UU

Unitarian Universalism and Pascal Boyer

By ck ⋅ May 14, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

Modern Unitarian Universalists spend a lot of energy reflecting upon where the movement is going (theists, pagans, Buddhists and nontheists all “worshipping” together), and how it can grow (the UUA has about 160,000 members).  As I’ve been reading Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained, I think I understand the reason Unitarian Universalism hasn’t caught on like wildfire.  It doesn’t have to do with our doctrines, or lack thereof.  It isn’t because we’re religiously liberal, or because of our poor marketing.

No, I think that Unitarian Universalism is trying to do the impossible, or at least what is very difficult for human beings.  We’re peeling back the curtain on a magic show, explaining the tricks, and then going on with the show, asking everyone to applaud when the rabbit is pulled from the hat.  Before you comment, or stop reading in anger, let me say that I appreciate the UUA, enjoy my fellowship with others there, and think that much of what we’re doing is necessary.  But…by its very nature, I think it will only ever appeal to a small minority of human beings.  And we (by that, I mean I as a part of the movement, and anyone else who might agree with me), we need to decide if that’s okay.

In what follows, I’m going to carefully lay out what I understand Boyer’s compelling thesis to be, and how it impacts Unitarian Universalism.  The major problem is twofold: first, our diffuse network of theologies makes it difficult for people to generate quick and rich inferences; secondly, our use of ritual is self-defeating.  The solution?  That’s for us to talk about in the comments…

Inferences and the human mind

Boyer’s main argument* is that supernatural agents are a natural effect of the way that the human mind functions.  We have a theory of mind “module”, or a way of interpreting the world around us that sees other humans as having goals, desires and mental states like we ourselves.  We tend to interpret certain patterns of movement as agency–when shown geometric shapes moving on a flat screen at a certain rate, human subjects will say they’re “chasing” each other.  It’s a consequence of the way we perceive the world, and we have an overactive agency detector and theory of mind module. 

Evolutionarily, this is a good thing–it’s better to think a stick is a snake (and then correct that perception) than to think a snake is a stick.  This predisposes us to view agents and minds as causes in the world around us.  But even more, we are drawn to agents that have access to important bits of social information.  Humans are social beings, and we can keep track of networks of individuals, their relationships, etc. with little difficulty.  Gods are emotionally attractive to us because we envision them as having access to these things.  The God of Aquinas and Augustine may know everything, everywhere, including quantum physics and what is in your trash can… but we naturally imagine gods as knowing social information. 

Boyer argues that because gods are connected with these mental modules that function rapidly, and are hyperactive, we can make quick inferences from them.  We don’t normally consult a systematic theology or creed when figuring out what our god does, or knows, but we use these models that our brains have been hardwired with.

Systematic theology is, then, an aberration, not a natural activity.  (Science is also a non-natural way of perceiving the world, but that’s for another post.)

Herein lies the problem for UUs.  First, our conception of god (if we have one, and that varies from individual to individual) is abstract, relying upon things we’ve read, ideas we’ve processed, and is an amalgamation of concepts.   Ask a UU what god is, what god does, and you’re likely to get some of what I’ve discussed above…but the dominant thread will probably be more philosophical.  God is love, is the process of evolution and growth, god is community and justice, etc. etc.  We don’t make quick inferences from these concepts, so they do not catch on with others quickly.  Instead of already having a shared mental module in place, anyone we talk with will need to be brought into some of the explicit concepts we’ve developed.

This makes any form of prosyletizing difficult.  (Buddhist UUs are in a similar position, since they take up the more philosophical concepts of Buddhism, and not the lay practices which do involve deities and supernatural agents).

Rituals and cause-effect explanations

At this point, if you haven’t given up reading, you may be saying, “Yes, but the rituals and community are what is important, really.  We can have religion without god!”  Boyer actually talks about this very point.  He makes the claim that rituals are a mechanism for explaining cause and effect which is too difficult for us to understand.  Think about a wedding.  We have an intuition that “before” and “after”, these individuals have had some kind of change.  For some people, it is a god acting through a ritual, that imparts this transformation. The non-religious may say: “people’s sense of being a community requires continued performance of the rites even if the metaphysics loses its persuasive power” (261).  Boyer suggests that this is close to the religious understanding of ritual.

Going back to the wedding, we have a situation in which we have evolutionary reasons for solidifying whether the couple involved is in or out of the pool of potential mates.  The transition from two people to one social unit can seem “magical”, as can (to cite other examples) the transition from adolescence to adulthood, and the arrival of a child.  Rituals provide an explanation for these transitions, in places where humans simply don’t have the conceptual tools to explain them otherwise.

There are also rituals which occur on a regular basis, to encourage gods to keep crops growing, or to mark the boundaries of a community and keep the group together.  Again, human communities are not formed by these rituals (Boyer argues that coalitions are brought together by pragmatic purposes, and we use essentialist descriptions because they explain why Town A is inherently different than Town B).  The rituals make an otherwise magical or mysterious process less so.  Boyer doesn’t think humans ignore the other elements involved–farmers don’t stop tending to their crops even if they’re praying to the god.  But, going back to the understanding of gods as social agents, there is an intuition that an exchange is going on, and that they’re playing a role in a barter.  It’s a normative activity.

So when Unitarian Universalists get together on Sundays, the god being involved in the ritual is not one for which we may have a rich set of social inferences (although my guess is that for the theists, I’d bet their default view of god is more similar to fundamentalist Christians then they’d realize…and the latter’s is less “fundamentalist” than they’d think).  On top of that, the ritual is baldly explained as being less-than-metaphysical.  The ritual is for the sake of the community, for the sake of individual [?] (insert your own UU experience here).

There’s no bartering, and there’s very little sense of creating a bounded community, like through a Eucharist or recited creed.  The illusions of metaphysical causes have been peeled back.  We’re left with (even the theists, I’d argue) ritual for ritual’s sake–but what is it actually doing?  Despite the best efforts of bloggers like Dan Harper, who’s written about Post-Christian worship, I have yet to understand the aims of the worship service.

Conclusion

This, for now, is my working hypothesis.  I am pretty convinced by Boyer and others arguing this line of thought.  The neurotheology of peak mystical experiences needs to be, I think, explored as well, but as it is not the norm for most humans, I don’t think it’s a good starting point.

I said I thought what Unitarian Universalists are doing is important, and that it just won’t catch on.  It won’t catch on because it does require a level of abstraction and literacy that most people simply do not have, or desire.  Christianity can spread to non-literate peoples, even though Christians will teach them to read the Bible in their language.  Islam teaches non-literate people Arabic, but the Five Pillars don’t require abstraction.

Imagine bringing Unitarian Universalism to an island people with no language.  What would it look like?  Nothing, except a deconstruction of their existing rituals.  It is a parasitic movement–and I do not mean that in a pejorative way. 

So, given that most people in the world will not become UUs, what should the aim of UUism be?  From where I stand (and yes, I am a non-theist, so I recognize that the theist UUs probably have steam coming out of their ears by now), I think that we should embrace our position as critics, as counterpoints, and as deconstructors.  For me, I envision the message of Unitarian Universalism as being one of dissolution.  In the words of John Lennon, “imagine no religion, too.”  And if that would mean Unitarian Universalism is eventually unnecessary, because it is redundant, so be it.**

* This is a highly abbreviated version, which simply reiterates his conclusions without the arguments for them.  I plan to develop the arguments in later posts, but for now am taking it at face value.

** Incidentally, this is an idea found in Buddhism.  Once you’ve achieved nirvana, you can kick away the ladder (Buddhist teachings).  There’s a different connotation, but I think it’s compatible.  Whether kicking away the ladder is compatible with theist and pagan UU theologies…that’s the question I’m trying to raise.