In his latest work, "Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief", sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University sketches the history of religion from its tribal beginnings up to the rise of Islam as the last great monotheism. Highlights include some discrediting thoughts on cultural evolution, a lot of swipes at the so-called "New Atheists" (mainly Dawkins and Dennett), a useful characterisation of supply-side aspects, a revealing chapter on Christianity, and a shocking outing on the final pages. Some parts are as strong as his "Acts of Faith" (2000), others just as embarrassing as John Lennox's "God's Undertaker".
In the Introduction to the book, Stark describes his new paradigm as antithetical to some of the classics of the sociology of religion and to his own past work (in particular, his 1987 essay "Evolution of the Gods"). The "discovery" that he examines doesn't relate to social theories on the causes of religious belief; specifically, he detects methodological shortcomings in Frazer's "The Golden Bough" (1890), sees no value in Durkheim's analysis of Australian aboriginal totemism (1912), and even gets a chance to repudiate more recent analytical work on the foundations of religious belief, such as Roger Boyer's "Religion Explained" (2002). In contrast, his prime interests lie in the spread of religious traditions, the dynamics of religious groups and denominationalism, and comparative religious history. The "evolution of belief" can be understood as either "the evolution of human images of God, or as the evolution of the human capacity to comprehend God" (his italics), with cultural evolution being a process of conscious selection without social forces acting as a "mechanical" transmitor. Stark dismisses the explanatory power of the "meme" analogy as "unobservable entity imagined by [Dawkins] for polemical purposes" without further discussing or referencing literature on memetic theory. Consequently, he asserts that cultural evolution "differs substantially from theories of biological evolution", which may or may not be "guided by Intelligent Design."
Anyone willing to overlook such peculiar statements may be comforted by the third chapter, in which Stark elaborates on the religious life in ancient Rome with reference to principles of the economics of religion, a field on which he has had a considerable influence. As Stark explains, the Roman Republic (509-27 BCE) lends itself well to the illustration of the natural state of religious economies, which is one of religious pluralism. Since any given society incorporates a wide range of religious tastes and needs as well as different degrees of religiosity, religion suppliers will compete for adherents by occupying particular market niches. No single supplier, however, will capture the whole of the market, and hence a competitive religious economy develops, yielding high levels of religious participation. Stark shows that this theoretical benchmark is a good fit to Roman religious history, as the Roman Republic neither purported a subsidised state religion nor restricted the influx of foreign religious cults. The supply-side analysis explains the success of "foreign" deities such as Isis, Bacchus, and Cybele and the rise of Christianity in the early Empire by pointing to the specific competitive advantages of the new religions. The Isis cult, like early Christianity, propagated a hitherto unknown message of love, individual salvation, and moral conduct; both the Bacchanalian and Cybelene religions were based on written texts and thus trailed most traditional Roman cults in theological sophistication; and even before the gender revolution of Christianity, Bacchanalian religion offered considerable freedoms to women. However, as Stark also points out, only the high degree of commitment demanded by these cults had the potential for causing religious conflict. The congregationalism of Bacchalanian religion ultimately resulted in its restriction by the authorities, while the political dimension of Christianity led to the
persecution of Christians.
The development of the Roman religious economy is a compelling example of the adequacy of supply-side analysis of religion, which in turn rests on two essential assumptions regarding demand: the first one, mentioned above, concerns the variety of individual religious activity; the second, which Stark repeatedly emphasises, is the notion that consumption decisions for religious products underlie the same rational-choice assumptions as those for regular commodities. However, Stark's description of the rational-choice assumption ("in pursuit of things they deem desirable or valuable (rewards), people attempt to make effective and efficient (rational) choices, limited by their information, by the available options, and by their understanding of what's involved") deserves particular attention, as he repeatedly succumbs to the habit of attacking thinkers of various disciplines for not applying the rational-choice approach to the religious mind. His criticism is not limited to historical writings such as Hobbes's "Leviathan" or Feuerbach's "The Essence of Christianity", but extends also to modern critics of religion. Richard Dawkins is on his blacklist in this regard, as are Ben-Ami Scharfstein and Michael P. Carroll. Daniel Dennett's self-characterisation as a "Bright" is, in Stark's view, nothing but a distancing from "those dullards who still cling to faith." Here, Stark clearly fails to account for an important distinction: a pragmatic approach to rationality emphasises the means by which individuals achieve set goals and investigates their efficiency. This "subjective" rationality underlies the analysis of human behaviour in game-theoretic models. In contrast, a philosophical perspective is adequate to make normative statements about human actions, that is, to assess their social quality and ethical validity. Objective rationality is the basis of all scientific investigation, including the social sciences, whereas subjective rationality merely serves as an explanatory factor in the analysis of human behaviour. When subjecting religious beliefs and practices to rational principles in order to formalise them in a social-scientific framework, rationality needs to be understood as subjective and defined, in Stark's own words, as the "attempt to pursue what [people] perceive to be the best option for achieving their goals" - which, of course, is quite distinct from models of unbounded rationality.
The blurring of this crucial distinction is a major weakness of the book. Stark's attacks on the likes of Dawkins, Boyer, and Dennett are grounded on the accusation that these authors fail to account for the pragmatic rationality of religious believers. It overlooks the fact that their approach is not concerned with the choices, beliefs, and cultural backgrounds that determine particular actions, but with whether human behaviour is rational given the full scale of potentially available information. In other words, they make normative statements that are not in the slightest at odds with the sociological approach. Objective rationality is needed to investigate the validity of human actions. Sociology, in contrast, is not
concerned with the normative, but is there to neutrally explain human behaviour and its ramifications with the tools that are at its disposal. When accusing scientist and philosophers of neglecting the rationality of the religious mind, Stark unduly extends the "subjective rationality" assumption beyond the realm of the social sciences.
The blurring is evident in his approach to the truth value of religious claims, i.e. when he suggests that assumptions about the supernatural should be part of the scientific perspective ("To make miracles plausible, all that is needed is to postulate the existence of God who created the universe, nothing more; surely a God who created the natural laws could suspend them at will"), as well as in his discussion of the most recent "New Atheist"* literature. Right on the first pages of the book, I began having a strange feeling regarding Starks scholarly intentions: apart from renouncing his 1987 essay "Evolution of the Gods" and suggesting the aforementioned alternative interpretation of his current subtitle, he eventually bases his discussion on assumptions about the supernatural in his chapter on Christianity ("So, was Lazarus raised from the dead? Perhaps, and perhaps not [...] Some believe these things happened, some believe they didn't - and both positions are based on faith"); not only does he attack the "New Atheists", he also questions the scholarly integrity of critical bible study (which, as a sociologist, does not really fall into his realm of competence) - an inconsiderate act of self-ridicule considering that some of the most brilliant biblical scholars see no contradiction in their religious expertise and their disbelief (take, for instance, Göttingen University's Gerd Lüdemann). But, worst of all, he lends credence to pseudo-scientific "Intelligent Design" (ID) theories by discussing them at length in his conclusion, thus conclusively gambling away his social-scientific authority. Stark's positive appraisal of deranged minds such as Michael Behe and William Dembski casts doubts on his sanity ("many building blocks of life cannot have arisen helter-skelter, one tiny increment at a time; in the case of the eye, or indeed of organic molecules as such, no early or intermediate stage has any survival value to sustain development"), whereas his final sentence ("science is theology and thereby serves as another method for the discovery of God") really does not require any further comment.
Overall, "Discovering God" makes for an interesting read, as long as one's interest is purely historical. It is also a good summary of, and introduction to, various religious traditions (apart from the monotheistic religions, Stark also discusses Buddhism, Confucianism, and Hinduism). It fails, however, in representing a solid sociological approach. Sociology, like any social science, should be concerned with observable social phenomena, not with speculations about the supernatural. Hence "the evolution of human images of God" is the only adequate, justified examination. Praising the "scientific" integrity of ID propagandists, in contrast, does a great disservice to the social-scientific study of religion.
*I agree with Sam Harris that "Atheism" is a problematic term; unfortunately, this has become the brand name for a particular set of writings. Here, I identify "atheist" approaches with "methodical atheism", meaning that any serious scientific approach will have to exclude supernatural or divine explanations in order not to discredit the scope of its examination. But this is exactly what Stark seems to forget.
I just finished reading the book and came away feeling cheated. The promise of the book was to explore whether man is inventing God or discovering God, or, as it asks on the jacket, "Did God create us, or did we create God?" I made the mistake of starting at the beginning and reading all the way through until the end. What I should have done is start with the last chapter titled "Discovering God"; I would have saved myself a lot of time. Only there does Stark finally get around to delivering on his promise to answer the question, but even there he fails to do so. Instead, once you boil it all down, he basically says that the answer simply depends on whether or not God exists - if He does, then we are discovering God, and if He doesn't then we are inventing God. Really, that's about it.
Of course, although he tries hard to sound objective and academic, and tries not to reveal his personal religious beliefs, it becomes evident in the final chapter that Stark is a Christian (can one even hold the position of co-director of the Institute for Studies of Religion at Baylor without being a Christian?), and so he finishes the book with why God does indeed exist, and hence why the history of religion is the history of "discovering" God. Unfortunately, here he completely switches topics from his area of expertise, religion and theology, and bases his argument for the existence of God on the fact that, quoting Einstein, contrary to what we might expect, the world is completely accessible to inquiry by science. Amazingly, he also uses the scientific discovery of the Big Bang as proof that the universe had a beginning after all (as opposed to an eternal universe with no beginning or end which, according to his endnotes, was the theme of Carl Sagan's Cosmos). He also bases his belief that God exists on the idea that Intelligent Design must be correct, again switching gears completely.
His argument goes like this: We are not inventing God, because if we were it would mean that the revelations of the prophets were just voices in their heads, and therefore God does not really exist. But since God does exist, we must be discovering that God. And how does he know God exists? Well … because he believes God exists, based on the facts that 1) the universe had a beginning (and therefore must have been created by a Creator) and 2) the universe is knowable through empirical inquiry, contrary to what it would have been had there been no God. That's about it.
Now you can see why I felt cheated. I bought the book on the basis of its title (good titles really do sell books, as I'm sure Stark is aware), and took the time to read it cover to cover, always expecting that the central question would be answered in an intelligent way that I could understand. But it never was. As interesting and edifying as was the short course in the history of religion and his theory of the religious economy, that is not what I was set up to expect; I was expecting him to answer the question posed at the outset. As I said, the last chapter was the only part of the book that even pretended to address the question, and really it was quite pathetic (if Stark knew anything about Carl Sagan he would know that Sagan believed in the Big Bang, and if he knew anything about Einstein he would know that he was an atheist who believed that all ideas are just conceptions in the mind).
Although the question "Did God create us, or did we create God?" is arguably tautological, I think there are meaningful arguments that could have been offered in support for the idea that we are not inventing God (and Stark came very close to using them, but he did not). Namely, what if we generalized the question to read "do we invent or do we discover any kind of knowledge?" To ask this would of course change the subject from religion to epistemology, not Stark's area of expertise, but let's see where this could lead. If we could cobble together a plausible argument that there is any kind of knowledge that is clearly being "discovered" by mankind, then we could argue, by analogy, that God is similarly being discovered.
Take mathematics for example; have we invented the body of knowledge we call mathematics, or has it been out there all the time just waiting for us to discover it? I know what you will say … from an epistemological point of view the question doesn't make sense … but to me it is much more intuitive (and less highly charged) than the question about God. We can ask the same question about the laws of physics and probably many other things as well. To me, it makes sense that some things are discoveries as opposed to inventions (although the techniques of mathematics and physics are clearly inventions). The facts of mathematics and physics seem like they have been there all along (did gravity exist before our minds were here to observe it? Of course). So … by analogy, albeit assuming that God exists, God has been out there all along, and as we evolve our consciousness we slowly discover Him.
I am not proposing this as a good argument for the idea that we are actually discovering God, as one could easily counter that philosophical or religious knowledge is fundamentally different than mathematical or physical knowledge. But wouldn't this line of reasoning be more interesting and powerful than what Stark gave us? Apparently the purpose of Stark's book was to showcase his extensive knowledge about religions and sneakily, in the end, to reinforce a Christian's reader's belief system, and to show non-Christians the error of their ways. It was definitely NOT an honestly attempt to answer the question on the book jacket. I'm going to be much more careful in the future.
Posted by: Ric Barline | February 12, 2010 at 11:47 PM
The Samaritans were snubbing someone far greater than Elijah. They were snubbing the Son of God. If anyone deserved to be struck by lightning, it was them. But that was not the Spirit of Christ. He came to show us a new way. You have heard it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy,’ but I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Matthew 5.43-44. In Luke 9, Jesus shows us what grace looks like. He refuses to strike back at the Samaritans.
Posted by: Bible Timeline | September 19, 2008 at 10:26 AM
The Black Adder obviously had Starks pretentious simplications in mind when he uttered his immortal words: Utter Crapp!
Posted by: Sue | March 27, 2008 at 01:55 AM