Spirituality and Fundamentalism

Are they hard-wired in?

By Bryan Zepp Jamieson

04/07/02

http://zeppscommentaries.com/Sociology/alper.htm

I came across a fascinating website that promotes a book, "The ‘God’ Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God" by Matthew Alper. http://www.godpart.com/index.html The premise was well enough written that I plan to purchase the book and read the rest of Alper’s thesis about human spirituality.

In a nutshell, Alper posits that human spirituality is a genetically-coded response that permits us to deal with the realization that we are mortal and allows us to carry on. If that seems a commonplace – humans invent cosmic sky muffins and afterlives to make death less scary, a notion hardly unheard of among skeptics – Alper makes it clear that he investigates the biological and neurological mechanics of this particular behavioral facet, along with descriptions to explain why it has persisted despite our advancing awareness and technology. Of particular interest to me is the fact that Alper addresses the socially-self-perpetuating aspects of spirituality, the enforcement mechanisms, the coercion, the bullying, the reward/punishment complexes that all religions use to maintain their status in any given society.

Alper points out that while the majority in any given society are religious, the religions themselves usually contradict one another, even on the most basic levels. One god, no god, or many? Take sacred texts literally or figuratively? Most religions are even self-contradictory, an example being the bible, which gives two different accounts of how the world was created in which the sequences are entirely different. Nevertheless, religions endure, and self-propagate from generation to generation, and, with difficulty, from culture to culture. (It’s always "with difficulty" since the culture being ingested by a religious belief inevitably already has one of its own).

I’ll be curious to see where Alper takes this. The psychology of religious belief is well trodden ground, but Alper clearly is moving into the physiology of religion, the neurology of religion, the biology of religion.

I’ll also be curious to see if Alper addresses the role of fundamentalism, the literalist mindset that dogs all religions, and most other secular pursuits, including politics, hobbies, fandom, and science. The word doesn’t appear in Alper’s Table of Contents, but it would be risky to assume that this means it isn’t addressed in the book, particularly since fundamentalism plays a key role in the enforcement/self-propagation facets of such behavior, particularly religious behavior.

Alper’s theories on religious behavior would, at first glance, parallel some notions I’ve been working with regarding fundamentalist behavior. The following is purely my views, and reflect on Alper in no way:

Fundamentalism is much more broad-spectrum a coping mechanism than is religious behavior, affecting, as noted, most secular philosophies and opinions. It is recognized by the APA as a behavioral phenomenon, and in its more extreme forms, as a pathological behavior. It is considered a psychological disqualification for police jobs in western societies, where cops aren’t expected to be judge, jury and executioner, and the perils of having a cop who believes speeders are profaning the will of God are self-evident.

Fundamentalists tend not to be seeking "Truth." Instead, they can be described as being people who have FOUND "truth" and are devoted to bringing that truth to the rest of the world. Compare with other types of religionists, who, very roughly speaking, break down into seekers – those who are searching for answers and will comparison shop at some or many different churches, mosques, synagogues and circles; and the "laid-back" religionists, who use religious affiliation more along the lines of social interactions, and who tend not to be particularly devout.

The problem with finding "truth" is that having done so, further consideration of the matter becomes impossible. To wonder about the truth is to experience doubt, and doubt is not a pleasant feeling for those inclined toward fundamentalism. Since most forms of fundementalism involve "truth" being vouchsafed by a diety, to even express doubt is at least disrespectful, at worst profane.

The assurance of divinely-granted truth gives structure and meaning to the universe and the fundamentalist’s role in it, and makes life in general much easier to cope with.

If it is a genetic physiological behavior pattern, it’s one that is adaptable and highly situational. A child growing up in a predominantly Christian culture is likely to become a Christian fundamentalist, while his counterpart in the middle east is likely to become a Moslem fundamentalist. A child in Los Angeles is more likely to become a diehard no-matter-what-they-do Dodger fan but if raised in New York, might have been a Mets or a Yankees fan.

Fundamentalism is situational, adaptive, and embraces the culture surrounding the individual with the predilection to fundamentalism. Why?

Human societies from the outset were a combination of cooperation and competition. Societies – tribes – were necessary since a lone human, unaided, could not cope with the adverse and predatory environment surrounding him. The formation of tribes not only permitted group strategies on hunts, but permitted division of labor which in turn led to more effective differentiation of mechanisms for surviving in the hostile surroundings. Simultaneously, tribes were competitive, with males competing for the position of chief, and failing that, at least decent mating privileges. Among females, similar competition occurred, but while with males it was physical strength and stamina, and hunting process and general resourcefulness, among females it was physical attraction, and ability to provide a congenial and reasonably safe environment for the raising of children.

Being a successful shaman avoided having to meet many of these prerequisites for social success. One simply needed the gift of gab, and the empathy and intuition to provide the seekers with acceptable answers and reinforce the beliefs of the fundamentalists, while not angering the skeptics. (The overview of Alper’s work suggests that while self-description may vary as a result of how punitive and restrictive the religion is, the actual general breakdown among the three types is fairly constant, culture to culture). The job description obviously called for more than the "too lazy to work and too timid to steal" attributes often imposed on shamans, but it did depend on the ability to manipulate the divergent points of view. It was in the best interest of shamans to have a positive and beneficial, not to mention pacifying, influence, upholding customs and laws in the interest of keeping the groups a coherent whole.

Most tribes had a separation between the head of the religion and the head of the tribe, since god-kings were in the unhappy position of not being able to point a finger at the other guy when the hunt went sour. When you are responsible for both the planning of the hunt and for its success, you can’t simply say, "I consulted with the chief/shaman, and here’s where what screwed up. We’ll try this next time." The dividing of authority also divided blame, which tended to increase job security.

It would be interesting to know in what proportion tribes sacrificed chiefs, compared to the number of times the chief convinced the tribe the shaman was to blame for the rotten hunt and they sacrificed the shaman instead.

And the role of fundamentalists? They were the enforcers. The shaman or chief couldn’t go out and discuss bad luck with the tribe every time things went sour, or his authority went right out the window. What he needed were people who could work as a buffer zone, both to protect him from embarrassing questions and accusations, and to prevent such items from arising in the first place. Fundamentalists, the true believers, would react with true outrage, and bully and suppress the tribe, while the shaman would rise above it all, tottering through the camp smiling genially and waving at the kiddies.

The guys willing to believe that the shaman or the chief represented The Answer would go out and keep the troops – especially the skeptics – in line. The were society’s torpedoes, the enforcers, the ones who became the dependent authorities, those whose own authority depended from the greater authority of the chief or the shaman, or both. They were soldiers of the gods, patriots for the chief.

Of course, there were drawbacks. If the Shaman had taken it into his head that lightning was evil spirits out to screw the tribe with grass fires, then the poor schlub who discovered that he could make a fire by banging two rocks stood a pretty good chance of getting kicked apart for profanity by the vengeful soldiers of the gods. Societies that are dominated by fundamentalists go nowhere because they cannot evolve. They cannot evolve because the fundamentalists cannot conceive that greater knowledge enhances truth. New ideas can only challenge truth in the fundamentalist mind.

But the role of fundamentalism is to maintain the hierarchal order of the tribe. A recent episode of "The West Wing" had a hilarious vignette where one of the characters, Josh Lyman, is exposed to lemonlyman.com, a fan website devoted to him. He posts a rather innocent correction to a position attributed to him, and quickly discovers he has intruded into a rigid hierarchal structure dominated by fundamentalist "control freaks" who assert their authority by flaming. Shamans are notoriously displeased when someone – particularly the deity – shows up who can challenge their authority, and Josh is chased off the site by the very people who are devoted to him. He later fumes that the person running the site is "a control freak, a woman in a muu-muu, chain-smoking Parliaments" – not a bad description of the type of personality that would run such a site, a small electronic tribe. Archetypal, in fact.

Fundamentalists are the dependent authorities, the bureaucrats, the functionaries, the peasants with pitchforks.

And at a time when we know what causes lightning, and don’t compete directly with the baboons or have to slay a mastodon to survive, we face the question of whether fundamentalism still has a positive role to play in human social development.