The Price of Everything - Eduardo Porter [86]
Perhaps the biggest difference between Pascal’s wager and current analysis of religion is that the seventeenth-century philosopher argued that the rewards for belief would occur in the afterlife. Contemporary scholars, by contrast, have concluded there is payback on this side of death. Be they economists seeking to understand why individuals invest in faith or biologists puzzling over how religion survived the pressures of evolution, most analysts have concluded that faith provides value for money. This is regardless of whether God exists or not.
THE BENEFITS OF BELIEF
The most tangible benefit religions provide to the faithful is a mixture of insurance and social services. In Israel, tight-knit groups of ultra-Orthodox Jews ensure that the sick receive visitors and the single are matched up with spousal candidates. Rabbis in the Bayit Vegan neighborhood of Jerusalem regularly put out flyers to request donations of time and money. The flyers also list offers of frozen meals for the sick, advice for childbearing mothers, playpens and wedding gowns, all provided for free by other members of the community. Orthodox communities can raise money quickly, providing interest-free loans of thousands of dollars to members in need. And trust is guaranteed: everything is insured by the word of the rabbi.
These sorts of mutual assistance agreements are typical in many religions, including Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Islam. Gallup polls in 145 countries have found that people who attend religious services donate more to charity and perform more voluntary service than those who do not. When crises drive people into the arms of God, they embrace Him for the insurance as well as the spiritual solace. When the Asian financial crisis struck Indonesia in 1997, the rupiah lost 85 percent of its value, the price of food nearly tripled, real wages plummeted by almost half, and the study of the Koran soared.
Indonesian Muslims study the Koran in communal events called “Pengajian,” in which a teacher lectures and leads the recitation of the religious text. At these gatherings substantial social pressure is brought upon believers to make charitable contributions for the needy. After the crisis, participation in the Pengajian jumped to 71 percent of Indonesian villagers, from 61 percent before the crisis, according to one survey.
Indonesian Muslims might have been in need of divine reassurance. But their faith was also driven by physical necessity. In the months after the crisis, the average village family had to cut their budget for everything but food by about two thirds—some $4.70 a month. Every dollar cut from the budget raised the odds that a family would participate in Pengajian by 2 percent. Those most hurt by the crisis—such as government workers on a fixed salary—were more likely to step up their Pengajian attendance than rice farmers, who benefited from soaring prices for rice and were thus less affected by the economic troubles. Indonesians who had access to credit from banks or microlending units did not change their religious participation much. They didn’t need the Pengajian for money. But the mosque-based insurance was effective. Three months after it peaked, those who increased their Pengajian participation were much less likely to need alms or credit than those who didn’t.
Yet religion isn’t just a mutual insurance scheme. Faith offers more than help in time of need. It also promotes specific sets of behaviors, discouraging self-destructive choices because God and his community are watching. Religious people trust others more, trust the government and the legal system more, and are less willing to break the law. In one experiment, people who were made to read sets of words including evocative terms like “spirit” or “sacred” donated more than twice as much to a stranger as those who didn’t