Science Literature

Two research psychologists have contributed an Opinion paper based on the empirical finding "that individuals presented with unfamiliar moral dilemmas show no difference in their responses if they have a religious background or not". The data used was obtained from an online web questionnaire which is open to any volunteer participants (including myself). Findings are reported elsewhere and in their Opinion paper the authors provide only a summary:

"These studies, carried out using the web-based Moral Sense Test (http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/), recruit thousands of male and female subjects, with educational levels that range from elementary school to graduate degrees, with political affiliations that range from liberal to conservative, and religious backgrounds that range from devout to atheist. In each of these studies, subjects read and judged the moral permissibility of an action on a 7pt-Likert scale [. . .]. Each scenario presented a contrast between a harmful action and a significant benefit in terms of lives saved."

Moral dilemmas come in all shapes and sizes (source here)

The hypothetical scenarios in the test present dilemmas where actions that are evidently harmful to human life considered in isolation result in significant benefits to other humans (whose lives are saved). The generalized results are as follows:

"More specifically, in dozens of dilemmas, and with thousands of subjects, the pattern of moral judgments delivered by subjects with a religious background do not differ from those who are atheists, and even in cases where we find statistically significant differences, the effect sizes are trivial."

This conclusion is the anchor-point for the author's wide-ranging discussion of the origin of morality and, as indicated in their title, the origin of religion. In evaluating their paper, we need to consider whether their empirical starting point is robust enough to carry such far-reaching conclusions.

Some caution is needed in the way "religious background" is understood. There is no systematic probing of the concept in the web-based questionnaire. Participants have to select a label that best fits their current religion, the religion of their upbringing, and locate themselves on the spectrum of "not-at-all" religious to "very" religious. This is all pretty superficial and subjective, given the diversity of religious experience around the world. There is no attempt to use Likert scales to assess the degree to which respondents understood God to be a creator, transcendent, immanent, able to answer prayer or, even more relevant, the reference point for our sense of right and wrong. Consequently, the term "religious" is 1-dimensional and almost devoid of content. Yet, the authors place considerable weight on their analysis of responses gathered.

More caution is needed when we read in the above quote about "trivial" effect sizes. In another study the authors mention, radical altruism was the focus of interest: does religious background affect thinking about whether to sacrifice ones own life "in order to save the lives of a greater number of anonymous others". Significant differences were found. But these could be predicted, say the authors, "given the fact that many religions praise martyrdom". They go on to offer this analysis:

"[A]lthough there are significant evolutionary pressures against such acts of radical altruism, religious pressures might lead people to offer this judgment because they believe it is the morally appropriate answer. What religion can do, and what political and legal institutions can do as well, is alter local and highly specific cases. And yet, they appear to have no influence at all on the intuitive system that operates more generally, and for unfamiliar cases."

These comments about the need for caution are intended to show that the authors have a very inadequate view of the concept of "religion". To them, the various religions can all be lumped together and there are no distinctions worth making. They do not see the need to explain why they think that radical altruism can somehow be linked to the praise of martyrdom. Even when differences are discernable between the moral judgments of the religious and those of atheists, they are considered trivial apparently because there are (untested) evolutionary explanations of why the religious are so minded. All this raises questions about the adopted methodology and the analysis of the authors.

Before making further comments on the arguments built on the empirical findings, it is useful to note some comments by Philip Ball, writing a column for Nature. He draws attention to the conceptual framework underpinning the research: "By taking it as a given that religion is an evolved social behaviour rather than a matter of divine revelation, [the authors' paper] tacitly adopts an atheistic framework." Ball is absolutely right, and we can add the thought that tacit atheism is a pervasive problem in many areas of scholarly activity. Given their presuppositions, no one should expect the authors to reach a conclusion that challenges atheism. However, this does not mean such conclusions cannot be drawn by others who approach the same data with a different conceptual framework.

The first thesis developed in the paper is that "moral intuitions operate independently of religious background" and are therefore not explained by religion. The authors develop an analogy with linguistics, where the concept of innate ability for language acquisition is widely held, and this innate ability is independent of the cultural background. Ball describes this thesis in this way:

"The paper [ . . ] challenges the assertion commonly made in defence of religion: that it inculcates a moral awareness. If we follow the authors' line of thinking, religious people are no more likely to be moral than atheists."

Whenever there is only one hypothesis on the table, there should be concern! Scholars should be cultivating multiple working hypotheses and looking for ways of testing them. To show the significance of an alternative conceptual framework, consider a perspective that understands mankind as made in the image of its Designer. Innate abilities are imparted by this Designer: we speak because the Designer speaks; we have a moral awareness because the Designer is the reference point for what is right and what is wrong. These innate abilities affect all people - whether they are atheists or religious, whether they are pantheists or theists, whether they are male or female, young or old. This is a hypothesis that explains the data and scholars who "tacitly adopt[] an atheistic framework" are excluding this alternative purely on ideological grounds.

The second thesis is concerned with the origin of religion. The authors think their work on moral intuitions leads naturally to the hypothesis that religion is a by-product of pre-existing capabilities.

"Specifically, recent work in moral psychology supports the view that religion evolved as a cognitive by-product of pre-existing capacities that evolved for non-religious functions."
[. . .]
"Religion is a set of ideas that survives in cultural transmission because it effectively parasitizes other evolved cognitive structures."
[. . .]
"Here again, religion stands on the shoulders of cognitive giants, psychological mechanisms that evolved for solving more general problems of social interactions in large, genetically unrelated groups."

For the purposes of this blog, we shall defer comment and let Philip Ball speak: "Whether it [i.e. the research] 'explains' religion is another matter."

"It's debatable, however, whether these moral tests are probing religion or culture as a moral-forming agency, because non-believers in a predominantly religious culture are likely to acquire the moral predispositions of the majority. Western culture, say, has long been shaped by Christian morality. [. . .] But to uncover religion's roots, is morality necessarily the best place to look? It seems hard to credit the idea that the immense cultural investment in religion was made merely to strengthen and fine-tune existing neural circuits related to morality. [. . .] Yet attempting to explain the origins of such a rich cultural phenomenon as religion is doomed to some extent to be a thankless task. For to 'explain' Chartres Cathedral or Bach's Mass in B Minor in terms of non-kin cooperation is obviously to have explained nothing."

The origins of religion: evolved adaptation or by-product?
Ilkka Pyysiainen and Marc Hauser
Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 14(3), 104-109, March 2010 | doi:10.1016/j.tics.2009.12.007

Abstract: Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for cooperation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation.

Morals don't come from God
Philip Ball
Nature, 8 February 2010 | doi:10.1038/news.2010.55

Abstract: The finding that religion scarcely influences moral intuition undermines the idea that a godless society will be immoral, says Philip Ball. Whether it 'explains' religion is another matter.

See also:

Morality Research Sheds Light on the Origins of Religion, ScienceDaily (9 February 2010)

Hunter, C. Important New Paper on Evolutionary Explanation, Darwin's God (8 February 2010)