hospitality to those one has been taught are one’s dreaded enemies does not come naturally. Perhaps people are too receptive to the idea that others who are different are their “enemies.”9 They might be only cultural “scapegoats,” which one will never discover without personally befriending them.
Of course, much of the turmoil of our present world is not novel. The world has known similar polarization and disruptions before. But now the globalization and cyber sphere enable the movements of ideologies of resentment to capitalize on the accessibility of powerful weapons by which they can threaten humanity at large. Economic crises and disproportionate advantages and disadvantages within single nations, then reduplicated on a more universal scale, reveal pockets of chaos that threaten much of the organized world, with the secular elements being absolutized, whether of race, sexuality, or other “accidentals” of one’s birth, simply exacerbating the already strident juxtaposition and animosity of existing and inflexible absolutized ancient religious ideas and practices that continue to permeate human existence, stirring emotions to kill the “other,” even to the point of welcoming self-sacrifice in the process. Are we not all citizens of one earth, who sit at one table of the earth, but, rather than sharing the goodness of it with each other, easily see the other as “enemy”? Where is the human trust in the obvious other humans?
Group identities naturally point out very distinct differences. But when identities feel threatened by globalization or other vital or new powers or are challenged intellectually, the “us vis-à-vis them” easily morphs into an “us versus them.” Mere difference is read as competition at best, sinister threat at worst. If people feel confident that they have access to a final or Absolute “authority,” the Absolute truth or Absolute god, that enables many to assert Absolute rights, utter unquestionable platitudes, even to revise history in many cultures, without recognizing that they are absolutizing ancient views which never had any more universal credibility in their own day than they do in ours. The absoluteness eliminates one’s ability to seriously challenge it, even if it is obviously immoral.10 To read the origins of religions differently, as if their claims were once upon a time more credible and universal, therefore obviously and correctly Absolute, is to fail to read the entire data, including the data of the many or even majority at the time who rejected the new religion or were driven into exile after the new religion gained sufficient political power to dispense with them.
“Religion”—Anything Deemed Absolute—So Potentially Divisive
“Religion” is usually understood as a “way of life,” whether it is called the “Tao,” “Buddha nature,” “covenant with God,” or recites words attributed to Jesus of “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” It does not present itself as merely another hobby, but quickly embraces more and more aspects of people’s lives, finally professing to encompass the whole, not merely a small segment of one’s life. This does not mean that everyone professing a religion is actively involved in it. The Dalai Lama estimated that probably the latter group is only about one-sixth of those who profess to be religious.11 Yet the religion does not present itself as simply for one’s spare time or very narrow secondary interest.
Typically, religion involves rituals of worship, doctrines, community, myth, cult, morality, and other aspects. I believe that its most dangerous distinctive character is its alleged metaphysical or mythical claims that it eventually propagates as Absolute, whether a deity, truth, power, or “way” of life, including morality. Its selection to propagate the Absolute or unquestionable is not a covert or embarrassing experience for which it needs to make apology. Instead, it is open, explicitly articulated, not usually by use of the word “Absolute” but by teaching adherents that they cannot question its doctrines or practices. To select some single entity or imagined but nonempirical entity such as a process or principle, as one’s Absolute, and to insist that it is Absolute, which means unlimited and unquestionable, at the expense of all other particular possibilities is at least subconsciously presumptuous and tends to produce divisiveness in a society. It excludes as it includes or draws the bifurcating line within humanity.
However, the process of thinking anything as incommensurable or Absolute is extremely nebulous and full of obvious problems, never a “slam-dunk.” For example, the most influential Christian theologian of the twentieth century, Paul Tillich, said that “religion” could not be a belief in “a god” because that would imply a genus called “gods,” which itself would be greater than any one god. Instead, he argued that religion had to be one’s “ultimate concern,” beyond any genus or any single entity or group of entities, so a belief in “god beyond the god of theism.” He felt this meant “atheism” (a=no; theism=belief in a god) was more accurate to describe religion in its truest sense, even though he sometimes said he believed in “panentheism” (“everything in god,” as distinguished from “pantheism” which means “everything is god,” which Tillich said was nonsense).12
Tillich explained that his definition of religion as “ultimate concern” meant that the object of one’s concern is ultimate, but also that the nature or passion of one’s concern for that “object” (which he insisted cannot really be an “object”) is ultimate. Yet, ironically, he understood “ultimate concern” as accommodating, even requiring doubt, which could not be so if the object of concern was really “ultimate” so that one could not think anything greater. Further, most religions never present themselves open to doubt at all. They are absolutized.
Many people have always believed in some other(s) that are supranatural, which means distinctly beyond the “natural” powers, as different from “supernatural,” which means only an intense, higher form of natural power—even if the people were not yet sophisticated enough to distinguish “natural” powers as we do today. These were powers or beings, good or malevolent, creative or destructive. But as modern science continually decreases the spaces and causes formerly assigned to supranatural powers, people’s belief in them has diminished and will continue to do so. In many cases, such power or powers have become trivial without the “believers” even realizing as the common ejaculation of surprise “My God!” suggests.
I define “religion” as a development of a system of ideas and behaviors (including the symbols, rituals of worship, doctrines, community, myth, cult, morality, listed earlier), by a group consistent with its constituents’ belief in an Absolute, that is, unquestionable supranatural power, persons, or values, which is beyond everything relative. If a philosophy aims primarily at people improving their lives without any sense of formal worship or religious institutions, which are distinguished from “secular” agencies, even if its great philosophers’ writings have permeated the culture for millennia, it might not be a “religion” in the sense of having an Absolute personal Other. But the degree to which it developed an Absolute, it would seem to qualify as “religion.” Confucianism with its great philosophers such as Confucius, Mencius, Hsun Tzu, and others, developed practical philosophies to show how the “Mandate of Heaven” is immanently experienced in everyday life. As significant as “Heaven” was, the emphasis of any “transcendence” was upon the improvement of human life and institutions, a “human flourishing.” None of the great teachers over the centuries were deified or made Absolute, and the Analects of Confucius were more of an invitation to participate in an ongoing conversation than some rigid, unquestionable method of individual transcendence or salvation. With the absence of the “unquestionable” element, it would not seem to be religion as I defined it, although it is often viewed as a religion.
Taoism was also practically oriented, but more specifically a worshipping community. Buddhism began primarily as a philosophy of practical life, and only gradually became a religion in the sense of developing first a method of answering life’s main problems, then in the process of absolutizing that existential–conceptual answer, in some forms of Buddhism, the “Buddha” or “Buddha nature” began to be absolutized, eventually even worshipped in specific forms as deity. At that point it certainly was “religion” as I am defining it. The dehumanizing
