Living Without God: European Lives and the Dissolution of Religion from Ferverent Practice to Benign Tradition

First, let me make clear; it seems like a very safe and uncontroversial statement to make when one observes that religion is a very large and powerful force in the contemporary world. The growth of Islam and its connections to militaristic terrorism are certainly a daily headline for people living all around the globe. It seems that Islam is leading a upsurge in religious belief for many inhabitants of our planet today.

But close behind by only a few steps are the advancements Christianity is making globally as it wages its own drive to recruit believers under its set of beliefs and practices. Evangelicalism is sweeping its way into the hearts and minds of millions while other Christian religions such as Pentecostalism are also rapidly expanding. There is little doubt that organized religious beliefs are bubbling throughout the world.

Of course, religion is very popular in the United States where church attendance and responses to polls that question people's religious beliefs make the world's most powerful democracy a haven for believers. Americans as a whole hold God, Jesus, and the Bible in the highest regard. In addition, television and radio stations provide their viewers and listeners with unequaled access to Christian perspectives on a daily basis. And both Democrats and Republicans try to outdo each other over their support for 'Christian values.' The presidency of George W. Bush was extremely receptive to and promoted Christian doctrine as a part of the Republican agenda.

And beyond Islam and Christianity there has also been an uptick in the popularity of other religious belief systems around the world.

The amazing point I am about to make may sound unbelievable but I assure you that it is true. Religion is not all powerful in all nations of the world. In fact there are some nations, notably in Europe where religion is not viewed with the fervor that it is across the rest of the world. Which nations in Europe am I speaking of? First let me say that all across Europe, with particular reference to Great Britain and the Netherlands there has been a trending down in religious beliefs but it is in the Scandinavian countries that has witnessed the greatest decline in the popularity of religion. And the least religious countries in the world are Denmark and Sweden.

In Denmark and Sweden which is made up of lovely small towns, clean cities, magnificent forests, isolated beachfront, vibrant democracies, among the lowest crime rates in the world, superb institutions of public education, beautiful architecture, strong economies, publicly supported art, widespread entrepreneurship, modern hospitals, fabulous beer, free health care, extraordinary filmmakers, egalitarian social policies, and little interest in religion.

The Danes and the Swedes have proven that a society can exist without God and be very civil and pleasant. So there goes the Christians argument that without God we would all be subject to chaos and the Devil would rule the Earth.

It proves that a society without God can establish and follow rational systems of ethics and morality. Also proven has been the ability of secularists to live their lives without the 'crutch' that religion provides concerning death because many have argued that religion exists as a way for humanity to cope with death. Others have convinced themselves that they follow religion and believe in God because He has a 'plan' that governs the universe and that 'plan' also provides answers that allows human beings to understand the nature of the universe.

So why are Denmark and Sweden the less religious democracies in the world and the United States ranks number one? Several possible factors contribute in part or in whole to answering this question. History has certainly played a role ; the Danes and Swedes had Christianity imposed on their nations by rulers while the United States had a number of Christian groups initially settle throughout New England and the Mid-Atlantic states. Immigration has also played a role as America became the home to numerous religious groups over time while Sweden and Denmark were two of the most homogeneously peopled nations in the world. Also, a high degree of racial, ethnic, class, and cultural diversity exists in the United States while Denmark and Sweden are quite homogeneous in these areas. Denmark and Sweden have a national church, the Lutheran Church while diversity of churches is the rule in America. Another factor simply has to do with marketing; Americans market their religious beliefs very aggressively because of their great diverse numbers while the Danes and Swedes do not because they only have one church that is a monopoly and state controlled. A final factor unfortunately concerns the high levels of poor and under educated people who live in America and are highly susceptible to the promises made by religion of a better hereafter; this situation does not exist in Denmark and Sweden because the population as a whole is far better educated and per capita income levels are higher.

Scientists Ponder: Is Religion A Biological Accident, An Adaptation or a Combination of Both?

Researchers are beginning to consider that individuals who think about whether or not God exists; does not "require divinely dedicated neurological wiring."

"... brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."

Cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the National Institutes of Health.

"Though scientific debate about God's existence has transfixed the public, Grafman's findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."

"Some scientists think it's just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren't present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."

"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."

The argument over the existence of a supernation power "breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps," many experts believe.

Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion believes; "Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,... but once in place, they're pretty handy."

Grafman's approach to exploring the cognitive neuroscience of religion "started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God's perceived level of involvement in the world, God's perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."

Grafman's questions involved queries such as "God protects one's life" or "Life has no higher purpose" activated brain activity in portions of the brain associated with understanding intent. Statements of God's emotions — such as "God is forgiving" or "the afterlife will be punishing" — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as "a source of creation exists" or "religions provide moral guidance," were asked questions that "activated linguistic processing centers."

Scientists conjecture: "Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

Researchers agree: "just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."

Scientists agree: "Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring.

"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals.

"You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality," said Barrett, "and maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced."

"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it.

"It could be that when you're in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking," he said: "Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust."

"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them.

"It's tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level," he said. "But there's a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That's not true in this case."

"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties.

"The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on," he said.

"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God.

"He, or She, didn't come in for the evaluation," he said.

Religious Rituals Foster Self-Control Among Believers

JOHN TIERNEY, who describes himself as a "nonbeliever" and who apparently does not attend church reports in the New York Times that psychologists Michael McCullough and Brian Willoughby, two self described "social scientists," have ventured far afield from their discipline and "concluded that religious belief and piety promote self-control." The two psychologists profess their attempt "to understand why religion evolved and why it seems to help so many people." Mr. Tierney claims, without citing proof, that: "Researchers around the world have repeatedly found that devoutly religious people tend to do better in school, live longer, have more satisfying marriages and be generally happier. These results have been ascribed to the rules imposed on believers and to the social support they receive from fellow worshipers..." Mr. Tierney's article exposes religion to describe it as a hierarchically-based social structure that depends on the participation of "devout" followers of religion who organize around an authoritarian arrangement that promotes self-control. “We simply asked if there was good evidence that people who are more religious have more self-control,” Dr. McCullough (added)... "When you add it all up, it turns out there are remarkably consistent findings that religiosity correlates with higher self-control... Brain-scan studies have shown that when people pray or meditate, there’s a lot of activity in two parts of brain that are important for self-regulation and control of attention and emotion,” Dr. McCullough conjectured. “The rituals that religions have been encouraging for thousands of years seem to be a kind of anaerobic workout for self-control... It looks as if people come to associate religion with tamping down these temptations (like drugs or premarital sex),” Dr. McCullough said. “When temptations cross their minds in daily life, they quickly use religion to dispel them from their minds.” What Mr. Tierney fails to mention is whether the two psychologists, Dr. Michael McCullough and Dr. Brian Willoughby studied religion as a manifestation of authoritarian control. A question the two psychologists seem unconcerned with. Authoritarianism requires it's participants to submit to the self-control of restraint in order to maintain unquestioned belief or faith. Self-control motivates believers to willingly accept the authoritarian nature of religion. Dr. McCullough makes the case for the tendency of some individuals to devoutly hold onto the authoritarianism of religion: "Sacred values come prefabricated for religious believers,.. The belief that God has preferences for how you behave and the goals you set for yourself has to be the granddaddy of all psychological devices for encouraging people to follow through with their goals. That may help to explain why belief in God has been so persistent through the ages.” The work of Dr. McCullough and Dr. Willoughby engages questions that far exceed the scope of Mr. Tierney's article and suggests a more rigorous examination of hominid neurological development and the relevance of hierarchical structures used to explain the natural and the supernatural. At most, Mr. Tierney has produced a cute and seasonal tale that attempts to praise religion at the expense of those not so taken by it's powers.