In the 19th century, the scientific method became codified and modern science, as we know it, took off. The eruption of scientific thinking collided with many religious perspectives, as emerging academic disciplines such as paleontology, astrophysics, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology appeared to conflict with the basic assumptions of traditional faiths, a tension perhaps exemplified most saliently by the Scopes Monkey Trial of 1925 which pitted evolution and Christianity against one another. This perception proved a disservice to both religion and science. In the West (particularly in Europe) the scientific age coincided with intense secularization. Conversely, where religion flourished, scientific conclusions were often viewed with skepticism, such as lingering controversies over global warming and vaccines predominantly pursued by the religious right. Yet, despite some of these remaining controversies, public intellectuals (e.g. C.S. Lewis, John Lennox, Francis Collins, and many others) have, over the last century, made compelling and impassioned cases that religion and science, although often perceived to conflict, are actually fully mutually compatible. Jesuit institutions are prime exemplars of this understanding, as encapsulated in the motto of Georgetown University: “Utraque Unum.”
This compatibilist position is generally defended on the epistemological and ontological grounds that science is merely the attempt to test falsifiable hypotheses through repeated observation. Such a method, as useful as it is, is fundamentally incapable of disproving the existence of a transcendent God, and supernatural phenomena, if real, cannot necessarily be predictably observed and are therefore potentially supra-scientific. For example, the scientific study of biology may not require supernatural hypotheses, but it does not intrinsically deny the existence of the supernatural. One can be religious and also be an expert in almost any scientific discipline. However, one academic discipline presents a potential unique impasse in the effort todeconflict science and religion, and that is the very study of religion itself. Many religious theorists and social scientists, including Tylor, Durkheim, Freud, Marx, and others implicitly approach the study of religion from a secular standpoint, but perhaps no theorist has more stridently articulated the necessity of this approach than Jonathan Z. Smith.
Smith contends that the academic study of religion has no more room for the supernatural than any other academic discipline, writing that “religion has no independent existence apart from the academy,” and that “for this reason, the student of religion … must be relentlessly self-conscious” to not insert their own (presumably religious) biases and predispositions into their academic study.1 This presents a unique issue because, unlike a naturalistic approach to biology, a naturalistic approach to the study of religion innately and directly assumes that the underlying religious claims under examination bely no intrinsic truth, and this approach thereby places the academy in direct opposition to religion. Smith’s approach would require, unlike any other discipline, that its students either be or think like atheists. This fact alone does not render this approach incorrect, but I do believe that by pitting science against religion in such a manner, Smith’s approach warrants special scrutiny. In this regard, I will only be able to scratch the surface of Smith’s perspective, so I will focus on the acute matter of Smith’s ontology, which I believe fundamentally prohibits the very taxonomic project that he envisions regarding the categorization of religion.
Perhaps Smith’s most provocative claim is that “there is no data for religion” and that therefore “religion is the sole creation of the scholar’s study.”2 I believe that what he means by this is that, in a sense, there are billions of ‘religions’ at any given moment, insofar as every theist has their own idiosyncratic (even if purely imagined) relationship with and conception of the sacred, but to attempt to tie these together into a broader proper-noun religion is an “imaginative act of comparison and generalization.”3 For example, Smith speaks of “Judaisms” rather than “Judaism.”4 I think Smith identifies a number of important truths here, namely that traditional categorizations of religion lack nuance and fail to recognize the diversity of understandings that exist within traditionally conceived ‘religions.’ The problem is how to proceed from this understanding. Smith suggests proceeding in the study of religion by classifying religion through a polythetic method, organizing religion in such a way that “each individual [subject] would most closely resemble its nearest neighbor and least closely resemble its furthest,” by comparing shared characteristics between individual subjects rather than focusing on essential qualities.5 Smith punts on creating such a polythetic classification of religions himself, but suggests that such a project is possible.6
While I appreciate the theoretical merits of such a classification, I think Smith’s own views preclude the feasibility of such an approach; it’s not clear Smith appreciates the magnitude of the problem that he has unearthed. Smith claims that religion is the product of the imagination of the scholar, connected together from arbitrary and fluctuating biases. This raises fundamental issues regarding philosophy of mind and the (potentially illusory) nature of consciousness, and the degree to which the products of our collective consciousness exist (or don’t exist) in the abstract. For example, in doing away with broad categories of proper-noun religions, Smith attempts to atomize religion, but he doesn't specify when that atomization is to stop. There is no reason to believe that this atomization should not transcend both time and relation: For example, ‘Jesuit Priest A’ and ‘Jesuit Priest B’ possess their own minutely distinct ‘Roman Catholicisms,’ but ‘Jesuit Priest A’ today also possesses a slightly different version of Roman Catholicism than he did yesterday. The Buddha articulates this more eloquently than I could, writing that:7
Form is like a glob of foam; feeling, a bubble; perception, a mirage; fabrications, a banana tree; consciousness, a magic trick … However you observe them, appropriately examine them, they’re empty, void to whoever sees them appropriately.
In this vein, the Jesuit Priest can never fully comprehend his own version of Roman Catholicism in its entirety at any one moment. He can only go from moment to moment thinking about, or doing, different parts of it. All the while, from moment to moment, the Jesuit Priest becomes a slightly different, newer person. The Jesuit Priest appears to do to his own beliefs (and to himself) just what Smith accuses the scholar of doing to religion as a whole, undertaking an “imaginative act of comparison and generalization” in imagining his own conception of his own faith, and even his own conception of self.
Within Smith’s framework, even if one takes a performative approach rather than a belief-oriented approach, this problem of atomization still remains when attempting to isolate subjects to study. Take Hanukkah, for example, during which, each night, for eight consecutive nights, a small ceremony is held and a candle on a menorah is lit. Does the entire 8-day period constitute one performance, or are there eight unique performances? If the entire 8-day period is one performance, then there must be some objective understanding and belief that each night is related to the other in an important and distinct way. Hanukkah serves as a clear example, but this atomization problem can exist within any ritual. As an extreme example, when a Christian makes the sign of the cross when attending church, they make a shape with their fingers on one hand, and then use this hand to touch four areas of their body. If we attempt to focus on ritual without considering the belief of the practitioner, then is the contortion of the hands a different ritual than the touching of one’s body? If, alternatively, making the sign of the cross is one encapsulated performance, then what isolates that performance from one’s attendance at church that day, especially if we discard belief? For that matter, would it be incorrect to say that one’s entire life encapsulates one long and continuous performance, or even that it is but a tiny component of an ongoing, trans-millennial performance put on by our entire species which began at some indeterminate primordial moment long ago? Performances, to use Buddhist language, are dependently arisen things, and, without considering the belief of the practitioners, are boundless and are defined only in the imagination. So, this dilemma of non-isolatable data appears to exist within the study of religion both when the scholar prioritizes belief and when the scholar prioritizes performance. If we go down this path further, the rejection of form can be expanded to any concept, and we must conclude that Jonathan Z. Smith himself is no more real than the religions he imagines.
Although Smith doesn’t take it this far himself, this understanding seems to be the logical extension of his articulation, especially given his definition of religion as something which “describes human thought and action, most frequently in terms of belief and norms of behavior.”8 Moreover, this interpretation comports with Smith in that it boldly underscores his claim that there really is “no data for religion.” While it might seem that this position reveals that there is a near-infinite pool of datum (“a staggering amount,” to use Smith’s words), such as the Jesuit’s beliefs or performances during moments X, Y, Z, and so on, none of it can truly be isolated, and therefore, amongst a sea of ‘religious activity,’ there are no actual data points.9 However, this presents a massive problem for Smith’s taxonomic proposal. What data would be used? What religions would we compare? Smith wants to look at and classify Judaisms through a polythetic, statistics-driven method, but I don’t know how he could even isolate these ‘Judaisms’ to examine.10 If the scholar is going to arbitrarily manufacture data points to classify, how can the resulting taxonomy be anything but entirely arbitrary itself? This is clearly different than biological cladistic taxonomy, because individual organisms, unlike Smith’s religions, are isolatable from one another.
Smith attempts to overcome this problem by positing three criteria necessary for identifying relevant datum, but the first criteria, that the “exemplum” be “well and fully understood,” seems insurmountable within Smith’s framework: If the beliefs and/or performances in question are non-isolatable and boundless, then they fundamentally cannot be “well and fully understood.”11 Moreover, his second criterion, that the datum be “displayed in the service of some important theory, some paradigm, some fundamental question, some central element in the academic imagination of religion” is so vague as to render it useless, and is ironic given his earlier claim that the scholar must leave all predispositions at the door.12 What distinguishes ‘important’ from ‘unimportant’ in the academic imagination of something for which there is no data? Somewhere deeply buried at the root of any answer to that question lies an embedded normative moral claim which itself, for perhaps the majority of humanity, rests perched atop an implicit religious claim— Is the academy itself not indelibly dependent upon the very ‘biases’ that Smith wants excise?
Nevertheless, I’m not convinced that any useful taxonomy of religion is necessarily doomed, although I think that for a taxonomy to be conceptually feasible, one must shed Smith’s notion that relationships established are purely the invention of the scholar. The Periodic Table of Elements serves as a helpful example. For the purpose of this metaphor, elements are comparable to proper-noun religions, and individual atoms are comparable to individual religious beliefs in that no two atoms, even of the same element, are truly identical, and similarly individual atoms (in the sense that they exist as waves) are like religious performance in that they lack determinable boundaries.13 Two atoms of gold will have slight subatomic differences from one another, and even from themselves as quantum processes unfold from moment to moment. Moreover, the method of classifying elements, the Periodic Table, was invented in the academy; it is the product of the scholar of chemistry. However, it would not be accurate to say that the categorization of elements in the Periodic Table is merely an arbitrary “imaginative act of comparison and generalization.” The data that is used to organize the periodic table does have an “independent existence outside of the academy,” and the elements themselves are not “the sole creation of the scholars’ study.” Hence, even though each individual atom is truly unique and constantly fluctuating, the categorization of the elements in the Periodic Table is both possible and useful.
I see no reason why the same thing cannot be done with religion so long as one recognizes, contra Smith, that at some level there is an objective ‘form’ of each religion that exists prior to the scholars’ discovery of it. Perhaps, as an example (one which is illustrative but the veracity of which is not necessary for my broader point), there might genuinely exist something transcendent and sacred which we can experience in our temporal existence, and this numinous interference, perhaps through complex psychic or subconscious mental hierophanies, acts as a subtle but direct catalyst for all religious behavior. In that case the practitioner (and potentially the scholar) would be realizing religion.
Here, I have presented two very different philosophical perspectives: One which comports more with Buddhist idealism regarding the transitory nature of consciousness, perception, and dependent arising, and one which seems to comport more with a Platonic perspective in regard to the role of objective forms.14 It is beyond the scope of this essay, and certainly beyond my own ability, to argue for one position over the other, but the point is that they do not appear to be mutually compatible. Smith seems to attempt to operate under both perspectives, engaging in rhetoric that aligns with the Buddhist-like epistemological skepticism all the while wanting to work, as a Western scholar, with a more Platonic understanding of the nature of ideas. As the statistician George Box famously said: “All models are wrong, but some are useful.” Smith’s model is challenged insofar as the very impossibility of its construction denies even its utility. This analysis has only touched upon the complex issues at play, but hopefully I have made the case that Smith’s vision for the study of religion is not as straightforward as he seems to suggest and therefore deserves more study, particularly as he leads a charge to position the academy in a position of direct conflict with religion itself, a position which I think the academy ought to be very wary of sleep-walking into.
Bibliography
Baird, Christopher S, PhD. "Are two atoms of the same element identical?" Science Questions with Surprising Answers. Last modified March 13, 2014. https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/03/13/are-two-atoms-of-the-same-element-identical/.
Pheṇa Sutta (SN 22:95). dhammatalks.org, n.d. https://www.dhammatalks.org/suttas/SN/SN22_95.html.
Smith, Jonathan Z. "Religion, Religions, Religious." In Critical Terms for Religious Studies, by Mark C. Taylor, 269-84. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Smith, Jonathan Z. Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown. Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Jonathan Z. Smith, Imagining Religion: From Babylon to Jonestown (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2013), xi.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Id. 18.
Id. 4.
Id. 18, 18.
“Foam,” Pheṇa Sutta, SN 22:95, from the Pāli Canon.
Jonathan Z. Smith, "Religion, Religions, Religious," in Critical Terms for Religious Studies, by Mark C. Taylor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), 269.; Smith might disagree with my characterization of his position, but I can only speak to the argument of the black-letter text of his writings, which I read as the logical predicate to the position I have laid out.
Smith, Imagining Religion, xi.
Id. 18.
Id. 18.
Ibid.
Dr. Christopher S. Baird, "Are two atoms of the same element identical?," Science Questions with Surprising Answers, last modified March 13, 2014, https://www.wtamu.edu/~cbaird/sq/2014/03/13/are-two-atoms-of-the-same-element-identical/.
I’m not claiming that either of these positions are exactly “Buddhist” or exactly “Platonic,” rather I invoke those terms because I think they’re helpful reference points.