Religion And Fiction
Having moved to Batavia, I have discovered Randall Road. Randall Road, running north and south is a dense strip of retail shopping. Some of the national chains have more than one store along this well traveled artery. Randall road is iconic of America if you think that the achievement of “the American Dream” is the opportunity to acquire lots of stuff.
North of Geneva on Randall Road the retail properties thin out and one notices Christian houses of worship which seem to grow in scale and visual impression as one drives further north. There is one that appears as a gargantuan mother-ship, symbolic of what is on offer for anyone who chooses to affiliate with that community.
All of this interests me, and provokes self examination. Perhaps that is obvious. I do not attend church, and find it easy to be critical of institutional religion. Nevertheless a question keeps recurring:
How can these religious institutions of substance, expressions of sizable communities, requiring considerable financial sums for their maintenance, exist and thrive in an area populated by highly educated, literate, influential members of society?
What would nature have done,
after creating intelligent beings,
if she had wanted to guard against
certain dangers of intellectual activity
without compromising the future of intelligence?
…..we see the finest arguments in the world
come to grief in the face of a single experiment:
nothing can resist facts.
So that, if intelligence was to be kept at the outset
from sliding down a slope which was dangerous
to the individual and society,
it could only be by the statement of apparent facts,
by the ghosts of facts; failing real experience
a counterfeit of experience had to be conjured up.
A fiction,
if its image is vivid and insistent,
may indeed masquerade as perception
and in that way prevent or modify action.
A systematically false experience,
confronting the intelligence,
may indeed stop it pushing too far
the conclusions it deduces
from a true experience.
…. we should not be surprised
to find that intelligence was pervaded
as soon as formed, by superstition,
that an essentially intelligent being
is naturally superstitious,
and that intelligent creatures
are the only superstitious beings.
— excerpt, The Two Sources of Morality And Religion
By Henri Bergson p. 109
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2 thoughts on “Religion And Fiction”
Henri Bergson’s narrative is well written, but it also strikes me as a bit closed minded to the fact that religion is not something that can be reduced to something as singular as intelligence vs. superstition. People are religious and belong to religious institutions for a variety of reasons, generally none that pertain to what Bergson reduces to superstition.
People belong to organized religious institutions because it gives them a sense of inward and outward commitment to certain morals. It makes them feel they belong to a community that has a sense of safety in shared ideals. It gives them a whole series of events they can participate in and also have their children participate in. It also gives them a historical sense of being part of something their ancestor relatives were part of and also, perhaps died for or risked their lives for. It also gives them a sense of emotional and imaginative philosophizing through getting past literal images some religions have, to instead find the meaning behind the stories that might be helpful in day to day life. Plus, it provides a structure for adults to study together and talk about, in other words it provides a shared experience together. And, it provides benchmarks for life events and passages to help people mark their life cycle aging as a person. And, a safe place outside of their mundane existence of working and daily dog eat dog. Plus, it gives them a sense of ownership of a building they can call a community home outside of their personal home. A community home away from home that they contribute to, therefore have a personal and financial stake in. It’s alao theirs as a result.
This only touches upon some of the reasons people participate in organized religion, build houses of worship/gathering places. Quite healthy, intelligent reasons I might add. Perhaps more intelligent than reducing organized religion to just superstition vs. intelligence as Bergson might be doing by acting like the people who are involved in organized religion are just superstitious or in other words…those people. Others. Rather than trying to understand the the realities of whys and the human needs it satisfies and positive opportunities it can provide.
Just food for thought.
Jeff
Jeff, I will offer in reply an additional quote from Bergson:
“Religion is then a defensive reaction of nature against the dissolvent power of intelligence.”