Wine connoisseurs on a budget often have a bottle of "the good stuff" that they reserve for special occasions. I feel like celebrating the conclusion of my Stealth series by breaking out the equivalent of a fine bottle of wine: a book that actually does use science to shed light on the nature of religion.
The book that I have decided to open for you is Sacred and Secular, written by Pippa Norris and Ronald Inglehart in 2004, a very good year. The authors are political scientists who don't use the E-word, but their results are highly interpretable from an evolutionary perspective. Their goal is to evaluate the hypothesis that religion can be replaced by secular society. All of the major social theorists of the 19th century, such as Comte, Spencer, Durkheim, Weber, Marx, and Freud, believed that this would be the case. Yet, here we are in the 21st century and religion seems to be stronger than ever. Does this mean that religion will always be with us? Norris and Inglehart think not. They propose that religion can indeed yield to secularization, but only under certain environmental conditions. That is why they are thinking like evolutionists, even if they don't use the E-word.
They identify existential security as the key environmental factor that determines whether society will become religious or secular. If your life is likely to be disrupted by famine, war, disease, and major dislocations of all sorts, then you live in an environment that is low in existential security. Religion thrives in this kind of environment because it provides actual security (basic social services, including protection against other human groups) and also a psychological sense of security. If you confidently expect to go to college, start a family in your late 20s, have a job with health care, and live to a ripe old age, then you live in an environment that is high in existential security. Secularization thrives in this environment because religion isn't required to provide basic services and the psychological comforts aren't worth the costs imposed by religious membership. Religion stays with us because so much of the world remains wracked by existential insecurity. If we take a closer look, we should be able to see religion and secularization expanding and contracting, like biological species shifting their ranges in response to environmental change.
How might one test such a hypothesis? Whenever I dive into a new subject area, I am often astonished at the sheer volume of research and the effort that was required to gather and analyze the data. Norris and Inglehart base their analysis on The World Values Survey (WVS), a global investigation of political and societal change that includes dozens of nations in four separate waves, beginning in 1981 and most recently in 1999-2001. This massive database allows three different kinds of comparison: 1) between nations at any particular point in time; 2) between time intervals for any particular nation; and 3) between age cohorts for any particular nation. The WVS includes questions that measure religious participation (e.g., "How often to you attend religious services?"), religious values (e.g., "How important Is God in your life?"), and religious beliefs (e.g., "Do you believe in life after death?" It and other international databases also contain voluminous information on the factors that comprise existential security for each nation.
Here are a few of the many results reported in Sacred and Secular:
• Variation in religiosity across nations is strongly correlated with indicators of existential security, regardless of the region of the world or specific religious tradition. Here is how Norris and Inglehart put it (p 63):
The extent to which sacred or secular orientations are present in a society can be predicted by any of these basic indicators of human development with a remarkable degree of accuracy, even if we know nothing further about the country. To explain or predict the strength and popularity of religion in any country we do not need to understand specific factors such as the activities and role of Pentecostal evangelism in Guatemala and Presbyterian missionaries in South Korea, the specific belief-systems in Buddhism, the impact of madrassa teaching Wahhabism in Pakistan, the fund-raising capacity and organizational strength of the Christian Right in the U.S. South, the philanthropic efforts of Catholic missionaries in West Africa, the crackdown of freedom on worship in China, or divisions over the endorsement of women and homosexual clergy within the Anglican church. What we do need to know, however, are the basic characteristics of a vulnerable society that generate the demand for religion, including factors far removed from the spiritual, exemplified by levels of medical immunization, cases of AIDS/HIV, and access to an improved water source.
• Within nations, religiosity is stronger in the more vulnerable segments of the population, such as women, poorer households, the less educated, and the unskilled working class.
• Longitudinal data is available for 22 industrial and post-industrial nations. Religiosity has declined in every one over the last few decades, with the exception of the USA, Ireland, and Italy.
• Religious values are learned primarily early in life, so that the religiosity of a given age cohort should be determined by the existential security during the period when the cohort was young. There is a strong cohort effect in post-industrial nations with the older cohort (born between the two world wars) more religious than the younger cohorts. There is no cohort effect in the poorest nations and if anything the youngest cohorts are more religious.
• The USA is the most religious of all the post-industrial nations, which makes it seem anomalous. However, the USA also has the highest income inequality of all the post-industrial nations. When these two variables are plotted against each other on a graph, they fall into a neat line (a strong correlation) with the USA at the top. Thus, the USA is not anomalous when it comes to the relationship between religiosity and existential security. Increase existential security and religiosity will probably decrease, in the USA no less than Nigeria. Here is how Norris and Inglehart put it (p 108):
Many American families, even in the professional middle classes, face risks of unemployment , the dangers of sudden ill health without adequate private medical insurance, vulnerability to becoming a victim of crime, and the problems of paying for long-term care of the elderly. Americans face greater anxieties than citizens in other advanced industrialized countries about whether they will be covered by health insurance, whether they will be fired arbitrarily, or whether they will be forced to choose between losing their job and devoting themselves to their newborn child.
• Religiosity and secularization are shifting their geographical distributions, exactly like biological species shifting their ranges in response to environmental change. Secularization is spreading in the postindustrial nations (as noted above), but religiosity is spreading worldwide, in part because the least secure (and most religious) nations also have a much higher rate of population growth than the most secure nations.
For me, reading Sacred and Secular in comparison to books such as The God Delusion or God is Not Great is like a fine Merlot compared to kerosene. True, the Merlot must be sipped slowly to be savored. Sacred and Secular describes the scientific process in detail, but this has the same fascination as watching the construction of a skyscraper, something that can become mesmerizing even if we are not the architect. And when it is finished, look at what has been built!
In contrast, take a slug of the new atheism and the primitive centers of your brain are immediately jolted into senseless action. That's exciting in a way, like gathering around a barroom brawl, but it leads only to injury and calling it science and reason is, well, sacrilege.
The new atheists defend their lack of scholarship by saying that their purpose is to raise consciousness and goad people into action. I would therefore like to end my Stealth series by issuing a call to action of my own. Science and reason are every bit as important for solving the problems of modern existence as the new atheists say, but they are not making their way into popular intellectual discourse or public policy. We justly disapprove of politicians when they manipulate the primitive centers of our brains, jolting us into senseless action that harms everyone over the long run. Yet, popular intellectual discourse is not much better, as we have seen in the case of the new atheists.
What books such as Sacred and Secular tell us is that the central problem of modern existence is how to increase existential security. That is something that everyone wants and the raison d'etre of religion, but achieving it in modern life on a worldwide scale is very much like building a skyscraper -- a collective and consensus effort, careful and methodical, based on scientific knowledge. Somehow, intellectuals and policy makers of all stripes need to focus on this fact. Everyone needs to swear off kerosene and learn to savor good wine. Fortunately, there is an entire wine cellar of books like Sacred and Secular, waiting to be opened. When it comes to the wine of science, we can all live like kings.
Paul Pardi: What's So New About the New Atheism?
Rev. Jonathan Weyer: A Ministry of Dialoguing about Doubt
Paul Pardi: Religion is Evolving Before Our Eyes
1. Some of us here have suggested (myself, mostly) that "the new atheists" may have different roles from the ones that your brand of secularism advocates. Among those are awareness, equal rights and support for atheists. How do you respond to this?
2. How do you explain the presence of pre-industrial secular societies using your "existential security" theory?
3. Religion uses big media to spread itself. You know how memes live on. Are you suggesting that if we just work towards "existential security" and stick to "intellectual discussion" we can achieve secularization?
My argument is : its information and not security that is the limiting factor in secularization, (although security is great in its own merit). Existential security can provide the conditions for thought, but if the information waves are jammed with superstitious mumbo-jumbo, its hard to discern the truth.
Thanks for these interesting questions. Briefly,
1) You are saying that the New Atheists are playing a USEFUL role but we also need to ask whether they are telling the TRUTH in the process. If not, they are engaging in "espionage" as Dan Dennett sometimes puts it, or going the way of a stealth religion, as I would put it. It's not enough to be useful, we also need to play by certain rules or we have abandoned the moral high ground. It's a bit like torture, which is how I feel when the New Atheists put religion on the rack. Let me stress again, as I have repeatedly in my blogs, that equal rights for atheists, maintaining the separation of church and state, etc. are great and noble causes--but that's no excuse for for abandoning the high intellectual ground. I think that the new atheists are botching their cause with their ham-fisted tactics, much like the Bush administration...
2) Your second question is empirical. There is always a scatter of points around a correlation and you are asking about the "outliers." The best answer would also be empirical--to examine the details of pre-industrial secular societies to see why they are not religious. Here is my prediction: Just because a society is pre-industrial doesn't necessarily make it existentially insecure. If pre-industrial societies vary in existential security, then this could explain variation in their religiosity. If so, then this would lend addition support for the overall theory. The situation is identical to the USA as "anomalous" among post-industrial societies. The anomaly disappears when we look at existential security per se, rather than broad categories such as "post-industrial" and "pre-industrial" that only crudely correlate with existential security. But again, this is a matter of empirical inquiry. Someone needs to roll up their sleeves and learn about the societies that appear to be the exceptions to the rule!
3) Don't forget that we are obligated to pay attention to the results of scientific inquiry. To advance the strong form of your argument, you would need to show how information and not security can explain all the patterns documented by Norris and Inglehart. A weaker form of your argument is more plausible--can information be a limiting factor IN ADDITION to existential security? That's quite likely.
In summary, wouldn't it be nice if we had an atheism movement that had all the worthwhile goals of the new atheism movement while sticking to the high ground? Must we resort to intellectual torture to achieve our noble goals???
Some thoughts:
1) Nearly every paradigm shift involves some pain. I call your approach the "Don't Rock the Boat" theory. Why are you worried about putting religion "on the rack"? So what? Is the small price of upsetting True Believers equal to the damage done by faith-based nonsense like fanatical terrorism, abstinence programs to fight AIDS in Africa, Intelligent Design and the Rapture?
2) The premise of the book you cite is "existential security creates secularism". Fine. But if true, then the contrapositive is also true : "non-secularism (religion) creates a LACK of existential security". In other words, for a religion to survive, it requires the population to feel inferior and threatened. So would it not be advisable to fight against religion to promote existential security? Why do we have to sit around waiting for universal affluence and an extended life-span for religion to go away?
Aargh ... I gotta run.
Thanks for taking the time to reply to my questions. I have given some thought to your points and find myself agreeing, quite to my surprise, with your 'moral high ground' principle. I think it was your torture analogy that has got me thinking. This idea is going to take some getting used to.
Regarding the question of "existential security", I think my aversion to the idea is because the ambiguity of the concept itself suggests that it could be defined so as to fit any set of data. I am reserving judgment till I read the book in question and see what factors the authors used in the study.
The question of causation is one I keep coming to. Security may indeed correlate well with secularization BECAUSE it provides the impetus for information spread, retention, receptiveness, etc. This would make an interesting study. In any case, we can agree that the assertion of scientific thinking in popular culture must help replace some of the traditional roles of supernatural religion. Given the standards you set for us in this regard, that will be a challenge in the era of mega-churches, televangelism and internet.
If you have evidence to the contrary, kindly present it so we can all move on.
It sounds like a good book, and I shall seek it out. But why couldn't you have written about it in the first article of the series? And why the provocative title ("Atheism as a Stealth Religion") for each of SIX articles? (I still think you are confusing atheism with so-called New Atheism, and I have yet to see you present a convincing argument that either atheism or New Atheism are the equivalent of religion.)
Also, there appears to be an underlying theme that continues to trouble me : You seem to be advocating that atheists just shut up and sit on their hands until society rises to such a level of affluence that the majority can begin to accept atheism without going to pieces. The "Don't Rock the Boat" Theory. Well, I reject that idea.
Just because an institution (religion) performs some "functional utility" does not make it worthy of keeping. Authoritarianism, Nationalism, slavery, caste systems, second class status for women, and the persecution of minorities can also be said to hold some "functional utility" for the societies that practice them - should we choose to not fight against them just because these institutions work for those societies? Most atheists find religion to be morally repugnant and even dangerous - it is NOT an option to wait for the rest of society to catch up with us. So what if advocating atheism shakes up society? Every paradigm shift rocks the boat.
And what if the "existential security implies secularism" argument is actually a reciprocal relationship? Maybe pushing for increased free-thinking (even atheism) will give rise to more intelligent, open-minded people who will in turn become more affluent, and who will feel greater existential security. Maybe if people stop waiting for the Rapture, they will do more to improve the world they live in.
1. Awareness. Most Americans are not aware of the fact the nonreligious people are the fourth largest belief group in the world after Christians, Muslims and Hindus.
2. Rights: Atheists are one of the few groups left that can be trashed as immoral and so on. This is partly because of point 1, most people dont know anything about atheists and there is no discussion of atheist rights.
3. Support: Like homosexuality, atheism usually makes uncomfortable dinner table talk and there needs to be support groups for those who decide to be atheist. Many kids go through their entire youth without help, keeping their beliefs to themselves and full of fear of persecution. These books have brought the issue out into the mainstream and more people are finding the courage to speak out.
4. There are groups now that are fighting ideas such as tax-exemption for government endorsed religion. Tax exemption, along with forcing people to say this "under god" and forcing atheists to handle money that says "in god we trust" is an example of the un-constitutional hold of religion on our society. It is the marginalization of millions of people by government endorsed persecution.
5. Alternatives: These books endorse scientific naturalism as an alternative to supernatural religion. Many people, myself included, need that.
There are many more reasons why the "new atheists" as you call them, are the best thing that happened to the atheistic community in America. Too bad many non-atheists are pissed off. Its about time religion's free ride ended.
I wonder why "the new atheists" cannot be viewed as providing the existential security that the author talks about. Read "Religion as a Natural Phenomenon" by Daniel Dennett. The books by Dawkins and Hitchens are just an introduction to a whole new way of thinking. A whole new world opens up from there on, a world that is fascinating, naturalistic and offers real existential security, better than all the myths of our dreamy ancestors.
I'm disappointed. Your argument boils down to the observation that people want existential security and that they will move toward societies and societal structures that provide it. That's not an insight about religion.
As I've said before, I greatly admire your work showing that religion furthers existential security. That's certainly a good argument for why religions persist. But lots of other societal structures, including dictatorships and street gangs, also offer improved existential security. People move towards them also when they offer more security than other options.
This analysis doesn't distinguish religion from any of the other ways that people have of organizing themselves to improve their existential security.
-- Russ
'This book advances a significant restatement
of secularization theory. It frames religion as declining,
not through rationalization or differentiation, but
with the advance of "existential security" through
modernization and human development. The healthier,
safer, and more secure people feel, the authors’
central probabilistic argument goes, the less they
feel a need for religion. Thus modernization involves
very strong secularizing tendencies.' ...
Well, duh!
Darwin, Einstein & Bohr killed g*d. Services have been held.
Really? Were you around two hundred thousand years ago? I know your religion wasn't. Cultural rules are what every religion borrowed from, not the other way around. Also, no one is calling for banning religion ( as you falsely interpreted from the reader's comments), just for enforcing constitutional equality, which includes abolishing religion-based public policy (Im sure you wouldn't want voodoo based policy decisions being made, would you?).