rice (University of Pittsburgh), James W. Skillen (Association for Public Justice, Washington, D.C.), and Carole Roos, my editor at the University of Notre Dame Press.

Others were also of aid and comfort in their own special way: Dr. Charles Stephenson, Dale and Lorraine Fleming, the late Bea Shemeley, John and Audrey Van Dyk, Gil Hunter, Arnold Olt, and the late Peter Steen.

I also wish to express my thanks to several institutions for their support at various stages of the research and writing: to the University of Pennsylvania for a Harrison Fellowship, to the Free University of Amsterdam for two travel grants, and to the Institute for Advanced Christian Studies and the Andreas Foundation for writing grants.

But above all, I want to express my deepest gratitude to the two people whose help was of the greatest significance to this work. The first is the late Herman Dooyeweerd, who endured lengthy conferences with me at his home, two to three times a week, for a total of four months; the second is my dear wife, Anita, whose editing of the entire manuscript was invaluable. It is to them that this work is affectionately dedicated.

Chapter 1

INTRODUCTION

When we consider what religion is for mankind and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.

Alfred North Whitehead

To what extent does religious belief make a difference to the ways people understand and conduct their lives?

The popular answer is that it all depends on how religious a person is. It makes virtually no difference at all for an atheist, while a fanatic thinks and cares about little else. The popular answer then sees the majority of people as falling between these two extremes, and it takes religion to deal mostly with morality and a person’s eternal destiny rather than with the bulk of the affairs of life. Thus most of the affairs of day-to-day life are seen as neutral with respect to religious belief.

As a result of investigating religious belief and its influences for almost fifty years, I have become convinced that these popular opinions are completely mistaken. Instead, I find that religious belief is the most powerful and influential belief in the world. I further find that religious belief has the single most decisive influence on everyone’s understanding of the major issues of life ranging across the entire spectrum of human experience. Moreover, I find it exercises such influence upon all people independently of their conscious acceptance or rejection of the religious traditions with which they are acquainted.

The enormous influence of religious beliefs remains, however, largely hidden from casual view. Its relation to the rest of life is like that of the great geological plates of the earth’s surface to its continents and oceans. The movement of these plates is not apparent to an eyeball inspection of any particular landscape and can only be detected with great difficulty. Nevertheless, so vast are these plates, so stupendous their power, that their visible effects—mountain ranges, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions—are but tiny surface blemishes compared with the force of the mighty plates themselves. Similarly, the great historic traditions of religious teaching, and the institutions devoted to their preservation, are merely the surface effects of religious belief, which is a vaster and more pervasive force than all of them put together.

Among the reasons this influence is so often missed is that people are prone to two alluring mistakes about religious belief. One is to suppose that all the major religious traditions are basically like the one they’re best acquainted with. The other is to suppose that the likeness between religious traditions must lie in their most obvious and outstanding features. These two mistakes serve to keep hidden from view the true nature of religious belief, and thus most of its influence.

Our first task, then, will be to define the nature of religious belief by seeking common features among the central beliefs of the world’s religious traditions. The definition we arrive at will strike many people as surprising because it will show a number of beliefs to be religious that do not result in worship. For those under the spell of the two mistakes just mentioned, the definition will therefore seem strange and suspicious. In fact, however, one of its greatest contributions lies precisely in showing us why not all religious beliefs have rituals or ethical codes connected with them. Though surprising, this discovery is of enormous benefit as a first step toward exposing the vast array of unsuspected connections between the issues usually supposed to be religiously neutral and the religious beliefs which actually guide their interpretation.

In speaking of religious belief as influential over the entire range of human experience, I do not mean to suggest that we speak our native tongue or add a column of figures differently depending on our religion. Speaking and counting usually take place at a level of experience where our activity in, and acquaintance with, the world around us is remarkably the same for all people. But there is a deeper level of understanding which humans have always sought, a level at which the nature of our world and ourselves is interpreted and explained. In our culture, that level has long been sought through theories. It is by the theories of philosophy and the sciences that we probe the deeper nature of, and construct explanations of, all that we experience.

The central claim of this book is that no such theory can fail to be regulated and guided by some religious belief or other.

To many readers this claim will seem not merely surprising but outrageous. Scientific theories, especially, are supposed to be the most neutral and unbiased explanations of all. My claim may therefore tempt some readers to think that I cannot possibly mean it. So let me assure you right away that I am not overstating it now only to water it down later. I will not, for example, argue that all theories have unprovable assumptions, call these assumptions faith, and then conclude that religious belief in that sense influences theories. That would be a huge waste of time. Everyone in philosophy and the sciences knows that theories have unprovable assumptions, but a belief is not religious just because it is unprovable.

Nor will I argue that theory making is influenced by the moral beliefs of theorists, and then try to connect religion with morality. There are notable instances of moral influences on theorizing, and some are cases in which the morality was directly derived from a religious tradition. But such influence is surely not true of all theories and is not the sort of thing intended by my claim. Neither will I merely be pointing to the fact that scientists have at times borrowed ideas from religion or theology which they transformed and employed in theories. That falls far short of the sort of regulation I will argue for, as it is neither pervasive nor regulatory. Finally, the position that will be defended is not just another version of the oft-suggested view that philosophy and science are limited in what they can explain, and so leave gaps in our understanding that religious beliefs can fill. I am not merely claiming that theories leave room for faith, as Kant put it. Rather, I will contend that one or another religious belief always functions as a regulative presupposition to any abstract theory, and that this is unavoidable not merely owing to the historical/social presence of such beliefs in our culture but because it arises out of the very process of theory making itself.

To be more precise, I will contend that one or another religious belief controls theory making in such a way that the interpretation of the contents of a theory differs depending on the contents of the religious belief it presupposes. This should not be understood to mean that religious beliefs somehow inspire thinkers to invent just the hypotheses they invent, but rather that the nature of whatever a theory proposes is conceived of differently depending on the religious belief it presupposes. It should be clear, then, that this is not the claim that the proposals of theories are all deduced from religious convictions (though that has happened at times). Rather, I mean that some religious belief or other delimits an acceptable range of interpretations of the nature of whatever a hypothesis proposes. It is in this sense that I find the influence of religious belief to be utterly pervasive. And it is in this sense that virtually all the major disagreements between rival theories in the sciences and in philosophy can ultimately be traced back to the differences between the religious beliefs that guide them.

This means that theories about math and physics, sociology and economics, art and ethics, politics and law can never be religiously neutral. They are one and all regulated by some religious belief. It is in this way that the effects of religious beliefs extend far beyond providing the hope for life after death or the influencing of moral values and judgments. By controlling theory making, they produce important differences in the interpretation of issues that range over the whole of life.

This position is bound to provoke stiff resistance from many quarters, and doubtless one of the strongest objections will be directed against my claim that the influence of religious belief extends to everyone. Do I really mean to suggest that everyone has a religious belief, despite the fact that many people say that they neither have nor want one? On this point, too, I once again disagree with the prevailing popular opinion. Popular opinion says that a person surely knows whether he or she has a religious belief, and that anyone who claims to reject them all couldn’t be wrong about it. Besides, popular opinion says, isn’t it just obvious that lots of people are totally nonreligious?

These popular views appear plausible, in my opinion, because of the two mistakes cited earlier. If religious belief must involve worship and creedal adherence, then certainly there are many people without it. However, once the definition of religious belief is made clear, and its involvement in theories is exposed, it becomes quite plausible that people may hold such a belief without even being conscious of it.

All the same, I will not attempt to prove that all people are innately religious. The project here is more modest, but still significant. What will be demonstrated is that no abstract explanatory theory can fail to include or presuppose a religious belief. In that case, we may say that the only people who could possibly avoid all religious belief are those who believe no theory whatever!

Let me briefly outline how I propose to defend such a seemingly hopeless cause.

After defining religious belief, I will take a hard look at what goes on in theory making, distinguish some major types of theories, and analyze the activity of abstraction that is unavoidable in the construction of any theory whatever. It is the act of abstraction and its limits that will later be shown to be what make the involvement of religious belief in theories unavoidable. We will then examine the most popular ideas of about how religious belief and theories are supposed to relate, and discover why they are deficient compared with the more extensive influence we’ll discover. I will then clarify more precisely how religious belief exercises its influence in theories by offering a casebook of sample theories to illustrate it. The sample theories will be some of the most famous and important ever to be proposed in math, physics, and psychology. They will not only show how the influence of religious belief works, but also make clear why the competing theories in these sciences are ultimately due to the differences between the religious beliefs presupposed by each. The arguments as to why such influence is unavoidable follow the casebook chapters in chapter 10.

The discovery of this relation between religious belief and theory making is not merely a matter of intellectual curiosity, but is of enormous importance for the whole of life. For if theories differ according to the religious beliefs controlling them, then those of us who believe in God should have an interpretation of all theories we make or adopt which is distinct from interpretations of them that presuppose some other divinity. It is for this reason the book concludes with a blueprint for a program of constructing new theories or reinterpreting existing theories so as to bring them under the control of belief in God. This includes a brief sketch of a God-controlled theory of reality. The results of that theory are then explicated by applying them to a theory of society and to a political theory which are not only generally theistic, but specifically Christian. That is, they will be guided not only by belief in God but also by views of human nature, social relationships, and institutions that are found in the New Testament.

I want to make it clear, therefore, that the primary intent of this book is not to convert readers to belief in God, or to refute atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism, or any other ism. Insofar as such isms are mentioned at all, the references to them are always secondary to my main purpose. This book is addressed to those who believe in God. I write here as a Christian seeking to persuade my brothers and sisters in the religious family of those who serve the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, that our belief in a transcendent Creator mandates a distinct perspective for the interpretation of every aspect of life. And this distinct perspective extends to the construction and interpretation of philosophical, scientific, and all other theories because there is no area or issue of life which is neutral with respect to belief in God. In addition, I write to fellow Christians to show how the basically theistic interpretation of theories can be combined with Christian teachings to develop specifically Christian theories.

I realize this is not a position that has ever been held by the majority of Christians or other theists, despite the fact that so many Bible writers repeatedly teach that all knowledge and truth is impacted by having the right God. The failure to take this teaching seriously has resulted in a long history of Christians and other theistic thinkers unwittingly accepting theories that are actually incompatible with belief in God. Moreover, the absence of this insight into just how belief in God impacts theories is responsible for much of the present confusion over the relation between science and biblical religion. The position defended here will make clear why it is not true that science and religion are by nature opposed to one another. But at the same time it will show why holding that belief in God impacts all theories does not require that they are all to be derived from, or confirmed by, appeal to scripture or theology as fundamentalists attempt to do. It will thus present an alternative to all the currently prevailing views of the general relation of religious belief to theories.

The discussion of these issues begins at an introductory level. It assumes the reader to have no previous knowledge of philosophy, only a smattering of high school science, and to be unsophisticated about religion. As the book progresses, however, each succeeding chapter does assume what has been explained in previous chapters, so that it will not be possible to understand the position defended in the later chapters if the earlier chapters are skipped. Even at its most advanced level, however, the more technical points of argument have been placed in the notes so as to keep the text accessible to nonprofessionals.

Keeping the text at such a level of discussion has drawbacks, of course. Many points that could be raised need to be left out, and others that are included need more extensive analysis and argument than can be given at this level. Although this is frustrating, it does allow the position as a whole to be conveyed in one book, and the book to be accessible to readers with little or no philosophical background. My hope is that the treatment afforded the major points will be detailed enough to indicate the lines along which they could and would be further defended were the discussion more extensive.

Despite the limitations of starting at an introductory level, I pray this work will be able to sensitize even the most sophisticated readers to the great influence of religious belief, to encourage all who believe in God to work together to promote this position, and to encourage Christians to develop theories that are regulated by the teachings of the New Testament.

PART I

RELIGION

Chapter 2

WHAT IS RELIGION?

2.1 The Problem

Defining religion is notoriously difficult. The word is used in a large number of ways: it is applied to rituals, organizations, beliefs, doctrines, and feelings as well as to large-scale traditions such as Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Moreover, the very subject of religious belief is often emotionally charged. This sensitivity is natural since religion concerns people at the deepest level of their convictions and values.

To help minimize these difficulties, let us keep two thoughts firmly in mind as we proceed. The first is that we are not now trying to establish which religion is true or false, right or wrong. We are trying to arrive at an understanding of what religion—any religion—is. In answer to this question I will be proposing and defending what is often called a real definition, that is, a definition that is more precise or scientific than those employed in common speech. The second thing to remember is that the definition I will offer focuses on one particular use of the term religion, the sense in which it qualifies belief. Our search for a definition of religion, then, will be a search for what distinguishes a religious belief from a belief which is not religious. This is because I take belief to be the key issue, since it is religious beliefs which prompt and guide the persons, practices, rites, rituals, and traditions we commonly call religious.

What, then, is a religious belief? Consider the question this way. We all have literally thousands of beliefs about thousands of things. At this moment, for example, I believe myself to be the blood relative of certain other people; I believe 1 + 1 = 2; I believe next Friday is payday, that there was an ice age about 20,000 years ago, and that there was a civil war in England in the 1640s. While most people would probably agree that none of these beliefs is religious, the ancient Pythagoreans regarded 1 + 1 = 2 as a religious belief! So we need to know not only what makes one belief religious and another not, but how it can be that the same belief can be religious to one person and not to another.

As we proceed, we must also keep in mind what any definition must do if it is to avoid being arbitrary. A non-arbitrary definition must state the set of characteristics uniquely shared by all the things of the type being defined. The way this is done is to inspect as many things of that type as possible, and try to isolate just the combination of characteristics which is true of them and only them. This is a difficult thing to do even for objects we can inspect, like computers or chairs, but it is even tougher for abstract ideas such as religious beliefs.

What makes such definitions possible is that we can all recognize things to be of a certain type prior to being able to define the type precisely. We all know a lot of things are trees, for instance, long before we perform the difficult task of analyzing the set of features possessed by all trees, but only trees. So while the process of defining starts by examining an initial list of things of the type to be defined, we need not examine all of them in order to formulate their definition. Indeed, we could not do so because we would already need to have a definition in order to decide whether to include or exclude any controversial or borderline case. So defining starts by examining a list of the things to be defined that leaves out controversial cases.

At first glance it seems an easy task to compile a relatively uncontroversial initial list of religions so as to look for a common element among their central beliefs. Virtually everyone would concede that Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, along with Hinduism, Buddhism,¹ and Taoism, can safely be placed on the list. Moreover, just about everyone thinks that the beliefs in the ancient Greek Olympian gods, the Greek mystery cults, the Roman pantheon, Egyptian polytheism, or ancient Canaanite belief in Ba’al were also religious. Nor does it seem objectionable that teachings which have never generated a large following can still count as religions—the ancient Epicurean beliefs and teachings about the gods, for example. In fact, there seems to be a fairly large initial short list of religions which further includes Druidism, the beliefs about Isis and Mithra, as well as the teachings of Zoroastrianism, Shintoism, and a host of other candidates. What, after all, could be the reason for refusing to acknowledge that these are all religions and their central tenets religious beliefs? They are (or were) all regarded as such by their adherents, and the adherents of at least the majority of them readily acknowledged others on the list to be alternative or competing religions.

But despite the availability of an acceptable list of religions, it has proven exceedingly difficult to extract any belief they, and only they, share in common. To illustrate this, let us now take a brief look at how poorly some of the most widely accepted definitions fare when applied to the traditions on our list. We will start with what are currently the most popular ideas, and then look at a few of the most influential scholarly proposals.

One of the most popular ideas is that religious beliefs are those that inspire and sanction an ethical code of some sort. In fact, many people suppose that the primary purpose of religious belief is to provide moral direction for life. Although this may sound plausible, the fact is that there are religions on our list which do not include any ethical teaching whatever. Ancient Epicureanism, for instance, made no connection between belief in its gods and moral duties to one’s fellow humans. According to the Epicureans, the gods had no concern whatever for human affairs, so a person could be morally rotten for all the gods cared. Other examples of religions with this same lack are the Japanese Shinto tradition and some forms of ancient Roman religion. To make matters worse for this proposal, there are clearly non-religious beliefs that do inspire or include moral teachings. For example, there are moral codes of honor in schools, sports clubs, armies, and even criminal organizations. This is enough to show that even if all religions did provide ethical teachings, that feature alone would not be sufficient to distinguish religious beliefs from those which are not religious.

Not all religious beliefs inspire worship, either. Aristotle argued for the existence of a supreme god he called the Prime Mover. But since he also held that it would be beneath the nature and dignity of the Prime Mover to know about or be concerned with earthly affairs, he regarded worship as futile. The ancient Epicureans mentioned above agreed. According to them, too, the gods care nothing about the world so the fact that gods exist is interesting to humans, but inspires no worship. Even in our own time, there are forms of Hinduism and Buddhism in which there is no worship.

Sometimes it is suggested that if the last two proposals were just broadened a bit and conjoined, they could form a successful definition. Suppose we take a religious belief to be one that generates ritual and/or ethics where the ritual can be of any sort rather than worship specifically? Won’t that do? The answer is, it will not. In the case of rituals it leads to the vicious circle of needing to know which rituals are religious in order to identify religious beliefs, and needing to know which beliefs are religious in order to know which rituals are. If there were a specific list of rituals generated only by religious beliefs, this could work. But there are many rituals that are at times religious and at others not: burning down a house, setting off fireworks, fasting, feasting, having sexual intercourse, singing, chanting, cutting oneself, circumcising an infant, covering one’s body with manure, washing, killing an animal, killing a human, eating bread and wine, shaving one’s head, and many more. So it seems clear that the only way to know whether a ritual is religious or not is to know what those who take part in it believe about it. If its motivating belief is religious, then the ritual may be. But without knowing whether it is done for a religious reason, even what looks like an act of prayer can be indistinguishable from fantasizing or talking to oneself. And notice that many of the rituals just cited have an ethical code conjoined to them when they are done for non-religious reasons, while others are believed to be unethical unless done for religious reasons! Rituals conducted by clubs with an ethical code or the ceremonies attending induction into an office of a company or government that has a code of ethics are examples of non-religious rituals accompanied by ethical beliefs, while the ritual killing of a human for religious reasons was considered pious by the Aztecs who otherwise regarded it as murder. I conclude, therefore, that this proposal fails. Religious beliefs are not necessarily those that generate ethical teaching and/or ritual; there are religious beliefs that lack both and non-religious beliefs that generate both.

Perhaps the most widespread of all the popular definitions is that a religious belief is belief in a Supreme Being. Many people not only seem to think this covers all religions, but also suspect that all religions worship the same Supreme Being under different names. This is simply mistaken. Not all the traditions on our list include belief in anything that has a uniquely supreme status. What is more, in Hinduism the divine (Brahman-Atman) is not considered a being at all. It is instead an indefinite being-ness, or being-itself. For this same reason Brahman-Atman cannot strictly be called a god, if a god is taken to be an individual and personal. Buddhism also denies the divine is a being, but goes even further. For fear that being itself is still too definite an expression, it insists on such terms as Void, Non-being, and Nothingness for the divine. So although these religions believe there is divine reality, they do not believe the divine is a being at all, let alone a supreme one.

Surprisingly, some of the most widely accepted scholarly attempts to define religious belief don’t fare much better than these popular ones. One of the most influential of the past fifty years was that of Paul Tillich, who declared religious belief or faith to be identical with ultimate concern.² This expression is supposed to bare the bones of all religions. Tillich contended that all people are ultimately concerned about something, and the state of being ultimately concerned is a person’s religion.

But just what does it mean to be ultimately concerned with something? The most plausible way to understand the expression is to take it as referring to the state of being concerned about whatever is ultimate reality. This, though still unclear as to precisely what concerned means, seems to include dealing with ultimate reality in some way and so does sound like much of what goes on in religions. Moreover, there is reason to think that it is what Tillich himself intended.³ But even overlooking the ambiguity of concerned, there is also the problem of how we are to define ultimate so as to know which beliefs and concerns are about what is ultimate reality and are thus religious.

Tillich identifies the ultimate with the holy and the divine,⁴ but of course that is not much help. (What do those terms mean?) However, he does add that what is truly ultimate—the only right object of ultimate concern—is being-itself, or the infinite.⁵ Moreover, he makes it clear that whatever is infinite in his sense must be unlimited in such a way that there could be nothing distinct from it. He thinks that if someone were to say that God is ultimate but also believe that the universe is a reality other than God, that person would be inconsistent. For were there anything other than God, God would then be limited by what he is not and thus would not be infinite and so not really ultimate. The result of this, Tillich says, is that anyone ultimately concerned with that sort of god (a god who is a being rather than being-itself) would be putting his or her trust in something which is not really ultimate and would therefore have false religious belief (he calls it false faith).⁶

But by understanding ultimate in this way, Tillich’s definition of faith turns out to be too narrow. Rather than finding a common element to all religious beliefs, Tillich lapses into prescribing his version of what true religion is. Thus he fails to give a meaning to ultimate which can allow for false as well as true religious belief. For if religious faith is being concerned about the ultimate only in his sense, then anyone whose concern is with something taken to be ultimate but not infinite as he understands infinite would simply have no religious belief whatever. Tillich has therefore actually defined faith so that only his idea of true faith is faith at all. So whether his idea of true religion is right or wrong is beside the point just now, because it is a fact that there are religions which do not believe anything to be ultimate in his sense of infinite.

Tillich was, of course, aware of this objection but he failed to realize that it is lethal to his definition. He tried to sidestep its significance by suggesting, as I indicated above, that the religions concerned with something that is not infinite in his sense intend their concern to be for that which is infinite but fall short. His sidestep amounts to saying that true religion is concern or belief which succeeds in being directed to the infinite, while false religion is concern which intends to be directed to the infinite but misses. But this just will not do. For the theistic religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—hold to the doctrine of creation found in Genesis. They do not therefore intend to believe in anything that is infinite in Tillich’s sense. Instead, they quite deliberately believe in God the Creator who is distinct from the universe He created. They hold that the universe depends on God for its existence because God brought it into being out of nothing, not that it is part of God. Thus, ultimate concern, as Tillich defines it, is not a characteristic of these religions and so is too narrow to be the essential definition of all religious belief.

Another influential scholarly definition is this:

Religion is the varied symbolic expression of, and appropriate response to, that which people deliberately affirm as being of unrestricted value for them.⁷

In other words, whatever is believed to be of unrestricted value is therefore regarded as the precise core of religious belief. This definition appears more plausible than it really is because of the way we sometimes speak metaphorically of a person’s obsessions as his religion. For example, we call a sports fanatic’s devotion to his favorite sport his religion because of the way that devotion is like the religious devotion of a saint or a prophet. But the fact that the fervor or dedication of a sports fanatic is like that of a saint won’t make a sport a religion any more than it will make a religion a sport. And that point aside, there are even better reasons to think this definition is just not right.

For one thing, there are polytheisms in which there are gods who are little valued or even hated.⁸ If religious belief were identical with belief in what a person values most, then belief in these gods would have to be non-religious! But if belief in a god isn’t a religious belief, what is? Here, and in all that follows, I will take it as a rule in need of no defense that any definition that makes belief in a god to be non-religious has thereby discredited itself.

Such polytheisms are not the only counter-examples to this proposal, however; Christianity is one also. For while it is surely true that what is of supreme value is an important part of Christian teaching, the proper ordering of values is presented in the New Testament as a result of belief in God rather than as identical with it. What a Christian is admonished to value above all is God’s favor: the kingdom of God and the righteousness he offers to those who believe in him (Matt. 6:33). But the New Testament also stipulates that to please God one must first believe that he exists and rewards those who seek him (Heb. 11:6). Clearly, then, if belief that God is real and trustworthy is a precondition for valuing God’s kingdom and favor above all else, then belief in God can not be the same as the valuing that results from it. In short, God, in Christian teaching, is not a value but the Creator of all values. And the proper relation to God is for us to love him with our whole being, not merely to value him. Thus it follows that Christianity is another counter-example to this proposal since defining religious belief as belief in whatever one values most would make the Christian belief in God to be non-religious. (Of course, this is not to deny that what people value most is often an indicator of what they regard as divine. But the fact that one’s highest value can reflect a religious belief doesn’t show it always does, let alone that religious belief can be defined by it.)

Although there isn’t the room here to examine a large number of other proposals,⁹ I don’t think it’s necessary since so many scholars of religion now agree that none of them succeeds and some have even concluded that no precise definition of religious belief is possible.¹⁰ As a result, the prevailing view these days is that religious beliefs have only family resemblances rather than any defining features common to them all. To appreciate why so many thinkers feel driven to say that, consider the obstacles to forming a real definition. Suppose, for example, we were to reply to them that every religion is characterized by a belief in something or other as divine. That seems true enough but not very helpful; it simply shifts the problem to defining divine. How, they would ask, are we to locate a common element among the ideas of divinity found in only the major world religions of the present? What common element is shared between the idea of God in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, the Hindu idea of Brahman-Atman, the idea of Dharmakaya in Mahajana Buddhism, and the idea of the Tao in Taoism? To isolate a common element among these seems daunting enough, but even if we could do it we would then have to locate that same element in the ideas of divinity found in ancient Egypt, Babylon, Palestine, and Greece; the divinities of China and Japan, of the Pacific islands, of Australia, of the Druids, and in the tribal religions of Africa and North and South America. Isn’t it obvious, they ask, that there is no common feature to the divinities of all these traditions? Posed in just this way, I would have to agree with the negative answer their question anticipates. The putative divinities compared are, indeed, so diverse as to have no common characteristic.

But before we give up on a precise definition, it is worth asking whether the list whose teachings are being compared is as innocent as it’s being taken to be. Granted, the beliefs represented on the list are all prima facie religious, but are they religious in the same sense? Could it be that the list conceals a shift in the meaning of religious for the beliefs being compared? To be more specific, I’m asking whether it’s possible that some beliefs on the list are religious in a sense that is basic to others on that list, so that the others are religious only in a secondary sense. If so, the list has failed to distinguish beliefs that are religious in a primary sense from those that are religious only in a secondary sense, and this could be the cause of the failure to obtain a precise definition for the entire list.

Now there are at least two senses in which one belief may be primary with respect to another. One is a noetic sense, that is, a sense that concerns the order of our beliefs. In this sense one belief is primary with respect to another when it is a necessary presupposition to the other, such that no one could hold the secondary belief without already holding (or assuming) the primary belief. The other sense of primacy is ontic, that is, it concerns the order of reality. In this sense one belief is primary with respect to another when the object of the secondary belief is taken to depend on the object of the primary belief for its reality. In each sense, then, what is primary is a necessary precondition for what is secondary. In the first case, the primary belief is necessary to hold the secondary belief; in the second case the object of the primary belief is held to be what generates the reality of the object of the secondary belief.

My worry, then, is whether the short list of religions we started with is in fact an admixture of secondary as well as primary beliefs. If so, it may well be the case that the quest for a precise definition has been surrendered prematurely. For it could be that the primary religious beliefs do have defining common characteristics that the secondary religious beliefs do not share, leaving the entire list with only family resemblances.

Consider the following analogy to this point. Suppose we wanted to define what counts as a school, and we tried to do that under the description educational organization. Guided by that description we compiled a list of as many sorts of schools as we could think of, but also included in our list the parent-teacher associations (PTAs) formed in many communities as auxiliaries to their local public elementary schools. Suppose we then tried to form a precise definition of a school only to find there are no features shared by all the organizations on our list. The reason would be that although there are common features shared by a kindergarten, an elementary school, a high school, a college, a university, etc., these features are not true of PTAs. But PTAs are clearly educational organizations only in the secondary senses of that term. There can’t be PTAs unless there are schools, and we can’t believe that we need a PTA or form beliefs about what it should do to support a school without believing we have a school and without beliefs about what the school’s needs are. It is clear in this case that our failure to come up with a precise definition of a school would be the result of our listing an organization that is educational only in the secondary sense of supporting schools, along with organizations that are educational in the primary sense of delivering education to students. For while all schools have the common aim of providing education, exhibit the same general internal relationship between instructor and student, and operate with the same notion of authority based on the expertise of the instructor, PTAs do not share any of these features. Thus it would be our failure to distinguish between the primary and secondary senses of educational that would have led to the false conclusion that there is no precise definition of a school.

Whether this is what has happened in the case of religious belief is a question worth pursuing just because so much is at stake. So we need to re-examine our initial short list to see whether, within the same tradition of thought and practice, some of the beliefs on our list exhibit either dependency on other beliefs, or whether the objects of some of those beliefs are thought to depend on the objects of still other beliefs. Should this turn out to be the case, we can then remove the secondary beliefs from the list and re-examine the primary beliefs to see if they really have only family resemblances or whether they share some defining characteristic(s) after all.

2.2 A Resolution

Out of what we have seen so far, one thing seems clear: all religious traditions center around whatever they believe to be divine, but they disagree widely on what is divine. For example, the divine is variously believed to be one transcendent creator, two ever-opposing forces, a large number of gods, being-itself, Nothingness, etc. It is this great divergence of belief that brings to grief the definitions just reviewed, and which has driven many thinkers to despair of ever capturing a common element to all religious belief. So, in accordance with the distinction drawn at the close of the last section, I now want to inquire as to whether any of the beliefs on our short list is religious in a secondary rather than a primary sense.

The answer can only be, yes. In many polytheistic traditions there are accounts of how the gods came into existence. This means that the divinity of such gods is clearly regarded as derived and secondary as compared to whatever is divine in the sense of having unconditional reality and accounts for their origins (from now on I will call this the status of being divine per se). Take, for example, the account of the gods of ancient Greece as found in Hesiod and Homer. In Hesiod’s account, the natural world in an undifferentiated state is what just is; it exists unconditionally and gave rise to everything else after it generated a gap between the earth and the heavens he called Chaos. Following that initial change, all other specific forms of existence were generated including the gods. According to Homer the primordial reality was Okeanos, a vast expanse of watery stuff from which arose all else including the gods. Despite their differences, then, both accounts agree that the gods are dependent on a more basic reality so the gods are themselves derivative realities.¹¹ This is why no one of them—nor all of them together—could be called creator in the sense that God is in Genesis. Moreover, the gods are not only secondary divinities because of their ontic dependency upon something else that is divine per se. They are also secondary in the noetic sense, since the beliefs about them depend upon the belief in Okeanos or Chaos. For no individual being could be believed to be a god—that is, a being with more divine power than humans possess—unless it was already believed that there is a per se divine source of all other things which confers varying degrees of power upon them.

The same is true of the myths of ancient Babylonia. In them, too, the gods acquire their divine status and power derivatively. For according to them,

The origin of all things was the primeval watery chaos, represented by the pair Apsu and Tiamat.… With them the cosmogenic theogony begins.¹²

In still other traditions the gods are beings with more power than humans. This is true of the Shinto tradition, for example, in which the divine per se is called Kami. In still others a divine power permeates all things but is concentrated in particular objects, places, or humans. The ancient Roman notion of Numen, the Melanesian idea of Mana, and the American Indian beliefs in Wakan or Orenda are instances of this.¹³ The same point has been noted about a number of African religions. Even though some of them believe in a supreme god, they maintain that belief in a different way from that of biblical theism, a way one writer has dubbed diffused monotheism

because here we have a monotheism in which there exist other powers which derive from the Deity such being and authority that they can be treated, for practical purposes almost as ends in themselves.¹⁴

It is not necessary to single out every case of secondary