Can The Belief Instinct Be Controlled?

That belief manifests as an instinct in humans has now been well documented. It is mainly in the field of evolutionary biology that much of the research into this instinct has been done, including by Dominic Johnson in his new book, 'God Is Watching You - How The Fear Of God Makes Us Human'. Of course, neither Johnson or other evolutionary biologists are touting an actual deity in which belief is invested, but rather a creation of the human brain that offers unique evolutionary advantages.

But religious belief, as in investing one's mental capital (to the extent of conviction) into a given religion's credos and dogmas, must not be confused with God belief.  The conflation of the two is what leads many to think religious belief is wired into the brain. It is not. Rather the brain's temporal lobes are predisposed to supernatural beliefs in general, whether devils, angels, ghosts or vampires. Johnson himself argues that belief in supernatural forces (and especially an "angry god") that can punish is a useful evolutionary adaptation in that it can steer adherents toward moral probity and societal cohesion, progress.

How come? Well, while rape for instance, might have enabled primitive, amoral tribes to spread their genes indiscriminately, once language and a god-fearing culture developed  the putative presence of an invisible and angry monitor would have prevented tribe members from incurring high social costs. Also, it would save the tribe social capital by having to decapitate so many offenders if the invisible censor in the members' brains was already eliminating potential vicious acts before they could manifest.

Johnson himself also argues that god-fearing societies with high moral senses would also be more likely to be established and grow given they'd more likely punish even minor offenders. For example, he argues that societies that punish cheaters more consistently and aggressively are more likely to prosper.  This can also explain why so many of these god fearin' societies have little tolerance for atheists, especially in holding high office.  Johnson quotes the 17th century English philosopher John Locke, for example:

"Those who deny the existence of the Deity are not to be tolerated at all. Promises, covenants and oaths, which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon or sanctity for an atheist"

Of course, this is all bare balderdash, with Locke merely invoking another form of the ignoratio elenchi fallacy. Generate a false premise, i.e. "atheists deny the existence of the deity" (which we don't, we merely withhold  investing belief in an unproven entity) and ergo we will have no truck for oaths, promises and covenants.  But this is also a non sequitur even if some hard core atheists did "deny" a deity, because the rejection of bonds and covenants would militate against their own self interest!

But again, there is no real deity only a concept of one, what we call a "God concept". If  religions or religionists claim they are advancing the SAME God but in different ways, then the critical thinker must point out the redundancy and superfluous nature of most. Since they will never agree on whose God meets that standard, then we must come back to the notion of relative and subjective God concepts.

The use of the term God-concept then recognizes implicitly that the nearly universal allegiance to some God belief or other is separate from the issue of any factual existence of a deity. In other words, the widespread use and appeal of God concepts does not mean that there is a genuine correspondent in reality. In fact, humanity's penchant for creating Gods via God-concepts is fully explainable by appeal to brain architecture and tendencies such as described by Michael Persinger in his monograph, The Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs, 1983.  As he noted therein:

"The God Experience is an artifact of transient changes in the temporal lobe”

But that doesn't mean it isn't evolutionarily useful. Persinger was merely among the first to recognize that human brains possess a hyperactive agency detector device, thereby seeing unseen "agents" - spirits, demons, angels, gods  and the like in natural phenomena as well as random happenings. (I.e. a person come through an airplane crash unscathed and insisted "God was protecting me!" - but somehow in his infinite power missed the dozens of other passengers.

As for natural phenomena, like solar eclipses, powerful lightning strikes, tsunamis etc., it was to be expected primitive humans - before the advent of modern science - would latch onto supernatural agents as the primary causes. They had no theoretical or rational wherewithal to come up with anything else. Still, as Johnson puts it:

"Learning religion is part of human nature. Learning science is against human nature"

Especially as much of modern science (e.g. quantum mechanics) goes directly against our dictates of common sense and simplistic versions of causality. Our basic nature is to use these as guiding standards but in QM and relativity, for example, they are useless.

As Johnson and many of his peers have noted, there is little harm in reacting to something that turned out not to exist but dismissing an unseen agent causing rustling in the thick brush might have dire consequences. Those primitives that ignored it might become meals for a saber tooth tiger.  So, no surprise that the benefits of survival would be mutated to a pattern of evolutionary selection in seeing agents everywhere.  I mean, hell, the instinct is even easily triggered in atheists. How many times have we walked down dark city streets late at night, and suddenly heard a noise behind us, then picked up our pace?  Maybe not a goblin, but could be a mugger.
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All of which discloses that perhaps there is something to be said for controlling the belief instinct in certain venues - whether of politics, our modern culture, or psychology. If then belief is allowed to run amuck, say whether in unhinged paranoia (such as circulated on Alex Jones'  "Info Wars"), or in accepting all Muslims are terrorists, or in supernatural cataclysms (e.g. the Armageddon fantasy) then we may pay the price. In the latter case , for example, if Ted Cruz seriously believes in Armageddon and that - if elected President- he has the power to bring it to fulfillment, we may all be in serious trouble.

But even in less serious or intense scenarios managing the belief instinct can prove valuable..

Peeling Back the Layers of the Religious Brain - What Do We Find?

 The physicalist or scientific Materialist has long sought to understand the religious brain, what makes it tick, why it obsesses over an invisible Being that can't be proven, and why and how it confects afterlives - some pretty nice (albeit boring), others downright nasty (usually devised for those who don't share the religious one's particular illusions, or for 'unbelievers').  We'd also like to know why some brains display a propensity to religiosity - including prayer, supernatural belief (including in afterlives) and religious-based morality, while many of us don't. Is there something wrong with our brains, or is it the religious brains that bear the defect?

Recent research has enabled remarkable insights into brains and what drives some toward religious belief, even mania, while others are 'turned off'. The research discloses the latter condition isn't the result of 'demons' or "Satan" afflicting the person, but rather particular brain chemicals, dynamics that differ in their manifestation between religious and non-religious.

Of particular interest in neurophysiological and neuropharmacological research is the brain region known as the OAA or the Orientation and Activation Area.  In his book, The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience[1], neuroscientist Andrew Newberg provides a putative basis for the divergence in religious acceptance, belief by showing how the brain’s orientation association area(OAA) determines the belief system for each of us. Since each human brain is different, and the OAA varies in cognitive function from brain to brain, then the beliefs we choose will reflect that biological brain disposition[2]. An atheist, for example, will manifest a very high reductive cognitive function, in addition to very low dopamine levels, according to Newberg. A Fundamentalist will typically display a very high causality cognitive function, overlaid by primitive fears issuing from the amygdala.  The hyper-religionist who believes s/he talks to God or actually knows the deity on an intimate basis exhibits fronto-temporal dementia, as first demonstrated by Dr. Patricia Bannister in Barbados decades ago.

While I served in Peace Corps in Barbados (1971-75), I had occasion to visit some of her patients at the Jenkins Mental Institution in Black Rock, St. Michael. All exhibited hyper-religious behavior, calling out "God" every waking hour and preaching non-stop to whoever might listen. All had to be put on largactyl to calm their feverish,  god-obsessed brains and this was interspersed with ECT. One could be assured, on the basis of her work, that this hyper faction of religious believer comprised a very small fraction, perhaps not even 0.5% of humanity.

Moving on, let's bear in mind that the object of attraction for all religious believers is not something actually known by them, but rather an artifact of their minds - constructed by their previous exposure to religious programming, their personal experiences, and the level of dopamine affecting their brain dynamics and especially the OAA.  We call this subjective approximation, which is in fact a regulative ideal, a "God concept".  We know that because all brains are limited in neural capacity, all God concepts must likewise be limited, as well as relative to each other. Hence, no one can be claimed as 'true' to the exclusion of all others.  One can call this the first principle of religious belief: what people profess belief in is not an actual entity they know, but rather their own brain-confected God concept.

 

Further,if the God concept is then internally confected by the brain, the personality of the believer can project its own prejudices, fears and hatreds onto its deity. In her book, A History of God, Karen Armstrong has observed[3]:

A personalized God can become a mere idol carved in our image. A projection of our limited needs, fears and desires. We just assume then that he loves what we love and hates what we hate, endorsing our prejudices instead of compelling us to transcend them.

 

Reinforcing this take,  the authors of Why God Won’t Go Away  note[4]:

The God Armstrong describes is the God of witch hunts, Inquisitions, Holy Wars, fundamentalist intolerances, and countless other forms of religious persecution- all carried out with the confident presumption of divine endorsement. The authority to commit such atrocities is rooted in the assumption, made by believers – that their God is the only God and their religion is the single, exclusive path to truth.

 

Again, the takeaway for the Materialist on the issue of God-concepts is that there is no single, exclusive path to truth for the religious brain. Every believer’s God is real to the extent its adherents believe it to be. This is what Newberg and D’Aquili’s’ findings show. For example, when one enters what the authors call the Absolute Unitary State there is only one God experience. Hence, Newberg and D'Aquili argue that one can assert a single, undifferentiated "ultimate Being"  transcends the specificJewish, Catholic, Fundamentalist, Muslim etc. brands.  The authors rightly conclude that the notion of exclusive truth is only apparent when incomplete brain states are attained.  These sort of incomplete brain transcendent states are more likely to occur in a person for whom absolutist attributes are accepted by his OAA brain region. The incompleteness of the brain state prefigures a weaker, more rudimentary God-concept.

If the God-concept is rudimentary, the probability is that its basis is furthest from any ontological truth.   The most rudimentary form of God-concept would be one that de facto interjects duality - manifesting in a "positive God" and "negative God". The God-Satan duality is, of course, the most well known example. Evidently, the dualist God-Satan believer never processes that if his 'good' God is truly "infinite" then it can't allow any operative domain for "Satan" (even on Earth).  The Satan-Lucifer aspect of his religious reality, in other words, delimits the purview of the infinite deity and effectively reduces it to another finite entity (equal to Satan, more or less). No surprise that most of those displaying pathological Satanic fear in Jenkins were precisely those for whom Satan was as real and as powerful as God - at least in their brains.

The truth hurdle for such believers, i.e. to liberate their brains to see the unrealistic duality of their God- concepts,  is then perhaps insurmountable. Likely more so because their thinking is so circumscribed that they refuse to even explore the ramifications of their narrow concepts.  Recall also, that the three primary attributes of a mind virus (as originally set out by Jacques Monod, in his Chance and Necessity) are: 1) performance value, 2) propagation value and 3) infectious value.

Performance value incorporates the most pronounced changes in the believer's brain, i.e. what difference does the meme or meme complex bring about in behaviors for the person who adopts it? For Christian Fundamentlists, the most major change is the intent to spread their "message" to others, e.g. pagans, unbelievers, in the conviction that must "save their souls".  Hence, if the fundie accepts this as his destiny, he will be much less likely to let loose of his Satan-Hell beliefs because he needs them to fulfill his performance, in saving souls. If he believes he can then instill enough fear- of Satan and Hell - he is convinced he can raise his performance value via soul-saving.

Propagation value indicates how far and wide  the particular religious meme is spread, and what means are employed to achieve this. (E.g. Islam in the past has invoked beheadings locally, and more generally "holy wars" or Jihad to force belief onto uncooperative populations.)

Infectious value embodies the ease with which other brains can be infected. Obviously, if a religious believer pushes his particular shtick and gains "converts" he will be reinforced by any success to continue doing this.  Since his brain has been so well infected owing to facility in the "conversion" game, he will be induced to spread the infection to others - so that they may also play the game. The infectious value is thereby determined by extraneous factors - it is only halted if the targets of conversion refuse to play the game. After enough decades of no converts, the infectious agents must finally conclude there is no practical value unless they accept their own insanity (defined according to Einstein as doing the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result).

 

For these reasons, it is likely that the God-concepts peculiar to any and all religious  fundamentalists (whether Jewish, Muslim or Christian)  are at the lowest end of the nuanced-God concept scale, more in the realm of a cartoon than credible deity.

Getting back to the brain dynamic and connections to religiosity, there are other things to bear in mind. First, as I noted in my book The Atheist Handbook to Modern Materialism, twin studies have shown that general spirituality and religious predisposition is fifty percent determined by genetics. That means that ab initio any given human has a 50 % probability of ending up a non-believer, all other things being equal (of course, they aren't,  including the fact one is usually born into a religion, it isn't freely chosen). It is also plausible there exists a "God gene". According to the book by the same name this gene codes for VMAT2, (vesicular monoamine transporter 2), a protein that wraps chemical messengers (monoamines) in vesicles for transport through the nerve fibers and is crucial to many brain functions.


Secondly, recurring research has shown a correlation between atheism, education, and IQ. There appears to be little doubt on this score that atheism is linked to intelligence, education, academic achievement, and a positive interest in natural science.  For example, James Allen Cheyne  (Skeptic Magazine, Vol. 15, No. 2, 2009) has referenced a compendium of research showing an inverse correlation between religious belief and intelligence as measured by IQ.

Cheyne observes (ibid.):

"Correlations between measures of intelligence and reported religious belief are remarkably consistent. Approximately 90% of all the studies ever conducted have reported that .....as intelligence (as measured by IQ) goes up, religious belief goes down."

This doesn't appear so fantastic a claim, based on the statistics he cites, when one realizes that just a moderate IQ (105-115) should be able to see that talking snakes (as in the "Garden of Eden"), guys living in whales bellies, and a man walking on water...are all preposterous. No genuinely intelligent person could buy into any of these any more than a smart kid would buy into Santa Claus.

 

In more depth, Cheyne makes reference to a particular type of thought he calls ACH thinking - or abstract, categorical and hypothetical - which appears to be mostly missing from believers' and which figures prominently on many IQ tests (such as the Raven's and Wechsler Similarities tests). Such tests feature many questions which construct an abstract hypothetical from a particular category, then ask the person to predict the consequences, if any.

 

For example, some ACH type questions might be:

1) If Venus and Earth were to exchange orbits, what would happen as a consequence to each planet to change it from its current conditions?

2) If a hollow equilateral pyramid is  "opened" up and spread out in two dimensions, how would it appear?
 

3) The Moon has 1/6 Earth's gravity. What might this fact have to do with the Moon having no atmosphere?

Why are believers missing this crucial component of thought which also, by the way, is essential for critical thinking? There are a number of reasons. For example, one may be that the honing of such skills was never possible, for example if they came from a home schooling environment. Another, more controversial, is that the very neural pathways that predispose them to belief or faith, are also the ones that inhibit predictive ACH conceptualizing.
 

My own hypothesis is that the stronger a believer's OAA (assessed by positron emission tomography)  the more neurological energy diverted there, and the less is available for ACH conceptualizing. Now, the task is to formulate practical ways this can be tested.  If such an anti-correlation is found it may explain why the most sincere and robust religious believers lack a capacity for ACH thought.

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[1] Newberg: The Spiritual Brain: Science and Religious Experience,  18.

[2] Newberg distinguishes causality-based cognitive functions, from reductive and holistically -based cognitive functions, and abstract cognitive functions.  Each brain will display a different bias toward manifesting each.

[3] Newberg and D’Aquili,: Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief, 163

[4] Ibid..

Pope Francis is A-OK: Conservative Catholics Need to Grow Up, Get A Life

How could any normal person with humanity's interests at stake and a yearning for peace possibly come down on Pope Francis I? It beggars the mind and imagination (the worst recesses) to think there are actually Catholics who deplore his actions and words and wonder if he is some kind of a "heretic" out to subvert Church teachings. I mean, hell, even atheists love this pope! Probably because he evinced a truly enlightened tolerance for them 5 months ago, when on delivering a homily at the Chapel of the Domus Santa Marta he said:  

"The Lord has redeemed all of us, all of us, with the Blood of Christ: all of us, not just Catholics. Everyone! 'Father, the atheists?' Even the atheists. Everyone! And this Blood makes us children of God of the first class. We are created children in the likeness of God and the Blood of Christ has redeemed us all. And we all have a duty to do good. And this commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. We must meet one another doing good. 'But I don't believe, Father, I am an atheist!' But do good: We will meet one another there."

But according to a Sunday New York Times piece ('Some Catholics Feel Left Out of Pope's Embrace' ) this exhibition of tolerance has evidently pissed off conservative Catholics (you know, the ones who think 'Opus Dei' is just grand, and yearn for old Latin masses and more saints). In this sense they're like a certain self-professed fundie who has roundly proclaimed he "ain't sharin' no afterlife with any atheists".  Seems the afterlife cosmos is just too damned small for these close-minded folks to allow "heathens" and  "believers" i.e. those who think they know what's up there (really) to co-exist in the same post-space-time continuum.

The part of Francis' address that really got to them was not generally published in the U.S. media - but was re-published in the NY Times article (p. 27):

"Everyone has his own idea of good and evil".

Which is, of course, true. A starving child or parent of that child will, for example, regard evil as the gross systemic inequality in a supposedly rich nation that permits such a travesty to occur. Yeshua, when he was alive, regarded evil as turning from one's fellow man and employing "rule-based" theology to exclude or demonize others. This is why he upbraided the Pharisees as "whited sepulchres."  They were so obsessed with their petty rules, laws and rule-making that they lost sight of the total spiritual vision, i.e. that a true God would embrace all humans, irrespective of beliefs, or unbelief.

As the Times piece observes: "The Pope has won affection worldwide for his humility and common touch."

But not among these regressive Catholics. The Times cites one conservative Catholic blogger named Steve Skojec - "the Vice President of a real estate firm in Virginia who has written for several conservative Catholic websites".

Skojec, according to the Times (ibid.) asks if Francis' statements are "explicitly heretical" - deciding they aren't ....quite, at least not yet. But he responds in an afterthought:

"Are they dangerously close? Absolutely! What kind of Christian tells an atheist he has no intention to convert him? That should disturb Catholics everywhere!"

Actually, no. Only seriously deluded Catholics would be so disturbed. Catholics who really think they have a lock on ultimate truth and know "God" to a tee. But as I noted in my recent book Beyond Atheism, Beyond God, the most people with limited brains and neural capacity can do is formulate relative, subjective God concepts. This means apart from not being any of their damned business to meddle in others' lives,  they lack the epistemological certainty to be able to justify trying to  "convert" anyone. This is because their god beliefs are as relative, limited and subjective as any other believer's and their neural capacity is no greater than an unbeliever's!

This further supports the contention of philosopher Joseph Campbell[1] to the effect that:  

‘God’ is an ambiguous word in our language because it appears to refer to something that is known..

The problem is people bandy the symbol about as if they have intimate knowledge of what it means, or the real entity behind it. But all they have, ultimately, is a symbol reflecting their own personal predilections, acquired beliefs, interpretations of dogmas and experience. But it was for precisely this reason that French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion’s advised of only writing “God”  with a strikethrough, e.g. GOD. Thereby to indicate no one has the capacity to describe, grasp, conceptualize or manipulate the underlying entity. In effect, as author James Byrne observes:  “to think GOD as unthinkable is to reject the idolatry of the God of onto-theology. “

 If  this entity is de-conceptualized, then it can’t be debated, even by the most ardent or determined atheist.  Similarly, no one possesses the knowledge, spiritual advantage or superior moral position to “convert” any other person to what he accepts or thinks is a "one true"  God concept. Because there is no "one true God" precisely because you're only dealing with a limited concept, not the actual entity.

 

My point here is that no one, of ANY religion, is in such a superior epistemological position that he can assert his religion is the “one true one”.  This also means he’s in no position to “convert” anyone to his religion.  Is there any advantage to be gained by acknowledging that a God-concept is what people are really talking about when they use the noun “God”? I think there is.  For one thing, the acknowledged use of the term God-concept reinforces an attitude of cautious forbearance.  The implicit relativism acts as a restraint, backing the believer away from a militant stance of absolutism. Ideally, this should dispose him or her to be more tolerant - tolerant toward unbelievers and tolerant toward those of different religions.

 

What is the alternative, after all? It is that each monotheistic religion, whether Islam, or Evangelical Protestantism or Catholicism will be spurred to condemn those not numbered in its fold. Each then prescribes "hellfire" for the outliers or unbelievers, and sows the seeds for incessant strife in this world as well as spiritual apartheid in the next.

 

 

But will a guy like Stevie Skojec be able to process all of this? Probably not. Because his absolutist stance admits of no questioning, or any smidgeon of tolerance for others'. In other words, like the most extreme Islamist extremists, he won't be satisfied until all "unbelievers" are "converted" or....if we carry his reasoning forward and extrapolate it to its brutal conclusion: put to the sword. Because, there is no other way, and none of us (atheists) are going to convert willingly nor are we going to listen to any authoritarian yap from the likes of his ilk.

 

 

All of which reinforces the point that when people use the word G-o-d they’re not talking or writing about an actual entity but a limited construct or approximate mental ideation configured as a noun, which we call a God concept. Further, because it’s limited by content and comprehension, i.e. by finite minds with finite intelligence which can’t grasp all aspects, then all such concepts must be relative and subjective. This means that the Jewish concept of Yahweh, the Muslim concept of Allah, the Hindu concept of Brahmin and the Christian concept of the Trinity all stand in the same epistemological relation.  From an informational point of view, none can be selected as “true” to the exclusion of the others.

 

 

If indeed Catholics, including the conservative faction, yearn for a better world, there is only one way and that's to allow for inevitable differences in epistemological,  belief (or unbelief) approaches that reflect human cultural, geographical and experiential differences. TO presume instead that there is only one "right" way and by god you are going to demand it, is to offer a prescription for endless war, endless strife and endless hate.

 

 

You really, really want that? Didn't think so! 
 

Everyone with a grain of sense, including conservative Catholics like Steve Skojec, ought to be applauding Francis' open statements of tolerance, instead of denigrating them as one step removed from what they believe is "heretical".

 

 

 

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[1] Campbell.: The Power of Myth, 56