Religion for Understanding People Better

Theory of Algorithms is a conceptual framework for knowing, understanding and solving things more effectively, and The Tripartite Model is a structured guide for doing these.  Religion is part of it all, as you see below.  It's a general term I use to encompass (a) any formal religion we may espouse across humankind and also (b) any endeavor having to do with spirituality, purpose and fate, belief and faith, philosophy, even metaphysics and transcendence.  While Science is about rational or analytic and Art about non-rational or intuitive, Religion is about meta-rational and spiritual.  Sometimes what we encounter is mysterious, inscrutable or miraculous: Religion helps us come to grips with these things. 

Not everyone is religious, spiritual or philosophic, of course, and some of us prefer to draw mainly on analytic or intuitive perspectives for knowing, understanding and solving things.  Some may even scoff outright at any notion of religion.  But I argue that to grasp ourselves, the world around us, and the broadest universe fully, we must draw on something like the Tripartite Model.  

That said, my articles this week look at issues and insights on religion.  Big Think is one of the best forums for a wide range of ideas and information, and while it's decidedly logical, rational and analytic in perspective, I am intrigued about how the broad area of science tackles religion.  I weigh in on such tackling.

Religion is really made by the brain, it's a secretion of the brain...  The brain creates religion, the brain consumes religion [i.e., neurologically].

There are 4200 religions in the world, each of them believing that they're absolutely correct and everyone should follow their views. No one has any evidence of the stories behind the religions.

We got interested in this massive unreality, which is in fact finally a real reality, namely, religion.

When my mother died last year, the priest and many in attendance at her funeral mass believed that she was now in the eternal life with God.  Privately I said to myself that none of us really know that.  But it was a very real belief in that Catholic church gathering, and it allayed the grief at losing my mother.  I very much allow for that possibility, that is, of the everlasting and the infinite, while wondering about, questioning and challenging how we come to believe what we believe, especially about the after-life. 

It makes sense, from a scientific viewpoint, that practicing religion is akin to going to a spa, getting a massage, or going for a walk, that is, in its effects on our brain.  While there are some wealthy people for whom luxury treatment is a sort of religion, I can hear devout practitioners taking umbrage at what Lionel Tiger relates.  But I agree with him:  Religion must've helped people at my mother's funeral come to grips with the thought of death, and it must've soothed them from that frightening specter. 

This brings me to some working arguments:

• God is all-powerful, all-knowing, and almighty, while religion is a human-made set of beliefs, practices and community, which are inevitably imperfect and limited.  
• How God fits into religion is a complex, intricate phenomenon, but the two are distinct and one doesn't necessarily require or imply the other.  
• At the same time, some people do equate God and religion as essentially the same:  To go to church, for example, is to follow God.

Much as some may scoff at religion, the fact that millions and millions of people around the world believe in it, practice it, and abide by it means, to Tiger's point, that this is no small or casual phenomena.  While some may say more bluntly that religion is a delusion, myth or farce, it is indeed a very real human reality.  It is no fantasy or fabrication that, again to Tiger's point, invests ungodly sums of money into religion, erects edifices of worship, and advances a strict edict of conduct.  It is indeed a real unreality and a real reality. 

So even if we have just a smattering of interest in truly understanding ourselves, each other, and our broader community across the world, then we cannot, I argue, dismiss religion in the way I position it in The Tripartite Model.  Some of us can certainly choose to dismiss religion, even after all these points, but they necessarily limit their understanding.