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.

Hypothetical Architecture (Part 2)

Using hypothetical architecture as a proof of concept, it can be shown that 30 billion people could be housed in an area the size of the state of Kansas: and not merely housed, but provided with first-world dwellings.

This is part of a larger project to investigate the carrying capacity of planet Earth. How many people can live on our planet in a sustainable manner, using renewable resources?

‘Carrying capacity’ is the upper limit of a population in given habitat. It is the ability of the habitat to provide the necessities of life for the population.

This is, of course, a difficult and ambiguous calculation, but it seems that the upper population limit would be several hundred billion. But even that number might be surpassed with technological innovation.

With any population level in the foreseeable future, food is not a limiting factor. Agriculture as currently practiced could provide good nutrition for many times the current population of 7 or 8 billion.

Hunger and famine, which tragically claim many human lives each year, are the results of distribution problems, not production problems. Instances of starvation or malnutrition are not due to a lack of food, but rather to a lack of delivery.

To the contrary, over the last century, production of food has exceeded the need for it. Deaths are the result of a failure to transport food to locations in which it is needed.

Slowing or stopping population growth would not reduce starvation. Even reducing the human population of the planet would not reduce starvation. Famine is the result of human nature; it is not the result of the planet’s carrying capacity.

If there were only 100 humans living on the planet, there could, and probably would, be starvation.

On the other hand, large-scale farming of seaweed would expand food supply beyond anything currently envisioned. Likewise, there is much underutilized fertile land which would expand food supply with traditional, land-based agriculture.

The earth’s mineral resources have barely been used in terms of iron and copper. The same is true of limestone for cement and concrete, and of clay for bricks.

The wise use of various energy sources will leave humans with clean air and clean water.

The works of Thomas Malthus, who wrote during the late 1700s and early 1800s, were misunderstood and misinterpreted to create a wave of concern in the 1960s and 1970s about potential ‘overpopulation.’

This misreading of Malthus led to alarmism in the popular imagination, seen in Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb. Various governments formed ‘population control’ agencies and policies. Ironically, decreasing birth rates in many first-world nations led to economic misery as fewer workers had to provide for more retirees.

Declining birth rates also inhibited ‘green’ environmentally-friendly practices, as a shortage of young workers caused employers to find the most efficient practices instead of the most ‘green’ practices.

The question of our planet’s carrying capacity was not explored by the doomsayers of the 1960s and 1970s. Instead, it was simply assumed that this capacity had been reached. Paul Ehrlich’s book is filled with horrifying predictions of what would happen in the next decade or two.

Because the timeline for Ehrlich’s predictions has passed, and the disasters he predicted did not happen, researchers are carefully analyzing the question of Earth’s carrying capacity. No precise answer has been calculated, but it will be well above current population levels, and will be in the hundreds of billions.

Hypothetical Architecture (Part 1)

The phrase ‘hypothetical architecture’ is here used to refer to designs for a building which nobody intends to build. The architect who designs it does not intend for anyone to build it, and there are no people who want to build it.

What is the purpose of designing something which nobody will ever build, and which nobody even wants to build?

Hypothetical architecture can serve as a proof of concept. It can show that a concept is feasible.

In the present case, it can help to answer questions about the carrying capacity of the earth. How many people can live on planet earth?

More precisely, how many people can live in first-world fashion, with sustainable and renewable sources of clean water, clean air, and nutritious food? This exploration provides 200 square feet of living space per individual (a family of 4 would have 800 square feet, a family of 5 would have 1000 square feet, etc.).

While this amount of living space is a bit low for a truly first-world standard, it represents a convenient metric for calculation. Once established, it would be easy to return to the question and recalculate to provide 250 or 300 square feet of living space per person.

Also part of the standard would be first-world HVAC, running hot and cold water, telephone, cable TV or broadcast TV, high-speed internet access, radio, electricity, etc., in each living unit.

This hypothetical architectural experiment will proceed by envisioning a 20-story apartment building which can be reproduced in a standardized fashion to fill an arbitrary number of square miles.

The building would be 54 feet wide and 421 feet long. Exterior and interior walls are calculated as being 1 foot thick. The interior space is conceptualized as square rooms measuring 20 feet by 20 feet. A 10-foot-wide hallway would run down the middle of the building with rooms to the right and left. There would be 20 rooms on each side, totalling 40 rooms on each floor of the building. Space is allotted for stairwells or elevators.

Outside of the building would be a 10-foot margin of green grass and a 10-foot sidewalk. A 1-foot curb would separate the sidewalk from a 10-foot automotive lane. (These units are imagined as replicating, so the next unit would also include a 10-foot automotive lane, forming a two-way street.)

This structure represents housing for 40 people per floor; a 20-story structure would render a building housing 800 people.

The unit, including the building, sidewalk, curb, and one lane of automotive traffic would measure 116 feet by 483 feet. These dimensions would constitute a repeatable footprint.

Replicated, 450 of these structures would be placed within a square mile, arrange in 10 rows of 45 buildings. Within that square mile would also be extra space for parks and gardens.

This would yield a housing density of 360,000 residents per square mile.

Thus housed, 9.7 billion people could be housed in an area which is equal to one-third of the square miles in Kansas.

The reader is again reminded that, in reality, nobody would ever build in this fashion, nor would anybody want to live in this fashion: it would be as unbearably dreary as the Stalinist socialist prefabricated housing (called Plattenbau in the former East Germany) which filled Warsaw Pact cities during the Cold War.

While nobody would build these structures or want to build them, and nobody would live in them or want to live in them, their function as ‘hypothetical architecture’ is fulfilled inasmuch as they serve as ‘proof of concept,’ showing that the earth’s population could not only be housed, but housed in first-world fashion.

Such a small percentage of the surface area of the earth would be occupied by residential structures that huge amounts of land would be left for agriculture, for parks, for undeveloped natural preserves, and for industry.

In any non-hypothetical scenario, obviously, the population would be spread across the various continents of the earth. The housing is here imagined as concentrated merely for the purpose of calculating population density and surface area.

The surface area and natural resources of the planet are sufficient to provide education, recreation, and meaningful work in addition to housing and other basic needs.

A population, of not only 10 billion, but rather even of hundreds of billions, could be housed. There would be ample sustainable and renewable resources to provide clean air, clean water, and nutritious food.

The (In)Corrigibility of First-Person Statements: A Plausible Doctrine in Need of Defense

Philosophers have long considered first-person statements of beliefs, desires, and intents. Many thinkers have asserted, in some form, the doctrine that such statements are incorrigible.

Such statements can also be reports about emotions or internal experiences.

Such arguments are plausible, and perhaps sometimes even persuasive. How can I correct someone who makes statements like:

I’m in pain.
I’m happy.
I’m sad.
I think that John is in the office.
I believe that Susan is in the museum.
I hope to be in Pittsburgh tomorrow.
I’m driving to Detroit this afternoon.
I want to quit smoking cigarettes.
I desire to finish my graduate degree.
My left foot hurts.

Reports of pain or emotion seem to be such that they can indeed be false, but not corrigible. The man who says, “I want to quit smoking” or “I’m in pain” may be correct, or may be mistaken, or may be lying. But on what basis can the listener correct the man’s statement?

The doctrine of the incorrigibility of first-person reports can be defended differently, depending on underlying assumptions about the philosophy of mind.

For those “substance dualists” willing to embrace a rich metaphysical ontology, the mind is an object, such first-person reports are descriptions of that object. Such reports can be accurate or inaccurate as they correspond to that object.

If and when such statements are not correct, they can be corrected by comparing them to the object in question. But the only person with direct access to that object is the speaker.

Questions about first-person reports are questions about other minds.

Someone with fewer ontological commitments than a ‘substance dualist,’ i.e., someone not committed to asserting the existence of a ‘mental substance’ out of which the mind is constructed, or someone who conducts his philosophy mind without reference to the possibility of metaphysical entities, will look the doctrine of incorrigibility differently.

One might, e.g., reduce such first-person reports of mental states to truth conditions for those statements, and the experiences which confirm or deny situations or events which would fulfill such truth conditions might be accessible only to the speaker.

Although the incorrigibility of such statements is a widely-accepted doctrine, there are some examples which cause difficulty for it.

There are, in fact, concrete examples of situations in which one person will say or write a sentence of the form “I want …” or “I believe …” or “I feel …” and a second person will reply, “No, you don’t want …” or “No, you don’t believe …” or “No, you don’t feel …”

Imagine, e.g., a married person who’s recently had an argument with her or his spouse. She or he might exclaim to a friend, “I want a divorce.” The friend, knowing that the outburst is a reaction to a transient emotion, might reply, “No, you don’t.”

Although the view that first person reports of mental or emotional states or events is plausible, attractive, and widely-accepted, it is nonetheless susceptible to questioning, and will ultimately need to be defended.

Schopenhauer Demands Much from His Readers

To approach Schopenhauer simply, and at face value, is to encounter surprisingly steep stipulations. His central work is Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung, translated variously as The World as Will and Representation, The World as Will and Idea, and The World as Will and Presentation.

He published it in 1818/1819.

The book is two volumes in its final form, totalling approximately 1430 pages, depending on the edition, font size, etc.

Schopenhauer expects the reader to digest a large amount of dense prose, including untranslated quotes from other authors in Greek, Latin, French, etc.

Even more, in the first few pages of the work, he places several other requirements on his audience. First, he asks that they read his book twice.

Second, he tells the reader that, before starting the book, he should read Über die Vierfache Wurzel des Satzes vom Zureichenden Grunde (On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason), a book he had written five years earlier.

Third, he imposes the requirement that the have also read Über das Sehen und die Farben (On Vision and Colors), a book he had written two years earlier.

Finally, he mentions in passing that the reader should have a good knowledge of Kant’s works.

This would mean that a person would have to read around 3120 pages of Schopenhauer’s writing, plus however many pages of Kant, in order to meet the demands.

Schopenhauer claims that only in this way does the reader have a chance to properly understand him.

His demands are staggering, and his claim, if true, would probably mean that very few people indeed have ever understood him.

As an author, Schopenhauer is free to make whichever demands and claims he pleases. As readers, people are free to comply or ignore as they choose.

But what about his claim that this is the only way to understand him? Certainly, generations of university students have contented themselves with reading summaries of, or excerpts from, his earlier two works.

Can it be said categorically that these students cannot have understood Schopenhauer?

His prose is often witty and enjoyable to read, but does he overestimate the power of his own text? Is it really necessary for the reader to read every page of this in order to understand Schopenhauer?

He certainly wouldn’t be the first author to be a bit too impressed with his own writing skills. Surely the reader could still understand his ideas, even if the reader skipped over the occasional anecdote or literary quotation.

Schopenhauer often restates his main points in a variety of ways. To be sure, this can lead to deeper understanding, but in this astonishing amount of text, there are, and there are bound to be, a number of redundancies.

In any case, it is clear that Schopenhauer has no qualms about placing significant burdens on his reader. He also hints, in those same early pages, that’s aware that many copies of his book will finally be little more than decorative objects.

If it’s true that those books can only be understood by meeting his demands, then he’s correct that the books will be merely ornamental trinkets.

On the Way, But Not Quite There Yet: Pre-Religion and Proto-Religion

A clear definition of the word ‘religion’ is necessary, because in concrete history, the reader will encounter phenomena, and want to call them ‘religion,’ and yet not be quite certain whether or not they are.

History seems to suggest that the earliest phases of all - a sweeping but justified generalization - human civilizations had, not religion, but something just short of religion: a system of myth and magic.

Here, ‘myth’ is understood to be narratives which are designed to explain; in this sense, a myth can be true or false, but in either case it’s still a myth. In addition, the creation of such myths, and their role in culture and society, are to be considered.

‘Magic’ is an attempt to manipulate or control nature: the weather, agricultural fertility, human fertility, disease, and health.

Hegel, in his lectures on the philosophy of religion, notes:

The first religion is this, that consciousness of the highest is consciousness of a human being as dominion, power, and lordship over nature. This first religion, if we can call it that, is the religion of magic.

The myths left to us by primitive civilizations seek to explain: the cycle of the four seasons, the patterns of visible stars and of other celestial bodies, the origin of the earth and of the universe, the features of natural geography, etc.

The magic of those early cultures included attempts to influence, primarily crops and harvests, but other events as well, by means of song, dance, chanting, incantations, the building of altars and temples, etc.

Sacrifice falls under the heading of ‘magic.’ Animals and edible plants were sacrificed to idols or effigies which were the personifications of natural forces like rain, sun, water, etc. The extreme case was common: human sacrifice has been documented in every known primitive civilization.

These early belief systems lacked elements which are found in religion: they focused almost exclusively on the attempt to explain or influence the course of nature. Even their hypotheses about the afterlife quickly returned, in one way or another, to the natural world.

Although these systems of myth and magic may seem very metaphysical, with their reliance on things unseen, they are, from another perspective, rather lacking in metaphysics, inasmuch as they are completely concerned only with the physical world. That which may seem metaphysical in these belief systems is merely an ad hoc explanation.

Hegel continues:

This earliest form of religion - although one may well refuse to call it religion - is that for which we have the name “magic.” To be precise, it is the claim that the spiritual aspect is the power over nature; but this spiritual aspect is not yet present as spirit, is not yet present in its universality. Instead the spiritual is at first just the singular and contingent human self-consciousness which, in spite of only sheer desire, self-consciously knews itself to be nobler than nature, and knows that self-consciousness is a power transcending nature.

To be sure, there are elements of myth and magic in modern culture, and even more in postmodern culture. In modern culture, however, these are less common than in early human civilization, and are often in the realm of politics and natural science, and less frequently in the realm of religion.

Further, myth and magic seem to be present, even in modern and postmodern contexts, in what one might call ‘folk religion’ or ‘disguised superstition.’ While religion itself in the current time has shed much of myth and magic, it is not difficult to find individual people, or individual events, in which both are significantly present.

Indeed, it is possible that one way to describe the emergence of postmodernism and the simultaneous recession of modernism is to depict it as reemergence of myth and magic. Postmodernism can be seen as more hospitable to both.

Another marker of the transition from pre-religion or proto-religion is the concept of relationship. In pre-religion and proto-religion, the deity, if present at all, is there to be cajoled and begged. The relationship to the deity, if it is a relationship at all, is one of manipulation. The deity is an object but not a subject, and although the deity may have power - to make it rain or to make the crops grow, etc. - the deity is not treaty as a fully knowing conscious agent with personhood, and no attempt is made to relate to the deity as a person.

By contrast, in the transition to religion, the deity is treated as a person, and the goal is not to manipulate the deity, but rather to know, and be known by, the deity. The goal of religion is relationship. Mature religion is not primarily focused on controlling nature or explaining it: hence the concepts of acceptance and surrender to what is.