John Derbyshire on Religion I think I finally figured out why I like John Derbyshire so much. While the correlation isn't perfect, I'm on board with at least a few of the things he says over here, and more so with what he says here, which I'll quote since it's much, much shorter.
There’s an extreme position on religion, as both a personal and a social phenomenon, which I often find myself slipping towards, but which I can think of counter-arguments to. This is the position that religion makes nothing happen. In other words, that an individual person, or a human society, would be pretty much what it is, with or without its faith, or lack of faith — that religion is just, so to speak, a thin coat of paint over something whose salient features are caused by other factors.Coincidentally, the last two new South Park episodes were mainly concerned with what would happen if Richard Dawkins was successful in destroying religion totally. After Cartman freezes himself in an avalanche (attempting to just freeze himself until the launch of Nintendo Wii), he is unfrozen five hundred years later to find everyone saying "Praise Science" and that the major atheist groups are all at war with each other. It's hilarious, and relevant, in that I think if religion didn't exist we'd find something else to fight over. Anyway, rip this to shreds. Please!
One of the English lady novelists — Elizabeth Bowen, I think, or possibly Rose Macaulay — has a character say that trying to change what you basically are is like “walking north on the deck of a south-bound ship.”
I have said this is an extreme position, and of course it is. To a devout person who thinks that all of history is shaped by God’s hand, it must look very extreme. I think it’s tenable, though, just about. Suppose, for example, that Christian doctrine had settled down not with a Trinity, but a Quaternity. Would the history of Western civilization actually have been any different? Why? More broadly: Does religion actually make anything happen? Or would the same stuff, or pretty similar stuff, have happened anyway? And then the meta-question, which is much more interesting: Could we ever know the answer to the foregoing? How?
posted by Justin at 12:09 PM 
4 Comments:
I think most of the details of religion are irrelevant to major historical happenings, but religion itself is not. Take the present case in point: it is much harder to recruit suicide bombers without religion. You don't see a lot of people blowing themselves up in the name of science. There are a lot of causes throughout history that people would not have rallied around without religion. Its just difficult to motivate vast mobs of people to extreme action without something... eternal to bribe them with. I admit that this is often an abuse of religious power and the specific religion is mostly irrelevant. But the point stands that religion is alone in its power to motivate the masses to the degree which it can. The Soviets tried to achieve the same fanaticism without religion and look where it got them. As far as I can tell, religion is singular in its ability to effect very large groups of people for extended periods of time. But that's just the first thought of the top of my head, maybe I'm completely wrong.
I don't know - nazism and facism and communism are fervent religions in their own right. I think the south park point is very accurate - if we didn't have religions, we'd make science or sociology or psychology or whatever into a religion, and then fight over and live and die for that instead.
At the same time, I don't think this has a lot to do with this less salient point that religion doesn't make things happen. I think religion definitely makes "things" happen, both in societies and the lives of individuals, and I think things unlike war and persecution would not happen the same without religion. I agree that some aspects of religion could be replaced by other things and we'd be the same, but not others. If nothing else, I believe that religion is the only source for the sort of truly powerful metanarratives required to derrive real meaning from our circumstances.
Interesting post. I think Redness is right, religion definitely makes things happen (for instance, I wouldn't be studying for the priesthood if there was no religion; which would lead to interesting future differences). That's on a trivial level.
To the more important question of whether certain doctrines of Christianity are essential (like the Trinity), I would say they are but it is interesting to consider if they were not true. I guess that would be a little too hypothetical really (what if I was a cockroach?) but it is a good point. Since I think all religion is revealed religion, in a sense it doesn't matter if we believe in Trinity or Quadrinity, but that doesn't mean it isn't true or important; it just means otherwise we would be running down a blind alley, I think. But I am not certain on this one. Good points.
Ok - this is nothing new. Emile Durkheim figured this all out a long time ago and wrote about it in "The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life." Religion plays a vital function in society - but it's not the content of religion that does so, it's the structure and the form. The functions are solidarity, distinguishing us and them, the rituals that bring cohesiveness to a group and give a sense of collective elation, and give rise to an 'other worldy' explanation for things. According to Durkheim, these same things can be accomplished by other movements that take a religious form - as Redhurt point out with nazism, facism and the like.
I think Durkheim has given the best sociological account of religion to date. And, while it is an A+ in terms of sociology, as a Christian, I have to reject it as ontologically untrue. While I may reject it on ontological grounds, I agree with the latent social functions religion performs in societies. Thus, I have to say that Derbyshire is wrong to say that religion makes nothing happen. Just wrong.
So, I don't know who Joen Derbyshire is, but he needs to read Durkheim.
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