The compatibility of science and religion is a long-standing debate. Religion has played a role in shaping and ordering large societies through transcendent beliefs, but it has also been a source of conflict. Without religion, human unity would be difficult, and in modern times, concepts such as ideology and capitalism are reflected in their religious nature. Religion has been the glue that has connected and developed humanity, but it has also been a source of conflict, and we need to think about its role in the future.
The compatibility of science and religion has been debated for centuries. There are countless famous cases in history where the two forces have clashed. Even today, many influential scientists see science and religion in conflict and emphasize the negative effects of religion. For example, Richard Dawkins has argued that religion is a mental virus that turns people into murderous weapons because of their obsession with the afterlife. From the religious wars between Catholics and Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries to the 9-11 attacks in modern times, religion has been blamed for many conflicts and sacrifices. Even the current global confrontation with IS terrorism has religious roots. There’s no denying that religion is the cause of many conflicts. But is religion simply a deadly virus that needs to be eliminated? Would humanity be better off without religion in the first place? I would argue that without religion, humanity would have failed to unify.
But what is the definition of religion? Anthropologist and historian Yuval Noah Harari defines religion as “a system of human norms and values based on a belief in a supernatural order. The origins of religion are uncertain. The dominant theory is that religion arose with the transition to agricultural societies around 11,000 years ago, but the earliest date remains a mystery until 1994, when archaeologist Klaus Schmidt discovered 11,600-year-old religious structures in Turkey. What we do know, however, is that the Agricultural Revolution and religion coincided. Although various human species have been hunter-gatherers for 2.5 million years, we can speculate that there is some connection between the Agricultural Revolution, which occurred roughly 10,000 years ago, and the rise of religion around that time. What they both have in common is the gathering of large numbers of people into communities. Unlike hunter-gatherers, who lived in small, mobile groups, farming required many people to settle in one place and work together, which in turn required social order and hierarchy. Since these moral codes and hierarchies were all fictions of the human imagination, they required a transcendent justification to sustain them. This is where religion comes in: by inspiring belief in a transcendent, absolute monotheistic deity (or the apex of a polytheistic pantheon of gods), it sets self-enforcing norms and values and creates a hierarchical order among people. These structures are one of the evidences of religion’s contribution to unifying humanity.
Even if religion has contributed to human integration in this way, would humanity have failed to integrate without religion? In other words, is religion essential to human integration? To answer this question, we need to look at how human integration has occurred. The most stable way for humanity to “come together,” or “live together,” is in the form of a state or empire. This is because if everyone is equal, with no absolute power or a few wise leaders, it is predictable that society will descend into chaos. Decisions and actions at the national level are more efficiently made and executed by those in power. But what gave this “power” its legitimacy? For most groups, religion has played this role: there is no such thing as absolute, predetermined power, and the only way to justify it is to explain that it is granted by a transcendent being. The question then naturally arises: why did people believe in this nonsense? In the early days of humanity, reverence for natural phenomena may have been the origin of these beliefs. But why did these beliefs evolve into organized religions, and why do they persist in the modern era when the truth is known? The answer is not entirely clear, but one explanation is that religious concepts are passed from parent to child like a virus. This theory makes sense when you consider that many of the people around you were raised in churches, temples, and cathedrals with their families from a young age, and many of them became religious naturally. One of the reasons modern people still believe in religion is that humans are not solely rational beings. According to Mash Hutson, humans have a magical and religious mind, and pure rationality without these elements is not enough to maintain a healthy mental state.
The power of religion is derived from the belief in an absolute being, but according to Harari’s definition, religion is not limited to the belief in God, but also applies to the belief in certain ‘powers’. This shows that Dawkins’ claim that “the obsession with the afterlife leads to murderous acts like terrorism and war” overlooks the core values of religion. Religion is not about the afterlife. For example, the Old Testament makes very few references to an afterlife. The afterlife is emphasized by problematic Islamic extremists in modern times, but they are in the minority. Dawkins wasn’t criticizing religion as a virus for its contribution to human unity in the past, but rather for its increasingly counterproductive role in the modern era. So, does religion still contribute to human unity today? Yes, it does. Religion still influences our lives in many ways.
You can think about the scope of religion in the definition of religion. Besides Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam, which we usually think of as religions, could ideologies like capitalism or communism also fall under the category of religion? For example, consider the United States, a country that values capitalism and liberalism. Seventy percent of the U.S. population is Christian, and only 5% have no religion. The US Declaration of Independence includes the phrase “We are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights”. This was influenced by the early presidents of the United States, who were Enlightenment deists. Thomas Jefferson, who based the Declaration of Independence on the Bible, eliminated the religious elements of the Bible, but left in the ethical teachings of Jesus. This only takes the accumulated wisdom of humanity from the moment religion originated. Ideology and religion share many characteristics, and modern ideologies often derive their legitimacy from religious beliefs.
Religion has influenced other areas besides ideology. Religions have long emphasized morality, love, and conscience, advocating for the welfare of the weak, but the state has not responded positively. The ancient Romans, for example, viewed poor relief negatively and provided only limited welfare for political purposes. Communism and social democracy inherited the philanthropic spirit of religion, and even in modern capitalist and democratic societies, welfare is an important issue. In our strictly capitalist system, money is worshiped as a god. Many people believe that with money, anything is possible. Without this belief, money is just a piece of paper, but because we believe in the power of money, it has unlimited possibilities. Even atheists who are skeptical of religion serve the god of money.
To summarize, thinking of religion as simply “believing in God” does not reflect the essence of religion. Religion is a “belief in an unseen force” that provides a basis for human beings to come together and cooperate. Without religion, human progress would be much slower. Religion continues to be the glue that holds humanity together in modern times in different forms. This is not to say that religion is the invention of perfect peace. Religion inevitably creates conflict, and it’s up to humanity to figure out how to minimize it. This is one of the challenges that will remain with us well into the future, perhaps even until the end of time.
