In their studies on the brain, cognitive scientists have traced the progress of human cognition across millennia. As the cognitive scientist Merlin Donald broadly categorises it, cognition evolved from the initial Mimetic domain, moved to the Mythic, ending at the contemporary Theoretical domain.
As part of the community forming impulse, early humans learnt to communicate and express through ‘Action metaphors’. Action metaphors included gesturing, pantomime, dance, visual analogies and rituals. Rituals arose mainly to express and disseminate ideas/ information across societies at a time when sophisticated language had not yet taken shape. Teaching and learning in the community happened mainly through gesturing; the culture was entirely mimetic. Rituals in themselves make little sense, they are figurative; the outward expressions of ineffable internal processes. When the ancients performed a sacrificial ritual, it would have been the outward expression of an internal surrender. When language was not adequate to express these internal processes, action metaphors would have been used to exhibit, to explain and to propagate. Rituals can be imitated; it is the way to transfer otherwise indescribable internal processes to someone else.
Then, no moral merit arises simply from observing meticulous fasts in Ramazan or Hindu holy days, if you don’t know what they are supposed to express. It could be an action metaphor to exemplify purifying and detoxifying the body and mind. A complicated religious ceremony has no moral implication in itself. No moral merit will be accrued, no holiness acquired by strongly observing and adhering to religious codes of conduct. The unintended drawback of rituals is that they turn our important psycho-mental and extra-psycho-mental phenomena to purely somatic, physical actions. See, literalization might help with simplicity, but oversimplifying kills the true meaning. Metaphors cannot be taken at face value, in and of themselves they don’t mean much.
It is as if we insist that a cube is a square because we are incapable of seeing the whole of it!
This mimetic domain was followed by the mythic when language was born. This was the era of the oral storytelling, the tradition of grand narratives: myths and epic poems. It is important to note that the mythic domain encapsulated within it the features of the mimetic, i.e. rituals and action metaphors were absorbed into the new culture. Also, no less pertinent is the fact that writing, and publishing especially, had not penetrated into the common culture. Writing was limited to the ivory towers of intellectuals and knowledge could be spread to the masses only through an oral tradition. Publishing did not become a cultural necessity until the fifteenth century when the printing press was invented. In this oral tradition, where information was passed down through memory only, lengthy expositions and elaborate simplifications of the present times could just not have been possible. Aphorisms, poems and allegories were the way to encapsulate difficult ideas which had to be memorised. Imagine if the vast libraries of the present times had to be remembered by heart! Imagine if the laborious theories and unending equations of science had to be memorized and taught to you in an oral tradition by scientists! Poetry and metaphors were an effective way to compress ideas while myths and narratives were effective for teaching. Haven’t we all had the sublime experience of learning a new idea through an interesting, attention grabbing story?
A narrative is a picture, an image, which it is more impactful than words. Movies are made for entertainment yes, but they also impactful for transferring sublime emotions and ideas, which would have had less effect, or no effect all, when spoken of literally! Don’t you agree? In the popular culture of our modern era, movies are the ultimate machine to achieve such supra-cognition. People learn effectively through stories and hence the oral tradition gave us our narratives and mythos. The tales of Homer and Mahabharata and maybe the Deuteronomy, Bible, Quran and the Vedas too.
Maybe then, the relevant question to be asked of scriptures should not to be, “Is it true?” but rather, “What does it mean?”
The contemporary theoretical domain followed the mythic domain where memorizing lost its importance. Since all knowledge can now be stored in external devices, we can afford to simplify complex ideas in lengthy expositions and winding explanations. Reductionism, the most important ethical value of modern science, makes things simple, by diving straight to the most basic units of everything. However, this relatively new modality of reductionism is not only leading to unexpected dead ends in all areas of modern science, it is also becoming a curse. A curse in the form of meaning-robbing oversimplification.
In this context of changing cognitive domains, the enigmatic character of religious scriptures from thousands of years ago seem less so. Rituals and myths were simply diverse modalities, the dominant modes of expression of their respective times. They must be as reflective of collective expression as rock music or sci-fi movies are of our contemporary culture. Imagine a civilization to come two thousand years after us. They will have different modes of gaining, storing and disseminating knowledge. Their techniques of expression and language could be far different from ours. Suppose they found our books of quantum physics, our collection of music and poetry, our movies, and dismissed them as superstitious and unintelligent nonsense?
Maybe the confusion then is simply our vantage point as our current theoretical domain crosses over to the mimetic and the mythic. We may be seeking and discussing the same confounding quandaries of human existence, be it through quantum physics or through the Rig Veda. It’s only the language that could be different.
Thus, to denounce scriptures as lacking intelligence may be fallacious. Delivering a proud blow to religion based on such literalism could be childish and immature. It could speak more about the denouncer’s mental standard than of God’s absence itself. Noone in their right minds can and should take the stories of scriptures literally, at face value. Agreed. Also, to literalize and adhere to them is nonsensical and utterly senseless, as is most of dogmatic religion. In that sense, modern atheism is an ideological step up, an improvement over the stupefying brainlessness of dogmatic religion. No question. Atheism is the best refuge for even the slightly rational individual. However should it be the last refuge? Or could there be an ideological step up from atheism too?
There could be.