Born to Believe – Review and Response

A New Scientist article, Born believers: how your brain creates God, takes us through some recent research with children that suggests belief in supernatural beings is somehow hard-wired into the human brain. The starting point is the rather unsurprising statistics that many people turn to religion in times of hardship. The afterlife may seem positively luxurious compared to being down and out.

Religious ideas are common to all cultures: like language and music, they seem to be part of what it is to be human. Until recently, science has largely shied away from asking why. "It's not that religion is not important," says Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University, "it's that the taboo nature of the topic has meant there has been little progress."

This is, indeed, good to see. However, I suspect we're also going to be entering a phase where the direction of research may also be contaminated with religious ideology and it is also good to know who says what.

As anthropologist Scott Atran of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor points out, the benefits of holding such unfounded beliefs are questionable, in terms of evolutionary progress. "I don't think the idea makes much sense, given the kinds of things you find in religion," he says. A belief in life after death, for example, is hardly compatible with surviving in the here-and-now and propagating your genes. Moreover, if there are adaptive advantages of religion, they do not explain its origin, but simply how it spread.

This is precisely my feeling on the matter. The shared delusion that may result in social cohesion can also lead that whole society to an early grave. Such dead-end cults would be difficult to find historically but we get an inkling of them in some of the contemporary suicide cults. A belief in afterlife has to also have some good excuse to live this one out fully first.

"Children the world over have a strong natural receptivity to believing in gods because of the way their minds work, and this early developing receptivity continues to anchor our intuitive thinking throughout life," says anthropologist Justin Barrett of the University of Oxford.

One thing the article fails to mention is that Justin Barrett is not only an anthropologist but also one of the founders of the Ian Ramsey Centre for Religion and Science. Barrett is described in the New York Times as a "prominent member of the by-product camp" and "an observant Christian who believes in “an all-knowing, all-powerful, perfectly good God who brought the universe into being,” [and] “that the purpose for people is to love God and love each other.” He considers that “Christian theology teaches that people were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship with him and other people, Why wouldn’t God, then, design us in such a way as to find belief in divinity quite natural?” What did I say about investigating both the research and the researcher?

Children do seem to have an innate common-sense dualism between things with minds and inanimate objects. The dualism extends to being able to conceive of minds as separate from their bodies. The common experience of having fantasy friends is one consequence of this. But some of the research seems to contradict this in that it found that children were prone to ascribe meaning and intention to natural physical phenomena – it rains so as to help plants grow, the sun shines because it keeps us warm, and so on. I'm not sure if the researchers looked deeply enough if this was a consequence of the way children's stories are written in that very often animate and inanimate objects are characters with intentions and purposes. Whatever the source of these ideas they do seem to be deeply embedded, with it being a very short step from believing in imaginary friends or disembodied minds to gods and an afterlife.

[...] religion is an inescapable artefact of the wiring in our brain, says Bloom. "All humans possess the brain circuitry and that never goes away." Olivera Petrovich adds that even adults who describe themselves as atheists and agnostics are prone to supernatural thinking.

Seeing patterns where none exist may well be an attribute of the brain but extending that to the supernatural sphere is not an obvious progression. The last piece of research quoted showed that people under stress or feeling a loss of control would be more prone to seeing patterns in random data. The results are interpreted as showing that people under stress are more likely to seek solace in meaning, even if that meaning is purely imaginary. Hence the link with the original observation that religious belief seems to increase when times are difficult.

The final message is that, whether belief says anything about the object of belief, religion is not going to be going away any time soon. Religious faith is the path of least resistance when the world around us seems to be descending into chaos. In contrast, disbelief requires more effort.

It is also interesting that this article prompted an editorial in the same edition. The editor shows a certain resignation in research showing that irrationality may well be the natural human state and that scientific understanding has not only been hard won but may also be more fragile than many of us would hope.

Galileo, Neurotheology and the Vatican - Osservatore Romano review

With the International Year of Astronomy and the Year of Darwin, the Vatican is going to have a lot to say about science in 2009. In my previous article I looked at a conference on Galileo coming in May as well as the catholic Church's insistence that the Galileo case should not be seen as a clash between science and religion. Perhaps one should not use the broad brush of religion in general as it brings into this particular argument other faiths, but to be more specific we are talking about the clash between the Catholic Church and science - between dogmatic control of ideas and the liberal tendency of natural philosophy. The science of astronomy obviously won the argument. It won this argument a long time ago. So why are we still talking about Galileo? What is the Church really trying to achieve here?

The Jesuit-run Stensen Institute of Florence will host a conference entitled "The Galileo Case. A historical, philosophical and theological re-examination". To quote from their website: "For the first time after 400 years, members of the Vatican Observatory, the Pontifical Council for Culture, The Sciences Academy and many other Institutions, that were historically involved in the Galileo affair, are among the experts invited to the congress with a view to showing how "recent scientific and historical research" might alleviate the "tension and conflict" still clouding the relationship between the church and science."

The Osservatore Romano ran a brief interview with one of the organizers on 31 January 2009. It starts off by quoting John Paul II, who saw the Galileo trial as a "tragic mutual incomprehension"; as usual, always seeking to spread the blame. The interview is, however, interesting in that it mentions biotechnology almost as much as Galileo. Here we get an inkling on why the Church is so obsessed with Galileo. It seeks to separate the decision of the Inquisition from the philosophical standpoint of the Church. It seeks to legitimize itself as an arbiter of science and to place Catholic doctrines as guides to what can and cannot be researched. The article, indeed, goes on to say that it is of fundamental importance that the Church promotes biotechnology for the benefit of humanity, and that morality must be placed above science in order to achieve this. For the Vatican, the "politics of science" is to place Catholic doctrines above scientific progress.

Two things are immediately clear. For anybody who has looked closely at the Galileo case it is obvious that above the philosophical positions it was the political climate that ultimately condemned Galileo. The Inquisition needed to make a point and the Counter-Reformation was gaining impetus. Even the Jesuits who initially supported Galileo knew that survival of the Church was more important than one man. The same Jesuits taught Galileo's theories in the Far East, away from the troublesome Reformation in Europe. The Catholic politics of science continues to this day with the same aims. This is why they want the world to accept that their position is at least legitimate.

The interviewee, who remains anonymous to the end so probably a Jesuit at the Stensen, then goes on to discuss reason and faith. Scientific progress in the "bio-techno-sciences" is leading to a greater understanding of the human experience and a refinement in the categories of faith and reason. Here we are now looking at the neurosciences rather than biotech or genetics. Indeed, research into consciousness and mind is progressing to the point where it seems fairly obvious even to the faithful that a state of belief could well just be a function of the brain. The scientific attack on faith itself, rather than just antiquated or supernatural doctrines, would be the most serious challenge the Church will have ever faced. Philosophical and doctrinal positions have to be articulated before the research data comes out. Better still, by placing Church doctrines above science they may even be able to avoid research going down that road. "I believe because I think", says our respondent! He thus turns around "I think therefore I am" into "I think therefore I believe". A possible sign of belief as a mental disorder but that's for another article.

These are interesting articles and this particular interview ends with a shot across the boughs of scientists, but I suspect neuroscientists in particular. The neuroscience of religious experiences is often called neurotheology. I know, some people object to the name but it may well stick. Neurotheology is a branch of the cognitive neurosciences and seeks to use new techniques such as fMRI to investigate which parts of the brain are active during experiences such as meditation, praying and other religious activities. The serious problem here for theologians is the coming debate that once belief becomes just a state of mind then any claim that faith is a special kind of knowledge gets blown away. The primacy of faith and the theological logic that supports it have to be defended. If the Galileo case is admitted as an "error of faith" then we should be mindful that an attack on faith not be an "error of science". That was the conclusion from our mystery interlocutor.

Interesting times ahead for science and religion debates.

Galileo Conference in Florence - Osservatore article and comments

The Vatican has decided to join the events of the International Year of Astronomy 2009. It is also nearly the 400th anniversary of the publication of Galileo's Starry Messenger (Sidereus nuncius). The Osservatore Romano has recently published two articles concerning these events. On the 30th January is the piece "Galileo's revolution 400 years later" and on 31st "The "Galileo Case" as an opportunity for dialogue". The style of the Osservatore, and of course the Vatican, is always tortuous when it comes to diplomacy - a kind of literary equivalent of squirming.

The first article is largely an announcement of an International Conference on Galileo Galilei to be held in Florence on 26-30 May. As conferences go this seems particularly long. The trial of Galileo is one story that just will not go away. It has become the archetypal clash between science and religion, reason and faith. I feel, sometimes, that a wider historical context should be promoted to the public, but I will write about this later, for now it is enough to just watch the Vatican propaganda in action. We must also not forget that the Vatican is in the peculiar position of having to defend itself, and yet if there is anywhere in the world with documents that could shed light on those events it is precisely in the Vatican archives. The propagandist protocol in cases of guilt is not to plead innocence but to completely muddy the water so that many people, especially the faithful, are left in doubt as to the Church's guilt. The aim of this article is in that category.

One strategy is to try to make Galileo seem untrustworthy. This is one of the most-often used bits of black propaganda - to put truths into the mouths of liars so that nobody believes them except those who comprehend the message all too clearly. That Galileo is a "complex" personality is laughable; I mean, aren't we all? Wouldn't we all react in different ways depending on how events unfolded for us? To court patrons is no crime - scientists do the same now except they are corporations or foundations rather than princes or kings. To ignore rivals is not in the spirit of science but that too happens today just as much as in the 17th century. To try and pin the first strike on Galileo's personality is ludicrous and should be recognized for what it is - a diversionary tactic worthy of a cheap trickster. There is one fact that is little mentioned so I will highlight it here.

The Jesuit astronomers taught Galileo's and Kepler's theories to the Japanese and Chinese while Galileo was still under house arrest. Now, re-read that sentence and think through the consequences of it.

One small episode in the whole Galileo drama has recently come to the fore, and this Year of Astronomy is as good a time as any to discuss the history of technology and philosophy of science. One of Galileo's criticisms against his accusers is that they refused to even look through his telescope to see for themselves the satellites of Jupiter and the mountains on the Moon. These fideists refused to do so on the philosophical ground that such a mechanical device distorted reality and therefore anything seen through it was just as likely to be an artefact of the telescope rather than an image of reality. True, the telescopes at the time were no better than cheap ones we can buy easily today, but the navigators who used them on a daily basis were not the kind of people to trust a device that produced mirages. The faithful refused to look through the telescope because by doing so they would see the truth for themselves. By refusing they could attack the man and the theories, not the data. In truth, the Jesuits did perform their own experiments but the role of the Jesuits in all of this and their battle with the Dominicans is worthy of a longer article.

There is a second aspect that is also always left out. Between the iconic figures of Copernicus and Galileo stands an often ignored figure who was a greater mathematician than both of them: Johann Kepler. It was Kepler who first discovered that planets move around the sun in ellipses. It was Kepler who discovered what are still known as Kepler's Laws of Planetary Motion. Kepler even anticipated the law of gravity but thought it was some kind of magnetic field. It was Kepler's Laws that Newton later recast as consequences of a gravitational force. I really don't know why Copernicus especially is so well-known as his idea was correct but his formulation was hopelessly wrong. However, some people become totems for others that follow and this seems to be the case for Copernicus.

The Vatican's message in all of this is that the Church's stance at the time was somehow philosophically justified and not a persecution. Re-read my sentence on the Jesuits in Japan. Their stance was justified by the obstinate aristotelian Dominican order that controlled the Inquisition. In Aristotle we find that his idea of natural philosophy was a purely observational science, without experimentation for to experiment was to somehow distort nature. The battle between this narrow, and erroneous, aristotelian view and natural philosophers in no way starts with Galileo but had been going on for centuries. The Condemnation of 1277 in Paris is another little-known but important stage in the liberation of science from fideist religious doctrines.

Unfortunately, Galileo's Starry Messenger was first published in 1610, thereby outside the Year of Astronomy, but the organisers have still taken advantage that it was in 1609 that Galileo became the first modern astronomer, extending the human senses with a telescope. One disturbing piece of recent news is the attempt by Italian and British scientists to exhume Galileo's body in order to test his DNA for eyesight problems! Although this was hidden in the Reuters weird news section this immediately smelled like the hand of the Church at work. If they could show that Galileo had defective vision then they would have another grain of doubt to implant into the intellectually challenged and to show the world that the Vatican's initial scepticism was warranted. "If we knew exactly what was wrong with his eyes we could use computer models to recreate what he saw in his telescope," said Paolo Galluzzi, director of the Museum of History and Science in Florence, the city where Galileo is buried. This may sound like a mantra, but read again about what the Jesuits taught the Chinese.

This edition of the Osservatore also has an article with a brief history of the telescope. It includes quotes about how Galileo constructed his first telescope from a Dutch design. Here we do see Kepler credited for designing a better telescope than Galileo, with a higher magnification. Nothing extraordinary or controversial here but the article does end with "These are the eyes to better see the extraordinary beauty of the universe." How nice.


I will look next at the article in the 30 January edition.

Science and Religion News and Resources

Below are links to news and resources on science and religion that I've found this week. Not all will be new but this is a way of storing them for future reference and before processing into articles. Will be posted once a week with additions made as the week passes.

Large minority of atheists are religious. if you look at this then the third column of figures is meaningless as it stands and should be divided by 100 to make sense.

U.S. Religious Landscape Survey from the Pew Forum

FreeThoughtPedia is a central repository of philosophical, scientific, scriptural, and historical arguments and commentary on the Freethought movement. Our goal is to provide a resource for those who choose to attribute greater significance to what's rational and logical, as opposed to irrational, superstitious, mythological and unproven.

Congregation of the Clergy. A Roman Catholic site for, of course, the clergy but interesting in that the articles are written so that priests can use them in their daily ministry, rather than being convoluted theological essays. The largest part is in Italian but a significant potion translated into English and other languages.

The Evolution of Religion, by R. Elisabeth Cornwell, PhD and J. Anderson Thomson, MD.

The Pledge of Allegiance to the United States is an article I wrote on how the Knights of Columbus lobbied to insert the "under God" phrase into the Pledge in 1954.


Anything you feel I should take note of then please leave a comment.