The following is my response to an NPR podcast episode that was recommended to me recently.
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/hidden-brain/id1028908750?i=1000415979970
There’s a lot covered in this episode (after a diet of audiobooks, 2-hour Jordan Peterson lectures, and 3-hour Joe Rogan podcasts, I’m impatient with the old constraints), but the final points struck me pretty hard.
One of the conclusions that is reached is that religion was created for social purposes and that modern institutions are capable of creating models of stability and trust that can now supplant the function of religion. I’m a totally biased libertarian, but find that concept a little bit laughable considering history since Nietzsche declared God to be dead. He was right in a societal manner, but also put forth that Man had blood on his hands and needed to find a way to wash himself clean, to create a structure of meaning without an extra-human source.
Man tried that in the 20th century and it was a bloody mess. We’ve worshiped communism, socialism, capitalism, democracy, and nationalism, none of which is held to a standard that is higher than the humans who administer them. Yes, organized religion suffers the same problem, but there is no church that has killed the tiniest fraction of people as Soviet Russia, Mao’s China, the Khmer Rouge, the United States of America, and the largest governments since Nietzsche’s cautionary declaration.
The same governments imprison more people than any religion is currently capable of too.
I did enjoy the podcast and don’t have nearly the expertise to refute the basic premise, but it doesn’t ring true to me. If I’m correct in restating, the claim is that religion was created to provide social needs. (Strangely, this is refuted during the episode as the claim is that non-physical beliefs exist in earlier cultures without the same problems to solve, and that they were merely changed, not created. Maybe I missed a connection there.)
From Joesph Campbell, Carl Jung, and my personal experience with the creative process, I’ve gleaned that there is knowledge to be received, that it exists a priori conscious thought. It seems to me that religion comes after the spiritual realm, not before.
God bless and thank you for reading,
Jason