The Double Refuge ⏯ Systems
Systems of Operation
⏯
Double refugees lie between two certainties.
On the one side, there are the New Atheists, who see it as their job to deconstruct religion, to show that it’s false, that it’s so unprovable that it’s pretty much useless, and that it can also be very dangerous. Refugees agree that religious zealotry can be dangerous — from the psychological abuse of ‘de-programming’ to witch hunts, jihads, and crusades — but it can also be beautiful and it certainly isn’t false or useless.
On the other side, evangelists tell us that we can’t live a deep life — and we won’t get to live an afterlife — if we don’t believe in their definition of God. Open agnostics and open theists object that we can in fact lead a deeply enriched secular life, and that we can believe in God without believing in their definition of God.
Double refugees believe that we can experiment with any version of theology we like, and we shouldn’t be compelled or coerced into any one way of believing. Refugees also argue that doubt doesn’t disqualify us from exploring or experiencing the highest religious benefits. If a benevolent God exists, 🔺 He can be experienced everywhere, even outside the church or temple, and 🔺He can make Himself available to us any time, including after we die. If God is unjust and malicious, then the doubter will in the afterlife have the same struggle as the believer who once believed in cosmic justice and mercy. In any case, there’s very little chance that a just and benevolent God would require that believers maintain a sense of superiority, let alone a hatred for others, or a duty to wage holy war against those who doubt or those who believe differently.
Double refugees don’t follow the New Atheists nor the evangelicals. Rather, they concede the undeniable in science and explore the possible in religion. Their criticism of exclusivity in religion — and its consequent downgrading of other religions — comes from the same position as their criticism of a scientific or material view that downgrades religion. Their criticism is against closing doors, proclaiming superiority, and fighting the other side, not against the liberating ideas and the phenomenological experiences that materialism and spirituality offer. In this sense, refugees operate in an eclectic way: they take what seems of value from each side, leaving out the exclusivity and superiority which may be part of some people’s view of materialism and religion yet which they see as neither crucial nor helpful.
While double refugees reject religious superiority and disdain, they understand that it’s difficult for some religious people to be ecumenical, let alone open to other religions. In The Power of Myth, Joseph Campbell talks about this difficulty:
CAMPBELL: […] I have had a revelation from my computer about mythology. You buy a certain software, and there is a whole set of signals that lead to the achievement of your aim. If you begin fooling around with signals that belong to another system of software, they just won’t work. Similarly, in mythology—if you have a mythology in which the metaphor for the mystery is the father, you are going to have a different set of signals from what you would have if the metaphor for the wisdom and mystery of the world were the mother. And they are two perfectly good metaphors. Neither one is a fact. These are metaphors. It is as though the universe were my father. It is as though the universe were my mother. Jesus says, “No one gets to the father but by me.” The father that he was talking about was the biblical father. It might be that you can get to the father only by way of Jesus. On the other hand, suppose you are going by way of the mother. There you might prefer Kali, and the hymns to the goddess, and so forth. That is simply another way to get to the mystery of your life. You must understand that each religion is a kind of software that has its own set of signals and will work. If a person is really involved in a religion and really building his life on it, he better stay with the software that he has got. But a chap like myself, who likes to play with the software—well, I can run around, but I probably will never have an experience comparable to that of a saint.
Campbell operates similarly to a double refugee by seeing doctrine not in terms of fundamental difference, but in terms of different aims and different paths, which are nevertheless both basically spiritual (one might even say essentially essentialist). Campbell also makes his point more universal by using the neutral word mystery to describe the core of monotheism or polytheism, rather than the word of God, salvation, union with nature, etc.
Perhaps most effective is that Campbell uses two analogies, which both work in a double refugee way. In the first of these, he sees the psyche as a computer: it’s a mechanical, physical thing, yet it can accommodate within it vastly different modes of believing, depending on the different program of religion. Matthew Bradley suggests something similar in his introduction to The Variety of Religious Experience when he describes William James’ view that
There is no unique affect for religion, ‘no ground for assuming a simple abstract “religious emotion” to exist as a distinct elementary mental affection.’ Indeed, ‘there … seems to be no one elementary religious emotion, but only a common storehouse of emotions upon which religious objects may draw.’
Cambell’s computer analogy fits nicely with James’ empirical approach: the depth of the differences between religions appears all-important because we get different results depending on the program we use. Yet underneath it all we are the same bodies which have the same circuits of thinking and feeling; we feel the need for something more than the functioning of our physical bodies; we feel the need for something which is deeply integrated with our bodies yet which turns these circuits into, or points these circuits toward, something else, something that isn’t merely a physical thing. We yearn for a more abstract and refined way of connecting with the universe.
⏯
Next: Veils