Christian Smith on Religion and Human Nature

humans are not by nature religious in

the sense we're naturally religious in

the sense that everyone is religious

obviously that's not the case where that

non-religious people are somehow

desperately working to suppress or purge

from themselves something that's always

on the surface and about to explode like

a volcano people are able to carry on

their lives for generations it seems

perfectly not religious and and that's

fine but there is some sense and same

thing with cultures but there is some

sense in which what we're calling

religion or what I'm defining as

religion following reason brought is

part of the nature of things it's just

part of the name of the human reality

and so I don't even might as a critical

realist I don't mind saying nature at

all I know some people don't like that

for somewhat understandable reasons but

it's not just experience because that's

just phenomenological it's the nature of

things is where I would like to go and a

stronger argument in the sense that it

is part of human being that human beings

have universally certain capacities

which tend to lead toward being

religious though now another part of

critical realism is many of the features

and capacities and tendencies of

entities there there are essentially

potentialities they're not automatic

they're not determined they don't have

to happen many things as humans can do

don't they don't do all of these things

have got to be triggered by contextual

environmental experiential factors that

make something happen that enact

something that turn a potential into an

actual that that allow a capacity to

turn into to engage a mechanism that

produces some outcome and so the crucial

thing is things can be real even if we

don't see evidence of them causes can

actually be operative even if we don't

see variants this is a hard thing for a

lot of sociologists who variables

oriented sociologists cannot imagine

something could be real if-if-if

empirical variance isn't observed but

critical realism just says well that's

preposterous there's all sorts of causal

mechanisms there's all sorts of powers

at work in the world that don't

necessarily give rise to empirically

observable variants sometimes because

other causal powers are pushing back in

an opposite direction those are two

causal powers that are self that are

neutralizing it doesn't mean there's no

causal powers happening so it really

depends on that have a larger background

framework of understanding what's real

when causes are at work when mechanisms

are actually operating so critical

realism enables us to see things can be

real as part embedded in reconstitute

avati even if they're not empirically

observable and that's sort of the hinge

of my argument that non-religious people

are naturally religious in the sense

that they have as part of their being

the capacities

then the potential mechanisms and the

tendencies once those capacities are

triggered to become religious to act

religious to believe religious to

practice religion to engage religion