The religious mind

We recently filled a rainy afternoon by digging out an old box of video tapes and showing our kids some of the stuff we used to get up to before they arrived. It was really surprising how interesting they found this, and really interesting trying to answer my young daughters question of "but where am I" posed at every key moment throughout the screening. We covered all kind of things on the tapes, holidays, birthdays, parties and special events we also had some footage of the action sports that we used to engage in, the kids were particularly interested in watching us skiing and diving, I even found some old shots of me paragliding and rock climbing. I think they found it really odd that their mum and dad could do such seemingly adventurous things in places that they have, so far in their short lives only read about, such as Africa, Asia and Australia. The thought went through my mind about how happy we were, what fun we had, love we shared and how optimistic we were for the future, looking at the pictures I can remember thinking at the time that things couldn't possibly get better, but the truth is they did, in ways we could not have even imagined back then.

Anyway, to get onto the main topic of this post, as we were all watching and laughing at the images together it got me thinking about the nature of the religious mind, several analogies popped into my head prompted by recent interactions with theists which were catalysed by the emotional reactions of the children and the images on the screen. I was reminded of a frequently voiced opinion that a lot of religious people seem to have which is that Atheists must be gloomy, selfish and without love, hope or purpose. Interestingly these are exactly the things that most religious people "claim" to get from their faith, and so it would probably be fair to conclude that not having such things must represent some of their deepest fears, is this some kind of deluded projection or is there more to it. There were two questions on my mind; firstly how do religious people justify these kinds of thoughts, what makes them believe they are true when to everyone else they are demonstrably false and secondly in what ways is the religious mind like the mind of a child.

Firstly religious people almost by definition have certain ways of thinking about the world that have been indoctrinated into them as small children; for example the idea that "faith" is a virtue, that is to say believing things without evidence is a good idea. Also, the idea that faith is reinforced by authority and tradition, for example if your pastor (authority) tells you something is true and your holy book (tradition) says its true then chances are you don't question it, to do so would be unfaithful, a perfectly circular system. Extending this idea into the real world it is plain to see that this mode of thought would have a strong propensity to fall foul of straw-man arguments, for example if the preacher says the Bible says that Atheists are evil then that's obviously what they are, the recipients of this falsehood would have no inclination to investigate the assertion themselves by say actually talking to an atheist, it simply wouldn't enter their mind to do that why should it? This kind of thinking has gotten religious people into all kinds of trouble over the years as reality has a tendency to prove our intuitions wrong, faith is possibly the worst way by which to acquire knowledge, as experience has shown us time and time again, mostly fatally.

So, why do religious people think this way when clearly as a method of knowing things "faith" has served them so poorly over the years? One theory I've read recently is that faith is a misfiring of another less obvious, but much more critical behaviour, loyalty. When two people believe the same thing (regardless of what that thing is) then they share something, sharing things brings people together and when people work together and strive for common goals they are more likely to survive than those people who don't. Over time you can imagine that the "sharing gene" would be selected for and would become pervasive in the population, loyalty to the ideas of the group would become more important than the "truth" of those ideas. Such behaviour also gives the group a mechanism to identify competing groups, or "out-group", in evolutionary terms eliminating competition is almost always as important to survival as anything else. Clearly there are many more subtleties layered onto modern religions but if you strip the years of culture away is this what is really going on? Like the ignorant red-neck who blames all his failures on the government or the commies, are religious people unavoidably susceptible to the straw-man trap?

Then we have the child-like mind set; just like my daughter who couldn't rationalise a world that didn't contain her, the religious person is unwilling to contemplate this thought too although the universe clearly functioned quite happily without them before they were born. Almost all religions contain the most fabulous and unlikely contrivances to ensure that the "faithful" are spared the natural cessation of their consciousness, all kinds of promises and threats are made to ensure that they as individuals are "saved" along with their in-group of course. I can't help but think how childish and selfish such thoughts are, for example, that the whole universe exists for the purpose of entertaining you and preventing your own personal suffering is mind boggling, any superficial study of the scale of the universe and the nature of nature shows us that we are totally insignificant as individuals, indeed our entire planet and solar system is insignificant. Theists often jump on this reality and in the best tradition of "shootinging the messenger", they exclaim ah ha! so Atheists believe there is no point to life; the old straw-man trap springs shut again, we make our own purpose we always have; and just like the wonderful experiences my Wife and I shared together in our movies we continue to hope, work, and dream to achieve our modest goals.

If there was one thought or message that I hope my children took away from watching our little films together it would be that life is short and precious, you never know what is around the corner and we only get one shot, so make the most of it!

PS. Thanks to TRP for the picture.