The SnowStar Institute of Religion

An Advocate of Honesty in Religion

  519-733-5858

  888-741-1420

Home

About
Membership
Events

Book Room
Book Displays
Forum

News
Axial
Meantime

SSAC
Speakers
Directors

Links

SnowStar In The Meantime Newsletter

SnowStar In the Meantime Newsletter is produced intermittently between publications of AXIAL and informs our membership of upcoming events, new books, and SnowStar activities. It also features "Ask A Scholar" in which David Galston fields a question from our membership or inquiries from the Web.

Below are examples from In The Meantime.

See

How is Religion a Human Creation

Wading Through Progressive Scholarship

Myths and Facts in Religion

 

From "Ask A Scholar."
February 2002
©SnowStar Institute

Concerning Religion as a Human Creation

Q: David, when you gave your interview to SnowStar about the upcoming conference, you said that SnowStar shares with the Sea of Faith the idea that religion is a human creation. What did you mean by this comment?

Probably I ought to start by clarifying what I did not mean. Particularly, I did not want to imply that there is some type of creedal nature to being part of SnowStar. Our organization is based on the free and honest questioning of religion; one of our goals is to provide resources-such as books, friendships, and conferences that enable open exploration. But certainly we are not about set doctrines or creedal beliefs. So in the end it might really only be a few SnowStar people who comfortably understand religion as a human creation.

The expression itself, though, comes immediately out of the Sea of Faith environment, and is especially derived from Don Cupitt's work on religion and language. Cupitt's Creation Out of Nothing is a good book from which to get the sense of this phrase in a way more sophisticated than I can offer here.

In one form or another humanity has always questioned the nature of the gods and if they represent some sort of reality. Even great conservative philosophies like neo-Platonism considered the gods little more than metaphors. But the idea that religion is really a human creation, at least for contemporary religious thought, is probably best related to Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). For Feuerbach religion is the essence of human nature projected on a horizon called God. Feuerbach speaks of the "essence" of human nature, and not the reality of human nature, because what is projected is ideal human qualities, not actual qualities of individuals or societies. To understand this, imagine yourself an artist before a blank canvass. The paint that you place on the canvass can be thought of as your ideals. The image you paint may be a complex one or very simply, but the colours are always bold and rich. God is something like your painting for Feuerbach.

Human beings have certain ideals unique to their cultures and histories, but human nature in a way contradicts itself by never being able to fulfill them. Wisdom, for example, is a human ideal, but human knowledge is partial and human acts often reflect our ignorance. So, the ideal of perfect wisdom is painted on to the horizon as an absolute quality that is only partially available to human experience. To Feuerbach, all the qualities of the ancient gods or of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God derive from human ideals projected onto the horizon. We are more or less artists who paint God in our own image, albeit in a negative way since God's image expresses absolute ideals not achieved by humans.

The Sea of Faith takes Feuerbach's idea in a more modern form (more directly related to Nietzsche) where the "paint" of the human artist is language. Religion, and generally human knowledge, is a creation of human language. Language acts as a kind of frame that shapes or forms various relationships that can exist between humans and the natural world.

For example modern physics is not a real "thing" but a relationship (or metaphor) that can be used in relation to the world. Physics is a human creation capable of many forms. True, people say, "Yes but physics works, so it must be real." The answer is of course it works! But that does not make it any less a human creation. Isaac Newton's system and Albert Einstein's system are very different but both work quite well. Neither system is fairly called "true" or "false." Rather both are like types of human poetry or art by which a relationship with the natural world can be carried out.

Religions of the world are like that. They are systems of dialogue with life that employ rich traditions of metaphor, poetry, and human psychology. But they are not really true or false things; in fact, they are not "things" at all. Religions are creations of linguistic traditions and modes of thought. They are artistic conceptions of life and its meaning. Space restricts my comments, but one other thing worth mentioning is that because religion is a human creation, ethical questions become supreme.

Einstein's system, for example, is highly creative and metaphorical with its curved universe and paradoxes of time, but it also gives us nuclear weapons. In other words, the way in which a dialogue is created with the universe is never neutral. To use the artist example again, there are many choices involved when it comes to the colour of paint or the content of an image, but the product can be dangerous. So, even though affirming religion as a human creation can sound very liberating--it allows us to question what is often given as monolithic dogma--this does not take responsibility away from humanity. Quite the opposite: the artist must be all the more wary of the creation.

 

From "Ask A Scholar."
September 2004
©SnowStar Institute

Concerning Understanding Progressive Scholarship

Q: Any tips on wading through all the "progressive" scholarship these days? Who is who?

The word progressive is starting to be used a lot, these days, as an alternative to liberal. So, first, we should define it basically as open, challenging, and embracing of plurality. In the context of scholarship that values these virtues there are indeed many interesting movements and names. Sorting out the differences can be a challenge.

I can share one guideline that I often find helpful. I call it the "metaphysical quadrilateral" (it's not as complicated as it may sound). My quadrilateral is composed of two categories (on the left) and two styles (on the right). The categories are historical and mythological and the styles are realism and non-realism. I'll explain this, but here is a small chart:

Historical	Realism
Mythological	Non-Realism

 

To display my meaning, I will refer to the historical Jesus both because there is a lot of scholarship around this question and because it is most familiar to me and likely many others.

"Historical" refers to persons who take the question of history very seriously, including the reality of historical figures. In historical Jesus studies this means affirming that Jesus was a real historical figure--human like anyone--and that this affirmation makes a difference. To me, at least, it matters that Jesus is historical and human and this affirmation is different from saying he was not historical.

This leads to the second category. Some scholars argue that Jesus was not historical at all. He is a mythical creation, a relationship of symbols, contrived in the first century but deeply rooted in ancient mythology. Such scholars tend to conclude that it does not matter whether Jesus ever existed because the mythical symbolism is the point.

Still, one can be "historical" or "mythological" either as a "realist" or "non-realist." The realist affirms that the reality the symbol points to is a real reality. Jesus, for example, talks about the "kingdom (basileia) of God." That reality, some will uphold, is real: it is a reality beyond human experience but to which humans--at the level of the soul--belong. It is where a universal or true humanity lies.

On the other hand, some will say that the world the symbol points to is not real. It is an image and perhaps a hope--but certainly a vision and an inspiration--of the best of human qualities. Nevertheless, it remains a human creation. Those who talk in this way are non-realists. I will quickly mention some names, but the interested reader ought to review things for her or himself.

Don Cupitt is an example of a mythological non-realist. Certainly, Don is "non-realist," but in his earlier writing he was this (and perhaps still is) in a mythological way. Don is not overly concerned about the question of the historical Jesus. His emphasis is the reality spoken about (the vision) in the story of Jesus; nevertheless, that "vision" remains an inspiring human creation. It is non-real in this sense (although Don would say that in a political sense it can become real).

Meanwhile, it is possible to think of Robert Funk as an historical non-realist. That is, he takes the historical question very seriously and, I believe, would say that a historically real Jesus does make a difference. However, he is close to Don Cupitt in understanding that the "basileia" the historical figure speaks of is a human creation.

An example of an historical realist, at least to me, is John Spong. He takes the historical Jesus question seriously but he also upholds a realist understanding of God. In other words, the "basileia" is relevant to here and now but also points to a real reality beyond the human reality.

Finally, I interpret Tom Harpur as a mythological realist. He is comfortable with, and perhaps even prefers, a mythological Jesus to an historical one (raising the serious question if Jesus is a figure of history at all). Yet, the main point to Harpur is not this but the myth. The myth is central and it does point to a real, noumenal world.

These examples are meant to be suggestive and hopefully helpful when keying in on the way the authors above or others approach the subject of religion. I am not offering a panacea; I am not even saying the authors above would agree with me. I am only saying that this quadrilateral has helped me to think through argumentations and presentations. However, there is no substitute for thinking for oneself. Some of the authors mentioned above may read this Newsletter and may not be happy with my comments. If so, there is an open invitation for a rejoinder printed here or in our journal AXIAL.

 

From "Ask A Scholar."
January 2006
©SnowStar Institute

Concerning Myths and Facts in Religion

Q: In my church people read from the Bible as if the events were facts, and no one seems to mind. Meanwhile, I keep asking myself how we know a myth is a myth? I know the creation story is a myth, but how do I "know" it is a myth when so many people carry on as if it were a fact.

While I'll try not to get too complicated here, there is a certain way in which the question is really to be reversed. How do we know anything is a "fact"? Most high-end scholarship these days, both in the circles of the arts and those of the sciences, tends to suggest that how we see and understand the world is the consequence of what tools or models we are using to look at it. In other words, the world is a kind of mirror that mimics our regard of it. Or, you could say, the world is a myth.

There is another thing, too, that is particularly significant in terms of biblical studies. Before the 18th century the obligation of proof rested on those who said the Bible was myth. If you thought the creation story was a myth, for example, you had to demonstrate this to your friends or colleagues. But since about the middle of the 18th century the onus of proof is really on those who claim the Bible is factual. Generally, the Bible is completely myth with only a few "facts" here and there buried in religious confessions, mythic stories, and national epics. So, now the case is that those who would claim that the exodus, for example, is an historic fact have to prove their case. It is, of course, an impossible proof because…it is a myth.

This does not answer your question directly. I know that you want to know how can we say a myth is a myth. I think there are three criteria that you can refer to: 1) that of evidence; 2) that of comparison; and 3) that of interpretation. These are pretty simple, and they are the assumptions most of us hold when we try to claim something is a fact.

In the case of the creation narrative, there is no evidence that creation occurred literally as the Bible describes. The Bible has every creature being created and named separately, but the evidence of the earth is that all life forms, including our own, evolved over time from other life forms. What can one say here except that there isn't any evidence to suggest the contrary? The evolution of life on earth is a much a "fact" as we can have.

Equally, by way of comparison, there are thousands of creation narratives from around the globe of the ancient world. Why, for example, should the biblical narrative of God speaking the world into existence be privileged over the Navajo narrative in which the world is sung into being? Even when we compare the Bible to itself, we see that it has two versions of creation, too (Genesis 1:1-2:4a and Genesis 2:4b-2:25). By comparing things, it is fairly clear that ancient people did not think that they were writing historical facts. They were simply recording story.

Finally, to me the most important point is interpretation. In fact, there are two points here. One is the obvious point that modern times are not ancient times. Modern people do not have the same mind as ancient people. Modern "knowledge" and ancient "knowledge" are different kettles of fish. So, we are not reading "science" when we are reading the Bible. Yet, on the other hand, there is one thing both ancient and modern people have in common: we both use "knowledge" for political and social reasons.

Like any form of "knowledge," the Bible certainly does represent political and social points of view. Most of the historical narrative in the Bible is written, for instance, from the point of view of Judah (the southern nation) and with ancient Judah's concerns in mind. Significant stories from the southern tradition, such as Solomon's temple, are magnificent legends but not facts. They are so because the point for the writer is the story or myth (we might even say "propaganda") of Judah.

Nations today do exactly the same thing: political mythmaking is regretfully the highest priority of most governments. Probably the most difficult aspect of your question is the fact that you had to ask it. It is baffling to me, too, how religious leaders of many faiths continue to read and talk about mythic narratives as they were relaying modern science. The challenge is one of religious literacy, which is a steep hill but one that the SnowStar Institute and many others are trying to climb.