One of the basic things that are emphasized in the training of scientists is the importance of evidence in arriving at conclusions. And while that is definitely true within the world of science, I am more and more convinced that when it comes to changing people’s minds about core beliefs (even within science), the effectiveness of evidence is overrated. This is because whatever evidence that is presented that one thinks challenges someone’s deep conviction, they can almost always come up with an alternative explanation that takes that evidence into account without changing the belief itself. This is because given a finite set of data, there are an infinite number of theories that can explain that data. All that increasing the data set does is bring into play a new infinite set of explanations that can accommodate the cherished belief. (I discuss this in some detail in my book The Great Paradox of Science and will not repeat that detailed argument here.)
So what does make people change their minds? When it comes to scientific theories, evidence does play a role but only partially. What happens is that there comes a time when people find maintaining their original belief requires too much work and intellectual contortions and they abandon it in favor of a new belief that makes more sense to them. And I believe that logic and reason are the factors that ultimately trigger such a change.
When I look back at the evolution of my own core beliefs, one major change was going from believing in God to not believing in the existence of any gods or indeed of anything supernatural. I had known the evidence against the existence of gods (such as the existence of suffering) but they did not sway me. People find it fairly easy to work around it. It was also not the case that I lost my faith due to anger about some personal misfortune or other bad experiences with religion that sometimes causes people to abandon religion. My experiences with the religious beliefs of my family and my interactions with all the clergy in my life were uniformly positive. So my emotional pull was to retain my faith, not leave it, feeling that becoming an atheist would somehow be a betrayal of those whom I valued dearly. But there came a point when I just could not logically reconcile the existence of a supernatural deity who could intervene to change the course of events with the idea that the universe works according to scientific laws. The two views were fundamentally incompatible, forcing me to choose, and it was logic that forced me to abandon faith.
Another major area was with the idea of free will. Like most people, I grew up firmly believing in free will. When I came across evidence that challenged the existence of free will, it was not hard to explain that evidence away. But it was only when I looked closely at the theoretical arguments against it that I became convinced that the idea of free will was incompatible with the idea that the brain, just like everything else, worked according to the laws of science and that it did not allow for the existence of a ‘Ghost in the Machine‘.
This brings me to the question of morality. One of the charges that is made against atheists (and thus atheism) is that they have no basis for morality since they deny the existence of universal moral standards of the kinds set by religions in the religious texts. They are accused of having an ‘anything goes’ philosophy that allows them to do whatever they feel like, whether it is harmful or not.
This has always been a specious argument. Whether people behave well or poorly has little correlation with their religious beliefs, with the exception that people who are driven by religious conviction can be convinced to do the most terrible things when they think they are doing their god’s will. They can become even worse when governments become theocratic and endorse their actions. As Steven Weinberg said, “Without [religion], you’d have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, it takes religion.”
In challenging the argument that morality requires religion, I have found that evidence has little effect. One can point to the fact that atheists do not routinely go around murdering people or otherwise doing evil things. In fact some studies show that non-believers commit crimes at lower rates than others. But this has little effect in persuading people that religion is essential if one is to have a moral core.
So what might be a good theoretical argument?
A good starting point might be the Euthyphro dilemma.
Although it was originally applied to the ancient Greek pantheon, the dilemma has implications for modern monotheistic religions. Gottfried Leibniz asked whether the good and just “is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just”.
The German philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz presented this version of the dilemma: “It is generally agreed that whatever God wills is good and just. But there remains the question whether it is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just; in other words, whether justice and goodness are arbitrary or whether they belong to the necessary and eternal truths about the nature of things.”
As stated, the question doesn’t seem to demand an answer either way, leaving it up to each person to choose. But one can make the question more pointed. For example, religious people point to the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill” as a religion-based universal moral standard. But what if you pose to them that if the Bible had said “thou shalt kill” instead, would they think it is acceptable to kill? If they say that they still would not, then their source of morality comes from somewhere other than their religion. If they say that their god would never say that, then they are saying that there is indeed an independent moral standard that their god abides by. Actually, the Bible of full of god giving injunctions that people should be killed (usually by stoning) for a large number of infractions that most people who claim to base their morality on the Bible would not dream of doing. Gays, stubborn and mouthy children, adulterers, women who are not virgins when they are married, blasphemers, those who work on the Sabbath, practice wizardry, worship other gods, and even merely pick up sticks on the Sabbath are all targeted for slaughter. When Bob Dylan sang, ‘Everybody must get stoned’ he was making a pun on the word ‘stoned’ but he was also expressing biblical claims.
And then there are people like the Christian apologist William Lane Craig who is a fervent advocate of what he calls the ‘divine command theory’ that says that if their god does or says something, it must be good and that we cannot question it. But he does not say why he does not follow all the commands if they are all good and instead only picks and chooses certain ones. He cannot because that would reveal that he is using a different standard to make his moral decisions.
Whether a god exists or not is an empirical question for which evidence can be provided either for or against. Evidence that goes counter to one’s beliefs can often be the spur that makes people start questioning their beliefs. But I doubt that evidence is the ultimate deciding factor in people arriving at their decision. I would argue that it is logic that provides the final impetus to change beliefs. Beliefs have to collapse under the weight of their internal logical contradictions before they are abandoned.
I guess MAGAts now go by Jesus’ slogan “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple.“
The existence of suffering is not an argument against gods in general. It is an argument against the kind of god that doesn’t want beings to suffer. One can come up with a deity that creates suffering because it is somehow good for the sufferer.
Re: Weinberg: His saying should be amended to ‘for good people to do evil things, it takes any strongly held ideology’. People have (and are) doing evil in the name of secular ideologies, be they nationalism, communism, and probably many others. It’s whenever people become convinced that they need to put their own morality aside because something beyond their understanding is the TRUTH. As in ‘you don’t see it now, but in the long run it works and leads to the best outcomes, believe me!
As for divine commands, I think the most interesting case I know was Yeshayahu Leibowitz. You can get some flavor of his ideas from his wikipedia page, but to fully understand his position one must continue to the logical conclusion (which he believed and wrote about): In Leibowitz’s view, Jews must obey God’s laws (as traditionally interpreted by Orthodox rabbis) and God’s commands (by this I mean commands given to individuals, such as God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son) with no argument. At the same time, he argued that some of the same actions if done not out of obedience to God are indeed evil. He argued that it was right for Joshua’s armies to genocide the 7 peoples of Canaan because that genocide was commended by God, but war crimes on an even much smaller scale by Israel are wrong because if God doesn’t command it -- then one must apply morality. (And no, a Jew can’t legitimately say they were personally commanded by God to do something that isn’t in accepted Jewish law because in Jewish tradition Jews told God to STFU and stop interfering in rabbinical interpretation back in the late 1st or early 2nd century CE, see The Oven of Akhnai.)
Great post Mano.
My path was less traumatic. I was fortunate never to have been brainwashed with a belief system at a formative age. Then, as evidence often presented itself against any idea that I formed in ignorance, I started to realise that I was wrong about pretty much everything simply because there was more to everything than was apparent at first glance. This led to a filter of scepticism as a way to force myself to think about issues before I wholeheartedly adopted them. By the time serious brainwashing attempts were made, I was very much “Yeah, nah.”
When others would talk to me about Jesus, I would espouse to them the virtues of the Sacred Yak. My homegrown alternative to Pastafarianism I guess.
That’s quite true, Mano, when it comes to deeply-held beliefs, presentation of evidence is not enough.
I have read that, almost universally, when people learn facts that tend to contradict a belief in which they are emotionally invested, they do not change their belief. They double down on it, believe it harder, in order to bat the facts away, and, as you say, explain them in a way that allows them to keep the belief.
That is because people need that belief as an emotional crutch. Something else must replace the belief’s emotional usefulness in their pysche, for people to change it.
So yes, I think that you’re quite right: it’s only the weight of the internal logical convictions, growing heavier and heavier (and these days, that weight must become really damn heavy), that will cause loss of faith in the belief. But, another belief must then take its place as the emotional crutch, so the danger is that people will take up some equally false, but emotionally-useful, belief.
I think that, to replace the belief with a rational one, the force and power of the logical arguments *for* the rational one (not to mention, the evidence) must come to be comforting to them: I mean that their emotional need gets fulfilled by feeling the power of the rational and logical belief.
How one can accomplish that with Q-Anon, anti-vaxxers, climate deniers, the deep state, the democrats controlling the weather, Jewish space lasers, and all the other conspiracy theories that give people emotional comfort these days, I could not say.
I am happy again and again I was raised with no religion at all. Far less angst this way.
@^
Weird that you’re notorious for deeply ingrained prejudices. One wonders where they come from absent religious indoctrination.
Information from the APA on countering disinformation -- which is often what we’re dealing with when trying to persuade.
https://www.apa.org/topics/journalism-facts/misinformation-recommendations
I would argue that it is logic that provides the final impetus to change beliefs.
Yabbut you’re a logical person. You’re also ipso facto in a fairly small minority.
Most humans choose or reject [$whatever] according to their most prevalent/recent fee-fees.
I wasn’t even aware of the concept of “religion” until I was a teenager. I did hear about Noah’s Ark and David and Goliath, but not being aware of Christianity or Judaism, I filed that under “ancient stories” like that all stuff about Thor or Zeus or Cú Chulainn or Pele or Coyote. I was also aware of buildings called “churches” which were… some sort of combination community center and graveyard maintenance, I guessed. Never went to one. And the Pilgrims at Plymouth Rock, the Jews in WWII, things like that, but the histories I read were children’s textbooks stripped of religious context, so as far as I knew those were just cultural groups. When I first heard about Christianity, I read the Bible… in the “wrongest” way possible -- start to end rather than piecemeal, lacking any historical or cultural context to fill in the very obvious gaps, noticing how much was wrong with its everything… had I been aware of Lovecraft at the time, I would have called it “Lovecraftian”, as those books were a thing of madness and horror. These “Christians” must be complete monsters. I have since altered my beliefs multiple times regarding the subject as I have learned more, but I can’t imagine what sort of “evidence” would convert me to any religion.
In fact some studies show that non-believers commit crimes at lower rates than others.
I’m not suggesting that you’re doing it here, but I did use to see people making the “no atheists in prison” argument as a sign of atheism being morally superior. Not literally true, of course, but my response to that was that this is very much a “correlation is not causation” situation. I suspect that poverty is one of the major causes of this disparity, as poor people are more likely to commit crimes and more likely to be religious, though that’s probably not the whole picture. Given that in-prison conversions to Christianity or Islam is a thing, it may also be in part that believing in an always-watching skydaddy helps people with self-control issues gain a bit more self-control (or at least feel like they have), though this is even more speculative than the poverty thing. AFAIK, there haven’t been any studies which really explore the cause and effect here.
@9, snowberry, who wrote,
I, on the other hand, took it as a recognition that prisoners who appeared devout and contrite often had their sentences reduced, or received parole sooner. A devout warden or parole board will help someone who is the same faith as they are. There are no atheists in prison because a professed belief in the local deity is to the benefit of the prisoner.
Back to the OP, I’ve found there are two conditions of the people you are talking to. The first condition is when they bring up the subject and are already feeling some doubts about their view. In that case, offering evidence and arguments do seem to have an affect. That is, people who are already questioning their idea are more open to arguments which challenge them.
Then there is the other type, people who are adamant their ideas are correct, regardless of the evidence. I’ve found the best way to get them to consider other possibilities is not to challenge their ideas directly, but to show there may be a different interpretation possible. I had a conversation many years ago with a fundamentalist Christian who wanted to talk about the miracle of the loaves and the fishes. I didn’t say it couldn’t have happened. What I suggested, however, was that it may have been allegorical. That is, the multitude listening to Christ had only a few loaves and fishes of wisdom among them, but the Sermon on the Mount multiplied the wisdom and understanding of the multitude. So the metaphorical loaves and fishes of wisdom were multiplied so that the entire crowd was fed and satiated with the wisdom and beauty of Christianity. I don’t personally believe that, but it offered an alternative explanation which didn’t challenge his worldview.
Now, I don’t know how the fellow I was talking to ended up thinking. But I do know that this alternative approach did start him thinking that maybe, just maybe, some things in the bible were allegories and not fact. I would like to think that he continued to think about this.
There is ample research on human psychology which suggests that when a person’s beliefs are directly challenged, that it makes those beliefs stronger. Claude M. Steele wrote a book about it (although it’s probably already out of date). However, opinions and prejudices can be changed by not directly challenging them, but offering alternative explanations while simultaneously being clear that the subjects original explanation may not be wrong. E.g. An effective retort to someone who says abortion is a sin is to remind them that many pregnancies do not come to term. That is, more pregnancies are aborted by God or nature than by any human agency. While there are responses to this statement which remain in the sphere of religious belief, it can plant the seed of doubt.
Doubt is the defining essence of science, and doubt is the only means of establishing what is real outside of our beliefs and senses.
#6 Sbob
Since you made your comment about me, I can answer you fully: I stated facts that you didn’t like, and supported those claims with citations. By contrast, you became known for making claims supported by citations you didn’t understand, with sentences carefully removed so as to reverse their meaning. But let us not return to that old subject lest you run afoul of your own advice to me: “Picking on commenters who can’t respond is lame”.
___
Back to the actual topic… I still feel mildly startled when I encounter an adult who professes actual belief in a religion, rather than simply going along with the traditions of that religion out of habit. Especially when the person is someone I consider intelligent. The indoctrination must be difficult to shake, but being a complete outsider to it I can’t really figure it out.
Silentbob @#6,
I sent you a private email regarding this comment to the address given when you registered to comment but it was returned. It may be that the email address was incorrect.
Could you please email me at mano.singham@case.edu so that I can re-send the message?
@Holms #11
Well put.