Sunday, September 06, 2009

Discovering God

by Rodney Stark

The origins of the great religions and the evolution of belief

As usual, Rodney Stark is quite readable. This time he is doing a merry tap dance on the toes of received wisdom about the history of religion. He starts by pointing out the research showing that primitive societies do not have primitive religions; that in fact very many have a “High God” with an interest in people’s moral behavior. The standard approaches to the evolution of religious belief are nonsense, and easily seen to be nonsense—but things like “totemism evolved into polytheism evolved into monotheism,” or the “Bicameral Mind” gibberish (conclusions drawn merely from studying Homer and deciding that people changed between the Iliad and the Odyssey!), or Boyer’s self-defeating claim that religion is merely an evolutionary adaptation (so then is science): all these and more clutter the landscape and obscure the obvious facts that religion is universal and sacrifice is a rational deal.

The “Temple Religions” (Sumer, Egypt, MesoAmerica, etc) are for him a devolution. They are generally state-supported and state-supporting, meant for the elite only; and carry essentially no ethical component whatever.

He insists on what on reflection is quite obvious—changes in a religion (or in any other great cultural attitude) originate in a handful of individuals who persuade others. The great “Temple Religions” were pretty stable (Akenaten notwithstanding), because of the entrenched conservatism and self-interest of both the state priests and the state.

The single most important element in the religiosity of a society he considers to be the competition among religions and sects (considered as “high-intensity” offshoots of religions), and examines the effect this had in Rome. Competition meant that each group had to vie for attention and legitimacy, not resting on its laurels. He notes that Rome persecuted not just Christians but Jews and Cybelians and even deprecated volunteer fire departments—anything that smacked of community organization.

Then he moves on to the “Axial Age” and the rebirth of monotheism via Zoroastrianism and Judaism. His discussion of the Deuteronomists won’t win him any plaudits in my church, but in the end he can’t seem to find that they did much substantial re-writing of history. Here the theme of evolving revelation comes up again.

India comes next, with the old Vedic religion transforming into the Upanishad religion in the time of considerable upheaval and religious competition, which competition survives to this day; as innumerable Hindu sects vie for attention all over India. I hadn’t realized that Buddhism had been so forgotten in India.

China and the “Godless” religions come next. The truly “Godless” religions are the elite versions—the popular versions of Taoism worship many gods, including (no doubt to his unutterable surprise, LaoTzu). Confucius and Buddha are likewise worshipped—Buddha in form of Buddhism so modified with the addition of a Heaven and Hell that one might call it a new religion. Behind the scenes, for the millions of common folk, are the Folk Religions with legions of gods responsible for all the details of life. Some Chinese, if the sacrifice to the god doesn’t bring the desired results, have been known to whip the idol in retribution.

The Rise of Christianity is the next chapter, and he again points out the obvious—that Jesus was real, the New Testament is not a late forgery (he approvingly quotes arguments dating John to circa 40AD and the Synoptics not much later), that the Gnostic “gospels” are not remotely Christian (if you read them you’ll see they’re not even the same kind of literature!), and so on. He reiterates what he said in other books: mass conversions don’t exist: the spread of Christianity is consistent with a 3.4% yearly increase and conversions occur through influence of friend and family; Christianity, like all sects, began largely from upper classes (once you get past the first few years, I suppose—Peter wasn’t rich); and the different ways Christians treated women, the sick and the poor made it very much more attractive than paganism. If the Roman Empire was 10-15% Jewish (conversions and “all-but” conversions) as some estimates say, then Paul’s missionary travails seem more understandable. The fall of Christianity he dates to Constantine, as the time when, as a state religion, it lost the need for competition and began to corrupt the priesthood. He cites studies suggesting that medieval Europe was even less religious than modern Europe.

The next chapter is about Islam, of course. He points out influences of Nestorianism on Muhammad, and gives a history of the early years. Islam didn’t have mass conversions either, and he cites studies showing 250 years or so to convert half the population—faster than Christianity did in Rome, but then Islam had the power of the state behind it.

The final chapter “Conclusion: Discovering God?” asks whether the various religions contributed to a discovery of God (no—just ask Confucius), whether there is an “Inspired Core” of religions which advance the understanding of God (yes—including Zoroastrianism but leaving out the most recent monotheism), and whether God actually exists (yes).

There’s one large gap in the history, which since it involves prehistory is probably unfillable: how do you go from the primitive religions (often with a High God) to the polytheisms and Folk Religions with no particular High God and no ethical component? The fact that this appears everywhere suggests that it isn’t a matter of diffusion. The fact that it appears in Folk Religions and in Greek-style (non-state) polytheisms and in state Temple Religions suggests that it isn’t a matter of the form of government. I’d guess that it has something to do with merging tribes, each with their own High God and retinue developed from the experiences their own ancestors had with the numinous. Either one tribe wins or you compromise. To make everybody happy you have to treat everybody’s gods the same, and you wind up with a polytheism that nobody believes deeply and which loses any ethical importance. Guessing.

Read it.

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