That’s comforting, and beautifully put, but I’m unable to let go of my reflexive hostility to religion. Quite possibly what I’m hostile to is “organized religion” which invariably ends up issuing decrees about what people should do with their genitals.
It seems uncontroversial to assert that humans have a built-in capability for worship - For me, that is what happens when I walk into Chartres cathedral or an old-growth forest. It is also uncontroversial that this capability has been used to drive many wonderful things, for example the works of J.S.Bach and Mother Theresa. Worship seems rarely harmful and often beneficial. But it’s not what we mean when we say “religion”. Practically speaking, religion seems organizationally indivisible from ISIS and the US Republican party and choirboy abuse and the Israeli settler movement. Were it not for religion, people who will die today, Oct 6, 2014, in the Middle East, would instead live. It feels, on balance, like an enemy of peace and sanity. Sorry. On Mon, Oct 6, 2014 at 8:33 AM, Heather Madrone <[email protected]> wrote: > or integrating God into a mind informed by science > > When I see an article like the one sent by Udhay a few days ago, I sigh > and think that the author has never really thought much about God and > religion. I settle back and read a series of knee-jerk reactions to the > more absurd religious tropes. I watch them build a strawman of religious > stupidity and then have the fun of knocking it down. Yay. Science wins in > its own tiltyard. > > Religion is big enough, old enough, and varied enough that there are > plenty of easy targets for anyone who wants to dismiss the whole vast > topic. You can show that religion is stupid, venal, cruel, murderous, and > plays into the hands of the power elite. You can build an image of God from > the most ludicrous bits of any theology and hold it up for ridicule. > > I played this game myself up until age 25 or so. Then I got bored. The > game wasn't challenging nor was it particularly interesting any more. From > time to time, I would explore a different area of the world, read their > mythology, explore religious philosophy in their system if it existed. The > various ideas and metaphors were interesting and varied, but I always ended > up feeling like I'd eaten a bowl of paleolithic mush. > > A lot of the paleolithic mush is in the religious texts, but quite a lot > of it was in me. I was sitting smugly atop the mountain of Scientific > Truth, judging religion with my thumb on the scale. > > One little realization plucked me off the mountaintop and pulled me back > down to earth. Someone quoted a medieval mystic to me. The words contained > beauty, truth, humor, and deep wisdom about the human condition. Suddenly I > saw that the humans of earlier times were no less intelligent than we are, > no less thoughtful, no less engaged with the great business of trying to > understand the universe. I also saw that most of the greatest thinkers who > had ever put pen to paper wrote in the religious mode. If I wanted to have > any hope of understanding what they were writing about, I needed to have > some way of dealing with religious terms (like “God”). > > So I set about making my peace with the concept of God. The first thing > that helped was remembering that the gods were created by human beings to > serve deep human needs. God is not a concrete entity sitting somewhere up > in the sky. God is an abstract concept sitting between the ears of a human > being. God is like a point or a number or any of the basic elements of > mathematics. All of the people who argue about the concrete existence of > God are missing the point. The point of God is not whether She exists, but > what you can do with Her once you posit Her. > > When I started looking at religion as just another form of mathematics, > like the calculus, it became easier for me to relate to. I don't have to > believe anything at all. All I need to do is to come up with a concept of > God through which I can view and understand the religious utterances of > others. > > This immediately made it easier to connect with the thoughts of those who > had written in the religious mode. I might still think that much of what > they wrote was claptrap, but I was able to appreciate the underlying truths > that they were trying to express. I was able to glean a lot more from their > experience once I had a working model of God to hang their thoughts from. > > What happened next shocked me. Various religious practices, which I had > dismissed as superstitious nonsense, turned out to be very useful to me in > daily life. Prayer, for example, turns out to have all sorts of practical > functions that can make my life better. When I don't know what to do, I can > pray for guidance. Quite often, I receive useful guidance in return, even > if I address my prayers to “Figment of my Imagination.” There is something > in the process of prayer that allows my busy monkey mind to get out of the > way so I can access to whatever deeper wisdom I might possess about the > situation. When I find myself fretting about a situation that is beyond my > control, I can hand the situation off to my Imaginary Friend and get on > with my life. I can pray for those who irritate me and feel better about > them. > > It turns out that there's a big God-shaped spot in the human psyche. I am > happier, more centered, and more stable when that spot is filled, even > though I firmly believe that most of the effects are psychological. > > In my mind, and the minds of most of the religious people I know, there is > no conflict between science and religion. They are in different realms and > for different purposes. Science explains how things work, and exposes the > mechanisms of the physical universe. Religion has many functions for human > animals who huddle together in the dark of a vast and dangerous universe. > Science serves the rational mind, while religion functions on the vast > animal parts of our minds that are pre-rational. It's a completely > different map of the same territory, with different contours and different > landmarks and serving different purposes. > > You can poke fun at the Just-So Stories of religious mythology, sure. You > can also poke fun at the Just-So Stories of evolutionary biology. > > Oh, and I don't believe in evolution, either. What is there to believe in? > The mechanisms of evolution are apparent all around us, all the time. > There's partial speciation all over the place. Evolution has left its > fingerprints in every process in every organism. I don't need to believe in > evolution any more than I need to believe in computers. Evolution is not a > matter of faith; it's a matter of fact. > > --hmm > > -- - Tim Bray (If you’d like to send me a private message, see https://keybase.io/timbray)
