Excellent Beauty by Eric Dietrich
Author:Eric Dietrich [Dietrich, Eric]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL106000, RELIGION / Religion & Science, PHI022000, PHILOSOPHY / Religious
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2015-06-08T16:00:00+00:00
PART THREE
The Journey in Tatters
EIGHT
Beyond Atheism
The Religion Illusion
THE TWO MOST IMPORTANT THINGS to explain about religion are why there are tens of thousands of religions today on planet Earth and why all of them are so resistant to the refuting evidence. The answer: religions are part of the human blueprint, just like speaking a language. Humans are religious because our ancestors who were religious reproduced more successfully than our ancestors who weren’t. This is the only explanation that works and is satisfying.
But now we are faced with a shocking conclusion: there is no such thing as any religion. There is no such thing as Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca, Sikhism, and so on. Yes, there are Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Witches, and Sikhs . . . but none of them actually practices a religion.
Among most of Earth’s religious people (which is to say, among most people), the idea that there are religions goes hand in hand with the idea that one religion is right and the others are wrong. Even among “enlightened” religious people who embrace some version of religious diversity, the idea persists that religion is correct. To get around the idea that the thousands of religions vary wildly, such “enlightened” people often say: “Perhaps we’ve all got our own interpretations of the fundamentally spiritual core of the universe, but that there is a spiritual core of the universe is not in question.” Indeed, it is common to argue as follows: “That so many people are religious, even if they differ considerably, surely points to a universal truth: that there is something holy and sacred, perhaps some being whom we but understand incompletely.” But we now know this is exactly like arguing, “That so many people eat large quantities of fat and sugar, even if they differ in what manner they consume them, surely points to a universal truth: that fat and sugar are good for us.” Most humans regard this latter argument as so silly that they cannot see the tight analogy between it and the first argument. Yet the two are exactly the same. The curious part is that so many of us let science tell us that fats and sugars are not good for us when consumed in large fried quantities, but turn a deaf ear to science telling us that there is no such thing as Christianity. True, we can explain why religion has the grip on us that it does, but few take that explanation to heart. Yet, when we do, when we allow the truth to wash over us, we see that there is no such thing as religion. There is no Navajo religion, no such thing as the religions of the Aboriginal peoples in Australia, the religions of the ancient Pueblo peoples, or the Chinese traditional religions. All religions are illusions supplied by our genetic makeup and the culture in which we were raised.
As mentioned previously, Richard Dawkins pointed out that we all know what it is like to be an atheist—when we consider
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