04 Sep 10 Why has religion been so successful?
Effectively all large societies have been religious. But religions haven’t been successful because they’re true: practically all religions are mutually contradictory, so there must be another reason to explain their success. One very good reason—probably the most fundamental one—is that religions have been very useful in promoting social cooperation. This is the basic prerequisite for civil society and economic progress.
Securing cooperation is the fundamental challenge in establishing a civil society. It would be nice if we could all just get along, but we all have incentives to cheat and steal on occasion. These incentives become magnified as the society grows and relations become more anonymous, since it becomes more and more difficult to know whether other people are trustworthy. There are various ways to solve this problem, but if left unchecked these incentives would lead to social chaos.
Religion is a particularly effective, if crude, method of securing cooperation. In general, religions lay out moral rules (which often happen to be social ones) and set up strong incentives to follow them. Eternal life in heaven is an infinitely great reward for being a cooperator; eternal damnation in hell is an infinitely great punishment for being a cheater; and the judge is omniscient, so it’s impossible to “get away” with anything. Societies with these religions would have a competitive advantage: greater cooperation means more trade and more production—in a word, prosperity. These societies would grow and spread—by conquest or consent—until they came to dominate. So religion is a hack that gets people to behave in large, anonymous societies.
On the individual level, there are strong incentives to portray oneself as a believer. Being genuinely religious makes you more trustworthy, as you can be counted on to cooperate and not cheat. Displaying (advertising) your religiosity to others is a signal of this trustworthiness, it creates a good reputation. Thus, being religious has material incentives: more people to trade and cooperate with. Once a religion gains a foothold, the incentive would be for everyone to jump aboard.
Yet I don’t think that religion could get a foothold with these incentives alone. Religion—a cultural universal—fundamentally rests on our psychological willingness to believe in the supernatural. Evolutionary psychology plays a large role. So religion is a particularly infectious meme that exploits an innate human irrationality and produces the byproduct of social cooperation, creating strong incentives to be religious.
This explains so much about religious behavior. Why do the religious often ask what keeps atheists from stealing and murdering? Because that’s supposed to be the function of religion. (Note that this question is self-contradictory: on one hand, it tries to argue that only religion can be the source of morality, while on the other hand, it presupposes that theft and murder are inherently wrong—regardless of what god says.) Why are the religious so hostile towards atheists, and why are they less hostile to believers in contradicting gods? Because genuine belief in any type of divine justice makes one more trustworthy; atheism makes one an unconstrained danger. Why do people invest so much time and money in religious affairs? To signal to others that they’re believers and therefore trustworthy. Why is questioning religion taboo? To avoid undermining the social order.
But there’s plenty of hope for truth. As other institutions replace religion in enabling social cooperation, religion becomes redundant and people can freely satisfy their intellects without undermining the social order. Religion is supported by mass belief and cultural momentum. It has already started to come undone, and will only unravel faster as mass support shrinks.
20 May 10 Religion: a virus of the mind
There is a striking parallel between belief in a personal god and belief in Santa. As Richard Dawkins argues, these beliefs (or memes) are viruses of the mind. The two beliefs are of the same type, differing only in particulars:
- Both beliefs infect young minds incapable of critical thought and lacking the knowledge to properly judge the validity of those beliefs.
- The disinfection process is identical for most people: critical thinking develops and knowledge about reality increases until the superstition is seen for what it is.
- Both depend on mass support: children believe in Santa because everyone else appears to. But when the appearance of mass support vanishes as children get older, the belief gets wiped out. If someone maintained the belief into adulthood, he would be considered mentally immature. Likewise, religions get their strength from mass support. The religion of culture A is considered ridiculous by those of culture B—culture B is highly resistant to religion A simply because mass support is missing. Religious belief is considered childish and ridiculous where it is rare.
Growing up involves learning about reality and discarding falsehoods. Everybody drops the superstitions that don’t have mass support among adults. But many who were infected by religion as young children aren’t able to shake the virus as adults—because the mass support among adults prevents it from being exposed as a superstition. They go on to spread the virus to their children—that’s how the virus propagates itself.
It’s telling that nearly all religious people were indoctrinated into their particular religion as children. Those who are infected as adults are usually of questionable psychological integrity, or are simply unaware of the scientific evidence. After all, atheism correlates with intelligence and education. Consider this: a person may have complete faith in religion A, but had they grown up in a different culture they would have complete faith in religion B, even though the two are mutually contradictory. It comes down to sheer luck whether one is born at the right time and place to be infected with the ‘correct’ religion, although such a person will always believe that his is the ‘correct’ religion, while the other is false. Take a moment and think through the implications of this.
Now, religious people are not all stupid. In fact, many are very smart. For example, several Mises Institute scholars are religious, despite being very sharp thinkers in economics. This strikes me as a huge disconnect, a double standard—intellectual dishonesty, but probably not intentional. It’s as though religious belief is kept in its own compartment in the mind, sealed off from the rigors of evidence and logic that rule everywhere else. I find it absurd that one can be committed to the high standards of logic and evidence while also believing the superstitions of Bronze Age tribesmen.
Belief in a personal god is childish, just like belief in Santa. Both beliefs have zero scientific evidence to support them, and are opposed by overwhelming evidence
Religion is an affront to reason and human dignity. It represents a complete rejection of reason and it lowers humans to the level of pawns in some divine game. Religion spreads by infecting innocent children, before they can critically assess what they’re being taught. Leave the children alone and let them decide what they’ll believe when they grow up. But if that were done, I reckon that religion would completely evaporate in a few generations.
