The Natural Religion

During the time of the 18^th century a new cultural movement of intellectuals emerged in Europe and America. Prior to the 17^th century theism and deism referred to the same idea. Both terms meant that there is a supreme creator. The idea of deism started to diverge from theism with the expansion of the use of rationality and scientific inquiry.

The deists gave a new view about the world, the rule of God and the role of humanity in it. For them, although God created the universe and set it into motion, but only that was his role in it. God created the laws of nature, and set up the laws of morality, but He does not interfere and did not place power or authority in the hand of a group of people, the church. This idea was in accordance with the times intentions to separate the church from the state. There is a third thing that God did gave to the people, the chance for an afterlife, if they follow the moral laws.

Because of the special ideas of the deists, it was much easier to answer some questions that was difficult to answer for other Christians. One fundamental problem was for the Christians is to explain why there is no Christian religion in the other parts of the world. If God is almighty and all-loving, then it is difficult to explain that why God would leave millions and millions of people without hearing about Him, dooming them to eternal damnation. Since the deists did not rely on the church or revelation they could answer this easily. For them there is no need to meet with priests or read the bible to know God, everybody has equal chance for that. Among the deists there were two main kinds of explanations. The first is that every human beings have an innate, natural understanding of God. Without the need of any studies everybody has a perception of God, and understands that the world is created by Him. This is the faith of even the very first human beings, the 'natural religion' shared by the whole human race.

The other explanation of the deists was not based on an inner faith, but on observation. They claimed that anybody merely just observing the surrounding world will reach to the conclusion of God's existence. This explanation relies on the importance of reasoning. It characterizes God as a great architect who created a 'clockwork' universe, and the world in itself is the evidence for His existence. The Teleological or Design Argument is one of the oldest and most popular of the theistic proofs. It is easily understandable by everybody, so it is often used not only by theologists, but people of faith without deeper philosophical background. It suggests that there is an analogy between the order and regularity of the cosmos and the products made by human beings. We can see in the world everything has its right place, everything is working according to its function in a very complex system. The whole universe is similar to a perfect machine, where every part was designed perfectly to fit its place. Even the different parts of the body are functioning according to support the whole human being. If we see a machine, for example a watch, we know it is made by somebody. If we see the world we should get to the same conclusion. This kind of argumentation also can be traced back to ancient Greek philosophers, like Socrates and Plato, but the most known version is probably the watchmaker analogy associated with theologian William Paley³⁸, who presented it in his book, the Natural Theology in 1802.

The rational consequence of these ideas is that all the people around the world with their 'religious' manifestations are belong to the same natural religion, and all of them are inspired by

38 William Paley (1743–1805)

God in some way. Not only the teachings and rituals of he Christian world, but the teachings and rituals of the people in China, Africa, India etc. can be traced back to God. If an American Indian performs a ritual for the Great Spirit, or a Hindu offers fruits to Vishnu, they are motivated by the same principle: the inner realization of a transcendent power: God. Although this approach went against the dominant teachings of the Church, but it still did not offered total equality for every people in the world. The deists still thought that their understanding is deeper then the understanding of others, and only they see clearly the true nature of God. The non-European and non-American cultures were still treated inferior, and their religious practices too. Besides the right religiousness, the cultural and intellectual superiority of the west was also taken as evident.

In the teachings of the deists the basics concepts of the religious studies were formulated. This was the moment when the concept of general religion, and its several instances of religions were born. At the time of the 18^th century there were common ideas among the intellectuals, they started to perceive the world as the place for religious beings. The idea of religiousness, even though got a broader sense, it was still based on the Judeo-Christian concepts. Actually, they pointed out directly that all the religions of the world are based on the religion of the deists, indirectly on the God of the European Christian tradition. All the descriptions they gave were based on the Christian idea of religion, although they formally has been separated from the Church, but they could not escape from the ideological structures of it, their framework of thinking remained similar.

And this was exactly the theoretical background of the religious studies. All the founding fathers of the religious studies were influenced by these ideas, or were deists themselves. They created the categories and methodology of the religious research based on Christian foundations.

The religious studies is a product of this specific age and time, probably in an other culture it could not have happened the same way. In this sense we can say that the foundations of the religious studies are not excursively scientific, which is true to some of its methodologies only, but it is came from Christian Theology. Because the created categories, and the idea of religion itself, are resisting total revision, and there is a strong resistance to abandon even controversial ideas, it is also can be considered as dogmatic.

The rationality of that time, with the questioning of religious world views have an other effect too. From the evidence of the teachings of the church and the scriptures they shifted to the evidence found in nature. This approach favors scientific knowledge over any other kind, and since the

non-European cultures seemed not following the same narrative system, their descriptions were treated as primitive. Although the existence of God as the first cause of the universe and nature was accepted by lots of scholars, and they agreed that other cultures has this notion too, but they argued that those cultures had some rudimentary grasp on reality only. Their understanding is screened with superstition and misunderstanding. This kind of attitude, even if it is usually hidden, is still part of the modern narratives of this field.