Why do religion?

I feel a need to apologize for or explain the recent excursion into mystical shit. Why, I'm not sure -- who am I apologizing to? Myself I guess. Does anyone else care? In part it was motivated by a feeling that I have to put some money where my mouth is. If I really believe, as I've said here on occasion, that religion is an important and fundamental part of being human, then I have to do it. Whatever religion is, it's not just something you think about or believe, it's something you practice. So I'm doing, in a fairly random and haphazard way, to be sure.

The whole Omer/Kabbalah stuff really just served as way to nucleate my usual self-absorption along certain lines that happened to be the same as other people in our synagogue's little study group. The point of this was to do this collectively, as part of a social group, which is not something I normally do. It's hard to make sense of that communal act out of its context -- it is at least as much about doing something together with a particular group of people as it is about the ostensible content. Last week I was at a scientific meeting on synthetic biology (crashing it actually), and I'm struck by what ought to be by now a banal truth, which is that more than half the point of these things is networking or simply being there and constituting a social group, rather than some kind of pure disembodied information exchange. This is a pervasive phenomenon, but it's just more obvious in the case of religion than it is in cases where there are rational reasons for people to be together.

So religion is fundamentally social, just like everything else. I am someone who is (or at least perceives himself as) fundamentally asocial and areligious, and constantly working on trying to fix that.

What I ask of the free thinker is that he should confront religion in the same mental state as the believer -- He who does not bring to the study of religion a sort of religious sentiment cannot speak about it! He is like a blind man trying to talk about colour.

The most bizarre or barbarous rites and the strangest myths translate some human need and some aspect of life, whether social or individual -- Fundamentally, then, there are no religions that are false. All are true after their own fashion. All fulfill given conditions of human existence, though in different ways.

Because society can exist only in and by means of individual minds, it must enter into us and become organized within us. That force thus becomes an integral art of our being...

There cannot be a rational interpretation of religion which is fundamentally irreligious; an irreligious interpretation of religion would be an interpretation which denied the phenomenon it was trying to explain.

From my standpoint...religion ceases to be an inexplicable hallucination of some sort and gains a foothold in reality. Indeed, we can say that the faithful are not mistaken when they believe in the existence of a moral power to which they are subject and from which they receive what is best in themselves. That power exists, and it is society...In this way, religion acquires a sense and a reasonableness that the most militant rationalist cannot fail to recognize. The main object of religion is not to give man a representation of the natural universe...religion is first and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members and the obscure yet intimate relations they have with it.

-- Emile Durkheim (the son of a rabbi, I just learned), The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Well, I could pull quotes from Durkheim all day, but the overarching point is that religion is about something real, and that whatever it is, is the same thing that animates social life in general. So, my interest in religion has two aspects: from the personal side, I do it to align myself with the social, something that I feel I need to do in order to be a mature adult (still working on that at my advanced age). And from the outside, I don't think you can understand politics without understanding religion, a point I touch on occasionally and is the subject of an interesting-sounding new book on "political theology".

We live in a dangerous time. The old gods are dead, the new ones have not sorted themselves out yet. I feel some sort of an obligation to be part of the sorting process.

Science and (yawn) religion notes

1) Let's open with the leading philosopher of social constructivism in science:

Be assured, I am not going to tackle the most boring question known to man (just after the so called Mind/Body problem, that is) namely the pont aux ¢nes, as we say in French, of Science and Religion. Nothing ever comes out of these disquisitions...The fights, reconciliations, ceasefires between those two "world views" are as instructive as a boxing match in a pitch black tunnel. Even if there are winners and losers (there do seem to be some from the cries of victory and screams of pain you can still hear), the winners and losers are ultimately indistinguishable anyway, since they both accept an unscientific science and an irreligious religion.

-- Bruno Latour, Will Non-humans be Saved? An Argument in Ecotheology

2) Here's a long, decent article on the Templeton Foundation, which has fascinated me for awhile now. But its blending of science and religion may be secondary to its blending of financial speculation and religion:

When Templeton created his foundation in the mid-'80s, conventional wisdom still largely held that religion would retreat as science secularized the world. But in Templeton's eyes, this made religion the perfect investment. "To get a bargain price," he would say, "you've got to look for where the public is most frightened and pessimistic." Religion's potential value far exceeded the asking price; a lot could be done with a little.

3) Herman Wouk, of all people, has a new book out on S-and-R. I've never read anything by Wouk, but I sort of thought he had a reputation as a middlebrow writer even in my parent's generation forty years ago, and I'm somewhat surprised to find out he's alive. Hm, according the Amazon he's 94, and the book is "about his encounters with famous scientists, foremost among them physicist Richard Feynman, who suggested Wouk learn the "œlanguage God talks" -- calculus. Wouk tried, unsuccessfully..." Sounds fascinating. It seems like this is a topic on which pretty much everyone thinks they are qualified to have an opinion, and write a book. The market may be glutted (here's another particularly boring-sounding one), which is too bad, since I had a plan for writing my own and making a bid for the Templeton Prize.

4) I randomly butted into a conversation on the dread topic here, defending both the Dalai Lama and liberal San Francisco Jews against radical atheists. I guess I find the New Atheists even more boring than the attempted reconcilers like those above -- since I could easily make all their arguments myself if I had to, they have nothing interesting to offer me.

5)


Much more in past postings, like here, here, here, here, here, and here -- the last one contains a pretty good framework for thinking about this stuff.

What's on my mind

Messing around with some computational language tools, I generated this list of words which are more frequent on this blog relative to a standard corpus (some misspellings removed), in order from most overused. Many of these are unsurprising, but I had no idea I used "cannot" more than is normal. Or "parasitical", which is more worrying.

cannot simpleminded parasitical excoriate delegitimize kvetching temperamentally treacly politcs cosmopolitans authoritarians twitter rightwingers inexpert constructivists constructionists entertainingly clathrate undesireable frenzies mystifies wastefulness repurpose gintis wobblies kunstler turmoils bukovsky bankrolls laitin smidgeon sociopaths scienceblogs cleavon oddsmaker vegetating reifying situationists doper yecs popularizer nobels cultish solidary arduino militarist prolixity congealing proft larded atran nixonian seatmate appeaser rationalists leftish libertarianism literalist materialist vitalism rejoinders schuon fusty facebook torahs arduously hugeness universalizing tinkerers factuality autoworkers parasitize rationalist dominionism physicalist incarnating idiocies axiomatically ferreted gourevitch glaringly symbiote averagely incisively shitheads skimped netzach appall metonymic onrush chokehold halldor churchy scampers starkest agentive dalliances emet mistimed ceasefires hallucinated reimagined overplaying bioethicist copleston disempower flippancy oversimplifies outrageousness indvidual ginned douchebags explicates plumbs mencius metaphysically schelling foregrounding polarizes outlives subtexts acquiesces nostrums undescribable malkuth marketeer analagous preeminently remediable flamers slipperiness bunraku proles burkean peaceniks materialists unaccountably athwart mcworld petraeus romanticizing unnamable huffpo ineffectually commonsensical interoperating empathizing wingnut supplicants hypostasis inchoate obama transhumanists fulminate affordance nonviolently geneological gashed mussed chuppah charnel felin reconstructionism verbalizing tegmark crabbed armys shalizi dehumanization hoohah vannevar copyable bungler unlikeliest preindustrial legitimated downscale fugs bilin slavering egomania naveh determinedly oligarchies chasten reappropriated bekki taleb bioethicists valdis ultraconservative wahabi straussian rewatch anthropomorphism ecstasies libertarians ruination exceptionalism vacillate overreach forthrightness informationally bushites rottenness biomorphic parceled twittering sorley parapsychological irreligious statists maddeningly selfing militarists bushite infuriates deconstructionist dallying harrows glutted worths misplacement engross jewishness hearkens girdled zombified prohibitionist braf sniggering positivists prostrating doomy schmaltzy yesod hewing philosophize doomsayers unconcern conflate jibes misappropriate convulse constructionist relabeled cavalierly mesmeric phantasms atrophied nattering reductionist personhood asocial placating incuding amorality incontestable weida greybeard inescapably scrabbling foreordained puthoff antiabortion commandeering iphone reinterpreting fudges minsky spluttering obsessional explicating rovian subdues ascription graeber counterargument plops

Now I'm playing the Burroughs-ish game of trying to find meaning in this shredded language. "physicalist incarnating idiocies axiomatically" sounds applicable to a number of discussions I've been having lately.