How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [106]
Is this because we want to be “good” or “moral” people? That may be what it feels like now, but current emotions may be proxies for deeper causes. Since our reputations as cooperators must be built over time, we must show consistency from day to day, week to week, and year to year. It would be difficult to fake being a cooperator in order to fool your fellow community members for any length of time. Anthropologist William Irons shows that religion, in addition to providing rules, morals, and enforcement (and numerous other benefits outside the scope of this analysis), furnishes a splendid opportunity to prove loyalty and commitment to the group. If I see you every week in the pews, every month at the confessional, getting circumcised, being bar mitzvahed, not eating meat on Fridays, wearing a yarmulke, singing the psalms of the Lord, not using electricity on the sabbath, facing east to pray, taking the bread and wine as the body and blood of the savior, going to war in the name of God, and even willing to risk death for our group, I know you are someone I can trust. That sort of commitment is hard to fake. If our self-image is that of an honest person, not only are others more likely to perceive us as honest, we are more likely to be honest. We are all fairly good at detecting cheaters and liars, so in order for the cheater or liar to get away with his offense, he has to work very hard at appearing honest. Even if deception is the original intent, in time, with repetition of the ritual, self-deception may take over. Psychics, cult gurus, and other charlatans may very well come to believe in their own outrageous claims for the simple fact that they can deceive their marks better if they themselves believe the lie. Either way, through literally millions of iterations of real-life gametheory events in the course of a lifetime, we learn who are the cooperators and who are the defectors. And through our religion (and, more recently, the state), we come to believe that our actions really are moral, just, and right. Our clan really is special, perhaps even worth dying for, if our leader or our God so asks.
One of the most common reasons people give for believing in God (see Chapter 4) is that without the existence of a deity there would be no ultimate basis for morality. The source of this belief may be that morality, God, and religion have been so intertwined for so long that there is probably an evolutionary-based epigenetic rule underlying the connection. The Enlightenment concept of human rights—as expressed and fought for in the French and American Revolutions—is relatively new. It is primarily based on the social contract: In order for humans to achieve life, liberty, and happiness they must be free, and their freedoms must be protected by the state through compacts like the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. With proper indoctrination it is possible to get young men so committed to these ideals that they will sacrifice themselves for the larger group. But this has not been easy, so it is probably no accident that beneath the surface of nationalism often lies religion. Our God is better than their God. (Or in the case of the cold war, our God is better than their Godless society.) When Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt together sang “Onward Christian Soldiers” following their meeting cementing the American-British alliance, this was more than ceremonial window dressing. Or consider the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” (especially the final refrain below) written by Julia Ward Howe after a review of the federal troops in Washington (published in the Atlantic Monthly in February, 1862):
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord;
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stor’d
He hath