Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

It is time to confront the worry that such an investigation might actually kill all the specimens, destroying something precious in the name of discovering its inner nature. Wouldn’t it be more prudent to leave well enough alone? As I have already noted, the case for curbing our curiosity here has two parts: it must show both (1) that religion provides net benefits to humankind, and (2) that these benefits would be unlikely to survive such an investigation. The tactical problem that confronts us is that there is really no way of showing the first point without actually engaging in the investigation. Religion seems to many people to be the source of many wonderful things, but others doubt this, for compelling reasons, and we shouldn’t just concede the point out of a misplaced respect for tradition. Perhaps this very respect is like the protective outer shell that often conceals deadly viruses from our immune system, a sort of camouflage that disengages much-needed criticism. So the most we can say is that point 1 is not yet proven. We can, however, proceed tentatively, and consider how likely point 2 would be if we were to assume for the sake of argument that religion is indeed a thing of great value. We can assume it innocent until proven guilty—in other words, just the way our legal system operates.

Now, what about point 2? How much damage do we suppose an investigation might do, in the worst case? Might it not break the spell and disenchant us forever? This concern has been a favorite ground for resisting scientific curiosity for centuries, but although it is undeniable that taking apart particular instances of wonderful things—plants, animals, musical instruments—may sometimes destroy them beyond reconstruction, other wonderful things—poems, symphonies, theories, legal systems—thrive on analysis, however painstaking, and one can hardly deny the benefit to other plants, animals, and musical instruments derived from dissecting a few specimens. In spite of all the warnings over the centuries, I have been unable to come up with a case of some valuable phenomenon that has actually been destroyed, or even seriously damaged, by scientific scrutiny.

Field biologists often confront a terrible quandary when studying an endangered species: does their well-meant attempt at a census, involving live capture and release, actually hasten the extinction of the species? When anthropologists descend on a heretofore isolated and pristine people, their inquiries, however discreet and diplomatic, swiftly change the culture they are so eager to know. With regard to the former cases, thou shalt not study is a policy that may indeed be wisely invoked on occasion, but with regard to the latter, prolonging the isolation of people by putting them, in effect, in a cultural zoo, though it is sometimes advocated, does not bear scrutiny. These are people, and we have no right to keep them ignorant of the larger world they share with us. (Whether they have the right to keep themselves ignorant is one of the vexing questions to be considered later in this book.)

It is worth recalling that it took brave pioneers many years to overcome the powerful taboo against the dissection of human cadavers during the early years of modern medicine. And we should note that, notwithstanding the outrage and revulsion with which the idea of dissection was then received, overcoming that tradition has not led to the feared collapse of morality and decency. We live in an era in which human corpses are still treated with due respect—indeed, with rather more respect and decorum than they were treated with at the time dissection was still disreputable. And which of us would choose to forgo the benefits of medicine made possible by the invasive, meddling science Wordsworth deplores?

More recently, another taboo was broken, with even greater outcry. Alfred C. Kinsey, in the 1940s and 1950s, began the scientific investigation of human sexual practices in America that led to the notorious Kinsey Reports, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953). There were substantial flaws in Kinsey’s studies, but the weight of the evidence he amassed led to surprising conclusions that have needed only minor adjustments in the wake of the better-controlled investigations that followed. For the first time, boys and men could learn that over 90 percent of American males masturbate, and that around 10 percent are homosexual; girls and women could learn that orgasms were normal and achievable for them as well, both in coitus and in masturbation, and—not surprisingly, in retrospect—that lesbians were better at inducing orgasms in women than men were.