Matthew, over at Ektopos, has an interesting discussion about whether religion is natural. The discussion comes out of an article in the Skeptical Inquirer about why religion is natural. After all, the obvious question anyone must answer with respect to religion is why so many people are religious. To a non-theist, like many at the Skeptical Inquirer, this poses a grave problem. The traditional answer is simply to say that religion is the result of poor thinking or are simple answers to problems in life. The problem is, as the article points out, is that most religions don't necessarily answer the big problems of life. They can't be seen as shoddy metaphysics.
Religion clearly is a complex human behavior and phenomena. To try and simplify it, as some skeptics, cognitists, or neurologists have done, is apt to lose the phenomena in explanations of "cause." The Skeptical Inquirer article attempts to avoid this, but ends up with a model were religious beliefs are simply regular beliers with some odd attribute. For instance a spirit is simply a person with attributes that violate regular phenomena. (i.e. can walk through walls) The argument basically is that religious beliefs arise out of the basic brain functions for dealing with the regular world. They don't arise out of reasoning or indoctrination. Rather than being learned, they are intuited, probably arises out of the basic function of the brain.
He offers the suggestion that supernatural explanation, far from being metaphysics, is really just attempting to explain phenomena in terms of our regular everyday social encounters. (Presumably it was up to the philosophers to make them into metaphysics) One can't help but hear the echo of Nietzsche and the idea that metaphysics was founded on the dream of an other world.
I don't want to summarize the whole article, as it is very interesting. (Even if you disagree with it). I'll quote one interesting paragraph thought:
The lesson of the cognitive study of religion is that religion is rather "natural" in the sense that it consists of by-products of normal mental functioning. Each of the systems described here (a sense for social exchange, a specific mechanism for detecting animacy in surrounding objects, an intuitive fear of invisible contamination, a capacity for coalitional thinking, etc.) is the plausible result of selective pressures on cognitive organization. In other words, these capacities are the outcome of evolution by natural selection.
The ultimate conclusions is:
People do not adhere to concepts of invisible ghosts or ancestors or spirits because they suspend ordinary cognitive resources, but rather because they use these cognitive resources in a context for which they were not designed in the first place.
I suppose an other way of putting this is that common sense (and the cognitive faculties providing it) is suited for the common world. When we move beyond that world, into the world of physics, of economics, or perhaps even religion, we need be careful. That's why science is so important.
So then, how do we, as Mormons react to this? I think it actually something in our favor. First off Mormonism, as opposed to most other traditions in the Judaic-Christian tradition, tends to treat the objects of religion as regular phenomena and not in terms of metaphysical notions such as Thomist Souls or a God who transcends all reality. This therefore entails that for us, the entities of religion, whether they be spirits, angels, gold plates or the like, be entities that make sense within the world of regular common sense experience. This isn't to say that individual Mormons might not make religious claims on the basis of experiences outside of our common world. However the basis of our religion: tangible gold plates, angels with bodies who converse in a regular human way, seem oriented directly to our ability to experience and interpret.
The big question left out of all this is personal revelation and inspiration. Can that be reconciled to our common experience? Is a sense we are unable to tie to a shared common experience really trustworthy? This is the main criticism of Mormonism and it is there that a lot of Mormon epistemology focuses. I just wish to say that I think Mormonism fundamentally makes religious knowledge a product of the everydayness which we find ourselves in. There are exceptions to this, but I think that our fundamental religious claim is that there is no "other world" in the Nietzschean sense. Whether there is the world we claim is something else, I suppose. But at least we depend upon the faculties we already have as human beings.
This is just the sort of thing I was trying to get at in my post on embodiment and epistemology over at Times & Seasons and on Mormon naturalism at Let Us Reason.
Yes, it is. I really liked the quotes you'd provided there as well.
The one problem is how to tell when we are merely applying "common sense" outside of its realm or merely encountering that which applies, but which is outside of what we're used to. (i.e. is an angel interpreted as an angel by mistake or not) The way to do that is by replicability, some skepticism, and then explanatory power. Unfortunately a lot of people with spiritual experiences often draw from them perhaps uncritically. That's not to say they are being irrational. Far from it as I think the above indicates. However they may not be justified in their beliefs - which is a subtle but important distinction.
All of this then gets us back to issues of reliabilism. If a method of knowing is normally reliable, ought we trust it when applied to these realms? I think this all leads to both a healthy reformulation of reliabilism and a check on its extremes.
Over at Philosophy Et Cetera they noted a few things in the article that I somehow missed. For one the article noted that the "theological" conception of God most Christians had an the actual "practical" conception of God was quite different.
However, subtle experimental tasks reveal that, when they are not reflecting upon their own beliefs, these same people use another concept of God, as a human-like agent with a particular viewpoint, a particular position and serial attention. God considers one problem and then another. Now that concept is mostly tacit. It drives people's thoughts about particular events, episodes of interaction with God, but it is not accessible to people as "their belief." In other words, people do not believe what they believe they believe.
What's interesting is that the "natural" beliefs hiding behind the theology are very much LDS theology. (Well, we might quibble about whether God thinks about one thing at a time - if he does he does so very quickly) This doesn't resolve whether this is inappropriately applying "common sense methods" to things it is inappropriate for thereby "creating" the divine world. But it does suggest that our intuitions about religion perhaps are more Mormon than we imagine. If it isn't all just an error, perhaps Mormons might see it as a natural instinct towards true belief?
Clark writes:
"Is a sense we are unable to tie to a shared common experience really trustworthy?"
This is a question I find myself asking. How do I know that the experiences I have had with the spirit are the 'same' as those others have had? Or even more: how come things like art and sermons don't affect me and my brothers and sisters in the gospel equally in terms of feeling the spirit?
It's a question of trust. But it's also why I think it's important for us to come together and worship and serve together [and why despite my fondness for art and well-wrought language I'm glad the emphasis is on pesonal expression for all that it may make us cringe sometimes in fast and testimony meeting] -- doing so increases the chances of that trust developing as we help each other feel and recognize the spirit and share our testimonies of how living the gospel brings 'the divine' into our lives.
I think also, that this points to the importance of the temple. At least for me, the temple provides a sort of even-ness of spirit, a communion that reaffirms my trust in the fact that other LDS are attuned to same source I am.
The Third Culture has an interesting interview with Paul Bloom on a fairly closely related topic. (Thanks to the link at Ektopos) There he suggests that mind-body dualism is fairly natural and perhaps, in a way, innate to our brain's way of thinking. While he clearly doesn't believe that there is a soul of the sort many religious posit, I found the overall discussion quite interesting. Basically he argues that even those familiar with brain functions talk as if the brain were a tool while the source of intentionality is a "me" separate from the brain.
Regardless of whether the beliefs are correct or not, it seems our common sense intuitions lead to standard religious beliefs. That is, we have intuitions of a religion that is somewhat unlike more formal theologies as well as being unlike the beliefs of skeptics.
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