10. Religion is like Football

Almost done with Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind. I've blogged on:

1. Introduction
2. Intuitive Dogs and Rational Tails
3. Elephants Rule
4. Three Domains of Morality
5. Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind
6. The Moral Foundations of Politics
7. The Conservative Advantage
8. Morality an Evolutionary Advantage
9. The "Chimp to Bee" Switch

The second to last chapter, chapter 11 is titled, "Religion is a Team Sport."

1. Haidt's basic claim in this chapter is that religion has played and continues to play a positive role in human society. He connects it to the "hive switch" that helps us to "suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible" (314). Particularly enjoyable in the chapter was his roasting of the New Atheists (Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens).

2. A good bit of the chapter, as many of the chapters, is evolutionary debate. So Dawkins and others basically see religion as an evolutionary accident and misfire. They see it as a parasite of evolution, a "time-consuming, wealth-consuming, hostility-provoking" waste of human energy. To him it's "anti-factual, counterproductive" and full of fantasies. So Dawkins, tell us what you really think.

The problem with the four horseman of new atheism is that their analysis focuses on lone believers and it does so from an almost purely cognitive perspective. Unlike Durkheim, these thinkers have failed to see the reality of "social facts." Here are some of Haidt's responses:

• "Trying to understand the persistence and passion of religion by studying beliefs about God is like trying to understand the persistence and passion of college football by studying the movements of the ball. You've got to broaden the inquiry" (290).
• "The function of those beliefs and practices is ultimately to create a community. Often our beliefs are post hoc constructions designed to justify what we've just done, or to support the groups we belong to."

Let me just say how completely obvious this is and has long been to me. Christians who think it's all about getting our ideas straight so our lives can follow suit are so far off it's embarrassing, and the atheists who have tried to dismiss religion on this basis look just as stupid.

In Haidt's language, it is not believing that leads to doing, but belonging that leads to both believing and doing. This is sometimes just as true of scholarship, unfortunately, as it is of other thinking. Much of the stuff in New Testament studies right now is little more than intelligent, sentimental self-justification.

3.  In the middle of this chapter, Haidt presents three evolutionary models. The first is that of Dawkins and the new atheists. They see morality as having evolved in a two step process: a) hypersensitive agency detective devices helped animals detect the presence of potentially dangerous "agents" in their midst, like predators wanting to eat them. So we see faces in clouds but we don't see clouds in faces. Accordingly, we see gods in the thunder.

The second step for Dawkins is then b) cultural evolution. The most interesting god stories win. Dawkins and others see these stories as parasitic. Religions for him are like viruses.

A second evolutionary perspective recognizes that religion helped homo sapiens survive but denies any genetic component to it. Atran and Henrich found that communities with a religious component survived better than "secular" communes in the nineteenth century, and irrational requirements only helped them survive longer (like prohibitions on dancing and drinking). This is because religion makes groups more cohesive and cooperative.

"Sacredness binds people together, and then blinds them to the arbitrariness of the practice" (299). "Gods really do help groups cohere, succeed, and outcompete other groups."

Haidt goes one step further. He suggests that our genes may actually contribute to our religiousness as a species, even with genetic developments that have taken place in the last 10,000 years. Accordingly, "we cannot expect people to abandon religion so easily" as the new atheists may think (307).

4. He goes on to make other claims on the basis of research as the chapter ends. "Putnam and Campbell found that the more frequently people attend religious services, the more generous and charitable they become across the board" (310). "Religiously observant Americans are better neighbors and better citizens than secular Americans." How about this quote: "The highest levels of wealth, therefore, would be created when religious people get to play a trust game with other religious people" (309).

"It is religious belongingness that matters for neighborliness, not religious believing" (311).

Haidt suggests that it remains to be seen whether a secular world will economically prosper. Atheistic societies "are the least efficient societies ever known at turning resources... into offspring" (313). "Gods were helpful in creating moral matrices within which Glauconian creatures have strong incentives to conform." He has an aside on terrorism, arguing that religion is only a handmaiden to nationalism as a cause in such cases. Group fervor is the primary force, which religion only reinforcing it. In this claim, again, he seems to be stating the bloody obvious.

5. He finally gets to a definition of a moral system: "interlocking sets of values, virtues, norms, practices, identities, institutions, technologies, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate self-interest and make cooperative societies possible" (314). He is being descriptive here. Virtue ethics, he argues, fits human nature best as an ethical approach in terms of how we are hard wired (versus utilitarianism or deontology).

However, if this is a descriptive definition, he suggests Durkheimian utilitarianism as the best system for a society, a sort of "rule" utilitarianism that seeks the greatest benefit for a society as a whole, including its minorities. Meanwhile, any effort to define morality only by isolating a few (Western) issues like "justice, rights, and welfare" is bound to go parochial (315).

9. The Human "Chimp to Bee" Switch

Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind continues. I've blogged on:

1. Introduction
2. Intuitive Dogs and Rational Tails
3. Elephants Rule
4. Three Domains of Morality
5. Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind
6. The Moral Foundations of Politics
7. The Conservative Advantage
8. Morality an Evolutionary Advantage

Today it's chapter 10: "The Hive Switch."

1. Haidt's basic hypothesis in this chapter is that while we are mostly chimps who look out for our own individual interests, we have a switch of sorts that puts us into bee mode, where we fight for our group. "Human beings are conditional hive creatures" (258). Under the right conditions, we can enter the mindset of "one for all, all for one."

Haidt links this switch to the religious dimension of human existence. He mentions what happens when a group is involved in an ecstatic group dance. Later he will mention the raves that took place in Britain in the 80s. He has mentioned earlier in the book when soldiers are marching together. Following Emile Durkheim, humans are homo duplex, who exist not only as individuals but as members of larger society. The second dimension of human existence is not reducible to the first.

2. He gives three examples of how to "flip the switch" on a human being to this euphoric sense of oneness with something bigger, the flip to a sense of the sacred. Nature, he suggested, can switch us to a sense of awe and of oneness with creation. Drugs are a second. Raves are the third.

3. The next part of the chapter dives into the biological basis for the switch. He suggests two possible contributors. One suggestion is the chemical oxytocin. In experiments with an oxytocin spray, groups becomes more unified, especially in the face of other groups.

A second candidate is the mirror neurons we have. These neurons imitate in our brains what we see. They help us empathize. [As an aside this is an argument against watching certain things or playing certain video games. Our brains do what we see, which is part of the thrill we get at certain movies. Jesus' statements about already doing in our heart things we fantasize about also seems to fit here.]

4. It was the last part of the chapter that was more interesting to me. He talked about the difference between transactional and transformational leadership. The previous treats people as self-interested individuals who are all homo economicus and motivates with personal consequences. Transformational leadership plays into people's propensity to unite with something bigger than themselves. People want to give for the good of the hive, not just themselves.

Fun to see intersections with leadership theory and the church growth movement in this sections. He mentions Dunbar groups, for example (434 n.46), groups of 150. We only seem to be able to know everyone within a group of this size or smaller, which is why this is a typical church size. A single pastor cannot handle a church bigger than this size without additional staff of some kind. Some churches plant another congregation when they hit this size and megachurches might think about facilitating sub-groups of this size or lower.

5. He mentions the homogeneous principle (although he doesn't name it). You won't have the switch (or perhaps slide, he suggests) to a higher group unity unless there is some strong sense of similarity. Of course he is not arguing for racial segregation. But he is suggesting that our differences need to be drowned in a sea of similarities if we want to experience this higher level of group cohesion. [My old colleague Bob Whitesel once cleverly suggested that multiculturalism in itself can be a basis for this sort of group bonding, if everyone in the group loves multiculturalism as a value!]

Another component of human bee hives is "team spirit," synchrony, group rituals that the group does together, chants, slogans, etc. Finally, healthy competition between smaller teams. Soldiers die more for their squad, not for their country. Basic training unites the soldiers, not the drill sergeant. So fraternities and sororities bond university students even more than university spirit in general.

So a thriving organization will not only make people feel part of a whole greater than themselves, it may also have smaller sub-units in healthy rivalries with each other.

6. Some people create these dynamics as a second nature. They are the cheerleaders. Where they need to be careful is in intergroup rivalry. "In group" enthusiasm can go too far in its attitudes and treatment of "out group" individuals.

The Perfect Candidate

Quick post, thinking of "The Conservative Advantage." To tickle the moral ivories of the American populace, a candidate might:

1. Harm - Address ways in which some group s/he represents is being harmed. Republicans might reference Americans being harmed by not having a strong military (Cruz). Democrats might reference individuals who are trying to succeed but having trouble because of the economic set up (Sanders).

2. Fairness - Address aspects of America that are unfair that they will fix. Republicans often reference small business owners or the idea that the opposite side wants to take their hard earned money and give it to those who haven't earned it (Cruz). Democrats might talk about income inequality and how people who work just as hard earn thousands less, including women (Sanders).

3. Loyalty - Loyalty has nationalism written all over it. Republicans tend to have an edge on this one. But both Trump and Sanders' anti-trade rhetoric plays into this dynamic on both sides. Emphasis on the military feeds nationalistic impulses. Of course both sides stress loyalty to party over reason, and people over 50 usually vote their own party no matter how irrational it is. I'm not sure that any Democrat has ever found a way to create passion by emphasizing loyalty to American values when it comes to equality or Europe's sense of standing for our way of life in terms of rights.

4. Authority/Liberty - I'm not 100% convinced yet by Haidt on teasing these out. There may be a cultural dynamic here, but I agree that Republicans generally do better at appealing to both. Cruz stands for liberty in terms of Tea Party concerns, but Sanders stands for liberty in terms of privacy, which apparently is all the rage for some millennials. The only authority either side seems to want is someone to stop their opponents. They certainly don't want any authority over them. Both sides, it seems to me, could develop the phrase, "our way of life" in different ways that played on these keys.

5. Sanctity - Again, the Republicans have the edge. Interestingly, France found a way of making liberté, égalité, fraternité into something of a sacred charge. But not America. The sanctity of human life is a Republican phrase. Democrats might work on something like the sanctity of freedom, but define it in their way.

Some thoughts...

Intuitive Dogs and Rational Tails (2)

The second chapter of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind is titled, "The Intuitive Dog and Its Rational Tail." Last week I gave a quick review of the first chapter that the old Monday reading group is going through. Yesterday we met to traverse chapter 2.

1. The bottom line of this chapter is that people's "moral" sensibilities (including their sense of politics and religion) are primarily intuitive. People just know what is right or wrong and then they find reasons after the fact to justify their sensibilities.

So, most of the time, our intuitions (the dog) lead to moral judgments which lead to reasoning (the tail). We then influence other people's intuitions with our reasonings. This is the social dimension of the moral/political/religious process.

In another part of the chapter, he likens our situation to a rider on an elephant. The elephant is our intuition, and the rider is our reasoning about our intuitions. Really, Haidt claims, the elephant is in control, and the rider is merely serving the elephant.

2. He begins with the story of the debate among moral psychologists. Plato thought that reason ruled the person (or at least should). Hume thought that our passions ruled our reason. Jefferson thought it was a both/and, that we sometimes relied on reason and sometimes relied on our emotions.

As it turns out, our emotions are not separate from our cognition. "Emotions" are intrinsic to human decision making and those whose brains are "disconnected" here have trouble making any decisions. "Emotions" are intrinsic to cognition--they are part of our reasoning, not something different as Jefferson pictured.

These are apparently fighting words, although to look at American politics and religion, it seems pretty obvious to me. People know what they believe, then they go find reasons to justify it. As a Bible teacher, I have often found that if I can find another way to get people to the theological or practical conclusion they want to believe, then I can get them to be more objective about the original meaning of biblical passages or about some item of theology.

3. Haidt does not deny that a person can change his or her moral intuitions by way of private reflection or reasoned judgment together. He simply claims that those instances are much rarer (especially the private reflection one) than the knee-jerk intuition. Contrary to stalwart names like Lawrence Kohlberg and John Rawls, Haidt and others have suggested that most people use reason to generate clever justifications for moral intuitions they already have.

It was fun to see Haidt reference Dale Carnegie, who was so influential on my Dad. You influence people, Carnegie suggested, not by confronting them with the truth and reason but by understanding the other person's point of view. Empathy is the best way to help change someone else who is taking a "righteous" point of view, not confrontation. My Dad used to quote, "A man convinced against his will is of the same mind still."

4. So Haidt calls this model a "social intuitionist" model. He has done a good job of reeling us in and as much as admits that he is plying his trade on people like me as readers. No doubt at some point he will cross a line and I will start to disagree. He jokingly suggests at the end of this chapter that if he hasn't managed to appeal to the reader's intuitions, perhaps that reader should stop reading. But of course, he is simply manipulating the rationally oriented reader to want then to read more so as to prove him wrong rationally.

There are hints already that I will not completely buy him. I did not think well of E. O. Wilson twenty years ago, but Haidt has appealed to my intuitions in such a way that I barely caught that I was feeling sorry for someone that I mocked in ethics class in the late 90s. We readers are being played or shall I say that my intuitions are being played. :-)

5. Keith Drury isn't back in town, but let me suggest some ways he might mock the field of biblical studies if he were at lunch with us. A great deal of biblical studies is simply scholars playing out their moral intuitions on the playing field of the biblical texts. N. T. Wright is a great case in point to me. He has these interpretive intuitions that he then applies his considerable reasoning skills to justify post hoc, IMO.

The whole theological interpretation enterprise strikes me as little else but a high falutin' way of reading our already existing theology into the biblical text while going through the motions of historical exegesis. In my opinion, half of the Hebrews scholarship of the last ten years is little more than sentimental manipulation of texts and history to say things we want to think.

There are exceptions, IMO. There are people who truly are willing to come to any interpretive conclusion. They are the scientist types who approach interpretation from a less predetermined direction. They are not popular right now. Postmodernism opened up the door to a theological Mardi Gras that has yet to simmer down.

But Haidt would tell me it has always been this way. I'm simply pointing out the current dominant intuition.