Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (13 page)

Two additional points about
The Bridge of San Luis Rey
: First, Brother Juniper never did determine what it was about the five victims that might have brought about God’s wrath. They all, including two children, had their share of foibles, but nothing particularly noteworthy. Worse yet, for his trouble, Brother Juniper and his document were burned as sacrilegious by the Spanish Inquisition.

The second point is worth considering the next time you hear somebody making prospiritual arguments. Despite his Pulitzer Prize, Wilder is a bit of a cheat in the way he frames his case. Quoting directly from the book, “Either we live by accident and die by accident, or we live by plan and die by plan.” That’s just not so. There is
at least
one additional possibility with more to recommend it than either of Wilder’s two extremes. Setting aside the question of whether there is any real comfort in living one’s life in lockstep with a divine plan (which amounts to predestination), the larger problem stems from how the alternative is phrased. The word “accident” has such negative connotations to most people that it would send them screaming into the arms of God. Accidents are bad things. What do we think of when we hear the word “accident”? A wreck on the highway. A child whose birth was unplanned and, often, unwanted. The negative connotations pile up as we dwell on the word. Does anyone really want to believe that the events of our lives and deaths are “accidental”?

So what’s the real alternative? I prefer to see the events of my life as unfolding in a lawful, orderly universe. While it’s true that I don’t have ultimate control over all of the things that befall me, and I can’t predict many of them, I have enough mastery to feel some degree of competence in my day-to-day affairs. The presence of laws, whether the laws of physics or laws made by my fellow humans to regulate our treatment of each other, gives me a sense of mastery over what happens around me. Plainly it is not perfect mastery, but I am not arrogant enough to think I’ll be any safer if I invent a few supernatural agents for the things that are truly beyond my control.

Forget accidents. This is a world full of regularities. It provides us with enough information to make informed choices that will maximize the probability of our successes and pleasures and minimize the probabilities of our failures and pain. Most of the time, the bridges work and do not send you plummeting into a Peruvian gorge or San Francisco Bay or the Hudson River. If I were magically transported back to Peru in 1714, things might have been different. I might have had one look at the material and construction of that bridge and decided to stay home. But that’s not about God’s plan. It has to do with bringing greater sophistication about the natural world around me to the decisions I make.

Even though Brother Juniper’s spiritual quest continues to appeal to many people in the twenty-first century, there are actually exceptions to this descent into Caveman Logic. On February 1, 2003, the space shuttle
Columbia
blew up unexpectedly, killing all its crew and scattering debris over the state of Texas. The nation was in shock and looked for answers. Surprisingly, much of the quest remained focused on the natural world. For months after the tragedy, the nightly news brought details of the physical decomposition of the spacecraft. Headlines detailed the search for defective parts or design, along with who was responsible for such oversights. Certainly, there were passing references to “God’s will” and the heroic crew “finding peace in the hereafter.” But basically, the nation remained focused on the physical/logical world in its attempt to make sense of the tragedy. Apparently, there was enough comfort in the ultimate message to satisfy our need for prediction and control. The verdict was simply, “You can’t cut corners indefinitely in the design and construction of spacecraft. At some point, you or someone else will pay the price.”

In all likelihood, some of the loved ones of the crew may have found these physical accounts of the tragedy incomplete and still wanted deeper, more spiritual answers. The question “Why my son?” requires a different explanatory logic than “Why that craft?” Nevertheless, it is heartening that the majority of the American public were satisfied to remain rational in the face of a tragedy of this magnitude.

The destruction of spacecraft, like rope bridges, does not always bring out the best in our mental skills. On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle
Challenger
was similarly destroyed in a sudden and horrifying explosion, killing all aboard. I attended the Ebenezer West Baptist Church in Athens, Georgia, the following Sunday and was treated to a sermon explaining the reason for the tragedy. We were told, “The hand of God had reached down and smacked the craft out of the sky. It was meant to put man back in his place and teach him to stay here on earth where he belonged and not to try to sneak into the kingdom of heaven.” Talk about causal agency! Prediction, control, and understanding all wrapped up in one vengeful deity. Just stay here on earth wallowing in ignorance and the Lord will be well pleased with you.

Given the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina coupled with New Orleans’s reputation as a sinful city, it was just a matter of time before Bible-thumping preachers got on the band-wagon about the wrath of God. They did not disappoint. And such pronouncements were not confined to more extreme regions of the Bible Belt. Indeed, the fall 2005 issue of the admirably even-handed
Religion in the News
publication from Trinity College featured a lead editorial titled, “Was New Orleans Asking for It?”
¹
Author Mark Silk surveyed extensive coverage of the disaster and concluded that the inclination to blame the events on a vengeful God provoked beyond endurance was indeed widespread across the United States. There were exceptions such as the
New York Times
and the
Philadelphia Inquirer
, which cautioned against confusing natural occurrences with theology. The
Inquirer
went so far as to label as “blasphemy” any attempt to view Katrina as divine retribution. But these attempts at reason and restraint were an almost inaudible minority view compared to the bleating of conservative and fundamentalist Christian leaders.

How does one dispute such statements? Most critics of the right wing simply said, as the
Inquirer
had, “Don’t do that. It isn’t right to exploit the tragedy for your own social agenda.” In a refreshing bit of contrast, however, New Orleans-based commentator Harry Anderson took a different approach to the events. Anderson did not dispute their relevance to theological matters at all. In fact, he welcomed it. However, he pointed out that we had drawn the wrong conclusion about God from the city’s devastation. Appearing on the March 4, 2006, edition of HBO’s
Real Time with Bill Maher
, Anderson pointed out that the French Quarter, the presumed hub of evil in New Orleans, was still standing after the flood. Anderson concluded, “If God was trying to destroy evil, He has very bad aim.”

In another example of logic turned on its ear, some have used stories about prayer to question rather than affirm the power and omniscience of God. Carl Sagan
²
offers the example of a bishop in the American West who prays for God to intervene and end a devastating dry spell. “Why is the prayer needed?” Sagan asks. “Didn’t God know about the drought?” It is indeed perplexing why an omniscient God would routinely require such special alerts or briefings about pain, suffering, and natural disasters. Sagan then questions why the bishop asks his followers to join him in prayer. “Is God more likely to intervene when many pray for mercy or justice than when only a few do?” Sagan goes on to cite an item from a 1994 issue of the
Prayer and Action Weekly News
of Des Moines, Iowa. The issue includes a call to local Christians to join in prayer, asking God to burn down the Planned Parenthood building in Des Moines. The prayer specifies that the destruction of the building should be of such magnitude that “no one can mistake it for any human torching.”

What is God to do in this situation? Does he blindly grant requests, especially those coming in large numbers from his devoted followers? Or does God use a moral compass to determine whether such requests are worthy of granting? If so, does he send a sign to his disappointed followers, explaining why he chose not to grant their wish? Will anything be learned by the makers of such unanswered prayers? Might God’s silence cause some reflection about the content of their requests, or is the notion that God moves in “mysterious ways” a buffer against having to examine one’s social agenda?

I have always wondered what God does in the case of major league baseball. He is often inundated with requests from players on opposing teams. How does he decide which prayers to answer? A French Canadian pitcher on the Philadelphia Phillies steps off the pitcher’s mound prior to the start of the inning and appears to be absorbed in prayer. He then crosses himself and goes into his warm-up before pitching to a Dominican player on the New York Mets, who has been busy praying at home plate. In fact, the two players have crossed themselves at approximately the same moment. When the game resumes, the batter strikes out. The pitcher thanks Jesus silently for granting his prayer. But what of the batter? Why was his prayer not answered? Was there a flaw in his life that swayed God to choose the pitcher’s wishes over the batter’s? They were both Catholic, so that can’t be it. Is God more attuned to the wishes of Quebec than the Dominican Republic? Or does God simply not care about professional baseball games and does nothing to meddle in their outcomes? Which, in turn, leads me to wonder why so many players continue to ask for his intervention. Do they not see after so long that such prayers and displays are not tipping the balance in their favor?

There is, I suppose, another possibility to account for the game situation I have described. Perhaps God is a Phillies fan. If he is, we may be forced once again to conclude that God has pretty poor aim.

In his book
The Demon-Haunted World
, Carl Sagan warns about the dangers of scientific illiteracy. I agree with almost everything in Sagan’s book and celebrate his compelling style. But there is one point on which he and I disagree. Sagan, like many critics of religion and pseudoscience, seems to believe that it is ignorance of science, per se, that paves the way for the spread of superstition or belief systems that masquerade as
real
science. There is undoubtedly some truth in that, but it is not the whole story.

Sagan argues, and he has much company on this point, that people seek out belief systems for the comfort they bring and then embrace them uncritically. This suggests that the average person is an unconstrained, if somewhat gullible, consumer who samples many available products (in this case, belief systems) and then chooses the one that provides maximum comfort. Comfort may consist of peace of mind, freedom from doubt, or social support. The important thing is our view of a shopper who is merely evaluating alternatives in a rather hedonistic, scientifically uncritical manner. If people were only better educated, the argument goes, our species wouldn’t be in this pickle. Again, I agree that better (or, for that matter,
any
) scientific training might provide some immunity, but it would not address the deeper issue. The so-called open-minded consumer who considers all belief systems as if they were equal contenders is an illusion. Our species has too many mental predispositions to treat alternative explanations as if they were equal contenders on a level playing field. Indeed, to pursue the athletics analogy, the very belief systems that Sagan disdains have an almost overwhelming “home field advantage.”

Sagan seems aware of the problem but fails to make the case explicit. For example, he notes that belief in superstition and pseudoscience is not confined to the “ignorant villager” stereotype. He cites modern examples, such as transcendental meditation and the Japanese sect Aum Shinrikyo, both of which attract educated and upscale membership, and make claims of levitation, faith healing, and walking through walls. As Sagan concludes, “These are not doctrines for nitwits. Something else is going on.” Sagan quotes revolutionary theorist Leon Trotsky, who noted that the problem was far more widespread than some marginalized illiterates living on the fringes of society and power. In Trotsky’s words, “Not only in peasant homes, but also in city skyscrapers there lives alongside the twentieth century, the thirteenth. A hundred million people use electricity and still believe in the magic power of signs and exorcisms. . . . Aviators who pilot miraculous mechanisms created by man’s genius wear amulets on their sweaters. What inexhaustible reserves they possess of darkness and ignorance.”

Sagan speaks about the “powerful emotional needs” that science “often leaves unfulfilled.” But he then suggests that in the quest for such fulfillment, we shop until we find something that fills that emotional void left wanting by science. Again, this suggests an open-minded consumer and a level playing field among alternatives.

If only this were true. A little more scientific literacy, perhaps some glitzy PR work to make
real
science sound sexier,
et voilà
!—an end to superstition, religious fundamentalism, false gods, or, for that matter,
any
gods. And once the solution is under way, it continues to gather momentum. To the extent that unscientific beliefs are given additional appeal by their ubiquity, they would lose even that edge as fewer practitioners were visible on the scene. Sagan suggests that 95 percent of Americans are scientifically illiterate, a pattern consistent with Gilovich’s observation that more Americans believe in ESP than evolution.

Even if scientific education were the antidote, there would still be an uphill battle to get science back into the classrooms and textbooks. It is not alarmist to suggest that it is science and not superstition that is marginalized in American society. It is unlikely that Americans will tolerate anytime soon the unapologetic teaching of evolution by natural selection side by side in the science class with other “theories” such as gravity.