Two days ago I quoted a lengthy passage from A. C. Grayling. Here is one of the sentences: "Human credulity and superstition, and the need for comforting fables, will never be extirpated, so religion will always exist, at least among the uneducated." This implies that superstition and the need for comfort are what is at the root of all religion. Suppose we pursue this, first by asking about the link between religion and superstition, and then about the link between religion and the need for psychological comfort. I don't have a fully worked-out position, but I would like to have one. Perhaps you can help me.
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Religion and Superstition
1. Is there a difference between religion and superstition, or is religion by its very nature superstitious? There seem to be two main views. One is that of skeptics and naturalists. For them, religion, apart perhaps from its ethical teaching, is superstitious in nature so that there could not be a religion free of superstition. Religion on this approach just is a tissue of superstitious beliefs and practices and has been exposed as such by the advance of natural science. The other view is that of those who take religion seriously as having a basis in reality. It is important to realize that among these are people well-schooled in hard science and mathematics. Thus it is simply unconscionable to depict religious believers, all of them, as ignorant of science.
Sophisticated people who take religion seriously do not deny that there are superstitious beliefs, practices, and people. Nor do they deny that religions are often interlarded with superstition. What they deny is that religion is in its essence superstitious.
Indeed, a philosophically sophisticated religion such as Roman Catholicism specifically prohibits superstitious beliefs and practices. One way it does this is via the prohibition of idolatry which derives from the First Commandment's prohibition on 'false gods.' Idolatry, the worshipping as divine of anything that is not divine, is one of the forms of superstition.
It should be noted that a sophisticated religionist can turn the tables on the skeptic and naturalist by accusing the latter of idolatry. Some skeptics appear to worship Doubt Itself, or else the power of their minds to doubt everything — except of course the validity of their own skeptical ruminations. Others, like Carl Sagan, appear to worship science. Humanists often enthrone Humanity, as if there were such a thing as Humanity as opoosed to just a lot of human beings. Futurists expect great things from the Future: does not that smack of idolatry? Our human past has been wretched; why should we think that our future will be any better? The quasi-religious and idolatrous nature of Communist belief has often been noted. Environmentalists often appear to make a god of nature and its subhuman inhabitants. One thinks of Edward Abbey in this connection, and those who, like Al Gore, display quasi-religious fervor in their zeal to protect the environment from global warming and other real or imagined threats. Naturalists can be found who attribute divine attributes to nature such as necessity of existence and supreme value.
Superstition, in the form of idolatry, therefore, can be found in the opponents of religion as much as it can be found in its proponents.
2. A second form of supersition consists in the imputation of powers to natural objects that they cannot possibly possess. Let's consider an example. A believer places a plastic Jesus icon on the dashboard of her car. It seems clear than anyone who believes that a piece of plastic has the power to ward off automotive danger is superstitious. A hunk of mere matter cannot have such magical properties. Superstition in this sense involves a failure to understand the causal structure of the world or the laws of probability. A flight attendant who attributes her years of flying without mishap to her wearing of a rabbit's foot or a St. Christopher's medal is clearly superstitious in this sense. Such objects have no causal bearing on an airplane's safety.
But no sophisticated believer attributes powers to icons or medals or relics or suchlike. The sophisticated believer distinguishes between the icon and the spiritual reality or person it represents.
Well, what about the belief that the person represented, God or Christ, will ward off danger and protect the believer from physical mishap? That belief too is arguably, though not obviously, superstitious. Why should the Second Person of the Trinity care about one's automotive adventures? Does one really expect, let alone deserve, divine intervention for the sake of one's petty concerns?
Here we touch upon the difficult topic of miracles as divine suspensions of the laws of nature. Earlier this year I wrote 18 or so posts on miracles, starting with this one, and there was much lively debate. Now is not the time to return to the topic of miracles. I will just state that religion does not require miracles. One can believe in a transcendent God who created and sustains the universe without believing that he intervenes in its workings. But even if one believes that God does intervene in nature's workings, there is nothing superstitious about this belief since it does not involve attributing powers to a being that could not possess them. A piece of plastic on a dashboard cannot have the power to ward of an accident, but God does. I would insist, though, that the belief that God intervenes in such petty matters, though not superstitious, represents a low form of religious belief, bordering on the childish, and the same goes for the crass petitionary prayer that goes along with it.
At this point a naturalist might claim that any belief in anything supernatural, anything that is not part of the space-time system, is by definition superstitious. But this would be both a confusion and a begging of the question. If an omnipotent God exists, then there cannot be anything superstitious about imputing to him the power of suspending natural laws. If a naturalist thinks that 'superstitious' and 'supernatural' are coextensive terms, then he he fails to make an obvious distinction and can be faulted on that ground alone. Abstract objects are supernatural in that they are outside the order of nature as the space-time system, and yet no one would call belief that they exist superstitious.
Returning to the icon on the dashboard. If the icon serves to remind the believer of her faith commitment rather than to propitiate or influence a godlike person for egoistic ends, then we have a form of religious belief that is in no way superstitious. The believer is not attributing magical powers to a hunk of plastic or a piece of metal. Nor is she invoking a spiritual reality in an attempt to satisfy petty material needs. Her belief transcends the sphere of egoic concerns.
3. To round out today's ruminations on superstition, let us consider the materialist who ascribes to the grey stuff in our skulls the magical property of giving rise to consciousness, self-consciousness, conscience, and intentionality. Can we not tax such a materialist with superstition? Is he not ascribing magical powers to matter, powers that material stuff cannot possess?
Brains exist and consciousness exists. It is natural to wax Searlean and say that brain activity causes consciousness. But if we have no idea HOW brain activity could cause consciousness, then how is saying that it does differ from saying that the St. Christopher medal causes safe passage through the friendly skies? "It just does" is no answer. Religion and Comfort
Religion and Comfort
Grayling suggests above that religions result from a need for psychological comfort in a world indifferent to human purposes. It is, of course, the genetic fallacy to suppose that religion can be refuted by exposing its tendency to comfort believers. If some religion is true, then it is logically irrelevant whether or not it is comforting. If a forest fire is raging near my house, and I then get word that the wind has shifted and that my house is no longer in danger, I will be comforted by this report. But the truth or falsity of the report is logically independent of whether or not it is comforting. It would be fallacious to infer that the report is false because it is comforting. There are mundane comforts, why should there not be Cosmic Comfort?
But one might also question whether religion really is all that comforting. If God is but a comforting illusion we project into a Godless universe, then why do religions contain such dreadful notions? If our unconscious aim is to comfort ourselves, why do we (collectively and unconsciously) project notions that are terrifying and unsettling? For example, why, on Ash Wednesday, do Christian believers tell themselves that they are dust and unto dust they shall return? (Gen 3, 19: quia pulvis est et in pulverem reverteris.) This does not sound like a comforting escape from harsh reality, but rather a rubbing of one’s nose in it. One literally gets ashes rubbed into one’s forehead in the sign of the cross, the cross being the most horrible form of execution the brutal Romans could devise. Why don’t Christians tell themselves that they are really immortal beings who have nothing to fear from death? And why do they tell a story about a Last Judgment, a sort of final examination that it is possible to fail with disastrous consequences? Why do they speak of working out one’s salvation in fear and trembling?
So it is not so obvious that religion is comforting. And it will have occurred to you that the tables can easily be turned: Is atheism not comforting and 'empowering' to those who want to believe that they are the lords of the universe beholden to no one? So if atheists can argue that religion is nothing but an expression of a need for comfort, why can't theists argue that atheism is but an expression of overweening pride and a need for 'empowerment'?
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This reasoning has two characteristics of magical reasoning: first, that from similarity of effects, they infer similarity of causes, even though all observable evidence shows that the causes are radically different. Second, they treat an abstract description of a process as though it were a physical description capable of having physical effects. The description "executing an algorithm" is entirely abstract, entirely in the mind of the observer; it can have have no physical effects. This sort of confusion is seen in magical thinking where words can have physical effects just because of what they mean, although the meaning is an entirely abstract description.
It's a bit frustrating to have someone who thinks like this call me superstitious because I believe in God.
The first thing that came to my head upon reading your quote of Grayling is that the militant atheist seeks the comfort of bearing no eternal consequences for his actions. Thus, the atheist, being all too human, has the same psychological needs as the theist he berates. So, of course, I was quite pleased when the Maverick Philosopher capped his fine essay with the same point. ;)
Overall, I think it is effective, as you have done, to point out that atheists have the same alleged psychological flaws and intellectual failures they identify in theists. This is akin to the point I have been making in distinguishing ideology from religion. Both the ideologue and the religionist embrace their first principles with faith, as they must if they are to act with purpose on those principles. So the problem is not with faith, as the ideologue might complain, but what a man puts his faith in.
(And not to belabor the point from previous threads, but what I mean by faith is one's intellectual assent to a proposition that is shown by reason to be true if not absolutely certain.)
In the case of the atheist, I thought you did a good job of citing a number of things the atheist must hold in faith (or even worse, superstitiously) to maintain a naturalist view of the universe.
Finally, Bill, I think your point about religion not being so comforting as the atheist caricaturizes it is well done. I will also say that this supports my argument in the previous thread that religion is not a species of ideology.
Regards, Bill T