Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Kinsey’s research tools were interviews and questionnaires, but soon William H. Masters and Virginia Johnson got up the nerve to subject human sexual arousal to scientific investigation in the laboratory, recording the physiological responses of volunteers engaged in sexual acts, using all the tools of science, including color cinematography (this was before the ready availability of videotape). Their pioneering work, Human Sexual Response (1966), was met with a wild mixture of hostility and outrage, amusement and prurient fascination—and cautious applause from the medical and scientific community. By shining the bright light of science on what had heretofore been conducted in the dark (with a huge measure of secrecy and shame), they dispelled a host of myths, revised the medical understanding of some kinds of sexual dysfunction, liberated untold numbers of anxious people whose tastes and practices had been under a cloud of socially inculcated disapproval, and—wonder of wonders—improved the sex lives of millions. It turns out that in this case, at least, you can break the spell and yet not break the spell at the same time. You can violate the taboo against dispassionate study of a phenomenon—there’s one spell broken—and not destroy it in the process—there’s a spell one can still blissfully fall under.

But at what cost? I deliberately draw attention to Masters and Johnson’s still-controversial work, since it illustrates so clearly the difficult issues with which this book will be concerned. Many will agree with me when I say that, thanks to the pioneering work of Kinsey, and Masters and Johnson, the knowledge we have acquired has not only not destroyed sex, it has made sex better. But there are also many who will pounce on the comparison and declare that this is exactly why they oppose any scientific exploration of religion: there is a chance it might do for religion what Kinsey et al. did for sex—teach us more than is good for us. Let me put words in their mouths:

If masturbating without shame, tolerance for homosexuality, and greater knowledge of how to achieve female orgasm are examples of the benefits science can bring us, then so much the worse for science. By treating sex as something natural (in the sense of nothing to be ashamed about), it has contributed to an explosion of pornography and degradation, defiling the sacred act of procreative union between husband and wife. We were better off not knowing all these facts, and we should take whatever steps we can to shelter our children from this contaminating information!

This is a very serious objection. There is no denying that the matter-of-fact candor about sex that was fostered by this research has had some terrible side effects, opening up new and fertile fields for exploitation by those who are always looking for ways to prey upon their fellow citizens. The sexual revolution of the sixties was not the glorious and all-benign liberation that it is often portrayed as being. The explorations of “free love” and “open marriage” broke many hearts, and robbed many young people of a deep sense of the moral importance of sexual relations by encouraging a shallow vision of sex as mere entertainment of the senses. Although it is widely believed that the sexual revolution contributed to the negligence and casual promiscuity that have heightened the scourge of sexually transmitted diseases, this may not be the case. Most evidence suggests that when information about sex is widespread, sexual behavior becomes more responsible (Posner, 1992), but anyone raising a child today has to worry about the surfeit of information about sex that now engulfs us.

Knowledge really is power, for good and for ill. Knowledge can have the power to disrupt ancient patterns of belief and action, the power to subvert authority, the power to change minds. It can interfere with trends that may or may not be desirable. In a notorious memorandum to President Richard Nixon, Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote:

The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of “benign neglect.” The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over by hysterics, paranoids, and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades. The administration can help bring this about by paying close attention to such progress—as we are doing—while seeking to avoid situations in which extremists of either race are given opportunities for martyrdom, heroics, histrionics or whatever.[Moynihan, 1970]