[SERIES] Faith and Atheism: ON RELIGION

Faith and Atheism [SERIES]: On Religion
Originally Published: Dec-2023
Edited: Jan-2024

By Andrew Samaras

Whereas faith encompassed my whole life as a believer, both in terms of my beliefs themselves and my conviction to live according to them, religion was my culture. It was not defined on the basis of shared geography or upbringings, but rather shared stories. We united around these stories and our communal belief in them, and from that wellspring of belief, we created a culture. Like any culture, religion is not a homogenous group. It has denominations, with different interpretations of the holy texts around which the culture is centered. And from these disjointed doctrines branch out subcultures, with unique customs and practices, different worship and music, and incompatible laws and dogma. These subcultures proliferate on the ambiguity of the texts and doctrine: the more interpretations are clarified and nuances are ironed out, the smaller and more insular the groups become, until you find in the end that you belong to a religion of one. By the time I started questioning my life of faith, I had already begun assimilating into other cultures and movements at the expense of my participation in Christian culture, making the religious pillar of my faith the weakest and easiest to topple. I suspected that my gradual withdrawal from my religious community was to blame for the malaise over my faith, but before renewing my allegiance to my culture, I had to examine its foundations. Why should participation in religion, as a culture, serve to prop up my faith? How was religion aiding me in my quest to live in the truth?

I was well-versed in the proposed answers to these questions; I had been trained to argue for the defense. From my own biblical study and the apologetics and systematic theology classes I had taken, I knew the religious argument, which was derived directly from the bible, and which is echoed in many other religious texts. This is the argument by religion, for religion. The first assertion of the religious argument bears with it, a threat. The claim is that religious participation is an obligation, and that religion is necessary for achieving salvation. Of course, different religions all prescribe themselves as the true one, but the admonition, and corresponding doom if ignored, is identical. The second assertion is that there is intrinsic power in religious communion; that communities of like-hearted worshippers are capable of great feats on behalf of their God. This assertion is also a charge for believers to unite and carry out the Lord’s work. The third claim of the religious argument asserts its utility — that organizing around a religion was and is the only way to achieve a moral, just, and community-based society; that religion, in general, provides a net-benefit to society; and that religious participation improves the quality of life, in aggregate, of practitioners. I discovered later that this argument is also echoed by secular apologists for religion who, although non-religious themselves, cannot bear to be perceived as criticizing religious culture. Finally, the fourth assertion, and most pertinent to my quest, is the insistence that religion is the one pathway to truth.

I was also prepared with rebuttals to the typical charges against religion by atheists and non-believers: their invoking the history of religious atrocities, the rampant hucksterism, and the encroachment of science into domains previously deemed theological. These, of course, were undeniable facts about religion throughout history, but it was easy for us to write them off as being a problem only among those who were not practicing their religion correctly. I had not yet been convinced that religion was altogether evil, or that it was even net-negative, but I had raised the religious question, and now the onus was on me to justify the necessity of it for living a righteous life. The sad and dark history of religion seemed still to merely be blemishes on its surface, but there was a much deeper rot lurking within the religious pillar that threatened its integrity.

The religious argument was ubiquitous in my religious education, from the pulpit and in the classroom, and due to my relatively positive personal religious experience, I felt I could extrapolate and apply it to religion as an institution. But when my faith was at stake, and I was relying on that proclamation to uphold that my beliefs were founded in truth, I discovered that it could not bear the weight. The utility of religion has nothing to do with the truth. The religious argument was a fallacy, whose reach far exceeded its grasp. Even if religious experience was overwhelmingly positive for 99% of the world’s population, that would say nothing about the actual existence of a deity or the validity of any particular holy book or doctrine. In order to objectively assess the religious argument, to discover the true value of my religious experience, I had to understand that it was naivety to view the argument that religion was good as evidence of my beliefs being true. Once the religious argument was contained and disentangled from discrete arguments on theism, science, and doctrine, I could begin to try to objectively grade religion on its merits.

At the heart of the religious argument is an empirical claim that the impact of religion on individuals and societies is net-positive, but this claim is worth examining. What is the score? Do the rewards of mass-religious participation outweigh the risks? Of course, the moral math on this point differs between evaluators. Yet it is not difficult for me, even now, to put myself back in my former mind of faith which saw only the best angles of my Christian culture. I can hear the volley of miraculous boons that religion boasts screaming past me, and I notice a few themes emerging:

That religion is a bastion of family values, a moral foundation for the institution of family, and a source of valuable wisdom to parents who aim to raise good and upstanding children;
That religion is an unmatched source of moral clarity, that its standards provide a method for accountability, and that its prescriptions and teachings are not only applicable to individuals, but also to the organization of society;
That it is a provider of purpose, a filler of voids, and the ultimate salvation from humanity’s mortal enemy, inevitable and total death.

Religion is indoctrination, even if it is consensual indoctrination. It is a pair of colored lenses whose hue can completely alter the perception of color and possibility, and when imposed on children who cannot consent, the indoctrination is unforgivable, cutting right to the heart of any assertion that religion is overwhelmingly good for families. Beyond this, Christian couples demonstrate the same frailty as secular ones, divorcing with virtually the same frequency, and religious children are prone to the same tempers, same rebellions, and same sinful explorations as any other. Participation in religions is also often correlated with active support for radical and extremist political ideologies and cultural movements, which are patently corrosive to families as well as dangerous to society. When addressing the claim that religion bolsters family, the issue of the rampant abuse of children in countless churches, religious schools, and faith-based organizations must also be raised, as religious affiliation is the driving force for the protective wall that is built around the abusers, and the cultural emphasis on respect and deference to authority accounts for many of the guilt-ridden who suffer and accept abuse in silence. Given all this context, it seemed correct to me that alternative models of family values could be, and perhaps should be pursued.

Insofar as it can be claimed that religion provides purpose to life or moral clarity, does it then follow that religion is the best purveyor of purpose or the only arbiter of morality? Is religious participation not pointless if the religion is untrue? I hold that people bring the meaning to religion, not the other way around. And yet religious participation has indisputably filled holes in people’s lives. The mystery is not if people can find purpose in religion; people can unite around and derive meaning from just about anything. The question is which manufacturers of experience and peddlers of purpose are selling a hazardous product and how can we know? The wealth of history on religious extremist movements and inter-religious conflict and war, bolsters the case that the brand of purpose religion prescribes to its adherents can come with painful, and sometimes deadly, ideological side-effects. Inquisitions, witch trials, and crusades, do not offer evidence that religion is always the harbinger of moral clarity. Even apparently secular violent movements, upon further examination, have religious components in them, whether it is the cult-like worship of a demagogue or ideologue, or religious adherence to a political doctrine, against all odds and logic. Does anyone really think that modern political ideological movements, whether MAGA and QAnon, or left-wing extremism and proto- communism, which appear suspiciously cultic in nature, have nothing to do with the religious culture and mindset people have learned at church?

The problems inherent from religious practice are more easily acknowledged when the charges are leveled against organized religion. If one points out examples of the inadequacies of religions for preventing atrocities committed in their own names, or failures to root out the inefficiencies and corruption that tarnish their reputations, it will be readily apparent to most that the culprits are institutions and churches, hierarchies and dogma. Criticism of personal religion, which ultimately shares the same makeup as organized religion, is far more controversial. The addition of one’s own subjectivity, individual interpretations, and worship practices woven into the religious culture is treated as an indemnifying ingredient. The idea, which is a myth floating out of secular and religious circles alike, is that when people do horrible acts, personal religion and ideology have nothing to do with it. There is no such thing as religious war or religious terrorism. Bad people will do bad things, and if they are religious, they will simply do them in the name of religion. Likewise, good people will do good things, regardless of their religion. This theory is also a fallacy. Good people are often led astray by bad ideas, and religious conviction makes people uniquely vulnerable to certain bad ideas that result in many of the problems facing our world today. It is fortunate that many people are capable of producing more benign personal religions, that ignore much of the viler dogma packaged and disseminated to the masses by hateful and radical pastors, priests, and imams. Unfortunately, this success is not scalable, because it relies on the individual’s convictions and consciences as a barometer of truth. Any time that a person spends trying to reconcile the problematic dogma of religion with their own ethical principles comes at an extraordinary opportunity cost to the sincere pursuit of truth.

Since I had never warmed to organized religion, and I did not subscribe to doctrine that put a bureaucratic or hierarchical layer between me and the divine, it was the deep personal religion I had developed that began to lose its charm to me. Under the new scrutiny I put on my faith, it became apparent to me that organized religion, with its strong ideological component, high risk of poisonous vitriol, and supreme ability to influence and mobilize, is a dangerous if not entirely harmful force. I began to wonder if a Sunday morning stroll through the woods was not a better way of searching for proximity to the divine than seeking in churches that no longer seemed to avail me. Could it be possible to achieve the same, or even a better sense of community and worship simply by taking in a show or enjoying a pleasant meal with family and friends? I discovered that deep thought and meditation brought more peace and joy to me than ritualistic prayer ever did. Eventually, my religious culture was virtually devoid of the doctrine and sacraments of my past. Even the idea of God, I diluted so thoroughly that it was virtually synonymous with Energy or The Universe.

This new understanding of God and new method of practice served my budding open-mindedness and roaming spirit of inquiry. After all, I was not abandoning the traditions out of disdain or to pursue the life of sin I had heard so much about. It was actually in introspective pursuit of self-improvement that I had wandered out of faith, and now, structured religion as well. The only problem was that these more new age ideas and wide-angle conceptualizations bore no semblance to the Biblical mandate as I had learned it. This made my newfound comfort a possible problem and prompted a new line of questioning and the examination of the second pillar.