God and the Ivory Tower

[Anonymous]

I just came across this article, written by a friend of a friend, and found some great insights that may be helpful to others:

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/08/06/god_and_the_ivory_tower?page=full

“Cross-cultural studies pioneered by anthropologist Pascal Boyer show that these miraculous features — talking bushes, horses that leap into the sky — make lasting impressions on people and thereby increase the likelihood that they will be passed down to the next generation. Implausibility also facilitates cultural transmission in a more subtle manner — fostering adaptability of religious beliefs by opening the door to multiple interpretations (as with metaphors or weekly sermons).

And the greater the investment in outlandishness, the better. This is because adherence to apparently absurd beliefs means incurring costs — surviving without electricity, for example, if you are Amish — which help identify members who are committed to the survival of a group and cannot be lured away. The ease of identifying true believers, in turn, builds trust and galvanizes group solidarity for common defense. “

Very useful in helping me to understand why things in our own religion that are not logically defensible to me as an individual, actually increase the long-term viability of a religion as a whole. The last paragraph quoted also speaks to why we have short hair cuts (for men), white shirts and ties, and so many outwardly visible markers, aka ‘Mormon Smile’ as an example, of ‘true believers’.

[Anonymous]

SD, thanks for the link.

I really think this helps present one view of why things can be non-literal and still true. It sounds very much like Joseph Campbell’s thoughts on the powers in myths that can benefit us. The church can galvanize and provide messages of hope for people going through struggles. And over time, people want certainty so much that the myths become accepted as facts. And that still helps some people.

Accept them as myths or accept them as facts, either way they are good stories that can benefit our lives, families, and social groups.

[Anonymous]

silentstruggle wrote:

I just came across this article:

“…Implausibility also facilitates cultural transmission in a more subtle manner — fostering adaptability of religious beliefs by opening the door to multiple interpretations…And the greater the investment in outlandishness, the better. This is because adherence to apparently absurd beliefs means incurring costs — surviving without electricity, for example, if you are Amish — which help identify members who are committed to the survival of a group and cannot be lured away. The ease of identifying true believers, in turn, builds trust and galvanizes group solidarity for common defense. “

Very useful in helping me to understand why things in our own religion that are not logically defensible to me as an individual, actually increase the long-term viability of a religion as a whole. The last paragraph quoted also speaks to why we have short hair cuts (for men), white shirts and ties, and so many outwardly visible markers, aka ‘Mormon Smile’ as an example, of ‘true believers’.

It sounds like this article is basically trying to explain the surprising trend (to many non-religious people and liberal Christians) of continued and even increasing popularity of hard-line conservative religious groups like Islamic and Evangelical Christian fundamentalists. I agree with the general idea that scientists would do well to try to understand religion and why it is still so popular better rather than quickly dismissing it as unnecessary and trying to argue it out of existence the way some have done because it’s definitely not going away any time soon and as we have seen some religious groups actually thrive on perceived persecution because it fires up many of their followers and makes them extremely defensive.

However, I don’t agree with the claim that, “the greater the investment in outlandishness, the better. This is because adherence to apparently absurd beliefs means incurring costs.” To me it looks like fundamentalism is relatively popular in spite of any absurdity, not because of it. What it provides is simple clear-cut answers that many people can easily rally around even if some of these answers cannot stand up to honest and objective scrutiny very well. Once people are already emotionally invested in belonging to a group and identifying with it and actively supporting its doctrines it can be increasingly difficult to look at the group and its beliefs the same way outsiders typically would. Whatever fundamentalists lack in terms of reasonable doctrines it seems like they often more than make up for with sheer zeal.

I see the same basic thing with communism where rebels were willing to sacrifice almost anything in the name of their cause but at the same time the basic ideals behind it don’t necessarily sound completely absurd or unusual to me on the surface. The main difference I see is that with secular ideologies it looks like it is easier for insiders to finally recognize when things are not really working out as planned but by that time significant damage could have already been done. My guess is that the ideal religion to thrive long-term would actually have a good balance of strong conviction and commitment of the leaders and followers to defend and advance their cause and mostly positive or harmless doctrines that wouldn’t require denial or rejection of generally accepted facts because any questionable beliefs would be unfalsifiable so that no central claims would be made that could easily be proven wrong or severely discredited by critics.

Another major factor in the continued popularity of religion not mentioned by this article is that it looks like people are fairly likely to believe what their parents and/or other people around them believe and the conversion of American Christians to Islam or European atheists to Christianity is not nearly as likely as children born and raised within a specific religious tradition continuing to accept the same general religious beliefs they are already familiar with. So the primary reason there are a billion Catholics worldwide actually has more to do with general population growth and how many Catholics there already were in previous generations than the relative merits of their doctrines or the level of commitment of the average Catholic.

That’s the main reason I don’t think it really makes that much sense for the Church to be quite so demanding and inflexible and also to make so many questionable claims and try to defend them all at the same time because it currently depends so much on entire families supporting the Church long enough to successfully pass the religious tradition on to their children and now the average family is smaller than we used to see before. So the combination of this trend of fewer children per family and the Church stubbornly maintaining so many common deal-breakers doesn’t necessarily bode well for what the Church will look like 50-100 years from now if nothing changes.

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