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