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Not In Harry's Name: How Religion Makes Us Moral
Sunday, April 8th, 2012 12:38 amA while ago I was struck by a picture of a chocolate bar bearing the motto "Not in Harry's name." (OK, I don't mean a picture of a chocolate bar actually hit me; I mean it was a striking picture.) This was the slogan of a campaign to get Warner Brothers to only use Fair Trade chocolate in their Harry Potter merchandising. It is organised by the Harry Potter Alliance, "an army of fans, activists, nerdfighters, teenagers, wizards and muggles dedicated to fighting for social justice with the greatest weapon we have—love." I wasn't sure whether to go "Awww, that's so sweet" or "Bah! Humbug!" but I signed up anyway. What interested me, though, is that it gives us an insight into how religion encourages moral behaviour. If you're not a whack-job fundamentalist who thinks Harry Potter is a DEVIL-WORSHIPPER, you probably don't think that the Harry Potter books promote any kind of a religion, and you would be right. But the books, while not being Holy Scripture, operate in a similar way to religion. In fact, it's tempting to say that they keep the good parts of religion while getting rid of the bad bits, like terrorism and child abuse, but that might be taking the argument too far.
Let us think of religion as a combination of three essential elements. The first is a moral vision. Every religion has some idea of what human beings are ideally like, including their relationship to each other and to the non-human world (Nature plus any gods, spirits etc. you may happen to believe in). Secondly, it has a set of practices which are thought to be helpful in realising that vision: prayer, ritual, meditation, fasting, church jumble sales etc. Finally, it has what we could call "supportive fantasy". Religious believers may object to this term, since it seems to put what they hold to be absolute truths on a level with Harry Potter, but this is not exactly my intention. The term was coined by Pete Carroll when talking about magic: a magical belief or supportive fantasy is something that, regardless of whether you think it is literally true, is there to help produce a result. Religious beliefs strike me as similar. Take the role of Buddhism and Taoism in China, for example. Buddhists hold that life is full of suffering, and you'll have to repeat it in countless incarnations unless you curb your desires, live a blameless life and meditate a lot. Taoists believe that life is just dandy, so to live as long as possible you should curb your desires, live a blameless life and meditate a lot. Hmm.
Leaving aside the question of whether any particular religious belief is true in the sense that Boyle's Law is true, it seems clear that when religion works well, it is like the Harry Potter Alliance on steroids, or whatever illegal performance enhancers kids at Hogwarts take. The HPA uses a popular fantasy as a way of creating a sense of community, providing fictional role models and generally motivating people to do good. Just imagine how much more powerful that would be if people not only enjoyed the fantasy but believed Harry Potter was a real person. OK, they would be stark raving bonkers, but they would be a potent force for good (so long as they could conceal the fact that they were stark raving bonkers).
Is religion, then, a kind of controlled insanity which - when it is not doing indescribable evil - can be harnessed as a force for good? Not quite, and not just because a belief in gods or spirits is not as obviously nutty as a belief in, say, horcruxes. I would say it was rather more like a placebo. You take the big red pill that you believe is a powerful medicine, so you get better. The pill is not a real medicine because you only get well because of the placebo effect. But if the placebo effect means you get better because you took the big red pill, then the pill really is medicine. And the fact that it is big and red is important; studies show that big red pills work better than small blue pills. It may sound like I'm just playing with words here, but I think there's an analogy with religion. (And more than an analogy with magic; for all practical purposes, the placebo effect is magic.) If my faith in some god lets me work miracles, then is it justified? As a statement of fact, no; as a statement of faith, maybe. The pill-as-object and the pill-as-healing-agent are different, and we believe in them in different ways, or as Wittgenstein might put it, in different language games.
This leads us to the problem with liberal theology. While it is better than illiberal theology (largely because it doesn't kill people) it is weaker. It is damnably hard to be cured by a placebo that you actually think is a placebo; in fact, I'd hazard a guess that if you were told a really potent drug was a placebo it would have less of an effect. This doesn't seem to apply so much to fantasy/religion because, as we have seen, people can still be motivated by the Harry Potter books even though they don't believe in their literal truth, but liberal religion still packs much less of a punch than literalism. It's the difference between saying "Well Harry Potter represents some noble qualities of the human soul, such as courage, compassion and a sense of justice, so it's ironic that people are using him to sell chocolate produced in an exploitative way" and "Harry Potter is real and HE'S REALLY ANGRY with Warner Brothers!" The first one is just so C. of E. The best we can hope for, I suppose, is something like this headline from the HPA website:
Note: If any of my dear readers are worrying that I'm about to get all churched up, worry no more. This is a two-part article, and the second part will be entitled "How Religion Makes Us Sub-moral."
Let us think of religion as a combination of three essential elements. The first is a moral vision. Every religion has some idea of what human beings are ideally like, including their relationship to each other and to the non-human world (Nature plus any gods, spirits etc. you may happen to believe in). Secondly, it has a set of practices which are thought to be helpful in realising that vision: prayer, ritual, meditation, fasting, church jumble sales etc. Finally, it has what we could call "supportive fantasy". Religious believers may object to this term, since it seems to put what they hold to be absolute truths on a level with Harry Potter, but this is not exactly my intention. The term was coined by Pete Carroll when talking about magic: a magical belief or supportive fantasy is something that, regardless of whether you think it is literally true, is there to help produce a result. Religious beliefs strike me as similar. Take the role of Buddhism and Taoism in China, for example. Buddhists hold that life is full of suffering, and you'll have to repeat it in countless incarnations unless you curb your desires, live a blameless life and meditate a lot. Taoists believe that life is just dandy, so to live as long as possible you should curb your desires, live a blameless life and meditate a lot. Hmm.
Leaving aside the question of whether any particular religious belief is true in the sense that Boyle's Law is true, it seems clear that when religion works well, it is like the Harry Potter Alliance on steroids, or whatever illegal performance enhancers kids at Hogwarts take. The HPA uses a popular fantasy as a way of creating a sense of community, providing fictional role models and generally motivating people to do good. Just imagine how much more powerful that would be if people not only enjoyed the fantasy but believed Harry Potter was a real person. OK, they would be stark raving bonkers, but they would be a potent force for good (so long as they could conceal the fact that they were stark raving bonkers).
Is religion, then, a kind of controlled insanity which - when it is not doing indescribable evil - can be harnessed as a force for good? Not quite, and not just because a belief in gods or spirits is not as obviously nutty as a belief in, say, horcruxes. I would say it was rather more like a placebo. You take the big red pill that you believe is a powerful medicine, so you get better. The pill is not a real medicine because you only get well because of the placebo effect. But if the placebo effect means you get better because you took the big red pill, then the pill really is medicine. And the fact that it is big and red is important; studies show that big red pills work better than small blue pills. It may sound like I'm just playing with words here, but I think there's an analogy with religion. (And more than an analogy with magic; for all practical purposes, the placebo effect is magic.) If my faith in some god lets me work miracles, then is it justified? As a statement of fact, no; as a statement of faith, maybe. The pill-as-object and the pill-as-healing-agent are different, and we believe in them in different ways, or as Wittgenstein might put it, in different language games.
This leads us to the problem with liberal theology. While it is better than illiberal theology (largely because it doesn't kill people) it is weaker. It is damnably hard to be cured by a placebo that you actually think is a placebo; in fact, I'd hazard a guess that if you were told a really potent drug was a placebo it would have less of an effect. This doesn't seem to apply so much to fantasy/religion because, as we have seen, people can still be motivated by the Harry Potter books even though they don't believe in their literal truth, but liberal religion still packs much less of a punch than literalism. It's the difference between saying "Well Harry Potter represents some noble qualities of the human soul, such as courage, compassion and a sense of justice, so it's ironic that people are using him to sell chocolate produced in an exploitative way" and "Harry Potter is real and HE'S REALLY ANGRY with Warner Brothers!" The first one is just so C. of E. The best we can hope for, I suppose, is something like this headline from the HPA website:
DID YOU EVER WISH THAT HARRY POTTER WAS REAL? WELL IT KIND OF IS.
Note: If any of my dear readers are worrying that I'm about to get all churched up, worry no more. This is a two-part article, and the second part will be entitled "How Religion Makes Us Sub-moral."
