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Gitchi Manitou
Feb. 3rd, 2005 10:44 pmWell, nobody's assigned me a rant yet, but here's one(well, more of a lecture, really)that's been percolating in me for a few days.
One of the main problems I have with religion is that the whole phenomenon seems to be easily explicable just because of how the brain is wired. We seem to be hardwired to look for patterns, even where there are none--seeing constellations in more-or-less random arrangements of stars, for instance. We are able to phrase questions that need not have valid answers(like Larry Gonick's classic, "Who make sky?"), and then presume that because we can form the question, it must have an answer. And our brains can get into states where we perceive presences that may or may not be there, like the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy.
So you look for patterns in a potentially chaotic world, and you find them even in randomness because that's what our brain has become good at doing. Then you ask why those patterns are there, and invent some invalid and untestable hypotheses to explain them. And if you experience temporal lobe effects, then you become convinced beyond any doubt, through direct experience, that there is Something Out There--gods, spirits, demons, whatever.
None of this necessitates the actual existence of these entities, or the existence of a sky-maker.
Let's add in the ability to conceptualize death and your own mortality. You ask potentially invalid questions about what happens after death. In dreams, perhaps, or even in waking visions caused by the stimulation of your brain, you may perceive the faces and voices of those who have died. You will naturally want to believe that death is not an ending, because that is scary and not nearly as comforting as an afterlife.
If you add in memes, then it becomes easy to see why religions persist and are popular. A religion is basically a huge meme complex which contains a hodgepodge of things. Among them is usually a lot of explanation for why things happen, what happens after death, and the codification of the mores of the originating tribe.
Not all of these things are bad, but they come as a package. Christianity includes "Thou shalt not kill" and "Turn the other cheek", but it also contains "Reproduce as much as possible", which includes "Homosexuality is bad" and "Abortion is bad", because both of those practices involve decreasing the number of births. Now it's an advantage for a meme complex to include some set of memes that encourage fecundity, so that more people will be born and brought up with the meme complex. And certainly, in times when tribal survival is a tricky matter, anything that keeps the birth rate above the death rate is good, and anything that lowers the birth rate is bad. Now, fast-forward to a time when world population is way too high, and that meme has outlived its usefulness...but the meme complex is still going strong.
And that's just the one that boils down to "Human life is a good thing". There's plenty of other religious meme complexes out there that say things like "Kill everyone who doesn't believe in this meme complex". Because if you kill nonbelievers, then your memes will spread faster than theirs. Even "Don't eat certain types of food", because they're more likely to make you sick, is less relevant when we know why they make you sick, can avoid it more easily, and can often fix you if you do get sick. Prejudice is easily codified, if only to make scapegoatery easier, and the "We are the chosen people" meme is another big comforting one. Then there's the good old "Try to convince others that this meme complex is good", the source of evangelism and missionary work, and often combined with the "Kill the infidels" one to devastating effect.
Now let's say that, instead of(or, more likely, in addition to)making suppositions based on a limited amount of data, you gather more data, with the intent of proving your suppositions(or disproving other people's). Eventually you can come up with a meme complex of a different kind. One of the basic memes in this complex will, ideally, contain something about being able to discard memes corresponding to hypotheses that no longer fit the evidence. In other words, it's a meme complex that can amend itself when the data becomes better. This, my friends, is science.
Now, it doesn't say anything reassuring about what happens after you die, it doesn't encourage population increase above all else, and it doesn't say to kill people who don't believe in science. But nevertheless it survives. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it answers a lot of questions, and it explains a lot of patterns, even if it excludes unanswerable questions and a lot of easily perceptible patterns. It's also verifiable.
I can understand why people believe in religions. They are seductive meme complexes, honed over generations, and they provide comfort, purpose, and community. I understand it. Perhaps the only reason I can't believe in one myself is the fact that I was raised to adulthood without being taught to believe, or maybe it's just part of my personality. But I'm resistant to the ideas now. I do have some memes of my own--a lot of that "science" meme complex, though I'd be flattering myself if I said that I really, deep down, believed in all of it. (Even most scientists want to believe their ideas are right for much longer than the evidence support them.) I also believe that there are some good ideas buried deep in those religious meme complexes, but wish they didn't have all that baggage. I don't believe that the only way to transport beneficial memes is in a religious container, though.
One of the main problems I have with religion is that the whole phenomenon seems to be easily explicable just because of how the brain is wired. We seem to be hardwired to look for patterns, even where there are none--seeing constellations in more-or-less random arrangements of stars, for instance. We are able to phrase questions that need not have valid answers(like Larry Gonick's classic, "Who make sky?"), and then presume that because we can form the question, it must have an answer. And our brains can get into states where we perceive presences that may or may not be there, like the effects of temporal lobe epilepsy.
So you look for patterns in a potentially chaotic world, and you find them even in randomness because that's what our brain has become good at doing. Then you ask why those patterns are there, and invent some invalid and untestable hypotheses to explain them. And if you experience temporal lobe effects, then you become convinced beyond any doubt, through direct experience, that there is Something Out There--gods, spirits, demons, whatever.
None of this necessitates the actual existence of these entities, or the existence of a sky-maker.
Let's add in the ability to conceptualize death and your own mortality. You ask potentially invalid questions about what happens after death. In dreams, perhaps, or even in waking visions caused by the stimulation of your brain, you may perceive the faces and voices of those who have died. You will naturally want to believe that death is not an ending, because that is scary and not nearly as comforting as an afterlife.
If you add in memes, then it becomes easy to see why religions persist and are popular. A religion is basically a huge meme complex which contains a hodgepodge of things. Among them is usually a lot of explanation for why things happen, what happens after death, and the codification of the mores of the originating tribe.
Not all of these things are bad, but they come as a package. Christianity includes "Thou shalt not kill" and "Turn the other cheek", but it also contains "Reproduce as much as possible", which includes "Homosexuality is bad" and "Abortion is bad", because both of those practices involve decreasing the number of births. Now it's an advantage for a meme complex to include some set of memes that encourage fecundity, so that more people will be born and brought up with the meme complex. And certainly, in times when tribal survival is a tricky matter, anything that keeps the birth rate above the death rate is good, and anything that lowers the birth rate is bad. Now, fast-forward to a time when world population is way too high, and that meme has outlived its usefulness...but the meme complex is still going strong.
And that's just the one that boils down to "Human life is a good thing". There's plenty of other religious meme complexes out there that say things like "Kill everyone who doesn't believe in this meme complex". Because if you kill nonbelievers, then your memes will spread faster than theirs. Even "Don't eat certain types of food", because they're more likely to make you sick, is less relevant when we know why they make you sick, can avoid it more easily, and can often fix you if you do get sick. Prejudice is easily codified, if only to make scapegoatery easier, and the "We are the chosen people" meme is another big comforting one. Then there's the good old "Try to convince others that this meme complex is good", the source of evangelism and missionary work, and often combined with the "Kill the infidels" one to devastating effect.
Now let's say that, instead of(or, more likely, in addition to)making suppositions based on a limited amount of data, you gather more data, with the intent of proving your suppositions(or disproving other people's). Eventually you can come up with a meme complex of a different kind. One of the basic memes in this complex will, ideally, contain something about being able to discard memes corresponding to hypotheses that no longer fit the evidence. In other words, it's a meme complex that can amend itself when the data becomes better. This, my friends, is science.
Now, it doesn't say anything reassuring about what happens after you die, it doesn't encourage population increase above all else, and it doesn't say to kill people who don't believe in science. But nevertheless it survives. Why? Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that it answers a lot of questions, and it explains a lot of patterns, even if it excludes unanswerable questions and a lot of easily perceptible patterns. It's also verifiable.
I can understand why people believe in religions. They are seductive meme complexes, honed over generations, and they provide comfort, purpose, and community. I understand it. Perhaps the only reason I can't believe in one myself is the fact that I was raised to adulthood without being taught to believe, or maybe it's just part of my personality. But I'm resistant to the ideas now. I do have some memes of my own--a lot of that "science" meme complex, though I'd be flattering myself if I said that I really, deep down, believed in all of it. (Even most scientists want to believe their ideas are right for much longer than the evidence support them.) I also believe that there are some good ideas buried deep in those religious meme complexes, but wish they didn't have all that baggage. I don't believe that the only way to transport beneficial memes is in a religious container, though.
