The Fallacies of Religious Clerics by N. Fakhr - HTML preview

Using Claims to Explain Why the Promises of Their Religion Have Not Come True

When asked why their religion has failed to create the kind of society it promised, or why a religious society may sometimes be worse off than a society in which religion plays a smaller role, clerics give various answers.

They may say:

“Those societies that are doing better have actually studied our religion and are following its teachings, while we ourselves are not.”

Or they may say:

“We have not properly put our religion into practice. The problem is with us, not with our religion.”

Sometimes they say that certain people in their society are not behaving properly and that if those people also acted as they should, everything would be fine.

What this implies is that our society will become successful only when everyone becomes good and the religion is followed completely, down to the smallest detail. According to this argument, if religion is only partly implemented, we should not expect the religious society to be at least somewhat better than nonreligious societies, even if it falls short of the ideal. Instead, the religious society may actually become worse than they are.

Sometimes another answer is given:

“Our religion is true, and our society will eventually become what it was meant to be—but this will happen when the savior promised by our religion comes.”

Belief in a future savior or redeemer appears in several religious traditions. When present conditions fall far short of a religion's ideal world, such a belief can provide an answer to the question of why the final victory of goodness, justice, or truth has not yet occurred.

For example, in Buddhism there is Maitreya, a bodhisattva who is expected to become the future Buddha. According to Buddhist tradition, Maitreya will appear in the world in the future, when the teachings of the present Buddha have been forgotten, and will teach the Dharma1 again. In some Buddhist traditions, Maitreya has also become an object of religious devotion.

In Hindu traditions, Vishnu, one of the principal Hindu deities and especially associated with the preservation of cosmic order, is believed to appear in the world in different incarnations, or avatars. In a widely known tradition, his tenth and final avatar will be Kalki, who is yet to come. Kalki is commonly portrayed as appearing at the end of the present age, the Kali Yuga, riding a white horse and carrying a sword. He will destroy evil and restore dharma, bringing the present age to an end and opening the way for a new and better age.

Zoroastrian tradition also developed a belief in future saviors. In later Zoroastrian tradition, the final periods of history are associated with three savior figures. The last and most important of them is Saoshyant, who will appear near the end of time and play a central role in the final renewal of the world.

Later Zoroastrian texts also contain the story that Zoroaster's seed was miraculously preserved in a lake. At appointed times, maidens entering its waters would become the mothers of the future saviors. The two saviors preceding Saoshyant are generally known as Ushidar and Ushidarmah, with Saoshyant appearing in the final period.

Judaism also developed the expectation of a future Messiah, associated with the redemption of Israel and a better future age. Jewish traditions have differed over the exact nature and role of this Messiah.

Christianity later interpreted passages in the Hebrew Bible, particularly the description of the suffering servant in Isaiah 53, as prophecies about Jesus and his suffering for the sins of others. This, however, is a Christian interpretation of the passage and should not simply be presented as the Jewish interpretation of Isaiah.

Jesus himself proclaimed the coming Kingdom of God. The Gospels also portray him as speaking of the future coming of the Son of Man “in the clouds with great power and glory.” Elsewhere, he speaks of people joining Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven.

After Jesus' death, his disciples believed that he had risen from the dead and that he would return again. The expectation of the Second Coming of Christ subsequently became an important part of Christian belief.

In Islam, too, there is a widespread belief in a future savior known as the Mahdi, who is generally described as being descended from the Prophet Muhammad. The details of this belief differ considerably among Sunni and Shia traditions. In Twelver Shia Islam, the Mahdi is identified specifically as Muhammad ibn Hasan, the twelfth Imam, who is believed to have entered occultation and to return in the future.

The effect of answers of this kind can be to divert the believers' attention from the fact that the cleric has not provided an acceptable answer to the original doubts.

The original question was why the religious society has not become as successful as promised. Why, for example, have justice, honesty, and moral purity not become established there? Why, after all those prayers, vows, and sacrifices, is the livelihood of its people not better than that of people who do none of these things?

Such questions may arise from doubts about whether the religion is really true. At that point, the cleric should provide strong reasons for believing that it is.

But, as I have said before, answers of the kind described above are a collection of claims whose truth the cleric cannot prove and whose falsehood the audience may also be unable to prove.

The result can be that the attention of believers watching the discussion is shifted away from the original question. They may be left with the impression that because the critic cannot disprove these new claims, the religion must therefore be true.

But if the cleric has made these claims himself, it is his responsibility to prove them. And if he has taken them from his religious texts, then he must first establish the truth of that religion by acceptable standards.

When someone asks why the condition of a religious society is not what the religion promised, what he may really be asking is this:

“Perhaps the person who claimed to be a prophet, or claimed to have contact with the supernatural, and said that he had brought instructions from God or the gods for people's happiness in this world and the next, was not telling the truth. You, as a cleric, should therefore give me good reasons to believe that he really was sent by God and that what he said was true. Do not merely answer my doubt by making new claims that cannot themselves be proved.”

So far, we have been discussing claims that a cleric may use to turn the audience's attention away from the question:

“Why has the religious society not become as successful as was promised?”

From the beginning, these claims may be difficult or impossible to prove or disprove.

Some clerics, however, go one step further. When they see their audience becoming occupied with proving or disproving such claims, they make a larger claim:

“If the government and its laws were completely based on my religion, and if someone like me had full authority to supervise and control their implementation, then the religious society would finally become what our religion promised.”

There is an important difference between this claim and the previous ones.

This one can actually be tested.

But testing it requires that the conditions demanded by the cleric first be created: society must become fully religious, and political power must be placed in the hands of the clerics.

If believers and other members of society fail to notice that the divine origin and truth of the religion should first be established before such a dangerous experiment is carried out, they may hand political power to clerics in the hope of reaching an ideal society2.

If the experiment then fails, taking that power back may not be easy.

Even the failure of such an experiment may not cause us to question the religion if we are strongly biased in its favor. There may still be clerics who say:

“The clerics who came to power this time implemented only their own interpretation of the religion. Other interpretations exist, and those are the correct ones.”

Or they may once again say:

“We must wait for the savior to come.”

And similar claims can again prevent the audience from asking the more fundamental question of whether the religion itself is really of divine origin.

At this point, I think it is necessary to say something about the idea of different interpretations of a religion.

The claim that the ruling group's interpretation of the religion was wrong, and that society would have succeeded if another interpretation had been implemented, is often made by religious critics of a religious government.

It is true that some people, influenced by philosophical or mystical ideas, may develop different understandings of their God and, as a result, reinterpret or change some religious rules. But such people are often minorities, and their own interpretations may also differ greatly from one another.

In practice, the understanding of religion held by large numbers of believers and clerics usually remains centered on their religious texts and on the teachings and actions attributed to the founder or prophet of that religion, which are themselves preserved in the religion's traditional sources. For this reason, there are limits to how far religious rules can depart from those sources while still being accepted by the wider religious community as belonging to that religion.

If a religious government moves too far away from its religion's traditional texts and teachings, many religious believers and clerics themselves may become dissatisfied. Their pressure may then push the government back toward a more traditional interpretation.

After all, an important part of the social support of a religious government comes from religious believers and the religious establishment itself. A government that bases its legitimacy on religion cannot easily move too far away from them.