This is a reader's response to Julian Baggini's essay in the Autumn 2015 New Humanist. An edited version of this response can be found on the Letters page of our Winter 2015 Edition.
Julian Baggini suggests we shouldn’t say we are "spiritual, not religious", because spiritual has two senses, so it’s confusing and folk might assume the wrong sense. Instead, we should call ourselves religious, even though he says that that also means at least two things - so it, too, is confusing in the same way, and folk may assume the wrong sort. The grounds for preferring one word to the other are either not clear or don’t exist. One can have a religious life without a literal spirituality i.e. the existence of spirits as entities and a realm where they live, but one can have a spiritual life without a literal spirituality, too.
He says "…it is essentially a matter of rejecting the maxim that man is the measure of all things and living according to the assumption that we are in a sense answerable to something other than ourselves…” There are two problems with this:
(a) he treats "man" as referring to a man, any man, each and every man, as the measure, rather than referring to "mankind" as the measure, meaning that the impact on mankind, on the flourishing of human beings (in Sam Harris’s phrase), is how we judge, or should judge, the value or merit of things. Treat the maxim as meaning “mankind is the measure of all things” (which it has often been treated as meaning)
(b) “answerable to something other than ourselves” is an example of his using words that chime with his congregation even though he seems to know most will interpret them in the wrong way. He later says there is no need to think of a transcendent something; but the term "answerable to" implies "morally and legally to a higher authority", which he doesn’t mean.
He ends by saying that he is not claiming that his view “is the very essence of religion, even less that only religious people can have it” (they are primarily concerned with creeds and practices); nevertheless, “at its best [in his opinion] religion is about promoting the right attitude to life, where specific creeds and practices are [the] means to the end of living well” (my emphasis). He thinks it is acceptable to treat creeds and practices as metaphors to live by, even lies to live by, in order to facilitate the good life. Leaving aside the salesman’s rhetoric, the fact that the end sought is humans "living well" also seems to me very much like "mankind is the measure of all things", or, at least, another thing mankind is the measure of.
Towards the end he writes: “We should not get too hung up about nomenclature”. Is this a plea for leniency? His article is about nomenclature. There are two problems with this, too.
(a) I think that when writing for or speaking to a mixed group of people whose education and experience and interests we can’t be sure of, we need to use words which are neither erudite nor recent nor slang – every word must be understood by everyone. I recommend The Complete Plain Words, written by Sir Ernest Gowers and later editions edited by others, which is unique in dealing with how to write to members of the general public in a middle-ground vocabulary and style favouring no class; no level of education; no in-house jargon; no vulgar tongue; no new words or new uses of old words (neologisms); no slang. Applied here, “nomenclature” should have been “words used to name things”.
And (b) the “too” makes the sentence true but trite, simply by the definitions of the words in it (or, as a philosopher might say, because tautological). Saying “I don’t like too much sugar” cries out for the response: “No one likes too much sugar – that’s what "too much" means. You need to tell me how much would not be too much for you”.
A first recast of Baggini’s sentence might come out as: “We should not be preoccupied with what words we choose to use for things” which sounds odd from a philosopher anyway. And substituting "preoccupied" for "hung up" leaves us a puzzle: will the reader take preoccupied to imply obsessively occupied, or just deeply but justifiably occupied? "Obsessively" has the faults of "too", implying "too occupied with what words we choose for things". Only by this simplification of expression can writers see what their words say. I found the ground Baggini was occupying was just another pitch in the marketplace; he was putting things in such a way that they might most easily be accepted – not putting things in such a way as to be most easily understood, unpicked, reasoned over, criticised.
“We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns” refers to a shared Scottish ethnicity; to a shared humanity (Jock Tamson is Scots for Jack Thomson). But while some would translate it as “We’re all God’s children”, where the term "God" is shorthand for "the natural world" or "the material universe", and so merely “the same thought in a different linguistic skin” as Bagggini says, it is very much not “the same thought in a different linguistic skin” when it signifies a real, knowable entity with which, for example, one can have a relationship and communication. This is one of many places where he averts his eyes from a careful comparison to avoid discord.
Anyone “familiar with the history of Christianity” would be aware of its confused, contradictory, and textually corrupt development such that almost any interpretation can be, and has been, seen as justified, giving rise to hundreds of contradictory sects all calling themselves Christian – some denying the Christianity of others. That the Christian faith “was not established on the principle that followers should set themselves apart” is an assertion that simply ignores contrary evidence.
He ends by referring to a “shared religiosity” justifying “mutual curiosity and respect”. Curiosity is self-justifying; it does not require any "mutual" sharing of values in order to show it is acceptable, indeed desirable. But respect, in the absence of apparent merit, must be limited to the humanity of the other, and never include voluntary beliefs except on merit. I could not respect anyone’s faith or belief that permitted them to harm others – such harm as human sacrifice, slavery, or beheading people who don’t agree with your ideas. When I think of respecting I think of admiring, esteeming, honouring, being deferential. Baggini's “mutual curiosity and respect” seems to imply that that the curiosity and the respect are about the same thing, namely the beliefs and the faith, and how these influence a person's engagement with the human situation, not merely about civility. Very disappointing.
