Moreover, I think there is evidence to support this position beyond just the intuitive argument I’ve presented here. The idea that religion evolved as a way of maintaining social cohesion is hardly original with me.
What has social cohesion to do with spirituality? Why do you consider those to be linked? You don’t explain that at all in your post.
That’s true, sorry about that. I actually wrote this piece many months ago, and it’s a topic on which I have written extensively elsewhere. I’ve made the social-cohesion argument elsewhere, and I just forgot that I hadn’t made it here. But here is the argument in a nutshell: we are social creatures, and many (if not all) of our social interactions are fundamentally based on shared subjective experiences: sharing the same meal, watching the same sunset, understanding the same proof. The religious trappings that tend to surround spirituality—the holy texts and the prayers and the rituals—can be understood as attempts to create social interactions anchored by the kinds of euphoric experiences I describe in my piece, the kind of experience that is hard to render into words beyond something like “Feeling the presence of the holy spirit” or something like that. It’s the difference between looking at the grooves (which is what rational people tend to do when the look at religion), and listening to the music (spiritual experience), and going to a concert and getting carried around in the mosh pit (going to church).
It’s the difference between looking at the grooves (which is what rational people tend to do when the look at religion)
It seems that you refer with the term rational to new atheist or something in that direction but not necessarily with what this community means with the term.
That’s quite possible. If I used the term inappropriately, I apologize. So I’ll re-phrase: “which is what a certain sub-set of non-religious people tend to do when they look at religion”.
What has social cohesion to do with spirituality? Why do you consider those to be linked? You don’t explain that at all in your post.
That’s true, sorry about that. I actually wrote this piece many months ago, and it’s a topic on which I have written extensively elsewhere. I’ve made the social-cohesion argument elsewhere, and I just forgot that I hadn’t made it here. But here is the argument in a nutshell: we are social creatures, and many (if not all) of our social interactions are fundamentally based on shared subjective experiences: sharing the same meal, watching the same sunset, understanding the same proof. The religious trappings that tend to surround spirituality—the holy texts and the prayers and the rituals—can be understood as attempts to create social interactions anchored by the kinds of euphoric experiences I describe in my piece, the kind of experience that is hard to render into words beyond something like “Feeling the presence of the holy spirit” or something like that. It’s the difference between looking at the grooves (which is what rational people tend to do when the look at religion), and listening to the music (spiritual experience), and going to a concert and getting carried around in the mosh pit (going to church).
It seems that you refer with the term rational to
new atheistor something in that direction but not necessarily with what this community means with the term.That’s quite possible. If I used the term inappropriately, I apologize. So I’ll re-phrase: “which is what a certain sub-set of non-religious people tend to do when they look at religion”.