Tag: religion

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The Economy Can’t Open Our Eyes to Angels and Demons

At my father’s insistence, I’m reading Dan Brown’s Angels & Demons. While lounging with the book today, a passage caught my attention, especially in light of recent news from the Pew Research Center:

“Perhaps miracle is the wrong word. I was simply trying to speak your language.”

“My language?” Langdon was suddenly uncomfortable. “Not to disappoint you, sir, but I study religious symbology – I’m an academic, not a priest.”

Kohler slowed suddenly and turned, his gaze softening a bit. “Of course. How simple of me. One does not need to have cancer to analyze its symptoms.” (page 27).

In August of last year, I wrote “Emptying Pews Cry for Leadership,” in which I discussed my perception of religion as a dying institution, but one that’s dying needlessly, from a preventable disease. The quotation from Angels & Demons I’ve included above is a propos because I’m not particularly religious; I’m just fascinated by religion and how people engage themselves with it.

In these dire economic times, you’d expect more and more people would be going to church. After all, aren’t we used to seeing church attendance rise when tough times or hurdles lie ahead or when the future becomes cloudy and overcast? Furthermore, going to church is more or less free, so it’s not like you can use less cash as an excuse from attending.

Despite what you might expect, the Pew Research Center released findings on March 13 which suggest that people are just as unconvinced by the value of going to church now as they were before this crisis started.

From the Pew Research Center, March 13, 2009
From the Pew Research Center, March 13, 2009

From the graph to the left, you can see that church-goers remain at the same small handful in January 2009 as they did in January 2007.

I don’t know about you, but I fully expected that as the Dow Jones plummeted, church attendance would climb, a testament to our ability to ignore the good things in our life until all we’re surrounded by is the bad.

So what does this mean, that the flagging economy has failed to revive our interest in religion? Maybe, just maybe, it’s an dead horse that’s not worth beating anymore.

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(The Good) Life and Leadership Laboratory

I’m a regular reader of about two dozen blogs. One of my favorites is Talking Philosophy, which recently featured a really compelling post by Jeff Mason, entitled “Philosophy and the Good Life.”

I’m not sure what inspired it, but I’m glad Mason indulged himself. A couple of excerpts intrigued me:

  • “Religion, as it were, does the thinking for the people who do not have time to think things through for themselves. Philosophy, however, asks people to think for themselves, to question doubtful premises and assumptions using reason, logic, and experience to provide the best arguments for their own position, while being able to put forward objections to rival arguments, and to answer objections to their own.”
  • “Finally, there are some people who appear to pursue truth and wisdom rather than pleasure, riches, fame or power. These, of course, are the philosophers. To be honest, when philosophers talk about the good life, they stack the deck in their own favor. Whenever they discuss it, the good life is the philosophical life. This does not mean that they are wrong, but we should be cautious how we receive their arguments. There is no such thing as the good life for everyone, and neither philosophers nor religious expositors have any right to lay down the law about it.”
  • Mason mentions how Aristotle suggests the philosophical life begins, which I think would be a good way to begin each morning: “in wonder at the universe and the spectacle of life.”
  • “The good life is a life devoted to the discovery and communication of truth within a community of like-minded people possessing moral integrity and a genuine desire to learn.”

That last quotation seems more appropriate to me as the definition of an ideal society: a society of leaders.

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Religion: Chicken Soup for the Soul…or Just Chicken Soup?

The JanuaryFebruary 2009 issue of The Atlantic points out an article which begs the question: is religion a spiritual quest alone, or could there be something more physical, more mundane behind it?

“Assortative Sociality, Limited Dispersal, Infectious Disease and the Genesis of the Global Pattern of Religion Diversity” published by the Royal Society in Proceedings B seems to suggest that religion could be attributed to evolution.

According to this document, “religion manifests from evolved behavioral strategies for the avoidance and management of infectious disease” (Medical News). Furthermore, the “diversity of religions in a given country correlates closely” with the amount of disease (Atlantic Monthly 21). Consider, for example, why Brazil boasts 159 religions, while Canada squeaks by with a mere 15? Perhaps it is because Brazil – poor and without a public-health system – is overrun by disease when compared to Canada – which has better than average healthcare and few known parasites.

In otherwords, people in regions with a greater chance of exposing them to a disease tend to limit travel and interpersonal interaction; which stems the flow of ideas and values responsible for birthing new religions.

Now, consider why Church pews the world over are emptying faster than you can say a Hail Mary?  Could it be that the advent of new health care systems and technologies have resulted in a world where religion no longer serves its evolutionary purpose? If this is the case, then are the people who contine to visit them weak links bound to fail the “only the strong survive” test, or do they represent the next evolutionary step for religion, whatever that may be?

A lot of questions to be asked, with few answers to give. It hurts to think outside your own generation, doesn’t it?