Dear ‘x’,
In these times of extremism and ever-present religious
fundamentalism, and given your deep commitment to reason, truth, equality,
personal responsibility and, of course, science and its application for the
betterment of society and this planet, I believe (and hope) that you will find
the following to be of interest, as it attempts to address one of the main
issues limiting societal progress – that of how to get peoples of differing
traditions and/or religions to live and work consistently and effectively
together. It also lays bare the vital role that religious leaders from
all faiths have in dealing with extremism at its source and in moving our
society forwards for the good of all. If you do find this information to
be of value, please feel free to use it in any way you see fit in the cause of
peace, reason and tolerance.
Whilst I am not a religious man (I’m an agnostic), I do believe in
the essential goodness at the heart of Christianity. Further, I recognise
that other faiths – such as Judaism and Islam – also have an essentially good heart
but that, for reasons which I hope will become apparent as you read this, their
followers can at times act in ways which may be construed as aggressive, bad
and even evil. Questions which this email tries to address include:
"Why were/are some believers prepared to go to any lengths to protect the
faith from unbelievers?" "Why is the youngest major religion also the
most aggressive against unbelievers?" "Why, when reason and learning
have often been a central part of the Jewish, Christian and Arab worlds has
there been an edge of terror against what is perceived as irrationality?"
"What is the relationship between reason, unreason, rationality,
irrationality, sanity, insanity, belief, faith and truth?" I hope
that you find this information to be of value to you.
As I’m sure you are aware, many claim that science is the new religion – and indeed there are more than a few people “who should know better” who treat it as such. However, what can we achieve if we keep the two separate, but try to use science to better understand why, despite the inherent goodness of religion – and the many positive things that the major religions have given to this world – religion has also at times led to bloodshed, torture and terror?
We know that, starved of reason, meaning or information, most people will fairly quickly begin to exhibit signs of what we call mental illness. Nowadays, science provides us with pile upon pile of evidence, beautiful theories to explain that evidence and the universal education to access it. Rational thinking has it easy now, yet still there is irrationality and insanity, and the violence, and terror that often then ensues.
Try to imagine having been a rational person thousands of years ago, before any theory and before all our corroborating evidence, when language was a new tool and writing was only beginning. Your tribe has many stories handed down through the generations, through language, of the horrors and madness of mixing with other tribes with different sets of beliefs, even completely different languages. Of how order and reason must always be maintained, at all costs.
As a uniquely questioning animal, with a language that has evolved rapidly from simple family-based communication to a much more powerful, general purpose tool, with an extremely powerful pattern recognition system in our heads which demands a firm framework within which to operate, all are searching for answers. However, in the absence of a fully objective, independent, agreed and verifiable mechanism for finding those answers it is imperative that every member of a tribe must accept the findings of their wisest men as truth – otherwise the whole thing will break down into chaos.
As I’m sure you are aware, many claim that science is the new religion – and indeed there are more than a few people “who should know better” who treat it as such. However, what can we achieve if we keep the two separate, but try to use science to better understand why, despite the inherent goodness of religion – and the many positive things that the major religions have given to this world – religion has also at times led to bloodshed, torture and terror?
We know that, starved of reason, meaning or information, most people will fairly quickly begin to exhibit signs of what we call mental illness. Nowadays, science provides us with pile upon pile of evidence, beautiful theories to explain that evidence and the universal education to access it. Rational thinking has it easy now, yet still there is irrationality and insanity, and the violence, and terror that often then ensues.
Try to imagine having been a rational person thousands of years ago, before any theory and before all our corroborating evidence, when language was a new tool and writing was only beginning. Your tribe has many stories handed down through the generations, through language, of the horrors and madness of mixing with other tribes with different sets of beliefs, even completely different languages. Of how order and reason must always be maintained, at all costs.
As a uniquely questioning animal, with a language that has evolved rapidly from simple family-based communication to a much more powerful, general purpose tool, with an extremely powerful pattern recognition system in our heads which demands a firm framework within which to operate, all are searching for answers. However, in the absence of a fully objective, independent, agreed and verifiable mechanism for finding those answers it is imperative that every member of a tribe must accept the findings of their wisest men as truth – otherwise the whole thing will break down into chaos.
It is likely that each tribe will come up with different versions of the
“truth”, and so when the believers (of your tribe) interact with the
unbelievers (the other tribe), with no way of combining their evidence, one
truth must prevail. Therefore, you must convert them, they must convert
you or you must attempt to destroy one another. Today, we can’t even
reason constructively between faiths when we have a common language. In
the absence of common language, members of different faiths will generally
appear to be completely mad, evil, dangerous, irrational, barbaric, devilish,
unreasonable, etc. – and of course, they will be thinking exactly the same
about you.
In a terrifying parallel to natural selection, over thousands of years, the original rational heart of each religion will, by necessity, be surrounded by a protective structure designed to maximise the chances of survival. Thus, whilst the core beliefs might include “love your neighbour as yourself” and “love your enemies,” the survival mechanism majors on propagation, strength, developing the technology of war, totally denying the validity of the beliefs of others, trying to convert where possible but otherwise destroying, etc., and any internal dissent – even the slightest risk of dissent – must be annihilated. When it comes down to it, individuals don’t matter, only the growth and preservation of the religion matters, so structures which encourage members to fight to the death if required, and to fight no matter what might be the personal risk to themselves, can only be good. Whether there is only one G-d or not, all members of each religion must worship “him” in exactly the same way, because dissent is too dangerous. Similarly, even if all the religions are worshipping exactly the same G-d but in different ways (dictated by how they came to know “him”), they cannot come together and agree because the precise way of worshipping is vital rather than the fact that “he” may be the same, one, G-d.
Natural selection forces the most successful cults to use their wisest members to develop many positive things - more powerful language, writing, technology, world models, and so on, at the same time as many things that we would consider barbaric and even insane. Yet just as some things in nature can seem unbelievably cruel to us, the necessity for survival has crafted much that could be viewed as evil and cruel into religion. The rational heart is still there but the protection mechanisms which have been honed for maximum efficiency over millennia are there also. If religions had labelled these two parts accordingly perhaps we would be getting further ahead now, but unfortunately it’s all just an amorphous lump at present. Achieving an agreement from the major religions to work at disentangling the two would be a major step forward – not least because it is likely that the positive, rational hearts of most effective religions will be quite similar when separated from their protection mechanisms. … and I guess that it would also be discovered that the heart came first …
Looking at the Spanish Inquisition within this context, for example, we might see that it was not about the guilt or innocence of the individual but the perceived risk of dissent. Identify potential dissenters, use all means possible to get them to expose any collaborators and then make sure that nobody else even thinks of wavering from the truth. It doesn’t matter whether you are guilty or whether you are innocent; if there is the slightest hint of dissent it has to be cut out. If you are dead you cannot attack the faith. Similarly, it doesn’t matter whether or not the people you might name under extreme torture as collaborators are innocent or guilty, because the risk of dissent is so great. All risk must be eradicated. Of course, in this context, maximising agony in the pursuit of eradicating dissent makes sense, because the lesson that has been learned through century after century is that dissent risks the descent into hell on earth – and having tortured numerous people in the defence of faith the men of religion have a fair idea of the kind of things that that might involve …
The positive part of religion is all about reason, making sense of the world, etc., but in a world without modern science, instant communication, universal literacy, numeracy and training in rational thinking, etc., the negative, protective parts were, unfortunately, necessary - or we would have never got to the science and technologies we have today. Of course there are questions which science cannot answer, but probably its greatest strength is in explaining things – that is what gives the theory of evolution its power, for example. Instead of judging religions I believe that we will get much further if we explain them. If we can show that there is reason behind the apparently irrational parts of religion, recognise the worth of the positive parts of each – their place to play in modern science and literature, etc. and that belief in G-d or otherwise does not have to be a sticking point (after all, science can never prove that there isn’t a G-d, and there are questions that it may never be able to answer, anyway). Hell can, at last, freeze over. Imagine that.
In a terrifying parallel to natural selection, over thousands of years, the original rational heart of each religion will, by necessity, be surrounded by a protective structure designed to maximise the chances of survival. Thus, whilst the core beliefs might include “love your neighbour as yourself” and “love your enemies,” the survival mechanism majors on propagation, strength, developing the technology of war, totally denying the validity of the beliefs of others, trying to convert where possible but otherwise destroying, etc., and any internal dissent – even the slightest risk of dissent – must be annihilated. When it comes down to it, individuals don’t matter, only the growth and preservation of the religion matters, so structures which encourage members to fight to the death if required, and to fight no matter what might be the personal risk to themselves, can only be good. Whether there is only one G-d or not, all members of each religion must worship “him” in exactly the same way, because dissent is too dangerous. Similarly, even if all the religions are worshipping exactly the same G-d but in different ways (dictated by how they came to know “him”), they cannot come together and agree because the precise way of worshipping is vital rather than the fact that “he” may be the same, one, G-d.
Natural selection forces the most successful cults to use their wisest members to develop many positive things - more powerful language, writing, technology, world models, and so on, at the same time as many things that we would consider barbaric and even insane. Yet just as some things in nature can seem unbelievably cruel to us, the necessity for survival has crafted much that could be viewed as evil and cruel into religion. The rational heart is still there but the protection mechanisms which have been honed for maximum efficiency over millennia are there also. If religions had labelled these two parts accordingly perhaps we would be getting further ahead now, but unfortunately it’s all just an amorphous lump at present. Achieving an agreement from the major religions to work at disentangling the two would be a major step forward – not least because it is likely that the positive, rational hearts of most effective religions will be quite similar when separated from their protection mechanisms. … and I guess that it would also be discovered that the heart came first …
Looking at the Spanish Inquisition within this context, for example, we might see that it was not about the guilt or innocence of the individual but the perceived risk of dissent. Identify potential dissenters, use all means possible to get them to expose any collaborators and then make sure that nobody else even thinks of wavering from the truth. It doesn’t matter whether you are guilty or whether you are innocent; if there is the slightest hint of dissent it has to be cut out. If you are dead you cannot attack the faith. Similarly, it doesn’t matter whether or not the people you might name under extreme torture as collaborators are innocent or guilty, because the risk of dissent is so great. All risk must be eradicated. Of course, in this context, maximising agony in the pursuit of eradicating dissent makes sense, because the lesson that has been learned through century after century is that dissent risks the descent into hell on earth – and having tortured numerous people in the defence of faith the men of religion have a fair idea of the kind of things that that might involve …
The positive part of religion is all about reason, making sense of the world, etc., but in a world without modern science, instant communication, universal literacy, numeracy and training in rational thinking, etc., the negative, protective parts were, unfortunately, necessary - or we would have never got to the science and technologies we have today. Of course there are questions which science cannot answer, but probably its greatest strength is in explaining things – that is what gives the theory of evolution its power, for example. Instead of judging religions I believe that we will get much further if we explain them. If we can show that there is reason behind the apparently irrational parts of religion, recognise the worth of the positive parts of each – their place to play in modern science and literature, etc. and that belief in G-d or otherwise does not have to be a sticking point (after all, science can never prove that there isn’t a G-d, and there are questions that it may never be able to answer, anyway). Hell can, at last, freeze over. Imagine that.
Currently, those of religious beliefs have a schism in their world
models (the model that the mind uses to make sense of and interact with the
world) and so they see that division in the world around them. Those who
truly belong to one of the major faiths and simultaneously claim to be
scientists, ironically, have an even more fragmented mind – which could be one
of the reasons why they have often bought into new religions so
enthusiastically. It is possible to be both rational and believe that
there is some sort of higher being, and if we can find a convincing,
non-threatening, non-disrespectful path from all current faiths to that we will
have achieved a great deal for mankind and the world in general.
Anyway, these are some initial thoughts for you. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any comments or questions. … and keep up the good work!
Anyway, these are some initial thoughts for you. Please don’t hesitate to get in touch if you have any comments or questions. … and keep up the good work!
Yours with best wishes,
James
