Religion Generally

Conversation 15, Socrates Worldview 11/22

SOCRATES. How is your coffee this morning, Critobulus?

CRITOBULUS. Excellent, Socrates. If it was not, how would I be able to put up with your diatribes?

S. That’s why I ask, Critobulus. How about you, Euthydemus?

EUTHYDEMUS. I’m ready to hear your sermon, Socrates. You said you were going to talk about religion.

S. That’s right, Euthydemus. Are you well, Adeimantus?

ADEIMANTUS. Tolerably well, thank you Socrates.

S. Very good, let’s begin. What do you think about religion, Critobulus?

C. I think of a scattering of frail old ladies listening to some old man droning on about an imaginary being and a whole lot of archaic rules that nobody cares about anymore.

S. I think you have a lot of company, Critobulus. What do you say, Euthydemus?

E. I believe that God is the creator and ruler of the universe and Jesus Christ is my personal lord and saviour. It fills me with joy, and I give thanks every day.

S. I’m happy for you, Euthydemus, you are not troubled by doubt, it seems. I won’t ask you, Adeimantus, because I know you’re waiting to hear all the arguments before you announce your verdict. Now, I want to make a few points about religion in general before I give my own views. This is because religion is a multidimensional concept and raises diverse responses, as we have just seen. I want to be sure we know what we are talking about.

A. That seems wise, Socrates.

S. I don’t want to focus at this stage on any particular religion, although my examples will mainly refer to the Judeo-Christian religious tradition, since that’s what I know best.

A. Also wise.

S. How can it be, do you think, that some people like Euthydemus embrace religion enthusiastically, while others, like Critobulus here, will run a mile to avoid it? After all, some kind of religious activity has been a natural and universal part of human life since the beginning of humanity.

C. And the majority of people in our society would like to forget about religion and not be reminded of it, especially on their Sunday morning!

S. Perhaps we should discuss the multiple dimensions of religion to see if we can discover what it is that attracts some people and repels others?

A. Fair enough.

S. Since the first humans or their ancestor hominins became self-aware, they have been conscious of their own agency, their ability to conceive an intention and then wilfully carry it out. They came to appreciate causes and effects. They became conscious of their own ‘I’ as a spirit which initiated causes to achieve effects. They observed that other people had their own ‘I’, and they attributed the movement of animals and the changes in things like the wind, streams of water, and weather to spirits that inhabited those things.

E. They became aware of God!

S. Not so fast, Euthydemus. These early humans were fascinated, enchanted, and probably not a little terrified, by the idea of an unseen world of spirits that caused all the motion and happenings around them. They expressed their enchantment in the unsurpassed artwork of rock and cave paintings.

A. That seems so, Socrates.

S. As people became aware that other people had intentions, and that they could learn of those intentions by questioning, so they sought to discover the intentions of the spirits of the natural world through signs and omens. They also discovered that they could influence and persuade other people and they thought that perhaps they could influence the external sprits through offerings and petitions. Some people who seemed to be good at interpreting signs and omens, or deciding what offerings to make, were called forward or put themselves forward to carry out these functions as intermediaries. And so there emerged priests and shamans and formal rituals. Religion was born.

C. And it was all downhill from there!

S. Not entirely, Critobulus. Some of these people were genuine seekers of the truth. Others were cynical exploiters of the people who trusted them. Such is human nature. People who seek power over others will use any means at their disposal, religion not excepted. Groups of people adopted their favourite god or gods. At best, these gods personalised the spirit of the people and fostered community. When states emerged, so did the official state gods which personalised the state. One thinks of the Romans and their official religion. At worst, these state religions became instruments of power and oppression for the ruling classes. Emperors like Augustus of Rome raised themselves to the status of gods.

A. It sounds like Yin and Yang, Socrates.

S. Dichotomies emerge in the story of religion, Adeimantus. The great battle is between my ‘I’ and God’s ‘I.’¹ A related dichotomy is between freedom and power. Shall I elaborate on these themes?

A. Go on, Socrates.

S. Abraham saw through the cynicism behind the state gods of Ur. He saw that the state religion was being used by the social elite to control people. He could see that the state religion was untrue, and for him God and truth were inseparable. Truth is another great theme of religion. Abraham had to get away, taking his God, his family, and his followers with him. The God of Abraham was a family god and later a community god. The name of this God, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, was later revealed to Moses to be Yahweh, meaning essentially ‘I’.

A. That’s a big ‘I’.

S. Yes, Adeimantus, but Abraham was not a timid man. You know, in Genesis Abraham wrestles with God. Pretty soon, God offered Abraham a deal, a covenant. God said, ‘I will be your God and you will be my people.’ God was offering to guide and protect Abraham’s people. In return, the people had to obey a few simple rules that God provided, God’s law.

C. Here we go with the power trip!

S. Your postmodernists friends see everything in terms of power, Critobulus. Their aim in life is to break down old power structures and install new authorities, and who better to be in authority than themselves, to stop the rest of us committing what is blasphemy in their eyes. It’s ‘my I versus God’s I’ all over again! Power was not what motivated Abraham. He was seeking truth, justice, and goodness, and he thought these things would come through reverence and obedience to God. In this way of thinking, God is holy, meaning good, pure, and untainted by anything that is not good. The covenant establishes a kind of parity between God and his people, but the holy, by definition, cannot mix with the unholy, so God’s people had to be holy. They were to achieve holiness by maintaining their purity, and this meant following the law that God had laid down.

A. Some philosophers say that if God is good, then good must have pre-existed God. What do you say to that, Socrates?

S. I’ve told you previously what I think of Idealist philosophers, Adeimantus. They attribute objective reality to ideas like goodness, truth, and justice. We are realists here, I think we agreed. For us realists, goodness is just a quality in our minds that we perceive in, or attribute to, a thing. Neither am I saying, at this stage, that God exists. I am saying that in religion, the concept of God emerged. For someone like Abraham, that concept of God was of a conceptual person characterised by qualities like, goodness, holiness, and justice. Certainly, the concepts of good and evil, justice, and so on, must have been present in people’s minds before they were able to attribute them to a conceptual person they called God. The question of where these concepts of good and evil came from is an important one which we will return to.

E. You make it sound like religion was invented by people. I believe it was revealed by God. Do you believe in God, or not, Socrates?

S. Remember that I am arguing from the point of view of a scientific materialist. Scientific materialists tend to dismiss religion, lock stock and barrel, out of hand. I want to show that there are at least some elements of religion that a scientific materialist should be able to relate to. I have introduced the idea of the ‘person’ as a concept, and now I have just said that God can be regarded as such a conceptual person. A scientific materialist should not deny that the mental processes of our material bodies can form thoughts of people as concepts. I have also said that you and I both exist as surely as anything exists, yet my knowledge of you, and your knowledge of me, are both in the form of conceptual persons in our mental models of the world. That is what a scientific materialist should say. So it is with God. The conceptual person called God surely existed in the mind of Abraham. Abraham attributed to the action of that conceptual person certain thoughts and dreams that he, Abraham, experienced as well as the qualities I have mentioned.

C. You avoided the question about your belief, Socrates.

S. I will tell you right now that I do believe in God, but what precisely that means will have to wait until we discuss the meaning of belief and faith.

C. Why don’t you tell us right now what you believe and get it over with, Socrates?

S. In the end, Critobulus, my position will seem simple enough, but all the words we use to talk about the subject of religion are so encumbered with prejudices that we must proceed in small steps to make clear exactly what we are talking about. Have courage! We are more than halfway up the mountain, and before long we will reach the summit and the vision splendid will be revealed!

E. It all seemed clear to me before we started this discussion.

S. I ask you, Euthydemus, to reflect on how you know God. I, as a scientific materialist, should say that you have formed a concept in your head of a person you call God. To this conceptual person you associate stories you have heard or read, certain thoughts or feelings you have experienced, and the cause of certain events that have occurred in your life, or in the lives of people you know. None of this proves or disproves the objective existence of God. You say that you believe God exists, and a scientific materialist would say you are deluded in your belief and, what is more, that your belief is irrational. I say that your belief is reasonable, provided you do not attribute to God actions that are clearly at odds with what we understand to be true in the scientific sense.

E. But God is revealed, not discovered.

S. If you assume that God exists and reveals himself through signs and events, those signs and events still have to be interpreted by human beings who apply them to shaping their concept of the person called God. God has not revealed himself, as far as we know, by any Cecil B de Mills type events that would be inexplicable by science, such as the moving finger burning the Ten Commandments into a tablet of stone. No, as Elijah found, God revealed himself in the gentle breeze (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, 1 Kings 19:12-13). He was much more subtle. Let’s not lose sight of what I am trying to say here. I am saying that religion applies to conceptual persons, or spirits if you like, that represent both God and people. Religion is in the conceptual or spiritual domain. The conceptual or spiritual domain emerges out of the material domain but is not itself subject to science in the way that the physical, material world is. Jesus himself was very definite about this when he said to the Samaritan woman at the well: ‘God is spirit, and those who worship must worship in spirit and truth.’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, John 4:24) And remember that Jesus scolded the Pharisees for claiming credit for being sons of Abraham, saying: ‘God can raise children for Abraham from these stones.’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, Matthew 3:9) He meant that God was interested in spiritual descendants, not physical descent.

E. It’s hard to believe you are on my side, Socrates.

C. He is definitely not on my side, Euthydemus.

S. I thank you both for your questions and the chance to say more about the existence of the concept of God in religion, as distinct from the objective existence of God. Now let me return to what I was saying before the diversion. I was speaking about Abraham as a way of introducing the themes of freedom and truth versus power and cynicism, one of the dichotomies of religion. I was speaking from Abraham’s perspective as reported in the bible. He found nothing but cynical falsehood and abuse of power in the state gods of his home town. In his own concept of God, he found truth and freedom.

A. But what did Abraham think was true, and what did he seek freedom from?

S. You will, I hope, remember that Jesus said: ‘you will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free.’ (The New Jerusalem Bible 1985, John 8:32) We will discuss what he meant in the next day or two. For now, I am just introducing the idea of the multiple dimensions of religion and the way different people see different things in it.

A. Very well, Socrates, we will go patiently with your argument.

S. Thank you too, Adeimantus. I would also like to point to a connection between truth and justice. My famous ancestor had much difficulty defining what justice is and he demolished all definitions put to him by his interlocutors (Plato n.d.). Nevertheless, we must consider justice because the bible makes much of the notion that God is just. Justice is one of the foundations of a good society and other dimensions of religion are also integral to society. Guilt, atonement, forgiveness, reward, and punishment are not confined to the experience of individuals, but are frequently occasioned by interactions between people, and so are relevant to society. You might argue that surely a good society could be founded on non-religious principles, and I will invite you to do just that another day.

E. You haven’t mentioned the authority of scripture and the Church, Socrates. They must be relevant to society and how we live together.

S. Authority and power are related, Euthydemus, but they are not the same thing. People who heard him agreed that Jesus taught with authority, but he had no power to coerce. Pilate, on the other hand, had the power to mete out punishments, but his authority was scantly respected by the Jews. This is yet another of the dichotomies of religion.

C. Socrates! You are spraying out ideas like a philosophical machine gun! When are you going to stop?

S. Calm yourself, Critobulus. I have reached the end for today. In introducing the topic of religion, I wanted us all to understand that religion has multiple dimensions and that when people react differently to religion, it may be because they are reacting to different dimensions. When we understand this, we may be able to reach some common ground among the dissenters.

A. Do you really think you can find common ground with the humanists, Socrates?

S. I do, Adeimantus, if only they will come down from their high horse! I have pointed out that while a conceptual person and a spirit are metaphysically different, they are interchangeable for most purposes in discussions about people, society, morality, and religion. Remember that my notion of the conceptual person is a materialistic one. No humanist need be afraid of it. A humanist should be able to accept this and not throw the baby out with the bathwater. I propose to tackle the humanists tomorrow, if you will permit me.

C. I can hardly wait to see the blood in the bathwater!

References

Plato. n.d. "The Republic." In The Classic Plato Collection: 24 Socratic Dialogues, edited by Charles River Editors, translated by Benjamin Jowett.

1985. The New Jerusalem Bible. London: Darton, Longman, & Todd.

1. Socrates attributes this phrase to the Reverend Peter Burrows.