Bogosity

“A Guide to Grown-Up Thinking” in the latest New Internationalist (Big Babies issue) asserts that society has become infantile and that this is reinforced by politics, consumerism and religion. But by dismissing religion wholesale, they are also dismissing forms of religion that would help us to grow up. Must we throw the baby out with the bathwater?

Questioning authority and reaching out for what is just and true … comes with an expensive price tag – the task of constructing and maintaining an ethical world view without the crutch of certainty. No wonder religion is such a powerful, virus like idea. It relieves us of the adult obligation of having to create a convincing moral and intellectual model of the world for ourselves – POLYP in A Guide to Grown-Up Thinking

This issue of New Internationalist has been a bit offensive for me. Apart from the frequent assertions that religion is infantile, there are also assumptions about what it means to be an adult. The articles argue that being an adult means that we move “away from the certainty of conforming to what others tell us is right” but then claim that science is the same as atheism and go on to make a bunch of other assertions about what it means to be ‘grown up’ including that grown ups are not religious. Sounds like they are trying to tell me what is right so aren’t they contradicting themselves? Or am I supposed to disagree. It’s like that Zen Buddhist joke “My Zen master told me not to listen to him so I didn’t”.

How come New Internationalist has managed to recognise that there is ‘infantile’ politics and ‘grown up’ politics. Yet they are not prepared to admit that there might be forms of ‘grown up’ religion that have moved beyond the ‘infantile’ forms.

My own practice of religion is far from “the crutch of certainty” and emphasises “a process of travelling towards the truth, rather than truth being a final destination at which you arrive, and then stop moving”. I might even suggest that the writer is being infantile by not questioning his “truth” that religion holds no value. And watch out for that word “truth” – used in a quasi-religious infantile manner perhaps? Can an atheist believe in ‘truth’ in such a sacred way? Sounds like faith to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I think there are a lot of things wrong in the way a lot of religion happens at the moment. But I wish that the same people who claim that we need to stop blaming others for the problems of society would also stop blaming religion.

I’m pretty happy with a lot of the stuff in this issue – there are a lot of brilliant insights – but I wish they didn’t keep generalising about religion.