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| author | Joe Carstairs <65492573+Sycamost@users.noreply.github.com> | 2024-03-30 16:32:17 +0000 |
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| committer | Joe Carstairs <65492573+Sycamost@users.noreply.github.com> | 2024-03-30 16:43:22 +0000 |
| commit | 261d89ebed13691e72312f44339063fee93130ac (patch) | |
| tree | 43cb6f1a9804352f666efaaee2bf7d6189906f08 /blog/2024/01/14 | |
| parent | 9cb047768f79f3d14a5c6bcf420e76d600a20f2d (diff) | |
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diff --git a/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion/index.html b/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion/index.html deleted file mode 100644 index 686b506..0000000 --- a/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion/index.html +++ /dev/null @@ -1,128 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html lang="en-GB"> - <head> - <meta charset="utf-8" /> - <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" /> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/reset.css" /> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/base.css" /> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/hcard.css" /> - <link rel="stylesheet" href="/blog.css" /> - <title>Hariri’s Sapiens on Religion | joeac’s blog</title> - </head> - - <body> - <article class="h-entry"> - <aside> - <p>This is a blog post by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/">Joe Carstairs</a></p> - <p>He wrote it on <time class="dt-published" datetime="2024-01-14">the 14<sup>th</sup> of January, 2024</time></p> - <p>Go back to his <a href="/blog">blog</a> if you like</p> - <p><a class="u-url uid" href="https://joeac.net/blog/2024/01/14/sapiens_on_religion">Permalink</a></p> - </aside> - - <h1 class="p-name">Harari’s <i>Sapiens</i> on Religion</h1> - <p class="p-summary"> - In which I discuss why I think Harari’s characterisation of religion - is inadequate because it’s too materialistic. - </p> - - <div class="e-content"> - <p> - I’ve been slowly re-reading Yuval Noah Harari’s 2014 classic, - <a href="https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens-2">Sapiens</a>, - which apart from being ridiculously over-scoped and hilariously - under-evidenced, is proving delightfully entertaining. - </p> - - <p> - I’ve just finished chapter 12, covering the world history of all - religion in thirty pages. Of course, at that level of brevity, - there will be many deficiencies. But here’s some thoughts - not - terribly well organised - which stand out to me. - </p> - - <p> - Hurari generally assumes a materialist metaphysic (a problem which - blights the book more generally). Nothing exists except physical stuff. - This gives him severe tunnel vision. As a consequence of this - restricting metaphysic, he is forced to adopt limiting accounts of what - the role of religion is in world history, and therefore what religion is. - </p> - - <blockquote> - <p> - The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman - legitimacy to [all social orders and hierarchies]. - </p> - <p>…</p> - <p> - Religion can thus be defined as <em>a system of human norms and - values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order</em>. - </p> - <footer>p. 234</footer> - </blockquote> - - <p> - It might seem a little unfair to criticise Harari for giving a - materialist account of religion. <i>Sapiens</i> is, after all, a - materialist world history. - </p> - - <p> - But this account is just one extreme example of how that project, to - give a materialist account of world history, will inevitably lack the - metaphysical resources to really understand the human story. - </p> - - <p> - On Harari’s view, any human enterprise which attempts to understand - that which transcends direct human experience is at best an effort in - imaginative story-telling. All scientific theory, theology, ethics and - metaphysics either contorted out of all recognition into a pragmatic - fiction or is cast to the flames. - </p> - - <p> - In particular, it’s a view which is incapable of taking seriously some - of the most important questions human beings have grappled with in the - course of their history. Those who know me won’t be surprised at which - ones I’m going to pick out: who was the being which made their covenant - with Abraham? How is that promise being fulfilled? And who the heck was - Jesus of Nazareth? - </p> - - <p> - If Harari’s characterisation of religion is adequate - and the Abrahamic - faiths come under that banner - then those questions are reduced to - nothing more profound than Doctor Who fans arguing over ‘canon’. The - question of who God is becomes a mere tool for the organisation of - society, rather than a substantial and important question on a matter - of fact. - </p> - - <p> - This is a shortcoming for its own sake: a materialist account of - religion cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of religion - itself. - </p> - - <p> - But it is also a shortcoming even by its own lights. Without giving - serious consideration to the substantial matter of what Harari calls - ‘religion’ (which, to his mind, includes the Abrahamic faiths, - Hinduism, paganism, animism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism, - capitalism, communism and Nazism), even the material facts are - inexplicable. Why would, as Harari is keen to point out, out, people - fight and die over and over again for a fiction? - </p> - - <p> - The material facts themselves prove that ‘religion’ as he construes it - is not window dressing to the real story of history. It cannot merely - serve as a mechanism in the churning of material history. It is itself - the centre of the story. - </p> - </div> - </article> - </body> -</html> - |