How We Believe, 2nd Ed.

by Michael Shermer

  To test this hypothesis the mathematician and political scientist Robert Axelrod held a contest by inviting people to submit a computer program to play the iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Pitting the programs against each other for 200 games each. he tallied up the payoff scores and found that the winning program was the simplest one, designed by Anatol Rapoport and called Tit for Tat. The program chooses to cooperate on the first round, and then on all subsequent moves it matches the choice of its opponent. Tit for Tat, says evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith, is an Evolutionary Stable Strategy, or “a strategy such that, if all the members of a population adopt it, no mutant strategy can invade.” Tit for Tat is reciprocal altruism—if you’ll scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours (or the reverse: If you stab me in the back, I’ll stab you in the back). But the latter is rarely necessary. Most of the time it pays to cooperate, and most of the time we do.

  Is this because we want to be “good” or “moral” people? That may be what it feels like now, but current emotions may be proxies for deeper causes. Since our reputations as cooperators must be built over time, we must show consistency from day to day, week to week, and year to year. It would be difficult to fake being a cooperator in order to fool your fellow community members for any length of time. Anthropologist William Irons shows that religion, in addition to providing rules, morals, and enforcement (and numerous other benefits outside the scope of this analysis), furnishes a splendid opportunity to prove loyalty and commitment to the group. If I see you every week in the pews, every month at the confessional, getting circumcised, being bar mitzvahed, not eating meat on Fridays, wearing a yarmulke, singing the psalms of the Lord, not using electricity on the sabbath, facing east to pray, taking the bread and wine as the body and blood of the savior, going to war in the name of God, and even willing to risk death for our group, I know you are someone I can trust. That sort of commitment is hard to fake. If our self-image is that of an honest person, not only are others more likely to perceive us as honest, we are more likely to be honest. We are all fairly good at detecting cheaters and liars, so in order for the cheater or liar to get away with his offense, he has to work very hard at appearing honest. Even if deception is the original intent, in time, with repetition of the ritual, self-deception may take over. Psychics, cult gurus, and other charlatans may very well come to believe in their own outrageous claims for the simple fact that they can deceive their marks better if they themselves believe the lie. Either way, through literally millions of iterations of real-life gametheory events in the course of a lifetime, we learn who are the cooperators and who are the defectors. And through our religion (and, more recently, the state), we come to believe that our actions really are moral, just, and right. Our clan really is special, perhaps even worth dying for, if our leader or our God so asks.

  One of the most common reasons people give for believing in God (see Chapter 4) is that without the existence of a deity there would be no ultimate basis for morality. The source of this belief may be that morality, God, and religion have been so intertwined for so long that there is probably an evolutionary-based epigenetic rule underlying the connection. The Enlightenment concept of human rights—as expressed and fought for in the French and American Revolutions—is relatively new. It is primarily based on the social contract: In order for humans to achieve life, liberty, and happiness they must be free, and their freedoms must be protected by the state through compacts like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. With proper indoctrination it is possible to get young men so committed to these ideals that they will sacrifice themselves for the larger group. But this has not been easy, so it is probably no accident that beneath the surface of nationalism often lies religion. Our God is better than their God. (Or in the case of the cold war, our God is better than their Godless society.) When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt together sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” following their meeting cementing the American-British alliance, this was more than ceremonial window dressing. Or consider the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (especially the final refrain below) written by Julia Ward Howe after a review of the federal troops in Washington (published in the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1862):

  Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;

  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stor’d

  He hath loos’d the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword

  His truth is marching on.

  I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel:

  “As ye deal with My contemners, so with you My grace shall deal”

  Let the Hero born of woman crush the serpent with His heel

  Since God is marching on.

  The Confederate troops, of course, sang and prayed to the same God to do the same thing to their enemy.

  FROM RELIGION TO GOD

  God and religion are many things to many people, and reasons for belief are varied, thoughtful, and momentous. For centuries many a theologian, scholar, and scientist has attempted to explain why people need religion and believe in God. Their efforts have left a legacy of theories and libraries of books on the subject. Edward Tylor and James Frazer viewed religion as animism and magic, whereas Sigmund Freud saw it as an obsessional neurosis. Emile Durkheim said religion is a sacred part of the social structure, while Karl Marx said it is nothing more than another tool of alienation and the opiate of the masses. Mircea Eliade thought religion to be the most sacred part of the human psyche. while E. E. Evans-Pritchard saw religion as society’s “construct of the heart,” which it needs as much as science’s “construct of the mind.” Clifford Geertz believed that religion is a cultural system of symbols that act to empower, give meaning, and provide motivation. In evaluating these disparate theories, historian of religion Daniel Pals suggests asking the following questions: “(1) How does it define the subject? (2) What type of theory is it? (3) What is the range of the theory? (4) What evidence does the theory appeal to? (5) What is the relationship between a theorist’s personal religious belief (or disbelief) and the explanation he chooses to advance?”

  Applying these questions to the theory of religion presented here: (1) Religion is a social institution that evolved as an integral mechanism of human culture to create and promote myths, to encourage altruism and reciprocal altruism, and to reveal the level of commitment to cooperate and reciprocate among members of the community. (2) This is a biocultural theory of religion. (3) The range of the theory is limited to deeper, ultimate “why” questions about religion and belief in God. The particulars of any one religion are not the subject of analysis. (4) This is a scientific theory, so the evidence is based on those sciences most allied with the study of myth, religion, and belief in God: archaeology, history, anthropology, sociology, cognitive and social psychology, neurophysiology, behavior genetics, and evolutionary biology. The theory attempts to probe deeply into the core of why people believe in God and religion, but does not focus on specific faiths or customs. (5) See the preface and first chapter of this book for the relationship between my personal religious beliefs and the explanation I have chosen to advance.

  This theory of religion has presented a case for how humans evolved from pattern-seeking to storytelling to mythmaking to morality and religion. Where does God fit into this sequence? In short, everywhere. God is a pattern, an explanation for our universe, our world, and ourselves. God is the key actor in the story, “the greatest story ever told” about where we came from, why we are here, and where we are going. God is a myth, one of the most sublime and sacred myths ever constructed by the mythmaking animal. God is the ultimate enforcer of the rules, the final arbiter of moral dilemmas, and the pinnacle object of commitment. And God is the integrant of religion, the most elemental of all components that go into the making of the sacred. God and religion are inseparable. People believe in God because we are pattern-seeking, storytelling, mythmaking, religious, moral animals.

  Chapter 8


  GOD AND THE GHOST DANCE

  The Eternal Return of the Messiah Myth

  And almost every one, when age,

  Disease, or sorrows strike him,

  Inclines to think there is a God,

  Or something very like Him.

  —Arthur H. Clough, Dipsychus, 1850

  In Los Angeles there is a radio station catering largely to an African-American audience—KKBT 92.3 FM, also known as “The Beat”—that features an interesting show called Street Science, hosted by Dominique Diprima. Since I live near Los Angeles I am a periodic guest, the token skeptic when street science veers into pseudoscience. In 1997 they organized a show about UFOs, and the other guests included Don Ecker, publisher of UFO Magazine, and Dwight Schultz, the actor best known as “Barclay” on Star Trek, The Next Generation. After the usual banter about blurry photographs and government cover-ups, the host opened up the phone lines. Suffice it to say that after years of doing such shows I am not unaccustomed to interviews in which most of the other guests and call-ins are believers in the topic of discussion. But this time was different. It was not just that these callers believed in UFOs. They believed in a particular type of UFO: a messianic “mothership” circling the Earth that in 1999 will release hundreds of smaller ships that will invade targeted cities.

  I did not think too much about the first call or two of this nature, but after half a dozen or so I realized what was going on. Announcing themselves as members of the Nation of Islam (NOI), these callers explained that there is no doubt about the existence of UFOs—their leader, the Minister Louis Farrakhan, had himself been to visit the “Mother Plane” in space, described in the NOI’s July 4, 1996, edition of the Final Call newspaper as “a human-built planet, a half mile by a half a mile” carrying “1500 smaller baby planes” with bombs “designed for the destruction of this world.” The “Mother Plane,” the newspaper explained, was visited by Louis Farrakhan himself on September 17, 1985, where he received communication from deceased NOI prophet Elijah Muhammad. For some NOI members, the science fiction film Independence Day was nothing short of a documentary. Final Call, in fact, explained that the hit film’s acronym, ID4, “is a biogenetic reference to a genetic inhibitor which ceases certain procedures in evolution and life, according to researchers at M.I.T.,” the alma mater, it pointed out, of the “Jewish genius” played by Jeff Goldblum in the film. In fact, according to Final Call, the existence of the spacecraft was known to both Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, who met in 1985 to discuss a plan to deal with alien invasion:

  Col. Colman S. Vonkeviskzky, MMSE, … a former Hungarian staff major and a military scientist who said he has been engaged over 45 years in dealing with the United Nations about the UFO phenomenon. In a telephone interview, Col. Vonkevickzky said that former President Ronald Reagan and former Soviet Union President Mikhail Gorbachev spent five hours in confidential talks during the 1985 Geneva Conference, discussing what military strategies to take in the event of alien attack against earth. All the methods used by the government to harm the real “Mother Plane” have failed, just as their efforts to crush the Nation of Islam have failed … . Frankly, this government needs help—desperately. I think the best thing they can do is consult with Minister Farrakhan.

  Several callers made reference to the end coming in 1999 when the “Mother Ship” will descend upon Earth, release its smaller ships to topple the “white government,” and place the black man back in his rightful position of power. The longer I listened the more incredulous I became. Did these callers really believe that the messiah was coming in the form of an alien? Many of them did. But how could Louis Farrakhan, who, regardless of his political beliefs, has always struck me as an intelligent man, believe such nonsense? His message is usually one of this-worldly self-reliance, not otherworldly wishful thinking. Ted Koppel wondered the same thing on the October 15, 1996, episode of Nightline:

  Koppel: Minister Farrakhan, frequently what you say makes eminently good sense and is extremely lucid, and then—and I’m going to read you this quote because we don’t have it on videotape—you told congregants just before the Million Man March at a Washington church about the “‘Mother Wheel,’ a heavily armed spaceship the size of a city which will rain destruction upon white America but save those who embrace the Nation of Islam” [the New Yorker]. It sounds like gibberish, but maybe you can explain it.

  Farrakhan: Well, sir, you can ask President Jimmy Carter if it’s gibberish. You can ask some of the astronauts who went up and saw it if it’s gibberish. On the front page of the Washington Post several years ago, a Japanese pilot was flying across the Bering Strait, and he saw something in his radar that looked like two large aircraft carriers joined together, in terms of size—and an aircraft carrier is 440 yards long—two of them together would be half a mile by a half a mile. This is that wheel that was spoken of in Ezekiel, that has become a reality. It’s over the heads of us in North America, and soon you shall see these wheels over the major cities of America. It is above top-secret by the United States government.

  As I sat in the studio taking this in, it dawned on me that I was hearing a modern iteration of the nineteenth-century Native American Ghost Dance, where the great spirit would descend to displace the white man and allow the Indians to live freely in their aboriginal home. They would defeat the white soldiers because their bodies would be impervious to bullets. The white man would then disappear, the dead would return to life, and buffalo would once again blanket the plains. I began to explain to the radio audience that such mythological motifs are common in history, especially among oppressed peoples, but Diprima interrupted me, proclaiming: “I respect the Ghost Dance. I believe in the Ghost Dance. I don’t want to go down this road. This show is about UFOs, not race.”

  Is there a connection transversing the century between these two beliefs? There is. In fact, it turns out that there are many Ghost Dance–like myths across time and cultures. The belief in a savior or messiah that, if the proper ritual is performed, will rescue us from our oppression and deliver redemption, fits the classic pattern of myth, in particular, what might be called the oppression-redemption myth, or, simply, the messiah myth.

  THE GHOST DANCE AS MYTHMAKING

  One of my most striking memories of this radio program was the host’s comment that she “believes in the Ghost Dance.” What did it mean for a twentieth-century African-American woman to believe in a nineteenth-century Native American story? It meant that the story is a myth, an enduring narrative with deep personal meaning and social context. The Ghost Dance in particular, and the messiah myth in general, represent a commingling of eschatological, messianic, and millenarian motifs, with an outer shell of representational rebirth and renewal. The reason this Native American myth was appealing to an African-American woman is because of the common elements of oppression and redemption. For over four centuries both Native Americans and African Americans were conquered, enslaved, and killed in large numbers. In the case of Native Americans, the process involved the dissolution of nearly 500 nations and the elimination of approximately 90 percent of the population (mostly by European diseases for which they had no immunity); in the case of African Americans, the process involved the confiscation of approximately twenty million Africans and the enslavement of the half who survived the journey to the New World. The learned helplessness that comes with such long-term oppression lends itself to the mythos of supernatural intervention.

  Suffice it to say that the probability of aliens unfettering African Americans from their perceived oppressors is coequal to the belief on the part of Native Americans that they would become impervious to bullets. Myths, however, even though fictitious, can be a powerful source of fuel to the belief engine that drives our perceptions of the world. In the four centuries from 1492 to 1890, one nation conquered 500 nations, one civilization destroyed 500 civilizations, one culture subsumed 500 cultures. As the sun set on a 13,000-year-old people, the circumstances were ripe for twilight dream time—a sl
ip into the sacred, the numina of the otherworld where messiahs reside and the rebirth of a new age awaits.

  THE 1890 GHOST DANCE

  On January 1, 1889, a total eclipse of the sun projected a black disk that streaked across the North American continent. In its path in Nevada was a Paiute Indian named Wovoka (“The Cutter”), known to whites as Jack Wilson. Wovoka was the son of Tavibo, a Paiute from Walker Valley, just south of Virginia City, Nevada. It was in 1870, almost twenty years earlier, that Tavibo and another Paiute named Wodziwob started the first Ghost Dance movement, on the heels of a devastating drought and an epidemic of typhoid and measles that wiped out a tenth of the Paiute population. Tavibo prophesied that a great earthquake would swallow both Indians and whites, but after three days (note the Christian influence) the Indians alone would return, along with fish, game, and plants. Tavibo created a counterclockwise circular dance around a fire that would bring back the dead, and this evolved (with as many variations as there were groups who adopted it) into the Ghost Dance of 1890. But times were not quite right for the messianic rebirth myth to take off, and the influence of Wodziwob and Tavibo soon faded after 1870. (The Battle of Little Big Horn in 1876, in which General Custer and his soldiers were thoroughly quashed in one of the few major victories for the natives, brought hope that perhaps the tide could be reversed by more earthly means.) Shortly thereafter Tavibo left his family and community, abandoning his teenage son Wovoka to a white rancher named David Wilson, who renamed him Jack. Wovoka/Jack grew up in a deeply Christian family that included daily prayers and readings from the Bible. At the age of twenty he married a Paiute woman, and as a young adult began to pursue the interests of his biological father, including reviving the circular dance that was said to open the Paiute soul to greater spirituality. Between dances he preached an amalgam of Native American Christianity, celebrating faith, Jesus, and the monotheistic God, along with traditional beliefs in the spirits of the mountains, clouds, snow, stars, trees, and antelope.