emphasis on propagating belief (i.e., evangelism) and purity of belief (i.e.,
orthodoxy) is only one of those strategies. In the late nineteeth and early
twentieth century, a movement called modernism emerged within Christianity.
Modernist theologians began reexamining traditional orthodox beliefs in light of
what we now know about linguistics, archaeology, psychiatry, biology, and
human history. In this light, traditional Christian certainties looked less certain,
and many modernist Christians have become more like members of Eastern
religions in that their primary concern is with spiritual practice rather than belief.
But a backlash emerged in response to modernism. People who proudly called
themselves "fundamentalists" insisted that no one was a real Christian who didn't
hold to the traditional dogmas. Evangelicals inherited the fundamentalist torch,
and even some of the more inquiring denominations have reverted back toward
emphasis on right belief.
This is the mindset that dominates Christianity in the public square. It is the
mindset that sends Christian missionaries out to seek converts in impoverished
and obscure corners of the planet. It is the mindset that prints Bibles to be
distributed in Iraq and has organized strategically within the United States
military hierarchy, seeking to create an "army of Christian soldiers." Hence, to
understand Christianity it is helpful to understand the psychology of belief.
So You THINK YOU'RE RATIONAL
I like to think of myself as fair-minded and reasonable. In fact, I pride myself on
"following the evidence where it leads, whether I like the conclusion or not."
Integrity and truth seeking are near the top of my wantedvirtues list.
The problem is-research on human cognition suggests that I am neither fair-
minded nor reasonable. None of us are. And it's not just a matter of sloppy
thinking. Our brains have builtin biases that stack the odds against objectivity, so
much so that the success of the scientific endeavor can be attributed to one
factor: it pits itself against our natural leanings, erects barriers across the
openings to rabbit trails, and systematically exposes faulty thinking to public
critique. In fact, the scientific method has been called "what we know about how
not to fool ourselves."
In some ways, science picks up where philosophy leaves off. Philosophers,
from classical times to the present, have developed sophisticated, useful lines of
reasoning about knowledge (epistemology), morality (ethics), and the nature of
reality (metaphysics). They have identified and learned to avoid "logical
fallacies." But their approach has limitations. Without the constraints of external
real-world tests, philosophers go down their own kind of rabbit trails, into a
world of ideals. Philosophy assumes that if an argument can be made logic-tight,
then it will be persuasive. It assumes that people can be compelled by reason. It
assumes that we make moral decisions by doing some calculus that prioritizes
harm avoidance or the greater good. Psychology, on the other hand, looks at how
ordinary people function in everyday life and says "that ain't the way things
work around here."
The way things actually do work is somewhat embarrassing. The fact is, we
distort reality in a host of ways-many of which are extravagantly selfserving. We
take undue credit for successes, and blame failures on external circumstances
(attribution biases). We even revise history so that, in hindsight, our failures
were simply to be expected because of the challenges we faced (retroactive
pessimism). We retain memories of when we were kind, finny, personable, and
clever, better than memories of when we were boorish and mean. On average,
we expect to live ten years longer than average.3 And virtually all of us who
believe in heaven think we are going there. To put it bluntly, each of us is the
protagonist in a custom-made Hollywood movie with the best possible camera
angles. Our selfserving biases may have a positive function. They may play a
role in fending off depression, feeding hope, and getting us to try harder. But
they also help to explain why stunningly self-centered religious beliefs don't
trigger any alarms.
It is easy for us to distort the evidence in our own favor, in part because we
aren't so great with evidence in general. One of the strongest builtin mental
distortions we have is called confirmation bias. Once we have a hunch about
how things work, we seek information that fits what we already think. It's like
our minds set up filters-with contradictory evidence stuck in gray tones on the
outside and the confirmatory evidence flowing through in bright and shining
color. This bias optimizes for efficiency over accuracy. It allows us to rapidly sift
through the information coming at us and piece together a meaningful story line.
But in situations where emotions run high or evidence is ambiguous, it also lets
us go very wrong. Corporate leaders fall into group-think about the best
competitive strategy. Jurors assume an accused criminal is guilty. Politicians
fabricate reasons for warcertain that the real evidence must be just out of sight.
What we're always trying to do is get to a coherent plot line. Consider what
it's like to read a novel: when there are too many contradictions or loose ends, or
the conclusion is ambiguous, we grumble and lose interest. What we want is a
story where the mysteries get solved and everything gets tied up in the end. In
everyday life, we operate the same way. Our brains are constantly trying to
create a smooth narrative out of fragments of information. This is true of our
eyes, which make jerky movements and have actual blind spots that our brains
revise to create a seamless picture of the scene in front of us. It is also true of our
higher cognitive processes. The mind edits and fills in gaps.
This imaginative infill is why we experience dreams as stories. As our
nighttime brain is at work on synthesizing memories, it insists on interpreting the
images and ideas flashing through them in a narrative form. Alcoholics and
patients with brain injuries that cause memory gaps sometimes "confabulate."
When asked about missing chunks of time they make up stories about where
they were and what happened. This is not intentional deception. It is the brain,
faced with an impossible question, creating an answer. And once the answer is
generated, the person whose subconscious created the history actually believes
it. Our compulsion to think in "stories," to ignore threads that don't fit the plot
line, and to fill in any gaps, may be at the heart of the religious impulse.
As we learn more about the human mind, even the outrages of religious belief
become more understandable. How can a college-educated engineer think he just
happened to be born into the one true religion? How can a doctor who looks at
the evidence and dismisses homeopathy believe in the healing power of
intercessory prayer? How can tourists who escaped a hurricane or plane crash
believe that a god intervened to save them while letting others drown or burn?
How can a minister with a high school education-or a doctorate, for that matter-
> be convinced after two thousand years of theological blood feuds that he knows
how God meant the book of Genesis to be interpreted?
It all becomes a bit easier to understand when you realize that we humans are
only partly rational. Bias is our default setting, and most of the distortions
happen below the level of conscious awareness. Understanding this may let us
be a little more sympathetic toward otherwise smart, decent people who hold
beliefs that make us cringe. It should also make us wonder about our own blind
spots. But it puts Christianity as a system in an awkward position because
Christianity sanctifies belief itself. "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou
shalt be saved and thy house" (Acts 16:3 1). Christians call themselves believers.
Philosopher Daniel Dennett calls their stance "belief in belief," which shines a
light on one of the core problems Christianity must face. Arriving at belief in an
infallible God by way of an inerrant Bible requires an unwarranted belief in
yourself.
I KNOW BECAUSE I KNOW
On a warm afternoon in June, two men have appointments with a psychiatrist.
The first has been dragged to the office by his wife, much to his irritation. He is
a biologist who suffers from schizophrenia, and the wife insists that his meds are
not working. "No," says the biologist, "I'm actually fine. It's just that because of
what I'm working on right now the CIA has been bugging my calls and reading
my e-mail." Despite his wife's skepticism and his understanding of his own
illness, he insists calmly that he is sure, and he lines up evidence to support his
claim. The second man has come on his own because he is feeling exhausted and
desperate. He shows the psychiatrist his hands, which are raw to the point of
bleeding. No matter how many times he washes them (up to a hundred times in a
day) or what he uses (soap, alcohol, bleach, or scouring pads) he never feels
confident that they are clean.
In both of these cases, after brain biochemistry is rebalanced, the patient's
sense of certainty falls back in line with the evidence. The first man becomes
less sure about the CIA thing and gradually loses interest in the idea. The second
man begins feeling confident that his hands are clean after a normal round of
soap and water, and the cracks start healing.
How do we know what is real? How do we know what we know? We don't,
entirely. Research on psychiatric disorders and brain injuries shows that humans
have a feeling or sense of knowing that can get activated by reason and evidence
but can get activated in other ways as well. Conversely, when certain kinds of
brain malfunctions occur, it may be impossible to experience a sense of knowing
no matter how much evidence piles up. V. S. Ramachandran describes a brain-
injured patient who sees his mother and says, "This looks like my mother in
every way, but she is an imposter." The connection between his visual cortex and
his limbic system has been severed, and even though he sees his mother
perfectly well, he has no emotional sense of rightness or knowing, so he offers
the only explanation he can find (called the Capgras Delusion).4
From malfunctions like these we gain an understanding of normal brain
function and how it shapes our day-to-day experience, including the experience
of religion. Neurologist Robert Burton explains it this way: "Despite how
certainty feels, it is neither a conscious choice nor even a thought process.
Certainty and similar states of knowing what we know arise out of involuntary
brain mechanisms that, like love or anger, function independently of reason."5
This "knowing what we know" mechanism is good enough for getting around in
the world, but it is not perfect. For the most part, it lets us explain, predict, and
influence people or objects or events, and we use that knowledge to advantage.
But as the above scenarios show, it can also get thrown off.
Burton says that the feeling of knowing (),ightness, correctness, certainty,
conviction) should be thought of as one of our primary emotions, like anger,
pleasure, or fear. Like these other feelings, it can be triggered by a seizure or a
drug or direct electrical stimulation of the brain. Research after the Korean War
suggested that the feeling of knowing or not knowing also can be produced by
what are called brainwashing techniques: repetition, sleep deprivation, and
social/emotional manipulation.6 Once triggered for any reason, the feeling that
something is right or real can be incredibly powerful-so powerful that when it
goes head-to-head with logic or evidence, the feeling wins. Our brains make up
reasons to justify our feeling of knowing, rather than following logic to its
logical conclusion.
For many reasons, religious beliefs are usually undergirded by a strong feeling
of knowing. Set aside for the moment the question of whether those beliefs tap
some underlying realities. Conversion experiences can be intense, hypnotic, and
transformative. Worship practices, music and religious architecture have been
optimized over time to evoke right-brain sensations of transcendence and
euphoria. Social insularity protects a community consensus. Repetition of ideas
reinforces a sense of conviction or certainty. Forms of Christianity that
emphasize right belief have builtin safeguards against contrary evidence, doubt,
and the assertions of other religions. Many a freethinker has sparred a smart,
educated fundamentalist into a corner only to have the believer utter some form
of "I just know."
Given what I've said about knowing, how can anybody claim to know
anything? We can't, with certainty. Those of us who are not religious could do
with a little more humility on this point. We all see "through a glass darkly," and
there is a realm in which all any of us can do is to make our own best guesses
about what is real and important. This doesn't imply, though, that all ideas are
created equal or that our traditional understanding of "knowledge" is useless. As
I said before, our sense of knowing allows us to navigate this world pretty well-
to detect regularities, anticipate events, and make things happen. In the concrete
domain of everyday life it works pretty well for us. Nonetheless, it is a healthy
mistrust for our sense of knowing that has allowed scientists to reach beyond
everyday life to detect, predict, and produce desired outcomes with ever greater
precision.
When we overstate our ability to know, we play into the fundamentalist
fallacy that certainty is possible. Burton, author of On Being Certain, calls this
"the all-knowing rational mind myth." As scientists learn more about how our
brains work, certitude is coming to be seen as a vice rather than a virtue.
Certainty is a confession of ignorance about our ability to be passionately
mistaken. Humans will always argue passionately about things that we do not
know and cannot know, but with a little more selfknowledge and humility we
may get to the point where those arguments are less often lethal.
WHY GOD HAS A HUMAN MIND
As the story goes, Jesus was a human, fathered by a god and born to a virgin. He
died for three d
ays and was resurrected. His death was a sacrifice, an offering or
propitiation. It brings favor for humans. He lives now in a realm where other
supernatural beings interact with each other and sometimes intervene in human
affairs.
Gradually the mainstream of the American public is becoming aware that
none of these elements is unique to Christianity. Symbologists, or scholars who
specialize in understanding ancient symbols, tell us that the orthodox Jesus story,
as it appears in our gospels, follows a specific sacred or mythic template that
existed in the ancient Near East long before Christianity or even Judaism. In part
this is due to the flow of history. Religions emerge out of ancestor religions.
Though the characters and details merge and morph, elements get carried
through that allow us to track the lineage. The Gilgamesh and Noah flood-hero
stories are similar because the Hebrew story descended from the Sumerian story.
The same can be said of the Sumerian "Descent of Inana" and the Christian
resurrection story.? Even religions that exist side by side borrow elements from
each other, in a process scholars call syncretism, something Her has shown us in
the first chapter.
But another reason for similarities among religious stories is that all of them
are carried by similar human minds. To quote cognitive scientist Pascal Boyer,
"Evolution by natural selection gave us a particular kind of mind so that only
particular kinds of religious notions can be acquired.... All human beings can
easily acquire a certain range of religious notions and communicate them to
others." Our supernatural notions are shaped by the builtin structures that let us
acquire, sort, and access information efficiently, especially information about
other people.
You may have heard the old adage "If dogs had a god, God would be a dog; if
horses had a god, God would be a horse...." Humans are more inventive than
dogs and horses, and not all human gods or magical beings have human bodies.
They do, however, have human psyches-minds with quirks and limitations that
are peculiar to our species. Philosopher John Locke believed that the human
mind was a tabula rasa, a blank slate. We now know this is not the case. Because
we need to learn so much so fast, certain assumptions are actually builtin. This
allows us to generalize from a few bits of data to a big fiend of knowledge. It lets
us know more than we have actually experienced or been told.
Let me illustrate. If I tell you that my "guarg," Annie, just made a baby by
laying an egg and sitting on it, your brain says: Guargs (not just Valerie's guarg)
are nonhuman animals that reproduce by laying eggs. You have different
categories in your brain for animal reproductive systems, and putting one guarg
in the egg-laying category puts them all there. To oversimplify, we have a builtin
filing system. Most of the labels actually start out blank, but some of them don't.
The preprinted labels appear to include human, nonhuman animal, plant, human-
made object, natural object.
A large percentage of our mental architecture consists of specialized "domain-
specific" structures for processing information about other humans. We Homo
sapiens sapiens are social information specialists; that is our specialized niche in
this world. Our survival and wellbeing depend mostly on smarts rather than
teeth, claws, stealth, or an innate sense of direction, and most of the information
we need comes from other humans. Our greatest threats also come from our own
species-people who seek to out-compete, exploit, or kill us. For this reason, our
brains are optimized to process information from and about other humans.
How DOES ALL OF THIS AFFECT RELIGION?
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 6