Before we begin, I’m not going to tell you where I stand in my personal beliefs; I’ll save that for the end. This will allow you to read my thoughts with an open mind and, I hope, attempt to think about them in an academic and objective way.
Psychology and Situational Influence
That said, for the past few years, I’ve been grappling with specific issues of organized religion. During this time, I’ve spent many hours on the phone with my father until 3 a.m., discussing various topics with Molly over coffee and through one electronic means or another, and far more time sitting in a reading chair in my apartment in Princeton as I attempted to rationalize, or at least compartmentalize, different belief systems and religious hierarchies. Often, I was forced (and still am) to utilize the three-boxed system Munger made so famous in accounting for his success: “Yes”, “No”, and “Too Hard – Come Back Later”.
As a child, I believed the world was black and white. Maybe, as I mentioned before, that’s why computer programming appealed to me; the notion of a binary morality scheme is very simplistic and reassuring. As I’ve gotten older, however, it became increasingly obvious that the real question I was asking stemmed from a simple quandary: “What is man?” We are a lot of things, but the single attribute that tends to differentiate us from animals is our rationality; the ability to contemplate the abstract (differentiating the concept of a circle – a geometric figure – from an orange; an ability that has been directly tied to literacy as it triggers some sort of higher level thinking skills). Our genetic programming has also, sadly, created short cuts that lead to very bad results over time. As I’ve told many of you before, I think Munger’s discourse on these 28 principles that are responsible for a vast majority of humanity’s shortcomings is life changing. Case in point: The other day I caught myself shying away from a French Dip Roast Beef sandwich because I once got food poisoning from the dish; despite the fact that my statistical probability of catching food poisoning was still very small and was dependent not one iota on whether I ordered beef, eggs, fish, or chicken, the overwhelming psychological power of mere association tendency was at work. The fact that I became aware of it enabled me to make a more informed decision based upon my true wants and desires, rather than some gut biological instinct born out of a genetically-coded software program meant to help ensure my survival.
The challenge is that most of the children brought up in the world aren’t given the technical tools necessary to overcome these shortcomings. Our Judeo-Christian values, for example, make it virtually impossible for Westerners to avoid the powerful grip of fundamental attribution error. In situations such as Abu Graib, we react with horror and blame the individual soldiers despite the now-famous Zimbaro experiment at Stanford University where he turned ordinary, well-adjusted, educated students into violent, human-rights abusing prison guards within a matter of two weeks. The lesson: All of this could have been avoided had the situation been setup to rage against the very basic psychological principles that will cause man to shut off his higher order thinking skills and instead revert to a violent, emotionally-charged guerilla acting solely out of self preservation and an enjoyment in the sheer novelty of depravity one could introduce to the closed society. Likewise, if children were required to learn about the “halo” and “horns” psychological effect, celebrity endorsements would evaporate overnight, causing products to rise and fall on their intrinsic value and not the prowess of the marketing team.
And there is where the connection to organized religion comes into play. Over the past few years, the difference between various belief systems has been brought to the forefront by the “war on terror” and rising tensions in the Middle East. A quick and dirty glance over the issues that have plagued the region for thousands of years makes it abundant that the problems stem from these rudimentary psychological issues: dislike / hate superreaction tendency, mere association, doubt-avoidance tendency, envy / jealousy tendency, reciprocation tendency, social proof, and on and on … In observing this, several things have become apparent to me.
The Role of Organized Religion as a Mechanism for Social Control
It seems that throughout history, religion has served less as a conduit to connect with the Divine, and more a systematic method of imparting social control by enforcing behaviors that are deemed good for society. Often, infidelity is treated as immoral when I’m not entirely certain it isn’t a result of a deeply rooted need to ensure the propagation of one’s own genes. Questioning religious authority is often derided as heresy because when it (the religious or government institution) was the sole provider of stability for so long, any legitimate questioning of its authority could cause social anarchy which is not a desirable situation for someone wanting to raise children and increase their standard of living. Theft is bad for individual property rights and, again, political stability so what better way to ensure the avoidance of such behavior than to trigger feelings of internal guilt that do the job for the authority figures by simply instructing a child from an early age that they will go to hell for it. We must procreate to propagate the species, so for the good of society, homosexuality should be impermissible; those who engage it should be imprisoned or killed, or so the thinking goes in primative societies.
I think the greatest evidence is the changing belief systems over time that happen to conveniently fit with the needs of society. For example, it was perfectly permissible for men during antiquity to have multiple wives because the human species circa 5,000 BC was only estimated to be 5 to 20 million people strong! As time went on, men began to settle down with a single wife and raise a family. Suddenly, in the United States, we have become the first society on a wide scale basis where economic development and the number of children is inversely correlated. Given our high level of education, extraordinary disposal income relative to the rest of the world, and access to contraceptives, survival became not so much a biological imperative as a lifestyle choice.
It seems absurd to me that in this age and time, a majority of the world’s population is living under political systems controlled by a select group of economically interested individuals (which, I don’t think is a coincidence) that maintain their authority to govern is based upon morality guidelines dictated by God. The problem with this approach is that since so many differ in very fundamental ways, a vast majority must, by definition, be wrong. Religious conversion by conscription always hit me as the height of absurdity – 600 years ago, the Christians were killing Jews telling them that if they did not convert they would be killed. Now, Islamic governments are executing Christians unless they convert. If Christ didn’t force the disbelieving thief on the cross to confess and accept atonement, what makes mere men think they have some Divine authority to force a conversion which any fool can tell you is not born of internal enlightenment or profound meaning? It’s an empty, hallow act of political submission that serves only to protect to the authority of those in control.
A Net Gain or Loss for the Civilization?
Thus, we are left with the present problem. From the standpoint of social control, religion can be extraordinarily effective in enforcing a code of ethics and morality that is deemed, on average, to be good for the civilization. On the whole, this has been a very real net positive as it has kept countless men from stealing, cheating on their spouse, lying, engaging in fraud, or treating people in any way other than which they would like to be treated. Take, for example, the mystical Judiaistic belief in the Tzadikim Nistarim, or the 36 righteous people. (I’ll just lift from the source text here to save time) “Lamedvavnik is the Yiddish term for one of the 36 hidden saints or Zaddiks mentioned in kabbalah or Jewish mysticism. According to this teaching, at any given time there are at least 36 holy Jews in the world who are Tazdikim. These holy people are hidden, i.e., nobody knows who they are. According to some versions of the story, they themselves may not know who they are. For the sake of these 36 hidden saints, God preserves the world even if the rest of humanity has degenerated to the level of total barbarism. This is similar to the story of Sodom and Gomorrah in the Hebrew Bible, where God told Abraham that he would spare the city of Sodom if there was a quorum of at least 10 righteous men. Since nobody knows who the Lamedvavniks are, not even themselves, every Jew should act as if he or she might be one of them, i.e., lead a holy and humble life and pray for the sake of fellow human beings and for planetary healing. It is also said that one of these 36 could potentially be the Jewish Messiah if the world is ready for him to reveal himself. Otherwise, he lives and dies as an ordinary person. Whether or not he himself knows he is the potential Messiah is debated.” If we walked through the world treating each other like that, mankind would certainly have a much better experience!
On the other hand, organized religion can cause horrific damage when men are confronted with challenges to these belief systems, sparking wars, riots, and violence. When their identies become inseparable from their beliefs, they will resist, even unto death, anyone who challenges them, no matter how innocently.
Personally, I believe in God. I believe that He created the world, He is who He says He is, and that there is a plan for the entire cosmos. I had no role or power in bringing myself here – the very fact that we have consciousness – self awareness is mind boggling; it almost cannot be comprehended if one stops and thinks about it. (I’ve always been struck by the arrogance of atheists: To make a declarative statement that in the 180 billion light year Universe that he or she had nothing to do with creating, there is no force that is responsible is, frankly, stupid. We don’t even fully understand the workings of our own biological functions! I’m convinced that atheism stems from a psychological weakness that requires one to believe there is no accountability for any actions, nor that they are really tiny in the relative scheme of things. It takes far more rationality and honesty to be agnostic.) I also believe that Jesus Christ is, in fact, the son of God and that he died and was raised from the dead, making atonement for my sin. Personally, I see no conflict between this and the Big Bang theory, Darwin’s theory of evolution (how God did it is unimportant – do we care whether a computer programmer uses C, Javascript, or Pascal when creating a new calculator or Mario Brothers game? Not at all; in this case, the instrument of choice was atoms and amino acids.)
Back in the Box …
I think that the real nature of God is probably in his relationship with Abraham. Three of the world’s major religions believe that this man was “the friend of God”. Many people believe that God actually came down in human form and ate dinner with him. What’s striking is that by all accounts, Abraham was an honorable man, regular guy (albeit very successful and wealthy), who simply thought: “Hey, God… how am I doing? Is there anything you need? Anything I’m not doing you’d like me to do?” No wars fought over whether the wafer literally becomes the body of Christ or whether it is representative. No arguments over the relative portion of his income that went to charitable works. Instead, man has built huge palaces (there is nothing wrong with that – Solomon’s Temple was a testament to the greatness of God), and forgotten that in the end it comes down to one thing. A direct relationship between the Maker and the Man. I really believe that this – a simple desire to try to figure out who He is and what He wants – is the core. It’s the key. Everything else is details.
For now, I’m putting this back in the “too hard” box and will go onto other things. Throughout the day, however, it’s been coming back up and I thought it was time for a personal exercise in mental codification.
Related posts:
- Does Religion Have a Responsibility to Look to Science?
- ACLU to Defend Child Molesters Right to Attend Church
- The Bible Said Owning Slaves Is Okay If They Come from Neighboring Nations … I Wonder How Mexico and Canada Feel About That
- Virgin Money Social Lending – a New Revolution in the Debt Markets
- Is There a Separation of Church and State in the United States?
