"Humanity's Naïve Self-Loves"

I recently came across the following quote from Freud:

"Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science two great outrages upon its naive self‑love. The first was when it realized that our earth was not the center of the universe…The second was when biological research robbed man of his peculiar privilege of having been specially created, and relegated him to a descent from the animal world…But man's craving for grandiosity is now suffering the third and most bitter blow from present‑day psychological research which is endeavoring to prove to the 'ego' of each one of us that he is not even master in his own house, but that he must remain content with the veriest scraps of information about what is going on unconsciously in his own mind…This is the kernel of the universal revolt against our science." (A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Eighteenth Lecture)

(Freud's conception of the psychoanalytic unconscious is not the one accepted by cognitive scientists today, and I don't know whether or not the above was truly at the root of criticism he faced. But, Freud was perhaps more right than he could have known about the third "outrage" to humanity's naive worldviews. Modern research on the cognitive unconscious in psychology and cognitive neuroscience has presented a wealth of evidence that picks away at the notion of a unified, directly-known, causal, conscious self.)

In any case, sort of sums things up, huh?

The Arbitrariness of Gosse

It occurred to me recently that I don't get the logical structure of the Gosse approach to evidence for the age of the Earth, evolution, etc--i.e., God planted mounds of evidence to test our faith. Let's say, for the moment, that we're ok with the bizarre theological implications of a trickster God. I still don't get it.

For the believer, theoretically, God created both nature and the Bible. The accounts in each clearly contradict each other (for a Biblical literalist, at least). So, what reason is there to claim that nature is the deceptive side, and the Bible true? Isn't it just as likely that the account contained in nature is true, and God is deceiving us in the Bible? From a logical standpoint, I don't see a reason to pick one over the other.

Obviously, the rest of the religion is built around the Bible, so that provides psychological motivation to protect that side. But I don't think I ever realized how arbitrary their choice seems on logical grounds, even putting aside the other problems with the idea (verifiability, Last Thursdayism, etc).

"You Assume Other People Exist, I Assume God Exists"

For some reason, I keep coming across this argument for faith now. I'd like to explain here why it's a bad argument.

The argument generally goes something like this, as articulated by a couple commenters on XGH's blog:

"We all proceed under assumptions that cannot be properly scientifically tested. You assume other people exist. I assume God exist. Neither of us is bothered by the fact that absolute truthiness of either of those propositions can ever really be known. We simply proceed with our lives, you and me both."

or:

"The simple point is that there are some certainties in life that come prior to reason [such as the existence of the external world/other people]. Faith is one of them. Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean that it's not so."

The problem with the argument is that it's just a bad analogy. The real comparison would be, "You assume your direct empirical experience with other people is what it seems to be, rather than an elaborate hoax or dream. I assume God exists."

In other words, we have a great reason to assume the external world or other people exist--namely, our sensory experience. It's just that we can doubt these things with an extreme form of doubt, and we assume they are what they seem anyway. We're not making up an external world from a blank. Similarly we can have good reason to accept the results of a scientific experiment if it works--it's just that we can always doubt it based on the induction problem. In contrast, there's no empirical experience that provides a basis for faith in God.

To make this point clear: for the analogy to work, the believer would need to have direct empirical experience with or evidence for God, and then say, "Well, I could doubt this experience/evidence as the work of an evil demon, but I will assume it is real just like I assume the external world is real." This is not the case, unfortunately, which means that there is just no connection between the faith case and the other cases.

Without this connection, one would need some reason to put faith in the category of "things accepted even though they can be doubted." Otherwise, the argument basically goes, "You have what I am calling an unprovable belief [because it could theoretically be doubted], so I can believe anything." Literally. There's no discrimination between one belief and another--faith is automatically approved because something else can't be saved from Cartesian doubt, with no justification for putting faith in the same category. (Notice how they always say, "And faith is the same," without explaining why.) If that's true, rational discussion has been thrown out the window since all beliefs are fair game without justification, and it's pointless even to bother thinking about it or trying to justify faith (or anything else).

On Cognitive Dissonance

In 1954, a housewife reported receiving mysterious "automatic writing" from aliens from the planet Clarion. Through these writings, she learned that the world was going to end via a Noah-like flood on December 21st of that year, and she began publicizing this fact. More specifically, she advertised that those who believed in the flood would be saved by a UFO that would rescue them.

Believers left jobs, colleges, and spouses to join the group that would be saved. They gave up their possessions and lives to prepare for the event. December 20th approaches, and they gather. The clock strikes midnight--the appointed time for salvation. There is no alien savior. The group waits--perhaps their clocks were fast. By five in the morning, though, it is clear no one is coming for them. But wait--the leader suddenly receives a new piece of automatic writing, declaring that the flood has been called off, thanks to the light spread by the group of believers.

The individuals here gave up their entire lives on the promise that they would be rescued from a flood at midnight of December 20th, 1954. You might expect that once they received clear and irreparable disconfirmation of that belief, they would angrily reject it, and demand compensation. Instead, psychologist Leon Festinger reports (in his book on the event), the crowd grew more attached to the belief.

This was a case study that grew into a robust literature in social psychology on cognitive dissonance theory. Bluntly, the theory states that if someone has two opposing cognitions--i.e. a belief and an opposing action--they will experience an unpleasant psychological tension. As such, they will resolve the tension somehow, most likely by changing their belief to accommodate their action. The individuals in the Clarion cult had devoted too much behavior to the cult. When push came to shove, there was no way for them to reconcile their actions with a belief that the UFO-flood story wasn't true--so they adjusted their beliefs in line with their actions. (Achrei ha'peulot nimshachim halevavot may be true, after all.) Participants in experimental psych labs do the same thing all the time, albeit with lower stakes. For example, participants will get paid only one dollar to write an essay they disagree with, and will end up agreeing with the position more than they used to--because if they don't agree with it, their unconscious reasoning goes, why are they defending it well for such little reward? Participants who are paid twenty dollars, on the other hand, do not need to rationalize their actions to themselves, and so do not change their beliefs.

The nimshal? If you are in the position of doubting your previous beliefs, you have a few options. You can look at your actions, and everything you have devoted to orthodoxy, and conclude that you simply must believe it after all--and come up with new justifications for said belief. Or, your actions can eventually change in line with your new beliefs. Or, you can become orthoprax, and just live with constant intellectual dissonance. If you're lucky, you'll alleviate some of the dissonance by finding some justification for the actions you are doing, such that they seem merited (for example, you like the community). Then you end up like an experimental participant offered $20 to write an essay you disagree with. You don't have to change your beliefs to match your actions, or change your actions to match your beliefs. You know exactly why you wrote the essay. It's not because you believe in it; it's because they gave you twenty bucks.

And if you're not lucky...cognitive dissonance it is.

Psychology, Religion, Orthopraxy

JG

Here is a list of psychological phenomena connected to religion I have come up with so far. (Of course, as any psychology article on this topic always notes, showing a psychological phenomenon related to religious belief neither proves nor disproves the belief itself.) Am I missing any? Connection to orthopraxy below.

-Anthropomorphizing of the universe. 1) Partly as error. Humans have a tendency to over-apply agency to things that aren't really agents. Kids do this as they are learning to apply concepts of agency (e.g. saying goodnight to their stuffed animals and meaning it), and adults yell at their cars and computers when they malfunction, see faces in the clouds, etc. In ancient times, people had pretty intense anthropomorphisms (like whipping the sea for misbehavior). 2) Partly as motivated approach to the world. Anthropomorphizing happens when people need social contact and feel lonely, or need to explain something unexplainable. Interestingly, one social psych study (Barrett & Keil, 1996) suggested that religious people were more likely to use an anthropomorphic concept of God than a classic theological one in daily life.

-Just World Hypothesis (referenced in a previous post). People have a need to believe the world is a just and ordered place, to the extent that if something bad happens to someone and we cannot help them, we will often assume it is in some way the victim's fault (either for causing it or having some flaw that "brought it upon them").

-Illusions of External Agency (Gilbert et al, 2000): We have psychological defense mechanisms that make us happy with what we have. However, they work unconsciously, so people often assume that what they have received is objectively good for them, rather than realizing that they their minds have subjectively made it seem good. Consequently, they assume there is an agent looking out for them, since they are getting all these good things.

-Fear of death. This one sort of speaks for itself.

-Supersense. I haven't read the book of that name yet--though it's on my list--but it shows how we develop a sense for the supernatural.

So the question for me now is, can orthopraxy relate to any of these psychological needs and principles? (Not really, as far as I can tell, which is why it seems pretty untenable as a movement to me.) It often feels to me as though being in the skeptic vein pits one's automatic psychological system against one's rationally-determined beliefs. From this lens, orthopraxy comes with the costs of religion without providing any of the core psychological benefits. One lives in constant intellectual dissonance, instead of gaining the relief the lifestyle should provide (in one ideal sense).

On the other hand, though, you can justify it by appeal to practical consequences, and--in theory--other psychological/emotional gains. You get a sense of community, some nice values and traditions, it's what you're comfortable with, etc. And maybe you've got it better than the full believers--you don't accept all the beliefs and whatnot, and get to do more of your own thing, but you get to gain the community (something a la this post).

I guess the point is, orthopraxy: a double-edged sword. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it.

Evil as a Reason to Believe?

Most people think of the problem of evil as one of the prime theological challenges facing religions throughout history.

A commenter writes on XGH, though:

There are many reasons to assume God exists -

1) why do bad things happen to good people?
2) Why do we exist?
3) what is our purpose?
4) How does something come from Quantum Soup if all there exists are laws of physics?

Ignoring 2-4 for now*, it was at first incredibly odd to me that someone cited bad things happening to good people as a reason to assume God exists. This was one of the prime arguments against religion for millennia!

But I realized how much sense that makes. One of the prime motivations for religious thinking, it seems, is to explain the universe in an ordered way. The Just World Hypothesis in social psychology states that we all have a need to view the world as ordered and just. If something bad happens to someone and we cannot help them, we will often tend to assume it must in some way be their own fault. By doing so, we keep the world ordered, and separate ourselves from the bad things that happen.

As such, while an argument from evil would be just about the worst logical argument for God ever envisioned, it gets directly to the root of the matter as an emotional argument for God.

*2 and 3, like 1, are psychological reasons we would like to assume God exists, not standalone reasons to assume God does exist. 4 is somewhat unintelligible to me as written.

Daat Emet

Luke Skyhopper

I was reading Undercover Kofer, and I stumbled across his link to a Daat Emet article which brings Torah sources to essentially prove that the Torah and Halacha cannot have remained intact since Sinai.

Daat Emet is an Israeli site which seeks to to dismantle various dogmatic arguments often espoused by Orthodox Judaism and popularized by the Kiruv movement.

While I have yet to check Daat Emet's sources in the original texts, I figured I'd share the link.

http://www.daatemet.org/articles/article.cfm?article_id=9

enjoy