“…love in deed and truth.”

“In week one I defined religion as having faith in something(s) or some being(s) to help provide answers about questions about life and how to live. After reading about the various authors over the last few weeks I still believe that my definition is appropriate and useful.

I noticed that those who put forth reductionist theories of religion would probably not consider faith as a reasonable explanation for explaining religion. And yet after reading these various theories about religion, there still seemed to be an element of faith even in those who hold to a more reductionist way to interpret religion. I looked up the definition of faith in the dictionary and the first two definitions really stood out in my mind as I read them. First it means, “confidence or trust in a person or thing (dictionary.com, http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/faith ,accessed September 13, 2008).”  And second it means, “belief that is not based on proof (dictionary).” In respect to the first basic meaning, scientists or those who use reductionism to explain religion in a sense put faith in the idea that facts will provide them with all the answers that they need in order to explain life as they see it. They would consider themselves to be more reasonable than say faith in an unseen being because when their ideas are proven wrong or the facts are shown to be wrong or faulty then they should and often do by the very nature of science as self-correcting in areas change their ideas as well. However, whether or not they actually are more reasonable is not the point here (that can certainly be argued) but rather that they put their trust in the facts that sometimes after careful examination either turn out to be not so factual or simply faulty in their interpretation. And in regards to the second meaning of faith, many of the theories are based on assumptions that really cannot really be proved one way or the other through any kind of scientific method.

For example, Tylor made assumptions about the way religion originally was without any real evidence to support them. Religion could have just as easily stemmed from a belief in one God rather than many, or it could have started out as more personal and then become more impersonal for all we know. Freud came up with theories such as the oedipal complex and others not based on scientific proof. And Durkheim makes the assumption that ritual created gods and not the other way around. They belief that there is no god just as much as those who do believe there is a God. So it would seem that in the process of trying to explain religion specifically, faith of some kind is unavoidable.

Just to be clear, the argument I’m making right now is not whether or not scientists in general have faith in regards to their scientific method but rather do scientists or those who break down religion in a reductionist way have to have elements of faith in regards to their theories about religion. Can religion really be explained apart from involving an element of faith in the process? Or is the faith element actually part of what distinguished religion and even the explanation of religion?

This is not an attempt to excuse theories from being critiqued by involving an element of faith in the process, but rather an attempt to question whether or not reductionist theories really are better or more helpful ways of explaining religion than the religion itself is at doing this.“

What do you think?

~Amy

Reductionism essentially is “the theory that every complex phenomenon, esp. in biology or psychology, can be explained by analyzing the simplest, most basic physical mechanisms that are in operation during the phenomenon.”  So in other words a traditional explanation for the existence of a God is not good enough because reductionism in a sense when it comes down to the way it is used in regards to explaining religion, seems to operate on the idea that there really isn’t a God/gods or there probably isn’t, but rather that there must be some explanation as to why people believe that he does exists.  Supernatural explanations, it would seem, are unacceptable for many if not all scientists who hold to reductionist views of religion in respect to attempting to explain origins.