The Traditional Perspective: Evolution as the Enemy of Religion
Traditionally, religion and evolution seem to have been locked in a perpetual battle. From the early years of Darwin’s Origin of Species, to the infamous and nationally covered Scopes monkey trial, right up to the current “Creation Science” movement, believers (mostly, although not exclusively, Christian evangelical fundamentalists) have characterized belief in evolution as incompatible with belief in God, and especially with belief in God as understood by evangelicals. Often this battle is situated in the larger context of a literalist interpretation of the Bible: since the theory of evolution offers an account of the origin of the human (and other) species that is different from the Genesis account of direct creation by an act of a transcendent God, to accept the truth of evolution necessarily implies the rejection of the infallible authority of the Bible, and for many Christians that is unacceptable. Of course, not all Christians are fundamentalists or Biblical literalists, and there are many who identify as Christians and accept the theory of evolution (of particular note, for example, was the French priest/paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose work attempted to present a complete reconciliation of religion and evolution. His work will be examined here in a later post). Nonetheless, it’s fair to say that the dominant factor in the religion-evolution relationship over the past century and longer, has been the evangelical/fundamentalist interpretation of that relationship, according to which Christian faith requires a literal interpretation of the Bible which necessarily leads to a rejection of evolution. But there is a much different way to think about the relationship between religion and evolution! An Alternative Perspective: Evolution as the Source of Religion Many religions understand the origin of their tradition to be the result of a divine act of top-down revelation, where a transcendent divine being communicates a revelation to humanity, with that revelation (Torah, Bible, Qur’an, Veda, etc.) functioning as the origin and foundation of their religion. But let’s consider another account of how religion might have emerged, doing so from an evolutionary perspective that does not in any way deny the reality of a spiritual dimension but at the same time eliminates the conflict between religion and evolution. To begin, let’s look at the big picture of evolution – the really big picture, sometimes referred to as Big History: The Universe originated approximately 13.7 billion years ago with a singularity in which space/time/energy first came into existence – the Big Bang. The subsequent development of the Universe has been one in which entities of increasing complexity evolved: from the primal energy to elementary particles to protons and neutrons to simple atoms to stars to galaxies. Collapsing stars, or supernova, in these early galaxies led to explosions which resulted in more complex elements and complex structures which became our solar systems, in which complex bodies composed of various elements orbited around a central star. In one such galaxy, this included the planet on which we reside, Earth. The evolution of increasingly complex structures continued on Earth, which was positioned in just the right location for the eventual emergence of cells, then multi-cellular organisms, then complex living species (fish, amphibians, reptiles, mammals), eventually leading to humans. And here is where things get really interesting! Humans continued to evolve, as individuals and as a group, and in a variety of ways: socially, culturally, psychologically, economically, politically, etc. For our purposes, though, the most important element of the ongoing evolution of humans was the evolution of human consciousness, or the capacity to perceive and be aware of increasingly fuller aspects of reality. Early humans, like the mammals which they evolved from, had the capacity for sensory experience: sight, sound, touch, taste, smell, etc. But over time, human consciousness developed to a point which exceeded that of previous species, in that humans developed the capacity to perceive or sense (however dimly) the existence of what we might call super-sensory aspects of reality. At some point, probably more than 40,000 years ago, humans acquired a sense that there was something more than that which they could perceive through the ordinary five senses, something that (to use a word that makes sense to us today but of course would have been meaningless at the time) transcended the more common everyday dimension of stuff. From this point onward, humans differed from all other living creatures in the sense that, in addition to sensory experience of stuff, humans had the capacity to experience or sense (again, however dimly), the presence of “something more” which could not be directly seen, touched, etc., but which was nonetheless part of what is real. In some ways, this unique human characteristic was a matter of recognizing abstractions: concepts such as number, time, space, direction, etc. In other words, the capacity of the human mind clearly evolved or grew over time: the earliest humans could not use written and oral symbols to communicate, which is to say that early human consciousness did not include abstract thinking; eventually, of course, humans not only developed this capacity but enlarged and refined it into complex languages capable of communicating subtle internal mental and emotional perceptions and states. But for our purposes, the most unique aspect of this evolving human sense of the nature of reality was the recognition of something that existed that was qualitatively different from anything that was experienced in the realm of time, space, matter, form, etc. Early humans had the capacity to perceive and experience that aspect of reality that was available through sensory experience: that which could be seen, touched, smelled, etc. But at some point in the evolution of human consciousness, our species acquired the capacity to sense that there was, so to speak, a supersensory aspect of reality, something which really existed, but was not directly perceived in the same manner as most aspects of the sensory realm. Humans acquired, however dimly and however poorly and variously articulated, a sense of a spiritual dimension, or the presence of the sacred as a part of reality. So again, using language that makes sense to us today, we could say that human consciousness evolved to the point that humans acquired the ability to sense the presence of Spirit: humans were the first species to acquire the capacity to sense the existence of a spiritual dimension of the Cosmos, and thus we have the birth of religion, or the attempt to articulate, make sense of, and respond to, the intuitive awareness of the spiritual dimension of the Cosmos. Of course, how and when this happened is and will remain a mystery. Sceptics are fond of offering simplistic reductionist explanations of the origin of religion (the sociological necessity to maintain order in increasingly large settlements, a psychological defense mechanism against the fear of death, the error of confusing dream reality with external reality, and so on), but even those reductionist explanations assume the existence of a human capacity to posit the presence of something that is not present to ordinary sensory experience. Yes, it clearly is the case that in human communities with a belief in supernatural beings, that religious belief system was used to encourage pro-social behavior and discourage anti-social behavior, but that constitutes a use of religion, not its origin. It does not account for the origin of the idea – apparently not found in any other living organism on Earth – that there exists a dimension of reality that is different from the space/time/matter/energy dimension that constitutes the physical universe and can be perceived through sensory experience. Where did that human awareness of Spirit come from? At what point in the evolution of the species and the ongoing development of the brain did the awareness of Spirit become possible? How did early humans deal with that budding spiritual awareness, an awareness that would have preceded the subsequent explosion of religious ideas and practices that claimed to explain that primal awareness of Spirit? Unfortunately, the answers to such questions are lost to history, but we can, in a very general sense, trace the emergence and development of the human awareness of Spirit, as over time it has been manifested in the various forms of religious belief and practice: animism, polytheism, monotheism, non-dualism, pantheism, deism, etc., each of which gets expressed and elaborated on in multiple forms in different cultures over different time periods. But back to the larger point: in this account of the origin of religion, there is no conflict between religion and evolution. Quite to the contrary, evolution is seen as the process through which this Universe develops an entity (humans) with the capacity to intuit the presence of Spirit. If there is no evolution of the human species and no evolution of consciousness, there is no evolution of the sense of Spirit, and hence there is no religion: from that point of view, religion is indebted to, rather than in conflict with, evolution. This interpretation of the origin of religion sees religion not as the product of a discrete top-down divine revelation but rather as the product of a natural process occurring in the Universe that has led to the emergence of an entity (homo sapiens) that has the evolved capacity to sense the presence of Spirit, the presence of a very real non-material dimension of the Cosmos. Of course, this evolutionary model of religion (which we will simply refer to as evolutionary religion) will not likely be embraced by traditional fundamentalist theists who wish to interpret ancient sacred texts in an infallible, literalist style. But for those who bring an open mind to the issue, we believe that evolutionary religion provides an opportunity for the contemporary citizen to be a believer without sacrificing their intellectual integrity. One can accept all that scientific knowledge has to offer, including the evolution of the Cosmos, and still assert the reality of Spirit. And the Future Evolution of Religion? As I argue in Thinking about Religion in the 21st Century: A New Guide for the Perplexed, we appear to be in the midst of a major transitional period from the religions of the past 2500 years to something new. All of the major existing world religions emerged during a period known as the Axial Age, and they have flourished and developed in various expressions across the globe for over two millennia. But there is good reason to believe that their influence is waning: the traditional Axial Age religions simply do not resonate with humans who are fully informed by a 21st century historical, scientific, and multi-cultural sensibility, and we see the consequences of this in the closing of churches, the rise of secularism, the growth of the “spiritual but not religious” identification, and just a widespread general disinterest in religion. Of course, new spiritual traditions will eventually emerge to replace the declining Axial Age religions, but here in the early 21st century we are in the awkward moment where post-Axial, evolutionary religion has not yet evolved into something recognizable and workable. Suggestions regarding what a post-Axial religion might look like have been offered in a previous blog (see Where We are Headed: The Second Axial Age and Post-Axial Religion, parts 1 through 6 ) and the nature of post-Axial religion is explored in detail in the second part of Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century. But the details of what the “religions of the future” will look like are difficult to foresee, especially in light of the likely transformation of the human species itself, as technology leads to the transition from human to post-human. But whatever the post-human world turns out to be like, it certainly will include religion and spirituality, and in a manner that is fully reconciled with science and evolution.
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Granted that for the past four centuries the relationship between religion and science has been a conflictual one in the West, there is good reason to believe that such conflict will diminish significantly in the coming years as we evolve further and further away from both the limiting parameters of the Axial-based model of religious faith that has dominated Western culture for over 2000 years and away from the dogmatic adherence to naturalism/materialism that has come to dominate the scientific community in much the same way that doctrinal orthodoxy once dominated the church.
The model for Axial faith was based on an a priori acceptance of a sacred text – the Bible for Christians – as the mandatory starting point for valid knowledge of truth or the nature of reality. If one starts from that position, a conflict with science is inevitable, given both the methodology of science and the content of scientific knowledge. If you start out with Biblical literalism as a prerequisite, you’re going to have a difficult time coming to terms with a scientific understanding of the nature of the Cosmos. But that simply will not be a problem in the religion of the future if that religion is no longer dependent on ancient texts for a starting point. If the spirituality of the 21st century and beyond is grounded in empirical experience, or our capacity to sense the Sacred or Spirit, then we are not locked in to concepts of the nature of the world that were developed over two millennia ago. A contemporary, post-Axial spirituality, in which a believer need not make any intellectual or moral sacrifices in order to believe, is one which almost by definition will be open to incorporating whatever the scientific worldview has to offer. If the 21st century spirituality is rooted in a simple awareness of the existence of a transcendent Meaning and Goodness in the Cosmos, unattached to any specific culturally-limited and parochial myths and legends, then the opportunity for a religion vs. science conflict is far less likely to arise. The new religion, rooted in the Spiritual Minimalism which we described in a previous post, of the post-Axial Age is one which finds no basis to challenge science. At the same time, however, we should recognize that science also is likely to make certain adjustments that will further facilitate a reconciliation with religion. For starters, science itself will hopefully become less dogmatic and recognize that while the scientific method is a remarkable tool for understanding the realm of matter/energy as it exists in space/time, such a comprehensive understanding of the natural world does not preclude the existence of a spiritual dimension, which, by its every definition, stands outside of or transcends the natural realm. Science tells us a lot about the world of “stuff” – but it tells us nothing about the spiritual dimension of meaning and value. In addition, as we have indicated earlier, many in the scientific community already recognize that the scientific dogmatism that sees reality in strictly materialist and mechanistic terms is no longer credible in light of the findings of how the quantum world functions. So neither religion nor science is going away, but both are changing, and changing in rather dramatic and significant ways such that the centuries-old conflict between them will continue to diminish. Early in the 20th century, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead spoke of the need for a “deeper religion and more subtle science,” and that appears to be what is slowly emerging. The spirituality of the 21st century will be “deeper” in the sense that it will be free from adherence to ancient texts and the parochial mythological worldviews found in those texts, and rooted in a spiritually open empiricism. Science of the 21st century will be more subtle in the sense that it will be freed from a reductionist, deterministic, simplistic materialism and liberated from the hubris of 20th century science’s parochial notion that science alone provides a true and comprehensive explanation of the nature of reality. Science will be open to the existence of Mystery, and religion will be open to the experience of Mystery, in all of its glorious multiplicity of manifestations. While we can only make vague guesses about what the many dimensions of the post-Axial religion of the 21st century and beyond will look like, we can probably assert with considerable confidence that the future religion will be one characterized by an embrace of religious pluralism and a rejection of exclusivism. The notion that there is only one true religion and that religions can be neatly categorized into “true” and “false” is already rapidly disappearing among many populations, and the pluralistic appreciation of a multiplicity of spiritual beliefs and practices will likely, over time, become the new norm. The exclusivist assertion that there is only one true religion, one true revelation, and one true path to salvation is simply not credible to people whose perspective is fully informed by study of the history of religions, which exposes the sociopolitical factors that influence the formation of each religion, and the study of World Religions, which demonstrates the multiple commonalities between traditions. We already see a movement away from the traditional exclusivist norm as, for instance, the traditional boundaries between various branches of Christianity are dissolving, with practicing Lutherans being quite comfortable attending a Presbyterian service or even a Catholic Mass, and indeed with many Protestants not even familiar with the theological differences that once created a sharp and often acrimonious wall between different denominations. Today many Protestant Christians would be hard-pressed to describe the theological differences between, for instance, Lutheranism, Methodism, and Presbyterianism, and many mainline Protestant congregations are populated by members simply by virtue of family tradition rather than theological choice. This openness to other traditions also extends beyond the different branches of one’s own faith and into completely different traditions, as we see Christians and Jews practicing Buddhist meditation and participating in Hindu religious festivals. We appear to be heading for what Duane Bidwell has referred to as believers who are “spiritually fluid” (see Bidwell’s When One Religion Isn’t Enough: The Lives of Spiritually Fluid People). Rather than feeling a need to be confined to one tradition, the spiritually fluid believers (which appear to be rapidly increasing in numbers) do not identify with any one tradition, but feel comfortable drawing different elements of their spiritual life from different religions. The spiritually fluid believer might, for instance, participate in a Christian Mass, practice Buddhist meditation, hold a worldview derived from Hindu Vedanta, and read Confucius for ethical guidance, all the while seeing no conflict in the blending of various traditions and not exclusively identifying with any one of them. To the spiritually fluid believer, being religious does not require identification with a specific historical tradition, but rather consists of an acceptance of and commitment to spiritual reality that transcends association with any particular expression of faith. This embrace of pluralism and movement toward spiritual fluidity doesn’t mean that we are necessarily headed toward some sort of universal, global One Religion. Spiritual beliefs and practices are influenced by many variables, some reflecting differences in personality and taste, some reflecting local traditions, and countless other subtle differences in human personality and culture that lead to a preference for one rather than another mode of spirituality. These factors will likely ensure that, as the religion of the future slowly evolves, it will develop along branches that reflect these many differences in preference, but the new normal in which such variations exist will almost certainly be one which strongly affirms religious pluralism. Where we are headed- The Second Axial Age and post-Axial Religion, part 4: Trans-human Morality7/19/2023 Given that the sense of moral goodness and duty to act virtuously is a universal element of religion, it would follow that if religion evolves, our sense of moral responsibility also should be expected to evolve.
If we look at the long term, big picture evolution of human morality, we see a gradual expansion of our sense of moral obligation from family to tribe to village to larger political units such as states and nations. What, then, will be the next step in what has so far been an ever-expanding sense of human moral responsibility? What will morality in a post-Axial Age spirituality look like? First, our sense of spiritually-grounded moral obligation likely will extend to the entire human species, not just to one’s “own” group, whether that be a church, nation, ethnic group, or whatever. For many contemporary believers, that sense of moral obligation has already been extended to its maximum breadth within the human community through a sense of moral obligation to all humans, regardless of religion, ethnicity, race, gender, nationality, etc. The notion of a “brotherhood (or sisterhood) of man (or humanity)” is hardly a new idea, and its origins can be seen even in the teachings of Axial traditions (Jesus extending the sense of moral obligation beyond his Jewish followers to the Gentiles, the Buddha teaching the importance of extending compassion and other moral virtues to people of all castes). In real life, of course, this sense of a moral commitment to the entire species is often forgotten and sullied by its confused connection with various forms of religious exclusivism (moral obligations only to fellow true believers), nationalism (moral obligation only to God’s chosen nation), and similar limiting perspectives. Nonetheless, over the course of the 20th century, and especially among the post-Baby Boomer generation that has grown up with a previously unknown global ecological awareness and more informed recognition of the consequences of many aspects of modern human technologies, we find that the sense of community with the entire human species to be more and more the norm rather than the exception. Such a trend is likely to continue, and the moral teachings of the religion of the future will reflect this sense of the need to treat all of humanity in a virtuous manner. But we would suggest that there are also signs that the expansion of our sense of moral responsibility is already extending even beyond the human species and evolving into a sense of moral responsibility to all living beings. The ethicist Peter Singer has coined the term “speciesism” to describe and criticize the traditional approach to morality in which we treat one species (human) as more deserving of moral consideration than other species, whether plant or animal. Singer argues that speciesism, like racism and sexism, are relics of a morality which humanity is growing out of. We already see the early signs of the emergence of what might be called a “trans-human” morality in the growth of vegetarianism and veganism (growing to the point that even fast-food restaurant chains now offer plant-based alternatives to beef and chicken) and the growing popularity of organizations and movements devoted to natural conservation, environmental protection, and ethical treatment of animals. One might speculate that given these trends, just as today’s believers look back critically at earlier religious moralities that were confined to one’s own tribe and identified sexist and racist behavior as morally acceptable, religious people in the future might someday look back at today’s nationalist and speciesist morality as similarly primitive and brutal. This movement toward a trans-human global ethic is explored by Ervin Laszlo, who sees the evolutionary development of the human species as heading into a post-Axial Age in which human consciousness will become more attuned to our trans-human connections and consequently a similarly expanded ethic will eventually develop. As our concept of God/Spirit/the Sacred expands, so will our sense of ethical responsibility: When people evolve transpersonal consciousness they become aware of their deep ties to each other, to the biosphere, and to the cosmos. They develop greater empathy with people and cultures near and far and greater sensitivity to animals, plants, and the entire biosphere (Laszlo, Quantum Shift in the Global Brain, 125) Again, this will be problematic for those who cling to Axial religions and their less expansive moral teachings, and as with basic beliefs as discussed above, it will take time to develop a more detailed set of post-Axial moral principles. But whatever form those principles take is sure to be one which is certain to reflect a moral commitment on a global scale, covering not only all humans but all sentient beings. Where we are headed- The Second Axial Age and post-Axial Religion, part 3: Empirical Religion7/19/2023 Let’s continue with our brief look at what a post-Axial religion might look like, with each aspect to be covered in more depth in later posts.
Our traditional religions, rooted in Axial Age spirituality, tend to be belief-oriented. That is to say, being religious is understood as primarily a cognitive act of choosing to think that certain propositions as defined in specific creeds, sacred texts, dogmas, theologies, etc., are true. However, the credibility of sacred texts and detailed doctrinal beliefs has been significantly diminished by the epistemological humility which, in the previous post, has been as deriving from a recognition of the cultural and historical contextual nature of all such doctrinal statements. But if the future of religion is not grounded in doctrine, dogma, and reliance on divinely revealed sacred texts, then what will it be based on? What’s left as the basis for religious faith once our confidence in these traditional Axial Age factors has been substantially diminished? We are suggesting that the religion of the future will likely be less rooted in declarative statements, theological arguments, and stories from ancient texts, and more grounded in the everyday awareness of the sacred quality of reality that remains available to people of faith even after the legitimacy of the doctrines and texts of the past have lost much of their credibility. In a sense, this will simply be a return to a meaning of “faith” that brings us back to the origins of religion and that from which the verbal expressions of faith (texts, doctrine, dogma, etc.) derive. Belief in a proposition about a historical event whose veracity must be accepted without evidence, or in “blind faith,” is quite different from belief in a statement about the nature of reality that can be confirmed by one’s own immediate awareness, or experiential faith. In the present era when many of the traditional bases for religious faith are no longer credible for much of the educated population that thinks in 21st century terms, religious experience stands out as the most reliable, substantial, unassailable basis for belief in a spiritual reality. This doesn’t mean that future believers all will be full-blown mystics who walk around in something like altered states of consciousness rooted in intense, prolonged non-dual experiences of the Sacred. Such overwhelming, rapturous nature of a mystical experience is just one type of spiritual experience. Equally valid and compelling is the everyday, ordinary sense of a spiritual dimension to the Cosmos, an often vague but also confident sense that there really is “Something More” than a Universe of time, space, matter, and energy. This perception of a Spiritual dimension does not require intensive and difficult spiritual practices leading to a clearly identifiable moment of overwhelming spiritual illumination. Certainly such extraordinary religious experiences happen, and they are profoundly meaningful in the spiritual lives of those who have them. But for the everyday person of faith who has neither the opportunity nor the interest to pursue the rigorous practices that lead to such experiences, there is the simple, humble, easily acquired sense of Something – a Something which is supremely Good and which confers meaning to the Cosmos, even in spite of the daily messes, challenges, and tragedies of normal, everyday human existence. Leaving doctrines and sacred texts aside, each person still has access to those subtle, quiet, yet powerfully meaningful moments when one senses the presence of Spirit, the presence of the indefinable Something More that has never been adequately captured in doctrinal statements or pronouncements in sacred texts. We can already see the emergence of this more experientially-oriented approach to religion in the growth of the “spiritual but not religious” population. Numerous polls have consistently found a steady growth in the number of people who, on the one hand, do not consider themselves to be “religious” in the sense of formally belonging to an existing tradition or accepting the doctrines of a given faith, while on the other hand identifying as “believers” in the sense of affirming the existence of a spiritual reality. In a sense, this trend is the leading edge of what might likely continue to evolve from a fringe movement to the most common expression of religion in the future: experiential, or empirical spirituality. Where we are headed- The Second Axial Age and post-Axial Religion, part 2: Spiritual Minimalism7/17/2023 Axial age religions emerged at a time when humanity often perceived itself in very confident terms: the pinnacle of creation, the center of the Universe, the holder of the key to all knowledge: Reason. And from this confident sense of human epistemological abilities there emerged detailed, complex, confident dogma, doctrines, and theologies.
But all that has changed! An honest, informed 21st century sensibility includes a radically altered sense of the context of the human presence in the vastness of space and time. We now recognize humanity as a species which, relative to the 14 billion year history of the Universe, has only recently appeared, and, relative to the immensity of the Universe, exists on a tiny speck of a planet. Such recognition of the human presence in the vastness of space and time is a profoundly humbling experience. When humanity is spatially and temporally contextualized like this, the notion that a recently evolved creature using a three pound organ (brain) on one tiny planet should be able to make detailed and definitive statements about the Ultimate nature of existence becomes glaringly arrogant and preposterous. Recognizing the place of the human species in the broader context of the Universe produces what might be characterized as a profound sense of Epistemological Humility, or a sense of the limits of human knowledge, and Epistemological Humility in turn is likely to lead to what we will refer to as Spiritual Minimalism, or a constant awareness of the need to avoid saying too much about the nature of the Spirit/Ultimate Reality which exceeds the capacity of humans to understand and describe in a comprehensive manner. Predictions that the religion of the 21st century will be theologically minimalist are shared by many who are exploring the possible contours of the future of religion. As Sean Kelly has put it, the spirituality of the future is likely to be characterized by a “renunciation of certainty” that stands in marked contrast to the detailed doctrinal positions of existing religions.* Similarly, Ervin Laszlo, in exploring the religious implications for the evolving global quality of human consciousness, suggests that we should attempt no more than a “minimally speculative theology.”** And J.L. Schellenberg argues that with reference to religion, “We simply need to start thinking more generally than we are accustomed to doing,” generating religious beliefs that can best be characterized as “thin,” in contrast to the “thick” collections of detailed ideas found in the theologies, doctrines, and philosophies that are associated with traditional, Axial religion.*** Similarly, we need to recognize that we are only at the beginning of the emergence of a post-Axial spirituality, and hence there will likely be a similar period of creative theologizing in which new words, symbols, concepts, etc. are offered up as the best ways to express the Sacred, and over time, as in the case of Christianity and every other major religion, new preferred expressions will emerge. Even then, however, we are suggesting that spiritual minimalism will always be present, since we have acquired an epistemological humility and a historical consciousness which, once attained, will not go away. * See Sean Kelly’s Coming Home: The Birth and Transformation of the Planetary Era and Becoming Gaia: On the Threshold of Planetary Initiation. ** See Ervin Laszlo, Quantum Shift in the Global Brain. *** Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg is perhaps the best known “mainstream” figure to write extensively and in great depth and detail about the temporal contextualization of religious thought and exploring the radical implications of the future evolution of religion. Schellenberg proposes “Ultimism” as a replacement for theism, and his concept of Ultimism shares many characteristics of the 21st century spirituality which we will be exploring on this website. For non-philosophers, his accessible Evolutionary Religion is an excellent starting point. Speculation that we have entered the early stages of a Second Axial Age from which there will emerge a post-Axial spirituality that is significantly different from that which we find in the traditional, or Axial Age religions that are with us today is certainly not a new idea. Its origins are sometimes traced to the philosopher Ewert Cousins and the cultural historian Thomas Berry, both of whom were at Fordham University in the 1970s. Many others have added to the conversation about a second Axial Age, some explicitly and others implicitly, from mainstream figures such as sociologist Robert Bellah and historian of religion Karen Armstrong, to more non-traditional contemporary philosophers such as Sean Kelly and Ervin Laszlo, to leading figures in the “Big History” field such as Brian Swimme and David Christian, and many others. So what we are exploring on this website clearly is an idea that is “in the air,” so to speak.
While further posts on this website will examine the multitude of diverse manifestations that post-Axial religion might head in the 21st century and beyond, in this series of six posts we would like to simply introduce a brief summary of what this “religion of the future” might include – each of these items explored in more detail later, as well as in Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century: A New guide for the Perplexed. A Different Way to Think About “God” As soon as we affirm that Spirit/God exists, we must also immediately acknowledge the utter inadequacy of human language to describe that Ultimate Reality. In a sense, religion is an activity in which humans use whatever linguistic symbols (i.e., words) are available in the culture in which they live to attempt to try to describe the indescribable. Necessarily, that has often meant using words derived from our experience as humans to describe God, a practice known as anthropomorphism (God is a father, king, ruler, etc.). But it increasingly appears to be the case that the Axial Age anthropomorphic language used to describe “God” is no longer adequate for the sense of the Sacred that exists for much of contemporary humanity, living as we do in very different cultural and historical circumstances than those of the humans who developed that anthropomorphic God-language. What we need, then, is a way of talking about Spirit that uses more contemporary language and symbols, producing a “religion than is appropriate for our time” (see note below on J.L. Schellenberg). Such a new way of speaking about Spirit is likely to be less anthropomorphic and less rooted in pre-modern value-laden terminology (words such as “king” and “lord” might have had a positive connotation in pre-modern and feudal societies, but they have not retained such a positive association in many contemporary cultures). Conceiving Spirit as a male king, ruler, lawgiver, punisher, father figure, and, at times, rather capricious personality, is just not as meaningful or credible to a 21st century sensibility as it was to humans at the beginning of the Axial period when today’s major religions developed. So what is the alternative? That’s hard to say, since we are still in a transition period to post-Axial religion, such that at the present time we can only make best guesses as to what the emerging post-Axial language of faith will be like. However, it seems reasonable to postulate that as the new post-Axial spirituality emerges over the coming centuries, a new religious language will develop to help humans express that which is beyond language. The “God” of the 21st century and beyond will be a much bigger and more expansive sense of “God” than we currently find in the existing traditional religions, and a language to adequately refer to that “God” is yet to be developed. In an earlier post we suggested that religion is a dynamic rather than a static phenomenon. Religion changes all the time, and at the present time it appears to be at a transition point where (like many other aspects of human culture) it could change dramatically in the coming years, decades, and centuries.
But before we begin to look at what those changes might look like as a 21st century spirituality evolves, it might be helpful to look at a model of the long-term evolution of human religion which both helps us to clearly see how religion has evolved in the past and provides a framework for speculation on where religion is headed in the future. The model that we are referring to is the Axial Age, a concept proposed by Karl Jaspers in 1949. Jaspers’ model is not universally accepted today by historians of religion, and clearly it has its share of deficiencies and controversies. But despite those shortcomings, it provides the most useful framework for thinking about the “big picture” of the evolution of human religion. Jaspers coined the term “Axial Age” to describe a period of human history, running from approximately the 8th century BCE to close to the beginning of the Christian era, during which there was a radical shift in religious consciousness in civilizations across the globe. Religion prior to this period tended to be fairly uniform in the various cultures covering the Earth; but during this period, in many civilizations we see the slow emergence of a dramatically modified sense of Spirit, almost as if human consciousness turned on an "axis" and, spiritually speaking, made a shift to something radically different from what preceded it. Using Jaspers’ model, we can distinguish between pre-Axial religion, Axial Age religion (represented by the various world religions that are still with us today), and what we will refer to as post-Axial religion, or the newly emerging sense of Spirit that could form the basis of what religion will look like in the future. Pre-Axial Religion We can refer to the period from the earliest evidence of human awareness of a spiritual dimension as early as 40,000 BCE to the 8th or 9th c. BCE as pre-Axial religion. During this extended period, religion throughout the world tended to contain some combination of the following elements:
To summarize, in the pre-Axial era humans recognized the presence of invisible, powerful spiritual presences in this world and in a heavenly realm, but they understood these spiritual realities as something that was primarily a source of power, and something that was related to through the performance of sacrifices. Moral qualities (kindness, generosity, compassion, justness, etc.) were neither seen as part of the nature of spiritual reality nor an important aspect of religious behavior. Axial Age Religion And then things changed dramatically, over the span of about five centuries (a remarkably short time in the larger context of the history of the human species) – in China, in India, in the Mediterranean civilizations – in a remarkable manner which would result in a radically different type of spirituality. This change would produce the great World Religions that are still with us today: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism all emerged during this period, in what Jaspers coined “Axial Age” religion, based on the notion that it seemed as if humanity was collectively pivoting on an axis and turning to a very different understanding of the spiritual dimension of reality. More specifically, it was during this period that we see a shift away from understanding the sacred as a capricious and threatening power which is often intertwined in some way with Earthly existence, and toward a perception of Spirit as the unitive and transcendent embodiment of all perfections and the source of universal meaning to existence. We see this movement from belief in multiple sacred spirits or deities toward a sense of the unitary nature of Spirit in the monotheisms of the Abrahamic traditions, in the non-dualism of the Hindu Brahman and the Buddhist Shunyata/Tathata/Dharmakaya, and in the Chinese Dao. In all of these Axial developments we see an evolution away from a sense that the Sacred is a scattered reality to an awareness of some sort of unity or oneness. This is the period of the rise of monotheisms in the West and the rise of non-dualisms in the East. In the Mediterranean world, the old gods clearly are in the process of receding by the time you get to the Temple period in Judaism, while in Asia the multiform sense of deity never completely disappears but rather becomes incorporated in the larger picture as part of a larger Oneness, as seen, for instance, in the Hindu Vedanta and Mahayana Buddhist tradition. But along with this movement toward an awareness of the unitary nature of spiritual reality, we also find a dramatic shift in the understanding of the qualities of that sacred reality. Spirit becomes the source of transcendent meaning, in the sense that it is no longer solely concerned with the specific circumstances of a given tribe or people, but rather imbues the world with a broader, transcendent purpose and meaning, and the human relationship with the spiritual dimension is seen less as a means of acquiring power and protection for one group against another group, and more as the means by which we participate in universal meaning, a meaning that is salvific in nature and includes recognition of the perpetuation of consciousness after death of the physical body. In addition, Spirit becomes moral during the Axial Age. Sacred reality is no longer characterized by capricious, petty, insolent, vindictive behavior, but rather is understood as the repository of moral perfection. Rather than gods acting like immoral humans, the Axial Age sees a morally perfect spiritual reality which is the source of all moral goodness. Spirit is now associated with love, compassion, kindness, justness, and other moral virtues. And given this new awareness of the sacred, humanity’s understanding of how it should relate to the sacred also changes. Sacrifice is gradually replaced by virtuous behavior as the fundamental spiritual practice. Whereas in pre-Axial religion, morality was at best secondary to the performance of ritual sacrifices, in Axial religion the role of sacrifice gradually diminishes and is replaced by the importance of leading a life based on moral virtues. If we look at religions across the globe in, say 3000 BCE, we find people offering sacrifices to a collection of rather unpredictable spiritual beings in return for protection from harm. If we look at religions across the globe in the first century CE, we often (although certainly not exclusively) find people endeavoring to lead virtuous lives in accordance with the will of a benevolent and all-powerful deity or force. Of course, this short account of the shift from pre-Axial to Axial religion is an oversimplification of the complexities of religious life during that period, but the point that we’re trying to make, even in this simplified account, is that religion changed, and changed radically during this period. And, to finally return to the point that led us to a consideration of the Axial Age religion, if we have definitive evidence that human awareness of the Sacred changed radically in the past, why should we assume (as many apparently do) that the human understanding of Spirit stopped evolving around 2000 years ago? Human awareness of the sacred dimension of reality clearly changed radically from the birth of human self-awareness to the beginning of the Christian era… and if so, why should we think that that evolving awareness would have stopped at that point? That much of the world’s population subscribes to this scenario of a religious awareness that is stuck somewhere around the first century or so is clearly demonstrated by the manner in which people from all of the major faiths look to texts that were written during the Axial Age for knowledge about God/Spirit. When a Christian looks to the Bible for an understanding of the nature of God, she or he implicitly affirms that the portrayal of God in that 2000-year-old book is more valuable, meaningful, valid, etc., than what a person living in today’s world can know, sense, intuit, experience about God. The Buddhist who looks to the teaching of the Buddha from the 6th century BCE commits the same error, knowingly or not, of acting as if human insight into the nature of the Sacred can only be found in books that record teachings from 2500 years ago. Post-Axial Religion We are suggesting that just as the human spiritual sensibility reached a point in the past that led to the radical shift in the nature of religion from the pre-Axial to the Axial expression, similarly we have now entered into a period where the religious sensibility that has been developing over the past several centuries has reached a critical point where the religion of Axial Age spirituality, like the pre-Axial spirituality that it replaced, will in turn be transformed into something new, something that is more true to contemporary consciousness and its awareness of Spirit. Some of the old beliefs, the old texts, the old practices that have provided humanity with a meaningful way of relating to Spirit for over 2000 years are nearing the end of their useful existence. The human species and its slowly evolving consciousness have reached a tipping point, from which we will enter into the next phase of human awareness of the Sacred. We are entering a second Axial Age during which there will evolve a post-Axial religion. Religion, like everything else, changes. Believers may tend to view their religion as the embodiment of eternal truths that never change, but the historical study of religion would suggest otherwise.
Indeed, all human knowledge changes, or evolves, over time, generally (but not always) in a progressive, expanding direction. This is clear with regard to secular knowledge: 21st century physicians and other health care providers don’t look to the writings of Galen (2nd century) when seeking guidance on how to treat an illness. NASA doesn’t consult Ptolemy (2nd century) for astronomical guidance when planning the complex task of launching a satellite into orbit. If you’re planning on taking a trip to China, you don’t do so based on a map from the time of Marco Polo (13th century). Clearly, then, human knowledge has evolved over time. What the human species knows about the nature of things and how they work in the 21st century has changed considerably since what was known in pre-modern times. We simply know more today than we knew in times past, in virtually all fields of knowledge: science, medicine, engineering, agriculture, and on and on. At least in certain ways, humans simply do not think the same way that we thought 2000 years ago. Or at least, in most areas we don’t… The progressive evolution of secular knowledge is obvious. And yet, when it comes to religion, there is a strong tendency to look to the past for truth, seeking wisdom about spiritual matters in books, doctrines, and practices that emerged on the scene 2000 years ago and longer. Why are we so reluctant to consider the possibility that religious knowledge, like all forms of human knowledge, evolves and expands over time? When you step back and contemplate this practice of 21st century humans habitually and without hesitation looking to ancient books for knowledge about something that is presumed to be a present-day reality (God), the practice might appear to some to be a bit strange! This is not to deny that there is much wisdom in the ancient religious traditions: of course there is, and that accounts for the persistence of these traditions over centuries! The traditional religions do indeed provide us with profound insights into the nature of God, human nature, and the relationship between the divine and the human. However, we are suggesting that spiritual knowledge should not be understood as being found only in the existing traditions. Human consciousness, including our capacity for awareness of the spiritual dimension, evolves over time, and we should be receptive to the new expressions of the nature of Spirit that grow out of that ever-evolving spiritual sensibility. To some extent, given the slow, organic pace of the evolution of human spiritual consciousness over very long periods of time, that evolution can be hard to notice, and it might appear to believers at any given fixed point in time to be the case that religion does not change at all simply due to the slow pace at which it does change. But that perception is incorrect, rooted in the inability of humans to temporally contextualize those things that take more than a generation, or century, or millennium to change. Viewed from the more expansive, comprehensive perspective of the 6000 year old history of the human civilization and speculation on spiritual reality, to say nothing of the 40,000 years since the first appearance of evidence of human belief in a spiritual dimension, religion does indeed change (and in the next post we will look at the specific ways in which religion has changed over the course of human history). Canadian philosopher J.L. Schellenberg distinguishes between a synchronic and diachronic understanding of religion. A synchronic perspective looks at religious truth as fundamentally static and unchanging; a diachronic perspective looks at religious truth as something that is constantly changing, like all forms of human awareness, as human consciousness evolves over time. Clearly, we are adopting a diachronic perspective of religion on this website. Furthermore, in the context of that long process of slow, organic change in human awareness of Spirit, things periodically reach a tipping point where there appears to be a dramatic transition to something new that is substantially different from all that proceeded it. This website is devoted to exploring the premise that human spirituality is on the verge of such a tipping point, where the traditional relgiions that have been with us for over 2000 years, having lost their credibility and hold on the consciousness of many contemporary humans who have a fully informed 21st century sensibility, But this does not mean that we are headed into a non-religious era. Rather, it means that we are entering into the early stages of a transition to a religious era that will be characterized by a different way of thinking about and acting toward the spiritual dimension. As we will explore in the next post, such a tipping point and transition to a different form of spiritual awareness occurred during a period which historians of religion refer to as the Axial Age, which ran from roughly (very roughly – one could extend the dates by couple centuries in either direction) the 8th to 3rd centuries BCE. Just as our Axial Age ancestors gradually set aside and rejected the spiritual concepts of pre-Axial religion (animism, polytheism) but still remained religious, albeit in the context of a new Axial Age spirituality (grounded in a more unitary sense of Spirit), so we should feel confident that humanity today can set aside many of the concepts of the Axial Age spirituality which have served humanity well for 2000 years but may have reached the end of their relevance, while we remain “believers,” but believers of a somewhat different sort: believers in what will be referring to as post-Axial Age spirituality that is only in the early stages of emergence from the Axial traditions that it is evolving out of and slowly replacing. The nature of that slowly emerging post-Axial spirituality is the main topic of this website, as well as Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century: A New Guide for the Perplexed, as we explore what a religion of the 21st century and beyond might look like. This site deals with religion, and since religion commonly deals with God, one might think that material posted here will make frequent use of the word “God.” And yet that will not be the case, so an explanation is in order.
In many religions, “God” is indeed the commonly used term to refer to the ultimate being, spiritual entity, or “Something More” (beyond the dimension of time, space, and matter) that is the source, support, and destiny of the totality of all reality, or the Cosmos. In such religions, God is usually understood in some sense as a personal being, who communicates with humanity, is the source of moral law, responds to prayer and worship, guides and intervenes in human affairs, etc. Belief in this type of personal God is often referred to by scholars of religion as theism. In the blog posts on this site, however, we will tend to shy away from using the term “God” to refer to whatever that “Something More” is. As I argue in Thinking About Religion in the 21st Century, many intelligent, good-hearted, spiritually-minded people today, considering themselves to be, or wishing that they could be, believers or “people of faith,” are sometimes reluctant to embrace traditional theism and its designation of “God” as the object of faith. Of course, it’s easy to see why, over the long course of the evolution of humanity’s attempt to better understand the nature of the spiritual dimension, the object of faith would be associated with “personal” qualities such as moral goodness, love, freedom, wisdom, etc. These are uniquely human traits, and they are good and desirable. If there is a spiritual reality that is greater than humans (and everything else), it certainly should be understood to at least contain the best traits of human persons. So in that context it makes sense that, as human religious awareness evolved, the spiritual dimension came to be seen as, in some sense, “personal” and hence referred to as God, the supreme person. But there also are some problems with referring to that Something More as a person. For starters, the theistic God of traditional religions tends to sometimes demonstrate some very unappealing personal or human traits: anger, jealousy, vengefulness, bias, and more. Many would-be believers today look at the God of the three Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity) and ask how could God behave in such a morally unworthy manner. Mature humans behave better than God sometimes behaves in the sacred texts of these traditional religions. If you doubt this, see Dan Barker’s God: The Most Unpleasant Character in All Fiction, an admittedly very biased work which brings to the forefront the many Biblical passages that followers of Christianity and Judaism understandably wish to overlook. In addition, some find the notion of a “personal” God, or a God who is conceived of in human-like terms, to be incredibly limited. To think of that Something More which governs the entire Cosmos in terms based on one particular species (the human) that has only briefly existed on one tiny planet (Earth) at one particular place in the Universe for only a brief moment in cosmic time would seem to be terribly limiting to say the least. God cannot be confined to human terms, they would argue. Perhaps it made sense to think of “God” in such limiting, anthropomorphic terms 2000 years ago, but that is no longer the case. We have outgrown the traditional way of thinking about and conceptualizing “God” that was developed at an earlier stage in the evolution of human spiritual awareness. “God” is so much more than that, and our language should properly reflect that more expansive sense of “God” that exists in the 21st century consciousness. Unfortunately, we are in a transition period from one mode of spirituality to another, and while the old language of traditional theism has lost its usefulness for many people, meaningful new alternatives have not yet emerged. For now, as people of faith at the early stages of the transition to what we will call a post-Axial and post-theistic spirituality (more on this in subsequent posts), we will have to be content with referring to that mysterious, incomprehensible, Something More through the limited language options that are at our disposal. Consequently, on this site we will tend to use terms such as Spirit, the Sacred, Ultimate Reality, Something More, spiritual dimension, and similar words and phrases. This is not to deny the personal quality of Spirit, and indeed, at times where it seems to fit, we will use the traditional word “God” in our remarks. But we want to emphasize that the traditional concept of a personal God who has human-like qualities which include anger, jealousy, vengefulness, etc., is simply not a credible and adequate way to think about Spirit for many 21st century humans. Humanity has outgrown certain aspects of anthropomorphic thinking about Spirit, and our language should be modified accordingly. Developing this new religious language will be an enormous challenge, and in subsequent posts we will explore various aspects of this challenge in the context of what a post-Axial 21st century spirituality might look like. |
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