Video Transcript: Lesson 3

Welcome back. We have reached a point where I have stated the definition of  what counts as a religious belief, if I had it up on the board and took it down for  this next segment. But just to review and remind you, a belief is religious if and  only if it is a belief in something as divine that is self existent, the divine reality  that produces everything else. Or it's a belief in how the other, the everything  else, depends on the divine. Or it's a belief about how humans come to stand in  proper relation to the Divine, where the Divine is, whatever it is that everything  else depends on, however that's conceived. So it may be thought of as God or  Brahman atman or atoms. Ancient Epicureans put atoms in that slot. The  Pythagoreans put numbers. There are all kinds of candidates for the divine  reality that everything else depends on, but they're all religious beliefs, because  their beliefs about divinity, about how everything depends on the divine reality,  and about how humans can come to stand in proper relation to the divine reality. So now I want, I'm going to take up objections to this definition and try to cover  most of the main ones that usually come up and show you why they don't work.  They don't succeed. Let's take the first one that says, look, there are a lot of  gods in different religions that don't fit this definition. Just think about the gods of ancient Greece. There was Zeus and all his cohorts, Dionysius and so on. None  of these were beings that produced everything else. They didn't do that at all.  Same thing about the gods of Rome, there's Jupiter in Neptune and so on. The  whole host of them, and none of them is the creator of everything else. That just  doesn't work. You're right. It doesn't matter, because those gods were not  thought to be divine. They were brought into being by the Divine. If you look at  the myths of each of those theologies, the Greek gods, according to Homer,  were brought into existence out of the self existent reality of reality that he gives  no account of the origin of. It's just there, and he calls it Okeanos. Out of  Okeanos were generated the heavens, the earth, gods and humans. So none of the gods are divine per se. They just have more divine power in them than  humans do. So they can do things humans can't, and it's good to be on their  good side, rather the bad side, because they can flame you up if they don't like  you, and they may be able to help you out if they do. That's the way that works  out. Works out the same for the for the Roman gods. In the Roman myths,  Numen was the name for the divine that was the power, the divine power that  produced everything and was in everything. And there was more Numen in a  God than a human. So than the gods didn't have to die, whereas humans did.  This is what lies behind and makes more sense of the claims of number of the  Roman emperors to be gods. They argued that there's more Numen in them  than the average bloke in the street. Therefore they are a God, even though  they have to die. That's their only difference from the other gods. So they're  they've called themselves mortal gods, and if you remember a couple of more  lonely enough to try to test that, the story is the Caligula went down to the ocean and ordered the waves to stop to test that he whether, to test the extent of his 

divinity, how much divine power he had in him. In the Polynesian islands, the  same thing, there are gods, but then there's this divine power called mana that's in everything. It's there The gods have more mana than humans do. But if a  member of your tribe can throw a spear fast, further than anybody else and run  faster, it's because he has more mana than you do. If this field produces more  crops than this one it had, there's more mana here. If that's the way that works,  so that it's it's true that in many traditions, Gods and Goddesses are not the  creators of everything else. They are not divine. Per se. They are not self  existent. They were brought into into existence by the Divine power which is  impersonal and which can't be approached or worshiped. So you approach and  try to butter up the gods by praising them and offering sacrifices and whatever to get on their good side, because that's as near as you can come to standing in  right relations to the divine power. So I think that more than amply answers that  objection, the fact that so many gods are not divine, per se there they do not  they are not self existent, and bring it into existence. Everything else is the  reason this definition has been missed by so many people or resisted. There's  another objection that goes like this, but wait a minute, there are beliefs about  something being self existent and generating everything else. There are beliefs  like that in science. You can't tell me that that's religion when it occurs in  physics, and my reply is no, why not. What's the difference where it occurs?  What's the difference whether you say it's some kind of quantum reality that's  purely physical, that generates everything else. What's the difference whether it  occurs in physics or not? Isn't it still a substitute for God? Isn't it a replacement  for God? Isn't it a replacement for Brahman Atman in Hinduism, for the Tao in  Taoism? Of course it is. It couldn't fail then to be religious. It's an alternative to  other religious beliefs. This point is a very sore point with atheists who want to  think that science is the substitute for religion. We we do science instead of  religion. And it's a sore point, because if this definition is correct, and I think the  evidence here is overwhelming, then they are not giving you an alternative to  religion, but an alternative religion, they're giving you an alternative divinity,  belief against your divinity, belief while pretending that theirs isn't a divinity belief at all. I explained this one time to a fellow graduate student who was an atheist  materialist, and he interrupted me and said, Show me any belief that I hold that's religious in any sense, and I'll give it up on the spot. So after I wrote the myth of  religious neutrality, and I sent him a copy and said, Remember when, hey Buzz,  Remember when we used to talk about this stuff? He was, at that point, he was  dean of Boston law law school, and he wrote back a very nice letter. He said,  I've had to take back a lot of things I said when I was a graduate student, it was  very gracious of him. But the point is that still that a lot of resistance to this  definition, because it means there's really no escaping regarding something as  divine. Now let me make that point and make an argument for it. Think for a  moment about the totality of reality. All That Is, all that is, has to be self existent, 

either in whole or in part, because there's nothing else for it to depend on. I'm  letting that sink in for a minute. If we're talking about all there is, then the reason  it's there is that some that either the whole of it or some part of it is self existent.  There's nothing else for it to depend on, so it doesn't come into being and pass  away. The Hindu, Buddhist Taoist traditions say it's the whole itself existed,  Brahman atman or the Dharmakaya or nothingness. Those are the those are  being itself that's in everything, and it's the only real reality. So the whole is the  self existent reality. Judaism, Christianity and Islam say, No, it's part. It's the part we call God. It transcends all the rest of us, called all the rest into existence and  sustains it, but one or the other them has to be true. Either it's the whole or it's  some part, and the totality then has to be or contain, include that which is self  existent. So that old philosophical question, why is there something rather than  nothing? Can only be answered one way, because something is self existent,  and that's the way humans have always answered it. So it doesn't matter  whether you say it's matter that self existent. It's space, it's mathematics, logical  laws, math and physics, sensations and logic. These are all proposals that have  been made history of philosophy. It's a long parade of mix and match  combinations trying to find what it is that can explain everything else, but it itself  doesn't need explaining. They all are accorded the role that God is accorded in  Christianity, Judaism and Islam. So they are all in that respect, those are  religious beliefs, whether they're embedded in a scientific theory or not. It  doesn't matter where it occurs, right? Doesn't matter if it occurs in an essay in  Good Housekeeping magazine, or it occurs in a poem. Or what's the difference  where it occurs? If it's a belief in something as the self existent reality in which  all else depends, that's a religious belief, and that's the only thing that they all  have in common. Now let's get that straight, too. Another objection is, wait a  minute, pal, you're calling those beliefs religious when they occur in size.  Nobody worships numbers anymore. They don't pray to them like the ancient  Pythagoreans. Nobody worships matter. Nobody sings hymns to force fields or  makes prayers to quantum entanglement. That's ridiculous. There's no worship,  there's there are no rites, there are no rituals, there there are no sacraments,  there are no holy days. That's right, that's correct. But so what? A belief doesn't  have to have those accompaniments in order to be religious? Indeed, some of  the most widely spread religions in the world, Hinduism and Buddhism, don't  have any worship. Now you'll say to me, wait a minute. I've seen films of them  worshiping and so on. There are different forms of Hinduism and Buddhism, but  each has the pure the real theology is that of the Brahman Hindus, and they  believe that all these gods and goddesses and feast days and all that that's all  for the common people who can't understand the real theology. The real  theology is that there's nothing to worship, and there are no rites, sacraments,  holy days. Nothing in Brahman Hinduism, neither is there in the purest form of  Buddhism, and Theravada Buddhism, for example, or in some of the Mahayana.

Now, worship has crept into that tradition. Again, that's regarded as something  for the average person. The common folk need this because they can't, can't  accept, they can't grasp the real truth, which is that the Divine is nothingness.  It's nothing you can conceive or think of, it's nothing you can describe. It's not a  it's not personal, so there's no worship and so on. That comes as a shock to a  lot of people that find those things that we think of right away when we think of  religion aren't associated with the purest forms of Hinduism and Buddhism and  Taoism. So this objection doesn't work either. There's a there's another one that  arises in the same way. I've made this point to people in presenting this and they have said, Well, I think that the difference between what you're calling a divinity  belief, when it arises in a science, and the difference between that and when it  arises in a religious tradition is that in religion, that belief is taken on faith,  whereas when it's in science, it's argued for it's a matter of theory, evidence,  reasoning, coming to a conclusion at first that sounds plausible. I have to admit  that when I get done explaining that much to you. It probably sounds right to  you, and I think there are really serious reasons why it's not right. First of all,  faith is not the opposite of reasoning, and we're going to that's going to be a big  part of the rest of this. Course, what is faith? How does the New Testament use  that term, we're going to be very curious about identifying that, because it's  striking that the word faith occurs maybe twice in the Old Testament and 146  times in the New Testament. What happened there? What's the shift how the  New Testament writers view faith? What is it? And it's not, I will tell you this my  it's not a blind leap into the dark. It's not the opposite of being rational. On the  other hand, when it occurs in science, it may be included in a theory, but  nobody's been able to mount an argument that shows. Those that what they're  regarding as self existent instead of God, matter, numbers, logical laws.  Nobody's ever been able to produce an argument to show that that's that is self  existent. They can't do it. So there's a belief without proof on the one hand, and  there's a belief without proof on the other hand, but that doesn't make them  totally irrational. On the one side, the scientific view of a divinity is embedded in  a theory and gets its persuasiveness from the way it functions in the theory in  religion. Something similar happens with what is trusted to be divine. When  Christians believe in God, they turn their lives over to him. They experience  God. God is not the conclusion of a proof or argument. People believe in God  because they experience God, and that's what we're largely going to talk about,  in this course, the experience of God. So it's not that one side is irrational and  the other side's rational, and if it's on the rational side, we'll call it science, and  only if it's irrational, when we call it religion, that's wildly biased and false, and  we'll be able to will be showing why in great detail, in in the rest of the course. All right, let's take another objection. This objection goes this way, when, when a  divinity belief arises in a theory, it's used to try to explain how the world works,  the divinity of numbers for the Pythagoreans, the divinity of of the of atoms, or 

the purely physical reality. For the tradition from Epicurious right up to Daniel  Dennett, doesn't matter. These when they occur in theories don't carry with them recommendations about how to live. And when they arise in religions, they can't  resist that they how to stand in proper relation to God always has to do with the  way you live, the way you think of how you should treat other people, the way  you think of human destiny, the way you think of what human nature is. And  that's very much in view in religious traditions, and it's not there in the sciences.  So that's got to be a big difference. And I agree with you that that is a difference, and it's important, but not crucial for the reason is this, those divinity beliefs that  occur in the sciences don't draw conclusions about how you ought to live if this  is True. But that doesn't mean that their position doesn't imply beliefs about how  you should live. And a great many of the thinkers who hold, say, a materialist  position do exactly that. They draw the implications they say, since it's all as  matter, since humans don't have a destiny beyond this life, you seize the day,  you enjoy yourself as much as you can. Your ethics maybe extends to being a  utilitarian, do whatever produces the most good and avoid whatever produces  the most evil pain, something like that, but has nothing to do, nothing remotely  like the standards of ethics that come to us in Judaism, Christianity, Islam, there, there are real moral laws that are built into the universe by God and and by  which humans are assessed and judged and will be judged by God, so that  there's a huge difference In in how you live. The implications of a belief may not  be spelled out, but that doesn't mean they can't be. The fact that the Divinity  beliefs arising in the sciences are concerned with how to explain this world and  don't draw out the beliefs doesn't mean they can't be drawn out. It doesn't mean  the beliefs don't have any such implications, and that's why it's a real difference,  but not a crucial one. It doesn't show that the Divinity beliefs, as they occur in  sciences, aren't religious. Well, I've been through, I think most of the objections  that have been raised to this, and I think that the objections pretty soundly fail.  Let me just review those for a minute. One is that the gods, many gods and  goddesses that have existed and still do in many religions, don't fit the definition  of divine, and that's because these gods and goddesses are not thought to be  divine, per se, but are. Creations of the Divine, power, force. Second objection,  there are beliefs in divinity, as you've defined it in science. Doesn't that show  that that's not a character that can't be the definition of religion? And my answer  is no, it doesn't. It shows that the people who do the sciences, who want to think that they are doing them independently of all religious belief. Actually have a  religious belief, and just don't call it that. The next objection was that when there  these divinity beliefs occur in sciences, there are matters of theory and  reasoning and weighing evidence and coming to conclusions in a scientific  manner, whereas when they arise in in religions, they're pure faith, where the  the understanding of this objection is faith is a blind leap into the dark. You don't  know that's right. You're just supposed to take it on trust and and that's the end 

of it. So let me make some a point even stronger about that objection. Now put it this way, there is not a religion on this planet, and never has been, whose official scriptures writings advocate people to take it on blind trust. None that's not true.  Every one of them says that you have to see this as true for yourself to be a  

genuine believer. And when you do see it as true for yourself, you will be certain  much in the way of seeing an axiom to be true, or seeing one plus one equals  two to be true, that's what they're talking about. It's not proof, but it's an obvious  truth that becomes obvious to you in your own experience. It's not a blind leap.  No religious tradition ever asked that of anyone and then there was the  objection that when theories, when the Divinity beliefs, arise in theories, they  don't have recommendations a program for how to live, let alone how have rites  and rituals and worship and holy days and so on. Well, that's all true, but it's  irrelevant, because there are major religions that do the same thing that don't  have any of those, and those are the Brahman version of Hinduism and the  Theravada Buddhism and some of the higher forms of Mahayana Buddhism as  well. So can we really avoid religious belief? It seems to me, the answer to that's no something has to be self existent. Remember the argument from the sum  total of reality, the sum total of reality has to be self existent in whole or in part,  because there's nothing for it that to be to depend on. You can divide it and say,  here's the self existent God, and here's the rest creation, and creation depends  on God. Or you can say that the whole thing is divine. That's what happens in  Hinduism and Buddhism. But one or the other have to be true. So the point is,  while human beings invent specific gods and goddesses, they don't invent the  idea of the Divine. It dawns on them that something has to be and humans have always wanted to know about their origins. They've always wanted to know how  they came to be and what of what nature they ultimately are. And in answering  that, they've always wanted to know what is the divine reality in which we  depend, and then that's how they understand themselves. That's why this is  important. It's why it won't go away, and it's why it's all pervasive, even though a  lot of people pass it off under another name and claim that it's not religion, it's  metaphysics, or it's science or something else. Don't be fooled by that, because  that is a trick. I think we'll call it a day there. There's a lot for you to think over,  and I hope you do before our next session, which will be devoted more to  religious belief and its characteristics and its relations to other sorts of beliefs,  other sorts of beliefs. Excuse me, so we'll end there for today.