Analyses of God beliefs, atheism, religion, faith, miracles, evidence for religious claims, evil and God, arguments for and against God, atheism, agnosticism, the role of religion in society, and related issues.
My recent lecture to the Stanislaus Humanists in Manteca, CA on Jan. 15 has caused some controversy locally. See some of the heated letters to the editor here:
In response, I wrote this letter to the editor of the paper. Let's hope they publish it and I get an opportunity to talk to some of that local church groups. The pastor of the church that demonstrated that night has declined my offer.
My name is
Matt McCormick. I am the professor who
gave the lecture to the Stanislaus Humanist group at the Manteca Library on
January 15.
I’d like to thank the Stanislaus Humanists for inviting me
to speak. And I’d like to thank all of
the people from Manteca who came out either to hear me speak, or to participate
in the events outside the building that night.
My lecture has stirred up quite a bit of controversy. I’d like to present a few thoughts on what I
take to be a fundamental issue, and I’d like to make an offer to any churches
or other groups in Manteca.
The most fundamental requirement for a successful democracy,
and for human prosperity and happiness, is for individuals to, first, be
informed with the full range of relevant ideas, particularly concerning
important decisions, and, second, for them to have the critical thinking skills
to be able to reason clearly, accurately, and reliably about that body of
information.
In religious organizations, to a greater or lesser extent
depending on the tradition, the social model is fundamentally authoritarian; the
clergy lead, they shepherd, they give their congregations the answers, they
enforce belief conformity, they exclude dissenters, they exclude contrary
ideas, they discourage doubts, and they discourage independent thinking. Much of this was evident in the dangerous
rhetoric in response to my coming to speak in Manteca. Many of the comments and reactions before,
during and after have been dangerous, combative, and confrontational. One pastor, praying about my lecture before I
came to town said, “We drive back any atheist movement right now in the name of
Jesus. . . We must repel the demonic attack on our city," and he prayed, "God,
cause a storm to happen or something [on Wednesday night]." Another pastor said that I was an
"evangelical atheist," and "they're going to try to put up
billboards, they're going to try to do other things to convince people that God
is not real. . . And, as far as I'm
concerned, this is our house. This is
our house. This is our city."
The social model for a liberal arts education at a
university like where I am a professor is fundamentally democratic; my job is
to encourage people to actively consider contrary ideas, think for themselves,
make their own decisions, be independent, to not blindly trust authority, and
to not be manipulated by emotional ploys or rhetoric. Our goal is to get people to reason
well. We are neutral with regard to the
outcome of that reasoning process; people should be free to draw whatever
conclusion they deem to be best supported by sound reasoning and the evidence. Creating atheists is not my goal; I would
rather people become thoughtful, rational, well-informed believers in God than
have them be dogmatic and irrational.
Many pastors, preachers, priests, and other clergy are
dedicated to keeping you believing no matter what the evidence is. And they wittingly or unwittingly use a
variety of methods to do it that are at odds with your being an independent,
informed, and effective critical thinker.
Some of them and some of their methods encourage ignorance,
superstition, intolerance, irrationality, and narrow-mindedness. We should all be deeply concerned about
clergy who would capitalize on the ignorance of people who don't have the
critical thinking skills or the information to know any better, to keep them
from making thoughtful, informed, reasonable decisions for themselves.
So with all of that in mind, I’d like to make an offer. I would like to come and speak to any church
or group in the Manteca area who would host me, and present some of my
questions and doubts about the resurrection of Jesus. People should have free access to
information, including viewpoints that may seem outrageous or offensive, and
they should be able to develop informed, reasonable conclusions about matters
of great importance on the basis of the full body of relevant information. My email address is mccormick@csus.edu
On my recent visit to Manteca to speak to Stanislaw
Humanists about the resurrection, we had a bit of drama with some local church
members. When I arrived at the library
to speak, there were 300 or so people assembled outside for a
counter-protest/prayer vigil/religious service.
They had a P.A. system set up, were playing music, praying, passing out
food, and so on. During my talk, among
other things, they encircled the building, held hands, and prayed fervently
about what was going on inside. A number
of them sat through my talk and asked some questions after. A couple of self-described “security” guys
came in and out during the talk, had intense conversations on radio headsets,
and scowled at me while I talked. A
number of them lurked outside the open door to the lecture hall and
listened. I invited them to come in and
sit down, but they refused. Some others
who were passing by shouted into the room later in the talk. And when I walked back to my car at the end
of the night, a car full of people followed me slowly and finally drove off
when I got in my car and started it.
(Inexplicably, YouTube won't let me embed this one.)
In a video of their sermon the week before, one of the
pastor’s said, “We must drive back this demonic attack from our city” language
during the prayer. And also note the territorial
language in their characterization of my visit.
There’s a lot to comment on here. But I want to focus on a particular issue
that’s been on my mind. Let’s talk on a
meta-level about what’s going on when someone like me tries to give a carefully
reasoned argument for why someone like the believers who showed up to my talk
should stop believing.
First, the Salem Witch Trials argument that I’ve been
presenting for some years now, and in my book, is, as far as I can tell, a
devastating argument against anyone who thinks that there is adequate
historical evidence to justify believing in the resurrection. No false modesty here. The point is that if the really sketchy
historical information we have about Jesus warrants concluding that he was
resurrected, then the evidence we have concerning witchcraft at Salem, which is
vastly better by any measure of quantity and quality, warrants us in concluding
that there were really witches at Salem.
But, of course, there was no magic at Salem. So we should reject both. There are lots more details about this
argument in my book.
But here’s what I want to get to. First, this sort of argument has almost no
effect on the majority of believers who hear it. That is due, in large part to motivated reasoning. This is a well-studied
proclivity in humans to acquire a belief, and then evaluate all new information
they encounter in ways to make it conform to that belief. Preference inconsistent information is
critically evaluated with much more sever skepticism, and preference consistent
information is accepted with much less critical scrutiny. That is, if it’s not what we want to hear, we
figure out some hyper-critical way to find flaws in it and reject it. We all do it about lots of topics. My book full of skeptical arguments about
Jesus, not surprisingly, has brought motivated reasoners out in droves.
These days, I find the base phenomena of motivated reasoning
and the psychology of belief more interesting than actually engaging in the
philosophical debate over that Salem argument.
The Salem argument is a slam dunk, as I see it. The only question that remains is, what are
the real reasons, psychological, social, personal, and neurobiological, that it
just bounces off of so many believers?
One of the reactions in Manteca got my attention. Someone said something like this, “He’s
making this argument comparing Jesus to the Salem Witch Trials or some
nonsense, and he thinks that Jesus wasn’t real. [That wasn’t my argument, of
course]. But we all know because of the
presence of Jesus in our lives, and because of what we’ve seen God do that God
is real and Jesus is his one true son. . . .
“
So I want to talk about that part: the body of evidence that folks like the ones
who showed up for my talk, take to be resounding proof of God. I’m going to speculate a bit about what that
is.
First, this group of believers, like many in the U.S., is
highly adept at getting themselves into a state of religious ecstasy, for lack
of a better term. Watch this bit of
video, shot by local activist Dan Pemberton, of them praying.
Note the swaying, waving of hands, eyes closed, speaking in
tongues, moral elevation, and altered state of consciousness in many of
them. And notice how quickly and easily
they can slip into this state as they work themselves up. There are some very powerful feelings surging
through people here. Undeniably
uplifting, positive feelings of elation, transcendence, connection with
something larger, and so on.
Psychologist Jonathan Haidt and others have called something like this
moral elevation:
Ok, so let’s take a believer and take the sum of all these
ecstatic moments that she’s had as a part of her evidence. What else is there?
There’s probably also a number of cases where she’s prayed
fervently for something—for a loved one to get better from illness, for someone
to overcome drug addiction, for guidance about some important decision, and so
on—and then as she sees it, later, the outcome she prayed for happened. A loved one got over an illness, someone
recovered from drug addiction, etc.
What else? All of her
friends and family believe fervently.
They are utterly convinced. God
existence and God’s presence in their lives is an obvious truth to them. The fact that so many people around her,
including lots of people whose judgment she trusts, itself is a part of her
evidence. It’s part of what’s leading
her to believe. And this makes perfect
sense. We all look to the people around
us for guidance about what to believe.
So what would be required to bring someone like this
around? Importantly, a person who
believes needs to care about believing reasonably, they need to care about the
evidence, they must have as a priority something like Hume’s principle: Believe all and only those things that are best
supported by the evidence. And believe
them with a conviction that commensurate to the quality and quantity of
evidence in your possession. And make a
concerted effort to gather all the relevant evidence (pro and con) that time,
resources, and prioritization requires.
Call this set of priorities a Rationality Principle.
Obviously, the Rationality Principle is huge. Lots of people don’t have it as a
priority. Lots of people don’t
understand parts of it. And lots of
people fail to see how central it is to their achieving lots of their
goals. So a real discussion with a
believer that has the goal of getting them to not believe may just turn into a
broader, and more fundamental discussion of why she ought to adopt or care
about this principle.
Next? Well, it’s
important to note, I think, that our hypothetical believer here has a lot of
what we should call evidence. She has a
number of observations, experiences, events in her life, and a lot of information
that is relevant to whether God is real.
And as she sees it, that information all points towards the God
conclusion. So if we can assume that she
holds the Rationality Principle, then we’ve got to address this body of
evidence. We’ve got to look at the
ecstatic experiences, the “answered prayers,” the community belief, and the
rest, and we’ve got to figure out what the best explanation of all of that
is. God’s existence is a possible
explanation, but it’s pretty clearly not the best explanation. But convincing someone of that is the hard
part. A nice, short analysis of a reasoning
mistake that is often made about prayer is in this video:
The problem with this piece that that the writing and the
tone here is inflammatory. Even though
he’s making a set of very good points about how prayer is set up to be
non-disconfirmable, he does it in a way that will offend people and obscure the
message.
What about the religious ecstasy? I have a number of ideas about what might put
those experiences into a larger, natural context for people. They are common in lots of human religions,
including ones that make contrary claims to Christianity. So one person arguing for God on the basis of
her ecstatic experiences is faced with millions of other people having just the
same sorts of experiences but taking them to imply that the opposite is
true. People also have these
experiences, or something very close to them, at Justin Bieber concerts, during
football games, when the national anthem is played, during chick flicks, and so
on. They are common, easily induced
naturally, and we don’t have any substantial reason to think that the best
explanation here is supernatural.
What about the community believer evidence? Education is the best key here. Manteca, for instance, is an isolated, rural
town. Lots of the people there who got
sucked into that church at an early age have never seen or considered the
alternatives. They’ve never been around
non-believers. They know very little
about other religious movements, religious history, or the broader context of
human religious belief. Learning the
basics about worldwide religious movements puts human religiousness into
context, and usually suggests a natural, rather than a supernatural
explanation. The Internet will save us,
I think. It is democratizing information
for humanity in a way that has never occurred in history. A massive flood of information is available
to a greater portion of people on the planet every day. And at the end of the day, the more someone
like the people in Manteca, or someone in backwater village in India, knows
about what other people out there in the world think, they more they will put 2
and 2 together. In a few generations,
religiousness, especially the worst, most dangerous parts of it, will drop
dramatically. Daniel Dennett is good on
this point here:
So there’s a sketch of what I think is going on in the head
of a subset of American Christian believers.
That’s an enumeration of their evidence, and some rough suggestions
about what it will take to win them, or more likely, their children or their
grandchildren over.
Very interesting study forthcoming from Jennifer Wright, Psychology, College of Charleston, and Ryan Nichols, Philosophy, CSU Fullerton:
How Perceived Religiosity Influences Moral Appraisal: The Social Cost of Atheism
Abstract: Social psychologists have found that stereotypes correlate with moral judgments about agents and actions. The most commonly studied stereotypes studied are race/ethnicity and gender. But atheists compose another stereotype, one with its own ignominious history in the Western world, and yet, about which very little is known. This project endeavored to further our understanding of atheism as a social stereotype. Specifically, we tested whether people with non-religious commitments were stereotypically viewed as less moral than people with religious commitments. We found that participants‘ (both Christian and atheist) moral appraisals of atheists were more negative than those of Christians who performed the same moral and immoral actions. They also reported immoral behavior as more (internally and externally) consistent for atheists, and moral behavior more consistent for Christians. The results contribute to research at the intersection of moral theory, moral psychology, and psychology of religion.