A short-lived success? The inevitable rise of ‘false facts'
As a whole, the institutional HoR of the past provides a clear example of the Darwinian ‘false facts [that] are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often long endure'.
And long endure they did. For the most part, the history of the HoR is the account of such false facts, or Frankfurt's bullshit, assumed a priori and against all evidence as correct. It is the story of an internecine competition with a profoundly admired theology for academic prestige and acknowledgement in the absence of any scientific support (Gilhus 2014). It is also the story of many epistemological blunders and even more disciplinary and methodological dead ends pursued in the service of ideology, with the purpose of exalting its subject of study (cf. Pinker 1997: 555). Today, because of the present post-truth cultural environment, propelled by online social media and institutional disengagement from reality, bullshit is again on the rise in the HoR. In past decades, historians of religions from all over the world have begun to react against the presence of the CSR and other scientific approaches in the academic study of religions (cf. Ambasciano 2014; Ambasciano 2015a; Ambasciano 2016a; Ambasciano 2016b). The ontological nature of the paranormal is slowly becoming the new normal inthe HoR. In Eliade’s footsteps, Jeffrey J. Kripal advocates the complete disciplinary acceptance of psi - that is to say the alleged ‘paranormal powers of mind’ such as psychokinesis (PK) and extrasensory perception (ESP) (cf. Humphrey 1999: 116) - against the materialism of science and the dogmatism of religious theologies (Kripal 2011a; Kripal 2011b; Kripal 2014). Kocku von Stuckrad has advanced a postmodern scaffolding of science and religion as mere discourses on reality, each one equally valid on its own, yet ambiguously proposing science as an oppressive force that unjustly rejects mysticism, magic and the paranormal (von Stuckrad 2014).
Postmodern critiques of ‘mainstream “secularist” historiographies’ and pleas for ‘alternative models’ (i.e. alternative to science) abound (e.g. King 2013). While the phenomenon is widespread, some national schools seem to be more prone to assume in toto such an anti-scientific stance. Rennie notes correctly that in Germany and Italy ‘scholars, [...] continue to appreciate both the distinction between Naturwissenschaft and Geisteswissenschaft and the value of the latter. In Italy, Storia delle religioni remains a creative and interpretive discipline, one that may use science but is still self-consciously humanist - philosophical, creative and interpretative - and openly appreciative of Eliade’s contributions’ (Rennie 2016; see, for instance, Sfameni Gasparro 2016: 83 for a powerful reaffirmation of the ‘validity and scientific autonomy on historical grounds’ of Bianchi’s post-historicist HoR against CSR). Obviously, such trends do reflect the local history of the HoR that we have reviewed so far. Many more examples might be added, but these should suffice. To cut a very long story short, Eliadological approaches are being constantly revived, revered and celebrated in the HoR as a bulwark against science.Evolutionary perspectives still struggle to spread evenly in the social sciences and the Humanities (Rosengren et al. 2012). Folk cognition and intuitive thinking reign supreme. It is not just that postmodernism has left an indelible, permanent mark on those academic domains. It is that science is fragile, and its mastery requires a long and slow process of ongoing update and constant study because science goes against the grain of intuitive thinking. During each and every generation, science can progress and build upon previous conquests if, and only if, the socio-political system allows the newest generation to enjoy the intellectual support, the freedom to pursue a scientific path, and the institutional means to achieve the required level of knowledge. The same intuitive, cognitive devices which make religious ideas so easy to grasp and so immediate to understand are a constant stumbling block for the academic and scientific study of religion.
As philosopher of science and cognitive scholar Robert N. McCauley has nicely summed up,religions share the same cognitive origins and vary within the same limited framework of natural cognitive constraints. Science overturns those constraints and regularly produces new, original ideas. Religion mainly obeys those constraints and replays minor variations on the same ideas time and time again. The sciences inevitably generate radically counterintuitive representations. Religions inevitably traffic in representations whose counterintuitiveness is quite modest. This is the sense in which [psychologist Steven] Pinker states that ‘compared to the mind-bending ideas of modern science, religious beliefs are notable for their lack of imagination’.
McCauley 2011: 152; cit. from Pinker 1997: 555
And, to be sure, the idea that the more science there is in any given humanistic research, the more arid and unimaginative said research becomes, is utterly false. Like Gottschall wrote, ‘science adds to wonder, it doesn't dissolve it. Scientists always report that the more they discover, the more lovely and mysterious things become. As the great novelist and distinguished lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov once put it, “The greater one's science, the deeper the sense of mystery”' (Gottschall 2012: xvi).
However, political actors, on the basis of biases and logical fallacies, influenced by theological or political ideologies, might mistakenly decide that science is not necessary, that science is superfluous if not dangerous to one's own worldview. Indeed, science is fragile and might disappear. It has already happened in past human history, and it can happen now (see McCauley 2011: 270-2, 279-86). In his last interview delivered in 1996, one of the most eminent scientists of the past century, Carl Sagan, made exactly this point: ‘We've arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces.
I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?' (Sagan 1996b; cf. Sagan 1996a: 28). Today, the presence of theological, spiritual or religious agendas in contemporary international, democratic and public education is threatening to sever the already fragile link between institutions and scientific literacy. In this regard, the case of faith schools in the United Kingdom is a tragic reminder of the degrading effect of religious agendas and religious financial sponsorship meddling in public education, with the resulting adoption of school subjects (e.g. creationism, literalism) and practices (e.g. mysoginistic sex segregation or homophobia) contrary to science and democracy (Gillard 2002; Gillard 2007; Gillard 2016; Adams 2017; Copson 2017; Marsh 2018).Science and democracy are intertwined. They both empower people - provided that an education in critical thinking has been implemented. As Sagan remarked,
science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business.
Sagan 1996a: 40-1
No wonder that so many past right-wing reactionary or conservative historians of religions and disciplinary schools have embraced essentialist, anti- scientific, theological postulates and devoted so much effort to delegitimize science and its role in human knowledge. In the past few decades, however, the ever-critical and self-aware stance of left-wing postmodernism, once a healthy immunological system of defence, has gone awry, and now acts more like an autoimmune disease whose life-threatening attacks are triggered by innocuous stimuli.
For instance, the fact that cognitive science has tried to carve for itself an academic niche within HoR and RS has been decried as another camouflaged attempt at reinstating a sui generis approach. Elaborating on this point, historian of religions Matthew Day ‘believe[s that] the ambition to erect a science of religion threatens to undo much of what has been accomplished in the way of establishing a non-confessional academic field of broadly naturalistic inquiry' (Day 2010: 5). First, I sincerely doubt that modern HoR and a significant part of RS can be labelled as ‘non-confessional' and ‘naturalistic'. S econd, approaching religion as a semi- autonomous mythological machine theorized and implemented as such in ancient, modern and contemporary societies does not imply an abdication of criticism and a return to a sui generis study, as this provides a convenient starting point to undertake scientific reverse- engineering. Third, the fact that there might be no justifiable cognitive divide within and between any cultural or religious domain envisaged by H. sapiens should lead to the complete dissolution of every humanistic academic approach, to be substituted by a diffused, eminently interdisciplinary web of knowledge. Indeed, other contemporary disciplines like Big History and Deep History are investigating all historiographical disciplines as one, treating them as a unique subject matter, so that each historiographical human event is the result of the combination, interplay and interconnection of various contingent historiographical levels, from cosmology to evolution (Smail 2008; Christian 2011). A few years ago, Finland was already on the verge of a radical restructuring of its school system with the inclusion of broader, interdisciplinary subjects, ‘such as the European Union, community and climate change, or 100 years of Finland's independence, which would bring in multidisciplinary modules on languages, geography, sciences and economics' (Pasi Sahlberg, quoted in Strauss 2015). Pending a complete overhaul of global academia, this bold experiment should at least give pause to anti-scientific postmodern criticism. And yet, given the aforementioned presence of theological and intuitive biases towards an appreciative attitude of religions, Day's criticism might not be too far off the mark.174