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While in London on Friday we took the chance to go the British Museum's new exhibition - Living with Gods. This is not really a review of the exhibition, hence ending up here rather than on my blog, more thoughts arising from it.
It was a bit of an odd exhibition as I'd gone in to it expecting to agree with it, and come out of it not. This wasn't helped by it feeling rather incoherent in itself - the collection of disparate objects didn't quite gel into a greater whole. There were also weirdnesses in the labelling that made me wonder how much I could trust any of the labels. Like they'd present something as a universal facet of Christianity (e.g. crucifixes carried in procession always wear scarves) which would make me go "wait? what?" and then I'd look closer & see where the object in question came from (e.g. Ethiopia) and realise it was probably specific to that region's flavour of Christianity. And so how many other sweeping statements about religions I've less knowledge of (e.g. I've been the crucifer in a C of E church and the cross wasn't wearing a scarf) were also more specific than they first appeared.
So the premise was that religion satisfies some innate need of human beings - that we shouldn't consider ourselves H. sapiens (wise man) but should instead be H. religiosus (religious man). And as I said, I sort of expected to agree with it. I mean, pretty much every society there ever was has a religion or many religions. Even in our current more secular age where many people don't believe in a religion (I myself am not a believing member of any religion despite my religious upbringing) there still seems to be a need that requires answering. Like people believing fervently in atheism as their focal point, or all the myriad of literature about finding meaning in one's life.
Talking to J about the exhibition afterwards clarified my thoughts - my divergence with them is that the exhibition was presenting religion as the answer to a singular need that could only have that answer. Whereas I'd say religion is an answer to a collection of needs, that we can answer other ways.
Like there's the desire to understand the world and our place in it. Most religions (as far as I know) have some sort of creation myth(s), some sort of reason people are here, some sort of explanation for weather, disasters, death, things that happen and so on. But science can do that too. And for the vast majority of people any given explanation is really on a par with the religious version - I mean "God made the world in 7 days" and "the universe started with the Big Bang" contain exactly the same amount of information on the surface. They're statements that someone who knows these things tells us is true - it's just that in the first case it's priests who teach us this and in the second case it's physicists.
And there's a desire for community, and communal worship/festivals/whatever provide focal points that make you feel in (or out of) the community. But again, other things do that - I've thought before that parkrun fits in the "church" slot for people's lives. You show up most weeks, to be a part of a community that's come together to do something collectively. If you're a regular you get to know other regulars, there's an emphasis on volunteering to help the community itself, of giving back to the wider community of the place (our parkrun does a carol service at a local care home each year, and gives the residents gifts). And if you're in a strange town, you can go to parkrun there and feel a part of the wider parkrun community. Many of the social functions of a (Christian) church, just no god and an emphasis on health in this life rather than a blessed afterlife.
And I do think there's a need for something transcendent* in life, but unlike the exhibition I don't think it can only be answered by a sense of the divine. I think that's what Richard Clay was getting at in the third episode of his Utopia series on TV that we watched a little earlier this autumn - he was talking there about the search for inner utopias. And one of his examples was the rave scene & house music, which does rhyme with my experience of live gigs. Not always, not even often, but sometimes, there's just something about being part of this crowd who are all responding to the same music in the same way - you're part of a moment that's bigger & more emotionally fundamental than just sitting listening to the same music on your own and thinking "oh I rather like this song".
*I'm not sure this is the right word, but I can't think of a better one, I hope it conveys something of what I intend it to!
And I think this leads me back to my knee-jerk reaction when I went into the exhibition - the first item was the Ice Age lion man sculpture, which is a gorgeous piece & I'm glad I had the chance to see it again. But my reaction was to the label - which said that as it took ~400 hours to make and life was hard in the ice age (so this was time away from pure survival), then it must be religious in nature. Why can't it be art for art's sake? Why invoke the divine when it could be a different answer to the need for something transcendent?
It was a bit of an odd exhibition as I'd gone in to it expecting to agree with it, and come out of it not. This wasn't helped by it feeling rather incoherent in itself - the collection of disparate objects didn't quite gel into a greater whole. There were also weirdnesses in the labelling that made me wonder how much I could trust any of the labels. Like they'd present something as a universal facet of Christianity (e.g. crucifixes carried in procession always wear scarves) which would make me go "wait? what?" and then I'd look closer & see where the object in question came from (e.g. Ethiopia) and realise it was probably specific to that region's flavour of Christianity. And so how many other sweeping statements about religions I've less knowledge of (e.g. I've been the crucifer in a C of E church and the cross wasn't wearing a scarf) were also more specific than they first appeared.
So the premise was that religion satisfies some innate need of human beings - that we shouldn't consider ourselves H. sapiens (wise man) but should instead be H. religiosus (religious man). And as I said, I sort of expected to agree with it. I mean, pretty much every society there ever was has a religion or many religions. Even in our current more secular age where many people don't believe in a religion (I myself am not a believing member of any religion despite my religious upbringing) there still seems to be a need that requires answering. Like people believing fervently in atheism as their focal point, or all the myriad of literature about finding meaning in one's life.
Talking to J about the exhibition afterwards clarified my thoughts - my divergence with them is that the exhibition was presenting religion as the answer to a singular need that could only have that answer. Whereas I'd say religion is an answer to a collection of needs, that we can answer other ways.
Like there's the desire to understand the world and our place in it. Most religions (as far as I know) have some sort of creation myth(s), some sort of reason people are here, some sort of explanation for weather, disasters, death, things that happen and so on. But science can do that too. And for the vast majority of people any given explanation is really on a par with the religious version - I mean "God made the world in 7 days" and "the universe started with the Big Bang" contain exactly the same amount of information on the surface. They're statements that someone who knows these things tells us is true - it's just that in the first case it's priests who teach us this and in the second case it's physicists.
And there's a desire for community, and communal worship/festivals/whatever provide focal points that make you feel in (or out of) the community. But again, other things do that - I've thought before that parkrun fits in the "church" slot for people's lives. You show up most weeks, to be a part of a community that's come together to do something collectively. If you're a regular you get to know other regulars, there's an emphasis on volunteering to help the community itself, of giving back to the wider community of the place (our parkrun does a carol service at a local care home each year, and gives the residents gifts). And if you're in a strange town, you can go to parkrun there and feel a part of the wider parkrun community. Many of the social functions of a (Christian) church, just no god and an emphasis on health in this life rather than a blessed afterlife.
And I do think there's a need for something transcendent* in life, but unlike the exhibition I don't think it can only be answered by a sense of the divine. I think that's what Richard Clay was getting at in the third episode of his Utopia series on TV that we watched a little earlier this autumn - he was talking there about the search for inner utopias. And one of his examples was the rave scene & house music, which does rhyme with my experience of live gigs. Not always, not even often, but sometimes, there's just something about being part of this crowd who are all responding to the same music in the same way - you're part of a moment that's bigger & more emotionally fundamental than just sitting listening to the same music on your own and thinking "oh I rather like this song".
*I'm not sure this is the right word, but I can't think of a better one, I hope it conveys something of what I intend it to!
And I think this leads me back to my knee-jerk reaction when I went into the exhibition - the first item was the Ice Age lion man sculpture, which is a gorgeous piece & I'm glad I had the chance to see it again. But my reaction was to the label - which said that as it took ~400 hours to make and life was hard in the ice age (so this was time away from pure survival), then it must be religious in nature. Why can't it be art for art's sake? Why invoke the divine when it could be a different answer to the need for something transcendent?
