I. My Personal Journey
I have a complicated relationship with religion. As far as I can tell, so probably has everyone else. But I believe it may be helpful to explain my specific complications, given that among my work are some poems, musical pieces and other writings that may create an overall confusing picture. It all makes sense in the long run, but let me illustrate at the hands of some examples:
- Some early poems on Biblical topics in German from Group 4: Laudatio (1996-98);
- A poetic rendering of the Requiem (Syllogy VI, 1999-2000);
- A very, very angry poem about rejecting dogma and authority, the transparently named Faith No More (Syllogy XXI, written in 2002);
- Pietà (Syllogy XXXV, 2008-09), a more conciliatory poetic approach at religion, attempting to describe religion as something to do with that “meta ta physika” (beyond the physical), Habermas’ idea of an “awareness/consciousness of something that is missing” (“Bewusstsein von dem, was fehlt”), and a general endorsement of kindness, humanity and humility;
- A more naturalist approach to the universe in Tetralogy I (Syllogies XXVI, XXVIII, XXX and XXXII, 2005-08), followed by some more religious themes entering Tetralogy II (since 2009), especially The Garden (Syllogy XLI, since 2014);
- And finally, Qaddish – Sanctus – Bismillah (Syllogy 50, 2022), my approach to sustain the idea that God is that which cannot be defined, that which is always greater than our understanding.
- Musically, you’ll find my Requiem Symphony, a Missa Brevis and some Songs for Liturgy and Meditation that follow mostly Catholic cultural traditions – due to my upbringing.
Thus you’ll find that my overall approach – though with exceptions due to reasons of neutral poetic exploration – follows a more deist (not theist) and abstract approach that aims to harmonize religion and science. Yet contrary to both Richard Dawkins (for whose writings on science and against religious fundamentalism I have an enormous respect – and which resulted in my academic article on Evolution) and and Stephen J. Gould (famous for his statement that science and religion are two “non-overlapping magisteria”), I believe that science and religion are really not at all incompatible, provided you follow the understanding of religion that is actually contained in the Tanakh, the Bible and the Quran. These holy writings all clearly state that shall not make graven images, that you cannot understand god or god’s motives, and that any pretense at doing so would actually be blasphemy.
This commandment can be read two ways: as admonition against believing that you can understand and actually picture God, or — a reading I see as more important — as the actual definition of God, or rather, of divinity.
II. Deism and Transcendentalism vs. Theism and Fundamentalism
God is simply that which we cannot explain, but that which nevertheless binds us together. You can follow an Einsteinian path and just equate God with nature or the universe (something I would regularly follow as well), but with the distinction of not seeing either as some lifeless collection of matter and energy, but also as a source of (metaphysical) meaning.
I reject dogma, literalism, woo-woo new-ageism, fundamentalism, and any form of understanding of religion that is incompatible with (modern) society, with democratic values, with science, with intelligent thinking. Religion is about linking us back (re-ligare, to bind back) to the grander picture, about recentering the self in the awareness that we are part of something so indescribably greater, so much more filled with life and love and compassion and grace, endorsing us to accept and correct our failings to keep trying to be a better human being in the constant realization that we will always be fallible, not perfect, still learning and developing, and that this insight should fill us with humility and an even greater sense of connectedness, shared humanity, shared submission under the love of that which sustains us, our life, our world, the universe, all universes. (This brings in Ralph Waldo Emerson and American Transcendentalism). This grand sublime unity which dwarfs our understanding is what is called God, Adonai, Allah, or whatever you may think. It is all the same idea.
Why is that necessary, in my opinion?
Religion is demeaned by both fundamentalist self-professed followers of a particular religion and by unreflecting atheists who too much in their understanding of religion and religiosity are influenced – and reacting to – the fundamentalist deviations of religious thinking and transcendentalism.
If you asked me whether I believe in God, I will tell you that I cannot even answer the question, as it is asked in a spirit that might assume that I could believe in something or someone who I could define and name and thus conceptualize and demystify.
If I take the idea of “no graven images” seriously (and I think that such a perspective is the core insight that sets apart monotheism from polytheism), then the answer would be is that I believe in the connectedness of all things and beings, that we – humans, animals, plants, everything – are all relatives, that we are all part of nature, part of the universe, part of this greater whole, and that realizing these connections and embracing the transcendental vision this allows brings us closer to whatever God is.
Now, once you understand and accept the vision herein – which actually goes back to the one monotheistic religion in its various forms (yes, I believe that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have more in common than divides them!) – if you understand and accept this, then ideas about whether a Celestial Teapot exists begin to sound rather silly. Sadly, Dawkins seems to have been in contact predominately with the more, let’s say, simplistic version of religion.
But do such more simple understandings of religion not also exist, are they not even the majority?
Sadly, yes, but I have chosen to elevate the discourse, promote a more deist and transcendent understanding of religion that – in my view – actually comes closer to scripture than typically assumed.
III. Pseudo-Religions and the Human Need for Religion
Now, there could be another reason to advocate in a way for a religious or transcendental perspective. It has frequently been proposed that human beings simply need a form of religion, and that taking it away or advocate in favor of it being taken away would be detrimental to human society. I am partially in agreement with this, but only to a point. Clearly, no human societies exist without any form of religion.
Even ostentatiously atheist societies (like Soviet, Chinese or North Korean socialism/communism) are indeed religious: They have just replaced traditional religions with a cult of communism and its leaders and mimicked religious worship in a most striking way. Growing up in East Germany, I got very familiar with the “replacement trinity” of Marx, Engels and Lenin (gladly, due to my late birth, I was able to skip the Stalin phase) and a veneration of their “holy texts” and the eschatological belief in the salvation communism would bring to the real-existing socialist society.
Another example would be the rise of “new age” religious concepts (what I would consider “woo woo”), astrology, pseudoscience etc. which has oftentimes replaced or even complemented established religion, but without the necessary corrective structures needed to have not just religion but critical theology that compensates for a desire to uncritically belief something that is simply not true or cannot be proven.
IV. Critical Religion vs. Dogmaticism
This illustrates, however, two points. First, human beings seem to have a desire to connect to something greater, transcendental, and mysterious. There may be an evolutionary trajectory that has seen humanity benefit from religious ideas in their history. Without such ideas and the resulting structures, societies might not have evolved as successfully as they have. By seeing religion merely as a “virus of the mind”, we may be underestimating the actual need for humans to connect with the greater good.
Second, there is a need for a critical approach to religion. Religious feelings need to be moderated, need to be checked so they do not just turn into a form of dangerous dogma allowing for motivating people to do evil instead of good. As Steven Weinberg has famously said, “With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil – that takes religion.” While I agree with the quote to a point, it needs to be qualified a bit: it is not religion per se but uncritical dogmatism (which can but does not have to be fueled by religion) which allows for people to set themselves apart from others and desire to fight them because of their assumed differences in belief.
Religion, if it is used in such a divisive manner, is dangerous – like any ideology that can be elevated to a religion-like status. This is why religion needs to be tamed, to be channeled into transcendentalism – exactly what already is in place in the monotheistic books mentioned above.
V. Religion Plus Science: Truth, Transcendence and Togetherness
Religion can only function if it is understood as a quest for truth, transcendence and togetherness.
Human beings are not alone in the universe, not even on the planet. We live together with each other, with animals, plants, other living beings, with nature. We are ideally living in communion with everyone and everything else, and have to realize that we all need each other, and that we do not have all the answers nor all the power, even though as human beings our power of the mind and of using tools has indeed set us apart from nature. We can exercise this dominion unthinkingly or responsibly.
The realization of our power needs to come with the realization of our limitedness: Nature has always been a check on human power. There is a reason that the most important gods have always been those associated with nature, with natural forces, with the weather. In effect, this means that whatever we may have called “God” has always meant nature, natural forces, the universe itself.
Thus if religion is the path to discover and commune with divinity, it is actually the path to discover and commune with nature and the universe. That sounds quite familiar.
Not without reason do we look at the stars or the ocean or the desert or the forests without the possibility of transcendental feelings. This is what Burke and Emerson have called the sublime – being in the presence of something so much more impressive and powerful than us teaches us humility, reverence and, ideally, introspection.
The cultivation of that feeling is what science and religion can do together; not in the pursuit of setting ourselves apart from each other, or to elevate ourselves over nature or the divine, but in the pursuit of getting closer to achieving understanding, harmony and peace.
There are no old men sitting in the clouds ruling over us, but if we look at the clouds, we can realize that whatever our dreams or desires or troubles, we are part of something magnificent, and that eventually, we are all connected, we are all the same, and it will all be alright in the end.
“In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period so ever of life, is always a child. In the woods, is perpetual youth. Within these plantations of God, a decorum and sanctity reign, a perennial festival is dressed, and the guest sees not how he should tire of them in a thousand years.
In the woods, we return to reason and faith. There I feel that nothing can befall me in life—no disgrace, no calamity, (leaving me my eyes,) which nature cannot repair.
Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.
The name of the nearest friend sounds then foreign and accidental: To be brothers, to be acquaintances—master or servant, is then a trifle and a disturbance. I am the lover of uncontained and immortal beauty. In the wilderness, I find something more dear and connate than in streets or villages. In the tranquil landscape, and especially in the distant line of the horizon, man beholds somewhat as beautiful as his own nature.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nature
Erratic Attempts 