What's the Point of Religion?

The cover of the September 7th issue of New Scientist asks "If morality is hard-wired in the brain, what's the point of religion?"

Well, I'll take a swing at answering that question, even if it was meant rhetorically.

First, though, we should look at this phenomenon of scientists paying attention to religion, even if their goal might be to bash it and to confirm with each other that religion-bashing is the new norm. Why exactly are they asking this question?

Science, with a capital "S" referring to the current social group of scientists and a dogma that starts with the principle that "God doesn't exist - find a better explanation!", has become tangled up in its own arguments.

On the one hand, it asserts that there is no maker, no purpose, no special "other world' and that all that is around is simply the natural outcome of the laws of physics and chemistry working themselves out. By that line of reasoning, the development and life-cycle of a person or a corporation or nation or cultural phenomenon (such as religion) is a purely natural event.

At the same time, they hold a legacy distinction between the part of the world called "natural science" and the parts of the natural world called "social science" or "politics" or "the economy." Things involving people, especially many people, were put into a different box for different treatment. Once, this was because of the belief that human spirits were of supernatural nature and not subject to the laws of nature. That belief has been rejected by Science, but its child, the distinction between natural and social science, has persisted.

Why is that?

So far as I can tell from pondering this for 40 years, the actual reason is that the main tool of Science, which I'll call the "Scientific Method version 3.1" ("SM31" for short) has very limited functionality when it comes to analyzing that part of the natural world. Or, more bluntly, it basically doesn't work.

Now, having the core tool fail to work would challenge the implicit concept that "Science has a good handle on everything, so you can let go of Religion now!" It's embarrassing. But rather than face the fact that SM31 doesn't get you anywhere with social science, Science has a new explanation: there's something wrong with "social science." It's somehow not a proper field, it is below notice, it is noise or garbage. It is not worth considering or counting when scoring how Science is doing with its homework.

The truth, however, is evident from looking out the window, or reading any newspaper. Out social structures are in disarray. Companies, cultures, nations are failing to prosper and folding right and left. Violence and warfare is rampant.

So, if Science understands these natural processes so well with its SM31, why hasn't it fixed these problems and given us the promised better life? Well, suddenly the arguments get muddy. Social problems are "different". It's not our fault, it's the fault of religion and religious terrorists. Etc.

Right. But aren't these religions and religious terrorists also "natural phenomena" that the laws of SM31 should apply to? Why are you Scientists having such difficulty with this problem you clearly care about deeply?

No, the terrible truth, it seems to me, is that the god of Science, or more precisely, of SM31, has clay feet. It doesn't' work. Period.

Let me be very clear. I am not rejecting the whole of Science, or all scientists -- I am saying that their "tool" is defective. This is undoubtedly an unacceptable assault on their manhood and the myth of their superhuman powers, and will generate emotional reactions.

Still, it is way past time for SM4.0 to be developed and released, with additional functionality that can, in fact, cope with social systems, feedback loops, emergent behavior of swarms, why committees and meetings don't work, why our corporations and government don't work or become corrupted from within, why people become violent and attack us, etc. That functionality is simply not in SM3.1, regardless how you twist or turn it.

Unfortunately for this paradigm shift, there are a great many people who grew up with SM3.1, and have had their mental models based on deterministic machines, linear equations, and problems that could be studied in isolation from the rest of the world in some lab somewhere, that we could run experiments on repeatedly. Causality was always nearby in space and time, with the causal event directly touching the caused event. Life was simple. Air pressure didn't kick back when you tried to study it.

At the social scale, things are not like that at all. At all. Intuition based on that "hard-science" world is worse than useless, it is totally misleading in this new world.

First, because the feedback loops are dense, and important, they cannot be removed. That means no statistics based on the General Linear Model (GLM) are applicable directly. That throws out almost all the standard tools and thinking.

Second, many phenomena only occur at full scale, and don't even occur in small scales. This is not that unusual, but it is damned inconvenient. For example, you don't see hurricanes or tornadoes forming in a lab's beakers full of air. They don't come down to your scale, you have to go up to theirs.

Third, many phenomena take over three years to unfold. This makes them unsuitable for most grant-based research. Some take over 30 years. Some over 300. Some over 2000 years. Much of what is going on in the Mideast today is still the continuing downstream effects of the Crusades back in the 1200's. Again, that is really inconvenient.

And, many phenomena aren't cleanly separable form other things, but are attached to things that are attached to things, etc. Again, this violates the basic rules of the tool SM3.1 for finding something to study that can be studied in isolation, varying only one variable at a time, under controlled conditions.

Finally, skipping to the end of the list, it's unethical or immoral or dangerous to your health to do experiments on society.

True, some new tools are being developed in the back rooms. Chaos theory. Non-linear dynamics. System Dynamics. Artificial Life. Swarm and Agent-based modeling. Etc. Even the proponents of these will admit they are in the early stages of development and not ready for full-scale production use yet in Social Engineering.

On the other hand, Religion has spent the last several thousand years focused almost entirely on the social, large-scale, long-time-frame picture, claiming that that picture is really, really important and should not be neglected or forgotten. Let's give Religion credit for that much, keeping the fires alive while Science emerged and got this far into its childhood.

While Science developed ever more powerful engines of warfare and commerce, Religion was always a thorn in the side, asking "Why? Why are you doing that? What are your motives? How will these tools be used?" And Science answered "Not our problem. We just build the stuff. "

I guess that was cool so long as "the stuff" was owned exclusively by "us" and it was used exclusively to exploit or control "them." Morality was voiced but was not a constraining issue, since millions of loose, unorganized voices are no resistance at all.

Now, however, the game is changing. Now "they" have some of this "stuff" and are using it to resist being exploited or controlled, or, worse, to turn around and start to control or exploit us.

Well, Scientists chime in now, finally, saying that this is clearly the fault of "religion", not of a series of feeble, incompetent, or flawed policies based on incompetent "science" that had no idea how social level things work.

I'll agree that logic is generally better than stupidity, and blind faith in any model or technique will invariably lead one down a blind alley. But "religion" didn't build these weapons, or the technology needed to deploy them -- Science did. And the spread and deployment was a fully expectable and predictable consequence of the development and use by "us."

So, maybe, the point of religion is to question short-term, me-first commerce, culture, and technology and ask repeatedly where it is going and for what purpose. Maybe Religion uses quaint vocabulary and technology, but it seems to have a far better handle on how people in groups work and fail than Science ever has. And it has cared about that problem millenia longer than Science has.

Or maybe another point of Religion is to hold up a mirror to Science and point out Science's flaws that scientists seem prone to minimize or dismiss.

And before Science was sucking its thumb, Religion was organizing vast territories of people who had never had common infrastructure before. Was the process sometimes bloody and gory? Yes - but so were all the alternatives including those brought to us by atheistic Scientists, or enabled by them or empowered by them. Let's score the game evenly there.

Is Religion perfect? No. Is Science perfect? No. Do they have a lot they could learn from each other? Yes.

Be "mindful." Cherish your exceptions. Be alert for possible hints that your model is wrong or incomplete. Even if those are brought to you by people you degrade or despise.

The first principle of Cosmology is that "We are not special, in time, or place." We are not the center of the universe. Fine. We are also not past the stages we see so clearly from 50 years backwards, where Science was sure it had finally nailed down the last crucial big piece, and all that was left was some cleanup work. By that principle, now is then. We are, by that principle, almost certainly going to be embarrassed in 1000 years, if we look back to now at what Scientists asserted in 2007 was important and true. Essentially 100% of it will turn out to be rubbish, or irrelevant, because of some other factor we totally missed.

It is the height of arrogance to not be able to analyze society, or build a workable company or health care system, or "stop terrorism" and at the same time criticize those who argue that long-term social issues matter and need to be addressed.

Wade