Religion Is Not About God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture Our Biological Nature

Rating:
Summary: Useful for an introduction to 5 major religions
Review: Almost half the book, a good part of Part 2, is devoted to explaining the gist of 5 major religions: Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism. For anyone interested in getting a good grasp of what any or all of these religions is about, I'd recommend this book for this benefit alone. Much of the chapter on Buddhism was superb: the difficult teaching of "no self" is explained as well as I've seen it presented anywhere. Similarly the heart of Islam seems well explained (in just a 27 page chapter): for anyone who doesn't appreciate the power of Islam, I'd strongly recommend this chapter. The other 3 religions are also presented with care and apparent respect.

I had, however, a number of problems with the book:

1. The presentation seems Pollyanna-ish, despite Rue's concerns at the end of book of the future of religion. For example, the chapter on Christianity doesn't mention early Christianity's persecution of Gnostic Christians and destruction of their literature, nor the Inquisition, nor the European wars between Protestants and Catholics, nor recent problems such as those in Northern Ireland. Rue's claim of "social coherence" as a key benefit of religions seems questionable, yet he seems not disposed to questioning it.

Rue claims the goals of "personal wholeness and social coherence" with only a brief warning that religious institutions might abuse their regulatory activity. B.F. Skinner devoted a chapter of "Science and Human Behavior" to the issues of religous control. Do Rue's appeals to human nature establish that a regard for "personal wholeness" is a key factor in religions? If it is a key factor, does he establish that the meaning of "personal wholeness" isn't often inappropriately manipulated by religious authorities, beyond what might be needed for adequate "social coherence"? Is Rue's depiction of religion realistic and has he demonstrated that by any comparison with other plausible depictions? Some people might stay with a religion for other reasons than "personal wholeness". Is "personal wholeness" well-defined enough : Rue says it is "maximizing satisfaction of motives" which seems rather vague and hard to measure. Is it clearly critical to religious participation? Just mostly it and social coherence?

2. Rue appears to have a favortism of theism. He calls his book "Religion Is Not About God" even though one of his major religions, Buddhism, isn't about God to begin with. Sure, some Buddhists treat Buddha as a god and some Buddhist branches acknowledge gods, but that's not the gist of Buddhism. Worse, Rue speaks of the extremes of "nihilsim and theism" when one opposite of theism, atheism, need not be nihilistic at all, and another opposite of theism, Buddhism, is one of the very major religions that Rue praises for providing meaningfulness.

3. In his chapter on Christianity, for example, Rue, focusing on capturing the myth, ignores historical concerns. There is no mention of other religons of the time (excepting Judaism) such as the mystery religons or philosophies such as Stoicism. There seems no consideration at all that a philosophy might provide personal wholeness and social coherence. Rue takes for granted the historicity of Jesus, even though that isn't necessary to establish the myth and even though the historicity of Jesus has long been open to serious question (e.g. "The Jesus Puzzle"). Rue seems to have oversimplified in his effort to demonstrate that a religion, such as Christianity, leads to personal wholeness and social coherence.

4. Rue seems to ignore whether there are non-religious ways to achieve personal wholeness and social coherence. By doing so, he seems in no position to assert that the contribution of religions to these goals exceeds that of other ways.

5. While it is intruiging to consider Consumerism as a religion, as Rue does, it's hard to see how Consumerism can offer "personal wholeness", at least when one considers our American society, which seems to have many lonely, alienated affluent individuals. In fact, Consumerism arguably makes "personal wholeness" harder to attain, perhaps by leaving individuals with too much time on their hands and often too little meaningful contact with others.

6. Here's Rue on human nature: "Human beings are star-born, earth-formed creatures endowed by evolutionary processes to seek reproductive fitness...Humans maximize their chances for reproductive fitness by managing the complexity of these systems in ways that are conducive to the simultaneous achievement of personal wholeness and social coherence." Star-born?

So where does Rue establish that we need a sense of personal wholeness in order to reproduce? When Rue says personal wholeness is "maximizing satisfaction of motives", why must it be "maximizing"? Can't I just get by, and be whole enough and reproductively fit enough? Won't it be stressful to have to maximize my personal wholeness and reproductive fitness? If I have a sex a lot, will that maximize my "satisfaction of motives" and, by itself, make me feel personally whole? Will satisfying my partner qualify as "maximizing conformity to shared standards of behavior".

7. Rue states that "Pinker is delivering the final, if not posthumous, deathblow to behaviorism". Perhaps Rue is unaware of a March 2004 article by Roddy Roediger, president of the American Psychological Society and himself a cognitive psychologist, in the APS's Observer entitled "What Happened to Behaviorism", in which Roediger emphasizes the debt the psychology owes to Skinner and Radical Behaviorism and the ongoing benefits of (Radical) Behaviorism. Perhaps Rue doesn't read "The Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis" or 'The Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior" or recognize the compassionate, helpful work of Applied Behavior Analysts. Rue associates with Behaviorism (during its hegemony) a "dogmatic prohibition against all theories of the mind." He characterizes Behaviorism's position as "science should not traffic in concepts about unobservable events...". But Skinner and Radical Behaviorists acknowledge private events as natural events and hence addressable by the science of Behavior Analysis because science is concerned with natural events whether they are observable or not. What Skinner and Radical Behaviorists object to is the practice of populating mind with fictitious entities (mentalisms) inferred from our behavior.

8. Rue not only believes Pinker delivered a deathblow to Behaviorism, he also state the Pinker's "How the Mind Works" makes "a good stab at the subject". Rue should read William Baum's "Understanding Behaviorism", which should give him a strong appreciation of why no one should wish that Behaviorism be dead, but also teach him about the dubiousness of the kind of mentalisms that Pinker's book is drenched in. Rue's analyses of religion doesn't seem to depend on Pinker anyway.

9. Rue states that that there be sufficient realism in a religion's root metaphor for it to be accepted. For Christianity, he then notes that the return of Christ to earth at the appointed time for the final judgment would have to have such realism in order for the myth to be effective.
But for Islam, it isn't the root metaphor but the nature of who claimed it that he questions the realism of. He writes: "If you are a realist about Muhammed's epilepsy, then you are not likely to be a realist about his claims to be a messenger from God". Is it realism or ignorant discrimination that would reject Muhammed's claims on that basis? One of the most powerful depictions of God in human history and someone would discount it because it's believed to have been produced by someone suffering from epilepsy? To me it seems all the more marvelous if in fact someone could endure such an affliction and still produce a great work. William James even argued against dismissing the visions of epileptics. Rue seems to define what he means by realism very loosely and then use expand on it abitrarily.

10. There seems to be little or no reference to experimental support for Rue's claims: social psychology rather than cognitive science may be more apt for grounding his speculations experimentally.

"Religion Is Not About God" was a mixed blessing. The religous studies was helpful, much of the psychology of religion was unhelpful and the cognitive science seemed a liability. If you want to learn about the religions he covers, consider reading the less speculative parts of Part 2, which were well worth the value of book for me.