Religion of Freethought Series: FREETHOUGHT BINDS US TOGETHER

People create communities on the basis of almost anything. Family ties are certainly the most common and probably the oldest foundation of human society. Ethnicity, which is essentially extended family relations, is another, one which accounts for the borders of many of the world’s nations. Language, too, creates communities, and sometimes divides them as well. The biblical story of the Tower of Babel shows that people have understood this for many thousands of years. Then there is race, which has little basis in biology but so divides people that the United Nations is now holding an international conference in Durban, South Africa to consider the many problems it gives rise to or is used to justify.
Such tireless creators of distinctions and categories are we human beings that numerous other ways of dividing ourselves up and choosing sides have been devised as well. This is done by gender, by age, by health status, by education, by occupation, by political opinions, by taste in food, music, hobbies, sports, and a wide variety other things ranging out into what some might consider trivial. Even criminality can be the basis of social organization.
But the basis for community that cuts across all these distinctions is religion. Despite all the other differences, people who share a religious perspective are drawn together. So strong are religious ties that they have at times incited jealousy, as when this or that group is criticized as too “clannish,” so close-knit and mutually supporting that its members – and, more tellingly, not others – realize significant benefits. Unbelievers are not immune to these jealousies and, I am convinced, there are many more of them who are “mad at” the apparent happiness and self-assured satisfaction of believers more than they are “mad at” nonexistent god(s).
This brings us to the dark side of religion. For it has an extraordinary power to divide as well as to unite. Of course, ethnicity, language, race, and many other things can be a basis for controversy and violence. But just as religion cuts across all these other distinctions in creating community, so also, as the saying goes, can it set brother against brother and children against their parents. As the Nobel prizewinning physicist Steven Weinberg put it:

“With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

Yet we ought not to put all the emphasis on this any more than we should consider it the distinctive feature of other useful things that they can also be turned to evil purposes. Whether religion is good or bad does not depend on its potential for harm, and we should not be so foolish as to expect anyone to suppose that it does.
The unique ability of religion to overwhelm nearly all other considerations in joining people together into communities has been known for a very long time. The word “religion” comes from the Latin religâre, which means “to bind together.” So it’s little wonder that the history of religion is intertwined with that of politics, and will probably continue to be so despite the real dangers of it.
Of course, people also naturally come to associate certain things with religion based on history and their own experience. God(s), devils, and other supernatural entities and doctrines are among these. But this is not to say that any particular theology or even any particular kind of theology is necessary to religion. It is a theological proposition, for example, to say that all gods are the products of human imagination just as it is a theological proposition to say that all gods but one are nonexistent or, alternatively, that all but one are demons. Even for those deny all god(s) that is not the end of it. Some unbelievers say that god(s) cannot exist, others say that there is simply no evidence that they exist, or that there is evidence that one or another specific god(s) do not exist, while yet others say that the very idea of “god(s)” is too hopelessly vague to be meaningful. The same considerations apply with respect to other supernatural doctrines such as life after death and reincarnation.
Meanwhile, there are religions like Unitarianism that have no creeds. The Universal Life Church is another of these “whatever” religions. And then there are groups of people whose religion looks like one of the other categories of distinctions that people draw inasmuch as ideas about race, gender, ethnicity, or something equally trivial are treated as if they were of the utmost importance. In short, anything pursued with “religious fervor” would seem to be religion.
This seems to be the distinguishing mark of religion, that it embodies what is most significant, most important and most meaningful to people. Of course, that varies from person to person, so it is not surprising that there are a diversity of religions as well as a diversity of sects within religions. And perhaps the IRS wouldn’t like it, but if stock car racing held ultimate existential meaning for someone, that would be their religion. It’s difficult to think of how such a religion might be fleshed out and applied to every area of life, but perhaps it could be!
So it is that religion seems to supersede every other method of categorization that human beings create but defies categorization itself, depending wholly on the interrelated elements of deeply felt significance, importance and meaning. That these things should be the basis for the strongest and most enduring forms of human community should not come as any surprise. After all, people’s sympathy for one another grows out of their capacity to see themselves in one another. And we naturally tend to have more respect and fellow feeling for those with whom we share our deepest convictions about the nature of reality and the meaning of life. Compared to these, ethnicity, race, gender and so on are of no importance.
To have sympathy and a sense of community with other human beings is extremely important. Nor does it seem to be possible for most people to enjoy these benefits just by imbibing the popular culture, surfing the internet or thinking grand thoughts about the family of humanity on Spaceship Earth and so on. Real-life connections with other people who more or less share our fundamental concerns, values and principles and who are engaged in confronting the same practical problems of life with which we are is what is necessary. Religion is necessary.
What is the alternative to religion in this sense? It is to be alone, adrift, and connected with others, if at all, in ways that are largely superficial. It is to be of the opinion – to hold as a religious conviction, in a way – that nothing is worth considering significant, important or meaningful. It could also be to suppose that things that bind people together with such great strength are really not such a good thing because of their potential for harm, though this view itself treads dangerously close to being a fundamental value.
This is not the way that most people choose to live. Nor should unbelievers be expected to live in such a way, simply because they reject the supernatural and other beliefs that are not supported by sufficient evidence. And so we choose not to reject this part of our humanity, our capacity to create, to take part in and to find satisfaction in a community built on fundamental values and shared ideals. This we do by choosing Freethought.

©2001 by Dr. Tim Gorski