Jonathan Morgan  

Last time I wrote about how we reason differently for those things that we consider sacred compared to profane things.  For most of our daily lives, we make decisions using instrumental or utilitarian processing– “is the benefit worth the cost?” But when we’re dealing with sacred objects or values, we switch into a decision-making process that is concerned with right and wrong instead of cost. That’s pretty interesting in and of itself, but it leaves one big question: how do certain things become sacred? Could the banana on my desk become a sacred object? In this post we’ll look at two different strands of research that give us clues into this question.

Not only do we know that people switch out of utilitarian reasoning when they’re thinking about sacred values, we also know that not everyone does this to the same degree. Some folks are more likely than others to consider values as sacred. That may seem obvious– of course religious people will regard more values as sacred than non-religious folks. But, this difference extends beyond the religious values that you might expect. For example, what may seem to be a matter of preference, “do you like Macs or PCs?” can become charged with a sense of right and wrong. For some people, it’s no longer a matter of simply liking Macs more, the preference becomes imbued with the feeling that Macs are just better. In the context of this research: these are preferences that you wouldn’t switch for any amount of money.

Obviously we’re out past the terrain of typical religion, unless you consider the cult of Mac a religion… but that’s an issue for another time. Given this difference between people, it raises the question: why? Why are some people more likely than others to switch into this right/wrong mode of reasoning?

The same guy we talked about last time, the anthropologist Scott Atran, has been working with a team exploring this question. There are some good guesses out there for who might be prone to make things sacred: one would be people who have a high need for closure. Need for closure is a psychological trait describing someone’s preference for structure and their tolerance of ambiguity. As an example, Burning Man would be deeply uncomfortable for someone with a high need for closure. Lots of theorists (such as the wonderful Mary Douglas) have suggested that one of the main functions of ritual and sacredness is to provide structure and order to our inherently ambiguous existence. So it’d make sense that need for closure would correspond with a tendency towards sacralizing values.

Another good guess for what drives this tendency is the trait of disgust sensitivity. Disgust sensitivity is just what it sounds like– how easily you feel grossed out. There’s a developing line of research in moral psychology that suggests we culturally link our disgust reflex with moral judgments. For example, think about the revulsion you feel about certain injustices or crimes. Isn’t revulsion just a synonym of disgust? Some people are more likely than others to feel this disgust, and it turns out that those with higher disgust sensitivity also make stricter moral judgments. So, that’s our second good guess– it seems likely that people with a high sensitivity to disgust, may also be more like to turn preferences into sacred values.

But, when Atran and his team, led by the psychologist Hammad Sheikh, ran their analysis neither of these psychological traits corresponded with the tendency to turn preferences into sacred values. In other words, how well you handle ambiguity and disgust had no relationship to how likely you were to turn simple preferences into sacred issues of right and wrong. That’s one of those exciting moments in social science when all your expectations are turned upside down. But it doesn’t end there.

The one variable that did predict this tendency to sacralize was how often someone performed religious rituals. This could be attending mosque, meditating quietly alone, or taking communion. Those people who performed more rituals were also more likely to transform values into matters of right and wrong. Of course this would make sense if we were only talking about religious preferences, but this tendency held for non-religious preferences too. So even those preferences like “Mac versus PC” or “Coffee versus Tea” were more often sacralized among those who did some sort of religious ritual.

A couple of things are worth mentioning. First– this is a correlational study, so we can’t tell for sure whether religious practice drives the tendency to sacralize or vice versa. Second– they didn’t separate out religious practices, from affiliation or belief. Of those three, actually practicing your religion is probably the best indicator of your religiosity, so kudos to Sheikh, Atran, and colleagues for choosing that one to measure. But, it’d be nice to have a wider picture of these people’s religious profile.

With those caveats in place, we can think about this relationship between practice and sacredness in a couple of different ways. One guess is that there’s a third factor influencing both the tendency to sacralize and the tendency to do religious things. That seems like a good guess, but the primary contenders for such a third variable would be Need for Closure and Disgust Sensitivity. Even if it wasn’t one of those two exactly, by our best theories you’d expect the third variable to at least show up through those two. This, tentatively, weakens the case for a third variable.

Another possibility is that the tendency to sacralize stands alone as a personality trait. If that was the case, then people with this trait could also be drawn to do religious things. This guess describes the causal influence running in one direction. But there are certain conditions, like feeling threatened or experiencing empathy, that can change people’s tendency to sacralize. In other words, the tendency to sacralize is malleable, it changes depending on the situation. Malleability isn’t what you want for a personality trait, which suggests this probably isn’t the characteristic driving the relationship.

The third possibility is that performing rituals actually leads to this tendency to turn preferences into sacred values. You can probably guess from the last two paragraphs that if I had to bet, this is where I’d put my money. My reasons will have to wait for next time, but suffice it to say that I believe that what we do changes what we think, what we believe, and ultimately what we experience. So it could be that performing religious rituals actually changes how you see the world and turns it into a place infused with sacredness. This could transform seemingly normal decisions into issues with moral weight beyond preference. But, that argument will have to wait for next time.

But sometimes they do

Jonathan Morgan

If you’re ever out in the Rockies, you’ll come across signs warning you about the dangers of the mountains.  These signs don’t beat around the bush– they directly let you know that “Mountains don’t care.”  And it’s true.  The weather doesn’t care that you forgot your raincoat.  Lightening isn’t going to discriminate between you and that boulder.  Heck, even that boulder doesn’t care enough to not twist your ankle or roll over your arm if you misjudge its balance.  The mountains don’t care.

But they’re also full of beauty.  And if you’re thirsty, those mountains are full of water– though you may want to bring iodine or a pump to kill off the germs.  If you’re hungry, they’re full of food– as long as you know what’s poisonous and what’s not.  And if you’re tired, you can find shelter among their slopes.  It won’t be as comfortable as a La-Z-Boy recliner, but it’ll keep the sun off your head and some of the rain off your back.  Before I run the risk of getting too poetic and sappy– my point is simply that the mountains also do care.

This is a microcosm for so many situations in our lives.  Sometimes life sucks: illness strikes at random; accidents happen; loved ones pass away; jobs are lost; opportunities disappear; war breaks out; injustice strikes at the core of your community.  But at the very same time, dear friends have new children; new relationships blossom; we receive random kindness; projects come to completion; strangers stand together for a common cause; or there’s just a really beautiful sunset.  We’re caught within the whole ambiguous mess.  The world doesn’t care.  The world cares.

Considering that this is a blog on a website that studies religion…well, you probably see where I’m going.  But I’m not trying to make any theological statement about the divine, and whether it cares or not.  Instead I’m struck by the capacity of religions, at their best, to hold these contradicting truths together.

The Hebrew Bible (or what Christians call the Old Testament) is full of laments about the staggering injustices of the world.  Yet it’s also full of amazing hymns of praise and awe.  These two voices are potently distilled in the Book of Job, a story about a devout and holy man, Job, who suffers every imaginable woe: his family dies, his fortune is lost, friends abandon him, and he even gets skin boils.  When he brings his anger before YHWH about this injustice, YHWH responds with an epic speech about the foundations of the earth and huge fish, which humbles, but also reassures, Job.

In the Bhagavad Gita, a famous Hindu scripture, the prince Arjuna is directly brought into the brutality of the world through his duty to fight and kill his relatives.  Yet, he’s simultaneously reassured by Krishna that it’s all okay– nothing is permanent in this world, everyone dies, but it’s not the true self that dies.  The true self, Atman, will never die.

In Buddhism, suffering is front and center as the First Noble Truth. Samsara – the cycle of birth, life, and death – is notoriously full of suffering.  Nirvana, as the liberation or salvation from this suffering, may seem like a handy solution to the problem. But Nagarjuna, one of the great Buddhist philosophers, taught that Samsara is Nirvana.  That’s confusing, and radical, and gets right to the heart of this tension.

Religious stories and teachings have a remarkable ability to face the ambiguity of existence.  The mountains care and they don’t care.  Life is suffering, and it’s also sublime. Great literature and artwork often face the same paradox of living.  But religion differs by also providing rituals and communities to help engage with that ambiguity– which is helpful, because the ambiguity isn’t going away.

Having the capacity to hold both truths at once is a deeply important virtue.  Without this virtue we risk falling to either side.  If the mountains simply don’t care, then despair’s the right response.  Or if they really do care, then we’re lead into some fantastical mania in which life is always on our side and even mountains will bend to serve us.  I suppose you could also just rule out both options and decide that the universe is just purely indifferent– but that position doesn’t seem to equip people to live very well.

I’m not dwelling on this capacity to hold ambiguity in order to simply applaud religion.  Instead, I want to highlight what’s lost if you treat religion as if it’s built out of propositional truths.

By “propositional truths” I’m talking about the sort of statements that are either true or false.  Water is made of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen atom.  The core of the sun is nearly 16 million degrees Celsius.  The Hudson Valley was largely formed during the Taconic and Acadian orogenies.  These are propositional statements, and while a philosopher of science might debate with me, such statements are primarily true or false.

But how about the statement: Samsara is Nirvana?  It simply doesn’t make sense if you take it as a propositional truth.*  Something else is going on.  In the Book of Job, YHWH cares and doesn’t care about Job’s suffering.  If you demand that these are propositional truths, then they both can’t be true.

But if you listen to most contemporary debates about religion, they take it for granted that religion is built of propositions.  Creationists exemplify this tragedy by saying the book of Genesis is full of literal truths.  But even debates about the existence of God seem to depend on the assumption that this propositional quality of religion is its most important aspect.

If you force religious thought into that propositional framework, then it loses its capacity to handle the ambiguity of existence.  Instead it’s forced to pick sides.  This is tragic because it’s so rare to find symbols, stories, communities, and practices that bring us directly into that tension between the world’s indifference and concern.

If religion is primarily about truth-statements, then this tension is flattened into an irresolvable dilemma.  How can you choose only one side?  And, even more tragically, we lose the practices and thoughts that help carry us through the inevitable ambiguity of living.  The mountains don’t care and they care.

Either way, I’m going hiking.

*If you think it does make sense, you should check out some of Nagarjuna’s other writings (especially Mulamadhyamakakarika) where he uses four-way negations (which if you want to sound fancy is called a tetralemma) to undermine any tendency to think you have figured him out!