[lbo-talk] comment on Zuckerman (was: "Damn, did God piss in your cheerios?"

Jeffrey Fisher jeff.jfisher at gmail.com
Thu Jun 9 08:41:38 PDT 2005


On 6/9/05, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> wrote:
> Doug:
> > And that's what the text
> > <http://www.pitzer.edu/academics/faculty/zuckerman/atheism.html> says:
> >
>
> It is a good piece, although it can be strengthened in several ways:
>
> 1. Consider anthropological evidence (esp. Bronislaw Malinowski's work in
> Trobriand islands which links religious superstition to the absence of
> effective technological control of tasks needed for survival (e.g. rich
> magical rituals surrounding open ocean fishing, and no such rituals
> surrounding lagoon fishing).
>
> 2. Consider the effect of path dependency on the persistence of theistic
> beliefs - the development of modern states was characterized, inter alia,
> by the adoption of certain traditional social institutions and beliefs to
> legitimate the power of the state (cf. Emanuel Todd, _The Explanation of
> Ideology_). In some states (e.g. Italy, or Thailand) it involved cooptation
> of religious institutions, in other states (cf. France or Russia) it
> involved suppression of religious institutions, and in still other states
> (e.g. Japan - subsumptioin of such institutions (i.e. the state became the
> secular source of legitimacy. Other options involve states in which
> struggle for national independence was carried to a significant extent
> through religious institutions (e.g. Ireland or Poland), since secular
> institutions were suppressed by the occupying powers.
>
> The net result of this process is setting a certain path - more or less
> religious or more or less secular - in the development of authority and its
> legitimation system. In states that initially depended more heavily on
> religion to establish the legitimacy of their sovereignty and power, the
> rates of atheism are lower. Path dependency variable is difficult to
> measure - it requires coding of the archival data - but it is possible, and
> I think it can explain quite a bit of the variance that cannot be explained
> by variations in living conditions.
>
> 3. The neuropsychological and cognitive argument is not without merits, if
> we consider the fact that the development of the brain takes place until
> adolescence and is significantly shaped by life experiences. Thus, people
> who are exposed more to religious superstition through enculturation may
> develop brain structures that re "wired" for that superstition later in
> their lives. That is certainly consistent with the path dependency view
> which I outlined above.
>

this piece is very very interesting, not least for zuckerman's acknowledgement of the limitations of the kind of work he is undertaking.

specifically, i would like to underscore the following, which has been a central part of my argument from the beginning of all these threads:

--- Finally, there are methodological problems relating to terminology. Meanings and definitions of specific words or categories seldom translate cross-culturally. Signifiers such as "religious," "secular," or even "God" have dramatically different meanings and connotations in different cultures (Beyer, 2003). They are laden with historical, political, social, and theological implications that are unique to every given country and the subcultures there within. Thus, making cross-national comparisons of beliefs between markedly different societies is tenuous, at best.( ii ) ---

indeed, this is a substantial problem, and those of us who study religion recognize that we are constantly in the process of defining the object of study, and even that there simply is no single object of study. in other words, in some very important ways, there is no such thing as "religion". now, obviously, we think there is something we're working on. but what exactly is it?

in my classes, i try to get students to think about whether (certain forms of) buddhism (or taoism) is an atheistic religion. this forces them to wonder about what makes a religion a religion, and many of them come up with the more thoughtful but nevertheless sophomoric response that as long as they "believe in something higher", that's religious -- indeed, they think it's ok to call that "something higher" by the name/term "god". maybe it is, but that's a far cry from believing in a personal god who demands you go to church every week, pray at least daily, and spend your time in the kitchen/confine your wife to the kitchen.

wojtek, i presume you've read talal asad's critique of geertz? then you have an idea what i'm after, here. people in different times and different places mean different things by religion and god and spirituality and magic and whatever. it's a real problem for studying the phenomenon (er, phenomena) and for correlating the results of different studies and different analyses.

it also usually means there's some kind of agenda, because your agenda determines the definition(s) you choose to use. i'm not saying that's bad. i'm just saying it's something we need to be aware of as we process the stuff we read. it affects our conversations with each other as activists (religious or otherwise) and it affects our conversations with people we may want to organize who self-identify as "religious" or as "believing in god".

and i am not at all suggesting that the argument zuckerman makes is null and void. i still need to spend more time mulling it over, but he looks pretty thorough to me. it's very interesting.

j

-- http://www.brainmortgage.com/

Among medieval and modern philosophers, anxious to establish the religious significance of God, an unfortunate habit has prevailed of paying to Him metaphysical compliments.

- Alfred North Whitehead



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