Violence
Violence is necessary even at the atomic or molecular level. There can be no transactions of energy or matter without enormous violence at the submicroscopic scale. This violence continues all the way up into biology at any scale, and thence to sociology and other more macro-level constructs.
The problem with much of the humanities is that they are elaborate narrative artifices or narrative factories designed to allow us to pretend as well as to mask such pretense or pretensions. The simpler (or earlier) the narratives, the less they mask the violence (see the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, for example; also compare Genesis to the Gospels).
The reason we tend to confuse all narratives with religion is that the whole thing is a seamless body of interwoven narratives. There is no literature or avenue of inquiry in the humanities that isn't religious in its roots.
That puts us in a parlous position when discussing violence. Everything is tainted with it, a fact which is as much acknowledged in the old stories (like Cain and Abel) as in the modern narratives.
The argument, therefore, that religious impulses are a major cause of violence (as people like Sam Harris seem to believe) is impossible to test. It is like saying, "Being human makes you prone to violence." The only way to test that is to remove what makes you human and see if you are still prone to violence; since we don't know what it is that we have to remove, and the causes of violence (in general) are too many and too different, we can't really test this assertion.
Likewise, to test the assertion that religious belief is a major cause of violence requires one to believe in turn that the human tendency to be violent is one level higher than the human tendency to have beliefs that can be considered religious. That has to be wrong; it's easier for humans to apprehend and comprehend violence than religion, and requires the use of less brain. Evolutionary biologists would have to agree — it's easier to observe violence in animals (and figure out why and whence this tendency arises) than to observe religion in animals.
Sam Harris and those of his ilk must be wrong. They have been overwhelmed by their own narrative and rhetoric, and have now turned the universe firmly on its head in order to squat in the ruins of the New Atheism.
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Note: Harris is particularly against Islam in terms of one kind of violence. He seems to say that if an increased tendency to commit acts of terrorism can be linked statistically to being Muslim, then all Muslims should submit to the indignity of their ethnicity being used as a tool for profiling. Actually, the statistics can be shown to be distorted by the unique case of the 9/11 incident, which was indeed carried out by terrorists who were Muslims.
The problem with much of the humanities is that they are elaborate narrative artifices or narrative factories designed to allow us to pretend as well as to mask such pretense or pretensions. The simpler (or earlier) the narratives, the less they mask the violence (see the Grimm brothers' fairy tales, for example; also compare Genesis to the Gospels).
The reason we tend to confuse all narratives with religion is that the whole thing is a seamless body of interwoven narratives. There is no literature or avenue of inquiry in the humanities that isn't religious in its roots.
That puts us in a parlous position when discussing violence. Everything is tainted with it, a fact which is as much acknowledged in the old stories (like Cain and Abel) as in the modern narratives.
The argument, therefore, that religious impulses are a major cause of violence (as people like Sam Harris seem to believe) is impossible to test. It is like saying, "Being human makes you prone to violence." The only way to test that is to remove what makes you human and see if you are still prone to violence; since we don't know what it is that we have to remove, and the causes of violence (in general) are too many and too different, we can't really test this assertion.
Likewise, to test the assertion that religious belief is a major cause of violence requires one to believe in turn that the human tendency to be violent is one level higher than the human tendency to have beliefs that can be considered religious. That has to be wrong; it's easier for humans to apprehend and comprehend violence than religion, and requires the use of less brain. Evolutionary biologists would have to agree — it's easier to observe violence in animals (and figure out why and whence this tendency arises) than to observe religion in animals.
Sam Harris and those of his ilk must be wrong. They have been overwhelmed by their own narrative and rhetoric, and have now turned the universe firmly on its head in order to squat in the ruins of the New Atheism.
=====
Note: Harris is particularly against Islam in terms of one kind of violence. He seems to say that if an increased tendency to commit acts of terrorism can be linked statistically to being Muslim, then all Muslims should submit to the indignity of their ethnicity being used as a tool for profiling. Actually, the statistics can be shown to be distorted by the unique case of the 9/11 incident, which was indeed carried out by terrorists who were Muslims.
Labels: Humanities, Humanity, Philosophy, Religion, Violence
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