5. The Naturalistic Study of Religious Traditions. In the accounts given of the various religions above, it has been assumed that the development of their beliefs and practices can be explained in natural terms, as the outcome of human thought in reaction to the situations they were faced with in the natural world. Some religions (Buddhism) were described as reacting to problems that one might have with other, already existing religions, others (Judaism) as responding to special problems faced by their national groups. It has also been assumed that the various sacred scriptures of the different religions were the products of human beings, and not divinely inspired.

             In most cases, the religions themselves would deny these assumptions. They would claim that their scriptures are the result of divine revelation and inspiration. So Christians have their Bible, which includes the Jewish scriptures, the Hindus have their Vedas, the Muslims their Q’uran, the Ancient Greeks regarded the Iliad and Odyssey as divinely inspired by the Muses (a notion that became a mere poetic conceit later on), the Zoroastrians have the Zend Avesta, and so on. The Buddhist scriptures are regarded as peculiarly authoritative, since they report the Buddha’s discoveries, but are not thought of as divinely inspired, and the same attitude is taken in China toward the classic works of Confucianism and Taoism, but these naturalistic religions may be the only exceptions to the rule. If a supernatural is postulated, it is assumed that it reveals itself to us in inspired scriptures. Perhaps it can also reveal itself to us directly in religious experience, in which case scriptures written by those who have had the experience may be viewed as authoritative eye witness reports, as it were. The supposed direct experience of metaphysical reality by a Buddha or sage also underlies the peculiar authority in Buddhist and Chinese scriptures.

             Many religions think that only their scriptures are divinely inspired, and regard the others as merely human products. Generally a non-skeptical account is given of one’s favored religion, and skeptical accounts are reserved for the others. So, for instance, Thomas Aquinas does not hesitate to give a merely historical account of the origins of Islam in his Christian work, the Summa Contra Gentiles.

             But a number of problems arise for the religious scholar trying to account for religions disagreeing with his own. In the first place, why would only some people receive the true revelation, whereas most do not, and why does the true revelation come so late? Early Christianity held that the fallen angels gave rise to non-Christian religions, appearing to people as gods to deceive them into worshiping them, and get their souls damned. (Later Christians did, too—so Milton in his Paradise Lost gives the names of the Pagan Gods to the demons following Satan.) So the original revelation to Adam was rapidly corrupted after the Fall. Hinduism gives a different account, holding that the other religions are partial and incomplete revelations by various Avatars of the Gods, suited to the level of understanding of those receiving them. So the other religions are divinely inspired, but the Gods did not tell their founders the exact truth, which was only revealed to the Hindus. In many religions it is fairly clear that the rest of the human race, outside those favored by God’s revelation, were simply not considered at all in the beginning of the thing. Later, explanations were sought out or invented why those chosen for the revelation were chosen, why others did not accept it from them, and why such ignorance was allowed to establish itself in the first place, but such explanations often seem implausible and ad hoc.

             In the second place, if we, for instance, explain away non-Christian religions without using the Demon hypothesis, making them out as due to various sorts of human error (the skeptical historical explanations above), then these explanations return to haunt us. We must somehow make it out also that Christianity is unique in a way that guarantees its truth. So it is argued that Christianity is unique because of the miracles that witness to it, in particular the miracle of Christianity’s successful spread throughout the Roman Empire to become the official religion of the Empire, that Christian Scriptures are unique and inexplicable without the assumption of revelation, and so on. One problem is that these arguments are hard to make plausible, and are often made in ignorance of the facts about other religions. Another is that very similar arguments are made in other, non-Christian religions (Islam argues for the uniqueness of the Q’uran, for instance), and must, of course, be rejected there without undermining our own case.

             One way in which a religious thinker approaches non-favored religions is to give an objective, developmental history of the religion, pointing out how earlier beliefs differed from the beliefs of later practitioners. This, too, may rebound on the head of practitioner, as it becomes clear that development is indicated by the historical evidence within the favored religion as well. This may lead to reform movements to get back to the origins, but the development may be radical enough so that the original beliefs now seem heretical or crude. So one might reject the developmental view in the favored religion, holding that it arose from a pure revelation which was never lost or significantly changed. Although the “developmentalist” may point to many early heresies in his accounts of the early days of the Church, the faithful, though not always evident in our historical sources, were always there, and are responsible for the preservation of the true doctrines, which the developmentalist mistakes for new thoughts, stated in response to these heresies in later times. One may speak of the true view of the Church needing to clarify itself, and being given fuller statement, in response to heresies. One can hold firmly to the true view, but fail to see all its consequences, or some of the deeper ways in which it clashes with false views. This may, of course, be the true account, but one defending a religious tradition must press it whether the evidence supports it or not.

             So Christians have been inclined to argue that originally, just after Adam and Eve, everyone knew there was only one God. This original pure monotheism was somehow lost (due to sin and the influence of the demons), so that the ancient polytheism our historians know about arose, except perhaps in the line of Abraham, which went largely unnoticed in history outside the sacred texts of the Bible. This view is presented, for instance, in George Horn, Philosophical Histories . . . (1645). Andrew Lang, in The Making of Religion (1898), and Wilhelm Schmidt, The Origin of the Idea of God (1912), pursued this view, attempting to show that primitive religions are inherently monotheistic. (Of course, even if one were able to establish this point, it would still do little to show that the Adam and Eve story is true, given the evidence we have about Ancient history and Prehistory.)

             In defense of the believer’s account of his own religion it may be suggested that the believer better grasps the nature of his religion than the skeptic who only wishes to explain it away, or the opposing religionist, whose religious thinking, it is assumed, is much inferior to that of our own best thinkers. This certainly may be true, though it does not seem it has to be, but even so, it does not imply that the believer is right, only that she is more insightful into her own way of thinking, and surely it could be pressed that she would be less insightful into other’s ways of thinking. Moreover, faith may bring not only insight, but also self-deception and a too ready dismissal of opponents. So perhaps we should expect clever but scholarly skeptics, with sympathy for the phenomena they are studying, will do better than the blunter, unsympathetic types and the believers alike.

             We will look at the matter further below, but it seems reasonable to say here that it cannot be established by the neutral study of the facts of history or the texts themselves that any existing religious scripture is in fact divinely inspired in such a way that it is inerrant, or even particularly accurate, in matters of history or science. If there are divinely inspired scriptures, the inspiration is concealed within a document fully comprehensible in historical and naturalistic terms.