But a second problem occurs with the religious’ hyperbolizing and mythologizing their claims, knowing no limits whatever. The transcendence does not mean merely that one has a more wholesome mental assessment of her conditions in life that makes things better. That should be included in the transformation of character mentioned by Whitehead. But religions’ claims do not stop here. The transcendence claimed by the religion goes beyond promising that one will find a new balance between the pleasures and the pains of one’s few short years. Nor does it even conclude with the promise that one can take heart at the time of death that one has done one’s best, and that reassurance by one’s own conscience suffices for the better life. Yet many conservative religious have even insisted that people must trust the institution rather than rely on their conscience since even conscience has become depraved. That, of course, would have horrified Kant who was convinced that one can never escape one’s conscience. But it does show religion’s unnecessary animosity toward autonomy.
Instead, religions typically promise not only transcendence of the immediate physical, material conditions that often extend far beyond the “state of mind,” but they insist that the knowledge or faith the given religion offers grants a life that is incomparable and not accessible in any way except through that religion. Whether it is merely the Absolute knowledge that puts an end to desire and therefore to suffering and to rebirth, as Buddhism professes, or is an eternal transformation of one’s being while in this mortal life, or a transformation into a utopian, heavenly post-death existence as in traditional Christianity and Islam, the answer still emphasizes that the better life is incomparable and simply is not otherwise accessible.
On the other hand, each specific religion claims that it is the only answer, the final revelation, the absolute truth, the incomparable. It is presupposed that there is no genus or species to which that religion even belongs. Many very conservative people have been taught through the influence of Karl Barth, that “religion” points to human effort, to the unsaved or pagans, which instead of being “religious,” must have a “relationship with Jesus Christ.”45 But one does not avoid contamination with what is finite or human just by denying being “religious,” since all the ideas associated with any religion are of human origin, no matter what they claim. Words and claims do not mutate from human phenomena to the “Word of God” merely by being included in a leather-bound book or scroll or by being called “sacred” or spoken by an “ordained” pastor as “Holy Bible” or “Qur’an” or called the “kerygma” (preached message), or even by people placing their hands on it while they take an oath.
Many adherents of a particular religion have been taught and then presupposed only themselves as the saved (even or especially to the degree that they insist they are not “religious”); all others are the lost, including not simply the nonreligious but those of all other religions.46 Further, many believe this cleavage or distinction is not for a week or two or even for half of the summer, but for eternity. It is not a small mistake they think the other religious or the nonreligious are making. It is the most momentous, obvious, and disastrous mistake humanly possible. Many religious people think better not to have been born than to make such a mistake for eternity.47
Of course religions also teach morality, personal responsibility toward others, and compassion for the less fortunate. Yet many nonreligious people are moral and personally responsible and compassionate as well. Religions, like all institutions, are ambiguous as Whitehead suggested. They often develop many inflexible attitudes of asserting their superiority, which the individuals within the groups would not assert on their own, not without it being emphasized by the institution itself.48 The terms “infidel” and “atheist” have been used by religious people often as cultural scare words or hate words, not mere neutral descriptions that a person does not believe in a particular supranatural personal deity. Therefore, the unfairness and thus immorality of such antagonistic linguistic usage to distinguish the “saved” (good or enlightened) from the “damned” (evil or ignorant) makes religions hypocritical and a threat to humanization.49
Even the religious person’s morality is not usually an autonomous decision to live morally, but rather a heteronomous demand with threats or at least a universal or Absolute heteronomous moral command. They insist they do it in obedience to God or Allah or Adonai or to follow Jesus or to emulate Buddha or because that is what Shiva did or Guru Nanak taught or is absolutely required by the Tao, Om, the “All in all,” or the truth their abbot emphasized or the Pope declared—or at least was manifest through eternal words or symbols as the eternal order of the universe or morality. It always came from some absolute “Other.”
Finally, not only is autonomy summarily annihilated by this kind of subservient morality, but even this heteronomous morality or this social relating to the nonbelievers ends up being extremely preferentially and culturally limited. It is not an accident that New Testament scholars have finally discovered that most of the passages in the New Testament that instruct believers to love, assist, and sustain those in need are talking only about helping those within the particular religious community itself, not people outside.50 So the heteronomous morality has several strikes against it, especially if Christians take seriously the wide-open moral sensitivity Jesus is alleged to have taught in the “Sermon on the Mount.”
Yet, despite the glorious promises of the religions for their “faithful” ones, many people still have preferred to be nonreligious or secular, to abstain from any association with religious beliefs and institutions. Their “freethinking” has often been misjudged as has their insistence on autonomy and their refusal to accept the usual mythologies and superstitions of the various religions. Yet, contrary to the religious people’s notions, many of the nonreligious or secular have not actually missed out on the better life, but often devoted every ounce of their being to attaining it and assisting others to do so. They have not been a barrier to humanization or humanity by squelching autonomy but have greatly encouraged it.
Unlike the religious in their culture, most of them have not abandoned this world to think of the better life only in some imaginary post-death “heaven,” nor have they deserted their fellow humans in their individualistic quest, thinking that the better life could still be theirs even if all other people missed out on it. Why else would Dorothee Solle have attacked the “individualistic” emphasis of Bultmann’s theology, and insisted that as long as anyone is not saved, others are not either?51 Nor have they been as misanthropic declaring that if one has no duty to God, neither does one have any moral duty to any human. Our co-existence makes it obvious that we do have moral responsibility to others, god or no god.
Autonomy and Resistance from Heteronomy
Authoritarianism and heteronomy are not unambiguous evils, nor is autonomy an unambiguous good. Autonomy does not mean arbitrariness. Nor does it require or tolerate antisocial behavior. Quite the opposite. Literally, it indicates only that one is somehow a “law to oneself” or “self-governing.” When used within a society that recognizes a social contract, whether explicit or merely consciously understood, autonomy means primarily a freedom to think on one’s own. But it certainly does not mean to do whatever one wants. It never did. Any social contract limits that freedom.
Further, people stand at totally different stages in their understandings of what they need and want, what they believe, what things they might allow to challenge or put their ideas and values to the test, and merely what they think they believe, which they have never questioned. That is, we all have our limits of what we can know, tolerate, and challenge, whether we are thinking of how different others’ beliefs might be from our own, or how much insecurity or personal questioning we can tolerate within ourselves.
If one can bracket out the Absolute, is there a probability that William James’ idea that the