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 very 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 historical 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) OR God as traditionally defined in any of those traditions is not real (and he/her/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 (i.e. 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/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 Christianity choose to create a reality/World/Universe which is functionally indistinguishable from a world originating from an impersonal natural force or forces but at least operating according to natural laws (i.e. which is not completely chaotic)? In such a world, the only way that conscious beings in that reality might be able to come to any awareness or understanding of God might be via their own imaginations and reasoning based on what they can experience about nature--Which is to say, indirectly (not empirically). In short, the author is arguing that unless one has incontrovertible and direct evidence that God exists, then it can make no sense to even entertain the possibility of a creator deity (i.e. 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 now increasingly recognized by contemporary epistemologists that this outlook failed to recognize the self-contradiction of its own core principle: "No sentence can be meaningful (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 deeply 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 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 reality we live in. But it is unclear to me why this would 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 manifest magical/supernatural interventions in their lives. Indeed, one can sense this outlook in the author's apparent disappointment with higher education. That her educational experience did not reveal a magical benign deity who like "fairies living at the bottom of ones 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 assumptions. 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. When it becomes clearer that a historical analysis of Jesus's views about his role in God's plan don't necessarily fit neatly with the categories devised by Gospel writers or the later reflections of early church thinkers and church councils, which eventually lead to traditional Christological formulations, doctrines and creeds, I don't feel obliged to drop my New Testament and huff away.  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.  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 Christianity, it is by these complex ongoing material, biological and sociological processes that we come to understand God in a naturalistic world (The author also seems to possibly be manifest a typical American assumption that all political discourse is ultimately corrupted and corruptive).

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 a real naturalism and some kind of naive Sunday school theism, is something to which I say hallelujah!  Somewhat strangely, 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 indeed.  I thank God for the United Church of Canada and its tolerant, progressive and non-anti-intellectual outlook, amen.

Is the Rise in Scapegoating a Sign of Civilizational Collapse?

In a prior post I explored a possible connection between polarization and theories of civilizational collapse.  In this post I want to continue to explore the possible implications of the notion of Joseph Tainter and like minded collapse scholars, such as Thomas Homer Dixon, that energy is the key factor in bringing about civilizational collapse.  Simply put, these theorists suggest that "progress" is essentially an artifact (that is to say a direct effect) of the increasing complexity of societies made possible by the fundamental fuel sources of those societies. But when societies reach levels of complexity that represent the max of their energy budgets allowed for by their fuel sources, but their complexity throws up problems that require new energy levels to be achieved, collapse back to a level of complexity that can be sustained will occur. Such problems are things like major environmental or social issues that are a direct result of the existing complexity.  Think of the environmental issues that global industrial societies unleash, or the wealth distribution/social issues (unemployment, tax exhaustion and the continued support of social programs, implications of deindustrialization being grappled with by those societies. If societies had unlimited energy, such novel problems could be easily dealt with. We could simply add new complexity as needed: Desalinate water, scrub air of CO2, provide guaranteed incomes or shorter work weeks for everyone, etc.

The average relative poverty rate (i.e. 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.)

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 even if we could achieve the communitarian ideals dreamt of throughout the 20th century, that societies would have the energy to also grapple with environmental challenges.  Certainly unleashing even greater levels of personal consumption of resources by the 99% is not the most obvious way to lessen the impacts of human beings on the natural world. Despite great advances in renewables and alternative energy sources, most people assume that the transition from carbon sources will be extremely difficult. Manufactured doubt allows businesses and their supporters in government to seek to squeeze a few more years of profit out of the dying energy sources of the past. The advanced industrial societies are all also grappling with fraying public services and social safety nets, largely stagnant real wage growth, high employment precarity, vastly increasing public debt, a housing crisis, declining trust in institutions and increasing populism and reactionary political movements. 

It is common wisdom these days that unhappiness is stalking most lands. Substance abuse and mental health "epidemics" (loneliness, anxiety, stress, misinformation via the decline of professional journalism) are increasing in most advanced industrial societies. Fears about growing public debt and managing demographic shifts and population decline are increasing. Again, easy access to new levels of wealth and wealth creation (via increasing sources of energy) could do wonders to help solve such problems. This is what happened in the second half of the last century when the increasing availability of relatively cheap fossil energy helped fuel the creation of vast social programs and public institutions to the benefit of ordinary people. But it goes without saying that the latitude for increased levels of taxation and public optimism about managing public debt is no longer available.  Thinking that we could also launch new "great society" projects like the people of those times could is simply inconceivable. Today, the height of dreaming involves hoping for modest reductions in taxation that will somehow nonetheless be compatible with the growing potholes on nearby streets being filled in. And let's just hope that we don't have to grapple with a global pandemic again any time soon...

In such an unhappy time it is a common observation that polarization and various forms of populism have increased.  A major aspect of these political movements is a tendency to manifest various forms of scapegoating (or "othering").  In deindustrialized and deindustrializing Britain, it is Brussels bureaucrats and foreign workers/migrants who are singled out for blame. In America it is Mexicans and the Chinese but also increasingly simply all "other" countries, including Canada who are the source of ire. In Russia it is "the West". In Israel--  Arabs.  In Europe it is Muslims and migrants. But it might also be the Chinese, if it weren't for the Americans (under Trump) abandoning their traditional role as "leader of the Free World" forcing them into the arms of China.  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 naive social activists and their inscrutable social reform agendas that would have their "sons chop of their own penises," or it is "the establishment" or "elites" and their lackies in "traditional media" (i.e. professional journalists). The demons populating the land multiply at a fantastic rate and anyone might find themselves mixing and matching from the above.

But what few seem to ask is why scapegoating (or othering) is increasing (or seems to be so) globally. The collapse theorists point to the fundamental problem of societal overshoot of energy budgets. Such a process is so abstract and detached from more tangible social effects that it would be almost impossible to discern by individuals.  As suggested by historians like Ronald Wright, societies undergoing collapse have rarely been aware of subtle shifts in energy flows as the fundamental cause of their decline.  Rather it has generally been "Barbarians" or internal "decadence" or various minorities tangentially attached to the subtle changes unleashed by shifts in energy flows who end up shouldering blame. At best, as Homer-Dixon makes clear, people are aware of the cascade of "crises" thrown up  as societies shift from going up the curve of the energy supply to going down after reaching the peak of whatever main source was fueling the progress of that society. For such specific issues ordinary politicians or technical specialists can simply be blamed for their failure to manage these problems or for their personal corruption. As Homer-Dixon and Wright make clear there are very few examples of societies managing to selectively and carefully "walk back" specific aspects of their complexity to buy themselves the surplus energy needed to formulate new lower energy and less complex systems or to to reach boldly for radically new technologies for unleashing new source of energy. If the Romans had somehow been able to transition from a largely land/gain/animal-based energy system, to something like coal, their path of progress might have been able to continue.  Or if they had been more adroit at restructuring their society into a less centralized, less top heavy social systems, the dark ages might have been a little less dark. Turchin's historical work is relevant here. Societies that are progressing tend towards "elite overproduction," which can only hasten collapse.

Out of such reflections come some simple deductions.  If scapegoating is a phenomenon that occurs when societies feel stressed but are unable to resolve a proliferating set of problems, leading them to seek irrationally for people to blame, then if one's society seems prone to increasing scapegoating one must ask: Are we simply failing to grasp and respond to a fundamental energy crisis?  Cheap high intensity fossil energy clearly gave us the power for the last 200 years to building increasingly complex and affluent  societies, but when that energy source begins to dwindle or become problematic for other reasons then the "engine of progress" begins to falter.  People's confidence in a future for themselves and their offspring begins to waver. If they are unaware of theories like Tainter's that the cause of such feelings comes down to an energy crisis, then they can be easily tempted to scape goat. But if they are aware, then they could apply the thinking of theorists like that of Homer-Dixon, who suggest that we must prioritize seeking new high density forms of energy and reducing our dependency on existing problematic forms by selectively abandoning less vital aspects of complexity.

The topic of seeking new sources of energy must become the main focus of political and social life, and considering and negotiating forms of walking back energy use for nonvital aspects of complexity/progress, such as car-dependent forms of urban development, and identifying false elements of "progress."  This latter kind of approach allows us to seek efficiencies providing new reserves of energy to help orchestrate a "soft landing."  In the worst case scenario, where major new forms of high density energy do not become available or are not of a high enough density or EROEI (Energy Return on Energy Invested) as old sources, then the best we can hope for is to orchestrate a soft landing to a lower level of complexity.  So careful sifting of existing complexity, which is just another way of saying of "technologies," and shedding less important or unsustainable aspects of complexity, such as auto dependency and sprawling cities, is just as important as supporting the innovation needed to seek new sources of energy.

The only alternative deductions we can make to explain the increase in scapegoating, unless we simply assume that people globally are just becoming "more bad," is that it must come from some other widespread cause-- something influencing people at a global level. Or perhaps, the perception of a growth in scapegoating is simply a misperception and there are better ways of characterizing what is going on in the political attitudes of people globally today. But if this is not so, any proposed alternative will have to show how it is not merely ad hoc and how it can explain the phenomena better than the explanation suggested by civilizational collapse theorists.

I have no doubt that there are some supporting contemporary technological phenomena contributing to the rise of scapegoating.  The characteristics of the new media undoubtedly make the phenomenon worse. For example, unlike traditional broadcasting media, "narrow casting" modern media as a simple structural aspect of their operation significantly undermine possibilities for editorial quality control and increase the quantity and incentives for the proliferation of false information.  Such a cause would increase the misunderstanding of the problem or problems we face.  But I don't think this mechanism alone can explain the sense that problems are increasing, possibly beyond control. that many people have. Indeed, increasing confusion caused by increasing levels of falsehood could just as well be expected to tamp down awareness of problems or of their growing intensity as much increase such awareness, leaving popular perceptions of problems and their severity effectively a wash

Which leads me to conclude that we should more carefully consider the arguments of civilizational collapse theorists. Their insights could enlighten social phenomena like polarization and issues like  scapegoating and othering.