religion

Why is religion so important to most Americans and so trivial to most intellectuals?

by	David Gelernter

Do modern intellectuals actually believe that religious believers are naively deluded? Or could they be missing something themselves? David Gelernter responds to Edge publisher/editor John Brockman's request to futurists to pose "hard-edge" questions that "render visible the deeper meanings of our lives, redefine who and what we are."

Is it just a matter of IQ? (Though I thought intellectuals no longer believed in IQ...) But empirically it can't be an IQ issue, because so many of history's greatest minds based their lives on religion -- from Michaelangelo or Bach to Spinoza or Dante or Kant. Do modern intellectuals actually believe that all such people are naively deluded? Or could they be missing something themselves?

If I had not read Boomeritis, I'm not sure I would have been able to answer this question. Spirituality is just another process in evolution. Aside from silly crusades which aren't even about religion but money, there is a sect in every religion that is "strictly outside of this world". Ken Wilber (more like whoever made up the Spiral of Consciousness) discusses that in order to reach this level, you need to evolve from first tier thinking into integral or second tier thinking to spiritual/ third tier thinking. All of these levels MUST include the predecessing levels that everyone uses throughout their evolution. Although intellectuals may be considered as intellectuals, and may be in fact, extremely intelligent, they are not evolved. Men like Dante and Kant and Michelangelo quite possibly reached third tier thinking, but since they were in a different era of time, it is hard to say.

Most modern intellectuals may feel that the masses are naively deluded because of all the corruption surrounding the church or temple or whatever house of worship but the main reason is they just cannot comprehend something that is beyond their level of consciousness. For instance, in Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr., he discusses an alien breed being able to see the fourth dimension, and thus makes it tangible. This idea is also explored in the movie "Donnie Darko;" there is a infinite amount of parallel (and probably perpendicular) moments of past, present and future and it just another moment in time. Because most people are not able to grasp this concept due to the scholastic teaching of continual time, they are not able to see the problems within the fourth dimension, Vonnegut argues. It is similar to what Wilber discusses in his works, as those who cannot grasp the concept of spirituality do not understand it and thus automatically dismiss it.