Beinhart’s Body Politic: Get Some New Religion

by Larry Beinhart and photographs by Dion Ogust, December 22, 2008

It’s the New Year.

We have a new president. A new Congress. We’re going to try to rebuild the economy the Republicans destroyed. What else do we need? How about a new religion?

A natural first reaction could be, Wait a minute, we already have too many, and they’re the source of most of the trouble in the world.

One thing I learned as a ski instructor is that it never works to say “Don’t do that.” Whatever people are doing, however wrong it is, they’re doing it because they want to accomplish something. To get them to change, you have to replace it with a new and better way. This is something atheists should have figured out too. But they just keep pointing out how wrong religion is and then are surprised when hardly anyone deconverts. The trick is to figure out what is people are trying to get to, what’s wrong with the way they’re going about it, then come up with a better alternative.

Here—in superbrief form—is what atheists and secularists say is wrong with the religions we have now. (To be precise, theistic religions, not those that are simply collections of spiritual practices.) In their view:
• The truth claims of religion are false.

Indeed, they are necessarily false and anything that we explain based on a theistic premise will be necessarily wrong (or meaningless).

• Theistic religions are inherently divisive.

People go to war, riot, and kill over them. In many societies with multiple religions, or even just different sects, one group is dominant and members of the other, or others, are second-class citizens, subjected to various levels of oppressions.

I’ve been to the headquarters, meetings, and conventions of atheists and secular humanists. Let me be brutally frank. While the individuals in them are wonderful, as movements they are sad. They don’t arouse enthusiasm (there’s more passion at comic book conventions), they are not especially joyous (even a mystery writers convention is more fun), they don’t spread their gospel, and they don’t convince many people to hand over money.

Let’s say they’re right. Yet religions, which are wrong, are vastly more successful. Why?

Human beings do, in fact, have a spiritual dimension. What is spirituality?