Guerilla Religion

When one looks, at least superficially, at the legal systems of North American society, obfuscation appears an effective tool to avoid repercussion. Guilt beyond reasonable doubt encourages criminals to pursue methods that increase uncertainty. In the application of law, a strong resistance to arbitrariness favors complication over common sense conclusions. Now this certainly protects the innocent. The extra work required to punish the guilty, to many, seems a justifiable balance. However the long term consequences may mean society is unable to deal with large scale guerilla wars. They can be challenged tactically, but strategically, a lack of arbitrariness may be a fatal flaw in a ideological and media based confrontation.




Religiously, the rise of guerillism in our society is quite apparent. Organized religion is taboo precisely because of its arbitrary tendencies. In its place individualism reigns. However the only consistent means by which individuals can succeed against organizations is with a response (ouda) loop that overpowers the benefits of group action. Extreme incompetence and disorganization on the part of organizations seems to enable this. However it is doubtful that every religious organization can be categorically inept (the benefits of group action almost always succeed in the long run). The other way is to have constantly changing conditions. Social progressiveness seems to assume that a rapid rate of change is a way to stay ahead of the consequences of stagnation, or the natural consequences of stability depending which view one favors. The other way individuals can succeed over organizations is within an obfusciscious society.

The complexity of today's rational state, its empowerment of experts, its resistance to accept any arbitrariness combine to empower the individual over the organization. However, what seems to be happening is that complexity is emerging as the new hideout for religion. By this I mean that it is a new vault where people can go to for vindication and empowerment. The rules are communally accepted and internally consistent. They are dogmatic in nature and morally based. The difference between this, call it guerilla religion, and organized religion is that the former can attack, but cannot itself be attacked, unless one takes an extremely arbitrary perspective on things. In this sense, is it any wonder that fanaticism and fundamentalism have increased? Realistically, if one wants a fight, how else does one combat religious guerillas? The irony with terrorism seems profound. Guerilla based neo-humanism in conflict with guerilla based diplomacy. The former fighting an unconventional ideological war via conventional means, the latter fighting a conventional ideological war via unconventional means.

Religion & Science 2

Scientific Reality

Jeffrey at Issues In Mormon Doctrine has had a series of good posts on Dennet's "Breaking the Spell of Religion". While most of my comments never quite manage to be in sync with the subtleties required, the novel threads I end up thinking about after the face must mean I am at least adjusting my track, or perhaps just getting successively more off base.

One issue that has taken me a while to come to grips with is the various things people mean when they say something is scientific. Many branches of study seem to cling to the coat tails of science in a way that is analogous to how religions cling to divine endorsement. Often it is used as a tool of authentication rather than a means of establishing rigorous absolutes.

Going through Voltaire's Bastards, one certainly gets presented with the idea that much of what we assume to be valid may in fact just be the finalizing of a self justifying and hence, logically consistent system. However, one assumes science is independent of this for a few reasons.
1. Science is weakly dependent on value judgments. Facts are able, in most part, to speak for themselves. If not, they can be explained in a way that minimizes subjective interpretation.
2. Scientific results are context independent. They specify the conditions under which they are valid. Eventually conclusions can be shown to be correct in any attainable situation.
3. As an extension of 2, context independence infers that reality is what is being described. Repeatability solidifies this assumption.

In the scientific pursuit one of the things sought are unimpeachable results. These should apply to any specified conditions, or at least be simplified approaches that apply to limited domains (Newtonian mechanics vs. quantum mechanics). They should be repeatable, hence reliable. In other words they should describe reality. Following this line, one can come to the conclusion that reality is anything that can be depended upon and is context independent. More specifically many people would say that it corresponds to something absolute. Science is a means to describe this absolute reality.

An absolute, science communicates in communal fashion. It's results are thing upon which every logical person can agree. Those that don't are factually and demonstrably incorrect. This means it is based on communal realities. Now of course it happens that shared realities are the ones most likely to represent physically reality. However our experience of reality can't occur without participation. While philosophers will probably call me a fool, I don't think we can logically talk about reality as an absolute without reference to our experiential contact with it. In other words, it is like trying to talk about the momentum of an electron without reference to it's position. While precise momentum measures are possible, we can't take this figure and extrapolate it back to a given position. Their distinguishabilities are inversely related. When we talk about science discovering absolutes, we can't talk about it independent of experience. Of course degree to which experience interacts with reality varies depending upon the object and, perhaps, the observer.

If I am a schizophrenic and hear voices of an imaginary person communicating with me, in what way is this less real than another person who has an actual person talking to them? It is less real because no one else can experience it. While this obviously isn't a very useful way of dealing with things, what happens if other people were to act as if the schizophrenic voice was real? Obviously we would say we are entering into a world of pretend. It falls apart because there is no way different people could experience that same thing. Each "voice" would be different, hence unreliable. If, however, people understood the imaginary voice as communicating the same thing in a repeatable fashion, is it still unreal? As the voice becomes more anthropomorphized, the answer mimics reality more and more. Questions like this really lead one to question the value in the difference between actual realities and functional realities. If they are indistinguishable, what is the difference? To some extent, is this what religion may actually be proposing?

One of the first problems is that we can no longer deal with one reality that we all experience. There are individual realities that have substantial overlap, especially in certain areas. In this realm, religion has a niche. The unification it facilitates may enable its fundamental promises. It implies that what one accepts, to some extent, is able to change the reality one experiences. Fundamentally this is what repentance is about. Real change is feasible, and paradigm shifts can enable things that otherwise would not be possible.

To me this leads to an interesting way to think about the three degrees of glory. Somehow people in one degrees are able to share a reality that is fundamentally different from those in another. It could be a similar idea of how god works and how to follow his example. In this way it would be analogous to Christ's proclamation that if you have seen him and what he has done, you have seen the Father and what he has done. While Jesus and the Father are not physically one, it's a good bet they have a similar take on how things work. I don't think it a religious stretch to say that their reality is quite a bit different that what many of us would accept, conceive, predict, or apply.

Similarly there are certain other shared realities that are possible. Some may involve no spiritual promptings at all. In this regard I find the cognitive sci approaches to religion interesting. They seem to imply that religious inclination is at least fairly widespread. The conclusion that the supernatural, while not actually real, is nonetheless an effective way to embody ethereal connections seems fairly analogous to the mormon conception of the telestial kingdom. Distinctions in the other kingdoms could also be based on the way one perceives, shares and experiences reality.

Religion & Science 1

From religion to science


When religion tries to become scientific a couple of outcomes seem likely.
1. Religion chooses which facts and studies to accept, becoming at most a pseudo science. Intelligent design defense seems to fit in here. Proponents use the science label to justify and proof text positions..
2a. Rationalism is mistakenly presented as science. Thus people who say religion is scientific are at best saying it is rational. Historicity approaches to religion seem a good example of this. The more one values the simple edge of Okam's razor, the more religion is seen as a useful myth. (Here I mean rationalism as the attempt to make things logically consistent with what is currently accepted)
2b. On a similar note, a few may confuse philosophical consistency with scientific truth. Thus they may propose that they are scientifically studying a world that is, in large part, hidden from us. Few people would really accept philosophy as real science.
3. Religion uses scientific methodology as a basis for revelation. Scientists get up in arms because results are always extremely contextual, scientifically unreliable, and inherently corrupt. Using these results could lead to patently false conclusions (the tooth fairy is a real entity).

There are probably a few other categories of outcomes. The first seems inherently distasteful to me. I have never been overly fond of proof texting and self justification. Apologetics certainly has place in a PR world, but it is poor way to discover anything useful.

The second is probably much more diverse that I have indicated. Since I accept that the conclusions of religion are improbable (although certainly not impossible), I tend to think attempts at complete rationalization have severe restrictions due to their inability to deal with vagueness.

I am rather partial to the third. While it certainly can lead to compartmentalization of truth (ie my revelations don't apply to everday life, and scientific conclusions can be superceded), I don't think it has to. The problem seems to be how we view reality, and how willing we are to let in data that could lead to erroneous conclusions. Science is based on using data that is acceptable to everyone. While certainly dependable, it may be limiting to assume all things can be so universal.

Are there any other general categories of outcomes that can be expected if a religion tries to become scientifically based?

VB 3 - Central Ideologies

Voltaire's Bastards
Central Ideologies

As one looks closer at society, extreme positions tend towards functional similarity. According to Terror & Liberalism, the extreme left is increasingly finding itself supporting regimes, or at least states, that are every bit as genocidal as their professed epitome of evil - nazism. While few countries are able to match German efficiency, I wonder if we aren't some times overly confident and adept in the creation of self justifying systems. Complexity can be a wonderful tool for creating the types of insulation necessary to make anything else seem foolish.

The Right and the Left, like Fascism and Communism, have never been anything more than marginal dialects on the extremes of reason. They are the naive answers that one would expect from a central ideology which, in its very heart, believes in absolute solutions. And so, despite this confusion of false ideologies, the ethic of reason has continued to spread within our societies. Certain characteristics of that ethic, less apparent in the beginning, have seeped through into dominating positions. It has produced a system determined to apply a kind of clean, unemotional logic to every decision, and this to the point where the dictatorship of the absolute monarchs has been replaced by that of absolute reason. The development and control of intricate systems, for example, has become the key to power

VB page 20

I have mentioned before that rationalism is very successful. I certainly can't imagine the world without it. However that does not mean that we aren't susceptible to over extending it in much the same way that people over extend religion. I think my posts ON IDEALISM have gotten at this idea. Often what matters isn't how things could work in an ideal world, it is how they function in practice. Pragmatism wins because it deals with the context that idealism forgets. However, just as extreme liberalism may find itself justifying Iraqi beheadings and condemning Californian executions, context can become an all encompassing shroud.

We see signs of failure, but the system provides no vocabulary for describing this breakdown, unless we become irrational; and the vocabulary of unreason is that of darkness, so we quite properly avoid it.

This absence of intellectual mechanisms for questioning our own actions becomes clear when the expression of any unstructured doubt - for example, over the export of arms to potential enemies or the loss of shareholder power to managers or the loss of parliamentary power to the executive - is automatically categorized as naive or idealistic... Our society contains no method of serious self-criticism for the simple reason that it is now a self-justifying system which generates its own logic.

VB page 21

Many people ask whether or not religion can stand up to scientific scrutiny. Does it have to throw up a wall of sacredness to avoid being shaken to myth? This seems to presuppose the existence of absolute solutions. While John Saul's comments certainly can be questioned, I wonder if some of the baggage brought to the debate doesn't illuminate some interesting duplicities concerning self justification.

Certainly science tends towards context independence. But in the debate, are we mistaking rationality for science and justifying it through self determining logic? When the solutions one is looking for are context dependent, a wrench certainly seems to get thrown into the mix. After all context independence seems a basic assumption upon which things naturally get framed. I wonder if, in some instances, we are mistaking rationality for science and religion for irrationality.

Rational complexity seems to have defined religion as its opposite. As they apply to moral fields, they may actually be sides of the same coin. The only difference could be the extent to which they have embraced scientific methodology When applied to moral fields, is rationality the scientology of religion? Does it hide behind the protective cloak of science in the same way religion hides behind its sacred walls?

To me the question seems to center around the extent to which science can stick to each.

VB2 - rationality's communication problems

Voltaire's Bastards 2
Rationality's communication problems


People like specific solutions. In societal terms we want to have a knowledge that the direction we are tending is the best possible course. We instinctively shy away from leaders who would answer with vagueness, indicating that the specifics we rely on really don't matter much in the end. This tendency seem analogous to religious tendencies towards highly specific extrapolations. From Voltaire's Bastards:

Our unquenchable thirst for answers has become one of the obvious characteristics of the West in the second half of the twentieth century. But what are answers when there is neither memory nor general understanding to give them meaning? This running together of the right answer with the search for truth is perhaps the most poignant sign of our confusion.

page 17

Confidence towards religion or rationality is based on the ability to understand. Realistically, religious language, while much deeper than most people can fathom can be interpreted to a point where sudden clarity seems apparent and limitations obvious. This seems similar to a move along Fowler's stages of progression. The limiting factor is often a deciphering of language and meaning. However, should we suppose that rationality suffers no such equivalencies? Continuing,

It is a curious sort of confusion. Organized and calm on the surface, our lives are lived in an atmosphere of nervous, even frenetic agitation. Hordes of essential answers fly about us and disappear, abruptly meaningless. Successive absolute solutions are provided for major public problems and then slip always without our consciously registering their failure. Neither the public and corporate authorities nor the experts are held responsible for their own actions in any sensible manner because the fracturing of memory and understanding has created a profound chaos in the individual's sense of what responsibility is.

This is part of the deadening of language which the reign of structure and abstract power has wrought. The central concepts upon which we operate were long ago severed from their roots and changed into formal rhetoric. They have no meaning. They are used wildly or administratively as masks. And the more our language becomes as tool for limiting general discourse, the more our desire fro answers becomes frenzied.

page 17

In the moral realm it is common to think of rationality as a saviour. Yet, the more complex its associated language becomes, the more religious in nature it appears. While an ability to decipher significant levels of interactions may lead one to believe that absolutes can be discovered, this very complexity may sow the seeds of its own inapplicableness.

Yet there is no great need for answers. Solutions are the cheapest commodity of our day. They are the medicine show tonic of the rational elites. And the structures which produce them are largely responsible for the inner panic which seems endemic to modern man.

pg 17

Perhaps there is something to be said for reliance on vagueness. While not a popular thought (it certainly could stymie progress), perhaps forcing reliance on over specificity may be one of the underlying principles true religion should teach.

VB 1 - religion of rationality

Voltaire's Bastards
The religion of rationality


Let's face it, religion today has a bad name. What protestantism was to Catholicism, individual morality now is to organized religion. And yet the more one looks at our society the clearer one fundamentally ingrained religious tendencies appear. While this certainly doesn't imply people are out recreating pseudo synagogues, cathedrals and catechisms, it does mean many of the principals that lead to religious belief and organization somehow get represented in people for whom religion has become a hiss and a byword.

Like many avante garde modern moralities, adherents of politically correct morality could probably best be described as a religious sect. However in place of formal organization, the fear of such has lead to what could best be described as a guerilla organization. Coincidentally this seems to mimic the success tribalism is having dealing with large world powers - it decentralizes responsibility preventing any sort of consequential accounting. Modern "religion" seems to be re-inventing moral dogmatism under other auspices, couching itself in sacrosanct positions that empower it to define new heresies. Fundamentally, has anything except the structure really changed?

John Ralston Saul, perhaps expressed similar ideas in his 1992 book Voltaire's Bastards. However his concern is that our modern faith in reason has left us blind to issues surrounding it's use.

One thing is clear: despite successive redefinitions by philosophers, the popular understanding and expectations have remained virtually unchanged. This stability seems to withstand even the real effects of reason when it is applied: to withstand them so effectively that it is difficult to imagine a more stubbornly optimistic concept, except perhaps that of life after death.

pg 15

What is John Ralston Saul talking about here? Religion? The endless circularity that occurs in philosophy? The ineffectiveness of idealism? Actually, it seems to be about a miscalculation concerning the dogmatic nature of reason.

The original easy conviction that reason was a moral force was gradually converted into a desperate, protective assumption. The twentieth century, which has seen the final victory of pure reason in power, has also seen unprecedented unleashings of violence and of power deformed. It is hard, for example, to avoid noticing that the murder of six million Jews was a perfectly rational act. And yet our civilization has been constructed precisely in order to avoid such conclusions. We carefully - rationally in fact - assign blame for our crimes to the irrational impulse. In this why we merely shut our eyes to the central and fundamental misunderstanding: reason is no more than structure. And structure is most easily controlled by those who feel themselves to be free of the cumbersome weight represented by common sense and humanism. Structure suits best those whose talents lei in manipulation and who have a taste for power in its purer forms.

pg. 16

While many find religion easy to critique because of disappointment in moral absoluteness, I wonder if the world of reason in to which they escape is fundamentally different in anything other than degree? While science certainly leads to true and false answers, believing that life can apply black and white rationality may be quite a leap of faith. Despite it's limitations, is it possible that aspects of religious morality may be functionally equivalent to more progressive attempts at delineating the same?

InG we T -Sin's Locus

In Gods We Trust
Ritual 3.1 - Sin's Locus

According to C. Ward and Beaubrun, possession exorcism affords positive advantages to the individual in such cases: direct escape for a conflict situation and diminution of stress and guilt feelings by projecting blame onto the intruding spirit. The critical advantage of the Pentecostal Church or the village holy man over doctors and folk healers is community support. The group accepts the cause of a person's difficulties to lie beyond the individual's responsibility or control and also accepts the collective burden of comforting, caring for, and eventually curing the individual.

-Atran pg 166

As Atran points out, one potential benefit from the development of sin is how it separates an individual from responsibility. Obviously this is sure to have some negatives associated with it. However, it certainly does make it easier for people to hate the sin and love the sinner.

Along related lines, it seems to give society the chance to create programs, traditions, or attitudes that can help remediate a given set of problems. For instance, many of the supposedly sexist sexual guidelines of the past are probably rooted in well meaning, and for their time period, successful attempts to deal with the risk of unplanned pregnancies. This is not to say the past had all the right answers, only that methods were created to deal with the problem.

It seems reasonable to assume that some people in the church use Satan as a foil to externalize some locus of control. Indeed I wonder if many of the people who conceptualize all sin as the results of an extremely active devil may not also be the ones who wish for more social engineering to combat the problems they see surrounding us. As a corollary, people who see sin as a real representation of their true character may be more inclined for personal rather than environmental solutions.