I haven’t looked to see if Haidt is using the study that came out a couple of years ago, but the one that first got my dander up was indeed a flawed methodology. The definition of charitable giving included a broad swath of financial donations that went to the churches and their upkeep, and no apparent tracking of the religious denomination or lack thereof of contributors. It relied mostly on reported numbers, and had an extremely small sampling of actual individual interviews. The study immediately was used by certain theists to further demonize non-theists (and non-monotheists, and non-Christian-monotheists, for that matter). It was more of a sound bite they could use rather than a valuable piece of information, and since I was actively engaged in many hours of volunteer work every week, and was also a contributor to a number of charities (often anonymously), I took umbrage at being called a heartless, selfish atheist.

It did, however, provide impetus to a number of nonreligious groups to organize and donate time and money so that their contributions would be more visible, though. I’m not sure that there will ever be communities of the nonreligious with the organization and structure of a church or temple, because nonbelief alone isn’t enough to unite people, but every little bit helps.

I am sympathetic with many of the arguments you make. Here is how I would resolve one apparent difference: I think that many religions and many informal clubs (such as sewing guilds) have a lot in common. They can both serve as “glues that can hold a group of people together.”

I visualize the various kinds of social organizations (religious and otherwise) as lying along a continuum. At one extreme we have informal groups where people sometimes come together to engage in a common endeavor that might even be whimsical or recreational. On the other hand, we have religions, which come in two extremes. Sometimes they are loosely-organized, essentially-consensual and friendly gatherings akin to social clubs, where people “hang out” without any deep commitment to the literalness of ancient writings or any inclination to dramatically change their lives by reference to any rules promulgated by the religion. Other religions are guilt-inducing terror-mongering highly-structured organizations where ostentatious authority figures promulgate rigid rules pertaining to lifestyle and where members are required to pledge unwavering allegiance to oxymoronic and unsubstantiated articles of faith.

In my mind, then, religious moderates can be a lot like those people you mentioned in the sewing and knitting clubs. In my mind, however, fundamentalists (and I understand that the distinction is not always an easy one) are a different kind of animal. There is something about that cocktail those fundamentalist churches serve up (the dogma, the terror, the presentation by unabashed authority figures) that completely stifles skepticism and turns the members into something that reminds me of zombies.

Religion-lite doesn’t have this effect of dramatically shutting down the intellect whereas fundamentalism does. For better or worse, high-octane religion has the effect of taking a group of individuals and channeling their energies toward group purposes. A good analogy would be the trillions of cells in one’s body. They have evolved to work together, in most cases forfeiting their rights to replicate new bodies (most of cells can only create specialized cells like themselves, not entire bodies-this privilege is reserved for the gametes). So how was it that this deal was cut? David Sloan Wilson would suggest that much like natural selection plays a key role in turning trillions of cells into a coordinated body, natural selection also plays a key role in turning numerous individual humans into a “super organism” that often takes the form of a religious community. His recent writings challenge the new atheists to take his proposal seriously. After all, religion is ubiquitous and it can require a huge investment of time and energy. Whenever you see this tandem, you should ask the question seriously: is the phenomenon functional in an evolutionary sense? Is religion adaptive, at least in some of its manifestations?

By the way, David Sloan Wilson is not suggesting that religious doctrines need to be literally true in order for this dramatic effect to occur. Even with oxymoronic and unsubstantiated supernatural claims, the power of religions can be amazing.

So I think you’re right about some religions-they do seem to be a lot like casual social clubs. Other religions, however, are more successful at getting their members to turn off their individual wants and needs and turning those energies toward the alleged common good. Members of sewing clothes do pursue group endeavors, but they don’t do so “religiously.” When a member of a sewing club falls ill, the members might visit that member in the hospital and they might bring some food over for awhile while the person recuperates, this is true enough. There is something extra going on, however, when the more virulent forms of religion take hold. I’ve seen it repeatedly, where people who don’t know each other (except by being members of the religious organization) will drop what they’re doing and incur substantial individual detriment in order to serve the needs of the religious community, even for months or years.

Human animals are rigged so that we are highly social and we can find many excuses and situations for being social. As I suggest above, however, there is something about the “cocktail” served up by some religions that causes their members to go way beyond the sorts of commitments typically tolerated by members of sewing clubs. I think you’re right, that much of this ability to get the group to fall in line has to do with the physical presence of religious communities. They work hard to make sure that the members spend time with each other, week after week, inside church and outside of church. This provides (as you suggest) a ready network for those who wish to find help or need help, complete with a wide audience of other church members ready to applaud or express disapproval based upon the conduct displayed by individual church members. I don’t think any of this can be over-emphasized when comparing the power of some religious organizations with the relative lack of commitment of many other social organizations.

I think you’re also correct to point out that there are unsettled issues raised by claims that religious people are more charitable. Many of these issues have been batted around by the writers who responded to Jonathon Haidt’s original article. I would like to go back to the studies and look at the data more carefully; I’m not completely sold on the claim that religious people are generally more charitable. Based upon Haidt’s writings, however, it appears that many religious folks are, at least in some ways, more willing to give to others than nonreligious folks. One reason that I give some credence to this claim (that religious people are more generous) is that it is my general experience, although I realize that this is all anecdotal. I do have some things I am tempted to say about the types of charity done by fundamentalists versus political liberals, but I need to do some more research before I commit to those positions.

Thank you for taking the time to write. Your thoughtful comments have helped me to focus better on these fascinating issues.

you’re misleading by giving only a tiny part of the picture, just as you do when you state that religious people are more generous to charity because charitable donations to religious organizations outnumber those to specifically secular ones

I don’t think Brooks is basing his claim completely on the total number of donations to religious vs. secular organizations. I’m not sure how he conducted his research but one of his claims is that, on an individual basis, religious conservatives give more to secular organizations.

I have been an active volunteer, and donater to charities, both as a church member and as an atheist. I’ve seen where the money goes, who gets the help, and who puts in the man-hours, and this is not an issue that can be painted with a broad brush. When it is, and is presented as a clear, inarguable benefit of religion, I’m afraid I have difficulty keeping quiet about it.

In his response, Haidt agreed. It’s a non-issue (in this discussion) that many religions are so dysfunctional. For every destructive thing people do in the name of religion (and, again, there are many such things), people do wonderful self-sacrifice in the name of religion (though it SOOOO often happens to be self-sacrifice to benefit members of the in-group).

I’m not completely convinced that Haidt solves the problem by making the distinction between “fundamentalist” and “non-fundamentalist” religions, but it’s a distinction that makes good sense to me.

I set out some of Haidt’s discussion of fundamentalism here: http://dangerousintersection.org/?p=1962

Allison, I agree with you that religion and culture completely interpenetrate each other, so trying to tease out what behavior is caused by religion and which by culture is completely useless. Consider for example how a Nigerian Catholic is probably going to have much more in common with her fellow Nigerians than with an American Catholic. The achievement of religion is to create the possibility of a community where the Nigerian and the American are bound together.

Allison also says:
“religion is not the same as community”

Who said that it was? It’s easy to say, well we can have all the beneficial effects of religious community without the dogma, but who is stepping up to the plate to create secular organizations with anything approaching the binding force of religion? And will these organizations be as radically non-merit based as religious groups? Churches do hold out a potential welcome to the smelliest, weirdest, most outcast members of society. (I remember how I used to hate it when my dad would invite the smelly drunks who wandered into church back home with us for Sunday dinner)

My sense is that the nearer any secular group approaches to the binding force of religion, the more it will be troubled by the very same dangers we see in religion-based communities.

And the fact is that many religious organizations have defused these dangers in terms of their impact on people outside their community.

The point is not that we atheists can prove religion to be the cause of more harm than good (though I think this can be argued, and the balance seems to me to be swinging further toward harm each day). The point is that religion remains the only mode of discourse that encourages grown men and women to pretend to know things they manifestly do not (and cannot) know. If ever there were an attitude at odds with science, this is it.

As luck would have it, Haidt comes to this debate in the guise an increasingly familiar “straw man”—that of the liberal, atheist scientist who would deliver us to the threshold of moral relativism, if not across it, with the best of intentions.

Haidt concludes his essay with this happy blandishment: “every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing.” Surely we can all agree about this. Our bets have been properly hedged (the ideology must be “longstanding” and need only have “some” wisdom). Even a “new atheist” must get off his high horse and drink from such pristine waters. Well, okay…

Anyone feeling nostalgic for the “wisdom” of the Aztecs? Rest assured, there’s nothing like the superstitious murder of innocent men, women, and children to “suppress selfishness” and convey a shared sense of purpose.

http://www.edge.org/discourse/moral_religion.html#harris

http://religion.propeller.com/story/2007/12/28/why-i-dont-ever-want-to-be-christian

The studies about the monetary generosity or number of volunteer hours of religious community members vs. nonreligious individuals is also factually skewed. It’s very easy to count up the monies received by organizations that receive a religious tax exemption and label it all as charitable giving by believers. As well, their records would show estimated man-hours donated for various causes, and the simplest calculation would be to assume that the volunteers are the same or similar denomination as the organization. Then. . .”whatever’s left is what the atheists gave,” a specious, misleading calculation. Not only does money and time that benefits only the reporting organization become “charitable”, but the religious affiliation of donors of time and money is almost never asked, and therefore impossible to track with any accuracy.

The true cause of good works and moral actions is rooted in the community and the attachment to it by motivated individuals. Religion is simply one of many glues that can hold a group of people together. It can be good in the same way that many secular groups will use a shared talent to benefit people who need it (Sewing guilds, knitting guilds, and quilting guilds regularly provide items to people in need) or bad in the same way that it gathers people of a similar mind to reinforce their negative feelings or goals (like the Aryan Nation, or Army of God).

As a community, religious groups have been around longer, have established physical presences, network across geographical limits, and are therefore easier to point to as a source of good, even though there are other communities that demonstrate the same type of moral cohesion. To give them credit on the basis of their dogma rather than their function as a community grants them too much, and takes away the value of community itself.