The Power of Prayer
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I am familiar with the work of Bruce Hood. He is highly regarded in his field of science. I have a couple of his books including “SuperSense” above which I consider to be very good. It deals with how our brains can so readily believe in the supernatural.
He discusses how we are evolved to have “magical thinking”. This is because we are pattern seeking creatures. Our brain see an “effect” and intuits a “cause” that automatically links the two of them.
A quick example: “My team always wins when I wear red socks”. Even if the team loses the person will still wear red socks for the next game. They “sense” that the red socks don’t really influence the outcome but it can be difficult to actually acknowledge because their brain still has the association linked in their subconscious. We all know that feeling, atheists and theists alike. It is a human trait we all share.
It may feel like we are evolved to be superstitious by default but superstitions are acquired due do the fact that we have evolved to seek patterns and because we have the “magical thinking” trait. Over time we build up “confirmation biases”. We only look for the things that confirm what we believe as this helps us make sense of the world and construct our reality. Eventually these cognitive biases progress to become superstitions and are eventually held as correct beliefs and no longer viewed as superstitions. This happens because we have not “reasoned” ourselves into thinking like this. We have unwittingly accepted our experiences as evidence and often have these biases confirmed by the “group polarization” of hanging out with other people who also “think” like us.
Take believers in ghosts or the paranormal. (Please take them!!). A person thinking critically about the topic and reasoning their way through the “evidence” will soon see it as bunk. Humans do not leave some sort of “plasma energy” floating around buildings for centuries after they die. Do ghosts become homeless if you knock down the haunted house and then move in with the neighbors? It should not take long to see it as a form of superstition which developed from magical thinking and was reinforced via confirmation bias or group think. Those that insist ghosts are real are suffering from a delusion. They are not deluded in the sense they are in any way insane but just that one aspect of their worldview is built upon a delusion.
Arthur Conan Doyle who created Sherlock Holmes is a good example of this. He wrote about the critical thinking and reasoning skills of “the world greatest detective” with such insight that you would think he could not be superstitious. However about 1/3 of his books are dedicated to “Victorian Spiritualism”. He fell for the ruse of the photograph of the fairies at the end of the garden and believed that we could communicate with the dead via séances. There are videos of him from the 1920’s saying this. He was not crazy but he did suffer from those delusions.
It is the same with Astrology. A belief in the power of astrology is a basically an error in reasoning. Most people who believe it can be dissuaded of it when asked to think critically about it. I have done this in the past by giving people a “reading” based upon their star sign. (Thanks to James Randi). I ask them to score it for accuracy on a scale of 1 to 10. Most will give it 8 or 9 with some 10’s. Then I get them to swap the reading with other star signs to see the difference. However all readings are exactly the same. This will initially get them a little annoyed. This is because “doubt” has been introduced and the part of the brain where the superstition has taken hold (because of our evolved Magical Thinking trait) begins to nag them. I then immediately ask them if the star Orion can influence us differently depending on our birth date. “Yes” is almost always the answer. “So you are telling me that a star that exerts no gravitation force on planet Earth because it is 7,900,872,501,558,758 miles away can have a different effect on the life of a person born at a few seconds to midnight on April 19th to that of their identical twin born 30 seconds later on April 20th under a different zodiac sign”??
You can “fill in the blanks” as to what happens net but do so with reason and not magical thinking.
However if these people learn Critical Thinking skills and gain the ability to “Reason” correctly they will remove the delusion and will come to see Astrology for what it is. Rubbish. It hails from the dark ages when we were mostly an unreasoned species that understood very little about anything that we would now consider “scientific”. We did not understand the micro world of germs or crop failures or volcanoes until recently. We grabbed the answers that made the most intuitive sense given that we had little or no other alternatives. We understood demons or angry gods or witches or evil spirits to be the causes of the observed effects.
God is another superstitious belief. It is not separate to other superstitions. It lives under the same umbrella. There is no special “God gene” to make it a different type of belief. It is probably our greatest superstition given that so many humans still maintain it but it lives in the same part of the brain. Because it is so ubiquitous people have come to consider it as not being a superstition or only seeing other people’s religious beliefs as being superstitious, like Voodoo or more primitive religions.
Another result of our evolved magical thinking is mind-body dualism. We “sense” that our thoughts are not internally constructed or the “voice” in our mind is independent to our body. This gives rise to the idea of freewill. There is no part of us that is “separate” to the rest of us. If you spend time considering “freewill” you will come to understand it does not exist. There is only the illusion or intuitive sensation of it. Everything is per-determined by our current circumstances and by how we construct our worldview. At best we have a choice to wear or not to wear our teams red socks but the “choice” depends on whether we are deluded by a superstitious belief or not. We need to deal with the delusion first and if we do then there is not really a choice to be made.
We also can anthropomorphize animals or objects and can “think about the thinking” of others. This “Theory of Mind” allows us to empathize with others and it is an innate trait we all share. It gives us the ability to put “ourselves in your shoes”. Part of this is our (evolved) sense of “agency” which can feel like a presence being involved in our lives. It may seem “greater than us” so we with our superstitious minds incorrectly deduce “God”. When we don’t think critically we are easily persuaded. The conman’s best tool is the person he is talking to. Take that on board with the culture we grow up in and the “meme” nature of religion, it is then easier to see how it happens.
We all also tend to search for a reason or “Purpose” in the events that happen to us. It can be difficult to accept that certain events are random like the recent weather events in Florida or the Caribbean. The religious often see them as “signs” or that the storm was sent for a reason. “Everything happens for a reason”. That is all part of the superstition. It is how primate humans also thought. This is where the “argument from design” comes from. “How something like the human eye could be evolved just does not make sense. It is way too complicated. There must be a designer.”
Again this is an error in reasoning caused by a lack of knowledge. We now know how the eye evolved, separately and more than once, so to hold a counter belief is to hold a delusion which was given birth to by a religiously inspired superstition. Faith is not powerful enough to last by itself so there is a constant need to reinforce it by looking elsewhere – usually the Sciences – to justify maintaining it. If faith was enough then there would be no need to seek further justification for it by arguing that modern science supports it. Why would evidence be required if one has enough faith? Because there is always the niggling doubt that the belief may be wrong (it may be a delusion). It is supernatural after all and the human brain uses reason, a natural trait we have evolved to make sense of the world. The human mind has no supernatural divination tools. All that is happening is that people have come to the conclusion that their supernatural superstition in God is not a superstition because it now appears to be a naturally deduced belief. They think that they made a decision to believe, as if they reasoned their way to it, which they have not done. Nobody reasons their way to belief. They can only reason themselves out of it and then they see it for what it is – just another superstition brought about by magical thinking.
We all engage in some form of magical thinking. When we make the effort to learn critical thinking skills, understand fallacious arguments better and therefore improve our ability to reason, the trait that makes us the “Thinking Ape”, we are more likely to see when we are engaging in magical thinking. This will greatly help to prevent us from trapping ourselves in superstitious belief and becoming deluded by those beliefs. While we are not evolved to be superstitious we can easily become so because of this “magical thinking”. Superstition is the result of such thinking but superstitious thinking itself is not an evolved trait.
It could just as easily be argued that “But we have evolved to use our reason” instead of “But we have evolved to believe in God”. We must learn how to reason properly. When we don’t we tend to be more susceptible to magical thinking. How often have you seen me write about teaching critical thinking in schools instead of religious indoctrination? How much better off would society be if our children left school with a first class reasoning ability instead of believing a certain myth was factual?
We are not evolved to believe in any gods. They are all created by mankind. Complex societies have evolved with any beliefs in gods. There is a difference between human evolution and cultural evolution. This explains why people end up believing in the god(s) of their culture. A child growing up in Malaysia may come to believe Allah is real or a child in India will find several gods. An American or European will find Yahweh while a Chinese child may never hear of any of them and grow up with no need to posit god as an answer to anything.
Belonging to a religion or a religious community can be beneficial to one’s health and well-being. I agree with that sentiment. I have met enough people who have “belief in the belief” but do not believe in any god but they still go to church and are actively involved in a religious community. It does not really matter who believes in God or what their own personal idea of that god is. Belief in God is just the badge or swipe card to allow you into the community. Once in the door it is all about community. I am not arguing that being a member of these communities is not beneficial. It is and especially so for those who need it. This sense of community and social contact is a good thing. It give emotional support to people and allows for discussion of any problem members might have.
None of this is evidence of any god existing. Most people who join a club get the same beneficial rewards. Old ladies don’t play Bingo because they love random numbers. They play it for the comradeship they experience and to meet like minded people. No-one find Yahweh or Allah or Brahma on their own. They have to be introduced to it. In order for religion to survive children must be indoctrinated into it. They are not taught about “God” but instead are indoctrinated with a god of a specific faith. When the numbers are large enough it becomes part of the cultural and feels “normal”. Now we can argue another time about whether or not cultural inheritance can influence natural selection. It could be possible for some physical traits but it is not possible for beliefs. So I do not accept that belief in god is an evolved trait.
There is a lot to be said for the work done by Bruce Hood including his debunking of Woo which I have previously featured in Sunday school. I recommend people read his work.
Now the other “Evolution News” article you introduced will be easier to tackle. They are creationists and their arguments are based upon an infantile corruption of Science. Most of their quotes are taken out of context and their “evidence” is bogus or a distortion of genuine science. I thought I warned you to be careful of this sort of thing 5 years ago when you introduced “work” by Ravi Zacharias to make a similar point?
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