Is there a reason to be religious if there is no afterlife?
Recently, Bart Ehrman asked subscribers to his blog to give input to a question: Is there a reason to be religious if there is no afterlife? Ehrman, if you weren't aware, is a noted scriptural scholar who has written a dozen or more popular books about Jesus, the early Church and the Bible. Once a very conservative evangelical, he eventually became an agnostic and non-theist. But he still retains the knowledge gained in his search for the truth of the Bible and religious teachings.
Knowing Ehrman’s stance against literal understanding of Scripture, and his lack of belief in the divine, I decided to answer his call from the middle ground I inhabit, one that both reveres the knowledge gained by science as well as the wisdom and depth gained and sometimes hidden in religious practice.
Here’s the long form of my answer, which I eventually whittled down to the 200 words required by his blog.
If you define “religion” broadly, it is a human activity that seeks, through ritual and language, to bring extra meaning to an important aspect of life. Whether it be a funeral mass with Gregorian chant, or a gathering of children burying a beloved pet, we humans seem to want to mark great passages – death, birth, marriage and others – with a few words and maybe a symbolic action, like sprinkling with water or pouring a loved one’s favorite beer on a grave.
I’d wager that even the staunchest atheist wouldn’t refuse to attend a birthday party or stand vigil at the wake of a deceased loved one. This innate human desire to be present – when all attention is placed on a single aspect of a loved one’s lifeline – is the beginning of religion. Faith traditions dress up the occasion in various ways – with words from scripture, special vestments and symbolic actions that bring special meaning to the moment and tie the person’s life into a larger web of meaning. But even at an atheist friend’s recent wake, the immediate urge was to gather his friends, to tell stories about him and to listen to Monty Python’s “The Galaxy Song” (“Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving and revolving at nine hundred miles an hour….”) Even the most jaded of my acquaintances showed up, even if just to scoff at the idea of a ceremony. But they came, didn’t they?
At its best, religion gives voice to our unspoken thoughts and feelings when human events occur that are especially shattering or joyful. Religion focuses our attention on the transcendent or hyper-human nature of the events, giving the wandering human mind a few moments to ponder life’s larger “mysteries” – how will a child’s birth change my life’s journey? Who is there to help me? What wisdom can I gain from my forebears? Where do I fit into the grand scheme of things – whether as a divine gift to the universe or as a new generation that tastes the universe for only a century or so?
Frankly, most of us are tongue-tied when it comes to memorializing our life’s passages. We don’t have the wisdom or perception to make sense of the death of a child, the union of two people in love, or the terror of the unknown that sometimes precedes death. Religion can fill in those gaps, providing familiar words and actions that soothe, calm and give hope that a passage can be endured.
Religion does not have to be objectively true to be valuable. Whether there is an afterlife is less relevant at a funeral than the act or gathering, commemoration and shared grieving. Neither must religion be performed well to work its magic. The words used may be trite or cliched or inappropriate; the symbols indecipherable; the vestments archaic and bizarre; the songs performed badly or without gusto. But the gathering and the word-saying seem to be enough.
So, I answer your question – “Is there a reason to be religious if there is no afterlife?” – not only with a resounding “Yes,” but with the observation that it is almost impossible for human beings to go through life without religion – the words, gathering and actions that focus those present on a human passage. Whether it’s a birthday card, a Vatican High Mass or the meeting of friends at a bar, we humans can’t help but to take note of what is special to us, even for the fleeting moment it takes to toast the day.
It wouldn’t surprise me that somewhere on the human genome a scientist will one day locate the genes that compel this sort of behavior. That doesn’t prove the existence of a Creator or Savior or Enlightened One, or Heaven, Hell or Eternal Bliss for that matter. It just proves that religion is as inescapably part of our humanity as hunger, thirst or avoidance of pain.