Religious Believers Normally Do and Should Want Their Religious Credences to Align with Their Factual Beliefs

comments on Neil Van Leeuwen's Religion as Make-Believe

Next week (at the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology) I'll be delivering comments on Neil Van Leeuwen's new book, Religion as Make-Believe. Neil argues that many (most?) people don't actually "factually believe" the doctrines of their religion, even if they profess belief. Instead, the typical attitude is one of "religious credence", which is closer to pretense or make-believe.

Below are my draft comments. Comments and further reactions welcome!

Highlights of Van Leeuwen’s View

Neil distinguishes factual beliefs from religious credences. If you factually believe something – for example, that there’s beer in the fridge – that belief will generally have four functional features:

(1.) It is involuntary. You can’t help but believe that there’s beer in the fridge upon looking in the fridge and seeing the beer.

(2.) It is vulnerable to evidence. If you later look in the fridge and discover no beer, your belief that there is beer in the fridge will vanish.

(3.) It guides actions across the board. Regardless of context, if the question of whether beer is in your fridge becomes relevant to your actions, you will act in light of that belief.

(4.) It provides the informational background governing other attitudes. For example, if you imagine a beer-loving guest opening the fridge, you will imagine them also noticing the beer in there.

Religious credences, Neil argues, have none of those features. If you “religiously creed” that God condemns masturbators to Hell, that attitude is:

(1.) Voluntary. In some sense – maybe unconsciously – you choose to have this religious credence.

(2.) Invulnerable to evidence. Factual evidence, for example, scientific evidence of the non-existence of Hell, will not cause the credence to disappear.

(3.) Guides actions only in limited contexts. For example, it doesn’t prevent you from engaging in the condemned behavior in the way a factual belief of the same content presumably would.

(4.) Doesn’t reliably govern other attitudes. For example, if you imagine others engaging in the behavior, it doesn’t follow that you will imagine God also condemning them.

Although some people may factually believe some of their religious doctrines, Neil holds that commonly what religious people say they “believe” they in fact only religiously creed.

Neil characterizes his view as a “two map” view of factual belief and religious credence. Many religious people have one picture of the world – one map – concerning what they factually believe, and a different picture of the world – a different map – concerning what they religiously creed. These maps might conflict: One might factually believe that Earth is billions of years old and religiously creed that it is less than a million years old. Such conflict need not be rationally troubling, since the attitudes are different. Compare: You might believe that Earth is billions of years old but imagine, desire, or assume for the sake of argument that it is less than a million years old. Although the contents of these attitudes conflict, there is no irrationality. What you imagine, desire, or assume for the sake of argument needn’t match what you factually believe. There are different maps, employed for different purposes. On Neil’s view, the same holds for religious credence.

There’s much I find plausible and attractive in Neil’s view. In particular, I fully support the idea that if someone sincerely asserts a religious proposition but doesn’t generally act and react as if that proposition is true, they can’t accurately be described as believing, or at least fully believing, that proposition.

However, I think it will be more productive to focus on points of disagreement.

First Concern: The Distinction Is Too Sharp

Neil generally speaks as though the attitudes of factual belief and religious credence split sharply into two distinct kinds. I’m not sure how much depends on this, but I’m inclined to think it’s a spectrum, with lots in the middle. Middling cases might especially include emotionally loaded attitudes where the evidence is not in-your-face compelling. Consider, for example, my attitude toward the proposition my daughter has a great eye for fashion. This is something she cares about, an important part of how she thinks of herself, and I sincerely and enthusiastically affirm it. Is this attitude voluntary or involuntary? Well, to some extent it is a reaction to evidence; but to some extent I suspect I hold on to it in part because I want to affirm her self-conception. Is it vulnerable to counterevidence? Well, maybe if I saw again and again signs of bad fashion taste, my attitude would disappear; but it might require more counterevidence than for an attitude in which I am less invested. It’s somewhat counterevidence resistant. Does it guide my inferences across contexts? Well, probably – but suppose she says she wants to pursue a career in fashion, the success of which would depend on her really having a great eye. Now I feel the bubbling up of some anxiety about the truth of the proposition, which I don’t normally feel in other contexts. It’s not a religious credence certainly, but it has some of those features, to some degree.

Another case might be philosophical views. I’m pretty invested, for example, in my dispositionalist approach to belief. Is my dispositionalism vulnerable to evidence? I’d like to hope that if enough counterevidence accumulated, I would abandon the view. But I also admit that my investment in the view likely makes my attitude somewhat counterevidence resistant. Did I choose it voluntarily? I remember being immediately attracted to it in graduate school, when two of my favorite interlocutors at the time, Victoria McGeer and John Heil, both described dispositionalism about belief as underappreciated. I felt its attractions immediately and perhaps in some sense chose it, before I had fully thought through the range of pro and con arguments. In general, I think, students quickly tend to find philosophical views attractive or repellent, even before they are familiar enough with the argumentative landscape to be able to effectively defend their preferred views against well informed opponents; and typically (not always) they stick with the views that initially attracted them. Is this choice? Well, it’s more like choice than what happens to me when I open the fridge and simply see whether it contains beer. If religious credences are chosen, perhaps philosophical attitudes are in a similar sense partly chosen. There might be a social component, too: People you like tend to have this philosophical view, people you dislilke tend to have this other one. As for widespread cognitive governance: There’s a small literature on the question of whether the views philosophers endorse in the classroom and in journal articles do, or do not, govern their choices outside of philosophical contexts. I suspect the answer is: partly.

I also suspect that typical religious credences aren’t quite as voluntary, evidentially invulnerable, and context constrained as would be suggested by a sharp-lines picture. Someone who religiously creeds that God condemns masturbators might feel to some extent correctly that that position is forced upon them by their other commitments and might be delighted to find and respond to evidence that it is false. And although as Neil notes, citing Dennett, they might engage in the activity in a way that makes little sense if they literally think they are risking eternal Hell, people with this particular credence might well feel nervous, guilty, and like they are taking a risk which they hope God will later forgive. If so, their credence affects their thinking in contexts beyond Sunday – and maybe generally when it’s relevant.

Second Concern: Much of Neil’s Evidence Can Be Explained by Weak Belief

Reading the book, I kept being niggled by the idea that much (but not all) of the evidence Neil marshals for his view could be explained if religious people factually believe what they say they believe, but don’t factually believe it with high confidence. On page 226, Neil articulates this thought as the “weak belief” explanation of the seeming irrationality of religious attitudes.

Weak belief can’t be the whole story. Even a 60% confidence in eternal damnation ought to be enough to choke off virtually any behavior, so if the behavior continues, it can’t be a rational reaction to low confidence.

Still, Neil makes much out of the fact that Vineyard members who claim in religious contexts that a shock they experienced from their coffeemaker was a demonic attack will also repair their coffeemaker and describe the shock in a more mundane way in non-religious contexts (p. 78-80). People who engage in petitionary prayer for healing also go to see the doctor (p. 86-88). And people often confess doubt about their religion (p. 93-95, 124-125). Such facts are perhaps excellent evidence that such people don’t believe with 100% confidence that the demon shocked them, that the prayer will heal them, and that the central tenets of their religion are all true. But these facts are virtually no evidence against the possibility that people have ordinary factual belief of perhaps 75% confidence that the demon shocked them, that the prayer will heal, and that their religion is true. Their alternative explanations, backup plans, and expressions of anxious doubt might be entirely appropriate and rational manifestations of low-confidence factual belief.

Third Concern: If There Are Two Maps, Why Does It Feel Like They Shouldn’t Conflict?

Consider cases where religious credences conflict with mainstream secular factual belief, such as the creationist attitude that Earth is less than a million years old and the Mormon attitude that American Indians descended from Israelites (p. 123-124). There is no rational conflict whatsoever between believing that Earth is billions of years old or that American Indians descended from East Asians and desiring that Earth is not billions of years old and that American Indians did not descend from East Asians. Nor is there any conflict between mainstream secular factual beliefs and imagining or assuming for the sake of argument that Earth is young or that American Indians descended from Israelites. For these attitude pairs, we really can construct two conflicting maps, feeling no rational pressure from their conflict. Here’s the map displaying what I factually believe, and here’s this other different map displaying what I desire, or imagine, or assume for sake of the present argument.

But it doesn’t seem like we are, or should be, as easygoing about conflicts between our religious attitudes and our factual beliefs. Of course, some people are. Some people will happily say I factually think that Earth is billions of years old but my religious attitude is that Earth is young, and I feel no conflict or tension between these two attitudes. But for the most part, I expect, to the extent people are invested in their religious credences they will reject conflicting factual content. They will say “Earth really is young. Mainstream science is wrong.” They feel the tension. This suggests that there aren’t really two maps with conflicting content, but one map, either representing Earth as old or representing Earth as young. If they buy the science, they reinterpret the creation stories as myths or metaphors. If they insist that the creation stories are literally true, then they reject the scientific consensus. What most people don’t do is hold both the standard scientific belief that Earth is literally old and the religious credence that Earth is literally young. At least, this appears to be so in most mainstream U.S. religious Christian cultures.

A one-map view nicely explains this felt tension. Neil’s two maps view needs to do more to explain why there’s a felt need for religious credence and factual belief to conform to each other. I raised a version of this concern in a blog post in 2022, developing an objection articulated by Tom Kelly in oral discussion. Neil has dubbed it the Rational Pressure Argument.

Neil’s response, in a guest post on my blog, was to suggest that there are some attitudes distinct from belief that are also subject to this type of rational pressure. Guessing is not believing, for example, but your guesses shouldn’t conflict with your factual beliefs. If you factually believe that the jar contains fewer than 8000 jelly beans, you’d better not guess that it actually contains 9041. If you hypothesize or accept in a scientific context that Gene X causes Disease Y, you’d better not firmly believe that Gene X has nothing to do with Disease Y. Thus, Neil argues, it does not follow from the felt conflict between the religious attitude and the factual belief that the religious attitude is a factual belief. Guesses and hypotheses are not beliefs and yet generate similar felt conflict.

That might be so. But the Rational Pressure Argument still creates a challenge for Neil’s two map view. Guessing and hypothesizing are different attitudes from factual belief, but they use the same map. My map of the jelly bean jar says there are 4000-8000 jelly beans. I now stick a pin in this map at 7000; that’s my guess. My map of the causes of Disease Y doesn’t specify what genes are involved, and because of this vagueness, I can put in a pin on Gene X as a hypothesized cause. The belief map constrains the guesses and hypotheses because the guesses and hypotheses are specifications within that same map. I don’t have a separate and possibly conflicting guess map and hypothesis map in the way that I can have a separate desire map or imagination map.

I thus propose that in our culture people typically feel the need to avoid conflict between their religious attitudes and their factual beliefs; and this suggests that they feel pressure to fit their religious understandings together with their ordinary everyday and scientific understandings into a single, coherent map of how the world really is, according to them.

Thanks for the awesome book, Neil! I philosophically creed some concerns, but I invite you to infer nothing from that about my factual beliefs.