Information and (Semitic) Religions

In Nexus, Yuval Noah Harari goes deeper into information networks involving humans. Early religions had a problem – how did one know whether the narrator/priest was indeed conveying the original instructions? What if he was changing things, accidentally or deliberately?

 

The invention of the book offered a solution.

“After tens of thousands of years in which gods spoke to humans via shamans, priests, prophets, oracles and other human messengers, religious movements… began arguing that the gods spoke through this novel technology of the book.”

In theory at least, all copies of the book could be identical.

 

Religions of the book (Semitic ones) though then ran into a new problem.

“Who decides what to include in the holy book?”

After all, the first copy didn’t come from heaven. But the faithful decided that a “once-and-for-all supreme effort” with the wisest and most trustworthy men could stitch the first book together. (It still led to debates on who would form this group, but the Semitic religions proceeded with this approach anyway). The (Jewish) Hebrew Bible still took centuries of “hair-splitting debates” to frame.

 

For a while, things seemed to work. Until a new problem cropped up – interpretation of the texts. Did “goat” mean only the goat? Or was it supposed to means dairy animals in general? Or all animals? What constituted “work” (important for Jews since they are not supposed to work on Sabbath)?

 

Interpretation became even more important as the world continued to change. How were new scenarios (and temptations) supposed to be handled as per the holy book (which, remember, couldn’t be edited or updated)?

 

The Jews soon had a new book which was the “right” interpretation of the holy book! Over time, newer “right” interpretations were created. The world was too complicated and kept changing, after all. Half-jokingly, Harari writes:

“Judaism became an “information religion”, obsessed with texts and interpretations.”

 

Over time, an increasing number didn’t agree with more and more parts of the interpretations. They would be called the Christians. In the short term, Christianity had opened the door to chaos. New interpretations were acceptable, but which ones? It led to multiple gospels, epistles and prayers. Until they were collated into the New Testament.

“Just as most Jews forgot that rabbis curated the Old Testament, so most Christians forgot that church councils curated the New Testament, and came to view it as the infallible word of God.”

 

In Christianity, one institution, the Church became the ultimate authority on all interpretations. They chose to interpret it in a way that made them the richest landowners in Europe, authorized them to launch violent crusades and murderous inquisitions. To use a modern phrase:

“The church sought to lock society into an echo chamber, allowing the spread of only those books that supported it.”

 

The popular narrative is that the invention of the printing press was all positive. It did smash the authority of the church after all. True. It also led to the easy and wide dissemination of scientific ideas. But it also led to the spread of “religious fantasies, fake news, and conspiracy theories”. The most notorious of those were the spread of witch hunts and burning them at the stake.

“The Hammar of the Witches became one of the biggest bestsellers of early modern Europe.”

The pinnacle(?) of this was the Spanish inquisition. As the “witch hunt bureaucracy” generated endless “information”, it became harder to dismiss it. Surely not all the incidents could be false? How could all the publications on the topic be wrong?

“Witch hunts were a catastrophe caused by the spread of toxic information. They are a prime example of a problem that was created by information and made worse by more information.”

 

Did that give you a sense of déjà vu? As Mark Twain said, history may not repeat, but it rhymes.