My google news reader served me a very interesting blog post today from the Gene Expression blog. The author is named Razib. I couldn't find an author bio on the blog. Regardless, it's a very interesting and thoughtful post. What do you think.
How I view Religion by Razib
A lot of comments have revolved around whether I am a Post-Modernist
when it comes to the definition of religion. This post is to make
explicit and clarify my own position so I don't have to waste so much
time in the comments. Most readers can therefore ignore this and wait
until I go back to posting on genetics or something more interesting!
:-)
One model of religion goes like so:
Axiom (e.g., One must follow all 612 commandments) → Entails → Entails → Specific belief and practice
In other words, there is a contingent relationship between the
initial set of beliefs, and the elaborated set of religious practices
and beliefs which are subsequent to "primitive" and "core" assertions.
In other words, the space of states which religious phenomena inhabit
is tightly constrained and guided by a simple set of principles and
ideas from which the rest follows.
To a great extent many religious people might accept this as an
accurate description of their faith; defined as it is by a belief in a
particular god, a particular creed, and a systematic theology, etc. The
average religious person might not be able to master the details of a
particular theology, but they accept its validity, and accept the
guidance of religious elites who are masters of said theology. These
elites then serve as the executors or implementers of a set of logical
consequences which emerge plainly from the propositions clearly
derivable from first principles.
In this conception religious texts and theologies serve as
blueprints. Religion as it is simply serves to reflect the nature of
that blueprint. Therefore, to understand a particular religion you
simply go to the religious texts, and see what those texts say. That
will be a reasonable approximate, model if you will, of religion as it
is practiced.
Texts and theologies serve therefore as the theoretical framework.
To test the theory you need go out and observe how religion is
practiced. So what happens if practice deviates from what the theory
says? One reaction would be to suggest that practice is in error, that
it deviates from the expectation of theory simply because of
misunderstanding, or, willful neglect of the inferences. For example,
most people would agree that most religions teach that adultery is
wrong, but many believers continue to engage in adultery because of
personal weaknesses despite their acceding to the moral principle that
their actions are wrong.
I accept the second point; many times people act in willful
contradiction of their admitted religious principles because of
personal failings. I do not accept the first; that is, that deviations
from expectation are error. If I was religious I might accept this as a
matter of faith because I accept particular premises about the nature
of religion. Specifically, that religion maps non-trivially and
transcendentally upon particular truths about the universe. If I was a
theist I would also assert religion is a revelation from an entity of
unimaginable power and scope. Because the premises of religion are what
they are, there must be a true religion, a particular most religious
religion which maps perfectly upon the Platonic idea of what a religion
should be in the mind of the god who revealed the religion.
But personally I don't accept this. I don't think that the
initial axioms of religion about god and revelation are anything more
than mental constructs; productions of human cognition, not expression
of ontological truths.. Because religion is a production of the
human mind I believe there is a profound subjectivity to its expression
and perception. Additionally, I do not believe there is a Platonic
ideal religion which maps onto true religion. All religion is true only
insofar as religion is ultimately rooted in neurological material and
phenomenological process; gods exist only in the mind's eye.
And therefore, I do not totally shrug off the accusation that I am a
Post-Modernist when it comes to religion. Since I believe that religion
is fundamentally a mental construct, I do not believe that individually
it is my place to tell a religious person what their religion is all
about. It is what their mind tells them it is. It is what it is. Of
course, there is a problem insofar as while I think religion is simply
a production of their minds, they believe it is a reflection of some
deep truth outside of their minds. We, the religious person and I,
disagree on the fundamental nature of religion. They may reject
Post-Modernism precisely because they believe that religion is true. I
believe that it is false insofar as I am considering the set of
assertions which they believe are true, but I believe that religion is
true as a mental process.
This brings to the disagreement I have with some atheists, a
disagreement I would have with myself when I was 18. An atheist
believes that the claims of religion are false, but an atheist may
believe that there is a true expression of religion which can be
back-projected toward its premises. An atheist may reject the premises,
but they may hold a model of religion which conceives of it as a set of
necessary inferences, a chain of tight propositions back to the
original premises.
I do not believe that this model reflects reality; that is, it does
not reflect the truth of how religion manifests itself in the world
around us. I do not believe that religion as it is practiced is tightly
constrained by a primitive initial set of beliefs. Instead of an
analogy to a logical or mathematical formalism as the theoretical
superstructure of religion, I believe that something more akin to law
is appropriate. In other words, religion is a matter of interpreting
from the premises toward a range of conclusions. The sample space which
religion as it is practiced inhabits is very large, and relatively
loosely, if at all, constrained by the premises of religion. Rather,
the sample space is contingent upon local historical context and its
own endogenous evolutionary pathway.
Of course, many religious persons will tell you this is not so. But
my discussion at this point is not with the religious, but those who
reject its truth claims as I do. My contention is that religion is not
well characterized as a set of necessary propositions, so deviation
from "expectation" is not error, rather, it reflects an interpretative
difference along the set of propositions which is a matter of local
condition and contingency. You might ask how it is then that religious
professionals might agree that "of course A → X", where there are
intervening inferences. I believe this is for show and comes about
through social consensus. My own study of Chinese Islam suggests that
when separated from other religionists a subgroup can quickly deviate
outside of the bounds of the consensus, and only reintegration into the
world wide information network can correct the "errors" which creep
into the inferences.
Rather, the true nature of religious logic is better illustrated
through its evolution over time, which implies a malleability and loose
constraint from premises. After all, the Nicene Creed and the basic
corpus of the Bible have been axioms which span nearly 2,000 years, but
the normative form of Christianity varied a great deal due to
time-sensitive interpretation.
Some, but not all, religious people will assert that there isn't any
time-sensitive interpretation; that past interpretations were wrong or
conditioned by local circumstances, but present interpretations reflect
the true spirit of the doctrine. Again, if you accept the
presuppositions of a religion as to its transcendent truth value and
revelation from god on high this is a reasonable assertion. But if you
do not accept the truth value of the religious premises then one must
question it, and ask if we are not again seeing local temporal
conditions being the important determinants of religious practice.
Because of the world wide nature of Christianity or Islam we can see
how this dynamic plays out spatially. The African churches of the
Anglican communion hold to the dominant view in regards to
homosexuality over time of the Christian tradition. The American and
Europe branches hold different views. Both groups claim that their
perspective in the authentic and true interpretation of the religion,
but I think what you're seeing is simply different local conditions.
After all the African branches of the Anglican communion don't adhere
to all the precepts of Anglicanism as it was in 1600, or Christianity
as it was in 300. In fact some "Southern" Christian theologians have
argued strongly for an indigenization of Christian practice to
accommodate local practices, in part by asserting that Christianity as
it was practiced and evolved over the past 2,000 years was in fact
Europeanized (e.g., the rejection of polygyny is attributed to
Greco-Roman pagan influence, as evidenced by the acceptance of the
practice among Jews outside of Europe).
At this point I would like to sidestep for a bit into my model of
cognition. In short I believe that many cognitive processes are
reflexive, or somehow encapsulated from our conscious inspection and
awareness. Rationality is like a shimmering surface above the deep
roiling waters of our mental processes. The human mind is a collective,
and one where there is imperfect communication or unanimity.
Mathematics works because its formal system is so precise and clear
that there is no possibility of "cognitive creep" fudging the sequence
of inferences to suit our own ends. In contrast, verbal logic is
subject to interpretation, and so inevitably subjective or exogenous
parameters end up shaping its outcome. Wealthy Christians may genuinely
believe that their wealth is a gift from god, and that Christ wishes
them to be wealthy. From the outside one might note that wealthier
Christians seem to come to a particular interpretation in regards to
material success, while less wealthy ones come to another, but both
might be equally sincere in accepting that their logic was objective.
The problem here is that the nature of cognition means that without the
straight-jacket of symbolic formalism people easily and unconsciously
insert hidden variables into the reasoning process.
More concretely, this gets us to something like the Bible. I've been
talking as if the premises are clear and distinct even if the
propositions entailed are not so much. In fact reading the Bible itself
is subject to a great deal of interpretation. "Literal" readings of the
Bible are not usually quite so literal, rather, they often "hide" the
interpretation by packing it straight into the text without
acknowledgment. By this, I mean that Fundamentalists may appeal to a
Bible which translates a word or passage in a manner to their liking.
Non-Fundamentalists may admit beforehand that there are different
readings, or in the process of smoking out the inferences point to the
different directions where the text could take you. Fundamentalists may
assert that there is no falsity in the Bible, but they eliminate
falsification and contradiction simply through expedient
reinterpretations of words. Jesus Christ prophesied that he would
return before the passing of a generation, but since generation means
Jewish people, as long as the Jewish people remain he need not
necessarily return (why does generation mean Jewish people when it says
generation? Don't ask).
Nevertheless, at least there is sense in the Bible. The nature of
the Bible is such that it is accessible to a typical person; the
stories and ideas extant within are intelligible. What about theology
and religious philosophy? To a great extent I don't believe they have
sense; that is, I don't think that they mean anything in a direct
fashion. I don't think even the theologians themselves understand what
they're saying or what it means. That implies to me that the problems
with viewing religion as a logical system start out with the axioms.
After all this, I think it's pretty clear I don't think as a
phenomenon that religion is what religious people think it is. So what
is it? I do believe one can make objective generalizations about
religion, but I believe to a great extent it is an empirical matter,
not one of inferences derived from textual and theological
presuppositions. Religion is how it is practiced. Religious people
may believe that religion is true, so likely how they are practicing is
the closest to true religion in their own mind. But from a
non-religious perspective I think it is useful to simply define and
characterize it by the distribution of practices and beliefs that
people hold, and not by texts or experts. Therefore, one can make
generalizations about religions for a particular time and place, but
since there are few constraints one can not make universal
generalizations.
This gets to my point about instrumental utility. A model of
religious behavior, a predictive model so to speak, can be constructed,
but its priors must be the proximate behaviors and beliefs. An
inductive system is within our reach, but I believe any deductive
system predicated on religious priors (texts, theologies, etc.) are
highly suspect. I do believe that a deductive system which suggests
constraints is possible, but I do not believe that it is possible from
the world of religious studies, rather, one must look to the social and
biological sciences. Since religion is a cognitive phenomenon we must
examine the priors which constrain and shape the unfolding of the
cognitive process.
In my post Richard Dawkins - Islamophobe?
I implied that Islam is Creationistic in orientation. I believe this is
true, insofar as I believe most Muslims would be what we call Young
Earth Creationists. But, this is an empirical matter. There are Muslims
who are not Creationists in this fashion. Are they then less "true to
Islam"? I don't believe so. Islam is what Muslims believe, if they
believe that that is true to Islam that is their opinion and I won't
gainsay that. That being said, there is a statistical generalization one can make.
On a theoretical level does the nature of Muslim interpretation of the
Koran constrain or bias Islam toward Creationism? Possibly. That being
said, most Muslims do not read the Koran, most Muslims can not speak
Arabic, especially the classical variant within the Koran, and a
substantial minority of Muslims are even illiterate. I do not believe
that Muslims are by necessary Creationist, rather, that is simply the
modal state of Islam here and now. That may change due to interpretation.
In other words, an objective model of Muslims can be constructed
based on ascertainment of the empirical distribution. This distribution
though is in constant flux, and that flux is contingent up a host of
parameters, very few of which are ultimately rooted in some sort of
religious premise. For an atheist to make an assertion about what the
true Islam is is like a geologist to define the most rocky rock. A rock
is a rock.
Though abbreviated I'll end my own model of explaining religion at
this point. But rather I want to shift to some of the atheists who
criticize this model. I believe their own rationale for trying to
truncate religion into a simply formal system is pretty obvious; you can disprove formalisms.
On the other hand, the sprawling complex phenomenon that I describe
above is a bigger fish to fry. Like a natural system it requires a
great deal of study to re-engineer and model. It takes work, and we're
not really there yet because the social sciences have not advanced to
the point where we have all the tools necessary to understand the
phenomenon we speak of, and which affects our lives on a very deep
level. We can't just argue religious people out of religion if the
model I'm proposing is correct; we can't just show that it's
unreasonable and false because reasoning and falsity isn't really the
point of it. My main criticism of The God Delusion
is that Richard Dawkins seems to "get" that religion is more than a
simple set of beliefs derivable from axioms in the first half of the
book...but in the second half he pretends as if it is exactly that to
"refute" it. If it was a matter of conjecture and refutation it would
be rather tractable, but it isn't. The model of religion that many
atheists hold in their mind is simply one thing: wrong. That's just objectively so. But the godless delusion that religion is what an atheist thinks religion is is hard to banish.
