In Indonesia, religion is considered as a sacred dimension of human life - which is not ideal.
Based on the principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) and the post-reformation institutionalization of Pancasila, the religious dimension is left to the people of Indonesia.
However, this seemingly individualistic and preferential treatment of religion has - since the fall of the Suharto regime - been treated in the same collectivist and weirdly conservative way as one would treat a person’s race.
It should not matter if someone is Papuan or Chinese, surely because of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika.
In other words, we tolerate these things to remain that way. By the same principle, it shouldn’t matter if someone is Muslim and wants to pray, or if someone is Christian and wants to worship on Sunday.
However, this article is an attempt to persuade the reader that this way of thinking is simply a wrong way of thinking because religion is not an attribute of a person in the same way that race is an attribute of a person.
In short, people are born into a race, but no one is born into a religion.
Religion ≠ Identity
Babies do not automatically embrace their parents’ religion, nor do they automatically embrace any particular religion.
Despite claims that humans are naturally religious, as per the suggestions of Freud and many other scholars, humans have been consistently showed to be irreligious by nature.
Whether they identify as atheists, agnostic, or any other labels which communicates some form of rejection or absence of beliefs and knowledge towards the existence of gods, the natural state of mind towards religious beliefs have always been its absence.
For humans to embrace religion, they must first be taught by others to accept - regardless of how much they do actually accept - the teachings of that religion.
Just as no one is born into socialism, capitalism, or fascism, religions are not inherent human attributes that people acquire at conception or birth.
They are ideational.
And an idea, to be possessed by anyone, must first be taught, learned, or socially propagated.
If I say that a baby, who can’t yet speak nor think in the societally conventional sense we say someone does, is a Muslim or a Christian, I should be committed to a mental asylum. What if I had called a baby to be polytheist instead? Or that a baby is somehow a Manichean or a Totemist? Would such invocations make equal common sense?
It’s like calling the child a capitalist, socialist, or fascist.
What’s indecent here is the assumption that the child who can’t yet understand or express words has a mentality that is mature enough to willingly consider and choose - from a set of countless numbers of religious beliefs - is already using that mentality to consider issues like the economic system in the second example, and the belief in God in the previous example.
The point here is that we generally don’t recognize a one-year-old as having sufficient experience and ability to drive a car, yet in Indonesia, cases of religions are met by many people through an idiosyncratic approach which contradicts such general common sense.
There are people who essentially expresses consent to the practice of pretending that children under the age of 13, even babies to some extent, are already exploring complex socio-religious teachings.
The issues in this topic extend beyond the realm of philosophy. Nevertheless, these philosophical discussions can provide a source of answers regarding how we should conduct ourselves in life. And this is where things can become dangerous not only to our own safety, but also to the condition of our society as a whole. The topic of religion raises questions such as “What do we live for?” and “What is the nature of the universe?” amongst many others.
And these questions can bring with them dangerous and dogmatic answers if we leave them to a realm where, according to the principles of our nation, everything can be considered true via a lackdaisical implementation of the principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika.
When asked, “Why do we live?” a Muslim might answer, “To worship Allah.” However, both answers are equally valid and should be considered valid, just as a Christian might answer, “To worship the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.”
Here, the principle held by Indonesia is that “Both answers have equal standing,” and therefore, Muslims are allowed to practice their teachings, and Christians are given the same rights. Just like when a Javanese person might be asked, “How should we live?” and they might answer “Lamun siro sekti ojo mateni. Lamun siro banter ojo ndhisiki. Lamun siro pinter ojo minteri” (Even if you are powerful, do not hurt others. Even if you are fast, do not get ahead. Even if you intelligent, do not be pretentious). Such answers surely ought to be treated as part of culture which stands on equal grounds - at least ideologically - in Indonesia with other cultural teachings.
However, it would be a mistake to assume that there is no conflict between the two religions, the same way that philosophically each races in Indonesia ought to stand on equal grounds. Once more, this is because religion is not identity, it is an idea, and conflicting ideas matter in a society.
Religion ≠ Harmony When someone wants to convert to Islam, they must recite what is known as the Shahada. This is a statement that reads, “I bear witness that there is no god but Allah… and I bear witness that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah.” The first part of the sentence is a confession of the state of the universe from an Islamic worldview, and is fundamentally opposed to the Christian worldview, which insists on belief in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the form of a Trinity.
When these conflicts are allowed to persist without any effort to find what’s right, things that aren’t necessarily in our best interests can happen without our consent. It’s like holding both beliefs—the Earth is a sphere and the Earth is a flat plane (the flat Earth model).
In a previous article, specifically Are Indonesians Normatively Confused?, I discussed the difference between descriptive statements and prescriptive statements. This same typology can be used to discuss beliefs.
A descriptive statement is a statement which describes something real or true regarding reality. They have truth value.
And when there’s no effort to identify the true descriptive belief, this will inevitably impact other aspects of life based on these two ideas.
A notable example in this regard is the bridge known as the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge in New York City, United States of America which connects Staten Island and Brooklyn. During the bridge’s construction, the curvature of the earth had to be taken into account, and this can be seen in the bridge’s two suspension towers, which, while both vertical and perpendicular to the sea, are 41 mm further apart at the top than at the bottom. Although each tower is vertical and perpendicular to the water, they are 41.28 mm farther apart at the top than the bottom. This is due to the Earth’s curvature - which would not be taken into account under a Flat Earther’s worldview, thus precluding the construction of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge.
Our knowledge of the Earth’s shape is the product of an activity we call science, an endeavor so often misunderstood that it has become somewhat of a pejorative in some circles, including in many religious circles.
In its non-pejorative, non-controversial, and non-misunderstood fashion, however, science simply refers to a wide array of systematic human activity which tries to employ observation, experimentation, and focused studies on the world around us. Despite its seemingly objective nature, science still relies on ideas, constructs, and concepts to be able to reliably interpret observations.
It is when an idea becomes unquestionable and treated like a race, it becomes difficult for any of us to carry out this activity.
If we place the belief that the Earth is flat on the same level as the belief that the Earth is round, and say, “Both are equally true according to the will of the one answering,” then it will be impossible to build the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge because we cannot at all choose which of the two worldviews is true about whether the Earth is flat or round.
The same is true in the realm of religion.
When we say, without first investigating, that Islam, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Confucianism are all equally correct in their respective assertions about the nature of the universe in which we live, we will have trouble in the long run because we are essentially giving people the right to practice and maintain their beliefs without first seeing whether their beliefs have been proven true or not.
Once more, we don’t do this in other aspects of human life.
We don’t let someone without a driver’s license drive, we don’t let someone who doesn’t know the law become a lawyer, and we certainly don’t rely on unproven research for information about a phenomenon.
The issue here isn’t that people need a license or permit to practice their religion, but rather that in other areas of society, people need to demonstrate their abilities, knowledge, experience, and, importantly, their ideas before they are taken seriously.
So why shouldn’t religion receive the same treatment?
Why do many people remain silent when they hear a sermon about the role of God in the universe or any topic that is too abstract, but still these people take the sermon seriously because it is a religious topic?
Why do many people, when they hear anything related to religion, immediately shut off the part of themselves that is – generally – critical and skeptical because it is a religious topic?
This is a very important thing because even though not everyone cares about the factual ideas given by a religion, of course they will care when they see things that can happen if normative ideas based on those factual ideas emerge.
In other words, it may not be the “facts” that matter in this case, it is the actions and teachings that formulate based on those “facts” which eventually - in many cases - result in human suffering. A well-known example in this regard is the origin of the Jemaah Islamiyah movement in Indonesia which facilitated the execution of the 2002 Bali Bombings.
For many Indonesian and international scholars, the movement’s origin can be discerned by contextualizing its appearance with Darul Islam (DI). The latter was a post-independence Indonesian organization with Salafi Jihadist teachings, believing that the Indonesian government - as it was configured by Sukarno - was an apostate regime which had to be overthrown. Terrorism, for DI, was a legitimate form of reaction against civilians who disagreed or was absent in their support towards the movement. Eventually, after being defeated by the Indonesian military, enclave members of DI reformed the organization - further influenced by the 1979 Iranian Revolution - by entrenching the remnants of the organization into the anti-Suharto opposition. They started by conducting terrorist attacks on Borobudur Temple and churches , specifically in response to mass killings of Muslim protestors in 1984. By 1985, the enclaves networked with Afghan mujahideens, eventually setting up a training center for hundreds of cadres, and proliferating ideological doctrines more akin to the Salafi Jihadism of Afghanistan with the aim of introducing and promoting them in Indonesia. This created an ideological split between the enclaves.
There were those who considered themselves to be more traditionalist, thus contesting the induction of the newer Salafi Jihadist ideas such as its emphasis on Jihad as an elevated doctrine compared to other Islamic pillars such as hajj. On the other hand, there were those who more so favored the newly-learned Salafi Jihadist ideas which eventually left the DI enclaves to form their own group now known as Jema’ah Islamiyah on 1993. This latter group not only contested the Indonesian government’s legitimacy, but eventually joined the fight against Western states (with special interest on the United States and its allies) as per the 1998 fatwa of Osama Bin Laden to conduct jihad. According to one of the leading scholars of jihadi movement, Solahudin, it was this commitment which led to the Bali bombings on 2002 with more than 200 people killed and more than 300 people wounded.
With this example alone, it is not only absurd for Bhinneka Tunggal Ika to be implemented in the same sense for ideas - especially religious ideas - as it should be implemented to inter-racial relations. The Salafi Jihadist ideas carries it roots from the same beliefs as the non-Salafi Jihadist ideas, that is, the belief in the existence of a God.
Perish the thought about the Abrahamic religions at this point, focus on the difference of sects and denominations which exists in one religion. Like it or not, different sects cannot coexist ideationally when all of them simultaneously claim themselves to be the “one true religion” and discards many - and sometimes all - rational faculties to peacefully criticize one another.
Thus, the point stands. Religion not only does not, but cannot provide a good basis for harmony.
All ideas should be subjected to the treatment of science and rationality, a process where ideas becomes progressively and systematically eliminated based on observation. It is only through this secular principle that ideas and religions may coexist peacefully.
One question that may appear in the reader’s mind at this point, however, is the following: What about religious sects and beliefs who are peaceful in their teachings, and does - in fact - preach tolerance to other faiths? Should they be subjected to the criticisms called for prior? What’s wrong with simply living one’s life in accordance to some religious teachings of one’s preference? Surely, there is nothing violent about religious harmony when such a concept can be actualized?
This is the perfect time when we have to discuss the failures of religion as a normative system to evaluate behaviors in a particular society, typically known as mores. In the next section, it will become clear why religious mores cannot be treated like racial mores, and simply be left alone to their holy books.
Religion ≠ Mores
Every religion is absolute and eternal truth, lit never contains any provision for its own amendment or “evolution.” It would stultify itself if it should say: I am temporarily or contingently true, and I shall give way to something truer. I am a working hypothesis only. I am a constitution which may be amended whenever you please. “The faith once delivered to the saints” must claim to be perfect, and the formula itself means that the faith is changeless. A scientific or developing religion is an absurdity.
William G. Sumner
Mores refers to customs, norms, and behaviors that are acceptable to a society or social group. When discussion related to religion comes to light, it is often presumed that religion acts as part of the foundational rubric of a society’s customs, norms, and behaviors. You can see this clearly in seemingly innocuous invocations of religious education as an important aspect of a child’s education. A closer look at such notions, however, would reveal a crude and nearly-barbaric practice rooted in dogmatism, a scourge to the human mind and rationale.
Steve Taylor divided religions into two types: dogmatic religion and spiritual religion. Dogmatic religion are those which creates a sense of in-group and out-group identity. In this sense, dogmatic religion often revolves around rigid belief and group identity rather than a sincere and authentic want for moral insight. Devout dogmatists will view their own doctrines as “the truth” - similar in fashion as the Quranic literalists of the Ja’maah Islamiyah movement - and regard others as absolutely wrong, not because they seek ethical understanding, but because they crave certainty and belonging. In such a mindset the goal is to defend one’s faith and convert others, either through coercion or other irrational modes. This adversarial stance inevitably lead to a confrontational “us-vs-them” outlook in which differing beliefs are seen as threats, leading to intolerance and cognitive inflexibility of the highest levels.
Amongst many other studies on tolerance, Rahkman Ardi et al.’s study is one of the most alarming specifically on “the relationships between religious schema and tolerance of two alienated groups in Indonesia, namely, the atheists and believers in indigenous faiths.” Ardi et al. conducted a survey on six different types of universities with varying levels of identity differences (one is an Islamic public university, one is a Catholic private university, one is a Hindu-majority public university in Bali, one is a private university with no particular religious majority, and one is a public university with no particular religious majority) between August and December 2019. They wrote the following statements in various parts of their study’s discussion and conclusion:
“People who believed strongly in the truth inscribed in their religious scriptures were likely to exhibit lower tolerance towards atheists.” This is consistent with similar studies conducted from 2005 to 2020 which found that “the more literally people interpret their religious teachings, the higher their prejudice against outgroups and the lower their tendency to engage with other religions.”
“Tolerance is often selectively and strategically manifested in certain groups, and its expressions are not generally sincere.”
“Students from universities unaffiliated to any particular religion displayed moderate levels of tolerance towards the two alienated groups. Their level of tolerance was lower than the acceptance demonstrated by the Bali and Catholic universities.”
“The social and educational climate of a university also determined the level of tolerance evinced by its student body towards such groups.”
These four statements demonstrates that not only is dogmatic religion dangerous, but - despite its over-reliance on dogma - it is also subject to the attitudes and preferences of its followers with no particularly rational basis other than the religious scriptures of their stated religion.
As mentioned by Sumner in the quote which opened this section on mores, while the interpretation of religions changes, the actual content behind those interpretation vis-a-vis the holy scriptures and relics do not. This means for religions to reform, they will need to conduct mental gymnastics and irrational modes of thinking based almost entirely on societal mores.
In other words, to change mores in a positive direction, religion itself has to intentionally ignore particular parts of its own teachings. Even if the religion preaches messages of tolerance, its over-reliance on dogmatism means that there is an inherent cognitive inflexibility and irrational mode of thinking that lodges itself on being against moral innovation. It may seem obvious to the common person, but our real guide to right and wrong comes from lived experience and shared culture – the mores we inherit – not from static religious dogma. In this sense, religion is a weird, anti-intellectual instrument of the past.
Religion can no more causate morality than a mirror can create the face it reflects. This is why religion cannot - and should not - facilitate the development of societal mores in Indonesia.
Conclusion
By now, it should be clear that questions that might fall within the realm of philosophy can also be important questions. These questions cannot simply be dismissed with the quip, “That topic isn’t important; let each person find their own truth.”
As long as there are people who base their answers on the question “What should I do?” and “How should I live” on religion, the religious sphere is of interest to all of us as a society.
Therefore, we cannot say that the principle of Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (Unity in Diversity) is a good principle to apply to our ideas and thoughts.
We cannot continue to treat the religious aspect of our society as something like race, because religion is simply not. Then, what is religion? So far, we have focused on dispelling the various ways religions have been understood.
We now know that religion is not equivocal to identity, then we learn it does not necessarily facilitate harmony, and in the latest section, we learn that it is not even a good basis for mores due to its over-reliance on dogmatism. Then, what it is?
Religion is a learned process, and we can control what we learn.
In this sense, religion is, and should always be negotiable, just like anything else that we can learn.
Religion is an aspect of human life which we - ideally - can question, rewrite, reinterpret, reimagine, or discard altogether.
If faith is learned, then it is also yours to challenge, just as we do with every and any other human idea.