Testing belief

At Majikthise, Lindsay Beyerstein comes to the defense of Daniel Dennett's new book, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon.

Lindsay says that Dennett's book is being misrepresented by critics who are afraid of what they think he's up to, a scientific debunking of their religion.  On the contrary, she says, "the primary focus of the book is not to advance a specific theory of the origins of religion, but rather to defend the the scientific study of religion against those who would discount these inquiries out of hand."  And she lays out the groundwork for what could be one approach to the study:

It's a widely-held article of meta-faith that religion is a force good in the world, irrespective of its truth or falsity. Dennett calls this stance "belief in belief." Believers in belief insist that religiosity has robust real-world benefits that are, at least in theory, observable by all. They claim that religiosity makes people happier, better behaved, and so on. If religion is so good and science might tarnish religion, then maybe it's irresponsible to probe too deeply. Even atheists might be prefer to leave well enough alone. Who are we to put our curiosity above the well-being of other people, even if we suspect that they are self-deluded? Some people worry that without religion there is no basis for morality. More cynical observers are concerned that the average person will see no reason to be moral without religion, despite sound non-religious arguments for ethical behavior.

Dennett argues that these worries are premature. The platitudes about the positive dividends of religion are themselves untested. In fact, we don't know whether religion makes people happier, healthier, more trustworthy, or anything else. There has been some epidemiological research on the effects of church membership on health, for example, but not nearly enough to draw firm conclusions one way or the other. Besides which, there are endless counterexamples that highlight the harms and dangers of religion. Religion inspires compassion in some and terrorism in others. The fact is, we don't know the ratio of medical missionaries to suicide bombers. What's the ratio of great works of art created to libraries burned in the name of religion? How many people feel that they are entitled to sin because they are going to be forgiven? How many people are tortured by fear of hellfire vs. consoled by the promise of salvation?

Good questions, and all of that would be good to know.  Really, though, there are other questions I'd like to have answers to first.  Like how many people actually believe in their own religion's teachings and follow them, as opposed to putting their faith in their ministers, priests, rabbis, mullahs, shamans, and wizards and take orders from them?  And how many people who believe in the teachings, as opposed to believing in their holy men and women, act on their beliefs.

That is, how many people who say they are religious really are, and how many of them practice what they preach?

Comments

[Kevin Wolf]

I'm all for testing the (often incorrect, says I) assumptions made about religion. I'm not the one to do so because I'd hardly be objective but I'd be willing to read the results and let the chips fall where they may.

[blue girl]

This subject is so big. My thoughts are over at my place. And by "my thoughts" I mean "someone else's thoughts" that I agree with. (My trackback window is gone...)

[Greg]

I think the worries of the "believers in belief" are unfounded. If you're religious, you believe because of faith, so no scientific study debunking your religion will be believed anyway. That just how faith works. It's like that Heaven's Gate cult. They were looking for the spaceship that was to carry them to heaven behind the Hale-Bopp comet, but when they couldn't find it they returned their telescope to store because it was defective.

[Mr. Shakes]

Lindsay says that Dennett's book is being misrepresented by critics who are afraid of what they think he's up to, a scientific debunking of their religion.

Actually, a scientific debunking of their religion is exactly what Dennett is trying to accomplish. Here's what he has to say on the matter:

I appreciate that many readers will be profoundly distrustful of the tack I am taking here," he writes. "They will see me as just another liberal professor trying to cajole them out of some of their convictions, and they are dead right about that -- that's what I am, and that's exactly what I am trying to do.

More power to him.

[Rasselas]

To state that "we don't know whether religion makes people happier, healthier, more trustworthy, or anything else..." is to abandon the realm of religion for what must be the more familiar ground of something else to argue about, like the cost of coffee or health insurance. People who do not -- for want of a better shorthand -- believe in God seem to have the same sort of trouble understanding people who believe in God as people from happy families have understanding people from unhappy families. They seem married to the assumption that everyone who believes, or claims to believe, in God, and especially the God in whom stupid rednecks believe, must do so for the self-magnification and self-satisfaction of attaching oneself to a larger social and political phenomenon, or for the flimsy comfort of an afterlife. For some people, believing in God is a torment, an abandoment, a tightrope walk: a dangerous crossing, a dangerous keeping-still and a dangerous retreat. The man who wants to experiment on the worth of my beliefs is not even a gadfly.

[Carl]

I'm with GB Shaw on this:

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one.