For my "listen while cooking" entertainment of late, I've been going through the various audio and video files news'ed about on
Richard Dawkins' website, and I found one tonight I thought worth a blog entry. It's long (2+ hour) debate featuring skeptic and paranormal investigator Sue Blackmore vs. theologian Alister McGrath. I'd never previously heard of Blackmore, but she's quite a good speaker, a clever mind boltered by a strong voice and a precise English accent. Such a vocal accompaniment does go quite a way towards elevating one's discourse.
It's not just a magic accent though; the voice has to be good also. McGrath has quite an accent of his own, but his voice is snively and he sounds smugly nasal to me. Of course I disagree with his arguments and think he's frequently deceptive in his presentation of them (more so in other debates I've heard than in this one), so I'm far from objective about that. Still, I feel secure in stating that he's got an annoying voice, English accent or not. (And yes, I realize that saying "English accent" is an almost pointless description, since accents vary tremendously throughout the country, and besides, McGrath's is Irish, modified by decades living in England. But for most of the world outside of the UK, and especially for most in the US, they all just sound so, so... English. Like the audible version of Worcestershire sauce.)
Anyway, what I thought worth recommending
from this debate was Blackmore's opening statement. I don't think she's very good on the audience questions, and her rebuttal to McGrath's opening was particularly flaccid, given that I've heard him give that exact speech in earlier debates, so she should have been able to prepare for it. I also don't think she relates her main speech to the theme of the event very well either; she's talking about how religions form and whey they exist, when the debate was formally about whether religious belief is a good or bad thing in society. (A question directly in McGrath's wheelhouse, since he debates primarily to demonstrate that religion is useful and beneficial, and has little or nothing to say about whether it's true outside of wishful thinking, which is why he's essentially unarmed when he debates Dawkins or Harris or Hitchens.)
Put all that aside, since I'm not recommending you listen to the whole 2 hours. Just check out Blackmore's opening remarks. They run about 20 minutes, starting maybe 3 minutes in, and provide as succinct and informative a rundown of the evolutionary origins of religion as I've ever heard. Why do humans invent faiths? What purposes do they serve? What needs do they fulfill? What do the various religions tell us about the societies that created and nurtured them?
Blackmore doesn't get into many details or specifics, but even her overview is very interesting, since she neatly outlines the concept of anthropological analysis of religion, one I think is fairly revelatory to most people, since they've never thought about the issue in that light. In the debate format Blackmore's coverage is necessarily superficial, but she provides a nutshell description of how human societies create religions (every historical and modern society ever studied has done so, with estimates running past 100,000 such instances) what functions these memes and memeplexes serve, how they evolve and mutate over time, and how and why they persist. Or not.
That last point is my current area of interest, and it's something I've been trying to find some scholarly writing about. How do religions and other comparable philosophies compete in the marketplace of ideas? Which elements from them are the most adaptive, which are the most sticky, and why do some religions persist and grow and adapt, while others get out-competed and vanish into the dustbin of mythology?
Answers, or anything approaching dispassionate analysis is hard to come by, since it's a very complicated subject, and sorting the causes from the overlapping issues is especially tricky. Humans don't grow up with clear minds and objectivity, and then at age 20 make an informed decision as to which (if any) religion they're going to join. Quite the opposite. Most people are indoctrinated from birth into their parents' faith (and stick with or reject it as adults), almost all of us were raised in societies where religion or religions were omnipresent, and religions are actively promoted by individuals, groups, and the world's culture at large. Belief in them is fairly fluid; many people switch sects or even religions entirely when they get married, but once humans have the religious concepts implanted in their minds, they are extremely difficult to eradicate. You think getting a catchy jingle out of your brain is hard? Try it with a major monotheism.
For one example of the overlap between meme strength and other issues, consider the fact that religions were historically spread by the sword. Religious wars have been fought throughout history with the winners usually doing their damndest to evangelize their faith to the defeated tribe/country/culture. Religion has always traveled with explorers, too. Missionaries work side by side with soldiers and keep busy infecting the conquered with the conqueror's religion. Examples of religion being used as a societal control and a moderating force on an oppressed people are legion. As are counter-examples of small groups using their own unique flavor of religion to give themselves a stronger identity which powered their drive for autonomy. Which is, of course, why wise conquerors worked to wipe out native religions and to impose a common faith.
Unfortunately for my purposes, this makes it impossible to compare, for instance, the relevant strengths and weaknesses (in a meme sense) between the Catholicism of the Spanish Conquistadors, and the indigenous religion of the Aztecs they conquered. Catholicism obviously won out, and the Americas south of California is almost entirely Catholic to this day, but why did it win out? Was the religion irresistible since it was part and parcel of the Spanish's (and subsequent European invaders') overall cultural dominance? The South Americans (and Central Americans, and Mexicans, and North Americans they conquered in the following centuries) all had their own religions, but when the technologically superior Spaniards rolled over them it must have seemed ridiculous to continue believing in the local faiths when their principle exponents, the rulers and priests, were crushed by the invaders and forced to convert to their cult of Christos. Catholicism spread rapidly through the new world since it was connected to the all-powerful conquering armies, and belief in it was required for the locals to receive education or metal tools, to work in the missions and forts, to obtain leadership positions in their own society, etc. Was the religion itself more mentally catchy? What about the Christian mythology makes it so easy to learn and so satisfying for those who believe in it? Why is it the most popular religion in the world today? (I'm not entertaining the notion that it's actually the one true faith, and that God is making people accept it now, or that He created humans with some inherent traits that make us suceptible to becoming Christians, though if that's your opinion you are free to cherish it.)
The spread of Christianity throughout the New World is historical fact (if open to debate on the details and nuances); what I'm curious about is why did/does the monotheism of Christianity (in its myriad forms, also including its Old Testament offshoot Islam), work so strongly as a meme? How much is just its (modern day) association with the culturally dominant Western civilization? Coca-Cola, Mickey Mouse, Levi's, and Jesus? How much is centuries-long association with conquering armies? And how much is purely the strength of the religion's memes winning the war in the ideological battleground, with its powerful concepts of afterlife rewards and punishment, various motivations to reproduce and build orderly societies, the concept of one all-powerful god instead of numerous local spirits living beneath fractious elder gods, etc? Which improvements and upgrades has Islam made to the basic Christian model to spread so widely and so quickly, without the cultural/entertainment benefits of Western Christianity? Why is Judaism so (comparatively) tiny and non-evangelical, given that it's the source from which both the expanding monotheisms sprung? How can polytheisms compete with such ambitious monotheisms?
I'm not sure how empirically those questions can be answered, but if anyone's made a scholarly effort to do so, I've not seen evidence of it.
Malaya's well-read on the issue, but she couldn't think of any books addressing that particular issue either. She did recommend
this one, which is interesting and informative in some ways, but is not an easy read and isn't quite addressing the issue I'm interested in. Boyer's book is more about how religious concepts form and stick in the human brain, and why we are moved by and attracted to some types of imagery and metaphor, (which are, naturally, found in every successful religion).
At any rate, if you want some good introductory information on the concept of the anthropological and psychological formation and evolution of religion, Sue Blackmore's opening remarks
in this debate provide it, and with fewer digressions than this blog post. Listen from about 3-23 minutes, and enjoy.
Update: Interesting book recommendations in the comments. One for Neal Stevenson's
Snow Crash, which
I read and reviewed several years ago, and the other for Daniel Dennett's
Breaking the Spell, which is the only one of the recent bestsellers by "the four horsemen" I have not yet gotten my hands on. Even though I haven't read it, I've watched or listened to at least a dozen interviews/presentations by Dennett, so I'm
pretty familiar with his recent work. In fact,
my first post mentioning him does a far better job of summarizing my questions about the formation of religion than this post did.
I still want to read his book, though.
Labels: daniel dennett, religion
