The God Evolution
Church viewed from The Pub, Kandy
Today is Christmas. Even in Sri Lanka, this is a holiday, and celebrated (albeit not much). Every country in the world follows a Judeo-Christian calendar. The years start from Jesus’s death and each ends, roughly, with his birth. This is one small way that religion gives us order.
That is just one way that religion makes our social lives more orderly and, by extension, gives us better lives as human beings. There’s a book coming out called ‘The Faith Instinct’ that expands on this idea.
According to Wade, a New York Times science writer, religions are machines for manufacturing social solidarity. They bind us into groups. Long ago, codes requiring altruistic behavior, and the gods who enforced them, helped human society expand from families to bands of people who were not necessarily related. We didn’t become religious creatures because we became social; we became social creatures because we became religious. Or, to put it in Darwinian terms, being willing to live and die for their coreligionists gave our ancestors an advantage in the struggle for resources.
Personally, I think that religion is a great step forward for humans. People say that it’s the root of all evil and wars, but by the same token then I suppose it’s responsible for good. Furthermore, it’s something many of us feel quite keenly, especially in times of trouble. To quote a beautiful Regina Spektor song,
No one laughs at God in a hospital
No one laughs at God in a war
No one’s laughing at God
When they’re starving or freezing or so very poor
This book posits that this feeling is indeed genetic, something like a God gene. He doesn’t offer biological evidence for this, just reasoning, but it seems reasonable. In reading the Koran I was struck by how sensible many of its thoughts were, and how revolutionary they were in terms of the tribal factionalism that came before. In reading this great book Destiny Disrupted (about Muslim history) I was struck at how Islam organized disparate people and made them into an empiric force.
Many would say that’s not what God is about, which is perhaps true. The scuffle among for control after Muhammed’s death and the eventual schism in Sunni and Shiite is one example where the power is there, but flows funny.
However, at some level, I do believe that religion delivers on the promise of a better life. We have a Christian calendar that structures time. We have Hindu/Buddhist principles of non-violence that have inspired movements from Gandhi to Sarvodaya to Martin Luther King. And, of course, we have had religious wars that – for better or worse – have determined the power structures of today.
Wade argues that our religious disposition can enhance social and national unity, manage scarce resources, even solve the tricky problem of how to get young men to die for the greater good when that’s called for. But Wade also knows that the faith-based preference for the group has engendered genocide, mass suicide and maladaptive cargo cults. Perhaps that is why he declines to draw one inference that proceeds from his arguments: that individual religions can be compared and ranked and, well, approved or disapproved of, since a religion can be good only insofar as it’s useful.
That is to say, rather than being a weird superstition, religion may actually be the software that enables morality and values to be communicated among a group of people. Like Windows if you will. Buggy and nonsensical at times, but it gets the job done. That ability to coalesce around some value system gives a social group power, and their individual components better health, marriages, and the stability to provide a better life for their children.
In that way I think that religion, organized religion, really can deliver. At the least, however, intellectuals and scientists would be wise to give religion the respect they give any other object of study. It is there, and we should try to understand it. I don’t think positioning science in opposition to religion is really an accurate way of perceiving reality. Religion does exist, and we should ask why. The obvious reason is because it works. The less obvious reason is because it’s absolutely true, but that, I suppose, remains a matter of faith.
There is no “God”; it’s a figment of the imagination – like the tooth fairy and santa claus.
To begin with, I believe all religions are good and intend to do good. Most of them, in their basic form, pretty much says the same thing in different ways. They may even be designed (for the lack of a better term) to manouver people towards good which may have been one of the reasons that they do exist – because that works as you put it.
However, with this most of them gathered many followers, which means more power and thus ended the innocense of religions. I’m pretty positive that Buddhists won’t be this tolerant/innocent if their number is as large as Chistians or Muslims. With this power, the point of religion was forgotten and it was used as a tool to gather more power to the instituitions that promote it to, err… gather more power.
That is why I find it quite difficult to respect many religions as they are today. I do admire teachings of early and more pure versions of many religions, but the form they are today is more or less repulsive. So I can’t really respect a belief taht I don’t agree with. But the absense of respect doesn’t have to be the same as holding it in active contempt. Perhpas the appropriate word is tolerance, or even indifference. I don’t respect many religions, but I don’t have a problem with them as long as they don’t come shoving it in my face. Also, I think more important is that respecting believer’s right to believe whatever nonsense (in my opinion that is – their’s differ of course) they want. But ironic it may sound, almost all the religions – or lets say followers of religions – seriously lacks in that department. To many followers mine is good while yours is shit. Pity…
Nicely put…we can go on for days and years debating religion vs. science, but in the end we have to contend that the human race continues to evolve in some form or another, where education, critical thinking and ethical behaviour will determine its future direction and survival, now more than ever.
According to this book, ‘Primates and philosophers: how morality evolved,’ morality exists in the animal kingdom, especially in primates. Religion only restates culturally what is intrinsically a part of our (and our primate cousins’) genetic make up. We also have an in-built tendency to divide the world into people like us and people not like us (sometimes racial–white skin blue eyes vs. brown skin brown eyes; sometimes cultural–Christianity vs. Islam). (Amazon)
People created God because they did not know why certain things happened. With the development of science many things are explained. Now we know what some religions taught is wrong. e.g. the origin of man. Faith is not rational. A kid has to be brainwashed ( the brain wired) at a very young age to have faith in god or believe in the supernatural. When someone can be brainwashed they can do horrible things. It is better to be rational, think for yourself and be responsible for your actions .
The gist of your post, Indi.ca, seems to be that religion is good, even though it has led to some bad things, and it is good mostly for how it has helped to guide and organize human society. My take is to agree with you on the notion of organizing and guiding human society, but the suggestion that it is or has been a generally good thing is much more debatable as far as I’m concerned.
My problem with religion is that it largely ignores the ability of the individual or society at large to arrive at conclusions based on reason, logic, experience, etc. and insists that any understanding one has be based on the authority of a god or those who represent him, on things that were written in the past by someone who purportedly represented that god or on tradition.
Personally, I don’t need any historical text or religious authority to tell me I should not discriminate against someone because of their race, that I should give some of what I have to help others in need, that it is wrong to steal, etc. Whether as individuals or a society at large we have the capacity to arrive at positions of morality through the power of reason, logic, experience, etc. and need not rely on religion, which has proven to have harmful consequences in far too many instances.
Despite the current uptick in religious fanaticism around the world today I think we are gradually moving toward a world where religion will finally be placed in the dustbin of history.
Understanding why religion exists and studying it objectively are different from ‘respecting’ it. Your bizarre argument can be extended to any human behaviour. One could study the sociological and psychological aspects of, for instance, rape; would you also then advocate respecting rape? It’s everywhere and has been practiced for ages as well! Extreme example, I know, but your bizarre ‘logic’ still applies. See here:
“At the least, however, intellectuals and scientists would be wise to give rape the respect they give any other object of study. It is there, and we should try to understand it. I don’t think positioning science in opposition to rape is really an accurate way of perceiving reality. Rape does exist, and we should ask why.”
FYI, scientists do try to understand why religion exists and why people are religious. That doesn’t mean they have to suddenly respect it, or believe in it themselves. The fact that religion exists doesn’t somehow make it true or valid, or worthy of respect. You seem to imply that by its mere existence it has earned credence.
“I don’t think positioning science in opposition to religion is really an accurate way of perceiving reality.” <- positioning one thing in opposition to something else has nothing to do with perception of reality. Your statement seems confused – science is in fact the only rational way of perceiving reality, and the fact that it doesn't jibe with religion doesn't mean it doesn't acknowledge that religion at present plays a major role in human societies (at least, the branches of science that have any need to consider those things). Like I said before, acknowledging it is possible without believing in it. In any case, science in general doesn't have any stated opposition to religion. It's is about seeking the truth based on observation and reason; the fact that that truth consistently flies in the face of religion is testament to how lacking religion is when it comes to, you know, veracity.
If you're a fan of religion, that's fine, but please don't preach about how it is the bedrock of morality. Just because some moral values are communicated via religion doesn't somehow give it an A+ in being an effective tool, nor does it mean that religion is necessary for morality. I don't have a religious bone in my body – am I immoral, has the 'software' of morality not been able to update my morality database? The very existence of atheists who are moral disproves the notion that religion is a necessary tool for morality. Unless you wish to imply that all of us are immoral.
And, as for your example of the modern calendar as a contribution of religion – Huh? The current Gregorian calendar is based on the Julian calendar, which is very similar and came into being a few decades BC. The calendar is the result of rational thinking, and the fact that the current one uses religious dates as a baseline is only reflective of how big religion has been and is in human society, and is in no way a credit to religion. If people used major natural disasters in history as key points for their calendar, would you really be saying that natural disasters are great because they give us a means of 'structuring time'?
If you believe in your religion and have faith, that's fine. The moment you try to rationalize it with bad arguments, that's where it stops being fine, that's where it has to be countered. Based on your reasoning, I suppose that means I haven't shown your belief enough respect?
lovely picture
Things are hardly as simple as that. Granted, religion has some good in it. But if you want to pick straws, so do almost anything under the sun. You can even use the argument of unification for a common goal, the motivation of youth to follow a leader, and inspiration for determined action to the Nazi persecution of Jews, and I don’t think any sane person of this century would condone their actions.
There is good and bad about almost everything in life. And in a time where people couldn’t explain phenomena, religion served as the glue which gave certitude to unanswerable questions. At a time when people were happy to just listen without questioning, it seemed enough that someone claimed to know the answers.
Without doubt, religion has had a very strong influence on the way the world has shaped up today, and equally doubtless is the fact that it is a force that cannot be ignored. But to use that as a guide to morality is far fetched in today’s world. Almost all the people in the world, except for the fundamentalists, are selectively religious. They pick and choose what aspect of their religion they want to practice. This is why the moral citizen ignores the passages in their respective holy books that preaches intolerance of other religions, differential treatment of women, and a tacit acceptance of slavery, to name just a few. It is the only way to practice religion today. Ignore the shady bits.
If we were to chart out the historical good and bad brought about by religion, the good is shamefully overshadowed. The Spanish Inquisition, the persecution of Jews, the Indo-Pak feud, the Palestinian situation, the salem witch hunt – these are all just some of the direct influence of religion. The indirect consequences of religious dogma has had far reaching consequence as well.
And Science does NOT ignore religion. Instead, scientists study religion as a phenomena; a mass influence, and how it has impacted the world as we know it. Positioning science in opposition to religion, as you put it, is not something done by scientists. On the contrary, it is religion which has almost always stood in the way of scientific progress. At one point, they killed scholars who postulated that the Earth revolves around the Sun and not the other way around, because they felt that God created the world with man in the center. Then they balked at the idea of extinction altogether, because they felt at the time that God would never let any of his creatures simply vanish… and the Bible’s tacit approval of slavery; with it’s prescription of how to treat slaves and how to punish them for ‘offenses’ (quite harshly) were once used very strongly against the abolition of slavery in the United States.
These ideas which were considered sacrilegious at the time, has slowly gained acceptance today, but the fight was quite strong, with far too many innocents punished for their opinions. Progress would have been faster, and the condition of the general populace, much better, were it not for the friction created by religion. Even today, we have anti-semitics, opposition to stem cell research, and homophobia, all of which has a strong support through religion. Granted, there are some contrived arguments even from non-religious sources, but the strongest support is undoubtedly, religion.
On a personal note, I’m a Christian, and I DO believe in a God, but I would never let Him dictate my morals. I never needed a historical manuscript to teach me what is right and wrong. I knew murder and theft were bad before I read the commandments, and I think moral fiber depends more on how you are brought up than quotable quotes from worn out books.
Very nice read.
Merry Xmas (Better late than never!)
Cheers!
Jesus’ birth date is not Dec 25th. The Catholic church, wanted to obscure a pagan ritual taking place around the winter solstice (Dec 21), hence they started to celebrate the birth of Christ during this time. That’s how, christmas on Dec 25th came about.
But in general, your point is well taken. While each religion’s adherents believe their God to be the true God, there are some interesting differences. For example: Christianity is the only religion, that I’ve heard, that preaches their God, Jesus Christ, coming to earth to die to save human beings. God as a Martyr. The Trinity is another interesting point of Christianity.
But the human proclivity for possessions, positions and pride will always interfere with Religions’ moral teachings. A struggle of the human flesh and spirit. Here spirit emphasizes the good part of humanity and the flesh the other.