I thought I would elevate the discussion in the comments on the previous post to the front page. Approaching religion from the standpoint of science, we find that the origins and possible functionality of religion are still controversial. This overview is 10 years old but I don't think the state of the art has changed very much.
Obviously neolithic, and indeed paleolithic people had morality. They had to live together cooperatively after all. We are a social species and sociality requires rules. This is true as well of bonobos and wolves, although we usually apply the word morality only to human patterns of social behavior. Archaeological evidence suggests that these early societies also had some form of religion, although as the linked article by Elizabeth Culotta discusses, this is in some dispute. In any event hunter-gatherer bands known to modern anthropologists have beliefs we would call religious, although they are quite different from the religions of complex societies. Rather than an all powerful deity, who prescribes rules and rituals, they perceive sentience and agency in natural phenomena, and may include belief in unseen beings of various kinds that can influence events. They don't have priests. Some have shamans who have the power to communicate with supernatural beings or manipulate supernatural forces, but they don't dictate rules for behavior, or condemn or absolve sins.
Psychologists have found various human tendencies that may help account for the origins of religion. Specifically, we do have what seems an innate tendency to attribute phenomena to agentic causes. However, this does not get us from the animism or pantheism of simpler societies to the elaborate theologies, priestly hierarchies, rules and rituals of the religions of large-scale civilizations.
Some do see a functional imperative in this development of religion. Religious doctrine and priestly authority reinforces the secular authority of rulers, and enforces conformity to people's assigned social roles. (Sometimes the priests and the rulers are the same people, sometimes they are allies.) This is seen as necessary to get people to surrender their freedom to the requirements of complex society. In other words the basic morality of people in a small-scale society is insufficient to make Ur and Babylon and Rome work.
However, it does not necessarily follow that this means religion is actually good, or even necessary. Nowadays we have successful secular republics in which shared values and expectations are sufficiently functional without recourse to religious authority. Perhaps we had to go through a period of religio-political authoritarianism to get there. Certainly that's what happened historically. But we don't need it any more.
2 comments:
I remember being at John Lennon's memorial gathering in Central Park in 1980. Even though there were helicopters overhead and what seemed like hundreds of thousands of people in that part of the park near the Goldman Bandshell, I heard the song "Imagine" (which I still love). I love particularly the way, when Lennon is describing an ideal, peaceful society, he just sort of slips in that line, "No religion, too," so quietly and inconspicuously.
It would be so lovely. I'd miss the traditions of my upbringing but if it could help to bring about a just and peaceful society, I'd give it up in a millisecond, just as I would cars and fossil fuels.
The problem with the model described (human tribes, wolf packs) is that it is based on blood ties and membership in a group small enough to know everyone's life story. Absent those, violence almost always ensues. Consider that wolves, lions, baboons, and neolithic human bands war constantly over territory, a small but unrelenting bloodletting. In neolithic tribes homicide accounted for 25% of all male deaths. Imagine living in a group in which everyone either attended your birth or would attend your death. Imagine that everyone knew all your business, that you knew all theirs, and that was right and proper. It seems obvious to me that the entire concept of privacy is a construct contemporaneous to and no less powerful than religion, another tool for living in large, non-kin groups.
The modern, secular republics you point to are living on the accrued moral capital of thousands of generations of religious adherents. They draw their laws from religious patrimony even when they don't acknowledge or even understand it. Obviously we can substitute state violence for morality (see: Paglia) but I'm pretty sure that's not a solution anyone wants. Atheists always go on about the social contract and the rational self interest of agreeing not to murder, but that only works when you might get caught (see: state violence). Also, Rousseau was a con man even if only de Sade could see it at the time.*
*Seriously, read their works back to back. Justine and Juliette are just The Social Contract as black comedy.
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