The fact that, in her preparation, she failed to discover a definition of religion that she found satisfying suggested to me that there was something seriously wrong in the approach of trying to account for religion, and that a different approach might be required.
Since that lecture, I've had reason to read more literature in the area, and there seems to be a pattern. When authors attempt to offer a definition of the term, they always seem much better at tearing down previous attempts than at constructing reliable definitions of their own. I'll quote Pascal Boyer,
If people tell you "Religion is faith in a doctrine that teaches us how to save our souls by obeying a wise and eternal Creator of the universe," these people probably have not travelled or read widely enough. In many cultures people think the dead come back to haunt the living, but this is not universal. In some places people think that some special individuals can communicate with gods or dead people, but that idea is not found everywhere. In some places people assume that people have a soul that survives after death, but that assumption also is not universal. When we put forward general explanations of religion, we had better make sure that they apply outside our parish.(from Religion Explained)
One is left to wonder if there is anything considered universal across religions! Even the distinct concept of "religion" is not universally held, as it requires some understanding that there are different, incompatible, belief-systems. These difficulties notwithstanding, "religion" is still considered to play a direct and powerful role in most of the great undertakings of most or all human societies.
I am reminded of Popper's criticism of Marxism, which was related to his introduction of the doctrine of falsifiability. Popper noted that Marxists, when presented with evidence that contradicted the implications of their theory, were always quite ready to make post-hoc modifications to the theory so that it would fit the new data. It's worth noting that everyone probably does this, to an extent: new evidence much more often causes refinements to theory, rather than wholesale rejection. But when theory is usually incompatible with the results of observed phenomena at the time of observation, well, you can have...
This is the Turn of a Plausible Phrase(from The Space Child's Mother Goose, by Frederick Winsor)
That thickened the Erudite Verbal Haze
Cloaking Constant K
That save the Summary
Based on the Mummery
Hiding the Flaw
That lay in the Theory that Jack Built.
...but the flaw in the theory is still there. At some point, it's best to forget your assumptions and try something else. The generally agreed importance of religion in human affairs is probably, at least partially, achieved by constraining the definition of religion so that it can always account for things of importance in human affairs. The accepted transcendent role of religion in the Christian cultures from which our current empirical scientific culture first became established (and, we should remember, the old Catholic Church in Europe used to have power to rival or exceed that of kings - the "transcendent" importance of religion may have followed from this) may have lead to the belief that religion everywhere is transcendentally important.
I want to end with the constructive point that we can still make major progress in understanding religious behavior. I suspect that the major redirection of effort involved will be to stop focusing on why people have religion, and start focusing on the structure of the religious institutions with which they interact. Answering questions about the role of ritual, generally, will help explain religious institutions, but can also help explain fraternity hazing, military cohesion, cooperation in athletics, etc. Understanding why people evangelize will help to understand many religions, but can also explain the invasiveness of neoliberal economic policy, or of advertising and marketing. [UPDATE 3/23/03:There is also a valid question about whether a single, general explanation for religion can account for people's susceptibility to religious ideology within all cultures.] There is so much more understanding we can gain if we stop accepting the framing that dictates that "religion" is what must be explained, as opposed to the structure of religious institutions and of people's behavior within them.
-l
5 comments:
Excellent! I especially like the note on which you end...
-r
can't spell my own name! so clumsy..
-u
What timing! I have just been reading Sloan Wilson's "Darwin's Cathedral" and must say that I remain thoroughly unconvinced of the group selection argument for religion. If he had a better basis for claiming group selection in the first place (other than by referring to some vague concept of the "averaging fallacy" and writing off second-order CAPs), I might be more sold on it. But your suggestion that "structure" is more fundamental than the semantics of "religion" is interesting in light of the group selection/ structure-functionalism literature. Personally, I don't see how the structure (unless you mean to describe interactions among individuals based on their own particular circumstances) provides us with a better working definition; nor do I see how it can be tested as an adaptation (function), which is the presumable goal. In reading the structure-functionalism stuff, it always struck me that the two concepts were at different levels of analysis (i.e. that many structures could give rise to any given function). I love the term "multilevel selection" though (appeals to my stats brain) and await a better explanation than that from Dr. Wilson (though I do appreciate the audience for which he was supposed to be writing).
Hey, anonymous, good to see you! I think I confused things by not clearly separating a few distinct points. One is that, in my opinion, "religion" itself is not a sufficiently meaningful concept to study, but there are associated phenomena which can be defined rigorously and which can be studied. These phenomena include ritual and evangelism, but there is no reason that studying these phenomena ought be limited to religion. Endothermy is more or less a feature of mammals, but it's still worth looking at its expression in certain fish, and doing so can greatly improve our understanding of endothermy in general (by removing the confounding effect of shared phylogeny). Studying political evangelism will shed light on religious evangelism (and vice versa), and studying sport ritual will shed light on religious ritual (and vice versa).
Another point is that, to understand particular religions, we should not consider them as "adaptations" themselves, but treat them as adapted entities in their own right, and try to treat their adaptations on a particulate level. For example, we might ask, "why did Catholicism develop so that it proscribed most forms of birth control, when Protestant Christianity usually allows it?" in a similar way that we ask "Why do bonobos resort to sex to resolve conflicts, when closely related chimpanzees use threat of violence?"
The last point, about structure/functionalism, you're absolutely right that they're at different levels of analysis. But it's been a theme of mine (ask my sister) that, even though a particular function can have many supporting structures, the actual structure chosen remains highly evolutionarily significant, as the development of new functions (in response to adaptive pressure) will tend to be more easily achieved through small modifications of existing mechanisms. Since I've had the vocabulary, I've tried to argue "the proximate directs the ultimate, too."
Anonymous happens to be your sister, goofball. :) Though perhaps you had realized that.
Now that we have the same vocabulary, I think I finally understand what you're getting at. I agree with most of what you say here. Sloan Wilson analyzes the "religion" as the adaptation without explaining what "religion" is or why IT, as opposed to specific sub-functions etc. might be useful.
I finally understand the proximate-ultimate thing you've been trying to get at. I agree that certain structures are likely to be more adaptable (this is a common argument for why humans are so successful - b/c they are so adaptable, etc.). I just think it's a different question from whether something IS adaptive. A very interesting question at that...
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