Theory of Indivisibility: Current Complexities of Religion
This transcription corresponds with Episode 8 of my podcast, Theory of Indivisibility. The show is now available on Google Podcast, Apple Podcast, Spotify, Stitcher, and Castbox. If you’d like to support my work, please visit my Patreon page.
In my previous transcription, we examined the evolutionary origins of religion. Today we are going to analyze and synthesize the current complexities of Religion in society.
Before we dive into analyzing the current complexities of religion in society, I want to introduce you to a concept in systems thinking called feedback loops.
The team at the website Thwink.org provides the following insight about systems thinking and feedback loops:
“Systems thinking is not stepping back to look at the whole, the big picture, or a higher level. This helps, but does not lead to the major insights that emerge when the feedback loop structure of the system becomes visible. Systems Thinking is the ability to see feedback loop patterns and when this insight happens, night becomes day.”
So what is a feedback loop?
A feedback loop is a process that is the result of a mutual causal interaction… meaning X affects Y and Y affects X. It’s a constant loop of an Action influencing an Effect and an Effect influencing an Action.
Nature contains two types of feedback loops, balancing and reinforcing.
Balancing feedback loops are self-correcting…they produce stability.
An example of a balancing feedback loop is a thermostat. Suppose you set the target temperature to 68 degrees in a room with a temperature of 60 degrees. The higher the target, the greater the temperature gap. The greater the temperature gap, the more heat that flows into the system. As the temperature in the room goes up, the temperature gap goes down and keeps going down until the gap is zero, at which point the system has reached equilibrium at its target.
Reinforcing feedback loops, on the other hand, produce exponential growth…which can lead to instability.
An example of a reinforcing loop is population growth. As population goes up, so do the number of births per year, which exponentially increases the future population.
Here is a diagram created by the team at “The Unschool of Disruptive Design” that illustrates these concepts perfectly:
Reality is made up of circles called feedback loops, but we tend to see straight lines because we’ve been taught to be linear, one-dimensional thinkers. This is why systems thinking can be so challenging to grasp for some people. Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline, notes that our language also plays a role in this difficulty. He states that,
“Words shape perception and what we speak becomes reality. The English language with its subject-verb-object structure, biases us towards a linear world view. If we want to become Systems Thinkers we need a language that honors interrelationships. We need a language made up of circles.”
To illustrate this, let’s look at an example of a very simple system as described in The Fifth Discipline and on Thwink.org. If someone is filling a glass of water and you are asked to describe what is happening, you might say, “Raheem is filling a glass of water.” A lack of systems thinking produces a linear perspective based only on what we can physically see. This gives us a shallow understanding of the way a system truly works. For example, when filling a glass with water we tend to only think about the actions of turning the faucet on until the glass is full, and then turning it off.
A systems thinking point of view helps us to see that a system’s behavior is a result of its feedback loops. In this example, the act of pouring a glass of water can be understood at a much deeper level by drawing a feedback loop diagram. Starting at the top, the faucet position influences the water flow, which influences the current water level. The desired water level minus the current water level equals the perceived gap. As the water level rises, the gap closes, which influences the faucet position, which influences the water flow. This feedback loop process operates continuously until the desired water level is reached.
The key to seeing reality systemically is seeing circles of influence rather than straight lines. This is the first step to breaking out of the reactive mindset that comes inevitably from linear thinking. Every circle tells a story. By tracing the flows of influence, you can see patterns that repeat themselves, time after time, making situations better or worse.
The feedback loop overturns deeply ingrained ideas, such as causality. In everyday English we say, “I am filling the glass of water” without thinking very deeply about the real meaning of the statement. It implies a one-way causality — — “*I* am causing the water level to rise”. The more complete statement of causality is that *my intent* to fill a glass of water creates a system that causes water to flow in when the level is low, then shuts the flow of water off when the glass is full. In other words, the structure of the glass causes the behavior. This distinction is important because seeing only individual actions and ignoring the underlying structures of our reality, lies at the root of our powerlessness in complex situations.
Another idea overturned by the feedback loop perspective is anthropocentrism — — or seeing ourselves at the center of activities. The simple description, “I am filling the glass with water,” suggests a world of human actors standing at the center of activity, operating on an inanimate reality.
From the systems perspective, the human actor is part of the feedback process, not separate from it. This represents a profound shift in awareness and allows us to see the ways we are continually both influenced by and influencing our reality. It is this shift in awareness that is so ardently advocated by ecologists in their cries that we must learn to see ourselves as part of nature, not separate from nature.
When I think deeply about the feedback loop process and the example of the process of filling a glass of water and how the structure of the actual glass (it’s size & shape) influences every other behavior in the steps taken to fill it… I think about what the implications could be for things like poverty, crime, school dropouts, homelessness and other issues that plague society. What if instead of blaming people as individuals for finding themselves in those situations we chose to examine the entire process that led to them being in that situation? What if we took a good hard look at the structure of the container (the system) that they are surviving in?
This line of questioning may be hard to accept for some of us because it seems like we are absolving people from taking personal responsibility for their choices and actions. However, if you think back to the slinky example from my transcription on The Evolution of Power-Over Systems, and allow yourself to imagine how different things would be if our social, economic, and political systems were designed in a completely different way, you’ll see that in a different system the “bad” choices either wouldn’t be made or they wouldn’t have the same consequences. Remember, systemic structures are more influential on our lives than individual choices. The choices we make do not happen in an individual vacuum, but in the context of the complex systems we exist within.
To assist us with analyzing and synthesizing the current complexities of religion, we’re going to start with a cluster map. Cluster maps are an important systems thinking tool because they help us to see the interconnections, interdependencies, and dynamic complexities of the elements (subsystems) that make up a system.
To make a cluster map for religion, write down whatever words come to mind when you think about religion, then draw a large circle around all of the elements that make up the system of religion.
As a call to action, I want to invite you to make your own religion cluster map. This activity will help you learn to diagnose and understand the complexities within systems.
Since you have (hopefully) already read my transcription on Patriarchy, let’s start with how patriarchy has specifically impacted religion. Sociologists define patriarchy as a social system in which men hold primary power by occupying the roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property.
All of the major religions as we know them today evolved from patriarchy and served to further embed patriarchal norms into human societies. Dr. Miki Kashtan, a sociologist who has spent decades studying violence and oppression, states the following about patriarchy in Psychology Today…
“The underlying principle of patriarchy, as I understand it, is separation and control. The separation is from self, other life, and nature. The fundamental structures we have created over the past approximately 7,000 years are based on dominance and submission, and the worldview we have inherited justifies them as necessary to overcome both our basic nature and ‘Nature’, which is seen as separate from us.
In the end, patriarchy gives only a few men access to power in society, and most men some small access to power in relation to women, robbing all men of core aspects of their humanity. This is a raw deal of monumental proportions. I see this as the core source of violence: the physical, emotional, and spiritual brutalization of boys and men.”
Many deem religion as being the rule book for upholding the dos and don’ts of patriarchy. Here are a few examples provided by Nishat Amber in an article discussing religion’s role in furthering patriarchy….
- Almost all organised religions propagate the idea of male superiority. They paint women as physically, mentally, emotionally and sexually inferior to men. The latter get special rights and privileges on account of being ‘naturally’ superior to their female counterparts.
- In almost all organised religions, restrictions exist over a woman’s choices over her body, sexuality, lifestyle, clothes, and just about everything. Sexuality and reproductive rights is especially the problem-area with regard to women. Almost all religions advocate ‘sexual exclusivity’ for women while exonerating men from the same obligation.
- The supreme God in all religions is always envisioned as a male. Scriptures are mostly written and interpreted by men who tweak and translate them to suit their own vision of the desirable social-order and preferable gender-dynamics in the same.
Many people, including myself, have questioned the idea that one religion is right and have rejected the idea that all the people in the world who don’t believe in the correct religion were going to hell no matter their deeds on earth. I’ve known of people who were both physically and emotionally abusive to their families and never attended church who were said to have accepted Jesus Christ and gotten “saved” right before they died, which somehow gave them a ticket to heaven.
The following data is from PRRI (Public Religion Research Institute) gives us insight into why many Americans have left religion…
“In 1991, only six percent of Americans identified their religious affiliation as ‘none’, and that number had not moved much since the early 1970s. Today, one-quarter (25%) of Americans claim no formal religious identity, making this group the single largest “religious affiliation” in the U.S.
The reasons Americans leave their childhood religion are varied, but a lack of belief in the teachings of that religion was the most commonly cited reason for disaffiliation. Among the reasons Americans identified as important motivations in leaving their childhood religion are: they stopped believing in the religion’s teachings (60%), their family was never that religious when they were growing up (32%), and their experience of negative religious teachings about or treatment of gay and lesbian people (29%).
Fewer than one in five Americans who left their childhood religion point to the clergy sexual-abuse scandal (19%), a traumatic event in their life (18%), or their congregation becoming too focused on politics (16%) as an important reason for disaffiliating.”
My personal reasons for becoming an opt-out…
- I believe in equity and equality and I began to see how religion was rooted in hierarchy and male privilege with the teaching that, “the man is the head of the household.” I preferred a partnership dynamic in my marriage.
- Divisive us vs. them messaging no longer fit my “Indivisible” world view.
- So many Christians were intolerant and judgemental of others and I didn’t want to be associated with that.
Science vs. Religion (Evolution vs. Creation)
In an article by Amir Aczel titled “Why Science Does Not Disprove God”, Amir makes the case that in spite of all of the amazing scientific discoveries made in the past 200 years, none of them disprove the possibility of a creator.
Amir points out the following…
“Science won major victories against entrenched religious dogma throughout the 19th century. In the 1800s, discoveries of Neanderthal remains in Belgium, Gibraltar and Germany showed that humans were not the only hominids to occupy earth, and fossils and remains of now extinct animals and plants further demonstrated that flora and fauna evolve, live for millennia and then sometimes die off, ceding their place on the planet to better-adapted species. These discoveries lent strong support to the then emerging theory of evolution, published by Charles Darwin in 1859. And in 1851, Leon Foucault, a self-trained French physicist, proved definitively that earth rotates — rather than staying in place as the sun revolved around it — using a special pendulum whose circular motion revealed the planet’s rotation. Geological discoveries made over the same century devastated the “young earth” hypothesis. We now know that earth is billions, not thousands, of years old, as some theologians had calculated based on counting generations back to the biblical Adam. All of these discoveries defeated literal interpretations of Scripture.”
In addition to discussing even more wonderful scientific findings about the evolution of our universe he goes on to state…
“The incredible fine-tuning of the universe presents the most powerful argument for the existence of an immanent creative entity we may well call God. Lacking convincing scientific evidence to the contrary, such a power may be necessary to force all the parameters we need for our existence — cosmological, physical, chemical, biological and cognitive — to be what they are.”
Amir closes the article by saying…
“Science and religion are two sides of the same deep human impulse to understand the world, to know our place in it, and to marvel at the wonder of life and the infinite cosmos we are surrounded by. Let’s keep them that way, and not let one attempt to usurp the role of the other”.
I agree that both science and religion have played an important role in helping humans understand the world around us and our place in it…however, I grieve when I think about all of the lives that were taken, the cultures erased, and the dehumanization of so many people, all done in the name of religion. I think that religion needs a major overhaul that identifies and removes the oppressive elements and beliefs that are rooted in power-over and patriarchy.
So the question remains, what would be left if we removed power-over & patriarchy from religion? Many people have already provided solutions to this question and we’ll explore how in my next transcription of Theory of Indivisibility.
Until next time,
I love yall, Peace!
Dr. Sundiata Soon-Jahta
2022. Podcast brought into written form by Ray Lightheart
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Notes and Resources
Articles:
Why Millenials Are Really Leaving Religion
Exodus: Why Americans are Leaving Religion — and Why They’re Unlikely to Come Back
6 Myths About Indigenous African Spirituality Debunked
What Is The Role Of Religion In Furthering The Patriarchal Agenda
