Stardate 20020717.1047

(On Screen): Will religion wither away and vanish from human culture over the next millennium? Should it?

Dave Trowbridge says that he thinks that religion (including Christianity) will continue to be a major part of human culture. I agree. Dave, as a very fervent Christian, thinks this is a good thing.

It may be surprising to hear that I, as a mechanistic atheist, agree. I don't totally agree with everything Dave says, but in the main I think he has the right of it.

Although I'm not a strict utilitarian, my ethics are closer to utilitarianism than to anything else with a commonly known label (given that ethical cynicism is not widely known). As a general principle I tend to judge something based on its effects rather than on any kind of inherent merit it may be perceived to have. And religion, even if I think it is based on self-deception, can have many benefits for the believers.

It provides a pattern for life, and it is also very comforting. It helps people deal with adversity. Confession, as practiced by the Catholic Church, is a decent kitchen-chemist version of what psychiatry can accomplish.

The universe is a big, complicated, confusing place. Religion offers straightforward answers, a compact and easily understood synthesis about what this place is, what we're doing here, and what will happen to us.

For many it's a social outlet, a replacement for the tribes that we lost when we moved into cities and onto farms. Humans are like lions and wolves; we operate best in small groups with emotional bonds, and we need that feeling of belonging. Churches can provide that; a church is home.

And given that we naturally fear to die, religion helps many to face the reality that everyone meets death eventually. Having someone you love die leaves a major hole in your life; grief and loneliness are inevitable. Believing that they have somehow gone to a better place, and that you'll eventually join them there, helps people to cope with that pain.

From my point of view it is indeed all self-deception, but that doesn't detract from the real benefits it brings.

The problem is that religion can also be a destructive force. Dave mentions the rise of fundamentalism. I don't see that as a part of the effects described above, which can be satisfied with the more mainstream and less militant religions.

One of the problems with modern technology is that it is enormously complex. If the world of 2000 years ago was complicated because natural science was ill-understood, our modern world is much worse. Many of the questions of 2000 years ago have been answered now by science, but to many the answers are profoundly troubling and unsatisfying. The answers are often extremely complex and deeply confusing, and it takes a great deal of time and effort and study to even understand them well enough to ask questions about them, let alone knowing what the answers are.

And now technology has added a whole new layer of complexity to life. Arthur C. Clarke famously said that a sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. We've long since reached that point.

However, Clarke has one aspect of it wrong: sufficiently advanced technology is reliable and repeatable. Magic was always very hard, and it was never certain if it would work. But technology works very well. The magician could point to a candle and speak magic words, and sometimes the candle would light itself. A modern person flips a switch on the wall, and a lightbulb starts to glow.

But on a deeper level, Clarke is right, and even in the industrialized west the wonders of technology might as well be magical. Everyone knows how to turn on lights, but the majority of people only have a vague understanding of why they work. And that's very simple and very old technology.

With the accelerating pace of change in technology, and with increasing miracles caused by it, there is a sense of wonder among those who don't understand it except at the user level. But there's also a rising sense of fear. Technology gives us gimcracks which make our lives easier, but it also changes our society and forces us in directions some may not wish to go. It is changing our lives in ways few can predict.

Those who are technologically unsophisticated are not necessarily stupid. But they lack the knowledge and experience to even understand many of the issues. They feel like passengers in the back of a bus driven by a madman; it's a feeling of helplessness.

Religion provides a feeling of power, of control, of knowledge and understanding. It helps relieve feelings of victimization and helplessness and powerlessness and confusion. But that can become pathological, and I believe that the newfound power of fundamentalism (Christian as well as Muslim) is more a reaction to this feeling of being left behind, of being dealt out by the technological revolution. For them it is a way to recapture control of their lives from the technological juggernaut.

Among those who consider themselves "more enlightened" who are nonetheless no more technologically savvy, you find a rise of pseudoscience. I think it's caused by the same effect: a need to recapture an illusion of control, of influence.

It's doomed to fail, and in the mean time it can often cause enormous damage. We're in a war now with Islamic fundamentalists, and a lot of people have died already because