Reclaiming Sprituality from Religion

Fall 1999 TOC Conference

Reclaiming Spirituality from Religion

On October 23, The Objectivist Center conducted its annual one-day fall conference, formerly known as "Objectivism Today." Held in New York City, the 1999 conference was devoted to "reclaiming spirituality from religion." Among the topics addressed were: the evidence that some people benefit from religion; the natural basis for spiritual needs; the use of environmentalism as a quasi-religious means of meeting spiritual needs; and secular humanism's experience with satisfying spiritual needs in a rational fashion.

Religion, Kelley went on, has traditionally provided an other-worldly answer as regards the meaning of life, and a God-centered answer as regards ideals. The opposite of a religious perspective is "humanism," the belief that meanings and ideals are to be defined in terms of human beings and their purposes. For humanists, the meaning of life lies here on Earth, with the people who are living it, and moral ideals must be grounded in human capacities and human nature. In this sense, Ayn Rand was the most thoroughgoing humanist of our age. She protested religion's usurpation of the highest moral concepts in our language: "exaltation," "worship," "reverence," and "sacred." These concepts, she wrote, "do name actual emotions ... and these emotions are experienced as uplifting or ennobling ... . It is this highest level of man's emotions that has to be redeemed." The beginning of that task was the purpose of TOC's conference.

Environmentalism's Spiritual Outlook

Arising from these two founts, Western tradition has reiterated and symbolized their common anti-humanist premise innumerable times: Man's job is to exist simply and non-intrusively in his humble niche; his constant peril lies in gaining knowledge and conquering nature. Said Bidinotto: "That's the heritage Al Gore counted on his readers to share when he denounced the 'violent collision between human civilization and the Earth.' In fact, that's the spiritual foundation upon which the entire environmental movement has been built."

In conclusion, Bidinotto pointed up the difficulties this long tradition presents for defenders of the humanist outlook. "During the past decades, dozens of books, some quite brilliant, have dissected environmentalism on scientific and economic grounds... . All these efforts are to be commended. But-if you've grasped the central point of this message-you'll realize that none of them ultimately will make much difference in the wider battle for human life and well-being on Earth." What humanists need to do, Bidinotto said, is to define a counter-ideal.

"But defining a new ideal is only part of the challenge. A corollary to my message today is that while a new ideal must be defined and justified by philosophy, the new ideal must be [expressed by] more than a philosophical argument. If, in the court of public opinion, you pit an abstract argument about an ideal against a compelling vision of an ideal, the vision will win hands down. . . . The one possible thing that could supplant [the environmentalists' pastoral ideal] in people's imaginations is an equally vivid counter-image of a new and better ideal."

The Benefits of Religion

When introducing Ken Livingston, David Kelley mentioned an argument often put forward by theists: Man needs God, and we find evidence of that need in statistics demonstrating that believers lead healthier and more emotionally satisfying lives. Livingston then proceeded to analyze the research and data used to support that contention. He began by asking how researchers measure religiosity and link that measure with measures of well-being. Most commonly, he said, religiosity is measured by the frequency of a person's church attendance and well-being is measured by having a person rate his happiness on a scale of one to seven. More than a century of controversy has surrounded the adequacy of these measures. But, Livingston noted, even if they are valid, the positive correlation between them must be interpreted. Believers interpret the correlation as demonstrating the beneficent effects of God's presence in the lives of religious people. Nonbelievers can equally well argue that church attendance gives one a social network that serves as a support system in times of stress. Similarly, non-believers can argue that a church's social network puts members' behavior under greater scrutiny, and it is that scrutiny, not divine grace, that accounts for lower rates of drug abuse and alcoholism.

One finding, confirmed by other such studies, was that the category of one's religion had no systematic effect on satisfaction and happiness. But perhaps the most important finding, Livingston said, was the significant positive effect of existential certainty. "The less doubt you have about your religious beliefs, the more committed you are to them, the more certain you are of them, the higher your life satisfaction and the higher your level of happiness. Even more interesting [is the] interaction between certainty and education. And the direction of the interaction is negative with respect to life satisfaction. What that means is that the effect of certainty is more powerful the lower your level of education. The lower your level of education, and (we happen to know from other research) the lower your level of measured intelligence, the more powerful effect your level of certainty will have on the degree to which you're satisfied with your life. This suggests that a religious framework provides a means of giving coherence and making sense of the events in your life if it should happen to turn out that you don't have the educational background or the cognitive coping skills to figure out how to do that on your own."

But, Livingston then asked, given the positive effects of strong belief, "Does it follow that the belief has to be of the religious-mystical kind to produce the same effects? And that brings us to a particularly provocative finding very rarely reported in the literature, definitely worth looking at." The findings plotted the degree of a person's religious belief (from anti-religious to firmly religious) against unhappiness and symptoms of mental and physical health. "If you take out the anti-religious group," he noted, "you've got the pattern we've been describing. The more religious you are, the less unhappy. But if you add the anti-religious group back in, the picture looks quite different... . It turns out that the anti-religious show the same [low] levels of symptomology and the same low levels of unhappiness as the very religious... . And who are the anti-religious? Well, it turns out that the anti-religious are a very interesting group. They score higher on intelligence tests. They score higher on both the verbal and quantitative portions of the SAT. They score lower on measures of prejudice and authoritarianism."

In short, Livingston concluded, what may make religion beneficial is its ability to give a person the means for organizing his life into a meaningful, coherent whole. But a religious system may be just one way of doing that, and may be particularly effective if the person lacks the intelligence or education to figure out how to do it on his own. Other more rational and individualistic systems may be capable of performing the same task for those who do have the intelligence and education to order their world autonomously.

Eight Spiritual Values

From 12:00 noon to 1:30 p.m., a splendid luncheon was served to conference participants in the Marriott's ninth-floor Marquis Ballroom. Afterward, Nathaniel Branden took to the podium and brought his perspective as a psychotherapist to the question of spiritual values. In particular, he examined his "six pillars of self-esteem" from the standpoint of spirituality.

The first of the six pillars, he noted, is the practice of living consciously, and the foundation of living consciously is respect for the facts of reality. "To strive for greater clarity of perception and understanding ... is to commit ourselves to spiritual growth, the continuing development of our ability to see... . Ultimately, if spirituality is about anything, it's about cultivating our ability to see."

The practice of self-acceptance, which is the second of Branden's six pillars, "is the application of living consciously specifically to oneself ... respect for reality; but now concerning ourselves. . . . Obviously, we will like and enjoy some aspects of who we are far more than others. That's not the point. What is at issue is whether we can be open to that which we may not like or enjoy... . Spiritual growth cannot be made out of self-made blindness. The more aspects of reality a consciousness is open to seeing, and the operative word here is 'seeing,' ... the more highly evolved the consciousness, and therefore the more mature the level of spiritual development."

Self-responsibility is the third practice of Branden's six pillars, and Branden observed that "the most fundamental expression of self-responsibility is of course reliance on our minds... . To look at the world through one's own eyes and be willing to live by one's own judgment requires courage, self-trust, and intellectual conscientiousness. To be willing to be accountable for one's actions requires integrity. These are moral and spiritual values if anything is, and they are profound moral and spiritual needs if the goal is to lead a fulfilling life."

The fourth of the six pillars, the practice of self-assertiveness, is an interesting one, Branden observed, because "to the conventional mind self-assertiveness may seem like the very opposite of a spiritual value." But, he said, "when I talk about self-assertiveness I have in mind the courage to treat one's self and one's convictions with decent respect in encounters with other people, the willingness to stand up for one's ideas and to live one's values in the real world, the honesty to let oneself be visible to others-or, to say it differently, not to be so controlled by fear of someone's disapproval that we twist our true self out of recognizable form. . . . Certainly, spirituality is more to be associated with openness than with self-concealment, with candor rather than with dissembling, and with authenticity rather than with a calculated persona."

The practice of living purposefully, the fifth pillar of self-esteem, "is essential to any genuine sense of control over one's existence," Branden observed. "To live purposefully," he said, "means to think through our short-term and our long-term goals and purposes; to identify the actions we need to realize them; to keep oneself on track; and to pay careful attention to whether the outcomes produced by our actions are those we intended." To act otherwise means that a person is not a thoughtful initiator, only an impulsive reactor. "To remove oneself from the realm of purpose," Branden declared, "... is to exist on the sidelines of life, to become a nonparticipant in life. After that, no form of spirituality is possible."

The sixth pillar, Branden said, is "the practice of integrity, [which] entails congruence between what we know, what we profess, and what we do. To be loyal in action to one's understanding and professed convictions is therefore the essence of integrity. When there is not congruence but contradiction, at some level consciousness is betraying itself. If one is genuinely concerned, therefore, with the growth and evolution of consciousness, which is what a spiritual quest or commitment entails, a lack of integrity is not to be tolerated... . The issue is not so much whether we are perfect in our integrity but rather how concerned we are with correcting such breaches as might exist. In the absence of such concern, whatever our life journey is about, it's not about spiritual growth."

Moving to other spiritual needs, Branden said that, for many people, one of the commonest associations with the idea of spirituality is "the longing to feel at home in the universe, to feel benevolently connected to all that exists and to the ultimate source-whatever that might be-of all that exists... . This is certainly central to what people are looking at, irrespective of which spiritual path they go down, irrespective of what religious path they go down, irrespective of what mystical path they go down. If they are looking for anything, one of the most salient things they are looking for is some experience of harmony or peace or connectedness with the universe. And that is a deep spiritual need in all of us."

For a final spiritual need, Branden pointed his audience to "the first time you read The Fountainhead or the first time you read Atlas Shrugged, and the kind of unique, unparalleled excitement that you felt; and the sense of being totally flipped out of ordinary reality; flipped out of [an] ordinary, everyday state of consciousness into some totally outer space." He said, "I believe that [there is a] need, for what I will call an ecstatic state of consciousness, [which] is a separate, distinguishable, spiritual need." And, he concluded: "It is not an accident that in every culture we have ever known-no exceptions, anthropologists tell us-you've always found drugs, or ceremonies, or rituals of which the intention was to take people into another state of consciousness, an ecstatic state of consciousness, different from ordinary perception."

Can Rituals Be Rational?

The last session of the day belonged to Tim Madigan, for many years editor of Free Inquiry magazine and (as chairman of Free Inquiry's Editorial Board) still a major figure in the secular-humanist movement. His talk on "Rational Rituals" took up the question of whether and how the values of ceremony and ritual that have made religion so attractive to so many can be achieved by a this-world philosophy.

After reviewing several sweeping historical attempts to carry out such a program, including the extravagant and even bizarre efforts of Auguste Comte, Madigan reported on some grass-roots attempts that humanists have been carrying out. Norway, he informed the audience, is the country where secularism has advanced furthest, claiming some 10 to 15 percent of the population. "And what the Norwegians did as a way to build membership," Madigan said, "is to foster 'rites of passage.' So, for example, in Norway today, one of the most popular events is a baby-naming ceremony. Shortly after a baby is born, ... there is a humanist ceremony that takes place. The name is given officially; the baby is welcomed into the community; members of the family all come together; and a paid professional from the humanist movement will be the initiator of this ceremony. There are books that are used and certain rituals."

Another very popular ceremony is the coming-of-age rite. When young Norwegian men and women reach the age of 14, there is a public event featuring a party and a humanist ceremony. Also, in addition, there are wedding ceremonies and funeral services of a strictly secular nature. "One thing that's interesting about the Norwegian humanist movement is the fact that it is explicitly atheistic. Unlike the Unitarian church in the United States and the rest of the world, which somewhat skirts the issue, the Norwegians — though they won't throw non-atheists out bodily — say, 'This is an atheist organization. We do not promote any belief in an afterlife, or a God, or any of the traditional notions of religion.'" Humanist organizations in Great Britain have also found success with ceremonies, Madigan declared.

Nevertheless, he admitted that, perhaps because of his Roman Catholic background, he found it difficult to "get into" ceremonies and rituals. "While I can admire the beauty of a church ceremony," he said, "I am also aware of how this ceremony can be used to manipulate people's feelings and keep them beholden to the institution. . . . I suspect this is why the issue of humanist rituals remains problematic [to me]. . . . Secular rites of passage seem artificial, or resonant of a 'me too' attitude. The point is, while most religious adherents have some sense of how their ceremonies might be giving them emotional support, they also believe that these ceremonies have a supernatural origin or sanction. They do not accept that they were essentially created by human beings. Like many other humanists, I'm fascinated by the origins of customs and the ways in which they function. But the process of analyzing such customs might simultaneously preclude participating in them."

That said, Madigan went on to relate how he had set up a funeral service for an uncompromising non-believer associated with Free Inquiry. People at the service spoke about what the deceased had meant to them; read some of his favorite passages; and, in general, celebrated the person's life rather than bemoaning his death. Afterward, many of the man's relatives, believers among them, told Madigan how memorable the service had been.

In Conclusion

Summing up the day, David Kelley drew several conclusions regarding "the further development of a form of Objectivism that fully addresses spiritual needs." First, he said, we must develop images, stories, symbols, and so forth that proclaim and celebrate the human creative power and the value of civilization. A second task is internal and personal: trying to aspire toward the best that we can be, the essence of which is the total and unrelenting commitment to awareness in all its forms and all its practices. And though this latter task is personal, Kelley said, "We ought to be able to offer people concrete ways of advancing this task."

Kelley's third conclusion was to emphasize "how important it is that one find a philosophy that gives one a sense of being at home in the universe, of being at peace, being in harmony, being right for the world"-a confirmation of the Objectivist view that man needs philosophy. Referring to Livingston's report on the relationship of certainty to happiness, Kelley contrasted genuine certainty with dogmatism. "One challenge will be to define in concrete terms what it means to hold Objectivism as an overview of which one is certain-and still be open to new evidence, to exploration and the growth of knowledge."

Kelley then mentioned another aspect of developing Objectivist spirituality, an aspect that the conference did not really touch on: dealing with pain and ultimately with death. "People have very, very deep feelings about the prospect of death. And I think a fuller understanding of what it is that happens at the end of life, that something comes to completion rather than loss, is absolutely necessary before our view of the world will gain much popularity. Because in my mind, there is no question that part of the appeal of religion, and also of many of the vaguer forms of spirituality, is a desire to escape death in one way or another."

Evening Festivities

An evening banquet capped the day's proceedings and included an after-dinner address by David Kelley: "Truth and Toleration: Ten Years Later." Kelley began by recalling how, when he was criticized for speaking to a group of libertarians, he circulated a letter suggesting that Objectivists "engage more actively and more benevolently with people who don't share our views; and that we exhibit a certain tolerance toward new ideas wherever they arise, from within our own ranks or elsewhere." This led to an article by Leonard Peikoff denouncing Kelley and his views. In response, Kelley set out to write the monograph that became Truth and Toleration, and one assignment that he gave himself was to understand what had happened. Now in the process of updating his monograph, Kelley is asking how well his analysis of what happened has stood up, and that was one of the three topics he addressed in his after-dinner talk. The other two were: What has been the result of his proposal that Objectivists collaborate with libertarians? And: What has been the result of his recommendation that Objectivists try to expand and enrich their ideas by practicing tolerance toward people who disagree with them and by fostering open debate within their own ranks?