In religious affairs, we don’t typically notice the sheer
declarativeness in the assertions of belief. In passing, we don’t isolate the
underpinning assumptions. We are all human beings relative to the divine, and
yet distinctions within our ranks are asserted or declared to be so, even if
implicitly. All too often, the human mind overreaches with impunity. Rarely are
the leaps themselves the subject of attention and thus subject to critique.
Much more commonly, the substance of the religious belief is noticed and
debated. I submit that the assumptions typically involved in making religious
statements—even the very nature of the declarative assertion—are more worthy of
note on account of the human mind’s vulnerabilities that are rarely noticed,
much less subject to rebuke.
Visiting a Hari Krishna temple, I found myself speechless
when the preacher reminded me after his talk that my religious beliefs could be
wrong, whereas his own could not be. Fully aware beforehand that my beliefs
about anything can be wrong, I was more struck by the man’s assumption
regarding his own beliefs—that they have the status of knowledge. This man’s
mind vanquished the gap between belief and knowledge on account of another
assumption: that his religious view is (based on) truth. The direct, unfiltered
access to truth is the underlying assumption that relegates the point that the
divine source is beyond the limits of human perception and cognition, and thus
cannot be known. It is the nature of
the religious mind’s assumptions and the supportive cognitive and emotional
defense mechanisms that can be said to be in need of transparency.
Regarding the defense mechanisms, the man’s lack of
awareness concerning his own behavior and the nature of his assumptions was
striking. The insult at my expense—in that only my beliefs could be
wrong—seemed to elude the religious man, such that his veneer of kindness, present
nonetheless, had a rather strange quality. He also seemed unaware that his ad
hominem attacks were insulting, not to mention unbecoming of a cleric.
Regarding his cognitive assumptions, such as that he has direct access to truth
whose source is transcendent, he lacked the basic awareness of
self-contradiction. In particular, it is a self-contradiction to assert that
human knowledge is beyond the limits of human cognition.
The lack of basic self-awareness in religious matters can
easily enable hypocrisy. The Christian Crusades provide a good illustration of
how a lack of awareness can take on a life of its own, occasioning grave sin
under the rubric of salvation. The four Roman Catholic popes in the Crusades
lured Christian men in Western Europe to fight
the enemy by promising salvation. “But I tell you, love your enemies and
pray for those who persecute you.”[1]
That Jesus of the Gospels preaches love of enemies, even those who persecute Christians,
was somehow lost on those pontiffs who were promising salvation for doing the
opposite. If the popes regarded the Muslims as having stolen the Holy Land, the
Christian response would arguably have been to give them additional properties,
for “if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as
well.”[2]
Fighting the enemy to take back the shirt is clearly anti-Christian, and yet
four popes promised salvation to those Christian men willing to do the task. It
is the pontiffs’ lack of awareness, cognitively speaking, of this rather basic
hypocrisy that suggests that the human mind is actually rather vulnerable to cognitive
lapses in the religious domain.
Given the severity of the lapses, presuming unfettered
access to transcendent truth can be seen as yet another indication of the
mind’s vulnerability. To use a loose analogy, consider the man who can barely
see a nearby tree and yet insists not only that he can see the farmhouse in the
distance but cannot be wrong about the color of the exterior paint! The rather
basic fault in this man’s claim is somehow invisible in the religious domain,
and yet is not salvation more important?
I submit that the human mind has great trouble grasping and
holding onto the inherent mysteriousness in the religious transcendent—the
divine object (e.g., a deity). Without being aware of itself in so doing, the
mind leaps over the mystery in assuming inerrancy concerning that which goes
beyond the limits of cognition and perception. It is much easier to be wrong
about such an object than the color of a distant farmhouse, and yet the human
mind tends to assume the opposite is the case. Strangely, no one calls out the
mind, least of all the mind itself.
1. Matt 5:44. NIV.
2. Matt. 5:40. NIV.
