EVERYONE HAS A RELIGION

No matter what you believe, I think the following passage gives a helpful perspective for respecting and understanding people whose beliefs are different from yours. I hope you'll find it as illuminating as I did.

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Let's begin by asking what religion is. Some say it is a form of belief in God. But that would not fit Zen Buddhism, which does not really believe in God at all. Some say it is belief in the supernatural. But that does not fit Hinduism, which does not believe in a supernatural realm beyond the material world, but only a spiritual reality within the empirical. What is religion then? It is a set of beliefs that explain what life is all about, who we are, and the most important things that human beings should spend their time doing. For example, some think that this material world is all there is, that we are here by accident and when we die we just rot, and therefore the important thing is to choose to do what makes you happy and not let others impose their beliefs on you. Notice that though this is not an explicit, "organized" religion, it contains a master narrative, an account about the meaning of life along with a recommendation for how to live based on that account of things.

Some call this a "worldview" while others call it a "narrative identity." In either case it is a set of faith-assumptions about the nature of things. It is an implicit religion. Broadly understood, faith in some view of the world and human nature informs everyone's life. Everyone lives and operates out of some narrative identity, whether it is thought out and reflected upon or not. All who say "You ought to do this" or "You shouldn't do that" reason out of such an implicit moral and religious position. Pragmatists say that we should leave our deeper worldviews behind and find consensus about "what works"—but our view of what works is determined by (to use a Wendell Berry title) what we think people are for. Any picture of happy human life that "works" is necessarily informed by deep-seated beliefs about the purpose of human life. Even the most secular pragmatists come to the table with deep commitments and narrative accounts of what it means to be human.

[Richard] Rorty insists that religion-based beliefs are conversation stoppers. But all of our most fundamental convictions about things are beliefs that are nearly impossible to justify to those who don't share them. Secular concepts such as "self-realization" and "autonomy" are impossible to prove and are "conversation stoppers" just as much as appeals to the Bible.

Statements that seem to be common sense to the speakers are nonetheless often profoundly religious in nature. Imagine that Ms. A argues that all the safety nets for the poor should be removed, in the name of "survival of the fittest." Ms. B might respond, "The poor have the right to a decent standard of living—they are human beings like the rest of us!" Ms. A could then come back with the fact that many bioethicists today think the concept of "human" is artificial and impossible to define. She might continue that there is no possibility of treating all living organisms as ends rather than means and that some always have to die that others may live. That is simply the way nature works. If Ms. B counters with a pragmatic argument, that we should help the poor simply because it makes society work better, Ms. A could come up with many similar pragmatic arguments about why letting some of the poor just die would be even more efficient. Now Ms. B would be getting angry. She would respond heatedly that starving the poor is simply unethical, but Ms. A could retort, "Who says ethics must be the same for everyone?" Ms. B would finally exclaim: "I wouldn't want to live in a society like the one you are describing!"

In this interchange Ms. B has tried to follow John Rawls and find universally accessible, "neutral and objective" arguments that would convince everyone that we must not starve the poor. She has failed because there are none. In the end Ms. B affirms the equality and dignity of human individuals simply because she believes it is true and right. She takes as an article of faith that people are more valuable than rocks or trees—though she can't prove such a belief scientifically. Her public policy proposals are ultimately based on a religious stance.

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This passage is taken from Chapter 1 of Timothy Keller's New York Times best-selling book, The Reason for God.