Religion and Imagination

In the 1980s, I was 19 and still living with my parents in suburban St. Louis, Missouri.  

One day, I bought a paperback in the Eastern Religion section of shopping centre bookstore.

I found it on the bottom shelf in the back corner of the store: 

Zen Buddhism, by D.T. Suzuki.

My mother also found the book one morning… on my nightstand.

Suffice it to say that she was NOT happy.

“We were Catholics”, I was told  and “Catholics didn’t read books with dangerous ideas”.

This kind of reaction sounds almost ridiculous today…

but even 40 years ago, there was little exposure to and tolerance for other religions.

I was listening to a podcast yesterday, an interview of Andrew Shtulman, researcher and Professor of Psychology at Occidental College.   He spoke about attitudes of people who identify themselves as conservative Christians today.

“We do live in a religiously pluralistic world where even people who have accepted their own God as real, also have to accept the existence of other Gods for other people and I would think that practice has to lead to some level of humility in their own sets of beliefs.”

He clearly sees the growing social and religious complexity in the US but then he doesn’t see his own cultural bias.   The US is not the world and there is little evidence to confirm his hypothesis on the world stage.

Shtulman is author of a book I recently read called, “Learning to Imagine:  The Science of Discovering New Possibilities”.

He devotes an entire chapter to religion because he claims that belief in God does NOT come naturally or intuitively to people.   In other words, they really do have to use their imagination to accept hypothetical concepts which cannot be scientifically proven.

The author places cultures, religions and believers on a continuum – from anthropomorphic to abstract.    

Anthropomorphic – the belief or representation of a deity in human form with human attributes.

Example:  God has a long white beard and sits on a throne on a cloud in heaven.

Angels, for example, look like humans except for the fact that they have wings.   It is extremely difficult to conceptualize angels otherwise.   Our imagination is constrained by our knowledge of human beings.

 Depictions of God as a “first cause”, “unmoved mover” “universal energy” or “universal spirit” fall on the abstract end of this belief continuum.

Shtulman accurately states that “the first God concepts we form are anthropomorphic and we retain those concepts even as we embrace abstract alternatives such as  “cosmic energy”, “infinite force” and “universal consciousness”.    

Not an "A" OR "B" choice

but a somewhat problematic "A" & "B" approach.

In a song emblematic of the 1980s , “Imagine”, John Lennon wrote:

“Imagine there’s no heaven.  It’s easy if you try.”

Well, no, Mr. Lennon, with all due respect, it’s incredibly difficult! 

Thankfully, there a growing number of individuals who refuse to “throw out the baby (spirituality) with the bath water” (organized religion).  

Religion can be a beautiful rose with thorns.

How does one embrace the traditions of organized religion without compromising one’s own path and identity?  

I’ve been called a “cafeteria Catholic” – picking and choosing pieces of Catholicism that resonate with me.   I don’t deny this. 

I can integrate my background and my values with a sincere appreciation for Buddhism and Daoism.

Shtulman has written a remarkable book full of solid research but he is unaware of two important biases:  cultural (US) and scientific. 

Shtulman is a scientist who knows little about theology or Eastern religious practices such as Qi Gong and the life work of great minds such as Carl Jung, Thomas Merton or Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

A purely scientific approach to spiritual questions has its limits.

Some things are experienced and “known” with the heart, mind and body.  This concept may be difficult for the author to…..sorry to say….imagine.

The above psychologists, writers, researchers and theologians devoted their lives to bridging that gap and broadening our understanding of what spirituality in a globalised world could look like.

With a growing number of global citizens with complex cultural and spiritual identities, this would seem to be a worthwhile endeavour.