The real challenges to Religion

Evolution vs. "Intelligent Design" - this discussion seems to be a hot topic particularly in the "bible belt" of the U.S. I must admit, most Europeans are shaking their head about it, but this does not take away from the fact that it is a serious topic that the U.S. society will have to come to terms with.
There are a number of questions associated with that discussion:
Was the world created a few thousand years ago, or 4.5 Billion years ago?
Is evolution essentially a more or less haphazard process, based on the "survival of the fittest" and arbitrary gene mutation, or is there an "intelligent design", some intelligent force (read: God) behind the scenes determining the direction, ultimately leading to the existence of humanity?
Finally, one of the underlying questions is: Can you read the Bible (in this case, the book Genesis) as an account of what really happened when the world was created, or is it more of a metaphoric or allegoric account that tries to explain why we are here?
I do not want to get into this argument here - my point is simply this: For the core of Christian belief, this is of marginal importance.
I think that wether God created the world in 7 days as Genesis says, or in 4.5 Billion years as scientists say, does not affect the core of Christian belief at all. It is not as big of a challenge as it is made out to be. It does not affect Jesus' teachings. Or have I missed something?
The struggle between Christianity and natural sciences is a thing of the past centuries. That battle probably started with Galileo Galilei's famous "Eppur si muove!" ("and she does move!") and ended in the 20th century. Since then it is generally accepted that the Bible is not intended as a scientific account, but was written for a very different purpose. It is time to move on.
The real challenges for modern religion (not just Christianity, but any religion really) have nothing to do with physics or biology or any other natural science. I believe the real challenges come from another direction, that nobody seems to be aware of: Sociology.
Scientific progress in modern sociology raises questions that challenge any religion. In this blog entry I will talk about some of them.
1. Let's imagine you found yourself stranded in a very different culture from the one you grew up in. For this example, let's assume you are a pious Christian who grew up in the bible belt of the USA. You believe in Christ, go to church on Sunday, read your bible and pray every day. For some reason you find yourself stranded in Saudi Arabia, with no contact to your own culture. You will suddenly be exposed to people with a belief that differs enormously from your own. First of all, Jesus is not the messiah, the saviour for them, he is merely a prophet. Instead of going to church on Sundays, people around you go to the Mosque on Fridays. They don't believe the bible is the word of God, they believe it Koran is. They use a different calendar and follow very different religious rites. Five times a day you hear the Muezzin call from the Mosque and it will remind you that they believe in something you don't. Those are just some of the things you will be faced with. Assuming that the people you are suddenly surrounded with are just as devout and upright Muslims as you are a devout and upright Christian, you will sooner or later have to come to terms with the fact that everyone else around you believes something different than you do. And they honestly do! They think you are wrong. You think they are wrong. It is a dilemma:
Humans have a hard time accepting two mutually exclusive views as both valid. You will start to question yourself. Could I be wrong and they are right? Or are they all misguided and have not seen the light? Or is there a middle ground, where we're both partially right?
Whatever the outcome of your introspection and self-questioning is, whatever your personal answer to these questions is: The point is that you will start questioning yourself and you will have to find a way to deal with the fact that your deeply held beliefs are different from the rest of society.
This is essentially the first sociological challenge to religion: People tend to believe what the people around them believe.
Let me phrase it in a provocative question: Could it be that religions are a nothing but a form of organized and constantly perpetuated mass illusion? Are they the "opium for he masses" as Karl Marx claimed? Could it be that religions exist because people keep telling each other that what they believe is true and not because they really offer valid truths about God and the world?

2. Sociologically speaking, a religious group is a sociological group like any other. Social groups are established, exist for a while and cease to exist at some point. This applies to churches too. The "Shakers" in the USA are a good example of a religious group that became extinct. A social group will be created when people come together with the same interest. In this case it is an interest in reading the Bible or the Koran, but it could just as well be an interest in building model airplanes. Social groups persist as long as they satisfy the wants and needs of the group members. In other words, people "get something out of it". This could be the comforting belief that they will go to heaven, or it may be something else. Social groups disband when people stop going there because their wants and needs are not satisfied any longer. In addition, social groups face threats from other social groups. Social groups are locked in a constant struggle for power and influence. If you analyze successful social groups and compare them with less successful ones, certain characteristics become apparent:
- Since there is always a certain fluctuation in any social group (e.g. people moving or passing away, etc.), successful social groups are good at "recruiting" new members. The most successful social groups attract significantly more people than they lose.
- Successful social groups are good at imparting and maintaining a certain mindset of its members: A feeling of Identity (e.g. "I am a Baptist") and a feeling of being different from the rest of the world. There has to be a clear separation between group members on the one hand and those outside of the group on the other hand.
- Social groups face an implicit (or sometimes explicit) pressure from society as a whole - on the one hand they have to be different from the rest of society for them to be able to justify their own existence. On the other hand, the more different they are, the harder it is to keep the group from falling apart. As described above, everyone feels the pressure to "be like the rest". The further away you are from what society as a whole believes, the more "closed" the group has to be to maintain their internal mindset and belief system.
- Social groups have to have an internal organization that determines how power is awared and shared in the group and how the group's teachings are preserved, developed and perpetuated. Again, the more the group's views differ from the rest of society, the stricter and more hierarchical the group's internal organization has to be to counter the external pressure. Every group needs leaders, the more powerful they are, the easier it is to keep the group together.
Let's take Jehova's witnesses as an example. I do not wish to make a statement here about the validity of their teachings. All I want to say is that those teachings are quite different from what the rest of society believes. For Jehova's witnesses to survive as a social group, they have to become "close-knitted" and they require strong internal leadership. Power has to be limited to a select few. They determine the way forward and the rest has to follow. Unless they limit the group members social interactions outside the group, and unless they constantly re-affirm their belief systems (e.g. bible study, bible classes, sermons, daily readings and prayers, etc.), they risk that the members of the group "drift away". This is inevitable.
What challenge to religion lies in this? Let me phrase it as a provocative question again: Could it be that not the "true religions" have survived over the centuries, but rather the sociologically most successful ones? Maybe the Shakers had all the answers. But since they were not as successful, sociologically speaking, they did not survive.
The challenge continues: If it is true that the religions that are best at recruiting people, those that are internally well-organized, are well-established in society and have found efficient ways of maintaining the group-internal mindset, have the best chance to survive, this is a form of natural selection that leads to polarization (if not extremism). Could it be that the sociological laws outlined above lead to an "evolution" of religions in which only the best organized, the most evangelic and most polarizing religious groups survive? Is it a sociological "survival of the fittest"?
No wonder we see more and more intolerant religions - and no wonder more and more terrorist groups are drawing on more or less obscure religious ideas to justify their murders.

Whatever you may think about Darwin's theories about fauna and flora. It seems that sociologically speaking, he was on to something without even knowing. Now isn't that ironic?

Note: Give credit where it's due: Many of these ideas where taken from the book "Rumours of Angels" by Peter L. Berger. Unfortunately it is out of print. His ideas are too valuable to be forgotten, so I felt some of them deserved being published in my blog.