Introduction
The relationship between reason and religious faith has always been a vexed issue in theology, philosophy of religion, and sociology of religion: are reason and faith mutually supportive, complementary, or incompatible? Is religious faith merely the choice of people who are ignorant or not intellectually mature enough? If so, why do so many people who at least appear to have sound psychology and mature intellect—such as even many of the most outstanding natural scientists of the contemporary era[①]—still piously believe in religion?
The sociologist of religion Stark complained: “The idea that humans are essentially rational animals is the common foundation of mainstream modern social science. Religion is the only exception, as an object of study. Regarding religion, many sociologists still stubbornly adhere to this dogma inherited from the founders of their discipline: because the ‘religious mind’ is fundamentally irrational, there is no role for ‘choice’ in religious behavior.”[②]
Stark tries to explain the rationality of religious behavior by means of his religious economics model. He believes: “Religious behavior—when it occurs—is generally based on cost/benefit calculations, and is therefore rational behavior, exactly the same as people’s other behavior.”[③]
For Stark, so-called “rational behavior” means behavior “based on cost/benefit calculations”; in short, it means “seeking advantage and avoiding harm.” Of course, the advantage and harm here do not refer merely to economic calculations of money, but to diverse orientations of benefit under different cultural backgrounds and personal tastes.
However, what Stark mainly discusses is “how religious behavior and religious choice are also often rational,” whereas I try to look in another direction: how does mature reason drive people to actively commit themselves to religion or proactively seek religion? That is to say, does reason itself also contain a “religious need”?
In my view, just as reason may lead people away from religion, reason may also lead people toward religion. If this is indeed the case, then Robert Woods’s puzzle—“why the least religious are found in the least scientific disciplines”[④]—becomes easier to understand.
Reason
Many concepts we are accustomed to taking for granted are often precisely the most obscure and indeterminate ones, and the word “reason” is just such a case.
“Seeking advantage and avoiding harm” is of course a convenient way of putting it, but how to measure advantage and harm is a complicated matter. For example, if a person sacrifices one of his arms in order to obtain a grain of sugar, this mad act can hardly be called “rational,” because one cannot imagine that a person possessing mature reason would think that one of his arms is not worth a grain of sugar. Similarly, even if it can be shown that many religious sacrifices are also some kind of “seeking advantage and avoiding harm,” anti-religious people will think that this is even more “incomprehensible” than sacrificing an arm for a grain of sugar—sacrificing one’s entire life in exchange for an empty promissory note that can never be cashed! If such religious behavior can also be called “rational,” then is cutting off one’s arm in exchange for a grain of sugar even more “rational”?
To prove that religious behavior is rational, one must also prove that “religious hope,” that is, the expectation of the reward it (possibly) obtains, is not irrational either.
What, exactly, is “reason”? A very common understanding is: reason = science! Whether in arguments that maintain the compatibility of religion and reason or in arguments that oppose them, a considerable part of them intentionally or unintentionally conflates reason with science. The question of whether religion is rational immediately becomes the question of whether religion is scientific.
Tillich distinguished “reason” into “ontological reason” and “technical reason”[⑤]. The former has always occupied the dominant position in the tradition of classical philosophy, and this subordinate relation has been gradually reversed since the rise of empiricism—“Reason has been reduced to the ability to ‘infer.’ In the classical concept of reason, only the cognitive side has been retained, and within the cognitive domain, only those cognitive acts that involve discovering means toward ends have retained any standing. On the one hand, reason in the sense of logos determines ends, and only in a secondary sense determines means; on the other hand, technical reason determines means, while accepting ends ‘from elsewhere.’”[⑥]
Stark’s interpretation of “reason” is precisely a typical manifestation of what Tillich calls “technical reason”: Stark is concerned with proving that people’s religious behavior is oriented toward some kind of benefit, and thus such behavior is “rational.” As for what the benefit as a “goal” actually is, and whether it is reasonable, that has nothing to do with rationality, because the goal is a matter “from elsewhere.”
Given that sociology of religion is a relatively objective science, researchers should try to maintain the perspective of a “bystander,” avoiding value judgments about right and wrong concerning religious doctrine. Therefore, it may be appropriate to actively avoid further discussion of “goals.” However, in order to discuss the relationship between reason and religion more comprehensively, one will inevitably have to confront the question of whether “religious hope is (possibly) rational.” Although it is unavoidable that discussion of philosophy of religion will be involved, in what follows I shall still strive to maintain the neutral, bystander stance of sociology of religion,
From Aristotle to Kant, “reason” is roughly divided into two types—“speculative reason (theoretical reason)” and “practical reason.” This distinction is important, although Kant consistently maintained that these two kinds of reason are “essentially consistent.”
Practical reason concerns action and involves morality and value. Natural science, by contrast, unfolds only under speculative reason, answering only the question of “what is” and not the question of “how one ought to act.”
So, can speculative reason support or even “derive” religion? Kant gave a firm negative answer to this in the Critique of Pure Reason and in other writings on philosophy of religion. Kant pointed out: “There can only be three ways of proving the existence of God from speculative reason”—the proof from natural theology, the cosmological proof, and the ontological proof. “There are no other proofs, nor can there be any others.”[A591 B619][⑦] “We may indeed infer from the order, purposiveness, and greatness of this world a creator who is wise, benevolent, and powerful, and so on; but we cannot infer his omniscience, omnibenevolence, omnipotence, and so forth.[⑧]”
Kant denied that faith could be established on any speculative or empirical basis. However, Kant did not thereby let faith slide into irrationality; Kant “distinguishes faith, on the one hand, from knowledge, and on the other hand, from that uncritical assent to some unproven claims and wishes.”[⑨]
For Kant, faith is also a product of reason. In the Critique of Judgment, Kant defines faith as “the moral way of thinking of reason when it recognizes as true what is difficult to attain for theoretical knowledge.”[⑩] The “moral way of thinking” of reason here is, of course, not speculative reason, but practical reason. Kant then further points out that faith “is the principle persisting within the mind, by which, because of the duty toward this end, one assumes as true that which must be presupposed as the condition of the possibility of the highest moral final end.”[11]
Kant’s prose is always very obscure and difficult to read, but always worth pondering. Here, we notice the phrase Kant uses: “that which must be presupposed as the condition of the possibility of the highest moral final end”—what exactly does this mean? What is a “final end”? What does “condition of the possibility” mean? Why “must be presupposed”? These are all questions worth further exploration.
Ultimate Concern
Kant’s definition of faith seems quite similar in spirit to Tillich’s claim of “ultimate concern.” So, what is the relation between ultimate concern and practical reason?
What is “concern”? Literally speaking, it simply means caring about, valuing, focusing on, committing oneself to, and so on, as opposed to indifference, bewilderment, or blindness.
So how does a rational person come to “concern himself” with certain things? — Only when those things are “meaningful” to him. Asking a rational person “Why are you concerned with this?” has much the same effect as asking “What do you think this means?”
What, then, is “meaning”? Teacher Sun Shangyang believes that: “Meaning refers to the interpretation (understanding) of certain situations and events according to some more grand framework of reference.[12]” In short, meaning is some kind of “interpretation.”
Of course, not every “interpretation” has to do with meaning. For instance, an explanation of “why there is a clock hanging on the wall” might be “because at a certain time, a certain person used some tool to fix the clock onto the wall.” This is an explanation offered by science, but it has nothing to do with meaning; whereas another sort of explanation such as “to make it convenient to tell the time,” “for aesthetic appeal,” and so on, does count as explaining the “meaning” of the clock on the wall.
That is to say, “meaning” can never be separated from “purpose.” Thus, to rationally “care about” something simultaneously means having an active and clear recognition of “what is the purpose of my devoting myself to this matter?”
For example, if one asks someone, “Why do you run?” and he clearly and explicitly answers, for instance, “To exercise,” or “To make it to class,” then the act of running can be said to be his rational choice; conversely, if the answer is: “I don’t know why I run. I’m just running, with no purpose, anyway I’m just running…” we will judge that his running is not the result of a rational choice.
This may be the most simplified understanding of “practical reason,” but it is indeed so: practical reason is the rational reflection and confirmation of the meaning of practical action. Only after meaning has been sufficiently reflected upon and confirmed can practical reason provide a judgment of “what ought I to do.” From the above analysis, it is easy to see that deeper reflection on the Kantian second theme of “what ought I to do” will inevitably lead to Kant’s third theme: “What may I hope?”
So why does practical reason need a “final end”? What is a “final end”?
For example, the purpose of “my running” is “to get to class,” but we can ask further: “What is the purpose of getting to class?” The answer may be “so as not to miss the lecture”; then ask again, “What is the purpose of attending the lecture?” The answer may be “to pass the exam,” and the purpose of the exam is to graduate smoothly, the purpose of graduating is to find a job, the purpose of finding a job is to make money, the purpose of making money is to find a wife and support a family, and so on and so on.
This chain of questioning about “purpose” cannot be extended without end; for every person, this chain must come to an end in some way. The first way of ending the chain is to “brutally” cut off the questioning at some point, for example: “I don’t know why I have to make money either; there’s no purpose, I’m just making money…” If one cannot provide a rational explanation for why the questioning stops, then one should think that reason is still not being used sufficiently on this issue. The second way of ending it is to fall into a cycle, for example making more money in order to accumulate more capital, and accumulating more capital in order to make more money… Likewise, people usually think that this looks “not rational enough.” The third is simply to cancel the questioning of purpose altogether and decide one’s own behavior by impulse or feeling; this, of course, is even less something that can be called “sufficiently rational.”
One can imagine that a mature person, someone able to make full use of reason to reflect on his own choices, will not be able to tolerate this chain of questioning about meaning falling into confusion and disorder; such a person will favor some more proper way to bring the questioning to an end. For example, by positing a certain “final end.”
It should be noted that Tillich’s “ultimate concern” contains more than the notion of a “final end”[13], but “ultimate concern” does indeed first provide us with the orientation of a final end and the support of ultimate meaning.
What sort of thing could possibly make reason consciously stop asking further questions? Tillich says: “In our lives and in human life there are countless things worth caring about; in general, they all require concentration, devotion, and passion. But none of them require infinite concentration, unconditional devotion, and ultimate passion.[14]” The countless things worth caring about in everyday life are mostly not qualified to become “ultimate.” Those finite, accessible things are not suitable as ultimate concern. For example, taking “getting into Peking University” as an “important concern” is fine, but what does it mean to say that “getting into Peking University” is the “final concern”? Then what happens once one gets in? Does life after getting into Peking University no longer have meaning? To take finite, attainable things as one’s final concern is obviously short-sighted. The ultimate concern that a rational person is more inclined to choose should be “infinite,” “transcendent,” “absolute,” or else “extraordinary,” “sacred,” and so on.
Ultimate concern is often beyond an individual’s life. For the questioning of meaning and purpose will ultimately have to circle back to a question such as this: “What is the meaning and purpose of my entire life, that is, of my very existence itself?” A person who is rationally mature enough cannot evade reflection on and interpretation of his own existence itself.
Thus, the sociologist of religion Luckmann’s definition of “religious phenomena” as “the transcending of the human organism beyond biological nature”[15] shares, in a certain sense, the same implication as Tillich’s idea that “religion is ultimate concern.” This is a broad interpretation of the word religion. It is worth noting that Einstein also expressed a similar view: “A person who is inspired by religion has already liberated himself to the greatest possible extent from the shackles of selfish desires, and is wholly absorbed in those thoughts, feelings, and aspirations which he persists in because of their superpersonal value. I consider important the strength of this content that transcends the individual, and the depth of the belief in its profound significance that surpasses everything, rather than whether one has ever tried to connect this content with a sacred being.”[16]
Poincaré went further and pointed out that the purpose of scientific inquiry is precisely the meaning of life: “A scientist does not study nature because nature is useful; he studies it because he likes it, and he likes it because it is beautiful. If nature were not beautiful, it would not be worth knowing; if nature were not worth knowing, life would not be worth living.[17]” This feeling is probably what Einstein meant when he said, “It is difficult to find a scientist of deep achievement who does not have his own religious feeling.”[18]
Including Tillich, many theologians and scholars of religion, although welcoming Einstein’s support for religion, did not agree with Einstein’s attempt to cancel the status of the “sacred being.” So is the “sacred being” really crucial? What other sources might there be for a transcendent “strength”? This is the question I will discuss in the following sections.
God and Immortality
For Kant, God and immortality are the two great “postulates” of practical reason[19]. To say that they are “postulates” means: they can never be proved by speculative reason, and yet they can receive support in practical reason in another way—because without them, practical reason would be unable to obtain a reliable guarantee.
It is not a particularly radical claim to say that practical reason requires postulates; in fact, theoretical reason also needs “axioms.” Axioms are basic tenets that are difficult to prove and no longer need proving. The axioms of theoretical reason become the core of science; similarly, religion may unfold around the axioms of practical reason. Although the construction of scientific systems clearly relies more on strict deduction, religion tends more toward revelation; but in any case: the act of adopting certain unprovable tenets based on intuition or consensus is not necessarily irrational in itself.
Similarly, axioms do not need to be proven again, but neither can they be laid down arbitrarily. In science, to establish axioms, one must not only comply with intuition or consensus as much as possible, but also take account of the unfolding of the theoretical system. If removing a certain axiom makes it almost impossible to construct a decent theoretical system, or even brings the system to a standstill, then the addition of that axiom becomes all the more reasonable. For example, the “law of excluded middle” accords with intuition and has won consensus; moreover, removing it would make the existing theoretical system much poorer and cause it to lose many of its hard-won theoretical results. Therefore, to accept the law of excluded middle in a system of axioms, or to derive it equivalently through other axioms, is of course rational—but this does not mean that one must believe in the law of excluded middle. Intuitionist logic and many-valued logic, and other such “deviant logic” systems that reject the law of excluded middle, have also been established, and they too are internally coherent. One cannot conclude that because accepting classical logic is rational, only classical logic is the one and only rational logic.
By comparison, the diversity of axioms in practical reason is undoubtedly even more striking. Every mature “system of meaning” necessarily involves certain “postulates.”
Let us first look at why Kant postulates God and immortality. Simply put, in Kant’s view, a morally upright person who is also sufficiently rational must inevitably turn toward religion. For only by believing in God and immortality as the “two postulates of practical reason” [20] can one, Kant points out, while an honest person who does not believe in God and the afterlife may indeed, under the guidance of the sacred moral law in his heart, “promote the good selflessly,” his efforts are limited, because he cannot transform the moral imperative in his nature into a rational ethical maxim. Moreover, this real secular world is ruthless: “brutality and envy will always rage around him”; “and the honest people whom he also encounters outside himself, however deserving they may be of happiness, nonetheless, because of a nature that pays no heed to this, still suffer poverty, illness, and untimely death just like all the other animals on earth, and so it goes on until a vast grave swallows them all up (where, in this respect, whether one is upright or not makes no difference).” Thus, if this good person wishes both to continue doing good and not to deny his own reason—that is, if he does not wish merely to obey blindly the summons of the inner law and thereby deny that he possesses “freedom”—then in practical terms he must “assume the existence of a moral world creator, that is to say, assume the existence of God: he may quite properly make such an assumption, for such an assumption is at least not self-contradictory in itself.” [21] Without “immortality,” all efforts to seek the highest good lose their meaning, and the highest good becomes an illusion. And without an omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good “God,” “justice” cannot be guaranteed, and people will find it hard to be certain that they will receive the happiness they deserve. Only with God and immortality can the highest good as an end possibly be realized; only then can people possibly claim to be “free.” “If we do not look at the world and ourselves in this way, then we fall into contradiction and irrationality in moral matters.” [22]
We may as well understand Kant’s two postulates in a broader sense. First, “immortality” need not be limited to the idea of “the immortality of the soul”; it can represent some kind of “infinity” or “eternity.” “God,” on the other hand, represents some kind of guarantee of “certainty,” such as “order” or “fairness.”
In this broad sense, even atheists find it hard to escape these two postulates. One is reminded of Comrade Lei Feng’s famous words: “A person’s life is limited, but serving the people is limitless. I want to devote my limited life to the limitless work of serving the people.” Here we see that Lei Feng transcended his limited life through “serving the people”; this can be said to be Lei Feng’s “ultimate concern.” There is also the pursuit of being “eternally remembered in history,” the struggle for the “supreme” cause of human liberation, and so on. Even the most fervent scientific positivists cannot avoid reverence for the “eternal.” For example, Richard Dawkins, a representative figure of neo-Darwinism, says: “On our planet, the biological individuals known to everyone do not necessarily exist forever, but in this world, no matter where, there is only one thing that is certainly eternal and can bring life into being and drive its evolution: genes, the immortal replicators.” [23]
The words “infinite,” “immortal,” “eternal,” and “sacred” that often appear even in atheists’ mouths are by no means a simple coincidence; this is because the longing for the “infinite” is deeply rooted and inescapable in human nature.
However, these secular, real “concerns” may well bring many atheists’ inquiries to a halt, but they cannot withstand reason’s further “interrogation” — what is the meaning of human existence itself?
The development of modern physical science has made this question even more acute (this may be one reason why among scientists theoretical physicists, rather than others, have the highest proportion of religious people; another reason may be the astonishingly beautiful and strange splendor of natural order): not only are the earth and the sun finite, but Big Bang cosmology reveals that the universe is highly likely to “die” either in “heat death,” or in a “big crunch,” or in a “big squeeze” — though for people’s actual daily lives, all of these are far, far away. But this does indeed tell people: not only are individual lives finite, but all of humanity and even the entire universe are finite too! So what, in the end, is the meaning of human existence, and of the existence of the universe? If reason is not restrained, a mature rational person is bound to encounter these perplexities.
Human beings have more than reason, and I do not advocate that everyone must pursue this to the bitter end. With a little irrationality added in, the search for meaning can be stopped at any time. But as Professor Sun Shangyang has said: “Although not everyone is constantly pursuing the question of meaning, and some people even consciously or unconsciously evade and reject the search for meaning, on the level of humanity as a whole, trying to understand one’s life-world as a cosmos rich in meaning, and trying to establish life goals and meanings worthy of pursuit, is a basic orientation in human nature; this pursuit of meaning may well be one of the important driving forces in the evolution of civilization.” [24]
The entire universe is finite, so how can there possibly be meaning that transcends the universe? Only two directions remain: one is to transcend nature as a whole and seek meaning outside and above nature, that is, to seek recourse in the “supernatural”; the other is to completely reverse the direction of inquiry, not seeking from the outset beyond the bounds of individual life, but seeking inward, seeking a self-transcendence through the power inherent in life itself, that is, seeking some kind of “life realm of transcendent elevation” within. The former is precisely the orientation of Western religion, while the latter is precisely the orientation of Confucianism and Buddhism.
Whether “the supernatural” or “a life realm of transcendent elevation,” neither can be demonstrated or refuted by speculative reason or so-called technical reason. But what I said earlier already applies here: this does not mean that postulating such meaning or such an end is irrational, just as natural science must presuppose the uniformity and reality of the natural world, and so on; otherwise, a mature and complete scientific theoretical system could not be effectively constructed. And we see that the construction of a mature and complete “system of meaning” is also hard to separate from the postulate of a “transcendent one.”
Religion and Society
As Luckmann says: “The human organism does not construct a ‘factually’ objective and moral order from zero—they are born into it. This means that the human organism typically transcends its biological nature through the internalization of a meaning system.” [25] In tradition, it is religion that provides people with a “ready-made” system of meaning.
To say that every religion must involve “the supernatural” or “a life realm of transcendence” may seem overly dogmatic, but the facts show that mature religions are all like this, because any mature religion necessarily needs to provide people with “ultimate concern.” For example, in Christianity, “obtaining salvation,” “returning to God’s side,” and “enjoying limitless happiness in the Kingdom of Heaven” are precisely ultimate concerns. Because of God’s “supreme goodness” and the transcendence of the other world, these concerns need no further questioning. Buddhism’s “nirvana” is somewhat special, because we know Buddhism seems to deny “eternity”; it emphasizes that “all dharmas are impermanent” and “all is empty.” Yet from another angle, “emptiness” instead becomes the eternal thing, and nirvana is precisely a state of “emptiness”; what it seeks is to leap beyond the cycle of birth and death.
Feuerbach’s interpretation of the origin of religion is correct: “If a man has no hope, he has no gods. Why did the Greeks stress so strongly the immortality and blessedness of the gods? Because they themselves did not wish to die, did not wish to be without blessedness. Wherever you do not hear people lamenting the vicissitudes and sorrows of life, there too you do not hear them praising the immortal and blessed heavenly gods.” [26] But where, then, is one not hearing people lament the vicissitudes and sorrows of life? Such a place does not exist. In fact, the more human culture advances, the more developed technology becomes, the more abundant material life grows, and the more satisfactory life becomes, the stronger people’s longing for transcendent things grows. Because no matter what, at least the longing for “the infinite” can never be realized. In times of material scarcity, people’s desire for the bread and milk right in front of them often allows them to set aside those abstract, transcendent pursuits; and precisely when material abundance arrives, anxiety about existence itself becomes acute, and transcendent striving instead becomes the most important topic. Feuerbach’s words can be turned around: if a person has hope, he will have a desire for gods; wherever you hear people lamenting the vicissitudes and sorrows of life, there too you can hear them praising the immortal and blessed heavenly gods.
Ultimate meaning is not a few words, but a whole “system.” This system includes a series of theories and doctrines supporting such ultimate meaning, records of historical facts, sacred utterances and revelations, as well as practical guides, prayer rituals, codes of conduct, and so on that instruct people how to seek ultimate meaning. Of course, for “religion,” each of these factors is probably not absolutely necessary on its own, and taken together they are not sufficient either. Different religions have different characteristics: some emphasize doctrine more, some revelation more; some have a strict organization, some are relatively diffuse… but the “system of ultimate meaning” is always crucial.
Besides religion in the traditional sense, where else might people obtain meaning? Luckmann points out: “The individual does not construct a minimal system of meaning; rather, he makes use of a treasury of meaning. Worldviews, as the result of the activity of constructing systems of meaning generation after generation, are incomparably richer and more varied than explanatory schemes developed from scratch by individuals. As socially objectified realities, their stability is also immeasurably greater than the stability of the stream of individual consciousness. Worldviews, as a transcendent moral system, possess a coercive character that cannot be approached in the immediate context of social relations.” [27]
Luckmann believes that: “The historical priority of worldviews provides the empirical basis for human organisms to ‘successfully’ transcend biological nature. It enables human organisms to detach themselves from the immediate context of life and integrate them as human beings into the context of a tradition of meaning. Therefore, we arrive at the following conclusion: worldviews, as an ‘objective’ and historical social reality, perform an essentially religious function, which we define as the basic social form of religion. This social form is universal in human society.” [28] “Worldviews as a whole perform a religious function” [29]
His insight is profound. In modern society, the decline of traditional “tangible” religion does not mean the retreat of the “religious question” or the “religious phenomenon,” much less does it mean that modern people’s longing for “ultimate meaning” has weakened.
In a study of American students, 80% of respondents said they “need religious belief.” Yet only 48% admitted believing in God in traditional Judeo-Christian terms. (R. Goldsen et al., What College Students Think, New Jersey, 1960.) [30] Strange statistics like this are not uncommon. Clearly, there are nowhere near so many non-Christian religious believers in the United States; why, then, do so many students say they “need religious belief”? What is it that they “need”? I believe that this “religious need” precisely refers to an “ultimate concern” regarding some kind of “transcendent one.”
The fading of the status of traditional religion as the sole authority is a feature of modern society. Luckmann notes: “In the absence of an ‘official’ model, the individual can choose from a wide variety of ‘ultimate’ meaning themes. The choice is based on consumer preference, and this preference in turn depends on the individual’s social experience, so similar social experiences will lead to similar choices. If a stock of religious representations is available to potential consumers and there is no ‘official’ model, then an ‘autonomous’ individual is, in principle, able not only to select certain themes, but also to use them to construct a clearly articulated private system of ‘ultimate’ meaning.” [31] “In short, ‘ultimate’ meaning systems in modern society are characterized by diversity of content; they are structurally similar; they are relatively flexible and unstable.” [32]
This pluralization of meaning makes the religious question in modern society extremely complicated: “The religious theme of modern industrial society does not constitute a sacred world that is articulated in a consistent and clear manner. The dominant themes originating in the ‘private sphere’ are relatively unstable.” “Finally, themes in the ‘ultimate’ sense are internalized in different ways among different social classes. All of this makes it much more difficult to describe the modern sacred world than, for example, to describe traditional Lutheran doctrine.” [33]
In short, if one looks from the traditional so-called perspective of “church sociology,” one cannot deny the fact that traditional tangible religion is indeed “declining” in modern society; however, from the angle of the search for “ultimate concern,” the religious problem of modern society has not only not faded, but has become increasingly acute because of the “crisis of meaning” brought about by the rise of scientism, skepticism, nihilism, and the like. Moreover, concern for ultimate meaning will certainly not automatically disappear with the maturation of human reason; on the contrary, this concern is precisely a longing arising from within reason itself. In this sense, “religion” is forever one of the most important themes of human civilization, just as Tillich said: “Everywhere, that is to say, in the depths of all the functions of human spiritual life, religion can find its home; religion is the foundation of all the functions of human spiritual life, and it resides in the depths of the whole of human spirit.” [34]
Main References
[US] Rodney Stark and Roger Finke: The Law of Belief, translated by Yang Fenggang, Renmin University of China Press, 2004
Kant: Kant on God and Religion, edited and translated by Li Qiuling, Renmin University of China Press, 2004
Tillich: Selected Works of Tillich, edited by He Guanghu, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1999
Sun Shangyang: Sociology of Religion, revised edition, Peking University Press, December 2003
[German] Luckmann: The Invisible Religion — The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, translated by Qin Fangming, Renmin University of China Press, 2003
[US] Berger: The Rumor of Angels — Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, translated by Gao Shining, Renmin University of China Press, 2003
[German] Feuerbach: The Essence of Religion, translated by Wang Taiqing, Commercial Press, 1999
July 31, 2006
[①]See [US] Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, The Law of Belief, translated by Yang Fenggang, Renmin University of China Press, 2004, p. 90, marginal page p73
[②] Ibid., p. 52, marginal p. 42
[③] Ibid., p. 69, marginal p. 56
[④] Ibid., see p. 67, marginal p. 55
[⑤] See Tillich: Selected Writings of Tillich, ed. He Guanghu, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1999, p. 966
[⑥] Ibid., p. 967
[⑦] See the 2004 edition of Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Deng Xiaomang / edited by Yang Zutao, People’s Publishing House
[⑧] Kant: Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Deng Xiaomang, p. 160 — referring to page 160 of the original edition; the same below
[⑨] [UK] John H. Brooke: Science and Religion, trans. Su Xiangui, Fudan University Press, 2000, p. 217
[⑩] Kant: Critique of Judgment, p. 346. The Chinese translation follows Kant: Critique of Judgment, trans. Deng Xiaomang, ed. Yang Zutao, People’s Publishing House, 2002
[11] Ibid.
[12] Sun Shangyang: Sociology of Religion, revised edition, Peking University Press, December 2003, p. 88
[13] Ultimate concern also has epistemological and aesthetic significance, etc.; this article will not discuss these for now.
[14] Tillich: Selected Writings of Tillich, ed. He Guanghu, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1999, p. 814
[15] See [German] Luckmann: Invisible Religion—The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, trans. Qin Fangming, China Renmin University Press, 2003
[16] Collected Writings of Einstein in His Later Years, trans. Fang Zaiqing, Han Wenbo, He Weiguo, Hainan Publishing House, 2000, p. 27
[17] Quoted in Roger G. Newton: What Is Scientific Truth, trans. Wu Jike, Shanghai Science and Technology Education Press, 2001, p. 227
[18] “The Religious Spirit of Science,” in The Collected Works of Einstein, vol. 1, Commercial Press, p. 67
[19] See Critique of Practical Reason, Book II—Chapter II—4
[20] See Critique of Practical Reason, Book II—Chapter II—4
[21] Kant: Critique of Judgment, §87, in Kant on God and Religion, ed. and trans. Li Qiuling, China Renmin University Press, 2004, p. 235,
[22] [US] Garrett Thomson: Kant, trans. Zhao Chengwen, Teng Xiaobing, Meng Lingpeng, Zhonghua Book Company, 2002, p. 107
[23] [UK] Richard Dawkins: The Selfish Gene, trans. Lu Yunning, Zhang Daiyun, Wang Bing, Jilin People’s Publishing House, 1998, p. 331
[24] Sun Shangyang: Sociology of Religion, revised edition, Peking University Press, December 2003, p. 88
[25] [German] Luckmann: Invisible Religion—The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, trans. Qin Fangming, China Renmin University Press, 2003, p. 40
[26] [German] Feuerbach: The Essence of Religion, trans. Wang Taiqing, Commercial Press, 1999, section 32, p. 43
[27] [German] Luckmann: Invisible Religion—The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, trans. Qin Fangming, China Renmin University Press, 2003, p. 42
[28] Ibid., p. 42
[29] Ibid., p. 46
[30] See [US] Berger: The Rumor of Angels—Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural, trans. Gao Shining, China Renmin University Press, 2003, p. 28
[31] [German] Luckmann: Invisible Religion—The Problem of Religion in Modern Society, trans. Qin Fangming, China Renmin University Press, 2003, p. 102
[32] Ibid., p. 105
[33] Ibid., p. 107
[34] Tillich: Selected Writings of Tillich, ed. He Guanghu, Shanghai Sanlian Bookstore, 1999, p. 382
Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.
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