Book review: Religion without God (Ray Billington)



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Ray Billington

RELIGION WITHOUT GOD

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Book review by Anthony Campbell. Copyright © Anthony Campbell (2005).
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"It seems to me beyond dispute that, on the one hand, religion is real
and universal and, on the other, God is unreal but has localised
aficionados." This quotation sums up, in a sentence, the case that
Billington wishes to make. He believes that religion is natural to the
human species but that it need not entail a belief in a deity. In
arguing his case he draws extensively on Eastern religious traditions
that emphasize the role of meditation to achieve those altered states
of consciousness he labels transcendental, numinous, or spiritual.
These, he holds, constitute the real "stuff" of religious experience.

Clearly, if Billington is to make his case convincingly he needs to
establish at the outset what he actually means by religion, and his
opening chapter is intended to do this. He discusses various suggested
characteristics of religion in some detail but, probably wisely, does
not offer a definition of his own. (The task is notoriously difficult to
achieve.) His central point, however, is that it is not necessary to
believe in God in order to be religious. He doesn't much care for ritual
either.

Subsequent chapters look at different ideas about God (deism, pantheism,
animism and so on) and at reasons proffered for believing in God. None
of the arguments stand up, in his view, and he thinks that it would be
desirable to remove references to God from public life and from
education, although it is not his purpose to argue for that here. His
focus is on the kinds of experience that are often labelled mystical,
and he discusses these both in general terms and with reference to
Hinduism, Buddhism, and Taoism. All this is well done although the
material will be pretty familiar to anyone who has already explored
these topics. There is no mention of Sufism, no doubt because this
theistic mystical tradition would be rather difficult to reconcile with
his main thesis.

The most important part of his discussion comes in the later chapters
where he argues for the religious outlook which he thinks we should be
adopting in a post-theistic time. I was reminded here of Aldous Huxley's
claims for what he termed the Perennial Philosophy; that is, the view
that all the great religions are pointing towards a common core of human
experience. However, Billington does not make the common mistake of
saying that all these traditions are saying exactly the same thing in
different words; he points out, for example, that there are important
differences between Hinduism and Taoism. But he does hold that the
meditation techniques favoured by many Eastern systems lead to true
insights into the nature of reality.

Among the conclusions he draws from his analysis is the consoling
thought that death doesn't matter because consciousness ceases with
death and that this is equivalent to eternity. This reflection, which he
has derived from reading the writings of Heidegger, has apparently
brought him tranquillity and peace of mind. I am not sure how generally
applicable consolation of this kind will be. (In fact, however, he does
not seem totally to exclude the possibility of some form of postmortem
experience, but is merely agnostic about it.)

My main impression of the book is that Billington seems to be trying to
hold on to the remnants of religious belief for primarily emotional
reasons. He can no longer believe in God but he is unwilling fully to
accept the implications of his unbelief. (Here he is quite similar to
Don Cupitt, from whom he quotes.) In a concluding section he tells us
that "the religious person in a post-modern age" will seek out
experiences prompted by music, nature, and other circumstances which
cause him to enter "a state in which he has lost the sense of
individuality and become absorbed in some other element".

He is referring here to what Marghanita Laski, in her important book
Ecstasy: a study of some secular and religious experiences, called
triggers. Like Billington, Laski linked ecstatic experience with
creativity and thought it to be very valuable, but she did not attribute
a transcendental or revelatory quality to it. The difference between
these two writers is that Laski did not accept the validity of the
totality beliefs that ecstatic experience often gives rise to, whereas
Billington, I think, does. This really is the central question: do
altered states of consciousness genuinely provide knowledge of the
"ground of being" or Brahman, the term Billington prefers? Which opinion
one prefers is probably ultimately a question of temperament.

See also:
Rational Mysticism (John Horgan)

12 August 2005
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%T Religion without God
%A Ray Billington
%I Routledge
%C London
%D 2002
%G ISBN 0-415-21785-7
%P xi + 148 pp
%K religion
%O hardback edition
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