Jonathon Robinson and David Warden each spoke for 20 mins on “What is the Point of Religion” With possible the largest turnout we haave had (around 40) this stimulated much questioning and the expression of opinions in what was a thoughtful and mutually respectful session. So different from the Trump Vance bullying of Ukraiaane’s president we saw later!
David Warden’s Paper . Also provided, some definitions of religion.
WHAT IS THE POINT OF RELIGION
ANVIL topic for debate Jonathan Robinson, David Warden 27 Feb 2025. notes John Baxter showing different definitions of Religion. John Baxter
Oxford Reference Dictionary:
RELIGION The belief in a superhuman controlling power entitled to obedience and worship.
ROBIN DUNBAR (How Religion Evolved)
Belief in some kind of transcendental world (That may or may not coincide with our physical world) inhabited by spirit beings or forces (that may or may not take an interest in and influence the physical world in which we live.
Judaism, Christianity, Islam (related monotheisms) – Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shamanism, Greek, Roman, African, Aboriginal, Native American Religions, etc.
JARED DIAMOND.(The World Until Yesterday) Lists 16 scholarly definitions. He summarises: The components commonly attributed to religions fall into five sets. 1. Belief in the supernatural. 2 Shared membership in a social movement, 3. costly and visible proofs of commitment, 4 practical rules for behaviour 5 Belief that supernatural beings and forces can be induced to intervene in worldly life.
My Conclusion. RELIGION. All religions are prescriptive belief systems (Geertz) which sustain and create communities. They are multi-faceted and communicate through shared stories, ceremonies, rules of behaviour, music and singing. Using these they facilitate an apprehension that transcends the individual as to what reality is and how we should respond to it and to each other. As products of human evolution and the way our brains work, religions enable our species to share values and co-operate on a scale and in ways no other species can.
Here is David Warden’s paper.
What is the Point of Religion?
A talk for the Anvil group, Wincanton, February 28, 2025
What is the point of religion? One possible answer to this question is that religion probably evolved in order to address existential fears such the fear of abandonment and aloneness, fear of suffering and death, fear of loss and change, fear of meaninglessness, and fear of having to take responsibility. The existence of supernatural agents can help to assuage these fears. If God is conceptualised as a loving father who will never abandon you, this will help to assuage your fear of abandonment and times of loneliness. I’m reminded of the hymn “What a friend we have in Jesus” or Psalm 23 “The Lord is my Shepherd”. If God is ubiquitous, you’ll never walk alone. But even this is not absolutely guaranteed. When Jesus was dying on the cross he felt abandoned by God.
As humans we may be troubled by the thought of death or non-existence. But religion provides us with the hope of everlasting life. If Jesus rose from the dead this gives hope to all of us. And if we are afflicted by suffering in this life, the thought of living in heaven forever without suffering is a wonderful thing to look forward to.
Human beings are also troubled by loss and change. We like novelty but we also want things to stay the same. It troubles me that the part of Bournemouth where I grew up is now an ugly shopping centre. Our sense of history is rooted in familiar streets and buildings. If they’re obliterated to make way for commercial property development there’s a sense of loss, as if part of our history has been erased. Religion gives a sense of permanence. Ancient churches and cathedrals, which are usually listed, help to maintain this sense of continuity.
We fear meaninglessness. What’s it’s all about? But if God has a masterplan for our lives we need not fear. It will all make sense in the end.
And lastly, the fear of taking responsibility. We’re often admonished to take responsibility, but if someone else takes responsibility that can come as a great relief.
Given that religion provides a whole package of remedies for these existential fears, why would anyone become an atheist? Perhaps the main reason is that it all sounds too good to be true. Children have invisible friends and it comes naturally to them to introject consciousness into their teddy bears. I still have this magical talent. But on the whole we grow out of such childish things. And millions of people grow out of having Jesus as their invisible friend.
Well, that may be all well and good, but the existential fears don’t go away!
So how does an atheist or a humanist deal with existential fears? And does humanism amount to a secular religion?
Let’s take fear of abandonment and aloneness first. As a child I was taken to Great Ormond Street Hospital and left there for a period of time because I’ve got coeliac disease – gluten intolerance. I remember large black women coming into the ward to clean. It was the first time I’d seen large black women and I remember being a little bit afraid. I was also afraid of the horrible biopsy I knew was planned. A tube stuck down my throat. But I didn’t feel abandoned. I knew that my mum would come back for me and all the female nurses were friendly and kind. It’s true of course that we’re all alone, and maybe this is why the Dharmic religions imagine that our ultimate spiritual destiny is to merge into a universal consciousness. But humans evolved as social primates and the best way to ensure that we are not alone and abandoned is to nurture and maintain social bonds and connections. Sometimes these bonds and connections are broken, but we can mend them and we can make new ones. So the humanist answer to this existential problem is simply to be the social primates that we are. Part of our life’s work is to create and maintain these social bonds.
Let’s take the fear of suffering and death next. I remember my mum saying that God does not give us more suffering than we can bear. Well, that’s a nice things to believe. But I’m sure that many people, whether religious or not, sometimes suffer much more than they can bear which is why we’re currently debating assisted dying. It may help to know that God is by your side and that he knows what suffering is like, having died on a cross. But by and large, religious folk have recourse to doctors and painkillers like the rest of us.
What about death? My mum was confident that she was going to be reunited with all her Welsh relatives on the other side. To be honest, I can’t think of anything worse. I love my mum and dad, both of whom are dead, but I really don’t want to be reunited with all my dead relatives when I die. And in what sense would they still be my relatives in any case? Would there still be a thirty four year age gap between me and my parents? Would my dad still have Parkinson’s disease or would his body have been restored to the vigour and beauty of his youth? If so, in what sense would he still be my dad? Life after death really doesn’t make any logical sense. So for a humanist, the sensible answer is this: life is everything and death is nothing.
I’ll look at one more existential fear and that’s taking responsibility. When I was an evangelical teenager, I was told that God is in charge and that I should put God in the driving seat of my life. This is a terrible thing to say to a child. Children should be taught self-reliance and they should be encouraged to take responsibility. It’s a really bad idea to say to a child that someone else is managing their life. But that was the stupid idea put into my head by Christian teachers. The results were predictably bad. I drifted through my teens thinking that God was in charge. When it became painfully obvious that he was asleep at the wheel, I took matters into my own hands. I was about 18 years old when I realised that I needed to start “believing in myself” and taking responsibility for my own life. And I’ve never looked back.
That was my first turning away from Christianity and towards humanism. That’s when I became a humanist from an existential point of view. The intellectual bit took a bit longer. After studying Christian theology for three years, I found it increasingly difficult to believe that God was any more than just a psychological construct. The great 18th century philosophers David Hume and Immanuel Kant had taken a wrecking ball to the philosophical arguments for the existence of God and my personal relationship with him was already attenuated by the fact that I was now running my own life. Ceasing to believe in the literal existence of God is quite a brave thing to do, but by the time I was 23 years old I knew the game was up. I’d been hanging on the telephone for far too long. Operator, operator is anyone there? The line was dead so I took the obvious next step and became an atheist.
Humanism addresses all of the existential problems of being human. It doesn’t wave a magic wand and make you believe in invisible friends and fairy tale endings. The facts of life are pretty brutal. Heaven and hell are states of being here on earth. We can do a lot to make our lives tolerable, comfortable, interesting and meaningful and we can do a lot to make it intolerable and miserable. It’s up to us. The whole of life in this sense is religious. Making a daily choice between heaven and hell. Being alive is my religion.
I’m going to change gear now and talk about the phenomenology and psychology of religion. Religion is a framework of ideas, practices, and institutions which can help people make sense of human life but the point of religion depends on which religion we’re talking about.
Dharmic religions such as Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism believe in something called samsara which is the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. The point of Dharmic religion is to achieve liberation or release from this cycle. It’s the ultimate spiritual goal, symbolising a state of eternal peace, self-realisation, and union with the divine or ultimate reality.
To give one example, in Hindu philosophy, particularly the school known as Advaita Vedanta, moksha is described as realising that the Atman (individual soul) is identical to Brahman (the ultimate reality). This realisation leads to the dissolution of the ego and merging with the infinite.
Abrahamic religions are rather different. The three religions in this group are Judaism, Christianity and Islam. You could add Mormonism as a fourth if you want to. All of them trace their origins back to a mythical founder called Abraham.
A central focus of Judaism is keeping the Torah which contains 613 commandments. Divine law helps sustain Jewish and communal bonds and keeping the law is seen as a means to create a just and moral society. A central focus of Islam is following the commands of God as written in the Quran and following the example of the prophet Muhammad as read about in the hadiths. The point of Islam is to minimise the amount of time you spend being punished in hell. Unlike Christianity, which has no parole for the damned, Muslims often expect to spend some time being tortured in hell but if they do good works in this life then the time they spend in hell can be minimised.
As an ex-Christian and theology graduate, I’d like to spend a bit more time on Christianity. What’s the point of it? There’s an enormous amount of internal variability in Christianity so any answer to this question is bound to be incomplete. But let’s see how we get on.
The Unique Selling Point of Christianity is salvation from eternal damnation. This ultimate goal is similar to Islam but its method for achieving the goal is different. It’s not so much about keeping divine commandments, although that’s important. It’s more to do with securing divine forgiveness for your sins and the main vehicle for the forgiveness of sins is a human sacrifice which is thought to have taken place around 2,000 years ago.
In order to understand the concept of sacrifice, we need to look at ancient Hebrew religion which was based on the idea of animal sacrifices. This was the whole cult of Temple worship in Jerusalem. Sacrifices were conducted as acts of worship, atonement, thanksgiving, and fellowship. The Temple was the only legitimate place for these sacrifices, because it was believed that God lived in the Temple, in some sense (or his ‘presence’ was there). Worshippers would bring animals, grain, and other offerings to the Temple. Large animals such as bulls could be used for major sacrifices, such as atonement. Sheep and goats could be used for sin offerings and guilt offerings. Doves and pigeons could be offered by the poor for such things as purification of women after childbirth. And grain, oil, and wine were used as offerings of thanksgiving. A portion of the sacrifice would be burned, and the rest would be given to the priests. An entire animal could be burnt on the altar as an act of total devotion to God, symbolising submission and atonement. And in order for the sacrifice to be effective, the animal had to be perfect and without blemish. Priests officiated in the entire process and the person offering the sacrifice would lay their hands on the animal’s head which symbolized the transfer of guilt. The blood of the animal would be collected and sprinkled on the altar in order to symbolize atonement. The layers of meaning are complex and obscure but blood was also considered to be a kind of cleansing agent. Parts of the animal were burned on the altar as a “pleasing aroma to the Lord.” If you’ve ever enjoyed the smell of a Sunday roast you might be able to imagine God enjoying this smell too, especially if God is present in the temple.
So what did they think they were doing? Sacrifices, especially the sin and guilt offerings, were seen as a way to achieve forgiveness for sins and restore the worshipper’s relationship to God. Burnt offerings symbolized complete submission to God’s will. There was also a social function to the whole process, with families and communities coming together to worship and give thanks.
Now the origin of Christianity is somewhat obscure, but it seems plausible that when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70, Jews would have needed some other way to keep the whole sacrificial system going. Christianity was a creative and brilliant solution to this problem because it enabled the sacrificial system to keep going despite the fact that the Temple had been destroyed. What was required was some kind of spiritual sacrifice, a sacrifice in a heavenly temple, which humans could benefit from through rituals of baptism and eating the flesh and drinking the blood of the slain Lamb of God. Early Christians such as Paul found their ideas for this new sacrificial system hidden in the scriptures such as Isaiah chapter 53: “He was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was on him, and by his wounds we are healed.” This new sacrificial Lamb was called Joshua which means “God saves”. And of course his name in Greek was Jesus Christ – the anointed Son of God.
So the point of the Christian religion, at its core, is to put people back into a right relationship with God through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus Christ with no dependence on the Temple in Jerusalem. Christianity, in essence, is a primitive human sacrifice cult which many people today still find psychologically powerful.
So finally let’s talk about humanism. Is humanism some kind of secular religion or is it best understood as the absence of religion? Humanists have different views on this but I’m in the former camp. I think of humanism as a kind of secular religion but very much based on classical or Enlightenment values such as reason, empirical science, and aiming to living a virtuous life.
One of the most effective ways to understand humanism is to compare and contrast it with Christianity.
Both of them are oriented around a psychological construct. In the case of Christianity, that’s God. God operates as a kind of inner parent ego state.
In humanism, the corresponding psychological construct is the self. So, for the Christian, the sense of self is split into two parts: the child ego state and the parent ego state. I’m a child of God and God is my loving Father. For the humanist, the sense of self is more integrated. We might say it’s an adult ego state.
So what are the implications of this? For the Christian, there’s a sense of dependence on God, having faith in God. Whereas for the humanist, there’s a sense of believing in myself, having faith in myself and in a broader sense having faith in humanity.
If you’re a Christian, you might think that the humanist faith is misplaced. You might have a dim view of human beings and believe that putting your faith in God is much more prudent than having faith in yourself. Well, if God genuinely does have some kind of independent ontological existence, I might agree with you. But for me, the shift from being a Christian to being a humanist was a kind of “coming of age”. A move from dependence and alienation to independence and integration. That’s how I experienced my conversion from Christianity to humanism. And the point of humanism is getting into a right relationship with myself in order to fully flourish as a human being.