The Christian Delusion: Chapter Two--Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science

Continuing my review of The Christian Delusion, today I explore chapter two: "Christian Belief through the Lens of Cognitive Science," by Dr. Valerie Tarico. Valerie is a psychologist, author and former evangelical Christian. She is a graduate of Wheaton College (Billy Graham's alma mater)  and the author of an interesting book entitled: The Dark Side: How Evangelical Teachings Corrupt Love and Truth.  She has a new book, which I am anxiously anticipating,  coming out in July, called: Trusting Doubt: A Former Evangelical Looks at Old Beliefs in a New Light.  She is currently on a trip throughout Africa and India. You can read about it on her blog.

In The Christian Delusion, Valerie explores what we have learned from neuroscience about faith. She writes:

The more we learn about the hardware and operating systems of the human brain--the more we understand about human information processing--the more we glean bits of insight  into the religious mind. For example:

• We humans are not rational about anything, let alone religion.
• Certainty is a feeling, not proof of knowing. It can fail to materialize even when evidence is enormous, and can manifest itself independently of any real knowledge.
• The structure of thought itself predisposes us to religious thinking. Given how our minds work, certain kinds of religious beliefs are likely and others are impossible.
• The "born again" experience is a natural phenomenon. It is triggered by specific social and emotional factors, which can occur in both religious and secular settings (p. 48).
  

The Christian Delusion: Chapter One--The Cultures of Christianity

Today, I begin my trek through The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails (ed. John W. Loftus). In my overview yesterday, I indicated that in my opinion this is the single best volume available today to debunk evangelical Christianity.

The first chapter is by Dr. David Eller, Professor of Anthropology at The Community College of Denver in Colorado. He is the author of six books: Cultural Anthropology: Global Forces, Local Lives ; Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate;  Violence and Culture: A Cross-Cultural and Interdisciplinary Approach; Natural Atheism; From Culture to Ethnicity to Conflict: An Anthropological Perspective on Ethnic Conflict ; and Atheism Advanced: Further Thoughts of a Freethinker.

In the chapter entitled, "The Culture of Christianities" (pp. 25-46), Eller begins by saying: One of the great mysteries is why, despite the best arguments against it, religion survives . His answer is that religions, including Christianity, survive because they are integrally interwoven into the culture. What is culture?

It is the label anthropologists give to the structured customs and underlying worldview assumptions by which people govern their lives. Culture is a people's way of life, their design for living, their way of coping with their biological, physical, and social environment. It consists of learned, patterned assumptions, concepts and behaviors, plus the resulting artifacts (Charles Kraft cited by Eller, p. 27).

Eller writes:

Christianity, like any religion, is a part of culture. It is learned and shared, and it is integrated with the other systems of the culture, including its economics, its kinship, and its politics (p. 28). It organizes the lives and experiences of its followers--literally provides the terms in and through which they live and experience--and is seldom questioned by them (p. 29). He continues: the United States and the wider Western world are heavily saturated with Christianity throughout their many large and small cultural arrangements. Whether or not they know it--and it is more insidious if they do not know it--non-Christians living in Christian-dominated societies live a life permeated with Christian assumptions and premises. Christian and non-Christian alike are literally immersed in Christian cultural waters, and like fish they take for granted the water they swim in (p. 33).

Eller (pp. 33-38) shows that religion, and specifically Christianity in the United States, becomes intertwined into every aspect of life--vocabulary in the language, important life events such as births, deaths, and marriages, foods, children's names, clothing, institutions, holidays, and so on. It is literally part of almost every aspect of daily life.

Eller also points out that culture is a two-way street:

culture adapts to and is suffused with religion, but religion also adapts to and is suffused with culture (emphasis his). In other words, not only does religion replicate itself through the many parts of culture, but culture replicates itself through the religion, recasting a religion like Christianity in the culture's own image. . . . Since its inception, Christianity has accommodated itself to its cultural surroundings--and necessarily so, since a religion that is incompatible with its cultural context would be unintelligible and therefore unappealing to the people of that society. The consequence is that there is no such thing as a single, unified, global Christianity but instead many, different, local "Christianities," which often do not recognize each other, accept each other, or even comprehend each other (p. 39).

Christianity has been evolving from the beginning. As Eller points out, Christianity itself began as a modification and reinterpretation of Judaism. As it spread out through the Hellenistic world, it evolved further. When it became the official religion of the Roman empire more assimilations and modifications took place. As it has moved into other parts of the world, it has adapted itself to those cultures. American Christianity is thus not unique in its history of innovation, diffusion, loss, reinterpretatiion, syncretism, and schism . . . (p. 41). The freedom of religion in the United States has resulted in even greater innovation as multiple new sects of Christianity have been born (e.g., Mormonism, Seventh Day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on). Christianity has shown a nearly infinite capacity to multiply and morph to fit its environment, it can accommodate or integrate almost any influence (p. 42). It has manifested itself in such diverse forms as the Ku Klux Klan and the Civil Rights Movement, the Prosperity Gospel and the Amish. Eller says there as many as 38,000 sects and denominations of Christianity in the world. Thus, there is really no such thing as Christianity but rather "Christianities."

Will the Christian underpinnings ever be removed from American or Western culture? Possibly, but it will be a very long and slow process. Its more likely that Christianity will keep reinventing itself to accommodate the changes within culture.

Why can't people see the fallacies involved in their religion and forsake them? Eller's answer is that

Like a pair of glasses, humans see with culture, but they do not usually see culture. Computers do not know they are running a program, they simply follow the instructions. Seeing your glasses, recognizing your program, is a rare thing, acheived by few individuals in even fewer societies. . . . culture provides us with a set of "frames" or "scenarios" with familiar and predictable patterns and outcomes. These frames or scenarios get the average person through the average life with little uncertainty . . . (p. 44).

Best Single Volume Today Exposing the Fallacies of Evangelical Christianity

The Christian Delusion: Why Faith Fails is hot off the press. This new book is an anthology containing 15 chapters written by 9 scholars, most of which were at one time conservative Christians. It surveys the problems with Christianity from a number of different angles--sociological, psychological, scientific, historical, and biblical. It is probably the single best volume available today to debunk evangelical Christianity. It brings together a variety of arguments into one work, that prior to its publication, would have required one to sift through dozens of books to find them. While there are some areas that still could be covered, for example, the immoral and illogical nature of the atonement (a topic near to my heart), nevertheless, it covers most of the bases.

Chapter One is written by anthropologist David Eller and discusses how Christianity is a phenomena that can be understood purely on cultural and sociological grounds.

Chapter Two is by psychologist Valerie Tarico who examines the concept of belief (or faith) as it is presently understood by neurologists and shows that it is rarely based on evidence or arguments.

Chapter Three is by pharmacist Jason Long who deals with how religious ideas develop in people and how they hold on to them regardless of the evidence.

Chapter Four is by former Pastor and Christian apologist John Loftus who explains his Outsider Test for Faith. He invites people to "step outside" of their belief system and evaluate their religion in the same way they would evaluate a religion that they do not hold.

Chapter Five is by librarian Ed Babinski who has studied Young Earth Creationism extensively. He clearly presents the pre-scientific understanding of the cosmos as held by biblical writers and shows that it is impossible to reconcile that understanding with what is currently known in science.

Chapter Six is by author (The Rejection of Pascal’s Wager: A Skeptic’s Guide to the Bible and the Historical Jesus) Paul Tobin who shows that the historical criticism of the Bible reveals that it contains errors, inconsistencies, myths, legends, and forgeries.

Chapter Seven has John Loftus returning to demonstrate how the Bible fails to communicate clearly. He shows how interpretational conflicts over the meaning of Scripture has led to millions of deaths as well as untold suffering through the ages. He argues that one would expect an omniscient God to be able to communicate his will in a much better fashion.

Chapter Eight is by biblical scholar Hector Avalos and discusses why the God of the Old Testament is a cruel and monstrous tyrant in spite of attempts by Christian apologists to justify him.

Chapter Nine is my favorite chapter in the book. In it John Loftus returns to lay out the problem of animal suffering and examine 8 different ways Christians have tried to reconcile that suffering with a good God. He shows convincingly that each
Christian answer fails and that there is no reconciliation possible.

Chapter Ten is by NT scholar Robert Price who, in his own unique and sarcastic way, demolishes the attempts by evangelicals to wiggle out of the implications of biblical criticism.

Chapter Eleven is by historian Richard Carrier who applies the Outsider Test of Faith to the "historical evidence" put forward by Christian apologists for the resurrection. He demonstrates conclusively that if one treats the NT as historians treat every other ancient document, the teaching that Jesus of Nazareth rose from the dead is untenable.

Chapter Twelve brings John Loftus back again to show that Jesus of Nazareth is but one in a long list of failed apocalyptic prophets. He demonstrates that Jesus taught the world would end in the lifetime of the disciples and that all of the first century believers including Paul thought Jesus would return at any moment. He goes on to show how Christians have had to rethink their eschatological ideas in light of the failure of Jesus to return.

Chapter Thirteen is a repeat performance by David Eller in which he explodes a commonly held myth that morality must be based on a divine being. He proves that morality is merely an expression of one's culture.

Chapter Fourteen has Hector Avalos returning to deal with the argument put forward by Christians that the holocaust and the other atrocities committed by Adolph Hitler were a result of Darwinian or atheistic ideology. He shows that instead Hitler's motivating factors were actually the example of the Roman Catholic Church and the teaching of Martin Luther about the Jews.

Chapter Fifteen is another essay by Richard Carrier in which he shows the absurdity of the Christian claim that modern science is based upon the precepts of the Christian worldview.

Once again, this is an excellent volume and I highly recommend it to anyone who is willing to examine the evidence and think seriously about the Christian faith. I am sure many Christians will be afraid to read it or even advised by their leaders not to read it. But as Socrates is reported to have said: "The unexamined life is not worth living."

Over the course of the next few weeks, I will be giving an indepth analysis of each chapter of this impressive volume.

The Religious Condition by Jason Long

Dr. Jason Long, Pharm.D., a former Christian, has written perhaps the best analysis and refutation of evangelical Christianity for laymen that is available today. The book, The Religious Condition, is Long's second volume. His first work, Biblical Nonsense, dealt more specifically with the Biblical text demonstrating the problems associated with thinking its the Word of God.

As a former Christian myself, I find that Long understands precisely how Christians think and how they argue. He knows this because he was one himself. For this reason, I think Long's book is more effective than some of the "new atheist" authors (i.e., Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, etc.). Since the "new atheists" are writing as outsiders to the faith, they don't have the same insights into Christianity that a former devout believer such as Long. Some will wave off Long's work because he is not a "biblical scholar" and does not quote all the current scholarship in the field. But Long is writing as an educated laymen who has experienced the indoctrination of Christianity and was able to free himself from it through logical and rational analysis.

Long begins by showing how people typically come to believe in their religion. They are indoctrinated into it by their parents and/or the culture in which they are reared. He cites the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 which shows that 84% of Americans belong to the same religion as their parents (p. 8). This is not surprising as parents are the most important formative element in a child's view of the world.

For those who claim that they chose Christianity on their own, Long says:

Individuals who claim to have made a rational, uninfluenced decision to join Christianity seem oblivious to how likely it was that they would walk right into the church. If that society had been propagating an Islamic viewpoint, the odds are that it would be right into the mosque (p. 9).

Many people do not seem to realize how the beliefs of the society around them shape their own beliefs. Man is a social creature and needs to "fit in" to the society and culture in which he lives. This influences most people to adopt the religious ideas that are dominant in their society.

After showing why many people have the religious beliefs they do (i.e., societal conditioning and indoctrination), Long explains why people do not give up these beliefs in spite of the evidence against them. He cites the psychological phenomena of "confirmation bias" and "cognitive dissonance." Long gives many examples of these two phenomena (pp. 21-52).

Confirmation bias involves assuming the truth of one's beliefs and then working backwards to confirm it. This is clearly seen in virtually every Christian apologist's writings. Long argues:

In short, either religious followers ignore evidence that is contradictory to their beliefs, or they superficially rationalize it. They interpret according to their preconceived notions and biases. When a skeptic points out a likely error, the Christian begins with the premise that it is not an error and then proceeds to defend by any means necessary what he is already convinced is the truth (p. 28).

When confirmation bias does not resolve the problem, cognitive dissonance kicks in. Cognitive dissonance tends to either minimize the problem or try to divert attention away from the problem by emphasizing the many good points of the belief. (See my previous post, for examples of this kind of thinking).

In the next part of his treatise (pp, 53-160), Long gives examples of this bias and dissonance in the arguments of Christians as it relates to science and the Bible, philosophical "proofs" for God, and other issues. Christian apologists have "answers" to all the problems but the question is, are these answers really plausible or are they merely theoretically possible?

In the last section of his book (pp. 161-245), Long addresses many of the objections he received from Christians concerning his first book, Biblical Nonsense. Long deals with these honestly and fairly and conclusively shows how bankrupt the Christian's arguments really are. This part of the book will be extremely helpful to skeptics who encounter these "Christian answers" on a regular basis.

I highly recommend this book to believers and non-believers alike. For believers, it will help them understand how they came to believe what they do and why it is so difficult to honestly question those beliefs. For non-believers, it will give insight into how conservative Christians think and the best ways to argue against their beliefs.

As I mentioned earlier, no one can refute a position better than someone who used to hold that position.

The Movie--The Invention of Lying

I have been preoccupied with some family matters and have not been able to post much in the last couple of months. Hopefully, I will be back to daily posting now.

Last night I watched the movie The Invention of Lying starring Ricky Gervais. For a brief synopsis of the movie see this link.

The movie is set in a world where no one has ever lied. One day Gervais character, Mark Bellison, realizes that he can lie. He is the only person who can. As his mother lay dying, she is very scared and depressed about the idea that after death there is "eternal nothingness". Mark in an attempt to make his mother feel better tells her that there is paradise waiting for her after death in which she will be together with all of her loved ones for eternity.

When word gets out that Mark Bellison knows what happens to you after death, a huge crowd of people assemble on his front lawn to find out more. He comes out and addresses them. He tells them there is a "man in the sky" who controls everything. This man will take us to heaven when we die as long as we don't commit more than 3 bad things in our lives. The people are very happy to find out that there is life after death.

Now, this movie is pretty lame and certainly not worth the cost of rental, however, it does provide some interesting insights into the religious cravings of mankind.

I think it illustrates why religion is so popular with people.

1. People desperately want to believe that there is something after death. They want to believe that they will be reunited with their loved ones.

2. People want to believe that there is some purpose in life.

3. People want to believe that there is someone in control of this universe and that this someone will eventually make all wrongs right.

For these reasons, religions are very popular and will probably never cease to exist.