In this series, I use the term “myth” as a synonym for confusion or falsehood. The point is not to convince you to bow the knee (i.e. believe). Rather, the point is to make religious belief clear. Believe it, reject it, fight it, rage against it, but get it right.
The student cannot make a scientific statement about the savage, because the savage is not making a scientific statement about the world
-G. K. Chesterton
Myth #1: Religion is primitive science
Let our myth-smith be Christopher Hitchens. Hitchens,
the first and the simplest objection to religious belief is that its metaphysical claims are not true. . . and come from the period that I would describe as the infancy, or the fearful childhood of our species. When because we have brains that seek for information, and seek for an explanation – brains that even now prefer a conspiracy theory to no theory at all, and are bound to do so, and indeed in some ways, are right to seek in this way. Explanations have to be found for things that seem (?) inexplicable. And in the absence of crucial information – we didn’t know, we had no way to know, that the earth went around the sun, didn’t know that there was a germ theory that would explain disease, didn’t have any means of knowing that earthquakes were the result of living on the crust of a cooling planet in a rather odd solar system, where most of the planets are either too hot or too cold to support life, and our own is, in large part, too hot or too cold to support it either, and where the remainder lives on a climatic knife edge, and always has. . . .We didn’t know that matters of this kind, that earthquakes, waves, disasters were not punishments. It was quite possible to listen to those, and even to believe those, who thought they could explain. (video here)
Hitchens’ narrative has been told by others. The most persuasive case for this idea is found in the work of E. B. Tylor and James Frazer, fathers of contemporary anthropology. Both Tylor and Frazer hypothesized that ancient people, being baffled and terrified by the natural world (e.g. earthquakes, floods, fires, volcanic eruptions, disease, and death), developed a belief in the supernatural to account for the vicissitudes of life.
Specifically, Tylor’s hypothesis was that primitive man conjured up the notion of a soul. The soul explained the difference between dead and live bodies, and explained dreams (where we seemingly left our bodies). Primitives then inferred that all objects, not just human bodies, were inhabited by souls. This view, that all objects are peopled with spirits, Tylor called Animism. Frazer further hypothesized that mankind had gone through stages of intellectual development. Animism developed into magic, magic into religion, and religion into science. Early man, being ignorant of the natural world, was an Animist, believing the world to be peopled by souls. As man’s understanding of the world increased so did the complexity and accuracy of his theoretical models and methodologies. Primitive man did the best he could, intellectually and technologically, with what he had.
Following Tylor and Frazer, contemporary intellectuals like Hitchens argue that we now have science, and so, should give up religion, as we gave up animism and magic. Science, on the Hitchens narrative, has superseded religion. It does a better job of explaining the natural world.
Consider a few rituals and practices regarded as religious or spiritual, rituals Tylor himself used in support of his hypothesis. Consider the ancient Roman, who would stand over his dying kinsman, or the Seminole Indian, who would place a child over his dying mother, so that the child (or kinsman) might take-in his mothers’ (or kinsman’s) spirit.
In such cases aren’t we presented with a primitive conception of the soul, and of biology? The primitive, whether Roman or Seminole, believed some vapor-like substance left the body after death. By placing a living person over a dying person, they believed they could catch this vapor-like substance (the soul) and contain in within their own bodies. Certainly, we don’t do such things anymore. And why, on the Hitchens hypothesis? Because we know that there are no souls to catch. We have opened the human body and found no soul.
Consider a practice such as dancing for rain. We know, now, that rain can’t be conjured by dancing. Scientists have revealed to us the process of evaporation and condensation. The more science advances, the more religion recedes. The more we know of the natural world, the less there is for religion to do. Religious belief is a primitive science, an inadequate hypothesis, and should be abandoned.
(In part II, I will evaluate this narrative and hypothesis)
