The Word of God

Stephanie Zastrow got me thinking about the devisiveness of religion in her recent entry where she talked about some of her personal perspective, experiences with religion, and how religion acted as a devisive force in her own life. Even the most devout of us cannot deny that religion, as much faith as you may have in God or some god, is not always Good in the hands of men. But... let's not put all the blame on religion quite yet. In our very own classroom, there is tangible dissension not only between atheists and theists, but also between scientists and literal interpreters. (Allow me a small aside in which to say that science and religion are not at odds. While there are many well known atheist scientists, and also prominent creationists etc. denying science, there are also well known theist scientists, such as Albert Einstein.) My point is in illustrating these conflicts is not to exacerbate anything, which we are handling maturely, but to point out that certainly division occurs over other ideas. Science can be divisive, creating distinct academic camps. Social sciences and more humanity oriented disciplines create academic rifts as well.

So what is my point in all of this? People argue, we all know it. But what do these divisive ideologies have in common? Metaphor. Symbolism. Language. Let me justify my position. The most divisive modern issues are those without clear answers. No one's ever been killed over the sum of two and three. But religion, philosophy, ideas. These things cause our society to be dynamic, and to be violent. People fight for what they believe to prove that it is Right. The article Singing Neanderthals notices that symbolism and metaphor are central to verbal languages. The author observes that the long time stability and static state of Neanderthal society may be indicative of a lack of the benefit of abstract metaphorical thought, which in turn would suggest a lack of verbal language. His continuation of suppose that the Neanderthals formed ugly, hairy 5'2" choirs is definitely interesting, but hardly conclusive. I would venture to guess, however, that many of us (let me know if my guess is completely off the mark, I'd like to know if I'm wrong) found the article compelling and convincing. Why is this? I myself would have liked to believe this fantastic theory. The very article itself is a work of language. The authors cutting skepticism on the "symbolic Neanderthal artifacts" and optimistic and romanticized depictions of frenzied displays of dance and song, and tender caring humming and singing to loved ones, gives us a lovely story to visualize in our heads, and every reason to disbelieve the contrary evidence. Now, I'm not denying the possibility of Singing Neanderthals, but the article was a popularization of a social science already strained to it's limits to have evidence whatsoever, and not conclusive at all! Despite the severely inconclusive evidence presented, the article does not come off as severely inconclusive, but instead, as a reasonably well formed support of a Hmmmming, singing language used by a pre human species. Steven Mithen does not use language to evaluate his evidence, he does that on his own, and then uses language to paint a portrait, to make his idea beautiful, acceptable, to readers, to us, to all who receive the language.

Language could, using identical evidence, spin this article in completely a different direction. Language is incredibly powerful and dangerous in it's ability to distort and create in that way.

Returning to the topic at hand, we've now read four very different articles: the beginning of Genesis, a newspaper article, a casual internet science expose, and a passage from a book. All of these thing talk about the beginning of humanity as we know it, but their language is absolutely different. Sarah Marheine, in her post, illustrated how the language in the bible and the language of science do not necessarily conflict, though they not at all the same. I have heard (and I can't cite this, but I do think it is a good example) that in Orthodox Judaism there is a belief that a)The Torah is the Word of God and is absolutely true, and b) some general belief in rationality and science apparently, amalgamating in c) if there is some apparent conflict between the Word of God and Science, then, in actuality, there is no conflict, it human minds are yet unable to comprehend how they are the same. This is a compensation for this feebleness of language.

So what I'm really getting at is What exactly do you mean? Not to turn this into a philosophy course, but, words all words are metaphors. How do we learn the color red? A red chair, a red book, a red sweater. Our collective knowledge of all these experience we roll together into an abstract concept of red, but no one will have seen exactly the same things, and so no one will have the same red metaphor. Religion, based on archaic and translated texts, is especially susceptible to these little language spins created by us imperfect humans, and even our own beliefs and convictions will be shallow if we don't explore the meanings and origins of the words in which we form them.

Defining local, global, and religious variables.

First, I will define religion as I am using it in the below paragraphs. Religion is a system of beliefs, a life philosophy, which someone applies and lives by. By this definition "religion" does not just refer to formal religions in boxes, so to speak, but any structure, or lack thereof that a person might live by. Every person has their styling of religion by which they live by, which may or may not fit a name. The answer to the question, "Can we define religion," is "Yes!" and we absolutely must if we're to get anywhere! A definition does not necessarily have to be universal, but it is of the utmost importance that as individuals we are specific and precise about the things we mean when we speak. This is, if anything, more true for abstracts and importants such as religion.

Second, as promised, I will extend the hardware-software metaphor. I'm not claiming any of this is logically conclusive, but let this metaphor be accurate, then what would it suggest?

To summarize, briefly, what was said in class, the hardware and software of a computer can be said to symbolize the physical human and his religion, respectively. The essential idea here is that all computers are physicall built in a similar manner, in that they contain similar components to serve similar computational tasks. The abstract purpose of a computer might be very different. Computers might be used to pursue computational results in science, to connect together phones or other computers and serve as network enablers, or to provide a personal interface, for email, text editing, and numerous other features. Many kinds of software serve many different purposes, and so many interpretations of religion serve different people in different ways.

It is also clear that culture influences the shape that religion takes, and another extension of the metaphor in class relates how an operating system exacts parameters under which software must fit and be developed within. Furthermore, software local to a certain operating system tends to be more compatible with software sharing its operating system. religious within a culture tends to be more cohesive then religions across cultural barriers. With a little effort at understanding the underworkings of a piece of software, it can be altered slightly to be compatible with almost any other modern operating system. I certainly take stock in this and find value in striving to understand what exactly makes my religious "flavor" compatible with me, and what details, maybe unimportant, are incompatible with others.

Another reflection is that while software is the important part of computing... computers would be without value without software and algorithms... it is restricted by hardware. In science, the accuracy and speed of computation is limited by what technology is available. Software is constantly pushing the bounds of hardware, and faster processors and bigger hard drives are sought after to increase the capabilities of our software. Since software is abstract it has no limits, and hardware will always be the cause of the system bottleneck. Carrying through the metaphor, our bodies and minds limit what we can do with our religion, and the most capable minds can thus "run the newest version" and have the potential for the strongest use of religion. We should then strive to make the most of our minds. Of course, this is easy to say, but what exactly is making the most of your mind?

Software is produced mainly by either large companies, or by many users through open source. Commercial religion reflects greater planning ahead of time, is compatible with other software made by the company, and often has few or no (large) bugs when it is initially created, however, it is also often specifically made to be incompatible with competitor products. Open source, contrastingly, is user developed, and though system specific, is often developed in parallel for many systems. Bugs are fixed quickly. Changes happen rapidly to meet user needs. Occasionally it is harder to get different pieces of open source software to run smoothly together. Fortunately user demand results in rapid solution development. I would interpret commercial software as parallelling more formal "book" religion, our religion in boxes. Formal religions often intentionally denounce each other and are "incompatible." There adherence to rules and accepted practice make them slower to change. There is no strong modern parallel to "open source religion." Religious communities exist, but very few consciously work to dynamically change to suit the religious needs of their adherents. What would be necessary for a consciously dynamic religion?

Perhaps an overextended metaphor, but valuable nonetheless, at least to one person.

Intro to Religious Studies

First post.

This is not a reflection on anything, I'm just breaking blogger in. In the near future, I am going to take the hardware software metaphor way too far. But really, as long as a metaphor is just a metaphor, how can you ever take it too far.

This blogger has a pretty clean layout. Hmm.
[Edit: Mrf. Silly buggy thing doesn't like images or rogue html.]

Okay, bye.