Morality and religion
Over at edge earlier this month they published an article by Jonathan Haidt entitled “Moral psychology and the misunderstanding of religion”.
He gives a comprehensive analysis of what morality is, summarised by this definition:
Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible.
Haidt uses that definition, and his analysis of morality, to argue how atheists, while attempting to bring rigorous scientific reasoning to their analysis of religion, are significantly influenced by their own moral psychology.
Haidt argues that
every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing
but suggests that people can lose sight of that wisdom when their or their opponent’s ideologies are attacked.
I agree, we might forget that those ideologies can provide some benefit. But I also think that many don’t realise those benefits can be provided without having to adopt those ideologies. Where adopting those ideologies also requires adopting their failings, surely we’re not expected to ignore those failings, considering them all part of the package?
Haidt also says
surveys have long shown that religious believers in the United States are happier, healthier, longer-lived, and more generous to charity and to each other than are secular people. Most of these effects have been documented in Europe too. If you believe that morality is about happiness and suffering, then I think you are obligated to take a close look at the way religious people actually live and ask what they are doing right.
The comments on PZ Myers’ blog provide anecdotal evidence that not everyone who attends church is happy doing so, including Keith’s story of the waiter who noted that the church-going Sunday lunch crowd is often surly and don’t tip well. This example can be used to highlight one of the problems with anecdotal evidence. It considers a smattering of cases which tend to agree with each other, leading to a perception which is not necessarily anything close to what would be seen if all possible cases were considered. This is why scientists do studies with large, randomised samples. Could all the happy church-going families have gone home for their Sunday lunch together? Might the waiter have been more aware of surly customers who don’t tip well?
So if we don’t look to anecdotal evidence, but we still need to take a close look, where do we look? We non-scientists generally don’t have the skills and resources to look as closely as necessary to be able to reach a firm conclusion. But there are scientists who can, and have. Anton Mates had a look at the results and said:
In support of this view, pretty much all the studies I’ve seen on the subject (such as those summarized here) find that regular religious attendance is correlated with happiness and health and giving. This has, so far as I can see, absolutely nothing to do with religious belief, other that in some cultures belief is a strong motivator for attendance. Studies such as this one provide evidence that belief, in itself, is a negative factor–countries with higher rates of belief also have higher rates of early mortality, homicide, STDs, abortions, and so forth.
I’m all for learning from religion, and for the benefit religious beliefs can provide individuals and society, but I’m not in favour of adopting it entirely, warts and all, for the sake of those positives. Particularly when all of those positives can be had without adopting those beliefs. We can learn from the ancient Greek gods, or the Norse gods, or any other gods now bereft of worshipers, without adopting all the practices which those gods required and which their worshipers willingly performed. Why should current gods and religions be approached any differently?
But I don’t believe Haidt is saying they should be approached differently. His final two sentences show he is simply warning against taking opposing ideologies to similar extremes:
A militant form of atheism that claims the backing of science and encourages “brights” to take up arms may perhaps advance atheism. But it may also backfire, polluting the scientific study of religion with moralistic dogma and damaging the prestige of science in the process.
I certainly agree to that. We don’t need to stamp out religion entirely. But I see no good in yielding to any form of harmful ideological dogmatism, religious, scientific, moralistic, or otherwise.
Here are some more responses to Haidt’s article
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September 22nd, 2007 at 1:15 am
The definition of harmful is very broad, meaning different things to different people, but I certainly agree that you can look at ideologies other than your own (and yes, you have one… you can’t function without one, even if it’s not one of the commonly accepted/known ones) and learn useful things from them, taking the good and leaving the bad.
As far as belief versus church attendance, there’s a reason for that… many people will claim belief in whatever the prevailing religion is, but not really mean it. Some cultures encourage this more than others, but it happens everywhere to some extent. People who merely claim belief, however, are unlikely to attend church regularly. Those who DO attend church regularly are more likely to be “true” believers, people who have taken the beliefs of their religion into them and made them part of who they are, rather than just something they pay lip service to. That’s not to say that all regular attendees are (I’ve certainly known some who weren’t), but it is substantially more probable.
In other words, claiming belief in a religion is a far different thing than living it.
September 22nd, 2007 at 9:47 am
I Agree. And I don’t think it’s at all unlikely that the social aspect of attending church would also contribute to church-goers’ happiness, independent of their religious beliefs.
September 22nd, 2007 at 2:15 pm
Agreed… being around other people who share a similar outlook on life and similar principles is generally good for your happiness.
September 24th, 2007 at 11:02 am
Many, many things on my mind after reading your post so I’m just going to start somewhere… You know I’m learning as I go so please excuse any poor word choice(s) and try to go with the meaning of what I’m saying, okay?
It seems to me that one thing that both science and religion have in common is they are both only as good as their individual practitioners. Any church or religion is comprised of real people with all the flaws inherent in being human. Theology and mythology are only as relevant as the understanding and adherence of individual practioners and/or the teachings of the leaders of their belief systems. The scientific process is only as good as the individual scientists who comprise it and their studies/research are only as good as their adherence to proper protocol. I’m not sure I know enough about science to deem who “leads” its beliefs systems but will hazard a guess that it just might be the editorial boards of various publications and at that high level science is again only as good as the adherence to its processes by editorial boards otherwise the best study in the world might never be published.
The ramifications within either group when individuals act outside their formal belief system range from small to massive. For instance several yrs ago a university hospital I worked at lost it’s ability to conduct any trials for a three yr period (including halting immediately all ongoing trials) that involved humans due to not correctly following protocol on a multitude of studies using human volunteers. The short and long term consequences of their inability to properly follow protocol including having to abruptly end clinical trials of patients on transplant drugs - patients that had been doing very well on those drugs. As far as the ramifications for religion, well for the massive ones any mention of the dark ages or crusades is probably enough…
You say…
I would agree and also wonder if you could identify any failings in the “theology” of science? Actually I’m unsure, is it the theologies of religion that you find lacking or the actual practice or both?
You know when I read these words it seems eerily similar to what gets said by the average person about religious leaders… That makes me slightly uncomfortable. I might just be reading what you are saying out of context though. Do you say this because you feel even if the average person doesn’t have the skills/resources to reach a decision they still have the capability to review the conclusions that are drawn and reach their own decisions from those?
Oh, and I had to laugh as I was reading all this stuff through as the similarities between born again Christians calling themselves the “chosen ones” and the new athiests calling themselves “brights”. They sound like different sides of the same coin in my opinion.
September 24th, 2007 at 12:51 pm
Agreed.
In a nutshell, throughout the history of science once in a while someone has come along who proposed a new way of doing things. If it’s more effective than previous methods, it’s adopted by others. So while peer-review is part of what determines what gets published, the results of peer-reviews can be influenced by strong enough suggestions by others.
But gradually the standard publishing model is changing. There are now open access publications, such as PLOS. I’m not sure how different their processes are, but you can read all their publications for free! I don’t know how much this will change the way current publishers do their thing, but I suspect it’s simply another way of doing things and that the models can coexist.
Sure, though as you mentioned, it’s not a failing in the ideology itself, but in those who attempt to uphold it. The most common failings are the misinterpretation of science as reductionist (reducing everything to its component parts and thereby somehow losing something of the whole), and of science as wholly materialistic (and thereby denying that anything else exists).
I think that most of what can be thought of as the ideology of science, is really just common beliefs amongst groups of scientists, not of all scientists. Much the same could probably be said of religions.
Ahh no, I was referring to the ability of non-scientists to conduct a study which conforms to all the protocols which increase the confidence in the results (and conclusions derived from the results).
Anyone sufficient capable of critical thinking can review a scientist’s conclusions as long as the scientists are clear in how they arrive at those conclusions. However, for example, if complex statistical analysis is used, an average person, even if very good at critical thinking, can’t determine if the results justify a particular conclusion unless they also understand the statistical methods used.
The average person could possibly do some fairly accurate qualitative analysis, but the results will inevitably be far more open to (mis)interpretation than the results of quantitative analysis. And unless the method of analysis takes into account cognitive biases and other potential human sources of error (which the scientific method aims to do), the results will be even less reliable.
So it’s not a categorical denial of the ability of non-scientists to do the stuff scientists do, but an acknowledgment of the reasons why scientists follow particular methods, and an understanding of the skills and resources required. A non-scientist might have the required skills, resources, and knowledge.