It’s the training
It never ends. Drip drip drip; whine whine whine. Those mean fashionable intellectual mean people at their fashionable parties aren’t Christians and aren’t impressed by Christianity. It’s so unfair.I would never admit to any left-liberal social gathering that I sometimes go to church…Christians are likely to be depicted in my paper’s pages as zealots or people who inexplicably haven’t caught up with the modern world.
That could be because Christians believe implausible things for epistemically questionable reasons. It’s not self-evident that there is no problem with believing implausible things for epistemically questionable reasons.
To the average funky young columnist, Christians are as relevant as Cliff Richard, but where does that columnist think the philosophical roots of his own opinions lie?
A number of places, probably, most or all of them secular. Christianity doesn’t provide philosophical roots, it provides theological or theistic ones. Jesus is quoted as saying quite a few good things, and some bad ones, but aphorisms don’t provide much in the way of philosophical roots; for those people must and do go elsewhere. Christianity doesn’t deserve much credit for those roots.
Then there’s some wool about consumerism, then some wool about how claustrophobic Dawkins makes him feel. There’s no argument or even clarity, just some disconnected musing. That’s one reason some of us are not fond of religion: it doesn’t generally teach or encourage people to think clearly; all too often it teaches or encourages them to do the opposite – witness that discussion between Rick Warren and Sam Harris in which Warren says one confused or inaccurate thing after another and Harris does better than that. It is very difficult to avoid drawing the conclusion that Warren simply can’t think properly at all, and to blame his training for that.
instead of dripping, would it not help, if some of these people switched their putative brains to ON?
“It seems to me that it speaks only to part of what constitutes and drives humans, and fails to take into account much less productively use the dark and shadowy hinterlands of the mind.”
Hmm. That depends on what you mean by secular humanism perhaps. To speak of atheism instead – since I answer to the name of atheist but not that of secular humanist – I don’t think that applies to atheism, since atheism can and does perfectly well take dark hinterlands into account. But then maybe that’s why I answer to atheist but not to humanist, in which case I probably agree with you. But it doesn’t worry me or make me claustrophobic, because I think the alternative to theism is atheism, not humanism.
And there’s this bit: “The strength of religion and religious ritual (again, without reference to truth-claims) seems to me precisely that it allows one to gaze into the abyss without falling in.”
But Merlijn, that would be a strength if it were true, but I can’t see how it is, or how you can claim it is. Religion and religious ritual, when they don’t CONSTITUTE plunging right into that abyss, certainly don’t seem to do much to prevent the plunge. Reason and critical thinking seem to do the job much more effectively.
It is not self-evident that there is no problem with believing implausible things for epistemically questionable reasons.
I love this line. May I steal it? If B&W ever decides to sell merchandise, I’d buy a t-shirt with the words “You believe implausible things for epistemically questionable reasons”.
Are you kidding? Of course you can! You can steal anything you like; mi casa es su casa.
There was once a thought about selling merchandise…I really should get on that some day.
G: I don’t agree. There is a way in which religious ritual channels tribalism, cruelty and the enjoyment of cruelty (which runs like a big red line through (early) Christian imagery), and other kinds of our “animal” selves in a way “reason and critical thinking” cannot, because they are precisely inimical to “reason and critical thinking”. Reason and critical thinking are like the foam on the crest of a wave, and religion, to me, speaks to the dark body of the wave itself. But this is quite irrelevant to the truth-claims of religion.
Channels it? Channels it to send it where?
“Reason and critical thinking are like the foam on the crest of a wave, and religion, to me, speaks to the dark body of the wave itself.”
I don’t buy it. At all. I’m allergic to all that romantic-Lawrentian guff about dark waves anyway, and I think that’s just wrong. One could at least as well argue that it’s religion that is the foam, because it turns away from the huge body of the wave which is what we really do know about human nature, and satisfies itself instead with the foam of mere easy dogma.
Okay, you say the dark wave thing is irrelevant to the truth-claims, but if the truth-claims are mere foam – then what are the rituals? And whatever they are, how and in what sense do they ‘channel’ cruelty?
Merlijn, you have homed in on the area in which I see clear reasons for a conclusion almost exactly opposite yours. Religious ritual does often channel tribalism, cruelty and enjoyment of cruelty – but it does not channel these into something else, it ENCOURAGES THEM! Shared participatory affirmations of religious identity – our tribe, we who are the chosen of God – is key in building the emotional certainty that believers have in their own righteousness and rightness. Insofar as religious ritual has the psychological effect of building, enhancing, and entrenching the believers’ collective (and distributive) sense of their own righteousness and rightness, their wildly unmerited moral and epistemological self-assurance, it gives license to subsequent exercises of cruelty.
Cruelty does not thrive in the light of doubt. Dehumanizing our fellow humans takes WORK – it is not a natural or default position for us. The active suppression of sympathy for our fellows comes from a strong sense of shared identity, such that those who do not share that identity are Other – alien, inhuman, untrustworthy and deserving of no basic respect and dignity. As far as I can see, the primary purpose of shared ritual is to create that sense of exclusive identity, q.v. Triumph of the Will.
G: I just want to say that’s a beautiful synopsis. It’s a bit like a nasty feedback cycle?
Does, perhaps, religious ritual often have positive impacts on the internal cohesion of the group (hence, perhaps, its evolutionary success???) In a world as interconnected as this one, can we afford this?
Interesting comments. I’m not sure if I agree with G about cruelty. Suppression of sympathy for our fellow human beings (outside of immediate environment, family, “tribe”) seems to me quite omnipresent – and it doesn’t necessarily take religion. Anytime you have a group larger than twenty, it will tend to divide up into hostile factions on the basis of the most stupid of reasons. I’d say religion had (has?) a social function in ensuring the cohesion of human groups quite a bit bigger than we are biologically used to (which is bands of maybe at most a few dozen individuals). Violence is directed outwards, but inwards only on specific occasions.
I think it is too simplistic, however, to state that organized religion encourages tribalism rather than regulates it. Not all religions are equal in that regard; and some of the proselyting monotheistic religions had the potential to transcend the old connection between religion and tribe, though they (mostly) failed. And ended up mixing the worst of tribalism and universalizing ambitions.
But that is connected but not quite what I was heading at. Organized religions in many ways do seem to me to provide an outlet to step outside of ourselves – in mysticism and participatory ritual – but not necessarily in a manner murderous to others. Human sacrifice was pretty much mythological by the time of the ancient Greeks and the ancient Hebrews. Still, the crucifixion of Christ, historical as it may be, refers in its imagery to sacrifice and dying/arisen god-religions spread far and wide around the world (from Odin and Balder to Osiris and God knows what). In similar fashion, Catholic imagery with its endless studies of torment and pain in its mythology of Martyrdom, etc. allows us a glimpse to things (the exhilaration of the predator closing in; the abject terror of the prey) that are no longer parts of our daily lives now but have been for our remotest ancestors, and are still engraved in our brain.
A while ago, OB expressed surprise (putting it mildly) at people wearing a symbol of torture and execution (i.e. a cross) around their necks. But a tittilated fascination for pain, suffering and death (preferably that of others) is surely a staple of human culture. The medievals gawking at some poor fellow’s death-struggle on the scaffolds or being amused by a theatrical display of some famous Christian martyr’s death during a Passion Play were a bit more forthright about this than we are. But, judging from the popularity of shock-sites such as ogrish.com it has gone exactly nowhere. I don’t think it is a coincidence that sado-masochism as both a subculture and a theme in art, literature etc. emerged as such pretty shortly after the Enlightenment and the concomitant retreat of religion, “humanizing” of the penal system, etc. To wit, there was no need for any such thing before. S/M as both a practice and a cultural phenomenon provides a “safe” outlets for emotions that had a very deadly serious expression at earlier times in history. And I believe the same goes for part of Christian imagery, but also for the more extatic and bloodier parts of old pagan religions, etc.
Now, a Christian would probably object here that I paint a rather dim view of Christian iconography: that Christ was not just killed, but also resurrected and thereby conquered death; that the martyrs who died for their faith are paragons of death-defying courage, etc. But that is precisely the point: cruelty, the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering, reminds us of nothing else that it is not just we who are alive, who feel joy and pain; that life and feeling and experience are omnipresent and that they are strangely confirmed by the negation of it. I.e. I don’t think cruelty is at all the negation of sympathy rather than some kind of perversion of it.
(One of my favourite novels, André Brink’s “An act of terror”, contains a haunting scene where the protagonist witnesses crayfish, their bodies broken in two, crawl to the edge of the basin, and notes that with that “very futile gesture” the crayfish “curiously defies death”).
(Disclaimer: one of the favourite pastimes for kids where I grew up was “blowing up frogs”, i.e. sticking a reed in the frog, blowing, and then throwing the frog at a stone so that the frog would explode. I’ve always found that actively particularly disgusting and never participated in it, and the same goes for any kind of abuse of animals and humans.)
So what I was trying to say was that religion provides a safety valve for some parts of our evolutionary heritage the expression of which is not currently very socially acceptable. At the very least, it regulates them in such a way that social cohesion is not threatened. At best, it potentially transcends them (though the results of the Christian effort at this are decidedly mixed).
Hmm. Certainly there are two sides to the relation between organized religion and tribalism: Organized religion creates a group identity that extends beyond those one immediately knows, so in a sense it enhances group cohesion. There are many reasons to believe that this is one of the root causes of organized religion as such in early agricultural city states throughout the world. But this way of stabilizing an in-group always seems to come at the cost of solidifying and entrenching the inhuman status of the out-group, perhaps necessarily so: If the religiously-reinforced “we” are the elect, the favorites of God (or the gods), then “they” must be those who deny God and whom God turns His face from – heretics, infidels, monsters. And that us/them division, backed by divine authority, is a very rigid one – difficult to counter with the ordinary doubts that might lead one human to question the dehumanization of another.
Of course, not all organized religions reinforce and rigidify in-group/out-group identity in the same way or to the same degree. But all the most successful and widespread religions seem to be the ones which are best at this – which does more than hint at cultural selection in action. Fortunately, there are many competing sources of identity – generally (though not always) less rigid and exclusionary – so the absolutism of religiously-grounded identity is frequently mitigated in the ordinary course of human events. When an absolutist sense of identity comes to dominate, though, that is where atrocities always seem to be born. Again, not all such absolutist and rigid identities are religious – but there seems to be no better tool for creating and maintaining such an identity than religion, and even non-religious organizations adopt the trappings of religious ritual to create emotional reinforcement of unity of “us” against “them.”
As for all the stuff about cruelty and sadomasochism and sublimation and such, I find that those sorts of explanations are far too slippery and malleable to be even remotely convincing. One can take EXACTLY the same body of “evidence” and impose several different narratives on it, all supporting wildly different and even directly contradictory conclusions. Like OB said, romantic guff.
Oh, and I almost forgot this:
“Interesting comments. I’m not sure if I agree with G about cruelty. Suppression of sympathy for our fellow human beings (outside of immediate environment, family, “tribe”) seems to me quite omnipresent – and it doesn’t necessarily take religion.”
I never said that it takes religion, I said that it takes work. Religion just happens to be particularly good at doing that work.
Now if you’re disagreeing that it takes any work at all to overcome natural human sympathy… I don’t actually think you are, but your phrasing seems to lead in that direction, so I’ll take it that way.
Such a position amounts to saying that the default in human moral psychology is to treat the other humans we encounter as inhuman – having no moral standing and deserving no sympathy for their suffering – until they prove otherwise or unless they are already part of one of our established identity in-groups (kin, culture, etc.). I think you have a lot more of an argument to make in support of such an extreme position than I have in taking the opposite position. In effect, you are saying that sociopaths are just humans ‘in the state of nature’ or some such – very Hobbesian of you, perhaps, but not very plausible. It still seems pretty obvious to me that it takes some motivation to dehumanize what is obviously another human. Admittedly, it doesn’t take much of a motivation for some individuals – and certainly dehumanization seems more easily arrived at in extraordinarily difficult circumstances. But on the whole, something is required to counteract the natural assumption that another human matters, morally speaking – and religious identity is particularly good at providing that something.
“Of course, not all organized religions reinforce and rigidify in-group/out-group identity in the same way or to the same degree. But all the most successful and widespread religions seem to be the ones which are best at this – which does more than hint at cultural selection in action.”
But “best” here I think does not quite square with “the most rigid”, if we define “best” in terms of success, widespread, etc. A “good” religion in this regard would combine militancy, strong in-groups/out-group identity with universalizing ambitions – which conflicts with an overly murderous attitude towards infidels. I.e. it must keep the door ajar for salvation for everyone.
“One can take EXACTLY the same body of “evidence” and impose several different narratives on it, all supporting wildly different and even directly contradictory conclusions. Like OB said, romantic guff.”
*Shrug*. I’ve always felt there was something to say for romanticism, and its attention to the less-than-rational sides of being human. Which are the sides I am currently interested in making sense of.
G: I am not sure I disagree with the dichotomy you seem to draw between either having a natural sympathy for our fellow humans which takes work to overcome; or with having no sympathy at all for fellow humans outside of in-group. It seems to me that the first is too optimistic, the second too relentlessly pessimistic. I would argue the “natural sympathy” you speak of comes in degrees and need not be totally overcome to make way for bloodlust and cruelty. I am also not sure to what extent “natural sympathy” is innate, learned, or a matter of both. Children can be remarkably and unthinkingly cruel. I recall a schoolyard bullying episode in which an unpopular kid with glasses was taunted because his father had just died (I’m not making this up). Was the behaviour of the bullies natural, learned, or does it take learning to overcome such delight in the other person’s distress?
“I am not sure I disagree” – make that: agree.
Attention to the less-than-rational sides of being human is of course highly necessary. But romanticism tends to exaggerate the degree to which non-romantics deny the existence of such sides, and it also tends to elevate them in various ways – more authentic, more primal, more real. I dislike both of those moves, and people are still making them.