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    Would knowledge of God’s existence interfere with our ability to make morally significant choices? Insights from the cognitive science of religion

    Although over half the world' population are theists (according to Pew survey results), God's existence isn't an obvious fact, not even to those who sincerely believe he exists. To put it differently, as Keith DeRose recently put it, even if God exists, we don't know that he does. This presents a puzzle for theists: why doesn't God make his existence more unambiguously known? The problem of divine hiddenness has long been recognized by theists (for instance, Psalm 22), but only fairly recently has it become the focus of debate in philosophy of religion. 

    In several works, J.L. Schellenberg has argued that divine hiddenness constitutes evidence against God's existence. A simple version of this argument goes as follows (Schellenberg 1993, 83):

    1. If there is a God, he is perfectly loving.
    2. If a perfectly loving God exists, reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does not occur
    3. Reasonable non-belief in the existence of God does occur.
    4.  No perfectly loving God exists. 
    5. There is no God.

    The controversial premises are 2 and 3. Authors like Swinburne and Murray have argued against premise 2: God may have reasons to make his existence less obviously true. Their arguments state that if we knew God existed, we wouldn't be able to make morally significant choices. This is an empirical claim. Obviously, it cannot be experimentally tested directly. However, research in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) on the relationship between belief in God and morality may indicate whether or not this is a plausible claim. 


    Michael Murray argues that

    at least one of the reasons that God must remain hidden is that failing to do so would lead to a loss of morally significant freedom on the part of creatures. The reason, in brief, is that making us powerfully aware of the truth of God's existence would suffice to coerce (at least many of ) us into behaving in accordance with God's moral commands. Such awareness can lead to this simply because God's presence would provide us with overpowering incentives which would make choosing the good ineluctable for us (p. 64).

    Murray is careful to specify that libertarian moral freedom is, by itself, not an intrinsic good. Rather, the intrinsic good is that our earthly life, when God's existence is veiled from us to some extent, allows us to develop morally significant characters (soul-making). If God revealed himself in a way that would eliminate all reasonable nonbelief,

    Our fear of punishment, or at least our fear of the prospect of missing out on a very great good, would compel us to believe the things that God has revealed and to act in accordance with them. (p. 68). 

    One way to estimate what sort of effect God's unequivocal revelation of himself would have is to examine whether belief in God makes people more moral. This is a complex question. The correlational data are messy. For instance, contrary to popular belief (expressed recently in a Pew survey, where many people across the world, especially in poorer countries, think belief in God is essential for moral behavior), there is no obvious correlation between moral behavior and religion. Scandinavians, for instance, are among the least religious populations in the world, but they have lower percentages of rape and murder than the much more religious Americans. Moreover, they have social safety nets that cut child poverty, lower abortion rates, etc.  

    According to Norenzayan, Shariff and co-authors, belief in powerful, punishing entities has a functional role: it enhances within-group cooperation and discourages freeriding. People who think they are being watched act nicer than those who do not. This has been amply experimentally demonstrated, for instance, recently in Oxford where simply placing a picture of two staring eyes and the message "cycle thieves, we are watching you" reduced cycle theft effectively. 

    Priming participants with religious words (for instance by letting them unscramble sentences with words like "spirit" and "divine" makes participants more generous later on. For instance, in an anonymous dictator game participants who were given 10 dollars and who were religiously primed gave on average 4.22 dollars away, those who received a neutral prime only offered 1.84 dollars. Similarly, participants who received a religious prime were less likely to cheat at a test later on than those who received a secular prime. In both these studies, simply reminding theists of God's existence (at least in the first study, the effect was solely driven by theists) resulted in better moral actions. So on the face of it, it seems that incontrovertible evidence of God's existence would amplify this effect and perhaps indeed make it impossible for us to make morally significant choices. 

    However, later studies reveal that it is especially belief in a vengeful, angry and punishing God that reliably deters people from doing bad things, not belief in God in general. To test the effect of different God concepts on moral behavior, Shariff and Norenzayan let participants do a tedious mathematical task. They were told that due to some computer glitch, the correct answer would sometimes appear on the screen, and were asked to press the spacebar when that happened to make sure they completed the task honestly. Not hitting spacebar was coded as cheating. The experimenters found that the extent to which participants cheated could be predicted by their image of God: those who thought God was angry and unforgiving cheated significantly less than those who thought of a loving and forgiving God. A large correlational study found that belief in Hell lowered crime rates, whereas societies with a prevalent belief in Heaven (but not Hell) actually had elevated crime rates. 

    Extrapolating from these findings, a God who revealed himself would not automatically deprive people of making morally significant choice, if people believed God to be only forgiving and loving, not vengeful and angry. So if God only revealed that aspect of himself (or perhaps, if that is God's nature, as is held in, e.g., universalism), there would be no impediment to morally significant actions.

    Assuming that universalism is not true, wouldn't this presentation of God be a form of deception? It might be so, but it's not clear to me that this would be worse than God not giving any clear indications that he exists at all. Indeed, Rowe presented a compelling case that, in the face of horrendous evil, God should be present with us while we suffer, and should assure us of his love and concern. Even if we remain unaware of God's true nature, suffering would be more bearable if we knew there was a God, thus giving a reason to believe there is a reason, and that it will all be alright at the end. 

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    2 responses to “Would knowledge of God’s existence interfere with our ability to make morally significant choices? Insights from the cognitive science of religion”

    1. Angra Mainyu Avatar
      Angra Mainyu

      Hi, Helen
      Even if knowledge of the presence of God were compelling in the case of humans, that wouldn’t need to be so in the case of other creatures that God could create instead. But that aside, it seems to me the theistic reply fails for a number of reasons, but briefly I would mention the following issues:
      1. Humans are free to make choices in societies in which criminal laws are generally just and law enforcement is reasonably effective, and people who engage in immoral behaviors that merit imprisonment or other serious punishment, often get properly punished.
      There is plenty of freedom also to make moral choices in such societies, since the proper punishment for immoral behavior in many cases is not imprisonment or anything requiring state intervention (granted, there are people who believe that all immoral behavior merits infinite punishment, but it should be obvious that that is not true).
      2. Moreover, in human societies like the above, it seems probable that violent crime would be lower than in societies in which law enforcement is much less effective all other things equal, and as a result, people generally would have more freedom, as they would be much less often compelled to act against their will because of unjust threats.
      Granted, even if there probably would be more freedom overall, there probably would be less freedom to engage in some seriously immoral behaviors that merit imprisonment, but that decrease is a good thing.
      On that note, it seems to me that the idea that a reason for God not to reveal himself is that the threat of just punishment would reduce freedom to make morally significant choices, is utterly improbable. It makes an exception for God that flies on the face of our moral sense.
      For example, let’s consider the case of law enforcement. Clearly, making the information that people who engage in immoral behaviors that merit imprisonment often get properly punished – or even that they always get properly punishment, if they do -, would tend to compel bad people who would otherwise engage in such behaviors, not to do that. But that’s by no means a justification for that information not to be made available to the public. Quite the opposite, it gives further reason – not that it would be required – to make the information available.
      A suggestion that a reduction in the “morally significant freedom” of people provides a reason for the government not to inform about the effectiveness of enforcenment – even if a defeasible reason – would probably and should be rejected. That particular sort of reduction of freedom is a good thing.
      Granted, analogies are not perfect matches, so a theist might say that the case of God is different. But just as in the case of law enforcement we may properly use our moral sense to reckon that the argument would fail (i.e., there is no such reason), we may do the same in the case of God (the analogy is not required, but it illustrates a point that they’re making an exception for God. I don’t think the exception is justified).
      3. With regard to the study on Hell and crime rates, that’s an interesting result.
      However, even if belief in Hell is associated with lower rates of crimes in the study, that does not seem to establish that it’s also linked with lower rates of immoral behavior – even very serious immoral behavior, but which is not regarded as a crime in the countries in question.
      For example, would belief in Hell be associated with a lower frequency of criminalizing abortions, or with a lower rate of imprisoning women for having abortions?
      Would belief in Hell be associated with a lower frequency of social condemnation of gay people, or even criminalization of gay sex, or of “promotion of homosexuality”?
      Would belief in Hell be associated with a lower frequency of criminalization of – or at least lesser social punishments for – heresy, apostasy, and so on?
      4. On the issue of whether incontrovertible evidence of God’s existence would prevent morally significant choices (and apart from the fact that coercion against some of those choices would be a good thing), I would argue that that’s not the case, also for several reasons, including the reasons I mentioned above in the case of law enforcement – i.e., there are morally significant choices regardless of effectiveness -, and the fact that God would never create Hell.
      Granted, many theists hold that God would create Hell, but even assuming for the sake of the argument that he would, and even leaving the other reasons aside, there is the following issue:
      Even people who seem to be and probably are completely convinced that God exists and that Hell exists, make morally significant choices all the time – and even theists who reject the hiddenness argument seem to generally accept this fact.
      For example, being a convinced member of IS, or Al-Qaeda, or a convinced witch hunter, inquisitor, or a Pope (from today or from the Middle Ages), etc., is not a property that precludes morally significant choices, no matter how convinced those people are/were. And it’s not that they made morally significant choices only on their way towards becoming so convinced, but they keep/kept making them aftrerwards.
      Granted, those people don’t/didn’t have incontrovertible evidence of the existence of Hell, or that Catholicism, Islam, etc., is true, etc. But regardless, some of them appear to be just as convinced as if they had conclusive evidence, and yet that does not preclude the moral significance of their choices (even without counting any choices they had to make in order to end up assigning probability close to 1 to their religion); so why would conviction of the existence of God and Hell based on actual evidence preclude morally signficant choices?

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    2. Ligurio Avatar
      Ligurio

      Ahh…, but universalism is true. 🙂

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