I said this would be a history. So lets start there. Organized religion as we understand it today traces it's routes back to the neolithic revolution, a period during which humans at several places around the world began to settle and practice totalitarian agriculture. Bear with me for this part, because it's important. There is a huge difference between agriculture and totalitarian agriculture. Agriculture, cultivating plants for consumption had been going on long before the neolithic revolution. The neolithic revolution was the onset of totalitarian agriculture. The goal of totalitarian agriculture is to maximize production by converting all organic matter into forms consumable by humans, whereas agriculture is subsistence farming as a supplement to hunting and gathering. This is where we trace organized religion to, and where we trace our cultural identity.
Population is a function of food supply. The more food you have, the larger population can be supported. Because totalitarian agriculture maximized food productivity, the tribes that practiced it soon exploded in numbers. Overwhelming numbers soon allowed totalitarian agriculture-based tribes to conquer their neighbors, and they expanded outwards from the Fertile Crescent, East Asia, and Central America. Each area was based on the growth of a specific crop: Asia was rice-based, the Fertile Crescent was wheat-based, and Central America was maize-based.
The transition to totalitarian agriculture had huge consequences. It led to social stratification, compared to the relatively egalitarian nature of tribal societies. It led to the subjugation of women, who were tied to male farmers for a means of survival. It led to the cultural myth that totalitarian agriculture was simply the way humans should live, and always had lived. This can be seen throughout world history; manifest destiny, European colonialism, and the systematic extermination or "making-more-civilized-of" any tribal society ever.
Totalitarian agriculture also gave rise to organized religion. And you thought i wouldn't ever get to the connection. Humans have long had superstitious beliefs, but the neolithic revolution centralized religion under political leadership; all societies of the era were theocracies. Religion was now being used as a method of social control. After all, who would be stupid enough to rebel against a king who could smite you in this life, then torment you for all eternity in the next? Totalitarian agriculture requires a back-breaking amount of work compared to hunting and gathering, and larger population numbers in close proximity led to a rise in infectious diseases. Larger societies began to wage devastating war on each other, compared to the constant, low level of conflict that tribes engage in. Humans began to believe that we were intrinsically deficient, or divinely cursed. Like we had some original sin or something.
Prophets also began appearing, who's main function was to tell people how to live. I remember reading somewhere, that any animal that is taken from it's habituated state will begin to exhibit psychotic tendencies. Humans are no different, we have the tendency to form tribes, like how birds form flocks, dolphins schools, and elephants herds. Taken into a new method of survival, humans experienced an identity crisis. Of all the things we know how to do now, we still don't seem to know how to live. People still look back on ancient texts for guidance. We don't know how to live as a totalitarian species.
And so, religion grew into what it is today. I think this is helpful, because a lot of people tend to hold onto the idea that their religion has been and always been the truth. Taken in a historical context, this is ridiculous. Of all the religions ever, of all the prophets, holy books, and miracles ever that claim to have a stranglehold on truth, it takes a mighty arrogance to think one of those religions must be the truth because you believe it, or you "feel it".
I'll finish with a couple disclaimers. One: I'm not trying to idealize the tribal lifestyle. What i've described is simply what happened. Humans know how to live as tribes, we don't as totalitarian agriculturalists. Soon it won't matter anymore: we're nearing a point of no return, where soon all of Earth's resources will be for human consumption. We'll devastate the world with our culture. Another disclaimer is that some people may scoff at the idea that we are not now better then ancient tribes. They are blinded by the cultural myth that our evolution was progress. It wasn't, it was simply change. We do live now, longer and healthier now then before. But at what cost? Wars, famines, and plagues that kill millions. Crime, the largest gap between rich and poor ever, etc. One of the worst effects we suffer i think, is the lack of social ties we experience. In a tribe, you have close and intense bonds with people in face-to-face interactions. Now, we post on facebooks. Friends, family, and people we love move away, never to be seen again. Loneliness is one of the worst social and psychological conditions.
Oh, its also a cultural myth that there's a distinction between artificiality and nature. Everything is nature, including humans, machines, factories, etc. Artificiality is an artificial construct, so to speak. Also, its a cultural myth that we know what's best for other species and ecosystems. We have no idea, and we have a terrible track record of trying to be the shepards of Earth. Just thought I'd tack those on there.
Sorry this was a long post. Next time, ill probably move onto a new topic. Or maybe ill go back and clarify/restate some of the things i talked about earlier. Whatevs.
I don't know if it's quite right to call this "Religion Part 2" given that it was nearly entirely an exposition on Quinn's ideas in The Story of B, but I suppose that's just me being picky about labels.
ReplyDeleteIt seems a bit loose to suggest that the Neolithic Revolution is the cause of organized religion, at least not in the modern sense. It wasn't until the Old Kingdom in Egypt that any sort of widely understood, organized religion developed. Before then, no theology had really perforated throughout a civilization. I'm not disputing what you said about theocracies, though I would say essentially every theocracy from the onset of the Neolithic Revolution to the birth of Zoroastrianism were not really grounded in "state religions" as much as they were really more cults of personality.
I don't think we see institutionalized religions develop until Zoroastrianism had to compete with Christianity, though that's arguably more a fault of the Sasanian dynasty than the religions themselves. Up until that point, religion was still on the backburner as far as a point of cultural dispute. You see that with the Greeks largely developing their theology around Etruscan and Egyptian theology and the Romans essentially absorbing Greek theology. Even better examples would be Cyrus the Great's principle of religious tolerance & how he dealt with the Babylonians rather benevolently and especially so with Alexander the Great fusing cultures in an attempt to create a long-lasting Hellenistic civilization. Even some of the growing religions at the time had a surprising tone of universalism as we see in Manichaeism.
To get to the point, up until the clash between Zoroastrianism and Christianity, the concept of organized religion was a largely negligible source of conflict. So I wouldn't say totalitarian agriculture is the cause of organized religion, though there's definitely a correlation. To say it is though is making the false conclusion that Large-Scale Agriculture = Civilization = Organized religion when the terms are not mutually inclusive in the realm of possibility, though it did happen that way historically.
I'd say that your argument about earlier religions being more cults of personality rather then institutionalized religions is valid, though i still think my earlier point would still apply, that it was still used as a mechanism of social control.
ReplyDeleteAlso, i think that civilization and totalitarian agriculture are inexorably bound together, though your right in saying religion doesn't necessarily have to be part of that, and that it developed in parallel. I'd say that civilization and totalitarian agriculture are tied together though, because large scale and complex societies can only exist if theres enough for for them to survive, and that requires a maximized system of production like totalitarian agriculture.
Thanks for commenting, I really enjoy discussing this stuff.
This theory that the origins of religion have been traced back to early mankind (desire for answers... fear of the unknown) has been widely studied and is acknowledged here in your post, that organized religion happened through agriculture.
ReplyDeleteA) im not focusing so much on religion as a societal, social insitutition, but rather religion as... well everything else it encompasses. (spirituality,practicality, morality)
Philosopher William James argued that the origins of something don't tell us anything about the value of it. So when your geometry teacher teaches you the pythagorean theorem, in order to believe it and use it on your test you don't have to go read a novel about Pythagoras, where he came from, from where the theorem originated, etc. You just use the theorem because its useful to you. So James went and applied this to religion, arguing that the origins of religious beliefs don't indicate the value of it. It's a pragmatic viewpoint, in the sense that the truth it that which works.
So do you think this can hold true in religion? As humans, are we justified in believing in and practicing something that is insufficiently justified, or should we hold the pragmatic viewpoint and "do" religion because it makes society morally better...
Thats a VERY good question, and i was honestly thinking about that myself. It may make a good new posting. I was talking to my friend about how religion is a placeholder for what we don't know, and as science explains more and more the place of religion will shrink into nothingness. But, I was wondering if this was a good thing. Religion certainly has positive functions in society like defining common morals, promoting solidarity, and defining a society's common identity.
ReplyDeletePersonally, I feel that knowing what I know now, I couldn't go back to something like christianity and attempt to believe in it because it brings me closer to a social group. It'd be living a lie, essentially.
Maybe society at large could develop a quasi religion, with defining morals and such, but without the mythology surrounding it. The closest thing I can think of like this would be to interpret the bible purely metaphorically (or the Quran or whatever). I might like to change a few passages here and there (off the top of my head, the ones concerning god giving the earth to man solely to be his domain), but I can see how overall it would have very positive societal functions.
Maybe in the future I'll write a book of defining societal morals, or at least those I think we should have. And I'll be sure to reference this anonymous comment as a source of inspiration haha
If youd like me to get into anything further let me know. Otherwise, you may be seeing a blog post about this in the near future. Thanks for the comment.