Religion Science and the Nature of Human Life

[Music]

i’m here today to talk about religion

religion is fascinating but it’s also

perplexing

all you have to do is read the daily

news and

you’ll realize that religion is involved

in a lot of

conflict and many people believe

that religion is irrational

and unscientific

they believe that as modernity and

science progress

that religion will just fade away

now i’m going to complicate what we

think we know about religion

i’m here to argue that religion is a

social fact and whether or not you

believe in religion

it isn’t going away anytime soon

in fact religion is thriving

even under the worst of conditions like

a pandemic

and while many think that religion and

science

are on opposite sides of the spectrum

i would argue that they’re just asking

different questions

as with any other aspect of human life

religion has its upsides and its

downsides

it can offer hope resilience

a warm and caring community during times

of crisis

and it can be a vehicle for

social and cultural conflict and

injustice religion is actually

many different things

and in an increasingly pluralistic world

we need to better understand religion as

a

social force and also as

a philosophical lens to better

understand human culture human life

and ways we can thrive as a species

in an unpredictable

and imperfect world

as a point of reference i grew up in a

family that attended religious services

on a regular basis

and it was a multicultural community i

think back on my experience with

religion

as being a positive one i it brings back

memories

of family and holidays

food drives and clothing drives

community and positive

feelings

my confusion with religion developed

later in life when my husband and i

embarked

on an adventure with the foreign service

we lived in the soviet union during the

fall of communism

and later in the former yugoslavia

during the war

we arrived in moscow in 1990

and after 70 years of soviet

communism religion had been suppressed

and even persecuted

it was seen as a competing source of

legitimacy

russian orthodox churches and

basilica these beautiful buildings were

empty

and some had even been repurposed

i genuinely believed that religion once

it was pushed out of the public sphere

was gone forever

well no one could have predicted that

just a few months later

during gorbachev’s efforts to

restructure the economy and to

open up society that communism would

fall

and the soviet union would splinter into

15 different

independent republics and just as

surprising

was the way that religion reemerged onto

the public sphere

after extreme persecution the russian

orthodox

church rose up from the ashes of

communism

almost like a phoenix and soon it became

a symbol of russian national identity

our next assignment was in the former

yugoslavia during the balkans crisis

the war was only 30 kilometers away from

where we were living

and i can assure you it was not easy to

live near a war zone

when we first arrived our welcoming

committee

told us that it wasn’t worth unpacking

our bags because we might actually

be evacuated soon

well during the time that we were there

we met

some of the wonderful people from the

balkans the muslims the croatian

catholics the serbian orthodox

all wonderful people

and we heard their stories many of them

had fled the war

and those stories kept us up at night

by this point we had two toddlers

two little boys and i worried

how would i protect them if the war came

to our doorstep

well soon there was news of a ceasefire

in fact the border had opened

and we knew that it probably wasn’t

going to be long before it closed again

so we packed up our little boys put them

in their car seats

and drove the 30 kilometers to the

border

past checkpoints past armed guards who

stopped our car and looked through the

window to see our little boys asleep in

the back

and we drove slowly through the ruins

of what used to be a thriving village

past homes that looked like our home

where families that were like us used to

live

they were bombed and burned

windows were shattered

rain was pouring through holes in the

roofs

in fact it was such a rainy day and the

mist was coming up from the ruins almost

like

smoke we drove back home

to our safe place we hugged our little

boys

but experiencing this and witnessing

with my own

eyes the destruction that this conflict

had caused

was sobering it hung over us

like a dark cloud

i wondered how could people who are so

cultured and educated do this to one

another

what role did religion or ethnicity play

in this conflict

the answers were unclear and the fog

hovered

secretly i worried

were all the positive things that i had

experienced growing up with religion

were they true

or was i just too young and naive

to really understand the true character

of religion

i felt like i was caught in a paradox

eventually cognitive dissonance set in

and i determined that religion was

like a two-sided coin on one hand you

have

all the positive experiences with

religion

you flip it over and you have the darker

more ominous side of religion

eventually we return to the united

states and i began my doctorate

i joined peter berger at the institute

for culture religion and world affairs

at boston university

i hoped peter berger who was a

well-known sociologist of religion could

wave a magic wand and clear

the fog so i could see religion more

clearly

he just smiled and said you know i think

it’s your job to figure this out

so what have i learned about religion

after meeting peter berger after

completing my research

after teaching

what i learned is religion is

multi-faceted it’s very complex

it takes on the characteristics of the

societies

it inhabits it can be

instrumentalized for human purposes

it also can advance social justice

and the moral good

i also learned that religion is

resilient

in fact the pandemic showed us that

while human beings were social isolating

religion went online

you could attend shabbat services and

friday prayers

saturday and sunday worship services

weddings

funerals baptisms and even a bris went

online

i also learned that religion can

contribute to human thriving

for instance meditation and prayer have

been

found to reduce stress and to increase

focus and even a sense of wellness

we know how important that is in today’s

world

when mental health has been a crisis

religion can also provide a supportive

community

when we lack resources when

we face discrimination or

marginalization

from a functional perspective religion

is much like any other

social force we experience

but through the process of teaching

i actually learned to appreciate the

many different ways that religion

understands

human life the human condition

suffering and death

i also learned that religion is not

so different from science it’s just

asking different questions

whereas science is asking the how how is

the universe

formed what is it composed of

how do we extend human life

religion is asking the why

why are we here what is the meaning of

life what kind of life

is worth living

to be clear religions do answer these

questions differently

religions also provide unique ways

of thinking about what we might call

ultimate reality

for instance buddhists believe

that the world around us what we

perceive

is actually just an illusion

everything animate and inanimate

is integrally connected because it all

came from the same source

and everything is constantly changing

well i don’t know about you but it

actually reminds me

a bit of quantum mechanics

theoretical physicist carlo revelli who

by the way is not religious

argues that quote quantum

mechanics describe a world that is

deeply different from our experience

nonetheless it’s real

in a sense it’s even more real

than our experience because our

experience is like a foggy

view of reality

so to some extent physics is like taking

away screens he argues

and seeing better so it’s like

walking over the hill and seeing what’s

beyond

now if i were to remove quantum

mechanics

and replace it with the word religion

this

is what we get religion

describes a world that is

deeply different from our experience

nevertheless it’s real

in a sense it is more real than our

experience

our experience is like a foggy view of

reality

so to some extent religion

is like taking away screens

and seeing better so it’s like walking

over the hill

and seeing what’s beyond

at its core religion reminds us that we

are just human beings after all

without divine powers and without total

control

over our environment or circumstances

as the pandemic taught us so clearly

at its heart religion is about

compassion

we are called to treat one another as we

would like to be treated

and while we don’t have control over our

circumstances

we do have control over how we respond

to those circumstances

religion tells us how as a species

we can better flourish and respect our

environment

and the world around us

in an increasingly pluralistic world

when cohesive systems of thought are

challenged

daily by other world views and by other

ideologies it’s vitally

important that we learn to see

human life from different perspectives

through other ways of making sense of

the human condition

so whether or not you believe in

religion

religion is a social fact

it’s not going away anytime soon

it’s around us in all forms and shapes

even during a pandemic or 70 years of

soviet communism it didn’t go away

as with quantum mechanics religion

gives us a view of reality that is

different

from the reality our physical senses

perceive

i invite you to try on the lens that

religion provides

i can’t promise it will take away the

screens

to reveal an ultimate reality

but i’ll wager it may give us

new insights into our lived reality

thank you

you