Tag Archives: Religion

Mysticism’s Function

By Robin Hanson · February 18, 2010 10:00 pm · Comments (44)

For our ancestors, mysticism functioned mainly to offer “higher” and stronger motives and excuses to do what they had more practical reasons to do.  In war:

Anthropologists universally reported one “spiritual” factor as being among the most prominent causes of warfare among hunter-gatherers, as well as among primitive agriculturalists.  This was fears and accusations of sorcery. … Accusations of sorcery … do not appear randomly.  They generally arise and are directed against people whom the victim of the alleged sorcery feels have reasons to want to harm him. … Chagnon’s account … of sorcery among the Yanomamo:

No two villages that are within comfortable walking distance from each other can maintain such a [neutral] relationship indefinitely: They must become allies, or hostility is likely to develop. … A death in one of the villages will be attributed to the malevolent hekura sent by shamans in the other village, and raids will eventually take place between them. …

Trespassing was often regarded in hunter-gatherer societies as an offense against a group’s sanctified territory.  In other cases, an act of sacrilege against the clan’s totem was regarded as an insult to the clan itself. … The Dugum Dani … who fought for pigs, women, and land … [also felt] they had to placate their ghosts who became angry with them if a killing … was not avenged. … Similarly, the Gebusi of Lowland New Guinea had the highest homicide rates recorded anywhere. The reason given for the killings was retribution for sorcery, but … there remains a striking correlation in Gebusi society between homicidal sorcery attribution and lack of reciprocity in sister exchange marriage …. Gebusi sorcery attribution is about unresolved and even unacknowledged improprieties in the balance of marital exchange.

In “peace”:

During the witch trials in Europe the accused were precisely those persons who had somehow aroused the suspicion that they were envious and hence desirous of harming others.  Gradually, however, the envious man himself became the accuser, the accused being people who were good-liooking, virtuous, proud and rich. … This double role played by envy in witchcraft is again apparent among primitive peoples.  The outsider, the cripple, anyone at all handicapped, is suspected. ….

Of 222 cases of accusation of [Navaho] witchcraft … 184 involved adult males, 131 of these being of great age.  All the females  accused were also very old.  The Navaho are usually so afraid of the sorcery of old people that they do their best to propitiate them with lavish hospitality and the like, even though the person concerned may be extremely unpleasant. … [They are] suspicious of all persons in extreme positions – the very rich, the very poor, the influential singer, the extremely old. …

The Zuni Indians share with the Hopi a distaste for competitive behavior and open aggression, and sacrifice individuality to the collective.  Bu this does not eliminate envy.  Both very poor and particular rich Zuni can be suspected of witchcraft.  The constant accusation of witchcraft serves to maintain social conformity. … A deceived husband or a jilted lover is described in Zuni legend … as a man to whom it is intolerable that he alone should be unhappy. …

If an old [Comanche] man failed to adapt himself with good grace to the role of peaceable old age, he was suspected of envious magic.  He might even be killed by the relatives of someone who suspected him of being a witch.

Can’t bring yourself to slaughter a nearby village, or a long-time associate?  Mysticism can help you believe they already attacked you first, and that the stakes are so much higher than your personal gain.

We similarly self-deceive today to give ourselves higher and stronger excuses to do what baser motives require.  Beware: if you won’t accept and act on your baser motives, your subconscious may well get you to achieve similar ends via self-deceptive delusions.  For a better chance at believing the truth, accept your ignoble desires.

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Catholic Girls

By Robin Hanson · September 11, 2009 3:30 pm · Comments (29)

Come out Virginia, don’t let me wait
You Catholic girls start much too late
aw But sooner or later it comes down to fate
I might as well be the one
Billy Joel, “Only The Good Die Young”

Apparently Billy was going after the wrong Catholic girls:

[On] college students … casual physical encounters or what some have termed “hooking up.” In this article, we examine the impact of both individual and institutional religious involvement on “hooking up” in a national sample of college women (N= 1,000). … Catholic college women are more likely to have “hooked up” while at school than college women with no religious affiliation. Second, conservative Protestant college women are less likely to have “hooked up” while at school than college women with no religious affiliation; however, this difference is mediated or explained by church attendance, which is protective against “hooking up.” Finally, women who attend colleges and universities with a Catholic affiliation are more likely to have hooked up while at school than women who attend academic institutions with no religious affiliation, net of individual-level religious involvement. …

Other work on young women’s sexual activity (Brewster et al. 1998), which shows sharply bifurcated patterns among Catholic women—those with high levels of religious commitment tend to delay sexual activity while those with lower levels of commitment display increased odds of sexual behavior compared to their unaffiliated counterparts. … Contrary to the “moral communities” thesis and to some widespread assumptions, the odds of “hooking up” are actually much higher at religious schools than at secular educational institutions. Upon closer inspection, this pattern is determined entirely by a large Catholic college effect.

I gotta admit, it is not easy to come up with a signaling explanation for this pattern.  Thanks to Alex for the Joel quote.

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Social Science Cuts Religiosity

By Robin Hanson · August 7, 2009 11:30 pm · Comments (24)

If reducing interest in religion is a sign of rationality, then social sciences rule!

A new NBER paper compares college majors for their effect on student religiosity.  Majoring in biological sciences, engineering, or vocational areas all increase religiosity about the same relative to not going to college.  Majoring in education encourages religion even more, while majoring in physical science has about the same effect as no college.  Majoring in humanities reduces religiosity relative to no college, and majoring in social science reduces it the most.

Here is a part of the paper’s main table:

econcutsreligion

Bold params are significant at 5%.  They control for year, region, gender, parent education, type of religion, and initial religiosity.

Added: Studying physics in college helped me become atheist because, taken as a complete account, physics seemed to leave no room for spirits to regularly intervene in human affairs.  Most students, however, do not take physics as such a complete account.  Social sciences and humanities do not usually suggest they offer complete accounts, but they do offer more direct stories of how human affairs become arranged, accounts that compete more directly with divine intervention stories.  I suspect that this competing explanation effect is the reason social sciences and humanities reduce religiosity, and that the social science effect is stronger because its accounts leave fewer holes for divine influence than do humanities’ accounts.

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Loving Cranks to Death

By Robin Hanson · March 9, 2009 6:00 am · Comments (35)

From the latest Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion:

[David] Hume writes that clergy (at least those of radical sects) are inherently dangerous and that if allowed to compete with one another will inspire in their adherents "the most violent abhorrence of all other sects, and continually endeavor, by some novelty, to excite the languid devotion of [their] audience." He concludes that the solution is "to bribe their indolence, by assigning stated salaries to their profession, and rendering it superfluous for them to be farther active, than merely to prevent their flock from straying in quest of new pastures". Hume, an agnostic if not an atheist, takes the position that religion is not a public good but its opposite — a public bad — and that government intervention will avert the pervasive negative externality of religious controversy, which clergy create and that threatens public safety.

My colleague Larry Iannaccone:

Looking at Figure 1, one immediately spots the exceptionally low levels of religiosity in the Scandinavian countries and, conversely, the high level of religiosity in the U.S.  As predicted by [Adam] Smith, these extremes correspond to different market structures.  A single state-run (Lutheran) church dominates the market in every Scandinavian country.  In contrast, the United States enjoys a constitutionally mandated free-for-all in which hundreds of denominations compete and none has special status.

Eliezer a year ago:

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Augustine’s Paradox of optimal repentance

By Philip Goetz · March 1, 2009 4:09 pm · Comments (68)

Eliezer once wrote this about Newcomb's problem:

Nonetheless, I would like to present some of my motivations on Newcomb's Problem – the reasons I felt impelled to seek a new theory – because they illustrate my source-attitudes toward rationality. Even if I can't present the theory that these motivations motivate…

First, foremost, fundamentally, above all else:

Rational agents should WIN.

As I just commented on another thread, this is faith in rationality, which is an oxymoron.

It isn't obvious whether there is a rational winning approach to Newcomb's problem. But here's a similar, simpler problem that billions of people have believed was real, which I'll call Augustine's Paradox ("Lord, make me chaste – but not yet!")

All conservative variants of Christianity teach, in one way or another, that your eternal fate depends on your state in the last moment of your life. If you live a nearly-flawless Christian life, but have a sinful thought ten minutes before dying and the priest has already left, you go to Hell. If you are sinful all your life but repent in your final minute, you go to Heaven.

The optimal self-interested strategy is to act selfishly all your life, and then repent at the final moment. But if you repent as part of a plan, it won't work; you'll go to Hell anyway. The optimal strategy is to be selfish all your life, without intending to repent, and then repent in your final moments and truly mean it.

I don't think there's any rational winning strategy here. Yet the purely emotional strategy of fear plus an irrationally large devaluation of the future wins.

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Beliefs Require Reasons, or: Is the Pope Catholic? Should he be?

By Paul Gowder · November 26, 2008 11:00 am · Comments (26)

In the early days of this blog, I would pick fierce arguments with Robin about the no-disagreement hypothesis.  Lately, however, reflection on things like public reason have brought me toward agreement with Robin, or at least moderated my disagreement.  To see why, it’s perhaps useful to take a look at the newspapers…

the pope said the book “explained with great clarity” that “an interreligious dialogue in the strict sense of the word is not possible.” In theological terms, added the pope, “a true dialogue is not possible without putting one’s faith in parentheses.”

What are we to make of a statement like this?

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The Evil Pleasure

By Robin Hanson · November 4, 2008 8:00 am · Comments (40)

Pascal Boyer in Nature on religion:

One important finding is that people are only aware of some of their religious beliefs.  … For instance, experiments reveal that most people entertain highly anthropomorphic expectations about gods, whatever their explicit beliefs. … Research has shown that unlike conscious beliefs, which differ widely from one tradition to another, tacit assumptions are extremely similar in different cultures and religions. … Experiments suggest that people best remember stories that include a combination of counterintuitive physical feats … and plausibly human psychological features.  … Experiments show that it is much more natural to think "the gods know that I stole this money" than "the gods know that I had porridge for breakfast." …

Humans are unique among animals in maintaining large, stable coalitions of unrelated individuals, strongly bonded by mutual trust.  Humans evolved the cognitive tools to … gauge others’ reliability. … They can emit and detect costly, hard-to-fake signals of commitment. … When people proclaim their adherence to a particular faith, they subscribe to claims for which there is no evidence, and that would be taken as obviously wrong or ridiculous in other religions groups.  This signals a willingness to embrace the group’s particular norm for no other reason than that it is, precisely, the group’s norm.

We feel a deep pleasure from realizing that we believe something in common with our friends, and different from most people.  We feel an even deeper pleasure letting everyone know of this fact.  This feeling is EVIL.  Learn to see it in yourself, and then learn to be horrified by how thoroughly it can poison your mind.  Yes evidence may at times force you to disagree with a majority, and your friends may have correlated exposure to that evidence, but take no pleasure when you and your associates disagree with others; that is the road to rationality ruin. 

Added 6Nov: I didn’t mean to emphasize the size of the group you agree with.  The emotion is mainly tied to believing the same as an in-group, relative to an out-group.

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Intelligent Design Honesty

By Robin Hanson · September 11, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (77)

The excellent and famous philosopher Thomas Nagel on teaching intelligent design:

When … in response to the finding that the teaching of creationism in public schools was unconstitutional, the producers of creation science tried to argue that young earth creationism was consistent with the geological and paleontological evidence, … their arguments were easily refuted. … That is a good enough reason not to teach it to schoolchildren. ..

I agree with Philip Kitcher that the response of evolutionists to creation science and intelligent design should not be to rule them out as "not science." He argues that the objection should rather be that they are bad science, or dead science: scientific claims that have been decisively refuted by the evidence. … However, the claim that ID is bad science or dead science may depend … on the assumption that divine intervention in the natural order is not a serious possibility. …

So far as I can see, the only way to make no assumptions of a religious nature would be to admit that the empirical evidence may suggest different conclusions depending on what religious belief one starts with, and that the evidence does not by itself settle which of those beliefs is correct, even though there are other religious beliefs, such as the literal truth of Genesis, that are easily refuted by the evidence. I do not see much hope that such an approach could be adopted, but it would combine intellectual responsibility with respect for the Establishment Clause. …

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Disagreement is Disrespect

By Robin Hanson · September 5, 2008 6:00 am · Comments (56)

Consider these dueling bumper stickers:

Hate_is_not_a_family_value_2

Disagreement_is_not_hatred

Here religious conservatives do seem unfairly maligned: seeing a behavior as immoral is not at all the same as “hating.”  These folks also rightly seethe at how they are usually portrayed in popular film and TV, and at seeing their democratic ideals violated when even local voting majorities can’t prevent their kids from being taught evolution in public schools.  You can feel this resentment in the enthusiasm for Palin.  (Of course since I’m not religious about God, sexual preference, or democracy, this all bothers me lots less.)

But this does seem a handy opportunity to repeat that while disagreement isn’t hate, it is disrespect.  When you knowingly disagree with someone you are judging them to be less rational than you, at least on that topic.  (Judging them less informed or experienced by itself can’t create disagreement.)  It might be only a minor disrespect, if you think this disagreement suggests little about whether you’d disagree with them elsewhere.  But disagreement is disrespect, nonetheless.

Added: Wikipedia says hate speech is:

Speech intended to degrade, intimidate, or incite violence or prejudicial action against a person or group of people based on their race, gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, language ability, moral or political views, socioeconomic class, occupation or appearance (such as height, weight, and hair color), mental capacity and any other distinction-liability. [emphasis added]

How exactly do you disagree with someone’s moral views without degrading them?  Can you really say pedophelia is disgusting without degrading pedophiles?

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Suspiciously Vague LHC Forecasts

By Robin Hanson · August 10, 2008 12:30 pm · Comments (32)

Me in ‘06:

You can get 80% of the improvement that prediction markets offer by using a much simpler solution: collect track records.  … When people make forecast-like-statements, write them down in a clear standardized form, and then check back later to see who was more accurate.

I’m at scifoo (Nature/O’Reilly/Google Science Foo Camp) and yesterday heard a talk about the Large Hadron Collider that will go live in a few weeks – and had a disturbing thought.  Odds are very good that within the next few years we will see news articles where bigshot physicists say a new LHC result vindicates a theory they’ve been pushing.  But today there are no public predictions by high-profile physicists stated precisely enough to be clearly scored for accuracy!  While weather, business, and sport forecasters commonly make scoreable probability forecasts, here are the sorts of forecasts bigshot physicists make:

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