Theoretically there are many possible mechanisms. But I want to limit myself for the purposes of this piece to mechanisms that operate in a faith based world. So let's take a deeper dive into this world. The place of religion in the world has not always been the way it is now. Take, for instance, the ancient Greeks. They had a glimmering of what we now take to be the modern "scientific" world. The foundations of mathematics, logic, astronomy, medicine, and other disciplines were laid down then.
And the ancient Greeks had a strong religious tradition. But it was far different from our modern one. It featured a large number of gods, all squabbling with each other like children, and often more interested in their own battles with other gods than in what was going on with lowly humans. This allowed for a lot of confusion and contradiction within religious belief. As one god ascended and another was pushed to the background the expectations of how humans should behave would change. So there was a lot of flexibility surrounding what constituted appropriate behavior. It depended on which god was up and which god was down or on which god you were trying to get on the good side of at a particular time. And what passed for science at the time was very limited so it had nothing to say about many important aspects of human life. It effectively represented a poor alternative to religion.
And this was true everywhere for a long time. But religion, at least western religion, evolved from polytheism (many gods) to monotheism (one god) and to an expectation that religious teaching would govern all of morality and much else. There was no other game in town. And this was reasonable. Religion is effectively an appeal to power. The smartest and most powerful come to have control of the levers of political and religious (often the same thing) power. If your options are "go with a random guess" and "go with what the rich and/or powerful say" then rich/powerful will be right more often than the random choice. This is not to say that this is a good answer. It is to say that it is the better of the answers available. In summary, there was a rational argument for religion for a long time.
Then in roughly the mid-1600's a viable alternative arose. It was called the enlightenment. "Enlightened" thinking depended on reason, analysis, and individualism, what we now call "the scientific approach". By about 1650 this approach had wrought miracles. Newtonian mechanics allowed the orbits of planets to be calculated to a heretofore unimaginable precision. Telescopes, microscopes, and other scientific tools opened worlds previously undreamed of to investigation. Advances in chemistry, metallurgy, and other aspects of the manufacturing art, made it possible to make things more cheaply and easily or to make new things that could not even been made before. And this enlightenment way of thinking did not depend on religion or on authority (i.e. powerful people).
This was widely seen by religious people as a direct attack on their beliefs. Many in the enlightenment movement did not see it that way. Descartes was a mathematical genius from a very early age. He revolutionized mathematics while still a young man. Then he retired into theology and completely stopped doing mathematics. Newton followed essentially the same trajectory. His early years were devoted to science and mathematics. His later years were primarily devoted to religious activities. Obviously these two and many others saw no inherent conflict between science and religion. But the people on the other side, the people who devoted their entire lives to religion and never engaged in scientific activity, saw the enlightenment as a direct attack on religion. A win for the enlightened way of thought inevitably meant a defeat for the religious way of thought.
And they were at least partly right. Religious people abandoned rationality. They decided a core tenet of religious thinking was that it was unprovable, that a rational approach was antithetical to a religious approach. The path to religiosity was "faith" not fact. A person was expected to hold to a religious belief in spite of any "fact" that might be seen as being in opposition to that belief. Facts were no longer important. Only faith was important. If you believed that an "enlightenment" way of thinking was inherently anti-religious, and religious people came to believe this in overwhelming numbers, then this rejection of fact and embrace of faith was a completely appropriate response. And this move away from anything smacking of enlightenment thinking has been the hallmark of the relationship between science and religion ever since.
For the purposes of most of the remainder of this piece we are going to assume that the "faith" people are right. Then we are going to see how this "faith based" approach affects conflict resolution. To do this we are going to start by studying a very artificial conflict. Specifically:
Consider two people: Smith and Jones. Smith believes one thing, call it "Red", and Jones believes another thing, call it "Blue". Now if it is possible to reconcile Red and Blue such that they both are true then there is no real conflict. So assume that if Red is true then Blue must be false, and vice versa. Now we have a conflict. And there are no facts involved. Why? Because in a "faith based" world facts are not important. This is our extremely artificial conflict It is simple but it contains all the necessary components. So how do we come to a reconciliation?
Well, you . . . No! that doesn't work because it depends on some fact or another. Well, how about . . . No! That doesn't work either because again facts come into play. In fact, we quickly find that there is only one approach left: power. If Smith can overpower Jones (or vice versa) then Smith can impose Red on Jones (or Jones can impose Blue on Smith). Smith can have the loudest voice, or the strongest muscles, or the sharpest sword, or the biggest gun (or army), or the best political connections, or whatever. But it all ends up coming down to power. The more powerful win because they can impose their will on the less powerful.
We see this playing out over and over all the time. The more powerful are able to use power to impose their will or belief system on the less powerful. I came at this from a slightly different perspective in http://sigma5.blogspot.com/2011/12/what-is-science.html. There I was talking about conflicts between someone with a science perspective and someone with a religious perspective. Here I am going to confine myself to conflicts where both people approach the conflict from a religious perspective. But let me lift a quote from my previous post because it is about a conflict between religious beliefs so it fits right in with the current discussion.
Your God loves your people and hates mine, he folds his strong arms lovingly around the white man and leads him as a father leads his infant son, but he has forsaken his red children, he makes your people wax strong every day . . . while my people are ebbing away like a fast-receding tide, that will never flow again. [“Eyewitness to the Old West”, Richard Scott, ed., page 129]Here Chief Seattle, a Native American is talking about the collision between his religious beliefs and that of the white Christians who have invaded his homeland. Ultimately, the Christianity of the white culture is overwhelming the animist religion of Chief Seattle and other natives. (Many Native Americans are either trying to hold on to their old religious beliefs or revive them but most Native Americans have given up. They see their old religions not as "religious" but as "cultural". Among those who hold religious beliefs, most now hold Christian religious beliefs.) And the reason Christianity triumphs is because of its power.
"God loves your people and hates mine" couldn't make the power-based argument more clear. And the small scale conflict that Chief Seattle is speaking of was writ large in the conflict over religion that played out between Europeans and the native inhabitants of the Americas: North, Central, and South. In every case and in every location the combination of military technology and disease that the Europeans could bring to bear on the natives overpowered them. Conversions stemmed not from any inherent superiority of the religion of the Europeans as compared to the locals but to the raw power the Europeans were able to bring to bear. The Chief Seattle "he makes your people wax strong every day . . . while my people ebb away" scenario played out in hundreds of locations over hundreds of years all over the Americas. The modern result is that the Americas are overwhelming composed of Christians of one stripe or another from top to bottom and everywhere in between.
And we saw a similar dynamic play out more than a thousand years ago. The location was different as was the religion. Shortly after the death of their prophet Moslems took up the sword and began an era of conquest. The ultimate result was that the Middle East, North Africa, and large swaths of Asia are now Moslem. As with the early conquests in the Americas where Spain in particular felt it had an explicit mission to convert the natives, the armies of Islam also saw it as part of their mission to convert the conquered and they largely succeeded. In this case, as with the Christian conquest of the Americas, the principal reason for success was that the new religion was backed by great military, economic, and political power. Next, let me go from the large, whole countries and great armies, to the small, two men.
The two men were Martin Luther and Pope Leo X. They had a conflict over a point of faith. And although the conflict ultimately entered a phase involving a lot of blood and thunder it started out as a war of words and ideas. Luther was no general. He was an intellectual and a theologian. So he did what any self respecting intellectual and theologian would do he posted his "95 theses" on the door of the local church. At that place and time that was the way you offered a debate. And you constructed your opening argument in the form of a number of "theses", what we would now call steps in a logical proof.
I have read an English translation of his theses. I am not impressed. I think his argument is poorly constructed. But that does not mean I think his conclusion was wrong. I would have constructed a different (and, IMHO better) set of theses but I would have ended up at pretty much the same place. So what was the beef? The Pope was doing a major refurbishment of St. Peter's church in Rome. Not surprisingly it was costing a bloody fortune and going wildly over budget. So the Pope needed a lot of money. So he sold "indulgences". An indulgence is a "get out of jail free". You "contribute" X bucks and you get a free card that allows you to commit some sin, to steel, or commit adultery, or whatever. The more serious the offense the indulgence covered the higher the cost. A Berlusconi "bunga bunga" party would cost serious money, for instance. And, as far as I can tell, if you wanted to commit murder and you were willing to cough up enough dough, you could buy an indulgence for that.
Luther's argument was that indulgences were a bad thing. It's hard to disagree with that sentiment. So what should Leo do? He could say "oops - we're going to not do indulgences any more" or he could come up with an argument as to why Luther was wrong and indulgences were actually ok. And initially this whole thing was no big deal. It was an obscure theological argument put forward by some German Monk guy that no one had even heard of. So let a bunch of egg head theologists duke it out while the rest of us get along with our lives. That's roughly how Luther probably figured it would go. He did not start out to create a revolution. He started out to win a debate. The issue might have been important to him. And he might have hoped to make big changes in how the church operated (e.g. no more indulgences). But initially neither Luther nor anyone else thought this was going to blow up into a big deal. That is until the response came down. Well actually it didn't. The first response was no response. As time passed the conflict started gaining traction and more people became interested in how things would play out.
Then after a couple of months of silence some friends of Luther got an idea. They translated the theses from Latin to German, printed up a bunch of copies (the printing press had recently been invented), and started sending them all over Germany. In its day that was better catnip than posting nude pictures of celebrities would be today. All of a sudden lots of Germans were would up and paying attention. The silence from the Leo camp continued. And the longer the silence persisted the more people all over Europe became aware of the conflict and got interested in the outcome.
Finally, more than six months after the original post, the Pope put out a response in the form of an Encyclical, a letter from the Pope outlining the official word on some theological issue. He took some fairly minor shots at Luther's argument but mostly he said in effect "Luther: As a monk you took an oath of obedience. I order you on your oath to knock it off and shut up". This was seen for what it was: a raw power play. And the response to this was not what the Pope expected. Instead of Luther and everyone else falling into line like good little soldiers the Protestant Revolution happened.
The history of the Catholic Church in this case and of other churches in other cases is rife with these kinds of situations. Rather than addressing the issue on its merits the method of resolving the conflict devolves to a base test of power and may the most powerful win. And this kind of "argument from power" manifests itself in many ways.
The first of the Ten Commandments of The Bible in short form is generally stated as "I am the lord thy god. Thou shalt not put strange gods before me." This is not "There is only one god and it is me." It is "There is more than one god but ,trust me, I am the most powerful so don't pay any attention to those other clowns." This is an argument from power. And certainly the Chief Seattle argument echoes this. Roughly translated it is "your white man god is more powerful than our native American gods so we're screwed".
In the middle ages it was common to see two armies marching out to the battle field. Each would have its own set of church eminences in tow. One army is going to win and the other lose. What's going on? Well, god must have shined his favor on the victorious side. And the fact that he did so means that the winning side must be somehow more good than the losing side because god couldn't possibly get something like this wrong. And, in a manner similar to what I have outlined above, this same sort of thing was not restricted to the field of battle where a clash of great powers was involved. It also played out in one on one conflicts.
"Trial by combat" was an accepted method of settling legal disputes. If you didn't like what a medieval court decided or if you wanted to skip that whole "trial in a court room" process many jurisdictions allowed nobles to instead have the issue settled using trial by combat. You (or your designated champion) would joust against the other guy (or his designated champion). Since god was watching and since god was just, whoever won must have been more right. There is a wonderful book called "The Last Duel" by Eric Jager that describes the last legally sanctioned trial by combat in France. The trial took place in 1386.
Most moderns are mystified by the whole "Salem Witch Trial" thing. But it is just a variation on the trial by combat concept. If a woman is a witch (i.e. evil) then god would know. So if you dunk her in water (or subject her to some other trial) and she drowns (or otherwise dies) it must be true. If she is actually a good woman god will save her somehow. It's the same idea.
And that's the problem with conflict resolution in a "faith based" environment. It all ends up boiling down to power in the end. Consider the "appeal to reasonableness" tactic. The idea is that both parties sit down and work it out like reasonable men. But how does Smith convince Jones (or vice versa)? Appeals to logic or data are ineffective because of "faith". And one side could abandon his position. But that just means he is weak compared to the other guy or the original conflict was not worth engaging in. Ultimately the only tactic that is effective in this environment is the power tactic. And do we really want to decide all conflicts by a test of power?
This is what has happened to our politics. The media no longer cares who has the facts on their side. And, for the most part, the general public goes along with this. They mostly don't are what the facts are either. Everybody lines up behind their side and we have a test of power. One side turns out to be more powerful and they win. In this environment is it any wonder that everyone is disgusted with everyone? But for the most part no one is arguing for the change that would make a difference, a change from a faith based approach where only beliefs matter to an approach where facts matter more than beliefs. Why?
Well, there's that whole "inconvenient" thing. In the world of science it is frequently true that everybody is wrong. An outcome where everybody is wrong is the only one that is worse on our egos than an outcome where we are wrong. I will restrict myself to one example. There was a long conflict in science about the nature of light. Newton believed light was composed of particles. Other lesser lights took the position that it was made of waves. Each side could point to experiments that positively proved that the other side was wrong. But each side figured that there was a way to patch their theory up so that the problems with it could be made to go away. And so the factions went back and forth for literally hundreds of years.
And then Einstein (and some other people that I am going to skip over in order to keep things simple) came along and said "you are both wrong". Light is made up of things called photons. In some circumstances photons behave like particles and in other circumstances photons behave like waves. And in still other circumstances they behave like something completely new. Again to keep things simple I am going to skip the details but the bottom line is that in some circumstances photons can become "entangled". All I am going to say by way of explanation is that neither particles nor waves do entanglement. In the end everybody (at least everybody before Einstein) turned out to be wrong. That's as embarrassing as it gets. And no one likes to be embarrassed.
This whole "everybody is wrong" thing happens all the time in science. It is just part of the whole science thing and scientists have had to learn to live with it. And so getting embarrassed in this way is taken as a kind of badge of honor by scientists. "It happens to the best of them" turns out to be literally true. Even Einstein got important things wrong. In their heart of hearts scientists would not be human if they didn't secretly wish that risking (and frequently experiencing) embarrassment wasn't part of the job. But it is.
People generally like to avoid placing themselves in situations where they risk embarrassment. That's a reason to avoid science and go the "faith based" route. If you are stubborn enough and are willing to ignore enough you can have faith and never be embarrassed. That is not an option if you go the science route. And lots of people are embarrassed for other reasons where science is involved. They know they should understand it better and pay more attention to it. But they feel they can't understand it even if they try. And, since they don't understand it and believe they never will, they are also concerned that it is all just a snow job to put something over on them. So they just stay away. This makes it easier for others like the tobacco industry to put things over on them. In effect they have been thrown back to the pre-enlightenment era. They see their options as picking a random choice or picking an "authority". By not knowing any science they frequently pick the wrong authority and we all pay the price.
No comments:
Post a Comment