Today’s New York Times Book Review recommends Holy Ignorance by Olivier Roy, a French social scientist working in Italy. From the review by sociologist Alan Wolfe:
Over the past few years, a number of theories have been offered about the rise of fundamentalism. Roy proposes the most original — and the most persuasive. Fundamentalism, in his view, is a symptom of, rather than a reaction against, the increasing secularization of society. Whether it takes the form of the Christian right in the United States or Salafist purity in the Muslim world, fundamentalism is not about restoring a more authentic and deeply spiritual religious experience. It is instead a manifestation of holy ignorance, Roy’s biting term meant to characterize the worldview of those who, having lost both their theology and their roots, subscribe to ideas as incoherent as they are ultimately futile. The most important thing to know about those urging the restoration of a lost religious authenticity is that they are sustained by the very forces they denounce.
Roy’s thesis is that despite the secular props of fundamentalism, it, as well as religion in general, are on the way out. I agree, although his track record of predictions about faith isn’t perfect:
Roy’s “Failure of Political Islam,” published in French in 1992 and English in 1994, infuriated those who viewed radical Islam as the major enemy of the West. Roy maintained in that book that Islamism, the perversion of Muslim faith into a utopian political movement, had little to offer ordinary Muslims and would therefore be unable to remain in power very long. (In subsequent work, Roy argues, I believe convincingly, that the ideology currently governing Iran or motivating Hamas has more to do with nationalism than with religion.)
It is indeed striking the depths of “holy ignorance” one finds amongst believers — and even amongst unbelievers.
Quick, a show of hands: how many of y’all think the Sermon on the Mount is a loverly bit of idyllic pastoral poetry expressing the importance of peace on Earth and goodwill towards men?
Well, you’re worng. It doesn’t even pretend to be such a thing. It starts out with Jesus re-affirming the inerrant sacredness of Mosaic law; you might recall that that’s the one that’s so emphatic about brutal executions for trivialities like marital infidelity…and then, a couple lines later, Jesus equates idle daydreaming with marital infidelity. But wait, there’s more! If you discover yourself guilty of such thoughtcrime, your only hope to avoid infinite torture is to pluck out your own eyes and chop off your own hands. And since Jesus is the one who’ll be deciding if you’ve been naughty or nice, one would think that he’s got the inside scoop on how to not be infinitely tortured.
That’s just the first refrain of the Sermon on the Mount. Elsewhere Jesus reveals himself to be a war god (Matthew 10:34) who demands human sacrifices be made to him of everybody who fails to worship him (Luke 19:27). Plenty of other examples abound.
The Qu’ran and the Hebrew Bible are full of the same kind of hatemongering, of course. At least the “radical” imams don’t pretend otherwise…but one has to wonder at the pure evil that could cause somebody to embrace such unadorned violence. As one might say, who pissed in their Wheaties?
In the Western world, of course, all this leads to profound levels of cognitive dissonance. The pious of all stripes love to wail and moan about all these “hard passages” throughout these unholy works of hate literature, but they never manage to reach the obvious conclusion: It’s all pure bullshit.
Only when they do will the rest of us be free from their self-inflicted sociopathy.
Cheers,
b&
“But wait, there’s more!”
Thank you, just what my joyous secular holiday needed to be fulfilled, a profound belly laugh.
Oh, look – it is a story! Personally, I prefer the one where the yule goat is bringing the gift of fundamentalism to all evil children.
Seriously though, this recent WEIT post shows an even level in US fundamentalism writ large. The number of literalist believers are certainly not rising, within the measurement error.
Moreover, superficially Roy’s sociological “theory” doesn’t seem testable, how do you correlate increase in ignorant population with increase in secularization? Certainly the measure Roy suggest fails, since creationism and other textual beliefs are by definition more coherent with religious paraphernalia rather than less. That it is less consistent with theology must be the fault of theology and its lack of coherence, not internal coherence of believers.
A testable theory about religious adherence was presented a few years back over at Edge, “WHY THE GODS ARE NOT WINNING” by Gregory Paul & Phil Zuckerman. [You have to google, more links and this comment has to dwell in the spam trap.]
“One Great Faith has risen from one eighth to one fifth of the globe in a hundred years, and is projected to rise to one quarter by 2050. Islam. But education and the vote have little to do with it. Generally impoverished and poorly educated, most Muslims live in nations where democracy is minimalist or absent. Nor are many infidels converting to Allah. Longman was correct on one point; Islam is growing because Muslims are literally having lots of unprotected sex. The absence of a grand revival of Christ, Allah and Vishnu worship via democratic free choice brings us to a point, as important as it is little appreciated — the chronic inability of religion to recruit new adherents on a consistent, global basis.”
Btw, they graph US biblical literalists as a declining population.
I confess I wouldn’t normally waste one millisecond on such an amorphous storytelling text as the review on Roy. But having read it, the review mentions one interesting tidbit. Roy contends that we are “witnessing the severing of religion from the cultures within which it was once embedded.”
This would agree with the quote from Paul & Zuckerman above, in that the global requirement is merely lack of democracy and the insecurities of impoverishment. You don’t get religious, and specifically literalist religious, because you have insecurities (say, on theology). You stay religious, and specifically literalist religious, because you have insecurities (say, on housing).
Maybe Roy, having thrown shit at enough walls, finally managed a bit that stuck.
Seems to me I made a bit of amorphous commentary of my own, in that last part. More clearly perhaps, general insecurities isn’t enough to make you religious. Some populations stay (even grow) religious despite the zeitgeist because they have specific insecurities, of impoverishment.
“Islam is growing because Muslims are literally having lots of unprotected sex.”
You mean, they can’t recruit, so they reproduce? Hmm.
I believe that this is exactly the case: in Vienna, for example, they’re seeing it in real time (Muslims recently went very quickly from 1% to 11%, and within most our lifetimes are projected to be > 50% there). Conversions can take years, but breeding takes only 9 months.
Sorry I have to disagree, Dr Coyne. I don’t think the arguments offered are all so persuasive. And the track record speaks for itself.
As for the regime of Iran-it is really not “nationalism presenting as religion”. In fact ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the revolution, condemned nationalist tendencies in Iran in the strongest possible terms. Which doesn’t mean the regime hasn’t been cynically using the same sentiments when it feels they can take advantage of them, such as when it comes to dealings with outside world on the nuclear issue. And why would a nationalist government be sponsoring Hamas and Hezbollah when its own people are starving? Where is the nationalistic motivation?
Roy is wrong on both counts.
Well, “nationalism” is not the correct term, we are dealing with a form of “supranationalism,” nations united by a same religion, comparable to the supranationalism of the Roman Church several centuries ago (The Holy Roman Empire).
Which is why Roy is wrong, and so is reviewer Wolfe.
It bugs me when I see pundits try to tell us religion, taken to an extreme, somehow becomes something other than religion (nationalism in this case).
Except that virtually all of the Arab nations close to Iran loathe and fear Iran and want the USA to… Sorry, I don’t see much supra-nationalism there, or anywhere else in th Muslim world, except in the dreams of a few unwordly imans and such as our infamous Osama.
Their governments do. Not necssarily the populace. Ahmadinejad’s antisemitic rhetoric has won him quite a few supporters in the Arab world.
Pan-Arab nationalism existed a few decades ago in a secular format. Today it is laregly replaced by different shapes and forms of Islamic extremism. How else could you get an alliance between Persian Iran, and Arab Hamas? To call it nationalism is ignorance, though not necessarily the holy type.
Sorry, but an alliance between Iran and Hamas is hardly a sign of some Islamic supra-nationalism in the making. Also, it seems to me that the thing to do is read Roy’s actual work and engage with its arguments instead of dismissing it out of hand on the basis of a single review. Juan Cole, whom I respect, has also written about the national as well as the religious fissures in the Muslim world.
No, but the alliance should indeed refute the notion if the ideology governing Iran being a form of nationalism masquerading as religion.
While iran’s ayatollah’s denounce nationalism, and denounce iran’s past nationalist leaders such as Mossadegh as traitors, it is rather…laughable to see someone who doesn’t speak the language, has never sat for an exam on Islamic studies, or actually been to the place, pretending to understand the situation better than I do.
Ah, the argument from authority…
Ehm, no. I am simply stating that you don’t know as much about my hometown as much as I do. Not least, because you do not speak my native language.
No, of course I don’t know as much as about Iran if that is your country of origin; all I was suggesting that it is perhapsworth engaging with the arguments of a man like Roy, who has a considerable reputation, instead of just jumping on him because of what one has read in a review. Anyway, I don’t like getting into squabbles on other people’s websites, so let’s just drop the issue, shall we? All good wishes for the New Year!
Speaking of joy, Pharyngula has a better yule gift. [Yeah, I’m pitting the cats against the squids, the boots against the beard, belly on belly. Wanna do something of it? ಠ⌣ಠ]
Go, Britain!
The “Future of Political Islam” summary sounds ridiculous. Theocracies ruled many Arabic kingdoms for many hundreds of years; why should anyone believe that these theocracies in general would not last much longer?
And what is to be gained by believing that fundamentalism is a “symptom of secularization”? It sounds like wishy-washy pseudo-philosophy to me.
I wonder what fundamentalism is meant to be an ignorance of. It’s certainly not an ignorance of superstition.
Many of them had democracies. But they were a threat to BP, Shell, Exxon, etc., so we over-threw them with repressive regimes, like the Shah or Iran or, in Iraq, helping the Baath Party (leading to Saddam Hussein) get into power.
I haven’t read the book, but I would sympathize with the “psychology of fear” and “loss of identity” concerning the factors influencing augmented behavioral manifestations *within* fundamentalism. Nonetheless, I do not see an increase in fundamentalism as a byproduct of increasing secularization — it appears only to increase reactionary behavior among those already invested in dogma. Ignorance and fear, however, are the baseline conditions underneath all forms of irrationality.
One review states: “The secularization of society was supposed to free people from religion, yet individuals are converting en masse to such fundamentalist faiths as Protestant evangelicalism, Islamic Salafism, and Haredi Judaism.” However, who says that the secularization of society has taken place? If ignorance is the problem, then secularization clearly hasn’t done its job yet.
Sounds more like wishful thinking to me. I’ve seen predictions of the imminent demise of fundamentalism for many years now, yet it seems to be getting stronger. I do think it will peak then fade, probably to a lower nadir than ever before, but it will take decades. I fear that we will have to suffer a Palinesque presidency first.
EVOLUTIONARY ASPECTS
On the subject of the reason for fundamentalism, and of religion generally, I am offering the following conjecture that religion has, lurking at its heart, hidden evolutionary roots. It seems so obvious that something weird is going on that it reminds me of the old joke in which two scientists are solemnly peering at an experiment churning away in front of them. One says to the other “Well, I can see that it works in practice but I won’t believe it until I see it working in principle”. Well then let’s get to the principle, but first a little background.
If religion can, by some means, become expressed within the genes (i.e. a god spot) then it opens up the potential for highly effective strategies for evolutionary success. There is no need, however, for the religion to be true in any way. For this to happen, it is necessary for group selection principles to hold true. The objection to group theory whereby it is supposed to be defeated by “subversion from within” (SFW) holds only up to a certain level of sophistication and complexity within a system. The hymenoptera (bees and ants etc.) are controlled by the queen whose workers and soldiers do not breed and are thus prevented from usurping their given purpose. The colony is thus freed from the actions of SFW. It is this one fundamental liberty that is responsible for the astounding success of their evolutionary strategy. Contrast this with the typical prey animal that cannot unite with its group to oppose predators. The effect of SFW prevents this; the cowards will always out survive the brave.
There comes a “tipping point” beyond which SFW is suddenly defeated and the strategies of the hymenoptera become available. The “tipping point” is reached when a society develops a means of communication and control which allows a ruling class to subjugate the lower orders.
No matter how successful any battle strategy may be and no matter what strengths are brought to bear, if these strengths are possessed by two sides, the side which has the any extra edge, no matter how small or bizarre, will find it is the winner over evolutionary time. If the extra edge could be a religion that encourages the soldier to be braver, more Kamikaze like, the odds will favour his tribe – the hymenoptera strategy being employed here to decisive effect.
It is basic scientific good practice to begin by looking at the facts with an open mind, free of all preconceptions. To this end I would suggest considering afresh the phenomenon of trying to argue with the religious minded, showing them great mountains of plausible arguments, just to find that almost inevitably, the exercise proves to be totally futile. We have become used to simply assuming that the stubbornly religious minded are in some way deficient in their intelligence or that some political or wishful thinking motivation is behind it. Is it not worth considering the blindingly obvious and deduce that we are seeing the workings of the instinctive part of the brain? The departure from normal logical neural operations is so extreme that we really must allow for the possibility that their judgment functions have been seized by something much more powerful than just a meme (for example). Could the agents be some Machiavellian logic circuit planted deep within the genes? Once again, the god spot.
I am not sure if the above conjecture has been put forward before and found to be false or simply not fashionable or testable. No doubt someone will put me right here but it would be a delicious irony if the compulsion to believe in a religion turned out, in the end, to be just a cunning evolutionary adaptation. That would be some cruel but amusing dilemma for the creationists to grapple with.
In summary, I think we should examine dispassionately the riddle of why humans so easily accept religious concepts as absolute truths whilst irrationally refusing to concede any possibility of error. However, if the world’s religious communities seem to survive better than our own, is this not evidence, before our eyes, of evolution at work?
All we need now are some suggestions for experiments or perhaps statistical analysis to prove the conjecture, one way or the other.
Robin Ducret
I do suggest that, rather than Sloan-Wilson, you should read Scott Atran, Pascal Boyer and Stewart Guthrie.
Hi,
Thanks for the suggestions. It looks as if Scott Atran’s “In Gods We Trust” is the best starting point. It does take Amazon forever to get books to me here in Cape Town however!
Robin Ducret
Your premise, that we should quit dismissing the idea of religion and warfare being an adaptive gene team, is good. Although you seem more surprised by it than we would be. But one of your conclusions is totally backwards. We should reconsider arguing? That is not a fresh, radical idea.
The problem could be either that arguing is futile, or we give up too easily and we almost had them. What better way to find the answer than to give up even more easily!
It’s also a really discontinuously minded idea. We all have our own level of vulnerability to superstition. There isn’t one rational group of humans and another irrational one which can never be reasoned with.
The proposal that rational communication might be futile is not a new idea. It’s one of humanity’s oldest problems. We give up on communication way more easily than we give up on violence. If someone were to say, “Let’s be more rational—more efficient in our arguments,” that would be a fresh idea.
Hello Steve and thanks for the comment. Yes it was certainly over-stating the point to suggest giving up on communication with the religious minded. It was merely intended as an expression of frustration rather than a serious proposition. The unstated implication being that other methods of persuasion should be tried. I have to admit having no clear idea what these might be and we are all here looking for answers to this one.
This was my first post and I suppose that grandstanding is a vice that I should avoid in future.
Robin Ducret
Off-topic:
Walking Santa, Talking Christ
Why do Americans claim to be more religious than they are?
By Shankar Vedantam
Maybe the biologists here would like to take a swing at this. Meanwhile, I don’t see how you test for religion being selective anymore than you test for a preference of blue paintings being such.
I thought that group selection was an invalid model:
“those models of group selection that had been proposed were vehicle models not replicator models. I was not for a moment suggesting that I accepted those models as valid. They were (and are) invalid vehicle models, as opposed to invalid replicator models.”
And that kin selection holds?
Now that is what I call a group!
What is “religious communities”, what is “our own”, how do they “survive better”, and how does inclusive fitness theory operate on such “kins”?
Oops! Comment in moderation was a reply to Robin Ducret, which I misplaced.
Thanks for the reply. Thanks also for giving me the link to what I see is a very acrimonious spat amongst the evolutionary heavyweights – a hornets’ nest that I had inadvertently trodden on. I recently read David Sloan Wilson’s “Evolution For Everyone” and also some of his articles from New Scientist. I thought that he had reported that Richard Dawkins had conceded some group selection principles – how wrong can you get? I must tread more carefully in future!
Instead of using a label, I should perhaps just suggest that a modern society is capable of exercising absolute control over its subjects, almost, but not quite, able to act like the hymenoptera in times of conflict. When religious fervour is added to the mix the suicide/Kamikaze option thus instilled in soldiers begins to get over the problem of the cowards out-surviving the brave. Religion, or whatever instinct for mindlessly accepting the word of leaders without question is called, would then be a useful evolutionary tool. Religion here would be a very non-specific. A more general term may be better suited. It would be an instinct that perhaps derives from the tendency for children to learn from their parents. E.g. “Stay away from snakes and scorpions, they will harm you” is a piece of advice best not learned from experience.
I think the general point/observation that I am making is this: people do have many strange superstitions and prejudices but not too many that they would be prepared to submit to being burned at the stake before denying. Their common sense and self preservation instincts seem to be circumvented when deeply religious feelings are involved. Is it not possible that some hitherto unknown instinct could be at work here?
Robin Ducret
Wow. I’ve made the similar fundamentalism is a “symptom of the death of religion” arguments. I’ve always thought that history has been good at teaching us that religion reacts to social threats (loss of control/respect/increase in equalities of formerly marginalized groups), with the greater the threat, the greater the reaction.
But I think are other things as well and that, in and of itself, the argument is a piece of the rise of fundamentalism, not the whole explanation. There’s also poverty, liberty, education and a host of other factors, I think.
I believe that what we are seeing in how fundamentalist religion has evolved over the last century only serves to support the ideas of universal darwinism. memes, like genes, only want (if they can be said to want anything) to reproduce themselves and fundamentalism is an aberrant mutated form of the religion meme that doesn’t need to be rational to be wildly successful at reproducing itself. Thankfully it seems that rationality, though doing so more slowly, is proving itself to be the more successful meme as overall human intelligence increases.