In this essay, I want to share thoughts on the state of religion in 2023. Specifically, we’ll discuss how the decline of religion’s viability has contributed to the Meaning Crisis, as elucidated in the great work of John Vervaeke. Then, we’ll look at how our culture might reform religion, so that it may fulfill its former role as a meta-meaning system and also come into alignment with our other systems of understanding our place in reality, such as science and philosophy.
What does a worldview entail?
For a full accounting of the evidence for the existence of the Meaning Crisis, I will point you to the link above, which goes to Vervaeke’s full series on YouTube.
For our purposes, the Meaning Crisis can be explained as the effects of a loss of the viability of our culture’s former worldviews, such as religion. A complete worldview provides the following aspects:
- Nomological order: one experiences a deep connectedness between their intellectual attempts to make sense of the world and their existential attempts to find meaning and a sense of belonging to reality.
- Normative order: one has a sense of how to move up the successive levels of reality, consciousness, and the self, in order to transcend to what is more real.
- Narrative order: one has a sense that reality and the individual are moving toward a final consummation, by way of a telos, or purpose, to existence. This purpose is evident at the level of both reality itself and the individual, as they follow the normative order in an attempt to better themselves.
For a worldview to be complete, it needs to provide sufficient explanation to make each of the above key aspects of meaning viable for its adherents. These three sources of meaning are baked into the human mind, stemming from how we establish a dialogical, reciprocal, participatory agent-arena relationship with reality.
Again, Vervaeke’s video-lecture series goes into tremendous detail on the cognitive science and philosophy behind this process. That is beyond the scope of this writing, but I recommend watching the series for the full context.
Even without endorsing or denying the veracity of any given religion, it is not controversial to say that Christianity once provided the above three aspects of a complete worldview. It is also not controversial to say that much of Western culture, particularly in the United States was, and continues to be, built on a foundation of Christianity. Though our society becomes more secular each year, the Judeo-Christian belief system continues to underlie our way of life.
The decline of religious affiliation
However, the fact that Christianity remains foundational to Western culture does not mean that it, or that religion in general, remains a viable worldview. Indeed, we need only look at Pew Research Center statistics showing that nearly a quarter of the U.S. public1 and “a third of adults under 30–are ‘religiously unaffiliated’–the highest percentages ever in Pew Research Center polling”2 history.
In roughly half of the world’s countries, these religious “nones,” who identify as unaffiliated with a religious group, are themselves the second largest religious group.3
Many of these religiously unaffiliated individuals cite a desire for an authentic spiritual life as a reason for disavowing religion. “In other words, the refusal to invest in specific organized religions does not indicate irreligiousness.”4
According to the Pew Research Center, 58% of the “nones” report feeling a deep connection with the natural world, indicating the pursuit of the three orders of a complete worldview. Many research participants expressed the opinion that religions are too isolating and unsatisfying, both in content and in practice. When surveyed, 55% of millennials in 2016 suggested that religion was “having a positive impact on the way things were going in the country,” down from 73% in 2010.5
The data indicates that, while fewer and fewer people identify as religiously affiliated, the desire for a connection to the spiritual/reality is still as strong and as inherently human as ever.
What’s striking is that the religiously unaffiliated are not all Sam Harris/Richard Dawkins-style atheists, who formulate rigorous arguments against religious belief. Such a staunch opposition betrays a deep passion for the topic of religion. By contrast, these “nones” want spirituality and a deeper connection with reality, but they don’t see religion as a viable path for obtaining meaning.
In other words, religion is not relevant to this growing section of the population, and so they disregard it rather than oppose it. Our religious institutions no longer provide the fully nomological, normative, and narrative meaning that they once did, and so religion is met with indifference rather than with interest, whether that be positive or negative.
The state of Christianity (and Western religion) today
Why might this be the case? For an answer, let’s look at the state of Christianity (and Western religion more generally) today, in 2023.
Iain McGilchrist’s work on understanding the brain is a good place to start. Specifically, he breaks down the differences between the “personalities” of the two hemispheres in the following way:
“Explicit, rationalising thought processes cannot avoid dependence on intuitive and embodied knowledge. Furthermore some areas of experience are clearly distorted by the process of making them explicit at all. Each hemisphere attends to the world differently, and therefore inevitably produces an experiential world with different qualities. The left hemisphere uses those aspects of language that aid focus on what is explicit and measurable; the right uses aspects of language, such as metaphor, that are capable of expressing, as does music, what by its nature remains resistant to such a process.”6
In his extensive volume, The Master and His Emissary,7 McGilchrist elucidates the myriad ways in which contemporary Western culture has idolized the left-brain way of thinking, to the detriment of the development and realization of right-brain thinking. This is echoed in Vervaeke’s video series8 and in philosopher Bernardo Kastrup’s More Than Allegory.9
The converging arguments of those works boil down to this: since the Scientific Revolution, and under the current mainstream metaphysical paradigm of reductionist physicalism, society has placed a premium on propositional knowledge, that which can be explicitly and measurably known through propositions, rather than perspectival and participatory knowledge, or knowing how to act (i.e., to be) in a dialogical, reciprocal agent-arena relationship with reality.
In other words, we care more about having explicit, measurable, and literal knowledge of reality than we do about knowing how to be connected to and part of that reality (that is, knowing what it is like to be part of that reality).
This goes back to Erich Fromm’s differentiation between the having mode and the being mode. The mode of having prioritizes possession, whereas the being mode prioritizes perceiving oneself as a “carrier of properties and abilities, rather than the consumer of things”.10 In short, this prioritization of having over being is at the root of the origins of the Meaning Crisis.
Naturally, the left-brain focuses on propositional knowledge, and the right-brain, with its proclivity for dealing with the “wholeness” of things in an integrated fashion, focuses on perspectival and participatory knowledge. Since the religiously affiliated are members of society at large, they have been equally susceptible to this shift toward a worship of the left hemisphere, even if they reject science for the purposes of spiritual bypassing. Indeed, such a diametrical opposition of science and dogma only encourages the use of propositional knowledge to try to refute scientific conclusions and advance literal interpretations of sacred texts (e.g., creationism vs. evolution by natural selection).
Religion has therefore transitioned from its original purpose, which is to “re-link”11 us with reality by means of metaphor, ritual, and liturgy, to a fundamentalist literalism that seeks an explicit, and ultimately shallow, interpretation of sacred texts.
The rise of fundamentalism in Western Christianity is precisely what has stripped the religion of its meaning-making machinery, thus converting it into an unviable worldview that no longer provides fully nomological, normative, and narrative orders.
We can see this in the following ways.
First, fundamentalism is a likely reason why the “nones” responded that the current religious institutions feel isolating. Fundamentalism transforms a religion from a set of practices and rituals that promote perspectival and participatory knowing (i.e., practices that teach a way of being connected to reality), into a set of arbitrary moral codes and beliefs that one is required to have. Such a religion then, by definition, creates a stark dividing line between true believers of those arbitrary moral codes, and everyone else. The rest of society becomes an “other” that can be villainized, thus isolating the adherents from the culture outside the congregation. This benefits the organization behind the congregation, but hurts the individuals within the faith.
Judgment of the “other” takes on a far greater importance, and can even become one of the beliefs that a true believer must have. While adherents connect with each other (and with the organization) in that shared act of seeing this “other” as an enemy of their arbitrary “truth,” the congregation as individuals and as a collective loses connection to other people and to reality. They recede into their own echo chamber and are encouraged to close ranks around the organization, which often asks them to prove their devotion in the form of monetary donations and purchases.
Adherents come to see themselves as the “elite,” by virtue of a hyper-prioritization of their propositional knowledge, which is an entirely subjective, yet “literal” interpretation of the sacred texts. Evidence of the irrationality of this position can be found in the disputes between denominations over their respective “literal” interpretations of the same text.
Despite this “elite” status, the adherents also share a strong sense of victimhood at the hands of the broader culture, which naturally rejects the religion’s strident demands and narrow beliefs as either irrelevant or as flat-out wrong. The shared notion that they are victims of an immoral culture further deepens both the adherents’ confirmation bias and their isolation from the rest of reality.
Such a view destroys any chance of having perspectival and participatory knowledge of themselves in relation to reality, and thus undermines the religion’s ability to provide nomological, normative, and narrative orders. In short, the religion fails to provide meaning, and becomes irrelevant.
Second, a “literal,” left-brained, fully propositional reading of a sacred text removes the bulk of that text’s levels of truth, which are actually expressed not in a literal fashion, but through myth.
“Myth” has become a curse word in contemporary Western thought. Due to this same prioritization of literality, we see myth as something false, something to be debunked, something valueless. However, “myths are the glue that holds society together, providing an indispensable, meaning-making function”.12
British anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski says that myth, “expresses, enhances and codifies belief, it safeguards and enforces morality, it vouches for the efficacy of ritual and contains practical rules for the guidance of man.”13
In other words, myths convey truths about what we, as a culture, value and do not value. For this purpose, they use symbolic thinking, story, explanation, and ritual to help us develop perspectival and participatory knowledge about ourselves, each other, and our place within reality. The goal is to become (i.e., the being mode) wise through this process of enlightenment, achieving transcendence beyond the self’s parasitic processing and egoic distortion.
Our culture’s denigration of myths to the level of worthless lies that were perhaps useful in times long gone, when humanity lacked the propositional knowledge that we’ve enjoyed since the Scientific Revolution, is one of the greatest tragedies in human history. It has directly led to the Meaning Crisis and to the rise of religious fundamentalism.
The irony, of course, is that banishing myth from our culture was supposed to defang religion to the extent that the scientific worldview would become a sufficient replacement. Instead, the loss of myth in its proper role has undermined society’s sense of meaning, empowered religious fundamentalists, and created a deep existential dread that science alone is not equipped to resolve.
Western culture now looks to science alone and to left-hemispheric ways of thinking for transcendence and enlightenment, to fill the role that religion once did. We have replaced priests with public figures like Bill Nye and we call them our new “wise men.” But, as McGilchrist explains, “Explicit, rationalising thought processes cannot avoid dependence on intuitive and embodied knowledge.”
That is, wisdom stems from not just propositional knowledge, but also from perspectival and participatory knowledge. Being, not just having.
Under a fundamentalist, hyper-propositional interpretation of sacred texts, however, our language can convey only one level of meaning: the literal. And this is typically the level where the least amount of truth can be found.
The result is that adherents are required to have literal beliefs, such as that the Earth is 6,000 years old, or that the origination/creation of reality occurred over seven Earth-days. Gone are the myths, the rituals, and the liturgy that show adherents how to be connected with reality. Those levels of meaning that can lead to perspectival and participatory knowing are sacrificed in the name of prioritizing propositional knowing, in a culture that worships having over being.
Of course, these literal interpretations conflict with the empirical data from science, further isolating the religion’s adherents from the rest of the culture, which chooses to believe the science over the religious group’s arbitrary interpretation of the given sacred text. Additionally, such dissonance between science and their religious beliefs further undermines the adherents’ sense of nomological, normative, and narrative order.
The religion can’t possibly provide those aspects of meaning in its worldview anymore, because they’ve all been undermined by fundamentalism’s replacement of truth in the form of myth with empirically refuted falsehoods in the form of literality.
Third, we know from cognitive science, psychology, physics, thermodynamics, biology, and the philosophical fields (particularly epistemology), that we don’t access the world directly. The logical, reasoning, and linguistic capacities of one species on one planet are not sufficient for grasping the literal truth of reality.
That’s because reality is combinatorially explosive. The combinations of possibilities and nominally labeled things are so incredibly vast, we can’t possibly comprehend them in a purely propositional sense. The world outside ourselves is simply too entropic and uncertain.
Instead, we utilize an encoded form of reality, using concepts, symbols, and images, including words and language, to access reality indirectly. In this way, we receive information vital to our survival without facing combinatorial explosion and a level of external entropy so vast, we would dissolve if we mirrored it in our internal state.
In other words, we use representations of reality to indirectly access reality, in and of itself.
Therefore, when we lose the depth of our linguistic symbology, as is the case when fundamentalism hollows out all meaning but a single, arbitrary, “literal” interpretation from a sacred text, we necessarily lose touch with reality. The religion then does precisely the opposite of its “re-linking” purpose. By pursuing a literal, nonrepresentational knowledge of reality, dogma reduces our knowledge of reality in all senses (propositionally, perspectivally, and participatorially). There can be no hope of the religion providing a complete worldview under such self-sabotage.
Fourth, if allowed to continue, such deleterious effects of fundamentalism will cause the myths of the religion to lose their power to flex with the changing needs of its adherents. The arbitrary “literal” interpretation and moral code that one must have become ossified, rigid, and very quickly outdated.
A sacred text is one that provides perennial truths.14 In other words, they are sacred precisely because each new generation can read the text and take truth from it. The myths, by their very nature as metaphor, symbolism, and ritual, are flexible enough to provide truth even when the state of the adherents’ world changes over time.
However, the literalism demanded by today’s fundamentalist dogma requires permanence, or else how could it be literally true? As a result, the religion and any fruitful meaning it once bore die on the vine, as new generations find no truth in an arbitrary interpretation of the text that has outstayed its welcome (if it was ever truly welcome).
The true believers of such fundamentalism may see ossification as a point in their belief system’s favor: “look how consistent and reliable our beliefs are!” But that enthusiasm is only enjoyed by those whom the fundamentalist dogma has isolated from the rest of the culture, who in turn cannot find the meaning they seek from the religion.
Such is the state of Christianity today. What once provided Western society with a complete worldview has now become a set of beliefs and an arbitrary moral code one must have, all based on a hollow, literalist, dogmatic interpretation of its sacred scriptures. Christianity today cares more about having than about being. It has prioritized propositional knowing over perspectival and participatory knowing. As such, Christianity has relinquished its ability to “re-link” us with reality, and has therefore lost its power of meaning-making. Therefore, it has ceased to be a viable worldview, especially for younger generations.
The ultimate evidence of this conclusion is in the nature of Christian sermons, which are now commonly focused on which beliefs to have, and on villainizing groups seen as the “other.” In the Baptist churches, for instance, religious rituals that are rich in symbolism have given way to a lecture format, in which visitors passively listen (and watch PowerPoint slides), rather than participate in practices meant to guide transcendence and wisdom.
Furthermore, prayer has become a recitation of wishlists to God. Churches tell adherents what to do and what beliefs to have, and the adherents tell God what to do and what they want to have.
Additionally, as religion loses its meaning-making machinery, its adherents turn to other sources of meaning, like politics and the state, often with devastating results. Nazism and Marxism were both examples of looking to the state for meaning (i.e., for the three orders of a complete worldview), and both led to some of the greatest bloodshed in history.
Today, the Evangelical voting bloc in America is an activist force, primarily within conservatism. However, in complete contradiction to the principles of small government and individual freedom that are cornerstones of conservative thought, including a healthy fear of government intrusion into private life, this voting bloc pushes policies that wield the power of the state to force the rest of society, the “other,” to have the same arbitrary morals and beliefs as they claim to.
This is a key sign that organized Christianity has even become irrelevant to its own adherents, who now turn to the state and to political activism for meaning in life, and to try to salvage nomological, normative, and narrative orders. The religion itself has taken a subservient role to politics in the adherents’ search for meaning and connection. Christianity is now part of a political identity, and is ultimately a political football, rather than a complete worldview that integrates one with reality.
After all, what other option do adherents have besides becoming activists in the arena of the state? If a religion has reduced its meaning-making to one set of beliefs that it views, in a fundamentalist sense, as literally true, then the only valid move for the adherents is to force everyone else in the culture to adopt that set of beliefs too.
Where is the “re-linking” in such an institution? Where is the meaning? How can an adherent of that religion become wise in their relationship with reality/God?
Indeed, the state of Christianity today is in large part to blame for its own unviability. In turn, the loss of Christianity as a complete worldview has led (not exclusively) to the Meaning Crisis, because we have no viable alternatives with which to replace it. The scientific worldview, for instance, is ill-equipped for the job, and our culture’s reliance on science alone to provide the transcendent meaning that religion once provided is another contributing factor to the Meaning Crisis. Such a worldview is called Scientism, and it suffers from dogma and fundamentalism as much as any other religion gone awry.
Even if we did have another complete worldview on offer, Western society is built on Christianity, so perhaps the best approach to resolving the Meaning Crisis is to make Christianity viable once more.
For a way to restore religion’s true purpose and to reconcile it with science, we must turn to a branch of philosophy called metaphysics. Through philosophy, we can enhance the scientific worldview, while simultaneously rediscovering the “re-linking” power of religion, so as to align both domains and take a holistic, dialogical, integrated approach to our relationship with reality/God.
Reforming Christianity and Western religion
The natural sciences, like physics, tell us how nature behaves. We make observations of nature’s behavior, then form predictive models of how we think nature will behave in the future, and finally put our predictions to the test via the scientific method. This approach has allowed us to invent technology that has improved our lives in countless ways.
What science, by definition, can’t do is tell us what nature is, in and of itself. That is the subject of metaphysics, the philosophical study of reality (and ontology, the study of being). In this way, it goes beyond (“meta-“) physics.
As with the word “myth,” we must correct a misconception about “metaphysics.” A segment of the culture has adopted the word to refer to a set of Spiritualist practices such as tarot, astrology, crystals, etc. That is not what is meant by “metaphysics” in this writing. Here, I refer to the academic field of philosophy.
Metaphysics reconciles spirituality with science because it must account for all of the empirical data of science, while also providing the orders of a complete religious worldview (that is, of a religion that is fulfilling its purpose of “re-linking”).
Science is metaphysically neutral, but it informs metaphysics. If an ontological theory conflicts with the empirical data from science, that theory must be revised or discarded. A valid metaphysics encompasses and explains all of our scientific knowledge, therefore delivering propositional knowledge.
On the other hand, philosophy addresses some of the same questions that religion does, such as the nature of reality, of consciousness, of ethics, and of knowledge itself. In that way, when it goes beyond science, philosophy helps us see what the myths and the symbolism of religions and sacred texts point to. We can bring the deeper truths of the metaphors back into the reach of the intellect through metaphysical, ontological theories, which can be analytically reviewed and debated.
My critique of the culture’s worship of propositional knowledge is not meant to devalue such knowing. It is incredibly valuable, but a problem arises when we elevate it far above perspectival and participatory knowing, as has happened in Western society. When we focus on developing one aspect of the psyche over others, we lose balance and, ultimately, wisdom.
You need propositional knowing, because in today’s culture, the “intellect is the bouncer of the heart,” as Kastrup says in More than Allegory. The propositional knowing of an ontology gives the adherent intellectual permission, in this left-brain-dominant culture, to accept a renewed spirituality that is grounded in science, which in turn is reconciled with religious myth through philosophy.
In so doing, each domain (science, philosophy, and religion) performs its role in meaning-making in an integrated, dialogical fashion, thereby matching the dialogical, reciprocal, agent-arena relationship we have with reality.
The fundamentalism that is religion’s current method of trying to provide propositional knowing (at the expense of perspectival and participatory knowing) should, therefore, be replaced with metaphysics, which provides all three kinds of knowing.
As for which metaphysical theory is the best on the table, I have written extensively on this site in favor of analytic idealism and conscious realism, for reasons too complex to cover here. You can read my thoughts on idealism in The Melody of Reality. Or, better yet, read the work of Kastrup, Donald Hoffman, McGilchrist, and Thomas Campbell, all of whom are far more authoritative than I am.
I do contend that mainstream reductionist physicalism is both a cause of the Meaning Crisis and also incompatible with a solution to the crisis. The same is true of any metaphysics that claims that there is no meaning to be found outside of ourselves, but only within; in other words, that meaning is a delusion.
So long as such a metaphysics is our culture’s mainstream view, we will not resolve the Meaning Crisis, as belonging to a higher order of meaning (that is, external and glorious) is inherent to how humans define a meaningful life.
Fortunately, there are a wealth of arguments today that reductionist physicalism is logically incoherent, internally inconsistent, inelegant and unparsimonious, and lacks empirical support and thus also explanatory power. I also contend that reductionism itself is logically incoherent, due to its epistemic problems. Again, the specifics of the debate are beyond the scope of this piece, but I direct you back to Vervaeke and Kastrup for details, or to The Melody of Reality for my take.
So how might Christianity implement this kind of change, so as to become relevant again?
First, Christianity should follow the example of Jesus and focus not on judgment, arbitrary moral codes, and propositional beliefs, but on understanding, empathy, and a participatory connection between people and reality/God.
Second, if Christianity wishes to be “conservative,” focus not on political activism, but on restoring the old liturgical and symbolic practices of the faith. Make common once again the rituals that provide a perspectival and participatory experience, rather than a passive, propositional one. The Christian service should not engage the intellect so much as help the congregation transcend the intellect, connecting to other aspects of the psyche and, ultimately, with reality.
Third, priests and pastors should play a dual role. In one sense, as philosophical counselors using metaphysical propositional knowledge to give the congregation’s intellects permission to allow their hearts to be receptive to the truths evoked by the metaphors in the liturgy and sacred texts. That embrace of metaphysics should include a rigorous accounting of scientific data, an analytic philosophical approach, and, I would argue, a commitment to metaphysical idealism.
In another sense, the clergy should be actors who facilitate transcendence through the performance of rituals and practices. Additionally, their role must be to distill the less accessible content of ontological debate into a form that is accessible for everyone who does not have an educational background in philosophy.
In other words, stop teaching arbitrary moral codes and judgments. Instead, foster a culture of connection, ontology, and symbolic, participatory experience.
That is how we can restore religion’s ability to “re-link” us to reality, if only organized religion would change course.
Footnotes/References:
- https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/religious-landscape-study/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise/
- https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/06/22/what-is-each-countrys-second-largest-religious-group/
- Vervaeke, J., Mastropietro, C. & Miscevic, F. (2017) Zombies in Western culture: a twenty-first century crisis. [Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, ©] [Pdf] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2019667839/.
- https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/01/04/millennials-views-of-news-media-religious-organizations-grow-more-negative/
- McGilchrist, Iain. (2018). ‘God, Metaphor, and the Language of the Hemispheres’, in Paul Chilton, and Monika Kopytowska (eds), Religion, Language, and the Human Mind (New York, 2018; online edn, Oxford Academic, 24 May 2018), https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190636647.003.0006, accessed 30 Dec. 2022.
- McGilchrist, I. (2009). The master and his emissary: The divided brain and the making of the Western world. New Haven: Yale University Press.
- Vervaeke, John. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb5eC1ZfZwWJ
- Kastrup, B. (2016). More Than Allegory: On Religious Myth, Truth And Belief. iff Books.
- “To Have Or to Be: Erich Fromm on two different ways of living one’s life”: https://daily-philosophy.com/to-have-or-to-be/#:~:text=Erich%20Fromm%20distinguishes%20between%20two,than%20the%20consumers%20of%20things.
- The etymology of “religion” is “religare” and/or “religio”, both of which have the root of “ligare”, meaning “to bind” or “to link”. Taken from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3087765#metadata_info_tab_contents
- Sachs, Jonah. (2012). Winning the Story Wars: Why those who tell–and live–the best stories will rule the future. Harvard Business Review Press.
- Harwood, Frances. (1976). “Myth, Memory and the Oral Tradition: Cicero in the Trobriands.” American Anthropologist 78, no. 4: 785.
- From: https://markmulvey.medium.com/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis-by-john-vervaeke-ep-35-61554e778eed and Vervaeke, John. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb5eC1ZfZwWJ
