What's in a name? Apophenia vs. Intuitive Theism

This is me responding to this post by Tony Breeden, which in turn is responding (sort of) to the loss of faith of former Baptist pastor Bruce Gerencser. I expect my comment to show up on Tony's blog shortly (it's currently queued for moderator approval), but just in case it doesn't make the cut, I'm reproducing it here.

Mr. Breeden disagrees with the idea that children are "born atheists".

I’d actually partly agree with you, in that:
A. I don’t think that children are born “atheistic” in the way that adult atheists use the term, and
B. I do think that a general tendency towards religious belief and expression is “wired in” to the human species.

Where we differ is that I don’t see that either of those things requires or even offers evidence suggesting a “creator god”, let alone the specific deity of the Christian religion.

What you keep referring to as “intuitive theism” has other names, and it’s worth reading their definitions: Pareidola, Apophenia, and Hyperactive Agency Detection. And while those add up to a tendency towards religious belief, they don’t add up to any sort of intuitive or pre-programmed monotheism – let alone anything as specific as Christianity.

Historically and socially, monotheistic religions are a statistical outlier (though admittedly, one that’s been so successful that at the current moment, in Western countries, it’s popular enough to seem like the default). That sort of belief is neither “programmed in” nor particularly intuitive; it only seems that way because we’re swimming in it.

Basically, while the phenomenon you’re describing is real, it is (at best!) an extremely weak argument for the truth of Christianity (or even the existence of some vague, generic, Deist sort of Creator). We aren’t born “with eternity in our hearts”; we’re born with a tendency to assign personalities and purposes to the events that affect our lives.

Edited to add: Mr. Breeden responded that I'm not arguing with him, I'm arguing with peer-reviewed Science! (which, um, isn't exactly how science works; a peer-reviewed article suggesting a specific conclusion is not the same thing as an established conclusion), and then deleted my response. So, I'm guessing that conversation is pretty much over.

Video: Thought Leader.

Ever wondered what it takes to be a thought leader? Now you know:

Video: What Does Adoption Mean?

This is not a topic I talk much about, mainly because it's not a topic I know much about. This particular video only came to my attention because it happens to include my soon-to-be-nephew. What the video mainly does is try to drive home just how little the kids involved in international adoptions understand about adoption, Americans, and what happens when/if they get adopted - just how much of a culture shock it really is for them.

It will also, very probably, make you want to adopt one of these kids.

Watch it anyway.

What is Normal: Religion is the Default Setting

I ran into this the other day when I was looking for something vaguely related. Don't bother reading it; it's not very interesting, except for the opening assertion:

"The idea of God exists ever since the beginning of humankind. You go to any part of the world, and you will encounter some form or idea of God. And even though, their views of God may be world apart, it conveys the universal belief in the existence of God."

Because, well... no. That's really not right. And it ties in to something I was starting to say over at Gullible's Travels a couple of months ago, so I guess this is my chance to finally finish expressing that thought.

If there's one thing I learned while getting a Minor in Anthropology, it's that "universal beliefs"... aren't.

"The idea of God exists ever since the beginning of humankind."
No, it hasn't - not the way you mean it, anyway. The idea of God traces back from Christianity and Islam to Judaism, which is to say that it comes from a particular tribe in a particular area of the world. The fact that the concept went viral and is now ubiquitous does not change the fact that it was originally a tribal and parochial view of the divine.

I am neither Jewish nor a religious scholar, so offhand I don't have any good scholarly citations to support this. (If you do, feel free to add them in the comments. Hell, if you've got conflicting citations, feel free to add those in the comments as well.) But my understanding is that early Judaism wasn't even monotheistic in the sense that we think of it today. Instead, they were monolatrous (or henotheistic) - that is, they acknowledged the existence of other gods, but they only worshiped one.

The "idea of God" has a very specific history relating to specific human cultures during specific time periods in specific areas of the world. It isn't something that's always been around.

You go to any part of the world, and you will encounter some form or idea of God.
This one is... not true, but sort of vaguely off in the right direction. What you'll find, actually, is that anywhere there are people there is some sort of religion (also, some form of art). Where it breaks down is the idea that this constitutes "some form or idea of God." It doesn't. It's not even close.

Religion, like Art, is a tricky thing to define. For our purposes here, I'm going to define it as "a belief in the unseen forces that shape our lives."[1] I'm told that people engaged in the study of comparative religions break beliefs down into four or five basic categories: Monotheistic (one deity), Dualistic (two deities), polytheistic (many deities), and pantheistic (the Divine spread through the world) - plus, possibly, shamanic[2], where the Divine exists in specific places, objects, animals, etc. Apparently shamanic religions are sometimes considered a subset of pantheistic religions, though personally I think that's a mistake.

And even though, their views of God may be world apart, it conveys the universal belief in the existence of God.
And again: no. No, it doesn't. There's far, far too much variety for that. In fact, the views you find are so irredeemably far apart, that they don't convey the universal belief in much of anything.

You'd be on far safer ground if you'd said that it conveys the universal belief that objects have their own personalities and deceased ancestors wish to be remembered. Because if you leave people to their own devices, those are the sorts of beliefs they tend to come up with. But again, that's not even remotely universal. Common, yes; universal, no.

From a historical and/or anthropological viewpoint, Christianity - and monotheism in general - is deeply weird. I mean, the transition sort of makes sense: This god is the strongest to We will only worship this god to There is only one real God, and he talks to us. But as compelling a vision of the Divine as that is, there are quite a number of things - and the Problem of Evil is chief among them - that are far easier to explain if you allow for two opposing gods; or for many gods, each with their own area of influence. [3]

So if you're looking through World Religions or religious history for evidence to support the Christian view of God - even among people who haven't directly heard of Him - give up now. It just isn't there.

---

[1] I like this definition because it allows me to include any sort of religious belief or practice that I've ever heard of, but still allows me to exclude atheism.

[2] I'd actually refer to this as animistic rather than shamanic, but that's probably only interesting to people who are curious about how the perspective of Comparative Religion folks differs from the perspective of Anthropology folks. In other words, the only people likely to care... are Sociology Majors.

[3] Which is, I think, a large part of the reason why Christianity goes back and forth on the existence of Satan, how much power he has relative to God, and why God doesn't do anything about it.

What is Normal: Shakespeare in the Bush

Normal is a funny sort of concept. Often, it simply means "the way I do things." Doing things differently - at least, in ways that are perceived to be significantly different - is "crazy."

This is not the definition of "crazy" that covers legitimate mental illnesses. This is the more colloquial, social use of the term. For that matter, this isn't the only (or even the best) use of the term "normal" either. But it is a significant part of the way people look at the world. We judge things by our own experiences, our own behaviors, our own reactions. It's sometimes hard to see why other people would do things differently, or how they could see things differently - especially when our beliefs and conclusions are so glaringly obvious to us. And it's especially hard to imagine that some of those beliefs and conclusions might simply be wrong.

Explaining one's perspective is a surprisingly tricky thing to do.

All of this is a lead-in to exploring how getting a Minor in Anthropology has affected my view of religion. But before we start talking about world religions, I want to emphasize that a lot of what we think of as universal, obvious, and natural is (instead) very frequently provincial, contextual, and relative. And one of the best examples I can think of is Shakespeare in the Bush - an account of an Anthropologist trying to explain Hamlet to the Tiv people of Africa.

Seriously, go read this thing. I promise you'll be enlightened and amused, though possibly not in that order.