If atheism is true, why did so many ancient cultures hold to some form of theism? Why did none of them get it right? Why did our ancestors adopt theism, rather than atheism?
Atheists sometimes feel compelled to answer these questions. The most common answer goes something like this: “Ancient people were superstitious and ignorant about nature. When they saw things that they didn’t understand, they invented explanations, projecting their own psychology onto nature, in a process known as “anthropomorphism”. Lightning strikes a tree near you? God must be angry!”
This explanation of theism is far from satisfying, though. What evidence do we have to support such a narrative? The most ancient scriptures of theistic religions describe very different motivations and mechanisms for their beliefs. Nowhere in the Torah, for example, do we find a patriarch asking himself “what is the cause of lightning?”, and then hearing the voice of God answering in explanation. In the Torah and the Vedas, we find the ancients obsessing over issues of justice, agency, love, and responsibility — nowhere do we see them appealing to God to explain some natural or cosmological process. If theism is a fiction created to explain the cosmos, the ancient theists were cunning in their concealment of this fact.
Likewise, the theory doesn’t match with our empirical experience of modern theists. How many Christians do we know who started by asking, “why does lightning happen?”, and ended up at Christianity? The very idea is ludicrous! It would take a truly special sort of idiocy to believe that modern Christians adopt their faith as a way to explain lightning, so why would we assume any differently about the ancients?
And this leads us to the real problem with this common atheist response. We’re expected to swallow this narrative about how theism was “invented”, with no real evidence past or present. Since there is no evidence to back up the story, atheists project their own psychology to support their chosen narrative. They explain, “people today always ask ‘why?’ and invent answers, so the ancients must have done the same”. Besides the fact that the atheist is inventing a narrative to explain theism, the idea that the ancients cared so much about explaining natural phenomena is pure projection. It is modern materialistic reductionists who are obsessed with detailed explanations of minute natural phenomena. Nowhere do we see such an obsession among ancient theists.
When faced with a series of unexplained facts, humans love to invent narratives to explain those facts. Nicholas Nassim Taleb calls this the “Narrative Fallacy“. Atheists would have you believe that theism is simply a gigantic example of narrative fallacy, backed up by anthropomorphism, and concealed with lies. But this explanation itself reeks of narrative fallacy and relies on projection of motivations that apply primarily to atheists. When faced with narrative fallacy, you don’t combat it with your own narrative fallacy. And you don’t back that narrative up with psychological projection — especially when you are accusing your opponents of doing the same. You combat narrative fallacy with evidence and empirical tests.
Why do atheists rely so frequently on narrative fallacy and psychological projection when explaining theism?
There are three problems with your reasoning.
1. The argument that atheists invent a narrative to explain a narrative is just a slightly more complicated “no u” argument which is simply not convincing. It also does nothing to support the truth of your narrative.
2. How modern theists arrived at their beliefs is relatively obvious. It’s a sociocultural staple that’s been around far too long to vanish in the face of new evidence and arguments. Another cause is simply the need to have reason for their existence and to ground certain values they might hold. To someone living in india the values and ways of life taught by hinduism would be much more appealing then your christian values. But I can’t say that either conclusion of “truth” was arrived at by sound reasoning.
3. There are excellent reasons to think that christianity is simply a narrative. Consider how there are no examples of supernatural causes in the world today, that there have been thousands of gods that people had faith in, and that the bible matches the world and values of its’ writers much better then it resembles an objective truth. You should also consider how many of the early biblical accounts (like the flood) have their origin in cultures other then the jews. Perhaps you can also look to the gospels which steadily grow more and more “magical” as they go along. Does either account sound more like history or a “bedtime story”?
@LukeL – Thanks for the comment. In this post I was addressing the very narrow claim that ancient theism originated as a way to explain natural phenomena like lightning. I reject the idea that ancient theism was a gigantic example of Rudyard Kipling’s “just so stories”. It seems that you mostly agree with me.
1. As I said in my post, one way to defeat a “just so” story is to offer a more plausible explanation for the observed outcomes. The claim that “theism was invented to explain lightning” needs to be subjected to the same plausibility test as the claim that “lightning is caused by Theo being mad”. The former claim is frequently made today, so there is some urgency in examining the claim. We don’t have any real evidence that the second claim was ever made, but if it were, it would be as easy as a straw man to knock down.
2. You claim that your explanation of theism is more plausible than the “Theo throwing lightning bolts” theory, which is a good start. I mostly agree with your explanation about “modern theists”, but that gets us no closer to having a plausible explanation of ancient theism. I don’t buy that it came about so that people could “have reason for existence”, but I think you are getting closer with “ground certain values”.
The explanation I currently find most plausible is summarized by William Flesch in his book “Comeuppance“. He’s not a theist, AFAIK, and he writes about how sexual selection (not group selection) in evolutionary biology can explain a large chunk of what we commonly call “morality”, and simultaneously explain our love of fiction.
Regardless of whether you prefer the current evolutionary biology theories about group selection, or instead prefer sexual selection, the point is the same. Our morality evolutionarily preceeded any anthropomorphizing of natural forces, and would have been far more important to our development as a species. One needn’t understand evolutionary biology to see the truth of this — one can simply observe Chimpanzees, who exhibit third-order intentionality and maintain complex accounts of who deserves punishment and reward, yet do not anthropomorphize nature. It seems pretty obvious that our innate capacity for these “moral” functions is far more explanatory in theism than any curiosity about the mechanics of the physical world.
3. In your third point, I think you’re confusing historical narrative with ex-post facto rationalization (which is the subject of “narrative fallacy”). Christianity is a historical narrative. As we’ve discussed, one way to defeat a narrative fallacy is to offer a more plausible explanation. With a historical narrative, however, you don’t need to imagine a narrative, since you are dealing with a narrative that was already supplied by people who recorded the historical events. The way to attack a historical narrative is to challenge its veracity.
We could argue about the veracity of the Christian narrative, but that’s a completely different topic, and would require a separate post (or, more likely, several posts).
Joshua,
You ask: Why did our ancestors adopt theism, rather than atheism? That is an interesting question. I have found the most satisfying answers from two related sources. 1) Neurological studies. 2) Anthropological studies.
Anthropological studies (and I highly recommend David Eller’s Introducing Anthropology of Religion: Culture to the Ultimate ). He shows that every culture does not believe in god(s) but all believe in some type of social interaction with non-human persons or forces. It seems that the belief in monotheism is a much later evolutionary development in the history of man.
2) Neurological studies indicate that man’s brain has evolved in such a way as to look for patterns and to look for causes and explanations of phenomena. Man tends to see purpose behind phenomena even when there is none (e.g., the common phrase–”everything happens for a reason.”). Here I recommend Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained and Robert Burton’s On Being Certain.
1. This isn’t exactly what you said. Your claim was that anthropomorphizing was a bad way of looking at the bible when it clearly has a lot of backing. It can also be used to ground things such as a moral belief shared by a group or even a simple factual belief (the world appears designed…how could that be?) and so on. It’s really this that I’m attacking as a simplistic analysis by a very unsophisticated people and it easily fits into what your described as natural phenomenon. I don’t understand why we dignify these kinds of conclusions with so much consideration.
If you think that the projection of unknowns into a sentient being (God) and that our ancestors were very likely to do this (then write about it >.> ) then you’re right and we do agree.
2. You could actually extend my argument to cover ancient theism. Our beliefs about Gods was relatively simple to begin with and might well have resembled something like the lightning example you gave and this practice of belief is what eventually evolved into ancient theism. The superstition just gradually grew more complex along with us.
I can’t comment on theories of natural selection as they relate to cultural growth but could you expand on exactly what you think morality implies as far as the development of theism? Do you think these morals are evidence that theism is correct?
3. Every point I made on 3 is directly related to whether an examination of the bible and christianity can yield truth or is instead a fiction. Isn’t that what we’re discussing here? Even by your criteria the flood and the gospels are a direct attack on the plausibility of the narrative so your objection is unrelated. If you’d like to save it for a different post then that’s fine but all the things I listed are huge questions that must be answered before the “Christian narrative” can be trusted.
Actually, the word “unknowns” is the part that I find implausible, for two reasons:
First, it presupposes that the Torah (for example) is primarily a tool for people to use to look up answers to unknowns. We don’t see any of that in the Torah — think of all of the questions that modern science has recently answered, which the ancients would have wondered about. Why do we see no agriculture tables, star guides, etc.?
What we do see in the Torah is an affirmation of basic morals that would’ve been innate, and then a lot of very complex stories about justice, deception, retribution, etc. So the idea that the Torah is about answering unknowns seems just as plausible as the idea that Shakespeare is about answering unknowns.
Second, this theory requires us to believe that our ancestors took the things that they were the least certain about, and posited solutions to which they ascribed the highest possible authority. And then, they lied about it. This doesn’t make any sense to me.
No, but I think they’re evidence of a more plausible explanation for the emergence of theism. I highly recommend reading the book, but in summary, the book argues that our desire to lift up the wounded and to punish the offender, even at great cost to ourselves, was a driving force in the evolution of our brains. This innate “moral” sense required us to become experts at “fiction” long before we had oral or written history.
A very important point in this evolutionary biology explanation is that altruism (and costly punishment) is a form of “costly signalling”, just like the peacock’s feathers. Our thirst for justice has to be expensive and un-fakeable, if it’s to serve as a mechanism of sexual selection. In other words, our innate desire for justice, and our willingness to lay down our lives for the cause, is stronger and more authentic than many other innate qualities.
Think of it like this. If you watch a stranger beat a woman you know, and there is a police officer standing by who does nothing, ignoring her pleas for help, how would you feel about the police officer? You’re far more likely to put yourself in bodily danger over this, than you are to get violent about the laws of thermodynamics. Your reaction is an innate moral impulse that is universal and unquestioned. The ancients’ level of confidence about such things was innate, and far stronger than their level of confidence about things like seasons or phases of the moon. The authors of the Torah were writing about things that seemed self-evident to them, with absolute certainty. The Torah is not a book about cosmology; it is a book about the condition of the human heart and moral conflicts.
Note that they did not attach the same level of certainty to all of their conclusions; things like starving babies we all agree upon. Other things were left up to judgement calls, so the Talmud, for example, never claimed the same level of divine inspiration as the Torah. This is just what we would expect. It is plausible.
3. Yes, I agree that the points you have raised would be relevant to a discussion of the veracity of the Bible. For this discussion, though, I would like to stick to the narrow issue of whether or not the ancients invented God to explain away their uncertainties. I find this theory implausible, for the reasons I gave above, and introduced an explanation that I find more plausible, and which ought to be acceptable to atheists.
BTW, I don’t mind engaging on those other points. But it would probably be better to just point me to the various atheist blogs when someone makes one or another of the arguments. This is better for two reasons — first, I don’t want to focus primarily on apologetics here, and I have a rather dim view of apologetics; and second, I would prefer to give my responses in a forum where there is the widest possible chance of rebuttal, so I can be more quickly and comprehensively corrected if wrong.
@Ken – thanks for the comment and the recommendations.
1) You’re right that monotheism came later in our development; even Abraham and Jacob were idol-worshippers before they became monotheists.
2) Correct. Check out this recent paper, “Loss of Control Increases Illusory Pattern Perception”. http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5898/115
The Old Testament of the bible does suggest that plagues, earthquakes,floods and the like are the result of Gods anger towards humans.(even “tumors” of the rectum!)
Evil spirits are believed to be the cause of some types of sickness and are said to come from God.
These certainly seem to be examples of an ignorant, ancient culture trying to explain their world.
As you implied, I think we could make a whole list of this sort of question:
If X is true, why did so many ancient cultures believe Y
X = round earth Y = flat earth
X = leprosy caused by organism Y = leprosy cause by demon
X = lightening is anger of god Y = is electrical discharge of large static charges stored in clouds.
or more complex issues (as you point out)
X = shit happens Y = bad thing happen to good people because there is a Satan
Concerning the Torah and Vedas you say “nowhere do we see them appealing to God to explain some natural or cosmological process.” I think this is clearly wrong as one of the commentors points out.
I wrote a post on the Shrinking Spackle God to show why Theists, overtime drop lightening and leprosy from their list of God’s doing but still leave vague things like creation and justice (the answer to the Spackle God is here: Your Modular God).
Sure even ancient people use to ask “Why?” but once “Why?” became more careful (recorded, tested, and refined) knowledge grew.
So hopefully, if you were sincerely curious, I answered a few of your “Why’s”. [though I am doubtful]
Oooops, I switch X & Y in the lightening story! (Freudian? arghhhh, Zap !)
Sabio, thanks for leaving a comment. I just subscribed to your blog; interesting stuff.
My claim is that the scriptures are explaining moral topics, and not natural phenomena. Obviously, the scriptures believe that deities are potent to intervene in the physical world, so there are accounts of God raining fire on Sodom, or causing a flood, or whatever. But these are always unique incidents related in a specific moral context.
Take, for example, arson. If you read the records of the police department, you’ll find many cases of arson. Do you conclude that “the police say that all fires are caused because an arsonist is mad”? Of course not! That’s idiotic. Likewise, portraying as Biblical the idea that “floods are caused because God is mad”, is idiotic.
Arson is an exception that proves the rule, which is why arsons are taken so seriously in police investigations. Likewise, God intervening in the physical world “because he’s mad”, was considered to be an extraordinarily exceptional event. Far from being a “just-so” story to explain the average flood or lightning bolt, the “God” explanation was used only for very specific cases within a moral context. The claim that God caused only one documented flood out of anger is, by implication, a claim that he does not cause all of the others out of anger.
So I think that people have it exactly backwards when they assume that some child asked, “Mommy, why do floods happen?”, and the mommy answered “Because God gets mad”.
If I were an atheist, there would be a far more logical and plausible explanation for these stories of God’s intervention in natural affairs. Let’s assume that the Bible is an example of primitive man grappling with, and writing about, moral issues. Now, assume that the primitive man gets caught up in a city where there are lots of “wicked” things going on. In other words, his innate sense of morality is deeply offended by the behavior of his fellow citizens. He’s really troubled by things, perhaps more so than he has ever been, so he goes outside the city to think. Just as he leaves, a meteor shower strikes the city and levels it.
Think about it. He’s just been exposed to the biggest moral dilemma of his life, and just witnessed an entire city being destroyed. You might call it coincidence, and the law of large numbers says that it will happen to someone eventually, but you will admit that the primitive man isn’t going to see it as a coincidence. He’s going to write it down and tell all of his grandchildren.
Why atheists don’t follow this more plausible line of explanation, and instead insist on telling this retarded “just-so” narrative, is beyond me.
I agree that the human animal often evaluates events as having some cause tied to moral events — across many cultures.
I am not really clear on your position otherwise. Have you posted your beliefs somewhere.
BTW, I can’t see any check box to follow your blog comments by e-mail. I can’t seem to subscribe to this thread. Perhaps you could find a way to activate it — it would greatly facilitate conversation on your site — I , for instance rarely come back to sites except via my feedreader or e-mail responses to comments. Just a thought. Look forward to dialogue.
Good suggestion about e-mail subscriptions. Like you, I tend to lose conversations on blogs where I can’t get comment e-mails. I’ll try to upgrade later this week.
As for my overall position, I’m actually still forming my opinions about a lot of things, and I intend this blog to be a place where I can sort of think out loud about stuff I’m forming opinions on. So I’m not promoting a worldview here; mainly just picking apart little issues and trying to analyze clearly. FWIW, I’m a Christian, and I used to promote atheism actively.
See, I came back and found your comment — I am so glad you took my suggestions without offense. I recently had a similar conversation at another site where it ended badly. Oh the scars ! (smile)
BTW, FWIW, since there are such a variety of people calling themselves “Christians” and since I try view people much deeper than their labels, but by how they tie their lives and thoughts together, it matters not to me that you call yourself a “Christian” — how about if I just label you as a “friend” for a while. Smile.