that your friends will go to hell because of such a trivial thing as singing in church).
There is clearly a need for more systematic psychological and sociological studies of the relation between faith and reason, but the evidence so far is clear: people can and do change their mind in response to reasonable argument. The problem is, it takes a long time, repeated exposure to similar ideas by different sources, and possibly also a particular personality that includes a propensity to reflect on things.”
—Italian-American biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci
One of the premises of this book is that people can be reasoned out of unreasonable beliefs. Not all scholars agree. In “Why Is Religion Natural?” French anthropologist Pascal Boyer argues against the idea that people have religious beliefs because they fail to reason properly (Boyer, 2004). 2 Ending his article with the famous quotation from Irish writer Jonathan Swift, “You do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into,” Boyer argues that it is unlikely that religious beliefs can be argued away.
I disagree. Here’s the evidence and several counterarguments:
Individuals have been argued away from religion. Many people who have recovered from religion have self-reported that they’ve been reasoned out of their religious belief. Former preachers have even gone on to become evangelical atheists: Hector Avalos, Dan Barker, Kenneth W. Daniels, Jerry DeWitt, Joe Holman, John W. Loftus, Teresa MacBain, Nate Phelps, Robert Price, Sam Singleton, etc. These individuals now successfully use lessons from their past, alongside reason and argument, to help others leave religion.
If the focus is on religion, as opposed to faith, Boyer may be partially correct in stating that religion can’t be “reasoned away.” Trying to reason away religion would be like trying to reason away one’s social support, friends, hobbies, comforting songs, rituals, etc. This is why Street Epistemologists shouldn’t attempt to separate people from their religion, but instead focus on separating them from their faith. Reasoning away faith means helping people to abandon a faulty epistemology, but reasoning away religion means that people abandon their social support network.
Subsequent to much of Boyer’s work, an interesting 2012 study, Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief , showed, as the title states, that analytic thinking does in fact lead to religious disbelief (Gervais & Norenzyan, 2012). While mechanisms of religious disbelief and various factors that contribute to disbelief are not entirely understood at this time, the authors demonstrated that improvements in analytic processing translate into an increased likelihood of religious dis belief. In other words, if one gains a proficiency in certain methods of critical reasoning there is an increased likelihood that one will not hold religious beliefs.
Finally, many apologists (especially American theologian William Lane Craig) have had considerable success reasoning people into holding unreasonable beliefs (Craig, n.d.). This is a despairing statement about the effectiveness of the faithful’s tactics. There are entire bodies of apologist literature detailing how to reason and persuade unbelievers into faith.
Boyer’s criticisms notwithstanding, the problem of faith is at least partially a problem of reasoning. People can be reasoned out of unreasonable beliefs. 3 In fact, people frequently change their religious beliefs independent of reason, moving with abandon from one faith tradition to another.
BELIEVING THE PREPOSTEROUS
“I believe because it is absurd.”
—Tertullian (197–220)
“I mean that we do not infer that our faith is true based on any sort of evidence or proof, but that in the context of the Spirit of God’s speaking to our hearts, we see immediately and unmistakably that our faith is true. God’s spirit makes it evident to us that our faith is true.”
—William Lane
There is clearly a need for more systematic psychological and sociological studies of the relation between faith and reason, but the evidence so far is clear: people can and do change their mind in response to reasonable argument. The problem is, it takes a long time, repeated exposure to similar ideas by different sources, and possibly also a particular personality that includes a propensity to reflect on things.”
—Italian-American biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci
One of the premises of this book is that people can be reasoned out of unreasonable beliefs. Not all scholars agree. In “Why Is Religion Natural?” French anthropologist Pascal Boyer argues against the idea that people have religious beliefs because they fail to reason properly (Boyer, 2004). 2 Ending his article with the famous quotation from Irish writer Jonathan Swift, “You do not reason a man out of something he was not reasoned into,” Boyer argues that it is unlikely that religious beliefs can be argued away.
I disagree. Here’s the evidence and several counterarguments:
Individuals have been argued away from religion. Many people who have recovered from religion have self-reported that they’ve been reasoned out of their religious belief. Former preachers have even gone on to become evangelical atheists: Hector Avalos, Dan Barker, Kenneth W. Daniels, Jerry DeWitt, Joe Holman, John W. Loftus, Teresa MacBain, Nate Phelps, Robert Price, Sam Singleton, etc. These individuals now successfully use lessons from their past, alongside reason and argument, to help others leave religion.
If the focus is on religion, as opposed to faith, Boyer may be partially correct in stating that religion can’t be “reasoned away.” Trying to reason away religion would be like trying to reason away one’s social support, friends, hobbies, comforting songs, rituals, etc. This is why Street Epistemologists shouldn’t attempt to separate people from their religion, but instead focus on separating them from their faith. Reasoning away faith means helping people to abandon a faulty epistemology, but reasoning away religion means that people abandon their social support network.
Subsequent to much of Boyer’s work, an interesting 2012 study, Analytic Thinking Promotes Religious Disbelief , showed, as the title states, that analytic thinking does in fact lead to religious disbelief (Gervais & Norenzyan, 2012). While mechanisms of religious disbelief and various factors that contribute to disbelief are not entirely understood at this time, the authors demonstrated that improvements in analytic processing translate into an increased likelihood of religious dis belief. In other words, if one gains a proficiency in certain methods of critical reasoning there is an increased likelihood that one will not hold religious beliefs.
Finally, many apologists (especially American theologian William Lane Craig) have had considerable success reasoning people into holding unreasonable beliefs (Craig, n.d.). This is a despairing statement about the effectiveness of the faithful’s tactics. There are entire bodies of apologist literature detailing how to reason and persuade unbelievers into faith.
Boyer’s criticisms notwithstanding, the problem of faith is at least partially a problem of reasoning. People can be reasoned out of unreasonable beliefs. 3 In fact, people frequently change their religious beliefs independent of reason, moving with abandon from one faith tradition to another.
BELIEVING THE PREPOSTEROUS
“I believe because it is absurd.”
—Tertullian (197–220)
“I mean that we do not infer that our faith is true based on any sort of evidence or proof, but that in the context of the Spirit of God’s speaking to our hearts, we see immediately and unmistakably that our faith is true. God’s spirit makes it evident to us that our faith is true.”
—William Lane
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