The Naturalness of Religion
The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science. Excerpt:
Religion occurs in every human culture. If a new religion does not surface quickly enough within a given society, then an existing religious system inevitably invades from without. Religious ideas are contagious. Religions propound ideas to which humans seem particularly susceptible.
In contrast to science, religion relies far more fundamentally on our standard cognitive equipment. Science demands developed intellectual skills, most notably literacy and mathematical fluency.
The vehicles for imparting religious knowledge and the cognitive capacities on which they depend are far more basic. Typically, religion (in contrast to science and theology) relies primarily on theater and narrative.
In the absence of cultural forms that foster the collective growth of humans’ critical and imaginative capacities, human beings rely on their natural cognitive dispositions, which often appear to be domain specific and comparatively inflexible in their application. CPS (culturally postulated superhuman) agents, stories about them, and rituals for controlling and appeasing them are natural the inevitable outcomes of a cognitive system that simultaneously seeks explanations, possesses an overactive agent detector, and, perhaps, most importantly, lacks scientific traditions.
Cognitive mechanisms that arose to address very different problems—such as distinguishing basic ontological categories and differentiating actions and other sorts of events—are fundamentally engaged in the generation and acquisition of religion.
Religion occurs in every human culture. If a new religion does not surface quickly enough within a given society, then an existing religious system inevitably invades from without. Religious ideas are contagious. Religions propound ideas to which humans seem particularly susceptible.
In contrast to science, religion relies far more fundamentally on our standard cognitive equipment. Science demands developed intellectual skills, most notably literacy and mathematical fluency.
The vehicles for imparting religious knowledge and the cognitive capacities on which they depend are far more basic. Typically, religion (in contrast to science and theology) relies primarily on theater and narrative.
In the absence of cultural forms that foster the collective growth of humans’ critical and imaginative capacities, human beings rely on their natural cognitive dispositions, which often appear to be domain specific and comparatively inflexible in their application. CPS (culturally postulated superhuman) agents, stories about them, and rituals for controlling and appeasing them are natural the inevitable outcomes of a cognitive system that simultaneously seeks explanations, possesses an overactive agent detector, and, perhaps, most importantly, lacks scientific traditions.
Cognitive mechanisms that arose to address very different problems—such as distinguishing basic ontological categories and differentiating actions and other sorts of events—are fundamentally engaged in the generation and acquisition of religion.
posted by John Aristides at 2/24/2006 07:03:00 PM
1 Comments:
In addition to disillusionment with the promises of materialism, a force of change undermining the misconceptions about reality that humanity brought into the 21st century is global integration.
Loss of faith in the certainties of materialism and the progressive globalizing of human experience reinforce one another in the longing they inspire for understanding about the purpose of existence!
Basic values are challenged; parochial attachments are surrendered; once unthinkable demands are accepted.
Its THIS universal upheaval, Baha'u'llah explains, for which the Scriptures of past religions employed the imagery of "the Day of Resurrection": "The shout hath been raised, and the people have come forth from their graves, and arising, are gazing around them."
Beneath all of the dislocation and suffering, the process is essentially a spiritual one:
"The breeze of the All-Merciful hath wafted, and the souls have been Quickened in the tombs of their bodies."
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