"Why not eat pig? Why not eat oysters and lobsters? Not eating pig is a consequence of the fact that Jews and the Arabs who also follow the injunction were nomadic, desert people..."

It is all too easy to make up 'explanations' after the fact for religious injunctions, and this can give them a veneer of semi-rationality which they may not deserve. Many years ago someone (Kurt Vonnegut?) suggested that laws like those against soft drug use and homosexuality had no intrinsic value but were a way for a government to demonstrate that it had the power to enforce rules which were completely useless and arbitrary. It may be that many or all religious rules are there for the same non-reason.

Perhaps some high priest way back when said: "Pork! Faugh! I hate the stuff! Let's tell them all that God loathes pork." And when it actually worked he was probably as surprised as everyone else. "Hey, do you know what else I hate? Seafood. Yeah, seafood and beards..."

Dear David,
Thanks for the stimulating stuff. All I have is some challenging free association.

Chimpanzees lack more than the “linguistic capacity to express” their appreciation. But then the immodest human capacity to make a symphony out of a cacophony is comparable.
I believe Sir Paul Acton came up with the Voltaire quote (Voltaire believed in God btw), just as the Exodus quotes definitely plagiarise our Lords Monty Python!—who were not averse to hyperbole.
Forget pigs! The far more interesting question is, why not eat humans?
Thousands of years ago the Middle East wanted for minimifidianists! Now history testifies that “they” were the cause of desertification—poor PR!
The Buddha died of eating spoiled pig!
Guilt and loathing are the obverse of desire (read the Bards 129th sonnet).
We should all rejoice in Marx!
But do people have the wherewithal to make a good decision? What is the burden of the human soul (sorry, psyche).
“...and I have tried to apprehend the [Monty?] Pythagorean power by which numbers hold sway above the flux...”.
And what about Eisenstein’s theory of montage?
Plato’s cave?
Hegel’s dialectic=Marx’s materialism!
“mathematics and science transcend”; indeed they do, God-like!
Arnold was suffering from a religious hangover, which he cured by making a religion of literature---and Sartre’s repost: ‘twas “a symptom of the dehumanizing effect of capitalist economy”.
The world is not changing at all, just our dreamy perception of it.
And what of the alienating effects of “techne”?

A religion requires numerous dichotomic relationships. It needs believers and unbelievers. It needs those who know the mysteries and those who only fear them. It needs the insider and the outsider. It needs both a god and a devil. It needs absolutes and relativity. It need that which is formless (though in the process of forming) and that which is formed.

Religious Engineering, secret writings of Amel, quoted by Frank Herbert in The Godmakers

A lovely article and interesting discussion thus far. Thanks David - I don't think I've expressed directly my appreciation of your prolific articles and comments on OLO over the time you've been posting here.

In the unlikely event that I live to your age, I really hope that I can approach the wisdom, wit and calm that you display here. I can't recall anything you've written here over the years with which I significantly disagree.

Anyway, on topic - my understanding of technology is much in accordance with yours, except that I have no problem with numerous kinds. Perhaps it's a category difference: as a former academic anthropologist I regard technologies as the myriad cultural adaptations that humans create, which enable us to collectively survive and reproduce ourselves as a species.

I think that religion/God has been an enormously adaptive technology that humans created in various forms over millennia, but that it is in the process of being superceded by superior technology in the form of the unprecedented availability of knowledge and mass communication.

While in evolutionary terms humans are still generally physically adapted to being hunter-gatherers, in sociocultural terms we've moved beyond the stage in human evolution where the cohesive collective belief in shared mumbo-jumbo is very useful.

It seems to me that the technology of God/s has passed its use-by date in terms of adaptation. Belief in human-invented gods seems to cause more division than cohesion in the contemporary globalised world.

Humanity will eventually outgrow religion in order to survive, but the process will be painful, particularly in the context of AGW.

Thanks anyway, David :)

Good article David, I’d prefer a greater separation of the application of various elements of what we might describe as “human intelligence” because we apply each quite differently.

Our imagination and creativity have multiple applications. Yes, our language has been “invented” and forms the basis of social structures, << ethnicity, nationality, class and other attributes that separate human groups >>, all products of our social intelligence.

However, our “imagination” is also one cornerstone of our “sciences”, the exploration of possibilities and “what if’s”. But unlike social and religious domains, science is directed to our tactile attributes, the understanding and making of “things”.

Religion I agree needs to be separated into its two key elements. Religion as in “spiritual self knowledge” needs to be set apart from “institutionalized religion”. Since there are now some 34,000 registered institutionalized religions worldwide, we can be absolutely sure the human “inventiveness” is at work. Spirituality, as an internally focused assessment of whom and what “self” is, requires no rules. As you say << Religion can be without God or morality.>>

Institutionalized Religions on the other hand require rules, millions of them, all “invented” by humans. So when you suggest << We invent God, religion, philosophy, mathematics, art and the supernatural in addition to technology >>, I think it should be redefined to say that what we actually do is invent the “rules” that govern each domain, because it is the rules we have invented that define each domain.

Everything in our lives today is driven by rules, social, political, economic, religious, ecological and scientific, millions and millions of them. Our media produces a daily feast of what rules were broken, by whom and what should be done about it?

The concept of God and the rules imposed by institutionalized religions are also man made, a product of our inventiveness. Like the rules for every other domain, their origins were to stop us doing bad things. The theology of religions is a logical extension, “enforcement of divinity” by intellectual bullying.

The complexity of our “invented” society disenfranchises many and makes them vulnerable.

CJ Morgan

I can only faintly reflect such an illuminating post. David remains one of the most consistent contributors to OLO. He epitomises the concept of the wisdom of elders.

David I wish your thoughts were broadcast further than the narrow band of OLO.

CJ your drawing of a connection between the religious and the most vociferous of the AGW deniers is most apt. And with good reason; of all the human institutions, religion has the most to lose from advancing knowledge of the natural world. Even the fossil fuel monopolies can transition to cleaner technology, but religion is based upon a chimera of ideas well past any use other than control over its believers.