"Religion without God" ... ?

Legal scholar/philosopher
Ronald Dworkin

That's the title of a book by the late teacher of jurisprudence and legal philosopher Ronald Dworkin, as discussed in a recent New York Times column, "Deeper Than God: Ronald Dworkin’s Religious Atheism," by Stanley Fish. Dworkin believed, says Fish, in "an underlying or overarching set of values in relation to which legal particulars are intelligible and have meaning." But he did not believe in a personal God who is "the source and definition of all that is good and true."

According to his own words, Dworkin believed that "inherent, objective value permeates everything, that the universe and its creatures are awe-inspiring, that human life has purpose and the universe order." Yet the “felt conviction that the universe really does embody a sublime beauty" was not the same for Dworkin as a need to affirm that the sublimity of the world requires a divine being to create it. Dworkin was a practitioner of "religious atheism."

With respect to how we as humans might react to the world's sublime beauty, Fish writes:

One form of acknowledgment might be the practice of theism — traditional religion with its rituals, sacred texts, formal prayers, proscribed and prescribed activities; but the conviction of the universe’s beauty does not, says Dworkin, “suppose any god” as its ground. Once we see this, we are on the way to “decoupling religion from a god” and admitting into the ranks of the religious those who are possessed by that conviction but do not trace it back to any deity. They will be, Dworkin declares, “religious atheists.”

“Decoupling religion from a god” is a notion I, as a Catholic, both do and don't understand. The part of me that doesn't understand the idea feels that the idea of "all that is good and true" necessarily resides in the same human brain cell as the idea of "God." The two are inseparable. If humans build on that notional dyad an elaborate theology, as the Catholic Church does, then dissenting humans are also able today to set that theology aside. Many do. Even if they do, though, it does not make any difference to the essential notional dyad. "God," by common definition, equals the fundamental source of "all that is good and true."

The part of me that does in fact understand Dworkin's decoupling notion now says, "Whoa!" There are clearly precedents for "decoupling religion from a god." One of these is Buddhism, which at least in its classical forms makes no mention of divinity. Another is the thought of the late myth-explainer Joseph Campbell, who has it that what we call "God" is but a mask of eternity, a metaphor for the utter incomprehensibility of the ground of all being.

Furthermore, "admitting into the ranks of the religious those who are possessed by that conviction [i.e., of sublime beauty, moral order, human purpose in the universe] but do not trace it back to any deity" is basically what I find myself longing for. I have urged, in this blog, that we today need to seek a "new awakening" of spirituality to thwart the descent into selfishness, sensuality, and violence that our culture seems to be beckoning us toward. In that regard, "religious atheists" à la Ronald Dworkin ought to be considered entirely welcome allies to Catholics and all other theists.

Fire U.S. Missiles at Syria?

President Obama

President Obama wants Congress to authorize a limited bombing attack on targets in Bashar al-Assad's Syria in retaliation for Assad's recent use of poison gas to kill over 1,400 civilians, including more than 400 children, in that country's ongoing civil war. The rationale is to punish, to deter, and to send a message. Ideally, Assad would feel chastened and henceforth stop using chemical weapons. In the face of America's demonstration of its firm resolve, other countries such as Iran would, we sincerely hope, cease their rush to develop their own weapons of mass destruction.

Would it work?

Syrian President
Bashar al-Assad

The anticipated U.S. strikes, said to be time-limited to about three days, would be on certain fixed targets in Syria, presumably including air bases, roads, and bridges, but will not include places where poison gas is itself stored. Hitting the gas-storage sites might cause gas to escape into the air and do exactly the kind of harm we excoriate Assad for doing. There is as yet no indication that the attack is intended to completely wipe out Assad's ability to employ poison gas again, though. So he might well defy us, not taking his medicine as we intend.

Then what?

The answer to that question is unknown. Are the president and his national security team thinking that far ahead? We don't know.

Is it even possible to think that far ahead?

Probably not. So no one truly knows where this would lead.

Is that OK, or not? Some would say yes, it's acceptable, because not to respond forcefully to what Assad has done would be an abdication of moral responsibility.

We had better all read this September 2, 2013, op-ed by Washington Post editor emeritus Henry Allen before we say that too loudly.

Washington Post writer
Henry Allen

The Pulitzer Prize-winning Allen, an ex-Marine, says this:

"The good war, the virtuous war. We believe in it. We have to believe in it or we wouldn’t be Americans.

"As John Updike wrote: 'America is beyond power, it acts as in a dream, as a face of God. Wherever America is, there is freedom, and wherever America is not, madness rules with chains, darkness strangles millions. Beneath her patient bombers, paradise is possible.'

"The United States doesn’t fight for land, resources, hatred, revenge, tribute, religious conversion — the usual stuff. Along with the occasional barrel of oil, we fight for virtue.

"Never mind that it doesn’t work out — the Gulf of Tonkin lies, Agent Orange, waterboarding, nonexistent weapons of mass destruction, the pointless horrors of Abu Ghraib, a fighter plane wiping out an Afghan wedding party, our explanation of civilian deaths as an abstraction: 'collateral damage.'

"Just so. We talk about our warmaking as if it were a therapeutic science — surgical strikes, precision bombing, graduated responses, a homeopathic treatment that uses war to cure us of war. 'Like cures like,' as the homeopathic slogan has it; 'the war to end all wars' as Woodrow Wilson is believed to have said of World War I. We send out our patient bombers in the manner of piling on blankets to break a child’s fever. We launch our missiles and say: 'We’re doing it for your own good.'"

And this:

"What better explains all of recorded history with its atrocity, conquest, pillage and extermination? Our love of war is the problem. War is an addiction, maybe a disease, the chronic autoimmune disease of humanity. It erupts, it subsides, but it’s always there, waiting to cripple and kill us. The best we can do is hope to keep it in remission.

"And yet Americans still believe in the idea of the good and virtuous war. It scratches our Calvinist itch; it proves our election to blessedness.

"Thus God is on our side. Strangely enough, though, we keep losing. Since World War II, we have failed to win any land war that lasted more than a week: Korea (a stalemate), Vietnam, little ones like Lebanon and Somalia, bigger ones like Iraq and Afghanistan. Ah, but these were all intended to be good wars, saving people from themselves.

"The latest target of opportunity for our patient bombers is Syria. The purity of our motives is unassailable. We would fire our missiles only to punish sin, this time in the form of poison gas. No land grab, no oil, not even an attempt to install democracy.

"Oscar Wilde said: 'As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.' He didn’t foresee a United States that would regard war as virtuous.

"What a dangerous idea it is."

I admit to being somewhat captivated by that dangerous idea myself.

And, the president assures us, it will be three days and out.

Will it really work out that way?

We're all possibly about to find out ...