Ep 51: Is Religion Make-Believe? With Neil Van Leeuwen

00:00- I was sort of vilified by the hardcore atheist

00:05as a religious apologist, right?

00:06- And when your book is called "Religion as Make Believe",

00:11I mean, are the Christians out there like,

00:16oh, that's gonna be really cool.

00:17- This works for us, this is gonna be good for us.

00:21(upbeat music)

00:23- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:28- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:29- And you are listening to the "Data Over Dogma" podcast

00:32where we increase public access to the academic study

00:35of the Bible and religion and combat the spread

00:37of misinformation about the same.

00:40How are things today, Dan?

00:42- Well, it's a lovely spring day.

00:44The birds are chirping, the sun is out,

00:47and we're gonna make some people mad.

00:49- What a lovely day as the great poet once said.

00:55All shiny and chrome.

00:58- Okay, so we are very excited today

01:00to welcome Neil Van Lewin to the show

01:04or if I'm Lewin, if you're nasty.

01:06Neil, thank you for being here.

01:08Neil is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience

01:11at Georgia State University in Atlanta, Georgia,

01:15good old hot Atlanta, and how are things today?

01:19Neil?

01:20- Well, it's a beautiful day here.

01:22I'm really happy to be here,

01:23and the sun is shining where I am as well.

01:26So I think those are auspicious signs.

01:28We can exactly take comfort in that.

01:31- Ospicious is such a great word.

01:35I don't think a lot of people who refer to things

01:39as an August body are aware of the relationship

01:42of August to auspicious to divination

01:47based on the flight patterns of birds.

01:50So yes, the success of our endeavors today

01:54have been decreed by the flight patterns of the birds.

01:58We have a little bit of snow on the ground here in Utah,

02:00but we can ignore that for now.

02:02- Yeah, we'll be okay, we'll be.

02:04- And Neil is the author of a new book entitled Religion

02:08as Make Believe, a theory of belief, imagination,

02:12and group identity.

02:14And this is a little bit outside of the beaten path

02:17for our podcast because we're getting

02:19into cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology.

02:24Cognitive science of religion is kind of

02:27the generic title I have for this field of study,

02:30which was a big part of my doctoral dissertation.

02:35And that's I like to bring up from time to time.

02:38But I wonder just because some of our listeners

02:42probably aren't familiar with cognitive science

02:45of religion of evolutionary psychology

02:48when it comes to religion.

02:50Can you tell us a little bit about the field

02:51as you perceive it?

02:52What do you think this approach brings to the table?

02:56What are the main questions this research is trying to ask?

03:00And if you're able to, can you just talk a little bit

03:02about how the idea for your book came about

03:06based on your work in these fields?

03:09So I'll start with cognitive science generally

03:09- Yeah, sure.

03:12in case people aren't familiar with that phrase.

03:14So cognitive science is basically

03:17the more theoretical end of psychology and linguistics.

03:20So it's asking, well, what is the basic nature

03:24of the psychological structures that guide certain behaviors?

03:28Like talking, like watching movies,

03:33like getting in political arguments and so on.

03:36What are the basic structures and processes?

03:38So your experimental psychologists will gather data

03:42to test certain hypotheses.

03:45And you can think of cognitive science

03:47as sort of the backend theory behind,

03:50well, what do the hypotheses even mean, right?

03:53What is a belief?

03:54That's something that I work on.

03:55What is it to imagine an idea?

03:58How is imagining different from belief?

04:00And you start to see that cognitive science

04:03is really a place where philosophical questions

04:06meet psychological data.

04:08And that's the space I've been working in

04:11for quite some time.

04:12The way I got into working in cognitive science of religion,

04:17which is basically investigating the psychological structures

04:20behind religious belief and practice, is as follows,

04:24it kind of got in there in a surprising way.

04:29So I was basically looking at the philosophical question

04:33of what is the difference between believing an idea

04:37and merely imagining it, right?

04:39Like you imagine something for the sake of make-believe play.

04:42In either case, you've got a mental representation

04:44of something.

04:45So just to give a concrete example,

04:47I could believe that there's a lion in the hallway

04:51or I could imagine that there's a lion in the hallway.

04:55What's the difference?

04:56Either way, I'm representing it

04:57as if there's a lion in the hallway.

04:59And so I was developing a theory

05:01of what differentiates what I now call factual belief,

05:05fictional imagining as psychological relations or attitudes.

05:10And it hit me one morning 'cause I grew up

05:12in a very religious context in the Christian-reformed church.

05:15My dad and mom taught at Calvin College.

05:18My dad was an ordained minister.

05:20It struck me one morning,

05:21just sort of out of the blue when I was a postdoc,

05:24that it seemed like a lot of the religious attitudes

05:28of the people around me growing up

05:31and including in my former self,

05:33they were much more like imaginings

05:36than they were like factual beliefs

05:38in terms of their psychological characteristics.

05:42And if that's true, it's hugely important.

05:45So I went from this more purely theoretical

05:49philosophical enterprise of trying

05:52to do this conceptual/theoretical work

05:55of distinguishing, believing from imagining

05:59to investigating a lot of empirical,

06:02psychological research, a lot of research and anthropology,

06:06basically a lot of empirical material

06:09that looks at the nature of religious activity

06:13broadly construed and seeing if it would actually support

06:17this hypothesis that I developed,

06:20namely that a lot of religious beliefs

06:23are kind of sacralized imaginings.

06:26- I think a lot of people are probably bristling right now

06:31because, and you do go through this very methodically

06:35in the book, so I highly recommend that people read it

06:38and sort of to really understand where you're coming from.

06:41But I think a lot of people see their beliefs,

06:46their religious beliefs or what you would call

06:50religious credences as being just as real to them

06:56as their belief that their house is located

07:03on the street that it's on.

07:05And you make a very distinct differentiation

07:08between those two things.

07:10Why don't you talk about how those could be considered

07:14different?

07:15- Yeah, so I basically coined a term of art.

07:19I'm gonna call it religious credence here,

07:21like I do in the book.

07:22And I've been writing about this for almost a decade now.

07:26My first big paper came out in 2014,

07:29in the journal Cognition.

07:31And where I say religious credence is different

07:33than factual belief and it differs from factual belief

07:37in the way that imagining does.

07:39So let's just quickly go over kind of some

07:42of the main differences.

07:43Or actually, let's take one step further back,

07:46just so people can kind of get the notion

07:49of factual belief in their mind.

07:51So factual belief is just the way you relate

07:54to what you take to be knowledge, right?

07:57You could be mistaken about some stuff,

07:58but how things are for you at a basic level in the world,

08:02right?

08:03Like how you relate to the idea that your street is on,

08:06that your house is on Smith Lane,

08:09that apples are fruits, that your name is Dan,

08:12and your name is Dan, and your cohost's name is Dan,

08:15and your cohost's name is Dan.

08:16So all this kind of stuff that you just take

08:20for granted so much that you think about it,

08:22your relation to those ideas is what I call factual belief.

08:26It's one of essentially epistemic confidence

08:30and you act as if the world is just like that.

08:35Whereas with imagining, it's a different map layer

08:39in what I call a two map cognitive structure, right?

08:41So I've got a chair over to the right to me,

08:44you can't see it, but I factually believe

08:46there's a chair in my office, another chair in my office,

08:49but I could fictionally imagine that, say,

08:52a wizard is sitting in the chair, all right?

08:55So what differentiates those two things,

08:59the imagining and the factual belief is,

09:02one, imaginings are largely under voluntary control, right?

09:07Like my factual belief that the chair is in the room,

09:10I couldn't get rid of it just by choosing to.

09:12It's just, that's how it seems to me.

09:15So factual belief is involuntary, right?

09:18You could choose, you could say,

09:20"Hey Neil, I'll give you a million dollars

09:22"to stop factually believing that you have a chair

09:24"in your office, and I wouldn't be able

09:27"to get the million dollars, I could pretend

09:29"to factually believe it, but, you know,

09:31"it's not under voluntary control."

09:33Whereas imagining that's under voluntary control.

09:36I can choose to imagine there's a wizard in the chair,

09:38I can choose not to, and so on.

09:41- I really liked that when I was reading it in the book,

09:43there was something so almost elegant

09:47about that differentiation, the idea that like,

09:49I don't have control over what I factually believe.

09:54I'm like, and you know, you go on later to talk about

09:57how factual beliefs are sort of vulnerable to evidence,

10:02and new evidence can alter a factual belief.

10:05But the fact that I can't,

10:09I can't not believe something that I know or understand

10:13to be a fact is sort of a wonderful differentiation

10:18between that and other ways of believing

10:23or of knowing things.

10:25- Yeah, or other cognitive attitudes more generally.

10:28- That's right, and that becomes a very big idea

10:30in your book, is this idea of cognitive attitudes.

10:34Do you wanna go deeper into that idea?

10:36- Sure, sure.

10:37So cognitive attitude, it's just a philosopher speak

10:41and some psychologists speak this well,

10:43for how it is you relate to or process a given idea.

10:47You can factually believe a given idea,

10:51you can hypothesize a given idea,

10:54you can suppose a given idea,

10:56you can assume a certain idea for the sake of argument.

10:59Those are all different ways of relating to some idea.

11:03And one of the beautiful things about human cognition

11:06is that we have that flexibility

11:09to relate to ideas in different ways.

11:11So this is what philosophers also call

11:13the attitude content distinction, right?

11:16You can have a different attitude toward the same content

11:21or you can have the same attitude

11:23towards a different content and so on.

11:25So when we're talking about these attitudes,

11:27voluntariness versus involontariness is one thing

11:29that really distinguishes imagining from factual belief.

11:35And then what I argue on the basis of various

11:39anthropological evidence and things like that,

11:43just as well as personal anecdotes,

11:46is that at least for a broad range of religious beliefs,

11:50they are adopted in a voluntary way.

11:54That doesn't mean that there's not outside pressures,

11:56but the fact that there is responsiveness

11:59to outside incentives shows that people are often choosing

12:04to have their religious credences.

12:06So what that shows, I argue,

12:09is that the religious credences

12:12with respect to voluntariness versus involontariness,

12:16they're more like the imaginings

12:18than they are like the factual beliefs.

12:20So that's one first important point of differentiation.

12:25And then another one,

12:27this is not the order I go in in the book, but no matter,

12:29you mentioned evidential constraint, right?

12:32So our factual beliefs update in light of evidence

12:36kind of so fast that we don't even realize it.

12:39So if you think that the supermarket is open till nine

12:43and then you see a sign outside the supermarket

12:48that says closing at eight, boom,

12:51your factual belief updates

12:52because you've got some good evidence

12:55that's contrary to it.

12:56And vulnerability to evidence is kind of the flip side

13:01of voluntariness.

13:03The reason factual beliefs are not under voluntary control

13:08is that they're basically at the whims

13:11of the evidence that the world throws at them.

13:14All right, I walk into my office

13:16and if the chair is not there or I might not know what happened

13:19but I stopped actually believing

13:21that there are chairs in my office and so on.

13:24So by way of contrast,

13:28imaginings can be held contrary to the evidence

13:33for as much as you like.

13:34So I wanna imagine that line in the hallway.

13:38There's no evidence that there's a line on the hallway.

13:40I can look in the hallway and not see a line.

13:42I can keep on imagining.

13:43So the imaginings aren't vulnerable to evidence.

13:48And here again, I say that the religious beliefs

13:53are not like factual beliefs.

13:55They're credences.

13:57They're more voluntary, sorry, more free from evidence.

14:02They can be held despite contrary evidence

14:06to a large extent at least.

14:08There's obviously complications here

14:10and I'm sure your listeners are thinking of some

14:14but there's plenty of reason to think

14:16that not only can religious credences

14:19be held contrary to evidence

14:21but sometimes people think of it as a virtue to do so.

14:25- Yeah, I remember seeing one time

14:27a pastor being interviewed and he said

14:30that if the Bible said that one plus one equaled five,

14:35he would accept that over his worldly knowledge

14:40that one plus one equals two.

14:42And I thought that that was an interesting,

14:45it sort of shows the difference between

14:51what you're talking about as a factual belief

14:54and contrasts it with how religious beliefs end up working.

15:00I mean, what is he gonna do

15:01when he has to balance his checkbook?

15:03- Right.

15:04Well, that's something that you talk about,

15:07which is that sort of that two map system

15:10where you've got a sense of the world

15:13and you've got how the material world around you works.

15:17And then this religious idea can be layered

15:22over top of that in a second mapping.

15:26Is that a reasonable way of summarizing what you say?

15:31- And that's very much reasonable.

15:35And it's also true that the two maps function

15:39in different ways.

15:40And I think we were about to bring out

15:42another one of the differences

15:44in terms of how people's minds process the two maps.

15:48All right, so I listened to your podcast

15:51on the Dead Sea Scrolls, which I really love.

15:54So I wanna, let's do a thought experiment,

15:56see if this works, right?

15:58With the pastor you mentioned who says,

16:00"Hey, if the Bible or whatever says one plus one equals five,

16:05I'm going to accept that one plus one equals five."

16:09All right, so let's say that your friend Kip was his name,

16:12right?

16:13Let's say Kip has a big discovery.

16:16There's a missing fragment of the book of Isaiah

16:20and lo and behold, it says one plus one equals five, right?

16:25So we've gotta add one plus one equals five

16:28to the book of Isaiah.

16:29And this pastor is gonna have to accept

16:32that one plus one equals five.

16:34Now here's a question.

16:35Is he really gonna act like that's true all the time

16:38in an all context?

16:40I'm gonna say, probably not.

16:42So he might preach one plus one equals five on Sunday.

16:47He might loudly declare it.

16:49He might make a sign and try to get other people

16:52to say that as well.

16:53But I bet you when he's at home

16:55trying to balance his checkbook,

16:57he goes with the one plus one equals two.

17:00And that was a fanciful example.

17:03I just came up with it.

17:04So hopefully it was entertaining for your audience.

17:07But there's actually a lot of evidence

17:09that one of the other processing differences

17:12between religious credence and factual belief

17:14is that the religious credences do have this characteristic

17:18of being compartmentalized.

17:20So they guide action.

17:22They, you know, if you religiously crede something,

17:26it might guide your action in sacred and symbolic contexts.

17:31But very often it fails to guide action outside that.

17:35And that's very much like, again, imagining.

17:38So when you imagine that there's a lie in in the hallway

17:42or, you know, you imagine that one plus one equals five,

17:46that might guide your behavior,

17:48your expressive behavior, so to speak,

17:51in make-believe settings or in this particular practical

17:55context, but not outside it.

17:57And that's what I call compartmentalization.

17:59Factual beliefs, they are operative all the time

18:03in guiding your behavior, right?

18:05They effectively never turn off.

18:07You might pretend like you don't factually believe something.

18:10But even not in the setting of make-believe play,

18:13say you're pretending that a hard piece of concrete

18:17is a nice, soft bed.

18:18Your factual belief that it's hard

18:21is going to guide how you lie down on it.

18:23You're not just gonna flop down on it, right?

18:25You're gonna kind of stretch out slowly

18:26or something like that.

18:27So in any given practical setting,

18:30your factual beliefs, how you take the world to be,

18:33is gonna be operative in guiding behavior.

18:35They effectively don't have an off switch.

18:38But there's a lot of psychological

18:40and anthropological evidence,

18:41not to mention ordinary phrases like once a week of Christian

18:45that suggest that psychologically religious credences

18:49become inactive when it's not a sacred time or setting.

18:54Again, there's gonna be lots of wrinkles to that story

18:57and I'm happy to go into it.

18:58But just as we get the basic ideas on the table,

19:01I think that's a pretty salient difference.

19:04And it's one that's relevant to how you do

19:06the cognitive science of saying,

19:08how are we gonna classify and theorize the different

19:12mental states and processes related to religious belief?

19:15(upbeat music)

19:17- I think I wanna bring up two examples of ways

19:23I think that bubbles to the surface in the real world.

19:27The first one is something I saw on Twitter yesterday.

19:29Somebody was commenting, their father was some kind

19:33of prominent Christian pastor or apologist

19:35or something like that for the life I can't remember who it is.

19:37But she was saying that when her mom was on the edge

19:41of death in the hospital, her dad did not let her grieve

19:46and said, if you believe in God like you claim to,

19:50you need to start acting like it and not be consumed

19:55with grief about the likely loss of her mother.

20:00And I think that's an example of the father

20:02who's obviously very conditioned to try to let the credences

20:07guide the behavior but knows there's a conflict there.

20:14Trying to, because this is costly signaling,

20:17this is a credibility enhancing display.

20:19This is a way to show my beliefs are so deeply ingrained

20:23in me that they do control my behavior

20:26even when this is a conscious effort

20:29to overcome those behaviors.

20:30And he's trying to require it of his daughter

20:33who's not so convinced that that's necessary,

20:37that that's gonna help her socially.

20:39She just wants to grieve because that's perfectly natural.

20:43And then the other example is famous experiments

20:46that Justin Barrett did with conceptualizing

20:50a non-natural entity where he had a bunch of participants.

20:54They were given short stories about a supercomputer

20:57and Superman and God, little narratives,

21:00and then they let some time pass and then they came back

21:03and asked them questions about the stories.

21:05And as they recalled the details,

21:07they not only more accurately recalled

21:11the more anthropomorphic representations of God

21:14but even filled in gaps in the stories

21:16with thoroughly anthropomorphic representations of God.

21:20But then they did it again,

21:21only this time they had a questionnaire

21:23about their beliefs about God.

21:26And right before they asked them the questions,

21:28they said, "By the way, here's what you said

21:30"you believe about God."

21:32And this was all in corporeal, omnipresent,

21:35omniscient, all this kind of stuff.

21:37And then suddenly the anthropomorphizing went way down

21:40and they concluded that until the theological correctness

21:45switch was on, they were just using

21:47their intuitive conceptualizations of deity

21:49which are far more based on just our understandings

21:53of human beings.

21:54And then when suddenly it was like, "Oh, I have to,"

21:57that context is triggered for theological correctness.

22:01Now they had to override their intuitions with,

22:04this is what I'm supposed to be believing about God.

22:07And so they were suddenly in a situation

22:09where it needed to be on.

22:10So it was very clearly compartmentalized

22:13in that situation.

22:15And there are all kinds of experiments

22:16that have shown this kind of stuff

22:18in all kinds of different areas of what we label religion

22:22which I think is just fascinating.

22:24- Yeah, the Barrett studies are fantastic.

22:26Let me go back to this situation

22:29where the father is telling it was the daughter not to grieve.

22:33I mean, first of all, how tragic is that, right?

22:36I mean, the mother is passing away

22:39and you have this stern message not to grieve.

22:43And so the fact that he knew he needed to say that

22:48does itself subtly reveal

22:51that it's a different sort of cognitive attitude

22:54that he has, right?

22:56Otherwise he just would have been like,

22:58"Why aren't you happy? She's going to heaven."

23:00All right, and I actually have a story about this

23:03from one of my critics.

23:04So if you'll indulge me for a minute, I'll share it.

23:06So Martin Boudry is a Flemish philosopher

23:11who criticized my early papers.

23:13He's a staunch atheist of the more militant variety.

23:17And so he kind of was criticizing my work

23:20'cause he thinks it lets religious people off the hook, right?

23:24So I was sort of vilified by the hardcore atheist

23:28as a religious apologist, right?

23:30Do you follow the twisted logic of that?

23:34- I do, I actually, I'm actually struggling to catch that.

23:38Why does it let them off the hook?

23:43- Bear with me for a second.

23:44- Okay, this is a big, by the way, this is a big divide

23:47in cognitive science of religion,

23:50whether this is helpful for religious believers

23:53or whether this is devastating for religious believers.

23:56It's this kind of scholarship.

23:57- And I'm kind of like, it just paints the nuance

24:00complexity for what it is.

24:01- Yeah, like if it's trying to take sides here.

24:04- If it's motivated by one thing or the other,

24:06then are we, you know, that, then one questions how,

24:11like, how well the science is being done, doesn't it?

24:15- And when your book is called "Religion as Make Believe,"

24:18I mean, right?

24:20It does, are the Christians out there like,

24:23oh, that's gonna be really cool.

24:25- This is, this works for us.

24:27This is gonna be good for us.

24:29- Well, so let me first deal with the atheists

24:34that my position has managed to piss off.

24:38- Okay.

24:39- So the line of reasoning goes like,

24:43or the sort of twisted psychological arrival at this point

24:46goes something like this.

24:48If you're a hardcore atheist, it's a lot easier

24:52to vilify religious people.

24:54If you portray them as simply and straightforwardly,

24:57factually believing that there was a talking snake

25:00in the garden of Eden, that the sun stopped,

25:03that a virgin had a baby.

25:05- That is delusion.

25:07- Yeah, it's straight up delusion.

25:09- Wow, if someone just straightforwardly thinks

25:12that those things are true, they must be just irrational,

25:15delusional, foaming at the mouth.

25:18And if your motivation is to basically portray

25:22how bad religion is, it's kind of nice to have the idea

25:26that there's straightforward factual belief

25:29in these entities.

25:30And here comes Van Lowen, the philosopher

25:33whose son of an ordained minister saying,

25:35no, they're religious credences.

25:37They're not factual belief.

25:39That sort of deprives them of a weapon in their arsenal.

25:44Right, so even though I'm not, I don't have any, you know,

25:47acts to grind in defending religion, you know,

25:50I mean, does good things for some people,

25:52obviously does bad things for other people.

25:54And it's a massively complicated empirical question.

25:57But I was depriving them of a tool in their arsenal.

26:02And so that led to certain attacks,

26:04including one by Martin Boudry and Jerry Coyne.

26:08Okay, and that was published in the journal,

26:10philosophical psychology in 2016.

26:12Well, I actually lived in Belgium for a year

26:14and I got to know Martin personally.

26:16And we're actually friends right now,

26:19but he told me a very interesting story

26:21that actually sort of supports my distinction.

26:24So he grew up in a staunch Catholic environment.

26:29Okay.

26:30And he was playing with his little sister one day.

26:34I think I'm getting the story, right?

26:35Martin can chime in in comments or whatever if he ever hears this.

26:39He's playing with his little sister one day.

26:41And his sister got her head stuck between the,

26:45I guess the spindles of a stairway banister.

26:49I don't know if those things are called spindles,

26:51but you know, the sort of spokes that come down.

26:54He was there with his little sister and his grandmother.

26:57And he was very young.

26:59And his grandmother, of course, starts freaking out.

27:02How are we going to get her head out?

27:04She's looking like she's going to choke.

27:06And Martin, you know, a little bit of a literal-minded guy

27:10and says, "Well, it's okay.

27:12She'll go to heaven."

27:13Yeah.

27:14Right?

27:15And so he's like, "What's the problem?

27:17She's going to paradise."

27:19And so that story does a few things.

27:23One, it illustrates the flexibility

27:27of attitude and content, right?

27:29Because most people and the grandmother's, you know,

27:34fearful reaction and trying to get the head out

27:39shows that she factually believed that death is death.

27:43Even if she religiously created

27:45that there's this eternal afterlife.

27:47Whereas Martin, who's, I don't know,

27:49maybe five or something at the time,

27:51he factually believed that there was this afterlife, right?

27:55And Martin told me, this is over dinner,

27:58he says, "When I said to my grandmother afterwards,

28:02why were you afraid she was just going to go to heaven?

28:04That the grandmother kind of smiled at him

28:07as if he were naive." Right?

28:09As in, this is a charming attitude to take.

28:13So she didn't want to correct him,

28:15but it's sort of like, you know,

28:17the way he would react to a kid

28:19who actually thought that Santa Claus

28:22had come down the chimney.

28:23Right.

28:24So this is, again, when we're talking about, you know,

28:24Right.

28:28death and afterlife, you often see people talking one way

28:35but acting and fearing a different way.

28:38Yeah.

28:38It would be a horrifying thing for an adult to say,

28:41why are we worried about this child stuck in the thing?

28:45If they die, they'd just go to heaven.

28:46Like if an adult said that same thing,

28:50it wouldn't be charming, it would be terrifying

28:54and grounds for, you know, removal of the child

28:57from the home or whatever, you know?

28:59Yeah.

29:00You call it child services.

29:01Exactly.

29:03So I think, I think that's an excellent demonstration

29:06of sort of your idea that there are these multiple,

29:09these multiple things in operation at the same time

29:14because it's not like grandma didn't also have

29:19the religious credence that if the child were to die,

29:22she would go to heaven, theoretically.

29:26Yeah.

29:27So how I'm curious, how have people responded to this?

29:31I mean, when you say this, when I think about

29:33how I would have reacted to this approach

29:38when I was a deep believer, and mind you,

29:41I was a teenager, so I'm not sure that my cognition,

29:44you know, my cognitive abilities would have been

29:46excellent at receiving something like this,

29:49but I imagine I would have bristled quite hard at this.

29:51Yeah.

29:53Well, in terms of reception, it's been mostly positive

29:58so far.

29:59I mean, it's a newest book,

30:00so not that many people have read it that far,

30:02but no hate mail so far.

30:04Wait until our listeners get their hands on it.

30:09Yeah, but I will say, I've shared my ideas

30:14with people who are currently devoutly religious.

30:18I spoke at a seminar yesterday evening at Georgia Tech

30:23up the street from Georgia State,

30:27and a few of the students said, well, yeah,

30:30I'm devout Catholic, I'm a devout member

30:33of the Vineyard Church, I'm a devout evangelical,

30:36and they weren't so hostile to the idea.

30:39They were kind of entertaining it.

30:41I think a couple of them were like, yeah,

30:43the title is a bit aggressive, but in terms of,

30:47and I said, hey, look, I wanted to catch people's attention,

30:50and it does capture the idea of the book,

30:53but they weren't really kind of angry

30:57that I had mischaracterized their psychology.

31:01They were kind of more intrigued, right?

31:04So in terms of people saying

31:07that I'm getting religious psychology wrong,

31:10it's mostly secular academics who are saying that,

31:14and not the religious people themselves, right?

31:17So it's not like they clap their hands necessarily

31:20and say, you nailed it van, though, and our religious beliefs

31:24are like imaginings, but they don't bristle at it so much either.

31:29Right, and partly that has to do with how I go

31:31about presenting it, I don't present things

31:35in a inflammatory way, or at least I try not to.

31:37And then, but I also think that for a lot

31:41of religious believers, there is some level of awareness

31:45that their religious beliefs don't operate

31:48like ordinary factual beliefs, and that's something

31:52that people often wrestle with, especially if they think

31:56that they should factually believe

31:58their religious stories and doctrines, right?

32:01So it might be even like, yeah, my work is in some ways

32:06a nice pressure valve for a normative pressure

32:13to have more epistemic confidence

32:15than they actually do in their religious stories and doctrines.

32:19I mean, especially in a religious tradition, right?

32:22I mean, a Christian tradition where there's this

32:27not just enormous pressure to go to church on Sundays,

32:30but to have belief, right?

32:34- And in the book you talk about, there's pressure

32:36not just to have a belief, but your belief isn't enough yet.

32:40You have to work harder, you have to delve deeper,

32:43you have to believe more, right?

32:45There's a lot of pressure there.

32:47- And I think part of that stems from the recognition

32:50that there's something, that this belief

32:52is a little more fleeting, this is not something

32:56that is as embedded in our cognition as gravity,

33:01that if we trip, we're gonna fall.

33:03And so it's the, I think people are constantly,

33:08particularly within strict religious traditions,

33:10trying to use how deeply embedded your beliefs are

33:14as a way of signaling to others that I'm one of the real ones.

33:19I am faithful to the group's ideals

33:23and all of my existences informed by those ideals.

33:28And so it functions very much to curate one's standing

33:32within a social identity.

33:34And I wanted to ask, when you talked about

33:39the militant atheist position

33:42that religious belief is delusion,

33:46which is a big part of other social identities,

33:51you're not saying that cretances are entirely exclusive

33:54to religious belief.

33:57These are things, anywhere there are strong social identities

34:01at work, there is potential for this kind of stuff

34:04to come up as identity markers

34:08and to be used that way.

34:11- Yeah, yeah, I'd love to talk about that for a little bit

34:16because going back to the attitude content distinction,

34:20we can see that, okay, once we've identified

34:25what this attitude of religious creams is,

34:26and basically it's imagining plus sacred values

34:29and group identity, that's the snapshot formula.

34:32How is religious creams different from factual belief?

34:36Factual beliefs are your ordinary,

34:38how you take the world to be religious creams

34:40is imagining plus group identity and sacred value.

34:43So you can have that attitude in relation

34:48to all sorts of different things, right?

34:52In ways that might constitute your group identity.

34:55So in chapter six, I developed this notion,

34:57sort of more general notion that I call groupish belief,

35:01where groupish beliefs are those that partly explain

35:06what group identity you have.

35:08And it's like religious creams is a species

35:11of groupish belief because it works

35:14as a sort of internal identity badge.

35:17Well, your badge can have different insignia on it.

35:21Let's take a by now, hopefully by now,

35:23some comical example, right?

35:26Like people's attitudes towards surgical masks

35:31during the pandemic, right?

35:33Now it should be something that you just have

35:36the factual beliefs that are best evidenced, right?

35:40And sure, the evidence was ambiguous.

35:42So you should have maybe a sort of measured

35:44factual belief or your confidence or something like that.

35:47Well, the idea that face masks work

35:50or that they don't work, right,

35:52became a sort of tribal identity marker, right?

35:56So people would have something like an ideological creams.

36:00So something that's not very responsive to evidence

36:03toward the proposition that face masks don't work, right?

36:08And then on the other side of the divide,

36:11someone might have an ideological creams

36:12toward the proposition that face masks do work.

36:16So, I mean, that's again, a comical example in itself.

36:21I mean, you might think it's a tragic example

36:23and perhaps both claims are right

36:26of how humans and we're weird creatures.

36:30I mean, we're really weird that we can do this.

36:32We can have sacralizing attitudes

36:35toward all sorts of stuff.

36:38So I focus on the religious case

36:41because I think that's kind of the,

36:43in a sense, the purest and cleanest example

36:46of being able to take a sacralizing attitude

36:50of religious credence toward strange

36:54and interesting and supernatural propositions.

36:57I mean, but especially of lately

36:59in the polarized political context in which we live,

37:03people end up taking ideological credence

37:08or religious credence type attitudes

37:10towards propositions having to do with whether guns

37:15prevent crime or cause more crimes,

37:18whether trans women are women or not women

37:23towards whether face masks are effective,

37:26towards whether vaccines and so on cause autism

37:31and things like that.

37:33So whenever you see these sort of entrenched positions

37:38where people appear loath, which one, identify in groups,

37:43where people are loath to update their beliefs

37:46in light of evidence and where you get a lot of signaling,

37:50which is a form of representational behavior,

37:52it's a good hypothesis that something like an attitude

37:57of religious credence is at play, right?

38:00And there's a lesson there

38:02and I don't know how to solve this problem,

38:04but if someone has a religious credence,

38:07say that vaccines cause autism, right?

38:10Just take that, for example.

38:12You can rub their noses in evidence

38:16till you pass out and it's not gonna do anything, right?

38:21If they had a factual belief to that effect,

38:24they might just say, "Oh, oh, is it an aware

38:26"or that the research has been updated?"

38:28Oh, thanks for telling me, right?

38:30But so one of the things that I think is value

38:35about my framework is that it gives us the expressive power

38:39to distinguish different kinds of believing,

38:43if we'll use believing in that broader way,

38:47even when it concerns the same content.

38:51And I think that's hopefully useful for researchers,

38:54but also people themselves for introspecting,

38:57well, what's actually going on with me

38:59when I quote, unquote, believe such and such a proposition?

39:04- This is actually something that I wanted to get to

39:11is the practical implications of this,

39:14because it's one thing to be able to acknowledge,

39:18hey, this is a credence, this is where this is coming from,

39:21but a lot of these credence and you highlighted

39:24a handful of them, they become identity markers

39:28and then they become dangerous, they cost lives.

39:32I think they estimated 232,000 plus people's lives

39:37could have been saved if they had chosen to be vaccinated.

39:40And just yesterday, I saw somebody on Twitter,

39:44someone with a large following say,

39:47anybody out there who didn't get the vaccine

39:50regretting it yet, and thousands of responses say,

39:53"Nope, nope, nope, nope."

39:55And it was like, well, you can't ask the people

39:57who probably regretted it the most anymore

40:00because they passed away.

40:03And so this is, I think in my work

40:07in the cognitive science of religion,

40:09not just with religion, but across the board,

40:12these identity markers that then get taken up

40:14as these credences in these battles

40:17are sitting at the root of a lot of our social ills today.

40:22And like Harvey Whitehouse wrote a wonderful book,

40:27The Ritual Animal that in part is discussing,

40:30hey, here's some things we can think about

40:33to try to engage this.

40:36What do you talk about in the book

40:37as kind of the implications, the practical implications

40:40of your theoretical framework?

40:42- Well, I think it's tough.

40:45I don't really go into practical implications

40:48that much in the book because I think it's a very difficult

40:53thing to just talk people out of their ideological credences

40:58even if they're harmful to others.

40:59But I think there's one that I can share now

41:02that I've kind of put into practice in my own life.

41:06And it has to do with how we use the word believe.

41:10And there's a, let me just give the audience

41:15a little bit of background.

41:16There's a kind of big difference

41:18in terms of how philosophers use the word believe

41:21and how lay people tend to use the word believe.

41:24So philosophers have come to use the word believe

41:26kind of for what I talk about as factual belief.

41:29So philosophers will say things like,

41:31Fred has the belief that there is beer in the refrigerator,

41:35which is kind of like, that's a funny way of talking.

41:37Most people would say Fred thinks there's beer

41:39in the refrigerator, right?

41:40- Okay.

41:41So, but given kind of the historical baggage

41:45with the word believe,

41:47it tends to be a sort of group identity marker, right?

41:50And that's why you see the word believe

41:53when people recite creeds.

41:55And so it sort of like believe

41:59and there's semantic flexibility here

42:01and there's various uses and so on.

42:04But one very common use of believe

42:06is to show your group identity, right?

42:10So if you say, you know, in this house,

42:13we believe in science.

42:15Okay, it's doing more than just saying,

42:17well, I think the products of scientific investigation

42:22give us a good guide to how the world is.

42:24Notice I use the word think there, right?

42:27And it feels less aggressive.

42:29So here's the kind of practical upshot

42:32of that I want to share that is maybe useful

42:36for talking to people who are kind of indifferent

42:41in groups from you, right?

42:42Religious versus not religious.

42:44So when people ask me, you know, if I believe in God,

42:49I don't say, I don't believe in God, right?

42:52Disbelieve in God.

42:53I say, well, I just don't think that there is a God, right?

42:57And even when I say this to people who are atheists,

43:02it comes off as less aggressive, right?

43:05'Cause I'm reporting my factual beliefs.

43:07I'm not saying, hey, I'm opposed to what you are.

43:11And my identity is opposed to what you are.

43:15But I'm just reporting my factual beliefs in as honest a way

43:19as I can.

43:20So, and I think we should do the same thing

43:25for when it comes to other ideological stuff, right?

43:28Like I think global, anthropogenic,

43:29global warming is a happening, right?

43:32And if you're talking to someone you disagree with

43:35and you say, well, I think on the basis of a lot of evidence

43:38that's such and such, it has less of that identity juice

43:42and it can be more productive.

43:45Even though it's less emotional,

43:48I mean, maybe because it's less emotional,

43:51it can be more productive for engaging in honest dialogue

43:55about things.

43:56So, one of those tweaks, you're gonna, when you hear someone

44:00saying, well, I believe in the Bible, not in science,

44:05the natural reaction, say, if you're like a secular liberal

44:09like I am, is to come back with, well, I believe in the science.

44:13But I think a more productive thing to say would be,

44:16well, I think science has given us a lot of accurate

44:20descriptions of how the world is, right?

44:22And then that'll invite a different kind of dialogue

44:27from the, the, the believey talk.

44:30- I mean, I think one of the things that you're talking about

44:32that I think is so useful is this, is the idea of somehow

44:36trying to decouple a practical conversation

44:41from the identity ideas.

44:44So like, what I take from what you're saying,

44:48and correct me if I'm wrong, please,

44:49but what I take from that is like,

44:52if you can use your language to separate,

44:55to, to, to extract the, the, the, the sort of tribal elements

45:00of it out of the conversation,

45:04you're gonna have a much more productive conversation.

45:06If you can say, this isn't about who you are versus who I am,

45:10but rather let's actually just tease out ideas

45:14and let those ideas sort of talk to each other.

45:17We're gonna be in a, in better shape.

45:19We're gonna be able to avoid some of the pitfalls

45:21that the credences can, can give us.

45:24- Yeah, I think, I think that's right.

45:26Or that'll be one of my, one of my hopes for the book.

45:29And, and then if since we're sticking on,

45:31on the practical applications for now,

45:35I'm, I unfortunately don't think I have any sort of cure

45:38for the social ills that, that stem from ideological credence.

45:42But I, I do hope that my framework can help people

45:46in their own personal reflection and maybe alleviate

45:50some of the pressure to, quote, unquote, believe

45:53and say, hey, well, look, maybe it's just the case

45:56that I have a religious credence

45:58that Jesus rose from the dead and not a factual belief.

46:00And, and that's, that's okay, right?

46:04That's, that's gonna be what, what faith is for me.

46:07And I think that might, that sort of self honesty

46:10might, might be a healthy thing to realize.

46:15- Now, I know that it's, it's difficult to convince people

46:17to think more critically about themselves.

46:19It's pretty easy to think critically about other people.

46:22But we have, we have a hard time thinking critically

46:24about ourselves, particularly in public discourse,

46:26the kind you see on social media and, and in a lot

46:29of the media and, you know, I make my living trying

46:32to engage a lot of what's going on in, in that discourse.

46:37And one of the, the issues is that there's, there's,

46:40an awful lot of attempts to one up the other side.

46:43Like even in the way I talk about how the Bible develops,

46:46I talk about ratcheting up rhetoric about, you know,

46:51the, the majesty and sovereignty of our God

46:54over and against your other God.

46:56And, at least within the, my religious tradition,

47:01the Latter-day Saint tradition, there's,

47:05there is a lot of social capital in one up being even,

47:09even claims to belief where when people testify,

47:12share their, their testimony, it is, I know.

47:16And they will even go into detail about how they are

47:19convinced factually about these kinds of things.

47:24And, and there's, there are a lot of rhetorical flourishes

47:27with every fiber of my being, I know and things like that.

47:31And, and we see that in some of the dialogue as well.

47:34It's not so much well, I, I think this about vaccines,

47:37'cause that's not going to be as rhetorically powerful.

47:41But you have a lot of attempts to come over the top

47:43with, well, I know, or this is just the way things are.

47:47And, and I think that's, that's wonderful counsel for,

47:51for everybody on all sides of this to have a coke

47:55and a smile and think a little more self critically

47:59and try to engage, not to defeat the other side,

48:03but to, to try to offer your perspectives in a way

48:08that can be accepted, you know, in the spirit

48:11that they're given rather than in anticipation of,

48:14of somebody trying to take a swing back.

48:18Which is, and I'll, and I'm pointing at myself first,

48:22not an easy thing to do.

48:24- Yeah, but it's, it's relieving, right?

48:28- Yeah.

48:29- Kind of, it's like a big weight off your shoulder.

48:32- Yeah.

48:33- It is an interesting, almost irony that while the,

48:38what the category that you call factual belief,

48:41while that's, I don't want to say more real,

48:45it's, it, it operates differently and is sort of impenetrable

48:50unless new evidence comes to light.

48:52There, the, the religious credences or ideological credences

48:58are more incalcitrant.

49:00They're more, they, they, they can lodge themselves

49:02so firmly in a person and, and are vulnerable to almost nothing.

49:09And if, that feels, that, that feels counterintuitive to me.

49:14- Yeah, it's, if the, sorry,

49:15if the religious beliefs are, are, are, are,

49:18as you say, closer to imaginings.

49:20It's, it's, it's interesting that they are so much harder

49:24to, to, to puncture or to, or to even allow a question.

49:29- Yeah, well, the way I would put it is,

49:32is the psychological levers are, are just very different.

49:37Okay, so it's, it's, in, in a sense, as you, as you're pointing out,

49:42it's, it's very easy to change people's factual beliefs.

49:45You just show them some contrary evidence and, and they, they update things.

49:49Whereas the, kind of what, what sociologists have found when,

49:54when people leave cults, it's sort of like you have to leave the cult, right?

50:01And so because, in a sense, because the motivation for holding religious credences

50:08is belonging to a certain group, and it's sort of like,

50:12that's what's hanging over your head.

50:13If you don't at least profess what you religiously creed,

50:18then it's kind of like you're stuck with them for as long as you're stuck,

50:23as, as, for as long as you choose to, or maybe are even forced to,

50:27remain in a certain religious ingroup, right?

50:31So when, when people do de-convert, often what you see is people will certainly lose

50:36their religious credences when they, when they de-convert,

50:40but it'll go by way of changing social groups first and then,

50:45and then dropping their religious credences, right?

50:48And so, for example, if you, if you look at what people say when they leave the vineyard

50:56church is they, you know, found maybe that there was a certain kind of social isolation

51:03that was attending being in the vineyard church,

51:06or they'll cite the immoral behavior of the pastors and elders.

51:10And I'm, I'm referring here to another ethnography of the vineyard by an anthropologist

51:16named John Bieleski.

51:18So the, the levers for adopting, the psychological levers for adopting

51:24and getting rid of religious credences appear to be much more kind of social motivations

51:31rather than evidence and logic and straightforward reasoning and so on.

51:37So I guess I don't, for me, I'm just kind of so used to thinking that way.

51:43I didn't, it doesn't surprise me to see that, but, but I think,

51:46I think the contrast is, is, is pretty striking once you, once you think about it.

51:51I think there are a lot of folks, there's, there's a community on social media.

51:56They generally refer to themselves as deconstructionist community is a group of people,

52:01the formerly religious who are trying to weed out of their cognition,

52:06the, the detritus of what, what they were conditioned to accept as, as a credence.

52:13And, and so I think a book like this can be incredibly helpful in helping them understand

52:18the mechanism of how these things get in there and, and hopefully can help give people

52:23the tools to more effectively and efficiently go through and, and, and weed them out.

52:29And you, your discussion about, about staying with credences as long as you're in the,

52:37with the in group makes me think of examples where the interests of the group change.

52:44And so the credences then change. And the one that springs immediately to mind is how in the 90s,

52:49I can very clearly recall a specific group of people saying that a president who cheats

52:54on his wife will cheat on his country.

52:57And the same group of people is now convinced with every fiber of their being that an unfaithful

53:06president is not a big deal because you're choosing a leader, not a pastor.

53:11And, and I think that was, that was a kind of credence that had to kind of quietly get

53:18put out to pasture while another one was trotted in, because the, the group's attempts to

53:24structure power and values and boundaries had to change because of circumstances.

53:29So I, I think the dynamic of, of the interplay of, of the identity politics and, and the

53:35credences and the access to power and resources is, is such a fascinating feature of, of all

53:40these things that are going on.

53:42Yeah, it's shocking how quick that one changed.

53:45Well, I mean, it says to me that there's like an overarching credence, right?

53:49There's, there's a, there's a super seeding credence that's more important than, you know,

53:54these individual things. Whatever that is, I wouldn't even venture to know.

53:59Yeah, yeah, there is, I mean, it's, it's worth pointing out that, you know, with respect

54:06to a big picture credences of your in-group, those are, are very much fixed.

54:13But with respect to the, the more detailed ones, there's a lot of creativity and, and

54:19making up and, and so on and so forth.

54:22Like I was at the gym the other day and I saw this, this, what looked like a personal

54:28trainer with a sweatshirt on that said something like God is a personal trainer.

54:34Right. And you can kind of see how, you can kind of see how you might want to think

54:39of God in that way.

54:40But there, there really is a certain amount of creative flexibility.

54:45And, and what I call in my earlier work, free elaboration, when it comes to how people

54:52imagine God, right? And so I think that's, that's kind of supportive of, of, of my

54:57position, but, but still consistent with the ideas that, you know, for, for the, the

55:04group defining religious credences.

55:07There's, they're more doctrinal and dogmatic and, and hard to get rid of unless you, unless

55:12you leave the group.

55:13Well.

55:14Let me say one more thing.

55:15Yeah.

55:16Dive in, man.

55:17If I can about, about these, these deconstructionists, because I think in a way that, that is a group

55:22that I would like to speak to, I think one of the hard things about relieving a, leaving

55:29a religion, that was a Freudian slip.

55:32One, one of the hard things about leaving a religion is that even if you kind of see clearly

55:40that the religious credences or the stories and doctrines are not for you, I think the

55:46emotional tendencies tend to persist.

55:49Right. And I think that's really one of the more powerful things about religious credences.

55:56So, so some people tell me, look, religious beliefs are factual beliefs because they're

56:00so serious, people must straightforwardly believe them.

56:03And my response to that is, well, you just underestimate the power of imagination.

56:08Because if you have an imaginative credence type relation to a certain story and doctrine,

56:15and you rehearse that every Sunday, week after week after week, it's going to inculcate certain

56:21emotional tendencies in you that make you bond to and that make you similar to your in-group

56:27members, and that are going to stick with you, well, after you leave the church, right?

56:34I mean, I grew up in a Calvinist context, and even when I was a kid, the doctrine of

56:40original sin didn't seem that plausible to me, right? But I created it because that's

56:46what I've supposed to. But I think in terms of, you know, like talking to my therapist,

56:51all these many years later, right, I can sort of see how this doctrine of original sin,

56:58it sort of shapes how I feel about myself in ways that, well, frankly, I wish it wouldn't.

57:06But the important thing is, yeah, religious credences, they're not near imaginings like

57:13you play make-believe that you're a robber for ten minutes, and then it goes away,

57:17and you're not emotionally changed by that. The persistence with which we play the religious

57:22game of make-believe, it really does shape our own emotional tendencies.

57:26And I think the social function of that is to bond us to the in-group, but the result

57:32of that is that the emotional tendencies don't go away even when the credences are still there.

57:38And that's just a sign of how effective the make-believe game actually is.

57:45I love that topic, and here's the main thing that I'm going to do.

57:50I like to do a mean thing at the end of every episode, and this one's a mean thing.

57:54I want to talk to you more about that idea of these remaining psychological and sort

58:05of emotional things that sort of track with people even after they leave religion.

58:10But we're going to do it in the patrons only after party.

58:15So for now, we're going to leave the main recording, and thank you so much, Neil,

58:25for joining us today.

58:27The book is, and we'll hold up our books.

58:32I have my PDF of the book on my screen, so I'll look at an engineer.

58:38Yeah, exactly, but yes, religion is make-believe, Neil, Vinley, and thank you so much for joining us today.

58:46I'm sure a lot of people will have a lot to chew on.

58:50Yeah.

58:51I assume the book is just available sort of out in the world wherever you get fine books of this sort.

58:57Yeah, let me say a word about that.

58:59It's available on Amazon.com, Bardens and Noble.

59:04I don't think it's in that many bookstores, but easily findable online.

59:09Harvard University Press's website, that's the press that published it.

59:13I will say it's only in hardcover at the moment.

59:18So it's a little bit pricey, but I like to encourage people to recommend it to their local public library,

59:25along with whatever other books that they hear about on your podcast.

59:29And that'll be a way of accessing it without so much cost and then also a fun way of engaging with the local public library.

59:37So encourage your listeners to do that, and I would love to hear from people feedback on what they think.

59:46Do you want to give people a way to give you their feedback?

59:50Sure, well, I'll say my email address is easily findable if you just Google me and I'm happy to hear from people.

59:58Okay, excellent.

59:59Well, thank you so much for joining us.

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60:34Bye, everybody.

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