(May 14, 2014 at 8:19 am)Hegel Wrote: Many atheists, following or walking in pace with Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Dan Dennett and the rest (the "New Atheists" as they are called) seem to think religion is simply parasitic. It is conceived as just something that our brains are, due to some imperfection (evolutionary side products) are disposed to believe in. Religions are "memeplexes" without any proper function except spreading themselves.
But how plausible is this? Emile Durkheim and others have had a very different view of things: religion is essentially functional. And when you read the new atheists you recognize how they totally ignore the social and ritual side of religions; they view it only as cognitive "belief-systems". Evolutionary psychologist Jonathan Haidt has claimed (as have many others) that the individualism the the view of the New Atheists implies is at odds with psychological reality.
I have three questions:
(1) What are/is the function(s) of religion?
(2) Should someone who does not believe in the truth claims of organized religions (atheists in particular) change his/her view towards religion if it is accpeted that religion actually has beneficial function for a society that our secular age is in danger of destroying?
(3) How could these functions, if one remains thoroughly secular in one's ethics and thought, be implemented within a secular framework; should an atheist or a secularist develop a secular religion, and if so, what could it look?
The problem with such views is that they derive from modernist philosophy. They would not dare wander into post-modernism as it makes everything irrelevant.
Modernism is centered around pragmaticism. There may or may not be truth, so the only truth is what is functional. Aerodynamics is truthful only in that it can get me from Seattle to New York in a matter of hours. Art does not get me anymore and does not seem to have any measurable objective ends, therefore it is not true, non-functional. There is no truth in things like love or beauty, they are only understood as means to end.
This is the problem with the world today, there seems to be no truth in things themselves. Rather, truth is only understand in what it does. Art, music, religion, and many other things express a meaning, a truth with appeals to the virtues of man that have long been forgotten.