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Johannes Röser

Religion as Maker of Moral?

New Biological Debate about the Social Usefulness of Faith

From: Der Christ in der Gegenwart, 5/2006, p. 35.36.38
webmaster's own, not authorized translation

Car insurance companies calculate their tariffs according to individual characteristics. Those who e.g. have a garage and small children and let their eighteen-to-twenty-one-year-old children not at the steering wheel, pay less taxes as singles or people who park their cars under a lantern, and lend them kindly to many friends. Officials are anyway more favorably classified, because they cause allegedly fewer accidents than others. Women drive more carefully - as we know from many studies. The "weak" sex causes more frequently dented cars than the "strong" one but fewer personal injuries. These are rather due to man's rage and drinking. Hence low-priced woman tariffs would only be fair.

Up till now one point has incomprehensibly been excluded. Actually car insurance companies should have to recompense by discounts pious people more than unbelievers. Or did these companies not read the statements of socio-biologists? Don't they know that in the course of evolution religion actually was only invented because it makes the individual morally better and more sociable? Do those who believe in God then drive better? Indeed, God's most pious men - and in the meantime also women - get particularly favourable conditions from a certain insurance company. Ministers drive rather "non-profit making". If that is not water on the mills of the evolution socio-biologists! But it seems that the vernacular did not hear about that yet. When it says that someone drives with trust in God then it means, "Oh God, how she/he is driving again ...!"

But joking apart, relevant explanations that the religious faith is nothing else than a more favourable natural outfit for the struggle for existence developed by evolution, do certainly boom again. Thus the "Zeit" (21 December 2005) published an interview with the American socio-biologist David Sloan Wilson, who reckons that also faith systems developed according to the rules of Darwin's evolution theory, by coincidence and necessity, mutation and selection. Wilson animates anew the old projection theories of Feuerbach, Marx and Freud: "God is a social invention." The idea 'god' developed for the surviving of the fittest people similarly as single cells found themselves together to an organized organism of many cells. There no single cell can veer out "egoistically" from the formation without destroying the whole - and so itself. Religion does care for the harmonious superstructure in the human collective. "Religion is a symbolic system by which a community can be organized efficiently. ... Religion is a product of cultural evolution." It works for the biologist according to the same laws as all other evolutionary systems. The idea of God is unreasonable. God does not exist. But religion is extremely useful as psycho-hygienic, community-creating instrument. "Religion is a cultural system which establishes and stabilizes communities, and minimizes exploitation and fraud."

Believers Have Better Sex And...?

In such a view one might actually be able to measure statistically the evolutionary "success" of religion. And it seems that "proofs" for it can also be found. Popular-psychological magazines for instance report time and again of (preferably) American studies that proved allegedly that Christians lead, on the average, a healthier life. They also educate their children better. They get even better, more pleasurable, because more content sex. Since they also respect sexual faithfulness more highly than other people do, they seek not so often a divorce. That promotes the security of the new generation, reduces its getting neurotic, and benefits so finally society as a whole. And - the faithful practice more charity. In emergency situations they are sooner ready to renounce, and to sacrifice something - favoured by their hope of resurrection that will recompense them in the other world. Hence the faithful would under mortal danger even defend their own native country more engaged than unbelievers...

In some respects even the new secular value debate in our country confirms the statements of the socio-biologists - at least in that measure in which the churches are sought after and respected preferentially as 'guards of virtue' and 'makers of moral' for the social play. Religion as critical faith and critical spirituality is banished to the private closet. The church has also not to interfere, please, in the private moral. But it is "in demand" at Sundays as public admonisher, as pleader of charities, as comforter in disasters, as advocate for justice and prosecutor of social coldness, warning against too much progress, for instance in biotechnology, from the fruits of which however, when the time is ripe, one would like to profit then gladly - never mind earlier scruples.

Opium now Becomes Cement for People

Obviously also church leaders let themselves gladly be harnessed for such "non-profit" services. Anyhow it is remarkable how the media, for instance at high Christian feasts, publish preferably the ethical-socially reminding and denouncing passages of sermons. The actual God problem is of less interest at such occasions. In this way the general perception of the Christian is reduced to certain common place expressions of Cardinals, Bishops and Regional Bishops. Hence occasionally the impression is produced that they are somehow perhaps still "national chaplains" or "national vicars". The quotations end usually with the small coin of appeal to the public interest. And one can critically put the question whether the religious office stoops possibly all too readily, to serve up the great, hard to digest mystery 'God' in easily consumable moral titbits. So at bottom one only confirms, without wanting it, the view of the socio-biologists. Religion is no longer opium but cement for the people! But God did probably not become man, only to cause a "jolt through society". It can hardly be assumed that - according to the Scriptures, as the Christians confess it in their Credo - the Son of Man and Son of God Jesus Christ

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let himself be nailed on the cross, died, was buried and rose on the third day from the dead only to stabilize socio-biologically the free democratic constitution. We should also not forget that in the beginning Christians were seen and persecuted rather as state-decomposing than as state-promoting elements, because they did not at all contribute productively to the idolatrous emperor cult of the Roman Empire.

Wilson stated that he had examined thirty five quite different religions - always with the same result. They stabilize the system by being useful. Indeed, to find that out is trivial. Of course, religion, as everything in art and culture, will always be concerned in the broadest sense also with dialogue, solidarity, relations and behaviuor. Everything that a human being humanly undertakes and celebrates - up to the sexual satisfaction -, will of course also be good somehow for the well-being, the happiness, the edification of other people - unless he/she does as loner avoid any contact with the community. Even ascets and hermits were in this sense of eminent cultural and sometimes material-political importance, think only of a Saint such as Nicholas from the Flue. But whether the public interest is the first and crucial "purpose" of religion can be doubted. There arise many questions in that matter.

Animals Do Not Use the "Advantage"

If religion is so successful and important in the struggle for existence, why then did only man develop such a complex brain and correspondingly such complex religious systems but not the animals? Think in this connection only of just a similar important, advantageous and complicated organ as the eye. It has allegedly been evolutionarily "invented" several times - independently from each other, and connects animals of most different kind with man. And why did certain religious systems die out while the respective peoples lived on? Why are there single and numerous conversions by conviction, if it is socio-biologically quite sufficient to be embedded somehow in some favourable religious system that harmoniously unites all human beings? Yes, why do people place themselves deliberately - often under mortal danger - against the religion of the community in which they grew up and live? - Should they do it only because they think the other religion is more plausible and is the true one? Why did religious consciousness laboriously develop like all other things in the course of thousands of years, in order to collapse then in the West within two centuries since the epoch of Enlightenment, i.e. in an evolution-biologically unexplainably short time? If faith is an evolutionary advantage, what then is the evolutionary advantage of today's unbelief?

"Intelligent Design" without God

Socio-biology gives no answers to those questions but does only state. Like in the story of the race of hare and hedgehog, it is - similar to the hedgehog - always already there with a new explanation, if the former does not "function". Above all it spreads myths. At the bottom it too believes in a kind of "intelligent design", in an intelligent plan - although without "God". As if evolution as "designer" allegedly "knew" the aim already from the outset, particularly those things that would at some time in the course of the process "do good". But evolution does not "know" anything. It does not "try out", because it is no mental "hypostasis"; and it cannot - like an intelligent "inventor" - try out something. And, evolution does not "think", it simply happens.

As far as we empirically know, only human beings are able to think. Therefore they think about the mysteries of entity and time, space and nothingness, created and uncreated entity - and concomitantly about growing, development and evolution. Humans investigate evolution but are not investigated by it. Humans think about themselves; evolution does not do that. Thus in the course of evolution human beings thought some day with their brains, which at this or that time had been transcendentally talented and God-enabled, also about "God". How did God enter into evolution? Did it happen by a quantum leap, by mutation? However it happened, this new ability too does nothing say against God's reality. Even if there is a "God gene", this would let us all the more put the question, 'What (reason) was and is it that - at some time or other on man's evolutionary pilgrimage - "put" a trace to God into the human intelligence?' God together with evolution - not against it!

Religion too develops constantly, even the Biblical revelation. That does not speak against but for it and for its truth. The Holy Scriptures show faith developments of immeasurable wealth and fascinating mysteriousness. Somehow the 'homo sapiens' seems to be a "naturally" talented religious being. Just that speaks not against the assumption of God's authorship but - as well rationally as emotionally, although with a "weak strength" - for it. Does God "sleep" from the outset somehow also in the hereditary property, which universally "codes" the process of life - of feeling as well as of thinking - in all organisms, doesn't he? Why not! Anyhow, at some time or other man's potential of knowledge reached that complexity in the brain, that - as if "out of enothing" - also the Creation of man's ability for transcendency became possible, in a 'lucid emoment', connected with the ability of self transcendency, the consciousness of the 'Ego', of 'you' and 'we', i.e. of unity and difference.

Anyhow, man's ability to think "God" at some time in the course of evolution cannot be explained mono-causally by a "need" for happiness and collective security. Human beings think God because they are able to do so. God is not plausible because people need comfort. No, quite the reverse, because God becomes plausible for human beings, he can also comfort them. But God does not only comfort, he does also move, shock, inspire and - he lets also doubt and despair. Fixed on its "proof", sociobiology arbitrarily reverses in its argumentation cause and effect. It presupposes the thing which it had actually to confirm and to exemplify yet.

And one has to put the question, 'If faith in God is socially so advantageous as one states - why then do people abandon religion today?' Of course, this too could be explained socio-biologically by stating that the idea of God had in many places just had its day, that it has become superfluous like other relicts of evolution. Strictly speaking, it is just as useless as an appendix, or as a "fin appendage" between the fingers of newborn children, or as the wings of ostriches that do not fly long since. We live in democracies, in post-industrial and post-magic welfare societies with completely worldly insurances, which assist and protect us in life risks. We have a health system of which earlier generations could not even dream. Modern states developed clever juridical systems and legal security, in order to teach morals and good behaviour to man. Interpol and world-wide legal agreements help to pursue criminals even globally. For prevention against evil, and retaliation of even unpunished criminal offences you need no longer threaten with eternal damnation in hell. Where as fruit of the welfare state the social welfare assistance net is strongly and far enough spread and the control by the residents' registration office dams social abuse, one needs God neither as rewarding instance for noble donors, nor as threatening instance for parasites.

Blood Revenge Works Better Than Hell

But also in allegedly primitive cultures one did not "need" God that much as a more comprehensive second control instance to secure morality, in case the temporal justice failed. In archaic societies the social supervision functioned more completely yet than in today's anonymous cities, where the inhabitants most easily "give up" God. And one had more powerful mechanisms and instruments of punishment: for example blood revenge. Just in "mobile" nomadic societies it functioned quite directly. There a god as executing aide of the law was at bottom much more superfluous as today.

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The biblical reference to "Cain's mark" as sign that somebody belongs to an especially protected group, and is so by no means as "fair game" at the mercy of others, shows impressively how kinship solidarity "autonomously" succeeds even in "disorganized" cultures and - completely without "God". However there is interspersed an interesting reference to an exceptional case, where the socio-biologists perhaps are a bit right then. It is "God" who gives this sign for the road to Cain, who is homeless roaming about in foreign countries. So people who meet the outlaw get the impression that Cain is under a higher protection, even if his present loneliness and individuality is in contrast with it. Everyone who lays hands on him would have to fear a last revenge.

All the more one wonders of course why a monotheistic religion like Christianity became a world religion. What is the evolutionary socio-biological surplus value of a universal religion, which - in contrast to a religion of blood and soil that is more or less confined to a particular clan - can actually little contribute to the struggle for existence of individual groups? Of course, there have been time and again attempts to make universal Christianity servable to provincial interests: national church, secessionist, racist ... But they did less and less work out in the course of the history of Christendom. For my "egoistic" surviving as small group or people such a religion is actually "worthless", "useless" and "senseless". A religion like Christianity does not "function" according to socio-biological patterns of group preservation and struggle for existence only.

Already Moses' Religion proved to be a recalcitrant to the "meat pots" of Egypt. The Prophets of the Old Testament on the other hand accused the political culture religion of the temple priests who supported the king. Yahweh demands justice, not burnt-offerings. Certainly, in the view of the socio-biologists here too resonates a little bit of usefulness: the dream of a better society, of a social reform. But the - in the Bible likewise in many strands handed down - strong doubts about God of people such as Hiob, Kohelet or Jona, speak yet again a different language. How socially useful is the doubt about God, which as you know unmasks and destroys relentlessly far too simple images of God?

And why did Moses - to use this expression - "invent" such an uncomfortable, not imaginable God Yahweh, when Israel would surely have done much better with the adoption of the nice, harmonious fertility and sex god Baal: in the sense of psycho-hygiene, welfare and health for everybody? Why this queer revelation in the "burning thorn shrub" contrary to all other "revelations"? There the question of truth breaks relentlessly into the question about God. Who, what, where, how is the true God? This prick of distinction, of conflict, of gruelling test in the midst of the same people is actually anything else than a socio-biological advantage. An "abstract", "inconceivable" God whom Moses defends against the graphic "Golden Calf", the useful god of his brother Aaron, is not at all advantageous for a community.

At Least as "Useless" as Mathematics

The difficulty will increase if one considers the large religious figures, who in deepest isolation and most radical individuality reflected above all on the night, the absence, the silence of God: important mystics such as John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila ... Thereto belong likewise the many modern God seekers who do not allow that the mysteries and paradoxes of the mere "natural life" are degraded to pure considerations about usefulness or to moral. Of what use for the struggle for existence is it that man feels provoked to think infinity, or even tries to describe and interpret it cosmological-physically? What is the use of abstract, everything else than application oriented mathematics for the surviving of the fittest? Not to mention here religion - what is the socio-biological use of curiosity for curiosity's sake: simply because one is able to be curious, to ask questions and wants to find answers - without purpose and intention? Why does one struggle with things that do not even bring joy and happiness? Why does one do things the failure of which is actually pre-programmed?

"Why does man believe?" Also the magazine "Geo" dedicated itself (in the January booklet 2006) to that topic, which momentarily does interest almost exclusively the secular media. Apart from theories on brain research socio-biological opinions are reported: "Humans believe because if they think beyond themselves, they will need a transcendental homeland - a heaven. A metaphysical roof above their heads, named God." The one who is asking so will need a plausible explanation, to be able to bear his/her being not "necessary". Does one really "need" that? Should the idea of God be a happiness gene that produces optimism?

The belief in God makes those who believe often enough not at all "happy", on the contrary, rather "unhappy", because: critical faith does not only good; the paradoxes of the conceptions about God drive you more frequently from one question to another one, from one pain to the next one. So then is "God"! No, God is not so! Whoever has God does not have him. That is the tragedy of faith. It is an everlasting failure. Often enough God gives us not a homeland but homelessness. He does not shelter us but makes us lonely. Nevertheless, he gives hope; often a bashful otherworldly hope, which is time and again rather "doubtful" and "insignificant" for this life.

The philosopher Ottfried Höffe titled recently his final speech for the humanities - particularly for philosophy - and against an overestimation of the "profit producing" natural sciences: "About the Use of Uselessness" (FAZ, 9 January 2006). Certainly, Höffe too does thereby not totally escape the trap of socio-biological thinking (category of usefulness), when he still claims some "use" again - and be it only the pedagogical promotion of more creativity and fantasy - for free arts and free thinking. At the end however Höffe states a criterion which would be worth it to be considered also in the socio-biological debate about the evolution of religion: "Aristotle calls those people "eleutheros" (free) who do not allow that their lives are reduced to the exchange of functional relations, but who lead it rather for the sake of itself." But the same applies exactly to the free - doubting and believing - questioning about God: simply because the question about God is in itself exciting, interesting, moving and plausible - and not "God as Maker of Moral". 'God alone' is enough. Looking and living for God - how "useless", and how outrageously inspiring is that, how exciting and alive - in the middle of evolution.