Traditionalist Home

The "Function" of Religion?

One of the torments atheists love to inflict upon me is a rambling dissertation on how they are materialists, couched sixty-two different ways as if I didn't comprehend the first sentence.  I don't know why, but at least half of the atheists I have encountered in person seem to think that I have never met one, that I don't know what atheism is and what its implications are, and that I have never heard the profound insights which come from their enlightened mouths.

This is often followed by a theory on "why" religion exists at all, or how it originated.  Never mind that serious study has been devoted to this question for, literally, millennia.  Never mind that I have forgotten more about religion than these people have ever absorbed in their lives.  Obviously I need to hear the Great Truth which no-one else has ever revealed unto me so I can be humbled and be freed from the bonds of illusion which have imprisoned me.

One of the most popular of these theories is that religion was invented to "control other people." 

No scholar of religion--even the atheists among them, who are numerous--takes this idea seriously.  Not only does it reflect a profound ignorance of anthropology, sociology, and history, but if anyone sat and actually thought about it he would see that it makes no sense. 

For this absurdity to be true, one must posit a time in history when religion did not exist; one must suppose that no-one, anywhere, had any conception of a reality beyond the purely material one.  Then one must conceive of an individual who, either through incompetence or physical weakness, is unable to acheive his ends.  This individual must then invent the idea of religion in order to gain what he desires.

It's not only the idea of religion; he must invent an entirely new conception of reality which transcends the physical world.  And he has to convince other people of this reality.

So imagine our philosopher (the first one, apparently) approaching an atheistic fellow-tribesman with this new idea:

"Hey, I want x." 

"You can't have x!" 

"Well, there are beings whom you can neither see nor hear, and they have decreed that I shall have x!"

Does anyone really think that the atheist tribesman would just believe this with no evidence at all, and abet the First Theist in the acheivement of his aims? 

He'd be laughed out of the village!

It's a simple enough scenario to reconstruct; yet apparently no atheist who believes it has given the four minutes of thought it would require to demonstrate its sheer idiocy. 

Religion has indeed been used to control others; but the fact that a thing may be used to an end does not mean that it was created for that end.  Because of the weight of the bottle of Labatt that sits on my desk, combined with its hardness, balance, and the comfortable fit in my hand, it might make a convenient weapon.  I might break the end off in order to make it efficacious for stabbing, too.  And if I throw in the fact that not only has a beer bottle been used as a weapon in the past, but continues to be used as a weapon, and will probably be so used in the future--clearly, the "beer bottle" was invented in order to be a weapon, and its function of containing "beer" (whatever that is) is only secondary!

This line of reasoning would be absurd in the extreme.  But that is par for the course for the vast majority of atheists; despite the fact that they are always blowing their own horns to declare how reasonable and thoughtful they are, it is a rare atheist who has actually given his beliefs a modicum of thought.

Hmmm--kind of like faith...

Gay "Marriage" part II

So I'm minding my own business, trying to write a response to a response I received to my post entitled "Gay 'Marriage' and Other Mysthical Beasts." So I type my response, and the TypePig page says, "We're sorry, we cannot accept this data."

So I've posted my response here. Sorry, Unbekannte, but it's the only way I could do this...oh, the seance I shall have with TypePig...

(Readers will be thrown off if they haven't read the original post or the response to it)

Hail, and sorry for the delayed response!

I don't check this as often as I ought to, since I'm just building up content and rarely have any visitors...

Brief answers:

Symbolically, it may be possible for gays to emulate the myths; but it's an extremely convoluted matter (which I'll deal with in a moment).

Any lack of evidence for the practice in Indo-European cultures could theoretically be a result of Abrahamic influence--but it would only be theoretical. I mean, really, we could point to anything we might wish were a part of Aryan culture and claim that it is not found because it was suppressed--but that's not really sound methodology (even if it were true, which would be unprovable).

Much of our evidence predates the influence of Abrahamic religions--for example, the accounts of Tacitus, at a time when not even the Romans (let alone the Teutonic tribes) had yet converted to Christianity. One also finds evidence in contemporary Aryan cultures which have had little influence from Christianity and its relatives. In India, for example, the majority of Hindu clergy will not officiate at a homosexual wedding, despite the existence of homoerotic motifs in traditional art and mythology.

As far as whether gays are seeking the material benefits of the marriage license over those of civil unions, it is a defect in my post (and thank you for pointing it out) that I did not make clear that the civil unions I am pushing for are something that we do not have yet--an actual federally recognized civil union, which would provide the federal benefits and the inter-state portability which current civil unions do not. There are hardliners who will not settle for less than possession of the cultural capital represented by the very word "marriage;" and it is against these that I have drawn my line. Heterosexual relations are indeed a shambles, as you point out--but that fact instills in me the wish to rebuild along traditional lines, rather than to capitulate and re-define in order to acommodate what we now have.

While tribal societies often have institutions whose participants frequently manifest questionable or even reversed sexual roles, those institutions are not solely defined by sexual orientation. They are a "top-down" institution, i.e., the participants recognize a spiritual reality and manifest it in their lives. Many (though not all) modern gay "marriage" candidates would do the opposite, i.e., "I have x orientation (for whatever reason, no matter how materialistic or pathological), and I demand that it be recognized spiritually!" That aside, many of the "alternative" roles available do not involve complete participation in one gender or the other. The hijra of India, for example, are neither male nor female, and while they enjoy a certain amount of enfranchisement due to the recognition of their natures, they cannot completely fulfill the role of a normal man or woman. The sworn virgins of Albania (keeping the discussion to Aryan cultures), while they are considered in every respect to be men and are allowed to transact business deals and enter gendered spaces restricted to men, never marry.

Let's suppose that you did have a person with a spiritual nature which is sexually the opposite of his or her physical embodiment. Such aberrations (meant in a pure sense as a departure from the norm, not in a moral or pejorative sense) may well occur, and most healthy traditional societies (in my opinion) have roles which could be filled by these folks. But they have rarely been fully enfranchised as either one or the other sex. For a "man in a woman's body" must desire a woman, but the woman he desires must herself be a "man in a woman's body" for the attraction to be mutual! Then, spiritually, you would have the union of two males (in the case of a lesbian couple), which from a cosmic (or, if you like, natural) standpoint lacks the dynamic opposition of forces required for a union which will emulate the male/female polarity.

Those are just preliminary considerations. The issue can certainly become even more complex. There may be certain rare cases in which an individual weofodthegn or godhi would see fit to unite two people of the same physical sex on a sacral level, though to write that possibility into the law of the land and grant all homosexual "marriages" the same status I think would be a gross mistake. I believe that it is best--and easiest for all--to avoid clogging up the gears of normal social function by continuing to make the distinction between marriage and a union between homosexuals.

Thanks for the food for thought you have provided me; I may very well rewrite this post.

The Galileo Myth

    Some of the most pervasive myths of Modernity revolve around the relationship between religion and science, often to the detriment of the former.  The narrative usually goes like this:

Ancient/Mediaeval people [ignorant savages] once believed [insert absurdity here].
Along came a scientist who knew better and tried to enlighten people.  The religious authorities  [agents of ignorance and dogma]  persecuted the scientist because his views conflicted with orthodox religious views [primitive superstitions].  Centuries later, we know that the scientist was correct, and he stands as an example of reason and integrity in the face of ignorance and persecution.

Sound familiar?

    Galileo Galilei is probably the most-often cited figure in this narrative (others have been Giordano Bruno and Isaac Newton). 
The Galileo mythos has as its foundation the claim that Galileo was persecuted for believing in a heliocentric universe, which contradicted the Bible.  The Church had him imprisoned, declaring its official position that the earth was the center of the universe, and it was not until the 1990s that they apologized and admitted that Galileo was right.

I was taught this at WMU!

    Now to clarify some finer points, especially for those who believe that the Church was some sort of "evil empire" (another very popular modern myth).

    Galileo did not invent the idea of a heliocentric universe.  That had been done years earlier by Copernicus, a Catholic priest.  Copernicus was never persecuted for these ideas.
Some ideologues have declared that Copernicus avoided persecution because he died before the Church could do anything about it. 

That's rich.

Ten years before Copernicus's death a scholar named Albert Widmanstadt gave a lecture about the heliocentric model in front of Pope Clement VII.  Nothing bad befell him.  In 1536 two Church officials, a Cardinal and a bishop, actively encouraged Copernicus to publish his work.

    The work of Copernicus was forbidden by the Church in 1616, seventy-three years after Copernicus's death, but was re-allowed after some sentences which proclaimed the certainty of the heliocentric model were changed.

    1616 was also the year in which a council of theologians decided that the heliocentric model was junk science, and probably heretical.  It was not a trial.  Galileo was not present, nor was he punished, nor did his name come up when the edict was announced.  One month after that edict, in fact, Galileo had a meeting with Pope Paul V, who assured Galileo of his support--though he had been formally warned against teaching the Copernican doctrine as truth.

    Galileo was tried in 1633 for having published a book defending the Copernican view.  The trial was a modest affair--Galileo faced two churchmen with a secretary taking notes--and was ruled upon by ten cardinals.  Three of those cardinals refused to sign the condemnation.  It was confirmed neither by the pope nor by a Council, and as such was not a statement of official doctrine by the Church--it was a disciplinary matter.

    Galileo was sentenced to house arrest, which he spent in the Florentine embassy, in a house in Acetri, and in the home of the archbishop of Sienna, who supported him.  He continued conducting experiments and publishing books until his death.

    Contrary to what I was taught at university, it is a fact that Benedict XIV gave an imprimatur to Galileo's works in 1741, a quarter of a millennium before the 1990s.

The fact that Galileo was punished is of course unjust.  But his persecution had more to do with the fact that the Ptolemaic model was firmly entrenched in the scientific community, at a time when many scientists also happened to be churchmen.   It had nothing to do with the Bible--in fact, read that again because I'm sure you need to--It had nothing to do with the Bible.  Cardinal Bellarmine, the cleric who notified Galileo of the 1616 decision, aptly noted that if the heliocentric model were found to be correct, then the Church would have to modify her understanding of Scripture. 

It's that simple.