Part of discussion on WSM (World Socialist Movement) discussion forum, subject: ‘The Jesus Conspiracy’, Sat Mar 31, 2007 5:38 pm (PST)

Hi G,

I wish I were as confident as you that religion is in retreat. I am not at all sure it is. Traditional religion, yes. But I don’t think we should underestimate the size and coherence of new Charismatic or New Age movements. I think, as Socialists, we often overestimate the power of rational and evidential argument to wean people off religious beliefs (or capitalist propaganda).

This is particularly true of charismatic and ‘spiritually’-focused movements which rely much more on ‘direct experience of the divine.’ They convince people to give up their rational faculty to allow ‘god’ to enter in. Initially it requires a desire to believe, but once someone has had a ‘religious’ experience of this kind and interpreted it as direct knowledge of ‘god’ or whatever, they become utterly immune to reason. For they have, in their view, a wholly different access route to the ‘truth’ which is more powerful than reason or material evidence. Conviction based on ‘inner experience’ or ‘intuition’ is a hugely potent force against which evidenced argument is entirely powerless.

And this kind of religious experience is not exceptional. I do strongly suspect it is a very normal part of our human psyche, part of the non-conceptual old brain functioning, perhaps. I’m no neuroscientist, so I can only speculate.

A specific problem arises because once someone has had an experience like this, the human need to explain it and give it some conceptual meaning kicks in. So it gets cloaked in terms that are familiar (traditionalists call it ‘god’, others, influenced by New Age thinking, call it all sorts of things: ‘the world spirit’, ‘the numinous’ ‘orgone energy’ what have you.) Hence the huge upsurge in whacky religions and short-lived ‘spiritual’ cults.

I’ve been very aware of a significant growth of this kind of religion in the last decade or so. I’m trained in and used to work in the field of complementary therapy (I’m a shiatsu practitioner – please don’t ask!!!) so in the world I move in, I get to encounter the full range of what I call “floaty religion” and the “floaty people” who believe in/create it. It has a huge market. And much of it is very strange indeed.

These kinds of metaphysical/religious belief structures are much harder for a Socialist to counter (or even engage with) than traditional religions based on revelation. They have no Bibles or Korans, no deeply established dogmas and so there is nothing very concrete for them to defend. Believers have had their revelatory experience and that is the end of it. Conceptualised belief is also much more individualistic in these people so much bigger and stronger egos are involved. (The same is true of socialists I suspect :-) )

You say that the religious have to ‘contort’ themselves to cope with the advance of scientific knowledge. Again I think that is true of traditional religions who have a whole body of pre-scientific theology to defend. But it is far from true of New Age religions and movements which rationalise to some small extent but who base their beliefs on something more experiential and can shift their vague conceptualisations around at will. Socialists who place a high value on rational, evidenced argument might see this as ‘contortion’. But for the New Ager it is nothing of the kind since their ideas simply ‘float’ around their experience. They often use ‘poetic’ rather than rational language and they make no pretence to conventional argument. ‘Contortion’ suggests something which is uncomfortable. I have to say that most New Age types I meet are not at all ‘uncomfortable’ in their unscientific thinking.

I’ve always thought that one of the biggest difficulties of the socialist case from a propagandists viewpoint is its dependence on detailed reasoning and evidence. Most people’s belief structures and their understanding of the world they live in are far from detailed or rational or consistent (Don’t we know it.) If it weren’t so, capitalist ideology would have a far harder job taking root. I have no answer to this, so I will leave the issue and add another voice of frustration to those who puzzle about the lack of progress that socialism has made over the last 100 years.

YFS (yours for socialism)

R

This was in reply to:

R

My particular pet hate (well, one of the many I have) is “Intelligent Design”. This is a shame faced assault on science and science education in the USA by fundamentalist Christians and Republicans. The idea is simple: the universe and life didn’t start in a big bang or happen merely through evolution – there is a god creator.

This is real life example, not some abstract debate on religion. I honestly wouldn’t dare stand on a platform and debate the socialist view on education and the ideological assault that is ID if there were people in the SPGB who believe in a god creator. (And what point is there to a god if he isn’t the creator of everything?)

The disintegration of religion is already happening, otherwise there wouldn’t be talk about personal beliefs contra organised belief. Religious beliefs have had to retreat in the face of humanities and science. The believers have to contort themselves in the face of such enquiry. If life evolved, if the solar system developed out of a spinning dust/gas cloud, if the stars were born from hydrogen and helium created in the cooling down of a universe that started in a big bang, where does that place god? It makes god an utter irrelevance.

G

Earlier piece on Socialism and Spirituality/ Religiosity, 21/12/04

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