Alternatively, you can set yourself up as your own authority: âI know what I mean when I utter the creed, and thatâs good enough for me!â And thatâs good enoughâthese daysâfor a surprising number of organized religions, too. Their leaders have come to realize that the robustness of the institution of religion doesnât depend on uniformity of belief at all; it depends on the uniformity of professing. This has long been a feature of some strains of Judaism: fake it and never mind if you make it (as my student Uriel Meshoulam once vividly put it to me). Recognizing that the very idea of commanding someone to believe something is incoherent on its face, an invitation to insincerity or self-deception, many Jewish congregations reject the demand for orthodoxy, right belief, and settle for orthopraxy, right behavior. Instead of creating secret pockets of festering guilty skepticism, they make a virtue of candid doubt, respectfully expressed.
As long as the formulas get transmitted down through the ages, the memes will survive and flourish. Much the same attitude has recently been adopted by many evangelical Christian denominations, especially the booming new phenomenon of âmega-churches,â which, as Wolfe describes in some detail, go out of their way to give their members plenty of elbow room for personal interpretations of the words they claim to be holy. Wolfe distinguishes sharply between evangelicalism and fundamentalism, which âtends to be more preoccupied with matters of theological substance.â His conclusion is intended to be reassuring:
But those who fear the consequences for the United States of a return to strong religious belief should not be fooled by evangelicalismâs rapid growth. On the contrary, evangelicalismâs popularity is due as much to its populistic and democratic urgesâits determination to find out exactly what believers want and to offer it to themâas it is to certainties of the faith. [2003, p. 36]
Wolfe shows that Stark and Finkeâs frank marketing approach is not at all foreign to religious leaders themselves. He notes without irony some of the concessions they are willing to make to contemporary secular culture, concessions that go far beyond Web sites and multimillion-dollar television programs, or the introduction of electric guitars, drums, and PowerPoint in their services. For instance, the term âsanctuaryâ is shunned by one church âbecause of its strong religious connotationsâ (p. 28), and more attention is paid to providing plenty of free parking and babysitting than to the proper interpretation of passages of Scripture. Wolfe has conducted many probing interviews with his informants, and they reveal that revision of tradition is often hard to distinguish from outright rejection. A derisive term has been coined by these memetic engineers to describe the image they are trying hard to shed: âchurchianityâ (p. 50).
Indeed, Lars and Ann, like many evangelicals throughout the country, say that faith is so important to them that âreligionââwhich they associate with discord and disagreement and, therefore, if often in an unexpected way, with doctrineâcannot be allowed to interfere with its exercise. [p. 73]
There is no denying the results of this marketing expertise. Pastor Chuck Smithâs Calvary Chapel has over six hundred churches, some of them with ten thousand worshipers a week (Wolfe, 2003, p. 75). Dr. Creflo Dollarâs World Changers Church has twenty-five thousand members, âbut only thirty per cent of them were regular tithersâ (Sanneh, 2004, p. 48). According to Wolfe, âAll of Americaâs religions face the same imperative: Personalize or die. Each does so in different waysâ (p. 35). He may be right, but his argument for this sweeping conclusion is sketchy and anecdotal, and though there can be no doubt that the phenomena he describes exist, the question of whether they will be permanent features of religion from now on or a passing fad is a question that cries out for a testable theory, not just a set of observations, however sensitive. Whatever its staying power, and the reasons for it, the example of such laissez-faire ânoncredalâ religion contrasts vividly with the continuing doctrinal emphasis of the Roman Catholic Church.
5 Beliefs designed to be professed
A mountain climber foolishly climbing alone slips off a precipice and finds himself dangling at the end of his safety rope, a thousand feet above a ravine. Unable to climb the rope or swing to a safe resting spot, he calls out in despair: âHallooo, hallooo! Can anybody help me?â To his astonishment, the clouds part, a beautiful light pours through them, and a mighty voice replies, âYes, my son, I can help you. Take your knife and cut the rope!â The climber takes out his knife, and then he stops, and thinks and thinks. Then he cries out: âCan anybody else help me?â
According to the old maxim, actions speak louder than words, but this actually doesnât say what it means. Speech acts are actions, too, and a person who says, for instance, that infidels deserve death is performing an action with potentially deadly effects, which is about as âloudâ as acting can get. What the maxim means, on reflection, is that actions other than speech acts are typically better evidence of what the actor really believes than any words the actor might say. It is easy enough to pay lip service (such a wonderful idiom!), but when the concrete consequences of your actions depend on whether you believe somethingâwhether you believe the gun is loaded, whether you believe the door is unlocked, whether you believe you are unobservedâlip service is a puny datum easily swamped by the nonverbal behavior that expressesâindeed, betraysâyour true beliefs.
And here is an interesting fact: the transition from folk religion to organized religion is marked by a shift in beliefs from those with very clear, concrete consequences to those with systematically elusive consequencesâpaying lip service is just about the only way you can act on them. If you really believe that the rain god wonât provide rain unless you sacrifice an ox, you sacrifice an ox if you want it to rain. If you really believe that your tribeâs god has made you invulnerable to arrows, you readily run headlong into a swarm of deadly arrows to get at your enemy. If you really believe that your God will save you, you cut the rope. If you really believe that your God is watching you and doesnât want you to masturbate, you donât masturbate. (You wouldnât masturbate with your mother watching you! How on earth could you masturbate with God watching you? Do you really believe God is watching you? Perhaps not.)
But what could you do to show that you really believe that the wine in the chalice has been transformed into the blood of Christ? You could bet a large sum of money on it and then send the wine to the biology lab to see if there was hemoglobin in it (and recover the genome of Jesus from the DNA in the bargain!)âexcept that the creed has been cleverly shielded from just such concrete tests. It would be a sacrilege to remove the wine from the ceremony, and, besides, taking the wine out of the holy context would surely untransubstantiate it, turning it back into ordinary wine. There is really only one action you can take to demonstrate this belief: you can say that you believe it, over and over, as fervently as the occasion demands.
This topic is broached in a telling way in âDominus Iesus: On the Unicity and Salvific Universality of Jesus Christ and the Church,â a Declaration written by Cardinal Ratzinger (who later was elected Pope Benedict XVI), and ratified by Pope John Paul II at a plenary session on June 16, 2000. Again and again this document specifies what faithful Catholics must âfirmly believeâ (italics in the original), but at several points the Declaration shifts idiom and speaks of what âthe Catholic faithful are required to professâ (italics in the original). As a professor myself, I find the use of this verb irresistible. What is commonly referred to as âreligious beliefâ or âreligious convictionâ might less misleadingly be called religious professing. Unlike academic professors, religious professors (not just priests, but all the faithful) may not either understand or believe what they are professing. They are just professing, because that is the best they can do, and they are required to profess. Cardinal Ratzinger cites Paulâs letter to the Corinthians: âPreachi
ng the Gospel is not a reason for me to boast; it is a necessity laid on me: woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!â (1 Corinthians 9:16).
Though lip service is thus required, it is not enough: you must firmly believe what you are obliged to say. How is it possible to obey this injunction? Professing is voluntary, but belief is not. Beliefâwhen it is distinguished from believing that some sentence expresses a truthârequires understanding, which is hard to come by, even by the experts in these matters. You canât just make yourself believe something by trying, so what are you to do? Cardinal Ratzingerâs Declaration offers some help on this score: âFaith is the acceptance in grace of revealed truth, which âmakes it possible to penetrate the mystery in a way that allows us to understand it coherentlyâ [quoting John Paul IIâs Encyclical Letter Fides et Ratio, p. 13].â So you should believe this. And if you can, believing this should help you believe you do understand the mystery (even if it seems to you that you donât), and hence do firmly believe whatever it is you profess you believe. But how do you believe this? It takes faith.
Why even try? What if you personally donât happen to share the belief in the belief in the doctrine in question? Here is where the memeâs-eye view can provide some explanation. In his original discussion of memes, Dawkins had noted this problem and its traditional solution: âMany children and even some adults believe that they will suffer ghastly torments after death if they do not obey the priestly rulesâ¦. The idea of hell fire is, quite simply, self-perpetuating, because of its own deep psychological impactâ (Dawkins, 1976, p. 212). If you have ever received a chain letter that warned of the terrible things that would happen to you if you failed to pass it along, you can appreciate the strategy, even if you didnât fall for it. The assurances of a trusted priest can be much more compelling.
If hellfire is the stick, mystery is the carrot. The propositions to be believed ought to be baffling! As Rappaport has trenchantly put it, âIf postulates are to be unquestionable, it is important that they be incomprehensibleâ (1979, p. 165). Not just counterintuitive, in Boyerâs technical sense of contradicting only one or two of the default assumptions of a basic category, but downright unintelligible. Prosaic assertions have no bite, and moreover they are too readily checked for accuracy. For a truly awesome and mind-teasing proposition, there is nothing that beats a paradox eagerly avowed. In a later essay, Dawkins drew attention to what we might call the inflation of credal athleticism, the boast that my faith is so strong that I can mentally embrace a bigger paradox than you can.
It is easy and non-mysterious to believe that in some symbolic or metaphorical sense the eucharistic wine turns into the blood of Christ. The Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, however, claims far more. The âwhole substanceâ of the wine is converted into the blood of Christ; the appearance of wine that remains is âmerely accidentalâ, âinhering in no substanceâ. Transubstantiation is colloquially taught as meaning that the wine âliterallyâ turns into the blood of Christ. [Dawkins, 1993, p. 21]11
There are several reasons why this inflation into incomprehensibility would be an adaptation that would enhance the fitness of a meme. First, as just noted, it tends to evoke wonder and draw attention to itself. It is a veritable peacockâs tail of extravagant display, and memetics would predict that something like an arms race of paradoxology should ensue when religions confront waning allegiance. Peacocksâ tails are finally limited by the sheer physical inability of the peacocks to carry around still larger ones, and paradoxology must hit the wall, too. Peopleâs discomfort with sheer incoherence is strong, so there are always tantalizing elements of sense-making narrative, punctuated with seriously perplexing nuggets of incomprehensibility. The anomalies give the host brains something to gnaw on, like an unresolved musical cadence, and hence something to rehearse, and rehearse again, and baffle themselves deliciously about.12 Second, as noted in chapter 5, incomprehensibility discourages paraphraseâwhich can be death to meme identityâby leaving the host with no viable choice but verbatim transmission. (âI donât really know what Pope John Paul II meant, but I can tell you that what he said was: âJesus is the Incarnate Wordâa single and indivisible person.ââ)
Dawkins has noted an extension or refinement of this adaptation: âThe meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational inquiryâ (1976, pp. 212â13). At a time when âfaith-based initiativesâ and other such uses of the term have made âfaithâ almost synonymous in the minds of many with the term âreligionâ (as in the phrase âpeople of all faithsâ), it is important to remind ourselves that not all religions have a home for the concept or anything even very close to it. The meme for faith exhibits frequency-dependent fitness: it flourishes particularly in the company of rationalistic memes. In a neighborhood with few skeptics, the meme for faith does not attract much attention, and hence tends to go dormant in minds, and hence is seldom reintroduced into the memosphere (Dennett, 1995b, p. 349). Indeed, it is mainly a Christian feature, and as we recently noted, Judaism has actually encouraged vigorous intellectual debate over the meaning, and even the truth, of many of its holy texts. But a similar athleticism is honored in Jewish practice, as explained by a rabbi:
That most of the Kashrut [kosher] laws are divine ordinances without reason given is 100 per cent to the point. It is very easy not to murder people. Very easy. It is a little bit harder not to steal because one is tempted occasionally. So that is not great proof that I believe in God or am fulfilling His will. But, if He tells me not to have a cup of coffee with milk in it with my mincemeat and peas at lunchtime, that is a test. The only reason I am doing that is because I have been told to so do. It is doing something difficult. [Guardian, July 29, 1991, quoted in Dawkins, 1993, p. 22]
Islam, meanwhile, obliges its faithful to stop what they are doing five times a day to pray, no matter how inconvenient or even dangerous that act of loyalty proves to be. This idea that we prove our faith by one extravagant act or anotherâsuch as choosing death over recanting an item of doctrine that we donât understandâpermits us to draw a strong distinction between religious faith and the sort of faith that I, for one, have in science. My faith in the expertise of physicists like Richard Feynman, for instance, permits me to endorseâand, if it comes to it, bet heavily on the truth ofâa proposition that I donât understand. So far, my faith is not unlike religious faith, but I am not in the slightest bit motivated to go to my death rather than recant the formulas of physics. Watch:
E doesnât equal mc2, it doesnât, it doesnât! I was lying, so there! I feel no guilt in making this little joke, unlike people who would find it deeply difficult to utter blasphemous words or recant their creed. But isnât my faith in the truth of the propositions of quantum mechanics that I admit I donât understand a sort of religious faith in any case? Let me invent a deeply religious person, Professor Faith, 13 to give a little speech that articulates this charge. Professor Faith wants to teach me a new word, âapophaticâ:
God is a Something that is Wonderful. He is an appropriate recipient of prayers, and thatâs about all we can say about Him. My concept of God is apophatic! What, you may ask, does that mean? It means I define God as ineffable, unknowable, something beyond all human ken. Listen to what Simon Oliver, writing about Denys Turnerâs recent book, Faith Seeking (2003), has to say:
â¦the God rejected by modern atheism is not the God of orthodox, pre-modern Christianity. God is not any kind of thing whose existence might be rejected in the way that one might reject the existence of Santa Claus. Turnerâs Godâowing much to the medieval mysticsâis profoundly apophatic, wholly other and, in the end, unknowable darkness. We begin our journey into that alterity in our realization that our being is a gracious gift. [p. 32]
And here is Raimun
do Panikkar, writing about Buddhism:
The term âapophaticâ is usually used in reference to an epistemological apophaticism, positing merely that the ultimate reality is ineffableâthat human intelligence is incapable of grasping, of embracing itâalthough this ultimate reality itself may be represented as intelligible, even supremely intelligible, in se. A gnoseological apophaticism, then, comports an ineffability on the part of the ultimate reality only quoad nos. Buddhistic apophaticism, on the other hand, seeks to transport this ineffability to the heart of ultimate reality itself, declaring that this realityâinasmuch as its logos (its expression and communication) no longer pertains to the order of ultimate reality but precisely to the manifestation of that orderâis ineffable not merely in our regard, but as such, quoad se. Thus Buddhistic apophaticism is an ontic apophaticism. [1989, p. 14]
I claim that these claims really arenât so different from what your scientists say. Physicists have come to realize that matter isnât composed of clusters of hard little spheres (atoms). Matter is much stranger than that, they acknowledge, but still they call it matter, even though they mainly know what matter isnât, not what it is. Theyâre still calling them atoms, but they no longer think of them as, well, atomic. Theyâve changed their conception of atoms, their conception of matter, quite radically. And if you ask them what they now think matter is, they confess that itâs something of a mystery. Their concept is apophatic, too! If physicists can move from concreteness to mystery, so can theologians.
Breaking the Spell Page 25
