If you’re tired of hearing heated yet worn-out arguments regarding religion and science, check out this intellectually nimble and energized exchange published by Edge.org [1]: Responses by David Sloan Wilson, Michael Shermer, Sam Harris, P. Z. Myers and Mark D. Hauser to Jonathon Haidt’s “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion.” Here’s a link to Haidt’s original article (“Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion.”). [2]
David Sloan Wilson sets the tone by challenging “the new atheists” to answer all four of the following questions:
1. Is there any empirically verifiable evidence for the existence of supernatural agents?
2. If not, how can we explain the phenomenon of religion in naturalistic terms?
3. What are the impacts of religion, good or bad, on human welfare? and
4. How can we use our understanding of religion to advance the goals of a stable and peaceful society?
Wilson argues that the new atheists sometimes neglect questions 2, 3 and 4. “This is like a debater leaving the debate after the opening round.”
For his part, Sam Harris reaches even deeper than usual in two his arsenal of weapons to present the many stupidities exhibited by many religions. In the process, Harris suggests that Haidt had incorrectly argued that all religious ways of life contains some wisdom and insights. In his response, Haidt makes it clear that he is suggesting no such thing. I won’t review the challenges and criticisms issued by the other reviewers point by point, but I’ll skip to Haidt’s response.
Those who have followed my readings on Haidt already know that I think that he (energized by the ideas of David Sloan Wilson) is especially interesting on the topics of religion and morality in that he makes a more serious effort than most writers to explore whether evolutionary functions can be gleaned from the ubiquitous displays of religion. Here is an excerpt from Haidt:
I used to dislike all religions, back when I thought of them as systems of belief that help individuals understand the world and cope with the unknown. After reading Durkheim and D.S. Wilson, I now think of religions first and foremost as coordination devices that bind people together into moral communities with effects that are mostly good for the members, although sometimes terrible for deviants and for neighboring groups.
Haidt agrees with David Sloan Wilson that scientists and evolutionary theorists need to reconsider groups as “emergent entities that have unique properties and regulatory mechanisms.” The dispute over group selection is a long and hotly contested one and evolutionary circles. The issue is one of whether “tribes really do compete.” Haidt argues that there is now a thriving field of behavioral economics and that scientists are now starting to look in the right places for group level effects (e.g., mechanisms that bind people together and suppress free riders).
There is much evidence to consider on the issue of whether religion truly benefit society, as described by Michael Shermer. On the “good side,” a study by Arthur Brooks shows that “religious conservatives donate 30% more money than liberals and nonreligious people, they get more blood and logged more volunteer hours. By a wide margin they report that they are much happier than nonbelievers. On the “evil side,” Gregory Paul’s 2005 data from the Journal of religion in society demonstrates “an inverse correlation between religiosity and societal health (measured by rates of homicide, suicide, childhood mortality, a life expectancy, sexually transmitted diseases, abortion, and teen pregnancy).
Haidt is convinced that the charitable imbalance between atheists and believers is enormous and that religious communities are akin to a hive full of bees who, more readily than nonbelievers, “toil to build their common hive” and to build churches in faraway lands to “found new colonies.” Religious communities are undoubtedly more highly coordinated than most secular communities. “Religions, generally speaking, work to suppress our inner chimp and bring out our inner bee.”
I respect many of Haidt’s ideas because I have also witnessed what he has witnessed about many religious communities:
I have gained new respect for religion as I came to see it as a complex of coevolved jeans and cultural innovations for binding people together and in viewing them with a sense of community and collective purpose, immune to the sense of pointlessness and isolation that engulfed me in high school.
Haidt, an avowed atheist, adds a huge asterisk to this observation when he notes that the “suppression of selfishness within groups is purchased by the increased likelihood of righteous nastiness across groups and toward internal deviants.”
The tribal tendencies that accompany religious belief create powerful feelings of belonging that create enormous benefits for the participants. Religious communities “idealize interdependence and try to raise their kids that way. They want them to be enmeshed in extended kin networks and congregations where everyone can ask for help from anyone and everyone is expected to give such help.” It is because of this cohesive power of religions that Haidt would be hesitant to wave a magic wand (assuming he has such a wand) to turn all believers into atheists.
Contrast the cohesiveness of believers with the typical groups of skeptical nonbelievers, who “idealize independence, which maximizes our freedom and creativity.” For nonbelievers, self-sufficiency is often considered to be a good thing. “But when you don’t expect to need others, you are less likely to be generous to others.”
I’ve seen it over and over. A member of a religious congregation is in an accident or becomes sick or loses his or her job. What follows is quite a spectacle: dozens of people who barely know this person, except that they are members of the same congregation, come forth to bring food, money and support. How many times have have you seen nonreligious intellectuals, those who espouse high principles, consciously ignoring the needs of human beings who live in their community, or even in the same building?
For me, the above evidence requires us to take a serious new look at religion through the viewpoint of group selection. For further readings on this topic, consider the recent article by David Sloan Wilson and Edward O. Wilson, “Rethinking the Theoretical Foundation of Sociobiology,” [3] from the Quarterly Review of Biology. See also this earlier post I wrote on Haidt’s analysis of conservative versus liberal sources of morality. [4] and this post on David Sloan Wilson’s evolutionary analysis of religion. [5]
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