Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion

by John W. Loftus

  Here is a concrete example. Our brains have a specialized facialrecognition

  module. Much of what is known about the inborn structures of our minds comes

  from studies of infants and brain injuries, and we know about the facial

  recognition module from both. Shortly after birth, babies are uniquely attracted

  to two circles with a slash beneath them, which is representative of a face. Later

  on, brain injury or developmental anomalies can produce a disorder in which

  people cannot recognize faces (including their own!)-even though other kinds of

  visual processing are perfectly intact. This is called prosopagnosia. Most of the

  time, though, our facialrecognition module overfiinctions rather than

  underfiinctions. In ambiguous situations-looking at clouds, rocks, lumps of clay,

  or ink blots-we have a tendency to see faces. Our brains automatically activate

  the facial recognition machinery even though it doesn't really apply. Through

  history people have seen gods, demons, ghosts, or the man in the moon looking

  at them. Christians, whose interpretation of hazy shapes is further shaped by

  belief in specific supernatural persons, see Jesus, the Virgin Mary, an angel, a

  demon, or even Satan.

  This illustrates a broader point that cannot be overemphasized in

  understanding the psychology of religion: when faced with unknowns and

  ambiguities, our brains activate inborn information modules even when they

  don't really apply. We take unfamiliar situations and even random data and

  perceive "simulacra," meaning patterns that are inherent, not in the external

  world, but in our own minds. Furthermore, our patternrecognition systems err on

  the side of being overactive rather than underactive. This tendency is called

  apophenia. It is alarming to look at a face and not see it immediately as a face; it

  is quite common to see a face in an array of leaves or shadows.

  When we look at the world around us, we instinctively see more than faces.

  We also "see" kindred conscious beings. Humans (and some intelligent animals)

  have developed a capacity called "theory of mind." We not only have minds, we

  imagine that others have them, and we think about what they might be thinking.

  To guess what someone else might do, or to influence what they might do, it is

  tremendously helpful to know what they want and what they intend. Theory of

  mind is so important in navigating our way through society that we can think

  about it several steps removed: I can imagine what Brian is thinking about how

  Grace intends to respond to Janet's preferences. Furthermore, because our brains

  process information about minds differently than information about bodies, we

  can imagine human minds inside of all kinds of bodies (think stuffed animals,

  pet rocks, or cartoon characters) or without any body at all (think evil spirits,

  poltergeists, or God).

  Because our theory of mind is so rich, we tend to overattribute events to

  conscious beings. Scientists call this hyperactive agency detection. What does

  that mean? It means that when good things happen somebody gets credit and

  when bad things happen we look for someone to blame. We expect important

  events to be done by, for, and to persons, and we are averse to the idea that stuff

  just happens. We also tend to overassume conscious intent, that if something

  consequential happened, someone did it on purpose.

  This set of default assumptions explains why the ancients thought that

  volcanoes and plagues must be the actions of gods. Even in modern times, we

  are not immune from this kind of attribution: for some Christians, Hurricane

  Katrina happened because God was angry about abortions and gays; the Asian

  tsunami happened because He was disgusted with nude Australian sunbathers. If

  gods are tweaking natural events, then we want to curry their favor. Around the

  world, people make their special requests known to gods or spirits by talking to

  them and giving them gifts. Athletes huddle in prayer before a game, just in case

  those random bounces aren't random. After a good day at the casino, a thank-you

  tip may go into the offering basket. Or it may be that the offering goes into the

  basket beforehand.

  All of this builds on the idea that supernatural beings are akin to us

  psychologically. They have emotions and preferences. They take action in

  response to things they like and dislike. They experience righteous indignation

  and crave retribution. They like some people better than others. They respond to

  our loyalty by being loyal to us. They can be placated or cajoled. They like

  praise, affirmation, and gratitude. They track favors and goodwill in a kind of tit-

  for-tat reciprocity.

  Abstract theologies are a fairly recent invention in the history of human

  religion, and they tend not to govern religious behavior. Even people who

  describe their god as omniscient, or who insist that everything is predestined,

  often behave as if they need to communicate their desires and can influence

  future events by doing so. There are exceptions. An increasing number of

  Christians have moved beyond the concept of a person-god to a sense of

  mystical transcendence, participation in a divine reality that is made manifest in

  small particulars throughout the universe. They believe that God's power is

  brought into human lives more through our actions than through supernatural

  interventions. But most people prefer the tangible familiarity of a powerful

  person who watches over them and answers their prayers.9

  An extraterrestrial anthropologist might look at Christianity's dogmas and

  think how beautifully they reflect the nature of our species as social information

  specialists. As we know, the social dimension of religion extends far beyond the

  doctrines, which would gain little traction if they were just dry ideas. Part of

  what keeps the doctrines alive is that they tap powerful emotions and

  relationships. Nowhere is this truer than in the experience of conversion and

  rebirth.

  THE BORNAGAIN EXPERIENCE

  "I prayed harder and just then I felt like everything I was saying was being

  sucked into a vacuum. When I stood up, I felt like thin air; I had to brace

  myself. I felt this energy, it was a kind of an ecstasy."

  -C athy.10

  "Something began to flow in me-a kind of energy.... Then came the strange

  sensation that water was not only running down my cheeks, but surging

  through my body as well, cleansing and cooling as it went."

  -Colson.11

  "It was a beautiful feeling of wellbeing, warmth, and loving ...I went home

  and all night long these warm feelings kept coining up in my body."

  -jean.12

  "I felt something real warm overwhelming me. It was in just a moment, yet

  it was like an eternity .... a joy, such a joy hit me with such a tremendous

  force that I jumped ... and ran."

  -Helen.13

  For many Christians, being born again is unlike anything they have ever known.

  A sense of personal conviction, yielding, or release followed by indescribable

  peace and joy-this is the stuff of spiritual
transformation. Once experienced it is

  unforgettable, and many people can recall small details years later. In the

  aftermath of such a moment, an alcoholic may stop drinking or a criminal

  fugitive may hand himself in to the authorities. A housewife may sail through

  her tasks for weeks, flooded by a sense of God's love flowing through her to her

  children. A normally introverted programmer may begin inviting his coworkers

  to church.

  This experience, more than any other, creates a sense of certainty about

  Christian belief and so makes belief impervious to rational argumentation. What

  most Christians don't know is that these experiences are not unique to

  Christianity. In fact, the quotations that you just read come from two bornagain

  Christians, a Moonie, and an encounter group participant. Their words are

  similar because the bornagain experience doesn't require a specific set of beliefs.

  It requires a specific social/emotional process, and the dogmas or explanations

  are secondary.

  Conversion is a process that begins with social influence. As sociologists like

  to say, our sense of reality is socially constructed. Missionary work typically

  begins with simple offers of friendship or conversations about shared interests.

  As prospective converts are drawn in, a group may envelope them in warmth,

  goodwill, thoughtful conversations, and playful activities, always with gentle

  pressure toward the group reality.

  In revival meetings or retreats, semi-hypnotic processes draw a potential

  convert closer to the toggle point. These include repetition of words, repetition

  of rhythms, evocative music, and Barnum statements (messages that seem

  personal but apply to almost everyone-like horoscopes). Because of the positive

  energy created by the group, potential converts become unwitting participants in

  the influence process, actively seeking to make the group's ideas fit with their

  own life history and knowledge. Factors that can strengthen the effect include

  sleep deprivation or isolation from a person's normal social environment. An

  example would be a latenight campfire gathering with an inspirational storyteller

  and altar call at Child Evangelism's "Camp Good News."

  These powerful social experiences culminate in conversion, a peak experience

  in which the new converts experience a flood of relief. Until that moment they

  have been consciously or unconsciously at odds with the group center of gravity.

  Now they may feel that their darkest secrets are known and forgiven. They may

  experience the kind of joy or transcendence normally reserved for mystics. And

  they are likely to be bathed in love and approval from the surrounding group,

  which mirrors their experience of God.

  The otherworldly mental state that I refer to as the domain of mystics is

  known in clinical situations as a "transcendence hallucination," but this term

  fails to reflect how normal and profound the experience can be as a part of

  human spirituality. The transcendence hallucination is an acute sense of

  connection with a reality that lies beyond and behind this natural plane. It

  typically lasts for just a few seconds or minutes but may leave a profound

  impression that lasts a lifetime. Transcendence hallucination can be triggered by

  neurological events (like a seizure, stroke, or migraine aura) or by a drug (such

  as psilocybin), but it also can be triggered by overstimulation or

  understimulation of the brain.

  Some mystics from the past have described or even drawn these events with

  such impressive detail that a diagnostic hypothesis is possible. Hildegard of

  Bingen, a medieval mystic, wrote of the intense pain accompanying her visions

  and created scores of drawings that show the visual field distorted in keeping

  with a migraine aura. In modern times, author Karen Armstrong describes the

  seizures that she first thought to be triggered spiritually.14 In discussing an

  altered state known as Kundalini awakening, one migraine sufferer commented,

  "I usually don't follow any of the mystic/esoteric stuff, but I must say it is kind

  of strange to see all my symptoms lined up like that outside of a western/medical

  context."15

  Let me emphasize, though, that these altered states don't depend on some kind

  of neurological damage or pathology. They can be unforgettable, peak

  experiences for normal people, long sought and hard won by those who care

  about the spiritual dimension of life. Sensory deprivation, fasting, meditation,

  rhythmic drumming, or crowd dynamics have all been used systematically to

  elicit altered states in normal people.16

  Since we humans are meaning-makers to the core, such a powerful experience

  demands an explanation. In an evangelical conversion context like a revival

  meeting or missionary work, religious interpretations of the snapping experience

  are provided both before and after it occurs. These explanations become the

  foundation stones on which whole castles of beliefs later will be constructed.

  The authorities who triggered the otherworldly experience are trusted implicitly,

  which gives them the power to now transform the convert's worldview in

  accordance with their own theology.

  The conversion process as I have described it sounds sinister, as if

  manipulative groups and hypnotic leaders deliberately ply their trade to suck in

  the unsuspecting and take over their minds. I don't believe this is usually the

  case. Rather, natural selection is at play. Over millennia of human history,

  religious leaders have hit on social/emotional techniques that work to win

  converts, just as individual believers have hit on spiritual practices they find

  satisfying and belief systems that fit how we process information. Techniques

  that don't trigger powerful spiritual experiences simply die out. Those techniques

  that do trigger powerful spiritual experiences are refined and handed down.

  With few exceptions the evangelists, from megachurch ministers to

  "friendship missionaries," are largely unaware of the powerful psychological

  tools they wield. They are persuasive in part because they genuinely believe they

  are doing good. After all, they have their own bornagain experiences to convince

  them that they are promoting the Real Thing. Consider, for example, the apostle

  Paul, whose Damascus Road event (possibly a temporal lobe seizure)

  transformed his moral priorities and sustained a lifetime of missionary devotion.

  What decent person wouldn't want to share the secret to healing and happiness?

  The challenge is trying to figure out exactly what that secret is. As I say to my

  daughters, it is not enough to be well intentioned-even joyfully, generously so.

  We also have to be right.

  CONCLUSION

  Understanding the psychology of religion doesn't tell us whether any specific set

  of beliefs is true. I might believe in a pantheon of supernatural beings for all the

  wrong reasons (childhood credulity, hyperactive agency detection, theory of

  mind, group hypnotic processes, misattributed transcendence hallucination), and

  they still might exist. Social scientists can't address the truth value of

  otherworldly religious assertions or emotions, only the patterns,
norms, and

  circumstances under which they occur. It remains the domain of philosophers

  and ethicists to examine the rational and moral qualities of religious beliefs-to

  examine internal coherence and virtue.

  Despite these limitations, cognitive research does offer what is rapidly

  becoming a sufficient explanation for the phenomenon of belief. More and more,

  we can explain Christian belief with the same set of principles that explain

  supernaturalism generally. This is a serious blow to orthodoxy-to a religion

  based on right belief. In the past, one of the arguments put forward by believers

  was that there simply was no explanation for the "bornagain" experience, the

  healing power of Christianity, the vast agreement among believers, or the joy

  and wonder of mysticism, save that these came from God Himself. We now

  know this not to be the case. Humans are capable of having transcendent,

  transformative experiences in the absence of any given dogma. We are capable

  of sustaining elaborate systems of false belief and transmitting them to our

  children. We are capable of feeling so certain about our false beliefs that we are

  willing to kill or die for them.

  One general principle that has worked well for humans seeking to advance or

  refine our knowledge is called "parsimony," also known as Occam's Razor. It can

  be paraphrased thus: " Usually the simplest explanation is the best one" or "Don't

  multiply entities unnecessarily." If we can predict storms by looking at

  barometric pressure and cloud formations, then there is no need to posit the

  existence of storm spirits or angry ancestors causing us trouble. If we can predict

  that an electric light will come on when a circuit is completed, we don't talk

  about the invisible parallel circuit that makes the whole thing work. When a

  scholar adheres to the principle of parsimony, explanatory factors get added only

  when they allow us to predict with greater accuracy, or explain things that

  previously were puzzling.

  In fields of human knowledge other than theology, if we can find a sufficient

  explanation within nature's matrix, we don't look outside. We no longer, for

  example, posit that demons are involved in seizures or bubonic plague. It's not

  that we know for sure that the demon explanation is wrong, but simply that it is

  unnecessary for predicting or treating seizures.

  What does all of this imply for the future of religious studies? Simply that

  supernatural explanations for religious experience are becoming unnecessary.

  Eighteenth-century French mathematician and astronomer Pierre Simone

  Laplace wrote a volume on the movements of the heavenly bodies. When asked

  by Emperor Napoleon I why he had not mentioned God in his treatise, he

  replied, "7e n aipas cu besoin de cette hypothese." ("I had no need of that

  hypothesis.") Modern scholars of religion, more and more, find themselves

  echoing the words of Laplace. We have no need of that hypothesis.

  NOTES

  1. Bootie Cosgrove-Mather, "Poll: Creationism Trumps Evolution," CBS

  News, November 22, 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/11/22/

  opinion/polls/main657083.shtml; Pew Research Center Pollwatch, "Reading the

  Polls on Evolution and Creationism," Pew Research Center far the People and

  the Press, September 28, 2005, http://people-press.org/commentary/?

  analysisid=118.

  2. Bart Ehrinan, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths

  We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003).

  3. Cordelia Fine, A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives

  (New York: Norton, 2006), p. 19. See also David Linden, The Accidental Mind

  (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), and the entry for

  "selfdeception" in Rohrer T. Caroll, "The Skeptic's Dictionary,"