Today’s Post
Last week we looked at this question from the viewpoint of religion as a way to look at reality and our place in it, but hampered by the diverse and often contradictory manifestations of belief. This week’s post will continue to address this question by looking at religion from the perspective of Teilhard: by situating it in the context of evolution.
Religion in the Context of Human Evolution
The key characteristic of evolution as it continues in the human, the skill of using the neocortex brain to deal with the primal urgings of the lower limbic and reptilian brains, offers a starting place to look at religion.
As Teilhard has observed, anything totally new (atoms, cells, persons) in the universe initially emerges in the appearance of its predecessor. The earliest cell, for example, emerges ‘dripping in molecularity’, and operates at the level of the sophisticated, complex molecules from which it evolved. The trappings of ‘life’ do not appear until much later. So it seems in the case of the human. Emerging from the forest of pre-humans, the first human may be distinguished anatomically from his predecessors by the presence of the large neocortex, but otherwise barely so. It is many thousands of years before humans become aware of their uniqueness, and still many more before this uniqueness begins to be understood objectively.
The history of this evolution of understanding can be found in the human management of the primal urges of the lower brains. This skill is learned over time and is part of acquired philosophical and cultural behavior. As Richard Rohr states, this skill is as necessary for our personal evolution as it is for our evolution as a species:
“(It is necessary for us to) move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the ‘reptilian brain’) … to proceed beyond the lower stages of human development.”
From Society to Self
Initially, religions emerged as a collection of evolved rules necessary for orderly society, and these rules are backed up by belief in supernatural sources. It is not until the Axial Age (900-200 BCE) (September 17, “The Evolution of Religion, Part 2- The ‘Axial Age’ “) that these beliefs begin to address the human person himself, and philosophical systems begin to emerge to provide explanations. As Karen Armstrong sees it:
“For the first time, human beings were systematically making themselves aware of the deeper layers of human consciousness. By disciplined introspection, the sages of the Axial Age were awakening to the vast reaches of selfhood that lay beneath the surface of their minds. They were becoming fully “Self-conscious””
As she observes, in spite of the many streams of thinking which developed during this brief period of time:
“The fact that they all came up with such profoundly similar solutions by so many different routes suggests that they had indeed discovered something important about the way human beings worked”.
Some religions, particularly those in the East, are less focused on god or gods, and more on behavior by which individuals can achieve their potential.
Other religions, particularly those in the West, focus more on positing the rules in a personal godhead, and basing religious beliefs on faithfulness to the rules. Again, from Karen Armstrong, commenting on Western expressions:
“It is frequently assumed, for example, that faith is a matter of believing certain creedal propositions. Indeed it is common to call religious people “believers” as though assenting to the articles of faith were their chief activity.”
However, she goes on to say of the Axial sages:
“…they all concluded that if people made a disciplined effort to reeducate themselves, they would experience an enhancement of their humanity. In one way or the other, their programs were designed to eradicate the egotism that is largely responsible for our violence, and promoted the empathic spirituality of the Golden Rule. The consistency with which the Axial sages-quite independently-returned to the Golden Rule may tell us something important about the structure of our nature.”
As we noted last week: Teilhard understood the need for an understanding of both ‘the self’ as well as this ‘structure of our nature’ from both the scientific and religious perspectives:
“To explain the workings of the universe we must understand the forces and process by which it comes to be, and this understanding must include the human person.”
This simply stated approach to such an understanding is also the basis for beginning to approach God from the perspective of science (“understanding the forces and processes”) and extending this perspective to religion (“including the human person”)
Karen Armstrong also notes that most religions are based on the intuitive belief that the ‘forces’ by which the universe comes to be include a ‘personal’ aspect. In support of such a synthesis, she cites the earliest (700 BCE) Eastern belief that:
“There is an immortal spark at the core of the human person, which participated in – was of the same nature as – the immortal brahman that sustained and gave life to the entire cosmos. This was a discovery of immense importance and it would become a central insight in every major religious tradition. The ultimate reality was an immanent presence in every single human being.”
The Next Post
Today’s post addressed the definition of religion in the context of evolution. Next week’s post will address how belief underlies our ability to act as part of our becoming more what we have the potential to become.