Customer Reviews

Religion Without God

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was raised a Christian fundamentalist. Eleven years ago, while searching for the foundation of my belief in the existence of god, I found that there is no logical or rational reason to hold such a belief. I still have a desire to find like-minded and family oriented people to fellowship with who share a quest for truth, knowledge, and morality. The potential groups I found posses a political drive to socialize world governments, which I do not share.

This book was easy to read, inspiring in parts, and if you are a religious scholar a rehash of many things you probably already know; but a good read nonetheless. The last 2 chapters (10 & 11) are where he gets to the heart of the matter. Chapter 10, Beyond Good and Evil, was a bit disturbing. I agreed with very little that he wrote here. On the section of moral maturity I completely disagreed with his whole premise. For example, I don't believe that slavery was ever moral. He seems to be arguing for moral relativism which I rejected long ago. I guess I'm somewhat of a moral objectivist. I believe that some things are morally right or wrong regardless of time or place. Chapter 11, Substance without form, was a bit of a let down as well; probably because of my own unrealistic expectations, more so than the contents of the chapter.

One more area that bothered me was 'religion without god' doesn't mean (to Billington) 'religion without the supernatural'. He keeps referring to the 'godhead' which is different than 'god'. It's the unknowable, non-antropomorphic, foundation of being, whatever that is supposed to mean. But if it's unknowable than why even bring it up and just assume that it exists? The experiences that people have when they shut down their ego and feel a oneness with the universe are real, in that the feelings are real, but he never addresses the fact that these experiences could be biochemical reactions and nothing more. Sure, they may inspire people to be moral and to live happy and fulfilled lives (which I don't have the slightest problem with) but I feel in a book like this all possibilities should at least be mentioned.

He seems to be stuck in the 'there's a higher power that does exist, that can't be known or described' mode. Which was somewhat of a letdown.

The book title should've been 'Religion of the godhead'.

When you read his book, you can tell that Billington obviously used to be a Christian, but lost his faith. I don't think he had any bad experience with Christianity, but his intellectual search just led him away from theism. I suspect that philosophy, science and comparative religion in particular were responsible for his change. As his mind led him out of Christianity, you might think his religiousity would become more shallow; but on the contrary, in his case it became much deeper.

Based on his own experience, he sees all of Western culture going through the same process. His thesis is that religion is better off without God. You can see that he already drew one long-winded, critical reviewer, and of course he will never convince any theists. Obviously Billington is just making his points and allowing readers to think for themselves.

(...)

Rather than theists, his book seems more directed toward people who are on the fence: maybe they suspect God doesn't exist, but they love or need religion and don't want to give it up. For them, Billington has a fresh Gospel (good news): they can go even deeper when they give God up. If you are in this position, this book will make you think hard, and it might change your life.

Now I basically agreed with Billington's thesis before I picked up the book, so you can anticipate my bias. I didn't care about the part of the book he spends criticizing the arguments that try to proove God's existence. Obviously other books do a better job of addressing that huge subject. For me, the interesting parts were his brief descriptions of non-theistic traditions, such as philosophical Taoism, Theravada and Zen Buddhism, and nondualistic Hinduism; as well as the romantic tradition in the West. Again, each of these topics are covered in other, quite lengthy books, so don't look for the last word here. But his coverage is adequate for his purposes.

From those traditions, with a very slight contribution from physics, he draws conclusions about the possibilities of religion without god, and his portrait is indeed quite rich.

Why only 4 stars? Well, because in my opinion there is much more exploration and explanation to be done. He just mentioned meditation a few times, without exploring it. He didn't fully explore the significance of modern physics, and when he mentions physics he appears dependent on an unfortunate source, Fritjof Capra. Besides, there is more science to explore: he didn't touch evolutionary psychology or the discoveries that are being made by neurologists about religious experience. He only explored a few traditions and not particularly deeply; in my opinion he left out some significant stuff. Most importantly, he needed to show that the essence of theistic religious experience can be had by an atheist, or even more that the most profound religious experience is essentially atheistic. I think such an argument is not easy, but it is possible to make. In short: this book needed to be about 500 pages longer. (IMHO.)

However, it is one of the best books I know of for people who are interested in atheistic spirituality.

The other reviewer mentioned that Billington didn't cover all possibilities of experience and I agree, but he was concise and I have to thank him for not dragging it out. He could have very easily turned this into a tome of epic proportions like William James' "Varieties of Religious Experience." But, he didn't. Clear-cut and well researched.

I was disappointed in this book. Although it says the author "is an experienced and respected author on Eastern religion and philosophy," his views on Buddhism are quite outdated and don't reflect the developments in Buddhist Studies over the last twenty or thirty years. To dismiss all of the Mahayana tradition as "a return to many of the theistic and polytheistic beliefs of earlier societies," as the author does, is something no respected scholar of Buddhism of the last thirty years or so would have done. Likewise, to state "only in the Theravada tradition, together with its scion, Zen, that we can be most confident of finding what Buddha originally proclaimed" is laughably amateur. No one who knew what they were talking about would make such an unqualified originalist assertion these days, particularly after Schopen.

The chapter on Buddhism deals with the subject with which I am most familiar, but it is reasonable to assume that the rest of the book is as dated and fatuous.

The thesis of this highly polemical book is that religion is better off without God and all its traditional Western accoutrements. To that end, the author-an External Examiner of Philosophy for the European baccalaureate and the author of two previous books-(1) explores the lineaments of non-theistic religion and (2) mounts a case against all forms of theism, but particularly against Christianity. This review will prove inadequate to detail the book's plethora of contradictions, misstatements, and otherwise objectionable elements. Billington makes many uncharitable and unduly hostile remarks against theism and Christianity, such as speaking of evangelical enthusiasm as "religious masturbation" (138). One also finds many unsupported and even farcical statements such as, "The Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:7) is, in fact, a magnificent description of the way of Zen" (129).

Billington proceeds on the assumption that "God is dead" in the Nietzschean sense. The concept of personal God has little purchase for contemporary thoughtful people (at least those like himself). He seems to think that the brute fact of the secularization of the West presents reasons to abandon theism. But secularization is not a worldwide phenomenon (as the growth of third world Christianity evidences), and one cannot deduce a philosophical conclusion from cultural tendencies. One needs solid arguments for that. But unlike Nietzsche, Billington does not abandon religion entirely, but promotes "religion without God." He gleans eclectically insights from several traditions, but seems particularly found of Taoism, claiming that "the Tao Te Ching is a book which expresses genuine religion more comprehensively than any of the scriptures produced by the Semites" (127), although is not taken as "a religious icon."

Billington is quite dismissive of the positive arguments for monotheism (33-40). His presentation of theistic arguments is tendentious and clumsy, and he fails to note the significant work done in natural theology in the past few decades by virtuoso analytic philosophers such as Richard Swinburne, William Lane Craig, and J.P. Moreland. Versions of the cosmological, design, and moral arguments-among others-are flourishing. Billington does not engage these arguments, but ignore them. From another angle, the Reformed epistemology movement (lead by Alvin Plantinga) argues that natural theology is not required for rational belief in the Christian God (although Plantinga himself has revived a highly sophisticated, modal version of the ontological argument). This significant, well-recognized, and well-documented research program is entirely overlooked by Billington.

Second, Billington is incautious in his handling of the mystical elements of various religions. He merely asserts-rather than argues-that the nontheistic mystical elements various religions are "higher" than the theistic experiences found in many religious traditions (47). In the classic study "Mysticism: Sacred and Profane" (1957), R.C. Zaehner provided three distinct categories of mysticism: (1) nature mysticism (Wordsworth), (2) monistic (or nondualistic) mysticism, and (3) theistic mysticism. Billington seems to conflate the first two categories, while largely ignoring-or dismissing-the third as a live option. Billington's thinking is an example of the "perennial philosophy" approach that attempts to isolate an experiential or doctrinal core supposedly found in all religions (monism), which then becomes the normative principle for religious evaluation. Hence, the rejection of theistic mystical experiences as substandard by definition. (On this questionable approach, see W.T. Stace, "Mysticism and Philosophy" [1960] and Aldous Huxley, "The Perennial Philosophy" [1944].)

Having unfairly rejected the positive case for monotheism based on theistic arguments and having marginalized the theistic elements of mysticism, Billington builds his argument for religion without God almost entirely on certain nontheistic mystical experiences. Here, too, he ignores a large body of philosophical arguments for theism that are based on theistic religious experiences. Especially noteworthy here is the work of Keith Yandell and William Alston. The fact is that the arguments for some cases of theistic mysticism being veridical (or truth-conveying) is much stronger than those made on behalf of nontheistic mysticism, which are critically flawed.

Billington, like other perennialists, repeatedly claims that genuine mystical experience is ineffable (beyond thoughts, concepts, and language). Related to this, he is fond of the epigram from the "Tao Te Ching": "The tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao; The name that can be named is not the eternal Name" (81). Instead of describing a personal and relational being who is distinct from the one having the religious experience (as in monotheistic mysticism), the nontheistic mystical experience is said to be ineffable because the personality of the subject drops away into the nontheistic and nondualistic mystical reality, which eludes rational elaboration in principle. However, if the experience itself is incapable of being explained in conceptual and rational terms, it necessarily lacks any argumentative power. A rational argument requires coherent and factual premises that lead to a conclusion through some pattern of argument (whether inductive, deductive, or abductive). No such premises and no argument form are available for nontheistic mysticism if ineffability is invoked. Ironically, Billington criticizes theistic concepts as too vague to be very meaningful (4) and then turns around and claims that nontheistic mystical experiences are beyond rationality entirely (58). This is surely inconsistent.

On the other hand, theistic mystical experiences (as well as other non-mystical kinds of religious experiences) can be used as evidence for belief in God, since the object of the experience does not utterly transcend conceptuality or rationality. Moreover, the individuality and personality of the experiencer does not drop out of the picture, but remains intact. In other words, the subject-object relationship still holds, thus opening the door to coherent accounts of the experience.

Billington's attempt to advocate religion without God, scripture, religious exemplars, objective morality, and even truth is a peculiar hybrid of anti-theistic zeal and mystical enthusiasm, but it fails to achieve anything close to a convincing argument.

Douglas Groothuis, Denver Seminary