The existential comfort of atheism

Leviathan Press:

Even though I currently believe that both the body and consciousness will perish after death - specifically, the human body is composed of about 99% hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen atoms, which is your profound relationship with the universe - in this sense, after the "I" disintegrates and is scattered in the universe in the form of atoms, it seems to still be a kind of "existence". However, the comfort brought by this existence seems to be insufficient, as if it is just a compensatory rhetoric when we face the inevitable death.

This is just like the sentence in this article, which seems contradictory, but it reveals the true meaning: This is not true, but I believe it.

Last month, Greg Epstein, an atheist, took office as Harvard University's new chief chaplain.

The New York Times reported that Epstein, a humanist chaplain, was unanimously selected to "coordinate activities for more than 40 chaplains who lead Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and other religious groups on campus." The article generated hundreds of comments, most of which were supportive. Some questioned whether an atheist could be a "real" chaplain, while others said that appointing a humanist was a wise move to retain a neutral role in the administration.

(www.nytimes.com/2021/08/26/us/harvard-chaplain-greg-epstein.html)

Greg Epstein. © Cody O'Loughlin/The New York Times

However, despite their differences, both responses share the questionable assumption that humanists do not believe in God or gods, that their beliefs are not based on religious authority and are not actually beliefs at all.

In stark contrast, Harvard students interviewed by the Times admired Epstein's ability to support a genuine pursuit of meaning without being influenced by belief in God. "It's a great thing to be able to find values ​​and rituals without relying on the power of God," said AJ Kumar, former president of Harvard's Humanist Group.

But is it really possible to find meaning (value and purpose) without gods (supernatural beings and metaphysics)? Are critics right to argue that humanistic faith lacks a sense of meaning and is not a humanistic source of value and meaning?

In some ways, this is a question for philosophers and theologians to consider. [Epstein himself has written a book called Good Without God.] But it’s also a question about the human mind. In psychological terms, can people get the benefits of traditional religious beliefs from naturalism? (We call this the “humanistic path” to meaning without God.) Or can people “believe” in God without believing in supernatural elements and get the benefits of it? (We call this the “theistic path” to meaning without God.)

People can easily construct “natural” explanations that provide a certain level of existential comfort. One participant said, “Stars were born, life began. Someone said, ‘We are the universe, we are experiencing ourselves.’ That feeling is beautiful and worth cherishing.” © Psychology Today

Research in psychology and cognitive science of religion provides some answers, but they are not all consistent. For example, there is evidence that belief in science can bring some of the benefits of religious belief, but there is also some evidence that some scientific doctrines, such as the theory of evolution, are widely believed to be a threat to human values.

There is evidence that people use different terms to describe religious beliefs than they do to describe other beliefs (for example, people “believe” in God but “think” that atoms exist, and so on). But there is also evidence that religious and scientific beliefs reflect the same psychological mechanisms.

In a series of studies forthcoming in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Telli Davoodi and I propose a new way of looking at these questions: the psychology of existential curiosity.

In three studies, we asked participants to consider existential questions that typically elicit a wide range of religious and nonreligious responses—How did the universe come to be? Why is there pain in the world? What happens after we die? The answers to these questions ranged from providing comfort to causing anxiety, from pondering meaning to despair, from providing evidence to mere speculation.

We were interested in the characteristics of these religious or nonreligious responses, including whether participants were able to provide existential comfort without invoking God or a deity.

Value and meaning, at least when it comes to satisfying existential anxiety, can be independent of supernatural metaphysics and divinity.

In one study, 494 people in the United States signed up online and were asked to give their best answer to one of these existential questions.

Importantly, we asked some of our participants to give answers based on logic and evidence, and others to give answers based on their own heart. As a baseline for comparison, we asked a third group to give clear and grammatically correct answers, remaining neutral between evidence and inner peace.

The first significant result was that when asked to answer based on logic and evidence, participants were less likely to give a religious explanation: about 34% of the third group gave a religious explanation, compared to 23% of the first group. In contrast, 53% of the third group gave a scientific explanation, compared to 71% of the first group.

But the most striking finding was that participants who were asked to give an existential explanation based on their inner comfort and peace were more likely to give an explicitly religious or theological explanation, with 34% of the third group doing so compared to more than 56% of the second group.

However, if participants did not have explicit religious beliefs, they were also more likely to construct “natural” explanations (as opposed to “supernatural”) that also provided comfort. In fact, the proportion of natural explanations that provided existential comfort was about 36%, while the proportion of supernatural explanations was about 42%, which was not much different.

So what are these explanations?

When asked what happens when we die, one religious explanation is that we will be reunited with our loved ones - "our souls will go to where our loved ones will greet us, and then we will have a beautiful reunion."

The natural explanation is that we will become memories, or be transformed into some other form - "we will remain forever in the hearts of those who loved us and those we left behind." "The molecules of our bodies...will be formed into new forms."

When asked about the origins of the universe, a religious explanation might appeal to our purpose in God’s design—“Rest assured, you have a place in God’s universe, and everything will unfold as it is supposed to.” A natural explanation might lament our place in the universe—“We were part of the fluid that preceded the Big Bang, and we were lucky enough to see the universe at its most interesting stage. Stars were born, and life began. Someone once said, ‘We are the universe, and we are experiencing ourselves.’ That feeling is beautiful, and worth cherishing.”

Thus, while appealing to traditional religious beliefs can provide existential comfort, for many participants, natural or humanistic beliefs can do the same. This is the benefit of a humanistic path to meaning without God. Value and meaning can be independent of supernatural metaphysics and divinity, at least when it comes to satisfying existential anxiety.

But, there is a problem.

Just because people can find natural sources of existential solace, it doesn't mean they work the same way as religious and supernatural sources.

We also asked participants to rate the extent to which their explanations generated positive emotions and eliminated negative emotions. Natural explanations performed much worse than supernatural explanations in this regard. Living in someone else’s memory is not as good as immortality, at least in terms of emotional comfort. Of course, emotional comfort is only one aspect of a valuable and meaningful belief system.

To examine how religious and nonreligious explanations of existentialism differed more broadly, participants who gave different answers also took part in a study in which they rated the explanations they received on other dimensions—so not just emotional comfort, but also social value (does this explanation foster relationships?), moral value (does it make the world a more moral place?), and identity importance (does it tell you who you are?).

Is it really possible to achieve meaning without God?

For example, in a study of 501 participants, each participant was presented with an explanation for one of the three existential questions listed above, either scientific or religious. In general, scientific explanations seemed more logically and evidence-based, and more objective. In contrast, religious explanations were more successful in fostering emotional comfort, social support, morality, and self-insight. Once again, when it comes to this (non-epistemological) source of meaning, religious explanations seem to have the upper hand.

© Financial Times

A final study with 652 participants reaffirmed these findings, but went a step further by measuring how true participants thought each scientific or religious explanation was. This leads us to ask, does an explanation have to be judged to be true in order for it to be considered comforting and morally valuable?

An Italian philosopher is said to have said of a local superstition: “It is not true, but I believe it.” This statement is interesting because it seems paradoxical (isn’t believing in something the same as believing in its truth?), but it also resonates because we all understand its meaning to a greater or lesser degree. This statement also suggests the possibility of a theological path to meaning without God: can religious explanations provide meaning (the value of belief) without requiring belief in its truth?

Our data offer one answer, but it’s a bit subtle. For both religious and scientific explanations, the perceived value of an existential explanation was strongly associated with belief in the truth of the explanation. Participants who saw the emotional, moral, and personal value of religious explanations were also more likely to believe those explanations were true. For religious explanations, seeing the good requires God (or gods, an afterlife, or some other form of supernatural metaphysics).

As long as there is no lying in the faith, perhaps that is enough.

However, there was one major difference between the science and religion domains. Even for explanations that matched perceived truth, religious explanations were rated higher in terms of non-epistemological sources of meaning. More specifically, participants only needed to have some degree of belief in the truth of the religious explanation to find it beneficial on an emotional, moral, and personal level. In contrast, scientific explanations needed to be strongly identified with in order to be perceived as having these benefits.

So, what does this tell us about finding meaning without God?

At the beginning of the article, I proposed two paths to meaning without God: one is the humanistic path, which obtains the meaning of faith without believing in the supernatural. The other is the theological path, which means that meaning comes from "believing" the value of supernatural claims rather than "believing" their truth.

We have some evidence in favor of the humanistic path: On the one hand, people can satisfy their existential curiosity through natural methods and gain many of the things associated with religious faith in the process: inner peace, emotional comfort, and other forms of meaning and value. On the other hand, people need to do more psychological work to achieve this—humanistic faith does not necessarily have the same psychological impact as the more familiar Christian faith in the example above.

We have all sorts of evidence in favor of the theological approach: assigning value to religious claims is often associated with a belief in their truth, and thus belief in God, gods, or other supernatural elements. But people only need a modest endorsement to perceive the benefits of religious belief. The Italian philosopher’s view is that belief without belief in its truth may be psychologically possible, at least conditionally: perhaps it is enough that the belief is not false.

Of course, the search for meaning includes more than our psychological reactions to existential interpretations. Also, this article is primarily about Christians and Americans, and interpretations and adherents of other religions may not all mirror what we have observed. All small studies claiming to have findings about meaning or religion need to be wary of generalizing. At the same time, I think these findings help to understand public support and opposition to an atheist becoming a religious authority. Humanistic beliefs can provide existential meaning, but it takes some effort.

References

1. Goldberg, E. The New Chief Chaplain at Harvard? An Atheist. The New York Times (2021).

2. Lombrozo, T. Can Science Deliver the Benefits of Religion? Boston Review (2013). 3. Brem, SK, Ranney, M., & Schindel, J. Perceived consequences of evolution: College students perceive negative personal and social impact in evolutionary theory. Science Education 87, 181-206 (2003). 4. Heiphetz, L., Landers, CL, & Van Leeuwen, N. Does think mean the same thing as believe? Linguistic insights into religious cognition. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 13, 287-297 (2021).5. Can Leeuwen, N., Weisman, K., & Luhrmann, TM To believe is not to think: A cross-cultural finding. Open Mind (forthcoming).6. Shtulman, A. Epistemic similarities between students' scientific and supernatural beliefs. Journal of Educational Psychology 105, 199-212 (2013).

By Tania Lombrozo

Translated by Rachel

Proofreading/boomchacha

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