Here from Big Questions Online is an interesting piece by Michael Graziano, a Princeton professor who describes himself as a neuroscientist and atheist, but “not an anti-theist”.
His starting point is (to me) pretty sound:
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 — and neuroscience in particular — can somehow persuade people that religion is nonsense.
But then Graziano goes on to argue that while neuroscience may “explain” religious belief, it does not “explain it away”, a dubious distinction that leads him to a conclusion that left me, well, scratching my head:
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.
It’s the word “crucial” 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’s 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’m not going to spend a lot of time pondering the ultimate reality of God (so far as I can see, it’s 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.
If the evolution of religion is a matter of natural selection, environment and chance (as, primarily, I think that it is) that’s one thing, but if it is a process periodically pushed by unfathomable divine intervention then that’s something else altogether.
And. yes, that’s crucial.
there are independent necessary conditions of religion for most people. community and culture are one aspect. but supernatural is also another. attempts to create religions which fixate on a particular strand lead to long term failure. political religion, or secular societies like ethical culture, are either ephemeral or of minimal attraction. excessive fixation on a ‘personal relationship’ with the supernatural also tends to be ephemeral and a feature of new sects. the american mega-church is almost certainly an implicit acknowledgement by jesus-obsessed christians that they really can’t make do without the institution of religion, even if they claim that “it’s all about jesus.”
Perhaps what Graziano meant was that the questions aren’t crucial to religious people themselves–that what’s important to religious people isn’t so much the relationship with God and the survival of the soul, but belonging to a community of presumably like-minded people for the social, cultural, culinary (he does mention food), and emotional perks.
What if the supernatural claims were necessary scaffolding to construct the edifice of religion but, now the all the other components are in place, can be safely taken down and put away.
Maybe that’s what Graziano had in mind.
Is a question rarely asked not a crucial question?
I got a similar sense that Dr. Graziano took his argument one step too far. What he says about perception vs. reality is very true. Where he steps over the line is when he suggests that because what our brains process are perceptions and not reality itself, that the reality isn’t that important.
It is true that color is a property of your mind and not reality. When you see a red object, it may be that the photons emanating from the object and hitting the cone cells in your retina may be of a single wavelength…say 650nm. It could be of two separate wavelenths…say 625nm and 675 nm. Maybe the photons are in a spectrum of wavelengths and the intensity peaks around 650 nm.
All of these possibilities are indistinguishable to us, provided that the ratio of the signals sent to our brains by our retina’s three types of cone receptors are the same. And those signals are dependent upon highly conjugated molecules that have broad spectrum absorbance peaking at different wavelengths. Our brain just looks at the ratios and packages that into a color. So, color is a property of our minds, not of reality.
Now, it seems to me that Dr. Graciano is extending that analogy to concepts of reality. Colors are constructs of our minds and yet they feel very “real” to us. Now, I’m sure that many people care about what the real distribution of photons emanating from the “blue” object that they’re looking at is, but trying to analogize that to religious belief in God is a bit silly.
I know that I at least value my concept of reality and while I don’t particularly care to take apart the notion of color every time I experience a color, I do hope that my perceptions are in some way an accurate reflection of reality, and religious people (at least those of theistic faiths) believe that God is an element of reality.
They may not constantly question whether God is there or not and it may be a property of their perceptions and not a direct function of reality, but if you convince a Christian that the God he has worshipped all his life doesn’t really exist, most of the time I suspect that he will not continue with the routine worship of what he now thinks is an absence.
Apologies to Dr. Graciano if I misinterpreted his argument, but I think that the argument that since we do not considered the number and wavelengths of photons emanating from a green ball to be a crucial element of reality in going on with our everyday behavior that by analogy the actual existence of God is not a question crucial to the practice of religion is specious.
Based on what we have from a number of prominent names, we may be looking in wrong directions in order to know that so-called mystical state. It is also known as higher consciousness, ultimate reality, nirvana and any other number of names. Jesus called it the Holy Spirit.
Could it be that we should follow what the prominent names suggest. Whitehead said, “Familiar things happen and mankind does not bother about them.” Hegel gave us this: “Because it’s familiar, a thing remains unknown.” Gibran said, “The obvious is that which is never seen until someone expresses it.” Huxley suggested that “Most human being have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted.” A number of others spoke in very similar ways. Could it be, could it just be that science looks too deep, religion too high and philosophy too far for the answer to the idea of gaining peace of mind and freedom of thought!
Once that higher state of mind is reached, we know the meaning of Oneness. The self, the universe and that higher power we call God, are seen as … One!
We are discovering that commandments are not followed and that the transmission of kindness and goodness and caring are concepts that can never be commanded. They must arrive as insights by each individual human being. We have the Ten Commandments, but still people do not follow the higher power, God. They still commit crimes and sins and terrible deeds. Why? They have not gained the insight to see that they can be good and decent human beings. The fundamental nature of the human being is goodness; who can deny that once one reaches the mystical state, he then is a good and decent human being!
The time has come to see that we must recognize the importance of analysis of familiar, obvious and known things, and things we have taken for granted. It is here insight will be gained, not through the disecting of brains (science), looking to the heavens (religion), or at far out concepts too difficult even for the most intellgent of men and women to understand (philosophy). It is in realizing we must look at things we have taken for granted — our thoughts — so that insight can be triggered and we can realize things we have known but only superficially.
Emmanuel Karavousanos
Author, Speaker
EKaravousa@aol.com
Maybe he says the question is not crucial because he already does not believe in God anyway. Is it a crucial question whether dragons exist? Maybe he means it’s a meaningless exercise.
One hates to resort to an ipse dixit argument, but St. Paul made it pretty clear that if Christ did not die and rise again, all his preaching was in vain. Christ himself was pretty insistent on the afterlife, too, as he looked forward to personally casting goats into the lake of fire for an eternity of roasting.
Now, maybe a Buddhist could agree with Dr. G ( I don’t really know myself), but no serious Christian could while still remaining a serious Christian.
meng,
“When you see a red object, it may be that the photons emanating from the object and hitting the cone cells in your retina…”
Actually, “seeing” red does not occur at the retina.
“Seeing” red is a mental phenomenon that does not occur in space (can we cut open the brain or otherwise spot that “redness”?)…and it might not exist in time.
Thus is the basis for an incorporeal existence of the “spirit” in us all.