Science and Religious Anthropology

A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life

Wesley J. Wildman

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317059073
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion

Science and Religious Anthropology explores the convergence of the biological sciences, human sciences, and humanities around a spiritually evocative, naturalistic vision of human life. The disciplinary contributions are at different levels of complexity, from evolution of brains to existential longings, and from embodied sociality to ecosystem habitat. The resulting interpretation of the human condition supports some aspects of traditional theological thinking in the world's religious traditions while seriously challenging other aspects. Wesley Wildman draws out these implications for philosophical and religious anthropology and argues that the modern secular interpretation of humanity is most compatible with a religious form of naturalistic humanism. This book resists the reduction of meaning and value questions while taking scientific theories about human life with full seriousness. It argues for a religious interpretation of human beings as bodily creatures emerging within a natural environment that permits engagement with the valuational potentials of reality. This engagement promotes socially borne spiritual quests to realize and harmonize values in everything human beings do, from the forging of cultures to the crafting of personal convictions.

I Preliminaries

1 Inquiry

DOI: 10.4324/9781315607757-1

Introduction

Religion is one of the most important and distinctive aspects of human existence. It is virtually universal across cultures, though in such a fabulous parade of diverse forms that it famously defies neat definition. Religion is a vital factor in politics, economics, education, cultural production, and social life. Religion is central to the self-understanding of many people, both now and in the past, who navigate their existential environments by means of its narratives, practices, and communities. Religion has had historic impact in every civilization and every cultural context. Religion has helped to inspire historical and scientific understandings of the human condition. I find it difficult to make generalizations about the human species in relation to the worlds of cultural production and existential meaning because human expressions in these realms are so diverse and intricately textured. Nevertheless, one of the safest generalizations is that the human being is every bit as much homo religiosus as homo rationis or homo sapienta, homo agens or homo communis or homo economicus (the rational or wise, the agential or communal or economic human being).

The question, therefore, is not whether the human being is homo religiosus but how to understand this fact of human life, and how to evaluate it. With regard to understanding, precisely how does human religion work in individuals and in groups? What are its causal conditions and effects? What activities and thoughts of the human being are religious and what do those manifestations of religion imply about the human condition? With regard to evaluation, is religiousness the avenue toward the highest human fulfillment or a recalcitrant species defect to be overcome through education and social engineering? (I shall argue that both responses to human religiousness are appropriate in different respects.) And are human beings homo religiosus merely historically, culturally, and circumstantially, or also ontologically, essentially, and inescapably? (I shall argue the latter, but only by enlarging the scope of religious behaviors, beliefs, and experiences to encompass everything relevant to human meaning and value, for on narrower construals the former is very likely to be correct.)

This book presents a religious anthropology, in the sense of an interpretation of the human being as homo religiosus. Western scholars and scientists have taken up questions bearing on religious anthropology in a wide variety of ways since the academic study of religion was born in the European Enlightenment. Controversy swirls around these diverse approaches and the assumptions they express about human nature, human religion, and the ultimate environment of human life. The book's argument is thoroughly entangled in these politically charged controversies. As just one example, consider that even to use the word “anthropology” is potentially problematic, given that I intend a more philosophical conception of the word than the academic discipline of anthropology presupposes. To be sure, this philosophical usage is considerably older than that of the social science called “anthropology,” but priority and propriety are not the same. There are many other conceptual and methodological tangles surrounding a work in religious anthropology, some far more perplexing than who gets to use the word “anthropology.”

One of the deepest controversies pertains to the fact that the interpretation offered here is an essentially philosophical and theological one that intends to go well beyond description of the human being as homo religiosus to explanations and evaluations. This intention will seem deeply problematic to many scientists, particularly since the academic study of religion has diligently tried to root out bias in all its forms. The problem of bias has haunted philosophy and theology ever since scholars—particularly cultural anthropologists—began in the late nineteenth century to point out that the intricacy of human cultural life resists species-wide generalizations of the sort that were routinely, and even cavalierly, offered by philosophers and theologians in the business of constructing interpretations of it. The inevitable conclusion is that any such generalizations are likely to encode the investigator's hidden assumptions about what is important and valuable in human life.

The problem of bias so framed has been nowhere more evident than in religious anthropologies rooted in theological traditions that take for granted their own theological narratives as universally relevant for interpreting the human condition. So, for example, a Christian theological anthropology might interpret the human condition in terms of the narrative framework of Catholic or Orthodox or Calvinist religious doctrines, without taking responsibility for the particularity of the interpretative outlook and its poor fit with certain religious and cultural settings. And the same is true of Buddhist interpretations of the human condition, which often take for granted the universal perfection of the narrative framework suggested by the Four Noble Truths. This kind of generalization is least problematic when the theological interpreter is fully aware of the specificity of the narrative framework in play. It can be refreshing and even bracing to witness a theological anthropology functioning as a kind of experimental declaration that remains open to correction in principle. Such self-awareness has typically been lacking in theologically framed interpretations of the human condition, unfortunately, but the problem of blinkered religious anthropologies is gradually easing. Wider knowledge of the world's numerous religions is increasing sensitivity among religious thinkers to the particularity of their own interpretative frameworks. Even when theologians recognize the particularity of their own interpretative perspectives, however, concrete responsiveness to alternative interpretative frameworks, and even to relevant empirical data from the social and biological sciences, often languishes.

From the outset, therefore, it is important to distinguish this philosophically and theologically voiced religious anthropology from the kinds of theological anthropologies that are most liable to the problems of bias and non-responsiveness to relevant data. Fairness of interpretation and responsibility in relation to data and theories offering corrective insights are priorities in this inquiry. These are some of the virtues of religious philosophy as I have elaborated it elsewhere (see Wildman 2009). I shall not recapitulate here the theory of inquiry presented in that book, nor shall I sketch the associated argument concerning the possibility and prospects of the multidisciplinary comparative form of philosophy of religion employed in the present work. Nevertheless, some methodological preliminaries are important.

The first task of this introductory chapter is to indicate how this book's approach to religious anthropology manages the methodological challenges confronting all attempts to give an interpretation of human beings as homo religiosus. In particular, I shall discuss the relation of the present effort in religious anthropology to the “stakeholder disciplines”: the scientific study of religion, the academic study of religion, and theology. Each of these stakeholder disciplines is actually a cluster of disciplines offering valuable insights into human nature. A properly accountable religious anthropology should be fully responsive to those insights and should strive to coordinate them in a synthetic interpretation of the human being as homo religiosus.

A second task of this chapter is to introduce the themes of religious naturalism and epistemological pragmatism that furnish the interpretative framework and methodological procedures for the theoretical and evaluative phases of the argument. An argument on behalf of these framing presuppositions is implicit in the quality of the interpretations they foster, and rarely made explicit. At one level, these framing assumptions express my view of human nature and the ultimate environment human beings inhabit. At another level, I regard the framing assumptions as optimal in the sense that, properly understood, they prejudge theological issues as little as possible while still allowing important theological questions to arise within the inquiry. That is, these framing assumptions allow relevant theological aspects of religious anthropology to come to the surface alongside insights from the biological and human sciences, where they can all be seen and discussed together without invidious reductionism or oversimplification of the scientific or theological kinds. Theology understood in the broadest cross-traditional sense is a stakeholder in any discussion of religious anthropology, just as the academic study of religion and the scientific study of religion are stakeholders—the latter including what the biological sciences and the social sciences have to offer on the subject. Eliminating any of these stakeholders from the outset expresses an ideological posture for which there is no adequate justification—one that can only impoverish the resulting interpretation of human life. The practical benefit of the framework constituted by religious naturalism and epistemological pragmatism is that it allows all stakeholders to cooperate with one another for the sake of a conceptually rich and highly textured interpretation of the human being as homo religiosus.

The practical benefit of the framework constituted by religious naturalism and epistemological pragmatism persists even if someone disagrees with the naturalistic way I interpret the human condition or opposes my rejection of supernaturally authorized sources of information about human nature. For example, if a theologian wants to present a religious anthropology commensurate with his or her beliefs in supernatural personal theism, perhaps as putatively revealed in one or another tradition's sacred scriptures, nothing in the argument of this book directly rules out that possibility. Such an interpretation is here framed as not strictly necessary and thus as a kind of over-belief, to recall the phrase of William James (1902), or a theological elaboration, as I shall refer to it here. The book does imply constraints on such theological elaborations. In particular, any such theistic (or Buddhist or Daoist …) theological elaboration should be no less responsive to the multidisciplinary and crosscultural insights adduced here than the religious naturalist interpretation I furnish is. I think that many traditional theological anthropologies fail to meet this standard, despite their other virtues. Thus, the constraints the book's argument imposes on theological elaborations are non-trivial ones that demand a transformation in theological approaches to religious anthropology.

Similarly, a multidisciplinary interpretation of the human condition in a naturalistic and pragmatic framework challenges the fallacy of scientific interpretations claiming comprehensiveness as exclusively scientific achievements. Such bluntly ideological deployment of the sciences beyond their proper limitations (sometimes called scientism) is rationally unjustifiable from within the sciences themselves, though it can seem politically and morally justified to scientists in the heat of battle with what strikes them as narrow-minded and potentially dangerous theological interpretations of the human condition. The naturalist and pragmatist framework of this inquiry makes such political and moral exertions on the part of social scientists and evolutionary biologists unnecessary in this case. Humanists and scientists can achieve a richer perception of the human condition, while protecting the dignity and freedom of human beings from religious zealotry and secular forms of authoritarianism, by cooperating with one another in a framework defined by religious naturalism and epistemological pragmatism.

Religious Anthropology and Disciplinary Stakeholders

Let us begin with a few key definitions. By scientific study of religion, I mean the interdisciplinary study of the cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, and communicative elements of religion using the methods of the natural and human sciences. The scientific study of religion has profound connections to the wider academic study of religion—i.e. religious studies, pursued by religionists, to use a term that seems to be gaining currency. It is also deeply connected to scholarly reflection on religious beliefs and practices—i.e. theology, pursued by theologians, who may belong to theistic and non-theistic religious traditions, or may have religiously non-affiliated or secular projects. If religionists and experts in the scientific study of religion typically frame their research as that of objective observers striving for neutrality, theologians tend to be insiders, making a virtue of their existentially lively religious commitment to generate profound insights that outsiders cannot easily grasp or express. Of course, there are exceptions on both sides of this insider–outsider contrast. Typically, it is not the case that a particular thinker simply is an insider or outsider by nature; rather, he or she functions as an insider or an outsider in a given inquiry. Many intellectuals can work effectively in both modes and move easily between the two.

All three domains—the scientific study of religion, religious studies, and theology—generate valid insights that a properly multidisciplinary and crossculturally alert religious anthropology should synthesize. Thus, all three groups are disciplinary stakeholders in a religious anthropology. But this requires explanation and perhaps justification because some contemporary interpretations of religion in human life neglect one or more of these disciplinary stakeholders. For example, even within the scientific study of religion, social scientists frequently neglect evolutionary theory's contributions to an understanding of the origins of religion, as if evolutionary origins and biological constraints were unimportant in the contemporary analysis of the social functions of religion. Evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists routinely neglect the rich descriptions of religion that cultural anthropologists and psychologists supply, happily but sometimes disastrously oversimplifying religion for the sake of the tractability of scientific research programs. Meanwhile, religionists and theologians usually neglect the scientific study of religion, and religionists and theologians themselves are often at loggerheads over what kinds of theories and interpretations are admissible in the academic study of religion. Investigations pertinent to religious anthropology can be useful without taking account of every disciplinary stakeholder, of course, but religious anthropology understood as it is here is committed to striving for a high degree of inclusiveness and consistency. It is deeply problematic for such a religious anthropology, therefore, that the advisability and even the possibility of cooperation between the disciplinary stakeholders in religious anthropology are not more widely embraced. I shall discuss these questions of advisability and possibility together in what follows.

Cooperation between Disciplinary Stakeholders

Contrary to the balkanization I have just described, I am one of a growing number of scientists, religionists, and theologians who regard a rich multidisciplinary understanding of the origins, functions, and value of religion as a worthy ideal, and a practical albeit challenging goal. This is one of the intellectual commitments of the field of science and religion, certainly as represented by the platform of its leading scholarly organization, the International Society for Science and Religion; though the same commitment arises elsewhere. Clearly, our motivations do not always cohere. We all find religious phenomena intrinsically fascinating. We can certainly all see that religion is often a crucial factor in geopolitics, economics, social change, and culture wars. We probably work in the hope that understanding will bring empathy and self-control, virtues badly needed in the often passionate and sometimes violent sphere of religion. But our ultimate purposes are far from harmonious. Some of us imagine that understanding religion may give us the power we need to eliminate it and to deliver its victims into humanistic enlightenment. Others dream of a form of religion that can remain authentically spiritual while being fully aware of its evolutionary origins, social functions, psychological dynamics, and economic implications. Yet others hope to confirm their personal religious outlook or the doctrinal assumptions of a religious tradition to which they are committed.

Despite these discrepant motivations, cooperation is feasible so long as we can suspend our hidden or not-so-hidden personal and social agendas for the sake of a quest for understanding of the human being as homo religiosus, and so long as we can agree on a framework that allows the insights of all disciplinary stakeholders to be registered within the inquiry. This framework can't be merely the “lowest common denominator” territory of biology. The biological sciences produce the most universal and least culturally bound insights into the human condition, but these insights are also existentially relatively inert and cannot register the full power and intricacy of religious behaviors, beliefs, and experiences in human life. To go further, we also need the anthropologist's rich descriptions of religion in its varied cultural settings, the psychologist's intricate tracings of religion in human emotions and behaviors, and the sociologist's group-level analyses of the role of religious beliefs and behaviors in maintaining social order and powering social change. Historical analyses can help knit the different levels of description together, so that connections between groups and individuals become apparent. But even this does not go far enough.

Though the biological and human sciences furnish much of the raw material for any interpretation of the human condition, by themselves and even marshaled by historians they do not allow for an evaluation of the role of religion in human life, which is an essential task of a religious anthropology. We cannot simply read off such an evaluation from the descriptive and theoretical material of the natural and human sciences and we should not pretend that the sciences somehow inevitably imply a particular evaluation of religion. Regulating the move from descriptive and theoretical work to full-blown evaluation requires philosophy and, in the broad sense introduced above and employed throughout this book, theology. Does this make theology the king of the castle and the queen of the sciences? Not at all: disciplinary stakeholders do not serve theological interests, they constrain theological and philosophical evaluations. But to omit philosophy and theology altogether is either to forsake the evaluative task—not a possibility for a religious anthropology in the sense of this book—or wrongly to pretend that evaluation is a trivial matter needing no disciplinary guidance and no special expertise.

Painful and often embarrassing experience has taught us that data are t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• PART I PRELIMINARIES
• PART II PERSPECTIVES
• PART III FINDINGS
• Cited Works
• Name Index
• Subject Index