On religion

the imperialism of taste

Caption: A spoon breaches the boundary of a singular confection, a moment of choice in the vast ecosystem of human taste—a visual metaphor for peoples 'taste' in religion courtesy of Nano Banana.

Introduction

We are storytelling creatures, and our most powerful stories have always been about what lies beyond the visible world. For millennia, religion has been the primary vessel for these stories, offering answers to our deepest fears and longings. There is a profound, legitimate beauty in this. The comfort found in prayer, the sense of purpose derived from scripture, the community forged in shared ritual—these are not illusions. They are real, tangible nourishment for the human spirit.

But somewhere along the way, something went terribly wrong. A quiet, profound confusion took root, one that would eventually justify crusades and inquisitions and that still fuels discrimination and violence today. It is the confusion between a spiritual experience and an empirical fact, between a personal anchor and a universal weapon. It is what I call the imperialism of taste.

The Pudding and the Poison

To understand this, let’s talk about pudding.

Imagine a world of 4,500 puddings, each with its own taste and each with its own circle of devotees. There’s a rich chocolate, a delicate rosewater rice pudding, a spicy ginger and mango number. It’s a glorious, diverse potluck. It’s perfectly reasonable, even beautiful, for someone to say, 'I’ve tried many, but this chocolate pudding is heavenly, the most divine thing I’ve ever tasted'.

This is the authentic voice of personal faith. It is a report from the interior of a human life: 'This fulfills me'.

Now, watch what happens when that voice changes. It’s no longer, 'I love this pudding', but 'this is the only pudding'. It declares, 'My pudding is the only true pudding. All other puddings are poison, and those who eat them are doomed to suffer'. The celebration of diversity collapses into a demand for conformity. The vibrant and diverse potluck becomes a holy war. This is the imperialist leap. It’s the moment a subjective preference drapes itself in the robes of objective, exclusive truth.

And it all hinges on a single, unexamined question: how?

The Ghost in the Machine

Every religion presents us with a finished product—a cosmology, a defined God with a specific personality, a set of inviolable rules. They are masters of description. They tell us who God is: loving, jealous, triune, unitary. They tell us what this God wants, whom God favors, and what hell awaits those who dissent.

But ask how God functions as Creator and the confident, authoritative voice of religion stutters, trailing-off into silence.

How does a divine consciousness, absent of a physical brain, formulate a thought? By what specific, measurable mechanism does a prayer—a vibration of air molecules—get received, processed, and 'answered'? What is the physics of a soul? How does it detach from the body and what medium does it travel through to reach a non-physical realm?

These aren't trivial technicalities; they lie at the very heart of the claim to God itself. It represents a fundamental failure of explanatory authority: the logical, rational requirement to explain the fundamental mechanics of a proposed causal agent, let alone one proposed to have caused everything.

The Fatal Chasm

This critique becomes fatal when we apply the standards we use in every other field of knowledge. Patently, the key to understanding God as 'Creator' is in the process: the how. If we apply this to any other domain, the chasm of rationality becomes self-evident:

• If you claim to be an authority on a specific engine but cannot explain how it combusts fuel to create motion, you are not an authority on that engine.
• If you claim to be an authority on a specific artist but cannot describe how they mix their colors or apply their brushstrokes, you are not an authority on that artist.
• If as a biologist you claimed to be an authority on an organism but have no idea how it eats, breathes or reproduces, you are not an authority on that organism.

We would not tolerate this chasm anywhere else. Yet, in religion, we are asked to make a special exception. Religions are making definitive, absolute statements about the 'Artist' while being utterly ignorant of the process of the 'Artist'. This ignorance is not a minor gap; it's a chasm at the very center of their claim to knowledge. If you cannot provide the recipe—the step-by-step process of how God functions—on what basis do you claim the absolute authority to define God's ethic and demands for all of humanity? The entire majestic, often terrifying, architecture of religious dogma is built on this chaos this 'void' of explanation.

The Valid and Vital Nourishment

To point this out is not to dismiss the pudding itself. This is a crucial distinction. The nourishment is real. The peace that settles over a meditating Buddhist is a measurable neurological state. The joy that erupts from a gospel choir is a powerful social and emotional release. The structure and discipline of Islamic prayer can provide a profound sense of order and submission to a higher purpose.

These traditions offer community in a fractured world, moral frameworks that guide behavior and a powerful narrative that helps individuals face suffering and mortality. 'This pudding tastes good to me' is a legitimate, defensible and deeply human statement. It requires no further justification. The problem begins not with the tasting, but with the imperial decree that follows.

The Cost of Dogma

When a community mistakes its religious palate for a universal standard, the consequences are never abstract. They are written throughout history in annihilation, discrimination and oppression.

Historically, this imperialism fueled the Crusades, the sectarian wars that tore Europe apart, and the jihads that expanded empires. These were not merely political conflicts; they were battles over whose pudding would be the official dessert of the world, enforced with sword and fire.

Today, it looks different but is no less real. It’s in laws that restrict the rights of women and LGBTQ individuals based on a specific religious text. It’s in the religious tests that subtly (or not so subtly) influence elections. It’s in the social ostracization of the apostate, the heretic, the 'unbeliever'. It creates in-groups and out-groups, dividing humanity into the saved and the damned based largely on a spiritual accident of birth.

Most insidiously, it shuts down the human conversation. When you are convinced you possess the only truth, curiosity becomes a sin. Why explore the delicate wisdom of Zen Buddhism, the passionate philosophical queries of Judaism, or the earth-based reverence of Indigenous traditions? The imperial mindset reduces the vast, awe-inspiring buffet of human spiritual wisdom to a single, mandatory meal.

From Empire to Ecosystem

There is a way out of this trap. It doesn't require abandoning faith, but rather, re-imagining its expression. We can move from a model of empire to one of ecosystem.

This path champions what I call defensible faith: a deep, personal commitment that does not rely on the coercion or conversion of others to validate its own truth. Its mantra is simple: 'I am deeply committed to my pudding, but I do not require you to eat it to validate my choice'.

This replaces the goal of conversion with the practice of curiosity. Imagine approaching the world’s spiritual traditions not as competing armies, but as a diverse library of human insight. Each offers a unique lens on reality. Buddhism provides a radical diagnosis of suffering through Pratītyasamutpāda (Dependent Origination), a profound map of the relentless chain of cause and effect that constructs our reality. Hinduism contemplates Brahman, the impersonal, ultimate metaphysical ground of all being from which the cosmos arises and to which it returns. Taoism teaches effortless action through Wu Wei, a philosophy of aligning with the natural flow of the cosmos rather than forcing one's will upon it. Abrahamic traditions present a universe of personal relationship and moral covenant with a conscious creator. The Bahá'í Faith teaches that all people are created equal and are 'fruits of one tree and leaves of one branch' thus necessitating the elimination of all forms of prejudice—whether racial, religious, national, or gender-based.

We can learn from these frameworks—unique perspectives for understanding existence—without having to swear exclusive allegiance to any single one. The map is not the territory, and no single map reveals all the terrain.

The Freedom to Taste

The imperialism of taste has offered us the cold comfort of perceived certainty at the price of compassion, curiosity and often, peace. It has forced a rich and complex human experience into a narrow, defensive box.

It is time to lay down our spoons and recognize that the divine, if it exists, is likely a feast too vast for any one recipe to capture. Our spiritual task is not to prove our pudding is the only one, but to have the freedom, and the courage, to taste deeply of our own, while securing for everyone else that same sacred right. The ecosystem, with all its beautiful, messy diversity, is far more nourishing—and far more true to the human spirit—than the empire ever was.

The Gospel of Being

by John Mackay

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