December 19, 2019 • 48 mins
He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you’re awake. He knows if you’ve been bad or good, but is Santa Claus merely a magical entity or does he rise to the status of a god? In this pair of STBYM episodes, Robert and Joe discuss the general attributes of a deity and consider the awesome, reality-warping powers of the one we call Kris Kringle, Saint Nicholas, Father Christmas and of course Santa Claus.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios Howstuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. In today, Santa Claus is coming to town.
That's right. This is an episode about Santa Claus. It's
also an episode about gods and our ideas about God's,
(00:26):
our god concepts and what that that all means. And
we are going to get into the question of whether
Santa is a god or not. I do want to
just have a couple of quick reminders here as we
dive into this one. First of all, uh, yes, this
episode it has to do with Santa, But if you
are attempted to listen to it outside of the holiday season,
(00:47):
no worries, because there's gonna be a lot of talk
that does not directly apply to Santa Claus. Sure, this
is an episode about the cognitive science of religion. And secondly,
we will be discussing the magic of Santa Claus in
this episode, so just keep that in mind, parents, if
you're listening with your children. Sure, alright, So most of
us would not say that Santa Claus is a god, right,
(01:09):
I mean, we we don't necessarily maybe we're not always
able to define God in a dictionary definition kind of way,
but you have an intuitive sense of how this word
is used, and for some reason, Santa Claus doesn't usually
fit into that definition, right, that intuitive definition. Right, even
if you are, let's say, a child who is a
(01:31):
Santa fundamentalist who believes in, you know, very literally in
Santa Claus, even then I don't think they would necessarily
confuse the the idea of Santa Claus with the idea
of say, the Judeo Christian deity. Sure, but on the
same hand, and then the same hand is, as we're
going to discuss in this episode, there are a lot
(01:52):
of similarity. So first of all, I want to just
talk a little bit about Santa Claus, this magical being
the factor so heavily into Western holiday traditions as well
as traditions around the world that have been influenced by
the notion of the Great Jolly Old Elf. The exact
mythology is going to vary, of course, but but here
are just some of the often highlighted aspects of the
(02:14):
mythos Okay, first of all, Santa is at at the
very least extremely long lived, if not undying, immortal or eternal.
I mean he's been doing this thing for a long time,
that's right. Secondly, uh, Santa is I guess you would
say pan sofick or all knowing. He knows when you
were sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if
(02:35):
you've been bad or good. I'm not sure he's supposed
to know your inner thoughts, but he is privy to
an awful lot. I think a lot of conceptions of
Santa would even give him like inner psychic access. Yeah,
I mean if if Santa can, well, Santa can at
least see what you're doing when other people aren't around
to see what you're doing, and he sees what you're
(02:56):
doing in private, right that that seems like that's virgin on.
I mean, it's got to be like supernatural. They're oh yeah, absolutely.
It's not like he's just getting reports about your behavior, right.
He definitely has supernatural abilities. It just it comes down
to whether he can see inside your brain or not,
if he can see your thoughts at all, if he
can anticipate your actions based on that information. Also, he
(03:20):
receives mail from all over the world often through magical means,
or at least magical variations of the postal system. Uh.
And you know that that includes things like letters can
find him no matter where you mail them. You can
mail them at the zoo, you can mail them at home,
you can mail them through the chimney, things like that.
(03:40):
You know another thing that's very common about God's is
they tend to live in inaccessible places, if not in
a like extra dimensional, completely fundamentally inaccessible place, even when
they live on Earth, they tend to be at the
top of a mountain or at the bottom of the
ocean or something like. Yeah. I think that the mountaintop
God as as an excellent example because the modern sense,
(04:00):
what is the top of the world mountain? It is
the North Pole, of course, which is which is where
Santa Claus is said to reside, and it is an
insanely hostile environment um fighting off polar bears, and he
seems to reside there without any outside support aside from
the milk and cookies that he collects every year, and
of course the big ones. Santa can travel around the
(04:23):
entire world and visit every home in a single evening
every year. I remember thinking about this as a child
and thinking like, well, I don't know, that sounds really difficult,
but it's probably not impossible. Right. It seemed within the
stretching of plausibility to me, right, Like the magic makes
sense at first, and then you start thinking about the
(04:44):
magic and you're like, wow, this is some potent magic.
And then along the way, you know, you you introduce
some science fiction concepts, and you introduce some some elaborate
visions of the nature of time, and then okay, you
can create some versions of it that makes a little
bit more sense for hals. But at the very least,
Santa has amazing abilities to travel in ways that immortal
(05:05):
human cannot, of course, and there's there's much more than
that that we might add, based not only on beliefs,
but on films as well that features Santa Claus. So
he has been spotted in the presence of inhuman in
human beast men, as we discussed in our Crampus episode. Okay,
sometimes appears in the guise of Tim Allen and Goldberg.
(05:25):
That's true. Uh, also whole cogd and Whole cokean play
of Santa Claus. Oh I don't remember that. Definitely in
the movie Santa Sleigh which is you know, you can
probably guess what it's about. Also, Santa can communicate with
magical deer that also fly and enable him to fly.
He can control robots, as he has the power over
(05:46):
all toys and machines that might be argued to be toys.
This of course from Santa Claus versus the Martians uh
and imports in that Santa Claus is also drawn into
an interplanetary dispute. Santa associates known wizards such as Merlin. Uh.
If he's watched the old Mexican Santa Claus film, we
of course see him hanging out with Merlin and then
(06:08):
dealing with demons, engaging in direct conflict with at least
demons who serve the Christian Devil, if not the Christian
Devil himself. Oh no, yeah, he's straight up fights demons
in the movie, Oh that Devil. It's like it's like
Gandal versus the Bell Rock. It's Santa versus whatever that
demon's name is. Yes, I mean he gets into some
(06:28):
serious theological territory in that film. He also may or
may not play the saxophone when visiting Asian countries, which
isn't as remarkable, I guess, but it's a it's an
additional wrinkle in the myth of Santa. Now, we're obviously
not the first people to raise these parallels between the
Santa Claus that brings magical delight to children and all
(06:49):
over the place and uh and you know, basically gods
that are found throughout history all over the world. In fact,
I would say it's almost like a cliche joke at
this point to kind of uh a point out that
Santa Claus and God are in some sense interchangeable to
too many children. Yeah, my favorite example of this goes
(07:09):
back to the year two thousand and one of you know,
our shared favorite shows, The Simpsons. There's the episode where
Bart goes in to his bedroom and he kneels by
his bed, and then he begins to pray, and he says, quote,
dear Santa, if you bring me lots of good stuff,
I promised not to do anything bad between now and
when I wake up. Amen. It's the best kind of
(07:32):
Simpson's joke, because there's a joke in what he says
between now and when I wake up. But actually, the
even funnier part is the very concept of him saying
it that he's praying to Santa in the first place. Yeah.
And one of the things I always loved about it
is is that it takes me a second to catch it,
you know, because it's not instantly clear that it's something
out of the ordinary. I think I vaguely remember almost
(07:54):
doing this at one point as a child, even uh,
sort of at least subconsciously getting the idea confused. Uh.
You know, praying to Santa is only a few degrees
to the left of sending a letter to an entity
that can observe your every move, And it's not that
different from the idea of praying to this divine entity
that you're told about, say it's Sunday school. Yeah. And
(08:16):
so for the rest of the episode today, we're going
to be focusing on a paper that actually asks the
question of, well, in the terms of cognitive science of religion,
does Santa Claus actually qualify as a god or not?
Does he match the other things that would be called
a god within this uh, this sort of like scientific
academic framework. In particular, we're going to be looking at
(08:38):
an article by experimental psychologist Justin Barrett published in the
Journal of Cognition and Culture back in two thousand and
eight and and Barrett is an interesting character here. He
wrote a book titled Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
And he himself is a Christian, but he also sees
God as a byproduct of our mental architecture, and he
sees this in a way where these two concepts have
(09:00):
room to coexist. Yeah, he seems like an interesting figure
to me, Like, having read a bit about him, I
think he's in the spirit of those who would believe that, like,
the existence of God is not in conflict with naturalistic
explanations for religion. Yeah. Like, for instance, when he was
asked about about this potential conflict in in a two
thousand seven New York Times article titled Darwin's God, Uh,
(09:24):
he said the following quote. Christian theology teaches that people
were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship
with him and other people. Why wouldn't God then design
us in such a way as to find belief in divinity?
Quite natural? Suppose science produces a convincing account for why
I think my wife loves me? Should I then stop
believing that she does? Which I thought was a nice
(09:46):
answer to that question. Yeah, that's interesting, like that you
can you can put together all kinds of uh, coherent
scientific explanations for what the feeling of love is, why
this is an emotion that's generated by the primate b
and what kind of relationship it has to you know,
the evolutionary pressures that created our bodies and our brains.
But at the same time, it doesn't make the love
(10:07):
not real. And so applying that to religion, you could say, okay, well,
here's a list of reasons we think that, like evolution,
natural selection could have shaped our brains to be geared
toward religion. Uh, unless so you have totally mechanistic, natural
type explanations for where religion comes from. And yet you
could still, under this theory potentially believe your religion to
(10:29):
be true, or multiple religions to be true. Yeah. Absolutely,
And I think that that that goes along with the
way we tend to approach religious concepts on this show.
I think that that we can certainly explain where they
come from. They can we can discuss, uh, you know,
how they evolve over time and the different influences wound
(10:49):
up in them. But at the same time we can
respect that yes, this this story, this myth, this idea,
this concept can still be very weighty and very important
to the individuals that value it. Well. Yeah, and and
that also though gets into another layer of complexity, which
is what it actually means to quote believe in a religion,
like can you believe in a religion? Does not necessarily
(11:09):
mean that you accept, say it's story of the creation
of the world as literally true, or that it suggests
or that it that it's propositions about metaphysics are literally
physically real. Yeah. Absolutely, and and and just to to
drive home a fact here again parental warning, Santa Claus
is not real in the sense that that Santa Claus
(11:32):
does not physically exist in the world. He's not actually
doing these these uh, these great deeds that we attribute
to him. But on the other hand, he is an
obviously an important cultural idea. And for my own part,
like I try and drive home the importance of mythology
and belief alongside the importance of you know, of a
(11:55):
fundamental reality I guess and scientific reality when talking about
these things with with my own son, Uh, you know
that currently he's really invested in the idea of Santa
But I am hopefully laying the groundwork that when Santa
falls from the lofty realm of of presumed magical reality.
He's not going to plumb it into the hellish depths
(12:17):
of lies and inaccuracies. He will instead fall into this
realm of mythological u and this this realm of magical
concepts that are valued by human culture. If that makes sense, Well, yeah,
Santa Claus is not physically real, but the magic of
Santa Claus is absolutely real. Like it's one of the
most powerful mind states that I can recall from my
(12:40):
entire life is the anticipation magic of the Christmas season
when I was young. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I also
remember sort of going through the struggle of then realizing, Okay,
Santa Claus is not objectively real, but then gradually then
growing to to realize that, okay, the idea of laws
can still be very important and can still be very
(13:03):
real in that sense, in the way the same way
that you know, one grows to learn that that fictional
characters and uh and uh and other stories can be
extremely important to us in a way that where there
is sometimes even more important than than flesh and blood
individuals and in very real events in the world. But anyway,
I want to get back to Barrett's work again. He's
(13:25):
he's working in the realm of cognitive science of religion, exploring,
in his words, quote why religious thoughts and actions only
occupy a small area in the vast landscape of possible
belief systems. And that's actually, I think a fascinating question, right,
Like religious beliefs could in theory be anything. Anything could
(13:47):
be a religious belief. Example, my friend Julian believes that
a breakfast crunch Rap Supreme that he got from Taco
bell in t is the creator of the universe and
only by its zesty cell ovation can he be saved
from annihilation. Why is it obvious this is a joke? Seriously, Like,
how come as soon as I said that, you knew
(14:10):
that I was kidding. You don't need to go like
look that up on Google and see if there really
is a sincere crunch Rap Supreme cult. You just immediately
know that people don't believe that sort of thing as
a sincere religion. And yet people believe in all kinds
of strange things, things that would of course seem strange
to those who don't share their religious beliefs. So why
(14:32):
is it that religious beliefs can and do involve all
kinds of strange things and narratives and propositions, and yet
there's actually a pretty constrained set of things even within
that fantastical landscape that would truly seem acceptable as a
god or a religious narrative. Like for some reason, thumbs
up to the immortal, all powerful person who reads your
(14:55):
thoughts as God, but thumbs down to the fast food
item as creator God. Right, So, like religious beliefs are
not usually constrained by things like the normal functioning of
physics or biology, but they are clearly constrained by something.
If they weren't constrained by something, it wouldn't be obvious
that the crunch rap Supreme God was a joke. Yeah, yeah,
(15:17):
I think it is. It is fascinating that, yes, okay,
world religion involves so many wonderful concepts and so many
things that when you first introduced to them, they seem
strange and new and and and and and you know,
perplexing at times, and and we celebrate that on on
this show. And yet at the same time you know
that there's not a tremendous amount of difference between you know,
(15:37):
the details of this religion and the next religion. Well, yeah,
there is this funny tension where in one sense there's
incredible diversity and difference, but on the other hand, that's
all constrained within some kind of lane that we sort
of have a sense. For you, you might not be
able to define exactly what all the parameters are, though
Barrett's going to try to do that in a minute.
(15:58):
But you've got a sense that, like, for some reason,
the crunch rap doesn't work. That's just not a thing
people would believe in as God. You just know it automatically.
So what do people's actual beliefs in God's seem to
have in common? Barrett argues that the cognitive science of
religion has actually been pretty successful in identifying the most
(16:18):
common features of human religious beliefs, including what kinds of
concepts people most often find intuitive as God's uh, And
I guess we'll get into those in just a minute,
but first we should talk about some of his like
basic criteria for for what even constitutes the category. Right,
So the first one, and this is a big one,
is that multiple individuals must share a given idea for
(16:40):
it to be a genuine culture or religious concept. And
this is this is kind of a no brainer, but
it's important to note he gives it. This example, if
one person believes their lamp can grant wishes and control
the weather, that's not a god. That's just one person
who has a crazy idea about their lamp. But if
a bunch of people share this idea about a given lamp,
it might just be a god concept. Sure uh, And
(17:03):
I agree that religion has a very strong and possibly
necessary social component, And yet I do think there are
some interesting counter examples that we might want to think about,
like hermetic mystics who live in isolation. They cut themselves
off from the world to develop private, personal, almost secretive
relationships with and understandings of God or of the gods.
(17:25):
And yet I think Barrett is still correct because we
don't usually grant these idiosyncratic, private mystical practices the status
of a religion unless they're supported by a wider structure
of belief shared by larger numbers of people. Like the
mystical traditions often tend to be a kind of monastic
offshoot or branch of larger religions with regular social adherents,
(17:49):
right right, like So, yes, while we may celebrate the
the ideas of say someone like a William Blake, you know,
who you know, certainly had his his own sort of
spin on what to on on what God was and
what the you know, the cosmology of of of the
universe happened to be. But we're probably not going to
buy into every detail of it. We're willing to sort
(18:12):
of stand a foot back and say like, Okay, he
has his own take on this, but I'm I'm still
keeping to the canon. You know, this is the extended
universe star Wars, And I'm more of a you know,
the Star Wars films, right, And and we accept Blake's
idiosyncratic ideas as religious because I think they grow out
of a larger existing religion. You know, they're they're like,
(18:33):
they're this kind of extended universe, the expanded universe of Christianity.
I guess one can also say that it helps in
these cases of other people do not start flocking to
your your extended universe concept of religion, because then you
stand the risk of being a heresy and or creating
a new, different religion. Right, Yeah, And that's another thought entirely.
(18:56):
It seems to me also that only widely distribute did
beliefs are likely to have stable contents. Because one member
of the religion tends to mediate any potential like deviation
from the orthodoxy by another member of the religion. But
private religious beliefs, they seem to be radically unstable. You know,
they're liable to change constantly. It's like asking how many
(19:18):
editors have access to a given UH wiki page, you know,
and if it's a if it's a Wikipedia page and
it's one that is UH that gets a lot of
traffic and has a lot of eyes on it, you know,
by and large you can assume that the information there
is probably going to be on the level or if
it's or if anything crazy is at it, it's going
(19:39):
to be taken out pretty quickly. You know, the the
the inquisition is going to move in on those heretics. Now,
if it is an off brand wiki and it has
like two editors or one editor, UH, then it's up
for grabs, right, right, Yeah, maybe one day somebody gets
a wild hair they're like, I'm gonna go in make
some major changes. Those changes probably stick, right, nobody comes
(20:01):
in to change it back. I mean, there's there's no
controlling influence, right, and then if it does change, you know,
when it does change over time, I think the idea
of a you know again, a high profile wiki, Wikipedia page,
or a a widely accepted god. Like, the changes are
gonna occur gradually and they're going to emerge from the
culture at large. Yes, yeah, having more adherents makes an
(20:23):
orthodoxy more generally stable, though of course they do still
change over time. It's just, uh, there's just less potential
for sudden radical change, I think, right, unless certain individuals
have a tremendous amount of power over it. And then
in that case, you know, you have like the ancient
adyption model where suddenly a ruler decides actually it's just
the sun disc and that's what we're doing now exactly.
(20:45):
But that was one guy and it didn't stick, right, Yeah,
So yeah, I think ultimately I agree with Barrett that
if we're going with normal usage what people usually mean
when they talk about a religious belief, it needs to
be a distributed if it's held by a decent number
of people. I'm not sure exactly what the number is,
but like private beliefs of a single person or a
(21:07):
handful of people, I probably don't count as religions yet.
All right. Number two, Religious concepts and god concepts can
spread due to quote features of human minds that transcend
cultural environmental variations unquote. And I'm assuming that's something like
the fear of death and the desire to avoid pain
might be such features as an example. Yeah, you're you're
(21:30):
correct about that. I mean, what he means is just
that it's obvious that influences on religion can be cultural
or social. Right, they can come from, you know, just
contingent facts about history and what else is going on
in the culture and politics and all that. But there
can be these What he's arguing is that there are
these internal factors as well. And this is what the
cognitive science of religion is about. It's about brains, right.
(21:52):
There are some religious beliefs that will be better adapted
to survive in the environment of the human primate brain
than other beliefs will be, regardless of cultural factors. Like,
some beliefs just fit like a puzzle piece with our instincts,
emotional tendencies, cognitive capacities, and others don't fit quite so well.
I was trying to think of a few simple, obvious examples.
(22:14):
Here's a clerkey in kind of one. You probably wouldn't
find a popular religious belief where you had to remember
a name for God. That was eighteen million silvers long, right,
because the cognitive constraints of memory put limits on what
types of God beliefs there are. You wouldn't expect a
concept of God to be successful if it just couldn't
(22:35):
be remembered. Here's another one. Due to uh, natural features
of of emotion and motivation and human brains, you wouldn't
expect to find beliefs in a God that you are
required to love and obey and who rewards you for
your love and obedience with eternal torture in the hell
of coconut crabs. You know that this just goes counter
(22:55):
natural instincts about motivation. Your your brain doesn't work that way. Yeah,
it has to be offering you something that that that
fits the mold for your your your biological life in
the mind that governs your behavior in that biological life. Yeah.
So yeah, so I think that that's a pretty standard
thing of cognitive science of religion. There of course going
to be extremely powerful cultural factors determining what kind of
(23:18):
religious beliefs proliferate, but there are also some probably biological
neuroscientific factors that contribute as well. And speaking of biology,
the third UH requirement that Barrett lays out is that
some features of the human mind are products of human
biology as it interacts with the natural world, apart from
cultural environmental variations. So maybe the pain example from above
(23:41):
fits here, but there may be better examples. Oh sure, yeah,
I think the pain thing works great. I mean, this
is just saying like, our brains are shaped by our revolution.
Of course they are, uh, and they're filled with contents
from culture, but they still have some innate kind of
tendencies that are just like part of your body. That's
just how brains usually work. One of them is that
we're motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain. You know.
(24:03):
It's like it's really hard to get around that standard
way that brains work. Alright. So a big concept in
God's of course, is that a god doesn't just need
to exist within a you know, within the minds of
a particular set of people. That God needs to be
able to travel, It needs to be accepted by new people, uh,
you know, across space and time. Yeah, needs memetics, survival advantages,
(24:27):
it needs to be able to spread and take root
in new environments. So we're going to take a quick break,
but when we come back We're going to get into
uh Barrett's ideas regarding the five features that a god
must have to successfully travel and this according to the
cognitive science of religion, and then we'll eventually get into
questions regarding Santa Claus himself. Thank alright, we're back, alright.
(24:54):
We're discussing how this paper about whether or not Santa
Claus actually counts as a god as usually defined by
the criteria of the cognitive science of religion. And this
psychologist Justin barretta has in this article, he lays out
five normal criteria that gods really have to have to
be successful and be thought of as God's. Alright, this
(25:16):
first one is gonna sound familiar, and that is that
God's must be counterintuitive, or more specifically, they have to
be minimally counterintuitive. And if this sounds familiar, it's because
we did a whole episode on it totally. It originally
aired in August. It was called the Gods Must Be Counterintuitive,
and we talked about myths and folk tales, including religious
(25:37):
characters and narratives with an eye towards the question of
what makes one successful and another unsuccessful in secular narratives
like why does everybody know the story of Cinderella, but
there is no Walt Disney's The Donkey Cabbage. Uh. We
talked about the Donkey Cabbages in this episode. It's a
fairytale that it just doesn't seem to work as well
(25:57):
as Cinderella because it's just crammed with count or intuitive stuff.
On the other hand, you could think of tons of mundane,
boring stories that don't proliferate as well as Cinderella. But
in a in a religious context, or especially in ancient
religious context, why does one religion spread far and wide
and another one just never take off? Again? We should
(26:17):
acknowledge they're going to be hugely important other you know,
non brain based factors influencing this, like political and social contingencies.
You know, the religion of a powerful, successful empire tends
to spread, right, So there's no sense ignoring those factors.
Those are obviously very important, but are their factors just
in the human animal in the brain as well, And
(26:39):
cognitive science of religion tends to think, yeah, there are
probably a few factors in our brains about our brains
that make some religions more successful than others. And in
this episode from we discussed a line of research positing
that a major factor in the success of a narrative
or a religion, at least in the pre modern context,
was mnemonic resilience. That means how easily a story is remembered,
(27:04):
how easily a story survives in the memory. Most religion,
for most of history, of course, has been spread not
by holy texts or anything, but by word of mouth. Right,
You've got to spread a religion by telling people about it,
because most people in history have been illiterate. And so
what kinds of things are easier to remember when when
you're trying to spread them around the world. Well, psychologists
(27:26):
had already found evidence that people remember lists of items
better when that list contains one or two strange items
that don't seem to fit with the other items on
the list. Isn't that interesting? Yeah? Yeah, Like, if you're
at at a grocery store and you're you're spying on
what the person in front of you is buying, you're
gonna remember it if there's something that is completely out
(27:48):
of keeping with the rest out it that that doesn't
assemble in your head into a like a an easily
define herble meal. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. Like
it would seem to suggest by this principle that if
your looking at what somebody has in their cart, you'd
remember every item they have in their cart better if
it's like mostly normal groceries with a couple of really
(28:08):
weird things in there. Like if someone were buying pie crust,
whip cream, frozen strawberries, you think, oh, they make a
strawberry pie, and then you'd forget about it. But if
they're buying whip cream, pie crust, um, and then something
else like whole fish, whole fish exactly, you would be like, oh,
my god, they're making a fish pie with whip cream
on top and a Graham cracker crust. That is crazy,
(28:30):
and then you would be telling everyone you knew about it. So,
at least as far as lists go, lists of things,
it seems that it's easier to remember something that's like
mostly normal with a couple of weird elements than it
is to remember something that's totally bonkers or totally mundane um.
And so one of the papers we looked at in
this episode also applied this principle to the intuitive nous
(28:53):
of elements in a story like a like a folk
tale or a religious narrative. This was by Norn, zion, Atran, Faulkner,
and Shaler in Cognitive Science in two thousands six, called
Memory and Mystery the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives,
and so basically the short story is this paper found
some evidence to support the hypothesis that the kinds of
(29:16):
stories people remember best are minimally counterintuitive narratives. Not stories
that are straightforward and mundane, not stories that are crammed
with weird, outlandish stuff, but stories in the middle, sort
of toward one end, like stories that are mostly straightforward
with a small number of strange or fantastical counterintuitive elements. So,
(29:38):
for instance, a humanoid elephant is a great concept, an
old man who lives in the sky is a great concept.
In these concepts travel reasonably well. Yes, uh. And just
as a tie into this older episode, I remember one
thing we talked about in there. We talked about a
number of papers that Justin Barrett was a co author of.
You know, he does a lot in the cognitive science
(29:58):
of religion, including one it I still remember. I thought
it was very interesting. It was about anthropomorphization in the
psychology of religion. And this paper was published in the
journal Cognitive Psychology in nine and essentially it was by
Barrett and Kyle, and it found that people quote spontaneously
anthropomorphize God in their reasoning, even if doing so contradicts
(30:21):
their stated theological beliefs. So like when they don't remember
to avoid doing so, if you're not, they're reminding them
what they're previously stated theological beliefs are. People tend to
start thinking of God as like a normal human agent
with just like big supernatural powers but basically with a
human brain. Yeah, Like, I can definitely relate to this
(30:42):
because I I tend to think when I, when I,
you know, think about concepts of of a monotheistic deity,
I think of, uh, you know, something more surreal or psychedelic.
I think of, you know, like some sort of like
triangular non physical entity. Or I think of you know,
something that is uh, you know, something where the you know,
(31:04):
the God is singular, but also all these other gods.
You know. I throw a lot of concepts at it,
but like like the ground of being, you know, that
kind of thing and stuff like that. But if I'm
not thinking too hard about it, if I'm saying, just
like listening to somebody at church talk, or I'm reflecting
on some you know, just on the nature of God,
I'll fall back into the sky daddy, um, where it's
(31:24):
like an old bearded man in the sky reaching out
his finger to touch the living that sort of thing. Yeah,
and then I'll have to be like, oh wait, no, no, no,
that's not what I've been filling my head with. Uh,
it's a you know, space triangles. Yeah. And so Barrett
and Kyle find that this tendency is very common. They say,
you know, even if you think of God is like
the ground of being or the force or even you know,
(31:45):
to get into a specific religion, like in in specific monotheisms,
you might find people very carefully calibrated theologians type points
of view, you know, where they they actually have meticulously
formed beliefs about like what God can and can't know,
and what how the mind of God works and all
that kind of stuff. But like if you just kind
of get them thinking without reminding them that that's what
(32:08):
their stated beliefs are, they just sort of start thinking
about God like a person with a human brain. Yeah.
And this can also be like super irritating if you're
you're trying to cultivate an idea of the Almighty as
being say, gender neutral or even being feminine as opposed
to masculine, and then when you're not thinking about it,
you fall right back into to it being a you know,
traditional masculine, uh, you know, patriarchal being. Oh yeah, I mean,
(32:32):
I guess there's that tendency to probably pushing on like
specific personality attributes and stuff, and not just like the anthropomorphization,
though they do say the authors here say that constantly
reminding people about their own state of theological beliefs can
help attenuate the anthropomorphization impulse. Right, you know, if you
you're like, hey, remember what you said, you said you
(32:52):
believe God was like this, Like that'll that'll obviously will
help some cut down on it. But they suggest here
that this may indicate a strong tendency to anthropomorphize all agents,
no matter what kind of being they are. Dogs become humans,
computers become humans, the world spirit becomes a human. Everything
that appears to have any kind of independent action or
is believed to have any kind of independent action basically
(33:15):
just becomes a human. Well that's that's the theory of mind, right,
Like it's there so we can understand primarily what our
fellow humans are doing. But then it it can act,
you know, it can actually be very helpful and trying
to figure out what non human animals are are wanting
to do. I was reading a little bit about this
in terms of veterinary science, and you know, like there's
the older tradition of saying like, don't or those beyond
(33:37):
veterinary science and science in general, just the study of animals,
and say, like, there's the idea of like, you know,
don't think of it as as a person, don't anti
anthropomorphize it at all, don't you know, don't think about
its feelings. And then there's someone say, well, actually, you know,
we should, we should use theory of mind to do
a say a certain degree to a safe degree, uh,
to figure out what is going on in the minds
(33:57):
of of of an animal. But then if you're anthropomorre
vising everything, if you are, in the words of creative
writing a teacher I once had, if you anthropomorphize like
a mad god, then that's where we get into problems
or and also that's where we end up creating some
of the more uh, you know, inspired concepts in human
culture as well. Yeah, totally uh, I guess, so to
(34:18):
bring it back. Yes, as Barrett says, according to the
cognitive science of religion, it seems true that God's must
be in some way counterintuitive, ideally minimally counterintuitive, you know,
having some unusual aspects like maybe say, being invisible and
all powerful, but then I have to be all powerful.
There are also minor gods that still qualify as God's right,
(34:39):
invisible and having some kind of non normal powers or attributes, right,
I mean, basically I like to play the game of like,
just keep adding counterintuitive aspects to a particular deity and
decide at which point it's silly and no longer intimidating,
like a like a a strange tall man comes out
of the shadows and gives me commandments. So that's great,
(35:00):
all right, Let's add that he has the head of
a dog. Okay, even better. Hybrids are a huge part
of religious concepts. Now he's got crab claws. Then he
has crab claws, right, and then okay, it's one's a
crab claw and one is a hand puppet. Uh. And
so for like, every time you add something else to
it becomes a little bit more ridiculous and a little
harder to to take um and that that seems to
be part of the whole. Minimally counterintuitive. Yes, but they've
(35:25):
got to at least be counterintuitive, because if you say, like,
this is my buddy Jeff, he's god. He doesn't have
anything unusual about him, like there are no he doesn't
have any powers. He's not invisible, he can't fly, he's
not omniscient, omnipotent, nothing like that. He's just Jeff. That's
not that nobody thinks that's a god. Now, Jeff would
probably at least pass the next one. This is number
(35:47):
two on Barrett's list. God's must be intentional agents. Barrett
uses the example of two minimally counterintuitive concepts, an invisible
potato versus a talking potato. Okay, both minimally counter intuitive,
but one works better as a god than another. Yeah,
only the latter is viable candidate for godhood because it
implies agency. A god must have agency and work as
(36:09):
an intentional agent. Now, this concept does make me think
about ideas of say, slumbering gods, dead gods, and mindless gods,
at least in fiction such as you know, Lovecrafts as
is off comes to mind. Oh you you got me
on as a off recently, but I looked it up.
It's as a thought, as a thought, sorry to correct
that that would make yeah, it would have the Egyptian
(36:30):
thought aspect to it. Yeah, yeah, well as as a
thought or as his off. He doesn't care because he
has he's mindless. He doesn't even know his own name.
He's just swirling chaos in the middle of the universe,
nawing on himself while uh, you know, blind monsters play flutes.
But like this would be an example of First of all,
it's a god that nobody actually worships. It is a
(36:50):
fictional deity, but is at least it is at least
the concept of a deity that is mindless. Yes, now,
I think this is another reason that, like the crunch Rap,
Supreme Aim could not be a viable god, because it's
essentially as a thought of them the mindless of being
at the center of the chaotic universe. Exactly. It's an
inanimate object that symbolizes primordial chaos, can't talk, has no intentions,
(37:15):
isn't going to do much right, all right, we're gonna
jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll
be right back. Thank And we're back. All right, So
let's move on to the third requirement. God's must possess
strategic information. So, in other words, the gods or God
must have some ideas, some advice, or some secret knowledge
(37:38):
that can improve your life here on earth. Perhaps it's
a set of laws, a revelation that there are no laws,
or knowledge about the coming end times. Or the God
must have privilege knowledge he knows what you've done, or
the nature of your inner thoughts, or what will happen
to you in the future. Yes, now, I think it's
very important to note that this does not mean the
same thing as like omniscient, which would be an omniscience
(38:02):
all knowing. No, would be a form of strategic information,
to be like the ultimate form of strategic information. But
the omniscience is a property only some God's possess. Right.
The strategic information idea here just requires that a god
knows something valuable or relevant. For example, the version of
God depicted in the Garden of Eden's story does not
(38:23):
appear to be all knowing. Like he walks in the garden,
he has limited perspective. It is possible to at least
temporarily hide from him, and yet he clearly has access
to important information that Adam and Eve do not have,
right though, I also always wondered if he was just
kind of like a you know, sky daddy, playing dumb,
but sort of trying to see what his creations are
(38:44):
gonna say. You know, like when you walk in and
you're like, all right, who smeared their food on this window?
You know who smeared the food on the window. But
you're you're asking the question because you want to have
a civilized discussion about it, and and and and you know,
and in doing so, uh, you know, prevent more or
food sparriage from happening. Sure, well, I think that's a
valid interpretation too. I think the other one is more straightforward,
(39:05):
but it could be the one. Um uh So. Barrett
points out that it's important that this information is relevant
to humans in particular. Right quote, Suppose a certain minimally
counterintuitive agent only knows about Himalayan micro invertebrates, such a
being is unlikely to gain traction as a noteworthy entity
and rise to the status of God. You know. And
(39:27):
that's specifically because this entity does not have any information
that is useful in any way relevant to humans like
they and and they don't have to be helpful, right,
God's can be mean, Gods can be bad. Beings with
strategic information could be helpful allies or dangerous enemies, as
say some of the Greek gods often are like Poseidon.
(39:47):
You know he wants to wreck your ship and get
revenge on you. He's still God, al right, Next we
have number four. This is a big one. God's must
be able to act in the human world in detectable ways.
Barrett says, quote an all saying all knowing statue that
does nothing but season knows is not worth transmitting. Gods
have to do stuff and be known by that stuff,
(40:08):
or at least to have done something. Otherwise, it's just
not a concept that's going to travel sure or to
be likely to potentially do something in the future. Yeah,
a god that has no interaction whatsoever with the world
usually isn't going to form a religion. People aren't have
beliefs about that core like, for instance, think about UFO religions, right.
(40:29):
They tend to involve ideas of say, well, okay, the
the aliens came in an ancient time, or the Aliens
are speaking to us now, or the aliens will come
and save our our you know, dying culture. But if
your your UFO religion says the aliens are out there,
they've never come. Uh, they've never communicated with us and
they never will come, but we worship them as a god.
(40:52):
That doesn't make any sense. Why am I? What am
I getting out of this relationship? Yeah? Now again, this
is one where I would say that none of these
rules are things where you can of no possible exceptions, because,
like I can think about I guess, like in the
Gnostic religions, there are some types of God that are
like very very removed. You could still say that their
(41:12):
actions have some like downstream effects or like very important
downstream effects on the world. But there are like some
types of gods or godlike type concepts that are at
least a very distant remove from the goings on of
the world. But often in those cases they're like sort
of layers below them who do interact more directly. Right,
(41:34):
Or in some cases, they're more esoteric variations of a
god that is worshiped more popularly in a slightly different
form Alright, let's move on to five. Gods must be
capable of motivating behaviors that reinforce belief. Yes, behaviors such
as ritual and prayer, and they need to be reinforcing behaviors.
(41:55):
For for instance, Barrett makes the example that the ritual
can't promise to produce eight foot children because there will
be no eight foot children around them to reinforce this. Um. Now,
rituals that promise happiness, um contentment, even financial gain, these
at least you can make and argue that, Look, here's
the proof of the ritual working, right, Yeah, I mean,
(42:17):
and it doesn't have to be clear proof. I mean,
as long as there could be some kind of ambiguous
way of interpreting that the rituals are having an effect. Uh,
then I think that's still okay. But yeah, he's saying that,
like the ritual can't guarantee results that it won't actually deliver.
Right if you say, if you tithe at to my
(42:38):
new religion, you will live forever, Like that's that's gonna
bite you in the butt eventually, and then your religion
is gonna fall apart. But it is funny how far
out on the limb you can kind of get with this,
Like as long as there's some kind of ambiguity where
you're not really sure or maybe you don't see it
not working for other people or something like there, you know,
they're the prosperity gospel is incredibly pop piller, But I
(43:01):
think that there's enough ambiguity that you don't necessarily know
what's going on with everybody else who's trying it. There's
enough wiggle room to say, like, you're not quite doing
it right. Right. It inspires a certain level of dishonesty
among the people that are practicing it. And then at
the center of it, you generally have an individual that's
perpetrating a con job like it is about the appearance
(43:21):
of wealth. And then of course they're they're you know,
in most of these cases, they are they're they're leaching
money right there, they are financially benefiting from the scenario.
And then you it's not like you have to carry
this out forever. You know, it's a con games have
a beginning in an end usually right. Yeah, But then
of course there are again, even if you're only understanding
religion in a totally naturalistic way, there are all kinds
(43:45):
of benefits that religious rituals can deliver. They can deliver
like maybe you know, strong tightly bonded communities with people
who help each other they can deliver a sense of
happiness and contentment. All all kinds of like psychological and
social benefits could be perfectly naturalistic outcomes of religious beliefs
and practices. Right So even if you know, say, you know,
(44:05):
Prosperity Gospel Church, which is is you know, vilified to
a large extent and for in many cases for a
good reason, you could still have that kind of a
church community that would have a lot of benefits to
the members of that community. Likewise, you could have, uh,
you know, something positive and beneficial sort of emerge out
(44:26):
of a more restrictive totalitarian belief system, Like maybe there's
some concept within that religion that resonates and works and
then the the individuals practicing it run off and you know,
start something new with that that concept that actually works
for them. Arguably an example of this I've I've heard is,
you know, in Scientology there are members of Scientology or
(44:49):
former members of Scientology who have claimed that, you know,
they don't care for the organization or some of the
culture there, perhaps, but they like the rich wells, they
like some of the the technological um ideas, and some
of the practices that are utilized. They see value in them,
and they attempt to spend them off into something separate
(45:12):
from them. The central Church of scientology. Oh yeah, I
mean ESPEC. The lower levels of scientology are are almost
in some ways indistinguishable from like a self help program
that's basically designed to like give you confidence and motivation
to take steps to achieve your goals and that kind
of thing. And you know, with stuff like that, you
can certainly see how just having a program that's supportive
(45:34):
and telling you to move confidently towards the things you
want could be perceived as very helpful, could actually be
very helpful in producing motivation for that kind of behavior,
even if it also implies things about you know, like
bombs from space and aliens in you and ghosts and
all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, as long
as all that stuff is minimally counterintuitive. I mean, because
(45:55):
that's the thing does seem maximally counterintuitive. But I don't know,
I don't know. I sometimes, at least I I see
people criticize. You see this the thing with with any religion,
someone is liable in one religion, they're liable to criticize
the other by saying that's crazy, that's wonky. How can
you believe in that and uh, without actually looking at
the details of their own belief system, and um, yeah,
(46:19):
I mean that's just that's just part of it. But yeah,
it's what you've come to accept as normal. And this
is the thing actually about that's come up in in
the theory about being counterintuitive, you know, religions needing counterintuitive elements.
Is that, uh like, as you get used to a religion,
the elements that used to be counterintuitive become less counter
they're becoming and then you need the next spin on it, right,
(46:41):
you need the mash up. Yeah, all right, everybody, we're
gonna have to go ahead and break right here. This
one went long. Yeah, this one went a bit a
little bit long, So we're gonna have to bust into
two episodes. Uh, certainly there's gonna be more Santa in
the second half than in the first half. In the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind and go to Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com and that'll send you where you
(47:02):
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you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
(47:23):
your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of
I Heart Radios Howstuff Works. Hey, you welcome to Stuff
to Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and
I'm Joe McCormick. In today, Santa Claus is coming to town.
That's right. This is an episode about Santa Claus. It's
also an episode about gods and our ideas about God's,
(00:26):
our god concepts and what that that all means. And
we are going to get into the question of whether
Santa is a god or not. I do want to
just have a couple of quick reminders here as we
dive into this one. First of all, uh, yes, this
episode it has to do with Santa, But if you
are attempted to listen to it outside of the holiday season,
(00:47):
no worries, because there's gonna be a lot of talk
that does not directly apply to Santa Claus. Sure, this
is an episode about the cognitive science of religion. And secondly,
we will be discussing the magic of Santa Claus in
this episode, so just keep that in mind, parents, if
you're listening with your children. Sure, alright, So most of
us would not say that Santa Claus is a god, right,
(01:09):
I mean, we we don't necessarily maybe we're not always
able to define God in a dictionary definition kind of way,
but you have an intuitive sense of how this word
is used, and for some reason, Santa Claus doesn't usually
fit into that definition, right, that intuitive definition. Right, even
if you are, let's say, a child who is a
(01:31):
Santa fundamentalist who believes in, you know, very literally in
Santa Claus, even then I don't think they would necessarily
confuse the the idea of Santa Claus with the idea
of say, the Judeo Christian deity. Sure, but on the
same hand, and then the same hand is, as we're
going to discuss in this episode, there are a lot
(01:52):
of similarity. So first of all, I want to just
talk a little bit about Santa Claus, this magical being
the factor so heavily into Western holiday traditions as well
as traditions around the world that have been influenced by
the notion of the Great Jolly Old Elf. The exact
mythology is going to vary, of course, but but here
are just some of the often highlighted aspects of the
(02:14):
mythos Okay, first of all, Santa is at at the
very least extremely long lived, if not undying, immortal or eternal.
I mean he's been doing this thing for a long time,
that's right. Secondly, uh, Santa is I guess you would
say pan sofick or all knowing. He knows when you
were sleeping, he knows when you're awake, he knows if
(02:35):
you've been bad or good. I'm not sure he's supposed
to know your inner thoughts, but he is privy to
an awful lot. I think a lot of conceptions of
Santa would even give him like inner psychic access. Yeah,
I mean if if Santa can, well, Santa can at
least see what you're doing when other people aren't around
to see what you're doing, and he sees what you're
(02:56):
doing in private, right that that seems like that's virgin on.
I mean, it's got to be like supernatural. They're oh yeah, absolutely.
It's not like he's just getting reports about your behavior, right.
He definitely has supernatural abilities. It just it comes down
to whether he can see inside your brain or not,
if he can see your thoughts at all, if he
can anticipate your actions based on that information. Also, he
(03:20):
receives mail from all over the world often through magical means,
or at least magical variations of the postal system. Uh.
And you know that that includes things like letters can
find him no matter where you mail them. You can
mail them at the zoo, you can mail them at home,
you can mail them through the chimney, things like that.
(03:40):
You know another thing that's very common about God's is
they tend to live in inaccessible places, if not in
a like extra dimensional, completely fundamentally inaccessible place, even when
they live on Earth, they tend to be at the
top of a mountain or at the bottom of the
ocean or something like. Yeah. I think that the mountaintop
God as as an excellent example because the modern sense,
(04:00):
what is the top of the world mountain? It is
the North Pole, of course, which is which is where
Santa Claus is said to reside, and it is an
insanely hostile environment um fighting off polar bears, and he
seems to reside there without any outside support aside from
the milk and cookies that he collects every year, and
of course the big ones. Santa can travel around the
(04:23):
entire world and visit every home in a single evening
every year. I remember thinking about this as a child
and thinking like, well, I don't know, that sounds really difficult,
but it's probably not impossible. Right. It seemed within the
stretching of plausibility to me, right, Like the magic makes
sense at first, and then you start thinking about the
(04:44):
magic and you're like, wow, this is some potent magic.
And then along the way, you know, you you introduce
some science fiction concepts, and you introduce some some elaborate
visions of the nature of time, and then okay, you
can create some versions of it that makes a little
bit more sense for hals. But at the very least,
Santa has amazing abilities to travel in ways that immortal
(05:05):
human cannot, of course, and there's there's much more than
that that we might add, based not only on beliefs,
but on films as well that features Santa Claus. So
he has been spotted in the presence of inhuman in
human beast men, as we discussed in our Crampus episode. Okay,
sometimes appears in the guise of Tim Allen and Goldberg.
(05:25):
That's true. Uh, also whole cogd and Whole cokean play
of Santa Claus. Oh I don't remember that. Definitely in
the movie Santa Sleigh which is you know, you can
probably guess what it's about. Also, Santa can communicate with
magical deer that also fly and enable him to fly.
He can control robots, as he has the power over
(05:46):
all toys and machines that might be argued to be toys.
This of course from Santa Claus versus the Martians uh
and imports in that Santa Claus is also drawn into
an interplanetary dispute. Santa associates known wizards such as Merlin. Uh.
If he's watched the old Mexican Santa Claus film, we
of course see him hanging out with Merlin and then
(06:08):
dealing with demons, engaging in direct conflict with at least
demons who serve the Christian Devil, if not the Christian
Devil himself. Oh no, yeah, he's straight up fights demons
in the movie, Oh that Devil. It's like it's like
Gandal versus the Bell Rock. It's Santa versus whatever that
demon's name is. Yes, I mean he gets into some
(06:28):
serious theological territory in that film. He also may or
may not play the saxophone when visiting Asian countries, which
isn't as remarkable, I guess, but it's a it's an
additional wrinkle in the myth of Santa. Now, we're obviously
not the first people to raise these parallels between the
Santa Claus that brings magical delight to children and all
(06:49):
over the place and uh and you know, basically gods
that are found throughout history all over the world. In fact,
I would say it's almost like a cliche joke at
this point to kind of uh a point out that
Santa Claus and God are in some sense interchangeable to
too many children. Yeah, my favorite example of this goes
(07:09):
back to the year two thousand and one of you know,
our shared favorite shows, The Simpsons. There's the episode where
Bart goes in to his bedroom and he kneels by
his bed, and then he begins to pray, and he says, quote,
dear Santa, if you bring me lots of good stuff,
I promised not to do anything bad between now and
when I wake up. Amen. It's the best kind of
(07:32):
Simpson's joke, because there's a joke in what he says
between now and when I wake up. But actually, the
even funnier part is the very concept of him saying
it that he's praying to Santa in the first place. Yeah.
And one of the things I always loved about it
is is that it takes me a second to catch it,
you know, because it's not instantly clear that it's something
out of the ordinary. I think I vaguely remember almost
(07:54):
doing this at one point as a child, even uh,
sort of at least subconsciously getting the idea confused. Uh.
You know, praying to Santa is only a few degrees
to the left of sending a letter to an entity
that can observe your every move, And it's not that
different from the idea of praying to this divine entity
that you're told about, say it's Sunday school. Yeah. And
(08:16):
so for the rest of the episode today, we're going
to be focusing on a paper that actually asks the
question of, well, in the terms of cognitive science of religion,
does Santa Claus actually qualify as a god or not?
Does he match the other things that would be called
a god within this uh, this sort of like scientific
academic framework. In particular, we're going to be looking at
(08:38):
an article by experimental psychologist Justin Barrett published in the
Journal of Cognition and Culture back in two thousand and
eight and and Barrett is an interesting character here. He
wrote a book titled Why Would Anyone Believe in God?
And he himself is a Christian, but he also sees
God as a byproduct of our mental architecture, and he
sees this in a way where these two concepts have
(09:00):
room to coexist. Yeah, he seems like an interesting figure
to me, Like, having read a bit about him, I
think he's in the spirit of those who would believe that, like,
the existence of God is not in conflict with naturalistic
explanations for religion. Yeah. Like, for instance, when he was
asked about about this potential conflict in in a two
thousand seven New York Times article titled Darwin's God, Uh,
(09:24):
he said the following quote. Christian theology teaches that people
were crafted by God to be in a loving relationship
with him and other people. Why wouldn't God then design
us in such a way as to find belief in divinity?
Quite natural? Suppose science produces a convincing account for why
I think my wife loves me? Should I then stop
believing that she does? Which I thought was a nice
(09:46):
answer to that question. Yeah, that's interesting, like that you
can you can put together all kinds of uh, coherent
scientific explanations for what the feeling of love is, why
this is an emotion that's generated by the primate b
and what kind of relationship it has to you know,
the evolutionary pressures that created our bodies and our brains.
But at the same time, it doesn't make the love
(10:07):
not real. And so applying that to religion, you could say, okay, well,
here's a list of reasons we think that, like evolution,
natural selection could have shaped our brains to be geared
toward religion. Uh, unless so you have totally mechanistic, natural
type explanations for where religion comes from. And yet you
could still, under this theory potentially believe your religion to
(10:29):
be true, or multiple religions to be true. Yeah. Absolutely,
And I think that that that goes along with the
way we tend to approach religious concepts on this show.
I think that that we can certainly explain where they
come from. They can we can discuss, uh, you know,
how they evolve over time and the different influences wound
(10:49):
up in them. But at the same time we can
respect that yes, this this story, this myth, this idea,
this concept can still be very weighty and very important
to the individuals that value it. Well. Yeah, and and
that also though gets into another layer of complexity, which
is what it actually means to quote believe in a religion,
like can you believe in a religion? Does not necessarily
(11:09):
mean that you accept, say it's story of the creation
of the world as literally true, or that it suggests
or that it that it's propositions about metaphysics are literally
physically real. Yeah. Absolutely, and and and just to to
drive home a fact here again parental warning, Santa Claus
is not real in the sense that that Santa Claus
(11:32):
does not physically exist in the world. He's not actually
doing these these uh, these great deeds that we attribute
to him. But on the other hand, he is an
obviously an important cultural idea. And for my own part,
like I try and drive home the importance of mythology
and belief alongside the importance of you know, of a
(11:55):
fundamental reality I guess and scientific reality when talking about
these things with with my own son, Uh, you know
that currently he's really invested in the idea of Santa
But I am hopefully laying the groundwork that when Santa
falls from the lofty realm of of presumed magical reality.
He's not going to plumb it into the hellish depths
(12:17):
of lies and inaccuracies. He will instead fall into this
realm of mythological u and this this realm of magical
concepts that are valued by human culture. If that makes sense, Well, yeah,
Santa Claus is not physically real, but the magic of
Santa Claus is absolutely real. Like it's one of the
most powerful mind states that I can recall from my
(12:40):
entire life is the anticipation magic of the Christmas season
when I was young. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, And I also
remember sort of going through the struggle of then realizing, Okay,
Santa Claus is not objectively real, but then gradually then
growing to to realize that, okay, the idea of laws
can still be very important and can still be very
(13:03):
real in that sense, in the way the same way
that you know, one grows to learn that that fictional
characters and uh and uh and other stories can be
extremely important to us in a way that where there
is sometimes even more important than than flesh and blood
individuals and in very real events in the world. But anyway,
I want to get back to Barrett's work again. He's
(13:25):
he's working in the realm of cognitive science of religion, exploring,
in his words, quote why religious thoughts and actions only
occupy a small area in the vast landscape of possible
belief systems. And that's actually, I think a fascinating question, right,
Like religious beliefs could in theory be anything. Anything could
(13:47):
be a religious belief. Example, my friend Julian believes that
a breakfast crunch Rap Supreme that he got from Taco
bell in t is the creator of the universe and
only by its zesty cell ovation can he be saved
from annihilation. Why is it obvious this is a joke? Seriously, Like,
how come as soon as I said that, you knew
(14:10):
that I was kidding. You don't need to go like
look that up on Google and see if there really
is a sincere crunch Rap Supreme cult. You just immediately
know that people don't believe that sort of thing as
a sincere religion. And yet people believe in all kinds
of strange things, things that would of course seem strange
to those who don't share their religious beliefs. So why
(14:32):
is it that religious beliefs can and do involve all
kinds of strange things and narratives and propositions, and yet
there's actually a pretty constrained set of things even within
that fantastical landscape that would truly seem acceptable as a
god or a religious narrative. Like for some reason, thumbs
up to the immortal, all powerful person who reads your
(14:55):
thoughts as God, but thumbs down to the fast food
item as creator God. Right, So, like religious beliefs are
not usually constrained by things like the normal functioning of
physics or biology, but they are clearly constrained by something.
If they weren't constrained by something, it wouldn't be obvious
that the crunch rap Supreme God was a joke. Yeah, yeah,
(15:17):
I think it is. It is fascinating that, yes, okay,
world religion involves so many wonderful concepts and so many
things that when you first introduced to them, they seem
strange and new and and and and and you know,
perplexing at times, and and we celebrate that on on
this show. And yet at the same time you know
that there's not a tremendous amount of difference between you know,
(15:37):
the details of this religion and the next religion. Well, yeah,
there is this funny tension where in one sense there's
incredible diversity and difference, but on the other hand, that's
all constrained within some kind of lane that we sort
of have a sense. For you, you might not be
able to define exactly what all the parameters are, though
Barrett's going to try to do that in a minute.
(15:58):
But you've got a sense that, like, for some reason,
the crunch rap doesn't work. That's just not a thing
people would believe in as God. You just know it automatically.
So what do people's actual beliefs in God's seem to
have in common? Barrett argues that the cognitive science of
religion has actually been pretty successful in identifying the most
(16:18):
common features of human religious beliefs, including what kinds of
concepts people most often find intuitive as God's uh, And
I guess we'll get into those in just a minute,
but first we should talk about some of his like
basic criteria for for what even constitutes the category. Right,
So the first one, and this is a big one,
is that multiple individuals must share a given idea for
(16:40):
it to be a genuine culture or religious concept. And
this is this is kind of a no brainer, but
it's important to note he gives it. This example, if
one person believes their lamp can grant wishes and control
the weather, that's not a god. That's just one person
who has a crazy idea about their lamp. But if
a bunch of people share this idea about a given lamp,
it might just be a god concept. Sure uh, And
(17:03):
I agree that religion has a very strong and possibly
necessary social component, And yet I do think there are
some interesting counter examples that we might want to think about,
like hermetic mystics who live in isolation. They cut themselves
off from the world to develop private, personal, almost secretive
relationships with and understandings of God or of the gods.
(17:25):
And yet I think Barrett is still correct because we
don't usually grant these idiosyncratic, private mystical practices the status
of a religion unless they're supported by a wider structure
of belief shared by larger numbers of people. Like the
mystical traditions often tend to be a kind of monastic
offshoot or branch of larger religions with regular social adherents,
(17:49):
right right, like So, yes, while we may celebrate the
the ideas of say someone like a William Blake, you know,
who you know, certainly had his his own sort of
spin on what to on on what God was and
what the you know, the cosmology of of of the
universe happened to be. But we're probably not going to
buy into every detail of it. We're willing to sort
(18:12):
of stand a foot back and say like, Okay, he
has his own take on this, but I'm I'm still
keeping to the canon. You know, this is the extended
universe star Wars, And I'm more of a you know,
the Star Wars films, right, And and we accept Blake's
idiosyncratic ideas as religious because I think they grow out
of a larger existing religion. You know, they're they're like,
(18:33):
they're this kind of extended universe, the expanded universe of Christianity.
I guess one can also say that it helps in
these cases of other people do not start flocking to
your your extended universe concept of religion, because then you
stand the risk of being a heresy and or creating
a new, different religion. Right, Yeah, And that's another thought entirely.
(18:56):
It seems to me also that only widely distribute did
beliefs are likely to have stable contents. Because one member
of the religion tends to mediate any potential like deviation
from the orthodoxy by another member of the religion. But
private religious beliefs, they seem to be radically unstable. You know,
they're liable to change constantly. It's like asking how many
(19:18):
editors have access to a given UH wiki page, you know,
and if it's a if it's a Wikipedia page and
it's one that is UH that gets a lot of
traffic and has a lot of eyes on it, you know,
by and large you can assume that the information there
is probably going to be on the level or if
it's or if anything crazy is at it, it's going
(19:39):
to be taken out pretty quickly. You know, the the
the inquisition is going to move in on those heretics. Now,
if it is an off brand wiki and it has
like two editors or one editor, UH, then it's up
for grabs, right, right, Yeah, maybe one day somebody gets
a wild hair they're like, I'm gonna go in make
some major changes. Those changes probably stick, right, nobody comes
(20:01):
in to change it back. I mean, there's there's no
controlling influence, right, and then if it does change, you know,
when it does change over time, I think the idea
of a you know again, a high profile wiki, Wikipedia page,
or a a widely accepted god. Like, the changes are
gonna occur gradually and they're going to emerge from the
culture at large. Yes, yeah, having more adherents makes an
(20:23):
orthodoxy more generally stable, though of course they do still
change over time. It's just, uh, there's just less potential
for sudden radical change, I think, right, unless certain individuals
have a tremendous amount of power over it. And then
in that case, you know, you have like the ancient
adyption model where suddenly a ruler decides actually it's just
the sun disc and that's what we're doing now exactly.
(20:45):
But that was one guy and it didn't stick, right, Yeah,
So yeah, I think ultimately I agree with Barrett that
if we're going with normal usage what people usually mean
when they talk about a religious belief, it needs to
be a distributed if it's held by a decent number
of people. I'm not sure exactly what the number is,
but like private beliefs of a single person or a
(21:07):
handful of people, I probably don't count as religions yet.
All right. Number two, Religious concepts and god concepts can
spread due to quote features of human minds that transcend
cultural environmental variations unquote. And I'm assuming that's something like
the fear of death and the desire to avoid pain
might be such features as an example. Yeah, you're you're
(21:30):
correct about that. I mean, what he means is just
that it's obvious that influences on religion can be cultural
or social. Right, they can come from, you know, just
contingent facts about history and what else is going on
in the culture and politics and all that. But there
can be these What he's arguing is that there are
these internal factors as well. And this is what the
cognitive science of religion is about. It's about brains, right.
(21:52):
There are some religious beliefs that will be better adapted
to survive in the environment of the human primate brain
than other beliefs will be, regardless of cultural factors. Like,
some beliefs just fit like a puzzle piece with our instincts,
emotional tendencies, cognitive capacities, and others don't fit quite so well.
I was trying to think of a few simple, obvious examples.
(22:14):
Here's a clerkey in kind of one. You probably wouldn't
find a popular religious belief where you had to remember
a name for God. That was eighteen million silvers long, right,
because the cognitive constraints of memory put limits on what
types of God beliefs there are. You wouldn't expect a
concept of God to be successful if it just couldn't
(22:35):
be remembered. Here's another one. Due to uh, natural features
of of emotion and motivation and human brains, you wouldn't
expect to find beliefs in a God that you are
required to love and obey and who rewards you for
your love and obedience with eternal torture in the hell
of coconut crabs. You know that this just goes counter
(22:55):
natural instincts about motivation. Your your brain doesn't work that way. Yeah,
it has to be offering you something that that that
fits the mold for your your your biological life in
the mind that governs your behavior in that biological life. Yeah.
So yeah, so I think that that's a pretty standard
thing of cognitive science of religion. There of course going
to be extremely powerful cultural factors determining what kind of
(23:18):
religious beliefs proliferate, but there are also some probably biological
neuroscientific factors that contribute as well. And speaking of biology,
the third UH requirement that Barrett lays out is that
some features of the human mind are products of human
biology as it interacts with the natural world, apart from
cultural environmental variations. So maybe the pain example from above
(23:41):
fits here, but there may be better examples. Oh sure, yeah,
I think the pain thing works great. I mean, this
is just saying like, our brains are shaped by our revolution.
Of course they are, uh, and they're filled with contents
from culture, but they still have some innate kind of
tendencies that are just like part of your body. That's
just how brains usually work. One of them is that
we're motivated to seek pleasure and avoid pain. You know.
(24:03):
It's like it's really hard to get around that standard
way that brains work. Alright. So a big concept in
God's of course, is that a god doesn't just need
to exist within a you know, within the minds of
a particular set of people. That God needs to be
able to travel, It needs to be accepted by new people, uh,
you know, across space and time. Yeah, needs memetics, survival advantages,
(24:27):
it needs to be able to spread and take root
in new environments. So we're going to take a quick break,
but when we come back We're going to get into
uh Barrett's ideas regarding the five features that a god
must have to successfully travel and this according to the
cognitive science of religion, and then we'll eventually get into
questions regarding Santa Claus himself. Thank alright, we're back, alright.
(24:54):
We're discussing how this paper about whether or not Santa
Claus actually counts as a god as usually defined by
the criteria of the cognitive science of religion. And this
psychologist Justin barretta has in this article, he lays out
five normal criteria that gods really have to have to
be successful and be thought of as God's. Alright, this
(25:16):
first one is gonna sound familiar, and that is that
God's must be counterintuitive, or more specifically, they have to
be minimally counterintuitive. And if this sounds familiar, it's because
we did a whole episode on it totally. It originally
aired in August. It was called the Gods Must Be Counterintuitive,
and we talked about myths and folk tales, including religious
(25:37):
characters and narratives with an eye towards the question of
what makes one successful and another unsuccessful in secular narratives
like why does everybody know the story of Cinderella, but
there is no Walt Disney's The Donkey Cabbage. Uh. We
talked about the Donkey Cabbages in this episode. It's a
fairytale that it just doesn't seem to work as well
(25:57):
as Cinderella because it's just crammed with count or intuitive stuff.
On the other hand, you could think of tons of mundane,
boring stories that don't proliferate as well as Cinderella. But
in a in a religious context, or especially in ancient
religious context, why does one religion spread far and wide
and another one just never take off? Again? We should
(26:17):
acknowledge they're going to be hugely important other you know,
non brain based factors influencing this, like political and social contingencies.
You know, the religion of a powerful, successful empire tends
to spread, right, So there's no sense ignoring those factors.
Those are obviously very important, but are their factors just
in the human animal in the brain as well, And
(26:39):
cognitive science of religion tends to think, yeah, there are
probably a few factors in our brains about our brains
that make some religions more successful than others. And in
this episode from we discussed a line of research positing
that a major factor in the success of a narrative
or a religion, at least in the pre modern context,
was mnemonic resilience. That means how easily a story is remembered,
(27:04):
how easily a story survives in the memory. Most religion,
for most of history, of course, has been spread not
by holy texts or anything, but by word of mouth. Right,
You've got to spread a religion by telling people about it,
because most people in history have been illiterate. And so
what kinds of things are easier to remember when when
you're trying to spread them around the world. Well, psychologists
(27:26):
had already found evidence that people remember lists of items
better when that list contains one or two strange items
that don't seem to fit with the other items on
the list. Isn't that interesting? Yeah? Yeah, Like, if you're
at at a grocery store and you're you're spying on
what the person in front of you is buying, you're
gonna remember it if there's something that is completely out
(27:48):
of keeping with the rest out it that that doesn't
assemble in your head into a like a an easily
define herble meal. Yeah, yeah, I think that's true. Like
it would seem to suggest by this principle that if
your looking at what somebody has in their cart, you'd
remember every item they have in their cart better if
it's like mostly normal groceries with a couple of really
(28:08):
weird things in there. Like if someone were buying pie crust,
whip cream, frozen strawberries, you think, oh, they make a
strawberry pie, and then you'd forget about it. But if
they're buying whip cream, pie crust, um, and then something
else like whole fish, whole fish exactly, you would be like, oh,
my god, they're making a fish pie with whip cream
on top and a Graham cracker crust. That is crazy,
(28:30):
and then you would be telling everyone you knew about it. So,
at least as far as lists go, lists of things,
it seems that it's easier to remember something that's like
mostly normal with a couple of weird elements than it
is to remember something that's totally bonkers or totally mundane um.
And so one of the papers we looked at in
this episode also applied this principle to the intuitive nous
(28:53):
of elements in a story like a like a folk
tale or a religious narrative. This was by Norn, zion, Atran, Faulkner,
and Shaler in Cognitive Science in two thousands six, called
Memory and Mystery the cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives,
and so basically the short story is this paper found
some evidence to support the hypothesis that the kinds of
(29:16):
stories people remember best are minimally counterintuitive narratives. Not stories
that are straightforward and mundane, not stories that are crammed
with weird, outlandish stuff, but stories in the middle, sort
of toward one end, like stories that are mostly straightforward
with a small number of strange or fantastical counterintuitive elements. So,
(29:38):
for instance, a humanoid elephant is a great concept, an
old man who lives in the sky is a great concept.
In these concepts travel reasonably well. Yes, uh. And just
as a tie into this older episode, I remember one
thing we talked about in there. We talked about a
number of papers that Justin Barrett was a co author of.
You know, he does a lot in the cognitive science
(29:58):
of religion, including one it I still remember. I thought
it was very interesting. It was about anthropomorphization in the
psychology of religion. And this paper was published in the
journal Cognitive Psychology in nine and essentially it was by
Barrett and Kyle, and it found that people quote spontaneously
anthropomorphize God in their reasoning, even if doing so contradicts
(30:21):
their stated theological beliefs. So like when they don't remember
to avoid doing so, if you're not, they're reminding them
what they're previously stated theological beliefs are. People tend to
start thinking of God as like a normal human agent
with just like big supernatural powers but basically with a
human brain. Yeah, Like, I can definitely relate to this
(30:42):
because I I tend to think when I, when I,
you know, think about concepts of of a monotheistic deity,
I think of, uh, you know, something more surreal or psychedelic.
I think of, you know, like some sort of like
triangular non physical entity. Or I think of you know,
something that is uh, you know, something where the you know,
(31:04):
the God is singular, but also all these other gods.
You know. I throw a lot of concepts at it,
but like like the ground of being, you know, that
kind of thing and stuff like that. But if I'm
not thinking too hard about it, if I'm saying, just
like listening to somebody at church talk, or I'm reflecting
on some you know, just on the nature of God,
I'll fall back into the sky daddy, um, where it's
(31:24):
like an old bearded man in the sky reaching out
his finger to touch the living that sort of thing. Yeah,
and then I'll have to be like, oh wait, no, no, no,
that's not what I've been filling my head with. Uh,
it's a you know, space triangles. Yeah. And so Barrett
and Kyle find that this tendency is very common. They say,
you know, even if you think of God is like
the ground of being or the force or even you know,
(31:45):
to get into a specific religion, like in in specific monotheisms,
you might find people very carefully calibrated theologians type points
of view, you know, where they they actually have meticulously
formed beliefs about like what God can and can't know,
and what how the mind of God works and all
that kind of stuff. But like if you just kind
of get them thinking without reminding them that that's what
(32:08):
their stated beliefs are, they just sort of start thinking
about God like a person with a human brain. Yeah.
And this can also be like super irritating if you're
you're trying to cultivate an idea of the Almighty as
being say, gender neutral or even being feminine as opposed
to masculine, and then when you're not thinking about it,
you fall right back into to it being a you know,
traditional masculine, uh, you know, patriarchal being. Oh yeah, I mean,
(32:32):
I guess there's that tendency to probably pushing on like
specific personality attributes and stuff, and not just like the anthropomorphization,
though they do say the authors here say that constantly
reminding people about their own state of theological beliefs can
help attenuate the anthropomorphization impulse. Right, you know, if you
you're like, hey, remember what you said, you said you
(32:52):
believe God was like this, Like that'll that'll obviously will
help some cut down on it. But they suggest here
that this may indicate a strong tendency to anthropomorphize all agents,
no matter what kind of being they are. Dogs become humans,
computers become humans, the world spirit becomes a human. Everything
that appears to have any kind of independent action or
is believed to have any kind of independent action basically
(33:15):
just becomes a human. Well that's that's the theory of mind, right,
Like it's there so we can understand primarily what our
fellow humans are doing. But then it it can act,
you know, it can actually be very helpful and trying
to figure out what non human animals are are wanting
to do. I was reading a little bit about this
in terms of veterinary science, and you know, like there's
the older tradition of saying like, don't or those beyond
(33:37):
veterinary science and science in general, just the study of animals,
and say, like, there's the idea of like, you know,
don't think of it as as a person, don't anti
anthropomorphize it at all, don't you know, don't think about
its feelings. And then there's someone say, well, actually, you know,
we should, we should use theory of mind to do
a say a certain degree to a safe degree, uh,
to figure out what is going on in the minds
(33:57):
of of of an animal. But then if you're anthropomorre
vising everything, if you are, in the words of creative
writing a teacher I once had, if you anthropomorphize like
a mad god, then that's where we get into problems
or and also that's where we end up creating some
of the more uh, you know, inspired concepts in human
culture as well. Yeah, totally uh, I guess, so to
(34:18):
bring it back. Yes, as Barrett says, according to the
cognitive science of religion, it seems true that God's must
be in some way counterintuitive, ideally minimally counterintuitive, you know,
having some unusual aspects like maybe say, being invisible and
all powerful, but then I have to be all powerful.
There are also minor gods that still qualify as God's right,
(34:39):
invisible and having some kind of non normal powers or attributes, right,
I mean, basically I like to play the game of like,
just keep adding counterintuitive aspects to a particular deity and
decide at which point it's silly and no longer intimidating,
like a like a a strange tall man comes out
of the shadows and gives me commandments. So that's great,
(35:00):
all right, Let's add that he has the head of
a dog. Okay, even better. Hybrids are a huge part
of religious concepts. Now he's got crab claws. Then he
has crab claws, right, and then okay, it's one's a
crab claw and one is a hand puppet. Uh. And
so for like, every time you add something else to
it becomes a little bit more ridiculous and a little
harder to to take um and that that seems to
be part of the whole. Minimally counterintuitive. Yes, but they've
(35:25):
got to at least be counterintuitive, because if you say, like,
this is my buddy Jeff, he's god. He doesn't have
anything unusual about him, like there are no he doesn't
have any powers. He's not invisible, he can't fly, he's
not omniscient, omnipotent, nothing like that. He's just Jeff. That's
not that nobody thinks that's a god. Now, Jeff would
probably at least pass the next one. This is number
(35:47):
two on Barrett's list. God's must be intentional agents. Barrett
uses the example of two minimally counterintuitive concepts, an invisible
potato versus a talking potato. Okay, both minimally counter intuitive,
but one works better as a god than another. Yeah,
only the latter is viable candidate for godhood because it
implies agency. A god must have agency and work as
(36:09):
an intentional agent. Now, this concept does make me think
about ideas of say, slumbering gods, dead gods, and mindless gods,
at least in fiction such as you know, Lovecrafts as
is off comes to mind. Oh you you got me
on as a off recently, but I looked it up.
It's as a thought, as a thought, sorry to correct
that that would make yeah, it would have the Egyptian
(36:30):
thought aspect to it. Yeah, yeah, well as as a
thought or as his off. He doesn't care because he
has he's mindless. He doesn't even know his own name.
He's just swirling chaos in the middle of the universe,
nawing on himself while uh, you know, blind monsters play flutes.
But like this would be an example of First of all,
it's a god that nobody actually worships. It is a
(36:50):
fictional deity, but is at least it is at least
the concept of a deity that is mindless. Yes, now,
I think this is another reason that, like the crunch Rap,
Supreme Aim could not be a viable god, because it's
essentially as a thought of them the mindless of being
at the center of the chaotic universe. Exactly. It's an
inanimate object that symbolizes primordial chaos, can't talk, has no intentions,
(37:15):
isn't going to do much right, all right, we're gonna
jump in here and take a quick break, but we'll
be right back. Thank And we're back. All right, So
let's move on to the third requirement. God's must possess
strategic information. So, in other words, the gods or God
must have some ideas, some advice, or some secret knowledge
(37:38):
that can improve your life here on earth. Perhaps it's
a set of laws, a revelation that there are no laws,
or knowledge about the coming end times. Or the God
must have privilege knowledge he knows what you've done, or
the nature of your inner thoughts, or what will happen
to you in the future. Yes, now, I think it's
very important to note that this does not mean the
same thing as like omniscient, which would be an omniscience
(38:02):
all knowing. No, would be a form of strategic information,
to be like the ultimate form of strategic information. But
the omniscience is a property only some God's possess. Right.
The strategic information idea here just requires that a god
knows something valuable or relevant. For example, the version of
God depicted in the Garden of Eden's story does not
(38:23):
appear to be all knowing. Like he walks in the garden,
he has limited perspective. It is possible to at least
temporarily hide from him, and yet he clearly has access
to important information that Adam and Eve do not have,
right though, I also always wondered if he was just
kind of like a you know, sky daddy, playing dumb,
but sort of trying to see what his creations are
(38:44):
gonna say. You know, like when you walk in and
you're like, all right, who smeared their food on this window?
You know who smeared the food on the window. But
you're you're asking the question because you want to have
a civilized discussion about it, and and and and you know,
and in doing so, uh, you know, prevent more or
food sparriage from happening. Sure, well, I think that's a
valid interpretation too. I think the other one is more straightforward,
(39:05):
but it could be the one. Um uh So. Barrett
points out that it's important that this information is relevant
to humans in particular. Right quote, Suppose a certain minimally
counterintuitive agent only knows about Himalayan micro invertebrates, such a
being is unlikely to gain traction as a noteworthy entity
and rise to the status of God. You know. And
(39:27):
that's specifically because this entity does not have any information
that is useful in any way relevant to humans like
they and and they don't have to be helpful, right,
God's can be mean, Gods can be bad. Beings with
strategic information could be helpful allies or dangerous enemies, as
say some of the Greek gods often are like Poseidon.
(39:47):
You know he wants to wreck your ship and get
revenge on you. He's still God, al right, Next we
have number four. This is a big one. God's must
be able to act in the human world in detectable ways.
Barrett says, quote an all saying all knowing statue that
does nothing but season knows is not worth transmitting. Gods
have to do stuff and be known by that stuff,
(40:08):
or at least to have done something. Otherwise, it's just
not a concept that's going to travel sure or to
be likely to potentially do something in the future. Yeah,
a god that has no interaction whatsoever with the world
usually isn't going to form a religion. People aren't have
beliefs about that core like, for instance, think about UFO religions, right.
(40:29):
They tend to involve ideas of say, well, okay, the
the aliens came in an ancient time, or the Aliens
are speaking to us now, or the aliens will come
and save our our you know, dying culture. But if
your your UFO religion says the aliens are out there,
they've never come. Uh, they've never communicated with us and
they never will come, but we worship them as a god.
(40:52):
That doesn't make any sense. Why am I? What am
I getting out of this relationship? Yeah? Now again, this
is one where I would say that none of these
rules are things where you can of no possible exceptions, because,
like I can think about I guess, like in the
Gnostic religions, there are some types of God that are
like very very removed. You could still say that their
(41:12):
actions have some like downstream effects or like very important
downstream effects on the world. But there are like some
types of gods or godlike type concepts that are at
least a very distant remove from the goings on of
the world. But often in those cases they're like sort
of layers below them who do interact more directly. Right,
(41:34):
Or in some cases, they're more esoteric variations of a
god that is worshiped more popularly in a slightly different
form Alright, let's move on to five. Gods must be
capable of motivating behaviors that reinforce belief. Yes, behaviors such
as ritual and prayer, and they need to be reinforcing behaviors.
(41:55):
For for instance, Barrett makes the example that the ritual
can't promise to produce eight foot children because there will
be no eight foot children around them to reinforce this. Um. Now,
rituals that promise happiness, um contentment, even financial gain, these
at least you can make and argue that, Look, here's
the proof of the ritual working, right, Yeah, I mean,
(42:17):
and it doesn't have to be clear proof. I mean,
as long as there could be some kind of ambiguous
way of interpreting that the rituals are having an effect. Uh,
then I think that's still okay. But yeah, he's saying that,
like the ritual can't guarantee results that it won't actually deliver.
Right if you say, if you tithe at to my
(42:38):
new religion, you will live forever, Like that's that's gonna
bite you in the butt eventually, and then your religion
is gonna fall apart. But it is funny how far
out on the limb you can kind of get with this,
Like as long as there's some kind of ambiguity where
you're not really sure or maybe you don't see it
not working for other people or something like there, you know,
they're the prosperity gospel is incredibly pop piller, But I
(43:01):
think that there's enough ambiguity that you don't necessarily know
what's going on with everybody else who's trying it. There's
enough wiggle room to say, like, you're not quite doing
it right. Right. It inspires a certain level of dishonesty
among the people that are practicing it. And then at
the center of it, you generally have an individual that's
perpetrating a con job like it is about the appearance
(43:21):
of wealth. And then of course they're they're you know,
in most of these cases, they are they're they're leaching
money right there, they are financially benefiting from the scenario.
And then you it's not like you have to carry
this out forever. You know, it's a con games have
a beginning in an end usually right. Yeah, But then
of course there are again, even if you're only understanding
religion in a totally naturalistic way, there are all kinds
(43:45):
of benefits that religious rituals can deliver. They can deliver
like maybe you know, strong tightly bonded communities with people
who help each other they can deliver a sense of
happiness and contentment. All all kinds of like psychological and
social benefits could be perfectly naturalistic outcomes of religious beliefs
and practices. Right So even if you know, say, you know,
(44:05):
Prosperity Gospel Church, which is is you know, vilified to
a large extent and for in many cases for a
good reason, you could still have that kind of a
church community that would have a lot of benefits to
the members of that community. Likewise, you could have, uh,
you know, something positive and beneficial sort of emerge out
(44:26):
of a more restrictive totalitarian belief system, Like maybe there's
some concept within that religion that resonates and works and
then the the individuals practicing it run off and you know,
start something new with that that concept that actually works
for them. Arguably an example of this I've I've heard is,
you know, in Scientology there are members of Scientology or
(44:49):
former members of Scientology who have claimed that, you know,
they don't care for the organization or some of the
culture there, perhaps, but they like the rich wells, they
like some of the the technological um ideas, and some
of the practices that are utilized. They see value in them,
and they attempt to spend them off into something separate
(45:12):
from them. The central Church of scientology. Oh yeah, I
mean ESPEC. The lower levels of scientology are are almost
in some ways indistinguishable from like a self help program
that's basically designed to like give you confidence and motivation
to take steps to achieve your goals and that kind
of thing. And you know, with stuff like that, you
can certainly see how just having a program that's supportive
(45:34):
and telling you to move confidently towards the things you
want could be perceived as very helpful, could actually be
very helpful in producing motivation for that kind of behavior,
even if it also implies things about you know, like
bombs from space and aliens in you and ghosts and
all that kind of stuff. Yeah, I mean, as long
as all that stuff is minimally counterintuitive. I mean, because
(45:55):
that's the thing does seem maximally counterintuitive. But I don't know,
I don't know. I sometimes, at least I I see
people criticize. You see this the thing with with any religion,
someone is liable in one religion, they're liable to criticize
the other by saying that's crazy, that's wonky. How can
you believe in that and uh, without actually looking at
the details of their own belief system, and um, yeah,
(46:19):
I mean that's just that's just part of it. But yeah,
it's what you've come to accept as normal. And this
is the thing actually about that's come up in in
the theory about being counterintuitive, you know, religions needing counterintuitive elements.
Is that, uh like, as you get used to a religion,
the elements that used to be counterintuitive become less counter
they're becoming and then you need the next spin on it, right,
(46:41):
you need the mash up. Yeah, all right, everybody, we're
gonna have to go ahead and break right here. This
one went long. Yeah, this one went a bit a
little bit long, So we're gonna have to bust into
two episodes. Uh, certainly there's gonna be more Santa in
the second half than in the first half. In the meantime,
if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff
to Blow Your Mind and go to Stuff to Blow
your Mind dot com and that'll send you where you
(47:02):
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out huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer
Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in
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you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow
(47:23):
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