He also introduced me to Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first president and a firm believer in the war of science and religion, and to al-Ghazzali, the Sufi philosopher who introduced into Islam the deranged notion that any natural law would be an abrogation of God's freedom. I once read about this idea, and tried to ask a Sufi guest speaker about it when I was at college, but managed to mangle the question, and since then had often wondered if I had even misunderstood the idea. Apparently not, which is a relief, and I am glad to have a name to go with it.
Looking at his other book reviews, it is clear that Prof. Weinberg is highly educated both in the humanities and in science, and he writes beautifully. It is a real pleasure to see that such a man could live today. He is 75, meaning he was educated in the old world that ended between 1963 and 1968, so his erudition cannot reassure me that much about the days to come. Still it is a fine sight and it is wonderful to be alive now while such things are yet possible.
Of course this is a blog, so even though his essay is as tranquil and clear as Crescent Lake, I am going to stick my oar in, catch crabs, and go about in circles with some criticism. He says,
When I was an undergraduate I knew a rabbi, Will Herberg, who worried about my lack of religious faith. He warned me that we must worship God, because otherwise we would start worshiping each other. He was right about the danger, but I would suggest a different cure: we should get out of the habit of worshiping anything.Perhaps that would be best; it is hard to imagine a world without serious houses on serious ground, and sad. But set against the beautiful solemnity is a great deal of evil, as anyone can see in others' religions, so that if there could be no worship at all, we might all come out ahead. What I disagree with is the idea that that could happen. Religion is an enormous grab-bag of human passions, interests, and needs, as Steven Pinker, Prof. Weinberg, and Razib have all said, but if any single thing binds it all together, surely that is worship. Worship can be sweet silliness, like Amy Grant's early records, or a mysterious obligation, like the worship owed at every roadside shrine in Shintoism or ancient Greek religion, or pants-filling craziness, like Aztec sacrifices, but it necessarily embodies a recognition that the worshipper is less than he normally feels like, and that something else is more. Some religions, like Christianity, use a kind of jujitsu to flip the worshipper into the greatness he has just exalted, but the abasement of one and the exaltation of the other come first.
Well, then, what would be lost if humanity lost religion, learned not to worship? Of course there would be no foaming imams and Pat Robertson would have to sell cars, and we could all feel a lot safer from new Nazisms and Marxisms, so that would all be good. The rest would not be so great. So strong and universal an impulse as the desire to worship implies that it has a tremendous evolutionary advantage, and possibly other benefits as well that we may enjoy without any real gain in fitness. I think the chief evolutionary advantage is in enabling a non-hive species to achieve astounding works. One of the minor benefits may well be science itself, or at least scientists may benefit by enjoying what they do much more.
If the end of worship came about because men could no longer exalt any other entity, surely great enterprises would become very rare, perhaps impossible. Humans, even disaffected bookworms, do not treat their leaders, whether a small-time CEO or a generalissimo, as though they were only men. If they did so, respecting only the office but having no greater regard for its tenant, every command would grate, every plan would draw cavils, every competing idea would threaten group unity. It might be possible to start out with the conscious submission of will motivated by desire for the communal goal, but fissiparous reason will soon show a few men, then groups of men, then whole sects, that a "communal goal" is something of a fiction, especially when your leader is a blockheaded old goat who won't see reason. He always is, of course, being human.
Dalrymple would say that the end of abasement is more likely, and already in progress. Of course he lives in England, which from every account is suffering just what would be expected in an unworshipping land, as swollen egos collide in every interaction and no one sees a reason to give an inch of ground. Perhaps that is only among the less charming classes, but that means a large part of the country. Some men might be exalted, but not in a way that lets them unite men in a common cause; it is an ersatz worship. Nasty as the city would be, I think the wild would lose something as well. In part, nature's beauty derives its power from letting its intricacy, scale, age, willlessness relieve your heart of the self-regard that so painfully swells it. Would the unworshipping man feel any awe of the natural world? Life would be bleak without that awe, but science would suffer more. Every scientist, writing of his start in science, names some special aspect of nature which in one way or another overawed him and drew him into his life's course. Even if some of them are only fulfilling genre requirements, they seem sincere and many must be; surely few of them would have come to science without that experience, often renewed.
In the end, there will be worship, though we may exclude ourselves. Perhaps mankind should stop worshipping (if "should" really means anything), or least life might be quieter, but if I and you and Prof. Weinberg all stop, we have still changed nothing about the reality that made man a worshipper and that always will re-make him so. Yet if it is foolish and futile to hope for the end of religions and to encourage others to stop worshipping, it leaves a man like Prof. Weinberg stranded. The sensible unbeliever by nature would either accept that he is an aberration with little to say on this subject to normal humanity or else dedicate himself to ensuring that existing religions tame and civilize the religious impulse. The difficulty with the latter is that for any man to choose to worship because mankind must always worship, possibly accords with logic but is humanly irrational, and rather wicked, even if none of us can quite say why.
