Information on working terriers, dogs, natural history, hunting, and the environment, with occasional political commentary as I see fit. This web log is associated with the Terrierman.com web site.
Monday, February 01, 2010
Animals don't have religion. Wonder why?
Hal Holbrook as Mark Twain. I saw this at Arena Stage about 30 years ago. .
I saw this Hal Holbrook special several years ago.
I will give you the real reason why animals don't have religion: They don't know they are going to die.
At some point in our evolution, we became aware of this fact, and it has continued to trouble us. What is the point all of this crap if we're just going to die in the end? That's the fundamental question of human existence.
To answer it, we have made up things to assuage that anxiety. From that anxiety comes our religions.
Animals don't have that anxiety. Although they are probably aware that some things can kill them, they probably aren't aware that they die in the end.
Richard Adams not withstanding, I animals would never come up with these mythologies.
I cannot speak for retrievers, but I assure you that terriers know they are going to die, and I think most prey and predator animals in field and forest do too. Both sides run like hell for a reason!
Few domesticated animals on earth are more intimate with death than working terriers are. They kill and (sometimes) they are killed. Working terriers are stone warriors -- like Patton they think success in the field is having the other son-of-bitch die for their country.
Do dogs (any dog?) want to get hurt? No, of course not. But they do not fear the other side because they know the truth: there is no heaven or hell. There is only the game well played on this earth.
I'm not saying that animals, including dogs, don't know they can be hurt or killed.
I'm saying that they don't know that they will die in the end.
That's a fundamentally human trait.
You and I know that no matter how many precautions we take-- diet, exercise, wearing our seat belt-- we are going to die in the end.
A dog knows that some things can kill him. He doesn't know that no matter how many times he dodges death, he is going to die in the end.
You must understand that having this knowledge is a major problem for our species. And I think that's why we created religion. We have to answer that question somehow or we can't function. Of course, I see atheism very differently from most people. If a person can live in this world as an atheist, I consider that person to be a far tougher person than I am.
We will probably never know, but Charles Darwin speculated in paper that came out after his death. A bit of interest >> http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A05E4DE113BE033A25755C2A9649D94629FD7CF
In his book, The Wolf in the Parlor," Jon Franklin speculates/muses about what he calls the "work around" theory of religion, which is , basically, "god" as a concept evolved along with our bigger brains in response to the otherwise debilitating realization that we all die. Animals' brains haven't/didn't evolve the same way - so they don't need that particular work around.
Understood that way, perhaps atheists aren't necessarily "tougher" than believers - maybe they're just less evolved, which I, and most other atheists, happen to think is a bunch of hooey. We just have other work arounds (art, science, music, sport, literature, poetry, love, drugs, sex, rock and roll, etc.).
Actually, I do not think religion has much to do with an afterlife.
Religion is mostly a form of story or parable. It is how we teach morals or manners or rules of society. It's a series of little instruction sheets that say "do this to be happy and prosper" and "don't do that unless you want to be miserable and poor."
There are, of course, parts of it that are about fundraising and other parts about claims to authority for the instructions being given (The 10 Commandments delivered from God, Jesus as Son of God, etc.) but the heaven stuff is pretty vague and is really there for the folks who had such miserable and unfair lives (slaves, serfs, cripples, etc.) that they needed a promise that if they lived by the rules being proclaimed that they would get a reward LATER (i.e. the excuse for why the rules may not work to their benefit right now).
Wild dogs have their own instruction pieces, but their codes are writen in urine on dirt and vine, on lonely howls from a peak, and on the flash of canines ripping down the muzzle of a rival. Some "stories" say "I am here and powerful, stay away for your own health," while others say "I am horny, please come visit me" while others are less clear to us who do not (yet) have the Rosetta Stone to their language. But do dogs communicate and tell stories? Oh yes, absolutely.
I have yet to find a religion that doesn't have some form of afterlife discussion. Oddly, the actual religious texts in the Bible are clear at all about the afterlife. That particular text is about rules and regulations, but also talks about founding a utopia-- a kingdom that has yet to come, which Jesus calls the kingdom of Heaven.
I have studied some comparative religion and the main afterlife suggested is almost always some form of reincarnation (especially the ones we think of as "primitive.")
Because Utopia has never existed on this planet, humans have always suffered. To know that one must go through such suffering and then die in the end is a very bad place to be for a species.
Religion always becomes a governing tool. In traditional societies (including Medieval Christian society), there were traditions that were used to promote civic virtues. A commons in Medieval Europe (and this is where Hardin made his error) was governed by a bunch of traditional rules. The existence of those commons was enforced by the church. That's one of the reasons why the early Enclosure under Henry VII is followed by the split with the church under Henry VIII. Although Weber did get some of it with his Protestant Ethic, the development of Protestant Christianity (especially Calvinism) is very important to the transition away from the traditional society of Medieval Europe to the Modern European society, which we generally believe came into being in 1648 after the Peace of Westphalia created the modern nation-state.
However, I've always disagreed with Marx and those various "progessive" theorists who have suggested that religion is nothing more than a governing too. It may be a very useful one, but the reason why it is so useful is because it reaches to the deepest questions of our existence.
As for my own beliefs, I go to church, but I don't "believe." I'm more like the spider in Walt Whitman's poem, who has "launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself; Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them."
I saw this Hal Holbrook special several years ago.
ReplyDeleteI will give you the real reason why animals don't have religion: They don't know they are going to die.
At some point in our evolution, we became aware of this fact, and it has continued to trouble us. What is the point all of this crap if we're just going to die in the end? That's the fundamental question of human existence.
To answer it, we have made up things to assuage that anxiety. From that anxiety comes our religions.
Animals don't have that anxiety. Although they are probably aware that some things can kill them, they probably aren't aware that they die in the end.
Richard Adams not withstanding, I animals would never come up with these mythologies.
I cannot speak for retrievers, but I assure you that terriers know they are going to die, and I think most prey and predator animals in field and forest do too. Both sides run like hell for a reason!
ReplyDeleteFew domesticated animals on earth are more intimate with death than working terriers are. They kill and (sometimes) they are killed. Working terriers are stone warriors -- like Patton they think success in the field is having the other son-of-bitch die for their country.
Do dogs (any dog?) want to get hurt? No, of course not. But they do not fear the other side because they know the truth: there is no heaven or hell. There is only the game well played on this earth.
P.
I'm not saying that animals, including dogs, don't know they can be hurt or killed.
ReplyDeleteI'm saying that they don't know that they will die in the end.
That's a fundamentally human trait.
You and I know that no matter how many precautions we take-- diet, exercise, wearing our seat belt-- we are going to die in the end.
A dog knows that some things can kill him. He doesn't know that no matter how many times he dodges death, he is going to die in the end.
You must understand that having this knowledge is a major problem for our species. And I think that's why we created religion. We have to answer that question somehow or we can't function. Of course, I see atheism very differently from most people. If a person can live in this world as an atheist, I consider that person to be a far tougher person than I am.
We will probably never know, but Charles Darwin speculated in paper that came out after his death. A bit of interest >> http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9A05E4DE113BE033A25755C2A9649D94629FD7CF
ReplyDeletePatrick
In his book, The Wolf in the Parlor," Jon Franklin speculates/muses about what he calls the "work around" theory of religion, which is , basically, "god" as a concept evolved along with our bigger brains in response to the otherwise debilitating realization that we all die. Animals' brains haven't/didn't evolve the same way - so they don't need that particular work around.
ReplyDeleteUnderstood that way, perhaps atheists aren't necessarily "tougher" than believers - maybe they're just less evolved, which I, and most other atheists, happen to think is a bunch of hooey. We just have other work arounds (art, science, music, sport, literature, poetry, love, drugs, sex, rock and roll, etc.).
Actually, I do not think religion has much to do with an afterlife.
ReplyDeleteReligion is mostly a form of story or parable. It is how we teach morals or manners or rules of society. It's a series of little instruction sheets that say "do this to be happy and prosper" and "don't do that unless you want to be miserable and poor."
There are, of course, parts of it that are about fundraising and other parts about claims to authority for the instructions being given (The 10 Commandments delivered from God, Jesus as Son of God, etc.) but the heaven stuff is pretty vague and is really there for the folks who had such miserable and unfair lives (slaves, serfs, cripples, etc.) that they needed a promise that if they lived by the rules being proclaimed that they would get a reward LATER (i.e. the excuse for why the rules may not work to their benefit right now).
Wild dogs have their own instruction pieces, but their codes are writen in urine on dirt and vine, on lonely howls from a peak, and on the flash of canines ripping down the muzzle of a rival. Some "stories" say "I am here and powerful, stay away for your own health," while others say "I am horny, please come visit me" while others are less clear to us who do not (yet) have the Rosetta Stone to their language. But do dogs communicate and tell stories? Oh yes, absolutely.
Patrick
I have yet to find a religion that doesn't have some form of afterlife discussion. Oddly, the actual religious texts in the Bible are clear at all about the afterlife. That particular text is about rules and regulations, but also talks about founding a utopia-- a kingdom that has yet to come, which Jesus calls the kingdom of Heaven.
ReplyDeleteI have studied some comparative religion and the main afterlife suggested is almost always some form of reincarnation (especially the ones we think of as "primitive.")
Because Utopia has never existed on this planet, humans have always suffered. To know that one must go through such suffering and then die in the end is a very bad place to be for a species.
Religion always becomes a governing tool. In traditional societies (including Medieval Christian society), there were traditions that were used to promote civic virtues. A commons in Medieval Europe (and this is where Hardin made his error) was governed by a bunch of traditional rules. The existence of those commons was enforced by the church. That's one of the reasons why the early Enclosure under Henry VII is followed by the split with the church under Henry VIII. Although Weber did get some of it with his Protestant Ethic, the development of Protestant Christianity (especially Calvinism) is very important to the transition away from the traditional society of Medieval Europe to the Modern European society, which we generally believe came into being in 1648 after the Peace of Westphalia created the modern nation-state.
However, I've always disagreed with Marx and those various "progessive" theorists who have suggested that religion is nothing more than a governing too. It may be a very useful one, but the reason why it is so useful is because it reaches to the deepest questions of our existence.
As for my own beliefs, I go to church, but I don't "believe." I'm more like the spider in Walt Whitman's poem, who has "launch'd forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself;
Ever unreeling them--ever tirelessly speeding them."