Chapter 14 Chapter 9 Guardians of Religion and Tradition

Religion, even in its crudest form, decreed moral rules long before the artificial age of reason and philosophy. Some insensitive people are always cursing the things they love. Natural Selection for Tradition Keepers As the book draws to a close, I would like to make a little informal note about the connection between the arguments of this book and the role of religious belief.They are informal - my intentions are limited to that.These accounts may offend some intellectuals because they suggest that they are partly wrong and deeply uncritical in their long-running confrontation with religion.

In this book I reveal the human being split into two states of existence.The first type of human attitudes and emotions are adapted to the behavior of small groups. Human beings have lived in such small groups for hundreds of thousands of years. They know each other, meet each other's needs, and pursue common goals.It is inconceivable that these outmoded, primitive attitudes and sentiments are now supported by rationalism and its allies of empiricism, hedonism, and socialism.The second is a more recent development in cultural evolution, when we no longer primarily serve familiar companions or pursue common goals, but gradually develop the institutions, moral systems, and traditions that lead to and sustain their existence. many times the number that lived before the dawn of civilization, these people pursued thousands of Thousands of different goals.

How did this happen?How can a tradition that people neither like nor understand, whose utility they usually don't appreciate, even neither see nor predict, and still vehemently attack, continue to pass on from generation to generation? Part of the answer is the evolution of moral order through group selection that we mentioned at the beginning: groups that behave in these ways survive and thrive.But that's not the whole story.Where did these rules of conduct come from, if not because it was understood that they played a beneficial role in creating an extended order of cooperation that was then unimaginable?More importantly, how have they survived the backlash of instinct and the onslaught of modern rationalism?Let's look at religion.

Both custom and tradition are irrational adaptations to circumstances, backed up by totems and taboos, mysticism, or religious beliefs—beliefs that arise from the human tendency to animistically interpret any order they encounter. , they are more likely to dominate group choice.These constraints on individual behavior may have originally served as markers for identifying group membership.Later, the belief that the gods would punish transgressors allowed these restrictions to be preserved. "The gods are generally seen as guardians of tradition...Our ancestors now lived as gods in another world...If we don't obey our customs, they will get angry and screw things up." (Malinowski , 1936: 25)

But this is not enough to produce real choices, for these beliefs, and the associated rituals, must also function at another level.Common patterns of behavior must have the opportunity to have beneficial effects on a population on a wide-ranging scale for selection in evolution to take effect.How have they been passed down from generation to generation during this time?Unlike genetic attributes, cultural attributes are not automatically transmitted.Intergenerational transmission and non-transmission play as positive or negative a role in a traditional system as individuals do.It will likely take many generations to ensure that any particular tradition is truly perpetuated and eventually widespread.It may take some sort of mystical faith for this to happen, especially when the rules of behavior conflict with instinct.Merely using utilitarianism or even functionalism to explain the different etiquette is not sufficient or even justified.

Beneficial traditions are preserved and passed on at least long enough that the populations of the groups that follow them increase and have a chance to expand, either through natural or cultural selection, which we believe is due in part to mysticism and religion Faith, and I believe, is especially attributable to monotheistic beliefs.That is to say, whether we like it or not, we owe in part the maintenance of certain habits, and the civilization that has grown out of them, to the support of beliefs that are not true in the scientific sense , that is, unverifiable or untestable, and they are certainly not the result of rational argument.I sometimes think that at least some of them might be properly called "symbolic truths," even if it's only a gesture of appreciation, since they help their followers "to work the earth, to prosper, prosper and produce abundantly" ("Old Testament Genesis", 1:28).Even those of us who, like myself, do not intend to subscribe to the anthropomorphic notion of a personal God, should admit that premature loss of belief in what we regard as untrue would detract from the The loss of a strong support in the long-term development of an extended order, and even today, the loss of these beliefs, whether true or false, causes great difficulties.

In conclusion, the religion's view that morality is determined by processes beyond our comprehension is perhaps more true than the rationalist deceit that human beings invented morality by using their ingenuity to enable them to achieve results beyond their expectations.If we keep these things in mind, we can better understand those missionaries who are said to have doubted the validity of their teaching, but continued to preach because they feared that the loss of faith would lead to moral decay.There is no doubt that they are right; even agnostics should admit that the morality and traditions that provide not only our civilization, but even our life, are due to the acceptance of claims of reality that are scientifically unacceptable.

There is an undoubted historical connection between religion, on the one hand, and those values, such as the family and divided property, that formed and moved civilization on the other, but not necessarily any internal relationship between them.Many of the religious founders of the past two thousand years were against property and the family.But only those religions that favored property and the family survived.So the idea of ​​communism, which is against both property and the family (and therefore against religion), has no future.It seems to me that it is a religion unto itself, once in power and now in rapid decline.In communist and socialist countries, we are witnessing how natural selection of religious beliefs weeds out those that are not fit to survive.

What I call the decline of communism, of course, is mainly where it was actually practiced - and so can dash those false hopes.But it also lives on in the minds of those who do not experience its practical consequences: intellectuals in the West, and poor people on the fringes of the extended order, the Third World.Among the former, there seems to have been a growing awareness that the rationalism being criticized here is a false God; but the need for some God remains the same, and this need can be expressed by going back to a kind of Hegelian dialectic. Paradox is partly satisfied because it allows rational fantasies to coexist with a belief system unquestioningly dedicated to a "humanitarian whole" (which itself is actually a construct of the kind I'm criticizing). notion of extreme rationalism in the theoretical sense) without any criticism.As Marcuse said, "True freedom of individual existence (rather than in the liberal sense) is possible only in a specially constructed city-state, in a 'rationally' organized society" (quoted in Jay Yi, 1973: 119. For what this "reasonable" means, see 49, 57, 60, 64, 81, 152 and related places in the same book).Among the latter, "liberation theology" may conspire with nationalism to produce a powerful new religion, with disastrous consequences for those already in dire economic straits.

How does religion preserve beneficial customs?Some customs, whose benefits are not known to those who observe them, are likely to be preserved long enough to increase their selective advantage only if they are supported by some other strong belief; some supernatural or mystical beliefs Easily played this role.As the order of human intercourse expands, the demands of instinct will become more threatening, and it will for a time be more dependent on the continuing influence of such religious beliefs—they are some of the influences that influence people to do certain things. For false reasons, they must do these things if they are to maintain structures that allow them to feed a growing population (see Supplement G).

But just as the extended order was never deliberately contrived, so there is no reason to think that support from religion is deliberately cultivated, or that there is often any "conspiracy" in all these things.Especially in view of the fact that we cannot observe the role of morality, it is naive to think that some intelligent elite calmly calculates the role of different moralities, chooses from them, and then tries to use Plato's "noble lie" to persuade the people to swallow " the opium of the people," thereby making them subject to regulations which further the interests of the rulers.Undoubtedly, the choice of specific claims in basic religious beliefs was often determined by the expediency of secular rulers.Moreover, secular rulers sometimes deliberately mobilize religious support, sometimes to the point of cynicism—but this is often a matter of momentary disputes, of little importance in the long evolutionary period in which favours. The question of whether the rules of society promote the development of the community is more decisive than the question of which ruling group favored it at any given time. Some linguistic problems also arise in describing and evaluating these developments.Everyday language is insufficient to make the necessary distinctions with great precision, especially when it comes to the concept of knowledge.For example, a person accustomed to a pattern of behavior of which he knows nothing, which increases the chances of survival not only for himself and his family but for many others with whom he has never known, in Is there a question of knowledge in this case, especially when he does it for a different and certainly quite incorrect reason?It was evidently not what is commonly called rational knowledge that led him to success.It is also useless to call this acquired habit "feelings," for it is not governed by factors which can reasonably be called sentiments, although some, such as reproach or punishment (whether or God) often supports or maintains specific habits.In most cases it is those who, by clinging to "blind habit" or religiously taught ideas such as "honesty is the best policy," beat those who otherwise The smarter counterpart of "rational" insights.As a survival strategy, strict adherence to conventions and flexibility correspond to both play an important role in biological evolution; morality in the form of rigid rules may sometimes be more effective than changeable rules, and these people who abide by changeable rules , attempting to direct one's habits and change one's course on the basis of definite facts and foreseeable consequences, what may more easily be called knowledge. Personally, I'd better state here that I don't think I'm qualified to assert or deny the existence of God, because I must admit that I really don't know what people want to mean by the word God.But I absolutely reject the anthropomorphic, anthropomorphic, or animistic interpretations of the word by which many people give it a meaning.The notion that there is a man-like or mind-like actor seems to me to be the product of an over-exaggeration of the capabilities of a man-like mind.In my own thinking structure or my world view, if some words do not occupy a position in which they can acquire meaning, then I cannot hard-wire a meaning to it.I would be deceiving myself if I used these words as if they expressed my beliefs. I have long been hesitant to write my personal views here, but I have finally decided to do so because the support of an honest agnostic will help people of faith to more unhesitatingly seek those We enjoy consensus conclusions.When many people speak of God, they may mean only the embodiment of the moral traditions or values ​​that keep their community alive.Religion sees a personal God as the source of order, a road map or a guide that successfully directs how the individual functions within the whole.We have now seen that the origin of order is not outside nature, but is one of its characteristics.This feature is so complex that it is impossible for any individual to grasp its "whole image" or "panorama".So it makes perfect sense that a religion that forbids idolatry would object to such an image.Perhaps most people can only understand abstract traditions if they regard them as someone's will.If so, could they not still find this will in "society" in an age when the shallower supernaturalisms have been purged as superstitions? This question may determine the survival of our civilization.