Stephen Prothero is a professor of religion at Boston University and an accomplished author. He has made a name for himself over the last decade writing about religious illiteracy in America (of our own faiths) and religious ignorance worldwide when it comes to other faith-systems. His latest book is called God is Not One and explores the “eight major world religions” and how they differ from one another. Prothero’s main argument is against those who argue that all the major religions are basically the same below the surface. The goal of his book is to demonstrate that the major world religions are not only different in practice and expression but also in doctrine and worldview. Anyone who has spent significant time reading in the world religions or actually talking to people of different faiths would agree with Prothero’s proposition. The world religions are not the same. They don’t teach the same things about god, about man, about the world, or about hope for the future. Because they have different basic theological views, they have different conclusions about what men and women need to do to experience full life here and forever (if they even have the forever category).
But as Stan Guthrie so eloquently describes in his review of Prothero’s book in Books & Culture, the attempt by a western academic to give equal validity to every religious system (even in the name of education) actually demonstrates the worldview of the writer. This is not surprising (as Guthrie points out) because it really is impossible to write apart from the presuppositions you bring to a discussion. The only way to fairly write about a topic like religion is to explain your presuppositions before you begin. In this way, you are honest that you are not only writing about a topic but you are also evaluating different positions. In an attempt to be fair and unbiased in order to present every religion in the best possible light, the author is actually presenting a western agnostic worldview position. This view says that we should understand all religions, but not critique any religions – that would be intolerant. Of course, this sounds good in theory but is impossible to actually live in.
What I mean is Prothero is advocating a position of educated agnosticism – learn but don’t make value judgments. But people can’t live without making value judgments. We make decisions every day about how we use our time, our money, our energy, our mind, our parenting, our careers, our hobbies, etc. in light of what we actually believe about the world. My point is that objectivity is an illusion. True agnosticism (an epistemological position that says real truth is unknowable) is popular because it allows the individual to deflect commitment to one worldview and seems genuinely humble. But to hold a position that I am above all other worldviews and can therefore see the good in all religions is not actually listening to what the religious systems themselves are saying and is therefore arrogant. The different religious systems are not just different, they are mutually exclusive. You cannot believe God is Trinity (Christianity) and God is Unitary (Islam) at the same time. And you don’t handle either religion fairly to simply explain how these two positions are different while acting like you are on the outside of the discussion. As Guthrie says in his review, the question in discussing religion is not just pragmatics (does this faith system work) but is ontology (is this faith system true in describing what actually is).
I appreciate Prothero’s goal of wanting everyone in the world to be more informed about the differences between world religions. This would especially help in loving our neighbor and in global politics. But we cannot be fair and generous in our description while ignoring our own convictions. To talk about worldview without discussion of our own is to buy into the illusion of objectivity.
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I want to first say that this essay gave me a glimpse at a deeper intellect than is often felt in the commonplace religious “head-to-tete.” Exuding a tone of compassionate realism when discussing ideas that have been so divisive and sentimentalized is sincerely welcomed.
However, I wanted to bring up a rather compelling argument that I believe is relevant. This argument is mainstream enough to be an underpinning idea for recent pop psychology books like ‘The Evolution of God,’ which presents the idea that the Christian God is a god descended from the Hebrew God, who in turn represented a sort of cultural spirit for the Israelites (based on a form inherited from the Judeans) that served to unify the people, who would see this spirit as a mascot who provides a standard to outsiders and the handbook of the upright citizen to those who accepted the primacy of this narrative.
The relevant bit of this argument is that each culture would have its own gods to represent its unique heritage. Though the human experience is, by a matter of course, similar in many ways worldwide, it stands to reason that at various points in its history, a society will collectively experience something unique among its neighboring civilizations, and therefore will branch away from the surrounding cultural narratives and have a different story, if only for a while.
Given this view, then it seems to me to be perfectly sound to claim one can believe in All Gods at the Same Time if you believe that the gods are not all in the same pantheon (and therefore subject to laws of nature and logic), but are really overlapping projections of popular imagination onto the night sky. The apparent conflicts between them signal not a contradiction in their existence, but evidence of a contradiction in thought processes here on the ground. That people disagree about fundamental concepts should be apparent by this point;
Therefore, as it is said, “let the gods battle while man lies in leisure.” But, pray sir, be not too leisurely, for your response is eagerly awaited.
I understand the position that you are advocating and have read books in this field – the study of religion from an evolutionary position.
The problem is two-fold with this position. First, is it not the height of arrogance to say that all the religions around the world have “part of the story” – their limited view of the heavens from their cultural background – but as a western intellectual I have the “full story?” In other words, the position that says I can see the big picture – one eternal reality with different human expressions – is simply another option among many options. Who is to say that view is correct? It is another “religion” that is mutually exclusive with Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. My point in the my post on Prothero’s book is not to reject this worldview but simply to expose it as a worldview. The position you explain above is not compatible with my Christian faith. I don’t believe that the Triune God of heaven and earth is simply my faith’s interpretation of the eternal reality – I believe that it is the one true understanding of the nature of God. I believe that other faith systems are wrong. To argue for an evolutionary view of God that says religion is a creation of biological natural selection is itself a faith system.
The second problem with the view above that all religions are simply creations of their cultural experiences doesn’t go all the way to admit that the evolutionary view of religion is a cultural creation as well. I don’t deny that religions and faith-systems are culturally formed. I just reject the idea that some faith systems are culturally formed and others aren’t – especially the western secular pluralistic position. People who argue that Christians are only Christian because they grow up in a Christian culture and Muslims are only Muslims because they grow up in a Muslim culture don’t take the step to realize that if this is true then they are only secular because they grew up in a secular culture. In other words, we are all culturally formed. This doesn’t make any of our positions more true than another – it just means that we start with a certain set of values as we explore issues of faith and eternity.
I just wish more writers would be more honest about the fact that they have a worldview. The point of my original post was simply to say that to write as though you are simply an outside observer is disingenuous. Everyone has a worldview. Simply admit what it is and do your best work from it – don’t act like you don’t have one.