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I have no idea if this is an original thought or not. Anyway. I ponder quite a bit how exactly it is that the major religions of the world maintain their grip in the teeth of so much new knowledge that is destructive of their base assertions.
Certainly there is a direct correlation between plural, prosperous culture and secularism. Just based on raw polling data. And I think this carries over to the more gentle and civil variations of religion as well. Competition either destroys them or makes them gentler. A healthy theocracy is one that eliminates all competition. In any epoch.
Social progress seems to track pretty reliably with scientific progress. And the acceptance of scientific findings. Religious authority, of course, tries to take credit but actual records demonstrate with great consistence that their normal mode is to oppose research and learning in the present and only approve at a much later date when all dispute has been rendered irrelevant. I’m mainly making historical generalizations here rather than contemporary ones but the difference is marginal.
Often we can witness figures of authority playing off both sides. Manipulating faith for its appeal and its apparent ability to solve the insoluble. While utilizing thoroughly different methods on back channels. Even when they get called on this duplicity the power of faith seems undaunted. They simply appeal to whatever built in rationalization already exists within the religion and carry on as before. It seems quite fool proof.
All that being a preface:
My suspicion is that a great utility of religion is its linguistic pliability. It is brilliant not because of what it says but because of what it doesn’t say. Will not say. Cannot say. Because of its deftness at nesting a whole series of obscurantisms into a beloved cultural ritual. I mean, no one is perfect right? No one always says the right thing at the right time. No has perfect moral intuition. Religion, at least popular civilized religion might be thought of as the ultimate incarnation of small talk. Some common and arbitrary point of reference with which to ground dialogue in a world where sensible, informed discourse takes more and more investment all the time. So this gives religious pleasantries some durable selective advantage. They can both affirm and transcend racial or nationalistic lines. They can simultaneously shame and affirm social misfits for inappropriate outbursts. Consider the specialized vocabularies of science, law, philosophy and so on. They are developed over time to deliver some optimum degree of specificity. And to do so more efficiently (sometimes) than the same ideas would normally have in casual conversation. I think that religion in civilized nations is sort of like the polar opposite of this. It’s a way to avoid or postpone or soften the difficult problems. To save face in the face of, well the unfaceable. And the degree to which it has succeeded contributes to its otherwise rather puzzling success.
I’d say there’s quite a bit of truth in your observations, Brick. The other thing religions do is wall off religion from the sort of criticism that is used in science to arrive at ‘truth’ by saying that religion cannot be investigated by the methods of science. They fall back on Gould’s rather unfortunate notion that religion and science deal with non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA). Which of course is a lot of nice-sounding crap.
I guess that fits in with what you were saying about using language to obfuscate.
Good points. The wish, desire, need, hope and/or fear of the threat of what is real seems to drive some cognitive formulation to make that threat less, or perhaps in some way under human control (even if expressed thru some posited god). A man saves a woman trapped under rubble, and she thanks “god,” for having saved her. Humans are too fallible.
I guess I should specify: I don’t mean the tenacity of actual belief. More the reliance on religious rhetoric to negotiate political obstacles. There is a degree of calculated risk here. A risk that undergoes some subtle changes. Framing ones concerns in either specifically religious or specifically secular terms will polarize ones audience. And the lines are always moving. I really pity those who’s careers depend on making a good impression to large numbers of people. It cannot be good for the soul.
I clung to religion rather tenaciously because, aside from my need for meaning and consolation, I felt inspired by the literature….(hard to mock “Forgive them, they know not what they do”), as well as being motivated to emulate the lives of believers, such as Gandhi, Ramakrishna, Bonhoeffer, Maximillain Kolbe, and Martin Luther King. I have a few secular heroes, but atheists (perhaps because, historically, there have been so few of them) simply don’t have the moral sizzle that theists do. Please note that I didn’t say they were less moral…I just think they are less inspiring than secular heroes.
I guess I should specify: I don’t mean the tenacity of actual belief. More the reliance on religious rhetoric to negotiate political obstacles. There is a degree of calculated risk here. A risk that undergoes some subtle changes. Framing ones concerns in either specifically religious or specifically secular terms will polarize ones audience. And the lines are always moving. I really pity those who’s careers depend on making a good impression to large numbers of people. It cannot be good for the soul.
While the lines may be moving, they are doing it at such a slow pace that there’s not that much risk really, at least in our society, of espousing a common religious theme politically. In my view, the whole reason for the existence of monotheism is political control. The emergence of monotheism and the hieratic city state correspond in history, obviously. We’re not very far from those beginnings. To this very day, there has been no better way to control a population than to have them believe the orders come from one specific deity who speaks through leadership (priest, king, pharoah, etc.) Promises and threats of rewards and consequences that are everlasting are powerful motivation, particularly to people who don’t know any better and cannot disprove the claims. We still inclucate the vast majority of children in the US with these identical concepts, when they don’t know any better. Society does almost nothing to counteract that effect in adulthoodn, and in fact, many communities strive to reinforce the illusions even in adulthood. You could ask any parent raising their child in a faith the reasons for doing so, and you could almost predict the top two answers would be: (1) because it’s true (i.e., I believe I’m saving my child from damnation); and (2) because religion is a convenient way to teach and enforce morality (i.e., a method to control behavior).
Coming up with general rules for morality without a supernatural rule-maker is tough mental work. Most people cannot or will not do it. They have to be told what’s right and wrong on the basis of some unimpeachable authority’s say so.
Quite true. If there is one reason I waver slightly in my challenge to faith based authority it is because I don’t really have a ready substitute for the easy ethical short hand that religious systems provide. Actual moral agency, stripped of sentimental throwaways quite honestly scares the shit out of me. I have no idea what to do about it.
Quite true. If there is one reason I waver slightly in my challenge to faith based authority it is because I don’t really have a ready substitute for the easy ethical short hand that religious systems provide. Actual moral agency, stripped of sentimental throwaways quite honestly scares the shit out of me. I have no idea what to do about it.
Kierkegaard said “anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.” It’s daunting, but I sense value in the struggle and absence of certainty. Laboring to a concept of moral must be a better guarantor of moral action than authoritative supernatural parenting. I’m not even sure I see it as moral at all to simply do what you’re told?
To this very day, there has been no better way to control a population than to have them believe the orders come from one specific deity who speaks through leadership (priest, king, pharoah, etc.) Promises and threats of rewards and consequences that are everlasting are powerful motivation, particularly to people who don’t know any better and cannot disprove the claims.
This nails it I reckon, it was the reason for religion from day one, to control the tribe and it still stands today, to control the masses.
To this very day, there has been no better way to control a population than to have them believe the orders come from one specific deity who speaks through leadership (priest, king, pharoah, etc.) Promises and threats of rewards and consequences that are everlasting are powerful motivation, particularly to people who don’t know any better and cannot disprove the claims.
This nails it I reckon, it was the reason for religion from day one, to control the tribe and it still stands today, to control the masses.
Agree. Remove that control, which is predicated on blind belief and obedience, and the religion goes away. Sometimes, to be replaced by some other secular authoritarian regime, for those many more comfortable in following than thinking for themselves.
Remove that control, which is predicated on blind belief and obedience, and the religion goes away.
So, a person can’t have personal religious beliefs and practices in the absence of an authoritarian structure?
Indeed you can. but then then structure of the organized religion fades away. I know of no organized religion that does not seek to inculcate in its members obedience to authority, supposedly that of the god, but in operational reality conveyed by the church leaders. There may be a great many individuals with some some of belief in a god of some sort, however they define it, but religion as a social organization is always authoritarian and tends to ally with if not replace authoritarian political ideologies. As an individual belief, there seem(?) to be few who claim that, without having to publish that belief to as many as possible, and thus a church/religion is formed.
Remove that control, which is predicated on blind belief and obedience, and the religion goes away.
So, a person can’t have personal religious beliefs and practices in the absence of an authoritarian structure?
How did you get to religious beliefs in the first place?
Like it or not, the vast majority of the human race across known history has always posited some form of god, sometimes multiple gods at the same time. That suggests that whatever the roots, this is not some aberrant expression but something quite common for most people. It can obviously be or become aberrant, but then so can any other form of human ideological expressions. As stated, religious organizations are inherently authoritarian; they are, after all, subscribing to some divine entity who requires allegiance else punishment be visited. It is also obvious that religions reflect the dominant ethnicity of the culture, as well as mores. You see an image of a Black skinned god in black cultures, white in white; various skin tones in between; and the precepts of the religion reflect the practices of the culture in which it is expressed.
Remove that control, which is predicated on blind belief and obedience, and the religion goes away.
So, a person can’t have personal religious beliefs and practices in the absence of an authoritarian structure?
How did you get to religious beliefs in the first place?
Like it or not, the vast majority of the human race across known history has always posited some form of god, sometimes multiple gods at the same time. That suggests that whatever the roots, this is not some aberrant expression but something quite common for most people. It can obviously be or become aberrant, but then so can any other form of human ideological expressions. As stated, religious organizations are inherently authoritarian; they are, after all, subscribing to some divine entity who requires allegiance else punishment be visited. It is also obvious that religions reflect the dominant ethnicity of the culture, as well as mores. You see an image of a Black skinned god in black cultures, white in white; various skin tones in between; and the precepts of the religion reflect the practices of the culture in which it is expressed.
No disupte. My point was that most people come to a religious belief because somebody in a position of authority tells them to. Once that person (parent) no longer has explicit authority, folks start to think their religious belief is personal rather than external and authoritative.
No disupte. My point was that most people come to a religious belief because somebody in a position of authority tells them to. Once that person (parent) no longer has explicit authority, folks start to think their religious belief is personal rather than external and authoritative.
No argument. Most likely “god” is an extrapolation from parent figures, as well as motivated by the child’s realizing s/he is comparatively weak.
