Can Art Replace Religion?
Can Art Replace Religion?
Can art assume the roles traditionally fulfilled by religion in an increasingly secular and digital world? Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) argues that the religiously non-affiliated worship two new gods: technology and randomness. Digital generative art—art fundamentally addressing technology and randomness—may provide the most straightforward means to critically engage these deities.
“With our recent shift to a more digital life, what is really changing?
What are we losing? And what are we gaining?”
-Tyler Hobbs to Le Random
The role of art in answering these questions may be shifting from a more subordinate to assertive position, as technological and sociological trends uniquely position creative expression to frame our evolving world. Hobbs’s three questions also serve to outline this article:
- What is really changing?
- What are we losing?
- What are we gaining?
As our lives digitize, what really is changing?
The world is secularizing. The number of people “who do not identify with any religion has been rising rapidly” over the last fifteen years in the United States, Western Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Latin America. This is in addition to the largely already secular East Asia. We can confidently say that large portions of the world that were once religious two decades ago are now…not. Why?
I. What is really changing? Gods of Technology and Randomness
We have been seduced by other gods better equipped to address the questions most relevant to our lives today. In the past, when we sought answers—for example, parents about childhood—we might have consulted spiritual leaders or prayed to gods. Today, we google it. Technology is our all-knowing god.
If we seek answers to fundamental questions like who we are, where we come from, and the nature of the universe, the sciences of natural selection and physics can explain with answers rooted in chance. Homo sapiens can identify its evolutionary roots, from our primate relatives to specks in deep-sea geothermal vents, through chance mutation over billions of years. Chance is our origin story god and more.
God of Technology
Our all-knowing technogod is mostly manifested in the Internet, and we keep it in our pocket. We wouldn’t dream of leaving home without it. It’s omniscient and omnipresent. With this wealth and breadth of knowledge at the globe’s fingertips, a secular generation—my generation—grew up at the altar of this superbeing that often knew us better than we knew ourselves. We could even directly communicate with it.
Our prayers were literally answered.
All other less accessible, less practical and less provably omniscient beings were directly challenged. As artist Maya Man told me, “Now in the age of the Internet, when young people are living more secular lives than ever, I think everybody is looking, and looking specifically online, for a way to find purpose in their life, find meaning, find community.” For Man, the purpose we seek in life today—from meaning to community—is directed online rather than on pews. Man’s practice serves as a microcosm of art’s expanding role, giving us space to make sense of and reflect on our digital lives.
If the Internet is the supreme technogod, then its offspring-savior-prophet-apocalypse-bringer is AI, its mother is the computer, and its saints—or intermediaries—are smart phones, social media and blockchain. The power of these combined forces converted us en masse. According to Pew Research, in the United States in 2007, religious non-affiliation was at 16%. By 2021, it had nearly doubled to 29%. The U.S. isn’t alone, with Japan, Western Europe, Australia and New Zealand already less religious yet demonstrating similar trends. In Australia, for example, non-affiliation stood at 19.3% in 2006 and doubled to 38.9% by 2021, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics. In fifteen years, nearly one-fifth of Australia’s population became non-affiliated. These trends are projected to continue into the future as well. How has technology pulled this off?
It appeals to a deeply religious yearning: the desire to participate in our gods’ power. Pharaohs built the Giza Pyramids 4,500 years ago for this reason. Like the pharaohs, we typically had to wait until the afterlife for this privilege. Technology shares its power with us immediately, a very attractive trait for converts.
God of Chance
One massive reason for faith’s enduring power was our previous inability to explain the most basic fundamentals of human existence. Who are we? Where did we come from? What is that giant, bright thing in the sky? Richard Dawkins called the Scientific Revolution “one of the most astonishing intellectual revolutions in history” because it allowed us to answer these basic questions to a large degree of satisfaction. We can explain our origins and the natural world with or without invoking a divine creator, attributing much to chance. Dawkins describes this process not as a single, monolithic act of chance but as “a whole series of tiny chance steps, each one small enough to be a believable product of its predecessor, occurring one after the other in sequence.”
Chance, as a concept, bridges diverse fields such as biology, physics, computer science and art. It offers a viable alternative to the requirement of gods dictating events. If gods are not in control, then the universe is ordered by physical laws. These laws create conditions akin to a generative system, producing results that are inherently unpredictable. No one knows exactly what the system will generate. We’re known as a species to worship the most powerful forces we know—the sun, emperors, animals, ancestors—so chance continues this tradition.
A religion of this age would give us space to question, criticize, prod, poke, immolate, emulate, mock, praise, destroy, admire, unravel and mourn these twin pillars of our time: technology and randomness. Better art functioning as a religion than something more self-serving or accommodating. Better the ruthless and cutting vision of artists to examine our gods from every angle lest we decide they don’t suit us anymore. Relevant artwork would prioritize and re-imagine this new relationship with our gods—the more irreverent, the better. Digital generative art, including AI and algorithmic art, appears poised to most directly address the questions of our precious gods.
II. What are we losing? Our unfulfilled digital needs
With the previously discussed mass loss of religion, there may be socio-anthropological needs going unfulfilled—what we are losing as our lives digitize and secularize. After all, whether you believe in gods or not, experts—such as Stanford anthropologist T. M. Luhrmann—suggest religions have actual, practical benefits. Psychologists also see religion as serving critical functional and cognitive-emotional roles. Even if we stop believing, these needs don’t disappear. They may give clues as to what exactly the religiously non-affiliated find lacking in their lives.
Functional Roles
- Explaining the unexplained: likely not lacking. We’ve long used religion to explain the unexplained but we can now use the Internet. We don’t have all the answers but we know crop growth is unrelated to number of animals sacrificed.
- Moral frameworks: likely not lacking. A loss of religion does not mean a loss of moral frameworks. Humans have created every moral framework in history—with or without religious association—so it appears reasonable to expect we can continue. The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not a terrible place to start. We have the frameworks and don’t have trouble creating them; we have trouble following them. Artists are certainly encouraged to highlight and expose humanity’s moral failures, however.
- Social cohesion: likely lacking. Here is where major issues arise. In 2023, the U.S. Surgeon General declared loneliness an epidemic. The report specifically cited religiosity, noting that “in 2020, only 47% of Americans said they belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque. This is down from 70% in 1999.” The report continues: “Religious or faith-based groups can be a source for regular social contact, serve as a community of support, provide meaning and purpose, create a sense of belonging around shared values and beliefs, and are associated with reduced risk-taking behaviors.” It concludes that “as a consequence of this decline in participation, individuals’ health may be undermined in different ways.” Breakdowns in social cohesion can adversely affect our biology, psychology, behavior and health.
- Comfort: likely lacking. Especially needed in crises, religion has long played a role here. This can include rituals, traditions, celebrations and attention to personal needs at birth, illness or death. When the scaffolding provided by faith in gods or directly from religious institutions is absent, there can be far-reaching consequences, as the previous section indicated. While nothing can replace the intimate support of loved ones, it is religion’s more subtle vanishing comforts—rituals and traditions—that the religiously non-affiliated may find missing today.
Cognitive-Emotional roles:
- Addressing fundamental human questions: lacking. Science can address fundamental questions like when and where we originated as a species. But it remains less successful at questions like what it means to be human today, coping with loss and grief or what a good life is—space that religion has nearly always occupied. It’s also less effective confronting questions of emotion, expression or empathy—all critical for a fundamental understanding of what it means to be human in contrast to our digital surroundings.
- Providing meaning and context to lived experiences: mostly lacking. Religion provided billions of people with meaning for hundreds of thousands of years and you can excuse humanity for an existential crisis when that support is suddenly removed. Finding meaning in a random, secular, digital life has become a great challenge of this age.
- Attending to inner experience: mostly lacking. Religions often offer approaches to inner attention, including prayer beads, Zen Buddhist rock gardens and spiritual counseling. Secular practices like mindfulness, meditation and cognitive behavioral therapy exist but are not common enough to replace the void left by non-affiliation. Supplementing our needed inner attention in a world of external distractions, notifications and attention-seeking remains an enormous task.
This leaves five areas where religious non-affiliation may leave—in aggregate terms, not necessarily on an individual level—potential unfulfilled roles.
- Social cohesion
- Comfort
- Addressing fundamental human questions
- Providing meaning, purpose and context to lived experiences
- Attending to inner experience
Can art fill these roles? We shouldn’t expect it to do it alone. The parts of family, friends, livelihood, wellbeing and general interests remain highly relevant too, as they were in less secular times.
III. What are we gaining? The role of art
Social cohesion
Art can address social cohesion on many levels, including online communities on Discord, social media and large-scale in-person events such as Bright Moments and Art Basel. Large-scale events in the art space mark the calendar like religious holidays. They serve similar purposes, too, providing opportunities to gather, eat, drink and celebrate our shared beliefs.
Artist and Art Blocks Founder Erick Calderon spoke to me about technology and art’s ability to bring people together: “I love generative art, I love NFTs and I love this technology. But I also think there's a higher calling with a lot of this in terms of new ways for humans to interact with each other.” Calderon invokes the language of gods—recognizing a “higher calling”—when describing the new ways art can reinforce social cohesion. For Calderon, art brings us together: “People are here for culture, people are here for art and people are here for each other.”
What does art replacing religion look like? Do you attend at least one large-scale art event per year? Are you a regular Discord, Twitter or Instagram user? If you have achieved a sense of social cohesion, either through in-person events or online, art may be impacting your social cohesion.
Comfort
Beyond the sensory comfort a specific piece might occasionally provide, art can perhaps play a larger role in our day-to-day comfort, replacing religious rituals and traditions. Maya Man spoke to me about her work’s exploration of our contemporary rituals in a secularizing context, from astrology, sports and makeup tutorials to posting on Twitter and making or appreciating art.
“I think having these patterns is comforting to people in a way because we don't have as many traditions that we are sticking to daily or weekly that bring that element of ritual into our lives in a less religious community.”
For Man, ritual provides the comfort of lost structure in a secular-digital life.
Artists like Fahad Karim work intentionally with ritual in their generative practice, believing it to “infuse a story into every artwork born from randomness, something that elevates the project from a thumbnail to a multisensory stamp in your memory.” Rituals supply the faithful with a concrete experience of the sacred, capable of making the ephemeral real—from digital to religious experiences.
Rhea Myers spoke to Le Random about finding comfort in creatively-directed randomness: “I've always found the world very random and confusing. So using randomness in a way that I controlled was therapeutic, or at least helped me theorize my experience of the world.” From experiencing work to its creation and theory, art can provide comfort to those seeking it.
What does art replacing religion look like? Do you regularly return to pieces, collections or artists that speak to you? Do you check something art-related—like Twitter—ritualistically, daily? Do you collect ritualistically? Is art the background on your phone or computer? Do you have more art hanging in your home than religious imagery?
Addressing fundamental questions
Thinking about the world as a complex generative system ruled by chance offers a different perspective on addressing fundamental questions. While it may seem like a devotion to the cold rules and hard logic of computation implies no space for the spiritual, that does not have to be the case. Generative concepts like order, chaos and emergence can serve to reconcile the rational and the transcendental.
Jared Tarbell explained to Jason Bailey on Artnome: “You can break the world down into these very simple rules that interact on orders of magnitude beyond what we’re capable of imagining.
I don’t know if it describes everything. In fact, I kind of don’t believe it does. I think there still are some very spiritual, mysterious elements to the universe. But certainly, thinking about problems computationally, you can get pretty far in understanding what’s actually happening.”
Artistic expression is another means by which humans strive to understand the world around them. Asking questions is fundamental to art itself, which Tarbell understood after reflecting on the act of creation before and after becoming an artist. He told Bailey, “I never wanted to be called an artist for a long time... I didn’t want to inspire or ask questions about the nature of the universe. Which, of course, is all I do now.”
What does art replacing religion look like? Has a work of art ever made you think deeply about its subject? Has it revealed something about the human condition, a different person’s perspective or challenged your way of thinking?
Meaning
Meaning is a loaded term but it can be as simple as a feeling of purpose in life. What role can art play in this pursuit traditionally informed by the spiritual?
Maya Man also spoke to me about the various ways we can find meaning in the randomness of our daily lives: “People find meaning in their sign, astrology readings and through the way that they often interact with generative work's randomness.” Man finds it “really beautiful to find meaning in randomness.” For her, “it doesn't matter that it's random. What matters is the meaning that you take” from it.
Calderon also mentioned art’s ability to motivate our entire lives: “The things that continue to motivate me are things like [Bright Moments] and the people that I get to work with and interact with on a regular basis. There's something greater than what we're talking about. The art is the catalyst.” Calderon even cites the divine, referring to “something greater” to describe the sense of purpose art provides for his life.
What does art replacing religion look like? Does art provide you with regular and sustained—some tiny, some life-changing—sparks that, on aggregate, enhance your life to a degree where not having them seems impossible? Does art underpin what motivates you?
Inner attention
Space for observation and reflection—central to concepts like prayer—is essential for experiencing art as well. One of art’s strengths remains its ability to facilitate a state of mindfulness that is nearly indistinguishable from prayer. Anthropologist Luhrmann explains: “Prayer is a lot like cognitive behavioral therapy. It’s a way you attend to your own inner experience, let go of distracting thoughts and focus on more positive thoughts.”
Can art achieve this? There is a literal Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas. Nathaniel Stern wrote for Le Random about the meditative powers of art, from Jason Ting’s elegant light sculptures to James Turrell’s Skyscapes and the minimalist sculpture of Donald Judd. An even more overt, hyper-contemporary example, breather by digital generative artist Kacey Weiniger (Kcdilla), explicitly encourages the exploration of inner attention. The project aims to “transport you into a surreal summer scene, a place to pause and rejuvenate. Each piece mirrors a calming breathing pattern and welcomes you to follow along.”
The project showcases how the latest tools of our age can be uniquely suited to address our age’s latest challenges.
Kim Asendorf spoke to me about the meditative power of art as well. “I also prefer the way that I don't have to do something with the art but the art does something with me so I can get in a state of losing myself.” If prayer is attending to your inner experience, art can certainly achieve similar ends.
What does art replacing religion look like? Have you become meditative when viewing a work? Do you engage with work that facilitates a reflective mindset? Does spending ten minutes with a piece of art each night in a state of quiet reflection seem reasonable?
Closing
We should think of our new gods like the ancient Greeks thought of theirs: as imperfect, mortal, flawed, dangerous and destructive. Their power and persuasion compel us to venerate them but they can also be abandoned if they fail us. Art can be the litmus test of their continued effectiveness, “a way of understanding life,” as Duchamp called it.
Why include the appreciation, making and experiencing of art in our daily lives? Perhaps, we are simply subconsciously filling a void with the most obvious choice.
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Peter Bauman (Monk Antony) is Le Random's Editor-in-Chief.
Special thanks to thefunnyguys.