If this book was meant to change my view of religion irrevocably it has failed rather miserably. Quite the opposite, if anything. What disappoints me with many books of this type is how little the authors really understand religion, and how unaware they are of their own presuppositions. It's cool to observe and critique from the outside, and I'd probably agree with much of what they see...
more If this book was meant to change my view of religion irrevocably it has failed rather miserably. Quite the opposite, if anything. What disappoints me with many books of this type is how little the authors really understand religion, and how unaware they are of their own presuppositions. It's cool to observe and critique from the outside, and I'd probably agree with much of what they see at face value. But observation is one thing, correct analysis or interpretation is another question.
The observation that humans have a genetic predisposition to worship anyone waving a sandal (a la Life Of Brian) holds no surprises for me. We just can't help ourselves. In the West, the crazy antics Christians get up to in an effort to follow that primal urge can be really amusing, and sometimes really sad. And sometimes, just sometimes, really moving. Singing, praying, speaking in tongues, slaying in the spirit, taking up a collection... I'm sure it's no less wacky in the East. But hey, Jacque Ellul was demystifying church services and youth groups years ago in False Presence Of The Kingdom, and he was a God-botherer. For him they were largely sociological phenomena. Alper takes it one step further and provides a biological explanation. So what? I would agree with all of that and still choose to believe in Hughey upstairs. How we respond to what's out there doesn't change what's out there.
Alper starts and finishes his book with the example of planarian worms that follow light. He argues that, through natural selection, those worms have evolved to always follow light. Cool, I can dig that. An external stimulus winds up selecting out individuals that haven't taken better advantage of that stimulus and you get left with the ones that do. Take-home lesson: your biology is not totally determined by your genes.
In the same way, he goes on to argue, humans have evolved a hardwired urge to believe in a supernatural "other" because it helps them to survive the trauma of being self-aware, mortal, alone. Well, that's one possibility. He doesn't explore the possibility that something really is "out there", and that it has embedded a sense of itself over a long time. Christians have maintained this as a core teaching since day one - they call it "being made in the the image of God".
Alper doesn't consider this possibility because he's never been able to prove God exists, so there's no point is exploring. How naive. I can't "prove" God exists but, for a whole bunch of reasons, life makes far more sense to me to live as if he/she/it does. It's a calculated gamble. Hey, I can't prove I exist either, but it's a whole lot easier to live as if I do.
What's really sad about this book is that, by Alper's logic, not only is God a product of evolution, but so are morality and ethics. I'm not disputing the latter completely. But to take his point to its logical extreme, not only should we dispense with believing in God and living accordingly, but we should also dispense with any kind of rules for how we live together, because they're just products of natural selection too. I'm struggling to think what our cultures would look like without any kind of morality or ethic. Murder? Incest? Beauty? Are these really just biological artefacts to help us perpetuate the species, either alone or in communities? Really?
And if beauty is just biology, murder and incest just evolutionary traits in response to these selfish genes, how should we then live? The best Alper could respond to the absence of "traits" like kindness, altruism or generosity, is to suggest we choose to do these things anyway, because it will make us feel more comfortable as communities and we can still drive our kids to kindy with some sense of security they'll be alive when we come back to collect them.
Such reductionism has always appeared to me a totally inadequate explanation for this incredible existence we share. Yes, our biology is amazing. And our hardwiredness makes us do some pretty stupid, and sometimes really dangerous things. But to say that because we're hardwired to believe in God means there is no God makes as much logical sense as telling worms that light doesn't exist either. And tell all the little spiders that webs don't really exist just because they're really good at making them without anyone telling them how. We just better make sure we never put a scientist in charge of the planet. Or a Reverend for that matter. Maybe democracy is OK after all.
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