Stephen Prothero on “Are all religions the same?”

September 20, 2014 • 9:54 am

Well here’s something refreshing: a professor of religion, Stephen Prothero, professing that all religions are NOT the same!  (The video is from 2010.) Not only that, but he claims that many evil acts really are motivated by religion rather than culture, politics, and other things. Heresy!

It seems to be a trend that the faithful (especially Christians) want to insist that all religions are at bottom the same: they worship what is really the same God. Of course, when this claim is made by Christians, that God bears traits strikingly similar to the Christian God. As Prothero says, “There’s too much of the insinuation of Christian values into this sort of generic human religiosity that people want to talk about.” And of course there’s a strain of secular apologetics, exemplified by Robert Pape, who claims that at bottom “religous” acts of terrorism are really motivated by politicus and culture (especially a history of Western colonialism), with religion playing virtually no role. (Pape’s arguments, by the way, have been severely criticized.)

Here’s Prothero’s cred from Wikipedia:

Stephen Prothero. . . is a professor in the Department of Religion at Boston University and the author of numerous books on religion in America.

He has commented on religion on dozens of National Public Radio programs and on television on CNN, NBC, CBS, Fox, PBS, MSNBC, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and The Colbert Report. A regular contributor to USA Today, he has also written for The New York Times Magazine, The New York Times Book Review, Slate, Salon.com, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and The Wall Street Journal.

Prothero has argued for mandatory public school Bible literacy courses (along the lines of the Bible Literacy Project’s The Bible and Its Influence), along with mandatory courses on world religions. Prothero describes himself as “religiously confused.”

Of course not all religious scholars and theologians agree—William Lane Craig, for example, whose insistence that Allah is not the TRUE God, as we learned yesterday.

His comments on the spread of Islam are enlightening (and to me, frightening), and he has an interesting theory why Jews are so drawn to Buddhism (“Bu-Jews,” we call them).

What is most striking to me is his discussion of Nazi Christian theology beginning at 5:06. He takes up the issue of whether the Nazis were “true Christians,” and his answer is an unqualified “yes.” This, of course, resembles our discussion of whether adherents to ISIS are “true Muslims.”

Prothero does add that while jihadis are indeed “Muslims,” they weren’t “good” Muslims—that is, they didn’t transform the “evil” parts of their theology into something good. My response is that one person’s “good” is another person’s “evil.” We can tell Muslims that their misogyny and draconian laws are bad for their society, but if they don’t believe in a consequentialist ethics, and actually know what the consequences are, they’re not going to listen. (I think many Muslims adhere to a Craig-ian form of voluntarist Divine Command Theory: what the Qur’an says is simply the moral truth.) Prothero notes, though, that jihadis “use resources within the Muslim tradition.”

In other words, he advocates picking and choosing among “religious resources” to transform religions into vehicles for good. While I agree with him that if you want to be religious, that’s the way to go, why bother to be religious in the first place if you’re going to force your superstition into the Procrustean bed of an ethics that is at bottom secular?

In the end, he makes a good case for why all of should learn something about religion.

“The fact that you don’t believe in God doesn’t mean that people around the world and throughout world history haven’t been motivated by their understandings of God, or Jesus or Allah or Buddha or Confucius or whomever it is.  Religion is one of the most powerful forces in world history, and we need to know something about it in order to make sense of the world.”

Indeed.

h/t: Adam

49 thoughts on “Stephen Prothero on “Are all religions the same?””

  1. …People want to live eternally….religion, they believe is the way…its demented…death is natural and normal…

          1. I agree, I love those things. The writer used to write for the Colbert show I believe. He also has a book written as God.

  4. Though there is much to commend about Prothero’s perspective, he is wrong that atheists are ignorant about religion as they not only know more about that topic in general, but also more about a specific religion than even a practitioner of it does.

    In addition, he has a skewed handle on new atheism as even the ‘strident’ Dawkins says that there are some religions that are mostly good/harmless. New atheists recognize that this good is usually because of a secularist influence.

    2. New atheists recognize that this good is usually because of a secularist influence.

      Indeed:

      “Religious readers may object that the harm in all these cases is done by perversions of religion, not by religion itself. But religious wars and persecutions have been at the center of religious life throughout history. What has changed, that these now seem to some people in some parts of the world to be only perversions of true religious belief? Has there been a new supernatural revelation, or a discovery of lost sacred writings that put religious teachings in a new light? No—since the Enlightenment there has been instead a spread of rationality and humanitarianism that has in turn affected religious belief, leading to a wider spread of religious toleration. It is not that religion has improved our moral sense but that a purely secular improvement in our moral values has improved the way religion is practiced here and there.” Steven Weinberg, Facing Up, pp. 255-256

    3. Yes, I agree as I argued on FB that all religions were not the same, however their holy books, with some exceptions tend to encourage violence. I then quoted that “I bring a sword” bit from Matthew, quoting Jesus. I like that one because it heads off the inevitable Christian reply to Leviticus & Deuteronomy, “Oh but I just follow the teachings of Jesus”. The last time I said this quote to a Catholic, his response was, “well we never were taught that in church”. Oh good grief!

      1. I have to side a bit with the Catholics on that one, it is true they don’t teach that in Church and for the most part, Catholicism has moved past brutal actions to force conversions and violence in a literal defense of the faith. Plus, Catholicism has never based itself solely on Biblical readings and has always relied on the Magisterium to guide lay people in the proper reading of the Bible.

        Of course, all this just means that they ignore or explain away the obvious contradictions, just like so many other sects do. The verse about the sword may be there but that philosophy is not a driving force in modern mainstream Catholicism. Now, if we could just get them to apply some nuance to belief in transmogrifying crackers and reduce the broad application of a stupid story about a man pulling out while sleeping with his brother’s wife, maybe some progress could be made in the way of stem cell research, fighting AIDS and stamping out misogyny…

        1. However, if you’re going to to say that you believe in the teachings of Jesus, you should make sure you read up on them. Otherwise, you really just follow the teachings of the Catholic Church and from what I’ve seen, not very well.

          1. Well, now that’s precisely the point. Catholics are bound by the teachings of the Church, not the teachings of Jesus explicitly. Whether those overlap is another topic entirely.

            On a side note, being raised in that environment has caused me to despise the words bound and grave. I’m bound to follow this and it’s a grave matter if I don’t? All because a priest threw some water on me as an infant? No thanks.

          2. Yeah, that would’ve been a good come back to the “we were never taught that” – seems you were taught the beliefs of the Church not the beliefs of Jesus. I’ll save that for next time, because you’ll know there will be a next time.

      2. I was brought up catholic before I got better. We were told every sunday what was in the bible and NT texts, carefully selected not to be contradictory or too confusing, were expounded upon from the pulpit (or lectern). But we never actually read the bible. The party line was simply that doG had created everything then deliberately made it “fallen” because of “adam’neve” who was a real person then lots of prophets predicted that a virgin would have a son who would grow up to be an incarnation of doG and would save the world from its own fallenness and so on and on and on – you all know how the story goes. All this was supposed to be real history but as catholics we never read the texts that supposedly were the divinely inspired factual basis for catholicism. So the executives of RCC Inc have over 2000 years invented a completely different religion that is in no way bible-based while maintaining that it is, yes it really really is bible-based and the bible is divinely inspired truth of doG.

        They can do this because it is now a tradition (based on centuries of RCC refusal to translate the bible into the language of the people) of the catholic laity to not read the bible. My brother a convinced and devout catholic, who reads de Chardin in the original french (perhaps as a penance) almost proudly said a while back “I don’t read the bible”. This is an educated layman who is so sure he’s got the ‘truth’ that he doesn’t need to make the slightest effort to see if it’s right or not.

        1. That sounds similar to my family. My brother, a very smart man and always one to think things through, for some reason also has an unshakeable belief that there’s certain things that God will just fix and they happened for a reason.

          I think it’d make for an interesting study to look at families where kids were raised in a devout religious environment and there’s a split between siblings when they grow up. I still can’t figure out how it stuck with him this long yet I stopped attending church regularly within weeks of moving away from home and then started on the slow road to seeing the RCC for the complete farce that it is.

          As for what you said about the Bible, yes it is very common for Catholics not room read it much, but there’s also mountains of other books like the Catechisms that they base their teachings on. It’s a good example of why the attacks on fundamentalists don’t hit home with a lot of Catholics (though there are Catholic fundamentalists out there). It’s best to attack the arguments they make, not just the Bible. One thing is for sure, George Carlin said religion is the greatest bullshit story ever told; the RCC almost certainly has the biggest heap of it. It’s been being piled on and cultivated for nearly two millenia.

        2. Yes, my Catholic relatives know nothing of the bible. Me, the atheist, knows more.

          I have a friend who also told me she doesn’t read the bible, she reads books that tell her what the bible says. At face value, it seems like she doesn’t want to think but it’s more that (I think) she just likes hearing the philosophies of those others who give their own spin to the bible. It’s nuts because in what other non-fiction writing would you be able to do that?

          2. I know — what’s up with that? Couldn’t the smartest god in the whole universe figure out a way to write something that catches your attention? My high school algebra textbook was less soporific….

            b&

          3. I remember being backstage at a Catholic holiday mass of some sort (Christmas, Easter, Baptism, Circumcision, Intestine-Fondling, one of those feasts) and the soprano soloist, for some reason, picked up a Bible and flipped to a random page and was rather shocked by what she read. Some sort of a nervous laugh and an excuse about why that wasn’t part of the Sunday School curriculum she taught, and that was the end of it. Something tells me she probably hasn’t picked up a Bible since, but I’m sure she’s still just as active with the church….

            b&

  5. Not only are all religions different… within the mainstream religions there are factions. Consider Protestantism with its several hundred denominations… then consider that no two engaged religious practitioners have the same view, not to mention experience.

    Today, many local congregations of Protestant denominations are really more secular than non. Many members would like to leave, but to where? They have a social community where they are.

    1. Where? Unitarian-Universalism. When I went to the local UU congregation many years ago the place was full of folks from different religious persuasions in various stages of abandoning their beliefs. The gamut ranged from hindus, baptists, catholics to flat out atheists. It was obvious that many of them hadn’t quite yet got the idea that staying in bed on a sunday morning was an option. Old habit dies hard.

      1. I had the same experience attending a UU fellowship. I remember they had a debate about how much ritual to include in their get-togethers. Some were nostalgic for a little hokus-pokus – maybe light a candle? Other’s were dead set against it as it represented the horrible experiences they had in a previous life. Some seemed downright damaged by their churchy upbringing.
        It seemed to me the essence of the exprience for most was the chance to discuss and commune with like minded people. Almost as a refuge from the cultural norm. They sang something out of a traditional hymn book because nothing more suitable was available and everyone knew the words. They had a speaker to address something of social or moral or political interest – strictly secular. Then, they put chairs in a large circle, grabbed coffee, and talked things over for an hour. I enjoyed the meetings.

  6. Maybe we need to first answer if all peoples are the same. There is another explanation why all religions are not the same, that of the extended phenotype. Beavers build dams, we create religion–that is, our genes do. If different breeds of dogs differ in how violent they are, why should we expect anything else from the different ethic groups within our own species? Islam may very well be more violent than Christianity or Judaism because the Arabs could be more violent (on the genetic level) than Europeans. Is it correct, then, to criticize a certain ideology as it may very well be the extended phenotype of the underlying biology? Could the New Atheists end up one day being accused of racism?

    1. It seems unlikely to me that genotypes could be at the root of such cultural differences. Much more likely the other way around. While our DNA varies subtly, cultural influence on belief and behavior are overwhelming and obvious.

      1. Also, violent cultures may beget violence in that you may select a powerful man to protect you who is also violent. Add a dash of psychopathy & you got a whole stew of bad stuff!

  7. Prothero is still a pretty religious guy, but he did write a pretty convincing book on the subject a few years ago – God is not one, spelling out this thesis quite clearly. I don’t recall if it was Sam Harris or someone else who said religion is analogous to sports – why should people expect all sports to converge on some unified common proto-sport, religion came about from diverse myths which did intermingle with one another which is why there are Egyptian, Babylonian, Greek and other influences in the Bible. Some of the commonalities can be explained by common needs of cultures such as motifs about seasonal harvests and floods for example. In short, one shouldn’t expect there to be unity in religion, even in monotheistic religions.

    3. Prothero’s “God is not One” is an illuminating book. I recommend it to everyone on this website.

  8. I find that the desire of some Christians to “baptize” all religions as Christian is just the usual trying to gather anything good under the aegis of Christiainty, like claiming any decent person simply *must* have really been Christian (rather like Dante’s virtuous pagans). It’s an attempt to increase the size of their “team”.

    As for people making their religions “good”, well, we know WLC’s claim that anything god wants is by definition good, and thus anything that Allah/God/YHWH, etc commands is good, no matter if it killing unbelievers, feeding children, etc. It’s all exactly the same.

  9. Prothero makes some valid points, but he misinterprets the capabilities of people to know something about religion. Watching him, it is clear that he thinks one has to take a 4+semester long course on Hebrew or Islam or Christianity or Taoism in order to know it well enough. Such hubris?

    He infers that non-religious people have to do an enormous amount of work to understand religion that they have not dedicated their lives to. This is harmful and devious.

    His best point: That picking and choosing is, in my opinion, the only justified religious life one should take.

    His worst (unmade) point: If he has learned so much about religion, why hasn’t he figured out that he should be devoting his to its termination? Let’s stop talking about history…let’s make some history forward!

    1. I think when a person within a religious culture finally steps completely outside it, they have a very good chance at seeing religions generally as fabrications. Without much formal training, they are able to be objective and realize that all religions need the ultimate reform: Simulating the CofE or disappearing altogether.
      Tea anyone?

    2. Religion studiers never seem to come to the conclusion that it should be terminated. They love it all and think it’s fascinating. They also tend to treat the believers as pets. “Aww, aren’t you a cute little Parsi?”. It’s a bit patronising and a bit delusional. Prothero is at least prepared to admit that religion is not all beer and skittles.

  10. But there is another sense in which all religions may be “the same”: They all arise from the same mechanisms in the workings of the human brain (some would say needs). Religion should be studied as a social and cognitive phenomenon.

  11. I wonder if anyone has ever argued that messianic settlers on the West Bank are not motivated by religion and are not “true” Jews.

    (This is an honest question, as well as being partly rhetorical.)

  12. The early Easter Island settlers blew themselves and their gods into almost oblivion by their competitive gods.
    The religions of today should be encouraged to do the same. They could for one, be further encouraged to split themselves into ever decreasing groups until there is just the lingering odour (rancid comes to mind) of mythical history. Bagging over.
    I agree without some or reasonable knowledge of religion TODAY you cannot negate it in any form from interfering with the business of living BUT, it needs to be excluded emphatically for future persons of this planet so no time or resources are wasted on a bleeding myth.

    1. The trouble is, if you managed to exclude current religions from teaching kids, would new weird superstitions spontaneously arise? In the same way as Scientology, or astrology, or homeopathy, or alien abduction theories, or chemtrails, or….

      In other words, does the brain have an evolutionary tendency to ‘make stuff up’ and form societies for believing in magical things.

      I’m rather afraid it probably does…

      1. I’m sure that’s true to an extent. Thing is, if you get a large majority with rational beliefs, it should keep the irrationality in check. Think of how Northern Europe operates. I’m sure they have wackos too, but they are kept from influencing government.

  13. I am a professor of religious studies at the University of Aberdeen and have written on Prothero’s work. He is not sharp. It never occurs to him (a) that religions can be similar without being the same and (b) that the real issue is not whether religions are different but whether the differences are more important than the similarities. He knows nothing of the comparative method. If I received from a student a paper as poorly argued as all of his books, I’d fail the student.

    Robert Segal

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