Ludwig Wittgenstein believed that the proper task of philosophy was to make the nature of our thought and talk clear. The problems of philosophy were illusory, he believed, and arose as a misunderstanding about language. While I think he greatly overstated the case, I think Wittgenstein was on to something important. Many problems—not only in philosophy but in other areas—result from the imprecise use of language.
I must confess that my own muddled use of language often contributes to this problem. When communicating with those who do not share my basic religious and political presuppositions, I often forget that we may not be using language in quite the same way. This can be particularly true when, like the mission of this magazine, attempting to “advance a religiously informed public philosophy.” To even begin to understand what religiously informed means requires answering a more basic question: What exactly is a religious belief?
In order to define the term in such a way that it is neither too broad nor too narrow, we must list all of the features that are true of all religious beliefs and true only of religious beliefs.* While this may appear to be an obvious point, we are often surprised to find what has been pruned when a definition is stripped to its essential components. Imagine, for instance, trying to define the concept of tree in a way that is limited to what is true for all trees but only true of trees. Paring the explanation down in such a manner would not only be difficult but would leave us with a curious, and likely unsatisfying, definition.
What is true of trees will be equally so for religious beliefs. After we cut away the foliage and underbrush that are features of specific religious beliefs we are likely to be unimpressed by the bare, slender reed that remains. We should also expect to find that a minimally precise definition will have exposed the fact that some beliefs that we might have considered to be religious really are not, while finding that others are actually more religious than we might have imagined. Nevertheless, while we might be surprised, unsatisfied, or unimpressed, the important point is that we have defined the term correctly.
Let us begin by examining to features that are commonly (though mistakenly) believed to be essential to religious beliefs:
Religious beliefs require a belief in God or gods — One of the most common misconceptions about religious belief is that it requires a belief in God or a supreme being. But such a feature would be too narrow because it would exclude polytheistic religions that do not recognize a supreme being. In fact, we cannot include the concept of god or gods at all since some religions (e.g., Brahmin Hinduism, Theravada Buddhism) are literally atheistic.
Religious beliefs are beliefs that induce worship or worship-related activities — This feature is also defeated by the counterexamples of Brahmin Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism, neither of which practices worship. The same is true for the religious beliefs of some ancient Greeks such as Aristotle and later the Epicureans who thought the gods neither knew about nor cared about humans. They certainly felt no obligation to worship such apathetic beings.
Having excluded gods and worship from our definition, we are left with very few features that all religious beliefs could possibly share in common. As philosopher Roy Clouser asks, “What common element can be found in the biblical idea of God in Judaism, Christianity and Islam, in the Hindu idea of Brahman-Atman, in the idea of Dharmakaya in Mahayana Buddhism, and the idea of the Tao in Taoism?” The answer, he argues, is that every religious tradition considers something or other as divine and that all of them have a common denominator in the status of the divinity itself.
While many religions disagree on what is divine, they all agree on what it means to be divine. The divine is simply whatever is unconditionally, nondependently real; whatever is just there. By contrast, everything nondivine ultimately depends for existence (at least in part) on whatever is divine. This idea of nondependence or its equivalent is the shared feature in all religious beliefs.
Clouser uses this common element to formulate a precise definition: A belief is a religious belief provided that it is (1) a belief in something as divine or (2) a belief about how to stand in proper relation to the divine, where (3) something is believed to be divine provided it is held to be unconditionally nondependent.
The conclusion we can draw from this definition is that everyone holds, consciously or unconsciously, a religious belief. For many of us, this will be as obvious as finding that our entire lives we’ve been speaking in prose. Others, though, will have a reaction similar to those who argue that while everyone else may speak with an accent, they themselves do not.
Although it may be true that not everyone has a religion (a system of religious beliefs, practices, and rituals), it would be rather absurd to believe that there is anyone who does not have a religious belief. This can be shown by focusing on a theory or belief that many people mistakenly believe to be the reverse of religion: materialism.
Although the idea of materialism has been around since at least the ancient Greeks, it has only recently been considered to be a non-religious idea. This is rather odd considering that it explicitly claims that matter (or some other physical entity) is unconditionally, nondependently real and draws conclusions about nature and humanity based on that belief.
Materialism, in fact, fits the definition more closely than some related beliefs, such as atheism. Just as monotheism claims that the number of gods is one and polytheism holds the view that the number is more than one, atheism simply claims the number of gods is zero. Because it merely takes a position on a nonessential element of religious belief, it would be erroneous to claim that atheism is inherently a religious belief. Materialism, on the other hand, fits the definition in a categorical and clear-cut manner.
Clouser’s definition is neither too broad nor too narrow, is applicable to every known religious tradition, and is logically forceful. Still, I don’t suspect materialists to bend to its logic and admit that they too have a religious belief. When pressed on this point many materialists tend to resort to special pleading or wrangling over the semantics of using the term “religious.” But as Clouser says, “If you insist that whatever you believe to be divine isn’t religious for you, you’ll have to admit that for those of us who hold such a belief and admit its religious character, your belief is going to appear to be religious for reasons that are far from arbitrary.” In other words, call the belief what you want—it certainly looks like a religious belief.
*The definition, ideas, and general explanation of concepts in this post are derived from the work of Roy Clouser. I have, however, filtered it through my own interpretation and sprinkled in some of my own thoughts on the question. Anything coherent, obvious, reasonable, and logical should be attributed to Clouser. Anything incoherent, absurd, unreasonable, and illogical should be credited solely to me.
September 1st, 2009 | 9:53 am
I don’t know, Joe. This seems to rule out most non-philosophical paganism. Zeus was born by crooked Kronos, whom he defeated. Mardok wasn’t always “there” – he rose to power by defeating Tamiat. What say you to this?
September 1st, 2009 | 10:06 am
Your points are mostly well taken, but you stumble when you try to connect them to FT’s mission. I’ve been reading FT since 1992, and I am fairly sure that its mission is not to advance a religiously informed public philosophy if the “religious” in “religiously informed” is defined as broadly as you have defined it. It should be clear that whatever the word “religious” means, in practice FT gives a voice to only a fraction of religiously informed authors (and rightly so).
September 1st, 2009 | 10:20 am
Wonders: What say you to this?
You raise an interesting point. I think we Westerners get confused by such religions because they have the appearance of being polytheistic yet their “gods” aren’t very divine.
How they fit in the schema, in my opinion, is that non-philosophical pagan religions almost always assume that the two kinds of reality that always exist (the divine) are form and matter.
Even though their views are not as sophisticated as, say, the Greek philosophers, they always assume the existence of form and matter. Even their gods are made of such stuff.
Barry: It should be clear that whatever the word “religious” means, in practice FT gives a voice to only a fraction of religiously informed authors (and rightly so).
Absolutely. I certainly don’t want to imply that FT is informed by anything more than a small subset of the available religious beliefs (mainly Judeo-Christian monotheism).
Indeed, the purpose of clarifying our terms is mainly just to clear the decks and provide a justification for the religiously-informed approach. As Clouser says, religious neutralityis a myth. Everyone brings their religious beliefs to the public square. We at FT (and our readers, etc.) are just more explicit and less apologetic about it.
September 1st, 2009 | 10:41 am
Actually, it is a subset of that subset: “traditional (or “orthodox” if you prefer) Judeo-Christian monotheism.” We agree in the main.
September 1st, 2009 | 11:54 am
While many religions disagree on what is divine, they all agree on what it means to be divine. The divine is simply whatever is unconditionally, nondependently real; whatever is just there.
I’m inclined to think that this falters on Buddhism as well; Buddhism, at least in principle, holds that there is nothing unconditionally, nondependently real (pratityasamutpada); there is nothing that is just there (sunyata).
I think it’s a mistake to try for a univocal definition with a term like ‘religion’; there will be a splay of different meanings, related to each other, but not all the same. What has really happened is that a once very well defined term, referring to the virtue of rendering gods or God their/His due and the practices and institutions relevant to this virtue, has been expanded by dozens of different analogies to other things. Neoplatonism, Buddhism, Taoism, and Ruism (Confucianism) can all be called religious in some way, but they are religious in different ways, and in ways different from the way Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are religious; and so forth.
September 1st, 2009 | 12:08 pm
[...] Carter on What is Religious Belief? here. Posted in Philosophy, Religion | No Comments » Leave a [...]
September 1st, 2009 | 1:12 pm
Brandon, I’ve followed this debate religiously, and I have to agree.
September 2nd, 2009 | 9:03 am
[...] I wrote that in order to advance a religiously informed public philosophy, it was useful to clarify what was meant by a religious belief. In the comments section Barry Addington notedthat the mission of First Things is not to advance a [...]
September 2nd, 2009 | 9:59 am
Paul Tillich opens his Dynamics of Faith with “Faith is the state of being ultimately concerned…”
The question of faith for Tillich was what ultimately concerns us? We can makes things an ultimate concern (ultimate = beyond human understanding, as I recall) that are less than ultimate (e.g. materialism).
“Divine” sounds like a substitute for “ultimate” in Clouser’s definition, but use of the word “real” seems to open up a can of worms.
Also, faith and religion are different words. I’m just curious if you’ve read Tillich and how you think he squares with Clouser.
September 2nd, 2009 | 10:45 am
Douglas,
Clouser was actually a student of Tillich, but radically different in terms of total approach with Clouser being a neo-Reformed thinker in the line of the great Amsterdam thinkers (Dooyeweerd, Vollenhoven, et. al.)
Brandon,
Vic Reppert (I think…) tries to find a definition of religion that includes all forms of Buddhism, but doesn’t include the Dallas Cowboys or their fans, haha.
September 2nd, 2009 | 1:07 pm
Despite the name-dropping, the author obvious has not read much Wittgenstein.
I say this because the author seeks the “list all of the features that are true of all religious beliefs and true only of religious beliefs.” However, Wittgenstein’s work showed that this is often impossible. For some words there are multiple definitions which have sets overlapping features, but lack any single feature common to all.
Because of this Wittgenstein says you have to look at how a word is used. Thus your definition of religion is a failure, since it includes beliefs that are not considered to be religions (materialism). Good definitions are descriptive, not prescriptive.
In any case, materialism doesn’t presuppose that God does not exist. Rather, if God (or something equivalent to God) exists, then He too is made of material.
P.S. Hinduism is polytheistic, not atheistic. The author seems to be confused about polytheism; he seems to think that since polytheists don’t believe in only one god that they don’t believe in any gods at all.
In any case, materialism still isn’t a religion because materialism is not a belief regarding the divine.
September 2nd, 2009 | 1:55 pm
[...] To stay on the Catholic theme, First Thoughts (a blog of First Things) offers a very interesting reflection on “what is a religious belief?” If the question doesn’t interest you, the [...]
September 2nd, 2009 | 7:48 pm
Anthony,
I think one of the problems in the West is that people assume atheism means complete rejection of all things supernatural. It’s very common for Western atheists to claim that there are as many as 800 million atheists worldwide. They usually do not realize that the vast majority of those “atheists” (particularly where I used to live in China) are believers in an afterlife, demonic activity, still living ancestors, etc. Thus, they are atheist, but believe in the supernatural. There are various particulars within beliefs that do not contain a god/gods, as Joe was mentioning here.
With this in mind, he wasn’t talking about “Hinduism” in general, but a particular type called “Brahmin Hinduism,” which is atheistic. In this faith, the teachers or “brahmin” have the highest level of authority, although there are supernatural events and an afterlife (or continued existence), there are technically no gods.
That’s also why he clarified Theravada Buddhism instead of Mahayana or Tibetan Buddhism. The latter two conceptions have gods, but the former does not. The former is a “way of life” or “way of thinking,” but most Theravada Buddhists in Thailand, Myanmar, etc. still believe in the supernatural. They are technically “atheists,” but clearly religious.
September 3rd, 2009 | 8:59 am
[...] post in a discussion on the role of religious beliefs in theory-making. The other two can be found here and [...]
September 3rd, 2009 | 1:58 pm
[...] days I’ve been writing about religious beliefs and how they are tied to theory-making (see here, here, and here). In essence, my argument has been that (a) everyone has religious beliefs, (b) [...]
September 7th, 2009 | 6:15 pm
I was fascinated to to see that the objections to the definition I defended were all ones I’d anticipated & replied to.
One was that pagan gods & goddesses were not divine as I defined “divine”. That is true because they were regarded as individuals who had more divine power than humans, but were just as much a product of okeanos (Homer) or chaos (Hesoid) as everything else. It was okeanos or chaos that were divine according to those accounts.
I also anticipated the objection that Buddhism has nothing that is unconditional and non- dependent. That is simply false. If you check note 26 on p.334 of The Myth of Religious Neutrality you’ll find many references that show how various schools of Buddhism have different names for the non-dependent reality: nirvnana, dharma-kaya, void, nothingness, nirvana-dharma-dhatu, and more. But all regard something as having that status.
As to materialism, it is surely true that there are many versions of it. But any version that takes physical reality to be non-dependent and all else to depend on the physical would, indeed, be a religious (divinity) belief. On the other hand, if the physical is not divine according to a certain position, then whatever it ultimately depends on is. Meanwhile, every version of it is subject to the critique I presented in ch 10 of MYTH. Regarded as divine or not, it still doesn’t work.
Finally, it would do well to note that the thinkers who have endorsed this neglected definition include: all the pre-Socratics, Plato, Aristotle, all the medievals, Luther, Calvin, and (in the 20th cent. alone) William James, Norman Kemp Smith, Paul Tillich, Mircea Eliade, Hans Kung, A.C. Bouquet, Paul Chenau, C.S. Lewis, Herman Dooyeweerd, and Joachim Wach.
Maybe it’s about time it got the hearing it deserves?
September 7th, 2009 | 6:24 pm
PS. I almost forgot to point out that although I’ve taught Wittgenstein, I don’t think his point matters much here. He said that using the same word for a number of different things doesn’t guarantee they all have a common property. True enough. It also doesn’t guarantee that they don’t, and his own example (games) fails because games have the common characteristics of being an activity engaged in for amusement in which some arbitrarily set goal is achieved in accordance with arbitrarily set rules. Anyway, although his point is sometimes right & sometimes not, it can’t be an objection to finding the common characteristics of religious beliefs until and unless you can show there are exceptions to the one I proposed & defended.
Ciao!
September 9th, 2009 | 5:18 pm
[...] Some philosophical beliefs should be treated the same as religious beliefs because they truly are religious beliefs. The problem in this case is that the ruling allows a doctrinal belief (”a philosophical [...]
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