Religion and I, we tend to rub each other the wrong way. It hasn't always been as such. In fact, I refrained from any serious personal decisions about religion up until high school. When I was in tenth grade I immersed myself in a number of influential sources presenting persuasive arguments against organized religion and, in fact, the dangers of it. Still, these were not directly focused on beliefs in any higher power, or God in general, and thus in my mind the possibility of a God as presently imagined was preserved.
Finally I reached college - a Jesuit institution at that - and my religious and spiritual affiliations were shaken to their cores. I immediately formed a stark opposition towards all organized religions. I found myself overzealously arguing with others about their religious beliefs and shunning away anything that was remotely related to religion, God, or a higher power.
What I slowly came to accept was something very important for my own reasonableness and fair-mindedness: religion, faith, spirituality, and belief are all fantastically complex and multi-layered subjects that should not and cannot be simplified, reduced, or hastily understood.
Only with time, careful analyzation and discipline, and after acknowledging my irrational discontent and hostility towards religion - and its distant cousin unreflective spirituality - have I managed a more modest and respectful attitude towards them. This is not to say that I have assumed a manner of indifference or disinterest in the matter but rather that I am now striving for a universal level of religious fairness and objectivity.
A wonderful change came from my self-improvement. I no longer wastefully crusade against religion, the religious, and the spiritual. Instead I learn, grow, and seek to harmonize amongst them, living in the same wondrous yet mysterious world that is just as bleak and beautiful for me as it is for all others.
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
Hell's Angel
The most disturbing finding I came across during my research for this project was definitely the dark truth surrounding Mother Teresa. I always assumed her to be everything the media and the church portrayed her to be. Well there's my problem! Apparently she does indeed care for the sick and dieing. But the nature of her care, her motives, and her objectives are all quite different from how she is commonly depicted.
Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist, made a documentary about Mother Teresa during the mid-90's, uncovering some startling secrets into her hospice in Calcutta. Reportedly, Mother Teresa provides minimal medical equipment to her nurses and her patients, they have been seen using the same hypodermic needle for multiple patients, many of them surely infected with diseases. Hundreds of patients sleep in the same room on a miserable military cot with no blanket. In one interview, she says that God is caring for them and that she has to do little to help, she is only doing this because God instructed her to – apparently not because these lepers are suffering and homeless.
Of course, this is Calcutta, what more could she provide! She is a nun, she is frail and old, she should be commended for all her efforts. Well, Christopher also notes that she receives millions upon millions of charitable donations towards her foundation yearly. Where does this go? Instead of building an effective and sanitary hospital, she spreads the money thinly throughout 500 of these hospices all across the world – all as ineffective and helpless as the next. Her intentions aren't to help these people towards recovery; her intention is to save their souls before they die.
Christopher Hitchens, a British journalist, made a documentary about Mother Teresa during the mid-90's, uncovering some startling secrets into her hospice in Calcutta. Reportedly, Mother Teresa provides minimal medical equipment to her nurses and her patients, they have been seen using the same hypodermic needle for multiple patients, many of them surely infected with diseases. Hundreds of patients sleep in the same room on a miserable military cot with no blanket. In one interview, she says that God is caring for them and that she has to do little to help, she is only doing this because God instructed her to – apparently not because these lepers are suffering and homeless.
Of course, this is Calcutta, what more could she provide! She is a nun, she is frail and old, she should be commended for all her efforts. Well, Christopher also notes that she receives millions upon millions of charitable donations towards her foundation yearly. Where does this go? Instead of building an effective and sanitary hospital, she spreads the money thinly throughout 500 of these hospices all across the world – all as ineffective and helpless as the next. Her intentions aren't to help these people towards recovery; her intention is to save their souls before they die.
Just Avoid The Bullet
Now that all the research has been collected, we can confidently propose a better way to think about this myth. Religious people do not tend to be more altruistic than other people. Contrarily, “the students with high levels of intrinsic religiosity and doctrinal orthodoxy were less likely to help others or volunteer for the community” (Chang-Ho, 2006). Moreover, “intrinsic and orthodox religion foster compassionate and caring beliefs, yet the likelihood of actually helping others decreases as those religious orientations increase” (Chang-Ho, 2006).
How surprising! The explanation that follows:
“One of the popular explanations for moral hypocrisy is “overpowered integrity” (Batson and Thompson, 2001). To this theory, a person sincerely intends to be moral, only to give up this goal when the costs of acting morally become evident” (Chang-Ho, 2006).
Rather than diving into a debate concerning precisely what does – if not religion – foster morality leading to altruism, we shall instead alter the intention of the myth's statement. A more accurate claim would be: Genuinely religious people follow philosophies which can and do motivate altruistic behavior while atheists and agnostics can and do govern their lives by equally altruistic ethical principles of morality. Avoid any categorical comparison between the two in the first place.
How surprising! The explanation that follows:
“One of the popular explanations for moral hypocrisy is “overpowered integrity” (Batson and Thompson, 2001). To this theory, a person sincerely intends to be moral, only to give up this goal when the costs of acting morally become evident” (Chang-Ho, 2006).
Rather than diving into a debate concerning precisely what does – if not religion – foster morality leading to altruism, we shall instead alter the intention of the myth's statement. A more accurate claim would be: Genuinely religious people follow philosophies which can and do motivate altruistic behavior while atheists and agnostics can and do govern their lives by equally altruistic ethical principles of morality. Avoid any categorical comparison between the two in the first place.
The Paradigm Of Duty
Religion, like many other aspects of human culture, has its fair share of advantages and disadvantages. Well, to be honest, religion is a particularly dangerous aspect of our culture; not because it is wrong – or right – but because of its inherently powerful, authoritative, and influential nature. Religions generally devise a mass scripture instructing how, why, and for whom to live and apply it to millions – sometimes billions – of diverse and unique people. They also tend to wager your life somewhere in there as well, granting you eternal bliss if you unquestioningly oblige or damnation in the fiery pits of hell if you decide to take your own route.
Fortunately, religion as of late has become more invested in ameliorating their hypocrisies, inconsistencies, fallacies, and so forth. Thus, I believe the most important misunderstanding of my myth lays at its heart – an archaic and ludicrously false generalization of religious people – and their opposites. Religious people are not inherently altruistic; but more importantly, ascribing to a religion brings absolutely no statistical bearing on one's altruistic nature. In fact, by definition, religious people acting 'altruistically' in the name of their god, religion, or church are not altruistic at all. Altruism must not have, as a motive, the motivation of duty to something or it is not considered altruism.
Fortunately, religion as of late has become more invested in ameliorating their hypocrisies, inconsistencies, fallacies, and so forth. Thus, I believe the most important misunderstanding of my myth lays at its heart – an archaic and ludicrously false generalization of religious people – and their opposites. Religious people are not inherently altruistic; but more importantly, ascribing to a religion brings absolutely no statistical bearing on one's altruistic nature. In fact, by definition, religious people acting 'altruistically' in the name of their god, religion, or church are not altruistic at all. Altruism must not have, as a motive, the motivation of duty to something or it is not considered altruism.
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
An Altruistic Doubt
Maybe I am self-righteous. Maybe I am just a heathen. Maybe, just maybe, I am frightened by the consequences of being wrong.
Religion, polytheism, atheism, agnosticism – these are philosophies by which billions of people over thousands of years have lived, guided, and ended their lives believing. Do I need a reason why I find myself engrossed in such an epic cosmic debate of humanity's beginning and the speculations of our future?
Of course, you are wondering what such a debate has to do with my myth. Well, not much. In fact, according to the research I have collected during this project, religious affiliation has nearly nothing to do with one's altruistic nature. But then, what does?
I chose this myth for two reasons; I find great importance in pursuing a more accurate idea of where I came from, where I am, and where we all may likely be headed. Whether or not some people find religion archaic and outdated, much of human history lays intertwined with humanity's ideas of spirituality and the divine. It is a source of much insight into the psychology of our past.
The second reason is simple; the coercive nature of both religion and human nature captivate me. This myth originally caught my eye because it would require me to look into the deep personal motives that drive actions of an individual that, to others, appear quite the opposite. I began this project quite certain that all human actions were done for the benefit of the individual. So, in other words, I was attracted to this myth because I thought it would uncover to me the phenomenon of altruism – the embodiment of genuine selfless action.
Monday, June 7, 2010
A Short Introduction: An Epidemic
How does the myth religious people tend to be more altruistic than other people survive without substantive evidence in support of it? Myths in culture are often perpetuated by mind traps – or reasoning errors – that fool people into holding questionable beliefs. Here are three of epidemic proportions:
An Epidemic
The false consensus effect causes one's own beliefs, values, and habits to influence his estimates of how widely such views and habits are shared by others (Gilovich, 1991). For example, a person who abstains from consuming illicit drugs may believe the majority of individuals in his school to do the same, while one who often experiments with drugs will be under the impression that most of his classmates do the same. All the while, for the sake of the argument, both may be wrong and the actual statistic is exactly half and half.
Applied directly to my myth, the reasoning error could look like this: “I have known Edward for 20 years and he has always been a nice guy, but ever since he began going to church more regularly he has become so much more selfless! I know he recently received a promotion and now has more money than he could ever spend, but it simply must be the church that is putting him up to all this charity!”
America's population is largely religious, making up something like 75% of the entire population (Wikipedia, 2010). It is no surprise to me that a myth so heavily invested in religious superiority has been preserved in our country. Making up three quarters of the United States, the religious are easily capable of perpetuating this self-serving assessment of themselves. By adopting self-serving beliefs about [themselves] and comforting beliefs about the world, [they allow their personal] motivations to influence their beliefs through the ways they choose a comforting [illusory] pattern from the fabric of available evidence (Gilovich, 1991). Thus, just as a warlord assesses the morality of his line of work and determines his actions justified because he believes war to be necessary and, technically, he is not personally killing any of his victims, but in fact entirely ignoring the magnificently gruesome reality of what he is enabling, religious people assess the morality of their lives and actions as well as the organizations with which they identify themselves. By positively assessing the religions that they adhere to, upholding the notion that religious people tend to be more altruistic than others, and then adopting said notion as a truth for themselves as well, they are able to, I suppose, sleep better at night.
Sources:
Gilovich, T. (1991). How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason In Everyday Life. New York, NY: The Free Press
Religion In The United States. (2010) In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion in the United States
Considering my myth, this reasoning error affects individuals in different ways. For a priest who believes this myth and who in fact lives a truly altruistic life, his estimation of other truly altruistic religious people may be severely skewed. First, he overestimates the religious population and then overestimates the number of those religious people who are actually altruistic. Another consequence of this error arises when applied to a religious individual who inaccurately believes himself to be altruistic. He inaccurately estimates the magnitude of religiously influenced altruism based on his erroneous idea of altruism and his overestimation of religiously-like-minded folks.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc identifies the error of coming to a conclusion based solely on order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might explain a connection (Gilovich, 1991). Concluding that college was the sole cause of a student's attempted suicide only because the suicide attempt occurred after his first quarter of college represents an example of this reasoning error. In reality, the student may have attempted suicide because of the death of a family member, a failed relationship, or long-standing depression.
Post hoc ergo propter hoc identifies the error of coming to a conclusion based solely on order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might explain a connection (Gilovich, 1991). Concluding that college was the sole cause of a student's attempted suicide only because the suicide attempt occurred after his first quarter of college represents an example of this reasoning error. In reality, the student may have attempted suicide because of the death of a family member, a failed relationship, or long-standing depression.
Applied directly to my myth, the reasoning error could look like this: “I have known Edward for 20 years and he has always been a nice guy, but ever since he began going to church more regularly he has become so much more selfless! I know he recently received a promotion and now has more money than he could ever spend, but it simply must be the church that is putting him up to all this charity!”
America's population is largely religious, making up something like 75% of the entire population (Wikipedia, 2010). It is no surprise to me that a myth so heavily invested in religious superiority has been preserved in our country. Making up three quarters of the United States, the religious are easily capable of perpetuating this self-serving assessment of themselves. By adopting self-serving beliefs about [themselves] and comforting beliefs about the world, [they allow their personal] motivations to influence their beliefs through the ways they choose a comforting [illusory] pattern from the fabric of available evidence (Gilovich, 1991). Thus, just as a warlord assesses the morality of his line of work and determines his actions justified because he believes war to be necessary and, technically, he is not personally killing any of his victims, but in fact entirely ignoring the magnificently gruesome reality of what he is enabling, religious people assess the morality of their lives and actions as well as the organizations with which they identify themselves. By positively assessing the religions that they adhere to, upholding the notion that religious people tend to be more altruistic than others, and then adopting said notion as a truth for themselves as well, they are able to, I suppose, sleep better at night.
Sources:
Gilovich, T. (1991). How We Know What Isn't So: The Fallibility of Human Reason In Everyday Life. New York, NY: The Free Press
Religion In The United States. (2010) In Wikipedia. Retrieved from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion in the United States
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