This is why intelligent people can be religious. That\u2019s an arrogant statement \u2014 it presumes that religion and intelligence are incompatible, that anyone with any sense wouldn\u2019t believe in unproven supernatural faith-based scenarios. But of course that is not the case. I personally might believe (believe!) that many religious beliefs are irrational and verge on lunacy \u2014 but I can both see their efficacy \u2014 their attraction and usefulness \u2014 and sense their beauty. One does not have to be a Catholic to stand in awe of the Sistine Chapel ceiling; be Muslim to hear the lure of the soulful cry of the muezzin and sense the power of the mass dance of the faithful in prayer; be Hindu or Jewish to read and enjoy a text that is often chock full of amazing and surprising metaphors and analogies. These dances, music, images, metaphors are, I sense, deep-rooted \u2014 they are like the neural propensities for grammatical structures that Chomsky goes on about \u2014 and are therefore similarly genetically inheritable. The dance that is religion has evolved within us, to be released and expressed in a thousand different forms, none of which make logical sense, and all of which, if looked at literally, require a large helping of denial. God is in the wiring, bequeathed by the genes.<\/p>\n
To me, this is why the current (tiny) wave of atheism \u2014 the recent books by Dawkins, Dennett and Harris, for example \u2014 are also in denial. They deny that this propensity for people to believe is innate. Yes, they admit that religion offers many comforts and assurances, security and community \u2014 very attractive and seductive \u2014 but they stop short at admitting that we are genetically predisposed to believe, that it is in our very nature, a part of what it means to be human. Maybe an illogical part, but that all our innate evolved characteristics are not practical forever (context changes, the world changes) or even rational, from some points of view (does the peacock\u2019s tail have to be THAT big? Isn\u2019t all that just a wee bit of a wasteful allocation of resources?)<\/p>\n
Rationalism can never win on pure sense and logic alone. Granted, religions are regularly used to justify horrors and despicable behavior, throughout history and this will never change \u2014 and rational thinking tells us these kinds of beliefs need to be wiped out \u2014 judged from the POV of the society or world at large at least these religiously justified behaviors are simply evil, counter to the survival of the species and commonly accepted morals \u2014 and in those cases maybe yes, religion needs to be smacked down. But what if the benign effects of religion are intimately tied to the dark side? What if you can\u2019t have the good without the bad? What if the shared sense of community, for example, is tied to the belief that God has given this community a personal mandate, a moral rightness above all others? Is it even possible to mold and deconstruct the religious impulse so that only the socially and personally beneficial effects result?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Einer der grossen Helden der Pop-Musik – und einer ihrer grossen Intellektuellen – n\u00e4mlich David Byrne (Talking Heads), schreibt ein erstaunliches Blog. Ich entnehme seiner Ausgabe vom 20. November diese Stelle \u00fcber die menschliche Neigung zur Religion, die mich frappiert hat. Ich w\u00fcrde sie gerne \u00fcbersetzen, aber mir fehlt die Zeit: … This is why […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[175],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-religionen-und-rituale"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/p>\n