"And religion has plausibly declined over the last few centuries due to our being status mad, seeing ourselves as all higher status due to being richer."
Are we less religious because greater wealth makes us less inclined to submit to something higher than ourselves, or because it reduces our need for a group? Religion is a groupish phenomenon, and in a world of abundance, the need for a group is weaker than in one of scarcity.
And of course Islam means submission in Arabic. This also explains why the religious get upset when others don't recognise the power of their God. It feels like a slap in the face.
Imagine the liberating power of submitting to the concept - some would say ‘truth’ - that God is not in the business of asserting power or status over us…but rather to wake us up to the power that already exists in His creation. Inside you and me.
An additional observation about religious submission: Pastors take advantage of this. It’s hard to submit to an abstract idea. It’s also difficult to differentiate my own emotions from divine communication. Many people want concrete instructions about how to behave and precisely what to believe. Pastors are more than ready to supply this. They present themselves as God experts. As Arnold Kling has said, we decide what to believe by deciding who to believe. Pastors will tell you how to interpret every word, every syllable of scripture. They will tell you what scholars to read, and which to avoid. They promote their preferred Bible translations. They stabilize their communities by encouraging group think and discouraging independent thought. Many people are very eager to submit to this style of leadership. Of course we see it in politics as well. This is of course not true of all pastors, but among those who function this way, it crosses ideological lines. The churches have become as politically polarized as the culture at large.
I take issue with the idea that everyone has the same motivation to dominate. I think that's true of certain personalities but many just want to belong as opposed to dominate. It might take the form of submission or donination, but I'm not sure that's the core desire.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the idea of the necessity of submission to reach the union with the divine experienced by mystics of most religious persuasions.
I’m very religious (LDS / Christian). Certainly submission to God is a thing in religion. But it is a sort of paradox where submission to God’s will opens up promises of greater power and glory. I think other religions, ancient and modern, have a similar dynamic. But I don’t think it’s the promise of submission or of glory that drives people to believe. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James cites numerous experiences in which an individual has a spiritual or mystical encounter that isn’t easily explained by materialism and fits better within a faith context. In The Varieties, it tends to be these experiences that drive conversion, belief, and behavior change. Ross Douthat described the same thing in his recent book: the secular age came but the spiritual experiences didn’t stop, and religion never went away as was expected.
Fair. Synthesizing our two perspectives: people have spiritual experiences that leave a deep and lasting impression. Part of why that impression is so deep and lasting is due to the realization of encountering / submitting ourselves to an infinitely greater will and power. In that sense I’m with you. But you also imply the emotional power may explain belief itself, if I read you correctly. That’s where my perspective diverges. The fact of spiritual experiences (personal as well as shared within a faith community) sparks a rational belief in God. Factors like submission to a greater will may add emotional resonance to that belief and experience, but don’t explain the origin of the belief itself.
Just one minor quibble in your formulation. Spiritual experience > lasting emotional impact > rationalization > conviction. The experience itself doesn’t usually tell a person exactly what to believe in much detail. I think you are right that it does take some rationalization to connect the experiences to a specific set of beliefs or faith context.
Just an obligatory Mormons aren't Christians as it's something that needs to keep being said every time a Mormon pretends otherwise to prevent the concerted Mormon marketing claim they have been pushing the last couple decades.
Nor is there a submission paradox, at least in the big three Abrahamics, as one can never be greater than God hence you will always be a subordinate even after death. I know that's not true in Mormonism hence back to my original point.
Regardless though I agree with your overall point made at the end there. People don't submit to become religious, they submit after they become religious because that is what their religion demands, or at least Islam does. Jews have no requirement to submit to God nor do Christians. I can't speak to non-Abrahamic religions though my stereotype of Hinduism and Buddhism doesn't scream submission either. Outside Islam I feel the only thing that requires submission is secular utilitarian ideologies such as Progressivism, Communism, etc.
Christianity is defined as the acceptance of Nicaea. That has been the objective definition used by academics and theologians who study world and comparative religions since at least the Enlightenment. If you are outside of Nicaea then you simply aren't Christian, you are an Abrahamic offshoot of Judaism that shares some of the same trappings. It's the same reason the Druze aren't Muslims though they look near identical externally, they deviate from the core belief of Islam around Mohammed even though they follow the rest of the trappings and the Koran. Likewise neither Unitarians (Deists), Rastafarians, Bhai, nor Jehovah Witnesses are Christians. Oranges aren't apples just because you paint them red and inject artificial apple flavoring into them.
The Mormons have been trying to confuse people for awhile now as part of their proselytization efforts to claim a mantle of normalcy and legitimacy in a culturally Christian nation as in "we aren't an outsider but just another insider Protestant denomination" and I applaud them for that, it's been an effective strategy, but it doesn't change the fact outside of gullible or or ignorant people. The same sort people you can convince Kraft Parmesan Cheese is actual Parmesan cheese and then defend it with "labels don't matter, definitions change".
As to the Epistle of James, it was just that, not Gospel. James was using words akin to Rabbinical traditional as in a commentary on the Gospel using the vernacular of his audience of the time, the proto-Rabbinical Jews whom recently converted to Christianity or were still fence sitting to communicate in terms they would understand. Epistles are effectively the Christian Mishnah and came about around the same time in the same intellectual ecosystem and for the same reasons. Protestants generally love the Epistles, more than the Gospels themselves, as they are all things for all people just like the Talmud for Reformed Jews; you can always find one stanza somewhere in all of them to support or opposes ones policy point out of context no matter what it is.
It is understood that James there was not using submit as in submission as in a servant to a master but simply one of self control for the love of God on a path to finding humility, i.e. submit yourself to yourself to conquer your base desires (hence the devil reference in the part you left out). You submitting to your love of God, not to God himself. And via that submission the Holy Spirit will lift you up by giving you temporal contentment and eternal life. Not power, not glory, and not polytheistic God peering in the afterlife as you suggest.
But regardless, I still agree with your overall point submission doesn't make people religious, religion simply requires one to become submissive though not necessarily to a third party. Deference and humility are not synonyms for submission.
There is a hypothesis that humans have been evolving the capacity for followership for a long time. Chimps have it too: When one band fights another band, often the group survives only through coordinated and decisive action. Because of this it benefits everyone to have a mutually agreed-upon leader, especially in times of stress. One can imagine a whole complex of emotions evolving to support this: Joy from submission, indignation toward those who refuse to fall in line, ...
Religion, so the story goes, piggybacks on this same capacity. It's notable that in many early societies the leaders had a privileged relationship with their god(s). It's an impressive sleight of hand: (1) Gain power, (2) invent a god that you are descended from and use your authority get people to worship it, (3) now your bloodline can rule in perpetuity with divine authority.
It's not just humans - many social animals have that too. Take wolves, for example. There you have your pack leader. Obviously, wolves don't need God for that.
"And religion has plausibly declined over the last few centuries due to our being status mad, seeing ourselves as all higher status due to being richer."
Are we less religious because greater wealth makes us less inclined to submit to something higher than ourselves, or because it reduces our need for a group? Religion is a groupish phenomenon, and in a world of abundance, the need for a group is weaker than in one of scarcity.
Don't people still seem pretty groupish? They just all think they should be leaders of their group, not that they shouldn't be in groups.
And of course Islam means submission in Arabic. This also explains why the religious get upset when others don't recognise the power of their God. It feels like a slap in the face.
Perhaps the "alignment problem" will be solved by having an ever-growing number of people joyfully submitting to the AI overlord.
This is apropos as we like inventing our gods. All hail Lord AI...🙌
Imagine the liberating power of submitting to the concept - some would say ‘truth’ - that God is not in the business of asserting power or status over us…but rather to wake us up to the power that already exists in His creation. Inside you and me.
This, I am learning, is the ultimate submission!!
An additional observation about religious submission: Pastors take advantage of this. It’s hard to submit to an abstract idea. It’s also difficult to differentiate my own emotions from divine communication. Many people want concrete instructions about how to behave and precisely what to believe. Pastors are more than ready to supply this. They present themselves as God experts. As Arnold Kling has said, we decide what to believe by deciding who to believe. Pastors will tell you how to interpret every word, every syllable of scripture. They will tell you what scholars to read, and which to avoid. They promote their preferred Bible translations. They stabilize their communities by encouraging group think and discouraging independent thought. Many people are very eager to submit to this style of leadership. Of course we see it in politics as well. This is of course not true of all pastors, but among those who function this way, it crosses ideological lines. The churches have become as politically polarized as the culture at large.
I take issue with the idea that everyone has the same motivation to dominate. I think that's true of certain personalities but many just want to belong as opposed to dominate. It might take the form of submission or donination, but I'm not sure that's the core desire.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the idea of the necessity of submission to reach the union with the divine experienced by mystics of most religious persuasions.
Just wow. An absolute banger of a post to wake up to this morning. Thanks, Robin. ❤️
I’m very religious (LDS / Christian). Certainly submission to God is a thing in religion. But it is a sort of paradox where submission to God’s will opens up promises of greater power and glory. I think other religions, ancient and modern, have a similar dynamic. But I don’t think it’s the promise of submission or of glory that drives people to believe. In The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James cites numerous experiences in which an individual has a spiritual or mystical encounter that isn’t easily explained by materialism and fits better within a faith context. In The Varieties, it tends to be these experiences that drive conversion, belief, and behavior change. Ross Douthat described the same thing in his recent book: the secular age came but the spiritual experiences didn’t stop, and religion never went away as was expected.
"isn’t easily explained by materialism and fits better within a faith context". I didn't think I was invoking materialism or faith in my descriptions.
Fair. Synthesizing our two perspectives: people have spiritual experiences that leave a deep and lasting impression. Part of why that impression is so deep and lasting is due to the realization of encountering / submitting ourselves to an infinitely greater will and power. In that sense I’m with you. But you also imply the emotional power may explain belief itself, if I read you correctly. That’s where my perspective diverges. The fact of spiritual experiences (personal as well as shared within a faith community) sparks a rational belief in God. Factors like submission to a greater will may add emotional resonance to that belief and experience, but don’t explain the origin of the belief itself.
"The fact of spiritual experiences (personal as well as shared within a faith community) sparks a rational belief in God."
This is one of the clearest explanations of a causal mechanism behind religious belief: lasting emotional experience → rationalization → conviction.
Just one minor quibble in your formulation. Spiritual experience > lasting emotional impact > rationalization > conviction. The experience itself doesn’t usually tell a person exactly what to believe in much detail. I think you are right that it does take some rationalization to connect the experiences to a specific set of beliefs or faith context.
Just an obligatory Mormons aren't Christians as it's something that needs to keep being said every time a Mormon pretends otherwise to prevent the concerted Mormon marketing claim they have been pushing the last couple decades.
Nor is there a submission paradox, at least in the big three Abrahamics, as one can never be greater than God hence you will always be a subordinate even after death. I know that's not true in Mormonism hence back to my original point.
Regardless though I agree with your overall point made at the end there. People don't submit to become religious, they submit after they become religious because that is what their religion demands, or at least Islam does. Jews have no requirement to submit to God nor do Christians. I can't speak to non-Abrahamic religions though my stereotype of Hinduism and Buddhism doesn't scream submission either. Outside Islam I feel the only thing that requires submission is secular utilitarian ideologies such as Progressivism, Communism, etc.
Is Christianity an exclusive club or a personal acknowledgement of Christ as my Savior?
James 4:7 “Submit yourselves therefore to God.”
James 4:10 “Humble yourself in the sight of the Lord and He shall lift you up.”
The New Teatament speaks clearly of submission and the submission paradox. It isn’t a bad thing.
Christianity is defined as the acceptance of Nicaea. That has been the objective definition used by academics and theologians who study world and comparative religions since at least the Enlightenment. If you are outside of Nicaea then you simply aren't Christian, you are an Abrahamic offshoot of Judaism that shares some of the same trappings. It's the same reason the Druze aren't Muslims though they look near identical externally, they deviate from the core belief of Islam around Mohammed even though they follow the rest of the trappings and the Koran. Likewise neither Unitarians (Deists), Rastafarians, Bhai, nor Jehovah Witnesses are Christians. Oranges aren't apples just because you paint them red and inject artificial apple flavoring into them.
The Mormons have been trying to confuse people for awhile now as part of their proselytization efforts to claim a mantle of normalcy and legitimacy in a culturally Christian nation as in "we aren't an outsider but just another insider Protestant denomination" and I applaud them for that, it's been an effective strategy, but it doesn't change the fact outside of gullible or or ignorant people. The same sort people you can convince Kraft Parmesan Cheese is actual Parmesan cheese and then defend it with "labels don't matter, definitions change".
As to the Epistle of James, it was just that, not Gospel. James was using words akin to Rabbinical traditional as in a commentary on the Gospel using the vernacular of his audience of the time, the proto-Rabbinical Jews whom recently converted to Christianity or were still fence sitting to communicate in terms they would understand. Epistles are effectively the Christian Mishnah and came about around the same time in the same intellectual ecosystem and for the same reasons. Protestants generally love the Epistles, more than the Gospels themselves, as they are all things for all people just like the Talmud for Reformed Jews; you can always find one stanza somewhere in all of them to support or opposes ones policy point out of context no matter what it is.
It is understood that James there was not using submit as in submission as in a servant to a master but simply one of self control for the love of God on a path to finding humility, i.e. submit yourself to yourself to conquer your base desires (hence the devil reference in the part you left out). You submitting to your love of God, not to God himself. And via that submission the Holy Spirit will lift you up by giving you temporal contentment and eternal life. Not power, not glory, and not polytheistic God peering in the afterlife as you suggest.
But regardless, I still agree with your overall point submission doesn't make people religious, religion simply requires one to become submissive though not necessarily to a third party. Deference and humility are not synonyms for submission.
There is a hypothesis that humans have been evolving the capacity for followership for a long time. Chimps have it too: When one band fights another band, often the group survives only through coordinated and decisive action. Because of this it benefits everyone to have a mutually agreed-upon leader, especially in times of stress. One can imagine a whole complex of emotions evolving to support this: Joy from submission, indignation toward those who refuse to fall in line, ...
Religion, so the story goes, piggybacks on this same capacity. It's notable that in many early societies the leaders had a privileged relationship with their god(s). It's an impressive sleight of hand: (1) Gain power, (2) invent a god that you are descended from and use your authority get people to worship it, (3) now your bloodline can rule in perpetuity with divine authority.
It's not just humans - many social animals have that too. Take wolves, for example. There you have your pack leader. Obviously, wolves don't need God for that.