Category Archives: Theology

How Buddhism & Marxism complement Each Other By Adrian Kreutz

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As the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss wrote in 1955: ‘Marxism and Buddhism are doing the same thing, but at different levels.’

At least since Tenzin Gyatso, His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet, commented on his Marxist inclination in 1993, it is evident that Buddhism and Marxism have something in common:

Of all the modern economic theories, the economic system of Marxism is founded on moral principles, while capitalism is concerned only with gain and profitability … The failure of the regime in the former Soviet Union was, for me, not the failure of Marxism but the failure of totalitarianism. For this reason, I still think of myself as half-Marxist, half-Buddhist.

And Marx himself knew something of Buddhism. In a letter to a friend, written in 1866, he described his own meditation practice:

I have become myself a sort of walking stick, running up and down the whole day, and keeping my mind in that state of nothingness which Buddhism considers the climax of human bliss.

So do Marxism and Buddhism really complement each other? How?

Central to both philosophies is a schema of ‘diagnosis and treatment’. They share a diagnosis: life is essentially suffering. For Marx, the chief catalyst of suffering is capitalism. Capitalism creates more suffering for the working class, whereas the bourgeoisie and the capitalists are comparatively well-off – but that doesn’t mean that capitalism does not create suffering on the side of the winners too, as I shall soon point out. For the Buddha, the transient and fleeting nature of life makes suffering inescapable. In modern Japanese, the gentle sadness associated with nature’s state of flux is called mono no aware. The Indo-Tibetan Buddhist term for the effects of the impermanence of nature is duḥkha, which might be translated as suffering, but sometimes pain, frustration, sorrow, misery or dissatisfaction is more applicable. Duḥkha is the first of the Four Noble Truths that the original Buddha propounded right after his experience of enlightenment under the Bodhi Tree.

It is not difficult to see what is behind the concept of duḥkha: life is full of suffering – mental and physical – and in many cases there is little we can do about it. We get older and lose our physical and mental esprit, we lose the people we love, and the possessions we dearly hold on to will one day no longer be ours. All this is inevitable since the world is a world of impermanence and transience – anitya is the Buddhist term. We are plagued by anxiety caused by the fear of becoming ill, losing our job, losing a loved one, losing money, losing fame. The reality of suffering is an incontestable, ubiquitous truth.

This gets us to the second of the Noble Truths, which is trṣṇa, often translated as thirst, but perhaps better thought of as attachment. We are attached to our job, our family, our possessions and our selves. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it strengthens human relations and self-care, but it also causes suffering when paired with the impermanence of everything that we are attached to. So the cause of our suffering is not the nature of reality itself, but our attitude towards it. We cling to the erroneous idea that good things will go on forever and bad things will either never happen or, if they do, we will soon return to the good place.

According to Marx’s Das Kapital (1867), there is more to duḥkha than the impermanent nature of reality. There is this socioeconomic system that fosters a mechanism of competition between individuals in the quest for accumulated wealth to which the people that produce it have only limited access or no access at all. Through this process, the majority of people are abused, controlled and mistreated, alienated from their human essence – not to mention the exploitation of nature and its resources. Marx saw that capitalism generates an extra amount of unnecessary duḥkha: it keeps people in poverty (relative to the value of their labour), it keeps people unemployed (to nurture competition and to tie the workers to the capitalist), it plays with the health of people (by forcing them to work under harmful circumstances, having to fear pecuniary injury when medical care is necessary) and, above all, it alienates people from the essence of their human existence (by the division of labour and long working hours). Social inequality and horrendous living conditions lead to crime, violence and hatred – this is no surprise. Crime, poverty, alienation and exploitation cause suffering, but not exclusively on the side of the exploited workers. Capitalists live in constant fear of losing their status and their money, so they have to work hard to protect it – what you own, in the end, owns you.

App-based mindfulness practice has become the newest balm for the stressed-out capitalist

For Buddhists, the source of suffering lies in a conflict between how we take reality to be and how reality really is. To get rid of suffering, then, is to apprehend reality as it really is – this is being in the mode of enlightenment. According to Marx, there is an extra source of suffering in the mode of production. So, for him, the point is to change this awful mode of production to something better. But as with enlightenment, it is hard to see the problem in the first place, and the capitalist system does everything to hide its malevolence behind the welcoming curtains of consumer culture.

From a Buddhist perspective, the capitalist motor is fuelled by humankind’s deepest vice: its trṣṇa. Marx understood that the whole economic system is based on consumption, and marketing agencies know how to push trṣṇa to the realms of utter perversion, thereby warranting a continuum of consumption and labour. The worker is the hamster, consumer culture is the hamster wheel. People are tricked into believing that Furbies, iPads and all those other pointless goods and services are necessary for a happy and fulfilled existence. A sense of ‘meaning’ has been replaced with instant, short-term, on-demand happiness.

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The Mathematical Surprises Within The Qur’anic Verses-By Azeem Farooki

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Lecture by Farooki Sahib at The New City Jewish Center  “The Learning Collaborative Class – May 28, 2019”

Topic – Mathematical surprises within the 6236 verses of the Qur’an and reminders in the verses for humanity to observe natural phenomenon.

Introduction

Prophet of Islam Muhammad Ibn Abdullah was born in Makkah, KSA in 570. His mother was Amina and father was Abdullah who died before Prophet’s birth. He came under the care of his paternal grandfather Abdul Muttalib. At the age of 6 he lost his mother and at 8 his grandfather died. He was entrusted to his uncle Abu Talib who had become the new head of the clan of Hashim within the ruling tribe of Quraish of Makkah. He was illiterate, could not read or write. When he was 22, he was employed by a local business woman, Khadija bint Khuwaylid, to look after her business by travelling in caravans from Makkah to Palestine. She was impressed by his honesty and proposed marriage, he was 25 and she was 40 years old and had two sons and four daughters, both sons died in infancy.

The marriage brought financial stability to the bridegroom who was deeply distressed with the local lawlessness and immoral behavior of his tribal society. He started going for spiritual retreats to a solitary place as was the custom of his tribe. Ramadan was the traditional month of retreat and it was one night he was meditating in the cave when Angel Gabriel came to him in the form of a man and asked him to recite five verses. He was told that he was selected to be the Messenger of God.

Thus began the series of visits and recitals by the Angel Gabriel for the next 23 years until the entire Qur’an in Arabic of 6236 Verses was received by the Prophet. It was revealed incrementally over a period of 23 years, beginning 609 CE, when the Prophet was 40, and concluding in 632 CE, the year of his death at the age of 62. 80% of Qur’an, 4613 Verses, was revealed during 610 – 622 in Makkah and remainder 20% of Qur’an, 1623 Verses, in Medina from 622 – 632.

The Verses are not in chronological order or organized around subject or topic. Why, we don’t know. It is exactly as Prophet was told to recite by Angel Gabriel.

The Five Pillars of Islam are the five obligations that every Muslim must satisfy in order to live a decent life and develop a family. Carrying out these obligations provides the framework of the daily activities in a Muslim society. They are:

• Shahada: Reciting the Muslim profession of faith.

There is one God and Muhammad is his messenger.

• Salah: Performing ritual prayers five times a day.

• Zakat: Paying charity tax to benefit the poor and the needy.

• Sawm: Fasting during the month of Ramadan.

• Hajj: Pilgrimage to Mecca only if financially and physically capable.

The classical Arabic language cannot be translated in English. A single word can yield many concepts as there is no third person pronoun suited to refer to the supreme Allah (God, Lord, Master) beyond human concepts.

Qur’anic text has a nonlinear structure; due to which they have no beginning, middle, or end and no chronological order.

The Qur’an literally means “the recitation”. It is the continuation and revival of the previous revealed books Torah and Bible. It is a book of guidance and signs and not a textbook of science.

Qur’an says Prophet Muhammad was selected to present and confirm the monotheistic teachings of Islam, preached previously by prophets selected by God. So it is the culmination of a series of divine messages revealed to Adam, Moses, David, Jesus and ending with Prophet Muhammad. (Peace be upon all of them).

The 6236 Verses (Ayats) are arranged in 114 units called Suras (Chapters) of varying length and touching upon all aspects of human existence. The first Sura called Fatihah has 7 Verses and it is recited daily in the 17 compulsory and many supplemental prayers performed 5 times a day. Several of Prophet’s companions served as scribes and recorded the revelations as soon as they heard. The timing of the revelation was unpredictable and the companions of the Prophet either memorized the Verses or wrote them down.

Shortly after Prophet’s death, the Qur’an was compiled by the first Caliph Abu Bakr (632-634). The process was carefully supervised and certified by companions who had either memorized or written down the revelations and finally seven copies were made and sent to the Muslim countries by the third Caliph Usman ibn Affan (579-656). Two copies still exist: one in Top Kapi Palace Museum, Istanbul, Turkey and the second in Ganja Museum, Azerbaijan. The Qur’an we read today is exactly the same, word by word, that was revealed to the Prophet 1440 years ago.

Qur’an offers historical accounts of events, the law and commandments, the wisdom and nature of the spiritual world. It is acclaimed as the finest work in classical Arabic literature as the word of God. During prayers, the Qur’an is recited only in Arabic. During the month of Ramadan, Muslims typically complete the recitation of the whole Qur’an, during the supplemental prayers. Those who memorize the entire Qur’an are known as Hafiz. Hadees are words and actions of the Prophet, oral and written traditions, supplementing the Qur’an. From an Islamic theological perspective, God created a community of men and women to whom he speaks in a manner that would have a universal and eternal significance for people of other times and places.

Listed below are some verses of Qur’an for guidance and information:

Chapter 2, Verse 185: This is a book of guidance for mankind.

Chapter 2, Verse 126. Say, We believe in God, and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac, and Jacob and their tribes and descendants, and that which has been given to Moses and Jesus: and all Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them. And it is to Him we surrender ourselves in Islam.

Chapter 3, Verse 84. Say, We believe in God and what has been revealed to us and what was revealed to Abraham, Ismael, Isaac, Jacob, and the 12 Tribes, and in the Books given to Moses, Jesus, and the Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between one and another among them, and to God do we bow our will in Islam.

Chapter 4, Verse 29. O you believe do not kill yourself as suicide is forbidden.

Chapter 4, Verse 163. Surely, We have sent to you the Revelation, like we had sent it to Noah and the prophets after him. We sent revelation to Abraham, Ishmael, Isaac and Jacob, and the tribes (the 12 sons of Jacob); to Jesus and Job, Jonah, Aaron, and Solomon and to David we gave the Psalms (Zaboor) a book of divine wisdom.

Chapter 5, Verse 69. Surely those who believe in Qur’an and those who follow the Jewish scriptures and the Sabians and the Christians – any who believe in Allah and the Last Day and people who work towards righteousness – Upon these shall be no fear and they shall not be in pain.

Chapter 11, Verse 1: This is a Book, the Verses are perfected in knowledge, and then explained in detail from One Allah, Who is All-Wise and Well-Acquainted with all things.

Chapter 29, Verse 46. You do not argue with People of the Books (Jews and Christians) except with better ways – reasons and facts. Say to them we believe in the revelation that came down to us and also that came to you as God and your God is one and the same.

Chapter 49, Verse 13. O mankind, We have created you from a single pair of male and female, and made you into nations and tribes that you may know each another. Surely, the noblest of you in the sight of God is the one who is most deeply conscious of Him. Behold, God is all knowing and well aware.

Qur’an has unique mathematical information that only came to light with our ability today to develop tools to count and keep track of individual words in a book as this book was composed over a period of 23 years and 1440 years ago. Currently, this subject is being researched, but I am able to glean information from several videos and articles available on various websites which leads to the obvious conclusion: The 6236 Verses must be divinely revealed, as it is simply impossible for a human mind to invent and recite them over a period of 23 years and keep track of the content of the book and its words.

It is interesting when the Qur’an provides information, it often tells the reader, “You did not know this before.” Indeed, there is no scripture that exists which makes that claim.

Qur’an mentions one thing is equal to another, e.g. man is equal to women. The word “man” (Rajul in Arabic) appears 24 times and the word “woman” (Imra in Arabic) also appears 24 times in the entire 6236 verses of the Qur’an.

This mathematical equality also happens with several words appearing in equal numbers in the entire 6236 verses of the Qur’an. For example:

· Adam 25 Jesus 25

· Material world 115 After world 115

· Angels 88 Satan 88

· Death 145 Life 145

· Hardship 114 Patience 114

· Charity 32 Blessing 32

· Benefit 50 Loss 50

· Faith 25 Infidelity 25

The words Adam and Jesus appear in the Quran 25 times each and they do not always occur together. Some chapters mention Jesus but not Adam and some chapters mention Adam but not Jesus.

It turns out that when the two names occur together in Chapter 3, Verse 59, it is the 7th time. Now after this mention they do not converge until the 19th chapter of Quran. This is the 19th time each name is mentioned. We know that each name is mentioned 25 times in the Quran, It is interesting that the numbers 7 and 19 are playing a role here.

Let’s do an exercise. Write the numbers is sequence 1, 2, 3, all the way to 25 in left to right English way and then write below 25, 24, 23 all the way to 1 in right to left Arabic way. You will find that 19 and 7 are in the same column and 7 and 19 are in the same column. This means the 7th time Jesus is mentioned in the Quran it is the 19th time from the rear of the Quran. And the 19th time Jesus is mentioned in the Quran it is 7th time from the rear of the Quran.

This applies to Adam in the same way.

Now let us take a look at how many Verses transpire from the 7th mention of Adam to the 19th mention of Adam so we going thru many passages, all the way to Chapter 19 where Adam is mentioned and the total number of Verses in this stretch is 1957. That number is a multiple of 19 as 19 x 103 = 1957

Now count the Verses where Jesus is mentioned for the first 19 times, we find that the total of those Verses is also 1957.

You might say that it is just coincidence but we have to remind ourselves that coincidences like this is not easy to come by because 1957 is a four digit number and there are 9000 four digit numbers from 1000 to 9999. So if you put all these number in a bag again it is not likely you will pick up 1957 again. If you pick up 1957 by the first contrivance, it is not likely that by a simple contrivance you pick this number again. So what we see is adding all the Verse numbers where Jesus is mentioned for the first 19 times, we come up with 1957 which is multiple of 19 x 103.

We find such patterns in the Quran and we cannot say that it is a coincidence and you need to be mathematically inclined to see the depth of this with the number 19 and number 7. They are recurring in the Quran. Both 19 and 7 are coinciding, so actually they add another level of complexity. No one knows the significance of number 19 but it is mentioned in the 74th Chapter, Verse 30 which speaks about Hell and says there 19 Angels guarding Hell. But why 19, the next Verse says God has mentioned this number to strengthen the faith of the believer and give certainty to the people of the scripture before this and one wonders how the number 19 strengthens the faith of the believer. But we find now there are such intricate pattern of number 19 in the Quran that this does actually strengthen the faith of the believer in our modern times.

There is one more pattern to talk about.

That is the Chapter 108. There are ten words in this Chapter. It is the shortest Chapter of Quran comprises 42 letters a product of 7 x 6 = 42. Now of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet 17 are used in this Sura and 11 are not used. Both 17 and 11 are Prime Numbers. There are 10 words and one letter Alif is used 10 times and other 10 letters are used only once. There is a symphony of numbers.

The words Prayer, Month and Day appear in the Qur’an exactly as we know:

Prayer 5 times Month 12 times Day 365 times

The words Sea and Land appear in the Qur’an 45 times:

Sea appears 32 times and Land appears 13 times

The significance of the word Sea and Land appearing 45 times provide the exact percentages of the Sea to Land ratios recently confirmed by science:

Sea + Land = 32+13 = 45

% Sea = 32/45 x 100 % 71.11 Recently confirmed by science

% Land = 13/45 x 100 % 28.88 Recently confirmed by science

Universe came into being by a Big Bang model and is expanding:

Chapter 21, Verse 30. Heavens & Earth were joined but We parted them

Chapter 51, Verse 47. We created the domain of space

Chapter 36, Verse 40. It is not permitted that Sun to catch the Moon, nor can the Night outstrip the Day. Each just swims along in its own orbit according to Law.

Chapter 39, Verse 21. Allah sends down rain from the sky and leads it through springs in the earth underground water.

Chapter 25, Verse 53. It is He who has let free two bodies of flowing water, one palatable and sweet, and the other salty and bitter and yet He has made a barrier between them that is forbidden to be passed.

Chapter 25, Verse 54. It is He who has created every living thing from water.

Creation of human life

Chapter 80, Verse 18-20. From a drop of sperm He created human and proportioned him. Then He eases the way for him.

Chapter 53, Verse 45-46. He has created both sexes, male and female from a drop of semen which has been ejected.

Qur’an also describes the developmental stages of a human being in the mother’s womb when bones develop first, muscles form and wrap around them.

Chapter 39, Verse 6. He created you stage by stage in your mothers’ wombs in three fold darkness.

1. Darkness of the abdomen 2. Darkness of the womb

3. Darkness of the placenta

Chapter 23, Verse 14. We then formed the drop into a clot and formed the clot into a lump and formed the lump into bones and clothed the bones in flesh; and then brought him into being as another creature.

Chapter 24, Verse 45. Allah created every living creature from water. Some of them go on their bellies, some of them on two legs, and some on four. Allah creates whatever He wills. Allah has power over all things.

Chapter 21, Verse 30. Do those who disbelieve do not see that the heavens and earth were sewn together and then We unstitched them and that We made from water every living thing? So will they not believe?

Chapter 25, Verse 54. And it is He who created human beings from water and then gave them relations by blood and marriage. Your Lord is all powerful.

The identity is in the fingerprint: While it is stated in the Qur’an that Allah can bring man back to life after death, the fingerprints are emphasized:

Chapter 75, Verse 1- 4. Yes, We are able to put together in perfect order the very tips of his fingers.

Chapter 36, Verse 36. Glory is to Him who created all the pairs from what the earth produces and from themselves and from things unknown to them.

Chapter 16, Verse 8. And He creates other things that you do not now.

Before the development of microscope we were not aware of the existence of life forms too small to see for the naked eye.

Chapter 34, Verse 3. He is the knower of the Unseen, Whom not even the weight of the smallest particle eludes, either in the heavens or in the earth: nor is there anything smaller or larger than that which is not a clear book.

Chapter 10, Verse 61. Not even the smallest speck eludes your Lord, either on earth or in heaven.

Chapter 16, Verse 68-69. The Qur’an mentions that the female bee leaves its home to gather food. This was not known 1440 years ago. People believed male bees leave home to gather food.

Chapter 21, Verse 33. It is He who created the Night and the Day, and the sun and the moon: all the celestial bodies swim along, each in its rounded course.

The Qur’an affirms that the sun is turning and rotating as it travels. Only recently science discovered that, sun rotates around its axis, and proved as the Qur’an stated 1440 years ago, that sun indeed turns as it travels through space.

Arabic word Sabaha describes it perfectly that Sun moves as a result of its own motion. Several videos are available on Internet with references regarding this topic. We are encouraged to observe and seek knowledge throughout our life.

Chapter 20, Verse 114. O my Lord, advance me in my knowledge.

After the death of the Prophet, Qur’an was the last word on any matter but determining what the Qur’an meant was not always easy and is still not.

Chapter 33, Verse 40. Muhammed is not the father of any of your men, but the Messenger of God and the seal of the Prophets: and God is, about everything, All-Knowing.

Exegesis (critical explanation or interpretation of a text), or Hermeneutics (the branch of knowledge that deals with interpretation) has not been easy but always quite challenging to scriptures, including the Qur’an.

Number of times 25 Prophets are mentioned in the Qur’an

1. Adam 25 Times

2. Enoch (Idris) 2

3. Noah (Nuh) 43

4. Eber (Hud) 7

5. Salih (Salah) 9

7. Lot (Lut) 27

6. Abraham (Ibrahim) 69

8. Ishmael (Ismael) 12

9. Isaac (Ishaq) 17

10. Jacob (Yaqub) 27

11. Joseph (Yusuf) 11

12. Job (Ayyub) 4

13. Ezikiel (Zulkifl) 2

14. Jethro (Shuab) 10

15. Moses (Musa) 136

16. Aaron (Harun) 20

17. David (Dawud) 16

18. Solomon (Suleiman) 17

19. Jonah (Yunus) 4

20. Elijah (Ilyas) 2

21. Elisha (Alyasa) 2

22. Zechariah (Zakariya) 7

23. John the Baptist (Yahya) 5

24. Jesus (Isa) 25 (and 48 times in third person)

25. Mohammad 4

Compiled by Azeem Farooki

For The Learning Collaborative program hosted by The New City Jewish Center

Acknowledgement: Information in this article is extracted from Internet and history books, errors are unintentional.

Who won the reformation?

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{nSalik}

Who won the reformation?

The Western world has not known quite what to do with the 500th anniversary of the Protestant Reformation. The powerful Protestant establishments that would have once celebrated the quincentenary wholeheartedly are mostly weak or impotent or gone, and while the disreputable sort of Calvinist and the disreputable sort of Catholic still brawl online, in official ecclesiastical circles the rule is to speak of the Reformation in regretful tones, like children following a bad divorce who hope that now that many years have passed the divided family can come together for a holiday, or at least an ecumenical communion service.

Meanwhile, the secular intelligentsia can only really celebrate the Reformation’s anniversary in instrumental terms. From the perspective of official liberalism, most of the Reformation fathers were fundamentalists and bigots, even worse in some cases than the Catholics they opposed. So for the Lutheran and Calvinist rebellions to be worth memorializing, it must be as a means to secularizing ends — the liberation of the individual from the shackles of religious authority, which allowed scientific inquiry and capitalism to flourish, made secular politics possible, and ultimately permitted liberalism to triumph.

It wasn’t Protestants or Catholics; it was commercial interests and the authoritarian state.

To read the full article, please click the hyper-link: Posted by nSalik

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/01/opinion/protestant-reformation.html?mwrsm

Does God Exist?

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  1.  

    Editorial Note:

    This thread was initiated in email loop by Syed Imtiaz Bokhari after reading an article in daily New York Times.            Syed Nayyar Bokhari provided a video from Facebook providing reasons in favor of Existence of God.                                   For serious discussion, this thread has been established in TFUSA website.

    nSalik {Noor Salik}

    “Does God exist? – Neil deGrasse Tyson and Michio Kaku Debate” on YouTube

    …

    On Oct 24, 2017 11:13 AM, “Nayyar Bokhari” <> wrote:

    On Friday, October 20, 2017 10:32 AM, Bokhari Imtiaz
    Hi members, I downloaded this article from today’s NYT.
     “Unknown Unknowns: Three Inquiries into Religion” philosopher Tim Crane is an atheist.
    James Ryerson reviewed this book and presented his comments in a very balanced and rational way. It is worth reading give us another perspective by an atheist philosopher on religion and its genesis.   
    Having surveyed religious traditions across the world and throughout history, he sees religion, at its core, as a set of “culturally prescribed practices” that aim to help people access “superhuman powers” in the hope of “realizing human goods” and avoiding bad things, typically “in conditions and situations they cannot control and with problems that they cannot solve.
    This seems to me is the crux of the religion, since ages people find solace in religion when confronted with problems in life to ward off calamities. To me it is a psychological remedy people looking for and it propel them to a comfort zones they created for them. It is still permeates all religions and people strongly belief in this cultural remedy, science has contrary view. Once they adhere to this philosophy their existential anxieties marginalized. 
    Worries about things like the meaning of life and the problem of evil are peripheral. “If religion could not promise the help of superhuman powers,” he concludes, “then religion would not exist.”
    With some my comments enjoy the article, expecting some feedback.
    Unknown Unknowns: Three Inquiries into Religion
    OCT. 20, 2017
    The philosopher Tim Crane is an atheist. Though educated in a Catholic environment, he has come to believe that nothing exists beyond the world of everyday experience and scientific explanation — nothing transcendent. Some people look around and think,this can’t be all there is. Crane is not one of those people. That he avows atheism, as opposed to agnosticism, does not strike him as presumptuous or arrogant. He has considered the relevant evidence and arguments as best he can and drawn the most reasonable-seeming conclusion. What more is a thinker supposed to do? He is convinced religious believers are wrong.
    But his qualm is not with them. As he explains in his lucid and thoughtful book THE MEANING OF BELIEF: Religion From an Atheist’s Point of View (Harvard University, $24.95), he is more troubled by some of his fellow atheists — specifically, those who campaign against religion as an irrational vestige of primitive thought outmoded by modern science. A notable feature of this campaign, Crane observes, has been its general failure to change the minds of religious people. Maybe those people are just foolish. Or maybe, as Crane is inclined to think, they do not recognize themselves or their beliefs in the picture of religion under attack. The atheists miss their target because they are aiming elsewhere. And because they fail to understand what religion is, they lack a suitably “realistic and feasible way to relate” to people of faith — which is to say, most people.
    In a spirit of reconciliation, Crane proposes to paint a more accurate picture of religion for his fellow unbelievers. Religion is an immense, sprawling and variegated affair. Any attempt to define it, however comprehensive, will omit some aspects and most attempts to define it, however crude, will capture something. The name of the game is what you see as central. Crane resists the notion, common to combative atheists, that the core of religion is an archaic cosmology (beliefs about things like the origin of the universe and supernatural agents) grafted onto a moral code. If you conceive of religion this way, as bad science plus arbitrary injunctions, of course you will think it should be replaced by good science and rational ethics.
    For Crane, the religious worldview is better understood as the combination of two attitudes. First: a sense of the transcendent, of an unseen moral order to the universe, often known as God. Second: an identification with a community that tries to “make sense of the world” by attempting to bring its members into alignment with this moral order through a tradition of narratives and rituals. Crane concedes there is a cosmology here; a belief in the transcendent is “a claim about the universe.” He also grants that religion, like science, is trying to explain things. But the kind of explanation and the kind of cosmology offered by religion, which does not “expect all aspects of the world to be intelligible,” are nothing like those of science, which strives to eliminate mystery.
    The atheist and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has suggested that the idea of God is a “hypothesis” about a supernatural agent, ventured as a possible account of perplexing natural phenomena. Crane disagrees. The god of actual religious people — the source of the unseen orders that imbues everything with significance — is both vaguer and more nuanced than that. Science takes “complex or confusing things” and tries to explain them in terms of “simpler or clearer things.” God is not simple or clear. Religion isn’t supposed to be a neat explanation of causal forces. It’s supposed to be a difficult explanation of the meaning of life. This explanation, Crane contends, is destined to be forever incomplete, always a struggle to fathom, not because it is missing some key facts, but because it involves “attempts to encounter” the transcendent.
    Crane himself thinks there is no transcendent reality, but he knows there can be no proof of this. Given the ineluctable enigma of existence, he believes religion can be a rational, “intelligible human reaction to the mystery of the world.”
    This picture of religion would no doubt strike the sociologist Christian Smith as “too cognitive, cerebral, intellectualist.” In his substantial, richly informed book RELIGION: What It Is, How It Works, and Why It Matters (Princeton University, $35), Smith offers a social scientific theory that disputes the notion, advanced by titans of social thought like Clifford Geertz and Max Weber, that religion is a cultural meaning system. “Religion is not at heart a set of replies to existential questions,” Smith writes, “even if it often involves this.”
    For Smith, the paradigmatic expression of religion is something like praying to God to cure your wife’s cancer, or beseeching a cloud spirit to bring rain to your withering crops.Having surveyed religious traditions across the world and throughout history, he sees religion, at its core, as a set of “culturally prescribed practices” that aim to help people access “superhuman powers” in the hope of “realizing human goods” and avoiding bad things, typically “in conditions and situations they cannot control and with problems that they cannot solve.” Smith is quick to acknowledge that this is not all religion provides, nor the sole reason people practice religion. But he maintains it is the “central” reason. And unlike other things religion does, like providing an identity (which a profession can also do) or seeking existential meaning (which philosophy can also do), it is “unique to religion.”
    A methodological hazard of discussing religion at this level of abstraction is the need, as Crane says, “to generalize the views of billions of people.” Smith hopes to avoid this difficulty by focusing less on subjective religious belief and more on public religious practices, which are “more or less objective.” This has allowed him, he believes, to focus on what religion is.He distinguishes this from what religion can do, its “secondary outgrowths” (things like fostering identity, meaning, and community and so on). Though these derivative features are “often crucial” for the personal experience and institutional strength of religion, they do not constitute its “ultimate raison d’être.”
    Smith’s is a theoretical work, but he provides ample illustrations of his theory, including religious traditions that might at first seem like counterexamples, such as American Protestant evangelicalism, which stresses the importance of beliefs and attitudes over rituals and customs. In all cases, he finds formalized calls for heavenly assistance, often involving this-worldly concerns like financial security and family health, to be central. Worries about things like the meaning of life and the problem of evil are peripheral. “If religion could not promise the help of superhuman powers,” he concludes, “then religion would not exist.”
    At some point in the distant past, of course, religion did not exist. The story of its emergence in the universe, and the significance of this story for our understanding of the nature of religion, are the subject of THE NEW COSMIC STORY: Inside Our Awakening Universe (Yale University, $25), by the theologianJohn F. Haught. Like Crane and Smith, he takes a “generalized approach” to religion; focusing on what all such traditions have in common. Unlike Crane and Smith, he sees religion as something whose journey, like that of the rest of the universe described by modern science, is “unfinished,” and hence whose nature must be understood, in part, in terms of where it may be headed.
    Haught describes religion as the “anticipation of a rightness that is now mostly out of range.” This formulation resembles Crane’s, with its transcendent moral order both everywhere present and agonizingly beyond reach. But Haught, a man of faith, disagrees with Crane that religion’s truths will necessarily remain so remote. Ever since the Big Bang, we have seen the emergence of matter, then life, then conscious life — and then, most notably, in Haught’s estimation, the human consciousnessof “interior striving” that finds its zenith in our “spiritual adventures.”
    Who knows what advances in religion the next stage of the universe’s evolution will bring? Thanks to modern science, Haught argues, we know “the cosmic story is far from over” and can look “patiently and expectantly ahead for a possible meaning to it all.” Should such a cosmic gift come to pass, it would amount to a salvation of the physical world, not a deliverance from it — a kind of redemption perhaps even an atheist could live with.
    James Ryerson is a senior staff editor for The Times’s Op-Ed page