Religion and the Immune System

A healthy skepticism is like a healthy immune system. Skepticism allows the thinker to defend him or herself from attacks of stupidity and destructive thoughts. But it is not over-reactive: it does not, or should not, lead the thinker to be deeply suspicious of and react against everything. Skepticism is also like the immune system in the way it develops. A mind, like an immune system, may be initially naïve against an initial assault, whether of antigens or of stupid ideas, but upon second contact, antibodies and skepticism react quickly enough that hardly any discomfort or danger occurs. I refer to skepticism, not militant atheism.

In contrast, religion is like a dysfunctional immune system. It is dysfunctional in both extremes. First, religion lowers a person’s defenses so that the craziest and most brutal ideas can slip or march right into the brain. If a revered religious leader says you should believe something, then you just might believe it, even without evidence, even against evidence, even against every feeling of altruism and empathy. Religious services, in particular, are designed to allow this to occur. The organ plays softly, you bow your head in prayer, and the preacher specifically instructs you to clear away all skeptical thoughts from your mind. The he (or she) may go right ahead and say something like, “Help us, O Lord, to see that Donald Trump is doing your will on Earth and leading us into the righteousness of which you approve...”

Second, religion overstimulates our defenses as well. It makes believers react against the very things that make us empathetically human. When we see someone in need, religion can make us actually see that person as a sinner who deserves suffering. Religion does not have to do this but often does. Religion can make us look upon environmental pollution and destruction, which ruins the livelihoods of millions of poor people who want to raise themselves out of poverty but cannot do so because their soil is eroding away or they are sick from toxins, and see that environmental destruction is actually God’s will, since it blesses billionaire industrialists with additional billions.

Religion says “O” while skepticism says, “oh.” Destructive religion says, “O Lord, confirm us in our beliefs,” while skepticism (and religion that is skeptical and thoughtful) says, “Oh, Lord, how could we have been so wrong?”

It will be entertaining to see whether religion plays any role in the current war of the billionaires. The Koch Brothers say that Trump’s tariffs are destructive, while Trump says that the Koch Brothers are “a total joke in real Republican circles.” He says he does not need their money in the upcoming elections. This remains to be seen. But what I want to know is, what will the rabid fundamentalists do about this?

Whatever they do, you can bet it will not be based on reason.

Will Reason Triumph?

The new year is coming up. Are you ready for it? Neither is anybody else. The big problems continue to get worse, particularly the strain of human consumption and pollution upon the ecosystem of the Earth, and hardly anything is being done about it except by a minority of humanitarians. The Paris climate talks earlier this month produced a set of reasonable recommendations that will at least help make the impact of global climate change a little more manageable. But the political machine of America responded with a collective snort; Congress has declared that America will not cooperate at all with other nations to limit global warming. Most Republicans declare that (in words I heard one of them use) nothing will ever convince them of global warming. Nothing. Ever. This is a statement, pure and simple, that Republicans consider themselves to be totally incapable of error. They have carved out for themselves a niche that properly belongs to God, if there is One.

And a lot of the power behind the conservative declaration of infallibility is religion. They believe that God has made them incapable of error. God approves of everything they do. (Some of them might admit that, once in a while, they make a few tiny mistakes.) To win any argument, a conservative need do no more than hold his God Finger Puppet up in the air and wiggle it.

There is practically no hope that this will change. And that is because the human brain did not evolve to reason. It evolved to rationalize. That is, the human brain evolved to use information from the world to control other human beings. Sometimes they used reason to do this. But just as often they used fantasy. We are the evolutionary descendants of people whose brains allowed them to understand the world just enough to manipulate it and to dominate other human beings. Therefore, the coming year, and all years to come, will be just as unreasonable and dangerous as the previous year, as all previous years.

However much I admire the character of Perry Mason, as played by Raymond Burr, I must regretfully disagree with one of his statements. In a 1961 episode, a client named Fallon (one of thousands of wrongfully-accused defendants) thanked Perry Mason for not losing faith in him, to which Mason responded, “Oh, I always have faith, Mr. Fallon—faith in what Judge Learned Hand called ‘the eventual supremacy of reason.’” One of the reasons I have always enjoyed Perry Mason reruns is that I can fantasize, for a few moments, that truth will eventually triumph in the world, a fantasy that I know is not true.

What is Faith?

Okay, so this doesn’t sound like a science essay. But I assure you it does fit in with science. I want to share a story that I heard on Krista Tippett’s On Being, an NPR show, on September 24 of this year. I retell this story from memory, since I do not have time to listen to the whole podcast over again, but you can hear it atthis link.

Dr. Guy Consolmagno is the current Vatican Astronomer, at the Vatican Observatory, and Dr. George Coyne is the recently retired astronomer. Now, whoa. You may not have known there even was a Vatican Observatory. Wasn’t this the church that condemned Galileo for believing the Earth was not the center of the universe, and burned Giordano Bruno at the stake? Well, it took a while for the Vatican to catch up with science, but in 1891 Pope Leo XIII founded the Catholic church decided to pursue it.

Dr. Coyne told a story of speaking at a convention of astronomers one time. He was wearing his priestly vestments. Then someone in the audience asked him, “Father,” not Dr. Coyne or George, “What does it feel like to go to work each day with the realization that you already know all of the answers?” Coyne’s response was swift and sure. He tore off his robe (I assume he was clothed underneath, and not in Mormon magical undergarments) and let everyone know that faith is not about knowing the answers, but about the assurance that the universe can be, as each day and year passes, better and better understood: our efforts at research will be rewarded. Even if we never understand it fully.

That is a way of describing the fundamental faith that all scientists have. And it is a leap of faith: there is no logical reason to believe that our brains, which evolved to maximize the fitness of genes and individuals, should have any way of understanding the universe. We evolved intelligence because it gave us a better ability to survive and to form associations with or to dominate other human beings. It evolved as a tool for evolutionary success, in the pursuit of which rationalization was just as good as reason. What our minds tell us need not be true, except in the matter of telling us where the edge of the cliff, or the next meal, is; it can be total fantasy, and natural selection favors it, so long as it allows us to form associations and to dominate others. I consider it an astonishing thing that our brains just happen to be suited for understanding the universe also. Even though very few people can actually understand dark energy or superstrings, at least we can understand the reasoning.

Keep the faith, brethren. We can understand the world, despite the political and religious and economic forces of hatred and unreason that try to keep us from doing so.

I also posed this essay on my evolution blog.