Tag Archives: Religion

Religion in “Silas Marner” by George Eliot

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In Silas Marner George Eliot doesn’t specifically state that religion is bad or dangerous nor does she say that one shouldn’t be religious. Instead, she presents certain aspects of religion that she believes are prone to creating uncertainty and confusion. She then allows readers to make up their own mind. One of her major concerns is the way people believe in God; she doesn’t deny the existence of God, but she says that even if he does exist, he does not interfere, so focusing on signs and symbols from God is dangerous because it detracts from the human aspects of life. Silas Marner states that how one treats others is more important than the religion one follows or if one believes in God.

Eliot directly questions the purpose of organized religion, but is less emphatic in questioning God, and tends to not refer directly to God (both literally and figuratively as the word “God” appears twenty-four times throughout the entire book, and most of these are general expressions.) Thus, the book is an impartial observer of the way religion is practiced and the way God is evidenced in the popular beliefs rather than a direct attack on the validity of religion and the concept of God. Eliot is very careful to never attack the existence of God, so even when Silas feels betrayed, he keeps his faith in the existence of God, but he believes that “there is no just God that governs the earth righteously, but a God of lies.” Silas gains a “shaken trust in God” which quickly assures that the existence of God is never questioned by Marner or any other inhabitant of Raveloe or Lantern Yard. This allows Eliot to focus on the way characters believe in God through the practice of religion rather than the deeper theological issue of the existence of God.

Eliot observes that even within Christianity the interpretations of God are very different. She states that Marner “was quite unable, by means of anything he heard or saw, to identify the Raveloe religion with his old faith,” but even within Raveloe, Eliot illustrates different modes of belief: one a God of precise laws and moral absolutes and another impersonal, parental God. These beliefs coexist within Raveloe because the focus of the community is not on how religious one is — “to go to church every Sunday in the calendar would have shown a greedy desire to stand well with Heaven” — but on how one behaves.

Within Raveloe, the popular interpretation of God is of the impersonal yet parental God — an interpretation very different from Lantern Yard’s belief in an active God. Alongside their belief in a Christian God, Raveloe’s beliefs incorporate some elements of paganism such as the belief in and desire for charms. Even with a faith in God, these people want a little extra assurance that things will be better for them, and they are willing to look away from Christianity and God to find it. Eliot uses these folk beliefs to demonstrate that the inhabitants of Raveloe are not entirely convinced of God’s manipulation of events and they do not share Lantern Yard’s belief that God is active in their lives, so even though the inhabitants of Raveloe trust in charms, they would never have drawn lots to determine a person’s guilt because Raveloe’s God as an almost deistic god who creates and judges, but one who is not actively involved in day-to-day matters. God to Dolly is not entirely Deistic because she allows that he may have guided Marner to Raveloe to care for Eppie, but she and the other lay members of the community are not concerned with God or religion beyond a secondary experience.

Eliot seems to suggest that this view is the correct view of religion because she warns against placing too much faith in God as do the inhabitants of Lantern Yard. She argues that once one places too much faith in God, God is in a position to be blamed for any negative event in one’s life rather than focusing on human causes. Silas Marner was betrayed by his friend; however, the lots and God decided for the community that he was guilty, so Marner believes he was betrayed by both his God and his friend because he was assured that God would reveal the truth (he even declares “God will clear me” three times.) Had the lots turned the other way, his faith would have remained, but Marner is placed in a position where his faith in God is destroyed because of the Lantern Yard belief that God is responsible for all actions. Marner eventually regains his faith in God saying to Eppie that he believes that “God was good to me” in delivering her to him, but he never fully regains a personal belief and faith in God. God remains on the outside of his life because Marner can never fully trust in him again.

Eliot warns that focusing too much on God can retard a person’s life and places one at a disadvantage in this world. The negative effects of this are demonstrated by the inhabitants of Lantern Yard’s quick belief in Marner’s guilt and their inability to see that William Dane had manipulated events. The negative traits of this are contrasted with the positive aspects of life in Raveloe where the community gathers at the Rainbow and interacts with each other rather than just with God.

My politicians are crazier than yours.

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It started with a post on Aardvarchaeology which was then linked by Pharyngula and responded to with a post on Uncertain Principles. Martin Rundkvist, of Aardvarchaeology, declares that US Politics Have No Left Wing which was quickly responded to by Chad Orzel, of Uncertain Prinicples, who retorted that it could just as easily said that European Politics Have No Right Wing. I agree with their base statements: Europe is left of America which is right of Europe, Europeans and Americans both got where they are through trial and error, and that many American politicians are very right-wing, but…To argue that higher taxes are fundamentally better than lower ones, and that certain political positions are better than others, and that religious politicians — regardless of how they publicly use their religion — are inherently inferior to their counterparts is a little too broad for my tastes.

Martin says that mentioning ones religious beliefs in public are part of the evidence for American politician’s extremist views, but I disagree. The way a politician follows their religion is extremely important, and before making any decisions, it is better to know for sure that a politician is going to follow all 10 commandments and most of Leviticus than have them ignore the issue whilst they campaign, and eventually force their secret beliefs on their constituents who didn’t have the chance to hear them. European politicians are more private in their beliefs, but all of one’s beliefs — either in the open or in private — affect their decisions. He mentions the Christian Democrat party in Sweden as evidence of private beliefs, but their beliefs are literally the banner under which they run; they may not mention them, but they are there, and they do affect the decision-making process.

Beyond this point, the issue devolves into Socialism vs. Liberalism vs. Conservatism — for simplicity I’ll define liberalism as the half-way mark between socialism and conservatism even though, as Martin notes, it isn’t. The American and European countries have always had one humongous difference: the European countries have a lineage and a population who is often part of the same country for generations, America doesn’t. America is quote unquote a “melting pot” where diverse groups come together to work and play, but often keep to themselves. There is an overreaching American culture through which people are united, but on a deeper more social level, many Americans couldn’t care less about the rest of America: more people vote for American Idol than the next president, and relatively few people vote in local elections. It can often seem that the way America is run only matters for a few short weeks and it is back to focusing on one’s own life with a few “bursts” of charity and caring, so one feels good about themselves. It seems that Americans tend to not have a good reason to care about all the other Americans, so in the American mindset there is no reason to take from oneself to ensure everyone is happy.

However, the issue is deeper than perceptions of a people. American politics are heavily based on Equality of Opportunity while European politics are based on Equality of Outcome. In America, the individual overrules the group, but in Europe, the group overrules the individual. America favours the hard-luck cases where someone drags themselves out from a lowly start into positions of wealth and influence — before tearing them down for daring to overreach the rest — because this is the ideal on which America was founded. So, yes, America has lower taxes, and Europeans have free health care or all, but it is the philosophical foundations of a society that dictates how it is run, not any egotistical desire or innate “betterness.” It is only time that can say which one is preferable.

Google Question and Answer: Religion in the Roman Empire

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Some people search search engines by using a few keywords, but others ask entire questions. This series of posts is dedicated to them. Over the next couple weeks I’m going to pick full questions from my logs and answer them. It is the least I could do.

The first question in this series comes from an American using Windows and Internet Explorer, and they ask “What religion did the People of the Roman Empire follow?” Well I’m glad you asked that… um…let’s call you Fred… while your search landed on a very popular article entitled Causes and Effects of the Popularization of Christianity in the Roman Empire, I’m afraid that it won’t answer your question entirely.

Yes, for a portion of its history the Roman Empire was Christian, but for most of its history Rome itself (including the period of the Republic and the Empire) followed a mythopoeic religion that was closely related the classical Greek religion. It wasn’t until Constantine realized that a single unified religion could revitalize the Roman empire that Christianity actually became a quasi-official religion. Prior to this the Roman Empire as a whole did not have an official religion: each culture was allowed to worship their own gods as long as they paid tribute to the gods of Rome and did not deny their existence. Even this requirement was ignored for a time and the Jewish peoples were allowed to live peaceably under Roman rule for many years. However, as the Roman economy degraded and the Empire spread to encompass many different cultures, it began to fracture and there was little to integrate the different groups or the classes. Read that article if you want to know more.)

For the rest of Roman history, the Romans followed a pagan religion and allowed people to believe whatever they wanted. That was the long way of saying: there was no one religion of the Roman empire, there were many.

My next question comes from … let’s say Sarah … who hails from Canada and also uses Windows and Internet Explorer. Sarah asks Did the church unite the Roman Empire?” Sarah landed on the same page as Fred and again the question is not fully answered. The real answer is both yes and no because individually the Eastern Empire and Western Empire were united through Christianity, but because they both had a slightly different view of Christianity (this is the divide between the Greek Orthodox and Catholic sects) the two parts of the empire slowly separate because of the religion.

You see Sarah, as Christianity spread in its early days, certain cities became the founding cities of the religion think Québec and Toronto or New York City and Boston, so they had a relatively large Christian population with widespread influence. However, in what was to become the Western Roman Empire, there was only one city: Rome, but in the Eastern Roman Empire there were several cities such as Jerusalem and Antioch.

Each of these major cities basically had someone, think a bishop, who was sort of a guide to the people under their influence, so while the Eastern Empire had several religious leaders to look up to, the Western Empire had only one: the Pope. As the two empires split the Western side looked only to their Pope for religious guidance and over time the two churches separated because the Western Pope was seen as the single most influential person in the religion by his own people, but the Eastern Empire was used to following several different religious leaders, so the religious structure of the two sides slowly separated.

So the short and sweet answer is yes, Christianity did unite the Roman Empire, but it united it in two slightly different styles.

The power of the individual: The American Enlightenment and Romanticism

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During the 18th century, scientific and social changes reshaped the concept of the self. The individual slowly separated from the collective and began to develop as an antithesis of the collective agrarian society of prior centuries; thus, giving rise to a wave of new philosophical thought that evolved into the popular movement of the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment developed around the belief that scientific thought and expression should be free from religious interference and that the foundations of society should be human reason and logic. Over time, these ideals gave rise to Romanticism which introduced the contrast of nature and the self, the internal desires, feelings and beliefs, and juxtaposed Nature with science. Franklin, Poe and Thoreau each represent one of the three popular faces of Enlightenment and Romanticism: Franklin, a well-respected Enlightenment writer, focused his writings on the improvement of the social order through improvement of the self and the realization of a deistic world; Thoreau, an Emersonian or “bright” Romantic, merged Nature with science and allowed for both to work simultaneously while emphasizing the individual’s ability to remove themselves from the flow of society; Poe, a “dark” romantic, wrote mainly on the way the individual views his world and the way the nature of the mind can recreate the world. While they tended to disagree on the specifics, they each agreed that the inner self was more powerful than the external self, and through self inspection a person could change their world and become the purveyor of order in the universe replacing religion, monarchy “” and to some extent “” God.

Arguably the most important “power” that these writers attributed to the individual was the individual’s right to power over their own beings. The ability to self-determine one’s destiny was not only necessary to the underpinnings of enlightenment, but it was also necessary to advance society as a whole. By allowing individuals to have power over their individual being, they became their own masters: no longer subjected by the whims of a larger society. As an illustration of these principles, once released from the tenets of religion, Benjamin Franklin “conceiv’d the bold and arduous Project of arriving at moral Perfection” (364). By believing in the power of the self and the equality of men he accomplished this without requiring a higher moral authority , Franklin defined his own moral perfection and strove to achieve it. The power the individual has over the self is absolute, but as Poe warns, this can be used for ill: in Poe’s tale of “The Tell-Tale Heart,” his protagonist envisions the world around him through the filter of his own demented mind. The conflicts in the character’s internal self become so profuse that he projects them externally and creates an old man whose eye haunts him, and he is eventually undone when he fails to recognize the beatings of his own heart. This absolute power is both the greatest curse and privilege of the Enlightenment and Romantic views of the self, so rather than leaving this power unchecked, they emphasized the power of Nature as both the antithesis to the self and the guide of the self.

Even though the release from mortal authority and the servitude of religion was central to the Enlightenment, they did not banish the Deities. Instead they either personified deities as part of the natural world which allowed the individual the opportunity to be “part or particle of God” (Emerson, 657) or defined the deities as separate from the world and as a creator but not a participatory member of the universe. Franklin was one of the original Deisitic writers in American Literature, and believed in the separation of religion from God because of the oppressive and meddlesome nature of churches which mixed their theology “with other Articles which without any tendency to inspire, promote or confirm Morality, serv’d principally to divide us & make us unfriendly to one another” (Franklin, 363). As Romantic writing developed it moved the Enlightened Deity from the role of creator into the natural world by blending the deity into Nature and science. This natural view of God continued the deistic way of thinking, and removed much of the remaining power of the organized churches allowing people to find and define their own personal church, and while some created cathedrals out of mountains and trees, others made theirs out of numbers, facts and figures creating the first conflicts between the mystical nature and the exacting sciences.

While the individual had the power to determine their own personal beliefs, some found that they were still oppressed by things they could not control: science became increasingly important, and to some, this was as oppressive as the monarchs and gods of the past. Their objection was that in becoming the absolute authority, science created a monochromatic image of the world which stifled the individual’s ability to perceive the world around him for what he believed it was; however, others quickly realized that science allowed them to open their eyes and see the world both as it was and how it could be. Poe and Thoreau, in a clash between bright and dark romanticism, viewed science differently with the more middle-of-the-road approach being attributed to to the bright romantics. In Poe’s “Sonnet “” to Science” he attacks the mundane aspects of science and refers to it as a “Vulture! whose wings are dull realities” (1223), but Thoreau, in his journals, embraces science, but believes that one can only truly appreciate something when one “forget[s] all [their] learning and get[s] rid of what is called knowledge”. Poe believes that the science accosts his creativity and stifles his ability to be an individual and exercise his hard-won individualism, but Thoreau is capable of independently appreciating nature even if his opinions are invalidated by science because he believes that his power over his own perceptions is absolute, so balancing the science with the mystery of Nature and the joy of poetic expression is not difficult him or other “bright” romantics. These two different views of science are brought about by the way the writers treat science: Poe personified science and held it blamable rather than as a tool, but Thoreau treats science as a tool and because of this, he is able to cast it aside when it is unnecessary while Poe’s creations and imaginings are constantly surrounded, attacked and restrained by a personified science which replaces the monarchs and gods. For writers of similar beliefs to Poe, this restriction by science was contrary to the ideals of Romanticism, and created a stumbling block that hemmed in the powers of the individual.

The only restrictions on the individual, other than the perception of a restrictive science and or those self-imposed, were the restrictions of society itself. These societal restrictions are not the same as the restrictions of a Monarch, but are the attempts of society to control the individual and harness their powers for the good of society itself. To the Romantics, this acceptance of societal pressures was a sort of voluntary defeat which according to some, like Thoreau, was necessary because not all were capable of fully controlling their own lives (820). Thoreau believed that most people spent their lives “sleeping” only using their minds for menial pursuits and living lives “of quiet desperation” (813). However, while Thoreau allowed for control of these sleepers, he believed that should a man wish to remove themselves from the societal order, they should be allowed to: regardless of its effects on the society itself. Thus, the individual is simultaneously an integral component of society, but also transcends such mean concerns when it is necessary for the individual to exercise their powers of reason, imagination, logic and creation.

The writers of the the Enlightenment and Romantic period defined the individual as the reasoning and logical self which interacts with the larger external world, and the powers they attributed to their creation were immense, but they tempered the powers of the individual with the power and mystery of nature. This individualistic view of the self replaced the mean collectivism of European society and formed the foundation of modern perceptions of the individual.

The rise of deism in western society

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During the Age of Enlightenment, western society examined itself through religious texts; it found that the religious doctrines of the past lacked unchanging principles and most of them hearkened to a more mystical mindset and flew in the face of scientific thinking. For some, this demonstrated that the religious texts themselves were flawed: it was in this mindset that the concepts of deism — a religious belief that if there is a god, he is not involved in the day-to-day affairs of human lives, and any human attempts to create rules and rituals concerning this god are corrupted by human nature — were first accepted as, partially, acceptable in mainstream thought. ((It was never accepted by the majority, but in certain intellectual circles it was.)) In Thomas Paine’s Age of Reason he advocates deism because its concepts allow for religious thought and morals based on the belief in a god and afterlife while still allowing society to not be “hemmed in” by religious doctrine. These ideas were especially important during the Age of Enlightenment because scientific advances and societal changes were invalidating thousands of years of religious dogma.

While Thomas Paine was referred to as a “a dirty little atheist” by Theodore Roosevelt, he did not disbelieve in a supreme god as the creator of everything: he believed that man could not be trusted with religion; therefore, any religions texts written down by humans were also contaminated by them. ((“His historians, having brought him into the world in a supernatural manner, were obliged to take him out again in the same manner, or the first part of the story must have fallen to the ground.”)) Paine also argued that “it is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand,” so rather than believing in adhering to a particular religious doctrine, he believed, as stated by Thomas Edison, “[that the] Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills.” Paine believed that “[his] own mind is [his] own church” and required no religious texts to indicate how he should live nor did he require four thousand year old scrawlings to dictate his morality. He believed that morality comes from within. ((“I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy.”))

We can see the rise of deism in western societies by taking America as a middle-of-the-road country. ((Yes, I know that most of us consider America to be very religious, but it really isn’t 100% true.)) The majority of Americans today also tend towards these ideas— the recent Baylor Religion Survey conducted by the Gallup Organization found that 88% of those living in America believe in a God. Of that 88%, 75% absolutely believed totally and 13% believed that it was probable that a God exists; however, a Gallup poll in 2006 found that only 43% of residents actually attended religious services more frequently than “almost weekly.” While these numbers could be indicative of any number of causes, the most obvious is a lack of belief that attendance in religious services, as required in religious texts, is required to live a moral life. Americans are beginning to see that weekly church services and a devout belief in god does not make men infallible and those who profess themselves to be religious leaders can have flaws whose consequences reverberate within an entire religion. While many Americans profess to believe in God, or the concept of a god, most see rituals as meaningless and the countless stories in the bible as stories meant not literally, but as a way to demonstrate morals.

These new tenets are demonstrated by the continued relaxing of America’s attitude towards other religions ((Of course, we must exclude religious animosity caused by non-religious events.)) and sects of Christianity, but the continued idea that atheism is the cause of most of societies ilks. The majority of Americans still value a belief in a god, but what god and how one worships the god is less important as long as the principles in the religion intersect with American cultural values and teach people moral behavior. The separation of religious morals from religion is not new: in the 1830’s Horace Mann argued, as part of the Board of Education for Massachusetts, that teaching religion in schools was not required to teach religious morals, but America’s separation of religious morals from religious belief has always had cycle and peaks and valleys based on events of that and the previous generation. However, it seems that religious doctrine is again giving way to scientific thought—evidenced by the continually changing tactics of those who want religion taught in classrooms—similarly to the way this occurred during the Age of Enlightenment.

Thoughts on Saint Augustine’s “City of God”

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The City Of God was written around 420 A.D. in response to the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths in 410 A.D . Many Romans believed that the sacking of Rome occurred because the pagan Roman gods were angry with Romans for abandoning them in favor of Christianity. Saint Augustine combated this by effectively saying that Rome, because it is an earthly city, does not matter; only the city of God matters. According to Saint Augustine the “city of God” is filled with believers while the earthly city is filled with nonbelievers. This division allows Saint Augustine to argue that the church is part of the city of God, but the city of Rome is earthly and thus expendable, and because the city of God (the church) is intangible it is indestructible.

Saint Augustine argues this idea by stating the difference between the two cities is in the goals of its inhabitants. According to Saint Augustine the inhabitants of the earthly city seek physical and financial wellbeing with their only goals being peace in wealth. (Just to stick my two sense in isn’t that a very good goal?) However, the inhabitance of the city of God do not seek peace but instead use peace to further the city of God. These people do not look for earthly peace or wealth, but rather look to the next life as their goal.

In general he says that the two cities are part of each other, but that the differences between them deal mainly with life goals and the important things in life.