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-title: Harari’s Sapiens on Religion
-description: >-
-    In which I discuss why I think Harari’s characterisation of religion
-    is inadequate because it’s too materialistic.
-pubDate: 2024-01-14
----
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-> The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman
-> legitimacy to [all social orders and hierarchies].
-> 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>.
-> <footer>p. 234</footer>
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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.
-
-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?
-
-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.
-
-This is a shortcoming for its own sake: a materialist account of
-religion cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of religion
-itself.
-
-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?
-
-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.