WHY RELIGION, WHY MYTHS, WHY HUMANITY
JAMES R. FISHER, JR., Ph.D.
© August 3, 2016
PERSPECTIVE
Taking a respite from my writing of NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND, and having been away from my correspondence for three weeks while in Europe, I thought my readers, especially international readers from as far away as Russia and Japan, might find these exchanges interesting.
A READER WRITES:
My years in the arena of organizational dysfunction and the angst it causes in its members have taken me far and wide. As I look at it all collectively in my dotage, I realize that the question of "why" will remain unanswerable (an accomplished celebrated engineer, he is writing a Kindle book on the subject).
“Now that the machinery and dynamics of dystopia have been decoded in ways that you can falsify by your own experience and testing, the central question remains:
Why does a species supposedly at the top of the Darwinian scale of intelligence navigate itself to extinction? Or, if you prefer, what makes the strategy of self-extinction intelligent?
The question was referred to the scientific study of causation, but these questions remain unanswered.
The fossil record reveals that species extinctions can rationally be attributed to events beyond the control of any species. Dramatic changes in the climate, movement of the tectonic plates, super volcanoes, asteroid impacts and the like have been used to account for the great bulk of species extinctions. So far nothing in that class of disturbance has been the fate of mankind.
The cataclysmic events of mass extinction did not confront most of mankind’s close relatives on the tree of life that disappeared, like Neanderthal, going back a million years or so. You can rule-out outrageous fortune for mankind.
If there is no material compelling purpose for man to ride into extinction, and that extinction remains the unanimous free choice of society, that is the enigma.
The fact that man in social membership chooses self-annihilation is on a collision course with his claim of top-gun rational intellect. This paradox is just one of many paradoxes that distinguish dystopia. Since a paradox is one part truth and one part lie, Utopias, in order to maintain transparency, treat an emerging enigma just like any other error to be neutralized.
Yet, the question remains: why? In our decades on the quest to develop the paradigm, nothing changed more frequently than our guess as to why all this cross-purposes irrationality exists. Most of the opinions of our cronies, like greed, power and fame, have long since been proven false. Decades of experience with distinguished professionals of psychology have not delivered a testable answer either. How could they really know far removed from the operational reality?
Another factor in the caldron of our ignorance is that everyone knows they operate in dystopia. Everyone knows they are accessories to the condition they say they despise. They know it is man made and that dystopia gets worse, never better, with time. Everyone knows the doctrine of infallibility is unsustainable. No one knows why they complain about dystopia then go straightaway to enable it.
The interesting property of the "Why" issue is that even if the true causation was proffered, there is no way to validate it. We can examine causes that are false but there is nothing like the situation in Utopia where everything can be tested against always-measurable changes in productivity. If the psychological cause of dystopia were to be identified, it would be vehemently denied by the perpetrators. There is a long history to this response of dystopia. Books are available about the denial of causation immediately followed by the actions previously denied. Some scholars of industrial sociology made a career out of it.
Utopia, the conundrum of dystopia, is solvable by taking the whole arena of social action up a level of abstraction and redesigning the problem so that dystopia causation drops out of the equation. When you can transform a dystopia to a Utopia on demand, enabling immortality, the causes of dystopia are no longer items of interest. Utopia is always bigger than its problems. Let the truth ring out that we have no falsifiable explanation for why. If you have a conjecture about cause that can be tested, it has already been run.
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
You have an interesting take on the Manichaean duality of utopia/dystopia. Since life is without cause, by seeing it in causational terms, does it make it so?
I am moving to appreciate if not clearly to understand the reason myth has so much power in our lives. Myth is necessary. It bridges the knowable with what is forever unknowable. Scientists are never going to be able to quantify the soul, so does that mean that the soul does not exist?
When myth is an instrumental (behavior) as well as a terminal value (belief) in our lives, we behave more consistent with what you propose to be our purpose. But when myth is denied, the myth of God, for example, we retrogress into the animal that we are, and that is when religion intervenes.
That is my problem and that is the theme of "In Search for the Real Parents of My Soul," which I wonder if I will ever get back to, given my waning energy.
Your outline is quite lucid and may resonate with readers. Good luck in that adventure with your book.
A SECOND READER WRITES:
I’ve been thinking about human backwardness. Hinduism is about 4000 years old, Judaism is about 3500 years old, Buddhism is about 2500 years old, Christianity is about 2000 years old and Islam, plagiarized from Judaism and Christianity, is about 1400 years old.
These are basically the major religions of the world, and here we are in the 21st century believing things that came into existence when humans knew very little about how everything works. We were able to drop the Greek and the plagiarized Roman religions as nonsense, but cannot seem to free ourselves from these other forms of nonsense.
It is understandable why people believed all this stuff thousands of years ago, but it is unfathomable why we don’t realize all these religions are like the Greek and Roman myths, which are no longer referred to as religions but rather referred to categorically as myths.
What is even more amazing is that many of the people who believe in one of the above are not stupid, but for some reason they don’t seem to get it. This is one of the greatest human weaknesses which has also manifested itself in Nazism, Communism and is evident in the politics today in this country.
The whole thing is totally pathetic. I even see it in all this black lives matter. The media does not talk about all the self-inflicted wounds evident in the black communities nor about the fact that people in those communities do not want to acknowledge what is wrong.
Monday I was in the John Germany library with my grandson, and I saw a tall pregnant black woman probably in her mid to late twenties with seven other children conceived in stair step order with the oldest about eight or nine. But all their problems are caused of course by white people, the education system and the police. No one looks in the mirror here either just like religious people, political people or any other group that thinks they know and have all the answers.
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
Why Religion, Why Myth, Why Humanity! Those three questions came to mind as I read your e-mail.
You are enamored of the mind and what the mind has accomplished, and rightly so, because in many ways we are far more humane and blessed with humanity for using the mind over matter for centuries.
You are also right, all the way back to the shamans, that religion or myth has always piggybacked on what was previously practiced and what had resonated with people before. This appeal is to the soul, and is based on faith, which to the frustration of rational man cannot be measured, proved or disproved.
Where your bias gets in the way of good sense is that you are aghast if not infuriated when you see what offends or perplexes you, such as the women in the library who seems a reproductive machine. Were she Roman Catholic in my era, she would have been celebrated because we were supposed to have as many children as God would allow. NO BIRTH CONTROL!
This woman had all her children at the library, showing she knows the importance of education and demonstrates it by example.
Having been the father of four birth children and the father of a stepdaughter, I salute rather than castigate her. It is a real chore to raise children today in a Godless universe, and I say that advisedly.
Myth, and religion as myth, is quintessentially important to our spiritual well-being as education is to our economic and material well-being. You cannot live without spiritual as well as material sustenance. Both are needed.
Man is an interloper on earth, a stranger out of place, and a manifestation of nature, not separate from nature, and yet man refuses to think of himself the same as a dog or a horse, or a mouse or a bird, or a fish when the embryonic development of all life -- at one point -- appears essentially the same.
Isn't that strange? By that I mean, isn't it strange that we think we are superior beings because we have consciousness when we are as much a part of nature as grass? Forgive me for waxing a bit philosophical as Europe always has that effect upon me, as if I am coming home.
Incidentally, touring Ireland, Scotland, Wales and Western England, and finding the tour guides talking about the Royal Family as if family, I realized how much the myth of an anachronistic monarchy remains essential identity to these people.
We need oxygen to breathe, but we need myth to live, and it comes in all sorts of variety.
Keep writing and keep thinking, and always be well.
THE READER RESPONDS:
I made the assumption that the pregnant woman with seven children being black was on welfare. When I was a teacher, there was much talk about black girls having children to collect welfare. I have no problem with having children no matter what race. However, I do have a problem about having all these children for taxpayers to support.
The black lives matter group is another bunch of people who are offended when someone says all lives matter, but they don’t talk about the black on black killings in their community nor about all the fatherless children. Until the problem is acknowledge it cannot be solved. Like in those black elementary failing schools in St Petersburg (Florida), which the Tampa Bay Times in its investigation blamed the violence and poor performance on the lack of integration, inexperienced teachers and insufficient staff.
When the real problem is the home environment, but no one wants to talk about that. Also, the death of blacks at the hands of some police officers if it occurs due to the officer’s racism then the officer should be punished. I think prejudice of all kinds will never go away entirely, but as I told one of my students whose parents were from Mexico that if you let prejudice control your life, you will be miserable.
I recently read part of a book about research of bird brains which concluded that birds are very intelligent. So the term bird brain is no longer valid. Also, from some of the latest research into the genetics of certain bacteria that live near ocean vents some scientist think that such a bacteria is where all the rest of life came from. As E. O. Wilson says we are all part of the same system and he wants to turn half of the planet into unused land because he says we need all parts of the natural world in order for the planet to survive.
I always enjoy reading your comments.
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
I like your description of the problem. E. O. Wilson studies insects and makes that world seem idyllic. Imagine if an insect could complain about its chaos. We are such a puzzle to ourselves. That is our hell, a hell which is unknown to the insect. When we are gone, the insect will still be here. What can we learn from that? Or more importantly, what will we learn from that?
ANOTHER READER WRITES:
Due to the extreme heat (in Iowa), much time has been spent indoors viewing old time movies, era 1930's early '40's. This brings me to pondering the human soul, as I view these nostalgic films, asking myself, where have all those handsome men gone?
Where does the individual come from and where do we go? Do we walk parallel worlds? Can we reach out and touch but not dare go further? Is there a force to restrict us to the confines of this earthly paradise?
This is man's eternal quandary. Then add to this the multitude of individual traits, complexes and divine in man's nature.
I ponder further, the whole world of wonder to look beyond (or is it below?) at the world you mention as the neighborhood of O. E. Wilson’s curiosity, the world of ants and other insect. It is in this micro world that reflects the macro world of man (or is it the other way around?) where thinking spirals into divisions and multiplications.
One's head can virtually swim from order to disorder to chaos as the mind explodes into realms of yet to visit dimensions of possibilities.
As we all reach the narrowing of life's pathways funneling on to the finish line, we are reminded of the fragility these last moments of confinement hold with each death of our friends and family. Are we harnessed or released? Do we evaporate, dissolve, or do we evolve??? Ah, that eternal mystery!!!
ANOTHER READER RESPONDS (to this exchange):
Without an eternal perspective and divine parentage, we are no better off, perhaps much worse off than E. O. Wilson’s insects—destined to be born and die in far less idyllic conditions than a rather cruel “Mother of Nature” provides.
We are only puzzles to ourselves when we fail to see the big picture and only fiddle with the jigsaw pieces. Our hell, if we live in one, is not knowing who we are. No animal has to endure such torture.
While some people surely “play the system” for all its worth, it’s not a fair assumption that the pregnant black woman with seven children was on welfare. Indeed, she has the toughest job in this world, regardless of the source of her revenue. Yes, Blacks have their challenges, and need to address them in ways that the “black lives matter” movement avoids.
I once spoke at a Black Leadership Conference in Atlanta. The head of the NAACP spoke just before me and argued for more government benefits and more reverse discrimination against whites. Yes, he blamed most of the problems of his black community on white racism. I left my prepared notes on my seat and spoke for 20 minutes in rebuttal.
While not slaves, Mormons were exterminated (legally) as pests and driven out of six states, all their property and money stolen, then pushing handcarts 1,200 miles across hostile territory and starting again in a desert (Utah).
Today, because of their faith and industry, the Mormon people have prospered. True, if you let hate and prejudice control your life, seeking recrimination and revenge, you will be poor and miserable.
Birds, while very intelligent, are not our kissing cousins, just products of both creation and evolution (alas, compatible concepts in high intelligence).
The mind is marvelous thing, but we are also blessed with a heart. If we have an open mind and receptive heart, a moral compass and conscience, we know when something rings true and when it rings false.
You are both justified in being critical of “organized religion” (churches) for its shamans and showmen, for false prophets and many conflicts overreaching into social, political, legal and familial realms.
As fathers, we have all felt the heavy hand of religion in the business of our heads and beds. We can’t evict God from man’s universe, or trash those who believe in Him. Yes, myth and religion as myth are quintessentially important to our spiritual well-being as education is to our economic and material well-being. You can’t live without both spiritual and material sustenance.
Man is no interloper on earth, no stranger out of place. Indeed, this earth was created expressly for him, and he was given dominion (stewardship) over all things on the face of it. We are not to act “superior” to other forms of life but as responsible stewards who at some point must give an account of our actions toward all human beings, plants and animals.
We are all part of the same “Royal Family.” What is mythical is the supremacy of the anachronistic monarchies that assert their celebrity for the sake of monetary gain and the glory of their compatriots. Perhaps we need myth to live, but we don’t need the expensive pomp and ceremony or changing of the guards at palaces or White Houses.
If “black lives matter,” then all lives matter. If life matters, then life comes with great cause, purpose, and for millions of good people, a semi-utopian destiny (though not of this world). Both myth and truth have much power in our lives. And though we often sway off the bridges that connect them, in our heart we know the one from the other.
DR. FISHER RESPONDS:
These last two correspondents had the courage to share their doubt (first case) and conviction (second case), both of which tens of thousands if not millions can relate to as well.
I just completed Part Sixteen of NOWHERE MAN IN NOWHERE LAND, which deals with skeptical clerics in the age of the dwindling appeal of conventional Christianity in the thirteen century.
These clerical skeptics were our first rational philosophers of the West, which was then called natural philosophy, and later science.
While still regarding the Holy Bible (Old and New Testaments) as truth personified, they pursued the mysteries of life, of nature and the universe to get beyond the limitations of faith and to allow their minds to have complete freedom to determine “what is” and “what isn’t,” what can be measured and replicated and what cannot.
Eight centuries later, Christianity is around but this and other religions have has had difficulty matching their mission with the transparency of science.
In this exchange, we have legitimate doubters of the role of religion if not the idea of God, and intense believers in their religion and often it is other than Christianity as my international correspondents attests.
Albert Einstein has written: “Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.” I can’t improve upon that.
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