Can demographics make you irrational?
Tyler Cowen is impressed by the recent Joel Grus book, Your Religion is False.
Cowen provides the following as an example of where Grus’s argument is not only good but different than those of the more famous “New Atheists.”
Grus yields many of the strongest arguments. For instance the biographical and sociological correlates with belief (most people choose the religion they grew up with, or encountered through a friend, etc.) suggest that, in this area, intuitions which feel “certain” simply cannot be trusted.
Like most economists, Cowen has probably not actually read very much of the New Atheists, or else he would know that, for example, Dawkins makes this exact argument all the time, easily found online and in his writings. But even so, is this a good argument?
We can construe the argument as constituting an objection to the warrant of religious beliefs. The argument says something like this: Being influenced by your epistemic community is not a reliable belief-forming process. So you can’t trust your intuitions of certainty which are attributable to your epistemic community.
But tons of our beliefs are influenced by our epistemic community. For example, Cowen’s economic beliefs would probably be quite different had he been raised in the Soviet Union. Or Ancient Sumer (I say probably because people have views dissonant with their community all the time, and much more than polls suggest). Does this invalidate Cowen’s intuitions? Or Sumerian Cowen’s intuitions? I hope not.
We might ask a much broader question: In what academic fields, or general areas of human interest, are major belief paradigms completely renewed from generation to generation? I doubt there are any compelling examples.
We should always keep in mind the basic distinction between the rationality of beliefs on the one hand, and the truth of beliefs on the other. Which does Grus’s argument threaten, or does it threaten both? And is it successful? I’ve construed the argument above as an argument about the rationality of religious belief. But it is perfectly rational to be influenced by your epistemic community, especially if constituted by epistemic peers (analogously, why not be epistemically influenced by, say, your physical surrounding? Does there apparently being trees around make it somehow unjustified that you believe in trees?). As an argument against the truth of religious belief, Grus’s argument according to Cowen seems to be approximately the argument from pluralism. But there are plenty of different beliefs on most topics, especially difficult topics. That’s not an argument against any particular belief. Otherwise, a Utilitarian could refute a Virtue Theorist by merely pointing out that he (the Utilitarian) is a Utilitarian.
You know, one nice thing about blogs is that they don’t have to be well-organized, well-written, or analytically perfected. I think I have exploited such allowance in this post.
This seems like an odd argument to me (the book’s… not yours). To begin, Grus speaks not only of one’s upbringing, but also of “encounters”. I wonder what the hell else that leaves us with, unless he expects religiosity to be achieved purely through solitary reflection. This, I would think, would be much more problematic than some sort of consensus-formed religiosity, whatever the problems of an epistemological inheritance may be.
Also, there’s no sense (at least in Cowen’s blurb) that this argument cuts both ways. It is no more an argument against religious belief than it is against atheism, which is presumably also affected by familial pressure. Especially with the rabid popularity of the “new atheists”, it should be obvious enough that cultural trends- whether of Christendom or secularism- go a long way in forming one’s intuitions. Read the comment from Danish guy that speaks up in the comment section so pompously about American religiosity that is “almost impossible to fathom for an average Scandinavian.” Does he really not pick up on how embarrassingly stupid he sounds?
I ran into this when reading an article about some tests that Sam Harris was doing on brain function (see here, although I don’t think this was the original article I read); he found that there were distinctions in brain activity when a proposition is accepted or rejected- both showed activity in emotional centers, but the rejecting decision was delayed and required additional processing.
The summaries of this study tended to say something to the tune of “religious belief is shown to be neurologically similar to matters of taste” or “disbelief and skepticism are not neurologically instinctual in the same way that belief is”… but this ignores the fact that disbelief in an atheistic proposition would also (presumably… the study mentioned no use of such propositions, only of theistic ones) reflect the neurological activity present in decisions to disbelieve. The closing sentence in the linked article is especially presumptuous, “Thus, it is that we should reward skepticism and disbelief and champion those willing to change their mind in the teeth of new evidence.”
I’ve always thought that the demographics argument is much more effective against (most) religious worldviews than against other beliefs/worldviews (in which cases I agree that it’s weak and mostly a red herring). The strength of the argument doesn’t primarily lie in showing that most people have lousy reasons for their religious beliefs, but that the distribution of religions is evidence against many of them. (It may be not always expressed this way when the argument is put forward, but I think the implication is there often enough.)
Take any sufficiently orthodox Christian theology which holds that only Christians are saved. This only makes sense if there is a morally relevant distinction between Christians and non-Christians. This can’t possibly consist in philosophical ability, epistemic skills, etc. What Christianity needs is something that people are actually responsible for, something they actually chose freely. And this is how you get the doctrine that nonbelief is culpable, which typically has to do with people embracing/rejecting Christianity after an encounter with the Holy Spirit. Without this doctrine or something like it, salvation by faith is morally bankrupt. And this is why to uphold a conservative theology, most Christians would have to believe that *all* non-Christians either haven’t been touched by the Holy Spirit yet or have consciously rejected it. Religious demographics show that this view is indefensible.
I agree that the objection from demographics (and pluralism) is such that it will be more challenging for some theologies than for others. Generally speaking, a mainline Christian response will be (and my response, if I were really pressed) something having to do with humans being responsible for the light that they have. Furthermore, if “no one gets to the Father except” through Jesus, we can say that if anyone enters into eternal life, it will be because of what God has done in Jesus.
It seems like something involving the true God in a different religious setting is at work, for example, in Acts when the altar to the “unknown God” is encountered. There the idea is that they are in some way worshiping God in a limited fashion, and the evangelists proclaim to them who this God really is. A good, and commonly used illustration of this comes from the C.S. Lewis’s novel The Last Battle, where Aslan tells the follower of the false God Tash that he has really served Aslan all along, or something like that.
Anyway, there are fairly rich, and not too heretical, theological options for us that are not only consistent with demographic data, but even add a certain beauty to considerations of diverse peoples and their religious lives.
I frequently bring up that part of CS Lewis’ story which you alluded to in your last comment, Josh, when atheists bring up this particular argument; and I tend to want to believe that “all roads lead to God”. I’m not sure I can actually stand by it, however. The most famous verses in the bible seem to indicate otherwise.
From John, chapter 3:
16For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,[a] that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.
In particular, verse 18. How might you respond to this? Or perhaps you know of some good further reading I can do on the issue?
Thanks.