Do Discoveries About the Historical Origins of Religions Necessarily Threaten Faith?

 

In the video "where the f*ck did christianity come from?" the author bonnetthoughts shares that they stopped being a Christian after pursuing higher education in theology and Biblical Studies. As they put it:

"Christianity is not a direct line from Jesus today but the product of a very long highly 

engineered deeply political process that took centuries to build."

The author then goes on to describe some recent insights provided by historical studies of the Bible about the development of the Christian movement, including the recognition of the absolutely pivotal role of Paul in transforming that movement from a minor Jewish sect to a world religion. Besides the author's description of Paul as "hijacking" Jesus' message its all pretty standard contemporary biblical studies stuff.  My beef is not concerned with such findings, but lies with the core argument implicitly presented in the video for rejecting belief in the Christian God as traditionally defined and derivatively, for seeing Paul as a "hijacker" of some otherwise more historically accurate message of Jesus. That argument is based on a form of false dichotomy that goes something like the following:

Either there are possible naturalistic explanations for everything that happens in reality, including historical & sociological descriptions of the forces bringing about religions such as Christianity OR God as traditionally defined in any such traditions is not real and he/she/it has no actual role in the explanation of how religions come about. There are possible naturalistic explanations for everything, such as good historical and anthropological explanations for the processes bringing about Pauline/Nicaean/Trinitarian Christianity. Therefore, the Christian God as traditionally defined is not real, which is to say, the Pauline God does not exist and can play no role in the explanation of religions.

1. If p then not q (i.e. not p or not q)
2. p
Therefore, not q

(A valid material implication).

The problem is with the acceptability of premise 1. It is not obviously clear why the implied dichotomy is true. Why is it not possible for there to be natural and empirical explanations for everything that happens in reality, including historical & sociological descriptions of the forces helping to bring religions into existence and God as defined in some particular tradition is real? In other words, why couldn't a God, including a God like that of traditional Pauline forms of Christianity, choose to create a reality/World/Universe which is functionally indistinguishable from a world originating from an impersonal natural force or forces, operating according to natural laws (i.e. is not chaotic)? In such a world, the only way that conscious beings might be able to come to any awareness or understanding of God might be via their own imaginations and reasoned extrapolations based on what they experience about nature--Which is to say, indirectly and not directly in an empirical. In short, the author is arguing that unless one has incontrovertible and direct physical evidence that God exists, then it can make no sense to even entertain the possibility of a creator deity or to adopt an attitude of faith as "trust" about the origin and fate of reality.

This argument seems a variation of the core problem with the 19th and early 20th century Positivist outlook and its core Principle of Verification. As is increasingly recognized by contemporary epistemologists this kind of outlook failed to recognize the self-contradiction of its own core principle: "No sentence can be meaningful" (i.e. capable of being judged true or false) "unless its truth can be decided by empirical tests." This is not a principle that can satisfy itself. Instead, it is a complex epistemological claim, resting on a host of philosophically contentious presuppositions (metaphysical, epistemological and ethical), which must be wrestled with in a philosophical manner.

Another way of expressing the dichotomy is this-- The author's position is premised on the contentious notion that no Abrahamic God (God of a form of ethical monotheism) would ever make naturalistic worlds. What I mean by "naturalistic world" is a world that would be functionally indistinguishable from the kinds of world that naturalist materialists, like I was before joining the Christian movement, believe is the kind of reality we live in. But it is unclear to me why this must be so. It seems premised on an unconsidered belief that the only genuine forms of theism are those that assert that the world is not "red in tooth and claw" but one where God can and does intervene arbitrarily and frequently to protect the lives of  his/her/its followers and can make himself/herself/itself manifest via absolutely obvious magical or supernatural interventions.  One can sense this outlook in the author's apparent disappointment with higher education. Her educational experience did not reveal a magical benign deity who like "fairies living at the bottom of one's garden" could be expected to manifest him/her/itself directly, but instead a complex story of historical human religious development dependent on real individuals with complex experiences, conflicted motivations, and contestable ethical and political goals. When such realities came into view the author just seems to assume that all that can be done is to pick up ones intellectual toys and go home.

But such discoveries don't bother me as a Christian, not one wit. When it can discerned using modern historical and critical methods that the real Jesus's views about his own role in God's plan don't necessarily fit neatly with the categories devised by the Gospel writers or the later reflections of early church leaders and councils, which eventually lead to traditional Christological formulations, doctrines and creeds, I don't feel obliged to drop my New Testament in disgust.  I rejoice in the contributions of all these fellow human beings to the story. When I learn about the possible connection between the ancient Israelites to the Bronze Age Collapse or the Hyksos, or the possibilities that David might have been a minor local warlord, if he existed at all, or that the editors of biblical materials were possibly pursuing monarchist goals after the Israel/Judah split, I don't cry "Lies! All lies!" and drop my Hebrew Scriptures. I thank God for the providence and creativity of human communities struggling through often terrible circumstances. The complex historical, sociological and indeed political journeys to religious positions and traditional formulations and narratives are not a corruption of some "real" historical truth of my religion, it is by these complex material, biological and sociological processes that understandings of God come about in our naturalistic world. The author of the video seems to manifest a common American assumption that political discourse as such is somehow ultimately corrupted and corruptive and to be distrusted and avoided. I don't share this cultural disposition.

In short, our imaginative, reasoned and ethical reflections on history in respectful living communities of discourse is how God could choose to communicate to beings in worlds like ours, not despite of such processes. That I am not forced to choose between embracing naturalism (perhaps an unusual kind of it) and some kind of naive Sunday school theism is something to which I say "hallelujah!"  Somewhat strangely, it seems like it is narrow-minded literalist and fundamentalist religious conservatives, so-called "conservative evangelicals" predominantly in the United States, and naturalist positivists and materialists who assert otherwise.  Strange bedfellows.  I thank God for the United Church of Canada and its tolerant, progressive and non-anti-intellectual outlook, and for my country, which celebrates cultural diversity and the messy processes making up responsible government by self-governing peoples living through history.

Is the Rise in Scapegoating a Sign of Civilizational Collapse?

In a prior post I explored a possible connection between political polarization and theories of civilizational collapse.  In this post I want to continue to explore the implications of the notion of Joseph Tainter and like-minded collapse scholars, such as Thomas Homer-Dixon, and explore a possible connection between the rise of scapegoating globally and these theories.

Tainter and Homer-Dixon argue that energy is the key factor in bringing about civilizational collapse. Simply put, these theorists suggest that "progress" is directly correlated to the increasing complexity of societies made possible by increasing access to the main fuel sources of those societies. But when societies reach levels of complexity that represent the peak of their energy budgets but their complexity throw up major problems requiring higher energy levels, collapse back to levels of complexity that can be sustained occurs. Think of problems like the environmental issues facing our global civilization or issues like those in advanced societies regarding maintaining support for social programs in the face of tax weariness and ballooning public debt. If we had unlimited energy, such crises could be easily dealt with. We could simply add new levels of complexity as needed: Desalinate water, scrub air of CO2, provide guaranteed incomes and create vast new bureaucratic mechanisms as needed.

But the reality is that the average relative poverty rate (the share of people living with less than half the median disposable income in their country) in OECD countries was 11.4% in 2021. Poverty rates were highest in the United States at 18%, or almost one fifth of the population. More than one‑third of people in OECD states were described in a 2024 report as being at risk of falling into poverty. (OECD [2024], Society at a Glance 2024: OECD Social Indicators, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/918d8db3-en.). Meanwhile, we are told we are in the midst of possibly greatest technological revolution in human history in the form of AI.  And yet, unlike prior revolutions, the energy and resources needed to fuel it are in question.  No one questioned whether we would have the fuel for the steam and locomotive revolutions of the 19th century, or for the electrification of production in the 1920s, or the "better living through plastics" post war period, the green revolution of 70s, or the personal computing revolution of the 80s and the birth of the Internet in the oughts.  Since the early 1800s, most working people could expect that there was a good chance their children would have a better life. Despite the immense heights of general affluence that many societies have achieved, the confidence of that expectation has increasingly come into doubt as average wage growth has stagnated, job security decreased and infrastructures teetered.

Of course those of us of leftist inclinations will insist that we have the technology, wealth and natural resources to at least solve the social issues. Just tax the hyper rich and everyone can be provided a modest modern lifestyle. But such hopes, even if realizable, still run into the hard issues of our environmental challenges. It is not clear that achieving the communitarian ideals dreamt of in the 20th century, that societies would have the energy to also grapple with the environmental challenges of modern life.  Certainly unleashing even greater levels of personal consumption by the 99% is not the most obvious way to lessen the environmental impacts of human beings. Despite great advances in renewables, the transition from carbon sources will be difficult. In the meantime fossil fuel providers and their supporters seek ardently to squeeze a few more years out of these declining sources. Industrial societies continue to grapple with fraying public services and safety nets, stagnant wage growth, high employment precarity, increasing public debt, housing shortages, declining trust in institutions and increasing reactionary political movements. 

It is common wisdom that unhappiness is stalking most societies. Substance abuse and mental health "epidemics" (loneliness, anxiety, stress, misinformation via the decline of professional journalism) are increasing. Fears about managing demographic shifts and population decline are increasing. Again, easy access to new levels of wealth via new sources of energy at least equivalent in energy density to current sources, or EROEI, "energy return on energy invested," could help solve such problems. This is what happened over the last two centuries of the fossil expansion.  The increasing availability of energy fueled the creation of the industrial revolution and public institutions and eventually social programs to the benefit of ordinary people. But it now goes without saying that increasing taxation and public public debt are no longer viable political strategies.  Instead we seem increasingly trapped in a "debt doom loop"

It would be political suicide for democratic governments to advocate for austerity and increased taxation, so launching new "great society" projects like those of the last century is increasingly inconceivable. Today, the height of dreaming seems limited to hoping for modest tax reductions that are somehow still compatible with fixing the growing potholes on nearby streets. And let's just hope that we don't have to grapple with another global pandemic...

In such an unhappy time it is common to observe that a major aspect of populist movements is a tendency to manifest forms of scapegoating.  In deindustrialized Britain it is Brussels bureaucrats and foreign workers (the proverbial polish plumber") who are to blame. In America it is Mexicans and the Chinese but also increasingly simply all other countries. In Russia it is "the decadent West", similarly in many Muslim societies. In Israel--  Arabs.  In Europe it is Muslims and migrants. But it might also be the Chinese, if it weren't for the Americans abandoning their traditional role as "leader of the Free World" forcing them into the arms of China.  In China it is the specter of the "century of humiliation" at the hands of Western colonizers. In the minds of many progressives and leftists, it is the "corporations", "hyper rich", "1%" or reactionary conservatives who are to blame. For conservatives, it is "woke" social activists and their inscrutable social reform agendas or "the establishment" and "elites" and their lackeys in "traditional media." For the Belville shooter it was "the Jews." On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote in a referendum that is meant to determine the path forward for a province that included "five questions on the issue of immigration. These include a proposal for Alberta to take increased control over its borders 'for the purposes of decreasing immigration,' plus a series of questions about whether the non-permanent residents should be denied access to public services like health care and education" (Richie Assaly, "Alberta’s shameless attempt to scapegoat immigrants" Globe & Mail, Sept 19, 2026). The demons populating the land multiply.  As David Brook's observes, "inner pain turns to outer hostility."

But what few seem to ask is what the source of this growing global pain unleashing these "dark passions" as Brooks describes them leading to a "fear of almost everything"?  Rather than referring to an inscrutable so-called "poly crisis" collapse theorists point to the fundamental problem of energy overshoot as the underlying cause. Fossil energy is the common factor for the progress of all societies for the past two centuries. But the process of the running down those sources is so abstract and detached from more obvious social effects that it is difficult discern.  As suggested by historians like Ronald Wright, societies undergoing collapse have rarely been aware of shifts in energy flows as a fundamental cause of their decline.  Rather it has been "barbarians" or internal "decadence" or minorities tangentially attached to the crises unleashed by such shifts who are blamed. For any specific crisis politicians or technical specialists can be blamed, either for their personal corruption or ignorance.

As Homer-Dixon and Wright make clear there are few examples of societies managing to selectively and carefully "walk back" aspects of their complexity to buy themselves surplus energy to formulate less complex systems or to reach boldly for new energy sources of equal or better EROEI.  If new sources only match existing sources or fall short, or are used primarily to satisfy increases in demand, as often seems the case, the major crises can only continue to get worse, and most  proposed alternatives seem only to match fossil sources. Turchin's historical work is also relevant here. Societies that  progress tend towards "elite overproduction," which can hasten processes of collapse.

Out of such reflections come some simple deductions. If scapegoating occurs when societies feel stressed but are unable to properly resolve the real causes of their problems this can lead them to seek irrationally for others to blame.  If this is so, then one must ask: What problem today are people globally failing to grasp?  Growing Fossil energy supplies, relatively cheap until recent decades, clearly gave us the power for the last 200 years of building increasingly affluent societies, but when that energy source begins to dwindle or become problematic then the "engine of progress" begins to falter.  People's confidence in a future begins to waver. If we are unaware of theories like Tainter's then we might be tempted to scapegoat. But if we apply the thinking of collapse theorists, then we must prioritize seeking new high EROEI energy sources or abandoning less vital aspects of complexity. Or both.

For example, should we discuss more intensely walking back energy wasted on car-dependent forms of urban development or fossil intensive forms of agriculture? Approaches like this can allow us to seek efficiencies providing new reserves of energy.  In the worst case scenario, where major new forms of high EROEI energy do not manifest themselves, then we can still hope to orchestrate a soft landing.  We must resist the vague resignation of conservative thinkers, like Britain's John Gray, who suggest that "adaptation to climate change" is now the only option, and those who argue that people are just somehow "more selfish," and claims that our sense of growing scapegoating is somehow simply a misperception.

I have no doubt that there are some specific contemporary cultural phenomena that possibly contribute to the rise of scapegoating.  The characteristics of the new media could be making the phenomenon worse. For example, unlike traditional broadcasting media, modern "narrow casting" media, as a simple structural aspect of their operation, undermine possibilities for editorial quality control and moderated democratic discussion and increase the incentives and possibilities for the distribution of false information.  Such a cause could in certain instances increase the misunderstanding of problems we are facing.  But this mechanism, by itself, cannot I believe straightforwardly explain the growing sense of impending doom or that problems are spiraling out of control. Indeed, increasing misunderstanding could just as well be expected to dissipate such awareness, leaving popular perceptions of problems effectively a wash.

For example, currently many people categorize AI as one of the most significant challenges facing humanity.  But others claim that "Super Intelligence" is on the cusp of providing solutions to all our problems. Could this possibly be like the giant uncompleted temple complex at Baalbek abandoned at the end of the Roman empire? Or the Super Moai statue still in its quarry on Easter Island? Google tells me "AI-linked companies account for roughly 40% to 45% of the S&P 500's total market capitalization."  In the midst of an expanding climate crisis based on a need to decarbonize this fact should be shocking. But instead, we are enthralled by the prospects of AI. Perhaps the growing resistance to data centres indicates some awareness of the role of energy in our predicament but it is unclear whether that is more about the cost of living crisis and nebulous fears about job killing killer robots than the need for an energy transition.

Which leads me to conclude that we would benefit from considering the arguments of civilizational collapse theorists. Their insights can enlighten global social phenomena like scapegoating and help us to better focus civic discourse.  Although, our governments in Canada are increasingly rhetorically aligned around the need to decarbonize and expand electricity infrastructure, this falls short in terms of tangible actions, and Canada significantly trails major economies in EV adoption and encouraging changes on the "demand side" of fossil use. (https://youtu.be/icnXUGTTWrU?si=Rhl0itS9Io4IE5mP)  Building pipelines and not properly pricing carbon might reflect a failure to properly resolve the real source of the challenges we face and prevent us from seeking our highest aspirations for a human future like those expressed in the United Nations' 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.