The Blogg

In response to my On “The Essentials” of Christianity post, one of my good friends from Bethlehem wrote a post in his own blog discussing his own religious beliefs. This is partially a response to him, although I have been meaning to write something similar for some time.

Matt writes:

Now I was raised to be a good christian moravian, but I find myself lacking … for lack of a better word “faith.” [...] You could of course argue that this makes me an atheist at worst or an agnostic at best. But honestly I don’t feel like either of those things describe better than christian. The church in aggregate is a fine orginization that believes in helping people and I don’t have it in me to tell them that the fundamentals of their faith is wrong. [...]

This begs the question, of course, of what “faith” really means. In the Christian Bible, the author of Hebrews 11:1 writes that “faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.” Merriam-Webster gives a number of definitions, but I find the most useful to be 2b(1): “firm belief in something for which there is no proof.” Having discussed this with Matt, I think what he means by a lack of faith is that he has no particular belief in the supernatural things generally associated with Christianity — the existence of God, an afterlife, etc.

On this point, I must disagree with Matt. In my opinion, if he does not hold these beliefs to be true, then “Christian” is simply not an appropriate term to describe his religion. To me, religion is nothing more and nothing less than a set of beliefs about the supernatural. It is true that religions often involve submission to some higher authority that dictates a moral code. Furthermore, this moral code often includes a call to love and assist their fellow man. However, these moral code is a side effect of religion, not the religion itself. Otherwise, are organizations such as the Lion’s Clubs and Kiwanis religions? Their members share a common moral code and work through the organization to help people, but they are not religions.

To clarify what I think about religion as a set of beliefs about the supernatural, I have created a bit of a taxonomy of religious belief. A few of the terms here are of my own invention, but I hope they will be useful. I am hardly an expert on religion, particularly those other than my own, so I will gladly accept feedback if any reader believes their religion is not represented or is misrepresented. Of course, I cannot hope to include every religious system, but I hope to organize all of the most common ones. The idea is that each person should be able to find a node in this tree that they identify with, and both that node and every node above it should characterize their beliefs.

• Atheism is the specific and firm belief that no supernatural beings exist.
• Agnosticism is an uncertainty about the existence of supernatural beings.
  • Hard Agnosticism is a belief that it is not possible to know anything about the existence of supernatural beings.
  • Soft Agnosticism is a belief that it is not worthwhile to know anything about the existence of supernatural beings.
    • Cultural Theism is a bit of a misnomer. I use this term to refer to people who associate themselves with some particular theistic religion despite a lack of interest in the supernatural beliefs that define that religion. Rather, cultural theists are attracted to a theistic religion because of societal pressure, a desire for community, appreciation of the religion’s contributions to music or general culture, a desire for moral guidance, or other such reasons.
• Theism is the belief that one or more supernatural beings do exist.
  • Monotheism is the belief in the existence of a single supernatural being or one most significant supernatural being referred to as a god or deity.
    • Abrahamic religions are those that believe in a deity known as God, Allah, YHWH, or by other names, who created the Universe and whose early exploits are chronicled in the text known as the Old Testament to Christians.
      • Judaism is the belief that that God made a covenant with the ancestors of Abraham through his son Issac and that the men Jesus and Muhammed did not have the significance attributed to them by Christianity and Islam, respectively.
      • Christianity is the belief that a man named Jesus was the fulfillment of a promise to the Jewish people, that he was both God and human, and that he died after leading a sinless life to pay the price required for the sins of mankind.
      • Islam is the belief that God’s promise to Abraham was fulfilled through the descendants of his son Ishmael, and that the man Muhammed was the last prophet of God.
    • Hinduism is the belief in an impersonal supreme deity who requires souls to progress their way through multiple lives, doing good works.
    • Deism is the belief in a deity who created the Universe but does not interact with it in any way.
  • Polytheism is the belief in the existence of multiple supernatural beings of roughly equal importance.
    • Buddhism is a belief that supernatural beings are just one of many stages of life and consciousness that a soul might experience on its journey to find Nirvana.
  • Universalism / Unitarianism is the belief that all religious beliefs are equally valid.
  • Pantheism is the belief that the supernatural is contained within all things.

I have ended up rather dissatisfied with this entire post, but suppose I will publish it in its current form anyway. I’ve put too much time into it to just throw it away. My primary point, however, is that moral convictions, cultural traditions, and the like do not make a religion. Religion, at least in my life, is defined by the beliefs one holds rather than the actions they take, even though one is typically a result of the other.