I have just finished reading The Faith Instinct by Nicolas Wade. I recommend that anyone interested in the history of religion, the role of religion in societal development, and/or the validity of any specific religion read this book. This book review will not do the depth of knowledge contained in the book any justice.
The book begins by describing how the author has reached the conclusion that religion has a genetic basis. This does not imply any specific religion has a genetic basis; only that the need to believe in something that explains the unknowable is common to all and has been a core element of survival. The book goes back 50,000 years to the original hunter and gather's tribes by looking at the behavior of those few tribes who survived around the world as hunter and gather's until modern times.
Mr. Wade's 1st book Before the Dawn is about what what our ancestors, going back the 2000 generations to the beginning of human existence, did in their daily lives. Out of that work, came the urge to investigate and document this history.
He uses 1st level source material to document as much as he can of more recent developments (the last 4,000 years) and really mines anthropological studies of the last hunter gathers to convincingly present his view that the need for religion is genetically ingrained. On that basis, I believe that all religions should be respected because no religion has more claim to being correct than any other religion.
After all, science cannot answer the last two unknowable questions: (i) what was the origin of the universe and (ii) how did life come to exist. There are theories but that is all, so anyone who wants to believe in God should have that right respected. Even though I am an atheist, I do not believe atheists do themselves any good fighting the expression of religious belief. If such belief has helped the species survive for 50,000 years, and given us a moral code to live by productively, it absolutely deserves to be respected.
Now I became an atheist because I was born into a family of Christianity and Judaism. As I became of age, the Virgin Birth of Jesus, the legend of Adam & Eve, Moses talking to God left me wondering about the inconsistencies between the stories of each religion and reality, and therefore the validity of any religion. Add to that, wars with a religious basis that left me wondering how could a God favor one tribe of people over another tribe of people. Thus, I do not believe in God and am probably a Buddhist by philosophy. Such migration is actually quite common in the U.S. Witness the migration from the traditional Protestant sects to the evangelical sects, who like their musical expression as did the original hunter gatherers.
This book does an excellent job of explaining the role of religion in fighting wars and why religion is not the cause of wars, rather it is the political process using religion to advocate for their tribe that creates the wars. The book also explains how religions keep tribes together regardless of borders and form the basis of commercial trust of which Judaism is the best example.
The book does an excellent job explaining how all the modern religions were made up without casting any judgements on the validity of their beliefs because respect for all religions is a central theme for the book. It does not matter that they are made up if their members want to believe in God. The other issues of Moses, Jesus, Mohammed (who may not have been a real person - think of those ironies given what certain sects of Islam advocate), or Joseph Smith are secondary to the basic role of religion in exhibiting respect for God, honoring God and the patrons' willingness to behave in a manner that the religion of their choice demands of them. All this is central to the role of religion for the 50,000 years since the beginning of human being existence.
This does not mean that atheists do not deserve respect also. After all, they are just another tribe, albeit, most of them are really members of the tribe that they do not follow any more. Judaism for me, whatever for anyone else. At the end of the day, we are still members of that tribe because more than likely we follow the moral code of that tribe. The book spend a lot of time discussing whether our society's morals would be what they are without religion. Religion's influences last and can be easily revived. Russian Orthodoxy took almost no time to reestablish itself as the state religion after 80 years of communism. Confucianism remains the core of Chinese society even though the state is run by communists who practice state sanctioned socialist capitalism. Most American atheists were raised in a Judaic-Christian religion or their parents were.
So all religions are made up, but they all deserve respect because they are central to our core being. No one has the answer to the two key questions and it is just as possible that a God created it as it is that the universe is an experiment in some other creature's beaker glass or is some quirk of circumstances.
The Faith Instinct is well worth reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment