I just read a New York Times article about a report in the new issue of Science.
It relates a vital clue to religiosity! It’s so darned obvious once you hear it.
The story shows two random-seeming collections of scratch-marks, and asks if you see any sort of pattern in them.
The thing is, according to research, people who feel out of control of their lives are more prone to see patterns.
The story relates this to Wall Street traders wearing their lucky shirts to work during uncertain times, or deep-sea fishermen who reportedly have more rituals and superstitions than fishermen who work near shore.
But it sparked an instant recognition, at least in my head, that the argument applies to religion too.
The pattern of “God’s hand” (or whatever they decide to call it) that some people see in their lives may well be an artifact of their own feelings of lack of control in their lives. They LOOK for meaningful or familiar patterns because it makes them feel slightly less out of control.
It makes immense sense to me. What the article doesn’t say is that religion also FOSTERS a lack of control. Hell, it actually TEACHES that all the control in your life is in the hands of your unpredictable god.
Put those two things together, and you just might have the most basic reason for religion — a psychological quirk that locks you into a self-reinforcing mental loop.
You’re taught about your capricious and powerful God, so you feel out of control. So you automatically look for, and find, familiar or meaningful patterns to make yourself feel better. Those patterns are the evidences of God, who has control of your life. If God has control of your life, you have little or none … which means you feel out of control, which forces you to look for more patterns.
I think this must be why extremely religious people see EVERYTHING as evidence for their god, and why religion is so hard to escape.
It might also help explain why poor people, uneducated people, are more apt to be deeply religious (or superstitious, or believers in luck). And maybe, by extension, even why churches seem to automatically oppose education and birth control — to keep people poor, ignorant and out of control.
And also why those people who flock to the Jesus stains or Mary spots on freeway overpasses, walls or screen doors or … whatever, are never PhD candidates.