…and this is a 
Darwin's God and the problem of Civil War reenactments
Category: Religion
Posted on: March 8, 2007 3:15 PM, by PZ Myers
I know I'm late getting to this article on "Darwin's God" that was published last weekend…but I've been busy, OK? And to be honest, when I took a look at at, the first couple of paragraphs turned me off. These are silly rationalizations for god-belief.
Call it God; call it superstition; call it, as Atran does, belief in hope beyond reason whatever you call it, there seems an inherent human drive to believe in something transcendent, unfathomable and otherworldly, something beyond the reach or understanding of science. Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us? asked Atran when we spoke at his Upper West Side pied-à-terre in January. Atran, who is 55, is an anthropologist at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris, with joint appointments at the University of Michigan and the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York. His research interests include cognitive science and evolutionary biology, and sometimes he presents students with a wooden box that he pretends is an African relic. If you have negative sentiments toward religion, he tells them, the box will destroy whatever you put inside it. Many of his students say they doubt the existence of God, but in this demonstration they act as if they believe in something. Put your pencil into the magic box, he tells them, and the nonbelievers do so blithely. Put in your drivers license, he says, and most do, but only after significant hesitation. And when he tells them to put in their hands, few will.
If they dont believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?
Errm, but I don't cross my fingers during turbulence. I don't pray, either. My heart rate might go up, but otherwise I regard it with helpless equanimity, and I don't find solace in rituals or magical incantations. So I'm already predisposed to be disagreeable with his premises.
As for the "magic box", isn't there an obvious explanation that doesn't involve god-belief? A strange man with a strange device asks you to do something that he says has an element of risk; you don't have to believe that there is anything supernatural involved in order to hesitate before committing anything valuable to the test. That hesitation says nothing about belief in religion or the supernatural; if we're afraid of anything, it's trusting the crazy bearded guy who claims to have a magic box.
The rest of the article is a longish but not very deep discussion of two competing explanations for religion: the spandrel explanation, that it is a side effect of some other property of the brain that is useful, and the adaptations explanation, that religion confers a direct benefit on an individual or group. You can put me solidly in the spandrel camp, since I don't find the adaptationist rationalizations at all persuasive. They rely on the valid observation that these kinds of non-productive activities impose a cost on the individual, coupled to the erroneous assumption that selection would purge any less-than-optimal solution from the population, therefore there must be an advantage that maintains it.
There are costs to any individual of being religious: the time and resources spent on rituals, the psychic energy devoted to following certain injunctions, the pain of some initiation rites. But in terms of intergroup struggle, according to Wilson, the costs can be outweighed by the benefits of being in a cohesive group that out-competes the others.
Many people assign a high personal value to religious belief, so they find the idea that it is an accidental by-product objectionable, and embrace the idea that it has some specific purpose ("purposelessness" is a kind of dirty word to a lot of people, for some reason). So let's strip that loaded term "religion" out of the equation, and put in something equivalent that won't have quite the resonance to most of us.
Say, "Civil War reenactments".
It's pretty much the same phenomenon as religion. Groups get together and follow repeated behavioral scripts; they argue in great detail and with great heat over fine points; many have much of their identity tied up in the philosophical underpinnings of the practice; people invest significant amounts of money and time in the practice; and to outsiders, the whole thing looks rather ridiculous, even when we can appreciate the fervor and the spectacle.
And yet, I haven't seen anyone try to argue that Civil War re-enactors must have had a historical selective advantage, or that there must be a Civil War reenactment gene, or that something so costly must have a hard-wired biological basis. We're reasonably comfortable with saying it has a cultural source, that there's a biological substrate that drives people to be social and associate in community activities, but that the specific patterns in which this drive expresses itself, whether it is in parading in wheatfields with old rifles loaded with blanks, or in standing up and sitting down in pews while someone hectors you about hellfire, are not derivable from your genes. Well, actually, some people do try to argue that the latter pattern of religious custom is built into your biology—I find them about as credible as I would someone who claims the Confederate battle flag is etched onto their cortex.
The kinds of arguments made in this article are the same kind of privileging of the idea of religion—acting as if it were something special, that it has biological attributes that make it unique and, as one of the people consulted suggests, could even be a mark of a god's design. We see the same astonishing commitment to the irrational in sports fans, or Dungeons and Dragons nerds, or stamp collectors, though; I'm hoping some evolutionary psychologist somewhere will give me a wonderful story about how those manias are the product of millennia of selection.
Greg Laden makes another interesting point about the article: it's a subtle smear against atheists. It sets up a false conflict between the noisy "neo-atheists" and these other people carrying on a "quiet and illuminating debate" within science. It also tries to set up atheists as the weird people who are fighting their natural impulses.
What can be made of atheists, then? If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe. Atran says he faces an emotional and intellectual struggle to live without God in a nonatheist world, and he suspects that is where his little superstitions come from, his passing thought about crossing his fingers during turbulence or knocking on wood just in case. It is like an atavistic theism erupting when his guard is down. The comforts and consolations of belief are alluring even to him, he says, and probably will become more so as he gets closer to the end of his life. He fights it because he is a scientist and holds the values of rationalism higher than the values of spiritualism.
Again, Atran is generalizing his own peculiarities to the whole of humanity. I have none of these conflicts he describes at all; I'm not tempted by magical thinking, I don't have superstitious warding rituals, I've faced the death of family members and not felt even a twinge of religious wishful thinking. Now you could argue, I suppose, that I am some unusual mutant with a defective god gene (I'm an X-Man, with the power of Godlessness!), but I find it much more plausible that I, and many others like me, have simply escaped the cultural indoctrination that still afflicts Atran. It's no less real for being the product of ubiquitous repetition, but neither is it inescapable. We are not predetermined to believe in the nonsensical claims of religion—we have to have them dunned into us.
I've also avoided the urge to recreate the battle of Antietam in my backyard. That's another allele I seem to have avoided, although I suppose if I'd been brought up to obsess over the War of Northern Aggression I might feel an occasional itch.
Comments
Posted by: silence | March 8, 2007 3:28 PM
I have an answer for people who try to suggest that, since we may have a biological predisposition to believe in some kind of supernatural deity(ies), that...well, it's obvious, you should accept Christianity! (or whatever the person's religion happens to be)
If, as you say, it's good for us to follow a religion, since it has certain practical benefits, why not make the most of the opportunity, and create our OWN religion? One that suits our needs, our tastes, the best? One that unambiguously promotes peace, cooperation, etc. to give our species the best chance of survival--rather than, say, Christianity or Islam, which promote peace and harmony at some times and urge us to kill one another at other times?
It's the same issue, really, as the point that, if evolution is wrong, that doesn't make creationism/ID right.
Posted by: Leon | March 8, 2007 3:47 PM
It was a disturbing article on many levels. I was turned off not only by the gratingly-cheerful-simplicity style of the writing but also by the things you mentioned- The easy generalization of one person's perspectives to all humanity. The really scary thing was the reverence with which the scientists in the article were quoted. Not just Atran, but Wilson and the rest of them. Where was some healthy skepticism, of any point of view?
I try telling myself that it is a newspaper article, it is journalism, not science journalism and therefore can just be consigned to the pit of annoying opinion pieces. Oh well.
Posted by: Veo Claramente | March 8, 2007 3:49 PM
There's a third explanation which we should place beside the "spandrel" and "adaptationist" models. Call it the "selfish meme" hypothesis: the entities which are replicating and mutating are not people, but ideas, beliefs, viruses of the mind.
What's more, these explanations do not necessarily forbid one another. As Jason Rosenhouse points out,
A general predisposition to see human faces in the clouds and understand natural phenomena in human terms may be a spandrel. It's the accidental consequence of evolving in a particular environment to cope with particular hazards. In the wild, a false negative can kill you: that shape lurking in the shadows was a leopard after all. Optimize to avoid false negatives, and you breed yourself the potential to suffer from false positives. If these don't kill you as often, or if you move into a new environment where the standards your ancestors evolved don't apply so well anymore, then you've set yourself up for perceptual distortions.
Perhaps a tendency to animism is a by-product, a spandrel, while the things which give our madness method — doctrines, statements about which gods to worship and how — are the memes which exploit our vulnerabilities.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 8, 2007 3:49 PM
Regarding a possible "historical selective advantage of religion", you may want to have a look at Julian Jaynes' Origin of Consciousness, if you haven't already.
Be warned though: scary, scary book!
Posted by: Arnaud | March 8, 2007 3:52 PM
I've seen enough illusionists on TV to be worried a bit even with a clear plastic box. Some of these guys are really good at what they do.
To me, the guy seems to be trying to rationalize his own personal superstitions. He's not as rational and atheistic as he knows he should be, so he's trying to come up with a biological excuse to explain why he still crosses his fingers.
Not that I'm disagreeing with you, PZ, but how do you know that the Civil War reenactments aren't a spandrel from the adaptatious development of religion?
Posted by: King Aardvark | March 8, 2007 3:55 PM
Why?
Posted by: Uber | March 8, 2007 4:00 PM
"Errm, but I don't cross my fingers during turbulence."
Wow, PZ, you're so awesomely logical. We all should be more like you.
Posted by: notthedroids | March 8, 2007 4:01 PM
Anyone else see the box scene from dune here?
"Put your hand in the box."
"What's in the box?"
"Pain."
"How about my car keys instead?"
Posted by: Cat of Many Faces | March 8, 2007 4:02 PM
I was also put off by the "even atheists cross their fingers" crap. I know I don't. I don't even say bless you when someone sneezes. As a matter of fact, when I dropped all pretenses of magical thinking in my early twenties, I felt an immense relief. I thought, "Hey, I don't have to worry about some diety reading my dirty thoughts. Cool!" I don't feel any struggle to overcome a god-gene. Just the opposite -- I thought life was more stressful when I had a minor belief in the supernatural.
In other words, Atran is full of it.
Posted by: Brandon | March 8, 2007 4:04 PM
It also tries to set up atheists as the weird people who are fighting their natural impulses.
This seems like an odd objection. If there were some level of heritable tendency (selected or incidental), it would be a case of naturalistic fallacy to then say that god-belief/religiosity is therefore necessarily a good thing.
I think it is likely there is some genetic basis (but not simply a "gene for") god-belief. But that no more compels me to belief then does a tendency to desire multiple mates compel me to infidelity.
Posted by: Shaggy Maniac | March 8, 2007 4:05 PM
Dungeons and Dragons nerds...the product of millennia of selection.
HEY, when the dragons come swooping out of the sky, all breathing fire and tossing Charm Person spells around, where will you be? I'll have my Delayed Blast Fireball primed and ready! Also, I typically roll natural 20s when really needed.
Civil War reenactments
Nice example.
Do other countries also reenact their own civil wars? Do Englishmen run about the countryside with pikes and wheel-locks? Do Spaniards build replica Messerschmitts? Do Bangladeshis drive around in restored T-55s?
'muricans are weird.
Posted by: TheBrummell | March 8, 2007 4:07 PM
You can sum up the problems of the article, it seems, thusly: Sample Size of One.
Posted by: Joshua | March 8, 2007 4:08 PM
Living in the NY metro gives me access to the premier public radio station WNYC. Sadly they replaced a secular Saturday morning program "Sound & Spirit" [Music and Ideas that Celebrate the Human Experience --a somewhat historical themed look at the music based on religion & cultures] with the deist "Sepaking of Faith". Makes me want to sleep in. Needless to say I won't pledge support to a 'religious' radio station....The point is the topic for this Saturday [1st of 3 parts] is "Einstein's God". While the guest may have valid credentials I'm sure the host Krista Tippett will still manage to twist all into something truly nauseating. As much as I loathe the program I dont think I can avoid listening in.. note WNYC lets one listen online for those furious enough but outside this metro, and not receiving this schmaltz from their own public radio sation.
Posted by: Dan Hoover | March 8, 2007 4:10 PM
I cannot stand Scott Atran. I last saw him appearing in the wonderful Beyond Belief 2006 conference, and his smug arguments about why religion wasn't harmful were very frustrating. He spoke it wish such authority and confidence that he almost had me for a second. Luckily Sam Harris roundly demolished him soon after that. If I recall correctly Scott also made up some facts about Palestine over the course of the conversation.
Posted by: TheBowerbird | March 8, 2007 4:13 PM
Brum: I don't know that they do recreations necessarily, but there is a Richard III Society that takes an interesting contrarian view on the Wars of the Roses.
Posted by: Joshua | March 8, 2007 4:14 PM
TheBrummell--
Allow me to suggest Otiluke's Freezing Sphere instead of a fireball spell against a fire-breathing dragon.
Posted by: JakeB | March 8, 2007 4:16 PM
Thanks for the (as usual) great analysis, PZ. Maybe it was the "glass half full" phenomenon, but I didn't hate the article as much as the rest of y'all. After all, this is the New York Times Magazine we're talking about--the same clowns who helped launch the country into Atkins diet mania a few years back. Plus, I still haven't had a chance to crack open Atran's book--it's still sitting on top of the Pile of Guilt--so it seemed a decent prologue to his work.
I agree Atran lacked a bit of rigor when he generalized his superstitious behavior to the population, but he may have felt this was an easy way to communicate his findings. And, as you might know, it's not always easy communicating findings to the press. Also, when you're dealing with human psychology, sometimes you come up with quite neat research questions that way: "I'm knocking on wood--I wonder why people do that?"
Finally, personally, I avoid walking under ladders, but I think it's mostly for fear of being klonked on the noggin with a paint bucket!
Posted by: tikistitch | March 8, 2007 4:21 PM
In other words, Atran is full of it.
I'm afraid you might be right about that. I have no idea what point he was trying to make with the hand in the box experiment. The only thing I can figure is maybe he thought he really had a god in there. Otherwise it doesn't make any sense.
Posted by: 386sx | March 8, 2007 4:24 PM
Be warned though: scary, scary book!
Uber : Why?
Hard to tell really. (I didn't mean scary in a derogatory way, BTW) Probably because we regard consciousness as such a defining quality of being human. I found Jaynes, at a first reading at least, utterly convincing, especially in his descriptions of societies whose members were devoid of this quality. His descriptions of the "hallucinatory reality" of Summer and the early Hebrews tribes definitly created a few goosebumps.
(Plus: I am a big fan of the Illiad!)
I have heard several times since that his thesis had been more or less refuted. But to tell the truth I have never really found out what exactly this refutation was.
Still, a book I'd recommend to anybody looking for an explanation for the religious phenomenon.
Posted by: Arnaud | March 8, 2007 4:28 PM
Oh my FSM! He discovered the radical and shocking theory that many people feel pressure to act and believe the way everyone around them is acting and believing!
What can we call this new and unexpected phenomenon... how about "peer pressure".
(Are atheists, as a group, more resistant to peer pressure than the general population? The vast majority of us resisted it at least once, after all, and frequently many, many more times than that... Honestly I would expect no more than a weak correlation at most - humans are pretty complex - but then, I haven't looked.)
Anyway, the statement "Humans are instinctively predisposed to believe X", even if correct, is not evidence that X is true. Many people seem strongly predisposed to believe that the person they love must also love them in spite of evidence to the contrary, but if you pursue *that* belief too far you can be jailed for stalking. Feelings are a very, very poor guide to what is actually true in the real world, and there's no reason to believe that principle wouldn't generalize to the supernatural world (if there is one) as well.
Posted by: Chris | March 8, 2007 4:28 PM
Again, Atran is generalizing his own peculiarities to the whole of humanity.
better known as projection. universally found as a primary MO in creationists, interestingly enough.
bottom line, Atran is no better in his application here than Collins is with his "Moral Law" argument in his latest book.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 4:30 PM
Heh. The gist I got from those excerpts was
"humans tend to exhibit behaviors which betray their belief in god/religion"
I'd take away from that rather, the converse
"humans tend to reflexively exhibit behavior which explains the existence of religion."
just like all the other ugres we fight, the need to believe is buried away in there like the need to eat, sleep, and procreate. there's also the urge to lounge around, steal, kill, chew with your mouth open, etc.
depending on your resolve you may recognize and conquer these urges, or, in most cases, you may just convince yourself that you have conquered them.
if anthing, the excerpt shows how very little the writer understands about human nature. w00t.
Posted by: Will Von Wizzlepig | March 8, 2007 4:31 PM
If you have negative sentiments toward religion, he tells them, the box will destroy whatever you put inside it
why not just ask them if they are still beating their wives?
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 4:32 PM
Excellent analysis.
I'd just like to add: If the actions rhetoric of various religious groups (what they do to children, what they profess regarding other groups, etc.) were described without attributing any group to a particular religion (not providing labels such as "christian" or "fundamentalist" etc.) and then ranked by a panel of average citizens as to weirdness, freakiness, potential danger to society, etc., you would get one ranking. But if you added back the labels, the groups that call themselves "christian" no matter how strange and dangerous they are, would not be ranked on this scale where they should be.
In other words, just as atheists who fail to remain quite, but instead deign to make a point or two, are automatically labeled as extremist radicals trying to destroy civilization, christians can do nearly anything and not be identified as fringe.
Or at least that's been the case since the late Roman Empire. (Ah, for the good ol' days...)
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 8, 2007 4:34 PM
Posted by: Steve LaBonne | March 8, 2007 4:35 PM
Yes, since you ask. They also frequently reenact the Battle of Hastings. The Dutch are big reenactors as well. Why on earth would anyone assume that reenacting battles is a specifically American pastime?
Posted by: nm | March 8, 2007 4:37 PM
If they dont believe in God, what exactly are they afraid of?
the guy holding the box, obviously. I know I would hesitate to even converse with someone who proffered an idiotic superstitious premise to a box. at best, i would suspect a trick.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 4:37 PM
what a stupid article. evolutionary psychology and sociology is plagued with panadaptationists and just positing some contrived dualist opposite spandrelism doesn't explain anything either.
there is a class conflict explanation that is a far better answer to why religions persist. the root cause of religious beliefs is a black box until we can actually run the experiments where children are raised without teleological metaphysics (english is full of this bullshit) and without references to god-beasts. until then, it belongs in the new york times.
Posted by: Erasmus | March 8, 2007 4:37 PM
"humans tend to reflexively exhibit behavior which explains the existence of religion."
dead on, will.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 4:39 PM
"If you have negative sentiments toward religion," he tells them, "the box will destroy whatever you put inside it."
Yeah, I'm sure everybody believes him when he says that. /sarcasm.
Anyway, how can he possibly know that there is only one god? There is just no way of knowing that. Obviously the man has gone completely over the edge.
Posted by: 386sx | March 8, 2007 4:40 PM
Only one god?
Even a cursory reading of the bible, with the premise that whenever "god" is mentioned a real god is being referred to, immediately indicates that there are several.
Posted by: Greg Laden | March 8, 2007 4:43 PM
The comparison of religion to Civil War reenactment is incredibly unpersuasive.
Posted by: notthedroids | March 8, 2007 4:44 PM
I'd love for that guy to tell me that if I have a negative sentiment toward religion, his magic box will destroy whatever I put inside it. I'd totally teabag that box, while decribing several uses for crucifixes, communion wafers, and baby Jesus that might not have previously been obvious to him.
Posted by: Greg Peterson | March 8, 2007 4:46 PM
"silence", there's a line in "Guys and Dolls" which explains why a skeptic would be reticent to put something valuable in any sort of box, clear or otherwise:
"One of these days in your travels, a guy is going to show you a brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken. Then this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the jack of spades jump out of this brand-new deck of cards and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not accept this bet, because as sure as you stand there, you're going to wind up with an ear full of cider."
Posted by: ben | March 8, 2007 4:49 PM
I think PZ here is implicitly falling for that popular version of the Naturalist Fallacy which says that if something is "natural," then that means it's good for us, the right way for us to behave. The tendency towards violence and waging war may also be deeply structured into human nature, but we don't automatically assume that someone who tries to fight against their "natural impulses" and be peaceful and nonviolent has some sort of problem. On the contrary. Even the religious respect such a person more, not less.
As for me, I fight against some of my superstituous tendencies, and give in to others, usually as a self-conscious form of whimsy. The ability to recognize the powerful draw of wanting to seeing significant patterns in random events -- or anthropomorphizing inert objects -- helps me to understand how the other side can be wrong, but not "crazy." In a different culture, and with a different background, there goes me.
I read the article -- and several others on the subject -- and don't see that much difference between Atran, Boyer, Bloom, Dennett, and Dawkins (at least, not when compared to their detractors.) They're all more or less looking for natural explanations which answer the question "why are religions or other forms of supernaturalism universal across cultures?" And I agree with Jason Rosenhouse and Blake Stacey: I suspect the actual answer is going to be complex, and lie in both byproduct and adaptionist theories, because the grab-bag we label "religion" is so complex.
By the way, not all adaptionist interpretations of religion favor the idea that religion is Good for Us. One of the most popular is the view that communities tied together through a belief in an afterlife and a special relationship and knowledge of a Spirit World would be absolute powerhouses in war, with a nasty tendency to kill their victims rather than enslave them, and kill their children rather than have them marry outside the tribe. Thus, the genes which favor religious-ways-of-thinking spread. Whether it's plausible or not, it's hardly "religion-friendly."
Posted by: Sastra | March 8, 2007 4:50 PM
I am genetically predisposed not to belive in Scott Atran, even when I cross my fingers. After reading your posting, and the comments, however, I think I am now humanistically and mystically predisposed to put him in front of several Civil War cannons at the Battle of Gettysburg. But he has his hope without reason, so it should come out okay for him!
Posted by: J-Dog | March 8, 2007 4:54 PM
PZ,
Would you prefer the statement that "humans are not hard-wired to be rational" to the "humans have a hard-wired acceptance of god" statement?
It explains a lot to say that we're not hard wired to be rational...
Posted by: factician | March 8, 2007 4:56 PM
Anyone else see the box scene from dune here?
Instantly. Which actually brings up some interesting philosophical underpinnings of the Bene Gesserit and their Missionaria Protectiva.
Or, even better, from National Lampoon's Doon...
"I hold at your neck the deadly Kareem Abdul Jabar - the High Handed One, the Sky Hook..."
Posted by: Sarcastro | March 8, 2007 5:01 PM
They're all more or less looking for natural explanations which answer the question "why are religions or other forms of supernaturalism universal across cultures?"
there's desire, and then there's method.
do you really think, sastra, that Atran's box experiment is an accurate method of determining the answer to the question he set out to explore?
if you do, as someone above mentioned, I have a deck of cards I wanna show you.
to see no difference in the methods between Atran and Dawkins, to pull two examples from your list, reflects rather poorly on your ability to differentiate method from desire.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 5:05 PM
Crossing your fingers in turbulence, or prayer in the face of fear, and possibly religion itself, are expressions of an attempt to exert influence over events that are beyond our control. Humans will seek any advantage, no matter small or hopeless, in a situation where they have no control. The immediate rationalization is something like "Well, it might not help, but it can't hurt." We find that, in the aggregate, this kind of thinking can hurt humanity (see Dawkins Root of All Evil), but on the personal level, it makes a kind of silly sense.
Posted by: Mike Nilsen | March 8, 2007 5:10 PM
The example about the mysterious African box is laughably insipid in its attributed "ingenius" nature. I don't get all religious if I walk up to a guy on the street with the 3 bowl-shuffle routine, hand him my watch, and then drop to my knees in earnest prayer while he's shuffling, hoping my wallet doesn't disappear.
I think that example sets the tone for this article. But notice the writer is playing the most-oft abused hand in religion: fear. Using just the destroying box as an example, he is drawing a clear connection between religion and fear. He says the people putting their hands into the box obviously hesitate strongly at first, no doubt out of some sort of natural apprehensive impulse. Even a dog will sniff a hand before shoving its nose into it affectionately, or halt when hunting in the woods to detect possible danger.
So now that the writer and the destructo-box guy have laid the layer of fear for unwitting subjects, the only antidote must be incorporation of a god?
That example is poor on a comedic level.
Posted by: BlueIndependent | March 8, 2007 5:10 PM
JakeB@17:
Dragons - Color Coded for your convenience!
Posted by: stogoe | March 8, 2007 5:11 PM
"Anyone else see the box scene from dune here?"
That and the Wood Beast in Flash Gordon.
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 8, 2007 5:18 PM
"Do other countries also reenact their own civil wars? Do Englishmen run about the countryside with pikes and wheel-locks? Do Spaniards build replica Messerschmitts? Do Bangladeshis drive around in restored T-55s?"
I know there are reenactors for the Napoleonic Wars in Europe. I know some Civil War reenactors, including a guy who managed to get a bayonet through his arm at Gettysburg (while filming the TNT film, no less!), and they're not all cooks who romanticize the Confederacy. But then he's from Michigan and plays a Midwestern character almost exclusively. Apparently, there are sometimes issues with the Confederate reenactors. Completely aside the problem of having six or seven Robert Lee's show up, sometimes they simply refuse to lose the battle. My source also informed me that these are the kinds of guys who go out of their way to live up to the more unfortunate stereotypes about Southerners and the war in question.
Posted by: Samnell | March 8, 2007 5:18 PM
I have yet to read much of Atran's stuff, but for anybody who HAS spent time going into his arguments in detail, is this really representative of the level of argument he presents?
if so, seems one can safely save some time.
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 5:19 PM
PZ, the hate you spew is just an example of one of the reasons why the human race is in trouble.
And eventually the hate and desire for revenge will spill over to own destruction.
Come to your senses. Stop the hate. Set a higher standard.
Win, but do it with honor.
Posted by: Francis | March 8, 2007 5:19 PM
It's fine to deconstruct Atran's box "experiment" as if it were really being presented as a research method rather than the (still criticizable) classroom illustration that it is. How about the actual psychological research cited in the article that at least suggests an innate propensity for god-belief/supernatural-belief? I think the article's author actually did a reasonable job of identifying the controversial nature of the issue.
I'll reiterate my view that it seems strange that a material basis for god-belief would is so objectionable on its face. If it exists, it really says nothing either way as to whether god-belief or even religion is something that one ought to embrace or reject.
Posted by: Shaggy Maniac | March 8, 2007 5:19 PM
PZ:
Sastra:
Reading PZ's post again, I think a better description would say that the New York Times article implicitly falls for the Naturalistic Fallacy. To which I say, religion may be natural, but so is deadly nightshade.
(Tip o' the Pope hat to Alan Alda.)
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 8, 2007 5:21 PM
386sx "what point he was trying to make with the hand in the box experiment. ..."
He imagines that finding pervasive hesitance is evidence of actual belief in god or god-like supernatural in spite of a declared skepticism, what he believes and is trying to 'prove'.
Surely there are other explanations, but my response is will my head fit in the box?
Posted by: Dan | March 8, 2007 5:24 PM
#48It's fine to deconstruct Atran's box "experiment" as if it were really being presented as a research method rather than the (still criticizable) classroom illustration that it is. How about the actual psychological research cited in the article that at least suggests an innate propensity for god-belief/supernatural-belief? I think the article's author actually did a reasonable job of identifying the controversial nature of the issue.
it doesn't matter if it was being represented as a method of research (his statements imply that in his mind, at least, it is), but that he represents the results as supportive of his argument, which they clearly are not.
get it?
there are indeed a couple of recent studies looking at heritability of "extreme religious behavior", like this one:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15745438&dopt=Abstract
surely you can see the difference between desire and method, just like I was getting at with Sastra's post?
Posted by: Ichthyic | March 8, 2007 5:28 PM
Thanks Francis! Really helpful.
Wait who is PZ hating?
The concern is nauseating.
Posted by: Steve_C | March 8, 2007 5:30 PM
Posted by: The Science Pundit | March 8, 2007 5:32 PM
"I'm an X-Man, with the power of Godlessness!"
I absolutely love that statement. Just PERFECT.
Posted by: Callandor | March 8, 2007 5:33 PM
I'll reiterate my view that it seems strange that a material basis for god-belief would is so objectionable on its face. If it exists, it really says nothing either way as to whether god-belief or even religion is something that one ought to embrace or reject.
I think part of it is the fear that the premise "Human beings have an innate tendency to believe in supernatural agency" will be used to support the conclusion "Religion will always be with us. It's built into our genes. So don't bother challenging or fighting it. You're wasting your time."
Posted by: Jason | March 8, 2007 5:33 PM
If the evolutionary view of religion is true, they have to work hard at being atheists, to resist slipping into intrinsic habits of mind that make it easier to believe than not to believe.
That few atheists "have to work hard at being atheists" is evidence that the evolutionary view of religion is false -- a point that construction of the above conditional is biased against.
I was once selected by a stage magician for his guillotine act. I hesitated putting my head into the device, despite being fairly certain , intellectually, that it was harmless. Does this demonstrate that I'm infected by a religion gene? Or does it suggest that Atran and Henig are infected by a stupidity gene? Perhaps, just perhaps, there are other explanations.
Posted by: truth machine | March 8, 2007 5:34 PM
"Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?"
The journalist's "we" is one of the most annoying habits in all of journalism. If I could have one rule drilled into every student or trainee journalist, it would be to never, ever assume that "we" all feel or do the same things. It's doubly obnoxious in this instance, where he compounds the initial offence by saying "the most atheistic of us" when he clearly isn't an atheist. What if I were to say something like: "Nobody endures serious racism anymore, even the blackest of us"? It's incredibly offensive in its presumption.
Huh? They haven't "learned" that. They've been told it in Church and by their parents and told that if they don't believe it they'll burn in hell. Have children "learned" that the tooth fairy will give them money for their teeth?
Posted by: Ginger Yellow | March 8, 2007 5:35 PM
Brandon: "I don't even say bless you when someone sneezes."
One acquaintance of mine says, "Damn you!" whenever I sneeze. (I don't know if he says that to other people--I imagine so, I just don't remember anyone else sneezing in his presence.) The first time he did, I didn't get the joke for a moment ...
Posted by: Scott Simmons | March 8, 2007 5:39 PM
"(I'm an X-Man, with the power of Godlessness!), "
How many hit points is that worth?
Posted by: Mike Haubrich | March 8, 2007 5:41 PM
So many bozos on this bus:
I'll reiterate my view that it seems strange that a material basis for god-belief would is so objectionable on its face.
It's not objectionable on its face. What is objectionable is fallacious reasoning and misrepresentation.
I think PZ here is implicitly falling for that popular version of the Naturalist Fallacy which says that if something is "natural," then that means it's good for us, the right way for us to behave.
Uh, no, PZ is reporting on the argument made in the article -- he did quote the article in support of his statement.
Posted by: truth machine | March 8, 2007 5:44 PM
I don't cross my fingers during turbulence either. I've never even heard of that superstition. What's it supposed to do, suspend the plane in mid-air? Break the cycle of bad luck?
I actually don't even get all that bothered by turbulence, which I know is odd. I just don't believe that I'll crash because plane crashes don't happen all that often. And I've also flown a lot. That's probably why the superstition wouldn't ever do much for me even if I had heard of it.
The only superstition to get to me is stepping on a crack. As a kid the saying, "Step on a crack, break your mother's back" really did a number on me. I used to imagine my mom dying as a result. I still hesitate when I notice I'm about to step on a crack even knowing how silly it is.
Posted by: ordinarygirl | March 8, 2007 5:46 PM
truth machine:
I'm not so sure. I was raised without religion and never acquired one, but my brain is still predisposed to see faces in clouds. Whatever spandrels emerged from the accidents of human evolution, they're in my head too. Without the memes, though, my neurological quirks don't become the foundation for a belief system.
Posted by: Blake Stacey | March 8, 2007 5:49 PM
Speaking of which, buy the t-shirt!
Posted by: Callandor | March 8, 2007 5:49 PM
"Why do we cross our fingers during turbulence, even the most atheistic among us?"
The journalist's "we" is one of the most annoying habits in all of journalism. If I could have one rule drilled into every student or trainee journalist, it would be to never, ever assume that "we" all feel or do the same things.
I doubt that even the "journalist" has ever crossed her fingers during turbulence, or ever seen anyone do so -- certainly no atheist. It's simply a lie fabricated to support a conclusion. The reality, that people mostly grab their armrests, and that people who grab their crucifixes are the sort of people who wear crucifixes, obviously doesn't fit into her just-so story.
Posted by: truth machine | March 8, 2007 5:52 PM
Dune was the first "book" (I.E. not doctor seuss) that I read as a child. (i was eight at the time) It has always been one of my favorites and it might be it's treating of religion that set me on the doubters path. After all it treats religion as a tool and not a truth. The bene gesserit use it as a manipulative force all over and Paul is in a constant fight to not let it come to it's ultimate conclusion. (the righteous war against the unrighteous)
Kinda seemed to say that all religions are a path toward that outcome, and so far i agree.
Also Doctor Kynes the senior is a wonderful portrait of a biologist.
Posted by: Cat of Many Faces | March 8, 2007 5:53 PM
TheBrummell (#12). Yes, there are reenactors of almost any interesting period. My father is a an avid Sherlockian, and their cannon discussions are just as vehement as a Civil War buff. And let's not forget folk dancers, White Rat Morris being my favorite (yeah, the bells are stitched onto their arms; best shirt at the fair: "Yes, it hurts").
And if there's not a historic period that appeals, just make it up: see furries & real life roleplay.
Posted by: usagi | March 8, 2007 5:58 PM
"We see the same astonishing commitment to the irrational in sports fans, or Dungeons and Dragons nerds, or stamp collectors..."
Exactly (I've used the stamp collector analogy a few times myself); which prompts the question: why the heck the whole thing about separation of Church and State? A hobby, however indoctrinated, is a hobby; there is no reason to give preferential treatment to one over others. Therefore, as far as I am concerned, the only secular State is such that does not have any mention of religion in its laws.
Posted by: Leo | March 8, 2007 6:00 PM
Ichthyic wrote:
The way the experiment was set up, the students were told that the box was an "African relic" which magically worked to destroy anything put in it, but only if the owner "had negative sentiments about religion." Clearly a religious sort of relic. Technically speaking, if you had no belief in the supernatural at all it should be easy to put your pen, your driver's license, or your hand in the box. Yet even atheists seemed hesitant. That is a bit unexpected.
Saying the experiment was poorly designed because it would be reasonable for the students to think there was a trick involved -- and the guy with the box was a loony -- is a fair point. The test could be redesigned to meet that objection.
But I suspect the class knew, in advance, that Dr. Atran did not believe in the box, and they didn't believe in the box either. In the circumstances, it was unlikely to be a trick (an anthropology classroom, and not Las Vegas.) But it was a lot harder for them to put their hand in, than their pen. And it felt "wrong" to wear a used but clean sweater when told it had belonged to a criminal, but not if it had belonged to an unknown stranger.
Something interesting is going on. Some sort of instinctive taboo seems to be working. I think his point -- and it's been made by both Dawkins and Dennett -- is that religion is not just about belief in God. That's a detail which may or may not be taught in the environment, where details are learned. It goes deeper than that, and deals with superstition and instinct and intuition and folk-physics and propensities in childhood.
By broadening his scope, Atran is actually getting further and further away from the simplistic "God puts knowledge of Himself in Every Heart" tripe the general public thinks of when it thinks of an innate tendency to be religious. They may try to spin it, but Atran's point of view should not be reassuring to any Believer.
Posted by: Sastra | March 8, 2007 6:07 PM
Yes to the first example, at least. I've seen an ECW re-enactment group in England. There are also very active re-enactment groups covering the whole span all the way back to the Roman era (complete with fully functional onagers and such...).
Regarding PZ's original comment about muskets loaded with blanks, I've seen one re-enactment involving a muzzle loader in which the owner forgot to remove the ram-rod before firing it at one of his friends. Owwwwww. Not quite a "blank".
Posted by: Millimeter Wave | March 8, 2007 6:14 PM
Everything. The void. The fact that there is no higher 'purpose' or 'meaning'. What is, just is. I'm going to die and that's it. I shall have been a speck of dust in time and space. Nothingness is rushing up to meet me and I can do nothing about it. And there isn't anything Out There that gives a fuck about my terror.
Atheists spend their entire lives facing those fears without the props religions (claim to) provide.
Posted by: sharon | March 8, 2007 6:14 PM
Oh, almost forgot. No, I don't cross my f***ing fingers in turbulence either.
I have my own ritual in such cases, which involves pouring any wine currently in my glass back into the little bottle and screwing the cap on. Much more practical, I think you'll agree...
Posted by: Millimeter Wave | March 8, 2007 6:16 PM
As nm pointed out, the English do in fact have their own civil war reenactment group(s?). But, as I recall, they run around with matchlocks--at least the infantry would. Any wheel locks would most likely be carried b