SHORTLY BEFORE THE FEDERAL
ELECTIONS of October
2004, Treasurer Peter
Costello delivered an
address entitled ‘The
Moral Decay of Australia’
to 16,000 members of
the Assemblies of God
at the Sydney Hillsong
Church. For his main
theme, Costello invoked
‘the Judeo-Christian-Western
tradition’, the
core of which, according
to him, was the Ten
Commandments. He lamented
that few people could
recite the Commandments
today, despite the fact
that ‘they are
the foundation of our
law and our society’.
He listed the legacy
of that tradition as
the rule of law, respect
for life, respect for
others and private property
rights. ‘Tolerance
under the law,’
he added, is also, ‘a
great part of this tradition.’
Then, after a few backhanders
to the Islamic Council,
the Victorian government,
rap music, prostitution
and drug barons, he
reiterated the importance
of mutual respect and
tolerance, and went
on to urge a return
to ‘genuine faith’,
an affirmation of the
‘historic Christian
faith’ and the
values ‘set out
in the Ten Commandments
about how to order society’.
Finally, he told the
audience how good and
important it was. Devout
Christians were the
ballast of society:
it is ‘their inner
faith that gives them
strength. Our society
won’t work without
them.’ Post-election
analyses suggested that
the audience liked what
they heard; yet almost
every word was gammon.
In
July 2005 Costello returned
to speak at the Hillsong
Church and was given
a ‘rapturous welcome’
by an audience of 20,000.
This time the NSW premier
and several federal
and state ministers
were also present. Costello
noted the ‘massive
growth’ of Hillsong
Church. ‘There’s
a definite movement,
and it’s having
a wonderful effect on
the lives of our young
people and of our society’,
he said. Within days
of this event, Opposition
Leader Kim Beazley revealed
his delicate relig-iosity
(‘I’m also
careful what I pray
for. I don’t pray
for victory. I don’t
assume that God necessarily
wills a Labor or Liberal
victory’). Kevin
Rudd and some other
politicians from both
sides outed themselves
as Christians, and the
economist heading the
new Fair Pay Commission
informed the public
that he would endeavour
to do God’s will
in the discharge of
his new duties. Of course,
on the world stage,
more august figures
have declared themselves
to be doing God’s
will. George W. Bush,
Osama bin Laden and
many of their associates
believe themselves to
be doing that, but,
according to reports,
only the first of these
mass murderers thinks
that he is receiving
instructions directly
from the Almighty.
Costello
got most of it wrong.
Western law has no historical
connection with the
Ten Commandments and
not much with Christianity;
it is largely a descendant
of Roman law. The assertion
that the Judeo-Christian
tradition has been tolerant
would not stand up in
Sunday school, though
the ambiguating prefix
‘Western’
makes the claim more
plausible. But Costello
may be right about the
revival of religion.
At the edges, sects,
cults and the occult
are doing well. It is
reported that Mormonism
and Scientology have
the highest recruitment
rates of any religion.
Services in astrology,
supernatural therapies
and dodgy alternative
medicines are in great
demand. Buffy the vampire
slayer and Sabrina the
teenage witch have vanquished
science fiction from
our screens. Satan appears
to be everywhere. There
is much talk of Evil,
with metaphysical overtones,
in high places. The
Vatican must have noticed
all this because, for
the first time in 400
years, it revised its
protocols on exorcism
and introduced courses
on it for priests.
The
news also looks good
for the mainstream religions.
Although surveying religious
belief is especially
problematic, statistics
suggest that traditional
faith, even if more
equivocal and fragmented
than it used to be,
still maintains support:
in the US, eighty-five
per cent of people claim
to believe in God; in
Nigeria, ninety-eight
per cent; in Indonesia,
at least ninety per
cent; in Ireland, eighty-seven
per cent. Taking into
account reported revivals
of Orthodoxy in Russia
and Eastern Europe,
religious stirring in
nominally atheistic
places such as China,
religion’s blooming
in Africa, and similar
developments in the
Muslim and Hindu worlds,
it does appear that
there is still much
hankering for religion.
People who take their
religion seriously have
become more clamorous
and influential in world
affairs than they have
been for centuries;
this is especially true,
of course, in the US,
where white Evangelical
Christians are having
a conspicuous social
and political impact.
Of course, as ever,
the devout still complain
about a falling-off
from religion —
and those who have fallen
off, or never got on,
still think that there
is too much of it.
Many
thinkers had believed
that the main religions
of the West — those
situated in the Judeo-Christian
and Islamic traditions
— had been ringbarked
some time around the
Enlightenment and would
gradually wither. That
hasn’t happened;
and for people of a
humanist or, at least,
anti-religious cast,
religion’s persistence
is worrying. As regards
some fundamentalist
religions, or religious
extremisms, and some
macabre cults, there
is general agreement
that they are a menace
to civil society. But
the agreement is usually
coupled with the view
that they are transient
perversions for which
the remedy is reassertion
of the wholesome traditional
mainstream ways. In
my opinion, this view
is mistaken. The fundamentalisms
are branches of a noxious
tree. I largely agree
with Bertrand Russell,
who agreed with Lucretius,
that (nearly) all religion
is a disease born of
fear and a source of
untold misery for the
human race.
There
has been much too little
criticism of religion.
This is understandable:
until the recent past,
where the pious have
held sway, atheists,
heretics and critics
were cowed or killed.
The persecution extended
well into the nineteenth
century; Russell was
deprived of an academic
post by religionists
as recently as 1940.
But the main reason
for the critical sloth
in more recent times
is that tolerance is
a creature of secular
humanism, and in its
spirit the majority
of critics manqué
have simply declined
to fire. The failure
to combat religious
belief, the social penetration
of religious institutions,
and the ever-greening
of wishful fantasy in
the human breast have
ensconced religion in
a kind of default position
in many cultures, as
if it were intellectually
respectable, rather
than meet for exposure
as an enfeeblement of
thought.
Russell’s
reproaches were similar
to those of Nietzsche
and Freud, the most
penetrating thinkers
to turn on religion.
All three had the monotheistic
traditions mostly in
mind (as I shall have
here), and between them
they charged roughly
as follows: religion
springs from fear, conceit
and cruelty; it is responsible
for a terrible record
of moral obstruction
and slaughter; it is
a delusional way of
confronting weakness
and helplessness; it
bends thought to its
purposes, undermines
reason, inhibits curiosity
and imagination, nourishes
hubris secretly and
forges pernicious group
identities; given the
opportunity, it persecutes
difference and threatens
the rule of law. All
of this I believe; but
it is a weighty indictment,
and my attempt here
to flesh it out psychologically
will necessarily be
selective.
I
am sure that many good
people would not agree
with me. Some people are
drawn to religion because
they believe that it is
good, and they may be
puzzled or offended by
the contention that religion
is a creature of darkness.
For many, religion provides
hope, consolation and
inspiration to love and
generosity. For some,
it may seem the most precious
thing of all; the ‘voice
of the deepest human experience’,
Matthew Arnold said. I
do not wish to deny that
good can come from religion
— as truth can come
from error — or that
there are good, immensely
kind people associated
with it. I believe that
such people probably would
be good, and perhaps even
be better, without religion
— but that is not
a matter I can discuss
here.
The
traditions I’m concerned
with are ambitious structures
of ideas, and practices
and institutions shaped
by those ideas. They assemble
a variety of superficially
unconnected phenomena
unified only by the posit
of a transcendent, creative,
omnipotent, personal and
solicitous God. They provide
cosmogonies and metaphysical
frameworks for understanding
humankind’s place
and purpose in the cosmos;
they provide a transcendent
or supernatural foundation
for morality and law;
they accommodate the powerful
dependent and wishful
dispositions of humankind,
the need for worship,
prayer and hope; and they
provide a sense of group
belonging, self-esteem
and security in this life
and reassurance about
the next.
I referred deliberately
to the notion of God as
a ‘posit’ to
draw attention to the
religious conception of
a transcendent, personal
(person-like) Being. I
think that this conception,
but not including the
detailed theological elaborations
of it — the ‘folk-metaphysics’
of religion, one might
say — is critical
to understanding religion.
To be sure, it is a kind
of illusion; but I will
come to that.
Now,
some philosophers and
theologians would insist
that in dallying with
the metaphysics even so
far I have already missed
the main point about religion.
Some distinguish between
a God of philosophy and
a God of religion, and
deny that the metaphysics
or theology of the former
— in any case, as
‘metaphysics’
is usually understood
— is relevant to
the God of religion, and
therefore of religion,
as these are properly
understood. There is a
variety of related views
here. It is said that
religion is really about
morality, or practical
commitment to a way of
life, or certain kinds
of attitudes to the world.
Some thinkers deny that
religious language traditionally
interpreted as referential
— in the sense, for
example, in which I refer
to my cat Jeoffry —
is really so. Thus, Immanuel
Kant in his Opus Postumum
wrote that ‘God is
not a Being outside of
me, but merely a thought
within me. God is the
practical reason giving
laws to itself.’
And ‘the proposition
“There is a God”
means no more than: “There
is in human reason, determining
itself according to morality,
a supreme principle which
…”’ The
Cambridge philosopher
R.B. Braithwaite suggested
that religious utterances
that appear superficially
to be referential are
really about commitments
to ways of life. The assertion
by a Christian of ‘I
believe in God’ is
really a way of declaring
that one intends to follow
the agapeistic life exemplified
by Jesus Christ. Some
followers of Wittgenstein
have made similar claims.
Some postmodernists, such
as Heidegger and Derrida,
distinguish between the
metaphysical God of the
main tradition and an
understanding of a ‘divine’
God who is totally ‘Other’,
somehow beyond Being.
The attempt in each of
these approaches is to
subvert the traditional
conception of a transcendent,
personal God and to rescue
religion by attaching
it to the new, or renewed,
non-metaphysical conceptions
of the divine.
These
attempts, if they are
attempts to understand
what is essential to the
religion that the vast
majority of people have
professed, are in the
wrong ballpark. A philosopher
is certainly free to propose
a new conception of religion
or understanding of God,
or to provide a radical
reinterpretation of traditional
understanding. And there
may even be rara aves
somewhere whose religious
practices conform to such
conceptions. But it is
quite another thing to
advance such proposals
as analytical descriptions
of the mainstream, traditional
conceptions. Consider
just one leading objection.
An early critic of Kant,
H.L. Mansel, pertinently
wrote: ‘Throughout
every page of Holy Scripture,
God reveals Himself not
as a Law but as a Person
… By what right do
we venture to rob the
Deity of half his revealed
attributes …?’
This certainly seems right.
It is the essence of the
religious traditions we
are considering that their
God is a personal, solicitous,
omni-potent Being. And
it is worth mentioning
here that, even in non-theistic
religions, as in forms
of Buddhism, actual religious
worship tends to re-invoke
earlier folk deities.
The
point is important, and
it is revealing to develop
it against a historical
backdrop. The group of
ancient Greek religions
flourished until 391 AD
when the Christian Emperor
Theodosius, forgetful
of the spirit of Christian
tolerance, proscribed
them. Many of the schools
of Greek philosophy also
had a recognisably religious
dimension, but the Christian
Emperor Justinian closed
them in 529 AD. At this
time, reason itself became
hateful to the Church,
and a cloud of doctrinal
totalitarianism descended
on the Western world,
and remained undispersed
for a thousand years.
Unlike
Yahweh, who seems exclusively
preoccupied with the welfare
of humankind and whose
extramural concerns are
undisclosed to us, the
Greek gods had private
lives and were occupied
as much by the affairs
of the pantheon as the
foibles of mortals. They
made neither moral nor
civic law. Gods occasionally
intervened to enforce
morality, but such action
was generally in the jurisdiction
of the older, chthonian
deities. Their solicitude
for mortals was not unbounded.
Consequently, the Greeks
had only an attenuated
sense of divine providence.
Reciprocally, their sense
of the holy was, as Maurice
Bowra said, ‘based
much less on a feeling
of the goodness of the
gods than on a devout
respect for their incorruptible
beauty and unfailing strength’.
There was little in these
religions that could be
called ‘love of god’.
The author of the Aristotelian
Magna Moralia wrote: ‘It
would be eccentric for
anyone to claim that he
loved Zeus.’
There is no absolute difference
in nature between gods
and men in Greek thought.
The gods are immortal,
more beautiful and powerful,
but they occupy the same
space as men and move
amongst them. ‘The
Greeks did not see the
Homeric gods above them
as masters and themselves
below as servants, as
did the Jews,’ Nietzsche
observed. Human envy had
not yet cast the gods
beyond the sphere of the
enviable, infinitely and
hopelessly beyond the
reach and competition
of men; nor had it provoked
the hatred that engenders
idealisation of the deity,
and self-abasement.
These
strands of Greek religious
belief contrast startlingly
with the tradition we
wish to illuminate. As
Iris Murdoch noted: ‘the
Greeks were fairly detached
about their gods. Jews
and Christians (in their
different styles) take
God as a supreme love
object …’ There
is reason to think from
the Akkadian epics that
attitudes toward the Mesopotamian
pantheons from which the
Jewish gods descended
were similar to those
of the Greeks. The Mesopotamians
had earlier linked morality
to the divine, but the
idea of a reciprocal bond,
a passionate covenant
between god and a people,
between god and individual,
seems to have been a Jewish
innovation.
The
intensification of the
relationship with a god
appears to have emerged
in Judaic religion during
the Babylonian exile in
the middle of the sixth
century BC. In the preceding
century, the god of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob, ’El
Shaddai, who was perhaps
a composite of earlier
Mesopotamian or Canaanite
mountain deities, was
fused with the itinerant
god of Moses, Yahweh.
The new god became exclusive
to the Jews and elevated
above all other gods.
At some time during or
just after the exile,
Yahweh becomes unique.
Deutero-Isaiah proclaims:
‘There is no God
but I.’ The existence
of other gods was denied,
and all religions but
one were declared false
and wicked. Religious
conversion or intensification
of belief often follows
calamity, and it is possible
that this development
was an effect of deracination
and the humili-ation of
exile. It has certainly
begotten much calamity.
The
emergence of monotheism
complicated religious
sensibility, but underlying
it there seems to be a
psycho-social regression.
For the first time, a
god becomes an object
of intense emotional attachment
upon which everything
depends. This is an extraordinary
and crucial development
and recalls that other
homologous relationship,
that between nursing infant
and mother.
There
is now an impressive body
of science concerning
the nature of human attachment.
It has grown out of psychoanalytic
object-relations theory
(which focuses on the
role of interpersonal
relationships in psychological
development) and particularly
the work of John Bowlby.
Bowlby described an innate
attachment behavioural
system that has the basic
aim of maintaining proximity
between infant and the
parenting figure who provides
the infant with a secure
base. Attachment to such
a figure, and to its various
incarnations through the
lifespan, is amongst the
most fundamental of all
human needs. The psychologist
Lee A. Kirkpatrick has
drawn attention to the
ways in which religious
belief provides for attachment
needs:
To
achieve the objective
of establishing physical
proximity, infants engage
in a variety of behaviours
such as crying, raising
arms (to be picked up)
and clinging. With increasing
cognitive abilities, older
children are often satisfied
by visual or verbal contact,
or eventually by mere
knowledge of an attachment
figure’s whereabouts.
This latter observation
opens the door to the
possibility of a non-corporeal
attachment figure with
which actual physical
contact is impossible.
Religious beliefs provide
a variety of ways of enhancing
perceptions about the
proximity of God. A crucial
tenet of most theistic
religions is that God
is omnipresent; thus one
is always in ‘proximity’
to God. God is frequently
described in religious
literature as always being
by one’s side, holding
one’s hand, or watching
over one … [V]irtually
all religions provide
places of worship where
one can be closer to God.
In addition a diverse
array of idols and symbols
— ranging from graven
images to crosses on necklaces
to painting and other
art forms — seem
designed to continually
remind the believer of
God’s presence. The
most important form of
proximity-maintaining
attachment behavior directed
toward God, however, is
prayer …
Lee A. Kirkpatrick, ‘Attachment
and Religion’, in
J. Cassidy and P.R. Shaver
(eds), Handbook of Attachment
(1999)
Kirkpatrick
has assembled extensive
survey data that supports
a link between attachment
needs and religious belief.
For example, in a US national
poll when subjects were
asked ‘What comes
closest to your own view
of faith?’, fifty-one
per cent of respondents
said ‘a relationship
with God’; nineteen
per cent said ‘a
set of beliefs’;
four per cent said ‘membership
of a church or synagogue;
and twenty per cent said
‘finding meaning
in life’. In a US
study of clergy, the most
common response to the
question ‘How does
faith help you in daily
life?’ was ‘Access
to a loving God who is
willing to help in everyday
life’. In a large
newspaper survey, two-thirds
of college students responded
positively to the question:
‘Do you feel you
have a personal relationship
with Jesus Christ and/or
God?’ Other studies
summarised by Kirkpatrick
suggest that personal
images of God and other
supernatural figures are
influenced by the vicissitudes
of a person’s attachment
history. As one would
expect, individuals may
turn to God as a substitute
attachment figure if parental
figures have been inadequate.
‘In a word, God may
provide the kind of secure
attachment relationship
one never had with one’s
parents or other primary
attachment figures.’
Here we find one, sad
explanation for the turning
of youth to religion today.
Attachment
in humans, as Freud noticed,
is quickly sexualised
and attracts the entire
assembly of human bondage:
erotic love, jealousy,
hatred, guilt and so on.
These passions and affections
can be transferred from
primary attachment figures
onto others, including,
as seems clear, God and
other supernatural persons,
such as Jesus or saints.
And as with other relationships,
much of what transpires
in them takes place below
the threshold of conscious
awareness. Unconsciously,
but not thereby invisibly:
the manifest and interpreted
content of much Christian
iconography, many rituals
and observances across
different traditions,
the psychodramas of Pentecostal
worship, and so on, are
immensely revealing. The
sensual character of worship
or relationship to the
divine is sometimes denied
outright, though not ingenuously,
I think, by anyone with
sensitivity to human dispositions.
It
is true, of course, that
for many believers religion
is little more than a
motley of comforting beliefs
and re-assuring observances
that can scarcely be described
as passionate. But for
many others, a relationship
with God (or other supernatural
Beings) certainly does
seem to acquire an intensely
personal, passionate character.
These are the devout people
I shall have mostly in
mind in what follows.
Nearly all human activity
is, in one way or another,
a diffracted striving
toward object-relationship,
toward emotionally significant
personal or quasi-interpersonal
relations. It would be
astonishing if the religious
enterprise was an exception.
The remarkable feature
of religion precisely
is its determined extension
of object-relational striving
into a supernatural or
spiritual dimension. It
is remarkable because
there is no supernatural
dimension and no spiritual
objects with which one
can have real relationships.
(Or, if there are, no
one has produced remotely
good reasons for thinking
so.)
So
what is going on? Well,
it is not a mystery. One
can desire, seek, fear
and love things that do
not exist, but are believed
to exist; and not only
then. Abstract, non-existent
things such as fictional
characters or ideals can
be loved. How much more
so supernatural figures
who are believed to exist!
Frequently in such cases,
psychological investigation
reveals that these objects
unconsciously represent
loved persons, or parts
of them, or aspects of
the self. This is not
surprising. Humans are
social creatures whose
thinking and dispositions
are shaped by the need
for other people and the
requirements for relating
to them. We never abandon
the child’s insistence
on personifying the inanimate
world, converting dolls
into companions and magicking
up company. We also turn
inwards and make company
of our selves.
The psychology of religions
is complex but, of course,
could not, and should
not aspire to, explain
all the intricate cultural
aspects of religion. However,
the object-relational
perspective on religion
is surely inviting to
anyone impressed by the
immense human need for
other people and the semblances
of them; and the idea
that the quasi-relationship
to God may be in part
a variation on a self-relationship
seems especially promising
if what follows is true.
Around
the time that an infant
is beginning to walk and
talk, she will, in normal
circumstances, experience
a heightened sense of
mastery and an exhilarating
love affair with the world.
Parents usually are still
satisfying the infant’s
needs on demand and may
therefore be experienced
as extensions of her will.
The infant is still subject
to what Freud called the
‘omnipotence of thought’:
when objects are desired,
their representations
are manufactured in fantasy
and are mistaken for the
real thing, just as they
are later in dreams and
fantasy. The conjunction
of these circumstances
elates the infant and
reinforces her (illusory)
sense of grandeur and
omnipotence. There begins
an intricate love affair
with the nascent self,
as well. This relation
to the self is referred
to in psychoanalytic thought
as ‘narcissism’.
Self-esteem is closely
bound up with narcissism.
Although self-esteem depends
greatly on feeling loved
by others, it depends
also on the reflexive
relation to one’s
self. Where self-esteem
cannot be gained through
love, then the machinery
of omnipotent thinking
may be invoked to compel
love, to create an illusion
of it, or to build a fortress
against its absence.
It
is difficult to sustain
narcissism. Parents become
uncompliant, and the child’s
growing understanding
soon discloses her real
weakness and dependency.
Most children then undertake
a rescue operation. They
reinforce their idealisation
of their parents, who
are usually already perceived
as magnificent creatures,
by projecting their own
idealised narcissistic
self-conceptions into
their parents, and then
re-identify unconsciously
with them. The strategy
partly restores their
narcissistic self-conception:
unconsciously it seems
that one is the parent,
that one has incorporated,
or resides in, them; and
this unconscious dispensation
undergirds and influences
the child’s conscious
beliefs and appraisals.
If the child is now introduced
to ideas about God and
other powerful, attractive
supernatural figures,
the same strategy may
be attempted. Elements
of the narcissistic self-conception
are projected into (her
images of) God, an attach-ment
relationship in fantasy
is established (much as
with a pop star or sporting
hero), and the narcissistic
state may be restored
by varying degrees of
identification.
However,
the conscious sense of
one’s great goodness,
importance and power is
not easily surrendered.
If it is forcefully extinguished
with threats or punishment,
or if the parents are
remote, the projected
image of the self may
be angry and punitive,
and the corresponding
image of God may be wrathful
and vengeful. Children
raised in a cold or crushing
atmosphere, or where identification
with parents is for some
other reason deterred,
are more likely to depend
on supernatural or other
substitute — often
imaginary — figures
to contain their narcissism.
Their self-esteem may
be precarious and sustainable
only through unremitting
efforts — prayer,
sacrifice, self-abasement
— to stay in emo-tional
proximity to a cruelly
silent God.
Two
final, rebarbative items
on this excursion into
psychodynamics. The projected
self-conception has become
idealised, in part, by
the dissociation from
it of the bad conception
the child has of herself.
This leaves the counterpart
all-bad self-conception
unmoderated. If, as is
often the case, there
is a dominant identification
with this bad self-image
and the attachment to,
and identification with,
God fails or is patchy,
then the expense of maintaining
an image of an all-good,
almighty God is to see
oneself as sinful, weak,
dependent and suppliant.
Worse: underlying this
bad self-image is an image
of the bad parents with
which it has become more
or less fused; the child
feels bad because she
feels that she is, or
is engulfed by, these
bad parents. At bottom,
confronting this feature
of their inner lives may
be the most difficult
ordeal for people caught
up in these psycho-religious
constellations. The image
of parents who were experienced
in childhood as depriving,
hateful or terrifying
may seem in the child’s
and the adult’s unconscious
mind — like the infusorian
under the microscope —
a hideous monster, a Satan.
One common way of coping
with this painful psychic
situation is to project
this satanic image onto
suitable objects in the
external world and reinforce
the identification with
God. That manoeuvre, it
seems likely, underlies
the perceptions of George
W. Bush and others like
him.
I
have hinted at baleful
consequences but have
done little so far to
support even one of the
charges levelled by Russell,
Freud or Nietzsche. Yet
now, I think, we have
some of the psychological
understanding to do so.
The sense of importance
and power, and self-esteem
garnered by identification,
first with idealised parents,
then images of God (and
other supernatural figures),
then through religious
group membership, is rarely
very stable. It is threatened
by challenges to faith,
by the debility of a dissociated
self and, in the end,
by reality. Religious
people who can make sensible
decisions about life insurance
suspect, privately, that
religion, or much of it,
is a house of cards. Faith,
as Mark Twain’s schoolboy
said, is believing what
you know ain’t so.
The salient episodes in
the social history of
religion comprise more
or less violent attempts
by the faithful to shore
up their faith. Those
who do not share the faith
must be segregated, converted,
exiled or eliminated.
Even small differences
become major threats to
those who require the
world to narcissistically
mirror them. Christians,
as Russell frequently
observed, have been far
more persecuted by other
sects of Christians than
by pagans. It is just
200 hundred years in a
Christian dispensation
of 2000 years that atheism,
heresy, blasphemy, homosexuality,
witchery and other bugbears
of religion have not been
cruelly punished. There
are still places under
religious influence where
these transgressions are
punished; and no doubt
there are many religious
folk elsewhere who believe
that they should be. It
is true that the worst
has occurred in the past;
but there are now emerging
reasons to fear that the
worst may return with
a vengeance.
Religious
identity easily becomes
an instrument of narcissistic
assertion and aggression.
Compelling others to think
and act as you do not
only confirms your faith
and eliminates challenges
to it, but also nourishes
grandiose self-conceptions
by testifying to your
power. It affirms the
special relationship,
and partial identification
with, God. This underlying
arrogance and self-importance
is partly why there is
so much talk in religion
about humility, of a kind
which often strikes people
as hypocrisy. It rarely
is suppressed successfully.
Bullying is an inseparable
feature of monotheism.
Examples today are everywhere:
from the crazy idea of
a purified caliphate,
to the invocation of divine
mandates over land, to
the hopes of American
evangelicals to stamp
their self-image on the
world. The combination
of devout faith and astounding
arrogance, exemplified
most starkly by contemporary
Christian, Jewish and
Islamic fundamentalists
— but not by them
alone — cannot be
satisfied in the undisturbed
practice of religion.
Their conceit requires
that they co-opt Caesar;
arguably the American
branch has.
It
is perhaps not coincidental
that the leaders responsible
for the heinous invasion
of Iraq are religious
folk — or say they
are. When deity is apprehended
as wrathful and punitive,
then, as we have seen,
character may be shaped
by the apprehension. When
morality is largely built
on fear, of other people
or a deity, then it becomes
vulnerable to all the
stratagems used to evade,
fool, corrupt and seduce
others. Deceit and self-deception
become its elements. Some
days before the invasion
of Iraq, John Howard attended
a Church service for the
‘pre-deployed’
troops. He read from Proverbs.
The text warned against
‘men of perverted
speech, who forsake the
paths of uprightness to
walk in the ways of darkness,
who rejoice in doing evil
and delight in the perverseness
of evil; men whose paths
are crooked, and who are
devious in their ways’.
Sometimes political leaders
have uncanny, but misattributive,
insight. Of course, it
will be said that some
irreligious leaders have
been more murderous and
mendacious. That’s
true, but it shows only
that there are other paths
to iniquity.
Truth
and reason have been problems
for religion because they
are so contrary to it.
Historically, the institutional
strategy of religion for
dealing with this inconvenience
has been to arrogate to
itself special rights
over the former while
undermining the latter.
From its earliest confrontations
with rational philosophy
and science, the monotheist
religions sought to restrict
reason, cultivate faith,
and flirt with the occult
and other expressions
of the non-rational. St
Paul and his Jewish contemporary,
Josephus, regarded philosophy
with contempt, and their
attitudes set the tone.
Luther thought reason
a whore. Reason was accused
of pride and of overstepping
its limits. When science
began to erode dogma,
Christianity persecuted
it. Faith in divine revelation,
deliverance of prayer,
the wisdom of the heart,
and mystical experience
were invoked (at different
times, by different sects)
as alternative, or even
superior, sources of epistemic
authority. But these things
are not supplemen-tary
to reason; they are assaults
on it. Ironically, they
maim the only thing that
could conceivably justify
them.
Reason
and insight (truth about
the self) present a serious
dilemma for the religious
individual. The religious
have a desperate need
to know: about such matters
as their place in creation,
about an afterlife, whether
they are watched over
and loved by the creator.
I suppose that most people
are curious about these
and kindred things, but
the curiosity of the religious
is more desperate because
it is animated both by
the necessity of maintaining
passionate contact with
an attachment figure and
by the unconscious need
to secure the illusion
of omniscience. The only
real means of acquiring
knowledge, however, are
the slow accumulations
of the sciences and humanities,
and these obstinately
refuse to endorse what
the religious wish most
to know. Not knowing is
intolerable; it is like
being abandoned. So reason
and insight become inimical
to the religious, partly
because they refuse to
support, and indeed challenge,
belief, but also because,
at the deepest level,
they threaten to subvert
the cherished relationship
to God and the (illusional)
omnipotence of the self.
In the grip of offended
narcissism, in precarious
identification with God,
the eye is plucked out
and many religious selectively
abandon reason and insight.
Thought, unguided by reason
or self-understanding,
captive to infantile needs
for attachment and omnipotence,
becomes more or less fantastic
and delusional.
A
passage from An Intelligent
Person’s Guide to
Religion (2003), by the
theist philosopher John
Haldane, tells that in
paradise the blessed will
gaze upon the divine nature
and see:
the
perfection of every positive
quality … [and find]
what they have always
craved — absolute,
unconditional, and everlasting
love — their minds
are themselves made more
loving, but now without
prospect of relapse, for
the wound from which their
darkness and disturbance
issued as a consequence
of wilful disobedience
has now been healed …
This
is fantasy, and the argument
of this essay would suggest
that the passage be read
as a depiction, with little
allegorical disguise,
of the ideal state of
the infant recon-ciled
with its mother. It may
be objected that this
inter-pretation is reductive
in that it seems to reduce
a complex cultural product,
the crystallisation of
thought, revelation and
spiritual longing, to
an infantile fantasy,
the child’s solution
to the problem of eternal
separation. But the objection
is mistaken. The logic
of the interpretation
is deflationary, not reductive:
it notes certain claims
(about paradise), considers
that the claims are empty
(there is no paradise)
and then tries to account
for the claims (how can
people believe such things?).
Passing over the detail,
we can say that it accounts
for the latter claim by
appeal to the fact that
the mind is a creature
of desire that uses wishful
fantasy and wish-fulfilling
delusion to occlude unpleasant
faces of life, or to patch
over torn or shattered
ones. Since there are
insuperable philosophical
difficulties with the
conception of an afterlife
as described by Haldane,
it seems reasonable to
conclude either that Haldane
reasons very badly or
that he is not reasoning
at all: his reason has
been recruited into the
service of fantasy. I
suspect the second conclusion
is true. The kind of religious
picture described by Haldane
is not refuted by psychology;
but it fades in the light
of psychological understanding.
Freud
argued that religious
ideas are wishful delusions
that satisfy the infantile
longing for protection
and love by a powerful
figure — a Father
in Heaven. He said that
religions are mass-delusions
and compared them to the
hallucinatory confusions
of amentia. Freud did
not believe that he could
prove this contention,
but he thought it a ‘very
striking fact’ that
the religious picture
of the world was ‘exactly
as we are bound to wish
it to be’. I have
been arguing along somewhat
different lines, developing
some themes that Freud
neglected, but my destination
has been much the same
as his: we need to consider
seriously the possibility
that for many people their
religion supervenes on
something akin to mental
illness or infant-ilism.
Shortly before his death
Anton Chekov wrote to
Diaghilev: ‘I can
only regard with bewilderment
an educated man who is
also religious.’
I share that bewilderment
and the psychological
explorations here are
partly attempts to dispel
it. Of course, good can
flow even from illness,
but far more often it
is a source of fear and
misery.
