Psychological Differences between Religious and Non-Religious People

There appear to be psychological differences between liberals and conservatives—not in the sense of brain dysfunction, but in the sense of fundamental psychological values. That is, neither liberals nor conservatives arrive at their beliefs completely by reason. They base their morals on the way their psychological values incline them to see the world. We all knew this, but a 2014 article in Science (“Morality in Everyday Life,” by Wilhelm Hoffman, Daniel C. Wisneski, Mark J. Brandt, and Linda J. Skitka; Science 345: 1340-1343) confirm this and give us specific examples of what these values are, based on a study of 1,252 people, from whom they received 13,240 responses.

The psychological differences between liberals and conservatives was not the main purpose of the study. It was to study how the moral or immoral behavior of other people can affect your moral or immoral behavior. That is, is there a “moral contagion” in which one good deed catalyzes another? Believe it or not, you can actually study morality and immorality scientifically. Does committing moral deeds make you feel better about yourself? Does committing immoral deeds make you feel worse about yourself? And, finally, are religious people more likely than non-religious people to be moral?

Previous studies of moral values, the authors said, have been based on what they call “moral vignettes.” Subjects are interviewed by psychologists, who tell them a story with a moral dilemma and ask them what they would do. But this is highly unrealistic. What I think I might do, when I am sitting in a chair in a psychology lab, might be very different from what I would actually do. “...virtually no research has taken morality science out of these artificial settings and directly asked people about whether and how they think about morality and immorality in the course of their everyday lived experience.” That is, this study investigated the things that actually happened each day in people’s lives.

The results were unsurprising but, apparently, have not been tabulated previously. People are happier when they are the recipients of other people’s moral acts (such as care and empathy) than when they experience other people’s immoral acts; but their sense of purpose was more strongly affected by what they did rather than by what they experienced, whether positive or negative.

What about moral contagion? Yes and no. People who experienced the moral kindness of others were more likely to themselves commit a moral act of kindness. On the other hand, after people committed moral acts, they were then more likely to do something immoral, feeling that, by having done something good earlier in the day, they deserved the right to be a little immoral.

What does this have to do with evolution? Evolution has conferred upon the human brain the instincts for both good and bad behavior. Studies such as this one illustrate how both kinds of behavior are kept alive in human populations.

The other results of this study were no less interesting. Religious people were no more or less likely to commit moral acts. The only discernible difference was that religious people tended to feel more disgust at their own immoral acts (or to say that they did). The authors conclude, “religious and nonreligious people commit comparable moral and immoral deeds with comparable frequency.” So much for religion making people better.

The authors of the study concluded, “A closer, ecologically valid look at how morality unfolds in people’s natural environments may inspire new models and theories about what it means to lead the ‘good’ or ‘bad’ life.” They left it to the rest of us to apply their conclusions to the world around us.

The differences between liberals and conservatives was even more interesting. But that is the topic of the next essay.

Jesus is Now Irrelevant to Evangelical Christianity

Jesus is Now Irrelevant to Evangelical Christianity

When I started this blog, I intended it as a serious examination of religious issues. Mostly this meant separating the big questions of life from the doctrinal details that fundamentalists use to grant themselves power and authority. To go from “God exists” to “believe everything Pat Robertson says” leaves out a few steps.

But, increasingly, this does not matter. As I have noted, fundamentalist Christians have pretty much lined up behind Trump, and they believe what he says and does what he tells them without even thinking about it. No matter what an agnostic might say, it doesn’t matter, because God and Jesus are totally irrelevant to what the evangelical churches now stand for.

Clear lines are being drawn. After his State of the Union message, Donald Trump said that if someone did not clap for him, it was treason. The fact that the constitution defines treason differently from Trump does not matter; Trump’s definition is the one evangelical Christians now use. And the constitution prescribes the death penalty for treason.

The Republican Party and evangelical Christianity are coming very close to being a personality cult of Donald Trump. We hope that guns will not be brought to bear on those who refuse to go along with this personality cult. But where is the evidence? What is to stop it? Who is to stop it? So far, no prominent Republicans, and no evangelical churches or groups, have stood up to Trump. This is exactly what happened in the 1930s in Germany when the National Socialist party became a personality cult for Hitler.

The Bible at least was honest about the sins of the rulers of Israel and Judah. In stark contrast, Republicans and their evangelical devotees will not admit that Trump has any faults.

Welcome Back to the Cold War

Today, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia has the capability to destroy the United States, not just because of its nuclear weapons but because of enhanced delivery systems. The Cold War has returned. Those of you who were born after about 1990 have grown up in a world in which mutual assured destruction has always been a possibility but nobody ever thought about it much. The reason for this was because the Soviet Union collapsed, and Russia focused more on its own economic development than on wanting to destroy America. Also, at that time, we had a president who was a moderate and thoughtful Republican (George H. W. Bush). But now, narcissistic egomaniacs are in control of both America (Donald Trump) and Russia (Vlad).

I grew up with the threat of nuclear destruction of the world. It didn’t happen. While it is unlikely to happen now or ever, the imminent possibility has returned. All that either Donald Trump or Vladimir Putin have to do is have a conniption fit and press the button.

Actually, it is not quite that simple. Only the president can authorize a nuclear strike. He broadcasts an encoded message to missile crews (the message, conveniently enough, is about as long as a tweet, Trump’s beloved form of communication). After that point, there is probably no chance to stop total nuclear annihilation. The five missile crews open safes to verify that the launch code sent by the president matches the one in the safe, to make sure that the order is not from a hacker. According to this report the five crews have to turn their keys at the same time. Then the report says, “There are five different keys, but only two need to be turned to launch the missiles.” Therefore, the president cannot launch a nuclear strike if everyone thinks he is crazy. But Trump has enough people who believe everything he says that it is not at all unthinkable for two keys to be turned to release The End of the World. And the Russian chain of command is even more mindlessly worshipful of Vlad than the American chain of command is of The Donald.

Evolution has given us brains that respond to imminent threat with quick and thoughtless attack. Not until the 1950s was it possible for such instinctual reactions to endanger the entire planet. For a few brief years, from 1990 until March 1, 2018, it remained possible but very unlikely. Now we are back to the panic mode. Living in a constant panic mode can erode your health. But in the evolutionary past, nobody lived long enough for this to be a problem.

We owe a big thanks to Trump and Putin for bringing the world back to the point in which the end of the world could begin at any moment.

Racism: Beyond Anything We Could Have Imagined

It is not for nothing that they call Harry Turtledove the master of alternative history. His wildly famous 1992 book Guns of the South was just one of his many works that explored how history might have been had a few small things changed its course—or maybe a few large things.

In Guns of the South, Turtledove imagines what might have happened if the Confederacy had had superior weaponry over the Union. And not just a little bit superior: what if the Confederacy had AK-47s and grenade launchers? This is what happened in the novel when, in 1864, some mysterious men showed up, wearing what we call camouflage but for which the confederates had no name, and making AK-47s, which could be used either in semi- or fully-automatic mode, and an unlimited amount of ammunition available for very little money—and for nearly worthless confederate money, at that. The men revealed to General Robert E. Lee and other top confederates that they were from the future—they had a time machine that brought them from 2014 back exactly 150 years. The result is gory and unsurprising, though its details are exciting: Confederate troops storm Washington, D.C., where Abraham Lincoln concedes defeat. The Confederacy just wants to be left alone, and the Union leaves them alone.

But there is a price to be paid. The mysterious camouflaged men told Lee that, if the Union had won the war, black people would eventually have enslaved white people. But what Lee and others eventually discover is that these men were lying about the future. They were a South African militia of white separatists who hated the very existence of black people. They were using a Confederate victory as a means of ensuring white supremacy in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Emancipation was already beginning in the Confederacy, and it was a great benefit to the economy. But the racists hated it any way—they wanted to have dominion over blacks, even if it bankrupted their confederacy.

The author portrays many Confederates as evil racists, but others, including the sergeant through whose eyes much of the action is seen, and including Lee, were moderates who admitted to themselves that even a Confederate victory would not ensure the indefinite continuation of slavery, which was despised by literally every other nation in the world. After Lee became a civilian, and ran for Confederate president, he campaigned for gradual emancipation of the slaves. The South African supremacists, of course, hated this, and they turned their weapons against the Confederacy for which they had just a couple of years earlier fought. They had overwhelming firepower advantage, but there were only a few hundred of them—racist splinter groups are always small, even in apartheid South Africa. The moderate confederates, principal among them Robert E. Lee, prevail over them and ease their way into racial equality.

Turtledove’s writing is clear and beautiful, sometimes formulaic but never poor. The twists of plot and the delightful characters even by themselves make the book good.

Why am I reviewing this old book? In 1992, neither Turtledove nor anyone else could imagine that the kind of fierce hatred of blacks that fueled South African apartheid could possibly exist in America. But it does. It is impossible to make an accurate count of how many racists there are in America. But when you consider how widespread and common the white power protests are, and, what is more, the sheer number of assault weapons they have built up, it is easy to believe that somewhere around a half million Americans are ready to take up arms against the rest of us in order to establish a White Supremacist Nation. And I believe that they would be willing to stage an act of terrorism every bit as bloody and violent as that of the Afrikaner racists in this novel. In 1992, Turtledove had to imagine a foreign source for a few hundred such racists; today, right here in America, there are perhaps hundreds of thousands.

That is, real history has turned out thousands of times worse than a novelist could have imagined it a little over a quarter century ago. It seems impossible to avoid the inevitable firestorm that will result from white hatred of blacks in America. Evolution has given us both good and bad instincts, and the intelligence to choose the good; sadly, I see no way in which intelligence and goodness can possibly prevail in this selfish and hostile nation that we have become.

News from France!

“A 19-year-old French youth who was shot in the head after a banal road dispute over right-of-way was pronounced dead in hospital on Wednesday. A suspect has now been charged with his murder…The 19-year-old youth was left fighting for his life after being gunned down on Sunday night near the town of Giffaumont in north-eastern France.”

Wow! They have road rage shootings in France! This makes America not look so bad…

Except that this report was from 2013. This was the only case of French road rage I could find by searching online.

Meanwhile, I was searching online for more information about a road rage shooting in Dallas about which one of my botany majors had told me. A friend of her husband had cut in front of another driver in an ill-advised attempt to take an exit. The driver who got cut off followed him around through Dallas until pulling up next to him at a stoplight. The road rage driver then took out a gun and shot holes in the side of the first man’s car. My student confirmed that this incident went unreported. The only road rage incidents that were reported were those that involved bloodshed, including murder, about five of them in Dallas just in the second half of 2017.

And you wonder why the Europeans think we are crazy? Is this what a “Christian country” is supposed to look like?

How Embarrassing...

...to be an American. Nearly every item of news that people in other countries (for example, France) hear about us is bad. And true.

They constantly hear about how many evangelical Christians there are in America. Many millions. Evangelical Christians are the ones who say that all other Christians are going to hell. At the same time, there are always numerous news reports, only some of which make it over to France, about immoral things that evangelical Christians do. America stands out in the world as a place thick with evangelical hypocrites.

They also repeatedly hear about how evangelical Christians by and large practically worship Donald Trump. Many of them are quite open in their idolatry and admiration of Him. As far as I can determine, no evangelical groups have criticized Trump about anything. There are individual evangelicals who have, and they had, at least before the election, an online petition they can sign. But these anti-Trump evangelicals are individuals scattered among the predominantly Trump-worshiping evangelical churches.

And then they also hear about utterly heinous crimes committed in Bible-belt states. This does not mean that the criminals are Christians, but the evangelicals claim that their Christianity creates a moral culture around them. The utter stupidity of this statement is illustrated by a news item that was scarcely reported in American news but was featured prominently in the French online news.

In North Carolina, Katie Pladl, age 20, looked for the biological father who had abandoned his family at the time of her birth. She found Steven Pladl, 42 years old. She married him and, a year later, had a baby by him. Here is the French news report with the American news photo below that appeared on French news. Incest is the one action that is considered sinful in every cultural group in the world, except that it is apparently thinkable in the Bible belt.

I am glad I read French news because otherwise the American news, even NPR, would lull me into thinking that things are pretty good in American society.

A Shift in the World

Most of this essay appeared on my science blog, but I have added some religious thoughts at the end that are unique to this blog.

It may not seem like the most important news of recent times, but I believe that Trump’s recent declaration that countries with dark people are “shithole nations” marks a major shift in the relationship of the United States with the rest of the world—not just with the countries that Trump insulted, but also with our European allies. As of this writing, Trump has refused to apologize for his words. (He admits insulting other countries, and only denies using the word shit.) He never apologizes for anything. He just blames Hillary for everything he says.

No longer does the United States, embodied now in the figure of Trump, oppose only its enemies such as North Korea or its economic rivals such as China. Trump, who insists that he is a “very stable genius,” has made it clear that he hates every country that is not pure white. Clearly, the United States no longer wants other countries as friends. We Americans want them to either hate us or to fear us or both.

It is not just Trump. The entire Republican Party, even if not completely sharing Trump’s sentiments, has supported him. America elected him, and knew what kind of person he was when doing so.

The majority non-white countries of the world have been pushed away from the table of friendship with America. Naturally, they will turn to one another for cooperation. And the majority-white European countries such as France and Germany must be perfectly ready to form coalitions with these countries. Perhaps even more importantly, when the United States insults most of the world, the Russians and Chinese will say, “Come and join with us, make special trade arrangements with us, at least we will not insult you.”

I do not mean the other countries of the world will become military enemies of America. But, starting now, and increasingly with time, they will consult with each other but only negotiate with the United States. It is quite clear to them that there is no point in talking with America except from a position of their own solidarity and power. We do not need to be at war with the other countries of the world in order to be overpowered by them.

I just finished reading Graham Greene’s classic novel The Human Factor, about a British double-agent who defects to the Soviet Union. But this man was not a communist. He thought communism was evil. Why, then, did he do it? He did it because, when he was a representative of the British government in South Africa, he fell in love with an African woman. In South Africa, love between blacks and whites was illegal. He had to escape from South Africa in order to marry the woman. The only people who were willing to help him escape were the communists, and in gratitude to them for this help—not because he agreed with their politics—he became a double agent. (Leave it to Graham Greene to make a spy novel into an empathetic exploration of the human spirit.)

Graham Greene was a convert to Catholicism. He did not seem very enthusiastic about the details of doctrine, but he considered the internal religious struggle between good and evil to be fundamental to the human experience. That pretty much summarizes all of his novels. Were he alive today he might see American arrogance as a fundamental evil that is now beginning to change the course of world history, much greater than the apartheid that Greene hated so much but that was confined to South Africa.

In a similar fashion, the countries that will begin to form an alliance against America—whether a few or many or all other countries—do not necessarily disagree with democracy nor do they necessarily agree with Russia or China. They will do it primarily because America hates them.

I imagine a future in which the other countries of the world form a new version of the United Nations, one in which America is not invited to participate. As I have so often said in this evolution blog, human altruism has been the greatest achievement of evolution. It will continue into the future, but the form in which it continues may be as mutual aid among countries who have had their fill of American hatred and arrogance.

And I think that future historians will look back and see that this shift started to take organized form in early 2018. As a religious person, though of no specific doctrine, I see that America has now largely become a force of evil in the world. I believe America has pushed God out into the dark shithole realms that we consider the rest of the world to be.