Do Mean Gods Make Nice People?

Perhaps destined to be a thorn in the side of theologians, priests, and pastors who preach that "God is Love" (1 John 4:8) are a series of studies that find that belief in a punishing God or gods is more likely to induce prosocial behavior than a belief in a God or gods who don't. Put somewhat differently, belief in the possibility of supernatural punishment appears to serve as a deterrent to behavior that, while potentially beneficial to the individual, is harmful to the larger group. At the same time, belief in a loving or kind deity has just the opposite effect. It appears to encourage anti-social behavior.

First, consider two experiments using North American undergraduates (who received partial course credit for participating) that examined the effect that their views of God had on the likelihood of cheating ("Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior"). In both experiments, the students were given a “test” designed in such a way that they had an opportunity to cheat. In addition, all answered a series questions so the researchers could control for basic demographic factors, assess their level of religious devotion, and measure how they viewed God (or gods) in terms of seven positive traits (forgiving, loving, compassionate, gentle, kind, comforting, and peaceful) and seven negative ones (vengeful, harsh, fearsome, angry, punishing, jealous, and terrifying). With regards to the latter, the students were asked to rank on a seven-point scale how much each one of these traits applied to their conception of their God or Gods, or, if they were nonbelievers, how much they felt each trait applied to their culture’s conception of God or Gods. The researchers then averaged the rankings in order to calculate "Loving God" and "Punitive God" scores, from which they then constructed a "God Negativity Scale" by subtracting the former score from the latter. Multivariate analysis (logistic regression) found that in both studies students who scored higher on the God Negativity Scale were much less likely to cheat on the test. At the same time, other factors, such as ethnicity, gender, and level of religious devotion exerted no effect. 

The figure below plots the correlation between the average scores for the fourteen "God" traits and the likelihood of cheating. Bars above zero indicate a greater likelihood to cheat, while bars below zero indicate a lower likelihood to cheat. The seven positive traits lie to the left, and the seven negative traits lie to the right. One doesn't have to be a trained statistician to see that punitive traits are much more likely to discourage cheating than are loving traits.

Of course, we should be cautious not to make too much of results of experiments using U.S. college students. However, cross-cultural experiments conducted in conjunction with ethnographic interviews have uncovered similar results. In particular, a series of experiments involving 591 individuals in eight societies from around the world ("Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality") found that people who believed in punishing and all-knowing deities ("moralistic gods") were much more likely in a series of experiments to allocate geographically-distant co-religionists money than were those who did not. This was true even after taking into account ("controlling for) other factors that could have an effect. 

This is captured in the figure below, which plots the odds that a participant would award a distant co-religionist money. It indicates that those who believed in a punishing god were 1.26 times more likely than those who did not, and those who believed in an all-knowing god were somewhere between 1.15 and 1.25 times more likely than those who did not. Unsurprisingly, when someone believed in an all-knowing AND punishing God, the effect was even higher (results not included in this figure). The figure also shows that belief in local gods that punished had no effect, while belief in all-knowing local gods actually reduced the likelihood they'd give money to a distant co-religionist. Finally, while the number of children reduced the likelihood of awarding any money, material security actually increased it.

Finally, consider the analysis of those who examined the predictors crime rates in as many as 67 countries ("Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates"). It found that the proportion of people who believe in hell is negatively associated with national crime rates, while the proportion of people who believe is heaven is positively associated with them. In particular, the higher the proportion who believe in hell, the lower the average rate of robbery, rape, assault, theft, drug crime, auto theft, and burglary (with opposite effects for the proportion who believe in heaven). No effects were found for the rate of kidnapping and human trafficking. The figure below presents an interesting graph that plots the proportion who believe in heaven less the proportion who believe in hell by the overall crime rate (normalized) for several countries. As you can see, the greater the difference between the proportion who believe in heaven and the proportion who believe in hell, the higher the crime rate.

And for readers who wonder if the results hold after taking into account a variety of factors, such as GDP, inequality, type of religion, religious attendance, and so on, the answer is yes.

It may be tempting to dismiss these results with claims such as "you can prove anything with statistics" or "you can't replicate the real world in the lab." But those are just sophisticated ways of crying, "fake news!" It is true that statistics can be bent in misleading ways. For example, I used to joke that I knew my mom better than my dad since I had known her 100% of my life, but he'd only known her 50% of his. But while statistical sleight of hand may pass muster in some quarters, it does not in the journals in the which the studies discussed above appeared. And while it is also true that experiments can't replicate the real world, that isn't their purpose.  They are designed to isolate the effect of particular variables that are hard, if not impossible, to isolate in the real world. And when experimental results are combined with field work and/or robust statistical analyses, they can provide compelling evidence on behalf of a particular hypothesis, as they do here. In fact, in light of these studies, I'd argue that the burden a proof now lies with those who disagree. Needless to say, anecdotal evidence or personal feelings simply won't do. Hard (empirical) evidence is needed.

These studies are part of a much larger project associated with cultural evolutionists who argue that some (but not all) evolutionary processes operate at the group, rather than at the individual, level. Their basic argument (see "The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions" and "The Secret of Our Success") is that evolutionary processes select for any psychological traits, norms, or practices that

1. Reduce competition among individuals and families within social groups (reduce selfish behavior that harms the group); 
2. Increase and sustain group solidarity; and 
3. Facilitate differential success in competition and conflict between social groups by increasing cooperation in warfare, defense, demographic expansion, and/or economic ventures

And although they argue that while cultural evolution can select for non-religious cultural practices, religions are often well-positioned to benefit from the process. And a key reason is that they typically include a belief in powerful, morally concerned gods that monitor human behavior.

For a time, group-level adaptation was scorned by evolutionists such as Richard Dawkins, but no longer. The use of advanced mathematical models and cross-cultural research (experiments, field work, and statistical analyses) has moved it into the mainstream, which interestingly coincides with the thinking of none other than Charles Darwin:

When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same circumstances, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other… The advantage which disciplined soldiers have over undisciplined hordes follows chiefly from the confidence which each man feels in his comrades. Obedience… is of the highest value, for any form of government is better than none. Selfish and contentious people will not cohere, and without coherence nothing can be effected. A tribe rich in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes.

On a final note, these studies have important, albeit somewhat disturbing, implications for the evolution of theological ideas. They suggest that "fire and brimstone" beliefs are more likely to perdure over time (i.e., be selected for) than are beliefs that promote a loving God. It makes one wonder whether "liberal" theology is doomed from the start and will only appeal to a small segment of the religious market. One would hope not, but it is no secret that theologically conservative faith communities, which are more likely to include notions of hell and damnation in their theological arsenal, consistently outperform theologically liberal ones. Could it be that "our" preference for fire and brimstone is a product of our evolutionary past and the destiny of our evolutionary future?

References

Henrich, Joseph. 2016. The Secret of Our Success: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Norenzayan, Ara. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Norenzayan, Ara, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais, Aiyana K. Willard, Rita A. McNamara, Edward Slingerland, and Joseph Henrich. 2016. "The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions." Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39:e1.

Purzycki, Benjamin Grant, Coren Apicella, Quentin D. Atkinson, Emma Cohen, Rita Anne McNamara, Aiyana K. Willard, Dimitris Xygalatas, Ara Norenzayan, and Joseph Henrich. 2016. "Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality." Nature 530:327-30.

Shariff, Azim F., and Ara Norenzayan. 2011. "Mean Gods Make Good People: Different Views of God Predict Cheating Behavior." The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 21(2):85-96.

Shariff, Azim F., and Mijke Rhemtulla. 2012. "Divergent Effects of Beliefs in Heaven and Hell on National Crime Rates." PLoS ONE 7(6):e39048.

The Evolution of a Survey Question About Evolution

Surveys have generally found that a high proportion of Americans do not believe evolution. For example, 2009 Pew Survey, for instance, found that 31% of Americans rejected evolution. However, Pew began to suspect that the way it was asking the question may be impacting peoples' answers. So, in a survey conducted in the Spring of 2018, it conducted an experiment. Half of the respondents were given this question, which mirrors questions used in previous surveys ("The Evolution of Pew Research Center’s Survey Questions About the Origins and Development of Life on Earth"):

1. Which statement comes closer to your own views, even if neither is exactly right?

a. Humans evolved
b. Humans have always existed in their present form since the beginning of time.

If the respondents answered that humans evolved (and only if), then they were asked this follow-up question:

2. Which of these statements comes closer to your own views, even if neither is exactly right?

a. Humans have evolved over time due to the processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process.
b. Humans have evolved over time due to the processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power.

The other half of the respondents were given this single question:

1. Which question comes closest to your view?

a. Humans have evolved over time due to processes such as natural selection; God or a higher power had no role in this process.
b. Humans have evolved over time due to processes that were guided or allowed by God or a higher power.
c. Humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time.And the results are startling. 

Using the old dual question approach 31% (the same percentage as in 2009) responded that humans have always existed in their present form. However, using the alternative single question approach, only 18% responded that humans have always existed in their present form. Unsurprisingly, people's view of evolution vary by religious tradition. The following graph breaks the results down by religious tradition ("How highly religious Americans view evolution depends on how they’re asked about it"). It presents the percentage of people within each broad category who "reject" religion according to how the question is asked:

White evangelicals and Black Protestants are still the most likely to reject evolution, but the percentage who do drops dramatically when the second, single question was used.

In short, then, Americans are not as ignorant of science as some believe them to be. In fact, a recent article on 538 confirms as much ("Americans Are Smart About Science"). What is striking is the difference the phrasing of survey questions can make. Unsurprisingly, going forward, Pew intends to use the alternative, single-question format.

Deaths of Despair and the Decline in Religious Affiliation

"Deaths of Despair" is a common term for the increasing number of middle-aged white Americans who have been dying from suicide, conditions related to alcoholism, and drug overdoses (e.g., opioids). At the recent meeting for the Association for the Study of Religion, Economics, and Culture (ASREC) in Boston, the economists Daniel Hungerman and Tony Giles of the University of Notre Dame, presented research that explores the relationship between the decline in religious affiliation and deaths of despair ("Opiates of the Masses? Deaths of Despair and the Decline of American Religion"). Like others, they trace the trend back to the early 1990s, thus dismissing the opioid abuse epidemic as a leading cause of the phenomenon, since the drugs central to that epidemic were unavailable 30 years ago. What they found is that the group that has experienced the largest increase in deaths of despair is the same group that has seen the largest decline in religious affiliation over the same time period: middle aged (45-54), non-Hispanic white Americans with no college education. While this group had the lowest levels of non-affiliation before the 1990s, today they have the highest.

Correlation, of course, does not necessarily mean causation, so Hungerman and Giles acknowledge they need to continue their research before it is ready for publication. Yet, they added that they "know of no other large coincidental changes of this kind.” Their initial findings also fit with J.D. Vance's observations in his book, Hillbilly Elegy, on the positive role that religion can play in peoples' lives. In it he laments the decline in church attendance rates among his "hillbilly" peers and notes that communities of faith offered something desperately needed for people like him, growing up in Appalachia:

For alcoholics, it gave them a community of support and a sense that they weren’t fighting addiction alone. For expectant mothers, it offered a free home with job training and parenting classes. When someone needed a job, church friends could either provide one or make introductions. When [my] Dad faced financial troubles, his church banded together and purchased a used car for the family. In the broken world I saw around me — and for the people struggling in that world — religion offered tangible assistance to keep the faithful on track. (pp. 93-94)

That there is positive relationship between religion and health and subjective well-being is well-established in the available research. It has been documented by thousands of studies (that is not a misprint), dating back to the 19th century, that have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, the Journal of the American Medical Association, the British Medical Journal, the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, the American Journal of Psychiatry, the American Journal of Epidemiology, and so on (for details, see Jeffrey S. Levine. 2016. "'For They Knew Not What It Was": Rethinking the Tacit Narrative History of Religion and Health Research." Journal of Religion and Health 56:28-46.) Thus, the findings of Hungerman and Giles should not come as a surprise. I suspect, though, that for many, especially those who have a mad-on with religion, they do. As I tell my students, however: just because you want something to be true, doesn't mean that it is.

Comparing the Complexity of Thinking of Believers and Atheists

The philosopher John Gray's latest book, "Seven Types of Atheism," caused a minor stir when it was released late last year. Unlike many critiques of atheism, this one comes from within, that is, from a fellow atheist. As the Economist's brief but excellent review of Gray's book ("When Atheists Lack the Courage of Their Convictions") notes, it's one thing when a believer critiques the logic of atheism; quite another when an atheist does:

Alister McGrath’s “The Twilight of Atheism” and Nick Spencer’s “Atheists: The Origin of the Species” are excellent critiques; but both writers are Christians, so they have been relatively easy for unbelievers to dismiss. It has taken a prophet seated firmly in an atheist pew to publicise the creed’s contradictions more widely.

(Never mind that McGrath earned a doctorate in molecular biophysics from Oxford in 1977). But critique it Gray does. He argues, for example, that "While atheists may call themselves freethinkers, for many today atheism is a closed system of thought” (p. 2). As the Economist summarizes:

[Gray] is as exasperated with knee-jerk unbelief as he is with unthinking devotion, and has no time for several of the types of atheism he enumerates. All of them look to replace God with some form of secular humanism, science or politics. Their high priests tend to be just as blinkered as the ecclesiastics they abjure.

Put somewhat differently, many are as dogmatic and "simple-minded" as the believers they often ridicule. Interestingly, a new study by the psychologist Shannon Houck and her colleagues ("An Integrative Complexity Analysis of Religious and Irreligious Thinking") uncovered results that lend support to Gray's critique. Houck et al. used a measure known as integrative complexity (IC) to evaluate complexity of the underlying cognitive structure of the written and spoken languages of religious and irreligious individuals.

They first compared the complexity of the written and spoken communications from several famous religious (Christian) and irreligious person from comparable time periods:

•  G. K. Chesterton and Robert Blatchford (written)
•  C. S. Lewis and Bertrand Russell (written)
•  Alister McGrath and Richard Dawkins (written)
•  David Quinn and Richard Dawkins (spoken - debate)
•  Rick Warren and Sam Harris (spoken - debate)
•  Bill O’Reilly and Bill Maher (spoken - debate)

They found that although Christians displayed higher levels of overall complexity, there was enough variability to conclude that the results should not be interpreted to mean that "religious believers are uniformly more complex thinkers than the nonreligious" (p. 5). Instead, the argue that while "it is often assumed that religious persons are very simple thinkers who do not readily recognize alternative viewpoints, our data suggest that this assumption may be inaccurate on the whole. Rather, religious thinkers are sometimes more complex than nonreligious thinkers, and vice versa" (p. 5).

Next, they compared the IC of 37,000 individuals who who voluntarily wrote about the things that matter to them at the website, "This I Believe." They note that while these results "cannot be interpreted directly to mean that religious people are more or less complex... [they] can be directly interpreted to evaluate the degree that persons who spontaneously use religious language are more complex when they discuss their beliefs (as opposed to people who use less religious language)" (p. 5). Consistent with the first part of their study, they found that people who used religious language exhibited higher levels of complexity than those who used less.

Finally, they compared the writings of C.S. Lewis before and after he converted to Christianity. In particular, they examined letters he wrote to one of his friends (Arthur Greeves) when he was still an atheist and those he wrote to him after he became a Christian. Here again, the results are consistent with the previous two. Lewis's writings scored higher in terms of IC after his conversion than they did before.

Although all three aspects of their study found that religious believers exhibited higher levels of complexity than secularists, the authors are quite cautious in interpreting their results. They do not want to suggest that irreligious individuals are simple-minded or that believers always display higher levels of complex thinking. Instead, they argue that their "findings at least suggest that the narrative of the simplifying effects of religion ought to be reconsidered. In the same way that conservatives were once considered more simple-minded, recent evidence calls that into question... these results suggest that perhaps religious persons are also not as simplistic as once believed" (p. 9).

I'd also add that their results suggest that perhaps irreligious persons are also not as complex in their thinking as many like to believe they are.

Why Checking Bags Ought to Be Free

I'm not a frequent traveler, but I'm not an infrequent one either, and it's been hard not to notice that airlines often struggle with boarding. A lot of the time the cause appears to be carry-on baggage. Often there is not enough room for all the bags brought on board (and sometimes they don't fit), so the the airlines are forced to check bags at the gate (and sometimes after people have already boarded).

Many airlines offer to check the bags for free at the gate, but this strikes me as using incentives backwards. Checking a bag when checking in should be free and having to check a bag at the gate should not, rather than the other way around. This would lead to less bag checking at the gate and quicker boarding times. Because more bags will be checked under such a system, the airlines might need to raise ticket prices a bit, but in my book, it would be worth it.

Brady is Just 2 Wins Away From Catching Bart Starr

If the Patriots win the Super Bowl, Tom Brady will be one championship win away from catching Bart Starr. That's right. What gets lost in most of the debate about who's the greatest quarterback of all time (Joe Montana or Tom Brady), is that if the number of championships is THE metric by which we are to decide, then Bart Starr is the guy. Starr won 7 championships (he went to 8 championship games), including the first two Super Bowls.

But should championships be the only metric? What about the great quarterbacks who played for lousy teams most of their careers (e.g., Archie Manning)? And I'm pretty sure if John Elway had played for Mike Shanahan (or someone like Mike Shanahan) his entire career, rather spending a good piece of it playing for Dan Reeves, he might have put up numbers that may never be reached. Or what about QBs like Sammy Baugh, Johnny Unitas, and Otto Graham? Why are they left out of the conversation? Do we only consider QBs who careers occurred in the Super Bowl era? That strikes me as unwise.

Of course, I'm one those who thinks such conversations are a waste of time. It's hard, if not impossible, to compare QBs from different eras because they played under different rules, with different offensive schemes, and against different types of defenses. I think the best we can do is identify the best of each era, but even that has its difficulties (e.g., there are many who think Peyton Manning is better than Brady but Brady had more success because he played for better coaches and teams).

Still, if you're going to argue about who's the greatest, use more metrics than championships. The number of championships is one piece of evidence, but it isn't the only one. Using the NBA as an example, does anyone really think that Robert Horry, who won 7 championships, is better than LeBron James (who's won 3)? Of course not. So, expand your metrics. Just don't expect me to join in on the conversation.

Pope Francis and President Trump: Twin Sons of Different Mothers?

First Things is a theologically conservative scholarly journal. It was founded in 1990 by Richard John Neuhaus, who was ordained a Lutheran minister in the 1960s, but he then converted to the Roman Catholic Church in 1990 and entered the priesthood a year later. Although he was active in the Civil Rights movement and associated with the theological and political left, after Roe v. Wade (1973), which he opposed, Neuhaus moved to the right. Here is Wikipedia's description of First Things (FT):

With a circulation of approximately 30,000 copies, FT is considered to be influential in its articulation of a broad Christian Ecumenism and erudite social and political conservatism. George Weigel, a long-time contributor and IRPL board member, wrote in Newsweek that, after its founding, the journal "quickly became, under [Neuhaus's] leadership and inspiration, the most important vehicle for exploring the tangled web of religion and society in the English-speaking world." Ross Douthat wrote that, through FT, Neuhaus demonstrated "that it was possible to be an intellectually fulfilled Christian".

Neuhaus was the author of several books, but he was probably best known for two columns that appeared in each issue of FT: "The Public Square" and "While We're At It". Neuhaus died in 2009, and it is now written by FT's current editor, R.R. Reno, a former professor of theology at Creighton University. In the most recent issue (February 2019), Reno begins "The Public Square" as follows:

The current regime in Rome will damage the Catholic Church. Pope Francis combines laxity and ruthlessness. His style is casual and approachable; his church politics are cold and cunning. There are leading themes in this pontificate—­mercy, accompaniment, peripheries, and so forth—but no theological framework. He is a verbal semi-automatic weapon, squeezing off rounds of barbed remarks, spiritual aperçus, and earthy asides (­coprophagia!). This has created a confusing, even dysfunctional atmosphere that will become intolerable, if it hasn’t already.

It struck me that if "President Trump" was substituted for "Pope Francis" (along with other related changes), we'd have what many would consider an apt description our current President:

The current administration in Washington will damage the U.S. President Trump combines laxity and ruthlessness. His style is casual and approachable; his politics are cold and cunning. There are leading themes in this administration--freedom, patriotism, and pride--but no ideological framework. He is a verbal semi-automatic weapon, squeezing off rounds of barbed remarks, patriotic aperçus, and earthy asides (@#$%&?!). This has created a confusing, even dysfunctional atmosphere that will become intolerable, if it hasn’t already.

It's curious how we disparage the behavior of those who promote policies with which we disagree, but explain away the same behavior of those who promote policies with which we do agree. Perhaps "curious" isn't the right word.