{"blyg":"0.4","id":"1ye580yc8501gf9prfq5yra813","kind":"thread","origin":"https://blyg.bricolage.io/","page":"t/1ye580yc8501gf9prfq5yra813/","author":{"name":"Kyle Mathews","url":"https://blyg.bricolage.io/"},"created":"2026-10-12T15:56:54Z","updated":"2026-10-12T16:04:15Z","version":1,"content_md":"Great interview with James Carse on his book \"A Religious Case Against Belief\" — https://www.salon.com/2008/07/21/james_carse/\n\n---\n\n**It sounds like you’re saying that belief doesn’t need to have any religious associations. You could just as well be talking about Nazism or Maoism or Serbian nationalism.**\n\nExactly. In fact, very passionate believers are often not at all religious. However, it does happen to be the case that people who hold on to beliefs with great passion begin to describe themselves as religious. For example, the Nazis had a kind of pseudo-religious understanding of themselves. Hitler talked about a 10,000-year Reich. That’s taken right out of Christian mythology — the kingdom of God going on forever and ever. The swastika is, after all, in the form of the cross. So Hitler was a passionate believer — not religious but pseudo-religious — ascribing to himself some sort of religious aura.\n\n**So what is it that holds together a belief system?**\n\nA belief system is meant to be a comprehensive network of ideas about what one thinks is absolutely real and true. Within that system, everything is adequately explained and perfectly reasonable. You know exactly how far to go with your beliefs and when to stop your thinking. A belief system is defined by an absolute authority. The authority can be a text or an institution or a person. So it’s very important to understand a belief system as independent of religion. After all, Marxism and Nazism were two of the most powerful belief systems ever.\n\n**What, then, do you mean by religion?**\n\nReligion is notoriously difficult to define. Modern scholars have almost unanimously decided that there is no generalization that applies to all the great living religions. Jews don’t have a priesthood. Catholics do. The prayer in one tradition is different from another. The literature and the texts are radically different from each other. So it leaves us with the question: Is there any generalization one could make about religion?\n\n**You’re also suggesting that there’s no underlying unity that permeates all religions, that, in fact, they’re totally different from each other.**\n\nI’m absolutely saying that. There have been a lot of fantasies about putting all the religions together. Mahatma Gandhi was famous for saying that all religions are, at their core, the same. But I have spent my life studying these traditions. I am a historian of religion. And the more I studied them, the more I saw that they were absolutely different.\n\n**And yet, you’ve just told me that you yourself don’t believe in a divine reality. In some ways, your critique of belief systems seems to go along with what the new atheists are saying.**\n\nThe difference, though, is that I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe. That’s a mode of being that has nothing to do with belief. So I have very little in common with them. As a matter of fact, one reason I wrote the book is that a much more compelling critique of belief systems comes not from the scientific side but from the religious side. When you look at belief systems from a religious perspective, what’s exposed is how limited they are, how deeply authoritarian they are, how rationalistic and comprehensive they claim to be, but at the same time how little staying power they have with the human imagination. It’s a deeper and much more incisive critique.\n\n**Why are you so pessimistic?**\n\nLet’s look at Islam, as an example. There’s no way of reducing Islam to a single belief system, but what you have in Islam is a very active series of belief systems. And they’re in deep conflict with each other. There’s no poetry in this. It’s all strictly hard belief, in an oppositional voice. But if you go back in Islamic history, what you get is a very deep sense of poetry. As a matter of fact, the Quran itself is considered so poetically beautiful that it’s a very high value in Islamic life to memorize it and sing it. Muslims refer to the Quran as a recitation, something to be repeated over and over again.\n\nYou go back to the medieval mystical period and you find Islamic thinkers who say terribly beautiful things. There’s a story told about Abu Ali of Sind, a famous mystic. He made his annual trip across the desert, which took days, to get his supplies in the markets on the other end of the desert. Then he walked all the way back, opened the packages that he bought and found that there were ants in his cardamom seeds. Immediately, he wrapped the ants back up in the cardamom seeds, walked back across the desert and returned the ants to their home. That’s a different Islam. That’s a poetic Islam. It comes right out of the heart of that religion.","content_html":"

Great interview with James Carse on his book "A Religious Case Against Belief" — https://www.salon.com/2008/07/21/james_carse/

\n
\n

It sounds like you’re saying that belief doesn’t need to have any religious associations. You could just as well be talking about Nazism or Maoism or Serbian nationalism.

\n

Exactly. In fact, very passionate believers are often not at all religious. However, it does happen to be the case that people who hold on to beliefs with great passion begin to describe themselves as religious. For example, the Nazis had a kind of pseudo-religious understanding of themselves. Hitler talked about a 10,000-year Reich. That’s taken right out of Christian mythology — the kingdom of God going on forever and ever. The swastika is, after all, in the form of the cross. So Hitler was a passionate believer — not religious but pseudo-religious — ascribing to himself some sort of religious aura.

\n

So what is it that holds together a belief system?

\n

A belief system is meant to be a comprehensive network of ideas about what one thinks is absolutely real and true. Within that system, everything is adequately explained and perfectly reasonable. You know exactly how far to go with your beliefs and when to stop your thinking. A belief system is defined by an absolute authority. The authority can be a text or an institution or a person. So it’s very important to understand a belief system as independent of religion. After all, Marxism and Nazism were two of the most powerful belief systems ever.

\n

What, then, do you mean by religion?

\n

Religion is notoriously difficult to define. Modern scholars have almost unanimously decided that there is no generalization that applies to all the great living religions. Jews don’t have a priesthood. Catholics do. The prayer in one tradition is different from another. The literature and the texts are radically different from each other. So it leaves us with the question: Is there any generalization one could make about religion?

\n

You’re also suggesting that there’s no underlying unity that permeates all religions, that, in fact, they’re totally different from each other.

\n

I’m absolutely saying that. There have been a lot of fantasies about putting all the religions together. Mahatma Gandhi was famous for saying that all religions are, at their core, the same. But I have spent my life studying these traditions. I am a historian of religion. And the more I studied them, the more I saw that they were absolutely different.

\n

And yet, you’ve just told me that you yourself don’t believe in a divine reality. In some ways, your critique of belief systems seems to go along with what the new atheists are saying.

\n

The difference, though, is that I wouldn’t call myself an atheist. To be an atheist is not to be stunned by the mystery of things or to walk around in wonder about the universe. That’s a mode of being that has nothing to do with belief. So I have very little in common with them. As a matter of fact, one reason I wrote the book is that a much more compelling critique of belief systems comes not from the scientific side but from the religious side. When you look at belief systems from a religious perspective, what’s exposed is how limited they are, how deeply authoritarian they are, how rationalistic and comprehensive they claim to be, but at the same time how little staying power they have with the human imagination. It’s a deeper and much more incisive critique.

\n

Why are you so pessimistic?

\n

Let’s look at Islam, as an example. There’s no way of reducing Islam to a single belief system, but what you have in Islam is a very active series of belief systems. And they’re in deep conflict with each other. There’s no poetry in this. It’s all strictly hard belief, in an oppositional voice. But if you go back in Islamic history, what you get is a very deep sense of poetry. As a matter of fact, the Quran itself is considered so poetically beautiful that it’s a very high value in Islamic life to memorize it and sing it. Muslims refer to the Quran as a recitation, something to be repeated over and over again.

\n

You go back to the medieval mystical period and you find Islamic thinkers who say terribly beautiful things. There’s a story told about Abu Ali of Sind, a famous mystic. He made his annual trip across the desert, which took days, to get his supplies in the markets on the other end of the desert. Then he walked all the way back, opened the packages that he bought and found that there were ants in his cardamom seeds. Immediately, he wrapped the ants back up in the cardamom seeds, walked back across the desert and returned the ants to their home. That’s a different Islam. That’s a poetic Islam. It comes right out of the heart of that religion.

\n","content_hash":"sha256:47ffee6f28639e8406a54cea23958870a2d12837fdd1104933bfc6813cd64199","media":[],"transclusions":[],"changelog":[{"version":1,"at":"2026-10-12T16:04:15Z","note":null}]}