74 lines
3.6 KiB
YAML
74 lines
3.6 KiB
YAML
title: Harari’s Sapiens on Religion
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description: >-
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In which I discuss why I think Harari’s characterisation of religion
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is inadequate because it’s too materialistic.
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pubDate: 2024-01-14
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content: |
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I’ve been slowly re-reading Yuval Noah Harari’s 2014 classic,
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<a href="https://www.ynharari.com/book/sapiens-2">Sapiens</a>,
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which apart from being ridiculously over-scoped and hilariously
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under-evidenced, is proving delightfully entertaining.
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I’ve just finished chapter 12, covering the world history of all
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religion in thirty pages. Of course, at that level of brevity,
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there will be many deficiencies. But here’s some thoughts - not
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terribly well organised - which stand out to me.
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Hurari generally assumes a materialist metaphysic (a problem which
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blights the book more generally). Nothing exists except physical stuff.
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This gives him severe tunnel vision. As a consequence of this
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restricting metaphysic, he is forced to adopt limiting accounts of what
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the role of religion is in world history, and therefore what religion is.
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> The crucial historical role of religion has been to give superhuman
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> legitimacy to [all social orders and hierarchies].
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> Religion can thus be defined as <em>a system of human norms and
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> values that is founded on a belief in a superhuman order</em>.
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> <footer>p. 234</footer>
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It might seem a little unfair to criticise Harari for giving a
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materialist account of religion. <i>Sapiens</i> is, after all, a
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materialist world history.
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But this account is just one extreme example of how that project, to
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give a materialist account of world history, will inevitably lack the
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metaphysical resources to really understand the human story.
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On Harari’s view, any human enterprise which attempts to understand
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that which transcends direct human experience is at best an effort in
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imaginative story-telling. All scientific theory, theology, ethics and
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metaphysics either contorted out of all recognition into a pragmatic
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fiction or is cast to the flames.
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In particular, it’s a view which is incapable of taking seriously some
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of the most important questions human beings have grappled with in the
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course of their history. Those who know me won’t be surprised at which
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ones I’m going to pick out: who was the being which made their covenant
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with Abraham? How is that promise being fulfilled? And who the heck was
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Jesus of Nazareth?
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If Harari’s characterisation of religion is adequate - and the Abrahamic
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faiths come under that banner - then those questions are reduced to
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nothing more profound than Doctor Who fans arguing over ‘canon’. The
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question of who God is becomes a mere tool for the organisation of
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society, rather than a substantial and important question on a matter
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of fact.
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This is a shortcoming for its own sake: a materialist account of
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religion cannot adequately account for the phenomenon of religion
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itself.
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But it is also a shortcoming even by its own lights. Without giving
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serious consideration to the substantial matter of what Harari calls
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‘religion’ (which, to his mind, includes the Abrahamic faiths,
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Hinduism, paganism, animism, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism,
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capitalism, communism and Nazism), even the material facts are
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inexplicable. Why would, as Harari is keen to point out, out, people
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fight and die over and over again for a fiction?
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The material facts themselves prove that ‘religion’ as he construes it
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is not window dressing to the real story of history. It cannot merely
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serve as a mechanism in the churning of material history. It is itself
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the centre of the story.
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