InG we T - Introduction

In Gods we trust
1.1 - Introduction

The introduction to In Gods we trust is jam packed. By itself it is quite an enticing thought starter. The subheading should give one a good taste of its content.
-why is religion an evolutionary dilemma
-why are religions and cultures not entities or things
-what is an evolutionary landscape
-why are Mickey Mouse and Marx different from God

One of the big questions I initially had revolved around the premise that "religions are not adaptations and have no evolutionary function as such." If this is the position taken I hope to see some discussion about the clustering of evolutionary traits. Not being up on the proper bio lingo, I had better explain what I mean.

When an adaptive trait is manifest, often other changes are clustered with it. For example developing webbed feet could mean one is more prone to certain skin conditions. All changes that occur with a mutation may not be adaptations. Some are merely carried along with the rearranging of genes or gene expression. Thus religious tendencies don't have to be adaptive, they only have to be associated with other adaptive traits. A few months ago I was pondering the question as to whether the strength of certain components of our religious tendencies would have been necessary to allow government formation and other important social functions.

I guess we'll see if this point gets followed. From the introduction, I suspect that this question may be too difficult to discern, and thus be useless for academic work (sociology excepted of course :).

Favorite Posts - November

Jim Faulconer has a great post suggesting that some forms of religion may encourage idolatry. In particular he mentions that valuing a construct, perhpas due to systematic theology, over the real, or revealed, may lead one to idolatry. This is because we are worhsipping what we create rather than the thing we are trying to describe. This seems like some of the problems some forms of protestantism has. The crreds become tantamount to scripture and systems of interpretations equivalent to revelation.

See Life Differently is a blog I had bookmarked some time ago, but haven't checked in on for quite some time. Looking for a bit of novelty in my reading lists, I stumbled on it again. Generous orthodoxy has quite a few interesting links. Trust the Spirit seems similar to a number of posts last month on the bloggernacle. Orthodoxy also seems similar to quite a few Mormon takes on translations and revelations. The Creedal topic could have been promising but seemed to skirt around the main issue. If one accepts creeds as a necessary part of religious heritage, what is to stop us today from making the equivalent of our own creeds. It seems that they really get validated by time, rather than by anything else. Sure the majority agree to them, but what the majority pushes needn't always be right. Accepting that God's will always ensures proper direction seems to be too deterministic for me, although I am aware it isn't so for many others (or at least not once significant time has lasped).

The Spinozist Mormon has a very good discussion on seer stones. The comments are the highlight. We seem to be afraid to acknowledge the possible use of seer stones. While individuals can assume what ever reason they want for this hesistency, it is probably correct that they cause people to think in terms of dictographic revelation. Since this doesn't happen much (if at all), at least not so that it gets reported as a "thus saith", we assume they don't exist, or don't work. However, one possible conclusion is that they just act as inspirational tools for a more conventional form of personal revelation.

Geoff at New Cool Thang had a good post and lots of good comments on the theological foundations of momon religion. I came in too late to post anything, but figure the merits of the creation account will percolate up again in a week or two, once people have had a time to digest some of the big issues. Personally the Pearl of Great Price is far and away my favorite scripture. I just can't get over how much is in there.

I lost track of the last half of November, so consider this an abbreviated list.

InG we T - Expectations

In Gods we trust
1.0 - Expectations

Who can resist a book whose subtitle is "The evolutionary landscape of religion". While some people like befuddling themselves with questions of when commandment A is more appropriate than commandment B, I find hard fundamental questions much more entertaining. It seems like a good way to keep oneself humble, and hence teachable. After all, from a naturalistic perspective, religious positions already seem so improbable I can't imagine why one would want to meld their hard won personal experiences within an inflexible paradigm. Extracting reliable knowledge from revelation is difficult enough, why make it more so by insisting that the baggage of construction is without err.

Thought provoking posts like The Main Issue at Issues in Mormon Doctrine intrigue me. They force me to step back and rexamine the possibilities that underlay my beliefs. Is my testimony of God's reality contingent upon his existence as an ex nihlo creator? Do my assurances about the reality of Adam force me to conclude that non-adamic homonids were really an impossibility? Is Adam's ascendance to God any more improbable if his mortal existence was through evolutionary lines rather than, ID direction or outright divine manufacture? With these ideas in mind I bought "In Gods we trust" with aspirations to see where my social and biological baggage about religion could lay. After all, there is not much point in making tradition a trump card if one is after anything non-circular.

In Gods We Trust

In Gods We Trust by Scott Atran (another review here) deals with the evolutionary landscape of religion. In it, he offers a well researched analysis of how supernatural religion is a natural consequence of our basic natures.

This book is written from a decidedly atheistic point of view. While it certainly isn't written in a pejorative way, it certainly can be a challenge to some types of testimonies. If you came into the book looking for ways to try and distinguish genuine religious experience from societal baggage, it certainly can lead to some interesting, and self defacing insights. As with any book, the more one looks for personal applications, the more one gets out of it.

Overall, I don't think this book will have a wide appeal for mormon audiences. To build something constructive from it requires a unique perspective on religion. The unnecessarily complex writing style in much of the book will further filter the audience. This is unfortunate because the experimental detail backing claims is quite nice to see. Unlike most anthropological or sociological works, assumptions are made minimally. Those with a science bend will feel comfortable with the style of presentation. Those interested in a light read will be disappointed.

During this next month I will be starting a series of posts on this book. While this seems to be a bloggernacle trend of late, I don't think my posts will summarize much of the book. Instead they will focus on interesting ideas that the book brings out in my world view. I would like to take about 1 week a section, meaning this should be a month long event. Along the way I will try and summarize my general reactions. So far it has been intriguing. It is just too bad I can only take it in short doses before getting bogged down with tangential ideas and issues.

World Lecture Hall

As a teacher I often have to run around the internet looking for resources. A few years ago I found the World Lecture Hall. This excellent resource has a listing of online college courses. Most courses are fairly complete. There are a few religion courses up there that I haven't gone through. If one is looking to get a bit more out of one's studies, picking up a text, and following through a course timeline and assignment schedule is not a bad idea.

Fundamentalists - just like us

From the Oct 8 2005 New Scientist:

The conclusion they came to was that there was no real difference between fundamentalists and everybody else. "The fundamentalist mentality is part of human nature." writes Stuart Sim, a cultural theorist at the University of Sunderland in the UK. "All of us are capable of exhibiting this kind of behaviour".

Attention has now turned away from individual psychology to focus on the power of the group. "We evolved to have close and intimate group contacts: we cooperate to compete, "says Atran. The psychology of fundamentalism is, literally, more than the sum of its parts; taken individually, fundamentalists are rather unremarkable. "The notion that you might be able to find something in a fundamentalist's brain scan is a non-starter," says John Brooke, a professor of science and religion at the University of Oxford.

My thought on this issue are probably best summed up by my rather incomprehensible essay on zealotry. To avoid the difficulty associated with making it through that post, I suspect that what we normally consider cultish zealotism is just an intersection between the high points on a couple of bell curves: one representing how easily people zone into to something, one representing how much an institution encourages such zoning, and the last being how uncommon chosen behaviours or interests are.

From a religious standpoint though, I think it is important to recognize that zealotry and fundamentalism, in whatever area most likely represent the easy road to escapism. Sure one can argue that biblical injunctions to extreme devotion are divinely mandated, but I don't believe imbalance and unsustainable actions designed to make or break us into relying on Jesus are necessarily the best way for long term progression. Continually laying down a gauntlet of fundamentalism, hoping that God will always be there to properly direct seems rather manic. Plus it seems to force an overly taxing solution on God when it would be much simpler for us just to move out of this rather selfish externalism.

New Scienctist Humility

From the October 8-14th New Scientist article "Meeting of the Minds" on fundamentalism we get the following, hopefully humility inspiring quote:

But how does the conflict [the compartmentalization of religious and scientific thought] translate into a social war, like that being waged over the role of science? part of the answer lies in fundamentalist's need to bolster group identity by reframing their belief in the terms of the dominant culture. In a secular, scientific culture, Savage points out, a certain level of evidence is generally required in order for knowledge to count and for individuals to act on it. Fundamentalists respond by attempting to "prove" their core beliefs: the "science-up" their faith, framing it in a way that they think ought to make sense to a scientific culture. Their claims then become, in their eyes at least, as valid as science's claims. No wonder scientists find fundamentalist's claims so infuriating: they are operating on patently false credentials.

I think in todays society, we are often too quick to self justify. While I think the minority movements of the 80's and 90's certainly actualized this human tendency, I suspect unless we are willing to look for the good that critical thought can offer, we are setting ourselves up for a compartmentalization of belief. While this may be a fine way to deal with abstract potentials, it may not be the wisest choice on the market. I fail to see why dealing with, and accepting day to day reality at face value is limiting. If religion doesn't match up with our current existence, it can only ever be applicable in an abstract world. While certain utopias may exist, limiting the conditions wherein beliefs may be correct certainly seems to severely limit the sphere of power over which one is able to operate. If I can't deal with this life, I may be missing out on a substantial fraction of the next.