Transcript:

Understanding the Usefulness of Religion from an Academic point of view. 

Learning is meant to be fun. I’m Shaun McMillan and this is the Best Class Ever. 

[intro music]

These days a lot of us feel pressure to be successful by the measures of physical success. Or even if we don’t put that pressure on ourselves, our parents, our peers, and our culture often do. 

But who among them really knows what will bring success or how to achieve it? So much of life is uncertain. How much relies on luck? How much relies on our beliefs and how much relies on our daily practices? 

Today I want to introduce an academic approach to the importance of religious belief systems. So first let’s start with an interesting question. 

Q: Can one be certain that God exists or doesn’t exist? How much are you willing to gamble on it? 

Pascal’s Wager

The great mathematician, Bliase Pascal, argued that one should believe in God, because there is nothing to lose and everything to gain by believing in God whether He exists or not. If He exists then He’ll reward you tremendously in life after death. But even if God does not exist, you might miss out on a little hedenism, but for the most part it is good for you to live by a code of ethics as outlined by religion. But if God DOES exist, well, there is a tremendous amount to lose if you fail to believe in Him. Is eternal damnation really a risk you want to take? This argument for faith became known as Pascal’s wager. 

How us vs them became we

In his top selling books, the historian, who is both Jewish, homosexual, and atheist, Yuval Noah Harari argues that religion is one of the only reasons human beings were able to achieve any kind of lasting peace throughout our history. Human beings are fundamentally tribal. Everyone belongs to a tribe, trusts only those within their tribe, and feels threatened by those outside the tribe.

In order to identify as one group everyone in the tribe has to believe in the same story. And historically, religion is the story that has united the greatest number of people, over the greatest distances, over the longest periods of time. 

Religion Preserved History and Sponsored Science

Religion has until recently always been the institution that preserved the stories from one generation to another. Before we wrote down our stories, the local shaman passed down the stories from the previous generation to help unite the tribe. This responsibility was eventually passed on to the local priesthood. It was only in the last century that the critical role of storytelling was passed on from religion to the global institution of broadcast media.

Monks were the ones who preserved the earliest writings and made hand written copies. Even art and science was mostly sponsored by the church which led both to the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. 

Art in the form of architecture, sculptures, and paintings were a way to share the stories of religion with the illiterate masses. 

Science in the form of astronomy was used to help the church keep the dates and the times. The celebration of religious holidays was a ritual that helped us to know where we are in the greater expanse of time. We even began keeping count of the years based on how far or how close each year is to the birth of the Messiah. It wasn’t until Galileo and the rise of the merchant class that any scientist was able to find funding outside of the church. Up until the moment that the Pope put Galileo on trial, science had almost always been united with religion. 

We could even argue that religion was the key motivator for our greatest explorers. When Columbus, Cortez, and the conquistadors came to the new world, they did so at great risk. They were inspired by the heroes who had gone before them, the legends carried down through the ages by the priesthood. And even if we argue that they were motivated by a greed for gold, we must acknowledge the courage of the missionaries who came with them to spread the gospel. 

So many of the pilgrims who first sailed to the new world came to start a Puritan religious community free from persecution by more orthodox religion. 

Even today our greatest innovators and entrepreneurs aspire to explore the heavens, and get beyond the reach of our current physical limitations. The gods of ancient mythology, Islam, and Christianity may no longer be their key sponsor, but without their mythic tales of morality to give us a sense of purpose, how will we navigate the stars? Science can tell us how to make rockets and weapons, but it cannot tell us why we should or shouldn’t use them. 

And without the self-discipline of daily rituals, and the ability to delay gratification, we’ll never get beyond our current limitations. 

We should stop looking down on sacrifice rituals as primitive

The single most influential academic in the western world right now is the infamous psychologist Jordan Peterson. He often argues for the utility of religion. People might look down on ancient traditions like animal sacrifices as primitive, but Peterson argues that embedded in those rituals are some of the greatest most evolutionary ideas that helped humanity make progress. Embedded in the ritual of sacrifice is the idea that me today is different from me tomorrow. If me today holds back the best portion, me tomorrow can live a better life. This hard-working ethic, this ability to delay gratification has been identified as one of the most critical characteristics of successful people.

Evolutionary Ideas Are Embedded in Our Rituals

You see animals don’t think about the future. They don’t sacrifice. If a wolf takes down some prey, it will eat as much as 20 lbs of flesh without reserving any for the future. It doesn’t think of tomorrow. 

That is the difference between humans and animals. We think about the future, record the past, and use what we learn from the past to shape the future.

In the course that Jordan Peterson taught at Harvard called Maps of Meaning, he explained about the behavioural scientist,  Jean Piaget. Piaget is most famous for discovering the different learning stages of childhood development. I had to study Piaget’s teachings in order to become a certified high school teacher. 

It turns out this childhood development researcher was actually trying to bridge the gap between science and religion. So now let me explain how the concept of Messiah emerges from evolutionary biology.

How the concept of Messiah Emerges from Evolutionary Biology

One of the ideas Piaget discussed was how people learn the rules when playing the game of life. When two organisms have to compete for the same resources they quickly begin to form a hierarchy. One becomes dominant and the others subordinate. Life at the top is good because you get more choice, access to more resources, and more opportunities to perpetuate the species. Females often go for the male who can display signs of dominance. Life at the bottom is punishing as you must work the hardest to serve the wants and needs of others. 

So our brains adapted to climbing hierarchies. Our nervous system releases hormones like cortisone which stresses us out when we find out we are at the bottom of the hierarchy, and serotonin which makes us feel satisfied when we reach a level of the hierarchy that matches our competence and abilities. This is why we feel unsatisfied and ambitious when we are not living up to our potential.

The one at the top of the hierarchy, or the leader, is the person among us who is the most competent. We want him at the top because he or she is the one we trust to make difficult choices and protect us from other tribes or enemies. We learn through observation how to imitate his or her good qualities so that we too can climb the hierarchy and get more access to resources and opportunities. 

When the leadership becomes corrupt, those underneath the leader can combine their strength to overtake the leader. So only a wise leader can stay a leader for a long period of time. The greatest leaders are able to speak well and explain the rules by which one can climb higher. 

The Word & The Messiah

If we define good as the characteristics that help us to climb to the top of the hierarchy, we can define the ability to observe and articulate what is good as the word or truth. And that truth, which can be told from one generation to the next, is able to transcend the life of any one individual. Ultimately the one who can stay at the top of the greatest hierarchy for the longest period of time and best convey the truth that transcends his and ultimately anyone’s life is the Messiah. Conceptually speaking, the Messiah is the greatest archetype of good. The greatest example upon which all men should model their lives in order to achieve success.

Patterns of Behavior

Jean Piaget found that articulating the rules is actually quite difficult. Animals who have no faculty for storytelling cannot do it. Even children aren’t very good at it. Piaget would have children play Monopoly together and then pull one aside to have the child explain the rules. The child couldn’t actually explain the rules correctly, but they were still able to play together with the other children. Human beings first learn through behavioral patterns or by taking action. It is only later that they are able to explain through words. 

Animals don’t explain to each other the rules of their hunting packs, but they do have rituals or behavioural patterns that display moral behavior. If a wolf challenges the pack leader and loses a one-on-one battle, the loser will often turn over and offer his neck to the superior wolf. The lead wolf will let him live and then the wolf is able to return to the lower status within the pack. 

Religious Practice

Religion gives us a sense of identity by laying down the rules of what our tribe does and does not do. We can live in harmony with each other by acting out the drama of our shared stories in the form of songs, sacred iconography, paintings, sculpture, architecture, sharing respect for what is sacred, and rituals. Through those rituals we embed our most important beliefs into our daily life, and even set aside important holidays to remember where we came from, who we are, and what Heavenly ideals we should aspire to achieve. 

So embedded within religion’s rituals and stories are the patterns of behavior that lead to a longer and more satisfying life. So the next time someone looks down on you for being religious, explain to them the importance of sacrificing for a better future. Warn them not to look down on these traditional values as some primitive practice. Explain to them that we would be foolish to forsake the wisdom of our fathers, and that is only by putting them into practice that we’ll be able to navigate towards a better future. 

Q: What Can Myths Tell Us About Truth?

Next week I will introduce the importance of mythologies. These are the ancient archetypal stories we have been telling about creation and the evolution of man. Myths are often looked down on as merely fiction, or as obsolete, superstitious rubbish by people in these more modern times, but what mythologies do you think contemporary culture prescribes to? What do you think is the modern day equivalent of ancient mythology? 
If you want to see notes on today’s lesson, or if you want to suggest your own ideas about modern day mythology, I would love to hear from you at www.BestClassEver.org.