宗教究竟会不会消失?
2015-01-28 10:53 我要评论(0)
核心提示:世界上无神论呈上升趋势,是否意味灵性即将成为过去?瑞吉尔·努尔发现答案复杂得多。全球范围内相信生命终会以死亡结束的人以数百万计地增长。
Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past? Rachel Nuwer discovers that the answer is far from simple.A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – that there is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. And it’s an outlook that could be gaining momentum – despite its lack of cheer. In some countries, openly acknowledged atheism has never been more popular.
世界上无神论呈上升趋势,是否意味灵性即将成为过去?瑞吉尔·努尔发现答案复杂得多。全球范围内相信生命终会以死亡结束的人以数百万计地增长——他们不信奉神明、不相信来生、不觉得神灵计划着世上诸事。尽管缺乏支持,这种趋势恐怕蓄势待发。一些国家公开承认无神论从未如此流行。
“There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont, California, and author of Living the Secular Life. According to a Gallup International survey of more than 50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68% between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’s estimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.
加州克莱蒙特匹兹学院社会学与世俗学教授、《活出世俗生活》一书作者菲尔·祖克曼说:“如今周围的无神论者绝对比以前多多了,纯数量上的和人类中所占比上都是。”据盖洛普国际一项涵盖57个国家、超过5万人的调查显示,2005至2011年间自称有宗教信仰的个体数从77%跌至68%,同期自认为无神论者的个体数则上升3%——使得世界的坚定非信徒估量比例上涨至13%。
【注:盖洛普公司由美国著名的社会科学家乔治·盖洛普博士于1935年创立,是全球知名的民意测验和商业调查/咨询公司。】
While atheists certainly are not the majority, could it be that these figures are a harbinger of things to come? Assuming global trends continue might religion someday disappear entirely?
虽然无神论者的确是非主流人群,而这些数字可否预兆未来之事?假设全球性趋势持续下去,某天宗教会彻底消失吗?
It’s impossible to predict the future, but examining what we know about religion – including why it evolved in the first place, and why some people chose to believe in it and others abandon it – can hint at how our relationship with the divine might play out in decades or centuries to come.
未来无法预测,但研究我们对宗教了解的部分——包括宗教最初为何演化、为什么有人选择信仰有人选择放弃——能提示未来数十年或数百年中人神关系怎样走向终结。
Scholars are still trying to tease out the complex factors that drive an individual or a nation toward atheism, but there are a few commonalities. Part of religion’s appeal is that it offers security in an uncertain world. So not surprisingly, nations that report the highest rates of atheism tend to be those that provide their citizens with relatively high economic, political and existential stability. “Security in society seems to diminish religious belief,” Zuckerman says. Capitalism, access to technology and education also seems to correlate with a corrosion of religiosity in some populations, he adds.
学者仍在尝试梳理出让个体或国家倾向无神论的复杂因素,找到的共同点却寥寥无几。宗教的部分吸引力在于它为一个世事难料的人间贡献了安全感。因此那些报告出无神论倾向率最高的国家同为向自家公民提供相对较高的经济、政治和生存稳定性的国家便不足为奇。“社会保障似乎削弱了宗教信仰,”祖克曼说到。他还补充说资本主义、技术与教育的收获好像也和某些群体中的宗教衰败有关。
Crisis of faith
信仰危机
Japan, the UK, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, France and Uruguay (where the majority of citizens have European roots) are all places where religion was important just a century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries feature strong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. “Basically, people are less scared about what might befall them,” says Quentin Atkinson, a psychologist at the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
一百年前,宗教在日本、英国。加拿大、韩国、荷兰、捷克共和国、爱沙尼亚、德国、法国、乌拉圭(本国多数居民有欧洲祖先)这些国家还备受重视,而今其中部分国家却报出变成了世界宗教信仰率最低的地方。这些国家的鲜明特点就是强大的教育和社会保障系统、高平等、相对富裕。新西兰奥克兰大学心理学家昆廷·阿特金森表示:“基本上这些国家的人都不害怕自己身上会发生什么。”
Yet decline in belief seems to be occurring across the board, including in places that are still strongly religious, such as Brazil, Jamaica and Ireland. “Very few societies are more religious today than they were 40 or 50 years ago,” Zuckerman says. “The only exception might be Iran, but that’s tricky because secular people might be hiding their beliefs.”
而信仰衰落像是正全面呈现,包括在一些宗教信仰虔诚的地方,例如巴西、牙买加、爱尔兰。“极少有哪个团体今天还比他们四五十年前更虔诚,”祖克曼说到。“唯一的例外恐怕是伊朗,但世俗的人可能隐瞒自身信仰这点就很微妙。”
The US, too, is an outlier in that it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but also has high rates of religiosity. (Still, a recent Pew survey revealed that, between 2007 and 2012, the proportion of Americans who said they are atheist rose from 1.6% to 2.4%.)
美国也是个例外,作为世界上最富裕的国家之一并且高宗教信仰率极高。(近来一项皮尤研究中心的调查仍显示出2007至2012年间,美国人中自称为无神论者的比例从1.6%上升至2.4%。)
Decline, however, does not mean disappearance, says Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Big Gods. Existential security is more fallible than it seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy a town; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming years and natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity. “People want to escape suffering, but if they can’t get out of it, they want to find meaning,” Norenzayan says. “For some reason, religion seems to give meaning to suffering – much more so than any secular ideal or belief that we know of.”
《大神灵》一书作者、加拿大温哥华英属哥伦比亚大学社会心理学家艾尔拉·罗伦萨扬认为,衰落并不意味着消失。生存保障比它本身看上去更易犯错。世间万物,瞬息万变:醉驾司机害死深爱之人;龙卷风毁灭城镇;医生下达临终诊断。未来几年内,气候变化报复肆虐世界、自然资源潜在短缺,病痛和苦难会刺激宗教信仰兴起。“人们想逃避痛苦,但若无法从中脱身,他们就想找到受苦的意义,”罗伦萨扬说到。“出于某些原由,宗教仿佛给痛苦赋予了意义——远远超出任何我们所知的世俗理想或信仰能办到的范围。”
This phenomenon constantly plays out in hospital rooms and disaster zones around the world. In 2011, for example, a massive earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand – a highly secular society. There was a sudden spike of religiosity in the people who experienced that event, but the rest of the country remained as secular as ever. While exceptions to this rule do exist – religion in Japan plummeted following World War II, for instance – for the most part, Zuckerman says, we adhere by the Christchurch model. “If experiencing something terrible caused all people to become atheists, then we’d all be atheists,” he says.
这类现象在医院病房和世界各地的灾区中不断上演。比如在2011年,一场大地震侵袭了新西兰的克莱斯特彻奇—一个非常世俗的社会。那次地震的经历者中信徒数量激增,但该国其它地区的人依旧世俗如初。这条规律确有特例存在——比如二战后的日本宗教暴跌——祖克曼认为,多数情况下人们都会遵循克莱斯特彻奇的模式。“如果是经历可怕的事情把人全变成无神论者,那我们就都是无神论者了。”
The mind of god
神之心
But even if the world’s troubles were miraculously solved and we all led peaceful lives in equity, religion would probably still be around. This is because a god-shaped hole seems to exist in our species’ neuropsychology, thanks to a quirk of our evolution.
即使奇迹般地解决了世间烦恼,人人都过上安宁平等的生活,宗教仍可能伴随着人类。这是因为进化中的偶然急变使人类在神经心理学上有了一个神形的孔。
Understanding this requires a delve into “dual process theory”. This psychological staple states that we have two very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2. System 2 evolved relatively recently. It’s the voice in our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically.
要想了解这点,钻研“双过程理论”很必要。心理学主要内容说明了人类思维的两个基本形式:系统一和系统二。系统二进化出的时间比较较近,是我们脑海里的声音——好像永远不会住口的解说员——让我们能够从逻辑上计划和思考。
【注:双过程理论在心理学上对“两种不同方式发生同一现象/两种过程产生同一结果”做出了论述,通常两种过程包括直接/间接、无意识/受控制的意识过程。根据该理论,直接过程、态度和行为随信念和教育而变化;间接过程或态度往往消耗大量时间并随新习惯的形成而变化。双过程理论涉及社会心理学、人格心理学、认知心理学和临床心理学,并与经济前景理论、行为经济学相关联。】
System 1, on the other hand, is intuitive, instinctual and automatic. These capabilities regularly develop in humans, regardless of where they are born. They are survival mechanisms. System 1 bestows us with an innate revulsion of rotting meat, allows us to speak our native language without thinking about it and gives babies the ability to recognise parents and distinguish between living and nonliving objects. It makes us prone to looking for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning for seemingly random events like natural disasters or the death of loved ones.
另一方面,系统一是直觉性的、本能的、无意识的。无论出生地,这些能力在人类中有规律地产生,是生存机制。系统一让人天生厌恶腐肉、使人说母语不假思索、令婴儿辨识双亲,区分活物和死物。系统一让人类倾向于寻找更好理解世界的模式、寻求表象看似随机事件背后的意义,比如自然灾害或亲人离世。
In addition to helping us navigate the dangers of the world and find a mate, some scholars think that System 1 also enabled religions to evolve and perpetuate. System 1, for example, makes us instinctually primed to see life forces – a phenomenon called hypersensitive agency detection – everywhere we go, regardless of whether they’re there or not. Millennia ago, that tendency probably helped us avoid concealed danger, such as lions crouched in the grass or venomous snakes concealed in the bush. But it also made us vulnerable to inferring the existence of invisible agents – whether they took the form of a benevolent god watching over us, an unappeased ancestor punishing us with a drought or a monster lurking in the shadows.
一些学者认为系统一除了帮助人类应付危险并找到伴侣,还使宗教得以演化和延续。比方说,系统一令人类本能地利用生命力——名为“高敏度施为感知”的现象——不管我们去哪儿、他们是否在那儿。一千年前,这种趋势或许帮助人类避免潜在的危险,像草丛里蜷伏的狮子、灌木中隐蔽的毒蛇。但系统一也让人类容易作出存在无形施为者的结论——采取的表现形式则是注视着我们的仁慈神明、未安息的祖先、蛰伏在阴影中的怪兽。
【注:施为感知,即在某些可能涉及自身情况下,人或动物预感到具感知力或智慧的施为者(人或其它存在, 通常指人类、其它活物或宗教灵魂意识)有目的的干涉。】
Similarly, System 1 encourages us to see things dualistically, meaning we have trouble thinking of the mind and body as a single unit. This tendency emerges quite early: young children, regardless of their cultural background, are inclined to believe that they have an immortal soul – that their essence or personhood existed somewhere prior to their birth, and will always continue to exist. This disposition easily assimilates into many existing religions, or – with a bit of creativity – lends itself to devising original constructs.
同样地,系统一支持我们二元地看待事物,也就说人很难将身体和思维看成独立单元。这种趋势早就出现了:忽略掉文化背景,小孩子更相信自己有不朽的灵魂——即本质或人格在出生前就有了,且一直存在。这类情形很容易同化作多种现存宗教或者——带点儿创造力地——形成宗教原始结构。
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