God's Theater

If, like me, you have The End of Faith, The God Delusion and Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon side by side on your bookshelf, you may have eagerly read the cover story in this weekend's New York Times Magazine Magazine: "Darwin's God." Robin Marantz Henig's 8,000-word piece is a crackling good account of current theories among evolutionary scientists about the possible adaptive or anthropological origins of God. Or, to be more honest, the religious impulse in humans, the innate tendency toward belief in the supernatural. Teaser excerpts:

Lost in the hullabaloo over the neo-atheists is a quieter and potentially more illuminating debate. It is taking place not between science and religion but within science itself, specifically among the scientists studying the evolution of religion. These scholars tend to agree on one point: that religious belief is an outgrowth of brain architecture that evolved during early human history. What they disagree about is why a tendency to believe evolved, whether it was because belief itself was adaptive or because it was just an evolutionary byproduct, a mere consequence of some other adaptation in the evolution of the human brain.

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and surprising this debate has become.

As Histriomastix readers know, I'm an Angry Atheist. So this seems like a good time to post notes I feverishly jotted down a few months ago when I thought about how tough theater has it, when megachurches are spreading across the country like plaguesores. I hope to expand on them in the future.

Notes on religion, theater and primal needs

Cultural anthropologists and Darwinian scientists have studied the primitive human need for religion. It appears that—no matter where on earth—early humans felt the need to make sense of the inchoate menace that nature can sometimes represent. Thus early humans set up an idol and worshiped it, and through the idol interpreted the mysteries of nature—both exterior and interior. This primeval urge to worship these carved idols and to build systems of belief comes for a basic need to shape the material of the world into legible, man-made shapes: from chaos, icon; from icon, ritual; from ritual law, culture, civilization and all the rest.

Art too is the product of that desire. Are the cave paintings at Lascaux holy relics? To the anthropologist and aesthete, yes. To the evangelical Christian, not so much.

Religion, like art, thrives and survives to this day due to the same basic urge. But why do SO MANY MORE humans worship gods and hold fast to religious tenets than attend museums, theater and dance concerts?

I’m asking seriously. Why do more people get down on their knees for an invisible, punitive, repetitive concept than get up on their feet for an opera or a great play? There are lots of class assumptions underlying my question, I know. I may as well ask, Why do all those poor shoeless bastards in The Third World worship Islam so fervently when they could be enjoying a fine novel or play? Or, more locally, why do those poverty-line hicks in Iowa send their rent money to Jerry Falwell and home-school their spawn when they could be raising sensitive cultured children? They don’t have money. They don’t have access. They don’t have 21st-century urbanized culture handed to them on a plate. Or, circularly, their religion forbids it.

Still, my question remains: Why is religion so POPULAR and art so UN-POPULAR? Is it because religion engages the spectator’s (believer’s) imagination more? Since God doesn’t actually exist, the pious have to make it all up? There’s no actual artwork or aesthetics to grapple with, just one’s own psychological self-medication through a series of ritual actions or mantric phrases. Of course, there’s art in religion. Icons, architecture, paintings, pretty words. Without the work of cunning artists and artisans through the centuries, you could perhaps argue that religion would not have had quite the hold it has on people’s imaginations, and that science and art would replace religion as opiates.

But I think there are others reasons religion has an advantage, demographically speaking, over secular art: 1)Clerics and other religious authorities have historically co-opted artistic labor to keep the faithful in thrall through aesthetic suasion. 2) Religious ritual and theology are inherently conflict-based; they titillate believers with the incentive of God-licensed cruelty and violence.

The last point I’d like to expand on a bit. In the artistic experience, whether it happens to a person alone with a book or painting or piece of music, or communally in a large theater with everyone hushed (or laughing), the goal of the work of art is to unite things. Whether it’s the single spectator with the work of art or a whole body of spectators in a shared aesthetic experience, often the aim of the artist is to break down divisions, to unite. (I know that certain artistic experiences are intended to divide the audience against itself, to make them feel less part of some fuzzy notion of shared humanity, but that’s a different post.) Religion putatively unites people, the believers, to each other and to their deity, but it also, crucially, sets people against each other. A believer is nothing without constant, unremitting hatred of the infidel.

Religion incorporates a kind of third-rate drama in its mythological narratives, its rituals and, depending on the sect, aesthetic cookies (paintings, sculpture, architecture, goblets, rhythmic drumming and dances, hymns, clerical garments, glossolalia). These lures seduce and impress the art-ignorant faithful, giving the believer a broader drama, a struggle against the Enemy. Art is all imagination and make-pretend, but religion is deadly serious, literalistic. We’re talking about the fate of your soul and your responsibility to defend the faith against marauding unbelievers.

Basically, religion is the ultimate in AUDIENCE-PARTICIPATION PERFORMANCE ART. And there’s the added kick of blood-sport, or promise of violence. Either the death of Enemies at your hand, or in the Rapture or on Judgment Day. So take primitive human, with twin struggling urges: to create and to kill. Diminish the urge to kill and you have the artist. Diminish the urge to create and you have the priest.

Comments

[Secret Rapture]

My inaugural address at the Great White Throne Judgment of the Dead, after I have raptured out billions! The Secret Rapture soon, by my hand!
My Site = http://www.angelfire.com/crazy/spaceman
Your jaw will drop!

[nick]

You said: "A believer is nothing without constant, unremitting hatred of the infidel."

Which of the world religions has that as one of its tenets?

Years ago I found a Fellini quote that spoke directly to my own experience. “I once believed in prayer and miracles. Now I believe in writing and art.”

[Aaron Riccio]

Why do more people fall all over themselves for religion than for art? I'm an atheist myself, but the answer's fairly simple: the only way you lose is if there turns out to be a God and you DON'T believe in him/her/it. If there is no afterlife, then there's nobody to laugh at you for being so zealous in life.

Unfortunately, it's a lot harder for the Theater to demonstrate that people are losing out by missing great shows. Especially when there are so many different shows (as opposed to the few [twenty is still a few] religions) to choose from. Furthermore, the specificity of religion gives people something in common. The vague multitudes of theater -- for all your talk of uniting things -- make theater a far more personal and isolated experience. Part of the reason film does so well is that it's a touchstone for strangers to talk about; what are the odds that the girl I meet tomorrow will know about the obscure off-off-Broadway play I fell in love with two years ago?

The article speaks about religion being an adaptation of the human body to something out there; theater, unfortunately, is all too easily lived without. The same goes for art in general, which, according to The Street is something that just isn't "real."

Wallace Shawn, in "The Fever," talks about how a play never changed anything, and accuses the audience of being this closed circle of the well-off. Isn't it, to some degree, true? I say this with love in my heart, but it's no surprise that art is so unpopular.

Besides, the last great president to openly appreciate theater got shot IN the theatre; something to think about, no?

[David Cote]

Nick: I will admit the believers-must-hate line was a tad melodramatic, but as far as I can tell, the more fundamentalist mutations of Christianity and Islam have, er, problematic attitudes towards the unbeliever. There is, I believe, subspeciation going on there in the pious attitude toward the infidel that permits murder.

And Aaron: I don't think it's quite that simple, as you shruggingly put it. Do you really think the faithful weigh their options and say, "Well, I'd rather be safe and look foolish than be damned in Hell." I doubt it's quite that rational and calculating. Religion speaks to some deep part of the subconscious that longs for narrative, symbol, beauty and meaning. I just worry that religious people let their imaginations carry them away. It's easier to attend the bad art that is religion than grapple with the good art that's out there. Thus, in a way, the success of Phantom and Les Mis. Perhaps they're more religious than theatrical...At the end of the day, "it's only a play." But too few say, "it's only a projection of my primeval hopes and fears." I suppose if I were to be really crude about it, I'd wear a t-shirt that reads "Religion: Bad Theater for Stupid People."

[Malachy Walsh]

I picked up END OF FAITH a few weeks ago and the way I read it, the popularity of religion comes down to something simple: It's inherited - by almost everyone at once - in the same sense that we inherit the alphabet.

Most "art" isn't brought into our lives the same way, so early on, when it might make a difference.

And the few windows we have to exposure to art are being shut on us. As you know, school funding for arts programs has been seriously cut - eventhough I understand there are solid numbers that connect participation in the arts with better academic performance.

Arts Administrators have also told me that the "culture of giving" - once part of the elite lifestyle - has shifted away from giving ANYTHING away.

More detrimental, it seems to me, while the primitive impulses and needs that create religion may also create art, in this culture, the understanding we inherit about art is that it's a "value proposition".

And when you can't convince people that arts participation in schools is a good value because it somehow helps with academic performance, well, you're in trouble across the board.

[nick]

Malachy said: “the primitive impulses and needs that create religion may also create art.”

The Kid Id of anarchy duo up at your blog are representative of this need/impulse.

http://litdept.blogspot.com/2007/03/anachey-in-uk.html

And theatre as punk disrupter is in opposition to geezer theatre as much as it is to the rest of culture.

[Joshua James]

David,

I really loved this post . . . I've been following your angry atheist rantings and love every minute of it . . . tho' I am a buddhist, I'd say we have more in common than I do with people of other faith (note Sam Harris's footnotes on Buddhism in The End of Faith) and I agree with you on most things . . . in Buddhism, hard questions are encouraged, unlike most other religions . . . and I thank you for writing this . . .

And I've been saying for quite sometime that church is basically performance art, only not as well as you . . .

I hope someday to have coffee with you and pick your brain on the subject even more . . .

[Ken]

As another atheist, I applaud any attempt to get at the nagging question that plagues me so, and shall forever: why do so many people build their lives around these fairy tales, these ancient superstitions (without acknowledging them as such)? Why do they sometimes cut themselves off from the all the tangible benefits this world can offer, just to more earnestly tow the line of some invisible being, whose existence can never be verified by anything even approaching an objective measure? As David put it so well, don't they know they could be enjoying a good play? True, my love of the arts may just be a substitution for religion, a way for me to achieve the same kind of rapture that others do by immersing themselves in scripture; but, I still think I'm giving my life over to something ultimately more worthwhile. Even the thought of one day finding out I was wrong, and then being subject to all the pains and tortures of the netherworld for all eternity, doesn't make me any more receptive to that communal delusion.

[James]

"Diminish the urge to create and you have the priest."

Yes, indeed, and this is but one of the myriad 'topics,' along with the death of God, which Nietzsche deals with in his Zarathustra, which everyone here should see - yes, I mean SEE.

There is currently a production based on Zarathustra at the Kraine Theater called Requiem Aeternam Deo. With the advent of religious madness from all quarters of the world (our Christian leaders are just as fanatical as many of the Muslims if not more so), it's vital and pressing that such a work is being staged. I was quite startled to know it was happening. While there were a few off moments in the show I saw last night (it was the opening, it's always the case), it was quite powerful. If only the theater communities were as vigorous in promoting themselves and bringing others to the theater as churchfolk do, it could have more of an impact, but who has time to proselytize? And if only believers would be willing to question themselves and interrogate what is problematic about their beliefs; this show surely raises questions which believers need to confront.