Idea about science and religion from a college friend....

[Denis Franklin, MD]

This is from a fellow I knew in college in the 1950s.  I probably won't look up the references, but thought someone might be interested...

  This morning I heard a fascinating talk from one of Emory's stars ( as a teacher as well as a scholar), Robert N. McCauley. He spoke for an hour and a half to our Emeritus College. Bob is the W. R. Kenan University Professor, and also professor of philosophy, psychology, religion, and anthropology. He founded and spent about a decade leading Emory's "Center for Mind, Brain and Culture," something like the Committee on Social Thought, but with more science (cognitive psychology).  After college he came to the Divinity School at the U. of Chicago., where he got an M.A. He then earned a Ph.D in philosophy. Recently emeritus, I think he spent his entire career at Emory.

     His talk today was about two of his recent books: Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not (2011) and Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind: What Religion can Teach Us about Mental Disorders (2020). More specifically, he spoke at length about the connection between religion and obsessive-compulsive disorders. It is not a causal relationship: neither causes the other, both are what he calls "maturationally natural" developments. This includes all kinds of things that we seem to be programmed for: the ability and inclination to walk, to talk, to recognize faces (there is a medical term for the few folks who cannot recognize faces), to avoid dangers and contaminations.  Whatever else they are, both religious behaviors and obsessive-compulsive behaviors are largely involuntary strategies to relieve recurring anxieties. These behaviors tend to be long lasting and repetitive; whatever relief these strategies provide for such anxieties is temporary. These strategies are "ritualistic" and must be repeated over and over again for relief. Thus the Puritans never stopped worrying about sin (and Howard Hughes never stopped washing his hands).

Denis

P.S. 

As for Jim's reference for the Shellenberger interview, I kept thinking that while he seemed to have perceived the flaws in the progressive agenda, what he finally noticed was easily predictable from the beginning to anyone with mature judgment.   I felt it was as if he were too late in realizing the dangers.    His thinking seems to exemplify the old warning -- "He who does not know history is doomed to repeat it".

D