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Christianity is the religion I'm best acquainted with, seeing as it's the one I was raised into, albeit a fairly unorthodox and liberal take on it. Since my teenhood, I've felt very conflicted about the whole thing.
On the one hand, a large majority of the historical figures I admire most were guided and inspired by one version or another of the Christian faith and the noblest facets of its ethics. When it (seldom) lives up to its own standards, it's perhaps the most awe-inspiring life philosophy. On the other hand, I find many of its tenets, or at least their most commonly agreed upon interpretations, to be highly objectionable and frankly intolerable.
While Christianity may well have a claim to the most crowded lineage of moral paragons, its history is also marred by the countless atrocities committed in its name, like most other religions. Even now, droves of self-proclaimed Christians spurn the beating heart of Jesus' message to instead obsess on the dregs of the parasitic dogma layered on top of it. The latter is littered with heaps of distasteful and incoherent rubbish it needs to answer for.
Furthermore, it seems the minute someone displays an openness to spirituality and the slightest of fondness for Jesus' teachings, they get swarmed by proselytic Christians angling to conscript them into their gang by means fair or foul, which irks me substantively. Why should every person imbued with spiritual inclinations be forced to bend the knee to whatever religion has the most peer pressure backing it up in their culture? It's perfectly fine, and dare I even say commendable, to be a spiritual independent (or whichever other strand of free-thinking heretic you prefer to style yourself as, I don't judge).
As such, I felt impelled to put down my vehement contentions in writing as an unordered series of self-contained posts listing the reasons why I personally will most likely never convert. As an added bonus, once I've externalized them, they'll serve as a publicly accessible reference that I can point people back to in case of need.
I am well aware that raising such objections to widespread religious doctrines isn't a novel undertaking and harkens back to a long, old, and abundant tradition. However, none of those I've come across so far have addressed my idiosyncratic pet peeves quite to my satisfaction. As we say where I'm from, "On est jamais mieux servi que par soi-mêmewhich roughly translates as "you're never better served than by yourself"".
Introduction #
Up to now in this series, I have raised objections to specific tenets of orthodox Christianity on ethical and logical grounds. In contrast, for this post, I'll contest the importance and necessity of religion as a container for spirituality, independently of any specific theology or tradition.
I've been confronted with an uptick in online proselytism these last few years. Allegedly, we should all return to religion to improve our personal lives and society as a whole. It would also be a superior alternative to "mere spirituality". Although the different arguments varied greatly in terms of quality and sobriety, I disagree with all of them and reject their conclusion.
In my view, religion is superfluous, at best, and catastrophic, at worst. If it's a good fit for you as an individual, then have at it, but as soon as you start pushing it onto the rest of us, I'll have to start protesting.
In live conversations, people will often dance from one type of argument to another depending on what's most convenient given the context, which muddies the water. I prefer to keep things neatly delineated for optimal clarity. So, I'll address each one in isolation, on the unpolluted basis of its own merits. I will also try my best to disentangle the arguments that focus more on transcendental, ontological truth from those that emphasize more prosaic, concrete benefits.
Let's start with the latter.
Practical concerns #
Fire and brimstone #
The first argument we'll cover might well be the most compelling and yet also the worst. "You should convert to my religion, or else God will condemn you to eternal torment in Hell".
If Hell really exists, then it's definitely in everybody's self-interest to convert. Virtually everything is an improvement over infinite suffering.
However, there are a few snags. First off, there are several competing "one true" religions that demand your allegiance under threat of Hell, and all disagree regarding how you're supposed to avoid that terrible fate. So how do you figure out which one is the real deal?
Then there's also the question of what the existence of Hell says about the Creator. Under that framing, it seems God is more interested in amassing a legion of hypocritical slaves who only align to "His" will under coercion. I've already pointed out that the God of most religious orthodoxies is a mentally unstable tyrant that doesn't seem all that omnipotent and definitely not omnibenevolent, so I won't retread the topic here. All I'll say is that the Demiurge does not deserve any respect, and a true tri-omni God wouldn't require it.
Since threatening eternal torture willy-nilly isn't the best look to modern sensibilities, most apologists today don't typically mention this one explicitly. They might however take a slyer approach and implicitly gesture towards it through Pascalian wager types of framing, "If religion is true, you'd better convert or else..." They just don't have the spine to finish their sentence.
At any rate, if you don't buy into Hell or don't have any intentions to negotiate with terrorists, this argument holds little water. So let's move on to more measured and interesting ones.
Structure, tradition, and community #
What do religions have to offer over more amorphous and idiosyncratic forms of spirituality? Quite a few things.
They provide you with:
- The ready-made structure of both a theological framework and its associated set of rituals.
- A rich historical lineage of symbolism, art, thinkers, and role models.
- A well-populated congregation that can serve as a source of fellowship, validation, and accountability.
This is the line of argumentation made by David Brooks in his insightful article on faith. It seems for him spirituality without religion only leads to aimlessness and complacency.
In my view, these are probably the best arguments in favor of religion over pure spirituality; however, their significance is strongly subjective and will vary from one person to another. Moreover, if you use these perks as your main reason for being religious, in effect you're portraying religion as a crutch for spiritual attunement. It becomes a means to an end rather than an intrinsically valuable end in itself.
If that's what does the trick for you to secure a sense of meaning and spiritual satisfaction, then by all means go for it. I'm happy you found your thing. However, I do not feel the need for any external support, whether it be social or intellectual, in order to sustain a satisfying spiritual life, so this line of argumentation falls flat on my end.
This is only further exacerbated when you consider the drawback of converting, which we will address in a moment, and the fact that religion is not a prerequisite for most of these benefits. I do not need to tie myself down to a denomination in order to resonate with the life story of a Christian saint, to be moved by a Sufi poem, or to ponder the reflections of a wise Rabbi.
With the individual benefits of religion losing some of their luster, let's examine their alleged broader social boons.
Making the world a better place #
According to many proselytizing devouts, religion is a necessary source of social order since it offers a set of transcendental principles around which to organize society and cultivate virtue in individuals. As stated earlier, we'll keep the ontological underpinning of this argument for later and only consider concrete results for now.
To give an example, in the case of our main religion of focus, there's been a resurgence of Christian nationalists pining for a shift toward theocracy. Such a desire has to be rooted in the assumption that baking religion into the political structure of the country will lead to better societal outcomes, at least for specific communities.
Tackling this view in-depth could be an entire post (or even a book) of its own, so to stay concise, I'll keep things broad.
I won't dispute that secular liberalism, in its current form, suffers from a meaning vacuum and a certain rudderlessness that lead to an accumulation of underlying turmoil and tension that can erupt in many dysfunctional ways. However, I will definitely dispute that organized religion is the solution.
What is our current situation if not the eventual outcome of the age of religion? It led us here. We're in our current position because it's reached its obsolescence as a societal model. The paradigm has shifted. There's no putting the toothpaste back into the tube. Perhaps religion, or at least spirituality, can be reintegrated with the evolution of our modern mindset and knowledge base, but artificially turning back the clock to "how it was" and faking global amnesia is mere fantasy and not a particularly appealing one at that.
In fact, that's the second, and strongest, part of my objection. I'm not only of the view that such a turnaround is highly impractical but also that it's deeply undesirable. All it takes to refute the idea that religion betters the world is the willingness to take a sober look at the history and current behavior of religious communities.
Upon observation, it's pretty clear that the average convert doesn't display a heightened proclivity for virtuous behavior. To make things worse, they often do not even follow the basic injunctions of the faith they endeavor to enforce upon others.
To go back to our previous example, the concept of Christian nationalism is completely oxymoronic. Someone who follows the teachings of Christ as reported in the Bible should not be vying for political power. Jesus' kingdom is not of this world. Furthermore, the essence of his message is one of universalism that transcends all borders.
In general, it's pretty perplexing that people who presumably believed in loving their neighbor and turning the other cheek felt inspired to carry out numerous slaughters "in the name of God". In current times, many among the self-proclaimed last standing bastion of Christian values advocate for the expulsion of immigrants, deny them the barest of dignity, and cheer gleefully at their misfortune.
As a matter of fact, in my experience the fiercest proselytizers are often remarkably mean, petty, resentful, prideful, and dishonest. They're happy to harshly rebuke others for their lifestyles and strive to constrain them to what they perceive to be the "righteous" path, but when you peer behind the curtains of their own private lives, it's steeped in the same "sinfulness" and "depravity", if not more.
Why would you even identify as the follower of a prophet if at every step along the way you chose to endorse the antithesis of their teachings through your actions?
Have the people who advocate for mass conversion gazed at their bedfellows when they consider the principles they're supposedly trying to propagate? With allies such as these, who even needs opponents?
In practice, it seems religion doesn't make people better; if anything, people make religion worse.
To clarify any potential misunderstanding, I'm not claiming that the existence of bad practitioners debunks Christianity as a theological framework. That would be fallacious. However, on the basis of its track record, I think it's only fair to observe that more Christian converts do not make the world a better place or even a more Christian place as it turns out.
Everywhere religion has gone it has created disunity—which is the opposite of God.
– Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God - Book 2
With the practical arguments out of the way, let's move on to the more transcendental ones.
Philosophical concerns #
Given each religion claims to be the word of God, you could reasonably argue that practical concerns are mostly irrelevant and the strongest reason you ought to convert is because its theology is the most fundamental description of truth and righteousness.
The ultimate source #
I don’t know, Lady. No religion I ever encountered made any sense. None are consistent. Most gods are megalomaniacs and paranoid psychotics by their worshipers’ description. I don’t see how they could survive their own insanity. But it’s not impossible that human beings are incapable of interpreting a power so much greater than themselves.
– Glen Cook, The White Rose
Religions present themselves as the most reliable source of divine knowledge. After all, they're presumably descended from the teachings of a prophet in direct communication with God. Surely, that's a more dependable basis than trying to piece together the metaphysical structure of the universe by yourself?
Of course the issue here, as stated previously, is that God apparently has chosen different prophets, and they all disagree with each other to various degrees. So we're back to square one in having to use our own discernment to figure out which religion, if any, has the truth of it. Alternatively, you can just rest easy in your ethnocentric bias and just go along with the tradition of the people you grew up among. In any case, that seems to deflate the appeal of "unequivocal" revelation.
Additionally, God seems to disagree with "Himself" over time, or at the very least change "His" messaging. That's why according to the Old Testament it was hunky dory to beat your slave within an inch of their life as long as they didn't die on the spot, but these days maybe you should abstain after allExodus 21:20-21. If you want to dive into this topic in more depth, check out Alex O'Connor's podcast episode with Joshua Bowen on the Bible's support of slavery.. So, either the Abrahamic God is chill with inhumane slavery or the Scriptures aren't all that ultimate, seeing as they require a changelog of patch notes.
More recently, "channeling", i.e. direct dictation from some spirit or divinity, has cropped up as an alternative form of revelation in New Age communities. On first thought, the idea seems pretty silly and far-fetched. But when you think about it, if God deals in revelations, there's no reason They couldn't use this communication method, especially since it's in effect far more reliable than compendiums of iteratively doctored scriptures written from memory decades later. It significantly reduces the game of telephone and confines the points of failure into a single intermediary. Of course, there are decent chances the self-proclaimed channeller is actually lying through their teeth or suffering from a psychotic break, but should the message contain any truth, its transcript will be far less adulterated.
Indeed, upon cursory inspection, both the origins and content of many holy scriptures are thorny blemishes on their alleged supremacy. They tend to be riddled with ethically and factually disputable claims as well as internal contradictions. Those are perplexing if they are indeed revelations but make much more sense in light of their histories as heterogeneous collections of evolving and reinterpreted myths across centuries under the context of shifting circumstances and ideological power grabs from individuals who color them with their personal prejudicesIt's a massive field of study, but to give just one example, here's another particularly insightful Within Reason podcast episode on the origins of the God of the Old Testament and monotheism..
Overall, I personally find the cosmology presented in the orthodox canon of most religions dubious. If you're interested, I've laid out the reasoning behind this conclusion when it comes to Christianity in the other posts of this series.
More broadly, whether one relies solely on scriptures depends on their stance towards the proper way to uncover tentative glimmers of truth.
Locus of discernment #
Religion would have you take its word for it. That is why all religions ultimately fail. Spirituality, on the other hand, will always succeed.
Religion asks you to learn from the experience of others. Spirituality urges you to seek your own.
Religion cannot stand Spirituality. It cannot abide it. For Spirituality may bring you to a different conclusion than a particular religion—and this no known religion can tolerate.
— Neale Donald Walsch, Conversations With God - Book 2
The underlying assumption of any religion is that you're better served relinquishing any personal sense-making endeavor and relying instead on the guidance of external and, supposedly, more "authoritative" sources. This may include a modest allowance for personal interpretation within the restrictive bounds of what the latter have deemed permissible, but no more.
Some may find relief in such an abdication; alas, it's fake comfort. There is no escaping the choice of which authority to dedicate yourself to. Delegation is itself an act of volition and discernment. In truth, it's impossible to shirk the responsibility for your beliefs.
I've always been much more drawn to the gnostic philosophy and mystic embodiment of a direct rather than mediated relationship to spirituality. As far as I'm concerned, the best part of any religion stems from its mystics. All the religious figures who instill a sense of resonance or awe in me through their work and life are the ones who experienced a real, felt, personal relationship to and conviction in the divine — those who had soul in the game — not the legions of interchangeable, rote lecturers of dull catechism.
Besides, all religions are derived from mysticism; without it, there can be no founding prophet. It is the only gateway between the pedestrian and the transcendental. It is the only possible source for the superhuman wisdom purportedly enshrined in the holy texts these organizations are founded upon.
The purpose of religions is supposed to be devotion to such divine truth. Consequently, it's worth considering whether its pursuit really is their main priority.
The pursuit of truth #
– Stop asking questions, God hates those.
– Why did He bless me with the ability to reason if he didn't want me asking questions?— DJ Peach Cobbler, "Red Dead Redemption 2: Was Dutch Right? (Sorta)"
(The original video was apparently privated because it contained historical inaccuracies, but it is still available on this reupload link at the time of publication.)Religions are born when people band together to formalize, sustain, and promote a spiritual world view and way of life. The entire point of their creation is to spotlight and promote these principles. Unfortunately, the initial stated vision of any such institution has a precarious lifespan. Before long, their main dedication always devolves to mere self-preservation.
Wishful ideals never stand a chance in a direct competition against perverse incentives. Once this type of organization reaches a certain size, its members start to depend on it as their main source of status, power, income, purpose, and community. To meet their most basic needs, they have to keep the system alive, regardless of its integrity to the source material.
At that point the community has become a clique, and in effect its purported values have stopped being its main priority. I've talked more about this pattern in my post on value vs. clique allegiance.
What Catholicism requires from you isn't your undying loyalty to God, but to the Church as Its supreme and undisputed intercessor. The same goes for every religion. It's near suicidal for them to give their members too much room for self-directed theological reconsideration and revisions. That would undermine their authority, their power, and therefore their necessity.
When you convert, you must cosign and echo the official creeds. The price of joining a denomination is binding yourself to it and, in so doing, donning a pall of subordination and stagnation. This is not compatible with a genuine pursuit of growth and truth which is a fallible and iterative process by nature.
Epistemic freedom, honesty, and tolerance #
Hubert: I will show that even trapped in this tiny skull, my intellect is all I need to understand God's works. That's why I don't read the Holy Scripture. I read nature.
Rafal: But doesn't a life like that frighten you?
Hubert: It does. Even so, a life that isn't frightening is missing its essence.
– Uoto, Orb on the Movement of the Earth (second episode of the anime adaptation of the original manga)
Religions tend to be as jealous as their gods. When you convert to one, it must become your prime allegiance. Any other principle and virtuous pursuit may only play second fiddle. When the rubber meets the road, this last foible is probably my deepest gripe with them. By force of circumstances, once instantiated, religions necessarily stand against candor, independence, and inquiry, which I all value to the highest degree.
For starters, religion hampers your honesty. As a faithful devout, your thought process starts from the basis of inherited conclusions. Any new or conflicting piece of information must be contorted to cohere with them somehow or be dismissed.
You can only belong to your sect so long as you agree with its established canon. Any admission of weakness or skepticism brings the risk of blasphemy and ostracization. This ties your hands and impedes your ability and willingness to be lucid and candid about the level of certainty you can reasonably invest in any related beliefs. Once you're religious, it's all or nothing. You're either faithful or heretical. Good religious faith requires intellectual bad faith.
Consequently, religion also limits inquiry, growth, and tolerance. If you believe you already have all the theological answers, there's no room left to refine them. If you happen to encounter spiritual truth that transcends your puny bundle of dogmatically sanctioned beliefs, you will have to choose your religion over God.
And that's not all. You will also be incentivized to crush the many differing genuine and idiosyncratic ways others relate to the Divine. The assumption you're endowed with the one right way to think and live funnels you down the path of ideological Imperialism.
This is all unacceptable to me. It's an affront to everything I hold sacred.
The only way to be an honest, authentic, and critically thinking religious person is through some form of heresy, and at that point, why even bother? I might as well skip the middleman wholesale. As an independent, I'm free to curate the best ideas and framings of each religious and spiritual school of thought to form the most intellectually and ethically coherent framework without needing to shackle myself to any calcified credo. All the while, I can remain open-minded, acknowledge the limits of my views, reassess when necessary, and respect the legitimacy of disagreements and alternatives.
So in short, I'd rather keep my freedom and integrity, thanks.
Cela dit, maître Loup s'enfuit, et court encor."So ran Sir Wolf, and runneth yet." Excerpt from Le Loup et le Chien by Jean de La Fontaine, a fable worth a read on the dilemma between comfort and freedom. English translation by Elizur Wright.
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