{"id":4450,"date":"2010-08-15T20:39:08","date_gmt":"2010-08-15T20:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/?p=4450"},"modified":"2010-08-15T20:39:43","modified_gmt":"2010-08-15T20:39:43","slug":"yes-it-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/yes-it-matters\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, It Matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Here<\/a> from Big Questions Online <\/em>is an interesting piece by Michael Graziano, a Princeton professor who describes himself as a neuroscientist and atheist, but \u201cnot an anti-theist\u201d. <\/p>\n

His starting point is (to me) pretty sound:<\/p>\n

I find religion to be a fascinating human psychological and cultural phenomenon and see no reason to try to eradicate it (not that it could be eradicated ). Nor do I believe that science \u2014 and neuroscience in particular \u2014 can somehow persuade people that religion is nonsense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

But then Graziano goes on to argue that while neuroscience may \u201cexplain\u201d religious belief, it does not \u201cexplain it away\u201d, a dubious distinction that leads him to a conclusion that left me, well, scratching my head:<\/p>\n

Much of the modern clash between science and religion focuses on questions about whether God exists independently or is a construct of the brain and whether the soul lives on after the body or ends when the brain dies. Are these crucial religious questions? I would argue that they are not. For the vast majority of people, religion is a way of life. It is about community and music, place and food, comfort and emotional support. It is, like all of human culture and experience, a function of our peculiar neurobiology, and we should try to appreciate it as such.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It\u2019s the word \u201ccrucial\u201d that has me stumped. Like Graziano, I believe that religion (in one shape or another) is a permanent part of the human condition. It may evolve, but it\u2019s not going away. To get from that point, however, to arguing that the question of the existence of God does not really matter is a leap too far. No, I\u2019m not going to spend a lot of time pondering the ultimate reality of God (so far as I can see, it\u2019s unprovable either way), but attempting to come to an understanding of what has driven the phenomenon of religious belief is something very different: important both in helping understand the past and, to the extent that one can, predicting aspects of the future. <\/p>\n

If the evolution of religion is a matter of natural selection, environment and chance (as, primarily, I think that it is) that\u2019s one thing, but if it is a process periodically pushed by unfathomable divine intervention then that\u2019s something else altogether. <\/p>\n

And. yes, that’s crucial. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Here from Big Questions Online is an interesting piece by Michael Graziano, a Princeton professor who describes himself as a neuroscientist and atheist, but \u201cnot an anti-theist\u201d. His starting point is (to me) pretty sound: I find religion to be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4450"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4514,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4450\/revisions\/4514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/secularright.org\/SR\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}