Wallace Stevens: Spritualist Poetry

In his Adagia, Wallace Stevens talks so much about poetry that I'm starting to wonder if that is his religion. He does say that "Poetry is a means of redemption," but I suppose redemption doesn't necessarily have to be religious (903). Maybe? But since our module is Religion and the Secular, I'll assume for the time being that it isn't religious. I guess it is missing the community aspect at the very least. Anyway... Stevens gives a very interesting perspective on the relationship between the mind and reality.

As stated above, Stevens seems to view poetry in an almost religious manner. At one point, he says, "The poet is a god or The young poet is a god. The old poet is a tramp" (911). I'm not sure what he means about the old poet, but the young poet seems to be people's redemption from the mind, for Stevens states next that "The poet represents the mind in the act of defending us against itself" (911). What's so bad about the mind? Well, apparently life is (or should be) based on instinct rather than "thesis" or intelligent thought (902). However, "The mind is the most powerful thing in the world" and is the means by which things become real (902-903). Therefore, "The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly" (903). In other words, although the mind is what makes things real, one cannot truly understand this unless the emotions come into play as well. This view helps show Stevens' spiritualist tendencies, because reality is subjective--determined by the individual--and emotions are to be intimately connected to knowledge. The importance of emotion is evidenced by the following quote: "It is possible to establish aesthetics in the individual mind as immeasurably a greater thing than religion" (906). Stevens clearly prefers individual "aesthetics," or emotional judgments, to outright religion.

A Different Kind of Sunday Morning

I'd never heard of Wallace Stevens before, but I really enjoyed reading his poetry tonight. His poem, "Sunday Morning," was especially beautiful--though probably too deep for me to understand. However, I do have a few observations about the poem that show how it fits in with our discussions on secularism and religion. This poem demonstrates well how secular individuals can have religious-like feelings without any social or doctrinal aspects of religion.

In the poem, Stevens seems to be worshipping Nature instead of a God, but he's not really worshipping--he's just enjoying a feeling of peace. He displays this attitude in the following passage: "Shall she not find in the comforts of the sun, / In pungent fruit and bright, green wings, or else / Things to be cherished like the thought of heaven? / Divinity must live within herself" (53). The sun, fruit, and other earthly things replace the thought of heaven as a source of comfort. Paradise becomes much like the Earth, simply a more perfect version: it has trees and fruit (55). Interestingly, Stevens seems to appreciate constancy more than change. He notes that no "haunt of prophesy" or any other religious invention will last as long as "April's green" (part of Nature), and he contrasts paradise to the Earth because it is "unchanging" (54, 55). The Earth is full of change--from the birds who leave their warm fields (54), to the maidens getting up off their feet (55), to the "men that perish" and go here and there (56). One interpretation of this aversion to change that Stevens has, evidenced by the stagnancy of his paradise, could be that he is against organized religions because of their propensity to change their doctrines all the time. He might want people to go back to their original religious feelings (peace and comfort) without trying to explain them with theology. The feelings themselves would remain relatively unchanging; they would probably oscillate back and forth, but nothing new would be added to the mix like tends to happen in theological study.

Likewise, Stevens' paradise is marked by "solitude," "isolation," and spontaneity (56). None of these are very common at all in organized religions, which are especially characterized by strong community. In Stevens' worldview, the "religion," if there is one, is just a special feeling that each individual has and enjoys alone without trying to explain it to others or convert others to that same feeling. He sees this situation as bringing freedom that organized religion suppresses. The woman in the beginning of the poem who decides to sit outside relaxing on a Sunday morning instead of going to church suffers for her seizure of this freedom; while trying to daydream, her mind is haunted by Palestine--a remnant of the religion she is trying to leave (53). Stevens wants people to be free from those haunting feelings and able to find peace in whatever thoughts they want.

Art, Religion, and Nietzsche

After a little exploring, I came upon a nice website about the abstract expressionist painter, Mark Rothko. I found something there that supplemented today's reading about Rothko in regards to religion. In the reading, the author describes how Rothko was very concerned about letting his art speak for itself--even without the use of titles or explanations for the abstract paintings. On the same note, this page of the aforementioned website quotes Rothko as saying:

If our titles recall the known myths of antiquity, we have used them again because they are the eternal symbols upon which we must fall back to express basic psychological ideas. They are the symbols of man's primitive fears and motivations, no matter in which land or what time, changing only in detail but never in substance....Our presentation of these myths, however, must be in our own terms which are at once more primitive and more modern than the myths themselves--more primitive because we seek the primeval and atavistic roots of the ideas rather than their graceful classical version; more modern than the myths themselves because we must redescribe their implications through our own experience....The myth holds us, therefore, not through its romantic flavor, not the remembrance of beauty of some bygone age, not through the possibilities of fantasy, but because it expresses to us something real and existing in ourselves, as it was to those who first tumbled upon the symbols to give them life.

Interestingly, Rothko sees his art as serving basically the same purpose as religious symbols did in the past--"express[ing] to us something real and existing in ourselves." One could say that his art is his religion; despite the lack of community and morality, it does have a core "belief system" of a sort--those deep psychological truths he mentions--and a definite spiritual/mystical feeling. However, if this is his religion, he expresses it much differently than conventional religions do. As I stated previously, he doesn't like to explain the meanings of each of his paintings, unlike typical religions' constant reassertions of their doctrines. There is a common thread, though: the expression of his "beliefs" (if we can call them that) changes over time. It's completely subjective: the truths ("fears and motivations") expressed in the art are timeless and constant, but the way they're expressed changes with time and with the bearer/artist. In the process, they seem to change on the outside but remain the same at the core. This is the same process as we've read about in so many religions: the methods of interpretation change and therefore the outward appearance of a religion may change, but the religion itself remains steadfast (at least in the minds of its followers).

Another reason I find this passage interesting is the fact that Rothko was an avid reader of Nietzsche. I just read some Nietzsche in one of my other classes, and we learned today that he sees all human interpretations of reality as inherently wrong. All of them are projections of the human will onto surroundings. However, he rates different forms of interpretation based on whether they promote "health" or "sickness" in humanity. Religion, to Nietzsche, is just plain sick, whereas art is one of the best forms of interpretation. Art is good because of its master mentality as opposed to Chrisitanity's slave mentality; in other words, art concentrates on the ideal and the good first and only talks about the bad as the absence of the good, whereas Christianity supposedly begins by defining evil and only later defines good. How convenient for Rothko...

Trying to Pull Things Together... but it'll take a while

Our unexpected discussion on Atheism last week got cut short in class, but it's found new life in the blogs. I'm going to attempt to bring together some of the points I've been reading in different blogs--specifically Daniel's, Oliver's, and Sarah M's. Basically, we're all trying to decide whether or not Atheism (but especially it's counterpart, "lower-case atheism") qualifies as a religion.

Before I start, I'll try to explain what I'm considering to be lower-case atheism because I don't think we ever clearly defined that. I guess I see lower-case atheists as people who don't believe in God but don't think of their atheism as a religion. They have the belief in no god (which is, after all, what "atheism" means, as Ted pointed out in class), but they don't consciously base their actions or life on that belief like a religious person would apply his/her beliefs into a religious frame of reference. This is almost like agnosticism (like Emily S. noted), but the difference is that these atheists don't believe they can't know if there's a god; they believe they know there is no god even though they don't elevate this belief/knowledge into anything more than just one fact among many. Basically, atheists believe what agnostics don't, but neither of them imparts any special significance on that belief or lack thereof. And all this is in contrast to upper-case Atheists who, like Catrina, find mystical significance in believing in no god.

And as to what religion itself is, I've found a few different definitions of religion in these blogs:

• Daniel- "the definition of religion is beyond being something tangible." "It is an abstract label for culture." "Religion is a wrapper for cultural objects to make them more 'user friendly.'" "Religion is...a way of gaining truths." (Note: this last one came from an earlier post.)
• Oliver- "Religion is a belief system that is meant to be applied to daily living and allows individuals to share in a common bond (of varying strengths)."
• Alex (in comment to Oliver's post)- "A religion by definition is the set of ideals that a person lives his/her life by."

And in class, we seemed to define religion vaguely as an all-encompassing frame with which to view the world which involves 1) meaning creation, 2) social cohesion, 3) identity, and 4) spiritual experience.

So... Oliver's and Alex's definitions seem to fit in with our class definition of an ultimate reference frame, but Daniel's is a little different. He seems to see religion as completely intertwined with culture so that as a reference frame, it depends a lot on other aspects of culture and isn't a frame in itself. (At least, that's how I interpret it.) Sarah M. discusses a similar idea in her post, suggesting that the so-called "half-assed" believers in any religion can share their ultimate frame with other things--these things being secular parts of the culture. This would mean that their actual religion is a combination of their nominal religion and their secular idealism.

Sarah also gives some possible reference frames that lower-case atheists might have instead of Atheism--such frames as environmentalism, capitalism, and secular humanism. Because their belief in no god is not important enough to them to qualify as a refrence frame, lower-case atheists need to have something else "properly ultimate," in Sarah's words, to shape their views of life and the world. In this view, lower-case atheism would not qualify as a religion because it lacks that importance in people's lives.

However, even if lower-case atheism in itself is not a religion, it does open the door to other religions (the aforementioned environmentalism, etc., as well as philosophies like Ayn Rand's objectivism and other variations of humanism that take on religious significance for their followers). In class, we seemed to be talking a lot about how science takes the place of religion for Atheists, but I agree with Daniel that science isn't the only form of Atheism. I wouldn't go so far as to agree that "science has no special tie to atheism whatsoever," however, because science and rationalism had such a huge influence on the rise of Atheism and many Atheists cite science as one of their main objections to religion. But I do agree that it's a mistake to think that science is the only difference between Atheism and [other] religions. We established in class that members of almost all religious groups accept scientific theories as part of their worldview (though, of course, partly influenced by their religious frames).

What I'd like to say is that lower-case atheism in itself is not a religion, but because it displaces all theistic religions by definition, it needs to have some other reference frame (unless we've decided that it's possible to live without one, which I personally doubt...). And this reference frame, though it may not be consciously grounded in the belief that there is no god, will have to be influenced by that belief because it naturally has to fit in with that belief to be accepted. In other words, their reference frame is a combination of their atheism and whatever other secular element of society they find particularly important. This is basically the same description as I gave of "half-assed" religious believers, so does that mean I think lower-cased atheists are just "half-assed" Atheists? I think the difference is that Atheism/atheism is so varied in its belief system as opposed to organized religions with their specific doctrines that atheism is more of a different sect than it is a different level of commitment. Atheism could be to lower-case atheism what Catholicism is to Non-denominational Christianity. In both cases, the members of both groups are equally committed to what they each believe; it's just the beliefs that differ. Atheists believe that the fact that God doesn't exist means certain things that lower-case atheists don't believe (i.e. the mysticism and greater significance).

I think that's all I have to say. I'm sorry it turned out so long. :( But thank you if you read the whole thing! ;)

Connection to "The God Fuse"

I came across a web article today called "The God Fuse: Ten Things Christians and Atheists Can - and Must - Agree On" by David Wong and it seems to relate to our discussion in class today about the movie Red. I highly recommend reading this article--it's both insightful and entertaining. As the title of the article indicates, Wong discusses where Christians and Atheists have common ground, and one of the biggest issues is morality. We ended our class discussion today on the point that religion can be viewed as one way to strengthen the connections between people that seem to be at the core of human life and that there are other, secular, ways to do the same thing. With religion, God is at the center of human relationships, but without religion, people can still seek to recognize and nurture their relationships with other people. Likewise, in the Wong article, religion is one way to approach morality--and atheism is another.

Wong emphasizes that regardless of one's religion, everyone feels the same moral "baseline," namely, "the value of human life." In addition, this moral has no proof or logical reason for existing: "[T]here's this invisible rule that [is] supposed to be followed, that everybody [is] supposed to be aware of, that can't be proven by logic. Whatever it is, wherever you think it came from, you can't deny that it's there. Your own behavior would make you a liar." Whether atheist or Christian--or anything else--everyone has the same moral conscience to respect human life. This tendency is innate (except in psychopaths...), so it's not intrinsically part of religion; instead, religion arises out of it (or, at least, that's one interpretation). Wong states that "at the very worst, the Christians are just taking that same moral impulse and applying it to the God question.... If they're wrong about God, they're only wrong in that they've taken that absolute morality and put a face on it, made an idol out of it. Taken it one step too far." According to Wong, the morality is there whether or not God has been added to it. This is like our discussion of Red in which the characters clearly seek love and connection with their fellow human beings without having any metaphysical reasons for doing so. The baseline fraternity instinct, if you will, is there despite the lack of religion.

To try to keep this post a reasonable length, I won't elaborate on the many other intruiging aspects of this article (although I might do that in my essay), but I again urge you all to read the article itself.

Changes in Morality

It was harder than I expected to find religion on the Urban Experience in Chicago website, but luckily, I eventually came across something relevant. In Jane Addams' piece, "Filial Relations," she discusses how different people have different opinions on what's morally right and what isn't. These moral consciences are the result of different experiences and environments. Even in the same place, not everyone experiences the same things, and this causes people to have different moralities. Addams references the story of St. Francis of Assisi, who rejected his inheritance in order to become an ascetic for his faith and offended his father in the process. St. Francis' father didn't understand that this calling from God to become ascetic was a "higher claim" than for Francis to fulfill his duties as a son. He would've had to be "touched by the fire of the same revival" as St. Francis was in order to change his moral values like that. As it was, St. Francis' father was highly offended by his son's behavior even though he, too, lived in the same cultural environment. Addams asserts that "the notion of a larger obligation can only come through the response to an enlarged interest in life and in the social movements around us." The social movements of the religius revival that brought St. Francis to his asceticism did not affect his father; his father didn't have that "response."

Addams compares St. Francis to college-educated women who want to make a difference in the world through social work instead of holding house-keeping as their life goal. These women have experienced something that changes their morals--adjusts them to the current time period. She sees this adjustment in morality to see social justice as more important than uphold the family name as "progress" in the institution of the famliy: "The new growth in the plant swelling against the sheath, which at the same time imprisons and protects it, must still be the truest type of progress. " Morals depend on the historical context, and for Addams, the ethical code which holds the family above all else is outdated--"a most flagrant example of the ill-adjustment and misery arising when an ethical code is applied too rigorously and too conscientiously to conditions which are no longer the same as when the code was instituted, and for which it was never designed."

This is exactly like what historical Biblical critics do: they look back in history to see the specific contexts of different Biblical passages and use that historical background to try to find the real meaning that passages and commandments had for their original, intended readers. Although Addams is using historical criticism for an ethical code and not a text, it's the same process. With the plant analogy she uses above, the meaning of the text/moral code would be the seed, the context the sheath, and the current form the growing plant itself. Therefore, moral codes can change with time as the contexts in which they're used change. However, the basic core (seed) of them--arguably--remains the same. Also, these contexts are not just dependent on time, but also on the individuals who are hearing the message--people listen differently.

Jane Addams and Christian Humanitarianism

In our reading on the Hull House, Jane Addams doesn't discuss religion very much at all until the end of Chapter 4. There, she describes "Christian humanitarianism" as one of three main causes of a revival in social activism like her Hull House. (The other two are "the desire to interpret democracy in social terms" and "the impulse, beating at the very source of our lives, urging us to aid the race progress" [125].) According to Addams, humanitarianism is a natural part of Christianity and was there from the very beginning (122). What she doesn't explain is how or when that humanitarianism ever left so as to be able to have a revival. I agree with her that on of the core aspects of Christianity is love of neighbor and service to the poor; after all, Jesus was famous for his loving treatment of social outcasts and preached that the second-greatest commandment is to "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Mt. 22:39), even saying that all the Law and Prophets hang on this along with the greatest commandment--to "Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind" (Mt. 22:40, 37). Addams discusses the early Church with their extraordinary love and generosity as the embodiment of this Christian humanitarian ideal, but she doesn't mention the modern Church at all. I would agree with her that many modern churches are much less socially active in the way that the early Church was. The early Christians, according to Addams, were so driven by the feeling of "continuous revelation" that they were constantly sacrificing their own comfort to help the less fortunate. They believed that continuous revelation not only spreads to others through their social work, but also that doing the service work would increase their own revelation (122-123). Of course, with a belief like that, it's no surprise that they were so active in their communities, advocating the poor and downtrodden. It brought many rewards to them spiritually.

Therefore, the reason Christians became more passive and apathetic toward social justice is probably that they stopped believing in it as an essential part of their faith. This would have to happen through a shift in doctrine, or at least in emphasis in doctrine. Addams claims (and I guess I agree) that what Jesus taught was not dogma or doctrine, but a whole religious life (122). In the early centuries of Christian history, a system of theology developed which was clarified in creeds and the official Bible canon. Maybe in the process of stating explicitly the smaller, less significant aspects of faith, the Church inadvertently distracted people from what used to be its core. The religion changed, not exactly through new interpretations of old text, but through new emphases and focuses within the same body of teachings. However, when this revival of the humanitarianism occurs, it is a reinterpretation of Biblical texts. People want to go back to the simple, bigger-picture Christianity as embodied in life and action, rejecting the view that it is merely "a set of ideas" (123-124).

I respect this interpretation, but I think it also has its downside--if Christianity is reduced to a moral commandment like "serve the poor," the unitarianism that Alex talks about in his post will arise. Everything that separates different religions from one another will be ignored and all that's left will be a set of morals. I definitely support tolerance between religions and believe that even disagreeing religions shouldn't attack each other, but I don't think that's a reason for Christians to abandon the Jesus-is-God part of their religion. Christianity (and any other religion) is much more than a set of morals: it also gives people a sense of belonging, purpose, and hope as well as fellowship with other people who share the same convictions. All this would be lost if all people cared about was morals. Plus, as Alex says himself, "If the teachings of peace, helping those in need, and turning the other cheek were followed in day-to-day living in the world, there would be less need for violence and more would be accomplished toward the greater good." There's no need to stop believing in God to follow those teachings; in fact, God makes it easier (for me, at least).

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that the rise of social activism is just like the rise of any other religious tendency (or even religion): it comes out of new interpretations of old religious traditions or texts. And on a side note, the theology, or set of beliefs, of a religion is what makes it the religion it is, so taking the theology away isn't a religious change--it's a religious deletion.

Music and Group Unity

A while ago, Catrina wrote this post about how music plays a big role in religion and in connecting people. I agree, but in symphonic band rehearsal this morning I noticed it especially much. After our discussion yesterday about Quaker meetings and how they build group unity, I realized how much group unity is produced in music ensembles as well. This morning, I felt like I connected to the band music in a way I'd never quite achieved before. Our director, Mr. Mast, is always talking about how important it is to use your emotions to make music and I've done that to a certain extent before, but what I felt today was even more than that. Instead of only feeling "emotional" during the climactic sections of the music, I felt it the whole time. Inside my head I was singing along with the other instruments during my rests, and I felt very connected to the ensemble as a whole. I was really glad to have so many other people each doing their part to produce such wonderful music. We were all helping with our individual parts while also building off each others' parts and working together dynamically, following each other as we got louder and softer. It reminded me of our discussion of the Quakers, who tend to connect their statements to ideas in what people said earlier in the meeting, forming a narrative. In band, we form a song instead of a narrative, but it's the same priniciple. While the notes are already written out, it's our job to add the music with dynamics, articulation, etc. And we do imitate the people who play before us.

I think the teamwork involved in making music is one of the most powerful aspects of it, because--at least in my experience--there's something really special about being in a big group of people with one common goal. I've felt similarly in various ensembles, both secular and religious. Maybe the coolest thing about it is the fact that so many people can be united about their goal. I've played in bands with 500 people all playing the same music and working with one another. I've also sung worship songs with 24,000 people in one stadium, all focused on the same goal (God). In both of these cases, there's a very real group unity even when I don't know the vast majority of the people I'm making music with.

So what does this mean? I'm not really sure, but here are a few possibilities. Humans are naturally group-oriented and therefore feel good when they're in groups. This would explain why so many religions include community as a core element. Or, it might just be that music unites people (like Catrina said). However, this could be because it allows people to find something that they all share so that they have a common goal and can therefore feel united. We all have emotions, and if music produces emotions, then it's something that can be that common ground. So it could be both that humans like groups and that humans like music. That's true for me, at least. :-)

Historical Biblical Criticism

Oliver wrote what I consider an excellent response to J.B.'s post on our Margaret Fell reading. J.B. brought up a few different points, but they all basically boil down to whether or not the Bible is divinely inspired, and what that means for people who try to follow it. I agree with what Oliver said, but I have a few things to add. I think historical Biblical criticism, as a movement, is the key in interpreting the Bible as it was meant to be read and that after this interpretation, there won't be those apparent criticisms J.B. mentions.

First of all, there are disagreements within the Christian church as to what it really means that the Bible is divinely inspired. Some say that every single word has been chosen by God (similar to dictation), while others maintain that God's Holy Spirit inspired the Bible writers with the ideas but let them express those ideas through their own words (and, accordingly, through their own perspective derived from personal experience). In the second view (which is what I believe), the Bible is all true because it came from God, who is perfect. But that truth is expressed in different ways depending on the mindset of the writer and must be interpreted accordingly.

Therefore, most modern Biblical scholars use historical biblical criticism when examining the Bible. To do this, they study the historical context around each passage--who the writer was, who the intended readers were, what was happening historically at the time, and what the current systems of belief and thought were. They then use this information as a lens through which they examine the passages. Looked at in this way, some statements make more sense in light of other passages in the Bible. When Oliver said that Biblical commands are based on reason, this type of criticism brings out the reason. What is unreasonable about looking at the context of a text? It's what historians do all the time. It may be a lens, and lenses can be very subjective (like Augustine's love-lust theory), but this particular lens is the lens of objectivity (at least as much objectivity as it's possible to have). People who don't use historical criticism are making the mistake of applying their own modern lens to ancient texts.

Margaret Fell's commentary illustrates historical criticism very well. She notes that when Paul wrote that women should not speak in church, he was trying to keep order in the church and prevent confusion (1 Cor 14:34-35). Fell claims that the women Paul was addressing were "tatling and unlearned" and "busie-bodies," and while this isn't expressely stated in 1 Corinthians 14, it is a very logical assumption based on Paul's discussion of only preaching intelligibly and in an orderly fashion. Writing to the Corinthians with their presumably uneducated and gossipy women, it was most effective just to say "women" should be silent in church since Paul didn't intend for the letter to be read by people all over the globe for the next 2,000 years.

On a slight tangent, I'd like to express my view on J.B.'s point that Christianity is so rooted in the Bible. What Oliver said is true--it's no more unreasonable for someone to believe in a divinely inspired sacred text than it is to believe in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent being. And if someone does happen to believe that, what incentive is there to deny the authority of the sacred text? (Especially when it makes so much sense... interpreted with context in mind, that is.) But at the same time, different branches of Christianity have different ideas of what form the basis of their religions. For Catholics it is scripture + tradition, for many Protestants it is (or started out as) scripture alone. I'm United Methodist, and our doctrine has a so-called quadrilateral of sources: scripture, tradition, reason, and experience. So while we believe in the authority of the Bible, we don't always take it at face value or literally; we use our reason and personal experience (as well as traditions formed by others' reason and experience) to discover what [we think] scriptures really mean.

The Importance of Theology

In class today, we discussed the difference between theology and religious studies. Theology is what people believe and how they view the world "from the inside [of religion] out" while religious studies looks at why and how people believe, studying patterns of belief from the outside in. I would argue that by that definition, religious studies is missing out on an essential element of the study of religion. It's only looking at half the picture. I admit that I am biased in this opinion because my own faith and theology are very important to me, but I believe that it's important for anyone studying religion to look at both the theological and academic sides of it.

Prof. Smith mentioned how it's so hard to get people to think about religion in terms of religious studies (patterns, "big picture religion," etc.) instead of theology, and I think that is a clue that theology is a very important aspect of religion. I'm not saying one should ignore the academic, objective study of religion, but I don't think we should ignore the theological either. I don't think it makes sense to exclude most people's idea of religion from the study. In my opinion, what tends to happen when we do that is we dismiss religion as completely fabricated without first examining it from the perspective of a believer. Like I said in my first post, I see religion as inherently out of the realm of empirical knowledge and study, so an academic study of religion that only uses an empirical lens is incomplete. I think we should take time to look through both the lens of science/logic and the lens (or theology) of the religion itself. Even though theology is not based on empirical evidence, it does make sense when approached with the mindset that it could be true, whereas I feel like religious studies is very skeptical of that and doesn't address it at all. (Again, this is my personal opinion and I could be wrong.)

We established in class that even in religious studies, it becomes necessary to study theology when looking at how religion affects (and is affected by) social change. I believe this is because theology profoundly influences how people behave--it is, after all, their entire worldview. The things we've discussed in class that are part of religion such as social identity and creating meaning are rooted in theology. A believer's identity is based on his or her belief as to the relationship of human beings to the universe and/or higher power. Theology tells believers if they are to be part of close-knit groups or seclude themselves for private meditation. And obviously, it's theology that defines the meaning that believers find in life. So much of religion is, like this, rooted in the inside that studying it purely academically--from the outside--comes up short.

Rastas and Ethiopians

Reading the Wikipedia article on the Rastafari movement, I noticed a similarity between it and Ethiopian Christianity in that both movements were intimately connected with their cultural environment. The Ethiopians used the Kebra Negast's story of descent from Solomon and Sheba to justify their nation, making it the greatest nation in the world in their eyes (the Promised Land). The black (possibly former slave) Rastas, likewise, brought themselves out of oblivion into special status when they saw Haile Selassie I of Ethiopia, the only black king of the time, as Christ in his second coming. Their original doctrine of black superiority makes it clear that their racial oppression was a huge factor in the emergence of this religion, even though they changed it later to promote racial tolerance by all. They still view any non-Rastas as corrupted by the world, which they call Babylon. Africa is seen as Zion, or the Promised Land, to which they all desire to return so they can escape white oppression (or downpression, as they would say). In her latest post, Heidi says that the black peasants in Jamaica--the birthplace of the Rastafari movement--lived in plain view of the much richer upper classes. Their oppression was probably always on their minds, so Rastafari brought them an escape from that depressing fact. With the belief that they were immortal and destined to return to their fatherland, Africa, the Rastas were better able to deal with their hard lives. The Ethiopians, though they weren't oppressed like blacks in the Americas, still had to deal with the Jews' talk of their superiority (in the Bible if not also in person from travelers or immigrants). As a result, both groups reinterpreted scripture and added to it with their own stories. And each story established the particular high status of the group who wrote it.

We've discussed how religion changes with time due to different interpretations of old ideas, traditions, and texts, but through these two examples we begin to see why. At least in these cases, the changes are very beneficial to the group in question, raising their morale and self-importance. Robin Marantz Henig quotes William James in the article we read at the beginning of term called "Why We Believe" as saying that religion fills people with "a new zest which adds itself like a gift to life... an assurance of safety and a temper of peace..." (62). Both of these situations fit that description, making the followers of the new religions happier in their current lives. However, when their culture changes again, their religious beliefs may also change to fit that new situation, again giving them a way to feel content.

Religious Hybridization

According to Almeida, the author of our reading, the Christians in Ethiopia practice many Jewish traditions even though they believe in Jesus Christ as the Messiah. They still practice circumcision despite New Testament proclamations (by Paul in particular) that Christ came to save everyone regardless of whether or not they're circumcised. Interestingly, in this case not only the Jews and Christians are circumcised, but so are the Moors and "heathens" (62). Apparently, the Ethiopian Christians were oppressive toward non-Christians and indirectly pressured them into this behavior. Also, the Ethiopian emperors are polygamous, marrying many women of many different religions. Almeida compares this to King Solomon, who had a thousand wives and concubines and fell into sin by building pagan shrines for them to worship at (69). If the Ethiopian Christians really are descended from Jewish migrants (with or without the alleged son of Solomon and Sheba), this would make sense. Another aspect of Ethiopian culture that reminded me of the Israelite Jews of the Old Testament was their warfare. Apparently, "the life of all [in Ethiopia] who are not farmers is war" (76). In the Old Testament, the Israelites go to war many times against Gentile tribes, fighting against those who are not the Chosen People. Now that Ethiopia sees itself as the Promised Land, it is no surprise that they would be aggressive in warfare like Israel was. Aside what could be seen as Jewish customs, the Ethiopian Christians also have practices that the Catholic missionaries see as erroneous and sinful: they baptize their babies too late (so many of them can't get to heaven because they die before their baptism) and they are heavy wine drinkers (63, 65).

The Ethiopians' relative isolation and correspondingly unique religion shows that culture has a considerable impact on the direction of a religion--so much so that different cultures are able to have completely different customs and behaviors and profess the same belief. The Catholic missionaries from Portugal see many problems with the Ethiopian cultural practices of the Christians as well as the other religious groups. Yet both the Portugese missionaries and the Ethiopians call themselves Christians and read from the same Bible. Culture, therefore, has a very large influence on the form of interpretation used with religious texts.

Ethiopia and Zion

If, like we postulated in class on Wednesday, the Kebra Negast was written in order to build community pride and unity, the writers did a very good job. Especially in Part II of the reading, many passages proclaimed Ethiopia's privileged status in God's eyes. First, the merchant Tamrin counters an Israelite's claim that the promised land is much better than Ethiopia, saying that the only thing Ethiopia lacks that the Israelites have is wisdom (44-45). This passage surprised me quite a bit, actually, because the Bible does describe Canaan as the land of milk and honey (although I don't remember the exact reference right now), and it seems arrogant of the Ethiopians to say that their country is even better than that. However, such a belief works very well in giving the Ethiopians something to be proud of. In the course of this story, though, they get something much more impressive even than that--Zion (the ark of the covenant). Not only do they bring Zion (and therefore God's dwelling place and presence) into Ethiopia, but they also are escorted by an angel. Their whole caravan is lifted off the ground as they travel, and they make such good time that wise Solomon doesn't believe it at first (78-79, 87). How much more blessed could they be than that? This whole incident follows an extended description of the great and numerous blessings that God bestows on those kings who please him by following his word (56-58). Later in the reading, Solomon confesses to God that he has not been following the word and this is the cause of his misfortune, but the Ethiopians apparently have been diligent and therefore are reaping the benefits (93).

In a dream on the night of his son's conception, Solomon saw a bright sun rise up, leave Israel forever, and settle in Ethiopia (35). Although he didn't realize it at the time, this sun is Zion, and Israel loses its privilege forever when Zion leaves the country. Ethiopia then can make a valid claim as the most blessed nation. Ethiopia had already been granted all the land East to India (and even further than that), so with this considerable territory coupled with God's very presence with them through Zion, it's no surprise that they developed a belief of their nation's superiority (53). I'd personally be interested in learning more about Ethiopian Christianity, so isolated as to allow--presumably--for exaggerated claims of its own uniqueness. The idea that Ethiopia is so special and privileged doesn't seem to gel very easily with the rest of the Bible and its continued discussion of Israel's chosen status as far as I can tell. But I don't know a lot about the issue, so I'm in no position to judge it.

The "Essence" of Religion

Catrina and Alex both recently posted about the definition of religion, and I'd actually just been thinking about the same issue because of a reading I had to do for my Christianity in the Modern World class. In On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers, written in 1799, Friedrich Schleiermacher tackles the very same question, and his basic conclusion is that religion's true form is personal experience--feeling and intuition. What I find so interesting about Schleiermacher’s definition is that instead of seeing religion as a box or chain or whatever other metaphors we’ve used in class, he sees it as only the very essence, or core, of those aspects which we seem to categorize within the religion definition. In his words, “religion is the sensibility and taste for the infinite,” meaning that when one has a religious experience, one feels immediately a connection to the infinite, a.k.a. God, and this feeling is so strong that one knows without a doubt that there really is that connection to the infinite (285). He divides human experience into three categories: thinking, acting, and religion. Thinking includes science, rationalism, and metaphysics, and this is not religious because it is derived from imperfect [finite] human views of the world. Acting, or doing, includes morality and is not religious because it isolates humans instead of seeing them as part of the infinite universe. According to Schleiermacher, thinking and acting are “empty” except when approached from the perspective of previous or current religious experience (286). Catrina mentioned in her post that “morality is not purely the realm of the religious,” and Schleiermacher would definitely agree. To him, a religion cannot be defined strictly by morality; it needs to have the underlying religious experience (like the “spirituality” that Catrina talked about) to back it up.

Schleiermacher talks a lot about how morality and metaphysics are so often seen as religion but are really just an outgrowth of one's awareness of the world gained through the aforementioned religious intuition. Religion itself is simply that feeling, and everything else connected to it--theology, identity, community, morality, etc.--instead of being based on the intuition of knowing God are based on such things as consciousness or contemplation of finite things. Therefore they are not really religion, and critiques of them should not be counted as critiques of actual religion. This would be one answer to Alex's aversion to religious sects that sanction violence toward outsiders (although I do think Catrina's point in class on Wednesday was very important as well--she said that even without religion, people will still naturally create in- and out-groups which will lead to conflict). Schleiermacher would most likely agree with Alex that such violence is wrong, but he would not see it as a fault with the religion but with the human interpreter of the religious experience.

When Schleiermacher defined religion, he differentiated between Religion the entity (almost like Plato would say… the “form” of religion) and various religions, which he saw as outward manifestations of real Religion. Interestingly, he accepted religious pluralism, saying that no religion is able to be a perfect version of Religion. This idea seems to go along with what we’ve been talking about—that it’s so hard to define religion because all religions are so different that they don’t necessarily all have the same common elements. While Shleiermacher sees it as different perspectives of approaching the same “taste for the infinite,” we’ve been talking about it as different manifestations of humans’ evolutionary desire for supernatural explanations and/or community. As different as our class’s complicated definition of religion and Schleiermacher’s very basic definition seem, we come out with almost the same conclusion. It’s just that Schleiermacher didn’t try as hard to figure out what all the different manifestations of religion could be like we’re doing.

Metropolis and Marxism

I was quite surprised to be watching a 1920s silent film in Religious Studies class this week, but after the discussion in class on Monday, it made a lot of sense why we watched it. The movie's many uses of religious themes and imagery to convey a very non-religious point illustrates just how useful and versatile religious allegory can be. In my opinion, the movie is critiquing the Marxist view that society must change through a revolution from below, because it clearly shows that a revolution from below can be disastrous, and it also advocates a mediator from above as the real solution. Noelle made an excellent point in class when she discussed how the intended audience of the film was the upper classes (since the lower, working, classes wouldn't have the time or money to spend at the cinema). With that audience in mind, it makes a lot of sense for director Fritz Lang to propose action from the upper rather than lower classes.

I don't remember who said it in class, but I agree with the idea that using religious imagery like this allows viewers to implicitly understand much more than is explicitly shown in the film, especially with the limits it has in being a silent film with so little dialogue. If Lang had wanted to get the same point across without using these religious themes, he would've had to work a lot harder in his character and plot development. Some of the examples of religious (Christian) imagery in the movie were the character Maria, the story of Babylon, and the idea of a mediator between high and low (like Jesus brought together God and humankind). Using these and other images, viewers' conceptual blending allows them to bring in well-known events and character traits from the Bible to supplement what Lang shows onscreen. The main point of the movie doesn't seem to be to promote these religious themes, especially since they're somewhat inconsistent with the Bible (the metaphor isn't uniform). Instead, especially considering the historical and geographical context of the film and filmmaker, it was intended to address socio-economic and political issues rather than religious ones. The religious overtones of the film simply made the task much easier by accelerating the plot and character developments.

Sam Harris' Exaggerations

In looking at Sam Harris' long collection of quotes from the Koran in his book, The End of Faith, I couldn't help noticing that--whatever he might say about them--at most, four of the passages (2:190-93, 2:216, 2:217-18, and 3:156) could be seen as supporting actually fighting nonbelievers. And even these passages are somewhat questionable in that regard: the first might only apply to retaliation, the second and third could be figurative (since I can't see them in context), and the fourth could also be in self-defense. The rest of the passages do promote a vicious attitude toward the nonbelievers, but Allah seems to be the one taking all the action against them, not the Muslims themselves (Harris 118-123). If it weren't for those few passages about fighting, I personally would interpret this part of the Koran to mean that nonbelievers are damned by Allah to eternal suffering after they die and that they deserve it--not that Muslims must go attack them and bring their death sooner (after all, they should be given time to accumulate as many sins as possible to increase their punishment...). Just because Muslims may hate nonbelievers, they don't necessarily have to kill them: hating and murdering are very different things. As far as fitting in those other passages about fighting, I'm not sure what to do. Since I don't have them in context, it's hard to discern what meaning they were originally meant to convey, but again, it may be figurative. Like Augustine said about violent Biblical passages, the fighting may have been geared toward the sin of the nonbelievers, not the people themselves (Augustine 76-77). However, Harris says that Muslims see the Koran as "literal and inerrant," so it all depends on one's interpretive methods (Harris 110).

Reading Harris' brutal attack on Islam, I feel that he highly exaggerated both the prevalence of Islam-related terrorism as well as the amount of support for it in the Koran. I think Noelle is very right to say that terrorism is far from "commonplace" as Harris describes it (Harris 109). And I'd like to elaborate: not only are the 2.8 million Muslims in the United States acting perfectly peaceful, but so are the majority of Muslims even in the Middle East and all across the globe. While some small factions of the religion have embraced terrorism as the most highly religious act, not everyone has. I admit that the survey results Harris cites, showing such widespread acceptance of suicide bombings as justifiable, are surprising, but they're also inconclusive (Harris 125-26). In asking participants if suicide bombings are ever justifiable, the survey is including situations in which the bombings could be counterattacks to previous violence by nonbelievers. To most people, violence in response to violence is at least sometimes justifiable, and if this is what the Muslims surveyed were thinking, the survey results become much less surprising.

Noelle also brought up another good point--that the militant Islam that does occur can just as easily be explained by psychology or sociology as religion. While the civilians being bombed wouldn't have attacked Islam themselves, they could easily be a scapegoat for the Muslim's retaliation. Once people start thinking in groups, they start to see people outside their "in-group" as less than human, and it becomes easier and easier for them to rationalize immoral behavior toward those outsiders. With the addition of the pressures of obedience to authority (as Milgram described and Noelle also mentioned), the situation can quickly get out of hand as people blindly obey their corrupted leaders. However, this has not happened to a very large faction of Islam. The sects in which it has occurred probably had cultural circumstances lending themselves to such violent measures; since Islam itself hasn't adopted them, I think there's good reason to believe that the core religious beliefs of Islam are not the cause of this terrorism. (Noelle said this in her post as well, but I thought it was very important and worth repeating.)

To me, Harris' arguments seemed very naive for ignoring these major points. Not only is the Koran much less supportive of outright violence than he seems to indicate, but Muslim violence int he world today is also much less widespread. As we've learned in this class, religious writings can be interpreted to mean many different things, and the militant Muslims who have committed acts of terrorism are just one example of imposing views not explicitly supported by the text onto other passages.

Blending and Religious Beliefs

I found "Conceptual Blending and Analogy," by Gilles Fauconnier, to be surprisingly intruiging. One of the most interesting aspects of conceptual blending is the fact that it is so natural that people don't notice it and often forget about the process altogether. In his skier example, Fauconnier says that the hypothetical skier only needs to think of the analogy of a French waiter until he masters his the ability to hold his arms correctly (261-62). After this point, the position is so natural that it doesn't need any assistance from a conceptual blend. Likewise, people using computer mice have mastered the ability so completely that they don't think at all about the fact that the movement of the physical mouse is not the same as the movement of the arrow on the screen (268-69). Fauconnier states that "once the integration is achieved, this imperfection is hardly accessible to consciousness any longer" (269). I believe that this is useful information in the study of religion, because religion naturally relies heavily on analogy (since we don't have any concrete objects with which to represent God, spirits, ultimate truths, etc.). According to this theory, if we are using analogy to explain religious beliefs, we will naturally tend to forget that the beliefs are analogies.

People can become so set on the analogies which they believe to be true that they accept them with the same certainty as they would accept facts gathered through empirical observation. But the fact is that religion and empiricism are very different. Religion, as we have seen in our readings about the Neanderthals, is rooted in the mind and mental processes. It has some external effects such as hierarchy/organization and artwork, but by no means can it be measured in the same way as anything in the realm of science. This is obvious in the definition of religion itself (or lack thereof): we have a very hard time defining religion because it varies so much based on individuals' and cultures' different mindsets. Some common themes in religion, though, such as higher powers or spirits, justice, and what happens after death, etc. cannot easily be put into words that literally describe them. The definition of a "spirit," for instance, is extremely vague due to the fact that people can't see or touch spirits. Likewise, what really is "justice"? Trying to define these concepts inevitably results in some form of analogy, because in the case of justice, all we know is that it's like what we see as just except that it's infallible unlike our attempts at defining it. I recently read excerpts from Bruce Benson's book, Graven Ideologies, in which he described the difference between laws and justice: laws are humans' attempt to apply justice to their lives. When the laws themselves are interpreted as true justice, what Fauconnier predicts has occured: the two original parts of the analogy have disappeared into the recesses of the mind, leaving only their blended result.

Interpretation Allows for Change

In On Christian Teaching, Augustine demonstrates how flexible religion can be, even with a seemingly inflexible body of written word and law. In Augustine's view, Scripture can be interpreted either literally or figuratively, and figurative interpretation comes into play when the literal meaning of the passage doesn't fit with the theme of God's love (80). What he means by this is that some passages, mostly in the Old Testament, seem to encourage violence or other "bad" things, and only by interpreting them figuratively is he able to make sense of them according to what he sees as the basic message of the Bible. For example, he uses Jeremiah 1:10, "Behold today I have established you over nations and kingdoms, to uproot and destroy, to lay waste and scatter," to say that the literal uprooting and destroying, etc., only applies to kingdoms of sin, not real kingdoms. In this way, God isn't seen as violent only toward sin and not toward other people or kingdoms; therefore, his goodness and love is upheld (76-77). The fact that Augustine can, in effect, pick and choose which passages from the Bible to believe while still affirming the truth of the whole Bible, shows quite clearly that the use of metaphor or allegory--like we discussed before--makes it easy to change some aspects of a religious belief while retaining the basic form and name of the religion itself.

Augustine goes on to say that commands in the Bible must be interpreted also according to historical and cultural context, explaining that the more important aspect in an action is the motive, not the act itself. Therefore, if one follows the motive of the people in the Bible, the outcome in the current culture may be completely different than what the Bible describes (81-82). Again, Augustine is using his method of interpretation to change the literal meaning of Scriptural passages to fit what he wants it to mean. If he didn't use this method of contextual reference, he would have to find some other way to explain why he and other members of his culture did not follow every single law of the Hebrews. This ability to change laws' application is very useful for religions, because it doesn't devalue the whole religion just because certain laws aren't followed anymore. Similarly, Augustine discusses symbolic language in Scripture and describes how words sometimes have very different meanings in different passages and contexts. This further supports his tendency to allow Scripture's meanings to change. However, when he uses other passages to determine those meanings (like he recommends), I believe he is actually doing what he says he's doing--restoring the intended meaning to the passages(86-87).

While his intentions are to bring out the true and intended meaning of Scripture, Augustine is actually imposing his own opinions on the text. I personally support most of his reasoning behind the methods he uses, but I do realize that what he concludes is probably often not what was intended by the passages because he takes such a subjective instead of objective view of them.

Hope in the Midst of Destruction

As Professor Smith already pointed out in class, the article, "A Different Kind of Courage," by Charles Taylor (a book review of Radical Hope: Ethics in the Face of Cultural Devastation by Jonathon Lear), describes the Crow people as going through a situation very similar to that of the Israelites during the sack of Jerusalem. In fact, I believe that the two situations are nearly identical with respect to religious hope, the only difference being that the Israelites have progressed to an even more desperate state than the Crow.

Just as Lear's book describes the Crow as completely losing their culture because the conquering Americans took away the basis of all their values (the coup). Everything the people used to celebrate had to do with increasing or defending their hunting territory, and in a reservation, territory was no longer an issue at all. Then, everything else became completely meaningless because their whole culture had revolved around it. In the same way, the Israelites' way of life totally disappeared after the Babylonians took over their city. Their society centered around their religion--their beliefs, their leaders, and their behavior (i.e. social and dining etiquitte). With the Babylonians' sack of Jerusalem, huge numbers of Isrealites were killed, and those who remained had no temple-related structure left to which to cling. They were so desperate just to survive that they resorted to all kinds of behaviors specifically prohibited in their books of law--even murder (of close family)!

Yet, remarkably, neither the Crow nor the Israelites (at the very least the writer of Lamentations), gave up hope completely. They had what Lear called "Radical Hope," because they hoped for something they couldn't understand, believed in something to come that was still fully unknown. For the Crow, it was Plenty Coups' dream that they would be able to transform their culture into something that would survive among the white men. For the Israelites, it was Jeremiah's conviction that God is faithful and would not abandon them forever (Lam. 3:23, 31). The difference between these two hopes is that Plenty Coups' hope relied upon the Crow themselves to bring it to completion. In order for them to survive as a people, they needed to make the effort to understand the white culture and adapt themselves. The Israelites, on the other hand, cried out repeatedly for God's mercy--for Him to do the work in saving them from their enemies.

I believe that the two responses differ in this respect because while the Crow still had their health and the ability to learn about the conquering culture, the Israelites had been completely demolished. Everything they stood for was gone, and even their food was almost gone. I'm not an expert on war tactics, so I don't know if it would've even been slightly possible that such a decimated group of people could have overcome such an opposition, but I do know that it's very, very unlikely. Therefore, the only hope that they could possibly have left was to rely on God's grace alone. And this decision was made even more natural by the fact that they believed that God's wrath had been the cause of their destruction in the first place, so if God started it, God could end it.

The Function of Allegory

Just this year I learned the difference between inductive and deductive Bible studies: while deductive studies enter a passage with a preconceived idea of its meaning, inductive studies allow the passage itself to determine its meaning (with help from historical context). The allegory which Origen lavishly uses in his commentary on Lamentations strikes me as the perfect example of a deductive study. He didn't approach the book with an "open mind," but rather he chose passages from it which supported his ideas of Christian theology and applied allegory in order to make the connections clearer. Allegories should be used with caution: too often, they reflect only the commentator's ideas, obscuring the author's intended meaning. The only time allegory is an appropriate method of Bible interpretation is when the author wrote in allegory, and in such cases the connections are obvious to most people. In a video about Bible interpretation that I watched last fall, Dr. Kenneth Bailey uses the story of the prodigal son to illustrate this point. Almost anyone who reads or hears the story (a son asks for his inheritance early so he can go off on his own, only to squander all he's worth and come back years later begging his father to let him be a servant in his own house) and knows anything about God is able to see that the father represents the merciful God who forgives his children (the son) in spite of their sins (Luke 15:11-32).

On the other hand, Origen's interpretations of Lamentations imply that Jerusalem symbolizes the soul, and the destruction and captivity of Jerusalem symbolize demons (73). While this is a somewhat plausible suggestion, it is far from fact and is at most an implicit addition to the primary meaning of the text. Jeremiah, the author of Lamentations, wrote the book soon after Jerusalem--the real city--was destroyed, so one should assume that when he writes that Jerusalem was destroyed, his main intention is to say that the city of Jerusalem was destroyed. Origen himself even uses historical context in his interpretations, but he believes that the scripture has two levels and that the concrete fact of the first level is superceded by the deeper meaning he discovers with his "laws of elevated interpretation," or allegory (78). I argue that as soon as one enters the realm of allegory, all things become uncertain. Any conclusions drawn by this method depend more on the interpreter than on the text. Dr. Bailey demonstrated this in the aforementioned video by using an elaborate allegory on the Gospels to "prove" that Jesus was a Nazi: you can make almost anything work by saying, "A symbolizes B, and C symbolizes D, so clearly..." I think that some of Origen's conclusions have a very shaky foundation. They fit well with Christian theology, but they have little to do with Lamentations itself. For example, he likens the "multitude of people" in Jerusalem to "theoretical insights" and the "multitude of gentiles" to "good works," explaining that when the people left the city, Jerusalem became without the Word and lost its distinction as the greatest city (75). Christianity teaches that the Word is very important, so with this logic, such a statement makes sense; however, it has very little to do with the actual passage because it is so allegorical.

When allegories are not intended by the author of a text, the best they can do is to illustrate an idea that has already been proven elsewhere, keeping in mind that the allegory itself is a human device used for individual purposes that does not necessarily reflect the real meaning of the text. Looked at in this way, Origen's commentaries are helpful for Christians who have considerable knowledge of scripture because they unite concepts from different parts of the Bible into coherent theology. However, they must not be taken to have arisen completely out of Lamentations, but rather out of Origen's mind (with the influence of both Lamentations and other books of the Bible).

Paleolithic Eden

I decided to start a new post, because the idea I just had--as radical as it is--needs more space than just a paragraph at the end of my last post. I admit that what I'm about to write is probably of little or no relevance and relies heavily on interpreting Genesis figuratively, but it could potentially connect the Genesis story to Paleolithic people.

To begin with, I think that Guthrie's basic claims in The Nature of Paleolithic Art could very well be true based on the evidence and the arguments he provides. And those claims are that Paleolithic humans, living in the Ice Ages, were very attuned to the details of the natural world and not religious. Once the climate warmed and food became more available, they settled into more stable and larger communities, and their artwork became more and more symbolic, or religoius.

However, Guthrie also pointed out some very interesting observations about the Paleolithic people that distinguish them from later humans: 1) They did not murder or make war; 2) They worked together and respected each other; 3) They did not get sick with infectuous diseases; 4) I already said this, but they show no signs of having a religion. What I find so interesting about these observations is that #1-3 are all Eden-like, meaning that if one were to design a utopia, they would be included.

1) I think this idea is the coolest one: obviously, before sin, humans did not commit murder. The first murder came in the story of Cain and Abel (Gen. 4:1-16), after the Fall. Since murder entered history with the beginning of communities and mystical thoughts, those mystical thoughts could be thought of as the knowledge from the Tree of Knowledge that the forbidden fruit came from. Perhaps God didn't want people to try to seek knowledge on their own through mysticism (i.e. their own minds/imaginations) but preferred that they stick to what he had decided to reveal to them in the physical world around them. And when they started believing in spiritual forces, he had to banish them from "Eden" (a.k.a. the sinless state of being/society) and this is when all the murder and things started happening.

2) Guthrie says that the Paleolithic hunters would've had to have extremely good cooperation in order to survive, and this implies good relationships with one another based on respect for each other's specific contributions to the band. In Genesis, God gives the man a woman as his "partner" and "helper" (2:18-20), which implies a similar cooperation.

3) This point doesn't fit so well with Genesis since diseases aren't mentioned at all in the chapters we read, but the idea is slightly reminiscent of God's punishment for Eve. He tells her that he will increase her pain in childbirth, almost like he could increase her pain by giving her a disease. I won't carry this analogy any further, though. ;)

4) Although, like I said, the Paleolithic people didn't seem to have a religion, it depends on the definition of religion. They didn't really have symbolism or a set of written morals or anything like that, but they did have community. And, in the Genesis story, God walks with Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden (3:8). He's part of the natural world for them, so they don't need to get spiritual in order to find God. That would explain why (if the Paleolithic people are what Adam and Eve symbolize in Genesis) they are such empiricists.

So... to summarize how I think Genesis could (maybe) explain Paleolithic history:
A. God creates humans (humans evolve) and he is empirically present in their lives.
1. They live in harmony with God and each other.
2. They don't sin or have physical health problems.
B. Humans eat from the Tree of Knowledge (they start dreaming up spiritual causes for things)
1. God punishes them by removing them from his physically discernable presence.
2. They sin even more and have to continue using this spirituality to find God again.

Empiricism Then and Now

In Part I of The Nature of Paleolithic Art, which we read for Monday, R. Dale Guthrie tried to explain that Paleolithic Art is not religious, and although some of his arguments made a lot of sense, there was still the burning question (for me): Why would those ancient humans draw so much if it wasn't religious? I have very little experience with art myself, so I couldn't think of any proclaimed benefits of art besides it making people "feel good" by engaging their creativity, etc. But I couldn't imagine how the drawing of such repetetive images of large animals and the like would satisfy their desire for creativity. Why didn't they draw something different for a change?

In Part II, Guthrie found, in my opinion, a very good reason: this art was not just a hobby, it was part of an intense lifestyle that demanded skill and quick thinking just to survive day to day. Because of their "frequent life-or-death decision making," these early humans had to perfect their skills of observation and reasoning if they were going to succeed at catching prey. This is why people of all artistic skill levels practiced drawing in remarkable detail the animals on which they depended for food and survival. (419) This "look-draw-look-draw" (433) method forced them to be very attentive to all the details of the physical world around them--from the coloration of the animals to their characteristic movements to how they look at a distance (the 3D images from Lascaux Cave). Not until life became easier with the improved climate of the Holocene did symbolic images start to appear in cave art. According to Guthrie, as people started to live in bigger communities sustained by this better climate, individualism and abstract ideas began to emerge, replacing the previous preoccupation with the natural world. (419-20)

Upon reading Noelle's latest post, I noticed an interesting connection between her quote from Karen Armstrong and Guthrie's point about Paleolithic hunter-gatherers. Armstrong is quoted as saying, "One of the reasons why religion seems irrelevant today is that many of us no longer have the sense that we are surrounded by the unseen. Our scientific culture educates us to focus our attention on the physical and material world in front of us. ... One of [this pov's] consequences, however, is that we have, as it were, edited out the sense of the 'spiritual'..." This sounds exactly like what the Paleolithic peoples were doing before the Holocene--examining and recording the physical world without any concern for the metaphysical. The difference is that the Paleolithic people were pre-religion and pre-spirituality while modern people are (according to Armstrong) post-religion and post-spirituality. Instead of "edit[ing] out" (Armstrong) the spiritual, the Paleolithic humans never had it in the first place because they hadn't yet moved on past the physical.

Guthrie raises another very interesting idea, saying that after life had improved in the Holocene, people came to expect survival instead of always expecting hardship. Yet, life is never perfect, so they still encountered some hard times. Guthrie proposes that because hardship had become the exception to the norm, people tried to find reasons for it and started looking for things to blame (418). Robin Marantz Henig's concept of agent detection (from last week) would agree with this interpretation, saying that humans look for reasons-- empirically verified or not--for everything (41). In Paleolithic times, only physical reasons were useful because all decisions had such immediate and severe consequences that any mystical ideas of cause and effect would quickly become evolutionarily extinct. In contrast, in the more "leisurely" times of the Holocene or, consequences were less essential to survival, allowing more room for mystical interpretations.

Yet, somehow, humans began to venture back toward empiricism, leading to the "scientific culture" (Armstrong) of modern centuries. One might think that with the entry of larger communities and eventually civilizations, life would only improve, but Guthrie asserts that humans were made for intimate, small groups (419), which might explain the origin of many of the problems that spawned a later return to empiricism over spirituality. Guthrie's speculation about physical and mental heal problems stemming from excessively large social groups may be over-the-top, but the fact remains that early humans DID live in small groups, and we DID evolve from them. Maybe the best thing to do is to return to the small hunter-gatherer groups of the ancient past, rejecting religion and technology in favor of campfires and javelins.

Religion from the Mind

In The Nature of Paleolithic Art, R. Dale Guthrie contends that the Paleolithic art that has been excavated by archaeologists shouldn't be interpreted merely on religious or symbolic grounds because it is such a tiny fragment of ancient peoples' art. He makes the point that although some art is religious, it's only part of the larger whole (10). According to Guthrie, we shouldn't think of Paleolithic peoples as so "mystically preoccupied" (10). He prefers to look at them as humans just like us--united through evolution (11). Our humanness is most exemplefied in our "shared rational ability" which allows us to see outside of ourselves and imagine other perspectives. Because we can thus see things objectively, we can have reason, which distinguishes us from other animals. (12-13)

Although Guthrie doesn't discuss religion very much in his book, the above statements provide some interesting implications about religion. As we've discussed in class, humans are the only species that seems to have a religion. If our ability to reason is also unique to humans, do reason and religion go together? Many people would say they don't, claiming that religion blinds people to their own common sense. For example, Richard Dawkins states that Catholic priests and monks are denying themselves their instincts to reproduce because they ignorantly obey an imagined God (The Selfish Gene). While it's true that some religious behaviors go against biological/evolutionary logic, this is not true of all. We've already established in class that religion can be beneficial to groups and individuals--it brings people together, promotes altruism, and gives people hope. Robin Marantz Henig addressed some of these benefits in the article, "Why Do We Believe?" from last week.

Our reading about Neanderthals earlier this week supports the idea that complex thoughts and highly developed minds brought about religion, although in that case it is cognitive fluidity rather than reason that is the main difference between human and animal brains. However, cognitive fluidity, or the ability to make connections between different areas of the brain and produce metaphors, is closely related with the ability to reason, or to see outside of oneself. This is because the connections involved in cognitive fluidity are what allow people to make analogies to things outside of themselves. Early humans could gain understanding of fellow humans and of the natural world through their rational abilities, and it is logical to think that they came to other conclusions as well--namely, the existance of spiritual beings. I believe we also discussed this idea briefly in class. The only other way I can think of religion originating is the way described in Genesis of God deliberately appearing to humans and telling them who he was. But if humans did come to the conclusion that there is a god through their rational thought, then either they're right and there is a god, or their reasoning led them astray to a mistaken conclusion. I realize that our systems of reasoning have been significantly changed/improved since then, but the fact remains that it may have been the very same process by which some people try to disprove religion that religion actually started.

This seems slightly ironic to me... if we're looking for the rationale behind the origin of religion yet are concentrating on the rational/scientific, i.e. physical, explanations, we're ignoring the whole spiritual aspect of religion. And that is not a small part, either; what is religion without the spiritual?

In Response to Catrina's Post...

Catrina, I really liked your post. In response to the middle-schoolers you talked about and other people with similar opinions, I want you to know that it bothers me almost as much as it bothers you when Christians are so hostile toward atheists. I'm a Christian and my faith is very important to me, but I try very hard not to behave/think like that.

Here's how I see it, as a Christian: God created the universe and everything in it, but of all of that, he especially blessed human beings, making them in his image and giving them priveleges over the rest of creation. Unfortunately, humans rebelled, so he had to find another way for them to be in union with him. This is where faith comes in. According to the Bible, God's grace is so great that he saves us all from our inevitable sins, and all we have to do to receive eternal life is acknowledge this through faith in Christ.

Now, faith is a choice. (I believe that humans have free will.) If you choose faith, you will be able to live in communion with God and participate in his great plan for the world. If you don't, you're basically denying the fact (<--to Christians, it's a fact) that you are completely dependent on God for everything. It is this arrogance which is the root of sin (like the disobedience of Adam and Eve). Atheists and members of other religions, no matter how good of people they seem to be, are committing this, the greatest of sins, by ignoring God's presence. Because, no one can be perfect. All of us are sinners, no matter how many good works we do. Therefore, Christians' desire is for all people to see the good news that we are saved in spite of our sinfulness, and this is what causes such zealous preaching, etc.

The problem that those middle-schoolers had was that they had a more Old Testament/Jewish view of non-Christians. The Jews were the chosen people, and before the coming of Jesus, God had to use earthly blessings and punishments to show people right and wrong. Jesus, however, taught Christians to love everyone, even the non-believers, and to leave the judging to God. So the call of Christians is to love everyone, atheists included, but to try to show them (by example) that life is better when you have God on your side.

One More Thing about Genesis

A couple of comments in class today as well as some of the blogs I read alerted me to what I consider a misconception of Christianity. The unfortunate thing about the evolution/creation debate is the fact that the only sides of it that people hear about it are the extremes: both the so-called evangelic atheists and the passionate Biblical creationists. There is, in fact, a middle ground in which many Christians (myself included) accept evolution as the scientific explanation for God's creation of the world. I won't go into more detail here; I've already discussed some aspects of it in my previous entry and if you're really interested in the subject you could try reading the [short] book, Can You Believe in God and Evolution? A Guide for the Perplexed by Ted Peters and Martinez Hewlett (one is a professor of biology and the other a professor of theology, and they both are Christians in the "theistic evolutionist" camp). The main point I'm trying to make is that I don't believe Genesis rejects the idea that animals could evolve. Yes, it says that God created animals, but it doesn't say God created animals exactly as they are today.

A Different Mind

Who knew Neanderthals could be so interesting? Reading Chapter 15 of Steven Mithen's book, The Singing Neanderthals, I was intruiged by the concept of a complex form of communication that didn't qualify as language. The communication of the Neanderthals, cleverly called 'Hmmmmm' (Holistic, manipulative, multi-modal, musical, mimetic), consisted of a limited set of "words" or "sentences," performed musically, which everyone used. They didn't say anything that hadn't been said (or almost said) before (228). The reason for this, according to Mithen, is that the Neanderthals possessed "domain-specific intelligence," in which they could basically only think about one thing at a time and couldn't make connections. With this lack of "cognitive fluidity," they cannot comprehend metaphors or anything connected to art, science, or religion. (233) It makes me wonder, where do we draw the line between humans and non-humans? Obviously Homo neanderthalensis are not the same species as Homo sapiens, but what distinguishes Homo sapiens as human? Is it the mind (intelligence), the heart (emotions), or something entirely different?

Neanderthals seem to be on our level when it comes to emotions. Mithen describes them as "highly emotional," having such complex emotions as guilt and confidence. They bury [at least some of] their dead (241), they neglect other duties to care for [at least some] wounded (236), and they work together very well in groups (238). All of these characteristics are reminiscient of modern humans. Even more so is Mithen's suggestion of "music therapy," or comforting song to reduce injury and/or stress (236). The Neanderthals seem almost like little children: highly emotional but not very intellectual. They are not able to make any innovations with their tools during their long period of existence--220,000 years! Yet, even children invent stories and imaginary games, so maybe Neanderthals are less intelligent still. I just think it's interesting how their musical capabilities are advanced (they all have perfect pitch!) while their minds lag far behind those of humans. However, this does support the idea that as one trait grows stronger, others grow weaker and visa versa (i.e. deaf people having extraordinary eyesight).

With the advent of the complex, cognitively fluid mind in humans came also the advent of religion. This could mean one of two things: either people's complex minds invented religion because they made up connections that didn't exist, or they were finally in the position to be able to recognize a religion/god that was already there. I would personally choose the latter, but there's no way to know for sure.

Genesis from a Christian Perspective

I'm sorry this post is so long, but I felt like all of it has to be said.

After reading Alex's post, I feel compelled to at least present a Christian alternative to the arguments he had against Genesis. First of all, I think that many of these arguments stem from the attitude that Genesis was written as a historical document. While it's true that some Christians take every word of the Bible literally, many--if not most--believe that some parts of scripture were written allegorically or symbolically, and Genesis is a classic example of that. Reading carefully you will notice that two stories are told (one in Ch. 1 and one in Ch. 2), and they each convey different themes (God's great power and love for humans, and humans' propensity to sin, respectively). On a side-note, the mindset of people back in ancient times was that "truth" was in meaning, not in details, so even if this was a historical document, the details of the specific order of creation/evolution wasn't the main point of the passage and would therefore would have some leeway. This is also the reason that the four gospels are all considered true even though they include some discrepancies in the smaller details: they all bring the same message of love and salvation but are written from different people's memories and points-of-view. But back to Genesis...

Alex criticized the "anthropocentric" perspective of Genesis, saying the writer had no reason to regard humans so highly. I disagree with this for several reasons. First, one of the main tenets of Christianity is the idea that God specifically created humans to be special among his creation. When he gave us "dominion" over the plants and animals, he was giving us a great responsibility because he loved and trusted us. He didn't plan for us to do with it whatever we wanted; the intent was that we would watch over the earth with the same loving care as God watches over us. Alex argued that there's no reason that humans should have that privelege/responsiblity of dominion since ecosystems do fine without us. Most Christians also agree that we should respect nature as it is and be careful with it, because that's how God treats us and we should do the same in our own positions. And as for Alex's question, "What makes man any less wild than the animals that were called so?" I think it's pretty obvious that humans have much more highly developed brains than any other animals. Any scientist would agree. To say that the only answer is the writer's biased anthropocentrism ignores this fact. If God were to choose one species to be his beloved stewards of the earth, it makes sense that he would choose the one with the greatest capacity for understanding. If one reads Genesis with the perspective of caring for nature like God does, the fact that humans have dominion over it only reinforces a feeling of accountablility, not carelessness.

Alex's second point was an argument against perceived sexism in Genesis--both in the fact that Eve was created from Adam's rib and that she was the first to take The Fall. Personally, I didn't find his biological arguments convincing, mainly because they all seem to be either isolated incidents or irrelevant to which sex was originally created first. And evolutionary theory actually suggests that the two sexes evolved simlutaneously in a sort of mutual evolution in which the females invested more in children and the males more in competition for mates (Dawkins, Selfish Gene, appendix to p. 142). The story of God creating Eve from Adam's rib is often taken among Christians to be symbolic of the marital status of "one flesh" because it shows that instead of being created separately (i.e. from different patches of dirt), the two are from the same body. This is the second creation story, but 1:27 says it differently: "male and female he created them," implying equal status. The fact that the other story favored men over women is most likely a reflection of the already patriarchal society when Moses wrote Genesis (around 1450-1410 B.C., long before the medieval period Alex mentioned). As is true of any type of writing, the story comes out through the lens of culture and personal experience, and this context needs to be recognized. I do agree that the church misinterpreted these passages in medieval times to reinforce their male dominance, but I don't think that was at all the intent when Moses wrote them.

Alex's harshest criticism comes in response to Original Sin. I agree that if God made pain and toil the penalty for knowledge, he would not be a good God. However, I disagree that this is what God did. I believe that the reason God made the Tree of Knowledge is to assure that his people would have the power to choose their own path. He wanted the best for them, which was to stay in communion with him (after all, he is perfect), but he didn't want to force them into it. I believe that the knowledge of good and evil (3:5) in the tree is not as important as the fact that it makes people "like God" (3:5). God isn't discouraging knowledge in itself; he's discouraging the attempt to find it independently of God and to disobey the Creator (who desires obedience because he has great plans for everyone's ultimate best interest). When God found out they had disobeyed, he didn't admonish their new knowledge, he said, "Have you eaten from the tree of which I commanded you not to eat?" It's the command that is important. Perhaps the reason the tree is of knowledge is that only knowledge of good and evil can help Adam and Eve deal with reality after they've sinned. In Eden, they could get by just fine by simply caring for the garden as God commanded, but after sinning they were no longer worthy to stay there and have to be able to distinguish between good and bad if they are to try to obey God in the future (and avoid more disastrous mistakes/sins).

I don't understand Alex's complaint about the Garden of Eden story ignoring the rest of the world. The beginning of Genesis clearly says that "God created the heavens and the earth" (1:1), not just Eden. Life had to start somewhere, and in this symbolic story of creation it is Eden. While Moses doesn't mention any other lands in the story, he doesn't at all imply that they don't exist. And what point would there be for God to tell Moses to add them to the story? I don't see it as a relevant detail. Also, the fact that all animals have pain in childbirth and that snakes evolved to not have legs simply indicate that this story isn't to be taken literally (in my opinion, at least). God used these images to convey the basic story he wanted to tell. As Sarah M said, if God had told Moses the exact scientific explanation (Big Bang, evolution, etc.), would anyone have understood him?

Scientific Explanations Can't Disprove Beliefs

Robin Marantz Henig's article, "Why Do We Believe," describes how various evolved traits may have produced religious belief, but it's important to remember that the processes by which these religious beliefs came about have nothing to do with their validity as beliefs. Justin Barrett put it well, saying, "Suppose science produces a convincing account for why I think my wife loves me -- should I then stop believing that she does?" (78). The simple fact that our [physical] brains have the tendency to believe something merely indicates that the belief exists. It doesn't provide evidence either for or against the existence of whatever thing it is that we believe in. As a Christian, I believe that this is just one more piece of evidence that God created humans to be in a relationship with him (which obviously rests on belief that he exists). Other people could interpret it in different ways: some atheists, such as Richard Dawkins, say that religious belief is a self-propagating "meme" that has developed because of our mistaken perceived need for the supernatural and for meaning and happiness in life.

Science and religion are separate entities, science dealing--by definition--with the physical world, and religion (and philosophy) dealing with the metaphysical. Therefore, science and religion look for answers in very different ways. When scientists try to find evolutionary reasons for religious beliefs, they are only looking at empirical signs. Theologians, on the other hand, look beyond the physically observable world to the realm of the spiritual. They don't push the physical world aside as wrong; they just are looking at a different side of reality. Neither should scientists completely ignore non-physical aspects of the world Or, if they do, they need to realize that they're not looking at the whole picture. While science has the power to look at all the physical evidence of a situation--in this case, religious belief--it has no way whatsoever of "measuring" the spiritual world like it would measure anything else. Therefore, the object of study is not complete, and any explanations based on this study can only be fully true if there is no spiritual world. (And since it's not observable by scientific standards, there is no way to prove if there is or not.) If these scientists conclude that religious belief is a behavioral tendency that has evolved based on such cognitive tools as agent detection, causal reasoning, and folkpsychology (41-42), they could very well be right that these patterns of thought are among the causes of religion. They just need to remember that they have no way of knowing if there is another (possibly more significant/powerful) cause completely removed from the physical realm of science. In my personal opinion and experience, there is, and it is God.