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Share on FacebookA BBC poll released yesterday on Radio 4 found that, somewhat surprisingly, most people want religion, and the values derived from it, to play an important role in British public life, despite the ever more strident (and apparently popular) calls by secularists to exclude faith from the public arena. Given that the current trend of political correctness suggests that the religious and cultural beliefs of the immigrant communities (largely Muslim and Hindus) should be honoured, the polls found that it was actually such immigrants themselves who felt more strongly than the native English that they would prefer to live within a Christian-based framework of national life, rather than one that is entirely secular.
While the excesses of religious fundamentalism (from religious wars to the persecution of minorities) have generally brought religion into disrepute, many of the practices of traditional Christianity (“Do as you would be done by, honour they father and mother, tell the truth, don’t be greedy”) attract an ever-growing number of parents it seems to send their children to Faith Schools.
The tension between the apparent claims of science to explain the “hows” of life, and religion’s attempt to provide explanations of life’s “whys”, requires an intellectual ability to handle the very different ‘languages’ of explanation. While religions have been shown to be wrong to claim that they could explain both the hows and whys, scientists find it hard to accept that the human search for spiritual meaning transcends an explanation of the selfish gene as the ultimate arbiter of what it means to be human. While religious beliefs have grown and evolved since our ancient ancestors first pondered the beauty of creation and the trauma of human suffering, too often religious people have sought simplicity, where there is only complexity. “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty”, was the most profound statement I have ever heard from a pulpit but it doesn’t suit many people.
Today’s English aren’t as good at living with ambiguity as were our ancestors a century or more ago when, deeply religious and thoughtful as they were, they were pleased to honour Darwin at his funeral as “The greatest naturalist of our time, perhaps of all time”. Such people understood that if the Bible was God’s word then the world around them must also be an account of His handy work, to be scrutinised, glossed and annotated by science.
Religious people have to understand the realities of science, while scientists need to recover that sense of awe which Darwin experienced as he went into the deepest interstices of nature, and realised that, given such complexity, we are bound to each other if we accept that we have within ourselves a touch of the Divine.
That is why good Muslims or good Hindus expect to respect, and be respected by, Christians for they each expect to see in the other that sense of ultimate responsibility to some authority greater than themselves. Important as we may each see ourselves to be, we are merely travellers for a short while in this terrestrial sphere, and seek a star to guide us.
So, that BBC finding isn’t really surprising. It explains much of the current confusion about education. Should schools be educating children to a prescription hammered out between competing political ideologies, or should it reflect timeless truths?
Good question, but only a part of much larger considerations, including, How much does anyone know about whether or not God exists? Science relies on empirical data, right? But where is the proof there is no God, or that religion and spirituality have no merit?
Of course there’s a plethora of religiously supported transgressions spread across the pages of history. But so too are there many secular misdeeds as well, particularly during the bloody twentieth century. The interesting point here is that the conflict between atheists such as Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens, et al. vs. creationists and right wing zealots seems to indicate each side has conclusive evidence and thus has closed their minds to further inquiry. For religious believers, such faith is the norm, but for scientists insisting on proof in their respective fields while unflinchingly insisting there is absolutely no God and that religion is valueless is a textbook example of hypocrisy.
Why was it that from approximately 1000 BC until 622 a flurry of activity around the world led to the introduction of religiously fortified beliefs? Because humankind, driven by conflicting impulses, was not prone to act in acceptably civil ways, and thus required an overarching source of power to serve as Mediation Central. The ancient traditions of animnism and polytheism had lost their powers to successfuly restrict the increasingly empowered mind that was awakening after, figuratively, being evicted from the Garden of Eden, i.e., minimal rationality. At that point, since more individuals were better able to think their way through life, while delegitimizing the old beliefs, new ones were necessary. Thus, God and religion were widely pursued.
Antonio Damasio’s research into brain injuries provides a key indicator of why humans require forceful moderation. Many of his patients throughout the years, who have experienced prefrontal injuries (mostly lesions), have/had difficulty determining risk and thus repeatedly make ‘bad’ choices. On the other hand, those uninjured individuals are risk-adverse, but usually only after enduring significant penalities. The more dramatic the penalty, the more risk-adverse and wiser their choices become over time. Sadly, humans are motivated by fear more than by a sublime interest in being good.
What if the atheists had their way 3,000 years ago and there were no ruling religions, and hence no fear of God, hell, and the devil? Would such liberty have produced a more noble breed of people or would a siginifant number of individuals who were not inhibited by religiously imposed threats become predatory monsters? If you argue that human affairs would have been more enlightened and civil without belief in God and religions then you haven’t paid much attention to human nature.
Plato’s admonition that there is a beastly component within humans has far more proof than the impartial spectator theory of Hutcheson, Smith, and Hume, which has fortified the so-called Invisble Hand. Where has that Invisble Hand been during the past decade when regulators abadoned monitoring capitalist endeavors, when bankers, insurance companies and investment firms pushed worthless derivatives on the unsuspecting masses, and when Bernie Madoff acted with impunity? Freed by secular liberty, those captains of industry are no longer restrained by Max Weber’s Calvinist ethos like their grandfathers were. That they threw away with the Glass-Steagle Act. Now, first come, first served, the man with the most toys wins, beat out the other guy before he beats you, Ayn Rand/Austrian School economics, i.e., if you can’t hack it, well dude, move on, you’re dust.
In the end, humankind is a promise without delivery, an immature species without a plan to avoid self-destruction, a fragile group of creatures too quick to pretend they know about the origins of the universe when, in fact, they haven’t yet found a dependable way of living in relative harmony.
With this in mind, realizing that at this rather early stage of rational understanding in human development, Why not expose children to the panorama of human experiences without rigid regimentation one way or the other and let them figure it out. We surely haven’t.