Rejecting Religion, Fostering Faith:
How to achieve transcendence by denying transcendents
In a college to train Jesuit priests I renounced my religion and solidified my faith.
I also discovered my mission in life: to resist true belief in thought, speech, and action. And I entered my career in science-primed philosophy and locally-engaged politics.
The philosopher with whom I most identify and on whom I wrote my thesis is Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a French “existential phenomenologist” who was also a member of the French Resistance during WWII. I compared him with John Dewey, an American “pragmatist” who with Jane Addams advanced public centered social change. Both confronted and resisted populist nationalism turned totalitarian. Both, intellectually and politically, revealed the enemy of human being that which Eric Hoffer would call “true belief” and JP Sartre would call “bad faith.” Merleau-Ponty resisted the “illusion of the absolute.” John Dewey opposed the “dogmatic fallacy.” Both were advocates of democracy at the roots, i.e. radical democracy over party or religion or school or economy.
In my youth I was active in the fight for civil and worker rights and in the resistance to the Vietnam War. I affirmed that McCarthyism, the John Birch society, the Ku Klux Klan, Jim Crow segregation, anti-immigration white supremacism were the results of a fatal malady in human nature the illusion of the absolute and the dogmatic fallacy. But I also learned that within our humanity were also the capacities to resist and even overcome our affliction.
Humankind, once again, is slipping towards populist nationalism and authoritarian government. I see America succumbing to its recurring unpurged infection of racial and class inequality and cruel oppression. While we approach the 250th anniversary of American indepence for freedom and justice for all, we learn that the 400th birthday of the American original sin of slavery is celebrated today in the commemoration of the first slave ship to the Virginia coast.
The great compromise of the Constitutional convention, the Jackson democrats’ populist removal of native Americans, the retreat from reconstruction after the civil war, the southern strategy of Nixon and Reagan, the new tea party and freedom caucus, are stepping stones to our present crisis. All these were nourished by religious dogmas and absolutes. The election of Donald Trump completes the unification of the Republic Party with evangelical, fundamentalist Christianity in reaction to cultural inclusion and social welfare politics based on secular humanist principles rather than on the absolutes and dogmas of divine revelation as presented by Christian churches.
Today I consult with new thinkers and activists and with them find myself renewing a science and philosophy of human nature that explains the illusions and fallacies that comprise the malady that we must overcome in our nature. Many of the old heroes of the great religions and philosophies have identified the malady using the myths, parables, metaphors, and maxims of their cultural habitats.
I am pleased to find numerous great-souled and thoughtful persons articulating the causes and remedies of evil in our time. Thanks to democratic publishing on the internet, especially Medium, I am amazed at the range, the depth, and the passion of so many writers, though without fame and fortune, faithfully contribute to critical thinking over blind belief
I just picked up Martin Hägglund’s This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom. In reading just the introduction so far, I find him making much better case than I have ever seen for a faith in the possibilities for people in this world based on our own fallible commitments to human existence accepted as finite. This is secular faith, rather than religious belief in an eternal space-time and in an immortal body-spirit: A belief that makes an un-worldly life more important than our messy present life which springs from a flawed past towards a collectively chosen future, thus relieving us of immediate responsibility for our friends, our history, and our earth.
I will further comment on this work when I finish it. Even in my old age, it renews my spirit. Imagination, and commitment to the people I love.
Nevertheless, I am sure I will argue for the need for the sacred and continued transcendence in our present lives and so for a kind of religious dimension which I identify with Hägglund’s notion of spiritual freedom. Most of my Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Buddhist, and other religious friends would probably not agree with this formulation. But we (I’m identifying with Hägglund) have no problem with that and have no need to preach atheism or even anti-religion. We can, however, hope and act that their religiousness does not foster hatred of, and personal and political irresponsibility towards, our present existence.