Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon

Tetlock and his colleagues have conducted ingenious (and sometimes troubling) experiments in which subjects are obliged to consider “taboo trade-offs,” such as whether or not to purchase live human body parts for some worthy end, or whether or not to pay somebody to have a baby that you then raise, or pay somebody to perform your military service. As their model predicts, many subjects exhibit a strong “mere contemplation effect”: they feel guilty and sometimes get angry about being lured into even thinking about such dire choices, even when they make all the right choices. When given the opportunity by the experimenters to engage in “moral cleansing” (by volunteering for some relevant community service, for instance), subjects who have had to think about taboo trade-offs are significantly more likely than control subjects to volunteer—for real—for such good deeds. (Control subjects had been asked to think about purely secular trade-offs, such as whether to hire a housecleaner or buy food instead of something else.) So this book may do some good by just increasing the level of charity in those who feel guilty reading it! If you feel yourself contaminated by reading this book, you will perhaps feel resentful, but also more eager than you otherwise would be to work off that resentment by engaging in some moral cleansing. I hope so, and you needn’t thank me for inspiring you.

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In spite of the religious connotations of the term, even atheists and agnostics can have sacred values, values that are simply not up for re-evaluation at all. I have sacred values—in the sense that I feel vaguely guilty even thinking about whether they are defensible and would never consider abandoning them (I like to think!) in the course of solving a moral dilemma. My sacred values are obvious and quite ecumenical: democracy, justice, life, love, and truth (in alphabetical order). But since I’m a philosopher, I’ve learned how to set aside the vertigo and embarrassment and ask myself what in the end supports even them, what should give when they conflict, as they often tragically do, and whether there are better alternatives. It is this traditional philosophers’ open-mindedness to every idea that some people find immoral in itself. They think that they should be closed-minded when it comes to certain topics. They know that they share the planet with others who disagree with them, but they don’t want to enter into dialogue with those others. They want to discredit, suppress, or even kill those others. While I recognize that many religious people could never bring themselves to read a book like this—that is part of the problem the book is meant to illuminate—I intend to reach as wide an audience of believers as possible. Other authors have recently written excellent books and articles on the scientific analysis of religion that are directed primarily to their fellow academics. My goal here is to play the role of ambassador, introducing (and distinguishing, criticizing, and defending) the main ideas of that literature. This puts my sacred values to work: I want the resolution to the world’s problems to be as democratic and just as possible, and both democracy and justice depend on getting on the table for all to see as much of the truth as possible, bearing in mind that sometimes the truth hurts, and hence should sometimes be left concealed, out of love for those who would suffer were it revealed. But I’m prepared to consider alternative values and reconsider the priorities I find among my own.

5 Religion as a natural phenomenon

As every enquiry which regards religion is of the utmost importance, there are two questions in particular which challenge our attention, to wit, that concerning its foundation in reason, and that concerning its origin in human nature.

—David Hume, The Natural History of Religion

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What do I mean when I speak of religion as a natural phenomenon?

I might mean that it’s like natural food—not just tasty but healthy, unadulterated, “organic.” (That, at any rate, is the myth.) So do I mean: “Religion is healthy; it’s good for you!”? This might be true, but it is not what I mean.