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Is Religion the Problem?
Sixth months or a year ago, I might not have thought twice about this kind of hyperbole. But I’m starting to not see the value in thinking like this. This comes from an article in the Guardian by Polly Toynbee. First she calls the London bombings “a savage reminder of the unknown waves of demented killers lining up to murder in the name of God.” And then she goes on:
[T]his is about religious delusion.
All religions are prone to it, given the right circumstances. How could those who preach the absolute revealed truth of every word of a primitive book not be prone to insanity? […]
Enlightenment values are in peril not because these mad beliefs are really growing but because too many rational people seek to appease and understand unreason. […]
It is time now to get serious about religion - all religion - and draw a firm line between the real world and the world of dreams. Tony Blair has taken entirely the wrong path. He has appeased, prevaricated and pretended, maybe because he is a man of faith himself, with a Catholic wife who consorts with crystals. But never was it more important to separate the state from all faiths and relegate all religion to the private - but well-regulated - sphere.
The world of dreams? Is that really a fair characterization of religion? I personally don’t think it is. But does she have any points about separating religious from public life? Or is that kind of thinking itself just a delusion - replacing the personal choice of religion with the choice of a civically-oriented religion where the state is god?
I originally found this article on a blog called Ang’s Weird Ideas. Ang writes: “Religion should have no part in politics and no part in government. Of course, try telling that to bush & co.” My question is, from where do we derive value and morality if not from religion? Though I don’t believe personally that the United States was founded with the intention of being a “Christian nation” I do think that Christian values have (favorably) affected us in a lot of really important ways.
This whole business about basically ousting religion from the public sphere on account of a few bad apples is also incredibly suspicious to me. What do people have without religion? Is there even such a thing as escaping religion? Is religion really the problem? Is it all just superstition? Do we really need to do away with it? I don’t think so, but what’s your take on all this?
July 26th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
If you assume that other people are as real as you are, you can derive a great deal of modern morality through the principle of reciprocity. Only minimal metaphysics (rejection of solipsism) required. (I’m sure someone with an actual philosophy background could go into greater detail on the subject than I could.)
July 26th, 2005 at 6:22 pm
One work that I’ve recently been quite fascinated by that might shed a bit of light on this issue is “Descartes Error” by Antonio Damasio. Damasio’s argument is that reason and emotions, rather than being opposed, are in fact part of the same decision-making complex- without functioning emotions, we become completely incapable of rational decision making. While Damasio never delves into religion in the work, it seems clear to me that he is implying that many of the “irrational” beliefs that we absorb are actually necessary for human functioning and decision-making- hence, our emotional intuitions and attachments might be much more vital to the proper conduct of life than it seems at first glance.
In any event, it explains why humans find it hard to abolish the “unrational” (whether “prerational” or “transrational”- in this context, the distinction isn’t that relevant). It also provides some explanation for why societies that try to abandon the irrational end up falling prey to it’s worst extremes (take anywhere where Communism has been applied or Fascism has arisen, or even just witness the rise of Deconstruction and the New Age). Granted, I’m as guilty of this as anyone I know, but it’s part of the human mystique. Another interesting “case in point” on this issue is that of Eliezer Yudkowsky, the transhuman AI coder. Google that name, and read some of his online papers- they’re brilliant, hyperrational, and completely batshit crazy. (Yudkowsky views rationalism as a “martial art” that one has to dedicate their life to- and it leads him to some absurd conclusions at times. It’s fun to watch.)
July 26th, 2005 at 6:54 pm
pfft where do animals aquire morality? it’s all instinctive, unless you’re fucked up in some way, you’ll know what is or isn’t good to do.
July 26th, 2005 at 7:06 pm
Which includes (depending on the animal) infanticide (housecats), rape (mallard ducks), sex changes (certain breeds of chicken), incest (certain crickets), killing for pleasure (wolverines)…
July 26th, 2005 at 7:07 pm
Religion is like the constellations: we humans came up with the shapes of the constellations, but the stars themselves weren’t created with the image of Pegasus or Orion as an intent. In fact, I have a hard time even finding the damned things in the sky, so little resemblance do they bear to their namesakes!
A constellation is a two-dimensional construct, superimposed over something that has more than two or three dimensions. Religion functions the same way– yes, it is real, but only to those who can negotiate this superimposition.
Humans can use it, but it isn’t needed.
July 26th, 2005 at 7:52 pm
I think as you have written before (science as a religion for example). That this is less a problem of religious delusion per se then a problem of having a fixed system that has the potential of violent fanatascism built in. Much of what the terrosists did in Britian has been done in other countries in the name of Marxism, Nationalism, Democracy, fill in the blank..I think maybe when people stop thinking emprically as much and start relying on “systems” of thought we get more delusional results. Of course different systems play better, nonviolence for example. Buddhists monks lighting themselves on fire is horrible but less problematic then suicide bombers.
July 26th, 2005 at 8:17 pm
Ive been thinking this a lot too, brekin. That systems are great and really useful, but if you get too caught in them, you get cut off from your source: people, who dont fit into any system.
James, thats an awesome way of looking at it. Jung talked a lot about how archetypes can form constellations in the mind - but also how archetypes precede the mind. That shit’s fascinating.
Animals don’t have morality. They have instinct. I don’t know that I really buy the idea that being “fucked up” is what makes people do things wrong. It seems like too simplistic of an answer that doesnt take into account all the directions that someone can be pulled in a scenario
July 26th, 2005 at 8:22 pm
I meant to come back and address this point of Toynbee’s:
I think the problem is actually the opposite - that too many rational people are cut off from thinking about anything in ways that are not rational. They simply can’t understand it. In instances like this, I can sort of see the usefulness of Wilber’s color-coding spiral dynamics system. Rational people can’t see that not everybody basing things on rationality (hell, rationalists dont at the end of the day either). And I can see the point of having a system to deliver to rationalists which allows them to understand other people’s motivations.
But then, simply talking to somebody might help too. But both used in conjunction - may it’s really not the horrible danger I made it out to be, as long as you don’t take it too far (which rationalists are almost certain to, considering their love of systems)
Nicq, I also think that book sounds really fascinating:
This seems to me like a much smarter way to “integrate” the two ways of thinking - to show that they arent different or stages in development, but that they come out of a common ground and need one another.
July 26th, 2005 at 8:50 pm
Sorry! i need to post this again to make sure you all see this:
i have to tell you ken wilber’s integralism is just the kind of secular religion the NWO would be looking for. basically wilber’s current philosophical phase or as he calls it ‘Wilber 5′ started back when he discovered spiral dynamics by don beck in 2000. now spiral dynamics uses the theory of memetics but with a twist, as don beck sells himself and his book to corporations as the perfect solution for employee conflict in business, ie social control. so what i mean to say is with ken wilber’s ever evolving god conscious ‘god will become us’, or rrather that we humans, conscious beings are god to a degree/will become god AND you toss in spiral dynamics (a crafty tool to identify people’s mental landscapes and how they act from them - memes) you get an excellent means of social control through meme exploitation with the added spiritual delusion that is ken wilber’s perpetuative ability good (a mental virus of its own)
a side note: ken wilber likes to say that Tony Blair is the most integral leader there is today. while Don Beck told once that George Bush is such a nice guy who was ‘chosen by the spiral’ whatever that means
July 26th, 2005 at 8:57 pm
I think the problem with religion is one of compatibility. Because religion, like politics or any other system of beleifs, are abstract constructs that we impose upon reality, people are constantly searching for a compatibility of ideas, not unlike the notion of the search for the One True Love That You Must Marry Upon Meeting that gets advanced all the time in this age.
Whenever the folly of compatibility is brought to light, alienation sets in, and soon people begin to see themselves as pitted against the world because of their imaginary beliefs.
There is no solving of the “religion problem” until humans can figure out how to make some beliefs compatible with others. This is a tall task, but not impossible– it just might take several lifetimes to get it right.
July 26th, 2005 at 9:05 pm
Hey Dugo! I appreciate the comments, but next time, please just post it in one place, rather than three!
July 26th, 2005 at 9:17 pm
i know i may have sounded horribly narrow minded but i was heavily interested in wilber’s ideas for the first half of this year. i don’t know if you know but the matrix revolutions ending is all about wilber’s ideas pictorally and verbally represented. ken wilber also does the philosophy commentary with cornel west on the 10 dvd collectors set for the matrix trilogy. but it took me 2 months to begin to see the big lie that integralism is. as one of the comments posted around here said, to paraphrase: wilber’s integralism needlessly complicates things. the question you need to ask yourself is who does it benefit if everything were so interwoven and complicated…directed globally? spiral dynamics is the key to understanding integralism. understand that when you identify peoples memes (understanding of the world) and begin to group them up, you learn what you need to say or show the rhetorically persuade them to your side. i mean notice how ken aspires for his baby called integralism to become the ruling system of thought of the world. ken’s philosophy is essentially nihilism cloaked in buddhist termonology. when you read his work you almost get the sense he hates this material world, that this plane of lower consciousness is so loath to be in existence with, that its almost preferable to be one with ultimate reality or conversely known as being DEAD!
July 26th, 2005 at 9:19 pm
haha will do occult, wat ya think about wat i’m saying?
July 26th, 2005 at 9:44 pm
Yeah I dig what you’re saying. I totally forgot about the alternate track voiceover he does for the Matrix. Does he do all three movies? I kind of want to hear what the hell he says on that now.
July 26th, 2005 at 9:50 pm
You seem to be implying here that religion predates values and morality. But from where did religion derive value and morality? I think it may be the other way around: religion merely documented a pre-existing set of values.
For example, half the ten commandments are just common sense: don’t kill or steal, etc.. (The other half are propaganda: no other Gods before me, etc..) “God” didn’t make them up–people did, long before Christianity or Judaism.
While I don’t believe values and morality are necessarily instinctive, I do believe human beings are capable of deriving them on their own, and have been doing so for a long time.
On a tangent, it’s a pity the last six commandments are tied to Christianity. I see nothing wrong with having them displayed in classrooms and courtrooms. Unfortunately, the foaming-at-the-mouth “atheist fundamentalists” can’t see past the religious connection and resist such common sense.
Link to 10 commandments: http://www.therain.org/studies/ten.html
July 26th, 2005 at 10:11 pm
Dugo:
While you’re reading Wilber correctly in some respects (and the Matrix Trilogy is basically Wilberian cyber-mythology, in fact one of the only public interviews given by the Wachowskis was with Wilber on his talk show, IntegralNaked.org), there are some I’m not so sure about- the world-hating aspect, for instance. In fact, the whole thrust of SES is to unite “descending and ascending”, “god and goddess”- some people get after him for being too sex-positive, too tech-positive, even too much of an environmentalist! And to be “one with ultimate reality” is, according to Wilber, a state that we are in all the time- we’re merely not conscious of it (and there is no more unconscious a state than being dead, so this critique is incorrect as well)- as he would describe it, we go from “unconscious hell” to “conscious hell” to “conscious heaven”- or, in Matrix-terminology, The Matrix, The Real World, and The Source.
Tim:
Yes, Descartes Error is an excellent book, as is “The Feeling of What Happens”, his followup. I haven’t read Damasio’s latest, “Looking for Spinoza”, but I probably should- especially before I begin work on a paper I’m contemplating, which uses Damasio’s work to show how brain function and the Kabbalistic model of reality match up…
July 26th, 2005 at 10:26 pm
aah, so that’s why matrix revolutions sucked. it all makes perfect sense now!
July 26th, 2005 at 10:39 pm
Funny… maybe that’s why I like the Matrix sequels more every time I watch them, unlike the Star Wars prequels, which I like less after each viewing…
July 27th, 2005 at 12:36 am
I don’t want to get rid of religion, but this “few bad apples” line sounds like utter nonsense. First of all, let’s drop this “public square” crap — it seems like an utterly useless metaphor. I want to separate religion and state authority. For example, neither I nor the courts object to students praying in school. We object to authority-led prayers, which seem meant to intimidate students who would rather not pray. And I defy you to name any religion that mixed with state authority without acting like a bad apple.
July 27th, 2005 at 12:43 am
I tend to think a much more important argument is that state authority IS a religion. An authority-led prayer doesn’t use emblems of traditional religions, and when they are used - as in Bush’s case - it’s just a smokescreen to distract you from the increasing strength of the state religion.
July 27th, 2005 at 1:29 am
I more or less agree — when we try to combine religion with government, it seems to act as a tool of the conservative elite.
Incidentally, what does Facscism have to do with trying to “abandon the irrational”? From what I’ve learned, fascism differs from Stalinism in placing society, or alleged “tradition”, before ideology. When did fascists ever view reason as an end in itself?
July 27th, 2005 at 2:57 am
The Aborigines have done the exact opposite, and their approach has seemed to serve them quite well for a very long time. Their more rationally-minded oppressors might want to take a long look at themselves, however.
Jainism might be the most ethically advanced system of belief and practice this planet has ever seen. If Jains were ruling the world, we’d likely all be better off for it.
What we’re actually talking about here [in London] is violence, the opposite of which is peace. Isn’t it rather obvious that the cause of peace can best be served by a ‘coalition of the caring, the loving, the ethical’, whether religiously motivated, rationally motivated, or, like most of us, motivated by some combination of these? Of course, this kind of coalition wouldn’t be willing to let British/American imperialism off the hook so easily, since state-sponsored violence kills you every bit as dead as the independent-operator kind does.
July 28th, 2005 at 1:14 am
Well, I think Chris said it for me. So thank you! My work is done without me having had to lift a finger.