Tag Archive for academic

Astrid Lydia Johannsen | February 29, 2012
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If you can’t keep it in your pants, I suppose you should get married.

Mawwiage. Mawwiage is what bwings us togevver, today. Mawwiage, that bwessed awwangement, that dweam wivvin a dweam.

~ The Princess Bride

There are lots of different ways to be married In the Old Testament, including (but not limited to) a widow with (no male offspring) and her dead husband’s brother [Gen. 38:6-10], a woman and the man who raped her [Deut. 22:28-29], a soldier and a female prisoner of war [Deut. 21:11-14], and a handful of others including polygamous marriage and, I suppose, one man and one woman.

In the New Testament, Jesus has a few things to say about marriage. Hearkening back to the Genesis story of the creation of Adam and Eve, Jesus specifically states that marriage is a lifetime contract and, except in the case of infidelity, divorce is strictly forbidden [Matt. 19:9]. The disciples ask him if it’s better not to marry at all, and Jesus responds “Not everyone can accept this teaching, but only those to whom it is given.” [Matt. 19:11]. Basically Jesus is agreeing with the disciples’ observation that it’s better not to marry if they plan on hanging out with him. This fact is laid out even more clearly in Luke 25:26, when Jesus says “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.” On top of that, Jesus expects his followers to sell everything they own and live an ascetic lifestyle contemplating none other than God.

Paul emphasizes these points even further in his first letter to the Corinthians. Echoing Jesus’ opinion of marriage versus discipleship, Paul explains “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain unmarried as I am. But if they are not practicing self-control, they should marry.” In other words, if you absolutely have to have sex, then go ahead and get married. But it’s clear in both Jesus’ and Paul’s opinion that not being married is clearly the superior option. “I want you to be free from anxieties,” Paul writes.

The unmarried man is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to please the Lord; but the married man is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin are anxious about the affairs of the Lord, so that they may be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about the affairs of the world, how to please her husband. I say this for your own benefit, not to put any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and unhindered devotion to the Lord. [1 Corinthians 7:32-35]

Paul sums up his argument that remaining single is preferable, saying “So then, he who marries does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better.”

Jesus was not the proponent of the kind of family values we understand today. He stated this quite succinctly when he said, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.” Reflecting the sentiment seen in the Luke passage above, Jesus goes on saying, “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me…. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.” The choice to follow Jesus would wind up breaking families apart (and indeed has done so to countless families for a long time now).

So according to Jesus and Paul, being unmarried was preferable to being married. But humans being humans, people found sex to be far more interesting than praying, and thus, marriage continued on down through the centuries. And in accordance to the rules laid down in the New Testament by Jesus and Paul, the marriage was codified and ritualized by the Church to ensure that the masses attending masses would grow to provide a steady stream of resources for the increasingly monolithic institution of Catholicism.

What I find particularly interesting about the Catholic Church’s rigorous adherence to rules concerning marriage is how at the same time it managed to completely ignore the very clear stipulations both Jesus and Paul made about giving away material wealth. Remember, it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. I wonder if people like Pope Benedict XVI, Rick Santorum or Newt Gingrich (adulterer!) remember that bit? [Matt. 19:24, Mark 10:25, Luke 18:25]

Category: Focus on Religion, History, Religion | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | December 29, 2011
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The Fog of Liberal Opium

Eris Discordia

I’m fascinated by religion. I really am. I even test-drove a handful of them just to see what they were like from the point of view of the practitioner. What I discovered is twofold: First, I’ve pretty much always been an atheist. I didn’t have the gumption to actually apply the label to myself until only three years ago, but thinking back on my experiments with religion, I’ve never ever held a belief that there was a benevolent, supernatural entity, with or without flowing robes and beard, that watched everything I did and judged me by my thoughts and actions. The closest I ever got to believing in something that could be called a divinity was when I was pagan and I personified the laws of physics as Eris Discordia. Technically speaking, I was an animist. The only thing I animated, however, were the physical laws of the universe. Finally after a few years of frittering about with lighting candles and waving daggers inside of a circle circumscribed with sea salt, I decided that personifying the physical laws of the universe was kind of a silly thing to do. I left it behind, and that was that.

My days of being a pagan lasted throughout the 1990s, and it was toward the end of the decade that I gave it up as well as any sort of notion of gods, yet I still did not call myself an atheist. I can’t say that my pagan days were wasted, because it taught me exactly what it is that I truly value: the world. I love the changing of the seasons. I love the strata of rocks. I love the fractal beauty of plants. I love the stars and planets in the sky above me. Fortunately for me, there is a far better way to pay homage to the world than calling it “goddess” and jumping up and down in a circle, and that is to study it. Science is the art of poking at the world with a stick and watching to see what happens.

When I went to uni to study religion, it was because I had a serious hankering to poke religion with a stick, for science. But religion is a sensitive issue for a lot of people. It also has a significant provenance, dating all the way back to the birth of civilization (in the “settling down from a nomadic lifestyle and living in cities” sense of the word). So a lot of people hold a kind of reverence for religion in the same way that they hold reverence for other old things. I recently commented about the human fascination for old things on my Google Plus page by quoting from an episode of “Star Trek the Next Generation” (which certifies my geek cred) in which Dr. Noonien Soong asks Data why humans are so fascinated with old things. I wrote,

It must be about continuity, and a feeling that one belongs to something bigger, that gives humans so much comfort in the past. The future is scary because it’s unknown, so many folks would prefer a stasis of a past Golden Age even if such an age is pure fantasy.

Fear is a powerful emotion, and the unknown can be rather intimidating. I understand that there are numerous folk in the world who are apprehensive of what might happen to them or their loved ones after death, and it’s that apprehension which is usually the primary motivation for looking to become some flavor of spiritual. Spirituality offers a sense of security even if it’s simply a fiction used to alleviate the fears of the skittish. People who choose religion or spirituality, as opposed to being indoctrinated into it at a young age, likely do so because they allow their fears to dictate their actions.

Indeed, fear is such a powerful emotion that it also has the power to influence the minds of folks who would otherwise consider themselves quite rational. I like to think of myself as a rational individual. I consider myself a skeptic. I eschew simplistic answers that are unverifiable or unprovable. I do not fear death, though I must admit I’m a little wary about the process of dying (quick and painless, please). However, there is something that I’ve consciously been avoiding in large part because of fear.

Christopher Hitchens

Many folks, both believers and not, have been railing on the tactics of the so-called “New Atheists”, claiming that their rhetoric is brusque, abrasive, and challenging, and even going so far as to label it anti-Christian (or plain old anti-religious) bigotry. The Religious™ find the “New Atheists” offensive boors who believe they know everything and are shitting on the faithful’s parade. For a long time, I didn’t want to get involved in that. I tiptoed through the minefield of religious sensibilities, being careful not to ruffle anyone’s feathers lest I be branded a shrieking, insufferable asshole. But it was in a post by PZ Myers in which he wrote, “a mind addled by liberal opium is just as faulty as one fired up on conservative crack.” I know he was referring to liberal Christianity, but I also interpreted it as “fence-sitting atheists”, and it actually got me to pause long enough to reconsider my stance on “tiptoeing through the minefield”.

I’m not keen on confrontation, and I haven’t studied enough rhetoric (yet) to be able to hold my own in a debate. I have l’esprit de l’escalier and my thought process is long and drawn out. My choice to tiptoe and not ruffle anyone’s feathers stems largely from my desire to avoid conflict, but also from my fear that I’ll get raked over the coals rhetorically because of my insufficient ability to retort decisively with something both relevant and accurate. But in kowtowing to religion so that I might avoid being seen as an insufferable asshole, I’ve effectively conceded that religion is deserving of deferential treatment. Well it’s not. Religion is an insidious tool of humankind which allows unscrupulous individuals to justify sexism, racism, homophobia, xenophobia, and garden-variety bigotry on the basis of assumed moral superiority from something they have which I do not: belief in the divine.

In my theory of religion course I took at uni, one of things we discussed was the complex definition of religion. It’s more than just a belief system, because people can believe in woo without being a part of a religious institution. Religion has had its hands in social dynamics, cultural anthropology, psychology, philosophy, science, literature, even economics. It is a tumor with many tendrils, and that is probably the key reason why I am simultaneously so fascinated and so disgusted by it. I went into studying religion because I wanted to understand the social and psychological reasoning as to how a person could believe in something so patently false. I want to believe that all humans have the same capacity for reason and critical thinking that I do, but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Papa Ratzi

Some are religious because it was taught to them at a young age and they don’t know any other way to be. Others are religious because of fear of the unknown and a disinclination to face that fear. And still others are religious because they are quite simply too lazy to engage in critical thinking. (I think many religious Americans likely fall into the latter camp.) If an individual chooses to be religious or spiritual, that is their choice to make, and they have the right to believe in what they choose. I don’t have to respect it though, just as I don’t have to respect it if someone chooses to rail against vaccinations claiming they’re unsafe despite the overwhelming scientific evidence to the contrary. I do not have to have respect for an institution or belief system that condones human rights violations on the justification that some behavior “goes against God’s wishes”. I do not have to have respect for a cleric who states that it’s better to be ignorant than to incur the wrath of God, or who proclaims from his golden throne, wearing his opulent silks, that an ascetic life is superior to one of material indulgence. I do not have to have respect for a faith that would have its followers threaten me with death because I dare disbelieve or insult it.

I do not want to let fear dictate how I live my life. Whether it’s an existential fear of death, or a mundane fear of being viewed as one of the unapologetic “New Atheists”, I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer. Religion is vile, and I’m through being namby-pamby with my opinion of it.

Category: Focus on Religion, General, Opinion, Religion | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | September 14, 2011
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The Four-Source Hypothesis

The structure of the Two-Source model proposed in the 19th century.

Just as the Old Testament was a culmination of material spanning multiple sources over time, so too are the four gospels of the New Testament. The Four-Source Hypothesis, an extension of the earlier Two-Source Hypothesis proposed in the 19th century, argues that the synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all pulled from interrelated source material. A British scholar by the name of Burnett Hillman Streeter introduced the Four-Source model in the early 20th century as a way to understand the development of the synoptic gospels of Mark, Matthew, and Luke.

Most biblical scholars today agree that the first gospel written was that of Mark sometime between A.D. 60-70, thirty to forty years after the death of Jesus and nearly twenty years after the majority of Paul’s letters. The source material for Mark is largely unknown, but it is most likely a compilation of oral traditions passed on in the mid-first century in addition to stories about the miracles of Jesus and the Passion narrative. Mark’s style is very simple and straightforward, suggesting it was little more than a basic transcript written for a Greek audience. Yet this gospel would serve as a template for the subsequent gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Scholars date Matthew to around A.D. 80-90 and Luke to around A.D. 85-95, each written well after Mark. Both of these use a tremendous amount of source material from Mark, but they also contain other stories similar to each other which are not found in Mark, leading scholars to speculate that an additional source apart from Mark was used by both Matthew and Luke. The name scholars give this source is ‘Q’, or ‘Quelle‘, the German word for ‘source’. The origin and precise content of Q is unknown, but scholars have hypothesized its existence since the early 19th century when they began trying to rationalize the similarities within the synoptic gospels. Matthew and Luke also used other source material unique to each of them which scholars have labeled ‘M’ and ‘L’ respectively. All together, the four sources of the synoptic gospels are Mark, Quelle, the M source unique to Matthew, and the L source unique to Luke.

John played by a different rulebook.

Of the four gospels of the New Testament, the gospel of John is the one holdout. While there are several passages in John that are similar to the synoptic gospels, John is an independent work. Dated to the end of the first century A.D., John has nearly seventy years of Christian history to call upon, however inaccurate or speculative that history may be. John also had a completely different audience, and the new faith of Christianity had almost exclusively become a religion of Greco-Roman gentiles. This difference in theology between John and the synoptic gospels is quite apparent in the attitudes John expresses toward the Jews in the text. It’s clear that whoever wrote John had a different interpretation of the figure of Jesus, an interpretation that sometimes agreed, but often times went completely against what had been written in the synoptic gospels.

The four-source hypothesis, like the documentary hypothesis of the Old Testament, is a framework for biblical scholars to speculate on the origins of the texts within the Bible. The synoptic gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke relay very similar information, and using Mark, Q, M, and L as source material, first-century authors crafted customized gospels of their own to construct the New Testament gospels we know today. In my own study Bible, just before the actual text of the four gospels begins, there is a section which marks out similar passages within each of them. Also in my library is a synopsis of the four gospels which lays out all the text of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John where they match up. It is a tremendously useful tool in revealing just how much overlap and duplication of the text there is among the gospels.

For thousands of years, the Bible was a living, breathing, evolving document. It adapted to the trials and tribulations suffered by the Jews and the Christians. The Bible was a compilation of a rich history and oral tradition. It was written by human beings with human opinions and human biases, and it accumulated disagreements and contradictions within it even despite similar traditions and source material. The gospels, and indeed all the books of the Bible, are far from the inerrant word of a god. They are the stories from thousands of authors over thousands of years, each with their own understanding of their god’s divine plan for them at their moment in history. When the Bible was codified by the Catholic Church, it ceased to be an evolving document. It ceased to be flexible, and soon, so did its followers.

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Astrid Lydia Johannsen | September 7, 2011
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A Crash Course on the Documentary Hypothesis

Moses Pleading with the Israelites

I’m reading a book right now called “Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism” by Bishop John Shelby Spong. It’s a fascinating read, and it has gotten me all geeked out once again (as though I ever stopped) about the origins and evolution of the Bible. Rational, skeptical folk know that the Bible didn’t spring fully formed from the forehead of Jesus in the first century. Its origins extend deep into the past to the tenth century B.C. via the oral traditions of the Hebrew tribes living in the middle east, and its evolution consists of the merging and compiling of these differing oral traditions along with an idealized retelling of Hebrew history.

For centuries it was commonly believed that the author of the Pentateuch was none other than Moses himself, but by the 17th century there were some who doubted the truth of that claim. Using verses from the Bible itself, philosophers like Thomas Hobbes and Benedict Spinoza argued against the claim that Moses wrote the Pentateuch. Their opinions were, of course, frowned upon and condemned by the Church, but that would not stop later skeptics from analyzing the text and reaching the same conclusion. By the early 19th century, meticulous analysis of the text would lead scholars to begin proposing the idea of earlier source material written by several authors over time.

Julius Wellhausen

In the latter half of the 19th century, a German scholar by the name of Julius Wellhausen proposed a hypothesis claiming that the five books of Moses were originally four separate narratives that, over time, had gotten interwoven and redacted to eventually form the Pentateuch we know today. Wellhausen used things like linguistic style and vocabulary, the particular name given to God (Yahweh or Elohim), geographical clues, the anthropomorphic nature vs the intangible nature given to God in the text, and so forth as guides to pick apart the books of Moses in order to unlock their origin sources. Eventually he was able to distinguish four distinct sources called J (for Jahweh), E (for Elohim), D (for Deuteronomical reforms), and P (for Priestly redactors). He was also able to ascribe approximate dates for these sources. The J source material was the earliest, written around 950 B.C. by the southern tribe of Judah who called their god Yahweh. The E source material came a century later, written by the northern tribe of Israel who called their god Elohim. The Deuteronomist material came after religious reforms from the discovery of a lost law code. Though Deuteronomical additions to the Pentateuch were not fully integrated with the extant literature until the exile in Babylon around 600 B.C. The Priestly redactors made their changes to the Pentateuch post-exile, during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.

These four sources in turn each have source material of their own. The most notable example of this would be the story of the flood in Genesis, coming from the earlier Babylonian story called the Enuma Elish, which dates to as early as the 18th century B.C. (some nine centuries earlier than the Yahwist source date for the book of Genesis). Another notable story is the Tower of Babel, coming from an earlier Sumerian myth called Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta. Many other ancient myths from middle eastern cultures were no doubt woven in to the increasingly diverse literary tapestry that would one day be known as the Bible.

Some have asked me why it would be important for an atheist such as myself to not only read the Bible, but to try and understand its origins. This is just basic science. By understanding how the five books of Moses, and the other books of the Bible, were compiled and the history from which they emerged, we glean a greater understanding of the religions which developed from these texts and the cultures which practice them. The Bible is a literary potpourri, a dense tapestry of lives and times and cultures, spanning nearly four thousand years of human history. It’s a tiny slice of civilization, complete with war, violence, oppression, slavery, human sacrifice, hate, love, poetry, wisdom, philosophy, concern for the future, hope for redemption, and so many other themes. It makes sense that it is one of the most widely read books in the world. Yet there are many religious folk who genuinely believe that this book, the Bible, emerged parthenogenetically from the heavens as the literal word of God, completely denying it any history of its own or any potential for human authorship whatsoever. This kind of mentality denies human development, stunts scholarly growth, and promotes polarized thinking. To make the claim that it is the literal truth as spoken by God is, in my opinion, quite possibly the greatest misanthropic claim in the history of human civilization.

[For those who are interested, archive.org has a copy of a text titled "The Book of Yahweh" by Clarimond Mansfield which is a reconstruction of the Jahwist source.]

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Astrid Lydia Johannsen | August 24, 2011
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Outer Space to Inner Space

Carl Sagan rocked my Cosmos

When I was a child, my fascination was with things celestial. I wanted to be an astronaut so that I could be closer to the stars. It was as though the heavens called to me, so I studied all I could about the planets (there were nine at the time) and the stars in the galaxy. I read about Andromeda, the Magellanic Clouds, comets, asteroids, meteorites, nebulae, and so many other things. I watched Cosmos as a kid, and though I was too young to really wrap my brain around the humanist message Carl Sagan spoke of in his series, those shows resonated with me nonetheless.

It was in high school that I was finally able to study the one subject that fascinated me almost as much as astronomy: physics. Physics, along with my love of history, introduced me to names like Ptolemy, Brahe, Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, and the history of science. It was the history of science, spawned by my love of the stars, that ultimate led me to the study of religion.

I was curious, why was someone like Galileo condemned to house arrest for the harmless act of reporting what he had discovered by pointing his telescope skyward? Science was always a marvel to me, and it blew my young mind that there could be people throughout history who would condemn scientists for teaching things that were held as contrary to popular understanding. Read that as “contradicting the Law of God”.

Galileo Galilei

Religion had always fascinated me as well, though I had no idea how much my curiosity about religion would influence me in later years. By the end of high school, my academic interest in outer space made a complete turn toward a fascination with inner space and the realm of the mind. More specifically, I wanted to understand why people believe the things they believe in. Why do people have religion?

These questions were always in the back of my mind as I spent a little over a decade trying on a handful of different religions, Judaism, Buddhism, even Wicca, in an attempt to try and understand them, and those who practice them, a little better. At university, I finally had the opportunity to study religion in a context which suited my skeptical mind a lot better: not behind a pew in a church, but behind a desk in a university. And in the final term of my final year before graduating, I took a course that would make me realize that choosing to study religion in an academic setting was probably the best decision I could have made regarding my academic career, and my life in general. I took a course on theory of religion, and it opened my eyes to the kinds of prospective answers I had been asking about religion for most of my life. What defined religion? Was it purely a sociological phenomenon? Did religious belief evolve with the rest of the mind? So many more questions to explore, far beyond my original childhood curiosity.

I think it’s interesting that my childhood fascination with the stars led me toward religious scholarship. I still read about astronomy, cosmology, and physics, and I am a strong proponent of the sciences and the pursuit of knowledge about how our universe works. I even contemplated majoring in physics prior to going to university, but my interest in history and ancient cultures won me over and I wound up majoring in religious studies. And I don’t regret it one bit!

Side note:
Recently I posted a video at WeAreAtheism.com concerning my interest in religion and how that shaped my eventual coming out as an atheist. Give it a gander if you are so inclined, and I encourage other atheist folk to consider posting their own video or essay as well.

Category: Focus on Religion, History, Religion, Science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | August 10, 2011
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Praxy and Doxy

Of the thirteen Pauline epistles in the New Testament, seven have been identified by biblical scholars as written by Paul himself. The veracity of the remaining six, Colossians, Ephesians, 1-2 Timothy, Titus, and 2 Thessalonians, is still disputed among scholars. Many suggest that these six epistles were not written by Paul, but were instead written anonymously by later authors and then attributed to Paul, perhaps so that these epistles would be taken seriously by emerging Christian communities.

Paul wrote the majority of his epistles in the middle of the first century, between AD 50 and 60, while the pseudepigraphal works have been dated to the latter years of the first century and possibly as late as the early second century. There are many reasons to suggest that these epistles were not actually written by Paul. In my previous post, I mentioned the radical shift in Paul’s attitude toward women and their roles in the church between 1 Corinthians, written approximately AD 54, and 1 Timothy, which scholars have dated to as late as the turn of the second century. That’s a fifty year difference, and certainly plenty of time for the emerging Christian faith to undergo radical change as it moved from a Jewish sect in the Levant to a fledgling religion in Greece and Rome.

In searching for clues to the authorship of the pseudepigraphal epistles, scholars have analyzed style and linguistic changes between accepted and questioned Pauline works, as well as the content itself. Paul’s earliest epistles, 1 Thessalonians, Philippians, and Philemon, were all fairly short in length and very warm in tone. The first two were letters of support to members of the churches Paul founded in Thessalonica and Philippi, gentle reminders to his followers to stay true to their faith. The letter to Philemon is more of a simple correspondence than an invocation of faith.

It isn’t until the mid 50’s with his letter to the Galatians that Paul begins discussing theological matters, and he most likely did so in order to combat alternative interpretations and practices of Christianity which were emerging in the east. These new issues included the idea that if Christianity is simply a sect of Judaism, then they must follow the laws dictated in the Torah in order to be included as the Chosen People. However, Paul’s claim was that correct practice, orthopraxy, was not necessary. It was correct belief, orthodoxy, specifically the belief that Jesus died to absolve humanity of all sins, that was required of new Christians and not adherence to Old Testament laws. His epistle to the Galatians was simply a way of reining in increasingly disparate dogmas of the young Christianity.

However, the gap between Jewish orthopraxy and Christian orthodoxy would continue to widen until Christianity became predominantly a Gentile religion. The ideas written in 1-2 Timothy expressed a marked change in religious doctrine that no doubt was a result of this split of Christianity from Judaism. As much as Paul tried to promote the idea that both Jew and Gentile could be Christian, the gap between orthodoxy and orthopraxy would prove to be difficult to overcome.

These differences in theology have proven quite dangerous throughout history. As Christianity flourished in the Greco-Roman world, new ideas would emerge from very different interpretations of Paul’s letters, resulting in anti-semitism, adherence to Greco-Roman gender constructs and social mores, and even social hierarchies that Paul, in all probability, sought to avoid. Paul was no doubt the individual responsible for shaping the religion of Christianity as it came to be practiced, but it would be later authors, commentators, and compilers who would have the final say in how Christianity would come to be practiced in the centuries to come.

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Astrid Lydia Johannsen | July 27, 2011
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The Academic Pursuit of Religion

Max Müller

In the late 19th century, an English academic of German ancestry by the name of Friedrich Max Müller proposed the study of religion from a scientific perspective. Prior to this time, religious scholarship was the exclusive domain of theologians who analyzed religious texts, making copious commentary on scriptures, that they might prove their faith to be the correct one. The idea that one could study religion as one studies astronomy or geology seemed unlikely to a great many people, including many in academic circles.

The impetus for Müller’s science of religion came a century earlier with the emergence of the Deists and the idea of a natural religion. According to the Deists, the divine existed and could be found in the natural world. To them, there was no need for the dogma of religion. Revealed scriptures were unnecessary. God was not an entity but rather a force of nature. The whole world was sacred, and prayer involved studying the world in great detail. With Deism, scholarship and faith did not have to be at odds with one another. Scientific analysis of religion was possible, and Müller as well as others would work toward a theory of religion which could be understood from an analytical, scientific perspective.

It would be the disciplines of history, archaeology, and anthropology which would seed the scientific study of religion in the latter years of the 19th century. After 1859, the buzzword on the lips of many in academia was ‘evolution’. Darwin’s theory of natural selection was being co-opted and corrupted by sociologists who twisted it to fit social dynamics, and put 19th century mechanized Britain at the top of the social evolutionary ladder. This was the thinking that fueled 19th and early 20th century anthropologists and early religious scholars. The claim was that society evolved just as living things did, and people moved through stages of civilization which led from tribal societies to agrarian societies to mechanized societies in a linear progression. The budding science of religion would offer a similar linear theory.

E. B. Tylor

Edward Burnett Tylor was a well-traveled English autodidact who came up with an early theory of religion based on his experiences with varying tribal societies of Central and South America. He proposed the theory of animism, the idea that all things were infused with the divine. Trees, rocks, the ocean, weather, all things were inherently spiritual, and Tylor claimed it was this ever-present spirituality which was worshipped by early tribal societies. Tylor also proposed the idea of “survivals”, that is, curious behaviors which persist into modern times that at one point in the past were aspects of spiritual practices. A blessing after someone sneezes would be an example of a survival. According to Tylor, survivals offer contemporary evidence for ancient animistic practices, thus connecting the ancient with the modern.

James George Frazer was a contemporary of Tylor, and also a disciple of Tylor’s theories. It would be Frazer who would take the scientific study of religion via anthropology to its next level in his seminal work “The Golden Bough”. Using anecdotes from the Greco-Roman myths he had studied earlier in his life, Frazer penned an extensive academic tome discussing his theory of religion. A terse blog post is wholly inadequate to summarize “The Golden Bough” given its voluminous nature. But what can be taken from it in this instance is this: Myths, magic, and the divine are attempts by earlier societies to explain the world in which they live. And as the tools for studying the world become more refined, so too do the myths. Animism matures into polytheism. Polytheism matures into monotheism. Eventually theism gives way to science as the pre-eminent tool for studying the natural world. It is Frazer’s theory of the social evolution of religious thought.

Though it may seem like an appealing idea, that ultimately religious thought will be superceded by scientific inquiry, it relies on the erroneous theory of social evolution. I don’t believe that religious thought, animism, polytheism, monotheism, is a linear progression. A stage of monotheism is not required to step into atheism. There were many atheists in polytheistic societies. The Deists demonstrated that scientific inquiry did not have to suffer while retaining a belief in a supernatural force. Tylor and Frazer’s theories are outdated today, having been a clear product of their time, but nevertheless they provided a firm academic starting point for further analysis into what defines a religion. I encourage folks who are interested in studying religion from a scientific perspective to look into “The Golden Bough” and early theories of religion.

Category: Focus on Religion, History, Religion, Science | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , ,
Astrid Lydia Johannsen | July 20, 2011
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How I Arrived At Religious Scholarship

Last week I wrote about the mythical forbidden fruit of Christianity. When I was a child, religion was a curiosity to me and became even more so when it became my forbidden fruit. I was fortunate that as a child I was never forced to go to church, so I was never taught to believe in imaginary things. Both Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were characters played by my mom. I knew that, and I knew my mom was aware that I didn’t actually believe in these things. The character of God was a little more nebulous though, so I thought what any rationally thinking child would think: “If I go to church, I can find out more about this mysterious God critter.”

My family was spiritual perhaps, but never particularly religious, so we didn’t go to church. It was only when I had to go over to my friend’s house on those Sundays when my mom was away that I was able to go to a church. This one happened to be Catholic. It was there that I learned about how loving and inclusive the Church and religious folks could be.

I kid. I learned very quickly how insular and unwelcoming the church could be. I wasn’t allowed to go have crackers and juice along with my friend because his mom told me I wasn’t allowed. They offered no reason why. I just wasn’t allowed. I went home feeling left out, like I was a freak or something, and thus began my unrequited fascination with religion. I wanted a place where I felt I belonged, but when I tried churches and synagogues, I was greeted with “you are Other and you are not welcome here”. I would always see religion as an outsider, no matter how hard I tried to get in, no matter how much I wanted to get in.

Drawing Down the Moon by Margot Adler

But this feeling of needing to belong to something outside of myself did not go away. I tried out a few other traditions including Judaism, Buddhism, Wicca, and general Paganism. When I read Margot Adler’s “Drawing Down the Moon”, an academic tome looking into the history of witchcraft ancient and modern, I stumbled upon the Discordian tradition. I had the luxury of working at a bookstore, so I nabbed a copy of the Principia Discordia and read it cover to cover again and again.

Principia Discordia

Discordianism featured Eris, the Greek goddess of Discord. The very goddess who crafted the golden apple that led to the Trojan War. Being fond of Greco-Roman mythology and history from a very young age, I was definitely interested in a Greek goddess. The Principia Discordia also featured a lot of Buddhist and Zen philosophies which clicked with me. It also featured an interesting commandment which expressly forbade me to believe anything I read. Deciding to be a Discordian in the mid-1990s was probably the best thing I could have done as far as choosing a religion was concerned. It was a religion that wasn’t a religion. It ordered me to challenge my beliefs, including my beliefs in Discordianism. For someone who had always questioned the existence of the divine and ridiculed the dogmatic traditions of older religions, it was a perfect fit.

Calling myself a Discordian only made me even more of a religious outcast than I had been before. Like the Biblical mythical outcasts Adam and Eve, I would just have to start figuring things out for myself. Since I couldn’t get an insider’s approach, I’d study religion on my own. I made a promise to myself that I would own and read a copy of every religious tome ever written. I went to college and majored in religious studies, and learned more about many religions than I ever could have learned in a church.

If I couldn’t be a part of religion from the inside, then I would take a look at it from the outside. I would study religion the same way a scientist studies the world. After trying on several different faiths, I finally settled on none of them. Instead, I came to the university to study what I wasn’t allowed to learn as a child, and I am so much wiser for it.

Next week I’ll be writing about Biblical scholarship in the late 19th century. Stay tuned!

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