Michael Chrichton to the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco:
I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people --- the best people, the most enlightened people --- do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.
Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.
There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.
Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. ... the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.
And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief.
I could make a similar point about secular humanism and evolutionism. Well, I suppose I have in the past.
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I'm trying to remember a quote I heard about man being inherently religious. I thought it was by Francis Schaeffer (it's possible I was thinking of something by C.S. Lewis as well), but I found this from Edmund Burke: "Man is by his constitution a religious animal...atheism is against, not only our reason, but our instincts". I'm not sure whether I think this contradicts Burke, or supports him, but I'd say that man is so religious that he makes even atheism into a religion.
Friday, December 19, 2003
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I'm not sure how arguing that religion is inherent to humans is useful. Lots of things are inherent to humans - violence, meat-eating, etc. That doesn't mean we can't be pacifist or vegitarian, and it doesn't mean that pacifists and vegitarians are wrong to make those choices.