Review: Why We Believe In Gods

Why do we believe in Gods? Is the human mind inherently theistic? In his lecture "Why We Believe In Gods" Andy Thomson provides a compelling and scientifically supported argument that our minds are hard wired to believe in Gods because of the way we evolved. I'm going to comment on a few of the highlights and try not to butcher it too much with my layman's understanding, but I strongly recommend watching the video if you have the time. Better yet, check out his book.


Andy Thomson explains that religion is a "by-product of cognitive mechanisms designed for other purposes." In other words, we evolved to think in certain ways that helped us survive, but then there were side effects. As you'll see, these "cognitive mechanisms" can combine to create religion.

Decoupled cognition: The ability to have an imaginary conversation with someone who is either absent or nonexistent. We can replay past conversations, rehearse future conversations, or even imagine what we would say to Elvis Presley and how he might respond. It's not much of a stretch to use this ability to talk to an imaginary agent, such as God. Sprinkle in a little magical thinking, and the imaginary conversation becomes an actual conversation. Some Christians might even imagine what God would say in response and misapprehend the imagined response as the actual voice of God.

Thomson says "It's natural to think of disembodied minds" because there may have been an evolutionary advantage to being able to think about someone's intentions or goals without them present. He talks about an experiment that was done where children were shown a puppet show of an alligator eating a mouse. The children were then asked a series of questions about the mouse.

"Does the mouse still need to eat or drink?" No.

"Is the mouse still moving around?" No.

"Does the mouse still think and want certain things?" Yes.

So apparently we're born thinking about minds and bodies as if they are separate things. This is evident even in adults when we ask "where do we go when we die?" This kind of thinking not only stimulates belief in souls, the afterlife, and ghosts, but also enables us to imagine a great disembodied mind in the sky.

Hyperactive agency detection: The tendency to assume that intelligent agents are behind every unknown. Think of this as a kind of abstract pareidolia. Similar to the way we unconsciously scan for faces in the clouds, we also look for other patterns that might indicate an agent.

We look at nature and think an intelligent designer must have made it. We experience a strange coincidence and think someone caused it to happen for a reason. We look back at our lives and think someone had a hand in the way things played out. Everywhere we look, we assume agents are behind everything.

Machines break down: gremlins did it.

Mushrooms appear in a circle: fairies did it.

Strange sounds in the night: ghosts did it.

Tide goes in and out: God did it.

The sound of a twig breaking nearby: a saber tooth tiger did it.

That last one might have something to do with why we think this way. There is an evolutionary advantage to being paranoid and constantly on the lookout for agents. Eons later, we no longer have to worry about that darn tiger, but we still have this sloppy detection mechanism built in, and we can't turn it off.

Attachment Mechanism: The tendency to turn to a caretaker when in distress. As children, we instinctively cry out for help whenever we're hurt or we need something. Prayer is when we continue that behavior into adulthood, instead of growing up and learning to be self-reliant. A lot of prayer is just childish crying for a celestial parent to make everything better.

Childhood credulity: The evolutionary advantage of being gullible. This is something Dawkins talks about as well. If a parent tells a child: don't play with snakes, don't swim with crocodiles, or don't eat a particular kind of berry, the child is more likely to survive if they don't try to be a skeptic and test those things. Unfortunately, this gullibility is still in effect when the parent tells the child what they need to do or believe in order to avoid the wrath of God.


These are just a few of the cognitive mechanisms that make the human mind a fertile petri dish for the memetic virus of religion. It's often said that everyone is born an atheist, but if Thomson is right, we're also born with a whole toolkit of evolutionary leftovers in our heads that make us naturally religious. This helps explain why theism has spontaneously and independently arisen in so many cultures around the world, a fact that many theists offer as evidence of faith.

I also strongly recommend Daniel Dennett's lecture "Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon". If you haven't seen that one, it will blow your mind. You will never see religion the same way again. Dennett explains how a religion evolves as a memetic virus, a virus made of words and ideas instead of physical stuff.

While I still think Dennett's memetic theory about the evolution of religion explains a lot, Thomson's ideas are better at explaining the "abiogenesis" of religion. In fact, I think Thomson's and Dennett's theories mesh perfectly. A virus, even a memetic one, works by exploiting the weaknesses of a system, and the cognitive mechanisms Thomson has studied are the weaknesses that allow religion to take hold of a mind.

Unfortunately, religion has had a long time to evolve, and it has become exceedingly efficient at exploiting the human mind. If atheists want to make a difference, we need to understand how religion works to be able to fight it effectively.

The Atheist's Fine Tuning Argument

The theist's fine tuning argument is so wrong that it's actually a good argument for strong atheism. In fact, the opposite argument would be more indicative for theism. For example, if we with our frail carbon-based bodies survived impossibly in a hostile environment with acid rain, a toxic atmosphere, and molten lava knee-deep, on a planet that miraculously existed in a universe where the laws of physics do not permit the formation of planets, then you might have a case for the supernatural.

But we're here instead. We are here, on the one planet that can support us naturally. We are here, in the one universe that does allow for our existence. We are here, in the only place in the known universe where we can possibly survive without supernatural support, because we couldn't be anywhere else without help from a god.

God Does Not Forgive

Forgiveness is mentioned in the Bible about 140 times. It is a central talking point in most churches. But if we read the Bible with a critical eye, a very startling fact becomes clear: the Christian God never actually forgives anyone. Seriously. There's a lot of talk about it, but it never happens. In practice, God's "forgiveness" fails to meet any description of forgiveness. The problem is three-fold, but any one of these problems alone would make it absurd to call Yahweh a forgiving god.

1. To forgive is to to erase a debt. Yet we're told that for some unfathomable reason, God cannot erase our debt. He can only transfer it. This is not forgiveness; this is scapegoating.

2. God's "forgiveness" is conditional. Not everyone is forgiven, only those who play by the rules of his game. You must believe without evidence, somehow. You must love God with all your heart, soul, mind, body, and worldly possessions. You must confess your sins, ask for forgiveness, accept Jesus as your savior, and be his servant for the rest of eternity. If you don't jump through these flaming hoops, you still go to hell, despite God's "forgiveness." This is not a true erasure of debt. God's "forgiveness" again fails to meet the definition of forgiveness. What we have here is a renegotiation of debt. "Instead of burning in hell, you can just be my slave for the rest of eternity. Deal?"

3. Again, the definition of forgiveness is to erase a debt. Yet even after God "forgives" us, we still owe him an eternal debt. We must be grateful, and thank him for the rest of eternity. We owe him our allegiance, our servitude, 10% of our income, and 100% of our souls. Why do we owe Jesus? Because he forgave us. In other words, he erased our debt, but now we owe him a debt for the service of erasing our debt. Only a religion could be so twisted.

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On the other hand, God expects us to do what he is incapable of: to truly forgive our neighbors. What if we followed his example instead? What if we actually put WWJD into practice? Let's say you accidentally break an irreplaceable vase in my home, and I "forgive" you, God's way. What would that look like?

Hey, it's cool. Don't worry about it. I forgive you.

But wait. I can't just erase the debt; someone must pay the price. There's no other way: I must punish my son for what you have done. He will be crushed for your transgressions, and his blood will atone for your sins. Then you will be forgiven.

But wait. You have to accept my forgiveness. To accept it, you must confess your sin, ask me to forgive you, and accept me as your Lord and savior. Of course once you've accepted me as your Lord and savior, that means you have to do whatever I say. I basically own you now. You must thank me and love me for the rest of your life. If you fail to do so, or if you ever dare to reject me or curse my name, then my forgiveness will become null and void. But as long as you promise to abide by these conditions, I forgive you.

But wait. Where are you going? You still owe me. No, not for the vase. You owe me because I forgave you for the vase. And that is a debt that can never be repaid.

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What would Christianity look like if Yahweh actually forgave? For one thing, there would be no need for a crucifixion, and the Christians would have to find another symbol.

Hell would be empty. All those dictators and serial killers would have to go somewhere, though. Maybe they would each have their own isolated world designed to help them learn and grow and eventually become compassionate human beings. Some might argue that it would be better to just end them, but I think eternity is long enough to reeducate even the most evil person.

What about atheists and everyone who picked the wrong religion? If God forgives, he's not going to hold a grudge about that. "Welcome to the pearly gates. Yes, I'm the one true god; some of you may be surprised by that. But hey, no hard feelings. Everybody come on in!"

And what about those of us who would still reject God? Maybe we're still sore about the Old Testament atrocities. Maybe we just don't like God, or we don't agree with policies. Well, if God is omnipotent, he can create a way for us to live apart from him. Maybe God would create a second heaven for those of us who want to live independently. We would be allowed to build our own humanist society and walk to the beat of our own drums. A forgiving god would not be offended by our decision. He would probably even keep an "open gates policy" in case any of us change our minds.

Earth's history would have been vastly different. Since Adam and Eve seemed genuinely sorry for eating the wrong fruit, God would not have cursed them and thrown them out of the garden. Even if there was a legitimate reason why they shouldn't digest the knowledge of good and evil, a forgiving god would not have triggered 6000 years of suffering over a problem that could have been solved with a stomach pump.

If I try to imagine a forgiving god, not a single prediction I can make from that hypothesis matches the behavior of the Biblical god. And when I try to imagine forgiving my neighbors the way God does, I realize it's no kind of forgiveness at all. None of these obvious things ever occur to a Christian. It's not that they're stupid; it's just that they're not allowed to think about it that way. God forgives because the Bible says so, and you'd better believe it. You're allowed to think, as long as you control your thoughts and steer them toward the correct conclusion. Because free thought is a corrosive acid to religion.

I Don't Know

Ever hear this one? "Atheists have a problem. They can't explain where the universe came from. You can't create something from nothing, and that's a big problem for atheism."

It's a common and bewildering notion that atheists need to be able to explain every mystery in the universe before making the audacious suggestion that maybe there isn't an invisible magic man in the sky.

Ok, so I don't know where the universe came from. I don't know why there's something rather than nothing. But why would my lack of knowledge conflict with my lack of belief? Ignorance and disbelief go together perfectly. In fact, one logically follows from the other. If I don't know what caused the universe, then I don't believe in any particular explanation. I'm open to the possibility that a god created it, as well as other possibilities, but I'm not going to settle for any particular explanation without proof. To put it as simply as I can, I don't know that God created the universe, so I don't believe that God created the universe.

In a Venn diagram of a rational person's mind, knowledge and belief should be indistinguishable. They should be right on top of each other, not just overlapping. To know without believing is denial, and to believe without knowing is faith.

If we are honestly seeking the truth, we won't find it by inventing magical explanations for things we don't understand. The existence of the universe doesn't prove a god anymore than presents under a tree prove Santa Clause. Just because we don't know how it got there, doesn't mean there has to be a supernatural being who put it there.

The fact that I don't know where the universe came from is not a problem for me, because I'm not the one claiming to know where the universe came from. The problem is with theists who claim the universe came from a god, but have no proof.

Church Sucks

This is not an atheist rant. I've held this position as a Christian before, and I stand by it now as an atheist. Church sucks regardless of whether or not its teachings are true, and here's why:

Imagine a Venn diagram of a church. Each bubble represents the beliefs of a member of the church. It's a messy diagram, with hundreds of bubbles, and right in the center there's just a tiny speck where all the bubbles overlap. That sad speck represents the pastor's entire repertoire, the range of ideas that can safely be discussed in church. Step outside of it, and someone gets offended.

This is why sermons are boring.

Sermons are boring because they have no substance. They are vacuous and redundant because the pastor is not allowed to tell his congregation anything they don't already know or believe. Though it is never explicitly stated, learning is basically forbidden in church. That is, if you define "learning" as the acquisition of new knowledge and ideas.

So what's up with all that talk about learning? We have Bible studies and classes and workshops. There are Christian bookstores loaded with books about the bible: study guides, concordances, valley girl translations, you name it. But there's no real information in them, just a million reiterations of a couple of ideas. We spend hours and hours scouring the scriptures for some tiny morsel of truth and always come away empty handed, but never admitting this even to ourselves. If we're bored or confused or if we can't even remember what the lesson was about, we assume it's our own fault. Chalk it up to ADD. Next time concentrate harder and maybe you'll learn something.

So we pile on more books and seminars and study groups, hoping to figure out what the Bible really means. We try in vain to discover the true nature of God, but there are just no solid answers to be had, at least nothing that fits within the confines of the speck. It's a mountain laboring to produce a mouse.

And what for? In the unlikely scenario that anything new is produced, it is immediately dismissed as heresy.

All new ideas are dismissed solely on the basis that they are new and unfamiliar. So why do we pretend to be learning if we're really against it? Do we just want the respect and credibility that comes with the appearance of being intellectual, without actually doing anything intellectual? There is no learning in church for anyone but the newest of Christians who haven't already heard the parable of the sower or the story of David and Goliath a thousand times. For the veteran church attendee there is nothing to look forward to but the continued repetition, reiteration, and repackaging of the same tired old lessons. This will never change until the church overcomes its fear of new ideas and its fear of offending people.

"I'm offended." With those magic words, any dimwit can shut down an idea and ban it from ever being uttered again, and they can do this without bothering to provide a rebuttal. The real problem however is that everyone else jumps when they hear those words. We're all supposed to drop what we're doing and rush to see what the matter is. The offending idea is then exorcised, never to be uttered again. By tolerating this, we have effectively surrendered control to the lowest common denominator. The most hypersensitive dullards in a church community have absolute veto power.

This is not an environment conducive to learning. Learning can only occur where there is freedom to explore and consider new viewpoints. You won't find that in church. Instead you'll find a stifling, suffocating atmosphere of censorship smothered in superficial politeness. It's an intellectually stagnant pit of boredom.

I stopped going to church long before I became an atheist, and if for any bizarre reason I ever become "born again" you still wouldn't find me there. If there is a God, the last place you're likely to find him is in a church.

How to Define God

The only rational way to define something is to first observe it. Please note that by "observe" I mean in a broad sense, directly or indirectly. We've never directly observed an atom but we have observed evidence that atoms exist. One cannot provide an accurate definition of a thing, nor even establish its existence, unless it has been observed somehow.

For example, if a naturalist encounters a new species of wildlife, he/she then studies that species and comes up with a definition for it. No sane naturalist ever wakes up in the morning, invents a new species from imagination, and then goes looking for it. Instead, they explore with an open mind and simply accept the existence of whatever they find.

We must first observe, and then define, specifically in that order. It must be in that order because the definition needs to be based on what we observed. Attempting to perform this operation in reverse is called "making shit up."

Now this goes for both atheists and theists: When we talk about the existence of God, we keep getting this backwards.

Theists simply assert a definition of God at the start of an argument to prove his existence, which is circular. For example, the ontological argument basically states that God must exist by definition, according to a definition they just made up.

Atheists also confuse the issue, saying they "can't prove or disprove something until it has been clearly defined." That's true, but we're still approaching this backwards. You can't even define something until it has been observed. And if we could observe it, then we wouldn't need to prove or disprove it because it would already be proven by the fact that we just observed it. It's not so much that we can't disprove something that hasn't been defined; it's that we can't define something that hasn't been proven to exist in the first place. A definition must be based on what we observe about the thing that is being defined.

 

Confused? Let me simplify. Here's how to define God:

Step One: Find God.

Step Two: Observe God to determine his/her features, qualities, and behaviors.

Step Three: Define God based on the data you gathered in step two.

Currently we're at step zero. Good luck theists. Find me a god, whatever you think that is, and show it to me. Until then, I'm not interested in arguments about the definition of God. Sure, we can define a hypothetical God for the sake of discussion, or just for the hell of it, but please remember that doing so is nothing more than an exercise of the imagination.

[Feedback is appreciated. Please leave a comment below.]

Evolution: Not a Philosophy

The theory of evolution doesn't imply eugenics any more than the theory of gravity implies trickle down economics. let's be clear: evolution is a fact, a theory, and an observation of reality, but not a philosophy. To derive a philosophy from it would be insane. Ironicaly, the same demographic (repubicans) who are against the teaching of evolution because it might lead to social darwinism, seem to hold a political ideology based on survival of the fittest. Don't have health insurance? Should've worked harder. Why is it that the only people who believe in darwinism are those who don't believe in evolution? Perhaps if they understood survival of the fittest they would recognise it in their own ideological rantings.