What is the role of religion in your own society?

What kind of mind does it take to form a

religion or become/stay religious? Are ‘religion’ and ‘science’ contradictory or potentially co-
dependent?

France's history with religion is extremely complex and has been closely intertwined with
war for centuries and centuries. The separation of state and church with the 1905 law changed a lot
of things in the religious sphere and gave rise to the principle of laïcité ( I think the word in English
for this concept is secularism). From then on, the political order was based solely on the sovereignty
of the people, and the state would not regulate the internal functioning of religious organizations.
This separation gave rise to the neutrality of the State, communities, and public services. Secularism
is therefore based on three principles: freedom of conscience and freedom to manifest one's
convictions within the limits of respect for public order, the separation of public institutions and
religious organizations, and the equality of all before the law regardless of their beliefs or
convictions. It also guarantees the right to choose to be religious or not, and to change religion. I
would say that in France religion does not have a very important role, especially compared to other
countries where it is at the heart of everyday life. In France, it is considered something private but
not taboo. You can ask what is someone’s religion without being rude. 

I think it is important to avoid an overly reductive definition of religion or the religious.
Especially when trying to contrast it with other practices, for example magic or politics. In general,
in the history of humanity, the social and political functioning includes practices and ideas qualified
as 'religious', such as pubertal initiation rites (putting on masks), the family (ancestor worship), the
juridical (rite), the political form (sacred kingship). It can even be said, in certain cases, that religion
is everywhere. It is only in our contemporary context with the emergence of secularism that the
definition of religion became clearer. This dilution of the religious into the social probably explains
why the word 'religion' has no translation in most other cultures (it’s a notion that originated from
Christianity).

In France 40% of the population is currently atheist and the two major religions are
Christianity and Islam. I am an atheist myself, and perhaps my vision of things is completely
different from that of a religious person in France. I have a rather mixed vision of religion, there are
very good sides but also very bad ones. For example, religion as a belief system gives people who
are part of a community the opportunity to act together by establishing links between faith and
identity, faith and culture, or faith and nation. But although religion produces community links and
identity, it can also lead to intolerance between different religious groups and stigmatization,
particularly in an inter-ethnic or multicultural context. 

Regarding the creation of a religious mind, I think many replies are possible, it depends on
which perspective we want to adopt to reply to the question. I personally associate the need to turn
to religion with several parameters. First, the environment in which one evolves plays a key role. If
one comes from an extremely religious family, there is a great chance that he or she will grow very
religious with an education that revolves around it. Religion may also help to explain the
mysterious origin of the world and its creation. It allows people to find reasons for the evil and
suffering of the world, and as such allows them to rationalize certain things beyond their control, to
find justice, an explanation, or a reason. Finding a reason, a justification for a problem or an event
often helps us to accept and support it better, in this sense religion can play a comforting role, help
with anxiety, and make the mortal condition less unbearable. Religion can also be a means of
establishing social order: it is a source of social cohesion and a guarantor of morality. 

Personally, I’ve always seen religion as a social control tool providing a code of conduct. In
many cases, it aimed at enforcing a predefined morality that varied according to cultural and
historical context. This reminds me very much of what Mary Douglas says about religion and the
work of classification associated with it. In her essay on Leviticus, she shows that animals
considered impure and not edible were those that fell into several categories of animals. If a
penguin had been discovered at that time, for example, it would have been considered unclean. In
the history of the world, religion has often been a control device, through the establishment of moral
principles and daily rituals to be performed, which had the effect of marginalizing certain social
classes and perpetuating a very specific moral order. Her book Purity and danger taught me a lot
about religion. She explains that the numerous interdictions like the one in the Leviticus section,
are to be understood as a system, as a separation between what conforms to the order and what does
not (the ambiguous categories). She also made me double question what is considered good or evil
in society and how much we can learn for a specific culture just by looking at what is marginalized.
The discourse on evil (and good) is usually centered on the idea of the transgression of an order
(collective and individual, the two being linked in most systems of representation), and this
discourse on disorder vs. order is expressed through the concepts of defilement and impurity. 

On the one hand, I have this rather negative view of religion, and on the other, I fully
understand the benefits it can bring. According to me, religion can reinforce social bonds within a
community but it can also lead to intolerance and violence. When I talk about religion I wonder
what really fits into these categories, western religions tend to be anthropomorphic, while some
societies include their whole natural environment in their spirituality, such as animist beliefs for
example. As a non-religious French person, I tend to see religion as a set of rules to follow,
however, this only takes into account the practical side and less the spiritual side. From a spiritual
point of view, I think that believing in supernatural things is a very natural phenomenon and I agree
with Boyer and Barrett. It can help to feel less alone and to hold on to something after a tragic or
painful event. For example, myths, which have been present since the beginning of human history,
and rituals are part of religious practice. Humans always needed to attach themselves to something
more in order to survive in their environment. Levi Strauss talks about how myths have similar
characteristics with variations according to different cultural groups, which makes me think of what
Pascal Boyer and Barrett explain: religion is a product of aggregated ordinary cognition. It results
from our intuitive assumptions based on the ontological categories and our intuitive knowledge
domain. We, therefore, recycle certain supernatural figures present in different belief systems. If we
follow what Boyer and Barrett say, human beings have evolved in such a way that they are now
born predisposed to embrace the sacred and to invoke supernatural causes to 'comfort them with
unsolved questions about human life. If we accept this hypothesis and accept that humans are
naturally inclined toward religion, does it mean that religion is necessarily beneficial to mankind? I
personally highly doubt it, but my point of view may be biased. Boyer also argues that religious
beliefs have a cognitive basis that stems from the way our brains process information. According to
him, our brains are predisposed to believe in supernatural agents that are often anthropomorphic,
and to see intentions behind random events. In this sense, it echoes the idea that one becomes
religious as a result of a particular or traumatic event. I also think that religion serves to rationalize
the feelings we have about unseen presence. It helps us put words on non-perceptible, non-palpable
things that exist around us. Religion help us establish concepts about things that surround us and
understand why they are there. In this sense, religion and science are quite complementary, or at
least they share a similar quest: to explain what is happening around us and to find the ultimate
truth. 

Science relies on the experimental method and reason to understand the physical and natural
world, while religion relies on beliefs and dogmas that are beyond the realm of rational
understanding. Scientists seek to describe and explain the physical world through laws and theories
that have been experimentally verified, while religious beliefs are often considered unprovable.
However, there are areas where science cannot answer all the questions, such as morality, the
meaning of life, consciousness, meditation, spirituality, etc. and this is where some people find
answers in religion. It is impossible to deny that there have often been violent conflicts between
science and religion: for example, we can mention the Inquisition and the Italian philosopher
Giordano Bruno, who was burned in Rome in 1600 by the religious powers for saying that the
universe was infinite. There is also Galileo, who was sued by the Church for defending the doctrine
of heliocentrism ( this doctrine stated that the Earth is not at the center of the universe, it revolves
around the Sun,). These conflicts are not limited to medieval times: there are still intense struggles
to this day, for example in the United States, between creationists (who believe that God created the
world and man) and evolutionists (who believe that man is the result of natural evolution and that
he is descended from the ape, according to Darwin's theory). These conflicts between science and
religion also show that knowledge is a power system. 

The rivalry between science and religion as been present for a long time and the debate is
still active today. They represent two different representation systems, interpreting reality according
to their own terms. Since religion and science offer different systems of understanding, the question
is whether they have equal rights to truth or not. What then distinguishes religious and scientific
discourse, given that what they have in common is the production of intelligibility?  In religions, the
discourse that fulfills this function is a myth. Every religion is a purveyor of mythical narratives. A
myth is always a story of origins. It tells how, thanks to the achievement of supernatural beings, a
reality came into being. Judeo-Christianity, Islam, and the Greek religion all claim to give an
account of reality. The description of the scientific method highlights the intellectual superiority of
scientific discourse over mythical narrative. The truth of mythical discourse is not verifiable by
experimental procedure or demonstration. It is imposed by authority. It is based on a revelation or
the prestige of those who are seen as having an understanding of sacred things in society. Prophets,
shamans, sorcerers, priests, imams, etc. are considered more connected to the other world and as
such superior because they can communicate with supernatural beings. Their word cannot be
discussed. Mythical truth has a dogmatic character that requires faith.   It relies on an arbitrary
system that escapes the need for empirical or rational proof. We could say that sometimes religious
belief draws its strength from what constitutes the weakness of science. I find that these two arenas
of knowledge are more complementary and co-dependent than anything else. The West tends to
look at the world through dichotomies, liberal feminist thought relies on the domination/oppression
dichotomy, the Enlightenment period gave rise to the nature/culture separation and we often tend to
oppose science and religion. However, it is not as black and white as it seems. I think science and
religion complement each other because one explains phenomena that are present but not palpable
(such as all the electron waves and micro-organisms that live on us), and the other is more focused
on the psychic, how one feels, and the intuitive side of life. Although there are many areas where
these two fields clash, I think it is more interesting to look at them as complementary sources of
knowledge. Science and religion are not necessarily opposed, but they have different approaches to
understanding the world and existential questions. It is important to note that they do not represent
mutually exclusive belief systems and that there are individuals who can be both religious and
scientific. I think science can help us understand how religions are structured in and through minds
and societies, but also, in a purely material sense, why religions last so long. Science and religion
can give rise to some very interesting research, such as the role of religion in healing traumas or
feeling better. We could also say that religion is a product of human thought to make sense, and to
make sense is to classify, distinguish, and make links. Religion sometimes imposes itself as
"wisdom" or "philosophy". It poses fruitful questions and proposes answers from which the
individual lives the experience of his life and directs his actions. In this way, religion reduces the
field of uncertainty, which is not necessarily the case with science, which shows the growth of our
ignorance of the world. 

Boyer explains that humans invented supernatural beings that violate natural laws and
religions appear as good stories that contradict our intuitive expectations. Critical or unfortunate
situations are relevant examples to understand how this works. In these cases, like the death of a
loved one, for example, particular mental patterns are activated. However, for Boyer, religion does
not appear as a moral comfort but as a cognitive response. Similarly, if the natural causality of an
unfortunate event is not obvious to us, we attribute the cause to an intention (intuitive psychology).
This is very interesting, and it ties in a little bit with what I said earlier: I think that we sometimes
become religious because it helps us cope with certain life events, it gives us a justification about
something we can not control and thus comfort us. 

A religious mind can also serve as an excuse, and on this point, I agree with what Boyer says in
Functional origins of religious concepts: ontological and strategic selection in evolved minds:
religious concepts produce information contrary to the expectations produced by a given category.
In other words, they are contrary to our intuitions. Although gods and spirits do not always appear
in human form, we give them human intellect and intentionality. The way we anthropomorphize
supernatural beings allows us to give responsibility to an agent when misfortune comes to us. It
helps us rationalize an explanation about something we don’t understand. Since we find it difficult
to perceive the cause of an unfortunate event, it helps us digest what is going on. (Why does this
always happen to me? What Have I done to deserve that?). This can bring another dark aspect of
religion: to be completely detached from any personal responsibility, placing everything happening
to us in the hands of fate, with zero personal agency.

Religion is certainly a natural cognitive phenomenon, but it is extremely influenced by the
socio-cultural context in which one evolves. The vocabulary employed by different cultures plays
on the supernatural sensations and representations we have. Although the basic set of signs is
common to all ( Boyer) , the way we interpret the signs and thus place our intentions in our beliefs
depends strongly on our environment and culture. This has been proven by the study of Cassaniti et
Luhrmann in The Cultural Kindling of Spiritual Experiences, the local culture greatly influences
spiritual perceptions, it plays a crucial role in the way people experience spirituality. The body or
spiritual categories do not escape the socio-cultural context. When we think about it nothing really
does. In this sense, I agree with all the authors we read. I think nothing can be detached from the
social context and this symbolic system of organization that we call culture. Some people will
perceive certain signs in a certain way in a certain context. Although people are naturally receptive
to religious concepts as Barrett showed, the local context influences representations. The way in
which religions are transmitted and practiced will determine how they are remembered and will
directly impact the acceptance of their precepts. From this point of view, individuals do not choose
a religion to satisfy a need. Religions satisfy different needs of individuals in different contexts. 

I also think that if no religion is easily labeled, it is because there are as many religions as
there are ways of living them. One does not live one's religion the same way depending on whether
one is a cardinal, a village priest or a simple worshipper, whether one is a monk or a merchant, a
shaman or a simple hunter, a man or a woman... etc. It is very important to take into account this
heterogeneity of experiences lived in a unique specific religious context. Although religions assert
their singularity, they are nonetheless mixtures. Religious forms travel, and borrow from others,
they are the result of a turbulent history (slave trade in America or colonization in Africa). New
forms are always emerging, dynamic, and more or less syncretic. Christianity has been presented as
a syncretism of Judaic, Greek, and Roman traditions, and even Celtic traditions; Shinto and
Buddhist religions have been presented as a syncretism of Jewish, Greek, and Roman traditions.
One always believes in something without necessarily being aware that it is a 'belief'. Belief is only
the investment of subjects in a proposition of any kind, the act of stating it and holding it to be true.
Thus, to say that 'god exists' is a belief, but when I say 'god does not exist' I realize this is also a
belief.

Alizé Del Alamo Hardy 111926024 韓佳艾

References :

Boyer, P (2000) Functional origins of religious concepts: ontological and strategic selection in
evolved minds. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute (N.S.) 6: 195-214 [electronic
journals].

Barrett, J. L. (2000). Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in 4 Cognitive Sciences,
4: 29-34 [electronic journals]

Cassaniti, J. L., & Luhrmann, T. M. (2014). The Cultural Kindling of Spiritual Experiences. Current
Anthropology, 55(S10), S333–S343

Douglas, M (1984). Purity and Danger. Introduction, Chapter 1, Religious Uncleanness, Chapter 2,
Secular Defilement.