Huston Smith surely is one of the great champions of religion of our time. He brings together all religions and faiths of the world and treats them all on an equal basis with the utmost respect. He brings them together not so much out of idealism (although he believes that he is serving a cause worth fighting for) as well as out of scientific curiosity. Like the true scientist he is, he never studies a religion from a prejudiced or dogmatic bias, but always with a positive attitude. 'Let's see if we can find something of value here', he always seems to say to us. He never dismisses a belief, how primitive it may seem to us at first glance, but he always tries to show us its deep wisdom and the deep similarities it has with other religious world views.

In his most recent book 'Why Religion Matters' (2001) he is deeply concerned about our modern civilization. At the end of his life he still has the energy to fight out one last major polemic with the academic world. For science as it is right now is in his view a poor lame fellow: it has only one leg to stand on. It's all about facts and physics, but it neglects that other pillar of knowledge about life and reality: it has no respect for metaphysics anymore, that branch of philosophy that was once so highly esteemed at the campus of universities. In the traditional world view, which was the common outlook of all men until science took over its hegemony in the 16/17th century, there was also another Reality to be accounted for besides the one we daily experience.

In the eyes of traditional man that Reality was in a way more real than the one experienced with our senses. For they believed it to be the Source of all things we see. The study of this ultimate Reality was of the utmost importance, because to gain knowledge of it gave meaning and value to life, for it was in a way the ground of all quality. And to know about quality gave quality. Maybe they all phrased it differently; maybe their myths and legends where all different and contradictory and even self-contradictory, but they all agreed on one issue: there is more to life than we see with our eyes and hear with our ears.

But this world view was given up in the rush of optimism that succeeded the first scientific successes of controlled experiment in the 16 and 17th century. Modern man became so excited about the possibilities of scientific control over nature, that he overstated the importance of the scientific method in procuring knowledge about life and the world. He soon began to think that science would be able to explain everything in the universe, including the unseen. Discoveries like the microscope and the telescope pointed in that direction. The man of the Enlightenment had the firm belief that science would eventually tackle every question that came to mind. It was only a question of time. All we had to do was to give up the old superstitious beliefs about reality and open-mindedly investigate into the workings of nature. Eventually we would be able to explain it all.

In the 20th century this optimism was for the first time questioned. True, science had made enormous advancements: by way of understanding the fundamentalities of nature we now were able to control and manipulate these laws and an enormous progress in technology was the result. Science had even brought us to the moon and we were now heading toward Mars. But science had also brought us the atomic bomb. Our knowledge of chemistry had brought about the death of millions of people in just a few years. And all around the world new technologies were being misused in polluting the environment and devastating whole regions by robbing them of their natural resources.

So the Postmodern philosophers of science became skeptical about the basic presumptions of Modernism and the Enlightenment. Belief in the redemption supposedly offered by modern science was replaced by skepticism and even cynicism. That human happiness was 'make able' by the progress of science was just another 'Big Story' invented to sooth the longing and the desire of our hearts. Science would never be able to procure us the 'better life'. It was all about 'die Wille zur Macht'. It was another mind game played to come to power.

But Postmodernism did not restore the old traditional belief in God and the Supernatural either. Silently she remained true to the precepts of nineteenth century positivism that only facts are true and that only our senses are reliable as knowledge is concerned. Derrida and Lyotard openly attacked theism in their writings and considered her a worthy subject for their 'deconstructivism'. The belief in God was perhaps the 'Biggest Story' invented by mankind. It was childish to stick to these old comforting notions about a universe that was created 'in the best possible way' (John Locke) and about a God that had the best intentions.

Huston Smith is both attacking this Modernist and this Postmodernist world view. He regrets the fact that the old traditional belief in the transcendental layers of reality has been given up so easily by both of them. This has lead to our modern 'tunnel vision', as if we can only see reality with the narrowing view of looking through a pipe. This 'tunnel vision' is simply disastrous from an ethical point of view. For it robs the heart of man of all hope and of all that is positive and vital in life. For we are driven not so much by facts and data as by hopes, aspirations, goals, intuitions and insights. The heart of man speaks of a different world that can give meaning to our lives.

It will be the greatest harm done in the history of mankind if we will dismiss this world as simply not existing at all and if we are not willing to investigate into the findings of all religious believers and mystics in history. For millions and millions of people tell us that there is something more to life than we can see with our eyes and hear with our ears.

But Smith is not attacking science at large, but only the philosophy of science called 'scientism' which says that positive science is the only way of studying reality and the only reliable method of acquiring knowledge. This is in the eyes of Smith a form of blatant materialistic reductionism. For how do we know that it is the only way?

Smith points to the fact that this 'scientism' is not the common philosophy of all modern scientists, but that a large number of scientists in the department of physics (and their number is getting bigger by the day) have a totally different scientific outlook. Smith points to the fact also that more than one genius of science was no materialistic reductionist whatsoever and he cites the names of Einstein (who's mystical bias is well known), Schroedinger (who on more than one occasion quoted from the Upanishads), Niels Bohr (who was a great admirer of Soeren Kierkengaard), Robert Oppenheimer (who even mastered Sanskrit to be able the read the Bhagavad Gita in the original language) etc.

criticism: Smith rightly underlines the fact that science is not behaving very scientifically when she discards the religious point of view from our whole spectrum of knowledge. Religion also gives us knowledge about the world we live in, but it is knowledge of a different kind, be it no less meaningful. So far Huston's contribution to the debate is very positive.

But the problem with his point of view is the lack of criticism it contains as the old traditional religions is concerned.  Because in his view the rise of Modernism and eventually of Postmodernism seems to be a drawback, but in fact the Enlightenment brought about an enormous progress in cultural consciousness. In my view the postmodernists were right in their analysis of the old mythological religions before the rise of Modernism: religion was being misused as a tool for political power (even to such an extent that eg. the Spanish Inquisitor Fernando de Valdes in 1559 forbade the reading of the Holy Scripture (sic) in Spanish, because King Philippe II was afraid that it would inflate all kinds of revolts in the hearts of the lower classes). Religion was also corrupted by all sorts of superstitious beliefs, for the magical element in religion was still very strong in the Middle Ages, as frequent instances of witch burning show.

Religion before the rise of Modernism was a stifling and suffocating institution, repressing individual thought and individual invention. The Church was so afraid  of individualism that it even banned and condemned her most gifted members. The greatest mystics of Christianity (listing their names here would take too much space) were prosecuted as heretics during their lifetime and only after their death (dead people aren't dangerous anymore) were they proclaimed to be saints or 'teachers of the Church'.  In this climate of paranoia and distrust no scientific progress could be made whatsoever. So the first thing the Enlightenment did was to undermine the cultural and philosophical supremacy of religion. Only within a liberated mind could real progress in science be made. For they were right about the old conservative religion: she was hostile toward new knowledge and to life itself.

If Huston would say 'yes, you are right, but this is not what I mean by 'traditional belief' and 'religion', I mean the kernel and inner core of every religion in her most pure form as it was experienced and described by the mystics of all beliefs', then my answer would be that he is in that case using a misleading terminology and that he is projecting his enlightened and modern religious beliefs, shaped by years of open minded comparison of all kinds of world religions, upon the whole history of religion, that in most cases was a very sorry business and that was rightly overcome in the age of the Enlightenment.

Smith gives the impression that every kind of religious feeling is meaningful, but religion can also be primitive, aggressive, nationalistic, a banner for political conflicts and like Freud said, a devise for projection of childish needs of security. I agree with Ken Wilber that the old mythological religions were pre- and infrarational and that they were rightly overcome in the course of history. But we must never forget that traces of this prerational religion still exist in world consciousness today. So what needs to be done is to make qualitive distinctions about what kind of religion we are talking about. There is no such thing as religion as such. There are only religious feelings and they seem to differ in a very wide range. What needs to be done is to make some sort of 'hierarchy of religious quality', how difficult a task that practically may be.

For when Smith tells us that in the ten most recent years the selling rates of religious books have doubled (Smith 2001 p.155), he neglects to tell us that these modern religious books are very different from their ancestors in premodern and modern times. The books about religion that are sold the most are more s(S)elf centered and are more a diversity of all kinds of religious beliefs.  At the top of the selling lists are books about eastern spirituality and mysticism at large. So there has been a great change in postmodern religion and it certainly can't be labeled a 'traditional belief' any more.

I belief Huston is a bit too 'political correct' in not wanting to raise any criticisms towards old conservative forms of religion or in not wanting to make any qualitive distinctions, perhaps because university life in America is still ruled by conservatives. Perhaps he does not want to estrange these conservatives from his cause. For his battle is with scientism and he needs all the people he can get to fill in the ranks. But maybe his opposition of religion versus scientism is a false one, for there is no such thing as one religion and there are a lot of religious people who are not opposed to science at all but are more opposed to old religious (in their eyes superstitious) beliefs.  These people can be believed to side more with scientism than with 'the traditional belief'.

In his book Huston rightly lists the boons religion can offer society and the individual. He critizises Karl Marx for not acknowledging the positive workings of religion in society. Rightly he states the fact that religion in some cases can have revolutionary force. She can not only be an opiate and a tranquilizer but she can be a stimulate as well.  She can be a threat to the establishment sometimes. And in more than one case has she sided with the poor and the oppressed and tried to liberate and redeem the world.

But if we look more closely to historical examples of the above named features of religion, we will find the true religious revolutionary to be somewhat marginal, not seldom disapproved and even  banned by the established 'traditional belief', like many priests at the end of the nineteenth and at the beginning of the twentieth century were lectured at or even condemned by the church authorities for expressing socialist sympathies and for trying to improve the fate of the working class and the poor. In these cases 'science' (ie. the materialism of Karl Marx) did more to improve their position than religion did.

But Huston wants to have a positive view of religion and it is a strong point to say that in every form of religion there is something precious and worth while, even in very traditional and conservative forms of religion. The essence of his philosophy is that all forms of religion have the belief in common that there is something more to life that is meaningful (that is perhaps the source of all meaning). Now this notion of 'something more', which is not something vague but can be deeply experienced by every believer at whatever stage in the hierarchy and can factually alter your life like nothing else in the world, now this notion is badly neglected and suppressed by scientism. Modern science fails to see the wonder behind it all. It is leaving something out of the picture.

But in the second part of 'Why Religion Matters' Smith hints at a more brighter future as the controversy between science and religion is concerned. For science herself is by now making new discoveries that seem to bridge the gap with religion more and more. In her research of the characteristics and the behavior of the smallest particles/energies in the universe she has stumbled on the ultimate layers of reality. These layers seem to be outside time and space in a kind of eternal continuum. The smallest particles (the quanta) of light, the fotones, are 'living' inside of these layers, outside the world of daily experience. They can't be experienced  by our senses because our senses are limited to only operate within the world of time and space. But they seem to generate energy that 'streams into' this world of time and space. These light quanta have the power to generate life. They seem to be the source of the physical universe.

But this is exactly what religion means with her intuitive concept of God: that there is a transcendent reality, unnoticable to our senses, that is the source of everything material and alive here in our universe. Religion even had the intuition that light somehow was involved in the creative process, for holy texts from all over the world often use the light metaphor to describe the workings of the divine, like 'and then there was Light' in Genesis or like angels appearing in rays if light etc.

So science is bridging the gap by admitting that there is 'more to life than we can see with our eyes' and that this 'more' is somehow a mystery to us. But the next thing to do is to ask the important question if religion is willing to bridge the gap also. For somehow she has to accept the fundamental improvements of the Enlightenment if she wants to be a serious modern partner of modern science.  And here for the first time Huston is admitting that there was something wrong with 'traditional belief' (and this was probably the reason science got so disappointed with it).

For if we accept that his typology of religious personalities (atheist, polytheist, monotheist and mystic) is in fact a hierarchy (as Huston himself claims it to be so), then we are bound to conclude that the monotheistic/mythological phase of religion (which roughly lasted till the rise of modernism) was better than the polytheistic/magical phase of religion (which ended with the rise of the great monotheistic religions in antiquity). But then we must also conclude, and this is important for our train of thought here, that the mystical religions we now see growing bigger by the day (only see how Buddhism is almost getting as popular as Christianity in the West, or that the popular New Age, be it a hotchpotch of all kinds of beliefs, is mystical to the core), are better than the monotheistic religions that formed our 'traditional belief'.

And this is the improvement religion has to make if she wants to bridge the gap with that other source of knowledge, science. For it is not a bargain without costs, but religion has to become fully mystical if she wants to compete with science in supplying true knowledge of r(R)eality. 'Traditional beliefs' wont do anymore because they all contradicted each other in the past and gave more reason for disputes and conflicts than that they contributed to culture. The 'traditional beliefs' tend to divide mankind instead of uniting it, and science has done far more in uniting mankind in the last century (let's name the Internet as an obvious example). So we have to look for a religion that unites all the world religions under a single umbrella, so that finally we can say that there is such a thing as 'religion'. As long as Christians are fighting against Muslims (and vice versa) we can't expect science to take religion seriously. Especially after the 11th of September  many a scientist has frowned his brows about religion.  I don't agree with Huston in seeing these religious conflicts as mere political. Old mythological religion is also at the base of these types of conflict. For old mythological religion wants to dominate other forms of religion.

I personally think Huston agrees with the leading role mysticism plays in religion. For at the end of his book he writes:

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