Whitehead’s “fourth” stage, that of the rationalization of religion, has been around for ages. In ancient forms, anthropomorphisms gradually displaced natural power to describe the unseen powers. This is evident as early as ancient Vedic literature of India, ancient Egyptian and Mesopotamian literature, and the Jewish scriptures, as well as in ancient ancestor worship even of isolated communities in the Pacific. The anthropomorphic development was often a mixture of qualities of character that a particular group judged as good and bad. Some gods were almost totally good. Others were evil. But character was often a big issue, just as when Plato rejected the Greek pantheon.
Allegedly, to speak or conceive of the power that people felt was greater than they in human terms or suprahuman terms seemed to carry the promise that they might at least possibly be able to appease, honor, or persuade it to give them some benefit. It was not just a brute force, since the ancient world actually knew of no “brute forces.” The cosmos and its various parts were all thought to be animated, living, and therefore could be responsive to one’s supplications. This is evident in ancient Aztec rituals as well as ancient Egyptian rituals, the early Vedic practices in India, and others. Even despite the moral emphasis in the world in the pre-Christian centuries, Virgil’s Aeneid reveals that the predominant way of defining “piety” or “religiousness” in the Roman world of his day was by counting the regularity of the individual’s sacrifices to a certain god or goddess. It was a matter of getting the god’s attention and favor, or at least putting pressure on the god to reciprocate or feel obligated to help the pious person.
This is obvious in the “personal laments” in Ancient Israel’s Psalms that were used to express the community’s desires—often for Yahweh to show his faithfulness to them, to arise and protect them, to keep his promises to them, to not allow them to be ashamed or defeated, to provide them with the life they should have as his people. That corresponds to James’ and Dr. Leuba’s insight. The irony is that if ancient people saw the ultimate powers as personal because of their unscientific approach to the phenomena of the universe, religious people today still usually think of ultimate powers as personal, but it is now despite their scientific understandings and personal experiences.
It is obvious that attempts to rationalize the religions go back 5,000–6,000 years or more, so the religions still utilized considerable ritual that was not explained fully, emotion that still was often seen as merely an end in itself, whether one understood why or not, and belief that was stated briefly, or belief in symbols and myths even if never explained and still a bit contradictory or incomplete. But they must be seen today for what they were: human responses to some alleged transcendent experience, rational attempts to make the ritual, emotion, and belief credible to the community that embraced them, explanations of alleged divine patterns or expectations that must be observed in order for the community to survive and flourish since it was these patterns or expectations or power they believed behind them that the community had absolutized. Almost from the outset, the “institution” of any religion had its own vested interests that usually could be seen just below the surface of these rationalizing efforts.
Once we accept that this rationalization process in religion has been going on for many millennia, during which time human understanding of the universe in which we live has also changed, it would be only natural that the people living during the rationalization stage might either feel uncomfortable with some of the very ancient rituals, emotions, or beliefs (e.g., D.F. Strauss) or, conversely, might stretch their idea of “reasonable” so far as to continue to accommodate those ancient forms, which they eventually stretch to square with the modern world understandings (e.g., John Locke). Despite the fact that scientific and historical explanations these days utilize empirical studies from which to formulate hypotheses, to quantify, experiment with, and analyze in order to make conclusions, which then are regarded as “paradigms” as Thomas Kuhn called them,34 or the equivalent—religions operate totally without this. Religions accept something as Absolute.
Science may assume values and ends, but its concern is with relative relationships of every existing thing, so it does not fasten onto an Absolute. As Kuhn and other scientists stress, the scientific method itself is totally the opposite of the religious method. The former is transparent, giving sufficient facts, data, and methods, which, if followed by another qualified scientist may be able to test their conclusions by reduplicating their experiments. Religion, on the other hand, offers no way of reduplicating its claims, or even of verifying or falsifying its claims, but instead, quickly reaches the point in which it stresses “mystery,” or “faith,” that “God’s ways are above human ways,” that “faith” is more valuable than reason since “faith” can weigh divine matters which reason cannot.
The scientific process has often exposed religions’ metaphysical and supranatural claims as simply being a positing of an Absolute, which has no foundation and/or contradicts science’s empirical findings—or at least as being too secretive and subjective to be tested. Religions of the West, familiar with the pre-Copernican understandings of ancient people, found Copernicus’ heliocentric galaxy blasphemous. When the chasm becomes obvious, many religious people will take this second alternative to preserve the ancient religious claims and try to emphasize that clashing scientific or historical data are also theory or simply an arbitrary act of a negative faith.35
The question seems to be, given any particular place in history, can a religious person find the “MORE life” they are seeking, and what about the nonreligious? This is the project of this book, whether religions’ divisive absolutes will become such a problem that they will interfere with the process of humanization or even obliterate what we know as humanity. This requires an examination of basic presuppositions where people do not explicitly say what they mean by “more” life.36 If most religions are presently within a stage of “rationalization,” is the prospect of “more life” only for the most rational of those believers, or does it also include the least rational or educated?
Is Autonomy a Realistic Goal for Religions?
Although the only concern in this book is to address the absolutized metaphysics of religions, of course, they all have morality attached to the metaphysics. The question must be asked whether a religious person can really expect to be autonomous in any sense, either within the metaphysical or moral aspects of the religion. In the twentieth century, theories of moral development in children and then in adults, were articulated by Jean Piaget and later by Lawrence Kohlberg. The latter is remembered for his delineation of six stages of moral development ranging from one’s response out of fear to a stage in which one could autonomously universalize a principle.37 The fifth stage was the stage of morality based on a voluntary social contract. The point was not to arrange these stages in a hierarchy of actual value, but to suggest that the higher stages were stages of abstraction, which were achieved the least. They were also thought to be stages in which one could expect the person’s behavior to be most consistent with the person’s moral understanding because they were stages of autonomy or mutual voluntary agreement and generalization. So they would involve the least cognitive dissonance. Kohlberg, however, concluded that most adults settle only into the middle rungs of the six stages, in which one is no longer operating primarily out of fear, but more on the results to be achieved for self and others.
Kohlberg’s highest stage of doing what was considered “right” simply because it was right and could be universalized, is the stage or morality of which philosopher Immanuel Kant wrote. Because its conception of the “good” or “right” is based on no results or teloi, it is not a hypothetical good or self-centered good, but a “categorical imperative.” It has no contingent purpose but only that of universal and apodictic duty.38 Kant’s position was that the things of which religion speaks are not capable of being subjected to the empirical data and logical proof that pure science needs. The categories of judgment do not fit with religious ideas. For Kant, then, the importance of religion is its postulating of freedom and responsibility and thus pointing to a necessary moral imperative that is universal among humans.
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