Is there some reason that progressives are starting to embrace religion? I’ve previously mentioned a number of MSM pieces that basically tout religion: presenting it without criticizing it or saying that its evidential bases are nil. Remember when both the Free Press and the New York Times published excerpts from Believe: Why Everyone Should be Religious, Ross Douthat’s new book? This kind of stuff is appearing more often now, and it puzzles me. Are liberals experiencing the much-discussed “God-shaped hole in their soul”: the lacuna of meaning that supposedly appears when you give up faith? There has been an uptick in American religiosity in the last two years, but it was small and, I thought, temporary. Maybe not. But for sure the press is making a huge megillah about it.
This notice appeared in yesterday’s New York Times email newsletter, announcing that they’re going to have a regular column dealing with “modern religion and spirituality.” And although they say they’ll include “nonbelief” under that rubric, atheism and agnosticism isn’t mentioned any further. No, this will be a column about real religion.
The paper itself (click on headline) announced the column in greater detail. It will be written by Lauren Jackson, a NYT editor. She’s a nonbeliever, which is good to hear, but I’d like to know that she deals with nonbelief when she deals with belief.
Below: quotes from Ms. Jackson’s introduction to the column. (Bolding is mine. except for the “Why are we doing this?” headline.) It is not at all clear to me what they mean by trying to speak of God in a secular fashion
In the 1940s, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a dissident German pastor, wrote hundreds of letters while facing execution inside a Nazi prison. From his small, dank cell, Bonhoeffer asked: “How do we speak in a secular fashion of God?”
The line has both inspired and inflamed theologians in the decades since. It’s also a question that animates this newsletter: The mission of Believing is to speak about the sacred, in all its forms, in a very secular space.
Why are we doing this?
Earlier this year, we published a series of articles about how people experience religion and spirituality now. In response, thousands of you told us you wanted more: You wanted us to expand our reporting on how ancient ideas are appearing in our very modern lives. You wanted a space for both believers and nonbelievers to share their stories. You wanted, above all, for us to take the subject seriously.
Well yes, religion has to be taken seriously. About 81% of Americans believe in God, and, surprisingly, the Barna site says, “According to Barna’s latest data, 66 percent of all U.S. adults say they have made a personal commitment to Jesus that is still important in their life today.” (This is scary given the lack of evidence for a Jesus person who was divine.) But these beliefs motivate much of Americans beliefs (e.g., abortion), politics (the Christianity of the Right), and morality. So yes, understanding religion is important if you want to understand America. It’s a vital part of our sociology.
That said, it’s also important to realize that most Americans rest their religious beliefs, and the morality that grows from them, on no evidence at all. They were either brought up to be religious, or had it hammered into them by peers and church before they learned to think for themselves. This means that much of American behavior is based on wish-thinking instead of evidence.
If you think that the clash of ideas in American life produces truth, as intended by the framers of the First Amendment, well, it hasn’t worked with religion. On one side are the vast majority of religious Americans; on the other are the 10% of Americans who are atheist or agnostic, and the approximately 20% that identify as “nones,” i.e., people who don’t necessarily reject God but aren’t affiliated with a church.
I would expect, especially because Lauren Jackson says she’s a nonbeliever, that there would be ample space given to nonbelievers and their writing. But the one mention of nonbelievers above is all we get. We do get a bit about Jackson’s own nonbelief, but she clearly has that god-shaped hole when she explains who she is below. First, the column’s raison d’etre:
Over the past few months, I’ve heard from so many different readers — MAGA bros, wellness influencers, climate activists, professors, actors and high school students. They all had something in common: seeking a space where they could think about the sacred.
Have a look at that link: it is all readers who have a God-shaped hole and want to believe because they want to belong. And if Jackson really wants to deal with nonbelief, she’s going to have to provide a space where where Americans can “think about the nonexistence of gods.”
Even her own atheism is hedged as she writes. From the intro above:
In reporting on belief, I’ve found that the fastest way to build trust is to share where I’m coming from. So here it is: I was raised a devout Mormon, or a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, in Arkansas. I know how luminous and enchanted life can be when you really believe in something. I also know what it feels like to leave a religion, which I wrote about here and here.
Yes, she’s being rightfully honest, but there was a reason she left Mormonism. Are we going to hear from other people who aren’t religious, too? And if you look at the two links in the preceding sentence, you see Ms. Jackson showing every evidence of a God-shaped hole. Quotes from the two pieces:
From the first article, called “Americans haven’t found a satisfying alternative to religion”:
I recognize, though, that my spiritual longing persists — and it hasn’t been sated by secularism. I want a god. I live an ocean away from that small Arkansas chapel, but I still remember the bliss of finding the sublime in the mundane. I still want it all to be true: miracles, souls, some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.
I want. . . I want. . I want. . . Well, I want a personal chef and a bottle of 1982 Château Pétrus, but I ain’t gonna get it.
The second link goes to an article by and about Jackson, called, “She almost went on a Mormon mission. She became a journalist instead.” This is simply an account of how she left Mormonism, and is reportage. But when she explains leaving Mormonism, she neglects one thing: She doesn’t tell us why:
I faced pressure to go on a mission, and I wrestled for years with the decision. At the same time, I won funding to attend a secular university, an opportunity I was too curious to decline. At school, I fell in love — with ideas, my classes, a boy. I found a new reality, inescapable and contradictory to everything I once knew. On that sidewalk in Rwanda, I looked at the missionaries and felt a distance between us for the first time. They were living a life I was slowly leaving.
I am no longer a member of the church. I ultimately chose to spend my college years becoming a journalist, not proselytizing. Still, I maintain an abiding curiosity about belief, one that has animated my reporting. I often see missionaries around the world and wonder how their work is shaping their nascent adulthoods, their hopes and desires. So I spent the last eight months reporting for The New York Times on how missionary work is evolving and influencing the church’s future.
So why did she “choose” to give up Mormonism? We don’t know. Did she realize that its tenets were wrong, its story, involving the golden plates and a peepstone, ludicrous? We’ll never know. I hope, but don’t think, that she’ll devote substantial time to nonbelievers and why the ‘nones”—I still think a lot of them are atheists—don’t belong to any church. And of course Europe, particularly the northern parts, are far less religious than Americans. Will she report on nonbelief there, too?
But I digress, for I’m just tired of the MSM constantly focusing on and touting beliefs that aren’t based on evidence but wish-thinking. At any rate, you can find her first article of the new series clicking on the headline (or find it archived here). It’s about how American are turning to AI on apps to answer questions about religion, quell doubts about their faith, or to act as a sort of electronic father-confessor.
It’s not that enlightening, as it reproduces a lot of conversations people have about belief and God with the bot, and also quotes a few religious detractors who say a bot can’t do the same job as a pastor, which is true. Here’s one conversation:
Pretty boring, eh? And the AI shows through clearly. Yet many Americans apparently find solace from this kind of algorithmic pap. But as they do it more, the bot will get better as it absorbs more and more answers, with all of them designed to dispel rather than exacerbate doubt. In fact AI therapy has recently been banned in Illinois!
Jackson’s debut is, sadly, a pretty boring article full of boring chats—not a good start to the column. But as I read these chats, I was reminded of Carl Rogers (1902-1987)—a famous psychologist who jettisoned psychoanalysis to simply become a robot, reflecting back patients’ views and not adding much. He was basically an AI therapist.
I put a video below of what I see as Rogers’s completely ineffective therapy. But he was famous!
The only advantage of a human acting like a bot is, as you’ll see below, their ability to look at a patient’s behavior and affect, which may give them clues to help them. Unfortunately, Rogers’s “help” was limited to stuff like “I can see that you’re nervous because you’re trembling.” To me, at least, he had little to offer. But Americans think AI has a lot to offer in lubricating their relationship with God. I think that’s unfortunate.
All in all, this is not a good start for the NYT’s new “religion” column.
And, of course, the Free Press is also mentioning God to help us in these troubled times. From their newsletter just this morning:
NYT column will be lame. There is a correlation between the recent waning of science acceptance and education, and the newish rise in religion and “spiritualism.” Let’s face it: evolutionary biology and science are (rightfully) quite contrary to most religious beliefs. Less science, more religious dogma. We should be putting more effort into early (high school) biology education that helps answer some basic questions about life and human behavior.
I guess Jackson doesn’t owe her readers an account of why she left her church. But it does leave a church-shaped hole in her telling of the origins of this new NYT feature.
Is there a parallel between journalism about religion and the HxA platforming of Michael Behe? Secular journalists like Jackson are mostly not trying to discover what’s true, they’re just reporting what’s going on. But to the extent they’re trying to report about true things that are going on rather than false or imaginary things, I do sort of expect Jackson to behave like a scientist: weigh the evidence, think about what makes the most sense, and report on that. Instead of just reporting that “Lots of people like their religious beliefs and want them to be true”, Jackson could weight her reporting toward those beliefs that actually seem to be true. I guess there would be less to write about.
Same for HxA: They’re trying to promote and model viewpoint diversity, and not to argue which viewpoint is true. So when Behe says nature is irreducibly complex, then like a NYT reporter HxA can choose to give him a time and place to talk about that heterodox view. But I sort of expect HxA to weight their organizing efforts toward platforming folks who are going to say things that are likely to be true, not just things the speaker wants to be true.
In both cases it all seems like such a waste of time and effort 🙁
I agree with most of what you said, but to me the most important thing in any account of why someone leaves religion is WHY they leave religion. Everything else is action absent rumination. People have come up to me many times at talks to tell me why they left their faith (it was often evolution), and without that their stories wouldn’t be half as interesting–or enlightening.
That doughnut shaped hole in my soul is growing larger and larger at an ever-expanding rate. Soon it will explode to create an entire universe!
Why do people seek this stuff out? They grew up with it, so it’s comforting. When my 30-year-old uncle Maynard died of a brain tumor in 1967 when I was ten, I asked my parents why he had to die. They told me (quite insincerely it seemed to me even at the time) that God must have wanted him. I was quite certain that God had no real need for a pharmacist in Heaven, so I knew—at age nine—that what they were telling me was bullsh*t. I rejected God even at the age of nine since it didn’t make any sense. My position was fortified when the U.S. astronauts—John Glenn was a hero but I knew the names of all the early astronauts as well—didn’t encounter Heaven in their travels, only empty space. My reasoning at the time was, well, youthful, but it was rational and empirical, an approach that has never let me down.
If people weren’t brainwashed into believing as children, there would be nothing to lose when their beliefs wane in adulthood—no God-shaped hole to miss. We would derive meaning in our lives from other sources. Why is there a market today for the kind of religious commentary you describe above? It’s people seeking solace and structure in an uncertain world.
This move toward “belief” is a blip. In the long run, I still think we are headed in the right direction.
Notice that last graphic : “repair”
Rupture->Exile->Repair
It’s Esotericism – a cosmic drama in which you can gather the broken shards at the margins and control how they are pieced back together into One.
For more, see eXtwitter user Yuri Bezmemov’s Ghost to see whats outside the box of religion-as-we-know-it.
Perhaps that’s part of the point. A belief that is not based on evidence is very stable and pure as a belief. One does not have to worry about someone coming up with some silly evidence to the contrary 🙂
I’m not convinced that religion is about seeking truth even if some religious people sincerely believe that it is. Its implicit function in society is probably something else. But if a religious person were to have sufficient analytical introspection to realize this, it would probably destroy the purpose of religion in their life. That could be very uncomfortable for some and liberating for others.
I’ve seen reports that the the US Christian population is not declining as rapidly anymore: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/survey-shows-u-s-christian-population-leveling-off-after-declining-for-years
I’m not entirely convinced that the declining fraction of believers is an indication of overall progress in critical thinking.
I discuss in detail in my book “Faith versus Fact” the evidence that many religious people do feel the need for their beliefs to be based on truth. I would suggest reading that. But of course not all religious believers care about truth.
Humankind cannot bear very much reality. — T.S. Eliot
Is any other explanation needed?
Ms. Jackson (bold added):
“… some sort of cosmic alchemy that makes sense of the chaos.”
Check out Jakob Böhme for “Christian mysticism” and more, that connects to Hegel :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jakob_B%C3%B6hme
How can they claim that chatbots are mimicking gods when there are no gods so they don’t have any type of behavior?
Obviously non-believers can talk about religion when it impacts us or society, but why would a non-believer want to write about it every week? My column would just be “there is no god get over it” every week.
I suggest again that we stop using the term “god-shaped hole” and instead speak of our “human-hole-shaped god(s)”.
A lot of bunk there (not Jerry’s commentary, the other stuff).
Finding the bliss in finding the sublime in the mundane? Sure, I do that in my sacred places, which also weren’t created by any deities. National parks work well. Other people may find different varieties of sublime.
And meditating on why there is no god? Pffft. That’s just silly.
Find God eh?
Imagine a few utterly non-religious friends who have read the same article and are all now “finding God” in specific faith traditions. They discuss their choices, which they don’t believe are all that different because God loves everyone. A bit like choosing the best color for the drapes…”best” is totally subjective to you.
Jeff, who loves Italy, picks Roman Catholicism. Joe picks Lutheranism because he thinks that’s what his ancestors followed. Sarah decides to give Judaism a spin…as she likes Woody Allen and Larry David. Fritz becomes a Muslim…he says he “wants to be more in touch with people of color”.
The first meeting goes great. Knowing very little about their respective chosen doctrines, they all discuss their spirituality and sense of purpose and community. At the end of the meeting, they all make a commitment to learn more about their respective faiths and become even more “spiritual”.
Meeting 1. There is an issue between Jeff and Joe. Unfortunately, they have discovered that there is not just one Bible…rather the Catholic version is different than Joe’s King James version. Specifically, Jeff’s Catholic bible has a half a dozen or so “extra” books according to Joe’s reckoning, while Jeff thinks Joe’s Bible is incomplete. They “agree to disagree”…although both are now wondering how the God of the Universe cannot ensure version control on his revealed truths to mankind.
Meeting 2. Joe openly speaks about how his relationship with Jesus has “saved him”. Sarah says that, as a Jew, she does not believe that Jesus had any power to save anyone from eternal damnation. Fritz concurs, and then adds that “Also, although Jesus may have been a nice fellow, it is Muhammad, peace be upon him, that is the last and greatest of the prophets. If you have received the wisdom of the Quran as I have, you all would know this.”
Meeting 3. Sarah had dropped out of the group after meeting 2, choosing to describe herself as more of a “Woody Allen” Jew who doesn’t actually believe in anything resembling a God. An email holy war has been raging between Jeff, Joe, and Fritz, with Joe and Jeff deciding to ignore their irreconcilable differences on the correct version of Christianity to focus on the more important goal of educating Fritz on how the Quran is clearly a fabricated, man-made document. Fritz then uses the same techniques against them, pointing out the voluminous contradictions in Christian Bible(s), and reminding them that they themselves cannot agree on a correct version of the Christian Bible.
In person, the friends calm down a bit. But they all realize that as they get more invested in and knowledgeable about their respective faiths, they are less likely to think that the generic advice to “find God, any God” makes sense.
Fritz says to Joe and Jeff, ”I’m glad that you have found some of the truth of God, but I am sad that you have not found all of it.”
Jeff: “I feel the same…I really wish you wouldn’t follow a false prophet like Muhammad.”
Joe: “Likewise Fritz. And Jeff, you don’t need the smells and bells of the Roman Church. My stripped-down Christianity is much closer to the truth.”
They agree to end the group. As they walk out the door, they all turn to each other and say at the same time, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
If you have access to an AI™ which isn’t cosplaying god full time, I expect your scenario could prompt a pretty good video.
There does seem to be quite a draw to religious beliefs for humans since we keep making them up. I like the quote I think I heard from Rob Bell that most people’s god is just themselves with a megaphone. It’s nice to have all your beliefs validated by “god”.
Culture seems to be a pendulum. We had a swing toward New Atheism a decade or so ago, and now we’re have a swing toward religion (ick!). Additionally, in times of uncertainty and despair people clutch their God-shaped Teddy Bears; evidentally the state of the world is making New York Times readers go a-clutching.
My teddy bear is rather offended by that. He’s not a total fiction.
Lots of fire and fury, dozens of “think pieces” from – of all thoughtless places the Times, etc. …. but signifying little, PCC(E).
Outside elite publications I don’t see some massive return to religion, the old gods.
As much as Ross Dotard (why does he get your goat so, boss?) would like, or Andrew Sullivan would hope.. there’s no run on churches these days. They “echo with laughter” like a Led Zeppelin song as many are now yoga studios and street theatre venues. Not prayers.
Hard to metricize, but opinions surveys don’t show the needle has moved.
Islam is the bigger threat though, and “woke” is its handmaiden.
best,
D.A.
NYC
All I can say is that I sense a return to religion in the media and by some public figures. And I think that says something, but I don’t know what. I have NOT said that there was a massive return to religion, numberswise. In fact, I’ve repeatedly said that the uptick (or plateau-ing) is small.
As for why Ross Douthat gets my goat, do you really need to ask that question? I don’t waste a lot of time thinking about him, but when I do it curls the soles of my shoes.
I was not raised religious but I have several friends who were. They came from ultra-devout Christian families with many siblings. Two things I noticed about their renouncing of religion, typically at the brink of adolescence. One, they were (from what I could tell) considerably smarter than their siblings who stayed religious, so intelligence clearly played a role. Two, they were males – their female siblings remained devout throughout their lives, including the smarter ones. So from my limited sampling I conclude that intelligence and sex play a role in choosing to leave a religion you were raised in. Why are females less likely to leave religion than males, at least in my limited sampling? I could speculate but I don’t know.
A few thoughts.
Six years in rabbinical seminary and 51 years as a practicing rabbi. What does that mean? Speaking only for myself it means that if i haven’t become a total skeptic after 57 years, i haven’t been paying attention.
A worthy idea about religion, taught by A. J. Heschel, 20th c. Jewish theologian and social activist. I paraphrase: Religion isn”t what you ask of God. Religion is what God asks of you. It means, be accountable. Be responsible. Very worthy idea! But if you remove God, it still works. LIFE asks something of us, God or no God.
As far as God-shaped holes, doughnut holes, and all the rest, I have no idea. You all know the awful cliche, I’m spiritual but not religious. i find uplift in moments that I’m religious but not spiritual.