Breaking the Spell

by Daniel C. Dennett

  It is worth recalling that the Arabic word islam means “submission.” The idea that Muslims should put the proliferation of Islam ahead of their own interests is built right into the etymology of its name, and Islam is not alone. What is more important to devout Christians than their own well-being, than their own lives, if it comes to that? They will tell you: the Word. Spreading the Word of God is their summum bonum, and if they are called upon to forgo having children and grandchildren for the sake of spreading the Word, that is the command they will try hard to obey. They do not shrink from the idea that a meme has commandeered them and obtunded their reproductive instinct; they embrace it. And they declare that this is precisely what distinguishes them from mere animals; it gives them a value to pursue that transcends the genetic imperative that limits the decision horizon of all other species. In the pursuit of that value, however, they will be as rational as they can be. When they look out for Number One, Number One is the Word, not their own skin, let alone their selfish genes.

  No ant can put itself in the service of a Word. It doesn’t have language, or any culture to speak of. We language-users get not just one Word but many, however, and the many words compete for our attention, and in combination these can form coalitions that vie for our allegiance. This is where rational choice theory comes into its own. For, as we have seen, once people are turned into stewards of their own favorite memes, an arms race of would-be improvements ensues. All design work is ultimately a matter of trial and error, but a lot of it takes place “off line,” in representations of decisions in the minds of people who consider them carefully before deciding for real on what they think will work best, given their limited information about the cruel world in which the designs must ultimately be tested. Thinking it through is quicker and cheaper than running the trials in the world and letting nature do the winnowing, but the human foresight that provides the extra speed is fallible and biased, so we often make mistakes. Memetic engineering, like genetic engineering, can spawn monsters if we’re not careful, and if they escape the laboratory, they may proliferate in spite of our best efforts. We always need to remember Orgel’s Second Rule: Evolution is cleverer than you are.

  (Permit me to pause here for a moment and point out what we have just done. The ardent anti-Darwinians in the humanities and social sciences have traditionally feared that an evolutionary approach would drown their cherished way of thinking—with its heroic authors and artists and inventors and other defenders and lovers of ideas. And so they have tended to declare, with desperate conviction but no evidence or argument, that human culture and human society can only be interpreted and never causally explained, using methods and presuppositions that are completely incommensurable with, or untranslatable into, the methods and presuppositions of the natural sciences. “You can’t get here from there!” could be their motto. “The chasm is unbridgeable!” And yet we have just completed a sketchy but nonmiraculous and matter-of-fact stroll, all the way from blind, mechanical, robotic nature to the passionate defense and elaboration of the most exalted ideas known to humankind. The chasm was a figment of fearful imagination. We can do a better job of understanding ourselves as champions of ideas, and defenders of values, if we first see how we came to occupy such a special role.)

  Once there are alternatives on offer in the “marketplace of ideas,” bigger and better rivals compete for allegiance, including not just mutating religions but—eventually—secular institutions as well. Among the coalitions not based on genetic kinship that have thrived in recent human history are political parties, revolutionary groups, ethnic organizations, labor unions, sports teams, and, last but not least, the Mafia. The dynamics of group membership (entrance and exit conditions, loyalty and its enforcement by punishment or otherwise) have been intensively studied in recent years by evolutionary thinkers in a variety of disciplines: economics, political science, cognitive psychology, biology, and, of course, philosophy.7 The results shed light on cooperation and altruism in secular as well as religious contexts, and this helps highlight the features that distinguish religious organizations from others.

  3 The growth market in religion

  Proposition 75: To the degree that religious economies are unregulated and competitive, overall levels of religious participation will be high. (Conversely, lacking competition, the dominant firm[s] will be too inefficient to sustain vigorous marketing efforts, and the result will be a low overall level of religious participation, with the average person minimizing and delaying payment of religious costs.)

  —Rodney Stark and Roger Finke, Acts of Faith

  In every aspect of the religious life, American faith has met American culture—and American culture has triumphed.

  —Alan Wolfe, The Transformation of American Religion

  We have a better product than soap or automobiles. We have eternal life.

  —Reverend Jim Bakker8

  Why make great sacrifices in order to further the prospects of a religious organization? Why, for instance, might one choose loyalty to a religion when one is also, perhaps, a contributing member of a labor union, a political party, and a social club? These “why” questions start by being neutral between two quite different types of answers: they could be asking why it is rational to choose loyalty to a religion, or they could be asking why it is natural (somehow) for people to be drawn into a religion which then commands their loyalty. (Consider the question Why do so many people fear heights? One answer is: because it is rational to fear heights; you can fall and hurt yourself! Another is: we have evolved an instinctual caution triggered by the perception that we are exposed at a great height; in some people this anxiety is exaggerated beyond what is useful; their fear is natural—we can explain its existence without residual mystery—but irrational.) If we take a good hard look at the first answer regarding religion, as proposed by rational choice theory, it will help us see the forces and constraints that shape the alternatives.

  Over the last two decades, Rodney Stark and his colleagues have done a remarkable job of articulating the rational choice answer, and they claim that, thanks to their efforts, “it now is impossible to do credible work in the social scientific study of religion based on the assumption that religiousness is a sign of stupidity, neurosis, poverty, ignorance, or false consciousness, or represents a flight from modernity” (Stark and Finke, 2000, p. 18). They concentrate on religion in the U.S.A., and their basic model is a straightforward application of economic theory:

  Indeed, having now had more than two centuries to develop under free market conditions, the American religious economy surpasses Adam Smith’s wildest dreams about the creative forces of a free market (Moore, 1994). There are more than 1, 500 separate religious “denominations” (Melton, 1998), many of them very sizable—24 have more than 1 million members each. Each of these bodies is entirely dependent on voluntary contributions, and American religious donations currently total more than $60 billion per year or more than $330 per person over age18. These totals omit many contributions to church construction funds (new church construction amounted to $3 billion in 1993), as well as most donations to religious schools, hospitals, and foreign missions. In 1996, more than $2.3 billion was donated to support missionaries and a significant amount of this was spent on missionaries to Europe. [p. 223]

  H. L. Mencken once opined: “The only really respectable Protestants are the Fundamentalists. Unfortunately, they are also palpable idiots.” Many share that opinion, especially in academia, but not Stark and Finke. They are particularly eager to dispel the familiar idea that the more fundamentalist or evangelical the denomination is, the less rational it is:

  Among the more common suggestions as to why evangelical churches grow are repressed sexuality, divorce, urbanization, racism, sexism, status anxieties, and rapid social change. Never do proponents of the old paradigm even explore possible religious explanations: for example, that people are d
rawn to the evangelical churches by a superior product. [p. 30]

  People bear the heavy expenses of church membership, and the church in return contracts “to support and supervise their exchanges with a god or gods” (p. 103). Stark and Finke have worked this out carefully, and their driving premise is their Proposition 6, “In pursuit of rewards, humans will seek to utilize and manipulate the supernatural” (p. 90). Some people go it alone, but most think they need help, and that is what churches provide. (Do churches actually manipulate the supernatural? Are Stark and Finke committed to the claim that exchanges with a god or gods really occur? No, they are studiously agnostic—or so they claim—on this score. They often point out that it can be perfectly rational to invest in a stock that turns out to be worthless, after all.)

  In a later book, One True God: Historical Consequences of Monotheism (2001), Stark takes on the role of memetic engineer, analyzing the pros and cons of doctrine as if he were an advertising consultant. “What sorts of Gods have the greatest appeal?” (p. 2). Here he distinguishes two strategies: God as essence (such as Tillich’s God as the Ground of All Being, entirely nonanthropomorphic, not in time and space, abstract) and God as conscious supernatural being (a God who listens to and answers prayers in real time, for instance). “There is no more profound religious difference than that between faiths involving divine beings and those limited to divine essences,” he says, and the latter he judges to be hopeless, because “only divine beings do anything” (p. 10). Supernatural conscious beings are much better sellers because “the supernatural is the only plausible source of many benefits we greatly desire” (p. 12).

  People care about Gods because, if they exist, they are potential exchange partners possessed of immense resources. Furthermore, untold billions of people are certain that Gods do exist, precisely because they believe they have experienced long and satisfying exchange relations with them [p. 13]…. Because Gods are conscious beings, they are potential exchange partners because all beings are assumed to want something for which they might be induced to give something valuable. [p. 15]9

  He adds that a responsive, fatherly God “makes an extremely attractive exchange partner who can be counted on to maximize human benefits” (p. 21), and he even proposes that a God without a counterbalancing Satan is an unstable concept—“irrational and perverse.” Why? Because “one God of infinite scope must be responsible for everything, evil as well as good, and thus must be dangerously capricious, shifting intentions unpredictably and without reason”(p. 24). This is pretty much the same raison d’être that Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, the creators of Superman, appreciated when they invented kryptonite as something to counteract the Man of Steel: there is no drama possible—no defeats to overcome, no cliff-hangers—if your hero is too powerful! But, unlike the concept of kryptonite, these concepts of God and Satan have free-floating rationales, and are not the brainchildren of any particular authors:

  I do not mean to suggest that this portrait of the Gods is the product of conscious human “creation.” No one sat down and decided, Let’s believe in a supreme God, surround him/her with some subordinate beings, and postulate an inferior evil being on whom we can blame evil. Rather, this view tends to evolve over time because it is the most reasonable and satisfying conclusion from the available religious culture. [pp. 25–26]

  Stark’s footnote on this passage is not to be missed: “Nor am I prepared to deny that this evolution reflects progressive human discovery of the truth.” Ah, that’s the ticket! The story doesn’t just get better; it happens to get closer to the truth. A lucky break? Maybe not. Wouldn’t a really good God arrange things that way? Maybe, but the fact that dramatic considerations so conveniently dictate the details of the story does provide an explanation of why the details are what they are that rivals the traditional supposition that they are simply “the God’s honest truth.”

  4 A God you can talk to

  The Pope traditionally prays for peace every Easter and the fact that it has never had any effect whatsoever in preventing or ending a war never deters him. What goes through the Pope’s mind about being rejected all the time? Does God have it in for him?

  —Andy Rooney, Sincerely, Andy Rooney

  Whatever we may think of Stark’s professed agnosticism on this score, surely he is right about the main shortcoming of highly abstract conceptions of God: “Because divine essences are incapable of exchanges, they may present mysteries, but they pose no tactical questions and thus prompt no effort to discover terms of exchange”(p. 16). Who can be loyal to a God who cannot be asked for anything? It doesn’t have to be manna from heaven. As the comedian Emo Phillips once said, “When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle. But then I realized that God doesn’t work in that way—so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!” And as Stark observes, “Rewards are always in limited supply and some are entirely unavailable—at least they are not available here and now through conventional means” (p. 17). A key marketing problem for religions, then, is how to entice the customer to wait.

  Recovery from cancer is rather minor compared with everlasting life. But perhaps the most significant aspect of otherworldly rewards is that the realization of these rewards is postponed often until after death). Consequently, in pursuit of otherworldly rewards, humans will accept an extended exchange relationship with Gods. That is, humans will make periodic payments over a substantial length of time, often until death. [p. 19]

  What can be done to keep people making their payments? Miraculous cures and prayed-for reversals of fortune go a long way, of course, by providing evidence of benefits received in this world by oneself or others, but even in their absence, there are design features that pay for themselves handily. The most interesting is the price-inversion effect described by Stark and Finke (2000).

  The answer can be found in elementary economics. Price is only one factor in any exchange; quality is the other, and combined they yield an estimate of value. Herein lies the secret of the strength of higher-tension religious groups: despite being expensive they offer greater value; indeed, they are able to do so because they are expensive. [p. 145]

  Tension refers to the degree of distinctiveness, separation, and antagonism between a religious group and the ‘outside’ world” (p. 143). So, in a spectrum from low to high, large established churches are low-tension, and sects and cults are high-tension. An expensive religion is one that is high in “material, social and psychic costs of belonging.” It doesn’t just cost time spent on religious duties and money in the collection plate; belonging can incur a loss of social standing and actually exacerbate—not ameliorate—one’s anxiety and suffering. But you get what you pay for: unlike the heathen, you get saved for eternity.

  To the extent that one is motivated by religious value, one must prefer a higher-priced supplier. Not only do more expensive religious groups offer more valuable product, but in doing so, they generate levels of commitment needed to maximize individual levels of confidence in the religion—in the truth of the fundamental doctrines, in the efficacy of its practices, and in the certainty of its otherworldly promises. [pp. 146–47]

  The more you have invested in your religion, the more you will be motivated to protect that investment. Stark and Finke are not alone in seeing that costliness can sometimes make good economic sense. For instance, the evolutionary economists Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (1998, 2001) have developed formal models of communities that foster pro-social norms, “cultural traits governing actions that affect the well-being of others but that cannot be regulated by costlessly enforceable contracts” (2001, p. 345). Their models show that these pro-social effects depend on “low cost access to information about other community members” as well as the tendency to favor interactions with group members, and restrict migration in and out, points t
hat Stark and Finke make as well.10

  The high entry and exit costs are as crucial to the survival of such arrangements as the membrane surrounding a cell: self-maintenance is costly and is made more efficient by a strict distinction between me and the rest of the world (in the case of a cell) or between us and them (in the case of a community). The work by Bowles and Gintis doesn’t just provide formal support for some of the propositions defended by Stark and Finke; it shows that the deplorable xenophobia found in “high-tension” religious communities is not a specifically religious feature. Xenophobia, they argue, is the price any community or group must pay for a high level of internal trust and harmony, and moreover it is a price we may in the end decide we have to be willing to pay: “Far from being vestigial anachronisms, we think communities may become more rather than less important in the nexus of governance structures in the years to come, since communities may claim some success in addressing governance problems not amenable to market or state solution” (Bowles and Gintis, 2001, p. 364).

  Stark and Finke’s applications of rational choice theory to many of the trends and disparities observable in American religious denominations are not yet proven, and have spirited detractors, but they are certainly worth further research. And the implications of some of their propositions are provocative indeed. For instance: