It's easy to make those kinds of passing comments at Church, but how do you persuade a non theist that theistic belief is not necessarily religious?
This is what I said to him. What do u reckon? What could I have said to be clearer? What's missing? What's in err?
First of all, so you know that I’m not pulling your leg I do talk about this in sermons at Church (can’t remember which ones off the top of my head but they’re online for any one to listen too).
My religiosity (and everyone’s for that matter) in part depends on how one defines religion.
A basic definition of religion might be – religion as belief in God (I suspect this is the working definition for many atheists. However that’s inadequate given many Buddhists are formally atheist. And not only Buddhists, but also by ‘God’ some religions are not referring to a living personal being but an idea or a life-force that encompasses all of reality.
In the Bible religion is understood in terms of the ultimate goal of life. This may be belief in a Divine entity (in reality belief in a god is often a weapon people yield to attain their true object of worship), but can be an ideology or a passion. Indeed, Jesus equates money with religion/god (to be more exact the ‘love of money’). With this view of religion a belief system such as Scientism fits nicely.
I don’t have proper time to expound my thinking at this moment, but here’s a few comments:
1. Religion (in the Bible) is commonly described as human attempts to appease the Divine, and so takes the form of various rituals, ceremonies, etc.
2. Jesus targeted the religious leaders of his day and repeatedly exposed their hypocrisy. The point being, true Christianity is not about human to God, but is dependent on revelation.
3. Religion obscures God, not clarifies (why? because religion is a human product)
4. I find the rational/religious antithesis argument over used and substantially in err. I know a lot of religious thought is irrational (actually it’s totally flipped), and the same can be said of some atheists I’ve met (They don’t believe in God because they don’t believe in God. It has little to do with empirical evidence.).
I am a Christian, I believe in God, and yet I also consider myself rational. My belief in God is not contrary to evidence, but is strongly supported by evidence. I believe there is good evidence for belief in God. But also as example, at my Church there is a Christian who is a geologist with a PhD working for CSIRO, there is a climate scientist, and medical Doctor who now teaches the Bible to uni students. These people are rational in the sense that is popularly used yet they are also Christian (but wouldn’t call themselves religious)
5. Religion leads to pride. Christianity is about epistemic humility. The Bible asserts that some knowledge of God’s existence can be known from the world around, but that knowledge is limited. This knowledge takes on the form of knowing God is there and that he is powerful enough to create a universe such as this. This knowledge is not saying when we see a star there is God (that view is in fact as naturalist view of world as any), for the Bible is clear that God is the creator of not part of the material world. The knowledge is an intuitive (and highly plausible) God made this – yes, this knowledge cannot be scientifically verified, but neither can science disprove him. The fact that science cannot prove God is the very argument about God in the Bible – he cannot be studied through a telescope or under a microscope. Science is a useful tool and it can aid our understanding about the evolution of the universe, but it does not have the equipment to search beyond.
This is where the Bible outlines the human divide; the human divide is not rational vs faith or science vs religion – it is religion vs revelation. Religion (according to Romans ch1) is human attempts to suppress the knowledge of God and in turn creates alternative gods and invents ways to ascend the paths to them. Because the Bible insists what can be known about God in the world is limited we are dependent on ‘revelation’(God making himself known) for a truer and personal knowing. This is where Jesus comes into the equation. Everything hangs on Jesus; not only whether Christianity is true or not, but Christianity is about Jesus and receiving what he has achieved on our behalf rather than inventing pointless means to reach God. Christianity hates religion (Jesus so hated religion that the people of the day understood his attitude and killed him for it).
6. In fact there is substantial philosophical overlap between rationalism (actually the correct term is naturalist rationalism) and religion – the beginning point for knowledge is the self.
Given religion leads to distorted, arrogant, unsubstantiated, and ultimately unsatisfying ends, it is therefore a waste of time, money and intellectual endeavour.
