THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION AND THE PILLARS OF HUMAN DIGNITY

8/10/2019 THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION AND THE PILLARS OF HUMAN DIGNITY

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TH E SCIENTIFIC STUD Y OF RELIGION

AND THE PILL AR S OF H UM A N D IG N ITY

A familiar theme in discussions of science and religion is the impact

of scientific progress on our conception of ourselves. Of particular

concem in understanding this impact is the question of how our view of

human dignity is affected by scientific progressor even influential sci-

entific theories, whether or not they are ultimately well confirmed. I

include here theories in the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but my

concem is wider. It has been said that Darwin unseated our sense of our

uniqueness in the biological reahn and that Freud undermined our sense

of rational self-control. Even supposing these claims are tme and that they

weaken or eliminate two of the pillars of human dignity, they do not by

themselves undermine the possibility of justified theistic beliefs or other

justified beliefs that support the view that human persons have a kind of

dignity. Granted, the bare tmth of theism does not imply that we are free

and autonomous in the sense widely taken to be most relevant to human

dignity, but some versions of theismsuch as those implying that God

would not have created persons who are not free and inherently valu-

abletend to support the view that we have a kind ofdignity.If, as many

philosophers and others believe, scientific findings undermine both argu-

ments for theism and, even apart from that, some cherished views about

the uniqueness and rationality of human beings, the idea that human

beings have dignity is deprived of one source of support. This paper will

explore whether developments in CSR might threaten our positive self

concep tion and, independently o ftha t, the idea that there is a rational basis

for theism. Might the results and likely developments of CSR undermine

the idea of human dignity as implyingin normal adult human beings

minimally, on the psychological side, free rational agency and a good

measure of autonomy and, on the normative side, moral rights and a

capacity for moral agency, i.e., roughly, for action based on moral judg-

ment or cogn ition?'


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RELIGION AND HUMAN DIGNITY 463

Scientists tend to presuppose, and philosophers widely agree, that

our men tal life depends on our neural hfe. Researchers in CSR tend to assume

that their results can be accommodated by whatever is leamed about the

neural underpirmings of co gnition, but m ost of them apparently proceed as

if certain cognitive and broad ly social-scientific concep ts are adequate for

scientific explanation of human behavior.^ This raises the question whether

CSR is committed to the reducibility of the cognitive properties and laws

crucial for its explanations to physical properties and correspondingly

phy sicalistic laws. If not, it apparently presu pposes a kind of autonom y on

the part of those properties and laws. This, in tum , implies that the cogni-

tive concepts and properties crucial for religious expression and commitment

might also have autonomous explanatory power, a kind that does not

depend on taking them to be identical with any phy sical counterparts.

Neutralify about redu ction d oes not entail rejection of reducibility in

principle. But it is not clear that anj^hing essential in CSR p recludes m ain-

taining the irreducibility of psych ological properties to phy sical ones I

hereafter assum e that mentaUstic concep ts are not reduc ible to physicalistic

ones and that in any case our main questions in this paper require consid-

ering reducibilify only for properties and laws). If CSR does not entail

such reducibility, then a kind of dualism importanteven if not essen-

tialfor most religions cannot be attacked by naturalistic proponents of

CSR as inconsistent with their scientific end eavo rs. If, h ow ever, CS R pre-

supposes that phy sical including neurobiolog ical) prope rties and laws are

explanatorily basic , it faces the prob lem of how to connect its own findings,

at least in outline, with an underlying physicalistic theory. Section I will

indicate some areas in which results in CSR bear on the issues sketched

above. Section

11

will con sider the relation be twee n the se results and a

materialistic conception of the human person. Section III treats the impli-

cations of the previous sections for the question of how CSR bears on

human dignity. The final section will consider the ethical implications of

CSR and, more generally, explore how the study of religionphilosoph-

ical,

religious, and scientificmay be pursued with an openness to all the

evidences relevant to understanding and appraising religious faith.

1 Some Explanatory Hypotheses Characteristic of CSR


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464 ROBERT AUD I

practices, such as ritual, that are in some sense based on theistic cogni-

tions. I have in mind roughly faith or belief positing or presupposing

God's (or a god's) existence or activity.^ We can distinguish between

explanations of the origin of such cognitions and explanations of their

fransmission from one person to another and across generations. Both

kinds of explanation will be briefly considered, but there will be no

attempt to do a survey of

this

fast-moving field.

Consider the characterization of religion given by Scott Atran:

Roughly, religion

is 1) a

community's costly

and

hard-to-fake commitment (2)

to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supematural agents (3) who

master people's existential atixieties, such as death and deception. (2002, 4)

This may be conceived as suggesting both (1) why a religion might arise

in primitive societies, where, even more than most of the modem world,

fear of death and deception w ould create anxieties people would naturally

seek to escape, and (2) how a religion might persist without the kinds of

evidences that sustain ordinary (or at least naturalistic) empirical beliefs.

In relation to (2) there is much w ritten on how the counterintuitive figures

in sustaining religion once it arises. Here the notion of a mental tool,

described in detail by Barrett (2009) is instmctive. He says that mental

tools automatically and non-reflectively constm ct most of our beliefs

about the natural and social world and are sometimes called intuitive

inference systems

[T]hese mental tools operate on specialized domains

of information, such as those in which agency detection is naturally oper-

ative, as where it autom atically tells us that self-propelled, goal directed

objects are intentional agents (2009 , 79).

How mental tools might work, and how their doing so might explain

religious behavior, is suggested by both Afran and Boyer. In a passage of

revealing generality, which suggests how evolutionary considerations,

especially as connected with findings in anthropology, are cenfral in CSR,

Atran maintains that:

All supematural agent concepts trigger our naturally selected agency-detec-

tion system, which is trip-wired to respond to fragmentary information,

inciting perception offigur surking in the shadows and emotions of dread

or awe. Mistaking a nonagent for an agent would do little harm, but failing


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RELIGION AND HUMAN DIGNITY 465

the evolutionary design for avoiding and tracking predators and prey. (Atran

2002,267)

One might think that given the normal great famiharity of human agents

to other human b eings, a high degree of anthropomorphism would be pre-

dicted. But this is not a consequence of any consensus position in CSR.

As Boyer puts it, "gods and spirits are not represented as having human

features in general but as having

minds

the concept of a mind is not

exclusively human" (Boyer

2001,

144). Mentality, we might suppose , is a

common focus of the inferential mental tool concemed with explaining

the behavior or agents or apparent agents.

A commentary on Atran and Norenzayan by Timothy Ketelaar nicely

brings out the ideas sketched in Atran's passage about attributions of

supematural agency. He says that for them:

Religion is essentially a by-product of an evolved bias toward over-attribut-

ing agency as the source of unexplained events (e.g., what was that noise in

the bush?). A key feature . . . is the claim that this bias emerges from the

simple evolutionary factor that the recurrent challenge of detecting predators

and other dangerous agents can be characterized as a signal-detection

problem . . . in which a

miss

would have been far less costly than

false

alarm (Ketelaar 2004, 740)

The language of this passage is revealing. For one thing, the possibility

that the rise and longevity of religion among humanity cotild have some

non-nattiralistic explanation is not considered. This is perhaps not inap-

propriate given a commitment to methodological naturalism in scientific

practice, but it should also be stressed that the causal connections be tween

religion and so many other factors wotild seem to indicate that treating it

as "essentially" a by-product of the factors cited is to underestimate its

role in stmcturing and transmitting human culture.

To see what other roles religion might play, consider first some points

by Justin Barrett. Withth protective role of agency-detectionin

mind

Barrett

has spoken of our hyper agency detection device (HADD) and noted its

context sensitivity. For instance , "A m an hiking through an unfamiliar forest

hears a noise beyond a nearby shmb. HADD screams 'Agent '" (2009,

86).He also notes that it works in concert with other cognitive m echatiisms

in a way that bears on the extent to which it may result in false positives:


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466 ROBERT AUDI

wrong. . . Other cognitive mechanisms, including our abilities to consider

evidence reflectively, can override HADD or any other single cognitive

mechan ism that tries to generate a beli ef (Barrett 200 7, 68)

One w ould think, for instance, that such overriding w ould occur w here an

inference to agency on hearing a noise in the bushes is followed by seeing

a fallen branch therein.

On one point, at least, these passages are representative of work in

CSR. They indicate that psychological conceptsor at least psychologi-

cal propertiesare taken to have explanatory power. Beliefs are

specifically referred to, and both in relation to anxiety and in relation to

explaining behavior by appeal to anxiety reduction, desire or some similar

motivational co nstmct plays a similar role. One cannot avoid the impres-

sion that many writers in CSR do not doubt that at least some explanatory

power conceming a kind of behavior resides in conceiving it as beheved

to play some kind of instrumental role in satisfying some desired end,

such as self-protection or reduction of anxiety.

To be sure, such psychological constmc ts are not always men tioned.

Consider Johnson and Kmger's view, for instance:

Many of our social norms developed because they promoted cooperation

towards public goods in the past. These norms are often driven by religion.

We suggest that the origins of these social norms may have spontaneously

emerged in evolution as a result of the specific selective advantages of [the

people in question positing?] supematural punishment. (Johnson and Kruger

2004,

171)

There is no reason to doubt, however, that psychological concepts figure

in how the norms are driven by religion, for example by being obeyed

owing to religious beliefs that, if these norms are violated, there will be

divine reprisal, hum an retaliation one wants to avoid, misfortune, impov-

erishment, and so forth.

An emphasis on the effect of assumed observation by gods is not,

however, the only element that CSR researchers emphasize in explaining

the contribution religion m akes to social coordination. Atran also says, for

instance, that religious rituals involve sequen tial, socially interactive

movement and gesture (chant, dance, murmur, etc.) and formulaic utter-

ances (liturgies, canonical texts, etc.) that synchronize affective states


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RELIGION AND HUM AN DIGNITY 467

as to what the texts and rituals require are also taken to play a role in

explaining the social coordination.

What we might now explore, then, is how some of the major psy-

chological explanatory elements in CSR are connected with biology and

the conception of the human person.

2. CSR as Psychological Evolutionary and

Potentially Materialistic

It might be useful to begin with what seems a w idespread view, or at

least presupposition, about psychological explanation. It is based on the

idea that mental properties supervene on physical ones and depend entirely

onare consequentialon, in a useful terminology the latter for existence

and (it is oen argued) explanatory power (Kim, 2005). A strong view on

this issue, though not an uncom mon one, is Georges Rey s thesis that:

Any ultimate explanation of mental phenomena will have to be in on-

mental terms . . . . There might

e

an explanation of some mental phenomena

in terms of othersperhaps

hope

in terms

of belief nd esire

^but if we

are to provide an explanation of all mental phenomena, we would in tum

have to explain such mentalistic explainers until wefinallyreached entirely

non-mental terms. (1997, 21)

At least two questions arise here. First, does the supervenience,

indeed even the consequentiahty, of mental on non-mental properties

imply that the former properties have no explanatory power? One might

think this in part because consequentiality of properties entails not only

strong supervenience, but much more. Suppose, for instance, that (as

required by the supervenience of the mental on the physical) two people

carmot differ in their mental properties , say one being in pain and the other

not, if they do not differ in their non-mental, say neural, properties. It does

not follow that mental properties are consequential on non-normative

ones,

or grounded on them in any other way. Supervenience alone does

not entail the determination relation Rey apparently has in mind, on which

mental properties are in a strong sense

controlled

by physical ones; and

even such determination does not entail that mental properties are really

physical, so that our terms for them, despite non-physicalistic meaning,

designate the same properties.


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468 ROBERT AUDI

minded people that the mental is in

some

significant way determined by

the physical. In any case, I am quite willing to assum e the supervenience,

indeed even the consequentialify, of mental on non-mental properties,

where to say that mental properties are consequential on (say) physical

ones is to say that (1) no two things can share all their physical properties

and differ in their mental ones (a version of the supervenience thesis) and

(2) any mental properties a thing has are possessed by it in virtue of pos-

sessing one or more physical properties. This view entails a kind of

dependence of mental properties on physical ones but does not entail that

men tal properties have no explanatory power. It also leaves open whether

mental properties are a kind of physical properfy. I doubt that they are; but

if so , there is no reason to think that their explanatory or causal power is

thereby reduced, and some would hold that it is indeed rendered more

secure. If, for instance, beliefs about the effects of our actions are really

neural or other properties, then they can have w hatever causal pow er their

physical nature makes possible. Religious beliefs would be no exception;

it would remain an empirical question what effects they have, but some of

them would be instrumental and thus connected with desires in the way

non-religious, apparently action-explaining beliefs are. Thus, a perso n s

believing that God commands honesty and wanting to obey divine com-

mands might affect behavior as fully as believing that moralify requires it

and wanting to be moral.

If mental properties do have explanatory power, and in particular if

common-sense explanations of action by appeal to beliefs and desires can

be sound, then the kinds of explanations important for human dignify are

unthreatened. The rationality of our actions is explicable in terms of that

of the beliefs and desires that explain them, and indeed the rationalify of

persons themselves, as argued in detail in my (2001). It should be added

that the relevant kind of mind-body materialism does not entail determin-

ism, even for the restricted reahn of human actions and other phenomena

explainable m entalistically. Thus even if determinism and freedom should

be incompatible, freedom is not necessarily undermined by the prospect

of mind-body identify.

Another important question raised for this paper is whether CSR or

indeed any kind of scientific inquiry that makes explanatory appeals to


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pose that its explanations by appeal to mental phenomena must be in

effect kinds of trans lations or strong equivalents of physicalistic expla-

nations? It is certainly natural to take our mental properties to dependon

neurophysiological properties, but this does not entail that any explana-

tory regularities ( law s if certain constraints are met) framed in

mentalistic terms are reducible to physical laws or that, more generally,

psychology is reducible to, say, neurobiology.

Reduction, to be sure, is not elimination. If beliefs, for instance, are

nomically equivalent to neural states or even identical with certain neural

or other physical phenomena, their reality is assured by what, for materi-

alists, are their ontically more robust counterparts. Moreover, even if in

principle such a reduction is poss ible, it does not follow that the best way

to understand psychological phenomenaincluding those conceming

religionis by appeal to physical phenomena. A kind of operational

autonomy of psychology is possible even if reduction is not only possible

but carried out in terms of identity statements that provide bridges

between the mental and the physical.

If these points are sound, then, even if CSR is integrated with

findings in evolutionary biology and with materialistic goals, the mere

explanatory success of CSR in providing an account of the origin and

fransmission of religion does not undermine the raw materials of human

dignity. Neither naturalistic explanations nor even physicalistic explana-

tions, of human behavior imply that our actions are not also explicable in

terms of

th

notions ofbelief which is sensitive to evidence of tmth, and

desire, which is sensitive to evidence of goodness social as well as bio-

logical. Sometimes such exphcabihty is described as a kind of responsiveness

to reasons; in any case, one pillar of hum an dignity is the possibility of an

important subset of our actions being explainable by appeal to certain

kinds of beliefs and desires. There remains, however, the question,

whether the porfrait CSR provides of human beings as practicing reli-

gionin many of its forms, at leastdoes threaten to undermine human

dignity or at least erode the sense that we have it. This will the main ques-

tion in the next section.

3

CSR and the Dignity of Persons


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470 ROBERT AUDI

omy are cmcial for understanding the concept, even if not all of the beings

having hum an dignity possess all of these attributes. One might think that,

in a paper considering the relevance of CSR to human dignity, dignity

might be tied to theism, but I am assum ing that the notion of htiman dignity

does not depend on though it is supported bycertain k inds of theism. In

particular, for w hat might be called classical theism (at least in the Westem

world), human beings are created by a God who cares about them. Those

facts taken together imply that human beings have a kind ofworth,since

God's creating and caring about them implies this; but it does not follow

that the b sisofthat worth or dignity depends on such a theistic relation.''

To assess the kind of impact developm ents in CSR might have on the

idea that human beings have dignity in the sense I have sketched, we m ight

make a generous assumption. It should suffice to assume that those CSR

theorists who take (say) HA DD , social coordination, and reduction of anxiety

to explain the origin and transmission of religion are basically correct.

Suppose that these and other factors that do not confirm the tmth of reh-

gious claims suffice to explain the origin and transmission of religion.

What follows about the tmth of those claims or about human dignity?

It is important here to distinguish between the sufficiency and the

exclusivity of explanations. Surely overdetermination is possible, as

where a soldier is killed simultaneously by a bullet and a car bomb. I do

not think it is, a priori, impossible that divine action explain the same phe-

nomenon that is explained naturalistically; but quite apart fi-om that

possibihty, it is surely not impossible that God (conceived as omniscient

and om nipotent as well as perfectly good) created a universe in which the

created natural events and laws goveming them lead to the genesis and

transmission of religion just as CSR research shows u sing naturalistic cat-

egories. Why God would create such a world is not obvious, but theological

hypotheses abotind, including the idea that it suits divine purposes for God

to remain often hidden (see, e.g., M oser [2001] and Sw inbum e [2004]).

Even those who accept these points may well find them unsatisfying.

If we have a sufficient naturalistic explanation of a phenomenon, why

should we posit a supem atural one even if the possibility of overdetermi-

nation cannot be mied out? It may be tme that the need to explain the

origin and transmission of rehgion provides no good reason to posit


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phers and others have given for the tmth of theistic claims. But the main

reasons are quite consistent with the findings of CSR. Some of the reasons

are provided by the traditional arguments for the existence of God, which,

even if inconclusive, are rationally defensible as providing som e evidence

(here Swinbume [2004] and Plantinga [2000] are representative of two

major approaches). Other apparent evidences come from religious experi-

ence. Some such experiences might instantiate HA DD , but others, such as

a sense of G od s presence in prayerful meditation, do not.

To be sure if HADD commonly generates false positives, this has a

statistical bearing on the justifiedness of cognitions arising from it. But

there may be kinds of conditions under which it is reliable, as where we infer

the presence of a person from orderly pattems of observable facts that seem

virtually impossible apart from human agency.^ In addition, even if CSR

findings should show that the kinds of contexts in which theistic and other

religious beliefs are formed through HADD are commonly accompanied

by false positives, the rehgious beliefs formed may

e

supportedand believ-

ers commonly try to support them^by other evidences. These range from

arguments of a philosophical kind to various sorts of religious experiences.

It is also important to keep clear the difference between conditions

for knowing theistic (or any other) propositions and conditions for being

justified in believing them. Contemporary epistemologists have tended to

hold that we can know a proposition only if our belief constituting the

knowledge arises by a reliable process from something that guarantees or

at least reliably indicates the tmth of the proposition. But justification is

not generally held to this high a standard and certainly does not meet it.*

Even if it did, note that the genesis or sustenance of a belief can be overde-

termined (though if it is taken to require intem ally accessible groimds, this

may in fact be a higher standard than reliability as such). If God w ished

to be hidden from us, as some have argued is apparently so (e.g. Moser

2001), this possibility must be taken seriously.

Justification, however, is not subject to the same standards as knowl-

edge and is not underm ined by the same range of conditions. Moreover, in

my view rationality, though normatively strong enough to entail a minim al

level of rational respectability, is normatively more permissive than

justification (Audi 2001, esp. chs. 1-2; 2008; 2011, esp. Part I). Having


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rationally required) to withhold the proposition in question. Even suppos-

ing that at present there is, for many scientifically and philosophically

informed people, better evidence against theism than for it, we cannot

conclude that this has always been the case in human history or that,

in

lives with both religious experience and an ability to appreciate such evi-

dence for theism as there is, the evidence against theism is equally strong.

What it is rational for a person to believe, like what the person may

justifiedly believe, is a matter of evidence accessible to the person. Here

justification differs from knowledgewhich may be defeated by coun-

terevidence of which one is unaware. Suppose, for instance, that I have

been given a hallucinogenic drug designed to give me feline sensory

images, but have no way of detecting this. I may then fail to know that

there is a black cat before m e when I seem to see one (even if there is one

producing m y feline sense impressions in the normal w ay); but assum ing

I feel normal and have no reason to doubt my senses, I may still quite

justifiedly believe that there is such a cat before me.

4 CSR and the Moral Authority o f Religion

If I have been right in arguing that CSR is compatible with counte-

nancing the kinds of psychological explanations of human action

important for our dignity and that its findings do not provide good reason

to think theistic beliefs are by their nature unjustified, it may still be ques-

tioned whether the kinds of findings suggested by the HADD and other

CSR hypotheses cited above are consistent with religion s having the kind

of moral authority it is typically taken to have by the faithful. The ques-

tion is of great importance because, given its implications for human hfe,

individual and social, the rational status of religion can affect many lives

and is in any event of great interest for a number of disciplines.

The first thing to say here is that even commitment to rehgions that

take God to be omniscient, omnipotent, and perfectly good does not

require holding a strong divine command ethics, on which moral tmths

are based on G od s com mands (a point argued for in Audi [2011, ch. 6]).

Piety is compatible with belief in the autonomy of ethics relative to theol-

ogy and religion. This is particularly so if, like tmths of pure mathematics,

basic ethical principles are not ordained or alterable by divine will. One


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omniscient even if one does not view logical and mathematical truths as

divinely ordained or in any way alterable. That view is compatible with

omnipotence as most commonly understood: roughly the power to bring

about anything that is not strictly, e.g. logically, impossible.

Second, it should be remembered that much of the ethical conduct

required by major religionsincluding that specified by plausible inter-

pretations of the ethical principles among the Ten Commandmentsis

independently justifiable by the most plausible non-theistic ethical theo-

ries.Strong prohibitions of killing and lying, for instance, figure in all of

the latter.

A major related point made by a CSR researcher is that:

Invocation of supematural agents constitutes an ecologically rational

response to the enhanced possibilities of deception inherent in the evolution

of human representational skills and social interaction. Religion, or any

moral order, could not long endure if it

were

unable to forestall defection and

escape

rom

hePrisoner's Dilemma

(i.e.,

if you don't cheatothersbefore they

have a chance to cheat you, you will be left in the lurch; but if all reason this

way, then everyone will lo se ) . .. . okeep the morally corrosive temptations

to deceive or defect under control,

all

concerned

must truly believe that

the gods are always watching. (Atran 2002, 144-45)

In a similar vein, Johnson and Kruger hold that:

Many of our social norms developed because they promoted cooperation

towards public goods in the past. These norms are often driven by religion.

We suggest that the origins of these social norms may have spontaneously

emerged in evolution asaresult of the specific selective advantages of super-

natural punishment. (Johnson and Kruger 2004, 171)

This emphasis on the effect of assumed observation by gods is not

the only element that CSR researchers emphasize in explaining the con-

tribution religion makes to social coordination. Atran also says, for

instance, that religious rituals involve sequential, socially interactive

movement and gesture (chant, dance, murmur, etc.) and formulaic utter-

ances (liturgies, canonical texts, etc.) that synchronize affective states

among group mem bers in displays of cooperative comm itment (2002,

172).These elements are apparently taken to have significant coordinative

effects even apart from the influence of the sense of gods' watching


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474 ROBERT AUD I

psychological variables of the cognitive and m otivational kinds important

for human dignity. People might cooperate better because they believe

divine refribution will be administered if they do not (and want to avoid

that) or because cooperative impulses are engendered in a more direct way

by the shared religious culture or both.

The point of bringing these CSR hypotheses into our discussion is

not to suggest that theistic beliefs are pragm atically justified roughly,

justified in terms of usefulness in serving important human purposes.

Indeed, I am not supposing there is any such justification of belief or other

cognitive attitudes. Pragmatic considerations m ay certainly make it ratio-

nal to

produce

a belief inoneself as where doing so has good effects

even if not the etemal bliss cited by proponents of Pascal's Wagerbut

that rationality of producing a belief oesnot imply any epistemic justifi-

cation for it. The point is rather that CSR findings seem to confirm that

(even if religious impulses can be perverted) religious commitments by

and large generate action tendencies of a kind that conduce to the survival

and coordination of human society.

To be sure, we m ight still wonder w hether human b eings can live up

to the ethics of love epitomized in Lov e thy neighbor as th y se lf and

illusfrated in the narratives of the life of Jesus Christ. Here fear of pun-

ishment

c nnot

be the cenfral motive, and presumably cannot even be

motivationally necessary. The comm andment is meant to evoke infrinsic,

non-instrumental caring about othe rs, the kind or caring that is natural and

comm on regardingoneself.What w e would no t do but for fear of punish-

ment we do not do on the basis of such caring or, especially, from love.

Love might be a factor, but if it yields the right actions only when p ropped

up by fear, it is surely not what Jesus had in mind. I find important con-

nections to cognitive science here. Consider two other connections.

First, given that love is neither an act nor d irectly voluntary, it is puz-

zling how we can fulfill the com mand to love. We cannot do it at will, and

many things that might produce the right acts are artificial in a way that

prevents their being genuinely done from love. A valuable task for CSR

would be to ascertain the extent of our power to engender, sustain, and act

from, the kind of love in question. One possible focus is religious prac-

tices, both social, as in participation in services, and individual, as in


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bly),

that (1) prayer commonly reduces anxiety or promotes a sense of

well-being. How can we tell whether (2) people comm only p ra y /o r that

reason, rather than for some rehgious purpose? (I assume that an action

can be explained by a reasonin the motivational sense of the term

even ifth person is not aware of the explaining factor or, at least, that it

is the explaining factor) It would also be of interest to know whether (3)

even if they pray for a religious purpose, they would not do so, or would

do less or differently, if (1) were not so. (l)-(3) are testable by CSR.

Suppose all are confirmed. Is this evidence of prayer s having only reli-

giously insignificant causes or effects?

Second, some psychological h terature supports the idea that narratives

like those in the Bible and role m odeling like that of parents toward children

are highly influential in moral education. CSR and associated psychological

inquiries may show much about how our moral attitudes and convictions

are formed. Sosis and Alcorta make the plausible suggestion that:

Far from being an evolutionary by-product, religion constitutes a uniquely

human form of ritualized display that not only regulates social interactions,

but also promulgates social cohesion and provides the foundation for social

transmission of culture. (Sosis and Alcorta 2004, 750)

If we can assume that transmission of culture has fitness value, that would

indirectly support the view that religion does also. Indeed, that religion

helps in transmitting cultureand indeed, related kinds of knowledge

is not something that cannot be evidenced by common-sense observations.

If

so ,

that might be an incentive to practice religion in at least some way.

This instmm ental know ledge about the value of religion (or of certain reli-

gious practices) would yield at most pragmatic justification for religious

behavior rather than evidential justification for religious propositions. But

that point is not disconfirmatory regarding theism, and it certainly does

nothing to erode the idea that htunan beings have dignity.

It should be emphasized that nothing said here ignores the point that

religion can have positive effects on cotnmon morality without having

moral

authority

In suggesting it might have positive effects, I am not

imagining that a strong divine command theory may ttim out to be tme.

The point is neutral with respect to that kind of theory; it is that findings


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476 ROBERT AUD I

sense: they do not impugn the m oral value of certain seriptural passages,

or certain religious traditions, or of clergy w ho have acquired wisdom in

ethics through the former and other sources. Indeed, the very idea of an

otnniscient being invites religious people who accept it to take a kind of

ideal observer point of view on difficult moral questions. One can take

God and various religious sources to be authoritative regarding what moral

standards are

sound

without taking moral standards to

depend

on God.

It must be granted, however, that religious practices, and certainly

religious leaders, may be ethically unacceptable or may generate or

support beliefs that have no rational basis. Here I see further work for

CSR. In particular, it should have important implications for the ethics of

be lief I do not regard beliefs as directly voluntary, but we can influence

our own future beliefs by w hat we do in the way of exposing ourselves to

certain influences. CSR may indicate some of the elements that tend to

weaken or strengthen religious conviction and motivation. Does ritual

have such effects? Do recitations of the Lord s Prayer or of certain creeds?

What implications might experimentally based answers to such questions

have for, on the one hand, the assessment of religious cognitions we

already have and, on the other, our obligations to maintain a suitably ratio-

nal,

critical stance toward influences on our outlook? This question

applies to non-theistic as well as to theistic religions.

I would speculate here that CSR research might pursue not only the

analogy between cognitive formation in religion and cognitive formation

in science, but also the analogy between religious experiences and beliefs

and aesthetic experiences and beliefs. The aesthetic realm is like the reli-

gious realm in at least two resp ects: first, the properties w e are acquainted

with therein are not ordinary natural properties or even invariably physi-

cal (as presum ably fictional entities and their properties a re not); secondly,

the experiences appropriate to aesthetic objects are not accessible to just

anyone. We must le rn to read poetry. CSR may make discoveries about

aesthetic experience and belief that in some ways parallel its discoveries

about religious experience and belief W hat might these discoveries imply

regarding the normative authority of such experiences? Are the ethical

influences of scriptural narratives due to their illustrating moral para-

digms as virtue ethicists might hold or is hum an psychology such that


16/19


the idea of our instantiating a design plan as we do on the view of Plantinga

[2000])is whether these two kinds of account, assuming they are com-

patible, are complementary or each disconfirmatory of

th

other.

The overall conclusion that emerges in this paper is that the devel-

opment of hypotheses and well-confirmed theories in CSR is not a threat

to human dignity. That development does not imply the explanatory inad-

equacy of the kinds of mentalistic concepts that respond to evidences of

tmth or of value and disvalue. It does not imply m aterialism, determinism,

or any good reason to doubt that our actions can be both rational and free.

It also does not imply that no religious commitments are rational, even if

researchers in CSR are correct in pointing to natural facts sufficient to

explain the genesis and transmission of religious beliefs and prac tices. My

view leaves open, moreover, that, even if rehgious influences can be mis-

directed, religion may, under many kinds of conditions, contribute to

rational support for sound ethical principles and practices. Much work

remains to be done in exploring psychological, cultural, and evolutionary

influences on cognition. We may hope that the progress of CSR helps bo th

to enhance our understanding of religion and to strengthen its positive role

in hum an life.^

Robert Audi

University of Notre D ame

OT S

1.

This is not the place for a full account of dignity, and here I simply assume that the

notion is meant to apply, if only by extension or in some indirect way, to human beings

generally, regardless of their age and even if impaired by illness or genetically lacking in

potentiality to achieve the paradigmatic dignity-making elemen ts.

2.

The papers in Schloss and Murray 2009) seem representative of much work in

CSR and support this understanding of the broadly social-scientific character of CSR. Cer-

tainly all of the authors in that volume take evolutionary biology to prov ide a context for

their inquiry, but their main hypotheses regard ing religion are framed in psychological or

other social-scientific terms.


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478 ROBERT AUD I

is sovereign in the universe) and belief

that

which are truth-valued attitudes (having true

or false propositions as objects) and cognitively as well as religiously important. A short

statement of reasons to hold this is provided in Audi (2008).

4. That this point is consistent with divine om nipotence (and a plausible account of

the relation between God and the norm ative realm ) is argued in some detail in Aud i ('2011

ch. 9).

5. For a development o f this point conceming the importance of context see Murray

(2009,

170-71).

6. On e way to see this is to consider a possibility env isaged in Desca rtes's famous

Meditations:

a demon w orld in which one 's experience is just as it now is; one would have

little knowledge (at least empirical know ledge) but arguably w ould b e unaffected in justifi-

cation. In any case, consider the possibility of a vivid hallucination; knowledge but not

justification is eliminated. For discussion and references see my (2010a, esp. chs. 9 and 10).

7. To see why justification might be considered a higher standard, consider two cases

in which knowledge seems possible without justification and in a way that, at least in a

normative sense, demands less of the subject. One is the case of tiny children acquiring

knowledge from what parents say. They are not yet candidates for justification. Second,

think of the

idiot savant

who may immediately know the answer to a multiplication

problem that would require calculation, and may know this even before realizing the pres-

ence of the ability, hence before achieving an inductive, track-record justification. For

explanation and defense of the idea that, in the way illustrated here, knowledge does not

require justification, see Audi (2010, chs. 10-11).

8. This paper has benefited from discussions at the Oxford W orkshop on the Cog ni-

tive Science of Religion led by Jason Barrett and Roger Trigg, and I thank both of them

and James Beebe for valuable discussion and Paul Draper for helpfiil comments on an

earlier version.

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THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION AND THE PILLARS OF HUMAN DIGNITY