Andrew’s post got me to thinking about inter-individual differences. I’ve had many religious friends who claim that if they didn’t believe in God they would happily rape & murder. Though frankly I have a tendency to keep my distance when people enthusiastically admit their predelicition for these acts if there wasn’t an eye-in-the-sky, the reality is that I don’t believe this is true (just as I don’t believe that many Christian evangelical men would participate in homosexual orgies if they’re religion didn’t preach against it). I accept that humans have a moral sense, and that religious and philosophical systems of morality & ethics only formalize, explicate and systematize what was already extant. But the more interesting issue than the problem of moral action is that of modeling the psychology of others. It is not uncommon for religious people to feel pity for non-religious people who do not have access to “teh awesome” that is God. This is especially ironic in the case of the large number of non-religious people who were religious at some point, and so presumably do not think that the state of religiosity is the bee’s knees.
There are extreme cases of those who have never been religious, in particular, never truly believed in God, and those who have always been religious, always believed in God. As someone in the former category I do occassionally ask atheists who did believe in God, or religious people who do believe in God, the details of what this was or is like. But what about those atheists who are in the category of wanting to believe, or not being able to? There are many of these as well who I have met.
I was thinking about this in reference to John McWhorters strange conversation with Michael Behe. It was strange because McWhorter, an avowed atheist, admitted that for him evolutionary theory could never plausibly explain the diversity of life. His visible enthusiasm for Behe’s ideas seem at least in part due to his consistent unsatisfaction with evolutionary theory. I have never shared this problem, I was raised in a Creationist household personally but evolution always just “made sense,” to the point where I recall being enraged when I mistakenly checked out a Creationist book on the origin of man from the library as an 8 year old (it was in the science section!). But I’m probably not typical. Several years ago the psychologist Paul Bloom, an atheist, reported his results which showed that children are innate Creationists in a piece in The Atlantic Monthly. Those who shed these beliefs do so because of what they are taught by parents and teachers, those who do not do not because of reinforcement from parents and religious leaders. In other words, to some extent Creationism may be a default setting, and lack of intellectual fulfillment may always lurk under the surface in regards to evolutionary biology. Most people do not have a deep understanding or comprehension of evolutionary biology, and so it may seem an abstruse and unsatisfying replacement for their intuitive understanding of the world. For an intellectual who has these gnawing intuitions, Intelligent Design is tailor-made, its packaging is definitely a cut above Young Earth Creationism, and its implicit answer fills the hole in one’s intuitive world-view.
What’s the resolution to this sort of problem? Until we can reprogram our intuitions there is no resolution; one could study evolutionary biology and so slowly allow its structure of axioms and inferences to bleed into one’s background assumptions, or, one could trust that natural scientists know what they’re doing even if those conclusions are somewhat at odds with your intuition. For intellectuals, who exist in a culture where reverence of achievement of the mind loom large, much of the acceptance of ideas which one might surprising at first (e.g., comparative advantage, quantum indeterminacy, simultaneity, etc.) has to be enforced through social pressure as opposed to personal intellectual inspection. In a world of specialized focii there is no time to be a jack-of-all-trades who can hold every model of the world in one’s mind. In the case of quantum theory it can be argued that one can never align intuition with the model and the empirical data; reality simply defies comprehension in some cases.
I knew a guy in college who joined Campus for Christ (this was around 1984). He told me he was into burglary and drug use before he “found god”. He was an engineering student when I met it.
It is quite likely that many people really do need the influence of an outside authority to “do the right thing” and live a proper life. It is also quite likely that these people may comprise a substantial percentage of the human race (a majority??).
I was a hard core “randian” libertarian when I lived in SoCal in the late 80’s (when we created transhumanism – you can read all about it in Ed Regis’s book “Great Mambo Chicken”). When I found myself as an expat in Asia in the early 90’s, I had to do some adjusting. Needless to say, American style libertarianism is quite orthogonal to anything in East Asia.
I would characterize myself as a “tribalist” libertarian transhumanist these days. I deal with others here in the U.S. no different than those I deal with in East and South East Asia.
As someone in the former category I do occassionally ask atheists who did believe in God, or religious people who do believe in God, the details of what this was or is like.
I can tell you what it was like for me. I was raised Christian as a kid, and believed pretty much everything I was taught, because that’s what most kids do. I had a pretty strong sense of right and wrong even as a kid, and I assumed that God was the source of morality. Because I thought that religion = morality, obeying my moral sense meant that I followed the teachings of Christianity closely. I paid attention in religion class, and to this day find myself in the odd position of occasionally explaining Christian history and teachings to my Christian relatives.
During adolescence, I gave up my beliefs. I started having serious doubts at 13, and gave it up completely by 16. I (with some help from Western Civilization) developed my own moral beliefs that didn’t depend on religion. However, I still believed in a Deist God simply because the laws of nature seemed just too perfect for the existence of life to be a coincidence. I lean toward atheism now, because now I am aware of the current trends in theoretical physics that are starting to explain the laws of nature themselves.
The question: Would I have still developed a interest in morality/philosophy/ethics if I had been not raised in a religion? I think so, but theists may disagree. Later, I’ll tell you how my kids turn out.
I was raised in no religion, by non-religious parents. As a young child, I think I might have had some vague belief in God, simply because I noticed that most of the people around me (exclusive of parents) did, or at least purported to believe in God, and because we had to recite the Lord’s Prayer in school. (Which never bothered me; I thought it was simply one of the things you had to do,like homework.) By age twelve, I had become an agnostic, because at that point I had studied enough science to realize that there was no empirical proof of the existence of a deity. I acquired my moral and ethical sense from my father, whom as far as I know believes in doing the right thing simply because…it’s the right thing to do. One isn’t cruel, deceitful, nor felonious, because it’s not ethical to be so. This wasn’t a lesson drummed into me; it was simply one I acquired from his example.
Apart from this, I do admit to a very slight envy of–and wonder at–people who do believe that there is a heaven and that they are assured of their place in it. It must be nice to believe that restitution in the aferlife will be made for every awful thing that happened to you on the mortal plane.
My opinion–as it has been since early adolescence–is that religion (Christianity in particular) was invented for two reasons: for crowd control purposes (threaten people with the boogyman to get them to behave) and to comfort and reassure the vast numbers of people who led wretched lives on earth that they would be eternally rewarded in heaven.
“lack of intellectual fulfillment”
Good post, but I think it’s more accurately descibed as lack of emotional fulfillment. Most of us have yearnings to really know The Truth. For some evolution explains (i.e “feels right”) it well; for others there has to be a creator. I suspect these predilections are 75-80% hardwired into our brains, and the reward centers they stimulate are deep in our evolutionary past – IOW at a gut level.
Good post, but I think it’s more accurately descibed as lack of emotional fulfillment.
sure, that’s probably closer. but there needs to be a word which matches gestalt “rightness.” that’s what i’m getting at. i don’t think it’s as much “i-wish-there-were-meaning-in-the-universe” (though people sometimes verbalize that way) than “there-just-seems-to-be-meaning.” who you gonna believe, your lying intuition or a scientist? 🙂
My experience is that most people do not want to know the truth. They want to believe – possess the conviction – be certain that – they know the truth.
Uncertainty, ambiguity, and doubt are painful for many people. As those are necessary stages that must be constantly re-entered if beliefs are to be kept approaching reality, most people will stick with any absurdity as long as they can cling to certainty that it’s right.
… to comfort and reassure the vast numbers of people who led wretched lives on earth that they would be eternally rewarded in heaven.
Karl Marx would be so proud.
Well, Art, I’ve never seen much difference between feudalism and Marxism, other than that feudalism had God.
I’ve had many religious friends who claim that if they didn’t believe in God they would happily rape & murder
Talk about rape and murder is pretty theoretical. The better question would be whether if they didn’t believe in God they would happily do whatever it took to screw a lot of chicks.
The better question would be whether if they didn’t believe in God they would happily do whatever it took to screw a lot of chicks.
a lot of them do. some versions of protestantism in particular allow for antinomian interpretations due to emphasis on faith alone.