Book 2: Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't

Alrighty then. This week's offering is  Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't 

D. Jason Slone.

Oxford University Press   2004

First off, hats off to anyone who goes by their middle name and includes their first initial in their signature. It's awesome, if you ask me, and makes me feel tough to do it myself. 

It should be noted (and emphasized) that the author does not take a stance for or against religion or religious thought. The subtitle, " Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't" isn't a value judgment on religious thought or a declaration of wrongdoing. Slone makes it clear early on that the "shouldn't" is reference to theological doctrine, not social mores or conventional wisdom. In other words, "why do religious people not do what their own religious doctrine tells them to do?"

While theological correctness is when a member of a religion acts the way the doctrine or sacred text of the religion describes, theological correctness is the label for why people do not do what their holy books tell them they should do, or, more appropriately, why they do things their books tell them they shouldn't.

A good deal of time is spent discussing free will, determinism, and divine sovereignty. This has always been a bit of Christian nonsense to me, and almost always directs a critical thinker to the problem of evil, which happens to be the the second most powerful catalyst for deconversion (led only slightly by applying our tool set for determining what is fantasy and what is reality to any  and all religious claims).

I would have liked to have seen the author spend more time on the problem of evil, and rationalizations which inevitably follow, but that really wasn't the focus of the book, so Slone cannot be blamed for that.

His argument that abductive reasoning is less cognitively taxing, leads to faster decision making and allows individuals to come to conclusions faster (if less accurately) is well though-out and described.

I would recommend it to anyone of or without religious faith. It will help the religious understand why they ignore certain parts of their holy books in favor of others, and it will help non-theists understand the inherent hypocrisy and inconsistencies in the religious community.

Little attention is paid to Islam. Nobody wants to get shot in the face for criticizing invisible people and suppressive dogma, so I can understand Slone's reluctance. Buddhism and Christianity are the primary focus of the book.

Slone argues that "One of the reasons why religious ideas have such widespread appeal is that they are interesting (i.e., attention grabbing), and because they are interesting they have a great chance of being transmitted successfully. They achieve a cognitive optimum. Of these, the commonly recurring representations are those that involve agency, probably because of the representational tendencies of the hyperactive agency detection device. Thus, the kinds of (supernatural) things that populate religious systems tend to be agents, either humans with breech violations or objects, plants, or animals which transferred human expectations (e.g., talking rocks, walking trees, trickster animals, etc.) So when someone tells a child that little Rover, the family puppy, is in heaven after being hit by a car, the idea is powerful. It is an idea that is cognitively optimal."

Outstanding. This helps us understand why it's terribly convenient for some religious folks to ignore the bits of "their" religion which they don't care for or has become socially unacceptable. You have to give it to the Westboro Baptist folks-- they're actually advocating the nonsense their book tells them to advocate. 

"Yet the religious concepts do not determine, per se, what follows. Rather, it appears that cognitive processes drive the thoughts and actions of religious believers at both the individual and the cultural levels. In the case of early American Protestantism, the Calvinism of the Puritans was short lived because Calvinist theology wast so cognitively burdensome to be employed online or to be maintained over the long run. Thus it is not surprising that the puritans were prone, according to orthodox Calvinism, to theological incorrectness. Nor should we be surprised that the Arminianism came to dominate mainline American Protestant thought.

The latter point is illuminating because it suggests that religious ideas with maximum inferential potential can even spread across diverse populations, such as the United States. Ideas like "cooperative theology" (i.e., Arminianism; belief in both divine sovereignty and free will) are very attractive to human beings across the board because they exploit natural cognitive processes. Theism in general necessarily contains an internal conceptual tension between the powers of the gods and the powers of people. Therefore, though awkward, religious conceptual schemes that alleviate that tension successfully will be selected over those that don't"

So not only do we see natural selection in religious thought, we also see where some of the nonsense comes from, and how and why it changes.

More cognitive dissonance:

"Muslims say that Allah wills everything that happens in the world yet struggle to bring about his divine will, however imagined (e.g., jihad). And Christians, like Jews, Wiccans, Rastafarians, and other religious people everywhere labor to decipher how best to live life-- a struggle that results in the oscillation between "doing" God's will and "giving in" to is. Such is the way of religious reasoning."

Seems to me that you can have your cake when it suits your personal desires, and you can eat it whenever you're hungry. This seems kind of like nonsense, and Slone does an excellent job of explaining why that nonsense doesn't seem like nonsense to the believer. 

One of my standard go-to beefs with those who are truly faithful and claim to fully rely on God is that they have cellphones. If you really think your god can handle anything you can throw at it, and you really think that your god answers your prayers, then why not pray for your god to tell Sally to meet you for pizza at 6:45 at the corner of Western and 45th? If your god really wants what's best for you, and Sally doesn't show because she never got the word, then it must be in your best interest for you and Sally not to eat pizza that night. 

Right?

People will argue that their gods are not to be tested, but this really isn't a test, and for an entity which can purportedly do anything and everything, it shouldn't even be a complicated process. Honestly, the god figure should've  seen it coming and, as a result, it's already done. No effort is exerted.
 

Slone semi-addresses this, but not really:
"This suggests that we are pattern seekers. We focus on singular events that are seemingly congruent but ignore the overwhelming majority of events that are not. "

Exactly. Whenever something good happens to someone, it was a blessing or a miracle. But the mundane, hum-drum existence they live has nothing to do with their god, who purportedly has a unique interest in their well-being... until something bad happens. And that was either the act of an invisible man in the center of the earth, or just plain bad luck. 

Luck, as Slone points out, is a theological non sequitur. It has no place in a world with a divinely sovereign god.

And my favorite bit:

"One can say, therefore, that religion is not a cause of behavior per se. It does not determine how we think or act. Yet neither does it prevent us from thinking or acting in ways we "shouldn't" Being a Muslim doesn't cause people not to comit acts of murder. Being a Christian does not cause people not to be superstitious. Being a Buddhist does not cause people not to pollute the environment. Being religious is merely one part of the complex puzzle that is human behavior. The dichotomy between nature and nurture, or determinism and free will, is ill formed. It is a false dichotomy because we have, to use Daniel Dennett's phrase, "elbow room" to act in the light of the fact that religion is a natural by-product of cognition, which is itself part of the equipment with which humans are endowed as a result of the process of natural selection."

I love this. Good people are good people regardless of their religious or political ideas. And dicks are likewise dicks.

Yes. Thank you D. Jason Slone, for pointing out the obvious in such a well-reasoned manner. Like most dichotomies, the proposed binary that is determinism/free will is complete codswallop. Even according to the Christian doctrine it's not always the case. 

 "Yahweh gave us free will because he didn't want robots."  Sorry Sister Christian, but like most binaries you suggest, this is a false one.