I’m glad that David Buss mentioned the fact that we should take our ancestral environment
seriously, and figure out the relationship between what’s going on in our heads today
and what went on at that time.
So I’d first like to make a comment about science, heavy duty science.
You know, from an evolutionary point of view, heavy duty science doesn’t make much sense,
because it’s not very adaptive, because it slows your reaction time.
Whereas these folk sciences, that all so good, that Bob McCauley told us that this is all
air, well not air, empty space, sorry.
Empty space.
The fact of the matter is from the point of view of folks physics, I can’t get my hand
through it, so I’m not going to try to walk through a wall either.
So I think we better not underplay the value of what evolutionists contribute to us, our
folk sciences.
Okay, so first of all, let me tell you what I-- by the way, at this time of day, everything
has already been said, so I can just repeat what everyone else has said.
Okay, so what are the aims of the cognitive science of religion?
It’s supposed to give you a theoretically sophisticated account of religion-- whatever
that is-- including the fact that, by the way, from one point of view religion is an
aggregate term.
It doesn’t really, it’s not a unified term at all, but it’s only an aggregate
term if you understand the theory that produced the concept of an aggregate term.
Secondly, cognitive science of religion is supported by empirical and experimental studies--
you better be.
And thirdly, it employs theories, methods, and results wherever they might be found;
and that’s why it’s a truly interdisciplinary project.
Now, I think it’s very important to distinguish between the attitudes people have.
Should we, is religion-- this aggregate term-- something to be condemned?
No.
Is it something to be commended?
No.
Is it’s job-- what is it’s job?
To develop an explanatory understanding of what’s going on in religion.
So on the one hand you have people like Dawkins writing the God Delusion, which of course
is a very, very popular book, that is designed, in a sense, to condemn religion.
And then you have Justin Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, at least the last
chapter is designed to commend religion.
I don’t think that there’s anything in the practice of cognitive science that requires
either of those approaches.
And the reason I’m saying this is because if you’re ever going to have a dialogue
between science, and the scientific thinker and the religious thinker, I think you’re
going to need to make it very, very clear that you’re neither in the condemnation
nor the commendation attitude.
So what is actually going on is the study of our minds at work; it provides no threat
to religious thought or behavior.
That’s the conclusion I come to, as long as we distinguish between mental processes
and their reference.
Everyone wants to argue about “Is there a God or not”; I’m much more interested
in how our minds produce ideas like God.
So let me give you an example.
If you’re gonna have-- understand what’s going on in religion, let’s look at what
happens in the actual field.
Now, I happened to do a great deal of ethnographic work, and I’m actually going out into the
boondocks, and I’m talking to people, and I’ll give you some examples.
But anyway, when you install a chief, you’re going to have certain ritual activities performed;
and in order to understand what’s going on in that activity when a chief is being
installed, is there’s going to be a lot of ritual drumming among the Zulu.
They just love the drums; but there’s a special way of beating those drums, and it
takes a great deal of expertise to learn how to beat those drums.
Now from a cognitive point of view, in order to understand what’s going on there, there’s
really very, very little difference between a ritual drummer beating a ritual drum, and
an ordinary drummer beating an ordinary drum, okay?
So part of the problem is that many people start looking for a special little spot in
the brain, that somehow there will be this religious G-spot, that God-spot in the brain,
where you can find what’s really motivating what’s going on.
I think what we need to understand is that the same cognitive resources that we have
to understand ritual drumming are the same cognitive resources to understand ordinary
drumming.
So then this becomes the issue: why do religious ideas persist?
Now a great deal of emphasis today has been focused upon religious beliefs, but you know,
you don’t have to believe any religious idea for it to persist, because you can entertain
an idea, transmit an idea, without ever believing it.
Take, for example, the idea of Mickey Mouse or Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
Now who in this room believes in the Easter Bunny?
Be honest and raise your hand-- yeah I knew you would do that.
Except for this odd guy, you see you don’t.
Naturally, you are the same people that are corrupting the minds of the little kids by
telling them about the Easter Bunny; that’s how these ideas get transmitted from generation
to generation.
There’s still Santa Claus around because you tell those little kids about Santa Claus.
There’s still God around because someone told those little kids about God too, okay.
So I think we need to have focused more on the transmission problem than simply the belief
problem.
Why do people believe?
Well, some people believe and some people don’t, but there’s ideas, once they’re
entertained, get transmitted from generation to generation.
So in the competition of ideas, what is it about these concepts that gets transmitted,
that are so interesting.
Well, as Bob McCauley told us this morning, they’re attention grabbing, they grab your
attention.
Secondly, they’re memorable.
Thirdly, they’re transmittable.
And we know these all on the basis of good science, namely the experimental work that
has been done.
For example, focusing on the whole notion of how an infant can show surprise; I’m
sure you all know those experiments.
Okay, and if you want to read a book about the subject, read Alison Gopnik and friends,
The Scientist in the Crib.
Or, see Philippe Rochat’s The Infant World.
What I’ve been interested in doing the last few years in South Africa is testing some
of the ideas that have emerged in the context of precautionary psychology, which I noticed
David was hinting at.
First of all, I’ve learned that there’s a kind of common idea among people… one
of the theories of the popular mind is that people entertain religious ideas because of
fear, okay?
So I decided to test this in the field, of whether it’s fear or not, Well, in order
to understand what’s going on with regard to the psychology of fear, I discovered that
you ought to make a distinction between imminent danger and potential danger.
Let me give you an example of this.
My colleague Joe Mort and I decided to put ourselves in a situation of danger.
We went to a part of the Kruger National Game Reserve where there were some pretty wild
elephants.
We just wanted to see these elephants and take pictures of them, but they told us “Be
careful when you go up there, because they’re not as adapted to visitors, people touring
the park, up there,” because there aren’t that many people driving around on these little
dirt roads.
Well, we came across an elephant on the side of the road, looked perfectly friendly, tearing
down a tree.
So here I am, taking pictures of this elephant tearing down a tree, the elephant is completely
ignoring us.
Joe and I are both looking, and then we hear crunch, crunch, crunch.
Now, my vigilance, my precautionary psychology immediately began to work.
What’s going on here?
All of a sudden we looked around, and here, about fifteen feet behind us, stood the most
massive bull elephant you can imagine.
These bull elephants are known for just picking up VWs and turning them upside down in the
park.
Well, what I said was “Holy shit!
Let’s get out of here,” and Joe put his foot on the accelerator and in no time we
were about a mile down the road, which we then turned around and took pictures of this
poor elephant looking at us, because he was on the verge-- by the way, the reason we know
this is at that moment a ranger came up in a car, saw the elephant, said “Oh my god,”
and turned his car around the same direction we were going, because he said “This is
a dangerous situation.”
Anyway, I’m interested in precautionary psychology because one of the things I’ve
learned from talking to evolutionary psychologists is that there are certain kinds of threats
that we are attuned to: predation and assault, contagion and contamination, decline in resources,
and change in social status.
And so what we decided to do in the populations we were studying, both in the city of Pretoria,
comparing that to what was going on in Northern Ireland, and what was going on in KwaZulu-Natal.
So we had three different populations; we told the same kinds of stories to these populations,
and we were interested in whether, given the cultural context, whether there would be a
different ranking of what was the greater threat.
So given four different kinds of threats, which threat is regarded as the greater.
I can tell you right now the results is that predation and assault was regarded as the
greatest threat, followed by contagion and contamination, then decline in resources,
and change in social status last.
Now, I wanted to tell you briefly-- I put that all up at the same time-- tell you briefly
about my conversation with a Zulu herbalist or what people call a witch doctor, because
I decided that I wanted to have a dialogue with him, okay.
He was going to be the religious thinker and I was going to be the scientist in dialogue
with him.
So I said “Look, I’ve heard ever since I’ve been here in South Africa,” and I
was there over a four year period, by the way, “Ever since I’ve been in South Africa,
if you take a car from Pietermaritzburg,” which is in KwaZulu-Natal, “to Johannesburg,
that it’s very dangerous to drive that way.”
He said, “Yes, that’s true.”
I said, “Now as an herbalist or a doctor, could you prescribe me some medicine that
I can take to prevent my car from being stolen,” because one of the things that they do is
they lay in the middle of the road, you’re driving, you stop, they show that they have
guns, make you get out of the car, usually shoot you but not always, and then take your
car.
So anyway, I said “I would like to be prevented from this.
What can you give me?”
So he said “Oh, no problem!
Just take this powder!
You take this powder, and it’ll prevent people from stealing your car.”
I said “Come on,” by the way, if you engage in dialogue, you better be willing to argue.
You don’t have to accept what someone else says.
So I said “Oh come on, are you saying that this car, this solid object is gonna disappear?”
“Oh no, I wouldn’t be so stupid as to say something like that.”
“Well what are you trying to say?”
He said “Oh, my powder that you swallow changes that guy’s perception, so that he
won’t see the car.”
Okay, so notice what he has done.
He’s changed the level of explanation from the physical to the psychological, and you
know the psychological experiments like Justin Barrett has done would show, in fact, that
people don’t want to have God really make this table disappear, okay; that’s not the
kind of thing that God bothers about.
God likes to operate on the level of mind.
Anyway-- excuse me?
[person in crowd asking if he tried it] No, no I didn’t, because I told him arguably
I didn’t believe him.
Well we had a wonderful conversation that lasted an entire after…
African evidence.
But anyway, to get back now to the theory, you know, a lot of the issues we heard today
too were designed for animosity and agent detection, and the only difference, I think,
is that the agents we talk about in religious contexts have special qualities.
As Bob McCauley would once again say, they’re modestly counterintuitive, you know?
The experiments would show that things that are massively counterintuitive are more difficult
to remember, and therefore more difficult to transmit.
So, false positives-- I think false positives are wonderful, because it’s better to be
safe than sorry, you see.
So a great deal of… in a sense, I’m defending folk science, okay.
I think folk science, there are very, very good reasons from an evolutionary point of
view, why folk science is there, why it’s around, because it’s really made us be here
today.
And I think that’s all I’m going to have to say for now.
Thank you very much.