Religion and Politics #1: Origin Stories

One view of religions is that they are very good memes, ideas that are very good at spreading themselves. If you agree with this view, then it is correct to conclude that religions should probably be gotten rid of. (Note that in this view, we’re not bothered by what specific harm it causes; rather, the conclusion is drawn as there is no benefit and either a small or a high cost to the host/believer).

 

But what if that view isn’t right, wonders Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind. What if religions evolved as “cultural innovations that spread to the extent that they make groups more cohesive and cooperative”? In this view, the “purpose” of religion was to persuade individuals to be less selfish, to convince them to work as groups with all the associated benefits and sacrifices. The gods “can be used to promote cooperation and trust within the group”. In such a setup:

“The gods of larger societies are usually quiet concerned about actions that foment conflict and division within the group, such as murder, adultery… and the breaking of oaths.”

This view would explain why the “old” gods would often inflict punishment on entire groups for the sins of a few, as Bill Watterson pointed out. It acted as a good deterrent, a way to nip bad behaviour early since others did not want to burn or die because of a few bad apples…


 

If this doesn’t sound convincing, consider the alternative. How easy is it for a secular call for sacrifice to work? Wouldn’t it just cause each individual to do a cost-benefit analysis, and lead to a lack of doing what’s good for the group?

“To invest social conventions with sanctity is to hide their arbitrariness in a cloak of seeming necessity… Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice.”

 

Some good points certainly, though I also felt it only explains Semitic religions, not the Eastern ones…

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Student of the Year

Image
As a toddler, my daughter loved Alia Bhatt’s songs, esp. the ones from Student of the Year . (That movie did have many good songs and well-choreographed dances). Fast forward to present day, when she is 12 yo. She rarely watches Hindi movies now, but one of the few ones she likes of late, Raja aur Rani ki Prem Kahani has, yes, Alia Bhatt.   If I had any hopes that there was anything to be read in the name of her toddler-time favorite ( Student of the Year ), they have been dashed. Our conversations come exam time are perfectly captured by this photo and its caption: In fact, the pic below captures how she and I look at her answer sheets – me intently, she with an expression of “It’s over, so why are you even looking at it?”   Of late, we pull her leg and tell her that she isn’t showing any signs of academic prowess, she’d better find a rich guy to marry. Some time later, she showed us this meme on the Internet: “Me No Study, Me No Care Me Go Marry Millionaire If He Die
Read more

Animal Senses #7: Touch and Remote Touch

Instinctively, we think touch is based on contact. Not entirely true, explains Ed Yong in Immense World – there’s a more important aspect than contact: “These incredible feats are possible through movement. If you rest a fingertip upon a surface, you can get only a limited idea of its features. But as soon you’re allowed to move, everything changes. Hardness becomes apparent with a press. Textures resolve at a stroke.” As you run your fingers over a surface, they hit the tiny peaks and troughs and set off vibrations in the mechanoreceptors at their tips.   At the tip of its snout, the star-nosed mole has many pairs of hairless appendages. It uses them to touch things around itself. Alive or dead? Food or ignore? It does these movements at an insane speed. In the time it takes to blink our eyes, the star-nosed mole can probe, identify and swallow its food. “Light may be the fastest thing in the universe, but light sensors have their limits, and the star-nosed mole’s sense of
Read more

The Retort of the "Luxury Person"

Image
Coming up with biting and witty retorts. It’s something we dream of, but rarely manage to pull off. Worse, the more we stew over the offending remark, the more likely we are to come up with that dream retort, as Calvin ruefully points out: During our last holiday at the Taj Resort, seeing my wife carrying towels to our poolside chairs, one of the kids there mistook her for a member of the staff and asked for a towel. When my wife narrated this to us, I did not imagine that my 8 yo daughter would come up with her own retort. But a day later, my daughter recapped the incident, an incident that didn’t even involve her in the first place , and said, “You know what I’d have told that kid who asked for the towel?”. And without waiting for an answer, she told us anyway: “I don’t work here. I too am a luxury person who is living at this resort. Go get your own towel.” We were highly amused by the phrase she had coined: “luxury person”. It certainly captures the kind of holid
Read more