Roger's Re-think: PLOVER - Religion - Future

© Roger M Tagg 2013

Highlights of book: 'Religion is not about God' by Loyal Rue, Rutgers University Press 2005, ISBN 0-8135-3511-5

Introduction

Loyal D Rue is a recently-retired professor of philosophy and religion at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa.

For myself, having lived for two years in a country with a different religion to my own, and having spent some time in countries where religion was not about God anyway, this book's title immediately interested me.

If you are nervous about trying to follow the fine detail of Rue's arguments, I have prepared a slide show  (7 slides) which might be a better place to start.

One warning I would give before anyone reads this book - or even my highlights - is about Rue's use of the words 'realist' and 'realism'. Whereas I would naturally take the meaning of 'realist' as something like 'trying to see the practical aspects' of something, Rue uses the words to mean 'accepting that a religious cosmological story IS the 'real' - i.e. underlying and ultimate - truth'.

So in my sense, I (Roger) am a realist, whereas in Rue's sense I am a non-realist!

Another term he uses several times is 'full-court press'. It's a basketball term meaning 'man-on-man marking as soon as the ball comes into play, not just when the ball is in defending team's half'. It's a bit bemusing for non-basketball followers!

Chapter	Page	Highlight
Pref -ace	vii	In explaining 'where he is coming from', Rue relates how, from a mainstream Christian religious upbringing, he came to the view that "without (human) motives, there would be no religion".
		Among those he acknowledges as conversation partners is E.O. Wilson, the biologist whose writings I have already come across. Wilson notably wrote "The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have." Rue's Wikipedia pages continues: "Wilson's intended usage of the word 'myth' does not denote falsehood - rather, a grand narrative that provides people with placement in time - a meaningful placement that celebrates extraordinary moments of shared heritage". Rue's first chapter is unsurprisingly titled "The Epic of Evolution".
Intro	1	Instead of being about God, religion "is about manipulating our brains so that we might think, feel and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively".
		"... a universal human nature exists and can be known by examining our evolutionary story, especially the evolution of behavior."
	2	"... a naturalistic theory of religion (such as Rue advances) seeks to understand religious phenomena by using categories, concepts, principles and methods compatible with the ones normally applied to non-religious domains of behavior." [RT: in other words, we shouldn't have to explain religion by using religion's own loaded concepts.]
	3	Rue declares that he is not arguing for or against the existence of God, and is not hostile to the religious life.
		He points out that he is not the first to take such a general, naturalistic line. He instances Kant, Feuerbach (of "Man created God in his own image" fame), Marx ("coping with the de-humanizing consequences of economic exploitation"), Durkheim and Freud ("projection of deep psychological dynamics" [RT: like yearning for the security of a father-figure].
	5	In contrast to his (Rue's) approach, 'particularists' would claim that each culture is 'of its own kind', so can't - and shouldn't - be compared with any others. [RT: They would each insist on their right to use their own terminology - words like 'consubstantial', 'ijtihad', 'samsara' and 'nirvana'.]
	9	"The general strategy of our species is to achieve personal wholeness and social coherence."
	10-11	Arguments between particularists and generalists often come down to 'concentration on some, versus balance of all' of the following: inherited similarities and differences, and acquired similarities and differences.
	12	A naturalistic approach is better aligned with Occam's Razor - the principle that less complication is always better than more. [RT: On p 363 Rue defines naturalism as the view that nothing transcends Nature.]
		Mircea Eliade opposed naturalism because it doesn't accept the fundamental separation of the 'sacred'. [RT: But Rue - and I - would say that 'sacred' is a loaded insiders' term.]
	13	Others oppose naturalism because it doesn't accept that 'moral order' is separate and 'above' nature.
		Naturalist theories are very diverse: Rue instances "the syncretism of Confucius, the materialism of the Atomists, the substantialism of Aristotle, and the idealism of Hegel". [RT: but I'd say these are all somewhat historical and 'Dark Age', i.e. before science - especially Darwin.]
	16	Rue invokes E O Wilson's take on 'consilience' - the idea that the many branches of science can be brought together into a coherent story.
1 -	21-27	"The Epic of Evolution". This is really just a 'rehearsal' of today's [RT: fairly consilient] scientific view of how things have evolved since the big bang.
	23	Rue offers Holmes Rolston's 'stepped hillside' model (see right). Up to the middle of 'II. Life' it's just Physics and Chemistry. Above that it's more Psychology and Sociology.
	25	"How these natural systems came to be is essential to the story of how we came to be."
		"A living organism is a self-regulating and self-replicating biochemical system that can manage to keep its rate of chemical composition comfortably ahead of its rate of chemical decomposition. Organisms failing in this task, for whatever reasons, are either dead or soon to be so."
	26	"So when we come, eventually, to consider the fancywork of human nature - our intelligence, our affections, our moral sense - it will be important to recall that these qualities are purchased on the account of traits that contribute to our reproductive fitness ... (which is) ... a superordinate principle that applies to all living systems.
2 -	28-77	"The Evolution of Behavior". Rue's general point is that human behaviour has evolved in analogous ways to physical characteristics. As this is a very long chapter, in order to help the reader of these highlights, I have numbered the sections in the chapter, largely following Rue's own headings.
		"Nobody inherits behavior. What we inherit are genes that code for proteins that build the tissues of mechanisms for organizing behavior. So the evolution of behavior comes down to a story about the evolution of mediators of behavior."
	28	2.1 'Molecular Systems' [RT: and he quickly moves on to 'Multicellular Systems']
	29	"Nearly everything a cell does ... is made possible by the properties of proteins and molecules that interact with them." This is the most basic level of all behavior.
	30	Multicellular life gained advantage by having some cells specialize, but there then have to be "higher-order regulatory systems".
	30	2.2 'Neural Systems'
	31	"If the body evolved by adding modules for particular adaptive functions, then why not the brain?"
		One can't maintain that the brain's networks of neurons are all wired in by heredity, nor that they are all acquired through learning. "The old nature-nurture controversy ... is no longer about the relative influences of heredity and environment, but rather about whether inherited systems of learning are few and general, or many and specific. The best evidence to date strongly favors the latter." (Reference here is made to Cosmides and Tooby).
	32-3	2.3 'Reflex Systems' - these "never drop out of a full account of behavior".
	33-4	2.4 "Perceptual Systems' - i.e. through our senses. Enhancements always help, but "having all the information about the world is worse than having a small amount of the right information".
	34	It's sometimes best to make early educated guesses.
	35	"Lizards ... can both see and hear, but since they cannot associate the two modes, they have no sense that what they see and what they hear may be the same object."
	35-6	2.5 'Physiological Drive Systems' - Rue means 'homeostatic' systems like hunger and thirst. "The trick is to make an appropriate response before damage is done to body tissues."
	37	The 'pleasure principle' might be included here.
	38	2.6 'Learning: Memory Systems' - "Learning and memory are two aspects of the same process".
		"The functional unit of memory is the 'memory trace' or engram ... (which denotes) the enduring change in the nervous system that conserves the effects of experience across time." [RT: NOT the Scientology meaning!]
	40	Some philosophers and social scientists have speculated that humans are 'all engrams', but Rue says "To survive by engrams alone would require a brain the size of Chicago and a curriculum of learning that would last for centuries ... The world has no tolerance for such monstrosities."
		"The phenomenon of working memory provides an excellent example of the coordination of genes and engrams." (See 2.11 below)
	41	"Engrams function as integral parts of computational systems, which are governed by algorithms encoded by the genes."
	41-2	2.7 'Emotional Systems' - Rue starts off by warning the reader against too 'linear' a model of evolution, i.e. 'one development after another". It's more like "constructing a house with materials delivered randomly from a junkyard." Emotion is the subject of the following chapter.
	43	Emotional systems are 'parallel distributive processors' (by analogy with computers). But there is not yet a lot of research consensus.
		Examples of emotions in early stages of evolution might have been those for "anticipating pain and pleasure"- e.g. "the adaptive value of fear and disgust".
	45	"How could genes promoting a sacrifice of self-interest possibly evolve? ... The theory of inclusive fitness ... showed that (such) genes would be selected if the sacrificial behaviors tended to enhance the survival and reproductive fitness of close kin, who carry the same genes." And this could later extend beyond the family circle (reciprocal altruism).
		"The primate brain is, almost literally, a social artifact."
	47	This might lead to an 'arms race' between those manipulating other people's emotions and our ability to "correctly read emotional signals properly".
	48	Rue introduces here the jargon word teloi for 'goals' - singular telos; this term gets used quite a lot from here on. [RT: I suppose 'goals' reminds us too easily of football!]
		"There are teloi inherent in molecular systems, in reflex systems, perceptual systems, drive systems, memory systems and emotional systems. The nature of a species is defined by the teloi embedded in these mediators."
	49	2.8 'Cognitive Systems' - 'Cognitive science' replaced an earlier vogue for 'Behaviorism' - a more 'black box' approach, opposed to studying how the mind works. Steven Pinker, by contrast, said that the brain is "a collection of computational modules" and "that scientific inquiry about how they work is possible and legitimate".
	51	"We are as smart as we are because the odds on cognition wagers kept increasing, with the result that we (not dung beetles or woodchucks) have come to occupy a niche favoring neural modules capable of generating grand theories about the world."
	51	2.9 'Mental Objects' - these include (according to J-P Changeux) "percepts, memory images and concepts, all of which may be featured in working memory".
		"The relation between sensation and perception may be illustrated by the familiar 'face-vase' problem. ... The information transmitted from the eye to the brain is exactly the same for each subject, yet the information may be resolved (in perception) differently."
	52	Example of cognition: how does a new schoolchild acquire the concept of 'teacher'?
	52-3	"Fragments of percepts become involved in the composition of memory images; image fragments contribute to the construction of other images; images also play a role in the construction of concepts; concept fragments may be activated in the neural assembly of new concepts; and concept fragments can also contribute to the construction of images and even to the construction of percepts."
	53	"It is by virtue of this power that a select group of species manages (more or less) to transcend the 'out of sight, out of mind' condition that is characteristic of most animal species." ... "And beyond that, the mind can behold inferred realities that could never present themselves to the senses ... (e.g.) three-headed tartan-clad dragons with an addiction to romance novels."
	53-4	2.10 'Mental Operators' - Rue recognizes 3 types: 1) reality operators - how we process information about how things appear to be in the external world [RT: note, that's nearer my meaning of 'realism' than Rue's!]; 2) valence operators - how we map information to our biological value system (from a previously 'value-free' perception or cognition); and 3) executive operators - how we generate and assess options for behavior in response to whatever circumstances we are facing.
	54	"The most basic types of reality operators are modules governing the initial buildup of mental objects. ... (We use) color, form, pattern, texture, movement, size, speed, frequency, sequence, sound, proximity, duration, function, derivation, assembly, decay ... (from) perceptual experience."
	55	Pinker: "(We) have foresight beyond simple necessities, and combine, compare and reason ... (and we) put these abilities to good use in outwitting the defenses of the local flora and fauna." We are all "intuitive scientists".
	56	"... Natural selection has biased the brains of all humans to jump to the same intuitive conclusions."
		"... Salience is not the same as relevance. ... Intelligibility is one thing, significance is quite another. That is, the meaning (relevance, value) of external facts is not objective, not something 'out there' to pick up on."
		In contrast to the so-called 'naturalistic fallacy', "facts in themselves are value-neutral, which means that however many facts you line up, you can never get them to imply anything about the value of something". [RT: But the choice of which facts are collected might have a bias based on the collector's value system.]
		"... Humans come into the world equipped with a biological value system, or what in broad terms might be called a species-wide intuitive morality."
	57	In "interactions between reality operators and valence operators, ... information about the value-neutral external world is integrated with value-laden information about internal body states. In this process the naturalistic fallacy is transgressed with a vengeance, as facts become overlaid with values". Rue calls this "an intuitive worldview" - but this is a pristine, limited early state.
	57-9	2.11 'Working Memory' [RT: by analogy with computer 'main memory', or like the 'registers' or 'core' of older computers.] Joseph LeDoux locates it in humans in the 'lateral prefrontal cortex' - something only primates have, and humans have much more of it than any other primates.
	59	Each of our senses has a 'buffer' for data waiting to go into WM, and there is a line to long-term memory. processing can be top-down or bottom-up. Research suggests its capacity is 7 items plus or minus 2 (some people allow up to 20).
		"The operations of working memory include reasoning, problem solving, language comprehension, memory searching, decision making, sequencing of priorities, and construction of narratives."
	60	Some say it's the "theatre of consciousness ... where mental objects are generated by lightning-fast inferences". Others think it is "the seat of the soul" - whatever that means.
		One function would be to "construct mental objects representing different possible future outcomes ...".
	60-1	2.12 'Secondary Operators': "Primary operators are the algorithms we inherit, scripted in our genes to bias our construction and manipulation of mental objects. By contrast, secondary operators are the algorithms we invent ..."
	62	"Individuals with more working memory capacity might pick up on non-salient features that cannot be assimilated by the rough and ready categories and concepts of intuitive science."
		"Thus it may happen over the course of a lifetime that two individuals of the same species, who share a common intuitive mentality, will come to organize their experience of the external world in radically different ways."
		"Nevertheless, the primary operators remain lurking in the background."
		"When old dogs die their tricks die with them, and each new generation defaults back to the provisions of intuitive science. Such was presumably the way things were before the invention of language, prior to which there was very little cultural diversity."
	63-4	2.13 'Self Esteem' - this is "a narrative process of self-monitoring", which is "judged by socially-induced standards of performance".
	64-5	"The variability of the self-esteem system is a mixed blessing. On one hand it provides a mechanism for social groups to adapt their behavior to changing circumstances. But on the other hand it opens the door to more diversity of values than an orderly society can tolerate."
	65	"Self-esteem linkages (secondary valence operators) ... exert a top-down influence on emotional systems." And secondary emotions emerge (see next chapter).
	66	"... Secondary values operate by extra-genetic rules. If there are no symbolic means to objectify and transmit these traits across generations, then we will default back to our intuitive morality."
	66-8	2.14 'Symbolic Systems' - this is where 'language' and 'culture' come in. Rue spends time musing about the origins and history of language, and the business of 'signs' and 'referents'.
	68-9	Rue distinguishes 'iconic' (pictures, imitations) and 'indexical' (simple codes) signs, and talks about "the language bottleneck ...(which involves) a passage from indexical reference to symbolic (social conventions) reference".
	69	Chimps in labs have it easier than our "apish ancestors" did - at least they get a symbol system ready waiting for them.
	70	Symbols give us "a new system for preserving and processing information ... outside the body", hence in the "social domain".
	71	Language and the brain can only evolve through 'co-evolution'.
	71	2.15 (not one of Rue's headings) 'Co-evolution and Cultural Evolution'
		For natural facts, 1) physical information is "preserved in forced bonds between subatomic particles"; 2) biological information is preserved in genes; 3) psychological information is in engrams; and 4) cultural information in symbols is preserved in memes, a term coined by Richard Dawkins.
	72	If average temperature dropped, for early hominids those with thicker fat or fur would survive. If secondary rules were shared, clothing and housing would make a greater difference as to who survived.
	72-3	"Cultures evolve as their memes change, just as species evolve with changes in the genome. ... Cultures will generate more variations of meaning than could ever be preserved in a tradition. More laws are proposed than passed, more pictures painted than hung, more songs composed than recorded, more books written than published, and so on. If a culture is to achieve the minimal degree of coherence, it must find a means to winnow the memetic diversity in systematic ways. Failing this, a culture becomes vulnerable to the chaos of too many conflicting memes ..."
	73	"Cultures must therefore devise strategies to select for a central core of ideas about how things are (cosmology) and which things matter (morality). This central core will become the defining narrative underlying the cultural tradition, and will be used as a selective device for culling out incompatible memes."
		"Internal checks on diversity and change do not, however, apply between cultures, and while most cultures evolve slowly, they tend to diverge rapidly."
	74	"Every cultural tradition, therefore, represents a unique history of competition and compromise between primary and secondary operators."
	74	2.16 'Human Nature and the Meaning of Life': Rue asks how can we say anything useful about these things. At the most general level, we are just the same as other species - we have to reproduce and survive. But, "the meaning of life at the individual level is too subjective and variable for a picture of human nature". So, we have to look at some intermediate level.
	75	"A sketch of human nature is less interested in how people should carry on than how they actually do carry on."
		"The meaning of human life should be expressed in terms of how our particular species pursues the ultimate telos of reproductive fitness. ... For humans there are many intermediate teloi, including the biological goals inherent in our drive systems, the psychological goals implicit in our emotional and cognitive systems, and the social goals we imbibe through our symbolic systems. Human life is about whatever these goals are about."
		It's "about a pair of mutually depending yet mutually contending intermediate goals:  personal wholeness and social coherence. ... The human strategy for winning the war of survival is to fight on two fronts, the battle against personal disintegration and the battle against social chaos.
	76	"One of the ironies of human existence is that sacrificing certain desirable goods for the sake of personal integration is a necessary means to maximizing such goods."
	77	"There may be many authentic ways to become a whole person, but encouraging a diversity of these ways is hardly the way to create a coherent society. A coherent society is achieved by minimizing potential for conflict ..."
3 -	78-124	"The Education of Emotion".
	78	"Emotion and cognition are now viewed as 'partners in the mind'."
	79	"... Religious traditions may be viewed as schools for educating the emotions"
	79	3.1 'What is an Emotion?'
	79-81	Emotions can be approached from many viewpoints: a) biological (e.g. heart rate); b) evolutionary (like chapter 2); c) behavioral outcomes; d) facial expressions; e) states of readiness;  f) cognitive psychology; g) social constructivism ("emotions are learned cultural artifacts"); etc.
	81	"It seems unwise to rule out of any of these theoretical approaches, ... yet their differences do not promise an early synthesis."
	82	Rue's definition is: "a temporary feeling state that acquires narrative content and leads to a predisposition to act".
	82	3.2 'Emotions are Temporary Feeling States' - yes, "but not all feeling states are emotions (Rue quotes pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst)
	83	3.3 'Moods': are longer-lasting than emotions, and "have less thematic content". Examples are depression, irritability.
	83	3.4 'Temperaments': These are defined as "any moderately stable, differentiating or behavioral quality whose appearance in childhood is influenced by an inherited biology, including differences in brain neurochemistry" (Jerome Kagan). [RT: I would have thought that a family environment could also influence temperament.]
	84	3.5 'Attitudes': following Gordon Allport, who saw them as "value-laden beliefs" - a lot of which come through socialization. Examples: 'pro-life', 'pro-environment' (greenie). Our attitudes may change if we find that we have clashes between more than one of our attitudes.
	86	3.6 'Emotions Acquire Narrative Content' - "Our lives unravel plot-like", and "An emotional reaction is the process by which we determine the narrative meaning of (a) happening".
	87-8	3.7 'A Preview of the Appraisal Process': Rue is referring here to the 6-phase model of Richard Lazarus. The questions to be asked in this appraisal about the 'happening' are: 1) Is it goal-relevant? 2) Is it goal-congruent or goal-incongruent? [RT: i.e., does it fit in with my preferences?]; 3) What part of my ego is involved (e.g. my life, my status, my beliefs, my self-esteem, my possessions)? 4) Are credit or blame to be apportioned? 5) Can I cope? 6) How does it all bode for the future?
	88	3.8 'Emotions and the Self': Antonio Damasio (who must have met Rue in Iowa) proposed 3 evolutionary stages: proto self, core self and autobiographical self.
	89	Proto selves (which many animals have) are "teleological centers of life" (Paul Taylor, in ‘Respect for Nature’),  but don't have emotions or consciousness.
	90	"You can make fish go away, but you cannot scare them away."
		Core self is "the experience of being something to which something is happening". It's narrative "only in the narrowest sense".
	91	But there is 'meaning' - "the core self senses (that) something is at stake". ... But, for the core self, each episode is a self-contained lifetime. ... The next episode calls forth the creation of the next core self ...". It's "like a random collection of very short stories by very different authors".
	92	With the autobiographical self, there's "continuity of selfhood", which requires "working memory" (as in chapter 2). Rue instances ravens, who apparently have a sense of "being an enduring thing to which many things happen.
	93	With humans, "we leave the world of vignettes and novellas to enter the world of sweeping sagas with convoluted subplots, refined character development, and epic triumphs and tragedies". [RT: sounds a bit grandiose for many of the humans I know!]
		"Humans are not merely goal-seekers, but goal setters as well, capable of monitoring the self, not only as it is but also as it should be."
	93-4	What good does the emotion of fear do in the core self of, say, a chicken? Rue thinks the advantage is limited to helping the chicken create mental images.
	94	Rue's central governing principle for emotional life: "Emotional states will vary according to the subject's goals and the cognitive appraisals a subject is able to perform regarding the relevance of the business at hand for the subject's goals".
	95	Are our emotions genetically determined? "No consensus has been achieved ... but the most popular view at the moment appears to be that we inherit a relatively small number of organized emotional systems that remain open to modulating influences". Rue proceeds to give his idea on which emotions might be 'primary' (i.e. genetically determined, and related to our 'core self') and which might be secondary (adaptive, probably through socialization).
	95	3.8.1 'Primary Emotions' - Rue suggests fear, disgust, anger, desire, happiness and sadness, although he thinks the last two might be classed as 'follow-on' emotions.
	97-8	3.8.2 'Secondary Emotions' - Rue thinks these depend on self-monitoring. Chimps might be able to get to this level. His prime example is guilt [RT: a favourite target of Christianity, especially Roman Catholic]. He has two classes, A) those that presuppose minimal self-concept, and B) those that presuppose explicit self-concept
	99	A: interest, anxiety, frustration/consternation, affection, gratitude, sympathy, resentment, contempt	B: hatred, outrage, shame, guilt, envy, jealousy, pride, grief, resignation, admiration, wonder, compassion, alienation, humility, amusement
	100	The problem with trying to cross-correlate these across linguistic borders is that the words often don't have exact equivalents, and some languages have a finer or coarser set of distinctions than others in certain areas. [RT: Like the Eskimos reputed 22 words for snow.]
	100-3	3.9 'A Review of the Appraisal Process' - Rue tries Lazarus's questions out on fear, anger, pride and love. [RT: the last one wasn't in any list!]
	103	Rue admits we don't necessarily consciously ask ourselves all the questions!
	104	3.10 'Emotions are Predispositions to Act'
	105	"...The action patterns characteristic of positive emotions tend to be associative [RT: i.e. we 'join in the fray'], while those for negative emotions tend to be dissociative" [RT: we 'cop out'; but I don't think this is always true.]
	106	Past experiences will have some influence. But as a whole, we have to accept that emotional processes are complicated and unpredictable.
	107	"Even slight failures to control emotional events can create havoc in personal lives and social groups."
		Our 'meta-goals' should be "1) to ameliorate goal-incongruent encounters, and 2) to sustain or enhance goal-congruent encounters".
	107-8	Coping strategies include 'run like hell', helping, bragging, readjust my goals, do something else to distract from the emotion, denial, and wishful hope.
	109	Maybe Christian love (agape) and hope, as well as aesthetic emotions, are tertiary ones.
	109	3.11 'Emotions are Influenced by Culture'
	109-11	3.11.1 Background feelings that could influence emotion include pain (and how our culture thinks one should endure it), moods, humour and other environmental things.
	111-3	3.11.2 'Incentive Events' - i.e., whatever kicks off the emotional process. Examples include a) ambiguity in what someone said, b) optical illusions, and c) difference from what one is 'used to'. Rue suggests these are often very culture-dependent.
	113	3.12 'The Appraisal Process' [RT: again?! This time, it seems to be in the light of 'Goal Hierarchy and the Influence of Cultures']
		Rue presents Maslow's goal hierarchy: from most basic needs upwards, the scheme is: 1) physiological needs; 2) safety needs; 3) love and acceptance needs; 4) self-esteem needs; 5) self-actualization needs.
	114	"... The priorities defining a person's goal hierarchy are not fixed." So we may inhibit some goals in favour of newly learned goals that inspire us more.
		There are always overlaps of interest, self-self, self-other humans, self-animals etc.
	115	"A goal hierarchy is kaleidoscopic ... our values are continuously in flux. They are not, however, chaotic."
	116	"It is from our cultural myths that we acquire memes for the ultimate realities and values that are reflected in our goal hierarchies. Our myths tell us how the world is made up, how it works, what its point is, what the possibilities are, and so forth. They also tell us how humans fit into the picture, what our point is, what in the world is good for us, and how we should seek to fulfill our lives." [RT: Trouble is, the old myths don't grab us any more, and there's a lot of competition about.]
	116	3.13 'Coping Strategies' - these have already been mentioned, but here Rue shows his complete emotional model (see below)
		INCENTIVE EVENT ---> APPRAISAL PROCESS ---> EMOTIONAL FEELING ---> COPING STRATEGIES ---> BEHAVIORAL EXPRESSION
		He defines "causal influences entering the picture before the feeling state emerges" as 'constitutive factors'; those that come later are 'regulative factors'.
	118-9	"... Emotional regulation may also generate the most substantial differences between cultures." Example: is 'sadness' dangerous or virtuous? Is anger "a positive sign of vitality and control" or "personally and socially threatening"?
	120	"Tertiary emotions" [RT: what's this got to do with coping strategies?] "are highly complex feeling states that may arise as we render appraisals on emergent primary and secondary emotions." Rue adds nostalgia to his list of tertiary emotions, as well as Ifalukian fago (see p46 of this book)  and Nepalese Laiya.
	121	He also classes as tertiary "The oceanic feeling of oneness with God, or the sense that one is in the presence of a transcendent power, or the blessed sense of being forgiven by grace, or the serenity of release from oppressive attachments". [RT: This clearly seems to be where he puts religion.]
		"The education of emotion calls for nurturing individuals in a morality of the emotional life. The task amounts to coaxing the working memory into giving priority to the emotional virtues, ensuring that these will prevail in the coping process." [RT: I'm not sure he has really argued his case for what are 'virtues' rather than the opposite.]
	122	"The ultimate challenge for any cultural tradition is therefore to find the symbolic and practical means to assure that the emotional virtues will acquire these priority markers" (i.e. in people's working memory). [RT: In my view, the symbols proposed by the major religions have become dangerously out of date, and don't address many of modern life's challenges.]
	122	3.14 'Summary and Conclusions' (of this chapter) [RT: At last! - But I don't think anything in this last section beats the previous 2 quotes.]
	123	(After much evolution) "it became possible to appraise the meaning of worldly business relative to the goals of an emergent and enduring subjective reality, the conscious self". But he goes on: "Variations of time and circumstance inevitably result in culturally unique perspectives on how best to organize personal and social variables. That is, humans tend to disagree about the conditions most conducive to the achievement of personal and social fulfillment." [RT: So, what can we do, then?]
	123-4	Rue summarizes the way he links the biological and psychological to the cultural. "1) The myths, symbols and practices in a religious tradition will have a decisive influence on the mental objects featured in the working memory of individuals" [RT: I'm not sure I see that in most Australians!]; "2) The mental objects (neural imaging) featured in the working memory will have a decisive influence on the cortico-limbic interactions taking place during appraisal and coping events; 3) Patterns of cortico-limbic interaction will have a decisive influence on the mediation of human behavior; 4) The mediation of behavior will have a decisive influence on the prospects for achieving personal wholeness and social coherence; 5) It is by the achievement of personal wholeness and social coherence that members of our species influence the odds favoring reproductive fitness."
	124	To those who object "that this view reduces the conventional meanings of religious myths, symbols and practices to 'nothing but' pragmatic devices for producing certain patterns of neural stimulation", Rue says "That is precisely my meaning", and he considers that the 'conventional meanings' of our embedded memes are just a s important as the religious symbols - which, however, he does not want to be seen suggesting as dispensable.
4 -		"The Nature of Religion" [RT: This chapter follows an easier structure, but is very much pro myth-based religion. It may be that he thinks non-myth-based religion is a non-starter, but his examples in this chapter all seem to evoke a bygone age. Don't many of us now adopt the 'evolutionary myth'? Rue himself does in previous chapters.]
	126	4.1 'The Structure of Religious Traditions' - [RT: I find this a fascinating analysis of religions in general.]
	126-7	4.1.1 'The Narrative Core: Myth': "Particular objects and events acquire meaning for individuals when facts and values are integrated in a valenced mental object - when images from two information streams are juxtaposed in working memory." [RT: I can follow this except for the integration bit.]
	127	"In cultural myths the entire universe acquires meaning by virtue of the conjugation of reality and value in metaphor." [RT: True, but for any particular metaphor, is it good enough for people at the time?]
		"Reality and value are never incommensurate in mythic insight; they are merely two aspects of a unified meaning."
		"When the root metaphor of a mythic tradition is ingested, one apprehends that ultimate facts and values have the same source. In mythic insight, the ultimate explanation is also the ultimate validation. The root metaphor renders the real sacred and the sacred real." [RT: What if the myth is indigestible?]
		"In the Abrahamic traditions, for example, the root metaphor is God-as-person." For ancient Greece it was the logos, for much of Chinese myth it's the Tao.
	127-8	"The deep structure of religious traditions is derived from the construction of root metaphors that unite ideas about how things ultimately are with ideas about which things ultimately matter." So, in Rue's pentagon (on the right), the 'narrative core' is a merging of 'cosmological ideas' with 'moral ideas'. [RT: The problem for today therefore appears to be that the cosmological ideas of 'old time religion' are way past their 'sell by' date, but that the moral side has not yet gelled in today's science-oriented cosmology.]
	128	"The meanings embedded within a mythic tradition will exert a selective influence to determine whether new meanings will be received or rejected. New ideas that do not fit the myth will be pronounced unfit ..." [RT: So was it the myth that objected to Galileo, or was it the sinful institution?]
		4.1.2 'Ancillary Strategies': The pentagon shows five: Intellectual, Experiential, Ritual, Aesthetic and Institutional. [RT: My question is, does this choice of 5 deliberately omit the Pragmatic, or the related issue of Resources?] Rue points out that religions differ in the weight they attach to each of the five here.
	128-31	4.1.2.1 'Intellectual Strategies': "Mythos is typically augmented by logos", mainly to interpret the myth. However in some religions, belief is rated higher than knowledge, understanding or reason - even if it leads to a position in contradiction to observable fact. [RT: And what about the Islamic tradition of reciting the Koran by heart in the original Arabic, even if one doesn't understand a word of it?]
	131	"It is very doubtful that theistic myths, such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam, could carry on effectively if individuals became 'nonrealists' [RT: in Rue's sense] regarding the God-as-person metaphor." [RT: But I suspect a large number of people are already nonrealists.] Rue admits that "Theistic traditions have been faced with the ultimate crisis of creeping nonrealism for more than a century." [RT: It seems more like a flood to me.]
	131-4	4.1.2.2 'Experiential Strategies' - Rue means visions etc. He feels that today's religions would not have survived if there hadn't been any. [RT: But some religions seems to suggest we ought to have them, and there is a suspicion that they can be 'encouraged' by poverty, hunger, drugs, breathing exercises and even self-flagellation.]
	134-6	4.1.2.3 'Ritual Strategies' - the usual list is offered: "prayers, pilgrimages, fasting, feasting, hymn singing, chanting, kneeling, magic, worshipping, wedding or funeral ceremonies, sacred dances and the like".
	135	Ritual is "performing the myth, re-enacting the narrative of ultimate reality, is a way to get back on track, to hit the reset button, to get our proper bearings, to become wise". [RT: I wonder about this - maybe we just 'like' rituals.]
		Some Plains Indians "achieved harmony with ritual self-torture".
	135-6	"Much of what we see in ritual falls under descriptions for magic or worship.... Magic attempts to bring reality into harmony with the subject through an act of domination or manipulation, while worship seeks to bring the subject into harmony with reality through an act of submission or supplication." [RT: and is this meant to be a good thing?]
	136-41	4.1.2.4 'Aesthetic Strategies' - it's about religious art supporting the myth. Christians have representations of the Crucifixion or 'Madonna and Child'. With some other traditions, it's snakes. [RT: Rue doesn't say much about music.] "Whereas theological formulations seek to localize the myth, artistic creations seek to diffuse it into a spectrum of meanings, some complementary, others conflicting."
	141-4	4.1.2.5 'Institutional Strategies' - there's a gradient between, e.g., the RC approach (ultra-centralized and hierarchical, aping imperial Rome) and Quakers. Rue thinks that in spite of the good religious institutions do by preserving and nurturing the core myth, the rituals etc, they are "not without inherent danger - that is, religious institutions have a tendency to become authoritarian regimes that brook no dissent from any quarter". ... If they "fancy themselves authorities on the myth, they might take the next step to presume authority on everything imaginable". [RT: Of course that happens, e.g. with 'theocracies'. But if Pragmatics and Resources aren't to be covered, then the religion has to accept a secular government that does deal with these matters.]
	144	4.2 'The Origins of Religion' - "Any attempt to answer ... will be highly speculative and full of debatable assumptions."
	145-8	4.2.1 'The Nature of the Question' - Rue gives 5 different ways of looking at it: 1) 'divine self-disclosure' in the 'Axial period' of 550 BC to 650 AD (Hick); 2) cognitively finding explanations for phenomena, especially death and dreams (Tylor and Frazer); 3) psychological response to emotional challenges (Freud); 4) sociogenic - "it is essentially about group survival" (Durkheim); 5) Rue's own 'Intuitive Science to Ad Hoc Science' and 'Intuitive Morality to Ad Hoc Morality' transitions.
	145-6	"If the naturalist can provide a plausible and satisfying story of religious origins, then competing supernaturalist accounts will be left to the mercy of Occam's razor." [RT: Why don't we extend this criterion ('plausible and satisfying story') to the religious myths themselves?]
	146	Frazer (of 'Golden Bough' fame) thought that "magic evolved into religion when primitive people became disillusioned with the results". [RT: Might not people today be similarly disillusioned with religion, because of unanswered prayers and inadequate explanations of suffering?]
	149	4.2.2 'Stage One: Beyond Intuitive Science' - Rue sees this as a slow transition, between 200,000 and 40,000 years ago.
	150	"In the infancy of our species this practice (anthropomorphizing nature) probably worked out rather well as a first approximation of how things actually work."
		"In this view, the emergent ad hoc science ... came to regard the natural world as brimming with verve and motive." [RT: Well, I once found Rex Warner's 'Men and Gods' pretty exciting.]
	151	One important issue that had to be explained was death - and its corollary, immortality.
	152-7	4.2.3 'Stage Two: Beyond Intuitive Morality' - Rue describes the drift from small hunter-gatherer family groups to larger clans meeting one another in raids and "periodic reunions".
	153	Originally, "They practiced a campsite technology, and regulated by a campsite morality. ... Moral obligations were determined by reciprocity and emotional exigency - you shared everything with everyone either because you felt affection, sympathy or gratitude towards them, or because you feared reprisals."
	154	"Having rules to regulate social behavior" wasn't seen as a need in the small groups.
	156	"... The formation of episodic coalitions would call for the invention and enforcement of ad hoc rules for behavior." [RT: This parallels my own arguments for 'inter-organizational workflows' - a business partnership often needs clearer procedural rules than are needed within an organization.]
	157	"There is no way to determine the first articulate ad hoc morality, but we may be confident that the specific rules were generated by the following algorithm: Thou shalt not do whatever it was that caused trouble at the last reunion."
	158-9	4.2.4 'Mythopoesis and Religion' - "The new social circumstances (larger groups) would have generated both ambivalence and dissonance. ... Our ancestors found themselves in a state of desperate need for a story that would tell them who they were, where they came from, what the group was, how it came to be, and why they should follow the new rules."
	159	The storytellers "borrowed the language of ad hoc cosmology ... and expanded it to include the nature and nurture of self and society."
	159	4.3 'The Functions of Religion' - Rue's approach to what these are is: "If you really want to know how organisms work, then figure out why they quit working".
	160	"... Whenever solidarity, cooperation, security and harmony appear to be decreasing, or whenever social animosity, discrimination, injustice and conflict appear to be increasing, we may begin to suspect a failure of religious function. And likewise whenever happiness, tolerance, generosity and forgiveness appear to be giving way to depression, aggression, obsession and repression ..." [RT: Well, that seems to describe today's trends - at least if we believe what the media tells us. But they are in the business of peddling 'shock horror'.]
		But "a religion cannot be blamed for losses such as" (those caused by earthquake, flood or even a brain tumour), although it ought to make an "appreciable difference in coping with or restoring those losses".
		Rue wonders if he can maintain his stance that "the principal functions of religion are to enhance personal wholeness and social coherence" against alternatives like "it brings us closer to God" or "it frees us from sin". However he says that all these alternatives do lead to the same goals, via the religion's resources for "therapy and politics".
	160-1	Can the "religious life offer anything more than personal wholeness and social coherence? ... What would the goal of salvation, or coming into glory, add to that?" Rue thinks it's just 'more of the same'.
	162	As he has said earlier, religions are about "educating the emotions" ... and they "also nurture the formation of attitudes".
	163	"But the saving grace of myth (i.e. saving us from excessive selfishness) goes beyond therapy to exercise a political function as well. When a mythic vision is ingested widely among members of a group, a synergy of parts emerges in service to the whole."
	164	"All of this assumes, of course, that our social context offers us a single mythic vision." It's not just "outbreaks of intuitive morality". Plurality of myths is also an issue. [RT: if one includes science, or Marxism, then I'd say it's a much bigger one.]
		"If we lack a shared orientation in nature and history, and if we lack a common understanding of who we are and what we should strive for together, then we lack the means to transcend our differences when the social chips are down. We will be left to think that the other just has it wrong.
		"... To resort to brute force or to part company" ... are impossible options in a world simultaneously bloated with instruments of warfare and depleted by overpopulation and insatiable consumption. ... We are called - here, now, urgently - to the task of mythopoesis." [RT: In other words, we need to develop a common story, a new myth that all the different traditions can accept - and fast!]

I am interrupting the table here, at the end of 'Part1' and before highlights of 'Part 2'.

As the next 5 chapters are primarily a comparative analysis of how 5 of the world's main religious appear to Rue to rate against the principles proposed in his Part 1, it makes more sense to show a table here summarizing his analysis. After that I will return to page-by-page 'highlights' mode.

[RT: It's notable that Rue doesn't analyze any Asian religions apart from Buddhism. Maybe these don't fit his pattern so well, e.g. the eclectic mix of schools in Chinese religions and the dual Shinto-Buddhist thing in Japan.]

Afterthoughts

I found this book an excellent challenge, though a little long-winded in places. It is interesting how he builds up the value of 'myth' in "manipulating our brains so that we might think, feel and act in ways that are good for us, both individually and collectively". His presentation of the five religions is always positive, and not critical. But then he shows how these myths can fail, primarily by not accounting for what are critical issues for our world today - scientific progress, globalization, consumerism, ecological limits (and, I would add, the flattening of the education gradient).

It strikes me that there is too much 'face' to be lost by leaders of religions. Having pretended to have all the answers, they are now under attack for falling short on several issues. It's a bit like governments, or business leaders - they don't like admitting they have ever been wrong or 'stuffed it up'. So most of them just block out the problems and just shout louder.

For the ambitious among us, getting elected is the first priority, so we offer a popular manifesto. If we do change tack when we get into power, we will be vilified for doing so. 'Seeing the light' is not acceptable to voters.

However I'm not sure I am ready to become a committed Green Party supporter - they too seem to have just as many impractical stances.

I suspect that some of my generation may be thinking "Thanks goodness we'll be gone when this new holocaust comes".

Links

The links below lead to the other components of  PLOVER

This version updated on 11^th November 2023