Bruni, in summarizing a
component of Harris’ larger contention, writes:
“The
question is this: Which comes first, the faith or the feeling of transcendence?
Is the former really a rococo attempt to explain and romanticize the latter,
rather than a bridge to it? Mightn’t religion be piggybacking on the
pre-existing condition of spirituality, a lexicon grafted onto it, a narrative
constructed to explain states of consciousness that have nothing to do with any
covenant or creed?”
Here, Bruni touches upon a further and more fundamental question
implicit in the relation of faith and transcendence: that is, what is integral
to the notion of religion itself (that is, how can religion be characterized,
can it even be invoked through characterization?) then further, religion
relative to belief? When it is stated that one is religious or that one
believes, are these statements necessarily synonymous? The meaning of belief,
removed from the context religion and subsequently taken on its literal level –
that is, understood exclusively through it’s definition – becomes amorphous.
Harris concerns himself with the amorphousness of the invocation of belief,
when that invocation occurs in varied contexts: “There’s truly no secular or
rational alternative for talking about questions of meaning and existential hopes
and fears.” How would belief, as a word, an action, an avenue to transcendence,
be understood in a secular world, relative to a secular world, in a world where
the notion of God is tenuous? What are the contours of belief relative to religion? Relative to secularism and atheism?
-Dante Clementi
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