Friday, 20 May 2011

• If Apple is a Religion, What does that mean for future of the faith?

  CNN has news today: neuroscientists find that mac lovers' brains respond similiarly to images of mac products as religious folks do to images of the deity.
  
  Whoa! Apple really has created quite the image for themselves. I don't know whether to be impressed or afraid.
   
  I guess that Oxford study was really right, religion is part of human nature--and if we're too secular to get our fix in the supernatural, we get it through products.
  
  I think the truth that this research really speaks to is that we all choose a worldview-- a set of values, a philosophical outlook that provides meaning for our lives (even if some choose nihilism).
  
  This worldview, be it secular liberalism, Mormonism, Buddhism, Catholicism, Communism, utilitarianism, etc (or even an unconscious or individually chosen mixture), is still an all-informing worldview that serves as the lens through which we view the world.
  
  Many of these world views are religious and recognize a supernatural or spiritual realm. Many of them are not religious and do not recognize a spiritual realm. Regardless, they are still all-encompassing worldviews that change our outlook and perception of the world. They still find ways to answer the important questions that we as humans have.
  
  The decrease in spiritual responsiveness in contemporary culture (such as the on-trend atheism) has not actually created a less dogmatic worldview because the truth is that we all have our own worldview and thus our own dogma. The Apple research illustrates this--we haven't "evolved" from religion; the religious part of ourselves is very much alive and well, and its sensitive enough to react to an iPad.
  
  What this really shows is that religion (or worldview) in our culture has taken a dramatic shift. We are looking to the world for meaning, to products, to ourselves.
  
  Many atheists might count that a victory, but the real truth is that we are still seeking meaning and answers in the same way as we were before.
  
  My take is that our self-styled consumerist worldviews that look only to the earth and to pleasure are actually quite harmful to the human person. The fact that everyone has chosen worldview does not mean that all answers and worldviews are equal (or that everything's relative). The thing is that some are more accurate than others, some better respond to human desires and needs. Some worldviews better seek what is good for humanity and for truth.
  
  In my opinion, it is deadly for the human mind to continue to embrace any and all worldviews while at the same time refusing to examine them for goodness and reality. It means that we assume all-encompassing worldviews (or religions) without a thought for what is more true or better because so often we have given up on the true and the good in search of pleasure.
  
  But is pleasure really the highest good? And if not, how do we know what is the highest good? Is it really something so arbitrary and meaningless that it is completely up to individual determination? And if true good has no criteria except individual choice, how on earth is an individual supposed to decide what's good with no values or factors on which to base her decision?
  
  In short, just saying "my decision makes it true" is meaningless because we use reasons to arrive at a decision, and if we have reasons for evaluating worldviews, where do those reasons come from and what are they?
  
  What I'm driving at is that there are real criteria that we use to judge the true and the good, and that these come from outside ourselves, from reality itself--they are the law written into the nature of the world and of the human person.
  
  And what a sad day it is when our understanding of these criteria becomes so distorted that an iPhone provides as much meaning in our lives as democracy, Buddha or Christ.
  
  

  • 7:18 PM
  • 290 Views
  • 0 eProps
  • 1 Comment