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Science Forum Index » Philosophy Forum » Why do we believe in God? (hyperreligiosity and mental...
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| turtoni... |
 Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 11:54 pm |
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"The Dolley Pond Church of God With Signs Following was founded in Tennessee
in 1909 by one George Went Hensley. This former bootlegger took to the
pulpit in a rural Pentecostalist community in Grasshopper Valley. One
Sabbath, while he was preaching a fiery sermon, some of the congregation
dumped a large box of rattlesnakes into the pulpit (history does not record
whether they were angry or just bored). Without missing a beat, in
mid-sentence, Hensley bent down, picked up a 3ft-long specimen of this most
venomous of snakes, and held it wriggling high above his head. Unharmed, he
exhorted his congregation to follow suit, quoting the words of Christ: "And
these signs will follow those who believe ... in my Name ... they will take
up serpents."
News of Hensley's sermon spread through Grasshopper Valley; others joined
him in handling snakes, and the practice caught on. There have since been
around 120 deaths from snakebite in these churches, but most of the
congregants tend to refuse medical help if they are bitten, preferring to
believe that divine intervention will be more efficacious. Sadly, Hensley
himself perished from a snakebite in 1955, and shortly afterwards the US
government wisely acted to prevent the practice - although it is still legal
in parts of the States.
Today, snake-handling continues mostly in small communities in rural areas
of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as pockets in other southern states.
Participants feel that "the spirit of God" comes upon them as they open the
boxes containing the snakes. Often lifting three or four of them up
simultaneously in one hand, holding them high and allowing the creatures to
wind around their arms and bodies, they praise God ecstatically.
To many of us, religious or not, this type of activity seems little short of
outright lunacy. And it's certainly the case that religion and mental
ill-health have long been linked. The disturbed individual who believes
himself to be Christ, or to receive messages from God, is something of a
cliche in our society. Ever since Sigmund Freud, many people have associated
religiosity with neurosis and mental illness.
Many years ago, a team of researchers at the department of anthropology at
the University of Minnesota decided to put this association to the test.
They studied certain fringe religious groups, such as fundamentalist
Baptists, Pentecostalists and the snake-handlers of West Virginia, to see if
they showed the particular type of psychopathology associated with mental
illness. Members of mainstream Protestant churches from a similar social and
financial background provided a good control group for comparison. Some of
the wilder fundamentalists prayed with what can only be described as great
and transcendental ecstasy, but there was no obvious sign of any particular
psychopathology among most of the people studied. After further analysis,
however, there appeared a tendency to what can only be described as mental
instability in one particular group. The study was blinded, so that most of
the research team involved with questionnaires did not have access to the
final data. When they were asked which group they thought would show the
most disturbed psychopathology, the whole team identified the
snake-handlers. But when the data were revealed, the reverse was true: there
was more mental illness among the conventional Protestant churchgoers - the
"extrinsically" religious - than among the fervently committed.
A Harvard psychologist named Gordon Allport did some key research in the
1950s on various kinds of human prejudice and came up with a definition of
religiosity that is still in use today. He suggested that there were two
types of religious commitment - extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic
religiosity he defined as religious self-centredness. Such a person goes to
church or synagogue as a means to an end - for what they can get out of it.
They might go to church to be seen, because it is the social norm in their
society, conferring respectability or social advancement. Going to church
(or synagogue) becomes a social convention.
Allport thought that intrinsic religiosity was different. He identified a
group of people who were intrinsically religious, seeing their religion as
an end in itself. They tended to be more deeply committed; religion became
the organising principle of their lives, a central and personal experience.
In support of his research, Allport found that prejudice was more common in
those individuals who scored highly for extrinsic religion.
The evidence generally is that intrinsic religiosity seems to be associated
with lower levels of anxiety and stress, freedom from guilt, better
adjustment in society and less depression. On the other hand, extrinsic
religious feelings - where religion is used as a way to belong to and
prosper within a group - seem to be associated with increased tendencies to
guilt, worry and anxiety.
It is possible that strong levels of belief in God, gods, spirits or the
supernatural might have given our ancestors considerable comforts and
advantages. Many anthropologists and social theorists do indeed take the
view that religion emerged out of a sense of uncertainty and bewilderment -
explaining misfortune or illness, for example, as the consequences of an
angry God, or reassuring us that we live on after death. Rituals would have
given us a comforting, albeit illusory, sense that we can control what is in
fact ultimately beyond our control - the weather, illness, attacks by
predators or other human groups.
However, it is equally plausible that the Divine Idea would have been of
little use in our prehistoric rough-and-tumble existence. Life on the
savannah may have been in the open air, but it was no picnic. Early humans
would have been constantly on the lookout for predators to be avoided, such
as wolves and sabre-tooth tigers; hunting or scavenging would be a continual
necessity to ensure sufficient food; and the men were probably constantly
fighting among each other to ensure that they could have sex with the
best-looking girl (or boy) or choose the most tender piece of meat from the
carcass. Why would it be necessary, in the daily scramble to stay alive, to
make time for such an indulgent pursuit as religion?
Richard Dawkins, our best-known Darwinist and a ferocious critic of
organised religion, notes that religion seems to be, on the face of it, a
cost rather than a benefit: "Religious behaviour in bipedal apes occupies
large quantities of time. It devours huge resources. A medieval cathedral
consumed hundreds of man-centuries in its building. Sacred music and
devotional paintings largely monopolised medieval and Renaissance talent.
Thousands, perhaps millions, of people have died, often accepting torture
first, for loyalty to one religion against a scarcely distinguishable
alternative. Devout people have died for their gods, killed for them, fasted
for them, endured whipping, undertaken a lifetime of celibacy, and sworn
themselves to asocial silence for the sake of religion."
It seems at first glance as if Dawkins is arguing that religion is an
evolutionary disaster area. Religious belief, it seems, would be unlikely,
on its own merits, to have slipped through the net of natural selection. But
maybe that interpretation of what Dawkins is saying neglects some of the
further benefits that religion might well offer in the human quest for
survival and security.
In his book Darwin's Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson, professor of biology and
anthropology at Binghamton University in New York state, says that
religiosity emerged as a "useful" genetic trait because it had the effect of
making social groups more unified. The communal nature of religion certainly
would have given groups of hunter-gatherers a stronger sense of
togetherness. This produced a leaner, meaner survival machine, a group that
was more likely to be able to defend a waterhole, or kill more antelope, or
capture their opponents' daughters. The better the religion was at producing
an organised and disciplined group, the more effective they would have been
at staying alive, and hence at passing their genes on to the next
generation. This is what we mean by "natural selection": adaptations which
help survival and reproduction get passed down through the genes. Taking
into account the additional suggestion, from various studies of twins, that
we may have an inherited disposition towards religious belief, is there any
evidence that the Divine Idea might be carried in our genes?
While nobody has identified any gene for religion, there are certainly some
candidate genes that may influence human personality and confer a tendency
to religious feelings. Some of the genes likely to be involved are those
which control levels of different chemicals called neurotransmitters in the
brain. Dopamine is one neurotransmitter which we know plays a powerful role
in our feelings of well-being; it may also be involved in the sense of peace
that humans feel during some spiritual experiences. One particular gene
involved in dopamine action - incidentally, by no means the only one that
has been studied in this way - is the dopamine D4 receptor gene (DRD4). In
some people, because of slight changes in spelling of the DNA sequences (a
so-called polymorphism) making up this gene, the gene may be more
biologically active, and this could be partly responsible for a religious
bent.
And it is easy to suggest a mechanism by which religious beliefs could help
us to pass on our genes. Greater cohesion and stricter moral codes would
tend to produce more cooperation, and more cooperation means that hunting
and gathering are likely to bring in more food. In turn, full bellies mean
greater strength and alertness, greater immunity against infection, and
offspring who develop and become independent more swiftly. Members of the
group would also be more likely to take care of each other, especially those
who are sick or injured. Therefore - in the long run - a shared religion
appears to be evolutionarily advantageous, and natural selection might
favour those groups with stronger religious beliefs.
But this is not the whole story. Although religion might be useful in
developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily
develop moral intuitions without relying on religion. Psychologist Eliot
Turiel observed that even three- and four-year-olds could distinguish
between moral rules (for example, not hitting someone) and conventional
rules (such as not talking when the teacher is talking). Furthermore, they
could understand that a moral breach, such as hitting someone, was wrong
whether you had been told not to do it or not, whereas a conventional
breach, such as talking in class, was wrong only if it had been expressly
forbidden. They were also clearly able to distinguish between prudential
rules (such as not leaving your notebook next to the fireplace) and moral
rules.
This would suggest that there is a sort of "morality module" in the brain
that is activated at an early age. Evidence from neuroscience would back
this up, to a degree. In my last book, The Human Mind, I noted that certain
brain areas become activated when we engage in cooperation with others, and
that these areas are associated with feelings of pleasure and reward. It
also seems that certain areas of the brain are brought into action in
situations where we feel empathy and forgiveness.
So religion does not seem to be produced by a specific part of our
psychological make-up. Is it more likely, then, that religious ideas are
something of an accidental by-product created by other parts of our basic
blueprint, by processes deep in the unconscious mind that evolved to help us
survive?
Shared beliefs
What identical twins teach us about religion
In the United States during the 50s and 60s,it was considered best to
separate at birth twins who were to be adopted. This led to a number of
these children being brought up by families who did not even know that their
adopted baby had a twin; and sadly, the children themselves were brought up
intotal ignorance of their "lost" twin.
Identical twins, of course, are formed in the uterus by the embryo
splitting; so identical twins have exactly the same DNA.
Non-identical twins -growing from two separate eggs fertilised by different
sperm - do not have identical genes, but will just share many general
aspects of their genetic inheritance, as do any other brothers or sisters in
one family unit.
Thomas Bouchard, professor of psychology at the University of Minnesota,
recognized that these twins, if compared with each other as they grew up,
would provide an important way of measuring genetic and environmental
influences.
His groundbreaking work in the 1980s and 90s gave rise to some extraordinary
insights into which aspects of the human condition are more likely to be due
to nature, and which to nurture.
In one study, Bouchard concentrated on72 sets of twins who had reached
adulthood. He first established which of the twins (35 sets in all) were
genuinely identical by genetic testing.
These were then invited to complete personality tests.
Such questionnaires, which are widely used by psychologists, pose questions
in the form of statements, to which the respondents have to rate their level
of agreement on a scale of one to eight. The following is a small sample of
the many statements relating to religion:
· I enjoy reading about my religion.
· My religion is important to me because it answers many questions about the
meaning of life.
· It is important to me to spend time in prayer and thought.
· It doesn't matter to me what I believe as long as I am good.
· I pray mainly to gain relief and protection.
· I go to my (church, synagogue, temple) to spend time with my friends.
· Although I am religious, I don't let it affect my daily life.
When Bouchard and his team compared the answers to these and other
personality questions, they found strong statistical evidence that identical
and non-identical twins tended to answer differently. If one identical twin
showed evidence of religious thinking or behaviour, it was much more likely
that his or her twin would answer similarly.
Non-identical twins, as might be expected (they are, after all, related),
showed some similarities of thinking, but not nearly to the same degree.
Crucially, the degree of religiosity was not strongly related to the
environment in which the twin was brought up. Even if one identical twin had
been brought up in an atheist family and the other in a religious Catholic
household, they would still tend to show the same kind of religious
feelings, or lack of them.
Work by several other scientists has inclined to confirm Bouchard's
findings. One study, conducted by an international team at the Institute of
Psychiatry in London under Dr Hans Eysenck, looked at information from twins
living in the UK and Australia.
The researchers found that attitudes to Sabbath observance, divine law,
church authority and the truth of the Bible showed greater congruity in
identical rather than non-identical twins - again supporting the idea of a
genetic influence.
Bouchard has consistently found in many of his studies that intrinsic
religiosity -which seems to incorporate a notion of spirituality - is much
more likely to be inherited. Extrinsic religiosity tends to be a product of
a person's environment and direct parental influence. Bouchard also found
that tendencies towards fundamentalism were also rather more likely to be
inherited.
It is of some interest, too, that, in the populations that Bouchard and his
colleagues have studied, women tend to have inherited rather more religious
attitudes than men."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/oct/13/religion.scienceandnature |
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