Much ado has been made about the various grand accomplishments of mankind over the centuries. Scholars point to the great pyramids and the other seven wonders of the ancient world as Herculean monuments to man’s genius and modern thinkers consider the computer, modern medicine or skyscrapers as the pinnacle of human achievement. All of these wonders of man’s creation are child’s toys though when compared with his greatest work, his magnum opus, religion.
The primary thing to remember about all these manmade wonders is that they are mere passing fancies. A lot of work went into the Pyramids but they’re done and for the most part, no one has laid hand to them since. They took decades to build and are indeed grand engineering wonders but they had only limited influence over future generations. Currently we’re in the midst of a computing boom and it seems in the context of today’s world that computers are the ultimate answer to man’s needs on this Earth. Some day soon, though, this too shall pass and computing will go by the wayside just as the Pyramids and Gardens of Babylon did when their time had passed.
Religion is a totally different beast; mankind has been working on and refining his religious practices since the first people sat by a fire and gazed up at the stars and shared stories about great hunters in the sky and forest spirits. The religious practices of today are an incredibly well-tuned and marvelous achievement in man’s quest to bring some grand overarching meaning to his existence and to enforce a code of behavior on his society. They are the result of the work of thousands of years of human effort and undergo constant refinement. Of all man’s creative works, religion is the one we’ve stuck with the longest and put the most energy into. Even today, some of our greatest minds spend their time honing their respective religions to have the greatest possible appeal to the rest of the humans on the planet. When you look at religions today in a purely analytical light, their architecture is almost like that of a biological organism. They have complex facilities for the recruitment and retention of followers which include well-formulated answers to many of the recurring questions of human existence. Lastly, they each contain a code of conduct intended to not only protect the people involved but also protect the interest and livelihood of the church itself.
Recruitment
The primary means of recruiting new inductees for a religion is simply by having your existing members give birth. Religious parents live in dire fear that their offspring will leave the fold and be subjected to the punishments promised to the unfaithful. In many cases, the parents even send the children to special schools for the specific purpose of making sure that the children stay within the religion the parents have chosen. Sometimes ritual mutilation is used to permanently mark children as initiates of a religion but generally the rites of induction are primarily ceremonial and educational for the child born into a religious home.
In addition to birth-based recruiting, almost all religions have directives in their texts to recruit new souls for their cause. To aid in the execution of these directives, the authorities in a religion also provide strong moral and spiritual arguments to be used to persuade the new candidates. Invariably there is a grand and generally vague reward for those who are faithful to the religion and a horrific punishment for those who are not. The punishments are usually much more specifically described than the rewards. Through a process of threat and reward, new souls are drawn from religions with weaker arguments and rewards into those with stronger ones. Religions have developed a wide range of intellectual and coercive arguments to fit many different types of people. The simplest of these generally depend on the liberal use of fear, the promise that if the person fails to profess allegiance with the religion being offered that they will suffer horribly or that they’ll miss out on some great opportunity. Typically these amount to some form of salvation after death or the promise of wealth and success in life. The most blatant and appalling of these actually tell their followers that if they will give money to the church then the benevolent God will return it to them in the form of an even greater personal blessing of some sort.
Retention
Once the initiate accepts the religion, retention is typically a much simpler matter. The threats used to bring the person into the religion in the first place are still present but they are supplemented by a much more powerful positive force, a strong sense of community and fellowship. Humans require friendly contact with other humans so religions supply this fellowship by requiring periodic meetings of their members. These vary from several times a day to several times a week but the function is the same. Through the camaraderie of seeing and speaking with others of the same faith, the bond of religion is strengthened and renewed. The religious leaders will also organize additional activities, especially for the younger members, which are intended to be fun and diverting to build a psychological link in the follower’s mind between the fun activity and the church which organized it. Religions also typically collect some form of material wealth from their followers in the form of tithes. In addition to helping support the ongoing activities of the church, it also gives the person giving the tithe a feeling that they’re contributing towards some greater material good in the world.
Rules
Sociologically, religion’s greatest contribution to mankind is the establishment of a more or less universal set of social rules. For the most part, the religions of the world agree on these rules and they boil down to the simple premise that you should treat people as nicely as you’d like to be treated. These rules act as a safeguard to the welfare of the members of the church but often include directives intended to advance the church. Churches tend to prohibit activities which would diminish the number of followers born into the church by outlawing birth control and non-procreative sex. Most also command their followers to tell others about their faith to help swell the ranks of the faithful.
In summary, religion is the most intricately constructed creation in the history of mankind and has consumed more time and energy than any other work this species has undertaken. Whether this is a good or bad thing is left primarily as an exercise for the reader. Clearly religion has had it’s positive and negative results during our history but there’s no way to know how our would we be different without this most elegant of social constructs.
3 comments:
“[M]ankind has been working on and refining his religious practices since the first people sat by a fire and gazed up at the stars and shared stories about great hunters in the sky and forest spirits. The religious practices of today are an incredibly well-tuned and marvelous achievement in man’s quest to bring some grand overarching meaning to his existence and to enforce a code of behavior on his society.”
I think you’ve almost got it with this first sentence, but then you walk away and give us the old Marxist line. It’s hard for me to imagine “primitive man” struggling to give meaning to his existence when his existence was pretty heavily occupied with trying to merely sustain his existence. And it’s equally hard for me to imagine fur-clad cavemen who lived in small bands going to the trouble of inventing a religion to “enforce a code of behavior on his society” as if he were some cynical, modern politico. Of course, it’s a bit much for either of us to speak definitively about the motivations of anybody, and slightly impossible to be very precise about the motivations of those that lived eons ago and first gave voice to their spiritual musings. But staring up at the stars has always produced in me a sense of awe even in our modern light-polluted sky. This sense of awe seems to me to be a more credible explanation for the rise of stories about “great hunters in the sky and forest spirits”. I mean, why invent a religion to keep somebody in line when a sharp rock would have done a much more reliable job?
“When you look at religions today in a purely analytical light, their architecture is almost like that of a biological organism. They have complex facilities for the recruitment and retention of followers which include well-formulated answers to many of the recurring questions of human existence.”
And like a biological organism, they would have all faded away without the ability to reproduce and sustain life (though they may have left behind some nice Shaker furniture).So where does this line of reasoning get us?
“Lastly, they each contain a code of conduct intended to not only protect the people involved but also protect the interest and livelihood of the church itself.”
So you’ve mentioned “the church” again in an essay that’s supposed to be about generic religion. Are you being sloppy, or are you really just aiming at Christianity?
”The primary means of recruiting new inductees for a religion is simply by having your existing members give birth. Religious parents live in dire fear that their offspring will leave the fold and be subjected to the punishments promised to the unfaithful.…Sometimes ritual mutilation is used to permanently mark children as initiates of a religion but generally the rites of induction are primarily ceremonial and educational for the child born into a religious home.”
First of all, it seems a little silly that you are trying to make it sound sinister that parents raise their children as if they really believed their religions. Secondly, not all religions have the whole “punishments promised to the unfaithful” bit. While Western Christianity does, not all Protestants and Catholics make much of a point of this. My Dad, as I pointed out in A Good Word on my blog, didn’t raise me to do the right thing for fear of being sent to Hell. Although the bit about ritual mutilations does make me break out in a cold sweat over the memories of those hair cuts we used to get.
Your paragraph on proselytizing would carry more weight if you used some concrete examples. As it stands, it seems that you are simply generalizing from some bad experiences with some particularly sadistic brand of Protestant Fundamentalism.
“Once the initiate accepts the religion, retention is typically a much simpler matter. The threats ...are supplemented by a much more powerful positive force, a strong sense of community and fellowship. Humans require friendly contact with other humans so religions supply this fellowship...."
...the bastards.
I think you’ve almost got it with this first sentence, but then you walk away and give us the old Marxist line. It’s hard for me to imagine “primitive man” struggling to give meaning to his existence when his existence was pretty heavily occupied with trying to merely sustain his existence. And it’s equally hard for me to imagine fur-clad cavemen who lived in small bands going to the trouble of inventing a religion to “enforce a code of behavior on his society” as if he were some cynical, modern politico.
>> Sure, sure, the first prerequisite for religion is obviously that the people in question must have enough food to have the time to sit down and not be immediately worried about their next meal. Fundamentally, I’d suggest this probably follows the same pattern as that of decorative personal art (beads, necklaces and other simple baubles). Where there is art, there’s probably religion. And I don’t mean to imply (well, I don’t imply NOW; there’s no telling what I meant to imply THEN) that the FIRST purpose of religion is to enforce order. The first purpose would have been to answer the unanswerable, “Why do the buffalo come, papa? Little one, because the great lake firebird comes down… etc.” You don’t start enforcing anything until the question becomes, “Papa, why DON’T the buffalo come?” and people start looking for reasons why.
Of course, it’s a bit much for either of us to speak definitively about the motivations of anybody, and slightly impossible to be very precise about the motivations of those that lived eons ago and first gave voice to their spiritual musings. But staring up at the stars has always produced in me a sense of awe even in our modern light-polluted sky. This sense of awe seems to me to be a more credible explanation for the rise of stories about “great hunters in the sky and forest spirits”.
>> Yes, this is all rampant speculation.
I mean, why invent a religion to keep somebody in line when a sharp rock would have done a much more reliable job?
>> You might not at first but I’d expect those people who need the rock upside the head the most to also be those who were of the greatest benefit to the tribe. You can’t kill off your immediate rivals for long unless you want to do all the hunting yourself.
And like a biological organism, they would have all faded away without the ability to reproduce and sustain life (though they may have left behind some nice Shaker furniture).So where does this line of reasoning get us?
>> Of course; I’m not sure where this line of reasoning leads now. Have I mentioned that I really should go back and edit/rewrite these extemporaneous blurbs from years ago? But really, who has that kind of time and others have done this with so much more clarity. *sigh*
So you’ve mentioned “the church” again in an essay that’s supposed to be about generic religion. Are you being sloppy, or are you really just aiming at Christianity?
>> Hrm. When I say ‘the church’ I guess I don’t consider that JUST Christianity. I consider the church to be the whole of ANY religion in one big word even if they’re not really churches per se.
First of all, it seems a little silly that you are trying to make it sound sinister that parents raise their children as if they really believed their religions. Secondly, not all religions have the whole “punishments promised to the unfaithful” bit. While Western Christianity does, not all Protestants and Catholics make much of a point of this. My Dad, as I pointed out in A Good Word on my blog, didn’t raise me to do the right thing for fear of being sent to Hell.
>> Well, what you detect there is a bit of ill-generalized angst. It irritates me to no end ever year when my wife teaches evolution in her science class and some handful of kids come back the next day saying their parents object. I find it hard to believe that real faith is based in ignorance and even harder to believe that these parents think they know so well the mechanism of how God did things.
Although the bit about ritual mutilations does make me break out in a cold sweat over the memories of those hair cuts we used to get.
Your paragraph on proselytizing would carry more weight if you used some concrete examples. As it stands, it seems that you are simply generalizing from some bad experiences with some particularly sadistic brand of Protestant Fundamentalism.
>> Yeah, probably. Have I mentioned that I should edit these for clarity?
“Once the initiate accepts the religion, retention is typically a much simpler matter. The threats ...are supplemented by a much more powerful positive force, a strong sense of community and fellowship. Humans require friendly contact with other humans so religions supply this fellowship...."
...the bastards.
>> Hrm. Not sure I intended to be negative about that. I’ve even mentioned being jealous of Christian fellowship so I can’t have felt THAT negatively about it.
To sum up, it just strikes me as incongruous that you liken religion to some biological entity while attributing its staying power and complexity to some sort of intelligent design rather than a sort of natural selection.
Post a Comment