Today in The New York Times there is a very interesting article by Johnathan Sacks on why, contrary to what Darwin's theory would suggest about altruism and morality, religion not only survives but thrives. While "At first glance religion is in decline," Sacks writes (especially when we consider polls throughout the West that suggest people are abandoning organized religion), "Yet after a series of withering attacks, most recently by the new atheists, including Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins and the late Christopher Hitchens, still in Britain three in four people, and in America four in five, declare allegiance to a religious faith. That, in an age of science, is what is truly surprising."
Darwin himself, Sacks writes, "was puzzled by a phenomenon that seemed to contradict his most basic thesis, that natural selection should favor the ruthless. [. . .] Yet religion is the greatest survivor of them all."
Sacks suggests that the answer might be found within evolutionary science: all "social animals" can be shown to "value altruism"--the implication being that morality and religion are merely by-product or manifestations of that biological impulse towards community. Sacks argues that religion "strengthens and speeds up the slow track. It reconfigures our neural pathways, turning altruism into instinct, through the rituals we perform, the texts we read and the prayers we pray. It remains the most powerful community builder the world has known. Religion binds individuals into groups through habits of altruism, creating relationships of trust strong enough to defeat destructive emotions. Far from refuting religion, the Neo-Darwinists have helped us understand why it matters."
Aside from this article being yet another example of a non-expert invoking the relatively new and still very theoretical discipline of neuroscience in a way that the science probably isn't designed for (something several scientists have criticized, as Alissa Quart's op-ed argues), Sacks' determination to show a biologic component--an evolutionary rationale--for religion unfortunately ignores what religion itself has to say about the existence of religion, and, in doing so, misses the mark, the point of religion.
Religion itself has struggled to understand the difference between the animals and humanity. Clearly they are meat and we are meat; they are spirit and we are spirit. And, while different religio-philosophical traditions have addressed this in different ways, the question is always there, knocking quietly at the doors: what makes us humans different? There is something. . .
The ancient Hebrew revelations (and I do consider them revelations; to consider them otherwise is merely biased in the other direction) suggest one reason:
"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth." (Gen. 1:26)
Humans were made in the image of God; God animated us with his own breath (that is to say, "spirit"--Gen. 2:7).
So, we are like God, and God made us that way on purpose; that's a key difference between us and the animals. We were specifically made to be different, and part of that difference, as other scriptures have suggested, is our moral insight--our knowledge of good and evil, so to speak, by which we have died to our animalistic innocence and now must either to continue forward and finish being made divine, like our Maker, or choose not to and risk the everlasting Hell of unfulfilled destiny (read Genesis 2-3, and read it closely; then read Revelations 1-3 and 20-22, looking closely at the imagery of the Tree of Life as the finishing component in human redemption; consider the fact that, in Genesis, by God's own admission, humans needed 2 things to be like God: knowledge of good and evil and the ability to live forever [Gen. 3:22]).
John, in his discussion of who Jesus Christ was, called Jesus "the true Light, which lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (John 1:9). Jesus is the full expression of this "truth," and came to show it to men--"But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God"(John 1:12). (in fact, in the Book of Mormon, the Tree of Life is revealed to be a symbol of Jesus Christ in 1 Nephi 11:21-23).
"21 And the angel said unto me: Behold the aLamb of God, yea, even the bSon of the Eternal cFather! Knowest thou the meaning of the dtree which thy father saw?
22 And I answered him, saying: Yea, it is the alove of God, which bsheddeth itself abroad in the hearts of the children of men; wherefore, it is the cmost desirable above all things.
Joseph Smith expressed the relationship between light and Christ and morality like this:
D&C 84:45-46 "For the word of the Lord is truth, and whatsoever is truth is light, and whatsoever is light is Spirit, even the Spirit of Jesus Christ. And the Spirit giveth light to every
man that cometh into the world; and the Spirit enlighteneth every man
through the world, that hearkeneth to the voice of the Spirit."
But it was perhaps most clearly stated by the Book of Mormon prophet Moroni (Moroni 7:15-16):
"For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge,
that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that
ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark
night. For behold, the Spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil [. . .]"
It is the rejection of our internal Light, our knowledge of good and evil, that is the cause of humanity's condemnation ("And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil"); we suffer because we choose darkness rather than light and evil rather than good.
Ironically, both Sacks and Hitchens are right about religion--but they are only partially right each, and where they are right they are right for the wrong reasons. Religion, then, is an enshrinement of our moral intellect; it is also a great evil because, like so many things, humans, when they choose evil over good, invariably pervert good things--religion, government, sex, business, art--for their own selfish purposes. They reject the Light of Christ that shines within them; they choose evil rather than good; and the world suffers for it.
Here I will not speak about how a true organized religion is a revelation from God and not a socially evolved construct, that it exists because our God knows we need it, that we need a social structure through which to help each other become the best moral creatures that we can and to help each other on the path back to the Tree of Life; nor will I discuss how perverted, false religion (whether they be political parties or actual churches built up merely to aggrandize and enrich those who organize them) are merely another example of humans not heeding the light within them, but choosing, once again, evil over light (there are many who would argue that Mormonism falls into this latter category; there are many who would argue that Catholicism does; there are many who would argue that Protestantism does); instead, I will simply suggest that religion is an expression NOT of evolutionary accident but of God.
Morality and religion are not evolutionary by-products; they are what separate us from the animals; they are what will, if we let them, make us like God.
Christ is the Light of the world; and we are better creatures for having his Light within us.
That is what we celebrate this holiday season. That Light that cannot be comprehended, that cannot be snuffed out, by the darkness.
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