8/13/2019 Prosocial Maintenance in the Age of Religious Decline
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Science WatchBY KENNETH W . KRAUSE
Prosocial Maintenancein the ge of Religious DeclineReligioti,
then,aso sa vingresourcefor the huma nspeciesca nnot gain much
milea ge fromthe origins ofmorality.But thesecondpa rt ofthe claim,
tha t relating to ma intena nce of s ocialmorality rema ins
morepersuasive. AlexanderSa xton,Religiona nd the Huma nProspect.N
o, THE HUMAN SLATE hasn't been anythingclose to blank since the
1970s. As evolutionarypsychologist Marc Huser reiterated in his
2006book, Moral Minds all humans are born with a universalethical
predispo sition, or moral grammar. That's quitefortunate, to be
sure. But for those of us concerned with thepractical nu ts and
bolts of mo ral rnaintenan ce, it's really justa serendipitous
start. How should mo dern moral mind s goabout fashioning cohesive
other-regarding societies, bothlarge and sm all? Can we learn a
thing or two from our reli-gious counterparts?
Relative to religionists, humanists appear almost mes-merized by
questions surrou nding the origin and develop-ment of moral
behavior. We possess few, if any, prepack-aged answers because as a
general rule we spurn beliefand conformity. Our skepticism tends to
complicate ethi-cal issues to say the least. But even ifwe could,
we shouldnever renounce our insistence on credibility.
Intellec-tual suicide is the answer to no complex societal prob-lem
I've ever pondered . On the other hand , to some mini-mal yet
meaningful extent, we might decide one day soonto rethink the
typically nonnegotiable character of ourindividualism.
On O ctober 3 ,2008 , two psychologists from the U niver-sity of
British Columbia, Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shar-iff, published their
review ofthe empirical evidence for andagainst religious
prosociality, mo re com mo nly referred toasaltruism{
cience322,58). The authors beganby weighingthe strengths and
vulnerabilities of various popular theo-ries of religious
evolution, but, in the end, found agreementthat religious
prosociality may have softened the limita-tions that kinship-based
and ... reciprocity-based altruism
place on grou p size. In other wo rds, natural selection mayhave
favored belief in morally concerne d go ds that observe,reward, and
punish, at least to the extent that religionistshave coalesced into
relatively large, s1:able, and coop erativesocieties of genetically
unrelated perso ns.
Which is not to suggest that Abrahamic monothe-ists, for
example, are more unconditionally or indiscrim-inately altruistic
than others. Although myriad sociologi-cal surveys allege that,
historically, the religious have beenmore charitable than the
nonreligious, even when con-trolled for income, education, age, and
so forth, Norenza-yan and Shiiriff point out that all such surveys
are subjectto fatal presentation biases and, of course,
self-deception. [I]t remains unresolved, they add, whether this
charitygap persists beyond the ingroup boundaries ofthe
religiousgroups. Instead, the authors hypothesize that the
religioushave merely becom e more motivated to maintain a proso
-cial reputation than the nonreligious.'
Indeed, the behavioral and experimental evidence failsto provide
any generalized association between altruismand religiosity perse.
In the classic Good Samaritan studyof 1973, for instance, subjects
were led past an apparentlyailing victim on their way to an
appointment. Predictably,some offered to help and some did not. But
religiosity hadno significant effect, the authors emph asize, in
this anony-mo us context.
In a 19H9 study, participants were asked in two wayswhether they
would volunteer to raise money to pay for asick child's medical
bills. One group was told that, in theend, they would surely be
called to service; the other wasinformed tha tthe y probably would
not. A link between reli-
. giosity and volun teerism w as established o nly in the
second
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group, where members could have it both ways, indulginginth f
lingof altruism witho ut actually suffering its costs.Multiple
studies concur, say the authors , that religios-ity predicts
prosocial behavior primarily when the proso-cial act could prom ote
a positive image for the participant,either in his or her own eyes
or in the eyes of observers.
More recent experiments have examined anonymity inthe context of
supernatural scrutiny. In a 2006 study, forexamp le, belief na
ghostly presence caused university stu-dents to cheat less while
completing a fixed computer task.In 2007 researchers reported lower
rates of cheating am ongstudents subjected to unconscious
activation of God con-cepts, but, interestingly, not among other
students whowere merely religious. According to Norenzayan and
Shar-iff, the effect occu rred only to the extent that thoug htsof
a morally concerned divine agent were activated in them om ent of
decision making. Apparently, neithe r religiousideology nor
devotion had anything to do w ith it.
Nevertheless, under certain circumstances belief inmoral gods
does seem to inspire the observation of socialnorms, even in the
absence of objective monitoring sys-tems, This, in turn, say the
auth ors, would be expected toexpand the reach of such norm s,
facilitating the emergenceof larger cooperative communities which
otherwise wouldbe vulne rable to collapse. Okay, but one could no
mo re askan empirico-rational humanist to believe in a
supernaturalagent, no matter what the cum ulative and ultimate
societalstakes, than o ne could ask a healthy bird to d isregard
its giftof flight.
But consider the authors' findings regarding the valueof ritual
behavior as well. In a 2003 study of 200 nineteenthcentury Am
erican com mun es, religious groups were foundto outlast their
secular counterparts by a ratio of four toone.Onc e again, however,
religiosity s suchhad nothing todo with the outcome. Once the
number of costly require-ments, including food taboos, possession
limitations, andconstraints upon marriage, sex, and outside
communica-tion were controlled, the statistical chasm vanished.
Onepotential implication, the authors vie, is that the
greaterlongevity of religious com mun es with costlier re quiremen
tswas due to greater intragroup coop eration and trust,
Free-loaders, alas, can easily fake mere belief in morally
con-cerned gods. But they are far less likely to do so, the
theorygoes, when required to observe onerous rituals and cus-toms
before acceptance into the fold.
So what does all of this have to do with humanists?Although
clearly not a religion, humanism is a predomi-nantly moral
philosophy. Everyone agrees that morality isabout making choices,
right? But the humanist realizes aswell that a pe rson is most
likely to choo se wisely for herself
and her community when she understands all of the avail-able
options. Freedom to investigate and respect for knowl-edge are
paramount. Of course many have argued that itis precisely our
devotion to perso nal liberty and tru th thatrenders every humanist
a socially pitiless individual, largelyindisposed to sacrifice for
the comm on good.
Then again, consider how far we've already come. AsNore nzayan
and Shariff note, [t]he cultural spread of reli-able secular
institutions, such as courts, policing authori-ties,and effective
contract-enforcing m echanism s, althoughhistorically recent, has
changed the course of human pro-sociality, They observe as well
that me m bers of contem -por ary secular organ izations are at
least as likely to becharitable as religious cong regants. Indeed,
no responsiblehistorian could possibly conclude that the civilized
worldhas not grown increasingly secular in recent centuries.
Soperhaps the opportunity has arrived for a great humanistawakening
ofsorts.
It would seem, however, that philosophy alone hasproven
insufficient to the moral task. I wouldn't suggestthat we pray or
reflect five times a day in the generaldirection of the US, Supreme
Court, or that we sacrifice afinch or two on the eve of Charles
Darwin's birthday. But Ithink we should habitually re-familiarize
ourselves with or,whenever necessary, invent our own unique sets of
narra-tives and icons. We can forget the w orn and w eary ones
ofold that defined us as merely irreligious, and em brace m
oreenergizing an d elevating ones that will distinctly identify
usas the most rational yet curiously impassioned and innova-tive
creatures on earth .
Maybe humanists should seriously consider moralmaintenance in
the mutually reinforcing contexts of rit-ual and parochial
ingroups. Although supernaturalism isclearly an unnecessary and
diminishing moral force in thecivilized world, we would be grimly
remiss to ignore thelessons of religious history. Perhaps now is
the time to learnhow to recognize and tru st one anothe r based on
local affil-iation and the undeniable power of symbolism and
cere-monyno matter how counterintuitive that may sound, atleast
initially, to the intracta bly indep end ent freethinker.Of all
people, humanists especially should be honest andresponsible enough
to distinguish the prosocial baby fromthe supern atural bathwater,
dKenneth W Krause is a contributing editor and bookscolumnist for
the Humanist and books editor for ecularNation He has recently
contributed to Skeptical InquirerFreeInquiry Si
