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.