Real or divine? Real. A Northern Light CC-BY Jim Trodel
The most obvious reason why people are religious might be that they believe in the tenets of their religion. We have already seen that there is no scientific evidence to support these tenets, so why do people still believe in them? We will now hypothesize about different reasons.
Let us start by looking back through history: One reason why people have historically believed in reports of miracles, visions, and divine apparitions may have been that there was less knowledge of the laws of nature, at least as they are now conceptualized and defined in Western scientific practice. Before the Scientific Revolution (i.e., before 1500 CE), for example, most societies did not have the tools to measure time precisely, look closely at objects in space, study things smaller than what the human eye can see, or measure temperature to the degree1. Thus, most people did not know that that the Earth revolves around the Sun, that certain diseases are caused by microorganisms, that solar eclipses can be predicted, that earthquakes are caused by tectonic shifts, or that halos are a natural phenomenon caused by light refracting off ice crystals in the atmosphere. Therefore, many natural events were considered unpredictable occurrences that could strike at any moment without understandable cause.
We can hypothesize that this unpredictability had two effects: First, people were likely more ready to suspect a supernatural cause behind these events — simply because they did not know the natural causes. Second, people may have been less skeptical of unpredictable events generally. For example, if an illness can appear without visible cause, why could it not also disappear without visible cause? And if a halo can light up the sky for no known reason, why should a man not be able to walk on water? Today, one event can be explained by the laws of nature while the other cannot. In the distant past, however, people did not know this. For them, both events may have been equally unpredictable (and thus equally plausible), which might have increased their readiness to believe religious stories.
Ignorance is the mother of Devotion.
The concept of truth
Another reason why early peoples may have more readily believed in religious tenets and stories is that they had a pre-scientific concept of truth. Today, scientists accept a theory as true only if it has been validated by experiment. Before the Scientific Revolution, however, most people did not know the concept of experimental validation and instead mainly used nonscientific methods of pursuing knowledge, such as magic, alchemy, and astrology1. Truth was not determined by experiment but by verbal argument1. In such a setting, truth was a more flexible concept that could accommodate many things as long as they appeared plausible and were well argued. In this environment, religion could prosper even if it could not be experimentally validated.
Still today, many people have a less clear concept of truth than we might wish — even if we set religion aside. Consider the following examples:
People fall prey to all types of logical fallacies234, such as wishful thinking (considering something to be true because it is desirable), circular reasoning (considering statement X to be true because of statement Y, and statement Y to be true because of statement X), or mass appeal (considering something to be true because many people believe it to be). In these cases, people accept a theory even if it was derived by an invalid argument.
Many people believe in magic5 or superstitions6, i.e., nonscientific methods to ward off evil. Thus, they believe in methods whose promises have not been systematically tested, or worse, have been systematically tested and shown to be false.
People readily follow all types of advice that has not been validated by evidence (or that has even been invalidated): They adhere to various diets (e.g., weight-loss diets, bone health diets, plant-based diets)7; believe that vaccination is harmful8; forward hoax mail; or succumb to spam emails and fake news. Indeed, false information spreads faster than the truth on the Internet9.
Few people today know of the concept of falsifiability. Therefore, abstract universal theories (such as the assertion that everything happens for a reason) enjoy popularity even though they do not allow for any prediction about the real world. Many of today’s philosophers, in particular, spend their time debating unfalsifiable concepts, such as whether the mind is an independently existing substance10; whether past, present, and future are equally real11; or whether existence is a property12. None of these theories allows for a concrete prediction about the real world.
In these cases, modern human thinking does not draw a distinction between validated theories and invalid (or outright unfalsifiable) theories either. A religion can therefore exist in this space between validated scientific theory on the one side and equally plausible but untenable ideas on the other. If people believe that all things happen for a reason, then they can also believe the (equally unfalsifiable) notion that “God loves you but does not show it”. If people succumb to logical fallacies generally, then they can also accept one that proves the existence of a god.
You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work?
Medicine.
Childhood education
As we now see, people have a general tendency to be open to unvalidated theories. Based on this observation, we can now discuss the most likely reason why people believe in the tenets of their religion: They were brought up with it. As British biologist (and militant atheist) Richard Dawkins has argued, “by far the most important variable determining your religion is the accident of birth. The convictions that you so passionately believe would have been a completely different, and largely contradictory, set of convictions, if only you had happened to be born in a different place”13. Dawkins goes on to argue that child brains are gullible, open to almost any suggestion. To exemplify this, we list here some stories that people were told as children and that they believed14:
When I was little, I used to suck my thumb. As I got older, my parents must have wanted this to stop, because this conversation happened while driving with my dad (I was probably 3): Dad: “Still sucking that thumb?” Me: “Yep!” Dad: “Aren’t you worried about ending up like those flamingos at the zoo?” Me: “Huh?” Dad: “Haven’t you ever noticed how they always stand on one leg? You see, they sucked their toes for so long, that they dissolved! The more they sucked, the more disappeared. Eventually they sucked their whole leg right off!” Didn’t suck my thumb ever again. [Julia Heil]
I have told my 4-year-old boy that the Internet (wifi network) is given by a “Fairy” and we cannot get it daily as per our wish. (It was too necessary to keep him away from internet games and videos all the time.) So every day when he is back from school, he will sweetly ask if the fairy has given us internet today or not and what should he do to please her so that she can give us more Internet ;) [Deepthi Shivaramu]
I had a friend whose mom told her that when the ice cream truck was out of ice cream it would play music! Can you imagine thinking that someone drive around your neighborhood regularly announcing they were out of ice cream? [Marcia Peterson Buckie]
My dad was almost completely bald and had been for as long as I was able to remember. When I was about 6 or 7 I asked him what happened to all his hair. He told me that one day he went for a ride in a convertible and was driving so fast that all his hair blew off. I believed him for way too many years after. [Jo Anne Lillis]
The lesson here is that children will believe nearly anything if we tell them to. There is a twist, though: In most cases, these children will later find out that the stories are not true. They may learn that flamingos do, in fact, have a second leg, or that the Internet works pretty well even when one is naughty. However, if the stories are unfalsifiable, then they will never find out that the stories are not true. As it so happens, religious stories are usually unfalsifiable. Thus, the children can never find out whether the religious stories told to them are true or false. Hence, they may continue to believe in them even as adults — and then teach those stories to their own children, who will continue the cycle.
Chew before you swallow.
Conformism
We may assume that most children believe in their religion because their parents do. But why do these children remain religious even as adults? One explanation might be the general tendency of humans to conform. Many people consider a social or historical standard sufficient justification of a behavior or belief. They do something because “everybody else does it” or because “this is how it has always been done”. As Swiss economist and author Rolf Dobelli points out, there might be an evolutionary reason for this: Imagine a hunter traveling with his group in early prehistory. All of a sudden, his fellow hunters scream in fear and start running. Then the hunter’s best bet is to run with them. Perhaps the group had seen a danger that he had not. The hunter who first paused to determine the reason for his fellow hunters’ behavior “exited the gene pool”, as Dobelli puts it3. We are thus the descendants of those humans who followed without first asking why — a phenomenon that has since come to be called herd mentality. Herd mentality serves not just to avoid danger, but also to fit into a society. By doing what the others do, a person can show adherence to the social group. People who did not show adherence risked losing the protection of the group — and may thus have met the same fate as the reflecting hunter. In this way, Evolution might have predisposed us to follow what others do.
In the context of religion, herd mentality ensures that people follow a particular religion if everybody else is doing so. Herd mentality is sometimes even brought forward consciously and explicitly as a reason to adhere to a religion: People follow their religion because they believe that what most people do must be right — a phenomenon called social proof.
The social proof phenomenon works for both long-term members of a society and newbies. As American computer scientist and author Marshall Brain proposes: “Imagine that you are in a new group of people, and you are not sure what to say or how to act. You may look around you, see what other people are doing, and then do the same kinds of things in order to fit in. The idea is that they, being members of the group already, must know what is going on”15. As American author Roy Sablosky has pointed out, there is also little cost or risk in affirming belief in God — at least in a Western Christian setting. It is not like affirming a belief in, say, recycling, which might require a visible commitment to a certain lifestyle. No, a belief in God requires no further action and is thus a perfectly safe way to fit in.
In this way, religion piggy-backs on the herd mentality from one generation to the next. As American philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett has argued, religion is an indefensible mutual presumption that is kept alive for centuries because each person assumes somebody else has some very good reason for maintaining it16. This behavior is not even irrational: In general, we mostly take as true what other people tell us because it would be tedious or impossible to verify all truths in life. That is all well and good until that tendency starts propagating a belief that has been verified by nobody.
Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.
The emperor’s new clothes
We have argued that most people believe in a religion mainly because everybody else does, too. But what happens if an adherent does not really feel religious? We can only speculate, but some insight may come from a folktale by Danish author Hans Christian Anderson called “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. It goes as follows:
Once upon a time, there was an emperor who ruled over a large country. One day, two tailors approached the emperor and offered to make him a special garment. The garment would be very expensive, they said, because it could be seen only by intelligent people. Curious, the emperor gave the tailors permission to construct the garment. Over the course of several weeks, the tailors took measurements, cut cloth, and drew up designs. But no matter how hard the emperor tried, he could not see the fabric. The tailors seemed to be perfectly at ease cutting the cloth, but it remained invisible to the emperor. And since the tailors had told him the fabric was visible only to intelligent people, the emperor concluded that it would be best to keep quiet about the matter. Instead, the emperor dressed himself in the invisible new garment and paid the tailors for their work. When the day came to present his garment to the people, a crowd gathered under the emperor’s balcony. When he appeared before them, the crowd was stunned. The people had heard that the garment could only be seen by the most intelligent, and so everyone tried their best to see it — and when they couldn’t, to pretend at least they could. Finally, a child raised her voice and said: “But the emperor is naked!”
By that time, the two tailors were nowhere to be found.
We can draw an analogy here between the emperor’s new clothes and the spiritual feeling that religion promises. Religion tells us that if we really believe, we will feel a closeness to God, a unity with Heaven, or the deeper meaning of the Universe. In reality, there is no supernatural spiritual feeling. What adherents feel is a mixture of conviction, hope, and admiration — but nothing supernatural. However, since everybody thinks that everybody else has found that special feeling, it appears safest to go along with the masses and to say that one has that special feeling, too. This, in turn, encourages others to do the same — and is more way in which religious thinking gets proliferated.
No alternatives
The tendency to follow others’ behavior is amplified if no alternatives are available. For example, if you hear only about religion X, and learn neither of its problems nor about any other religion, then you are more susceptible to accept religion X. In many countries, the majority religion is taught at school, propagated on TV, and even represented in the government. In some cases, alternative belief systems are systematically eradicated from society by discriminating against, persecuting, or even killing their adherents. Once all people who think differently have been discredited or disappeared, those who remain are more likely to pick up the dominant religion.
This tendency to trust whatever can be accessed most easily bears resemblance to what is known as availability bias: A person evaluates the probability of an event (or here, by extension, the probability that a theory is true) by the ease with which relevant instances come to mind1718. If other religions rarely appear in public discourse (or are even systematically eliminated from public life), then people are more likely to believe in the majority religion.
A child who did not travel praises the mother as the best cook.
Illiteracy
Another factor that reinforces the tendency of people to believe what they have been told (and hence to follow the dominant religion) is illiteracy. If we look back over modern history, we see that literacy was much less widespread than it is today. Until the mid-19th century, less than 20% of the world population was able to read. Even in economically strong countries such as the United Kingdom, roughly half of the population was illiterate as recently as 1850.
Literacy rate over time
CC-BY Our World In Data, caption, sources, and logo removed
Still today, only half of the population of many countries can read: In 10 African countries, you are more likely to meet someone who cannot read than someone who can19. Even in several more developed countries, such as Morocco, Egypt, or Pakistan, the literacy rate is below 75%. In Pakistan, for example, it is 61% (and 53% among women)20. The country has the resources to build an atomic bomb but not to teach its people how to read.
World literacy rates (2015)
CC-BY Our World In Data (caption, sources, logo, and blank space removed)
A person who cannot read cannot access books, newspapers, or web sources critical of a dominant religion. Thus, they are in less of a position to challenge that religion. Indeed, many radical ideas (such as communism, those of the Enlightenment, or even religions themselves) spread through the written word. A person who cannot read is more immune to such ideas. The main input they receive usually comes from those around them — and if these people are religious, the person is likely to be so, too. Indeed, we find that countries with lower literacy rates happen to be more religious21. More generally, the literacy rate is an upper bound for the level of formal education, and a number of studies suggest that a lack of formal education correlates with higher religiosity222324 — not because education makes one atheist, but because without education one cannot question the dominant worldview. This may be one of the reasons why some of the world religions have historically not shown much interest in the education of their adherents.
The more people know, the less they have to believe.
Proofs
So far, we have argued that people believe religious tenets mainly because they were brought up with them and are in no position to challenge them. However, people may also consciously decide to believe in the supernatural because they have been convinced by proofs for the supernatural. Such proofs include:
supernatural explanations for the Universe;
Pascal’s wager;
abstract universal hypotheses such as dualism;
miracles, including the effects of prayer; or
a reported, or possibly even personal, encounter with the supernatural.
We have already discussed these proofs (and others) in the Chapter on Proofs and the Chapter on the God of Gaps.
It’s actually easy to tell if your house is haunted.
It isn’t.
Desire
The desire to influence nature
If torrential rain can destroy your day from one minute to the next, you are more likely to appeal to the supernatural.
in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
“Crossing the road, grab a flag”. Worryingly enough, none of the flags seem to have arrived safe and sound to this side of the street. With no more flags at hand, only prayer can help. (Thailand has one of the highest road traffic death rates in the world25. It is also one of the most religious countries in the world.)
in Bangkok, Thailand
We will now discuss cases in which people believe in their religion because they want it to be true. This desire often has to do with a need or wish to control the environment. It unfolds as follows: We are all, to some degree, exposed to forces that we cannot control — an accident can change our life forever, an unfortunate coincidence can cost us our job, and an illness can carry away a loved one. When we are exposed to such forces, we desire to control them. For this, we resort to all types of strategies. These are often rational ones such as wearing a seatbelt, getting vaccinated, or buying insurances. However, the range of these strategies is limited: We still cannot control the elements of nature, illnesses, and adversary coincidences.
Therefore, people appeal to nonrational methods: They avoid walking under a ladder; prefer not to stay in a hotel room with the number 13; follow voodoo or magic; consult the position of the stars to determine their fate; or believe that cancer can be cured by magnets. (Cancer, in particular, attracts many appeals to the supernatural because it is one of the main causes of death in developed countries and there is no known cure. Wikipedia maintains a list of unsuccessful treatments26.) Out of the very same motivation (the protection against the forces of nature), people ask priests to bless their home; consult the stars to determine an auspicious wedding date; resort to faith healing; and pray to the gods or saints to prevent evil. There is no difference between religious strategies and superstitious ones: They are all attempts to influence nature when rational methods are not available or judged to be too weak.
We can hypothesize that this desire for supernatural protection is stronger when a person lacks control over their environment. For example, a person who can be fired from one day to the next has a greater need to appeal to the supernatural than someone with a permanent job. A person who lives in a country where one rainy summer can destroy their crop and livelihood has a greater desire to control the forces of nature than does someone with an office job. A person for whom an appendicitis would be a death warrant has more incentive to converse with the gods than a person who has access to modern health care, vaccination, and insurance. A person who lives amid the daily threat of the violence of war will seek more supernatural protection than a person who knows war only from the TV. And a person who has a 2% statistical chance of getting murdered in the street or a 20% chance of being raped has a greater urge to appeal to the gods than a person who’s most annoying problem in life is a slow Internet connection.
And when that supernatural protection fails (as we argue it does), religion can, at least, give a meaning to these random forces. It can provide hope for a better life in this world or the next, and reassure via community and rituals27.
Our theory is thus: The less safe an environment is (in terms of social security, health care, job security, insurances, and rule of law), and the less influence the individual has over their own life, the more religious the person will be. This theory is generally true. Poorer countries tend to be more religious2827 while countries with a stable social system, universal healthcare, mandatory insurance, and job security are typically less religious.
Proportion of people who say that religion is important in their daily life, according to a 2009 Gallup poll. 21.
Lightest blue: 10%-19%. Darkest blue: 90%-100%. CC-BY-SA Kamalthebest (Antarctica removed)
And it is not just the objective lack of control over one’s life that produces a greater reliance on religion; it is also the subjective impression of being helpless. People in poorer countries are more likely to believe that their lives are determined by fate rather than by their own actions. For example, 43% of people in poor countries think that fate plays a larger role in their life than their own decisions, as opposed to 26% of people in rich countries and 37% in transition countries29. When people believe that fate plays a large role in their lives, they feel more need to appeal to the forces that supposedly control this fate.
The same goes for times of crisis. For example, studies suggest that in Muslim countries, Islamic school attendance increases in times of economic crisis30. And in Western countries, church attendance increased during and after the COVID-19 pandemic of 202031. Insecurity makes people more open to religion. This leads to an interplay between instability and religiousness that we discuss in various places in this book.
When [the turmoil of Napoleon Bonaparte’s invasion of Europe] brought about a temporary neglect of science and consequently a certain decline in the general increase of knowledge, the Church immediately began to raise her head again and Faith began to show fresh signs of life.... On the other hand, in the more than thirty years of peace which followed, leisure and prosperity furthered the building up of science and the spread of knowledge in an extraordinary degree, the consequence of which is [...] the dissolution and threatened fall of religion.
Religiosity in the United States
We have hypothesized that safe environments generally make people less religious. The United States may seem, at first, to be an exception to this rule as the country is both very developed and very religious: 65% of Americans say that religion is important in their daily lives21. Beyond that, 42% of Americans believe in possession by the devil, 32% in ghosts and spirits, 25% in astrology, 21% in witches, 29% in communication with the dead, and 24% in reincarnation432.
However, despite its wealth, the United States does not provide the “safe environment” that our theory requires:
Health insurance
The United States does not have universal health insurance and roughly 10% of the population has no insurance at all33. If an uninsured person suffers from an illness, and if that illness requires expensive treatment, that person may have to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket. At worst, such expenses can lead to bankruptcy and homelessness — a possibility that looms over every uninsured citizen.
Debt
The average American household holds $170,000 in debt34, with the average household paying $1000 in interest per year to credit card companies35. Debt is not just a financial burden, it is also a psychological one: 41% of Americans who currently have debt feel anxious about it, and nearly 7 in 10 Americans (69%) have financial concerns about the next 12 months34. Furthermore, the majority of students in the United States borrow money each year to fund their education, and thus, a large proportion of Americans live with a considerable psychological and material burden (see 36 for an illustration).
Rule of Law
The rule of law is less developed in the United States than in other rich countries. Police brutality is a prevalent problem. An extensive report prepared in 2006 for the United Nations Human Rights Committee states that in the US, the “War on Terror” has “created a generalized climate of impunity for law enforcement officers, and contributed to the erosion of what few accountability mechanisms exist for civilian control over law enforcement agencies. As a result, police brutality and abuse persist unabated and undeterred across the country”37. People of color, in particular, are “disproportionately subjected to human rights violations at the hands of law enforcement officers, ranging from pervasive verbal abuse and harassment, racial profiling, routine stops and frisks based solely on race or gender to excessive force, unjustified shootings, and torture”. This imbalance has been highlighted by the murder of George Floyd in 2020 (and others), which caused widespread protests against racist police brutality38. The US also has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world, with 513 per 100,000 people in prison39. While the country has only 5% of the world’s population, it has 25% of the world’s prison inmates40. For the individual, this means that he or she has a higher chance of being subjected to law enforcement or cruel police treatment in the US than in other developed countries — in particular if she or he is not white. The US is also one of only two developed countries (along with Japan) that still uses the death penalty. It comes in 5th worldwide in the number of people executed.
Crime
in Chicago, United States
Crime is more prevalent in the United States than in other developed countries. With a rate of 6.4 per 100,000 people per year, as of 2022, the US has the highest murder rate among countries designated as advanced economies by the International Monetary Fund41. The next advanced economy on the list (bar mini-state Liechtenstein), Lithuania, ranks 30 countries later, with a rate of just 2.6. So, the US is really an outlier among rich countries. Part of the reason may be the fact that the US has laxer gun laws than other countries: With the highest rate of gun ownership per capita in the world, the US has more arms than people — 120 arms per 100 inhabitants42. Furthermore, people can legally own guns strong enough to pierce police-issue body armor, and around 50 shootings per year occur at schools and colleges43. Thus, personal security is less guaranteed in the US than in other developed countries.
Job security
It is easier in the United States than in other developed countries to fire an employee. The Microsoft research lab where the author of this book was previously employed, for example, was closed with only a day’s notice, putting around 50 people out of work44. (The author had left the lab prior to this event.) The possibility (however distant) that a person could lose their income from one day to the next can be a significant cause of insecurity in their daily life.
Undesired Pregnancies
In 2019, 16 of every 1,000 teenage women in the United States were pregnant45. That is the highest rate in the developed world (after Romania and Bulgaria, where it is high mainly among the Roma population46). By way of comparison, the value is 7 per 1,000 teenage women for Germany. One reason for the high rate of teenage pregnancies in the US may be a reluctance to use contraception: In a survey conducted in 2015, 44% of young women agreed that “It doesn’t matter whether you use birth control or not; when it is your time to get pregnant it will happen”47. For most teenagers, these pregnancies are unplanned. An unplanned pregnancy can destroy career plans, shatter families, prevent higher education, and push people into poverty (particularly so for those who are already poor47). Furthermore, abortion access continues to be restricted in the US48. Thus, people in the US have less control over their reproductive lives than people in other developed countries.
All of these factors make life in the United States less secure for the individual than in other developed countries. This explains, according to our theory, why the US is more religious than other developed countries. That said, the US has become more secular since the beginning of the 21st century, moving towards less religiosity at roughly the same speed as Europe (though still lagging behind Europe on that measure). The Orthodox, Islamic, and Latin American countries, in contrast, move only slightly or not at all toward less religiosity27.
Two hands working can do more than a thousand clasped in prayer.
Powerlessness
We have argued that a loss of control over one’s life can result in a greater need to appeal to the supernatural. Our examples so far have focused mainly on negative life events such as illness, joblessness, and crime. However, it is not just the poor and the ill who are religious. Many rich, healthy, and happy people are religious too. One reason may be that positive events can also be outside one’s control, such as being born into a wealthy family, lacking a genetic predisposition for cancer, or meeting a partner through happenstance. Our theory predicts that such circumstances, too, should increase one’s readiness to believe in the supernatural. This is because such circumstances show people that there are things outside their control. When uncontrollable things happen (positive or negative), some people conclude that there must be “something more” out there, i.e., some supernatural powers that govern these uncontrolled events. Religion then helps people to get in touch with these powers: to ask for help, to express gratitude, to ask for the continuation of the protection from evil, or simply to acknowledge that they cannot control everything.
We can hypothesize that this perceived connection to the supernatural should be stronger in people who have a more turbulent life history, in which events outside their control have had a large impact on their life — be it positive or negative.
Luck is far more egalitarian than intelligence. If people were rewarded strictly according to their abilities, things would be unfair — people don’t choose their abilities. Randomness has the beneficial effect of reshuffling society’s cards.
Spurious correlation
We have argued that people appeal to the supernatural in search of help, but we have also argued that this help never materializes because the supernatural does not exist. Why then do people still appeal to the supernatural?
One reason may be the human tendency to accept a behavior (such as prayer or possession of a lucky charm) as effective even if it has been shown to work in only very few cases. Take the following example:
Assume that you play on a school basketball team and tonight is the final game. The coach has explained that it is of utmost importance that your team wins. You are in the changing room with your teammates, and the atmosphere is loaded: Your team has been preparing for this game for two months. You anxiously try to avoid anything that could lead to failure. You remember that before the team’s last win, you spit into the dust bin just before you left the changing room for the court. Was it maybe this action that helped you win? It’s silly, of course, but... who knows? So when the team walks out of the changing room, you quickly spit into the dust bin. Just in case.
And voilà, a superstition is born. And indeed, examples abound in which people create some habit to bring on good luck: Professional golfer Tiger Woods wears red shirts on final tournament days; tennis player Serena Williams ties her shoelaces in a specific way; writer Quentin Tarantino has a series of writing rituals that involve specially purchased notebooks; model Heidi Klum carries a little bag containing her children’s lost teeth; former US first lady Nancy Reagan relied on astrology; rapper Missy Elliott avoids black cats; actor Benicio Del Toro wears a lucky ring; former US president Harry Truman mounted a horseshoe above the door to his office; and basketball player Michael Jordan wore his college practice shorts under his NBA uniform49. In a similar way, people tend to accept lucky charms and other superstitions if they have been shown to work once. People are ready to give such techniques the benefit of the doubt.
Dots generated by a Poisson point process
Technically speaking, a superstition is a belief or practice for which there is no rational substance50. In the terminology of our book, a superstition is a rule of the form “If I do this, then this event will have a positive outcome” that is accepted based on very few positive examples, and that will not withstand systematic validation. Why do people accept such rules? The first reason is statistical in nature: Let us assume that the conclusion of a rule (e.g., that your team wins the basketball game) is a completely random event, which happens with a certain probability, independently of other games. It is as if the god of victory, Nike, threw a die for each game, and let your team win when the die shows an even number — with no memory of previous die tosses. Such a random process is called a Bernoulli process, after Swiss mathematician Jacob Bernoulli. One may think that such a process generates a uniform sequence of wins and losses, with no discernible pattern. This is, however, not the case. The illustration above shows dots generated by a random Bernoulli process (with a probability of 0.03). Even though the process is completely random, we can see shapes in the output51 (for example, the giraffe at the bottom right). So, why does the process not generate a somewhat uniform distribution in which all the dots are roughly equally far away from each other? The reason is that each dot is independent of the others. A dot just appears, it does not “know” or “care” whether it is far away from or near to the other dots. Therefore, the dots may, by chance, cluster together — and form shapes that remind us of something. In the same way, it is possible to see patterns in the sequence of won basketball games. Counterintuitive as it may be, true randomness does not actually look random. However, the shapes in such data are coincidences. They are not in any way regular. It is thus not possible to build a validated rule on them.
However, people do build rules on randomness, i.e., they accept rules with very few instances (or even a single instance). Why is that? The reason may be evolutionary, as American science writer Michael Shermer has argued: Imagine an early human hearing a rustle in the grass. Is it a hungry predator or just the wind? If the person assumes it’s a hungry predator but it’s actually the wind, he or she will come to no harm. But if the person believes it’s the wind when it’s actually a hungry predator, it could mean death. So, the tendency to assume a predator instead of the wind increases the chances for the person to pass on their genes. Shermer infers: “We are the descendants of those most successful at finding patterns”. He calls this tendency to find patterns in both meaningful and meaningless noise patternicity.52
Patternicity is not restricted to humans. In a sociological experiment, American behavioral psychologist B.F. Skinner gave food to caged pigeons at random intervals. After some time, Skinner noted that the pigeons showed some very strange behavior, such as shaking their heads in a rhythm or walking around in circles. He discovered that the pigeons were repeating the behavior that they had been following the last time they got food. For example, if a pigeon had been shaking its head just before it was fed, then the pigeon would begin to shake its head when it got hungry. Thus, the pigeon falsely believed that the head shaking led to food.53 Of course, there exists no causal relation in these cases. Rather, it is a rule that got generalized from a single example — a superstition.
We can thus conclude that people (and pigeons) have a tendency to accept rules even if they have worked only in a single case. This tendency helps religion, too: It is sufficient for many people to have seen (or heard) that a prayer worked once to continue praying.
Religion is a superstition plus the conviction that it is not.
Confirmation bias
Magical belief is popular in South America. This magician promises to cure all your discomforts.
in Arequipa, Peru
We have seen that humans (and animals) readily generalize rules and superstitions from a very few examples. The problem is that superstitions generate not just positive examples, but also counterexamples — cases for which the good luck charm, special clothing, or prayer does not work. Then, why do people not abandon these practices?
One answer is that humans have a tendency to remember positive cases and to forget or excuse negative cases. For example, if we pray for sunny weather and the weather is indeed sunny, then we tend to see this as a confirmation for the theory that prayer works. If, in contrast, the weather is rainy, then we tend to see this as an exception to the rule rather than a counterexample. This way, the theory accumulates positive examples and is never associated with failure. This way of thinking is known as confirmation bias or counting the hits — a particularly frequent fallacy that has been confirmed by numerous psychological studies54553. Different explanations have been proposed for this phenomenon54: People may be content believing in something they want to be true; people may be unable to consider both positive and negative evidence at the same time; people may have a general tendency to assume that statements are true rather than false; people may strengthen their belief in a hypothesis if they have to explain why the hypothesis is true (even if confronted with evidence that the hypothesis is false); in some cases, a false statement may be less harmful when erroneously considered true than a true statement erroneously considered false; and people may have learned to defend their own hypotheses and to disregard counterevidence. This way of thinking may even have beneficial effects because it reinforces belief in one’s own worldview and thus strengthens one’s self-confidence.
In general, confirmation bias makes people more open to a theory that fails more often than it works — and this includes both superstitions and religious practices.
God does miracles in the same way that Santa delivers presents —
by taking credit for other people’s work.
The illusion of control
Another reason why people do not abandon superstitions even when they don’t work is that people readily assume that they have control over a situation even when they don’t. This phenomenon is called the illusion of control56, and it was first studied by Herbert Jenkins and William Ward in 1965. They conducted an experiment where they asked people to figure out how to operate four buttons to control two light bulbs. Even when the light bulbs flashed on and off at random, subjects were still convinced that they could influence them by pushing the buttons573. Such switches also exist in our everyday life: elevator buttons that do not actually do anything but satisfy children and adults who feel the urge to press them; dummy office thermostats that let people believe they can control the temperature; and crosswalk signal buttons that do nothing but give the pedestrian a feeling of control58.
In a similar vein, people who pray are convinced they can actually influence something, even if the something they pray for would have come about also without the prayer. This illusion contributes to the prevalence of religious thinking.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.
Pressure
Coercion
So far, we have discussed scenarios in which people truly believe in their religion — or at least want their religion to be true. We now come to scenarios in which people are forced to adhere to their religion. Indeed, coercion is one of the most effective ways to make people adherents. For example, a person may be told that if he or she does not believe, they will be denied basic rights, persecuted, or even killed. Under such threats, a person is much more likely to become and remain a believer — even if only pro forma.
This is, indeed, the way that many religions gain and retain adherents. Christianity has long persecuted and sentenced to death apostates (those who didn’t adhere, or were suspected of not adhering, to Christian dogma) as heretics. This practice ceased only in the 19th century. Judaism, too, historically punished apostates by death, and to this day, several interpretations of Islam call for the death penalty for apostates. Outside of the Abrahamic religions, traditional interpretations of Hinduism also banished apostates from society.
In all of these cases, the principle is the same: Pressure makes people follow a religion. This does not mean that these people necessarily believe in the tenets of said religion. However, that does not matter for the survival of the faith: Even nonbelieving adherents will be constrained to teach the religion to their children, and thus the religion will pass down over generations.
Many people believe in their religion mainly because they have no right to believe in anything else.
Peer pressure
We have seen that coercion is one of the most effective means for making a person adhere to a religion. In cases where coercion is no longer an option due to secular legal systems, peer pressure can take its role. Directly or indirectly, peer pressure alienates those who deviate from the majority religion: They have to constantly justify their worldview, they are less trusted, excluded from meetings, and regarded as less attractive for marriage, and they become the subject of gossip. This threat (implicit or explicit) pushes people to align themselves with the majority religion.
Peer pressure is particularly prevalent in Islam: Muslim apostates in the West can face psychological and physical abuse and assault by family members and members of their local community5960. In the United States, a quarter of Muslims have left their faith but are afraid to say so for fear of risking their relationships with parents, siblings, and/or friends61. In France, the overwhelming majority of ex-Muslims undergo family and community persecutions, which can include physical aggression, threats, harassment, and rejection62. Some Muslims even believe that they will go to Hell if any of their family members deviates from the faith63, and so will do their utmost to prevent it. In the same vein, the community may put pressure on the entire family of the apostate — even if the apostate lives in another country.
Christian apostates also face pressure, as we have already discussed: In the United States, apostates (or, more generally, atheists) are routinely discriminated against. They are excluded from taking public office in some states, associated with criminality, distanced from family and friends, and discouraged as life partners. In other Western countries, atheists are legally discriminated against, too, as we have discussed.
In India, too, the vast majority of people form friendship circles within their own religious community. Interreligious marriages are very uncommon, and a majority of Indians say it is very important to stop both women and men in their community from marrying outside their religion.64 Arranged marriages are the norm, and even Hindus living abroad tend to have arranged marriages, which entails that these marriages happen within the faith65. In this way, the Hindu faith is maintained even for adherents who venture outside India.
In all of these systems, people have reasons to take the path of least resistance and profess adherence to the faith. It avoids trouble and guarantees peace of mind at the comparatively small expense of occasional feelings of ambivalence.
Everybody is a prisoner of their own convictions.
Fear of Hell
A substantial proportion of the world’s population believes in Hell (or its analog in the non-Abrahamic religions)66: less than 25% of the population in most European countries, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Uruguay, but around 80% of the population in countries in Africa and the Middle East, and more than 50% in most others67.
We can hypothesize that this fear of Hell keeps people from leaving the religion. Of course, such an argument may seem irrational as the threat of Hell can work only if you believe in the religion in the first place. However, when confronted with tales of the brutalities of hell, you can easily forget that you do not believe in them. Some preachers can speak so convincingly about the tortures that await in the afterlife that they can trick people into fear. Once a person has swallowed the theory of Hell, all other dogmas can be force-fed rather easily.
This is true, in particular, if the receiver of these threats does not have the tools at hand to rebut them. The threat of Hell is, indeed, a very popular technique in today’s world religions. It appears most prominently in the Abrahamic Religions , but the Indian religions and the Chinese religions, too, have their analogs.
If the person who offers you salvation from suffering is also the one who administers that suffering, it’s not really salvation. It’s extortion.
Benefits
Community
We now come to an array of more pragmatic reasons that make people follow a religion, including for its perceived usefulness. In the psychological literature, such reasons are known as extrinsic motivations68. One of the main extrinsic motivations for following a religion is usually that it establishes a community. This works through several means:
a common moral framework, such as the Ten Commandments, the duty to give charity, or the call to non-violence;
common beliefs, such as a world model, a set of mythological stories, or shared beliefs about history;
common rituals, such as fasting, joint prayer, church attendance, life event and annual celebrations, or sacrifices;
initiation rites, such as circumcision or baptism;
shared experiences, such as fares, excursions, or concerts;
social services, such as hospitals, kindergartens, schools, or senior citizen homes;
mutual assistance, such as help for the poor, the ill, and the desperate;
a label, such as “Jew”, “Buddhist”, or “Catholic”, together with a sense of pride in the religion and the community; and
the prohibition to venture out of the community, for example, by the prohibition of interfaith marriage, the shunning of those who decide to leave the religion, the prohibition of criticism, the branding of outsiders as errant, and, more generally, the focus on one’s own faith at the expense of knowledge about the others.
Such a community can have several advantages for the individual: Believers can count on friendly neighbors, happy get-togethers, and help in distress from their fellows. Through all of this, the religious community can give peace of mind, the feeling of safety, a sense of belonging, the assurance of having a purpose, and, ultimately, happiness. We will later discuss these positive effects in the Chapter on the Benefits of Religion. We will also discuss there why the prospect of a community does not convince atheists to become religious.
Absolution
A bath in the Ganges River is said to clean a person of all sins. Here, a self-experiment by the author.
in Varanasi, India
One more advantage of a religion is that it can soothe feelings of guilt: When we do something bad, we usually have a troubled conscience , which can be very disturbing, even devastating. Religions typically offer us a way to remove that feeling. In many interpretations of Christianity, this happens via confession: We talk to a priest and, under certain conditions, he forgives us our sins in the name of God. For graver sins, a pilgrimage might do the job69. In Islam, one can ask for forgiveness directly from God[Quran: 2:160, 39:54, 3:135, 25:71, 6:54]. Otherwise, a pilgrimage to Mecca can help[Hadith Muslim 1350]. Hindus can clean themselves from sin by bathing in the holy Ganges River. Other religions offer other ways to repent for wrongdoing, such as making sacrifices, fasting, or following the laws of the religion to the letter. All of these techniques give adherents a means to clear (or at least weaken) their troubled conscience. This is a very attractive feature of a religion, as those suffering from anxiety and guilt are understandably drawn to resources that promise forgiveness70. It has to be noted, though, that in some cases, the religion first instills the guilt in order to then offer remedies against it.
There is nothing quite so useless as doing with great efficiency something that should not be done at all.
Personal advantages
One more extrinsic reason to follow a religion may be that the religion grants permissions for practices that are not possible outside the religion. Examples are as follows:
Raëlism
Raëlism is a new religious movement that promotes free love and believes that sex is a normal, important, and healthy part of life. It accepts all sexual orientations, advocates polygamy over monogamy, and holds summer courses and camps to help members discover their own sexuality. Any sexual activity is permitted and encouraged as long as it is consensual[Intelligent Design: 2:3:5]71. Thus, adherents of Raëlism enjoy permissions that adherents of many other religions do not. This makes the religion attractive.
Islam
When the Prophet Muhammad founded Islam in the 7th century CE, he set out to conquer the Arabian Peninsula. Tribes who joined him were allowed to share in the booty of the war: money, slaves, and enslaved concubines. This looting was divinely sanctioned [Quran: 8:45, 8:69, 33:50, 23:5-6, 4:24], which made the religion attractive to the tribes72.
Christianity
Christianity, in particular Catholicism and European Protestantism, has an extensive system of priests, bishops, and other clergymen. Christian organizations also run schools, hospitals, and senior citizen homes. The churches thus act as an employer (in Germany, they are actually the second largest employer after the government73). In the European Union, the churches are legally allowed to hire only people of their religion74. This makes adherence to the religion materially attractive to those looking for employment.
In all of these cases, the religion gives physical or material advantages to its adherents. Therefore, people have an incentive to follow it.
Atheism is the only belief about a god in America that is taxed.
A moral frame
One additional advantage of a religion is that it can provide a moral framework. We have already seen that humans are completely free to design any moral framework they wish, which gives a lot of liberty on one hand, but also a lot of responsibility on the other. Is abortion murder? Should we allow stem cell research? Are nuclear power plants ok? Should cousins be allowed to marry? Is genetically engineered food a good thing? These are tricky questions. Even if we find the answers, we will likely run into people who have found different answers. Worse, if they convince us they are right, we might be forced to change our point of view, and this is always an unpleasant thing to do.
Religions can provide a way out of this predicament as they usually come with a given moral framework that a believer can follow. This framework can be a written law (such as the Ten Commandments), or it can also be the law administered by a preacher. These frameworks answer most everyday questions, which saves an adherent time and effort. What is more, the framework has divine authority. This means that, within a religious community, one is much less likely to run into disputes. There is simply no discussion needed because the gods (or their representatives) have decided for us.
Here is a story to illustrate this, as told by a friend of the author:
A Jewish couple in New York fell out with the husband’s parents and did not want to see them anymore. In particular, the couple would not allow the grandparents to see their grandchildren. The grandparents complained that they have a right to see their grandchildren, but the couple maintained that the children were theirs, and that it is their choice who can see them. How would you decide?
In this particular case, the couple and the grandparents brought the case before the local rabbi. The rabbi listened to both parties and then determined that the couple has the right to decide who sees their children. At the same time, the grandparents shared a blood link with the grandchildren. Thus, the rabbi determined that they also have the right to see them. Therefore, the grandparents were see the grandchildren once every fortnight. The couple and the grandparents had no choice but to accept the rabbi’s ruling.
In this example, we see how a religious moral decision simplified a family’s life: The rabbi spoke and the case was decided. There was no discussion about whether the decision was right or wrong, or whether a fortnight was the right measure, because the rabbi had the singular authority to decide these matters. There was also no shame for the couple or for the grandparents in having ceded to the other party because nobody can challenge the rabbi’s ruling.
The same goes for other moral questions, such as the morality of gay marriage or stem cell research: The holy book, the gods, or their representatives decide on the matter and there is no need (or space) for discussion. This gives a great deal of juridical security. It also relieves people of the burden of making a personal choice75 and of getting into disputes about moral values. This mechanism is at work not just for the mainstream religions, but also for sects. For example, legal security is one of the main draws of religious terror networks such as the Islamic State: Many of Islamic State recruits are attracted to the strict system of rules imposed by the fundamentalists76. Thus, in one way or the other, a religion caters for the human desire for safety and boundaries. It shields us from uncertainty, from the weight of assuming responsibility over our own moral codes, and from the need to reevaluate our convictions.
The flesh is willing if the spirit is weak.
Moral frame case studies
As we have seen, a religion caters to the human desire for rules and boundaries. Such an argument may seem out of place in the developed world, where we usually do not want others to decide for us, let alone based on an ancient book. We are used to questioning and challenging.
And yet, the very same search for absolute ancient values happens also in rich countries. Here are examples:
Germany’s military intervention in Afghanistan in 2002
The German constitution declares that the main purpose of the German army is to protect the security of the country77. This has long been interpreted to mean that any military missions abroad with no link to Germany are prohibited. However, in 2002, NATO asked Germany to participate in missions in Afghanistan. To do this above board, the German constitution would have needed to be changed to permit such missions. However, since people were hesitant to change the constitution, Minister of Defence Peter Struck just declared that “German security is also being defended in the Hindu Kush”78 — thereby justifying current actions with a reinterpretation of historical values.
The role of Japan’s armed forces
The Japanese postwar constitution states that Japan renounces war and shall never have an army79. In the decades following, this was reinterpreted to allow for an army for self-defense. In 2014, the rule was again reinterpreted to allow for an army for the defense of fellow allied countries80. All of this was done without making use of the article that allows for an amendment of the constitution81. Again, we can see a fear of breaking with established authority and an attempt to justify current policies based on a reinterpretation of previous values.
The gun owner debate in the US in the 2000s
In the United States, there is an ongoing debate as to whether people have the right to bear firearms. To answer that question, the public and the judiciary turn to the Second Amendment of the constitution, which dates to 1791. It reads that “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”82. Leaving aside the syntactic problems of this sentence, the current debate is on the meaning of “militia” and whether or not the weapons have to be connected to the militia, whether or not “to bear arms” applies only in a military context, and whether or not “the people” is a metaphor for the government or refers to individual persons83. Proponents of each camp accuse the other of misinterpreting the will of the Founding Fathers. Again, we see that people prefer to justify their position by interpreting ancient documents instead of assuming the responsibility for their own predilections.
In all of these cases, people resort to reinterpreting ancient documents rather than making a decision for themselves, shying away from the responsibility of defining their own moral frameworks. This tendency to delegate decisions to ancient documents plays in the favor of religions, as all major religions have suitable ancient documents on offer.
For psychological comfort, some people would rather use a map of the Pyrenees while lost in the Alps than use nothing at all.
The clack game
The clack game.
We have seen that adherents of a religion can benefit from a number of material or practical advantages, including absolution from wrongdoing, personal benefits granted only to followers of the religion, an established moral framework, and a community of believers. But how do people manage to believe in the theological tenets of a religion in order to benefit from these advantages? The answer might well be that they don’t. Let us illustrate this hypothesis with a game that we will call the clack game.
The clack game begins with a little wooden tube with a piston (pictured). The piston sticks into the tube and has a little hook at its end. Inside the tube, on the end opposite to where the piston enters, there is a rubber band that forms a loop (pictured in blue). The goal is to maneuver the hook into the loop. Then, you can pull out the piston and let it “clack” back into the tube. This is a very difficult endeavor because the tube is completely covered, so that one cannot see the rubber band. It requires a lot of dexterity, and some people never succeed, even if they practice for hours.
Some people, however, get it done after a few trials. They can do it even if the tube is held vertical (so that the rubber band lies on the floor of the tube) or even when they are drunk. So, how do they manage it?
The trick is that there is no rubber band. Those who can do it simply put a lot of effort into making it appear as if they are turning the hook artfully into the rubber band and then pulling out the piston slowly, as if against the opposing force of the rubber band. Then, they squeeze the beak of the piston between their thumb and index finger, which pushes the piston back into the tube — clack!
The message of the game is that the desired effect can be achieved without the proposed procedure. In fact, the proposed procedure does not work at all. And it is the same with religion: All social advantages of a religion can be obtained by simply confessing that one believes in its dogmata, and then by following all of its rules. Much how clack game players can skillfully simulate the search for (and the effect of) the “inner connection” with the rubber band, believers can skillfully simulate the search for (and the effect of) the “inner connection” with the gods. It is not necessary to actually have that connection in order to get the clack, i.e., to benefit from the social advantages of the religion.
In this spirit, Canadian American cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker has suggested that religious beliefs fulfill a social rather than a cognitive function: People say that they believe certain things not because they rationally hold these things to be true, but because it makes them fit into a social, moral, and philosophical framework4. For example, American cognitive anthropologist Pascal Boyer observes that many devout Christians cannot remember the Ten Commandments, and many Muslims have a rather hazy grasp of what the Quran actually recommends61. For these people, professing adherence to the religion is more important than knowing its dogmata. Indeed, studies show that people may rationally choose to display religious symbols pertaining to a given religion regardless of the true nature of their deep beliefs30.
This disconnection between the true belief in the dogmata and the social role is perhaps best described by the Episcopal Bishop of Newark, John Shelby Spong84:
As I first studied the birth narratives, it was clear that no major scholar of any persuasion took them literally.... How long could the educated folk of the twentieth century continue to be literal about such things as a conception that occurred for a couple when both were well beyond menopause, the visit of the angel Gabriel, a pregnancy without a male agent, an angelic choir that sang in the sky, a star that roamed through the heavens, shepherds that have no trouble finding a baby in a city crowded with people called for a special census, and a king named Herod who would rely on three men he had never met before to bring him an intelligence report about a pretender to his throne who was said to have been born just six miles away?
According to Spong, Anglican scholars have long given up on a literal interpretation of the Bible. At the same time, they maintain an entire social frame built around it, including masses, weddings, ceremonies, etc. The social, material, and pragmatic components of a religion work just as well without believing.
I give them what they need, and they give me what I need.
Intrinsic motivations
We have discussed a number of reasons why people adhere to a religion. Some truly believe in the religion, and we have argued that this is mainly because they were brought up with it. Others want to believe in the religion because they long for ways to influence their environment. Still others are forced to believe in (or at least adhere to) the faith. Finally, some show adherence to the religion mainly for pragmatic reasons.
However, some people also follow a religion because of the positive effects of the faith that they themselves experience: personal strength in times of hardship, a healthier lifestyle, more connections with like-minded people, a reason for being, the benefits of prayer or meditation, and the assurance provided by following rituals. These people may or may not sense that their religion rests on shaky evidence, but they choose to not further investigate so as to keep benefiting from the advantages they experience. We discuss these advantages in the Chapter on the Benefits of Religion.
Adhere to a principle not because you decided for it, but because it is good.
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