"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.