Scientific look at Religion

I should first say that if someone already talked about this, I sincerely apologize. My brain doesn’t have the capacity to remember all the blog posts that have already been posted, and I don't have the time to go back and look.

After thinking all day about what I should write about, I decided to crack open Linden’s The Accidental Mind and see what he had to say about religion. I thought it might be interesting to get some scientific thoughts into the class. I opened to the chapter titled “religious impulse” and began to read. I found that he noticed that all cultures in the world have different religions, but are all similar in the fact that they practice a religion. He then poses the question “Why does every human culture have religion?”

Somehow, he is able to explain this in a way that I understand (I'm pretty sure), and hopefully I can relay this to you in a way you can understand. He first discusses how your brain can make things appear to be “gap-free.” His first example is about saccades. Saccades are the jumps and jerks of your eyes as you scan a visual scene. You don’t actually see those jerks, but everything blends very smoothly because you brain is basically making up the visual feedback between each jerk. Hopefully you’re still with me. This shows that your brain can make things up for you, in order for things to make sense.

He then goes on to say the same concept happens with split-brain patients. He gives an example of a patient who is set up in front of a device where they can see two images next to each other, a chicken claw and snow. The subject is asked to select two cards out of several different ones that would best match the individual pictures on the devise. The subject decides to pick a shovel and chicken. As you can see, the subject chose to match the shovel with the snow, and the chicken claw with the chicken. However, when the subject is asked about why they decided on those, the subject states “The chicken claw goes with the chicken and you need a shovel to clean out the chicken shed.” Because there is no clear link between the two hemispheres in a split brain patient, a side of the brain that can clearly see the snow was able to tell the body to pick the shovel card, but was not able to relay this to the other side of the brain, which is supposed to allow the subject to explain themselves in the decision (but it couldn’t). The brain is able to re-organize what happened, and create something that made sense.

(You might be starting to recall all this from last year.)

If you can see where I’m getting at, or actually what he’s getting at, you’ll notice that the brain likes to try and make things make sense. He states “The binding together of disparate percepts and ideas to create coherent narrative that violates our everyday waking experience and cognitive categories is a left cortical function that underlies both dreaming and the creation and social propagation of religious thought.” I’m pretty sure that the statement means that for something that can’t be explained in a way for someone to understand, the brain will make something up, to allow for the person to understand that explanation. This results in unnatural answers to these questions, with “unnatural” referring to something that is “God-like”, which would explain why so many cultures will have some sort of religion.

So, what do you think? Could this be the reason why cultures have religion? Is this the reason behind any religious thoughts? And don’t think of this concept as a scientific fact, he states in the beginning of the chapter that it is all speculation. But who knows? This is probably the reason why I keep on thinking that God had a part in creating life, because scientifically the creation of life it is too difficult to wrap my head around.

Works Cited:

Linden, David J. The Accidental Mind. Cambridge, MA: Belknap, 2007.

Course texts

Traditions of the Catholic Religion

While watching television, I came across many episodes of my favorite shows that relate to religion and the traditions of being Catholic. This caused me to think about how religion is viewed in the 21st century and what it really means to be a Catholic. The Catholic religion bases itself on traditions and what practitioners are "supposed" to do in order to consider themselves a true Catholic. Growing up, I considered myself Catholic because that is what my family raised me as. When I think more about my religious views though, I wonder if I am still considered a Catholic because I never participate in the traditions Catholics should be doing. I do not go to church anymore, I do not pray to God, I do not attend confession, etc.

This made me think back to a quote from The Transformation of American Religion, "Historian Robert Orsi has written of the "intense devotional creativity and improvisation in American Catholic culture" that characterized the religious life of his parent's generation, but in today's world, one study found that 61 percent of religiously active Catholics never pray with a rosary, 76 percent never engage in the novena (nine consecutive evenings of prayer), 44 percent never participate in the Stations of the Cross, and 53 percent never attend Benediction" (Wolfe).

This all relates back to an episode of That 70s Show that was on TV the other day where Eric's mom asked him and his sister to attend church with her, but they listed off reasons why they did not want to go.



This video shows how being a Catholic has changed over time. There is a clear seperation between Eric and his mom and how they view the Catholic Religion.

This blog post is meant to bring up the question of what it means to be a true Catholic. Must people follow the many traditions of this religion in order to be considered a true and devote Catholic or has the value of being a Catholic and the traditions changed so much over time that it solely depends on the individual and how they choose to practice?

WORKS CITED

Wolfe, Alan. The Transformation of American Religion: How We Actually Live Our Faith. New York: Free Press, 2003.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgprmIdnGmQ (Youtube video)

Religious Neurosis?

"The general idea of Christ the redeemer belongs to the world wide and pre-Christ theme of the hero and rescuer who, although he has been devoured by a monster, appears again in a miraculous way, having overcome whatever monster it was that swallowed him. When and where such a motif originated nobody knows. We do not even know how to go about investigating the problem. The one apparent certainty is that every generation seems to have known it as a tradition handed down from some preceding time. Thus we can safely assume that it originated at a period when man did not yet know that he possessed a hero myth; in an age, that is to say, when he did not yet consciously reflect on what he was saying. The hero figure is an archetype, which has existed in time immemorial." This idea has been presented by Carl Jung in his book Man and His Symbols.

In contemporary times, this idea explains the nature of why humans create religions. Jung proposes that ideas of Gods and "God-men" are inherent in the human unconscious. We do not create the ideas of Gods or mystical beings, rather our unconscious creates them for us in order to keep our minds stable, and avoid neurosis. It is a necessary part of human existence. Before we had the ability to intellectualize and conceive things on a conscious level, homage was paid to these unconscious figures purely out of instinct. In our current age of intellectual thought however, many people ignore their unconscious and their natural instincts.

In the times of ancient Egypt, people did not try to rationalize why they made sacrifices to their many gods, they just did because it helped them with their daily processes and relieved anxiety. They had ideas of the Hero, like Jesus, in the form of the Osiris-Horus myth, which is a direct parallel to the idea of Christ the Redeemer. The people who followed the Catholic Church for the many years during the dark ages never questioned their beliefs in the way we do now, but again, practiced rituals, like confession and prayer, to aid in their daily lives.

In the age of scientific thought, many of the unconscious elaborations of spirituality and the existence of archetypal themes are forgotten. This leads to neurotic thought, and instability of the human psyche.

The first five minutes of this clip from the film Zeitgeist elaborates on the many themes of religion that seem to reoccur throughout time and history. Check it out!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2740987755232169561