Evolutionary Religion: Some Clarifications

Evolutionary Religion: Some Clarifications
 
Describing various aspects of life as “evolutionary” has become quite popular these days, with evolution being applied as an explanatory scheme to such diverse areas as psychology, aesthetics, political systems, entertainment, and countless other fields that extend the notion of evolutionary development far beyond its origin as an explanation of the development of life. Observing this proliferation of the application of the evolutionary process rooted in natural selection being applied to areas far beyond its original intent, philosopher Raymond Tallis has coined the term “Darwinitis” to describe what sometimes seems to be an over-reaching misapplication of Darwin’s model.
 
Lest we be accused of suffering from a case of this Darwinitis, in this post we would like to offer some clarification regarding our use of the term “evolutionary religion,” especially in light of the rather recent appearance of this concept and the consequent lack of a shared definition among those who use “evolutionary religion” as a category of thought.
 
Specifically, to clarify what we mean by evolutionary religion:
 
1.Evolutionary religion means that religion changes over time.
To describe religion as evolutionary simply means that religion changes over time, in a generally progressive direction of a fuller understanding of spiritual reality. Over time, human spiritual awareness appears to have moved in the direction of a more expansive sense of Ultimacy and an accompanying morality that reflects that evolved sense of Spirit. Human sacrifices are no longer commonly practiced. Moral obligations are less likely to be understood as applicable only to our kin/tribe/species. Spirit is less likely to be understood in terms which reflect parochial prejudices and the projection of flawed human traits such as rage, jealousy, capriciousness, etc.
Obviously, we are only describing trends here, and (unfortunately) it’s still quite easy to find expressions of contemporary religious belief and practice that do not reflect such progressive development. But in the big picture, human spiritual awareness clearly has changed in a positive direction over time.
 
2. Evolutionary religion is not an assertion of religion as the product of natural selection or “survival of the fittest.”
To say that religion has evolved is not meant to imply that it has done so in accordance with the same process of natural selection that has occurred in biological development. This is an important and easily misunderstood point. The multiple expressions of “evolutionary” development in various fields as referenced above typically do argue that such and such aspect of human culture has acquired its current form as the result of its successful adaptations, such that it has been “selected” over other alternatives for its survival value.
One could analyze religion in such a manner, but that is not what we are doing here. Our purpose is simply to explore how religion has changed in a progressive direction, without speculating on the process through which this has happened.
 
3. Evolutionary religion recognizes that, in the short term, the evolution of religion is not one-directional and resistant to regression.
As evidenced by current political developments in certain pockets of the human population, there can be periods of retreat to tribalism and its various cultural expressions, including a type of religion that tends to return to exclusivism, anthropomorphism, literalist fundamentalism, etc. But as with biological evolution, short term regressions must be viewed in the context of long-term progressive development: exclusivist tribalistic religious fundamentalisms might currently be increasing in tandem with comparable political developments, but such regression will be temporary.
 
4. Evolutionary religion is not naïve.
Some argue that an evolutionary understanding of religion is naïve, in the sense that its model of progressively fuller consciousness of Spirit fails to recognize the everyday reality of human suffering as well as the ever-present possibility of a catastrophic and sudden end of the human species. To the extent that an evolutionary religion model is sometimes embraced by New Age thought and popular philosophers such as Ken Wilber, that criticism is not without some merit, and even among more sophisticated philosophical expressions of evolutionary spirituality the problem of suffering tends to be downplayed.
 
However, it would be inaccurate to suggest that an evolutionary model of religion is incompatible with recognition of not only the everyday suffering of the present moment but also the brutality and wastefulness of the evolutionary process itself. Teilhard and Aurobindo, for example, both acknowledge that the presence of profound pain and suffering throughout all living species tends to dampen the otherwise enthusiastically hopeful perspective that both of their evolutionary models express. Unfortunately, neither Teilhard nor Aurobindo provide even a remotely adequate account of how to reconcile this presence of suffering and evil with an evolutionary view of spirituality, but then again neither do traditional theistic theodicies provide an adequate reconciliation of the simultaneous existence of an omnipotent/omnibenevolent deity with a cosmos, created by that deity, which is rampant with crushing pain, suffering, and evil. The problem of theodicy, in other words, remains a thorn in the side of traditional theism as well as evolutionary religion, but it does not follow that either traditional theists or adherents of the evolutionary model do not recognize the presence of suffering and evil and the challenge that it presents, both existentially and cognitively.
 
5. Evolutionary religion does not deny transcendence.
This is a somewhat more subtle philosophical and theological point which we will unpack in more detail in a subsequent post. Criticisms of some of the most popular models of evolutionary religion have argued that divine transcendence is denied by describing Spirit as the on-going product of the evolutionary process of Spirit becoming more manifest in the Cosmos, in effect reflecting a process of the progressive spiritualization of the Cosmos through the progressive self-awareness of Spirit.
 
This is a criticism that applies to what we have previously labelled as “strong” evolutionary religion, which sees evolution as a process in which Spirit itself is becoming more and more present in the Cosmos through the evolution from energy to matter to living entities to conscious beings to self-reflective conscious beings with an awareness of the evolutionary process itself. As often expressed, evolution is the process of Spirit becoming aware of itself through the evolution of matter that is becoming more and more conscious.
 
By contrast, “weak” evolutionary religion adopts a more modest descriptive/phenomenological approach, rather than the philosophical/spiritual approach of the hard model. Hence, the weak model of evolutionary religion simply affirms that an objective observation of the evolutionary development of the Universe reveals an evolving awareness of the nature of Spirit, as evidenced in the progressive development of human spiritual consciousness and its cultural expressions in religion. Whether or not this includes an actual development of Spirit in the Cosmos itself is not the primary concern of this approach, which focuses on human awareness of Spirit rather than changes in Spirit itself.
 
However, even in the most prominent systems of strong evolutionary religion, (Teilhard de Chardin, Aurobindo, and the popularized version of Aurobindo found in Ken Wilber), there is recognition that Spirit exists in its fullness already, or, in a sense, Spirit is simultaneously fully Transcendent while evolving increased Immanence. In Teilhard, for example, the end point of the evolutionary process, which he calls Omega, is also understood as the origin and continued support of the Cosmos. Spirit, in other words, is both transcendent and immanent, with divine immanence expanding in the Cosmos as it evolves. This is sometimes a difficult concept for the more rationally inclined Western philosophers and theologians to buy into, since it asserts the simultaneous reality of what in a sense are opposing qualities of Spirit: If Spirit is Transcendent it can’t be Immanent, and if Spirit is Immanent it can’t be fully Transcendent. But the union of opposites, of course, has an ancient pedigree and is found in both ancient and modern mystical traditions, which set aside the contemporary epistemological bias of positing that the nature of Spirit must correspond to the categories that human thought is capable of grasping. Setting aside that sort of human epistemological hubris, the existence of a spiritual ultimate which is simultaneously Transcendent and Immanent becomes perfectly credible.
 
6. Understanding the evolutionary model of religion requires an appropriately vast temporal perspective. 
All of the above, however, must in turn be understood in the context of what might be considered one of the fundamental assumptions of an evolutionary perspective: the vastness of time and the (relatively) slow pace of the evolutionary process.
 
Appreciating an evolutionary perspective of religion requires an appropriately expansive temporal framework. Perhaps no  contemporary philosopher consistently acknowledges the need for such a perspective as does J.L. Schellenberg, whose work always contextualizes human religious awareness in the context of deep time, not only with reference to the depth of past time during which human spiritual consciousness has slowly developed to its present state, but also the equally deep future time during which human awareness of Spirit might develop in ways that are, to minds still operating with “only” a  21st century awareness, quite inconceivable.