Discussion Board: Religion

God and the Ivory Tower | Foreign Policy

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What we don't understand about religion just might kill us.

ARGUMENT

God and the Ivory Tower

AUGUST 6, 2012BY SCOTT ATRAN

The era of world struggle between the great secular ideological –isms that began with the French

Revolution and lasted through the Cold War (republicanism, anarchism, socialism, fascism, communism,

liberalism) is passing on to a religious stage. Across the Middle East and North Africa, religious movements

are gaining social and political ground, with election victories by avowedly Islamic parties in Turkey,

Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, and Morocco. As Israel’s National Security Council chief, Gen. Yaakov Amidror (a

religious man himself), told me on the eve of Tunisia’s elections last October, "We expect Islamist parties to

soon dominate all governments in the region, from Afghanistan to Morocco, except for Israel."

On a global scale, Protestant evangelical churches (together with Pentacostalists) continue to proliferate,

especially in Latin America, but also keep pace with the expansion of fundamentalist Islam in southern

Africa and eastern and southern Asia. In Russia, a clear majority of the population remains religious despite

decades of forcibly imposed atheism. Even in China, where the government’s commission on atheism has

the Sisyphean job of making that country religion-free, religious agitation is on the rise. And in the United

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God and the Ivory Tower | Foreign Policy

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States, a majority says it wants less religion in politics, but an equal majority still will not vote for an atheist

as president.

But if reams of social scientific analysis have been produced on religion’s less celestial cousins — from the

nature of perception and speech to how we rationalize and shop — faith is not a matter that rigorous

science has taken seriously. To be sure, social scientists have long studied how religious practices correlate

with a wide range of economic, social, and political issues. Yet, for nearly a century after Harvard University

psychologist William James’s 1902 masterwork, The Varieties of Religious Experience, there was little

serious investigation of the psychological structure or neurological and biological underpinnings of religious

belief that determine how religion actually causes behavior. And that’s a problem if science aims to produce

knowledge that improves the human condition, including a lessening of cultural conflict and war.

Religion molds a nation in which it thrives, sometimes producing solidarity and sacred causes so powerful

that citizens are willing to kill or die for a common good (as when Judea’s Jews around the time of Christ

persisted in rebellion unto political annihilation in the face of the Roman Empire’s overwhelmingly military

might). But religion can also hinder a society’s ability to work out differences with others, especially if those

others don’t understand what religion is all about. That’s the mess we find ourselves in today, not only

among different groups of Americans in the so-called culture wars, but between secular and Judeo-

Christian America and many Muslim countries.

Time and again, countries go to war without understanding the transcendent drives and dreams of

adversaries who see a very different world. Yet we needn’t fly blindly into the storm.

Science can help us understand religion and the sacred just as it can help us understand the genome or the

structure of the universe. This, in turn, can make policy better informed.

Fortunately, the last few years show progress in scientific studies of religion and the sacred, though

headwinds remain strong. Across history and cultures, religion has often knit communities together under

the rule of sentient, but immaterial deities — that is, spiritual beings whose description is logically

contradictory and empirically unfalsifiable. Cross-cultural studies pioneered by anthropologist Pascal Boyer

show that these miraculous features — talking bushes, horses that leap into the sky — make lasting

impressions on people and thereby increase the likelihood that they will be passed down to the next

generation. Implausibility also facilitates cultural transmission in a more subtle manner — fostering

adaptability of religious beliefs by opening the door to multiple interpretations (as with metaphors or

weekly sermons).

And the greater the investment in outlandishness, the better. This is because adherence to apparently

absurd beliefs means incurring costs — surviving without electricity, for example, if you are Amish — which

help identify members who are committed to the survival of a group and cannot be lured away. The ease of

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identifying true believers, in turn, builds trust and galvanizes group solidarity for common defense.

To test this hypothesis, anthropologist Richard Sosis and his colleagues studied 200 communes founded in

the United States in the 19th century. If shared religious beliefs really did foster loyalty, they reasoned, then

communes formed out of religious conviction should survive longer than those motivated by secular

ideologies such as socialism. Their findings were striking: Just 6 percent of the secular communes were still

functioning 20 years after their founding, compared with 39 percent of the religious communes.

It is not difficult to see why groups formed for purely rational reasons can be more vulnerable to collapse:

Background conditions change, and it might make sense to abandon one group in favor of another.

Interestingly, recent research echoes the findings of 14th-century historian Ibn Khaldun, who argued that

long-term differences among North African Muslim dynasties with comparable military might "have their

origin in religion … [and] group feeling [wherein] mutual cooperation and support flourish." The more

religious societies, he argued, endured the longest.

For this reason, even ostensibly secular countries and transnational movements usually contain important

quasi-religious rituals and beliefs. Think of sacred songs and ceremonies, or postulations that "providence"

or "nature" bestows equality and inalienable rights (though, for about 99.9 percent of our species’ existence,

slavery, and oppression of minorities were more standard fare). These sacred values act as moral

imperatives that inspire nonrational sacrifices in cooperative endeavors such as war.

Insurgents, revolutionaries, and terrorists all make use of this logic, generating outsized commitment that

allows them to resist and often prevail against materially stronger foes. Consider the American

revolutionaries who defied the greatest empire of their age by pledging "our Lives, our Fortunes and our

sacred Honor" for the cause of "liberty or death." Surely they were aware of how unlikely they were to

succeed, given the vast disparities in material resources, manpower, and training. As Osama Hamdan, the

ranking Hamas politburo member for external affairs, put it to me in Damascus, Syria, "George Washington

was fighting the strongest military in the world, beyond all reason. That’s what we’re doing. Exactly."

But the same logic that makes religious and sacred beliefs more likely to endure can make them impervious

to compromise. Based on interviews, experiments, and surveys with Palestinians, Israelis, Indonesians,

Indians, Afghans, and Iranians, my research with psychologists Jeremy Ginges, Douglas Medin, and others

demonstrates that offering people material incentives (large amounts of money, guarantees for a life free of

political violence) to compromise sacred values can backfire, increasing stated willingness to use violence.

Such backfire effects occur both for convictions with clear religious investment (Jerusalem, sharia law) and

for those that are at least initially nonreligious (Iran’s right to a nuclear capability, Palestinian refugees’

right of return).

According to a 2010 study, for example, most Iranians think there is nothing sacred about their

God and the Ivory Tower | Foreign Policy

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government’s nuclear program. But for a sizable minority — 13 percent of the population — the quest for a

nuclear capability (more focused on energy than weapons) had, through religious rhetoric, become a sacred

subject. This group, which tends to be close to the regime, now believes a nuclear program is bound up with

national identity and with Islam itself. As a result, offering material rewards or punishments to abandon

the program only increases anger and support for it.

Although this sacralization of initially secular issues confounds standard "business-like" negotiation tactics,

my work with political scientist Robert Axelrod interviewing political leaders in the Middle East and

elsewhere indicates that strong symbolic gestures (sincere apologies, demonstrating respect for the other’s

values) generate surprising flexibility, even among militants, and may enable subsequent material

negotiations. Thus, we find that Palestinian leaders and their supporting populations are generally willing to

accept Israeli offers of economic improvement only after issues of recognition are addressed. Even purely

symbolic statements accompanied by no material action, such as "we recognize your suffering" or "we

respect your rights in Jerusalem," diminish support for violence, including suicide terrorism. This is

particularly promising because symbolic gestures tied to religious notions that are open to interpretation

might potentially be reframed without compromising their absolute "truth." For example, Jerusalem might

be reconceived less as a place than portal to heaven, where earthly access to the portal suffices.

If these things are worth knowing, why do scientists still shun religion?

Part of the reason is that most scientists are staunchly nonreligious. If you look at the prestigious U.S.

National Academy of Sciences or Britain’s Royal Society, well over 90 percent of members are non-

religious. That may help explain why some of the bestselling books by scientists about religion aren’t about

the science of religion as much as the reasons that it’s no longer necessary to believe. "New Atheists" have

aggressively sought to discredit religion as the chief cause of much human misery, militating for its demise.

They contend that science has now answered questions about humans’ origins and place in the world that

only religion sought to answer in the days before evolutionary science, and that humankind no longer needs

the broken crutch of faith.

But the idea that we can simply argue away religion has little factual support. Although a recent study by

psychologists Will Gervais and Ara Norenzayan indicates that people are less prone to think religiously

when they think analytically, other studies suggest that seemingly contrary evidence rarely undermines

religious belief, especially among groups welded by ritualized sacrifice in the face of outside threats.

Norenzayan and others also find that belief in gods and miracles intensifies when people are primed with

awareness of death or when facing danger, as in wartime.

Moreover, the chief complaint against religion — that it is history’s prime instigator of intergroup conflict —

does not withstand scrutiny. Religious issues motivate only a small minority of recorded wars. The

Encyclopedia of Wars surveyed 1,763 violent conflicts across history; only 123 (7 percent) were religious. A

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BBC-sponsored "God and War" audit, which evaluated major conflicts over 3,500 years and rated them on

a 0-to-5 scale for religious motivation (Punic Wars = 0, Crusades = 5), found that more than 60 percent

had no religious motivation. Less than 7 percent earned a rating greater than 3. There was little religious

motivation for the internecine Russian and Chinese conflicts or the world wars responsible for history’s

most lethal century of international bloodshed.

Indeed, inclusive concepts such as "humanity" arguably emerged with the rise of universal religions.

Sociologist Rodney Stark reveals that early Christianity became the Roman Empire’s majority religion not

through conquest, but through a social process grounded in trust. Repeated acts of altruism, such as caring

for non-Christians during epidemics, facilitated the expansion of social networks that were invested in the

religion. Likewise, studies by behavioral economist Joseph Henrich and colleagues on contemporary

foragers, farmers, and herders show that professing a world religion is correlated with greater fairness

toward passing strangers. This research helps explain what’s going on in sub-Saharan Africa, where Islam is

spreading rapidly. In Rwanda, for example, people began converting to Islam in droves after Muslims

systematically risked their lives to protect Christians and animists from genocide when few others cared.

Although surprisingly few wars are started by religions, once they start, religion — and the values it imposes

— can play a critical role. When competing interests are framed in terms of religious and sacred values,

conflict may persist for decades, even centuries. Disputes over otherwise mundane phenomena then become

existential struggles, as when land becomes "Holy Land." Secular issues become sacralized and

nonnegotiable, regardless of material rewards or punishments. In a multiyear study, our research group

found that Palestinian adolescents who perceived strong threats to their communities and were highly

involved in religious ritual were most likely to see political issues, like the right of refugees to return to

homes in Israel, as absolute moral imperatives. These individuals were thus opposed to compromise,

regardless of the costs. It turns out there may be a neurological component to such behavior: Our work with

Gregory Berns and his neuroeconomics team suggests that such values are processed in the brain as duties

rather than utilitarian calculations; neuroimaging reveals that violations of sacred values trigger emotional

responses consistent with sentiments of moral outrage.

Historical and experimental studies suggest that the more antagonistic a group’s neighborhood, the more

tightly that group will cling to its sacred values and rituals. The result is enhanced solidarity, but also

increased potential for conflict toward other groups. Investigation of 60 small-scale societies reveals that

groups that experience the highest rates of conflict (warfare) endure the costliest rites (genital mutilation,

scarification, etc.). Likewise, research in India, Mexico, Britain, Russia, and Indonesia indicates that greater

participation in religious ritual in large-scale societies is associated with greater parochial altruism — that

is, willingness to sacrifice for one’s own group, such as Muslims or Christians, but not for outsiders — and,

in relevant contexts, support for suicide attacks. This dynamic is behind the paradoxical reality that the

world finds itself in today: Modern global multiculturalism is increasingly challenged by fundamentalist

movements aimed at reviving group loyalty through greater ritual commitments to ideological purity.

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So why does it matter that we have moved past the -isms and into an era of greater religiosity? In an age

where religious and sacred causes are resurgent, there is urgent need for scientific effort to understand

them. Now that humankind has acquired through science the power to destroy itself with nuclear weapons,

we cannot afford to let science ignore religion and the sacred, or let scientists simply try to reason them

away. Policymakers should leverage scientific understanding of what makes religion so potent a force for

both cooperation and conflict, to help increase the one and lessen the other.

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