"When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."--Stephen Roberts

The above quotation attributed to Stephen Roberts is, I think, profound. Philosopher Elizabeth Anderson points out:

The same cognitive bias that leads pagans to believe in witches and multiple gods leads theists to believe in God. Indeed, once the explanatory principle--to ascribe worldly events that bear on human well-being to the intentions and powers of unseen spirits, when no actual person is observed to have caused them--is admitted, it is hard to deny that the evidence for polytheism and spiritualism of all heretical varieties is exactly on a par with the evidence for theism (("If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted," in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise Antony [2007],p. 227).

Anderson recounts her experience at the summer fair in Ann Arbor, Michigan where various religious groups have booths from which to propagate their faith.

Along one street one finds booths of Catholics, Baptists, Calvinists, Christian Orthodox ... Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Baha'i, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Jews for Jesus, Wiccans, Scientologists, New Age believers--representatives of nearly every religion that has a significant presence in the United States. The believers in each booth offer evidence of exactly the same kind to advance their religion. Every faith points to its own holy texts and oral traditions, its spiritual experiences, miracles and prophets, its testimonies of wayward lives turned around by conversion, rebirth of faith, or return to the church. Each religion takes these experiences and reports them as conclusive evidence for its peculiar set of beliefs.

... [I] am always struck by the fact that they are staffed by people who are convinced of their own revelations and miracles, while most so readily disparage the revelations and miracles of other faiths. To a mainstream Christian, Jew, or Muslim, nothing is more obvious than that founders and prophets of other religions, such as Joseph Smith, the Rev. Moon, Mary Baker Eddy, and L. Ron Hubbard, are either frauds or delusional, their purported miracles or cures tricks played upon a credulous audience, their prophecies false, their metaphysics absurd. To me, nothing is more obvious than that the evidence cited on behalf of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam is of exactly the same type and quality cited on behalf of such despised religons. Indeed, it is on a par with the evidence for Zeus, Baal, Thor, and other long-abandoned gods, who are now considered ridiculous by nearly everyone (Ibid., pp. 226-27).

Man seems to be a religious animal and will look for something beyond the natural world to explain what he does not understand. When one becomes a true believer in a particular religion, other contradictory religions are written off as delusional. Yet, if one applied the same standards to his own religion as he is applying to the ones he rejects, he would reject his own as well (This is essentially "The Outsider Test of Faith" popularized by John Loftus). As Robert Heinlein quipped: One man's religion is another man's belly laugh.

When I was an evangelical Christian, I remember wondering how any intelligent person could believe the teaching of Mormonism. Yet, I encountered intelligent lawyers, doctors, and other professionals who were Mormons. This was always something of a mystery to me. I concluded that they must believe, if they really do, without thinking much about it. They must be Mormons because their families have been Mormons for generations. In other words, they believed not based on an impartial examination of the evidence but because of societal and cultural influences. But when I applied the same logic to my own belief system, I looked for excuses as to why my beliefs were rational and not merely due to cultural considerations. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that it is no more logical to believe that God appeared to Moses than it was to believe he appeared to Joseph Smith (or Muhammad or any of the other thousands who have claimed to hear directly from God).

The Concept of Sacrifice in Ancient Times

One of the common elements in all ancient religions is the offering of sacrifices to a supernatural entity. This entity evolved from a spirit that inhabits natural objects such as rivers, trees, mountains, and so on (animism), to the spirits of departed ancestors (ancestor worship), to deities that were much like man (anthropomorphic deities), to a deity who is transcendent and separate from creation (Hebrew monotheism), to philosophical constructs of a deity that possesses total perfection in every way--omniscience, omnipresence, omnipotentence, etc. (later Greek concepts of deity) [see this prior post]. As the evolution continued, the sacrifices also evolved until eventually they were totally spiritualized and ceased to be physical acts. Stephen Finlan writes:

As the culture evolves, religion evolves, and sacrifice is subjected to continuing reinterpretation and alteration.... From Greece to Asia Minor to Israel, we can see that a heightening of intellectual culture brings a heightening of moral sensibility, and calls bloody sacrifice into question. This is especially visible in the Hebrew and Greek cultures, which both moved toward an emphasis on the inward religious attitude.

As cultures enter a stablization phase, cultic tradents standardize the cult. Under their influence, ritual practices are reinterpreted, changed, or even suppressed.... The metaphysical conceptions motivating many rituals were forgotten by the time the procedures were inscribed in texts (The Background and Content of Paul's Cultic Atonement Metaphors [2004], pp. 46-47).

In order to better understand how early Christians came to interpret the death of Jesus, it is necessary to take a look back at the concepts underlying the offering of sacrifices in ancient religion. There is a host of literature on the subject but the best introduction to the subject is probably the work edited by Jeffrey Carter entitled: Understanding Religious Sacrifice: A Reader (2003). Carter provides lengthy excerpts from some of the best studies done on the matter of religious sacrifices. From reading his work and others, I have come to the conclusion that sacrifices in ancient religions typically involved at least four purposes:

1. To placate the anger of the deity.
2. To garner the favor of the deity.
3. To bring about purification.
4. To restore harmony or order.

Most of these elements can be seen in virtually every religion that has ever practiced sacrifices. The sacrifice is seen as a gift of something valuable to the deity that accomplishes one or more of the above purposes. The concept of placating the anger of the deity and/or garnering its favor seems to be the earliest notions involved in ritual sacrifices. Homer writing about 800 BCE says that the gods are pliable and can be influenced by gifts such as roasted meat ( The Illiad, bk. 9). Plato, writing about 300 years later, was critical of those who thought they could bribe the gods through gifts and sacrifices (See Plato, Laws, bk. 10). One of the earliest references to sacrifices in the Hebrew Bible is found in Genesis 8. After Noah left the ark, he presented burnt offerings of animals and birds to Yahweh. The text says that when Yahweh "smelled the pleasing aroma," he promised never to curse the ground again (v. 21). This description of a burnt-offering being a "pleasing aroma" (KJV, "sweet-smelling savor") is repeated often (42 times) in the Hebrew Bible. According to Stephen Finlan:

[F]iguratively it means a sacrifice that God accepts, but its literal and older meaning is smoke that is tasty to God. The verbal root "nuach" means rest, so it is a restful or "tranquilizing" aroma, pacifying God's anger ... (Problems with Atonement [2005], p. 12).

In other words, the aroma of the cooked animal pacified or calmed the anger that God felt. This is the essence of propitiation (Rom. 3:25; I Jn. 2:2) to which I will return in a later post.

Sacrifices are seen often in the Hebrew Bible prior to the Levitical law. In the book of Job, which most believe predate the patriarchs, Job daily presented burnt-offerings to the Lord (1:5). The patriarchs regularly built altars and made burnt-offerings to the Lord. This was also a common practice of Israel's neighbors. The offering up of an animal (and sometimes a human being) as a burnt-sacrifice was widespread in antiquity. It was seen as an exchange, a gift to the deity in exchange for the deity's favor.

Why were ancient peoples so prone to think that a supernatural agent was causing either the good things or the bad things that were happening to them? According to philosopher, Elizabeth Anderson:

The answer is that they took it for granted that all events bearing on human well-being are willed by some agent for the purpose of affecting humans for good or ill. If no human was observed to have caused the event, or if the event was of a kind (e.g., a plague, drought, or good weather) that no human would have the power to cause, then they assumed that some unseen, more-powerful agent had to have willed it, precisely for its good or bad effects on humans. So, if the event was good for people, they assumed that God willed it out of love for them; if it was bad, they assumed that God willed it out of anger at them. This mode of explantation is universally obeserved among people who lack scientific understanding of natural events. It appears to be a deeply rooted cognitive bias of humans to reject the thought of meaningless suffering. ("If God is Dead, Is Everything Permitted," in Philosophers without Gods, ed. Louise Antony [2007],p. 225).

So, the offering of the sacrificial gift was seen as a means by which one could manipulate or affect the emotions and will of the deity. It really is not that much different today with religious (or superstituous) peoples. For example, many people in the USA today believe that if they attend religious services or give money to a charity, or say certain prayers they can influence a deity's attitude towards them which will result in good fortune.

Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous?

Alix Spiegel wrote an interesting article entitled, Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? He begins:

In the history of the world, every culture in every location at every point in time has developed some supernatural belief system. And when a human behavior is so universal, scientists often argue that it must be an evolutionary adaptation along the lines of standing upright. That is, something so helpful that the people who had it thrived, and the people who didn't slowly died out until we were all left with the trait. But what could be the evolutionary advantage of believing in God?

Spiegel discusses the work of two psychologists, Jesse Bering and Dominic Johnson. He quotes Bering:

Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives. These supernatural agents might have very different names. What some call God, others call Karma. There are literally thousands of names. Whether it's a dead ancestor or God, whatever supernatural agent it is, if you think they're watching you, your behavior is going to be affected.

Bering did an experiment with children ages 5 to 9 in which he measured the likelihood of cheating among three groups: (1) with no one watching, (2) with an invisible, magical person watching and (3) with him watching. The first group cheated much more than the other two. The second group cheated at about the same rate as the third group. His conclusion is that if someone believes that someone else is watching, even an invisible person, they are much less likely to cheat. How does this relate to a belief in god(s) being advantageous? He says that the belief served in our past to better enable man to cooperate with one another and to "cheat" less.

Man's ability to cooperate with his fellow man is what has enabled him to flourish. As Spiegel notes:

This cooperation makes all kinds of things possible, of course. Because we can cooperate, we can build sophisticated machines and create whole cities —communities that require huge amounts of coordination. We can do things that no individual or small group could do.

It is one of the keys to man's evolutionary success but how did it come about? This is a subject of continuing study and debate. Dominic Johnson has a theory.

In those early human communities when someone did something wrong, someone else in the small human group would have to punish them. But as Johnson points out, punishing itself is often dangerous because the person being punished probably won't like it. "That person has a family; that person has a memory and is going to develop a grudge," Johnson says. "So there are going to be potentially quite disruptive consequences of people taking the law into their own hands." On the other hand, Johnson says, if there are Gods or a God who must be obeyed, these strains are reduced. After all, the punisher isn't a vigilante; he's simply enforcing God's law. "You have a very nice situation," Johnson says. "There are no reprisals against punishers. And the other nice thing about supernatural agents is that they are often omniscient and omnipresent." If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife ."

Thus, according to Johnson, human groups with a religious belief system survived better because they worked better together. There was more cooperation and more obedience to the rules of society because they thought someone was always watching.

I don't know if this can explain the nearly universal belief in supernatural agents but it is certainly an interesting theory. For related posts, see Is Religion Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake?, What are the Functions of Religion?, and The Evolution of God.

An Anthropologist Describes Fundamentalism

Recently I have had some posts on Fundamentalism. I used to consider myself a fundamentalist Christian. In the circle in which I lived, it was considered a "badge of honor." It was equivalent to being a biblical Christian, one who remained true to the Bible in spite of the opposition from the world.

Today for most people the term "fundamentalist" is a pejorative term. It refers to anyone who is too extreme in their religion. Many times it carries the connotation of someone who will resort to violence in support of their religious beliefs, such as Islamic fundamentalists or even Christian fundamentalists who kill abortion doctors.

So, the term "fundamentalism" means different things to different people.

In his book Introducing Anthropology of Religion,  David Eller describes fundamentalism from an anthropological point of view:

Religious fundamentalism derives its name from the notion of "fundamentals," those things--beliefs, behaviors, organizational structures, and/or moral injunctions--that are felt by members to be most essential or central, the oldest, deepest, and truest aspects of it. (p. 276).

He sees three common elements in religious fundamentalism:

First, religious fundamentalism is for something, namely what it perceives to be the fundamental and crucial elements of its faith, which constitutes the worldview and "the truth" for practitioners. In the case of Christianity, these fundamentals typically focus on the Bible even as a literal and inerrant document and source of knowledge; a certainty that their path is the true path and therefore, the exclusion and sometimes condemnation of others (even other Christians) as corrupt and lost; a sharp distinction between religion and "the secular," the latter of which is inferior or actually evil; an eschatology in which the end-time is near and only they will survive into the new kingdom, that is, an apocalyptic view and a sense of being "chosen"; an uncompromising moral standard; and increasingly, a willingness to participate in politics to institutionalize all of the above, including a more or less conscious desire to dismantle the separation of church and state. . . .

Second, religious fundamentalist is against something. . . As Marsden proceeds to argue, fundamentalists "must not only believe their evangelical teachings, but they must be willing to fight for them against modernist theologies, secular humanism, and the like" (George Marsden, "Defining American Fundamentalism, p. 23). . . Fundamentalists see themselves as militants. . . They are, in their words and often enough in their works, at war with the world (pp. 277-78).

For some this means total separation from the world, such as the Amish, or other communal groups. For others it means separation from what they perceive to the be the evil pleasures of the world, such as gambling, dancing, drinking alcohol, certain types of music, certain types of apparel, and so on. For still others it takes on an activist form whereby the world is engaged and attempts are made to change the world. This could be through evangelism (either mass meetings or personal "soul-winning"), and/or through political means, such as attempts to "legislate morality,"  post the Ten Commandments, reinstate prayer in schools, teach "scientific" creationism, and so on. Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority and Pat Robertson's Christian Coalition are examples of this type of fundamentalism. An even more extreme example is the Christian Reconstructionists, a Calvinist group (which would eschew the label Fundamentalist), whose stated goal is to enforce all of the OT laws including stoning homosexuals, adulterers, and so on.

Eller notes a third common thread of fundamentalism--it is enamored with the past. The past, when the fundamentals were formed and truly practiced, looms as a kind of golden age, an ideal and idealized way of life. Fundamentalisms thus emerge as one variation of the cultural nostalgias produced by the modern world--memories of a better, purer time (p. 279). Fundamentalism favors the past over the present. This is evidenced oftentimes in their choice of hymns over more modern worship music, in the use of the King James Bible over newer translations, and so on.

Here are some additional characteristics of a fundamentalist mentality:

• Intellectual and moral absolutism--"we alone have the truth."
• Obsession with who is and who is not a real "fundamentalist"
• The need to be "certain"--doesn't like ambiguity
• Submission to authority is a prime virtue--the written Scriptures as taught by the (male) leader
• Sense of being special--we are God's children, we have the truth and everyone else is lost
• Resistance to change--any change is seen as compromise which is almost always wrong

Probably the common thread through all of these is the suspicion of any modern ideas. Modernity, for fully understandable reasons, undermines all the old certainties; uncertainty is a condition that many people find very hard to bear; therefore, any movement (not only a religous one) that promises to provide or to renew certainty has a ready market (Peter Berger, The Desecularization of the World,  p. 7 cited by Eller,  p. 282). This is why conservative and authoritarian religions are growing. They provide a rock of certainty in a fast-changing world. They provide simple and divinely authoritative answers to the complexities of life. For certain people, this has a tremendous appeal.

As Eller concludes:

No religion is immune to fundamentalist tendencies, especially in a modern world of religous and cultural pluralism, rapid social change, and strong religious beliefs and sentiments. All fundamentalisms share a certain reactionary or defensive nature--even a certain militancy--although they also vary significantly not only between religions and between societies/states but also within religions. They are also, it is quite clear, no utterly unique to modern times but can be found in all times of change and threat--which are almost all times. They are ultimately one of the recurring forms of "revitalization movements" that arise in all societies (and not only in religious institutions) during moments of turmoil and (real or perceived) social decline. . . . The fact that these very circumstances are certain to continue and even intensify in the future suggests that fundamentalisms are likely to persist, and it also proves conclusively that "modernity" is not the death of religion but may rather give it new and energetic life" (p. 301).

So, one should not be surprised at the rise of fundamentalism in the 20th century. Since the last century brought the greatest amount of change to the world, it is only natural that there were a segment of society that resisted that change. As Eller points out, fundamentalism is a mentality and it is not unique to religions (although that is the most visible and potentially dangerous kind). As we move into the 21st century, one can only expect more rapid changes in society and therefore stronger resistance from fundamentalists.

Is Religion Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake?

Yesterday, I ran a post that included a video by Sam Harris on the dangers of religion. Is religion really dangerous or is it mostly harmless? Paul Thagard calls it Cognitive-Emotional Cheesecake. For most American Christians, that is probably an apt description. But too much cheesecake could also be dangerous to one's health.

On his blog, Thagard writes:

Religion is not innate, but rather a cultural development that we might call "cognitive-emotional cheesecake". I adapt this metaphor from Steven Pinker's claim that music is not innate, but rather amounts to "auditory cheesecake". A preference for cheesecake is not innate, since cheesecake did not exist during the early stages of human development. But preferences for sugar and fat are innate, and cheesecake cleverly combines them in an appealing way. Similarly, I conjecture, religion is appealing because it combines the psychological needs for explanations and emotional reassurance.

He believes man's belief in god(s) is not innate (as in the God Gene or a God-spot in the brain), but rather is due to it's pyschological and emotional appeal.

Another blog, Epiphenom: The Science of Religon and Non-Belief, has a recent post entitled, What's the evidence that anxiety and insecurity turns people to religion?. In the post, the author refers to several scientific studies that show the following increase a person's interest in religion:

1. Being reminded of death.

Ara Norenzayan has shown that subtly reminding people of death makes them say they are more religious. That's probably related to something called 'World View Defence' - when you remind people about death, they tend to grab onto their traditional, cultural values.
Research shows that having a positive view of the afterlife (i.e., heaven or paradise) seems to be good for one's mental health, whereas having a negative view (i.e., hell or annihilation) brings no psychological benefit.

2. Feeling loss of control.

Aaron Kay has shown that making people feel like they are not in control strengthens their belief in a controlling god - in other words, they compensate for lack of control in their own lives by believing in a god that has it all in hand.

3. Dealing with negative life-events.

Kurt Gray has shown that people invoke god as a moral agent to explain negative (but acausal) events. In other words, instead of saying that a major life event happened by chance, one prefers to think that it was caused by an intentional agent, usually god(s).

4. Feeling lonely.

Nicholas Epley has shown that making people feel lonely increases their belief in the supernatural. Many people turn to religion when they feel all alone in the world. You've got a friend in Jesus is very appealing.

5. Feeling anxious.

Researchers from the University of Toronto have shown that religious believers get less 'error-related negativity' (ERN) - a neurological response that's associated with conflict anxiety - when they make mistakes (Religion: Xanax of the People?). Perhaps, Marx was right when he called religion the "Opiate of the Masses." It definitely seems to relieve stress (especially prayer and meditation ).

6. Having financial hardship.

Matt Bradshaw and Chris Ellison have shown that religion can reduce the stress caused by financial hardship.

Andrew Clark found that European Protestants and Catholics are less fearful of unemployment than the non religious.

If these studies are correct, they reveal why religion is so appealing to people. It provides comfort and certainty in a cold, hard world. However, if the benefit provided is really a delusion, is it not dangerous ultimately? Does it not cause one to stop looking for real solutions to life's problems? I think so but it's hard to resist cheesecake.

What are the Functions of Religion?

As I indicated in prior posts, I have been fascinated by the writings of David Eller, an anthropologist. He is the author of two chapters in John Loftus', The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails. He is also the author of a college textbook entitled, Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate (Routledge, 2007). On pages 10 and 11, he gives six functions of religion:

1. Filling individual needs, especially psychological or emotional needs. Religion provides comfort, hope, perhaps love, definitely a sense of control, and relief from fear and despair.

2. Explanation, especially of origins or causes. Humans wonder why things are as they are. How did the world start? How did humans start? . . .

3. Source of rules and norms. . . . religion can provide the answer to where the traditions and laws of the society came from. . . . This is the charter function of religion: It acts as the the "charter" or guideline or authority by which we organize ourselves in particular ways and follow particular standards. Why do we practice monogamy? Because a religious being or precedent says to, or because the first humans did, etc. Why do other societies practice polygamy? Perhaps because their religious being or precedent (say, the ancestor or founder) said it or did it.

4. Source of "ultimate sanctions." Religion is, among other things, a means of social control. . . . a large part of religion is about what we should do, how we should live. . . . Human agents of social control cannot be everywhere and cannot see everything, and the rewards and punishments they can mete out are finite. . . .

5. Solution of immediate problems. . . . If we are sick or distressed, are the beings or forces angry with us? What should we do about it? If there is an important social or political decision to make (say, going to war), is there a way to discover the preferences or plans of the beings and forces--to "read their mind"? Can we ask them for favors, give them gifts, or do anything at all to influence their actions and intentions?

6. Fill "needs of society." . . . Certainly, not everything that a religion teaches or practices is good for every individual: Human sacrifice is not about fulfilling the needs of sacrificial victims. Nor does religion always soothe individual fears and anxieties; for instance, the belief in a punitive afterlife may cause people to fear more, and concerns about proper conduct of rituals can cause anxiety. However, belief in a punitive afterlife can cause people to obey norms, which is good for society. The primary need of society, beyond the needs of individuals, is integration, cohesion, and perpetuation, and religion can provide an important "glue" toward that end.

I think these "functions of religion," as Eller calls them, goes a long way in explaining why religion is so very important to people. These functions are not unique to any one particular religion but common to them all. They help us to understand why religion is intricately interwoven into our societies and why it is very difficult, if not impossible, to ever eradicate it.