However briefly.
The thing is, whilst there undoubtedly are some positive effects, we've actually already developed past the point where we need religion to provide them. This is something I've been meaning to talk about pretty much since I took up blogging as a hobby. Which I suppose should help illustrate to all the young earth creationists that some things really do only happen on geological time scales.
Anyway point is we're going to be discussing SERIOUS BUSINESS topics again this week. So with that in mind, let me introduce you to your all new lord and saviour:
Oh yeah, we're going there.
You may think I'm joking here, and to be fair I kind of am. BUT ONLY KIND OF. It's just that, even as an inveterate Doctor Who fan, I think Star Trek provides possibly the best example of my theory in action. It actually applies equally well for pretty much whatever franchise you choose to name. But we've been making jokes about Star Trek fandom evolving into a religion for decades now.
ALL POWER TO THE ENGINES.
I think you can probably see where I'm going with this. So let's just come out and say it: Yes, I am totally proposing that we replace religion with nerdery. And whilst I'm going to be primarily using Star Trek as my example material, feel free to replace it with the equivalent titles and characters of whatever it is you're most into.
See, the key question we need to address is what does religion actually DO exactly? What roles does it play? What needs does it fulfill? And why does it seem to make people want to set each other on fire all the time?
Or sometimes yourself, in the case of Buddhism.
Well, the obvious answer is that it's meant to impart some sort of sense meaning. Where we came from, why stuff happens, that kind of thing. The obvious flaw with this argument is that it DOESN'T. Creation myths are, kinda by definition, mythological in nature. That means, for those without a convenient dictionary or grasp of English, that they're not actually real.
Now, don't get me wrong, there's some fun ideas. But whilst all that business with beards and turtles may have been a reasonable hypothesis for a bronze age goat herder, things have actually moved on a bit since then. We know enough about geology to demonstrate that the Japanese archipelago is not made of fossilized babies for example. Equally we have developed sufficiently advanced telescope that the apparent motion of solar orbits has nothing to do with giant beetles.
What? Did you think I was only going to pick on abrahmic religions? Sorry to disappoint you Raven, but saying you're a pagan doesn't actually make you special, if just makes you a theological hipster.
It doesn't matter what religion we're talking about or how popular it is. If you're working from a false premise to start with you're not going to produce much in the way of meaningful results. Of course, it was as simple as just demonstrating that certain mythological claims are false then we would have moved on from a lot of this hundreds of years ago. That we haven't is down to various cognitive biases related to some of the stuff I'm trying to work to talking about. But first we should probably take time out to briefly address a classic defence of what I've already mentioned.
There's always one who will try to argue that you can't take certain selected parts of a religious tract literally. Specifically the parts that have already been conclusively dis-proven. Oh, it's a metaphor they say. The bible is totally the literal and inerrant word of god. Except when it isn't. Thing is, it's not a as though any of these allegedly metaphorical passages come with labels. It doesn't say "God created the world in seven days, except not really. Call me in 2000 years when you've worked out what geology is." does it? Once you get down the point where you're having to say one element of your theology is a matter of interpretation then you're admitting that the rest of it is well. If I can't take you seriously about the snake bit, how do I know the part about stoning women to death because vaginas are evil is accurate? It's all a bit slippery slope at the point isn't it?
So, yeah. Enough of that. I think we can agree that Religion does bugger all to explain the world in any meaningful way. But that's not all it's for. There's also the questions of morality, community and identity. And it's here that we have to admit that science isn't going to be as useful.
Except for anthropology, sociology, psychology and all that sort of thing. I guess I'm talking mainly in terms of the physical sciences here. You can always learn something by applying the principles of the scientific method, but notions of right and wrong are, let's face it, entirely subjective human constructs.
Let's be clear though, moral relativity does not mean I get to switch off your empathy when it suits you, or that I have no concept of right and wrong. It's more that I recognise that the nature of morality is governed by centuries of sociological development, not to mention the millions of years of evolutionary development into a social species in the first place. Also the fact that if you seriously want to seriously make an argument that morality is absolute then you're going to be debating with something that will it's eggs in your brain and happily watch as you are devoured from the inside out in the most horrible fashion imaginable.
You need to realize that if nature actually gave any fucks it would laughing at us.
So, whilst of course the moral lessons provided in a religious source are entirely subjective, that doesn't mean having moral lessons is a bad thing. As I said, there is a strong sociological component to moral development. The main problem here is that the moral lessons on offer are based less on evidence and more on the personal peccadilloes of someone who lived thousands of years ago. Even assuming they're remotely sane there's no particular guarantee they're still going to be relevant.
It's this social angle which also ties into notions of community. We are social animals, generally speaking.
Even when we shun the outside world, we still maintain a tribe of Waifu to keep us company.
We like to belong, and one thing religion is actually really great at is providing that sense of community. That whole image of pleasant little old ladies going to church as much for the company and the bake sales as for any sense of religious conviction. People coming together, united by a common belief and all that. How is it that you evil atheist types could be against anything so harmless?
Hang on, let me check the manifesto...
Well, I can't speak for everyone else you don't actually get a doctrine for not believing in something, but personally I DON'T think that's a bad thing. I think it's a good. In fact, I would even go as far as saying that, as a person who suffers with mental health issues related to stuff like loneliness and lack of purpose I can TOTALLY see just how appealing religions can be in that sense.
But that doesn't mean I can just ignore everything that's wrong about the idea either. And that's where we're hopefully going to finally start getting to the point. Because if we're looking for a sense of community or an exploration of moral issues as related through story and example, we could go a lot worse than just going to a Star Trek convention or something.
Here's a funny little quote I stumbled across randomly on the internet ages ago:
This has stuck in my mind simply because it's actually REALLY accurate. Your basic abrahamic religions are basically like Star Trek. There's various sequels building on what came before, but doing things in their own way. Except that Star Trek actually manages to maintain a (relatively) cohesive, and most importantly INCLUSIVE structure throughout. No matter if you're a fan of the original series or the next generation you're still a Star Trek fan. We can debate which bits are our favourites or the canonicity of various elements to our hearts content, but it's not like anyone's going to go to war over it.
See, for all you may think this is a daft analogy, religion has exactly the same issues. Consider the notion of Biblical Apocrypha. There's so much cruft and dubious fan fiction that the vatican has actually had to sit down on more than one occasion and actually decide which bits it wanted to count as official.
You know, like Disney had to when they decided they wanted to make new Star Wars films.
Then of course we need to take into account the various issues with translations from the original text, both accidental and intentional. This means that Christianity for example is not only the theological equivalent of the blu-ray version of the special edition of Star Wars, but that half the stuff in it you think you know is probably actually Ermac from Mortal Kombat.
Divide by cucumber!
One of the long standing puzzles of religious belief is why it is that, considering the basic principle of "wouldn't it be nice if everyone was nice" is pretty firmly entrenched in most of them at some level, everyone continually feels the need to kill each other over them. It's actually pretty simple really. We talked about a sense of community a bit earlier. Well, perhaps a more accurate term would be tribalism. After all, nothing makes you feel more like one of us than having one of THEM to complain about. And since we're talking things that are fundamental, irrational AND mutually exclusive there's bound to be a bit of friction. You can still such tribalism manifest in fandom of course, Star Trek vs Star Wars being apparently a debate some people like to have. But there is a subtle but important difference between having a flame war and ACTUALLY SETTING SOMEONE ON FIRE.
This is what you get for liking Voyager!
You can hopefully see how the whole fandom thing is filling some of the same needs. Not only do we have the whole tribal thing, but we also get our holy texts, comprising f stories we can over-interpret for lessons about life and morality and all that stuff. Overthinking episodes of your favourite show is, let's face it, half the point. This may still sound a bit silly, but you need to remember that there's nothing inherently superior about ancient myths and legends. I freely admit that there's a lot of shite episodes of Star Trek, as well as everything else. But then there's a lot of nonsensical randomness in all your religious texts as well. If someone can draw important life lessons from a talking snake then I guess someone can get something from a story about turning into a giant space newt.
Believe it or not, it's probably going to be a lesson about taking proper contraceptive precautions, which actually makes Star Trek Voyager morally superior to Catholicism by several orders of magnitude.
The important thing here, at least in terms of human progress, is that your basic fandom is one step removed from the fundamentalist aspect of religion. Since it's not trying to explain fundamental aspects of the very nature of reality you're afforded a certain critical distance which you don't really get in a purely religious context. Perhaps most importantly you are fully aware that this is a thing written by other people, reflecting their opinions and biases. You're free to spot the agendas, and react to them as appropriate. And you can see where they go wrong, as well as where they do things right. And this then allows us to engage in the single most important part of the exercise: CRITICAL THINKING. That's a vital thing to do if you ever want to make any sort of progress, but it's not something that you can really get from a religious context, since a fundamental aspect of any religion is to accept what it's saying is true, despite any evidence to the contrary.
In short you get all the advantages of a religion, but knowing it's not actually REAL gives you the power to analyse and critique. And you can progress. A long running series can give you a way to talk about modern issues that you'd never get in a text written a decade ago, let alone a century. Fiction gives us a space to consider real world problems. It's kinda what science fiction is FOR.
Nobody said the metaphors had to be particularly subtle.
And of course one of the advantages of removing the divine mandate from it all is that we get to appreciate the true moral complexity of real life. After all who is a going to be a better role model? Someone who is just automatically right by default? Or someone who tries to do what they think is right, even if they might not always succeed?
Ultimately of course everyone is free to choose what they want to believe. Even if anyone was actually dumb enough to try and take that away it would never actually work. But at the end of the day a religion is just a collection of stories, written by humans and designed to express a particular philosophy. And because of that they have no more inherent validity or moral superiority than Star Trek, Doctor Who, Quantum Leap, Star Wars, Ultraman or pretty much any other work of fiction that you'd care to mention.
I mean hell, even Dino-Riders managed to actually have Dinosaurs in it. That alone put's it ahead of most world religions.
Plus, with greatest respect to Michaelangelo and his contemporaries, the artwork is WAY COOLER.
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