The Religious Case Against Belief

At first glance, the reader may be confused by the title of the book since the terms seem to be synonyms. This, as it turns out, is part of the problem experienced by each concept. The mistake made by many is to apply the terms interchangeably. Religion and belief are two different things in a very important ways. Religion, as defined by Professor Carse exhibits features associated with communitas and requires a significant history. He uses many of the largely recognized religions to make his point, including Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism. These he distinguishes from Mormonism which has too short of a life span and too few permutations to be described as anything more than a belief. It is the latter element that contributes to understanding his point. It is the ability of the religion to adapt and include that makes it a religion. The belief system is far less flexible and is easily threatened by the poets, a term he broadly assigns to those who express contrary ideas. The essence of the belief is that it relies on its ability to identify what is to be considered outside the boundaries of its tenets. The beginning of this argument rests in the nature of ignorance, which Carse describes as having three basic forms: common, willful, and higher. Common ignorance is simply our inability to know certain things, such as what the weather will be next week. Willful ignorance is the choice to reject anything that falls outside the believer's conclusions. This may include the Creationists refusal to acknowledge that there is any credibility to evolution at all. Higher ignorance is the healthy form of humility that recognizes that we all have "bounded rationality" as noted by C. Wright Mills. In the context of religion, each of these may be present but it is a reliance on the higher form of ignorance, perhaps even a respect for it, which promotes the well-being of a religion. Once the religion strays into the area of willful ignorance, setting up boundaries similar to those of a civitas, it places itself at great risk of creating their own mortality. Much of what Professor Carse offers has notable relevance to the current state of affairs of the Roman Catholic Church. As the conservative, or more accurately Restorationist, elements, push for control and emphasize the need for orthodoxy and consistency in all practices, they are driving the church itself to a position of becoming a belief system. Once an institution becomes a belief system, it cuts off all dialogue that takes place within a religion. The institution then takes on more elements of the civitas which relies on compliance with the rules more than it does on the embrace of mystery. It is now showing its "early signs of mortality." The result will be a loss of resonance. "Even more perilous, this splintering seems to have tossed aside the centuries of culture that has accumulated around the historic church--its music, literature, architecture, rituals, schoo

James P Carse's " The Religious Case Against Belief " is written in a style embodying his thesis against belief: mysterious enough to maintain a high level of allurement, definitive enough to encourage anger and delight in alternating currents.I think he's fundamentally right about belief systems. Once you're a true believer, your brain goes on hold.I was especially in agreement with his premise that mystery and longevity are what the great religions have in common.It surely isn't the story line,though one could press the point that Christians hold the story of Israel--transformed.Carse under-appreciates the pervasiveness of the Resurrection theme in the New Testament.Death/Resurrection is the very essence of the Pauline corpus.For one so insistent on the emptiness of Fundamentalism, he has a fundamentalistic yen for the explicit text.On balance, a book well worth reading.

I'm already a fan of Prof. Carse from "Finite and Infinite Games," and this new book adds to my respect for his careful way of seeing. In this new work, Carse offers a reasoned and useful distinction between religious thought and belief systems. The basis of his distinction is the comparative openness to wonder. Belief "systems" are not religions, by Carse's reasoning, but closed sets of dogma which thrive in opposition to other such systems. His basis for true religion is longevity. This book will reward rereading!

This book invites the reader to explore the differences between belief (dogma, doctrine, etc) and religion (living faith, spirit, connection with God/Spirit). I find it fascinating and very very accessible -- thought provoking AND fluid, not heavy as some theology books can be. Whatever a person's faith or spiritual journey, this book can be a valuable asset in looking at one's own journey and, most important, at the ways in which we (historically, collectively) tend to deal with differences in belief/tradition. Also looks at political and social belief structures.....fascinating and liberating!

Whereas many, perhaps most, books on "spirituality" make the case that "faith," "belief," and "convictions" are positive, laudable, and commendable, they cast suspicion on "religion" as being misguided and mistaken. The present book reverses such a judgment and asserts, in short: "belief" bad; "religion" good. James Carse, professor emeritus of religion at New York University, has written a reflective and religiously literate critique of belief and its distorted understanding of the nature of religion. According to Carse, the "blind ignorance" of belief systems, locked in literalism and absolutism, leads to violence of "the other"; the "higher ignorance" at the core of authentic religion, exemplified in imaginative "musicality," is the beginning of wisdom. "What belief systems conspicuously lack is music," writes Carse. "They are monotonal. One voice speaks for all others." On the other hand, "religion in its purest form is a vast work of poetry. As such, its vitality comes in the form of communitas [a community of authentic dialogue], fully independent of any civitas [political or secular establishment]. Belief is very often a sign that whatever counts for religion has been pushed aside." Carse points out that to be human at all is to live in an ill-lit zone of imponderables: Why am I alive at all? Where did I come from and where am I going? What happens at death? How should I conduct myself in a world as confused as this? Why must so much of the world live in misery and violence? Why such collective self-destruction? Why do the evil prosper? Why is there something rather than nothing? Whereas belief systems fairly bristle with (alleged) definitive answers, leaving no ambiguity in their arrogant declarations of truth, religion, in the best sense of the word, seeks to peer beyond the boundaries and catch a vision of life beyond the horizon. Like a magnificent symphony, with an orchestration of mystery, awe, wonder, and a "higher ignorance," it is open to the future rather than locked in a closed and stifling world. Belief systems are actually pseudo-religions. Imprisoned within the confining boundaries of dogmatic "certainties," "true believers" lack the vision of poetic imagination that opens new horizons of possibility. In seeking to show the contrast between religion and faith, Carse provides intriguing "takes" on such widely divergent figures as Plato, Galileo, Luther, Lincoln, Jesus, and Emily Dickinson. An intriguing study in the philosophy of religion, The Religious Case Against Belief provides excellent food for thought. Although the author does not mention the following quotation from the German philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (1844-1900), the quotation might well be chosen as an excellent and fitting epigraph to Carse's book: "'Faith' means not wanting to know what is true. . . . A very popular error: having the courage of one's convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack on one's convictions.