Believers Read online

  Believers

  FAITH IN HUMAN NATURE

  Melvin Konner, MD

  To

  Rabbi Emanuel Feldman,

  The Reverend Dr. James M. Gustafson,

  and

  Professor Ann Cale Kruger,

  believers

  Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

  — Karl Marx, introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, 1844

  I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world . . . On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.— Let each man hope & believe what he can.

  — Charles Darwin, letter to Rev. Asa Gray, May 22, 1860

  The human religious impulse does seem very difficult to wipe out, which causes me a certain amount of grief. Clearly religion has extreme tenacity.

  — Richard Dawkins, BBC Two Horizon program, April 17, 2005

  Contents

  Introduction

  1.Encounters

  2.Varieties

  3.Elementary Forms

  4.The God Map

  5.Harvesting Faith

  6.Convergences

  7.Good to Think?

  8.The Voice of the Child

  9.Awe Evolving

  10.Goodness!

  11.If Not Religion, What?

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Appendix: For Further Reading

  Notes

  Index

  Introduction

  Tragedies dominate the news, often man-made, enough to fill our lives if we look. But for most people, tragedy finds them. Even in the developed world, tragedy seems to visit more now than it once did. And often, the men who bring it home to us say they are motivated by faith.

  Some use faith as an excuse, but for now let’s take them at their word: faith is one of their motives. In Africa, Muslims and Christians build rogue armies that murder and rape on a large scale; in the Middle East, fanatical Jews desecrate Muslims’ graves and burn down homes with families inside; in the United States, violent Christians murder doctors who perform abortions; in Burma, Buddhists brutalize Muslims; in India, Hindus torment Muslims; and in many countries, Muslims murder “unbelievers” in God’s name.

  But most “unbelievers” believe; they share the same God with their attackers. They must die not only because they are, say, Christians or Muslims but because they cross themselves with a different number of fingers or keep the feast of a different ancient imam. Theologians may say all of humankind is one, but extremists split hairs and murder “infidels,” thinking they are doing right. They pray for wider war between faiths—as soon as enough deluded moderates see the light.

  None of this is new. In fact, killing in the name of faith is less common today, when you consider human numbers. For much of our past, it was the rule, not the exception. It is how major religions became major—a long clash of “civilizations,” war after war between armies moved by the conviction that their beliefs were solely true. But of all the different kinds of mutually exclusive belief, only one can be true—at most. Most people of faith accept the fact that billions don’t share their most important commitments. Each of the largest religions is a fraction of humanity. Most adapt.

  Too bad, you won’t find salvation in Christ.

  Sorry, you won’t be reborn as a higher being or escape the cycle of rebirth.

  Pity you won’t be absolved of your sins before you die and are punished forever.

  You won’t get credit for following God’s 613 commandments.

  You’ll never know the precious sound of one hand clapping.

  I can help you get the truth, and it will save you; if you don’t get it, too bad for you.

  Not,

  If you don’t, I’ll kill you.

  This letting people be is not just part of civilization; it’s the heart of it: freedom of thought includes freedom of faith, an ability to practice one’s observances, or none—a cosmopolitan acceptance. As an adjective, “cosmopolitan” means “open to those who are different”; as a noun, “a citizen of the world.” Cosmopolitan civilization—humanity’s greatest invention—is higher because it is wider. “Clash of civilizations” is an oxymoron. What we face is a clash between civilization and something else. Something that hates and fears civilization. Something that we can be confident—for the first time in history—will lose its futile battle against the future, against our vast humane majority.

  But most of that majority are people of faith—people whose faith leads them to build, not destroy; help, not hurt; thank, not rage. People who are uncertain about the future, but whose faith helps them to go forward: to raise their children; to come to each other’s aid; to wake up every morning and embrace, or at least face, a new day. Yet people with no religious faith are growing in numbers, and that’s fine. In northern Europe, conventional religion is now a minority culture, although spirituality is not. Russia and China, whose generations of Communism repressed religious adherence, still have religion, although conventional believers are probably a minority. Even the US, long the most religious advanced country, is starting to catch up to Europe.

  The rise of the “Nones”—those who check “none of the above” when asked about religion—is the strongest trend in American religious life. A generation ago, millions of dropouts from conventional faith ended up in spanking-new evangelical megachurches; today’s dropouts end up in sports arenas and coffee shops, gyms and health food stores, clubs and psychologists’ offices, surfing the waves or the internet, religion the last thing on their minds. Spiritual? Many say there is more out there than material reality. But keep the beliefs and practices of prior generations? No thanks.

  Is it a worrisome trend? No. As countries modernize, become wealthier, reduce child mortality, and live longer, they grow less religious. Let’s put off the explanation for now and just grant that fact. The most religious countries are the least developed ones. It’s no accident that Pope Francis came from the developing world—a first for the Vatican. Both the Catholic Church in Rome and the Church of England in Canterbury now have strong second centers of gravity south of the equator. But as the planet’s South modernizes, it will follow the path blazed by developed countries, toward less conventional spirituality and more Nones. Some say religion will fade away.

  In fact, some very smart people want it to fade away and are sure it will, as indicated by the titles of certain popular books: The End of Faith, The God Delusion, Breaking the Spell, God Is Not Great. I agree with many of their criticisms of religion, and I am not a believer, but I don’t like their attacks on other people’s faith. I don’t think faith will fade away, nor do I think it should. I want to understand faith—its basis in
brain function and genes, its growth in childhood, its deep evolutionary background, its countless cultural and historical varieties, its ties to morality, and its many roles in human life. I think faith can be explained, but not explained away.

  We are rapidly leaving behind—and good riddance to it—a world in which religion could coerce not only heretics (those with a new interpretation or faith) but also those with no faith at all. In many places, religions have that power today. But take the long view. Our great-grandchildren will live in a world where religion is on the defensive, and many of us already do. It’s hard to watch the news and believe this, but here we will not be looking at the headlines; we will be looking at the evolution and history of faith in all its varieties, the grand sweep of good and evil, the aspirational and tragic displays of a human inclination grounded in biology.

  I think faith will persist in a large minority, and in some form perhaps a majority, permanently. It has always manifested itself in different ways—some revelatory and comforting; some kind and good; some ecumenical and cosmopolitan; some bigoted, coercive, and violent. But the future will both produce more Nones and incline the religious among us to reject bigotry, coercion, and violence.

  As for murderous fanaticism, it is not solely grounded in religion. Europe’s gas chambers murdered millions, but not in God’s name; the Nazis—despite the Gott mit uns motto on their belts—were a political, not a religious, movement. Stalinism and Maoism, each of which killed scores of millions, were antireligious tyrannies. Later, mass murders in Indonesia, Cambodia, and Rwanda had nothing to do with religion. The frequent terrorism of the early and middle twentieth century owed more to leftist politics than to faith. The 1995 Oklahoma City bombing and the 2011 mass murder of teens at a Norway summer camp stemmed from right-wing politics, and most American terrorists are right-wing, nonreligious zealots. Religion as the root of all evil does not fit the facts.

  Belligerent atheists attack faith because—not being true cosmopolitans—they are intolerant of the idea that our actions can be legitimately motivated at times by something other than pure reason. Soon people will be asking not, “Do I have a right to disbelieve?” but “Do I have a right to faith?” Atheism, for all its rationality, has taken a fundamentalist turn, seeking to exclude all other forms of belief. It is the mirror image of the exclusionary fanaticisms of faith. So, this book is not only a scientific attempt to understand religion—including its toxic infusion with violence—but an a-theistic defense of it as a part of human nature, for many. People of faith have the inclination, and should have the right, to believe things for which there is no evidence.

  I was raised as an Orthodox Jew and remained so until age 17. I have now been a nonbeliever for over half a century. I understand those two traditions—Judaism and nonbelief—very well. I lived for two years among a people commonly called Bushmen, hunter-gatherers in Botswana, and was for a time an apprentice in their trance-dance religion, so (with the help of others who have studied it) I know about that faith too. I live in a Christian country, know the role of Christianity in the history of the West, and have had important friendships with Christian clergy and laity—not least of all my wife, whom I would describe as a mildly believing Presbyterian. You might say I cut my eyeteeth on the contrasts between Judaism and Christianity—often, in the past, ominous for Jews—so I have been thinking about varieties of faith all my life.

  In various ways—as an anthropologist, traveler, teacher, and friend—I have encountered Tibetan Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and other faiths, always with respect and openness to learning about their commonalities and differences. I have spent many years studying and teaching about culture, brain function, evolution, child development, and other ways of knowing how religion relates to our brains and bodies.

  Believers is about the nature of faith: an evolved, biologically grounded, psychologically intimate, socially strong set of inclinations and ideas that are not universal but are so widespread and deeply ingrained that, in my view, faith will never go away. I also think that it should never go away—a value judgment I will try to justify. But let’s acknowledge those who think it should and will. Their twenty-first-century movement defends an old philosophy in vehement, persuasive ways: religion is irrational, does great harm, and therefore should and will disappear from human experience. Notice that there are four different propositions in these few italicized words. I will argue that the first two are partly true, but the last two are not evidence based. So, the movement against religion is also a faith.

  The movement has had brilliant leaders, among them evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, philosopher Daniel Dennett, neuroscientist Sam Harris, and essayist Christopher Hitchens. They’ve been called the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,” “Ditchkins,” and other unfriendly names, but I’ll just call them “the Quartet.” Their books are worth reading. Dawkins is and Hitchens was as eloquent in speech as in writing. The last months of Hitchens’s life, when he was dying of cancer, did not much curtail his work; he was exemplary in poise and courage. Rabbi David Wolpe, who debated Hitchens publicly six times, was an admirer. To paraphrase the comedian W. C. Fields, also a proud atheist, Hitchens died without knuckling under.

  I am not the first to criticize their views or to try to defend religion from them, not even the first nonbeliever. (My credentials for that label are sound; I am on an online list of celebrity atheists—between actress Keira Knightley and graphic artist Frank Kozik—and at times have been on an honor roll called Who’s Who in Hell.) I don’t plan to rebut them in detail here, any more than I plan to describe Buddhism or Judaism in detail. What matters for me about religions is that they have noticed something about human nature and tried in varied ways to give it form, expression, and meaning. What matters about the critics is that they have mostly missed it.

  I have nothing against nonbelievers; I have been one for over half a century. I know that atheistic writings, speeches, debates, and websites comfort people who are struggling to feel that nonbelief is okay. Some are surrounded by believers who find them odd and bad. I am not being facetious when I say that Dawkins, Dennett, Harris, and Hitchens are pastors to those people, who need and deserve care and moral support. But gratuitous and ignorant bashing of religion does not just give comfort to harried atheists; it attempts, with all verbal guns blazing, to cause pain to believers. I will offer my opinion on whether and how much religion is irrational, harmful, and deserving of elimination from human life. However, it is the last of the four claims of the recent critics of religion, that it will disappear, that inspires my main argument.

  There is another way to say that. My friend Robert Hamerton-Kelly was an eloquent, charismatic Methodist minister and philosopher, for many years the chaplain of Stanford University. I asked him whether he was worried about the New Atheism. He raised a white eyebrow under a thick shock of hair and, with a twinkle in his eye, after a careful professional pause, said in his basso profundo, “God can handle it.”

  SIR FRANCIS CRICK, codiscoverer of the structure of DNA, described himself as an agnostic, leaning toward atheism, but he had a lifelong contempt for religion. In 1963, a year after winning a Nobel Prize, he contributed £100 toward a prize for the best essay on the subject “What Can Be Done with the College Chapels?” The winning entry proposed that they be turned into swimming pools. In an essay of his own entitled “Why I Am a Humanist,” Crick wrote, “The simple fables of the religions of the world have come to seem like tales told to children.” When another biologist wrote a response to his essay, Crick replied, “I should perhaps emphasize this point, since it is good manners to pretend the opposite. I do not respect Christian beliefs. I think they are ridiculous.”

  Many scientists and philosophers have been inspired by Crick’s view, but not all are as committed. Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson has separated himself from some:

  Atheists I know who proudly wear the badge are active atheists, they’re, like, in-your-face atheists, and they want to change
policies, and they’re having debates! I don’t have the time, the interest, the energy. . . . I’m a scientist, I’m an educator, my goal is to get people thinking straight in the first place, to get you to be curious about the natural world, that’s what I’m about. . . . It’s odd that the word “atheist” even exists. I don’t play golf. Is there a word for non-golf-players? Do non-golf-players gather and strategize? Do non-skiers have a word, and come together and talk about the fact that they don’t ski?

  Another nemesis of religion, Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, detaches himself from certain scientists—Stephen Jay Gould, E. O. Wilson, and others—who see the possibility of détente or even an alliance (on environmental protection, for instance) between science and religion: “I’m not having it. . . . The world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief. Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done, and may in fact in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization.”

  But Weinberg also raises a concern: “If not religion, what?”

  Certainly I’m not one of those who would rhapsodically say, “Oh, science. That’s all we need, to understand the world, and look at pictures of the Eagle Nebula, and it’ll fill us with such joy we won’t miss religion. I think we will miss it. I see religion somewhat as a crazy old aunt. You know, she tells lies, and she stirs up all sorts of mischief and she’s getting on, and she may not have that much life left in her, but she was beautiful once, and when she’s gone, we may miss her.”

  Dawkins, when he heard this, was adamant: “I won’t miss her at all. Not one scrap. Not one smidgen. I am utterly fed up with the respect that we, all of us . . . have been brainwashed into bestowing on religion.” Weinberg has impeccable antireligious credentials, yet he has a subtlety that is missing from the Quartet’s discourse. If they are a brass quartet, Weinberg is off to the side playing a plaintive solo violin. They are all humanists, true and faithful, but Weinberg is a tragic humanist, and even when they are standing shoulder to shoulder on the barricades, there is a difference.