The idea of utopia
Robert Bellah has a new book on religion in human evolution (called, aptly, just that). He talks to the Atlantic.
You mention play as a way of getting out of normal working consciousness, and religion emerging from the play instinct, a mammalian characteristic common to sparring puppies and humans experiencing art.
That’s the one way I can see religion as something interesting about human beings as opposed to something depressing or tiresome or unhelpful about them. (I mean honestly – going without water from dawn to dusk in a hot climate?) It’s something gratuitous and extra, ornamental and elaborate; it’s good that humans can do that. (Though only from a human point of view. Humpback whales don’t think it’s good that humans can do that, and neither does any other species.)
The idea of utopia is always a kind of play, because we know it’s not real – it’s just what we can imagine. But it has the serious possibility of saying, “Look, the world the way it is didn’t have to be that way. It could be different.”
And so does the idea of god – it could be a way of thinking about a better way to be a person. It doesn’t seem to work out that way very much though.
It is used as a means of forcing other people to change for the ‘better’.
It is used to tell other people that they are not good enough as persons.
Once again we see that people using religion don’t know how to, well, do anything right.
Well, we are like unto gods to our pets.
(Except not imaginary)
John- I know a pet owner who would be eaten alive by her cats if they thought they could pull it off. But then, if g-d was real, I’d eat him too, and not in the catholic way. Ever see that episode of Wonder Showzen? What was I even just talking about now?
Theories about the origin of religion have a problem: There are too many good ones. Are they all true? None of them? We can probably never test the hypotheses, so they aren’t very useful. Is the origin of religion multifactorial? Probably. What do you even do with that knowledge?
But that’s the layman in me talking. Knowledge has inherent worth even if it’s useless from a practical standpoint. Keep on thinking, thinkers. I <3 you.
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I don’t know that I fully agree. While many religious traditions do not invoke an afterlife (or, after Douglas Adams, an après vie), the idea that one’s soul, upon death, returns to its source seems pretty much universal. Religion is basically about finding an alternative to annihilation.
Me too. I like some the the stories a lot. Stories are good. If only people wouldn’t confuse fiction with fact.I’m reading God Against the Gods right now. It sounds from Kirsch’s account like religion didn’t become tiresome and totalitarian until it became monotheistic.
Sorry about the formatting fail above. *repeats: The Preview Button Is My Friend*
I’d say an awful lot of it has been, and still is, about trying to control the vagaries of fate in the here and now.
I’m fond of the overattribution of agency theory of god belief, myself. If the theory’s true, religion grows out of a need to propitiate the unseen agents that we evolved to detect all around us.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agent_detection#Role_in_religion
I have a hard time with saying religion is basically about any one thing at all. It is even hard to say that religion is any one thing at all, let alone that it all boils down to any one basic feature. It’s too complicated and to varied for that. Even were all religions to say something about some given topic, that would not by itself prove it to be the driving force behind all religions.
I wish he’d come up with a better name than “New Book”.
John Morales @2-
I don’t know where you live, but here it’s the other way around.
This sounds like an interesting book. Thanks for bringing it to my attention.