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AR 24:19 - Do 'big societies' create (or require) a 'Big God?'
In this issue:
ANTHROPOLOGY - solving social data complexity without revelation
ISLAM - religion, or mere 'political ideology' in disguise?
+ are Muslims, Jews and Christians coming together?
Apologia Report 24:19 (1,427)
May 9, 2019
ANTHROPOLOGY
We begin this issue's chronicle of incomprehension with "Big People, Big Gods" (no byline) via The Economist (Mar 23 '19, p74) -- "A 'Big God' ... a supernatural 'eye in the sky' who cares whether people do right by others - is a feature of most of the world's top religions. But it was not always so. Anthropological research suggests that the gods who watch over small societies tend to demand only that people show deference to them. Big Gods come later.
"One theory holds that this is because small societies do not need a supernatural policeman. If everyone knows everyone else, antisocial elements are easily managed. But as societies grow, and especially as they absorb ethnically and culturally diverse groups through conquest [and today there's the republic-killing influence of "news" and "social" media - RP], a different policing mechanism is needed. ...
"If this theory is correct, it raises another question: which comes first, a Big God that permits a big society, or a big society that requires a Big God? That question is addressed by a paper <www.go.nature.com/2JtVhoS> published in this week's Nature by Harvey Whitehouse of Oxford University and his colleagues" who over the past eight years have built "a historical database, dubbed Seshat. ...
"Seshat <www.seshatdatabank.info> divides the globe arbitrarily into 30 regions. Twelve house societies that offered data on their complexity before and after the emergence of Big Gods. In ten of these 12 regions, Big Gods appeared about 100 years after a society took a leap forward in complexity, with populations in the region of 1m.
"That suggests Big Gods are a consequence of big societies, not a cause of them. But interrogation of Seshat revealed another religious phenomenon that played a role in driving societies towards greater complexity: frequent, collective rituals such as daily food offerings to gods. These rituals predate Big Gods in nine of the 12 regions by long periods of time, around 1,100 years on average."
Conclusion: If the academics are correct, "today's religions did not create modernity, but in the past at least, they held it together."
In past issues of AR, anthropology <www.bit.ly/2J1Iz0T> makes for one of our more interesting collections.
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ISLAM
Communication aids our understanding of others by helping us measure the distance between ourselves and them. Asma Uddin is a religious liberty lawyer who has worked on cases at the U.S. Supreme Court, federal appellate courts, and federal trial courts; she is also founding editor-in-chief of altmuslimah.com. Writing for the Washington Post (Mar 19 '19), she opened our eyes to how out-of-reach understanding has become in some quarters - and it came with a jolt. In fact, we went full-stop with incomplete one-word-wonder: "Wh___?"
Appropriately, the conundrum begins with Uddin's title, which reads in part: "The baffling argument that has become mainstream under Trump: 'Islam is not a religion.'" (How many questions come to mind as a result of that alone?)
"The argument has been circulating for some time, but it has gained ground in recent years, at least partly because the voices making the argument have a prominent platform in the Trump administration. Former national security adviser Michael Flynn said 'Islam is a political ideology' that 'hides behind the notion of it being a religion.' Former White House aide Sebastian Gorka <www.sebgorka.com> and former White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon have also questioned Islam's status as a religion. Fred Fleitz, who in 2018 was named chief of staff for President Trump's National Security Council, has said in the past that American Muslims are susceptible to a 'radical worldview that wants to destroy modern society, create a global caliphate and impose sharia law on everyone on Earth.'"
Uddin certainly whets our appetite with her disclosure that in her "forthcoming book, When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America's Fight for Religious Freedom [1], I track the impact of this argument in several key areas of religious exercise."
In this teaser of an introduction, Uddin names more adversaries: David Yerulshami (new to AR), Frank Gaffney (found in AR <www.bit.ly/2LyWwp4> only once) and Pamela Geller (mentioned <www.bit.ly/2GZ15nb> just twice).
And she broadens the scope of her engagement: "The model statute [that stops judges from considering any rulings that are based on Islamic law] is enacted in various forms in 43 states. In practice, the 'anti-sharia' laws restrict the ability of Muslims to use religious arbitration to manage their personal affairs. Arbitration by other religious groups - such as Orthodox Jews and Christian groups like InterVarsity - is common and a fairly uncontroversial form of religious exercise, but the laws single out Muslims for suspicion."
Perhaps the most we can offer in summation is a vague generalization: Credibility suffers when sensationalism is entertained without meaningful - or at least, reasonable - challenge. We have a long way to go. <www.wapo.st/2Y2amlk>
In startling contrast, we read: "Evangelicals and Muslims see similarities in faiths and favor closer ties, survey says" by Aysha Khan (Religious News Service, Mar 20 '19). In light of the above item, the title alone is enough to prompt the now-familiar "Wh___?"
Khan's intro reads: "As a growing number of evangelical Christian leaders are working to improve Christian-Muslim relations, a new online study finds that more than 3 in 4 U.S. evangelicals say they never or infrequently interact with Muslims."
Based on a "national benchmark survey <www.bit.ly/2H0N9Jp> by the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding [it] suggests that an overlap in religious values between the two faith groups is obscured by a lack of understanding." (This last line arrives with a sense of near comic understatement, given the context of this edition of AR.)
Further, it reveals that "many evangelicals were disinterested in knowing more about Islam, its practices and holidays....
"Among the evangelicals surveyed, most showed low levels of familiarity with basic Islamic terminology. Only half said they were very or somewhat familiar with the holy month of Ramadan — about 3 percent incorrectly identified it as a Jewish term — and 9 percent were familiar with the holiday of Eid al-Fitr.
"Muslims tended to show more understanding of Christian terms, with 65 percent surveyed saying they were familiar with Lent and 77 percent saying the same of the Old Testament. ...
"Muslims and evangelicals who interacted with members of the other group frequently were more likely to see their faiths as more similar than different and to perceive the other faith as inclusive, modern and evolving. ...
"Common reasons given for the discrimination was a feeling that Islam is insular and parochial, and that Muslims are largely anti-Israel. ...
"Both groups said they pray and attend faith services at similar rates, and they also ranked the same three religious values as most important to them: daily prayer, family and making the world a better place.
"If evangelicals don’t see these similarities, said Imam Ossama Bahloul, resident scholar at the Islamic Center of Nashville <icntn.org>, it’s because of their lack of exposure to the Islamic faith. ...
"Both communities care deeply about faith, family and are pro-life." Khan gives examples of progress in cooperation and communication. ...
"Majorities of both Muslims and Jews agreed that their faiths are more similar than different, and more than 60 percent of both Muslims and Jews said that working together to strengthen anti-discrimination policies is important." <www.bit.ly/2ZY3wzb>
Again, we have a long way to go.
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SOURCES: Monographs
1 - When Islam Is Not a Religion: Inside America’s Fight for Religious Freedom, by Asma T. Uddin (Pegasus, July 2019, hardcover, 336 pages) <www.amzn.to/2DRO5yY>
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