The Halo Effect

 Why do sensible, educated people believe in God?  

As I explored previously in this blog, belief in God involves acceptance of logical paradoxes, disregard for the lived experience of other people, and belief without reasonable evidence.  So what is the motivation for belief?  

One answer is that belief in God is the cultural norm.  Most nations have a dominant religion, and that religion permeates society and culture.  So there are Protestant Christian, Catholic, Orthodox Christian, Shia Muslim, Sunni Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Jewish and other religions, each with its own diversity of sects, which each dominate a culture.  People are also taught the precepts of religion from childhood.  It is easiest to simply believe and observe the rituals than to intellectually challenge the medium surrounding us all.  

Another motivation for belief is hope in the midst of despair.  All people, at some time, experience disappointment in life, defeat, discouragement and depression.  Some people have lived in situations utterly without hope; others may experience an internalized feeling of despair.  In either case, religion can be a source of hope and I would not want to take that away.  

But for those who would live their lives by a standard of truth, and are able to withstand the vagaries of life without reliance on religion, I expect that more of them would reject religion.  In western cultures, particularly in America, we have a culture of questioning academic orthodoxy and dogma.  For educated people trained in critical thinking, why does religion receive a pass from rigorous skepticism?  

I think part of the answer is the halo effect.  

This image in the style of a Russian Orthodox icon was generated by AI, which is still unable to count fingers on a hand. 

The halo effect is a form of cognitive bias, one of dozens of common, repeatable human errors in perception or judgment.  These errors are explored in a number of popular psychology books, including Inevitable Illusions by M. Piattelli-Palmarini, Predictably Irrational, by Daniel Areily, Thinking, Fast and Slow, by Daniel Kahneman, Blink by Malcolm Gladwell, The Art of Thinking Clearly by Rolf Dobelli, Nudge by Richard Thaler, Fooled by Randomness by Nassim Taleb, etc.  Most of these cognitive biases reflect internal heuristics (rules of thumb) which people use to make rapid, simple judgments about complex things.  

The Halo Effect was first rigorously documented in 1920, by Edward Thorndike.  Thorndike defined the halo effect as a cognitive bias in which one facet of a person or thing affects judgment about other facets of that person or thing.  The usual example is that a person who is deemed to be attractive is also perceived, without evidence, as being smart, neat, diligent, well-behaved, friendly or other positive qualities.  

In the case of religion, I think that the positive aspects of religious doctrine lead people to conflate being *good* with being *true*.  

Certainly, there is much about religious doctrine that is objectively good.  Most religious teachings include some version of the Golden Rule. It is well represented by Jesus’ admonition to love your neighbor as yourself.  In general, the Christian New Testament reflects core human values of goodness, including kindness, empathy, forgiveness, fairness, justice, service and responsibility.  There are also teachings of gender inequality and intolerance, which are considered negative in modern values, but predominantly, the New Testament is an instruction to be good.  It is much like the departing words of the alien in Steven Spielberg’s Christ-like story, "ET":  “Be good.”

But one critical value is missing from the human values represented in the New Testament, the value of Truth.  In any prioritization of human values, Truth should be one of the highest values, exceeded only by kindness. **

My grandfather spent a number of years as a missionary in Japan, running a Christian bookstore and teaching English at a Christian boys’ school, while raising his family.  He believed that mission work should first address the physical needs of people for food, shelter and economic development, then education, then fellowship, before broaching the ideas of the Christian religion.  He believed that living the example of a good life was the best way to bring about conversion to Christianity.  After World War II, he was the founding director of the Methodist Committee on Overseas Relief, and later was director of the World Council of Churches’ world literacy program.  By objective criteria, he was a good man, and lived a good life.  But living a good life doesn’t make his religion true.

One of my friends argues that on balance, the force of religion for good outweighs any question of whether or not it is true.  It is depressingly true that there is evil in the world, and evil behavior by people of all cultures.  Perhaps some of those people could be influenced by either the teachings of Jesus, or the prospect of eternal damnation for their deeds.  But the persistence of evil despite the prevalence of religion gives me doubt.*

On balance, the influence of religion for good does not offset the fact that it isn’t true.  I think that a false belief in God will ultimately lead to greater evil, as it has so many times in the past.  

In the long run, you cannot reason to sound conclusions from false premises.  Belief in something that isn’t true, will eventually lead to conflict with others who hold conflicting absolute beliefs.   This is especially true for belief in an all-powerful god and in god’s absolute truth.

In writing the American Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin wrote of the self-evident truths of inalienable human rights.  It was John Adams who inserted the line “endowed by their creator”.  I suggest that human morality should be derived along the thinking of Jefferson and Franklin, as a self-evident truth that people should be good, according to core human values, without the need for instructions from a god that doesn’t exist.  
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Appendix
*  Donald Trump recently mused aloud that his chances of getting into heaven were small, but perhaps he could tip the scales by winning the Nobel Peace Prize.  That isn’t my notion of how the scales of heavenly grace would work, but whatever.  

But just as the Christian religion urges people to be good, it offers a Get Out of Hell Free card through repentance and forgiveness.  Evildoers through the ages have relied on the idea of heavenly forgiveness while perpetrating heinous crimes against humanity.  In the time of Martin Luther, the Catholic church sold "indulgences", which were pre-approved forgiveness tokens for planned or completed sins.  Religious people banking on divine forgiveness span the spectrum from Ivan The Terrible (who tortured thousands, murdered his son and then prayed for forgiveness) to fundamentalist Christian pedophile ministers to decamillionaire televangelists.  These Christian faithful sinners are either banking on  heavenly forgiveness or are secretly complete atheists.  I’m inclined to think that they believe that they can game the system with late-life repentance.  It is hard for me to understand exactly what these people believe, given the deep hypocrisy between their public religious exhortations and their private behavior.

**In an attempt to restore truth to the New Testament and exclude superstition, Thomas Jefferson constructed a manuscript of the teachings of Jesus.  Jefferson collected text from the four gospels, but excluded all miracles, mention of the supernatural, the divinity of Jesus and the resurrection.  Jefferson called his final manuscript "The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth".  It was first published in 1904.   

Is Religion Benign? Part II

I have a former classmate who is an aggressive atheist.  Her worldview is largely built around an idea, frequently and obsessively repeated on social media, “Religion is never benign.”  Her framing is that absolutely no good ever comes from religion.  In this two-post series, I’m considering a milder form of that framing.  I freely acknowledge that religion brings good into many lives and societies, but also harm.  As Mark Twain noted in “The Dervish and the Offensive Stranger”, there is both good and harm in every deed.  There are no good deeds without bad consequences, and no bad deeds without incidental good.  My question, then, is whether religion is a net benefit or a net harm to society.  

My previous post considered the historical record of religion – unjust sacred texts, religious wars and persecutions, absolutism, abusive cults, abusive clergy and misdirected social resources.  Weighing against those are unquantifiable benefits of kindness and community, which sometimes (but not always) accompany religion.  This post will address the principal harm from religion, which is that religion does not have a foundation in truth.  The problem with religion is that it simply isn’t true.  

Is Religion True or False?  How We Know What is True

"Inuring us to lies lays the groundwork for many other evils."
                        -- Thomas Paine, quoted by Carl Sagan in The Demon-Haunted World

We know religion isn’t true for several reasons.  First, there is an utter lack of reliable evidence for the existence of God or unseen sentient spirits.  Second, there is a complete lack of agreement among the world’s cultures regarding the nature and history of these unseen beings.  Third, there is a lack of reason and justice in acts attributed to God, and in sacred literature.  Finally, there are irreconcilable logical inconsistencies regarding God’s omnipotence, omniscience, and goodness, compared to what we observe in the world.  Occam’s razor forces the conclusion that God isn’t real, and religion is false.

People are responsible for discerning what is true and what is false.  It is essential for personal safety, for citizenship, and for social order.  Without a common agreement on what is true, a society cannot have a fair football game, fair marathons, fair elections, ethical marketplaces, prices and advertising, trustworthy science and medicine, etc.  Civilization falls apart without widespread integrity and commonly accepted truth.  

I have a friend who maintains from a philosophical perspective that there is no such thing as absolute truth.  I strenuously disagree.  The concept of absolute truth is necessary for science, for justice, for government, for business and for society.  We cannot deal in relative truth when submitting annual reports to investors, writing a scientific publication or deciding on the guilt of an accused person.  I believe that absolute truth exists, and is generally accessible to everyone.  (This is one of the few statements in which I will say “I believe”, as an assertion that cannot be proven.)  In a scientific sense, truth will always be incomplete, like the mathematics of Goedel’s theorem.  For example, complete truth about historical matters may never be known.  We will never know the music that was played on a 40,000 year-old bone flute.  In physics, we may never know the true nature of dark matter or energy.  But we can put firm bounds on what is known to be true, and reach whatever conclusions are possible from these bounded uncertainties.

The Triumph of Conscience over False Prophets
(Also called the Triumph of Truth over Falsehood)
Johann Sadeler, Circa 1580

Does It Matter If People Believe In False Gods and Spirits?

“When you believe in things that you don't understand, then you suffer.  Superstition ain't the way.”
                                                            -- Stevie Wonder, Superstition

One person’s religion is another person’s superstition.  It’s kind of astonishing how missionaries (including my ancestors) traveled the world, met indigenous people, told them their timeless beliefs were false, and replaced those beliefs with other false beliefs.  We tend to look with derision upon ancient Greek oracles, and the notion of gods dwelling and squabbling on the top of a mountain, but those were very real articles of faith for those people.  Socrates died for “impiety and corrupting youth” by questioning those beliefs.  A few plots of Star Trek imagined encountering cultures that worshipped a rock, or an ancient visitation by space travelers.  What would star-faring visitors to Earth think of our religions?  

As atheists, is religion something we can safely ignore, or should it be challenged in public discourse?  Another college classmate wrote this rhetorical question to me:

“All major religions exhort followers to be good, ethical, moral...if that helps you live well, what difference does it make if there is heaven or hell at the end?”
College classmate #2

Does it matter whether religion is true?  Yes, it matters.  Faithful people rarely consider the possibility that all of religion is a lie.  As a consequence, there is great harm done by what follows from believing in things that are not true.

People make irrational decisions based on faith, ignoring the obvious consequences if that faith is misplaced.  Plains Indians warriors believed that Ghost Shirts would protect them from bullets (didn’t work).  The mother of a childhood friend, as a practicing Christian Scientist, did not take my friend to a doctor or dentist, believing that God would protect him.   Many people refuse vaccines, believing that God will protect them.  Others refuse life-saving medical care for themselves or their children, instead trusting to “God’s will.”  In recent memory, many Christians believed that religious gatherings would be protected from COVID.  In a cruel inversion of that belief, fundamentalist Christians sometimes ostracize members of their congregation who fall ill to cancer or other diseases, inferring that it signifies sin on the part of the member who falls ill.  

Apart from irrational decisions about health and wellness, religious faith leads people into other irrational behaviors regarding diet, dress, social hierarchy (particularly regarding women) and sexual orientation.  These result in personal guilt, a loss of personal realization, oppression of others, psychological distress, and misdirected time, energy and financial resources.   Other people have taken random events as signs from God about pathways or decisions that may have been far from the best choices.  What could humanity have achieved if we had not spent our fortunes and energy in building pyramids and cathedrals?  Some people have piloted Kamikaze planes or strapped explosives on their bodies, trusting that they will receive eternal reward in the afterlife.  Some people have spent their lives in devotion to God, through prayer, worship and contemplation.  What could they have achieved, if they had applied their intelligence and energy to science, education, or public service? 

Truth and Untruth, Anastasia Tyutyunnik

Conclusion

“In like manner, if I let myself believe anything on insufficient evidence, there may be no great harm done by the mere belief; it may be true after all, or I may never have occasion to exhibit it in outward acts.  But I cannot help doing this great wrong towards Man, that I make myself credulous.  The danger to society is not merely that it should believe wrong things, but that it should become credulous.”
                -W.K. Clifford, in Bronowski, Science and Human Values, published 1956

You cannot reliably reach good conclusions from false assumptions.  False assumptions will inevitably lead to a loss of reason, a loss of rational judgment.  No matter how well-intentioned, any system of false belief will ultimately result in irrational and damaging decisions and behaviors.  

When people learn to accept their deepest beliefs without proof and without question, it erodes their ability to discern what is true.  When holding one unfounded belief, it becomes easier to accept other unfounded beliefs.  Judging by comments on social media by religious people, it also becomes easier to reject truths that are established through rigorous processes of proof.  The alignment of conservative religious beliefs and conservative social and political beliefs is a major social phenomenon of our time.  It’s a movement that crosses national and continental boundaries.  In the United States, someone who is deeply faithful to Christianity is likely to accept false claims of faith healing, election fraud (when Republicans lose), conspiracy theories about the political opposition (ranging into the absurd), etc., and to doubt well-established truths, such as the safety of vaccines, human-caused climate change, the reality of the moon landing.  

In recent history, religious belief has been politicized.  Religious belief seems to predispose believers to believing political falsehoods, influencing their votes.  Our current presidential race features former President Donald Trump, an inveterate liar.  The Republican party has doubled down one his false claims,  regarding the integrity of Joe Biden’s electoral victory in 2020, the dangers of immigration, the state of the economy, the war in Ukraine, etc.  There’s a good correspondence between people with strong religious beliefs and those who strongly disbelieve facts from science, medicine, journalism and politics.  The Venn diagram approaches a circle.

False beliefs lead to irrational and harmful actions.  Someone who believes that God will protect them from COVID at a family Thanksgiving dinner may transmit the disease to me at the grocery store.  Someone who believes that their God is the right and true God may blow up a bus, or start a war that will kill, maim, and make homeless thousands of innocent people, including many of their own sect.  Yet 90% or more Americans believe in God, or spirits or the afterlife, and every day are making irrational decisions that affect me and society.  I live in the Middle Ages, a time of superstition, ignorance, plague, war and feudal hierarchies and other than writing this blog, I am powerless to correct the problem.

I conclude that my classmate is essentially correct.  Religion is not benign, and causes more harm than good, because fundamentally, the precepts of religion and spiritualism are false.  Religion and spiritualism inevitably lead to harmful decisions and behaviors affecting all of society.

Allegory of Truth and Falsehood, Fortunato Duranti, circa 1835

Irrational Beliefs
https://www.progressfocused.com/2016/05/3-types-of-harm-from-irrational-beliefs.html

Donald Trump’s Lies
https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/01/politics/trump-dishonesty-avalanche-102-fall-false-claims/index.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/01/24/trumps-false-or-misleading-claims-total-30573-over-four-years/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-fact-checker-tracked-trump-claims/2021/01/23/ad04b69a-5c1d-11eb-a976-bad6431e03e2_story.html

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