According to Scruton, the decline of religion has not come from the arguments of atheists but from turning our “openings to transcendence” into objects of our appetites.
We should not be surprised, therefore, if God is so rarely encountered now. The consumer culture is one without sacrifices; easy entertainment distracts us from our metaphysical loneliness.
The rearranging of the world as an object of appetite obscures its meaning as a gift. The defacing of eros and the loss of rites of passage eliminate the old conception of human life as an adventure within the community and an offering to others. It is inevitable, therefore, that moments of sacred awe should be rare among us.
And it is surely this, rather than the arguments of the atheists, that has led to the decline of religion. Our world contained many openings onto the transcendental; but they have been blocked by waste. You may think that this does not matter that mankind has had enough of sacred mysteries and their well-known dangers. But I think we are none of us at ease with the result. Our disenchanted life is, to use the Socratic idiom, ‘not a life for a human being’. By remaking human beings and their habitat as objects to consume rather than subjects to revere we invite the degradation of both.
Now I think God is regularly encountered now, but certainly many people never encounter Him.
Scruton says that the world contains “many openings onto the transcendental,” but they are blocked because we have rearranged the world “as an object of appetite.” Let’s consider how this is so.
He mentions the “defacing of eros.” Romantic love used to be experienced as an “opening onto the transcendental,” leading to the mysterious union of marriage and to the the miracle of parenthood. Now, “eros” has been reduced to nothing more than sexual appetite, which can be satiated any way we please and just as well by pornography.
He mentions “the loss of rites of passage.” In Christendom, those rites begin with baptism, then confirmation, then marriage, parenthood, vocation, “the last rites,” and the funeral service. Even secularists had rites of passage: the first day of school, getting a driver’s license, graduation, getting a job, marriage, having kids, becoming a grandparent, retirement. But today many folks find rituals meaningless, reject marriage and parenthood, refuse to grow up, and at the end seek to be euthanized.
What are some other “openings to transcendence” that we have reduced to crass appetite?
Work? To see our vocations as means through which God Himself is working to care for and adorn His creation as we love and serve our neighbors. As opposed to using our God-given vocations to satisfy our greed and serve ourselves.
Nature? We can exult in God’s creation, or just look for ways to use it for ourselves.
Religion? We can pursue it as an encounter with God and an immersion in the sacred. Or we can pursue it as religious “consumers,” judging it by what we like, rejecting what we don’t like, and using it to sanctify our worst impulses.
What else?
We need to re-enchant life to make it fit “for a human being.” We need to treat human beings and our habitat on earth as subjects to revere, rather than as objects to consume. And to see it all as a gift rather than objects of our appetite.
Photo: Roger Scruton (2015) by NoJin, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
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