Why religious myths rely on fantasy
At TED India this year, mythologist Devdutt Pattanaik spoke of the difference between the absolute universe and the subjective universe — between the world as it exists and the world as we perceive it.
Pattanaik said, “The world tells us how the world functions, how the sun rises, how we are born. My world tells us why the sun rises… why were we born?”
This how-why divide, in my opinion, says a lot about what keeps the scientific and the religious worlds apart. The scientific mindset often undermines the why (choosing to focus on the mechanics of how things work) and the religious mindset often ignores the how (choosing to focus on why things came into being).
I, being one of the unfortunates who choose to take the middle path, believe that both views of the world are equally important. Man isn’t going to get where he is going on a bicycle with one wheel missing.
However, I will be quick to admit that the divide is a very distinct one and it is not going to get blurry any time soon (perhaps it shouldn’t). While objective observation of our surroundings don’t allow the world to be anything more than a series of phenomena, mythology goes right ahead and turns the world into something full of magic (flying people, talking animals, moving trees and all that). No wonder scientific people often balk at the sight of religion (and vice versa).
I want to try and explain the why behind this strange behaviour by mythology in a way that would make sense to the scientific mind.
Let us take the environment for example (since everyone is fresh out of the movie theatre after having watched Avatar). It is something that both religious mythology and science look upon with great amounts of interest. Both recognise the environment as important and in need of attention. Both say man’s future is inextricably linked to the way he responds to the various issues facing the environment today.
The scientific view of the environmental crisis facing us is that if deforestation continues, man himself will be in danger one day. Science tells us that destruction of forests will cause harm to animal species, which in turn will affect the food chain, which will eventually get to us one day. By then, it will be too late to do anything about it. So if we want to survive that eventuality, we better start caring for nature.
I don’t know about you, but to me that sounds like, “Listen! You are pissing your rich mom off. If you keep doing this, some day she will die and leave nothing to you. Then you will be out on the road with no money. If you don’t want that to happen, start showing her some love.”
Does the argument make sense? Of course it does. Does it make us feel ashamed of ourselves? If it doesn’t, it should.
Religious mythology makes things a lot more straightforward. It personifies nature, turning it into a woman. It tells man that nature is his mother. It tells him beautiful and moving stories about how she has cared for him in so many ways since the beginning of time. It makes man emotional. It means to make man act out of genuine concern for nature, as opposed to acting out of fear for his own life.
It is perhaps for this reason that forest tribes fight against deforestation with more passion and urgency than we (the urban educated and so-called scientific-minded) do. To us, nature is a system – something mechanical and clockwork-like. To those who listen to (and probably believe in) outlandish stories about talking trees, noble animals, and a benevolent spirits, nature is everything a mother is.
Joseph Campbell once said that mythology turns an it into a you. All around us in the modern world are forces that desensitise us to the world. A bomb explodes somewhere and hundreds of people die. We switch the channel with a straight face. The tally is simply a number to us. Then someone makes a movie on the event, making it into a story, bringing us closer to the people who died. We are moved. We start caring.
In the end, it probably doesn’t matter why you care for something as long as you do care. But then again, maybe it does matter.
Taking your point on Avatar forward, the director took the aesthetic concept of ‘bonding with nature’ to a wholly different level, making it physical and tangible. He follows it up with a scientific explanation using Synapses and neural networks and data centres. To me, it was a brilliant interspersing of ‘why’ and ‘how’ that you discussed.
Although conceptually the script of the movie was not rich, I found this bonding idea particularly profound.
(@vijaybhargava)
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
December 29th, 2009 at 10:21 pm
Same here. To be sure, we here on Earth are as attached to our environment as the Pandorans were to theirs. But the rootlets and synaptic connections made the whole concept “physical and tangible”.
Vijay Bhargava
29 Dec 09 at 10:14 pm
“This how-why divide, in my opinion, says a lot about what keeps the scientific and the religious worlds apart.” I agree that science focuses mostly on how, even when some how’s are framed as why’s. But in my opinion, despite their claims, all the religions and other systematic belief systems tell us only how rather than why. In most cases the buck stops with god or some supernatural force.
To make my point more clear read the para beginning “Religious mythology makes things a lot more straightforward … ” in the blog. It describes only “how” and not “why”. It may or may not be more effective than a scientific explanation, which I avoid elaborating on here.
“It is perhaps for this reason that forest tribes fight against deforestation with more passion and urgency …” I think it is more because their habitat is being destroyed than because of supernatural beliefs. Even city dwellers would resist with passion if tomorrow the cities are bulldozed and people are asked to live in rubble.
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 14th, 2010 at 10:26 am
Here is a simple way of looking at the how-why divide: You can explore a machine and find out how it works and what makes it work. But the why addresses the greater question of the machine’s purpose. Why does the machine exist at all? What is the purpose of its being?
As for the forest/city divide, you are making the same point I am. Human beings won’t fight to save their homes. They will fight because of the emotions they attach to the concept of “home”. In the end, that is exactly what the forest-dwellers are fighting for. If it was just about a habitat, one could always move to another one. How is one house different from another?
The purpose such emotional attachment serves, scientifically speaking, is to make people give immediate care to their habitat.
P
14 Jan 10 at 4:14 am
Thanks for the example. However, you did not address my point that science as well as religions suggest answers to only how’s and not why’s. I don’t think any religion really answers the question why the machine exists or what its purpose is. If they do give an answer it just leads to more questions until something supernatural such as god is introduced to end the chain of questions. But surely, that is not answering a why. That is the point I was trying to make.
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
January 14th, 2010 at 2:47 pm
I don’t think anyone can answer the why angle. That agree with. My state of being is that I float around in wonderment about it. As for supernatural reasons like God, I think religions go to the extent of saying “there is something on the other side of this veil we can’t cross” and then that something is given the name “God”.
The why can’t be answered. All that we can do is wonder and probably guess and imagine. That is all I am doing here.
P
14 Jan 10 at 12:14 pm
purpose of religious myths :-
1. to keep the uninitiated at a distance.
2. to pass on/propagate the ‘vijnana’ (’special knowledge’) through esoterism.
no wonder most of the world’s people take religious myths on face-value, keep doing things without knowing ‘why’ they’re doing it, and kill each other on ‘my god and ypur god’…
Vijayendra Mohanty Reply:
February 7th, 2010 at 10:31 am
Thanks kilroy. I would like to describe your first point a bit in case someone jumps at it without understanding it.
“to keep the uninitiated at a distance” is not discrimination. It simply means – “to keep a standard 1 student out of the PhD classroom”. Because that would do nobody any good.
kilroy
7 Feb 10 at 12:00 am
spot on vijay !
kilroy
7 Feb 10 at 3:44 pm
agree RT @kanika1386: a great read RT @vimoh: Why religious myths rely on fantasy http://bit.ly/7opm6q
This comment was originally posted on Twitter
Puneetaneja
29 Dec 09 at 6:19 pm