On Thursday, Dr. Susan Blackmore (if you don't know who she is, look here) came to Lehigh and gave a thoughtful and thought-provoking lecture entitled "The Power of Memes, or How Infectious is the God Delusion?" As some of you may know, I consider myself religious, although not in the typical church-going sense of the word, so I knew this was a lecture I had to attend. Unfortunately, while I had questions I wanted to pose to Dr. Blackmore, my ongoing bout of conjunctivitis (keeps my eye producing tears on an almost constant basis, very frustrating) and the overall hostility that I perceived from the audience towards religious people (based on the tone of the questions in the Q&A, although I suspect there were many like me who were simply intimidated into silence) precluded me from drawing attention to myself by asking a question. I just didn't have the confidence to do it, especially given my propensity to blush when I'm the focus of attention. I would have just discussed my thoughts with others (and maybe Dr. Blackmore herself) after the lecture, were it not for the conjunctivitis, with which I'm trying to achieve a tricky balance between preventing its spread to others and still living my life. But as my thoughts continue to demand an outlet, I give you this post.
I'm going to do my best here to summarize the take-away points of Dr. Blackmore's sophisticated and energetic presentation. Essentially, on the issue of religion, she is a disciple of Richard Dawkins, who's fairly prominent in the public dialogue about religion right now. Unlike Dawkins, Dr. Blackmore recognizes both the good and the bad associated with religion and does not necessarily think religion is worthless or destructive. Instead, she advocates an empirical study of religion to ascertain what exactly are the consequences of religion so that we may then act accordingly. She did mention the findings of this study (or a very similar one, I didn't write down the name of it, but it came to the same conclusions as the one I found) but made sure to stress that a correlation does not establish causality and that the study has been widely criticized. Nonetheless, by even bringing up this study, I can imagine that she is sympathetic to the point of view expressed by the study.
Now, I've learned enough history to know that religion has its dark side and has been invoked to justify terrible things (The Crusades, Thirty Years War, al Qaeda, etc.). Furthermore, I have no qualms with the suggestion that we should examine religion and determine what good/harm it's doing for the world. However, I'd like to offer my own hypothesis: The problem isn't religion itself but rather those who manipulate it, co-opt it, and misinterpret it for their own purposes.
In my experience, religion can act as a helpful guide for one's life, keeping you focused on the path that best utilizes your unique gifts in a way that brings greater good to the world. It may not be necessary, but it can help and therefore should not be indicted for the ways in which it's been abused by various organizations/individuals. I would posit that it is the latter that we should be targeting, instead of throwing out the whole kit-and-caboodle. In particular, fundamentalism of any kind should be challenged, because fundamentalism is what leads to the greatest bastardizations and corruptions of religion.
As Dr. Blackmore herself admitted in the Q&A, there is a distinction to be made between religion and spirituality. She seemed to associate religion with the institutions and dogma that teach people to have unquestioning faith in the rightness of their beliefs, while spirituality was defined as the belief of interconnectedness that is at the core of most religions. In my faith, spirituality is at the center, and I think that's true for most religious people. It's the vocal and highly visible minority that focuses on the rhetorical, judgmental, and holier-than-thou aspects of religion that screws the pooch for the rest of us (and I don't get enough chances to use the phrase "screws the pooch"). If we can get our religious leaders to stop advancing literal interpretations of the religious texts that disregard the context under which the texts were written, I think we'll be moving religion more towards where it should be, and we'll be able to undercut many of the strongest criticisms of religion.
So that's my defense of religion in 500 words or less. As for my life, other than the aforementioned conjunctivitis, I'm doing well. I made a little application for my search engines class that you might find amusing; check it out here. Finally, you can see how the beard's going below:
It's thickened quite a bit, but I think it'll be another couple of weeks, at least, before it's the mane that I was envisioning. At this point, I'm pretty much committed to this project for the long-haul; my curiosity won't let me do otherwise.
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