Narrative in the Rise of Religion, by Anthony Campbell.

[David M. Payne]

Interesting narrative on: Narrative in the Rise of Religion (http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=340) by Anthony Campbell.

I've been amazed most of my life that the God/religion biz in all its glory could be based on simple tales, narratives as Mr. Campbell says. In The Story of Bob (http://www.secweb.org/asset.asp?AssetID=236) that ran here a couple of years ago, I use a tale, a narrative, to lampoon this religious relic of the bronze age. But what he had to say has given me a new appreciation of the power these religious tales have had over their adherents from the dawn of humanity. And it shows me that even a well reasoned argument will never get through to many of those who have closed their minds to any narrative that contradicts the one they hold so dear.

This article has stimulated my thinking a little more deeply about just where religion came from, and why it has such great staying power in otherwise intelligent people.

I hope more people read it, because it's an interesting perspective on where religion comes from and why it has such staying power. This despite the Abrahamic religions manifest failure to ever provide even one scientifically reliable piece of evidence proving the existence of God.

Thank you Mr. Campbell for a well thought out piece.

David

[Edited only to fix formatting of URLs. -Don-]

[acampbell]

Thanks for these kind comments. I think myself that many of our beliefs, especially in matters such as religion or politics that are deeply held, are based on brain events that are not accessible to consciousness and hence cannot be altered by arguments. This is another very large subject, of course.

[Delius]

Originally posted by acampbell
I think myself that many of our beliefs, especially in matters such as religion or politics that are deeply held, are based on brain events that are not accessible to consciousness and hence cannot be altered by arguments.

Like the theory of memes, this seems to have a certain plausibility, but I'm not sure it covers all cases. I say this because it seems at least possible to question any belief and change one's mind about it. I'll grant that people have a strong tendency to hold beiefs in this way, and it also seems reasonable that our beliefs are not shaped wholly in our conscious mind. Still, a comprehensive theory needs to account for the fact that beliefs which were once deeply held can be given up.

That said, I'd like to add that I found this essay largely persuasive, and think its conclusions about a human predisposition to narrative are convincing. Thank you.

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[acampbell]

I did say many beliefs, not all. But to expand a little: what I have in mind is the important experiments by Benjamin Libet, carried out about 20 years ago. Libet found that the electrical signal indicating the initiation of an action (readiness potential) occurred about half a second before the conscious decision to act. Although there has been a lot of argument about the exact significance of this finding it does seem to imply that our subjective experience of choosing is not what it appears to be.

I think that much the same state of affairs probably occurs in relation to the formation of belief. Dennet's discussion (see below) is relevant here.

References:

1. Libet B., 1985. `Unconscious cerebral initiative and the role of
conscious will in voluntary action'. Behaviour and Brain Sciences,
8, 229-266, including commentaries following this article.

2.Libet B., 1999. `Do we have free will?'. Journal of Consciousness
Studies, 6, 47

There is a good discussion of the significance of Libet's work in Daniel C Dennett, Freedom Evolves (2003).

[Tusko]

This is a response to the thought provoking musings of Anthony Campbell in "Nattative in the Rise of Religion".

I really enjoyed the article, and agreed with much that Anthony said. I thought one point he raised was particularly interesting, although he didn't explore it as much as I would have liked: so in my own clumsy way I will try to expand on it a little.
I warn you now, its really rambling... but Id like to hear peoples responses to it, if they think its worth responding to.

Anthony mentioned Chompsky's idea of the universality of language, and went on to suggest that there might be a similar "universal faith" somehow hardwired into the human brain, and that all religious faiths today are expressions of this (presumably evolutionarily advantageous) ur-religious template.

However, if the instinct to religion is hard wired into ALL people, then what about atheists, especially those raised as atheists? A universal tendency to religion cannot be wired into only some of the population. Anthony addresses this by suggesting that narratives, not religion, are the true vehicles of belief. He even offers the example of the ball breaking the window to show how our belief in everything, not just that which is invisible or inaccessable, is founded upon narrative.

I believe the power of narratives comes from a belief in cause and effect... which would seem to be shared by all socialised humans. Thats just an assertion... I haven't got anything to back it up.
Nonetheless, if we see something, anything-- a broken window or a world in which we live-- I believe that we have a desire to find and believe in a cause (and the intensity of the desire relates to the importance of the issue). The state of unknowing, when it comes to our attention, is a very uncomfortable one. Once we are given an answer in the form of a narrative that seems likely to be true (from our own deduction, or through peer group influence), the matter is settled in our minds, and our understanding of the world reaffirmed.

(I think it was David Hume who suggested that cause and effect might be a human construct and not a necessary relationship between events and things.)

So we ALL make sense of the world around us through narratives (which are in turn given form by language) and belief in those narratives. This got me to thinking about the commonality between theists and atheists.

Many atheists, myself included, who aren't particularly conversant with the science of the big bang end up with the basic narrative to cling on to... after .003 seconds the universe was as big as a pool ball, after three seconds the universe was the size and consistency of an elephant, and so on. I remember hearing that on tv some years ago when I was a kid, and for some reason its stuck. Its just a belief I have, and it isn't backed with any of the theoretical knowhow that some physics prof might have.

In a similar way, the story of life on earth is my primary means of relating to evolution, and the story of the peppered moths, or the horses or whatever is my supporting evidence.

I'm actually starting to sound like that theist who wrote that book "icons of evolution" aren't I? Thats not my intention.

I don't think that I think that everything is relative, and that all the stories that people tell, whether that of the Darwin's finches or that of Lazarus are all equivalent. There is a lot to be said for the methodology of science. This may well set it apart from religion... but there is still the problem with science that most of us have to take it on trust.

The problem is that when it comes to science, the general population has to take it on trust that a scientist knows what s/he is talking about, because the dont have the ability to reproduce experiments. In this way, scientists begin to resemble a kind of intermediary class between the general population and The Truth... which obviously looks a bit like the priest's role of mediating The Truth to the proles.

There should be a whole lot of difference between a directly observable truth claim, like the peppered moths and an ancient eyewitness acount like Lazarus... but there isn't for someone like me, because I take one or the other on trust... And I guess even scientists have to take it on trust that their 19th century forebears documented the cases accurately and without prejudice... perhaps things are different when you are talking about claims that scientists make that are directly observable today, because they can be tested again and again by different people to everyone's satisfaction.

But even then, there is the problem that Stephen J Gould raised in The Mismeasure of Man ... namely that scientists can be guided by their expectations to some pretty unpleasant or innaccurate results, without ever noticeing that they aren't being properly objective.

So.. to sum up that rather insane ramble... all socialised humans are driven by a belief in cause and effect to find narratives that will explain reality, past and future. Sure, these, narratives can take very different forms... scientific, religious and so on, but many of them require that they are simply taken on trust. Thats not to say that an expert in a scientific field wont have very good concrete reasons for preferring their favoured scientific explanation over a vague religious one... but there isn't anyone who is an expert in all fields.

Thanks! STeve

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[acampbell]

Steve raises some interesting points here.

First, one minor clarification: the illustration of the stone breaking a window is not mine but Boyer's, in his book which I cite.

The question of why some people are disbelievers in religion is an important one. Complete irreligion and frank atheism are relatively recent in the West. Of course there may have been disbelievers in the past (Montaigne comes to mind, offhand) but at many periods it would have been suicidal to declare oneself an atheist, and indeed the thought that there might be no God at all was inconceivable to most people. There seem to have been atheists in ancient India but we don't know much about these.

I t seems likely that the increase in secularism has been due in part to a shift towards urban, technology-based, living. But no doubt many factors are involved.

I agree that narrative has an explanatory function and that this is important in the genesis of religion. The two are inextricably linked. As EM Forster said, The king died and then the queen died is a story; the king died and then the queen died of grief is a plot. Genesis provides an explanation for the existence of suffering and death (as does Gilgamesh). However, I would not say that explanation is the sole purpose of narrative; at a more basic level it is simply a form of verbal grooming (gossip).

As for science, I'm strongly against claims that all is relative and the view that modern cosmology and the myths of the Hopi Indians are of equal value as statements about the world. At the same time, we must recognize that, as Popper said, all scientific theories are provisional and that science does not offer us ultimate truths. In fact, the whole point of the scientific enterprise, as I see it, is that it continually questions received opinion. For many people, including me, this means that religion and science are all but irreconcilable, but others disagree.