Competing Definitions of ‘Religion’

The debates and discussions of religion are many, and the discipline of the philosophy of religion, as it is known at universities, is a prolific one, spilling gallons of ink. One reason that the analysis of this topic is so voluminous is that the words used are slippery, having ambiguous definitions.

The word ‘religion’ is one of the words at the center of this clutter.

There are many competing definitions of ‘religion’ and each carries with it a set of implications and entailments.

Two of these many will serve as examples.

Among individuals and societies, two phases can be discerned - and possibly many more, in addition - which are not necessary temporal phases, although they probably are, but certainly one phase has a logical priority over the other:

Phase 1: Some individuals and societies structure their thought around myths and magic.

Phase 2: Others shift the primary emphasis onto a relationship with the deity.

The word ‘myth’ may be used to refer to a narrative which has explanatory powers - it is usually a narrative designed to explain or to answer some question. Contra some modern usages, a ‘myth’ is not a priori false: there are true myths.

The word ‘magic’ here refers to attempts to control the forces of nature. Traditionally, there is an effort to manipulate the weather, the fertility of crops, the outcome of military efforts, the romantic response of a potential spouse, or one’s physical health. Magic is an attempt to manipulate via supernatural means. In this context, societies offer sacrifices of animals or humans, prayers, songs, and artworks.

Myth and magic are transcended by an outlook which is in some sense Kantian. Historically speaking, some individuals and societies have moved beyond myth and magic centuries and millennia before Kant (1724 to 1804), but the principles involved are Kantian in nature.

At the risk of great oversimplification, Immanuel Kant argued that there are some things which are simply unknowable to human reason. Sifted down to ordinary folk, this means accepting the concept of mystery.

Rather than using human reason to find explanations, or create myths, rationality simply accepts that there is a categories of unknowables.

An allusion to Werner Heisenberg’s work may be in order here: Heisenberg (1901 to 1976) showed that human reason cannot predict, e.g., the direction in which a photon will leave a neon atom when it’s electrically charged.

This Kantian shift nudges the individual, or the society, to de-emphasize myth - the attempt to explain, and to de-emphasize magic - the attempt to control. Instead, emphasis is placed on relating to the deity.

In a post-myth and post-magic framework, the individual seeks knowledge about, and understanding of, God. Questions arise about God’s nature, characteristics, actions, and intentions. These questions are not instruments, i.e., their answers are not sought as tools by which the individual or the society may achieve some end.

Rather, the goal - if a goal it is - is relating to, or with, the deity. But perhaps it is something other than a goal: perhaps it is a way of being. Some scholars use words like ‘contemplation’ and ‘reflection’ for such way.

Relating to the deity includes not only a partial knowledge about, and understanding of, God. It include not only a ‘knowing about’ but rather also a ‘knowing’ - and here one may investigate the difference between ‘knowing about God’ - which could also be the task of an academic philosopher - and ‘knowing God’ - which is a relational concept.

Further, there is a reciprocation: being known by God, and being understood by God. Generally considered to be omniscient, God is seen as knowing and the understanding the individual - and doing so better than anyone else.

Having moved beyond myth and magic, this second phase focuses on a connection or communication between God and the individual human being. In this phase, variety of concepts appear to describe this relationship: grace, mercy, forgiveness, inspiration, vocation.

But the question which lay at the beginning of this investigation was about the definition of ‘religion’ - what does this word mean? Note that it has been studiously avoided for several paragraphs!

Here the competition between definitions becomes clear.

Some scholars use ‘religion’ to designate the phase of myth and magic. Other scholars use the word to refer to the post-myth, post-magic phase of relation.

With two such variant definitions on the table, it is no wonder why discussions of the matter seem endless.

For the one group of thinkers, ‘religion’ is a phase to be left behind. For the other group, it is a goal.

For one group, it is an irrational and pre-Kantian viewpoint. For the other group, it is the achievement of human reason having reckoned with its own limits.

To muddy the waters still further, these are only two of many possible ways of using the word ‘religion.’

Hypothetical Architecture (Part 3)

Trying to formulate even a rough estimate of the Earth’s carrying capacity is difficult. How many people can sustainably and renewably be housed and fed and given a first-world lifestyle on our planet?

In simple terms of physical space, there is room for hundreds of billions of people to have generous housing - 400 square feet of indoor living space (e.g., 1600 square feet for a family of four), with running water, electricity, HVAC, telephone, radio, internet, and television. There is no shortage of space.

But living space is merely one variable. What about clean water, clean air, food, and energy?

Warren Weaver earned his Ph.D. at the University of Wisconsin, and taught at Caltech (The California Institute of Technology) before working at the Sloan-Kettering institute. He analyzed food production in terms of energy: sunlight is energy which plants store by means of photosynthesis.

The effectiveness of agriculture can be measured by the efficiency with which sunlight’s energy is converted into, and stored as, chemical energy in plants.

Calculating what the carrying capacity of America might be, Weaver, in the words of author Charles Mann, suggested

that in terms of energy, the theoretical carrying capacity of the United States was about 80 billion people.

Weaver was one of the first to apply advanced mathematics, physics, and chemistry to the question of Earth’s carrying capacity. Charles Mann continues:

Think in these terms was clarifying, Weaver thought. It showed that viewing the human dilemma in terms of an ecological carrying capacity was a mistake. The planet’s actual, physical carrying capacity was so large - scores of billions of people - as to be irrelevant. The true problem was not that humankind risked surpassing natural limits, but that our species didn’t know how to tap more than a fraction of the energy provided by nature.

Weaver calculated that even modest progress in agricultural productivity would yield enormous advancements. Baseline farming practices convert energy at a microscopic efficiency of 0.00025%, but

if we had a more efficient way of turning solar energy into food - and let us now say to be more reasonable, a way that had efficiency of only 1 percent - then an area the size of 1/100 the state of Texas would produce food enough to give 3,000 calories per day to a world population 50 or 60 times the present one.

As generous as Weaver’s estimates are, the planet’s carrying capacity is, in fact, many times greater than he suspected. To his numbers can be added, e.g., the farming of the seas (kelp), which would feed billions more.

Turning from food to water, it is clear that the planet Earth contains immeasurably more water than any conceivable human population might need. The trick is, however, to provide water which is both clean and desalinated.

The majority of the planet’s water is saltwater, and the majority of the needed freshwater is not for drinking, but rather for agriculture.

Water use can be analyzed from a variety of perspectives: sea farming doesn’t require desalinated water; industrial large-scale desalination processes have been refined to point at which they can provide huge amounts of water.

It is quite reasonable to estimate that we can provide sufficient energy while retaining or even improving air quality. In the United States, for example, air quality was at its worst in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and it has been getting better ever since. During this same time, the U.S. has increased its energy production and energy consumption.

Clean air and plentiful energy are not mutually exclusive.

Reports generated by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations confirm that, relative to the planet’s population, the world has a food surplus.

Starvation and malnutrition, wherever they occur, are the results of mismanagement, corruption, and bad distribution practices.

So what is the Earth’s carrying capacity? A definitive answer eludes researchers, but a generally acceptable number would be significantly greater than 100 billion.