The Davey Dialogues - An Exploration of the Scientific Foundations of Human Culture. John C. Madden
for other purposes. Over history, our religions have served four primary purposes: explaining otherwise inexplicable phenomena; serving as an instrument of power; serving as a means to establish and enforce social harmony (particularly useful as tribes grew in size so that it became increasingly difficult for a chief to maintain control); and finally as a source of comfort and solace when things did not go well, and, increasingly, even when things did go well. Thus religion very quickly became much more than just a means of understanding otherwise inexplicable events.
Davey seemed pleased. I thought I detected faint notes of gratitude and excitement in his voice when he said:
– Already you have helped me! I have found this whole business of religion amongst you humans rather confusing. It is obviously very important to most of you, yet I was not aware of any religious practices amongst my superhuman friends before their disappearance. They had ancestors just as you do. I wonder if they were ever afflicted with religion?
– You might want to be careful about assuming that religion is an affliction. As I just mentioned, for many people religion is a great joy and comfort. It suffuses their lives.
– So I have noticed. But it doesn’t make sense to me. Can you explain why different people profess faith in different gods? You would have expected that over time one god would have won out over the others. After all, they cannot possibly all be omnipotent at once!
– Such behaviour is completely rational in the context of human development, but hold on, I would prefer to answer your question later on. For now, I hope you will be as amazed as I am at what the ancients were able to learn about the heavens, driven in large part by curiosity about what the gods were doing up there.
As far as we know, Galileo fashioned the world’s first astronomical telescope in 1609. Prior to 1609 astronomy was practiced exclusively with the unaided eye assisted by some instruments that permitted the user to measure direction and the angle of inclination to a particular object in the sky.
How might you and I have fared in sorting out the riddles of the heavens in such circumstances?
Might we have been like the Sumerians, deemed by some to be the earliest astronomers of recorded history, who, as early as 4000 BC considered the sun, the moon and Venus to be the homes of gods? If we were both lucky and crafty, we might have become priests in a temple system with hundreds of “staff.” Perhaps we, like them, would have designed a calendar; identified the basic cycles of the sun, moon, planets and stars; and divided the year into twelve months based on the moon’s twelve cycles during a year, though I find it hard to imagine that I, at least, would have been smart enough to do that!
Perhaps, like some ancient Britons at Stonehenge in about 2450 BC, we would have added some very large stones to an existing structure to indicate the alignment of the sun at the time of summer solstice, and thus marked the start of a decline toward a winter whose dampness and cold were uncomfortable and life-threatening.
Mankind’s first known record of an eclipse of the sun was made in China in 2136 BC. Might we, like the Chinese, have attached particular importance to the constellation Ursa Major, and looked on the North Star as the keystone of the heavens?
Would we, like Aryabhatta of India (said to have been born in 476 AD) have concluded that Earth orbited the sun (and not vice versa as most of the “civilized” world believed at the time), and then gone on to predict eclipses as well?
Maybe we would have been more like the Mayans in Central America. They were able to figure out that the planet Venus has a 584-day cycle of appearance as seen from Earth. They also learned how to predict lunar eclipses and developed a detailed calendar based on a twenty-day month that accounted for seasonal changes as well as lunar cycles.
And I could go on with many more examples from other parts of the globe. It turns out that many if not most peoples of the ancient world had an interest in and a fascination for astronomy, and some learned a surprising amount while pursuing that interest.
– Are you just being rhetorical, or are you really asking me these questions? Frankly speaking, if it were up to me, I certainly would have made all those discoveries you speak of, and many more besides. I would have thought that having an understanding of one’s surroundings was pretty basic, yet you humans seem to have been quite slow to catch on.
I felt frustrated by Davey’s response at this point, after all my work at finding good examples of ancient discoveries, and I felt it was important that I express it.
– You have me at a disadvantage. You tell me nothing about yourself and how you came about, while you seem to imagine that human intelligence was such that as soon as it had evolved, it would necessarily learn all about its surroundings almost immediately. That is not the way things happen in our universe. I shall be interested to learn how things got going in yours.
– You are right to complain. I apologise. I sometimes forget how different your development has been from mine. Please continue.
– Well, that pretty well wraps up what I wanted to say about early synergies between religion and science. Like other human institutions, religions have undergone a continuing evolution as the human situation has changed. For example, as Richard Dawkins has succinctly pointed out, Christian doctrine today is worlds apart from that of the early Christians.[2]
While there is no shortage today of writers promoting atheism, Dawkins notably included, available polling evidence strongly suggests that religions will continue to have an important influence on human activity for years to come. After all, the founders of the major religions were all very wise men, whose insight into the foibles of human nature rightly won them many adherents. Furthermore, the pastoral work of the clergy and the social networks provided by attendance at religious ceremonies are, for the most part, important contributors to social cohesion and happiness.
Nonetheless, religious tenets and practices will need to continue to adapt if religion is to survive.
You can count on it that many if not most major religions will therefore adapt.
– Well, I am not at all sure you are right. I continue to find your religions very puzzling, though I think I now understand much better how they probably got started. My friends in my universe did not seem to have any need for a religion. Nor do I. But you humans do seem to have such a need, though I wonder if that need is permanent, or merely a phase in your evolution.
Very puzzling, indeed.
– I hope that as our discussions progress, the mainsprings of human religion will become clearer to you. Next week, I plan to talk a bit about some other non-scientific sources of knowledge concerning humans and the environment we live in. That should set us up for the scientific pilgrimage I have in mind.
– I, too, hope you are correct in predicting that it will all become clearer for me. At this time it seems to me that religion is a potentially damaging and unnecessary luxury.
I look forward to next week.
With those few sceptical words, Davey apparently took his leave. I quickly discovered that I always knew when he left, but I never did quite understand how I knew.
I clearly recall that I felt both relieved and exhausted after this first real session ended. It was evidently more stressful than I had anticipated or even realized as the dialogue progressed. It was surely a privilege to be able to have a dialogue with Davey, but it was a very odd privilege – and it was quite some time before I developed any feelings of kinship or affection for Davey.
By the next morning I felt rested and imbued with a renewed sense that Davey’s education was a challenge I could and should meet. At the very least it seemed important to understand him better.
DIALOGUE 3
Setting the Stage
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances . . .
WILLIAM