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- Kierkegaard, as Johannes de Silentio "It is almost every night now, where my bugger of a human guardian doesn't pop over with a noodle strand or breadcrumb or something. Why should a hamster have to diet when his human does? It...wait, did you mean to say 'night' or 'knight'?" - Mr Ham G. Bacon, as Mr Ham G. Bacon Obituary of the week - J.D. Salinger, caught the rye. Arsenal somehow conspired to field a mishmash of a team against Stoke, setting me back to $1164/$1700 in my virtual punting. Tasty odds on tonight's game at the Emirates, and United looked good against City, so: $100 on Man United to beat Arsenal (at 2.70) I Wonder Who Did It So then the question arises - whodunnit? The solution professed here is: no one. Or more strictly, no one who lays down Laws, or gives Commands, or indeed does anything that cannot be explained by "natural" processes - i.e., someone supernatural. I was about to articulate my reasoning, when more research showed that someone far more knowledgeable than me had already done it far more convincingly than I could. In Breaking The Spell - Religion As A Natural Phenomenon, Daniel Dennett puts forth an explanation why, as is so succinctly stated by Voltaire (who is of course quoted), "If God did not exist, it would be necessary for us to invent Him." At the risk of oversimplifying matters, I attempt to convey the gist of the argument, borrowing freely from the book where it suits me, inserting my own thoughts when it does not, and leaving out whole sections for brevity's sake; So please do not take the following as a faithful rendering of Dennett's work. Also, where errors in fact, flow or understanding occur, they are mine and mine alone. The first (and necessary) issue is whether science can, or should, study religion. If not, or as Gould puts it, they are non-overlapping magisteria, then the rest of the book is meaningless, and so we have Dennett's answer. My observation is that science has generally been far superior in answering the "how" questions. The material world just works for everyone, regardless of the type or strength of conviction of each person. One celebrated example is that of lightning - recognized by many, from ancient Greek Zeus-worshippers to modern Chinese swearing 天打雷劈 oaths, to be a classic manifestation of divine wrath. The question is why, all things considered, does God smite His own churches so much more regularly than taverns or other houses of ill repute? One plausible explanation is that, according to Matthew 6:6, Jesus said to pray alone and not in public, and God is simply pissed at people yet again not following his clear dictates. Another is that the church steeples were often the tallest objects around, and lightning tends to strike the tallest things, without undue discrimination (this of course applies for minarets, shrines, and all other religious structures that stick out).  If you are sincere enough, God saves your car too (Source: Tesladownunder) Here, one might remark that God, if He exists, is perfectly impartial and just. I would expect that no amount of fervent prayer would significantly change the average number of places of worship being struck, and religious leaders appear to have caught on to that. What the Almighty is appeased by, it seems, is not a sincere profession of faith by the entire congregation, but the permanent offering of a $100 lightning rod. This led me to much the same conclusion that Dennett reached: that religion is basically evolved behaviour, a meme, if you would like. [N.B. The term was invented by Dawkins, who as a biologist by training, appears to have a disposition towards computer simulations to justify theories; I am of the same mould - give me a model and a sufficient supply of random numbers, and I can bypass a ton of sticky math. Reality is simply the ultimate simulation, anyhow] Dennett also makes the observation that the largest religions today are precocious. Some form of language has existed for at least forty thousand years, agriculture for ten thousand (interestingly, roughly four thousand years before the Creation of All Existence), and writing for five thousand, while Judaism and the Dharmic religions have existed (and possibly changed quite a bit since) for perhaps four thousand, with Christianity's age (without even speaking of younger individual denominations) being around two thousand years, and Islam about 1400 years. But some form of religion has almost certainly existed, before Man put pen to paper, or stylus to clay. These were the tribal or folk religions, replete with shamans and witch doctors, and Dennett attributes their appearance, and that of gods, very simply: "At the root of human belief in gods lies an instinct on a hair trigger: the disposition to attribute agency - beliefs and desires and other mental states - to anything complicated that moves." Or: if a durian fell on Mwaba's head and injured him, it wasn't a result of bad luck and standing under a durian tree. Mwaba must have provoked the durian tree spirit somehow. It is then noted that belief can be useful, even if the belief is not correct. The author recalls an episode in which his five year-old daughter accidentally crushed a couple of her fingertips, and he told her to push her pain into his hand with her mind, in a flash of inspiration - and it worked, at least for a while. This endearing trust that children have in their parents, while usually justified, can sadly be misused - Dawkins gave the example of a survey of a thousand Israeli kids on the battle of Jericho, where Joshua committed genocide on the Caananites. 66% of the kids totally approved of the act while 26% totally disapproved, and even when they disapproved, they did so on religious grounds (e.g. the Arabs [Caananites?] were impure and if one enters their impure land to slaughter them, one would become impure too!). However, when Joshua's name was replaced by a General Lin, and the story set in China, only 7% of the kids approved while 75% disapproved of the slaughter, which is probably closer to the expected response according to Lewis' universal Moral Law, and supports Steven Weinberg's insistence that "With or without religion, you have good people doing good things, and evil people doing bad things, but for good people to do bad things, it takes religion." Another justification Dennett gives for gods, is that it allows divination and relieves people of the burden of deciding for themselves - and as cleverly noted, just flipping a coin might seem too flippant. It is instructive to note that great leaders often put little stock in this, or indeed gods, and even if they do, tend to make their own fate (consider Nobunaga's use of a two-headed coin to inspire his army to victory) Dennett then makes the point that these early believers (a few of whom still exist) don't think of their beliefs as a religion at all, as they never reassure each other on this, just as we do not seek reaffirmation that atoms exist. It is just their reality.  And when they butt heads directly... (Source: Home of the Fumbler) Some faith, in some things, is likely useful - if a witch doctor supplies some herbs that have been tried and tested for generations, they should help in remitting disease; But if he insists that the sufferer hammer his head against a rock for a hundred times as the second part of the ritual, one suspects that this is unnecessary. However, religions usually evolve a way of dealing with dicey questions: forbid them to be asked. I will now state "my" hypothesis (which is far from original), slightly less cautiously than Dennett has, for he has a far larger name to consider than mine:
In summary, organized religion is evolved behaviour. I do not deny that humans have a conscience, or that there may be something (indeed, many things) we do not understand. But while conscience may say, "do not torture" or "aid the needy", or perhaps even "there is something wonderful, and it is God", I find it hard to believe that it says "God exists and He is exactly as described by this interpretation of this subset of this religion, all fifty thousand words of it". Or even if it does, then it is either hardly universal, or most of the faithful are spectacularly wrong. And even if God has not changed, it is evident that His worship has - and the believer of a millenium ago might well refuse to admit that a modern believer is even of the same faith. I therefore have little confidence that the practices that are preached, where they collide with my own conscience, actually have a divine mandate behind them. Returning at the last to Kierkegaard, who wrote against the Hegelianism which appears to be manifest in the idea of religious evolution (but as with much of philosophy, it is hard to be sure). He wrote of the Knight of Faith, who transcends through absolute belief. He gives the example of Abraham, who believed that he would have his son alive and well, despite plunging a dagger into his heart. But these knights do exist, and in our time we term them mad. We praise a man if he says God led him to build an orphanage; But we condemn a man if he says God told him to kill a baby, lest it grow up to the next Hitler. The sincerity of both men may be equal, but most would call the first sane, but the second insane. I recognize the unshakeable faith of those who devote their lives to helping the poorest of the poor, as well as those who fly airplanes into buildings, and readily admit that I have neither. So, one hopes, that one might learn to hoist the banner of Infinite Resignation, and muddle on through the world. Next: The Numbers Game
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