My Religion
What a busy week it has been, and today's blogging session feels like a welcome break. I have been coding incessantly through the week, driven and inspired by ideas that keep on sprouting in my head. Today, I'm going to step back a little and examine some thoughts that have been circling in my head.
As the non-existent reader will know, I am very interested in religion as a socio-psychological phenomenon. I have expressed my view that religion is an inevitability. Any human society will inevitably develop a religion, just like art and music are natural expressions of human civilisation.
This idea should not trouble a believer of any of the popular religions. It doesn't mean religion is an unnecessary or made-up invention of humans. It will, however, challenge zealots who think that their religion is the only true one. If the doctrine of your faith demands that, it is perfectly understandable. There usually is an inviolable creed in any religious system that ensures its continued existence. And articles of faith are the foundation and stabiliser of any human institution. Religion is no exception. Like any mathematical formulation, you begin by declaring your axioms, which are nothing more than self-evident truths.
The human need for survival is a great underlying motivation for any action. That is why most popular religions provide a soteriology, or a theory of salvation. They introduce axiomatic concepts such as the possession of a 'soul', which transcends the physical body and can be resurrected and saved from bodily death.
Religion also demands a belief in deities, gods or God, who are the vehicles or paths to salvation. Your worship of these divine entities, through rites and rituals, constitutes the activities which guarantee your alignment with the axioms of your faith. And like mathematical formulations, as long as these axiomatic principles are adhered to, you can build a system of logic that explains and justifies its 'theorems', which are considered truths, as long as the axioms are accepted.
Religion as a social construct has its utility. It provides the physical, emotional and intellectual basis for pursuing social goals: cohesion, progress and prosperity. Intellectually, the metaphysics of religion provide a 'satisfying' explanation for the existence of the world. There is an act of Creation that accounts for the world which we see. God or gods were involved in this very anthropomorphic act of making and building. Because, intuitively, anything so beautiful, intricate and complex has to be 'created' by some form of intelligence. So it makes sense in a very intuitively logical way, which provides intellectual comfort. Comfort, conformance and coherence are powerful attractors.
In the language of systems science, all the religions of the world are attractor basins. They are stable regions in the state space which any human society would evolve towards. The dynamics of social systems inevitably drive humans toward them. So the call of the divine is irresistible when the conditions are right, like how water naturally flows down hills, forming rivers and lakes. From this perspective, there is no right or wrong path towards these states. The religion of your adoption depends on your starting point, the influence of family, friends, life experiences, education and incidental encounters.
Perhaps religion is less about proving ontological truths than about providing a basin of meaning into which our restless minds inevitably flow. These attractor basins are where we find meaning and consensus as a society.
Religion is not an anomaly but a natural flow of human civilisation. If we understand this, we will not fight stupid religious wars and learn to appreciate each other's beliefs better. In some strange way, this systems-science understanding of religion provides the same comforts which religion provides. And this is my religion, if ever there was one.
