Glen Davis

I stum­bled across a link to an arti­cle by renowned athe­ist Richard Dawkins titled What Use is Reli­gion?.

With a title like that, how could I not read it?

I was dis­ap­point­ed. Dawkins is a skilled essayist–even though I usu­al­ly dis­agree with him I enjoy his writ­ing style. He throws in the most fas­ci­nat­ing illus­tra­tions, and his log­ic is engag­ing.

This arti­cle, how­ev­er, fell flat.

The key para­graph:

Nat­ur­al selec­tion builds child brains with a ten­den­cy to believe what­ev­er their par­ents and trib­al elders tell them. And this very qual­i­ty auto­mat­i­cal­ly makes them vul­ner­a­ble to infec­tion by mind virus­es. For excel­lent sur­vival rea­sons, child brains need to trust par­ents and trust elders whom their par­ents tell them to trust. An auto­mat­ic con­se­quence is that the “truster” has no way of dis­tin­guish­ing good advice from bad. The child can­not tell that “If you swim in the riv­er you’ll be eat­en by croc­o­diles” is good advice but “If you don’t sac­ri­fice a goat at the time of the full moon, the crops will fail” is bad advice. They both sound the same. Both are advice from a trust­ed source, and both are deliv­ered with a solemn earnest­ness that com­mands respect and demands obe­di­ence.

So reli­gious faith is a byprod­uct of child­hood naivete?

The prob­lem with his argu­ment is that it does­n’t explain why so many adults con­tin­ue to believe this spe­cif­ic “bad advice” received in child­hood.

After all, we reject both spe­cif­ic mytholo­gies (San­ta Claus) and spe­cif­ic beliefs (bad peo­ple always have bad things hap­pen to them). Why then do so many keep believ­ing in God (espe­cial­ly so many smart ones) if it’s just anoth­er piece of bad advice?

Also, I’m not sure his the­o­ry could account for adult con­verts from athe­ism.

His argu­ment, intrigu­ing though it is, does­n’t hold water.

Dawkins hatred of reli­gion is fair­ly well known, and has always inter­est­ed me. It’s one thing to not be reli­gious, it’s anoth­er thing to hate reli­gion utter­ly.

That’s why I was struck by this anec­dote:

I have nev­er for­got­ten a hor­ri­fy­ing ser­mon, preached in my school chapel when I was lit­tle. It was hor­ri­fy­ing in ret­ro­spect: at the time, my child brain accept­ed it as intend­ed by the preach­er. He told the sto­ry of a squad of sol­diers, drilling beside a rail­way line. At a crit­i­cal moment, the drill sergeant’s atten­tion was dis­tract­ed, and he failed to give the order to halt. The sol­diers were so well schooled to obey orders with­out ques­tion that they car­ried on march­ing, right into the path of an oncom­ing train. Now, of course, I don’t believe the sto­ry now, but I did when I was nine. The point is that the preach­er wished us chil­dren to regard as a virtue the sol­diers’ slav­ish and unques­tion­ing obe­di­ence to an order, how­ev­er pre­pos­ter­ous.

I don’t know Dawkins, but I can’t help but won­der if that sto­ry (and oth­ers like it) help account for his zeal­ous athe­is­tic con­vic­tions.

While try­ing to explain away adult beliefs via child­hood expe­ri­ences, it seems that Dawkins inad­ver­tent­ly does the same to him­self.

“The sci­en­tif­ic mind at such times does not try to think up pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures. Rather it says: Yipes.” (The Straight Dope)

Inter­est­ing com­par­i­son of the Amer­i­can and Euro­pean work eth­ic. If that arti­cle inter­ests you, also take a look at our ear­li­er Reli­gion and Eco­nom­ic Growth Linked. (hat tip: OxBlog)