Noam Chomsky: 'On Religion'

"I think irrational belief is a dangerous phenomenon," observes noted scholar and activist, Noam Chomsky, "and I try to avoid irrational belief."

"On the other hand," he notes, "I certainly recognize that (religion) is a major phenomenon for people in general and you can understand why it would be. . . . It does, apparently, provide personal sustenance, but also bonds of association and solidarity and a means for expressing elements of one's personality that are often very valuable elements. To many people it does that."

"In my view," he concedes, "there's nothing wrong with that. My view could be wrong, of course, but my position is that we should not succumb to irrational belief."





While Chomsky's views are laudable, particularly his view that one should perhaps "avoid irrational belief," he fails  - as so many others do, and will - to distinguish between the inner religious experience upon which most of the worlds religions and wisdom traditions are founded and fuelled, and the narrow outer religious forms that dogmas, doctrines and/or or mass 'belief' systems forge.

Failing to differentiate between the two - one 'experiential, which while largely subjective is nonetheless amenable to rational inquiry, and the other which is wholly subjective and therefore beyond the purview of rational inquiry - is a bias commonly held by even the best scholars (like Chomsky, himself) who are steeped in Western empirical methodology, a methodology that does not admit that it has its own built-in biases when it comes to examining phenomena that are in any way 'tainted' by subjectivity.

The higher states of consciousness afforded by experiential religious insight and practice are, as Allan Wallace points out (below), "the retinal blindspot of Western science." Yet, as a result of the scientific bias which lumps experiential inner religious phenomena with outer religious dogma, even as noted and fair-minded a scholar as Chomsky appears to make the common logical misstep of assuming that all aspects of religion - experiential and doctrinal - are necessarily "irrational" and thus vulnerable to emergent fanaticism in challenging times.

"If You Think You Understand Spirituality . . ."

Spirituality is a lot like quantum mechanics. The experience of higher consciousness - those moments when we lose our sense of individuality, of "ego" or "self" - may be described in the same way quantum mechanics was described by renowned quantum theorist, Richard Feynman: it's sort of "spooky." Equally, it confounds one's ability to describe it, or to "know" perfectly just what it is we are "observing" or "experiencing."

Perhaps this is why the "Infinite," the "Absolute," or "God" have so often been described as "the ineffable," literally beyond verbal description. Or, perhaps no matter how deeply we look - whatever experience of ever-purer consciousness we reach - there is yet another 'deeper' level that may be achievable. Certainly, this is what the eminent 20th-century theologian, Paul Tillich meant when he talked of the "depth of our existence."

"The wisdom of all ages and of all continents speaks about the road to our depth. It has been described in innumerably different ways. But all those who have been concerned - mystics and priests, poets and philosophers, simple people and educated - with that road through confession, lonely self-scrutiny, internal or external catastrophes, prayer, contemplation, have witnessed to the same experience. They have found they are not what what they  believed themselves to be, even after a deeper level had appeared to them below the vanishing surface. That deeper level itself became surface, when a still deeper level was discovered, this happening again and again, as long as their lives, as long as they kept on the road to their depth. . . .

The name of this infinite and inexhaustible depth and ground of all being is God. That depth is what the word God means. . . . For if you know that God means depth, you know much about him. You cannot then call yourself an atheist or an unbeliever. For you cannot think or say: Life has no depth! Life itself is shallow. If you could say this in complete seriousness, you would be an atheist; but otherwise you are not. He who knows about depth knows about God." (Paul Tillich, "Shaking The Foundations," Scribners, New York: 1948, pp. 56-57.)

Paul Tillich (1886-1965)

Similarly, it is how Richard Feynman describes his work in science. Probing ever further into "what the world is," always expecting (or perhaps knowing 'intuitively') that there is a still further depth of knowledge to be revealed in an ever-unravelling understanding of both the macrocosmic and the microcosmic nature of our 'reality.'




Both Tillich and Feynman - physicist and metaphysicist - challenge us to look at the depth of our knowledge, the depth of our experience and, yes, the depth of our consciousness. And both urge us to do so without prejudice as to what we might find

Thich Nhat Hahn (b. 1926)

Of course, this is what the Buddha also said 2500 years ago, when he urged us not to believe him, but to see for ourselves, to be witnesses to our own experience of the depth of our consciousness, and to do so without dogmatism or preformed beliefs.

As the much-admired Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, so eloquently explains, we are all called to explore the depth of our worldview, and in so doing, to look into the depth of our existence. Hahn notes:

"We each have a view of the universe. That view may be called relativity or uncertainty or probability or string theory; there may be many kinds of view. It's okay to propose views, but if you want to make progress on the path of inquiry, you should be able to be ready to throw away your view. It's like climbing a ladder, coming to the fifth rung, and thinking you're on the highest rung. That idea prevents you from climbing to the sixth rung, and the seventh rung. So in order to come to the sixth and the seventh, you have to release the fifth. That is the process of learning proposed by the Buddha. Buddhism fully practiced is free from dogmatism. If you worship something as a dogma, as absolute truth, you are not a good practitioner. You must be totally free; even from the teachings of the Buddha. The teachings of the Buddha are offered as instruments, not as absolute truth. (Emphasis added.) Thich Nhat Hanh, "Beyond the Self: Teachings on the Middle Way," Parralax Press, Berkeley CA: 2010, pp. 14-15.)

The point is that spirituality like science is in essence a non-ending quest. As Richard Feynman famously said, "If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics." Similarly, perhaps it can be said that: "If you think you understand spiritually and the depth of consciousness, you don't understand spiritually and the depth of consciousness."