Religion: Why we must transcend it

The title of this blog is "Making Sense of it All." And I've been thinking quite a lot about what that means. Religion plays a big role in our world in helping us make sense of it all. So while at first this feels a bit out of the blue... it's really quite integral to all of what I think about, and I'll try to explain that as I go.

I drafted this post quite some time ago, but hesitated to post because it obviously stirs up powerful emotions. However, this morning upon seeing a report published by the Council of Europe regarding an issue that is wreaking havoc in the quality of US K-12 education -- the teaching of creationism or "intelligent design" -- well, it's time for me to comment. See the report here: The dangers of creationism in education.

I suppose this is an appropriate place to put a disclaimer... or perhaps several. First, that this - as with all my posts - is a snapshot of my thinking at a particular time. My thinking is continuously evolving and devolving, going in circles, advancing and retreating. Here you read my latest. Second, those who have watched and supported my growth over the years may be a bit surprised or you may not... depending upon the time in my life when you participated. To all of those friends and acquaintances, from pals to pastors, people with whom I've had a single conversation to my best of friends, and especially family: I mean no offense with the suggestions I make nor with the ideas I propose. I share them only in hopes that they might parallel thoughts and questions that you have, at one time or another, also faced.

And so, religion it is. Unfortunately, organized religion as we know it and this blog title are incompatible. While I don't like to make blanket statements, I feel pretty comfortable with this one.

My overarching thought: we can not solve problems at the same level of thinking as when we created the problems. Religion has created many, many problems. We -- humanity -- can not solve those problems while we are still at the level of religion. We, then, must transcend what we know as religion if we are to solve the greatest challenges that face human society.

Hold that thought for a second... I want to go back to the big questions that I asked at the beginning of the master's program last year: How do we motivate people toward a more sustainable way of living? It's a quite perplexing question that I - and no doubt many, many others - have pondered over the last year. And I have no comprehensive answer just now... but only a nagging sense that it's answer is quite closely related to the thought you are holding about our need to transcend religion.

From a sustainability standpoint... and by that, I mean from a perspective that considers what humans need in order to continue to exist as a species... we have a limited but growing understanding of what we can or can not do. We know that our physical bodies require air, water, and energy in the form of food. We know that certain other things are poisonous to our bodies. From these two statements, we can derive guidelines that show us how our society must develop in order to ensure that these requirements of our survival are met... that we have to be able to obtain breathable air, drinkable water, and nutritious food while not taking in anything that will poison us. That's what we do know. Still, within the physical world there is much that we do not know, such as the effects of radiation or the earth's magnetic fields on our bodies.

The need for physical subsistence is at least part of our bare minimum requirements for subsistence. From previous posts, you'll know that I believe there is more to it than that... that we must also fulfill other human needs along the lines of affection, identity, protection, understanding, creation, etc. The point I want to make for now, though, is that our physical existence is at least part of a bare minimum requirement for human society to continue to exist for a long, long time.

If we agree on that, then it should be easy to agree that it would be advantageous for us to understand the physical world in which we live... the biological processes upon which we depend -- not only our own bodies, but also those processes of other organisms with which we co-exist. Photosynthesis and cellular respiration are key to this, as together they explain how energy is taken from the sun and used to create ordered matter in the form of plants and animals.

The point that I am trying to arrive at: I believe that for thousands--if not tens of thousands--of years, religion has served as a cop-out for people actually understanding how these natural processes work. To be fair, people of 3,000 years ago did not have the technology that enabled them to readily understand the basic workings of the world... and so defaulted to myths and stories to answer questions about how things work. Today, however, we have no excuse for not having at least an elementary understanding of the natural processes upon which we are dependent. It follows that we have no excuse for not living in ways that at least minimize our disruption of these processes (and perhaps we should go beyond this minimal requirement and find ways to SUPPORT these processes).

Now, there's a bit of a gap in my logic up to this point: even if (even though) religion has historically been a cop-out for human understanding of the world, it doesn't mean that religious belief is incompatible with such an understanding... it only means that the religions we have seen are not supportive of such an understanding. If taken a step further, however, by clarifying 'religion' as a belief in any sort of God or gods with supernatural and/or world-creating powers... then I believe we address that gap, because such a being is incompatible with an understanding of how our physical world operates.

(Faith -- in terms of going beyond reason, or believing in things not seen -- may still have a role in a sustainable society... but it must shift as our understanding of how society operates changes. In the past, when we didn't have the knowledge that the earth is 4.5 billion + years old, it was acceptable to believe that it could have been created 6,000 years ago. Today we know that it isn't true. As our level of scientific understanding grows, the beginning boundaries of our faith -- the place where our knowledge stops and our faith begins -- must move.)

The consequences of this realization -- this reality for our world -- are staggering, both at individual and societal levels. Sometimes I wonder if it isn't better for us to maintain our religious beliefs -- for they give us hope, joy, cause for celebration, and many other benefits. However, in a world that is increasingly demanding democracy, it is far too dangerous to put power in the hands of people who do not understand -- who do not take time to understand -- the basic processes that allow life to exist.