Religious Truth

My previous post might seem a bit anti-religion. It was not intended to be. I consider myself a science advocate because I believe science has brought more benefit to mankind than any other cognitive construct, and that it is the most effective tool ever devised for revealing the secrets of the natural world. However, I am not anti-religion. I like some religions more than others, but I do not completely accept the idea that "religion poisons everything" as expressed in the subtitle of Christopher Hitchens' book, "God is Not Great." I am not completely on board with the new atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. I believe that religion provides a net benefit to society and that the criticism of the new atheists results from cherry picking the worst examples of religions influence.

I believe that religion reveals a type of truth, just not the truths that literalistic believers think it does. It does not reveal the truth about worlds beyond this one or the secrets of setting yourself up well for the next life. Nobody knows the answers to those questions despite their strong convictions to the contrary. We can demonstrate conclusively that religion has an atrocious track record of accuracy in trying to reveal truths about the natural world that are accessible to science. Rather, its value lies in its insight into the human mind, motivation, social cohesion, mental health, and its ability to organize and motivate giving to private charity. Secular organizations, despite their good intentions, never seem to be able to do this quite as well.

I once tried to explain to a very literalistic believer in my former faith the things I valued about the religion I grew up with, which included the items mentioned above. His response was that if the claims of the religion were not literally true, then the religion was basically worthless. If the unique beliefs about the afterlife were not true, then participation is pointless. It seems that on this point he would be in agreement with the new atheists if he were to ever discover that his beliefs were not literally true. However, there is a middle ground that is more than a mere compromise.

I believe that the best religion has to offer fulfills a deep need in the human psyche that nothing else satisfies as well. This is not dependent on the literal truth of the religious belief, but it is dependent on how humans are put together. The proclivity to insist on literal truth in spiritual texts is a modern tendency that was not shared by the ancients. Religious literalism is doomed to fail eventually once the populace becomes sufficiently informed and open minded enough to reject religious claims contradicted by solid science. Unless literal believers can transition over to a symbolic, less-literal interpretation of their foundational texts they will likely miss out on the benefits that go beyond a literal, historical interpretation.

So why is religion so effective at what it does? Religion has been around long enough to have accumulated deep wisdom into profound human psychological and social needs. At least this is true of the old religions. Some of the newer religions have not yet acquired this wisdom, but rather, they exploit the deep psychological needs of its followers in order to placate the ego of a charismatic leader. I believe that some of these newer religions can be more harmful than beneficial. They still may fulfill some of the same needs, but at way too high of a cost in terms of time, money, and intellectual integrity.

Another question that occurs to me is, do we need to believe literally in order to reap the benefits religion has to offer? Put another way, can we behave ourselves without the literal belief that the Great Sky Daddy will punish us if we don't? Once children discover that Santa Clause is not real, we can no longer use that to motivate and control them. Once we see the man behind the curtain, the great Oz loses his power to awe and intimidate. However, I believe the greatest benefits of religion go beyond this simplistic method of social control. I still feel a great sense of awe and comfort participating in religious rituals, despite my non-literal beliefs.

I feel especially attracted to religions that acknowledge mystery rather than believing in the illusion that they have everything figured out. I also appreciate a religion that can accept me as I am, despite my skepticism. I do not understand why faith is considered such a high virtue when the ability to think and reason can often serve us much better. Finally, I will never again participate in a religion where I have to check my brain at the door or pretend to be something I am not. My former religion treated me as if I was the one with the problem, while the problem all along was that they were absolutely certain of things that are just not so. I have a quite different view than I once did of the words attributed to Jesus, "the truth shall set you free." The truth has set me free of limiting fundamentalist, literalistic beliefs and taken me to a place where I have found peace, comfort, love, and acceptance.

Scientific vs. Religious Ways of Knowing

I have sworn off of writing about Mormonism, a religion that I stopped believing in about 15 years ago and stopped practicing about 9 years ago.  So this post is not about Mormonism per se. Rather it is about how we know things in general, a branch of philosophy known as epistemology.  See my blog, The Glory of God is Intelligence, for discussions that specifically involve Mormonism.

I have heard many people, usually the religious, who contrast scientific ways of knowing with religious ways of knowing. Some truths are beyond the purview of science, they say, and can only be known through spiritual or religious means. I agree with half of this. There are many things that are difficult or impossible to study with scientific techniques. However, the other half of this proposition, that these things can be known by other means, is what I find questionable. My view is that if we cannot study something through scientific techniques, we cannot know it at all. Sure, we can have strong convictions about it, but strong convictions are about how our minds work, not about reality in the world that exists outside of our inner mental life. In other words, religious conviction is more about psychology than truth.

Psychology is sometimes criticized as being a soft science, especially by those who practice the hard sciences such as physics and chemistry. To whatever extent that may be true, it is not because psychologists are less competent as scientists, but because their subject matter is so much more complex than the behavior of individual atoms or sub-atomic particles. To study human behavior and cognition at the level where physics and chemists typically work is a task of such enormous complexity that it is, in all practicality, unsolvable. However, higher-level phenomena can still be studied with statistical techniques. Even physicists must use statistical methods when dealing with the quantum level because of the uncertainty introduced by the act of measuring, which according to Heisenberg's principle cannot be overcome no matter how much we improve our measuring instruments. This introduces a limitation in all sciences, that results are probabilistic rather than absolute.

So is it true that religion reveals absolute truth while science can only reveal what is probably true? Once again, I agree with half of this.  Science does not reveal anything with absolute certainty. However, many of the findings of science are so thoroughly supported by the evidence and have withstood every attempt to falsify them, even though they could be very easily falsified with the right evidence, that we may as well consider them absolute truth. At least they are as close to it as anything possibly can be. I put things like General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics, and Evolution in this category.  Could they be overturned? Absolutely! But as they have resisted the most igneous methods of falsification by some of the smartest people in the world, the chances are vanishingly remote that they will ever be overturned completely. Perhaps continually refined, but not overturned.

It is the first half of the above question, that religion reveals absolute truth, that I have a hard time accepting. There are a number of reasons for my skepticism. From my observation, Christians and Muslims can be equally certain that their religious convictions represent absolute truth, even though some of their tenants are diametrically opposed. Most Christians believe that faith that Jesus is the son of God is necessary for salvation while Muslims believe that the very suggestion that God needs a son to do his work is blasphemous. Both sides express their views with absolutely certainty. Some of the past absolute claims of religion, such as the earth being the unmovable center of the universe, have been demonstrated to be false. Most older religions have wisely backed off from such claims and now confine their truth claims to untestable assumptions, while a few doggedly cling to disproven claims by attempting to discredit the science. Young-earth creationism fits into this category.

In a February 2014 debate between young-earth creationist, Ken Ham, and science popularizer, Bill Nye, each participant was asked what it would take to change his mind. Nye answered that one piece of the right evidence, such as an out-of-place fossil, would prompt him to reconsider his views, while Ham stated that absolutely nothing would change his mind. The problem with dogmatically clinging to a particular view that has no supporting evidence is that the choice among similar competing views is arbitrary. Usually the choice is highly influenced by confirmation bias, the religion of one's parents, and social considerations. The best predictor of a person's religion is the religion of her parents. For the the most conservative Christian denominations, the rate is about 90 percent according to this page on Google Answers.

Here is where we get to the heart of the matter. The absolute certainty we feel about our religious convictions is an illusion. It is an intentional illusion. Without out it, we may be slow to act when our survival is at stake. That is why natural selection has favored it. Without the certain conviction that the snake about to strike is a threat to our life, we may not act quickly enough to avoid being bitten. Our conviction saved our life in the case where the snake was poisonous, but it was an overreaction if this snake was one of the many harmless varieties. Yet the harmless snake, if we were unfamiliar with its species, likely generated as great a conviction as the poisonous one. I believe that a similar mechanism is responsible for our religious convictions. Religious conviction reveals how our minds work, not the nature of metaphysical or supernatural truth.

Just as important to our survival as avoiding being bitten by a poisonous snake is living in social groups. Humans are social animals and learning to navigate our world within our social environment is essential to our survival. An isolated human is unlikely to survive long, and even if he somehow manages to survive for a time, he cannot pass on his genes making him an evolutionary dead end. Religion is one of many social institutions that bind us together. Religious conviction binds us to that social group and provides structure for such important life events as birth, coming of age, marriage, procreation, and death. It should not be surprising that the conviction that binds us to such a group would be favored by natural selection given what is at stake. In order to be truly effective, these convictions must be convincing. The strength of these convictions is more about the importance of these social bonds to our survival, not an indication that they reveal absolute truth.

In my own tradition there is a monthly practice where everyone has the opportunity to stand up in front of the congregation and express their convictions of the religion's foundational truth claims. Most of them are convinced that the feeling they get from this declaration of solidarity constitutes evidence of truthfulness that is superior to anything science has to offer. It can easily be demonstrated that these feelings of conviction are not reliable as a means to discover truth when they concern something that can be examined by science. The reaction of a typical believer to scientific contradiction of his beliefs is to continue to believe anyway when it should be to call into question not only the testable beliefs, but also the untestable beliefs.  Since the religious way of knowing has proved deficient when we can verify by other means, how can we be confident in the method when it concerns the unverifiable?

Human nature is generally to cling to our beliefs even when contradicted by solid evidence. That is why science is so important.  Science provides tools and techniques for compensating for our natural cognitive biases. Our brain uses many heuristics, or rules-of-thumb, because sometimes speed is of the essence and a thorough analysis is not possible. Psychologists have identified many cognitive biases, which are listed in this article. Evolution is not fine-grained enough to eliminate all these, especially when there is no harm in a false positive.

So how do we know that science is not merely another religion? If our cognitive biases can deceive us in our religious beliefs by making us certain of things that are untrue, is this not also true for science? After all, we use the same brain for both activities. Yes, it is correct that these biases affect science as well. That is why so many scientists have trouble accepting new theories, which prompted quantum pioneer, Max Planck, to point out that "science advances one funeral at a time." Scientists can be just as dogmatic as the most stubborn religionist, but science itself has methods for mitigating this, such as peer review, double-blind studies, and rigorous statistical analysis.

Science has an undeniable track record that has led to nearly all the advancements of the modern age, while religion has a track record of resisting progress until the evidence is virtually irrefutable. Religion looks to the past with appeals to authority, but science seeks to verify and question every assumption, no matter how authoritative. The fact that science is sometimes wrong is a strength, not a weakness. Science is self-correcting, while religion rarely corrects its own misconceptions until the external evidence, usually provided by science, is so overwhelming that it cannot be easily denied.

There is wisdom in the old traditions, especially when coupled with modern skepticism. The ancients were just as smart as modern humans, and they passed along their insights through stories prior to beginning of writing. They learned by observation and trial and error, the same as we do today. Not enough time has passed for there to be significant cognitive differences between us and them. The differences are that we have a much larger cultural heritage, and we have the best tool humans have ever devised for teasing out the more difficult and non-intuitive secrets of the natural world.

So in the final analysis, religious ways of knowing are unreliable. Real knowledge is hard-won through persistent, rigorous application of the most effective tools ever invented for overcoming cognitive biases, the sum of which is what we call science.

Eulogy for James Zoar Conklin, Jr.

This is the text of a eulogy that I delivered at my dad's funeral on April 11, 2015.

Dad once told Margie and me that there were only basically three different hairstyles.  He said that I had one, Margie had another, and he had the third.  Parted, un-parted, and departed.  Today, not only is dad’s hair departed but he is also gone from us.  But rather than focus on the loss, today I want to focus on the life that touched so many of us.  Dad is not so much departed, as he was and is deep-hearted.

Dad was born as Junior Zoar Conklin on May 17, 1923 in a farmhouse near Stockville, Nebraska to James Zoar Conklin and Mildred Alma Guthrie.  He was the middle of three boys.  Chester was the oldest and Frank was the youngest.  Dad later changed his name to James Zoar Conklin, Jr. because he felt that Junior was more of a title than a proper name.  His mother continued to call him Junior, but to most everyone else he was Jim.

Dad’s memories of Stockville include a blizzard with 18-foot snow drifts, getting caught smoking corn silk, sleep walking episodes, and delivering voting ballots in an old Dodge touring car with the boxes strapped to the running boards.

In 1931, when Dad was 8 years old, his family moved to New Raymer, Colorado.  On the way they were hit broadside by another car, knocking the Dodge touring car on its side.  The family found Dad unconscious and thought he had been injured, but he woke up unhurt and just asked what had happened.  He had slept through the whole thing.  The sturdy old Dodge touring car was undamaged.  They pushed the car back onto its wheels and went on.

The dust bowl hit in 1933 when Dad was 10 years old. Dad remembers it becoming as black as night when there was a dust storm. The dust would get so thick that they could hardly breathe. They would have to put a wet rag over their mouth if they went outside. The dust would get into everything. It was impossible to keep out. It gathered so high around the fences that cattle could walk right over. There was always a big clean up job after each storm.

While living in New Raymer, when he was around 12 years old, Dad took a movie trip with a couple of friends, Lawrence and Earl Hays. Lawrence was driving his parent's car.  Dad kept pestering Lawrence to let him drive until Lawrence finally gave in. Dad was doing pretty well until he got going a little too fast traveling down a hill. The car hit some gravel at the bottom of the hill and Dad lost control of the car. The car skidded off the road and ended up on its side. There was a duck that had been in a gunnysack in the back seat. The duck and one of the boys were thrown through a hole in the roof.  The boys left the car and walked the rest of the way into town, taking the duck with them.  Dad's aunt, Ruby Clark, and her husband, Guy, found the car where the boys had left it on its side. They were worried that someone could have been hurt. They checked at the doctor's office, but no one there had seen the boys. They went to the school next and found the boys, and the duck, in the auditorium watching the movie as if nothing had happened. The boys explained what had happened, but no one ever found out that Lawrence had let Dad drive the car.

Dad played for the junior high basketball team in New Raymer.  His most memorable experience was a game that he had a chance to win on the final shot.  His shot spun around the rim several times before finally coming out to the gasps of the hometown fans.  New Raymer had lost the game, apparently.  But Dad was fouled on the play.  With New Raymer down by one point and no time left, it was all up to Dad.  If he made both shots, new Raymer would win.  His coach could not watch, but he did not have to.  The crowd went nuts as Dad sank both free throws to win the game.  Dad called this the proudest moment of his life, as far as sports are concerned.

In 1938 Zoar got an offer to move his family to a farm near Gilcrest, Colorado to live rent-free.  Still feeling the effects of the great depression, Zoar accepted.  Dad attended Gilcrest High School for half of 10th grade where he still played basketball.  In 1939 they moved to Greeley where dad attended the much larger Greeley High (which is now Greeley Central).  Dad gave up basketball because of the tougher competition, but he tried boxing for a while.  Dad's friend, Dean Carmichael, talked him into boxing in a tournament. Dad found out just before the match that his first opponent was the former Northern Colorado Lightweight Champion. The match lasted less than a round. Dad never boxed again, and Dean Carmichael was no longer his friend.

Zoar’s family lived in a two-room shack at 5th Street and 21st Avenue in Greeley.  They had a large garden on this one-acre plot which yielded 37 different vegetables. Dad remembered Zoar's famous stew in which he used all 37 different vegetables.

While he was in high school, Dad caught typhoid fever, which the doctor attributed to having drunk water from the Big Thompson River. The doctor wrote a prescription for morphine, which called for 1⁄2 a grain in 24 tablets.  But the druggist put 1⁄2 a grain in each tablet by mistake, making the dosage 24 times too strong. After Dad had taken four tablets, all he wanted to do was sleep all day long. He would nod off while someone was talking to him. Zoar got worried and called the doctor. The doctor came and figured out right away what had happened. The doctor said that it was a good thing Zoar called when he did. In another half hour, Dad would have been dead.

The doctor told Mildred to put on a pot of coffee. They gave Dad coffee, and Chester and a friend took turns walking him up and down the street. They also tried to make him vomit. They had to keep him awake and moving until he got all the morphine out of his system, which took several hours. Dad was not in his right mind and does not remember much of this. They told him later that he kept trying to get away and go flirt with the doctor’s daughter, who was waiting in car.

The doctor suggested that they hire a lawyer, so they hired Robert Gilbert. He got them an out-of-court settlement, and the druggist left town. Later, when Dad lost his hair in a relatively short time, the doctor thought that the morphine overdose may have contributed.

Dad graduated from Greeley High in 1941, the same school from which Margie and I later graduated 38 and 41 years later, although it was Greeley Central by then.  Dad received a draft notice later that year as America entered World War II.  Dad got a medical deferment because of a hernia, but several years later he voluntarily enlisted with his brother, Frank, in time to fight in the Korean War.  Frank was on the front lines and Dad’s job was in communications.  He would lay new phone lines every time they were cut by the enemy.

Between high school and his service years Dad was married, divorced, and became a single parent, retaining custody of his first son, Jimmy.  While Dad was in the service Jimmy stayed with his grandparents.  Dad sent his entire military paycheck home to support Jimmy and the rest of his family.

In late 1959, Dad was attending the funeral of his uncle’s wife.  It was there that he met the love of his life, Florence Jane Ferguson.  She was attending the funeral of her mom’s cousin’s wife.  Since this happened to be the same person, this made Mom and Dad second cousins. They were married a few weeks later on December 10, 1959.  This past year they celebrated their 55th wedding anniversary.

Mom and Dad were both single parents with one child each when they met and married.  Dad had a 15-year-old son, Jimmy, and Mom had a 7-year-old daughter, Tillie.  Within a year and a half they had their first child together.  Margie was born June 10, 1961.  Two and a half years after that, I was born on November 14, 1963, just eight days before the assassination of John F. Kennedy.  By the time I was born, Jimmy was no longer living at home.  Eight months later in August 1964 Jimmy was killed in a single car accident when he fell asleep and drove off an overpass on his way home to visit.

Anyone who has lost a child will know how hard this hit the family, especially Dad.  He was such a private person that he was left cope with his overwhelming grief in the only way he knew.  Consequently, he continued the pattern of problem drinking that had begun with his own father.  Later, when Dad saw how much this hurt his loved ones he quit completely.  By the time of his passing he had been sober for more than 35 years.

For similar reasons, Dad also quit smoking around 1984.  He always had a special connection with his grandson, Joel Marshall, Tillie’s fourth son.  When Joel was around 6 years old, he said to his grandpa, “Oh Grandpa, I wish you wouldn’t drink and smoke and get canceled and die.”  This touched Dad so much that he did not smoke the last 31 years of his life.  This may be a big part of why he was around so long.  His love for his family sustained him and motivated him to make life-changing choices.

Dad retired from the Postal Service in 1984 after working there for more than 20 years.  He recently told my wife Lisa that he had been retired for 31 years.  Not a bad return on investment.

Mom and Dad’s lives changed forever on February 1, 1986.  They once again found themselves taking care of a baby, their grandson, Brandon.  Brandon stayed with Mom and Dad from the time he was born until he was about 3 when he went to live with his mother, Margie, and her new husband Steve, who eventually adopted Brandon and raised him as his own son.  Mom and Dad stayed involved in Brandon’s life taking him on vacation with them and helping him with anything he needed.  When Brandon had children of his own they became very precious to Mom and Dad.  Brandon’s children were at Dad’s bedside two days before he died, along with their mother, Margie, Steve, and Brandon’s brother Justin.  However, Brandon could only be there in spirit as he preceded Dad when he died suddenly and tragically at the age of 28 just a few months earlier.  During the viewing just before Brandon’s funeral, Dad placed his hand on Brandon and said, “I will be joining you soon.”  Dad seemed to lose much of his will to go on after Brandon’s death.  We can only hope that he now has what he had hoped for and that they are reunited, along with Henri Dad’s favorite toy poodle dog.

Dad did not often express his feelings verbally, which made a few occasions all the more striking.  At both their 40th and 50th wedding anniversary parties in front of family and friends he spontaneously and publicly declared how much he loved Mom.  In his lucid moments at the hospital just weeks before he died he continually asked about Mom, how her surgery went, and if she could walk now.  It was as if he knew that he did not have much time left and he wanted to make sure she would be OK without him.

Although Dad was not always big on words, his actions spoke volumes.  He was one of the most kind, gentle, generous, and loving men I have ever know.  When I went through a divorce I gained a new level of appreciation for both Mom and Dad.  They were both unbelievably kind and generous in helping me pick up the pieces of my life, and providing a place where I could spend time with my kids after I moved to California.  My current wife, Lisa, has told me many times that Dad was one of the biggest reasons she felt right about marrying me when she saw the loving and gentle way he interacted with his wife, children, and grand children.  I know there are many here who have been touched and influenced by Dad’s gentleness and generosity.  He never wanted to be a bother to anyone, but he gave whatever he could to those who needed it with no thought about how much it cost him personally.  He was the living embodiment of the widow from Jesus’ parable of the widow’s mite who cast her all into the treasury.  Thank you, Dad, for who you were.  For the life you lived.  For how much you have touched us all.  May you rest in peace and know how much we love you.