I have always found the term “to believe in” rather annoying. I will try to analyse why.
Firstly, there are so many ways this term is generally understood. To believe in a principle or cause, is to have confidence in its value to society. To believe in an individual, is to have confidence in their ability to be successful in some way. To believe in X, is to have confidence that X is literally true or real, no matter what the evidence may indicate. It is this last sense that is most troubling, although many religious folk define religion by all three.
But is religion really about “believing in”? Certainly for Christianity, and Islam, this is the case. In our long domination by this influence, most Westerners define religion as something you believe in. More than that, it requires the third mode of belief, as faith in the literal truth of unprovable statements. I would contend that this view of religion is highly limiting, not at all universal, and somewhat dangerous.
For the majority of religions, belief has always been secondary. Individuals within a society tend to share similar beliefs, but it was never an explicit requirement for participants in most religions to believe in particular unprovable things. Most religions are more about celebration, symbolism, and social cohesion. The Abrahamic religions are unusual in requiring a belief in the unprovable. This view of religion as belief has unfortunately influenced many other religions that have, over time, become more inclined to place more importance on belief.
The negative consequences of belief-based religion are manifest. The requirement to “believe in” unprovable propositions opens the door to interpretations of those propositions, and the concepts of heresy, and blasphemy. These are essentially “thought crimes” historically, and in some countries still, punishable by death. Even where there are no longer official punishments, the questioning of orthodoxy is often met with social sanctions and even physical abuse.
Less extreme, but perhaps more destructive in the long run, is the tendency of those reliant upon revealed belief to ignore evidence-based knowledge. Denial is the most common position of religious and political groups who find some truths inconvenient to their cherished beliefs. Climate change denial, evolution denial, and holocaust denial, are just a few examples. These groups are not skeptics in the sense of being undecided and requiring more evidence. They have a predefined position, and are selective in their acceptance only of evidence that seems to support their beliefs. They create and exploit public confusion, delaying urgent action, or casting doubt and suspicion on the legitimate pursuit of knowledge.
A more insidious consequence of stressing belief in the unprovable, is that it is a short step to enforcing belief in the demonstrably false. Fundamentalist Christian, Muslim, and other religious cults discovered the power of coercive psychological techniques long before they were adopted by communist re-educators, or described in George Orwell’s “1984”. By immersing people in an environment where unquestioning belief and obedience are required, individual conscience and rationality can be suppressed. Cult survivors are often horrified at how easily they were lead into actions and ideas that were totally out of character.
It may be useful here to define the difference between a sect and a cult. A sect is merely a subgroup of a religion that may have unusual ideas, and may have intense hostility toward other sects, but is not necessarily a cult. A cult is a group, religious or otherwise, that uses coercive psychological techniques to control its members’ actions and beliefs.
The signs of cult behaviour in a group usually include; an authoritarian leadership, often with outlandishly grandiose titles, a hierarchical structure where promotion and status are rewards for adherence to the dictates of the leadership, psychological isolation of members from the wider world, often reinforced with physical isolation and a degree of paranoia, the insistence that members are special or better than the outside community, and particularly the enforcement of belief in unprovable dogmas involving punishments for doubt or questioning.
The key to getting a cult to work is the control of belief. This is most easily achieved if it is done in stages. Once the members have modified their beliefs sufficiently far from reality, they lose their ability to discern the difference between truth and fiction, or between what they would previously have seen intuitively as right or wrong. The process can produce profound changes in an individual’s behaviour, and lasting psychological damage.
By overstating the importance of “believing in” things, Western culture has really set itself up for the proliferation of cults. In the Islamic world religious cults are less tolerated, but belief can still be politicised and turned toward extremism.
The only antidote to our susceptibility to cults, is to stop defining religion as “believing in..”. Define it as a practice, a philosophy of life, a way of communing with the Universe, a tradition. Once we are free from the tyranny of “believing in”, we are able to accept evidence-based knowledge, or reject misinformation, without fear or guilt.
The problem of belief seems to have polarised society, with rationalist atheists on one side, and superstitious religionists on the other. In reality, there is a silent majority of rational and quietly religious folk, as there always has been. Many of the divisions and problems of religion and society would vanish if we just stopped “believing in …”.
Recommended Reading
Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism: A Study of Brainwashing in China by Robert Jay Lifton
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason by Sam Harris
Your words are straightforward and true. And though it seems that nobody in the world who is educated and can think for himself could disagree with your words, many people fall into the trap of ‘believing in…’ It’s interesting how easily people are ready to kill for their convictions (“Convictions cause convicts”, Robert Anton Wilson once said) or how aggressive believers protect their dogmas, when their beliefs are questioned by science or rational thought. It’s even more outrageous that people like that can become presidents in the USA. Politicians often say “I am convinced that…” as if this would turn their beliefs into a rational arguement or a fact. However, only good old education can save mankind from its ‘original sin’: stupidity. I am sometimes perplexed that so many religious people ‘believe in’ things or act as if German philosophers like Immanuel Kant or the Age of Enlightenment have never existed.
The issues involved in “believing in” as the defining principle of religioius identity has been discussed in an interesting way, albeit from a Christain perspective, by Harvey Cox in his recent book, “The Future of Faith.”
The argument in this post should provide great food for thought for followers of “new” religion .
Let us look at a non-theistic religious tradition such as Buddhism. Even Buddhism, which is without a theology, can be subject to cultish appropriations, however, in essence it is a religion with complete emphasis on rational philosophy and practice that can be integrated into one’s daily life; the results of the latter are demonstrable in mental clarity, psychological well-being, greater self-control, compassionate response to others’ sufferings, etc.
Buddhists measure spiritual progress by the degree of maturity in one’s practice. For example, a Buddhist who claims to meditate a lot but loses temper easily will be advised to concentrate more on his or her practice. Buddhism is both practical and empirical. When the historical Buddha was asked by a Greek philosopher what his metaphysical position was, his answer was that he had none.
The term “religion” may even be inapplicable to Buddhism. Buddhists talk about dharma, which in fact is a way of being. However, in its historical evolution Buddhism, too, has manifested some of the major problems in Abrahamic faiths, such as inflexible orthodoxy and persecution of dissenters.
“The term “religion” may even be inapplicable to Buddhism”
This is only true if we accept the Judeo-Christian definition of religion as belief based.
That is a very good point, Sweyn. Some years ago I read an article by a Polish academic who argues that Buddhism, unlike Christianity, lacks transcendence. For him transcendence is the defining essence of a religion. What he misses is that Buddhists are more interested in primordiality: what is already there that we can go really deep into.
Traditionalists like Schuon also made a similar argument about neo-paganism. Again, in my view, plenty of examples of a profound attunement to primordiality can be found in the pagan and heathen traditions. In the sagas, for example, cultural aspects of human existence, such as speech, are given a divine character (viz. Bragi for speech, in particular poetic speech). The runic system is also an expression of the divine nature of writing.
There are many Buddhist techniques that work and I am in the process of reintegrating them into my own practice. I do not view Buddhism as simply an “Eastern” religion. It flourished first in the East, but it is also now developing in a wholesome way in the West that embraces diversity and experimentation. The essence of Buddhism is Indo-European, given that Sanskrit is one of the ancestors of European languages. In the Western context, the cultural baggage relating specifically to the East in Buddhism can be shed through a study that is historically aware. Given time, there will be a distinctly Western form of Buddhism one day.
ROFLMAO
“Buddhism, unlike Christianity, lacks transcendence”. This could only be uttered by an academic who has never tried meditation.
I agree that Buddhism is undergoing a revitalisation in its return to the West. I think that a Western form of Buddhism has been around for some time, it has just not been formalised.
First Zen was very ‘in’ through people like Suzuki Shunryū and Alan Watts, now Yajrayana Buddhism seems to be more poplular (or at least as popular as Zen) through authors like Chögyam Trungpa, Sogyal Rinpoche and, of course, the Dalai Lama. However, Western perceptions of Buddhism seem to be still very romanticised, idealised and generally mixed with Western projections and imaginations.
The scholar you quote, von den vielen Raben, is typically academic (in a pejorative sense in this context). In the theooratical realms and in the safety of academia, where abstract categoriess all too often trump living experience, it’s easy to claim that Buddhism lacks transcendence. Doing practical work should prove otherwise. but even then academics tend to return to the safety of their preconceptions, because they don’t surrender to the experience. I knew a very intelligent and sincere professor from the US and he said about a Zen Master he has ‘meditated’ with that he was saddened by the fact that this Zen Master was wasting his life away ‘doing nothing and gazing at a naked wall’ [!].
A quote from Aleister Crowley in his Book of Lies that seems very pertinent to this and other recent Elhaz Ablaze articles:
“The more necessary anything appears to my mind, the more certain it is that I only assert a limitation.
“I slept with Faith, and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with Doubt, and found her a virgin in the morning.”
Good one, that is my favourite Crowley quote.
Yes Matt, reminds me of the old story about the Professor visiting the Zen Master. After being asked a lot of academic questions, the Master started pouring tea into the professor’s cup until it started running over. The Professor says “It is full, no more will go in”. The Master replies “Just like you”.
Indeed Zen is a very distilled form of Buddhism and it offers pertinent moments that gives one a “jolt”. Matt, thanks for your anecdote, it made me roar with laughter when I read it. Sweyn, the story that you quoted provides a very apt description of most academics, even those whose career is based on research on esotericism. Gnosis comes from knowledge but it is also based on direct experience. No wonder in Vajrayana Buddhism enlightenment is symbolised as a couple in sexual embrace. Sex is one thing in life that has to be experienced in its totality.
It is gnosis that counts in the moment of death, so that the transition will be smooth. This is the essence of “The Tibetan Book of the Dead”.
On Tibetan Buddhism: Matt, I agree with you that a lot of what is going on is personality-based, and based on my personal experience, I have to say that the Tibetans themselves are to a certain extent at fault. They do not understand Western culture and one major mistake they are making, from the Buddhist point of view, is conversion and amassing of recruits. I support the Tibetans’ human rights cause but I think the way Tibetan Buddhism is being taught in the West, such as in Australian society, is problematic. There needs to be a greater rapprochement with the Western tradition of Enlightenment. In academia my position upsets quite a few people – all Westerners, ironically – and I have spoken to them about the importance of learning about the primordial wisdom of the West, e.g. the Northern Tradition.
I have read a fair bit of Crowley and I am convinced that on the experiential level he really got there. “Congressum cum daemonae” is an important aspect of fundamental reality. He definitely deserves to be read anew.