What Is Religious Belief?

Ken Taylor
Does anyone really truly believe in God?

Josh Landy
Or is religion just a fancy form of make believe?

Ken Taylor
Don’t we all believe some things on faith?

Josh Landy
Welcome to Philosophy Talk the program that questions everything…

Ken Taylor
…except your intelligence. I’m Ken Taylor. We’re coming to you from the studios of KALW San Francisco.

Josh Landy
Continuing conversations that begin at Philosophers Corner on the Stanford campus, where Ken teaches philosophy and I direct the philosophy and literature initiative.

Ken Taylor
And today we’re thinking about religious beliefs, and asking how they differ from other kinds of beliefs.

Josh Landy
How they differ? I’ll tell you one way they differ, Ken: they’re more philosophically disreputable.

Ken Taylor
Disreputable? Come on Josh, why do you say that?

Josh Landy
Well, they’re not based on evidence or reason. They’re not subject to debate, you can’t prove or disprove them. I mean, I think religious belief is a lot more like self-deception or make-believe.

Ken Taylor
Oh gosh, Josh. I think you’re way under estimating religious people. And also their beliefs. Look, religious beliefs can have huge impacts on people, some of the most honest, committed and passionate people I know, I the way they are precisely because of their religious beliefs. So they can’t possibly just be like make-believe.

Josh Landy
Well, maybe it could be wishful thinking. Maybe they believe it, but it isn’t true. Or maybe they only believe they believe, Oh, what are you talking about? Well, think about all this stuff that religious people actually do. Maybe not all of them, but some of them, you know, they they tell us to love our neighbor. And then what do they do? They go out and vote for a guy who puts kids in cages. Right? They go on and on about sexual purity, and then they cheat on their spouses. And I mean, surely that kind of thing has to mean they don’t really believe this stuff. They say they just think they believe it.

Ken Taylor
No, no, Josh, Josh, just look, look, you’re making a bad difference. Lots of people are like that are precisely like that, about lots of their beliefs. For example, there are plenty of people who believe that I don’t know, getting more exercise and eating better, would be good for their health. But you know, they don’t always follow through. But that doesn’t mean that they don’t believe really, truly believe that they should. It’s like you’re the literary guy. It’s like that line from TS Eliot, I think he says, “Between the intention and the act, falls the shadow.”

Josh Landy
That is a beautiful line. So you’re saying people like that subject to what philosophers call weakness of the well?

Ken Taylor
That’s exactly right. And all of us even you Josh, I’m sure even you are subject to weakness of the will sometimes fair point. So So why would you pick on religious people as their religious beliefs is particularly bad example?

Josh Landy
Well, because there really is a difference. I mean, like, I genuinely believe that it’s good for me to get more exercise even if I’m, you know, lying on my couch eating Cheetos. But I’m not as convinced Ken Gunn, loving Christians actually believe for example, in turning the other cheek, you know, maybe they say they do. Or maybe they’re trying to convince other people. Maybe they’re trying to convince themselves but are they really believing it?

Ken Taylor
But just ask yourself, come on. Why on earth would people spend all that time all that intellectual energy trying to talk themselves into pretending that they believe something that they really don’t believe? What would be the point?

Josh Landy
Well, meetcha has an answer for that. Actually, he thinks people often prefer illusions to the truth because because the truth is really hard to swallow. Illusions make life more palatable. They make things look better than it actually are. And you know what? People need that.

Ken Taylor
Josh, come on. You really believe that religious belief is it’s just nothing but like a Nietzschean necessary illusion or something?

Josh Landy
Thus spoke Zarathustra, Ken. I mean, look, believing in an all powerful, all knowing eternal being in the sky was some big plan for you. That’s a really comforting illusion. It sure beats the heck out of recognizing the world’s just a cold, hard, meaningless place and death is the end of existence.

Ken Taylor
You say, okay, I get it. You say religious belief is also comforting, so easy, but come on, think about it a little more. Think of what religion sometimes demand requires of us. It says, You got to give away your money. You got to sacrifice your life. In the case of Abraham, you know what God said to Abraham? Give me your child son, the one I promised you take them and sacrifice them. You think that was comforting to Abraham, that was demanding dude.

Josh Landy
I’ll grant you that religious belief is a complicated phenomenon. There’s clearly a lot we need to figure out. Maybe would help if we could get God on the line.

Ken Taylor
I know you’re joking, but you know, there are people who seriously believe that they’re in an actual conversation with God. So we sent our Roving Philosophical Reporter, Holly J. McDede, to find out how some evangelical Christians try to forge an intimate relationship with an invisible divine being. She files this report.

Holly McDede
Tanya Marie Luhrmann grew up in an Orthodox Jewish neighborhood. Her mother’s father’s a Baptist minister, her father was raised as a Christian Scientist. So she’s always been fascinated by how things become real for people.

Tanya Luhrmann
My first project, my dissertation project, was on middle class people who practice magic.

Holly McDede
Now she’s an anthropologist at Stanford. By 2003, she began doing fieldwork with an evangelical church called the Vineyard.

Tanya Luhrmann
In this faith, people seek to have a back and forth relationship, an intimate relationship with this, all powerful, all knowing entirely good god who responds to them.

Holly McDede
She spent more than four years observing the Vineyard in Chicago and Palo Alto—in prayer groups, Bible circles and worship sessions.

Tanya Luhrmann
And they would say things like, I recognize God’s voice, the way I recognize my mom’s voice on the phone.

Holly McDede
But she says Vineyard members didn’t necessarily act like they could rely on an all powerful God, at least not in the same way people rely on mom. In fact, they often talk about forgetting God was real.

Tanya Luhrmann
People never asked God to write their term paper. They take their car to fixed, most religious believers also go to the doctor.

Holly McDede
So Luhrmann went searching for an explanation to a big question. How are rational people able to feel the presence of an invisible being? That question set her back in time to the 1960s

Tanya Luhrmann
One of the great untold stories of American Christianity is the Hippie Christians or the Jesus Freaks.

Larry Norman
Sipping whiskey from a paper cup

Holly McDede
By the 70s musicians Larry Norman had introduced the world to Christian rock.

Larry Norman
Take a look at what you done to yourself, why don’t you put the Bible back on the shelf?

Holly McDede
Thousands and thousands of young Christians look to Jesus as the perfect representation of hippie counterculture.

Lonnie Frisbee
The people tell me that I’m trying to look like Jesus. I can’t think of anybody else I’d rather look like.

Holly McDede
An evangelist named Lonnie Frisbee preached on the beaches.

Lonnie Frisbee
God is blowing everybody’s mind. Because he’s saving the hippies and nobody thought a hippie could be saved. God, if you’re really real, reveal yourself to me!

Tanya Luhrmann
These hippie Christians kind of traded LSD out for speaking in tongues.

Holly McDede
Lurman says the Jesus people wanted to connect with God in a meaningful, intimate way. The Vineyard movement spoke about a real God for real people.

Petra
I want you to be free, Jesus said that to me.

Holly McDede
Decades later, evangelical churches like the Vineyard now dot the United States, and many Americans say they talk to God. Luhrmann visited the vineyard church goers are taught how to hear God’s voice

Tanya Luhrmann
Because they basically invited people to look for thoughts that stood out from other thoughts, thoughts that might be more spontaneous, thoughts that were louder. And they would say, Well you really want to ask is this the kind of thing that God would say.

Holly McDede
This close relationship to God can help keep belief systems strong, and those beliefs can also have political implications. White Christian evangelicals, for example, overwhelmingly voted for President Donald Trump because he spoke about a lot of policies that appeal to the space.

Jon Bialecki
That spoke to a lot of evangelical anxieties in a moment where they’re beginning to go and clearly see their demographic decline.

Holly McDede
Jon Bialecki is an American religion anthropologist with the University of Edinburgh. He also researched the Vineyard church, where he met people drawn to the miraculous.

Jon Bialecki
Part of it was that the entire Trump story seems so unlikely, to the degree that people believe there is a divine plan. And people are looking for the hand of God. They’re looking for breaks from the natural order.

Holly McDede
But Bialecki says evangelicals were clearly not the only people looking for an improbable president. And he says that faith in the invisible is not necessarily unique to believers.

Jon Bialecki
So much of what we do in this current world is taken on faith. There’s just a vast horizon of material that we don’t understand that we can’t explain that we just hope or expect will be there.

Holly McDede
Tanya Luhrmann says the evangelical Christians she met the Vineyard seemed happy to feel the presence of such a loving God. But there were some who also felt that a disturbing presence of demons.

Tanya Luhrmann
I thought that the demons could sometimes be pretty overwhelming for people. And those are the people that I became most worried about.

Holly McDede
After all, not all invisible forces are good to have around.

Bob Dylan
Well it may be the devil or it may be the lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.

Holly McDede
for Philosophy Talk, I’m Holly J. McDede.

Ken Taylor
Thanks for that amazing tour of people trying to hear the voice of God. I’m Ken Taylor, with me is my Stanford colleague, Josh Landy, and today we’re asking what is religious belief.

Josh Landy
Ken and I are actually in the studios of the Chicago recording company this week. But from our home studio at KALW in San Francisco, we’re now joined by Neil van Leeuwen. Neil is a professor of philosophy at Georgia State University. He’s one of the featured contributors on the Philosophy Talk blog. And he’s the author of a forthcoming book tentatively titled, “Religion as Make-Believe.” Neil, welcome back to Philosophy Talk.

Neil van Leeuwen
It’s great to be here.

Ken Taylor
So Neil I want you to tell us what first got you interested in this? It’s a fascinating topic. But what first got you interested? I mean, did you have some religious conversion religious falling away hear the voice of God shouting at you or something? What was it?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, I grew up in a Protestant family that was really devout. My parents are both professors. But we went to church twice on Sunday, and once during the week on Wednesday, and I was I was always intellectually curious. So I ended up in grad school in philosophy, as you know, as my former advisor. So with this personal background, combined with my interest in philosophy of mind, I really it was sort of inevitable that I would start thinking about, Well, what exactly is going on psychologically, with religious belief?

Josh Landy
So okay, so I feel like we should ask you how much grad school corrupted you. I mean, so Ken and I were arguing earlier about religious belief. Ken was saying that religious belief that basically just you know, garden variety beliefs, I was saying they might be a little bit more questionable. So where are you these days after grad school? Who’s right?

Neil van Leeuwen
I lean your way Josh. I don’t think the garden variety beliefs garden variety beliefs are bliss with usually contents like I think my bicycles in the garage or I think this flight is going to leave late but there’s definitely more of a make believe quality more of a creative yet still committed quality to religious beliefs. And the way I like to think of it is they’re like make believed that people use to define their identities.

Ken Taylor
Identity. Oh, wait, wait a minute, wait a minute. I guess I get the thing about identity. The thing about make believe, though, I mean, there, there’s something in the news, whereas in some country, they’re gonna put gays to death, because of their religion says, Put gays to death. Right. And that doesn’t sound like that sounds like deadly serious stuff that doesn’t sound like play acting or fiction or anything like that.

Neil van Leeuwen
It’s a false dichotomy, Ken. Make believe can be extremely serious. So people dedicate their lives to fictions. So is the fact that religion is something that people dedicate their lives to, at least on Sundays doesn’t mean that it’s a garden variety kind of belief.

Josh Landy
In fact, would you, you know, would you kill someone over a Game of Thrones?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, I was something like I would do an episode on tonight, so we’ll see but I don’t plan on it.

Josh Landy
Maybe if you spoil it for me it could get violent.

Neil van Leeuwen
But just consider an example of fiction being serious. So after Johann Wolfgang gutta published The Sorrows of Young Verter, there were copycat suicides that emulated the way there are killed himself in in this novel. So you also hear about people playing World of Warcraft, on doing very bad things to themselves, and sometimes even committing suicide and that sort of thing, on the basis of something that is not part of reality.

Ken Taylor
When you say not part of reality. Just really quickly, you also said something about the identification about their identity? Isn’t my identity part of reality? If I identify something with something, don’t I make it part of my reality? Can you tell me that briefly?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, your your identity is something that’s in your mind, but the symbols, the symbols that stand for your identity that you have allegiance to, those can be fictional. Those can be like war paint on your face, or a certain effigy or image that is imagined but rather than real.

Ken Taylor
Okay so there’s a lot of stuff to untangle here because I want to get at this make believe versus identity versus all this stuff, and how it’s all wrapped up with a religious belief, but we’ll have to take a break and then reset. You’re listening to Philosophy Talk. Today we’re thinking about religious belief with Neil van Leeuwen from Georgia State University.

Josh Landy
What’s special about religious beliefs? Are they sincere professions of faith? Are they just wishful thinking? Or is religion on elaborate game of make-believe?

Ken Taylor
Sacred truth or make-believe—plus your calls and emails, When Philosophy Talk continues.

George Harrison
I really to know you, lord, but it takes so long, my lord.

Ken Taylor
What exactly Is it about believing in God that takes so long? I’m Ken Taylor. This is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
….except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy and we’re thinking about religious belief. Our guest is Neil van Leewuen from Georgia State University.

Ken Taylor
So I can tell you got a complicated welter of thoughts about the nature of religious belief. And I know you’ve done a lot of sort of cognitive science related work on this. But I want to start by you picking out like one of the main features of what’s what was the most significant or surprising or intriguing feature of religious belief that in your mind distinguishes it from ordinary factual beliefs?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, I think one simple place to start is that to a large extent, religious Credences, as I call them are voluntary. So people make a voluntary commitment to the resurrection of Jesus. But when it comes to ordinary, factual beliefs, like if you see lightning strike in your backyard, it’s not a choice to think that lightning just stuck in your backyard. That’s more of a passive phenomenon. That’s just how you take things to be. So factual glow versus religious credence is differs in terms of voluntariness.

Ken Taylor
Well, wait a minute, though, you’re talking about being raised in a religious household, as was I? And, in one sense, I can see the the claim that religious bliss is voluntary, because when I got to be 16, I said, To heck with that. But in my house, it wasn’t voluntary. I mean, it certainly going to church wasn’t voluntary, reciting certain prayers wasn’t voluntary. I mean, and, and the authority on the basis of which I believed it, there wasn’t my own will. It was like my parents, my preachers, all these authority figures said, believe this, Ken!

Josh Landy
Right and you could add in there, things like scripture and revelation. Right. So I mean, you know, we tend to think that religious belief floats free of evidence, unlike lightning, I’ve got good evidence to say that there’s lightning out there but but couldn’t believe or say, I’ve got evidence, you know, God appear to me, or I’ve got evidence that I’ve got the Bible, the Bible is evidence. So it’s not a choice, I don’t have a choice, whether or not to believe it, the evidence is right in front of me.

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, let me address Ken’s point. So people put a lot of pressure on you to believe. But when you actually have evidence based ordinary beliefs, like your belief that your bike is in the garage, or that electricity turns the lights on, you don’t have to have someone pressure you, you don’t have to work hard at it. Rather, that’s something that arises in light of the evidence you have. Now, to Josh’s point, sure people can say that their religious beliefs are evidence based. But there’s actually plenty of evidence from the anthropology that there’s also choice going on. So Tanya Luhrmann, who, from whom we just heard, mentions this among the vineyard fellowship that people often are making a choice to hear their own thoughts as the voice of God.

Josh Landy
It makes sense, you, you were saying earlier, that it has to do with a sense of identity. I mean, Emile Durkheim, the apologist thought the religions primarily or maybe even entirely about me, is that what you’re saying that I make this choice to believe certain things, so that I’m sort of part of a certain group, we’re the people who believe that God is three in one or something like that we believe that you don’t, this an identity marker, is that the idea people are choosing to be part of a group?

Neil van Leeuwen
Yeah, religious Credences are our group ish beliefs. As, as I put it, that’s not the only thing that religious beliefs might do for someone. They also make people feel as if they have a certain purpose. They make people feel happy sometimes. But a large part of it is marking yourself under a certain identity. It’s like a badge. I’m the one who believes that Jesus rose from the dead.

Ken Taylor
So now, I want to make a distinction and see, because part of me agrees with you. Part of me, I’m not sure. But I think a distinction might help you, I believe in lots of things, I believe in my son. I believe in my wife, I believe in Josh, I believe in you. I sometimes believe in my country, I sometimes doubt my country, that believing in is a kind of commitment, right? That that i i Hold to my belief in something independent, somewhat independently of my evidence, because if my son lets me down, or something, or my wife lets me down, I’m disappointed. But I persist in my believing and that’s a form of commitment or faith. Right? This believing and now it seems to me that religious belief is a form of believing in, right. It’s not necessarily I mean, there is some believing that believing that God blah, blah, blah, and there’s some complicated religious relationship between believing in and believing that, but I don’t know that as a form of believing in religious belief is all that different from other forms of believing?

Neil van Leeuwen
Sure. Well, I think let’s focus on the believing that because there really are a lot of descriptive statements about the world that appear in religions, right, just just people say they believe that God exists. But even on the believing that side, the religious Credences, they function psychologically differently from the factual beliefs. So as as Josh was pointing out, before, the religious Credences only seem to be active in certain special places, and in certain special contacts. So, so you hear this phrase, once a week, Christian, and there are a lot of analogues in other religions, so so people stop acting like God exists, when it’s not the High Holy Days, or when it’s not Sunday, or when they’re not in church, or when they’re not being probed about their identity.

Ken Taylor
But but, you know, the philosopher Kierkegaard said about those once a week, Christians, that’s a lazy Christianity, that’s a Lazy, Lazy Christianity, true faith, the faith of Abraham is demanding, it’s not a once a week thing, it’s a thing that takes over your life, and, and leads you to, to make hard choices and all that can those ones that we Christians triggerguard would say they don’t really have belief. Well, they have mere belief, but not faith or something .

Neil van Leeuwen
There’s a point implicit and Kierkegaard that I think is really worth trying out. And that’s this, the fact that you have to work at it to be more than a once a week, Christian, already shows that religious Credences aren’t like factual beliefs, you don’t have to work at it to believe that electricity exists. You don’t have to work at it, to act like the lights need to be plugged in to work.

Ken Taylor
I get you, I get you. But that’s why I wanted to distinguish between believing in and believing that right? Believing in God is work, believing in your country is work, believing in your spouse is work. And it’s important work. It’s not make believe work. It’s an investment of your cognitive, cognitive kind of resources in, in living a life of a certain kind. Right? So believing in is supposed to be work.

Neil van Leeuwen
Sure, but what’s your point? Rhat doesn’t show that religious belief—

Ken Taylor
You’re misunderstanding that you’re relating religious belief to sort of factual belief in saying it’s not like that, but there’s a kind of belief that it is like that does take work and commitment, believing in something and believing in God is a kind of different orientation than just oh, I believe that God is this that or the other thing? It’s a completely different kind of? So I mean, maybe you’re right, but maybe, maybe that this, the category is not make believe it’s more like believing in, right? Because you want to say it’s like, it’s like, make believe it’s like pretend it’s not like pretend to make believe it’s like believing in something.

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, so So first of all, you granted my my main point already. So if you’re saying that religious beliefs are different from factual beliefs, that’s kind of the main that’s kind of the main point here. And now we’re quibbling about, well, what’s the best analog? So I grant you that believing in which is, by the way, a vague term, it’s a kind of commitment that people make more than just in religion? But that’s fine. The question is, how do people relate to the the descriptive things like, oh, let’s, let’s pick a more traditional religion that that does ancestor worship? Well, people say in Madagascar will act like their dead ancestors are completely gone, when probed in a naturalistic context. But then if you probe them in a ritual context, so in a sacred context, then they’ll say things like the ancestor can still hear, can still see and so on. So you get this kind of toggling back and forth. In certain special situations, you act a certain way, as if this dead person were still alive. But then most of the time you act like it’s just a dead body. So that makes sense.

Josh Landy
I mean, yeah, I think, you know, we have analogs in thinking, you think about funerals, where people talk about folks having gone to a better a better place, and then they leave the funeral parlor and look both ways when they cross the road because they they don’t, they don’t want to go to that battle place right now. Right? But But, but I so I’m, I’m essentially agreeing with you, but I still have a worry about what Ken was saying Kierkegaard is it? Is it really a one size fits all thing here? I mean, all religious believers sort of the same in this dimension, or is there maybe a kind of difference of degree? I mean, think about a priest or a preacher, or rabbi or somebody, someone who’s who’s essentially living that every moment of every day or a Buddhist monk. I mean, shouldn’t we talk about differences in degree here way? So yeah, some people are once a week Christian some people are once a year Christians, but some people are kind of every moment of every day Christians and doesn’t that make a difference?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, let’s distinguish two kinds of degree. One is degree to which your religious beliefs are central to your identity. Another degree The extent to which you’re confident that they’re actually true. And those two things come apart and in in quite striking ways. And I think the fact that they come apart is important. So so if you look back at or listen back to what Tanya Luhrmann was saying, it’s very clear that there can be people who, who, as she put it, forget that God is real. But they’re still strong believers in the sense that believing in God is is part of their identity. So the fact that there can be that disparity, I think, is a point in my favor, that the strongest believers, so take, take Ted Haggard, the evangelical preacher, who was who was caught with a meth dealing male prostitute now, he was he was one of the strongest, quote unquote, believers. But I think what that shows is that his his belief was a very selective make believe, even if it was important to him.

Ken Taylor
Well, it could just be weakness of the will of a garden variety. So I’m not saying weakness of the will is a non puzzling phenomenon. But you know, we got some callers who want to get into this conversation. And I don’t think any of them is the voice of God, but maybe. Ariane in San Francisco’s on the line. Welcome to Philosophy Talk, Ariane. What’s your comment or question?

Ariane
Yes, thank you, I have a couple points. The first is that our images of God say more about ourselves than whether God exists or not. When they say in the Bible, that man is created in God’s image, they can equally say that God has created a man’s image. And unfortunately, God is blamed for all kinds of human foibles, from rape to war to gross economic disparity at any rate, um, when your guest talks about what he believes it’s based on the senses. And there’s a form of hubris cannot and it goes on question in hyper materialistic age, when science itself is worshipped as a religion, I’m not saying that science is without its purpose, but divorced from the larger questions of the universe. And what is created if there’s no car or even dictionary that hasn’t been created by something or someone to deny the things are intentionally created when we cannot create an ecosystem? seems absurd to me, and it’s full of hubris.

Ken Taylor
So thanks for the comments. But I knew I don’t think you’re questioning whether I don’t think it’s relevant to your study of religious Credences whether they’re true or not, and they’re not. You’re not claiming that they’re kind, they’re the kind of things that couldn’t possibly be true, or are you?

Neil van Leeuwen
No, that’s that’s not the claim, the claim is that they’re processed in a different way, psychologically speaking, and that we need to get clear on what that different way is. So that’s, that’s the main point. So I’m not actually doing any theology or negative theology or anything like that. It’s really a psychologically oriented theory.

Ken Taylor
And I think that’s an important thing. I mean, it’s the question of what are the nature of, I’m gonna call them cognitive cognitions? What other nature? What is the distinctive nature of religious cognitions? Right? Are they like ordinary beliefs, which are some kind of cognitive stage? They’re all kinds of cognitive states beyond just religious belief and factual belief? There’s hypotheses, there’s conjectures, right? Imagination is, in some ways, a cognitive state. So you’re just kind of doing the fine grained psychology of that, that what have you right?

Neil van Leeuwen
That’s absolutely right. And, and let me pick up on a point that Aireon actually made, she was saying that we make God in our image. Now, I think she’s right about that. And going back to the roving philosophical report, we saw that the hippie Christians that Tonya Lerman was talking about, they had a hippie God. Now, isn’t that interesting? So so there’s a creative, imaginative element to religious belief that I think is important not to overlook, and that does mark it as a kind of psychological processing. That’s similar to make belief.

Josh Landy
Yes. And often he is the ancient Greek philosopher said that, you know, horses had gods, they looked like horses. But I, you know, I’m very persuaded by you that there’s a there’s a real difference between everyday beliefs and religious beliefs, both in terms of how the beliefs have formed also, in terms of the kind of work they do for us also in terms of how we evaluate them, all these things. So, here’s a question for you, you know, you’re you’re someone who has read a lot of empirical psychology. I mean, should we think about these things as belonging to two different systems in the brain? I mean, I read one study that suggested that when you get people to solve math problems, and then ask them, you know, whether they believe in supernatural forces, they’re less likely than in the, you know, in the ordinary context to declare a belief in supernatural forces. Doesn’t that suggest that? You know, kind of confirming your thought, we’re actually talking about two different kinds of mental system the system that to might create some monitors everyday you kinds of belief and the system that creates and monitors religious beliefs.

Neil van Leeuwen
So I don’t actually think that Josh, and here’s why. Just because you have different attitudes doesn’t mean it’s a whole separate system. So in processing fiction, you use a lot of the same psychological resources for thinking about the mental states of say, Sherlock Holmes, as you do for thinking about the mental states of Ken Taylor. So whether or not you’re using religious Credences, or you’re using factual beliefs, there’s going to be a lot of overlapping psychological processes. So So I think it’s actually a mistake to put them in separate boxes.

Ken Taylor
We’ve got another caller on the line, Patty in San Francisco. Welcome to Philosoohy Talk, Patty, what’s your comment or question?

Patty
Yeah, good morning. I believe that there’s actually two variations on the same thing. You have the communal or societal beliefs, which you’re instructed from childhood, to follow certain rituals to do certain things to do have certain beliefs, which may be more superficial than reality. And then you have the individual who looks beyond the rituals and the dogma to find whatever the truth is of that belief.

Ken Taylor
Okay, thanks for the comment. Neil, you got a quick response to that?

Neil van Leeuwen
I think the word communal is a great word. When there’s traffic on the freeway, you just think there’s traffic on the freeway. But when you believe the world was created in seven days, you’re doing that to belong to a community.

Ken Taylor
You’re listening to Philosophy Talk, we’re thinking about religious belief with Neil van Leeuwen from Georgia State University.

Josh Landy
What attitude should non believers have towards religious belief? Should they tolerate it? Make fun of it, or respect?

Ken Taylor
Religious belief and social life—when Philosophy Talk it continues.

Bob Dylan
I walk out on my own, a thousand miles from home, but I don’t feel alone, ’cause I believe in you.

Ken Taylor
Seems like some people don’t always respect the religious beliefs of famous singers. I’m Ken Taylor and this is Philosophy Talk, the program that questions everything…

Josh Landy
…except your intelligence. I’m Josh Landy, and our guest is Neil van Leewuen from Georgia State University. Today we’re asking what is religious belief?

Ken Taylor
And we’ve got a caller on the line, Madeline from El Cerrito. Welcome to Philosophy Talk. What’s your comment your question?

Madeline
I have a comment. Religion is a crutch. It’s a very useful crutch for a lot of people. And it’s really nice if you can use it. But I don’t have it. But it’s a crutch. Because everybody’s okay, I’m gonna die and go to heaven. Your religion is worse than mine. It’s always something that people lean on.

Ken Taylor
Yeah, Madeline. Thank you. You’re spoken like Nietzsche’s—as Josh said. It comforting, useful illusion. Does that follow? Let me I’m not gonna ask you what you can opine on that question. If you want, Neil. But is your view tantamount to a Nietzschean view? Let’s put it that way. That religion is just a comforting illusion.

Neil van Leeuwen
Just I wouldn’t use the word just something’s being a comforting illusion can be really powerful. So don’t say just a comforting illusion. That’s if it’s a company illusion, which I think it is in in many cases, that doesn’t mean that there’s something small about it. Right? It’s one that people take very seriously.

Ken Taylor
Right. But the I assume that but deja had the belief that that’s all religion could be because it had no, it seems as though he believed it didn’t have the possibility of being true. Or I’m not sure if that’s right. I mean, I’m wondering is your view this is back to Aryans question I thought your view did not have the immediate implication that religion, religious belief couldn’t possibly be true. They’re not candidates for being true. Will go that far?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, I don’t think that’s the case. So religious beliefs have lots of different contents. And there’s there’s there have been 1000s and 1000s of different contents to religious beliefs all over the world. Maybe some of them might be true. Lots of them aren’t probably, but that’s not the real question that I’m trying to ask. The question I’m trying to ask is, what are people doing with them in their minds and and to go back to the the crutch metaphor, they’re doing something differently with their religious beliefs than they do with their ordinary factual beliefs like about where they live, what their address is, what’s in their bank account, and so on.

Ken Taylor
However, religious beliefs are related to another kind of state in our head hopes. For example, I hope for an afterlife, right even more, let’s pretend I hoped for an afterlife, I hoped for fame, I hope for, you know, good health, I work toward making my hopes real. I don’t just hope it happens, I hope to make it happen. Right? So how were religious beliefs related to hopes? I mean, nobody would just say a hope is just a crutch, would they? So, or even that a hope is a crutch, or a hope is an illusion. So what what what differentiate religious beliefs from hopes?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, I think they’re both sort of imagination driven kinds of mental states. So you’re when you when you hope for something, you picture something that’s other than what the ordinary world is actually like. And I think in many ways, you’re doing the same thing with with religious Credences. You’re coming up with a representation of the world that’s different from the ordinary, mundane world. And that’s, that’s kind of the whole point.

Ken Taylor
Right, exactly. But in mind without that capacity for hope, wouldn’t that be an impoverished mind? So instead of I mean, Nietzche, dismissing religious belief as a as a comforting illusion, isn’t that the same as dismissing hope? I mean, if you were to dismiss it as a mere illusion, wouldn’t you be, wouldn’t that I mean, by parity of reasoning, should I dismiss hope? I mean, no, of course, I shouldn’t dismiss hope.

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, not now, you’re putting me on the on the hook for something that I don’t think I need to sign up for. So I don’t think we need to get rid of Hope altogether. Just just to get rid of religious Credences. I think, I think the thing to keep in mind is I’m not telling anyone to not have their religious Credences. But I think what I would want to say is that they don’t belong in the public sphere, guiding public deliberation about how to live collective life. So sure, hope away, sure practice your religion, but don’t impose it on on other people who don’t share that just like you aren’t entitled to impose your hopes on other people. You’re not entitled to impose your religious Credences on people that don’t share them.

Ken Taylor
Keith from San Francisco is in the line. What’s your—welcome to Philosophy Talk, Keith, what’s your comment your question for us?

Keith
First of all, I’m wondering if the question might actually be the wrong one. And the question I’m interpreting is do religious beliefs matter? Might be do religious practices matter? And I explained what I mean by that, for my outsider perspective, on Christianity, is that in Christianity, particularly Roman Catholicism, belief is very important, perhaps critical. Now, from my somewhat inside perspective on Judaism, I taught and but leave, what we actually believe is us is immaterial, it is what we do. That matters. So my question for Neil is, do other religions have statements? Do they require belief? Or do they require action?

Ken Taylor
Good question, Keith. What’s your comment there, Neil?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, there’s there’s certainly a lot of variation across religions in how important belief is in Christianity, and I think Islam, there’s, there’s a pretty high value placed on believing but But you’re right, other religious practices don’t have the same strong emphasis on what you might call people’s epistemological states. And that’s fine. But nevertheless, I think my question is still interesting, which is, well, well, what is the psychological processing that goes on? Now, it may be that the less we’ll hang on it, when it comes to say contemporary Judaism, then when it comes to contemporary Christianity, but there’s still a lot of mental states that we have to account for, in any given religion. So that’s why a theory like mine is worthwhile.

Ken Taylor
So I want to ask you one quick question before we I’m gonna ask you like a big question. But one small question. John wisdom had this old article God’s which was once required reading in the philosophy of religion, but it’s kind of an old article, I don’t know if they still read it. And he argues that religious belief started out as factual beliefs, right. But they lost in the competition with scientific explanation. And so they retreated. The religious retreated, withdrew their beliefs from the competition with science by making them non empirical in a certain sense, right. And but that’s not a fundamental psychological divide. It’s just that as, as factual beliefs, religious beliefs can’t withstand the competition of so they could be held as factual beliefs, but they’re just if they’re held as factual beliefs, they get refuted. So you retreat to another kind of way of holding these contents. What do you think of that thought?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, it’s an interesting historical origin story, and I’m skeptic So a great book that I recommend to everyone listening is an Taves revelatory events. And she catalogs the origins of, of Mormonism. And the picture she paints is that there was a lot of creativity, in kind of the invention of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith had these visions, and then a small group kind of worked out together, what to make of the visions. And it’s an enormous creative process. And I can’t honestly say I would think that it all started out as factual belief, it was the invention of a story.

Josh Landy
Righ, and that’s another thing that distinguishes between everyday factual beliefs, right, and, and religious beliefs. So you can be a little bit more creative, a little bit more inventive in those contexts. But I want to I want to ask you something about, you know, how the different communities should should interact, and how should non believers think about religious beliefs, especially if we adopt your view, that there’s something anomalous something special or unusual about religious beliefs? What What kind of attitude should a non believer have towards them?

Neil van Leeuwen
I think the correct attitude is they’re they’re welcome in their in their place, but they’re not welcome to govern public policy. So I think we should respect people’s right to worship and to pray to the entities that they have religious Credences about. But when those entities are taken to dictate public policy, right, like women’s reproductive choices, or how we take care of the environment, then the fact that religious Credences aren’t vulnerable to evidence don’t get shaped by evidence means they’re, they’re not properly used in the public sphere.

Ken Taylor
You’re with Rawls on this but I want to ask you a question really quickly. Last question. Well, you’re with Ross on this but Ross faces a problem too, I think because you said religious beliefs are tied up with identity they’re they’re played this identity constituting role. Do you think all beliefs and allegiances that play an identity constituting role should be banned from public policy, influencing the public square, so that I have to come to the public square without any kind of thick identity? That’s one of the things I think is wrong with Rawls, it seems as though you’re getting in the same boat?

Neil van Leeuwen
I think any discriminant belief that’s movable by evidence can be put in the public sphere, because then it can change when it’s confronted with evidence.

Ken Taylor
But lots of identity constituting beliefs aren’t like that. Right?

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, sure. But I don’t think I think lots of identity kind of constituting beliefs should also be left at the door. And we Okay, that’s what I was. Yeah.

Ken Taylor
And that’s, that’s a feature for you, not a bug. But on that note, I’m gonna thank you for joining us, Neil. It’s been a fascinating conversation. And I believe that and not just religiously believe.

Neil van Leeuwen
Well, thank you, Ken, it’s been great to be here.

Ken Taylor
Our guest has been Neil van Lewin. He’s a professor of philosophy at Georgia State University. He’s working on a book tentatively entitled “Religion as Make-Believe.” So Joshua, have you got any make believe or genuine belief?

Josh Landy
Well, God’s been talking to me while you’ve been chatting, and here’s what I think. So look, I’m not sure I’d use the term make believe exactly. I mean, people do kill for it and die for it in a way they don’t. For fictions, but but it does I accept the point that it does seem to work a little bit differently from other beliefs. That doesn’t mean it’s not true. It certainly doesn’t mean it isn’t beneficial. Right seems to do a lot of psychological work people. As long as we keep it out of the policymaking?

Ken Taylor
I’m not sure about I take Neil’s point I take your point, I think we would need to probe Neil or whatever. We did a little bit of this. But if we had another hour we I would I want to want to probe him on what other kinds of states belong in this way. Because in the same way that a religious community is a kind of fiction, so is a national community, a kind of fiction, and those things are deadly serious. So I write a book about serious fictions. Right. But you know, this conversation continues at philosophers corner at our online community of thinkers where our motto is Cogito ergo Blago, I think, therefore, I blog, and you can become a partner in our community just by visiting our website, philosophytalk.org.

Josh Landy
And if you have a question that wasn’t addressed in today’s show, we’d love to hear from you send it to us at comments@philosophytalk.org, and we may feature it on our blog. Now, what does religious belief sound like at the speed of thought? Let’s ask Ian Shoales the Sixty-Second Philosopher.

Ian Shoales
Ian Shoales… I can’t speak to all religions, just the ones that pop up in the news, but it strikes me that they’re all in a bit of trouble. They’re a bit defensive, allowing themselves to be defined by their enemies, and by unbelievers, disbelievers, journalists. All of whom focus on the social implications of a religion rather than its core beliefs. But even to itself, religions’ core beliefs, so it seems to this observer, are being supplanted by self image, which is increasingly dictated by the whispers and taunts of mass media, or the Internet, or a mealy mouthed congressional committee report. Let us take Israel. You can’t criticize Israel without the risk of being accused of anti-Semitism. To complicate that, actual anti-Semites try to disguise their prejudice as criticism of Israel. And all the while Netanyahu stands athwart history like a cut rate Colossus. See, I said cut rate? That’s a dog whistle because stereotypical Jews often offer discounts. Speaking of dog whistles, a Congresswoman, Ilhan Omar, an actual Muslim, got elected and immediately became an object of scorn and accused of anti-Semitism because she said congresspeople take money from the Israel lobby in exchange for votes. It’s all about the Benjajmins, she said, which again is a dog whistle, because stereotypical Jews, when not offering discounts, want to wallow in your money like Scrooge McDuck, a stereotypical dour and frugal scot, only a duck. Netanyahu, displaying the wit that has made him the toast of Paris salons, told some Republicans that Ms. Omar is wrong, he is the only Benjamin, cause that’s his first name. Ha ha ha. So okay THEN Ms. Omar made a speech about prejudice against Muslims, in which, talking about 9/11, she described it, or its aftermath, as “some people did something,” which does not seem untrue, frankly, but she was chided for wearing her hijab and for not collapsing in tears, remorse, and regret any time 9/11 is even MENTIONED. Christians these days seem to wallow in this sort of Muslim bashing, even as they defend Israel, because it needs to be intact for the End Times. Armageddon is the final battlefield, you see, which is in Israel. Israel has a robust relationship with American fundamentalist Christians because of this, but I dunno, it would make me a bit uneasy that an alliance is based on your country being the place for the final battle of all time, after which unless you embrace Jesus you will be cast into a lake of fire, or its equivalent. Not my idea of a fun prayer breakfast. A guy named, I believe, Buttigieggeg, is as of this moment, a rising possibility to be a Democratic candidate for President. He is married to a man, and calls himself a gay Christian. Many Christians claim to be alarmed by that. Again, judging by what I see in the media, Christians today are against homosexuality, transsexuals, Muslims, public education, immigration, and the Clintons (though adultery is fine if you’re a Trump). Just the other day, Michelle Bachman, former Congresswoman from Minnesota, and Christianity enthusiast, was interviewed by a Christian radio program. She said, among other things, “I will say to your listeners in my lifetime I have never seen a more biblical president than I have seen in Donald Trump.” Not entirely sure what that means. Leviathan is Biblical, also Sodom and Gomorrah. I think she was trying to turn him into a latter day prophet or something. For some reason, Trump seems to have a lot more mojo religionwise than Obama, or Bush or Reagan or even Jimmy Carter, who remains a Baptist far as I can tell, unlike President Trump, who has claimed to be a Christian, but is not entirely convincing. He didn’t seem to know what Easter is, for instance. Interviewed two years ago, he said Easter “really means something very special.” And it’s “just a very important day.” Hosanna Hosanna, I guess. Which comes from the Hebrew, “Save us. Save us.” From what is up for grabs depending on who you ask. What do I know. I thought I knew Sikhs, for instance. I thought, all Sikhs are cab drivers. Or rather, all the cab drivers in front of Ashby Bart in Berkley are Sikhs. Until Uber goes public, and then all the cabs will disappear, the turbans will disappear, and then a year from that Uber will disappear, and we’ll have to take buses everywhere, if they’re still running. Which again is a sure sign of the end times. That’s right, even the end times have fallen on hard times and are running a little bit late. The Antichrist apologizes for the inconvenience. I gotta go.

Ken Taylor
Philosophy Talk is a presentation of KA LW local public radio San Francisco and the trustees of Leland Stanford Junior University, copyright 2019.

Josh Landy
Our executive producers are David Demarest and Tina Pamintuan.

Ken Taylor
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Josh Landy
Thanks also to Merle Kessler, Angela Johnston, and Lauren Schecter.

Ken Taylor
Support for Philosophy Talk comes from Stanford University and from the partners at our online community of thinkers.

Josh Landy
The views expressed or (mis-expressed) on this program do not necessarily represent the opinions of Stanford University or of our other funders.

Ken Taylor
Not even when they’re true and reasonable.

Josh Landy
The conversation continues on our website, philosophytalk.org, where you too can become a partner in our community of thinkers. I’m Josh Landy.

Ken Taylor
And I’m Ken Taylor. Thank you for listening.

Josh Landy
And thank you for thinking

Glee
There’s no God. You can’t prove there isn’t a magic teapot floating around on the dark side of mhe Moon with a dwarf inside of it that reads romance novels and shoot lightning out of its boobs, but it seems pretty unlikely, doesn’t it? Is God an evil dwarf?