Phylogeny of religions by CPurrin1. Incorrect in parts, but something.
In this 2007th year marked by someone else’s prophet, I’d like to say that I like faith. Contrary to katakata, I am not anti-Buddhist or anti-religious in any sense. I only tend to comment on stuff that interferes directly with my life, like Fundamentalist Buddhism, notably in Parliament. I actually have great respect for faith and fond memories of my now depleted store. What I do object to is a faith of certainty rather than a faith of submission and doubt. Any Islamist, Christianist, or Buddhist who proclaims the supremacy of their religion and castigates anyone else doesn’t typify faith to me. Importantly, the same goes for Atheists who gleefully try to ‘disprove’ faith and are so certain of others being wrong. My own experience with faith isn’t of any specific conclusions, or of any superiority to anyone else. It was simply of loving something and feeling greatly humbled by that love.
For Faith
I’d like to briefly address the Atheist argument that faith is a destructive force. On their side they cite religious wars, persecution, and intolerance. There are numerous examples of the above. I don’t dispute this, but I also think that there are too many confounding variables (power, politics) to make the conclusion so one-to-one. The truth is that the overwhelming majority of humanity does practice some kind of faith. In fact, Atheism does not even show up in the demographics of religion, and around 75% of people adhere to the five majors. I have an instinctive revulsion to an argument which writes off most of history and humanity as stupid. It’s elitist for one, and smacks more of judgment than useful social theory. My first argument is simply that faith is important.
History: For all its sins, religion is also responsible for our system of time, most art, magnificent architecture (Pyramids, Angkor Wat, Notre Dame), literature (Ramayana, Bible) and was for a great part of human history the guardian of knowledge and writing. It also preserved and spread language, culture, and formed a basic moral code that actually leads to decent lives and societies. Not that it is perfect, but it is a standard.
In technology the word ‘standard’ has a special meaning. HTML and GSM (phones), for example, are standards. HTML isn’t especially awesome as a programming language, and it’s not optimal. There are a lot of contradictions, kludges, and stuff it can’t do. It is, however, widely adopted (warts and all) and that standardization lets you build a million things on top of it. Same thing for Windows. It kinda sucks, but people have settled on it and people have been able to communicate and build countless structures of business and knowledge on top of it.
In the same way, even religions with liberal doses of crazy form a standard, one that you can build a civilization atop. Not the greatest civilization or an optimal one, but something. It was the first thing that took us out of family/clan/race orientation and into something bigger and more inclusive. Not totally inclusive (obviously), but it’s something. That’s one reason I’m not quick to criticize religion on technical points. I know it’s hacky, but we have built amazing things on top of it.
Humanity: Back to the present day, the majority of humans simply do have faith. That doesn’t mean it’s right, but it is deserving of at least an academic respect. I’ve found that I learn more about people by observing what they do rather than judging it. Not that some things aren’t wrong, but in the past when I have judged I have also stopped learning.
Religion could be an antiquated delusion, but as a social scientist you can’t simply ignore it. Religion is there and has been there at the most crucial moments in human lives – birth, marriage, and death. You may think it’s stupid personally, but that’s not an intellectually honest place to start.
Finally, I have often had Atheists argue to me that God does not as if that proves something (or is provable). Honestly, I will gladly concede that point. God, Nirvana and Allah don’t exist. Fine. My uncle is also dead. I still love him.
The existence or non-existence of God is to me, irrelevant. What is important is loving Him/It/Her and living a better life. What is important is using some standards to build a more stable society. It’s OK to love something that doesn’t exist. It can make you a better person. The love is what is important.
Faith has been with us throughout history and it is with most of us now. I’m not saying that anyone needs to have it, but I do think it deserves some academic respect. Billions of people have had faith for thousands of years, so it’s no minor psychological phenomenon. Hours of stoned brain power has been wasted on whether something greater exists, when the more important question of faith has been left largely unstudied. I’m in the odd position of thinking that religion needs more respect from that minority and a bit less from the majority, which I guess pleases nobody. However, I’m simply not that interested in whether God is dead. I’m more interested in how humans live.
Very nicely put. Glad you included atheists, cos many seem to ignore their views. Though its debatable whether simply loving somethin that might not be there makes you a better person, but that is your view, and the post is still good.
religion as i see it is a certain dependance on a higher being or a collective philosophy. It fullfills a persons inherent need to hold on to something that provides hope and a sense of tranquility. I believe that life dictates the degree to which your yearn for it, what circumstances you have been through and what influences you have had in your life. its what works for you, you either reject it or embrace it but do the world a favour and bloody keep it to yourself. I hate the loudspeakers that have bana and muslims prayers polluting the air, the missioneries that offer food if converted…
Religion good, men who distort it to their favour BAD. Also not a fan of collective thinking, i don’t need a religion to set the way i live my life..
Indi,
You say faith is important. It may have been important years and years ago when the mass populace was uneducated, illiterate and needed, literally, the fear of god to be kept in line and follow the norms of their society. It couldn’t have been difficult to convince those people of a superior being. A good example is that in this day and age, with society expected to be enlightened and more rational, people from all walks of life, including many highly educated, otherwise intelligent people, blindly believe in god-men like Sai Baba, Swami Premananda etc. If a charismatic man who is (obviously) delusional enough to believe in the stuff that he preaches can hold sway over millions of people like Sai Baba does today, what chance would the poor people living 4 B.C. have had? Cue your Jesus Christs, your Mohameds, who were no doubt trying to do some good by bringing some discipline to those folks, but we’d never know whether they weren’t just a ancient version of the modern day messiahs.
I sometimes wonder whether faith is relevant now. I’m a fairly broadminded bugger who believes in ‘to each, his own’ so I figured that it works for some people and so it is probably relevant to them.
hmmm…
You say better life. What is the fundamental difference between what is good and what is bad?
Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is belief in spite of, even perhaps because of, the lack of evidence.
— Richard Dawkins
By that definition of faith, any heuristic thought is a ‘cop out’. By heuristic I mean
Heuristics are literally the basis for 99.9% of human decisions, and in a computational sense they are remarkably efficient at dealing with woefully incomplete information. It’s not a ‘cop-out’, just ask anyone trying to program a computer to deal with corrupted or incomplete input. Dawkins studied evolution and he didn’t base his book on such a specious argument. ‘Faith’ as described in that quote is literally the human processing model. People don’t apply the scientific method in 99.9% of decisions (if any), and we’re actually evolved to be pretty damn good at decision making. Purely by that token, faith is literally a godsend.
You’re going straight to Hell
Because you don’t believe
In my imaginary friend
Who lives in the sky
And truly loves you so!
Well, even though
He is gonna have you tortured when you die
You’re going straight to Hell
Because you don’t believe as you oughtta
That snakes and donkeys talk
Or a man can walk
On water
Or that it’s true
That the Lord committed suicide just for me and you!
You’re going straight to Hell
Because you don’t believe
In a red demon with a little pointy tail
Or a man who had a condo in a whale
Or those flapping feathered angels who fell
Just like them
You’re going straight to Hell!
Heuristics are literally the basis for 99.9% of human decisions, and in a computational sense they are remarkably efficient at dealing with woefully incomplete information
– Yes, thousands of years ago – but today people have a lot more information than they did – yet they still base decisions on faith.
People don’t apply the scientific method in 99.9% of decisions (if any),
-Isnt that worrying? Lets say a person comes upon an unforseen situation. One one hand they have faith (which has no evidence of ever being right) and on the other hand they have science (which has a lot of evidence) and they choose faith to deal with the situation!
and we’re actually evolved to be pretty damn good at decision making.
–Are you sure? What about all the countless needless deaths and immense suffering caused by faith?
Purely by that token, faith is literally a godsend.
–Not only that, sometimes it can get you a private jet. Just ask Benny Hinn ;)
I think you miss the point, nsharp. The reason 99.9% of decisions are not based on the scientific method, is probably because they cannot be based on the scientific method, due to data, time, and computational restrictions. If you tried to base every single one of your decisions on the scientific method, you literally wouldn’t get very far.
I guess for people who have never had to go through trials & tribulations & feel the powerlessness of being human in adversity — I mean ‘no hope’ situations— & the comfort one feels in a belief system & the hope it gives, it must be smart to make assumptions as why some people have the need to believe in something.
Well, the phylogeny of religion is clearly wrong in spots, as you say. If you have thoughts on how I should fix it, I’d be grateful. The current draft is here.