Is Religion the Opium of the Masses? Psychological Objections to Faith (Part 1)

In The Future of an Illusion, Sigmund Freud argues that “religious ideas have arisen from the same need as have all other achievements of civilization: from the necessity of defending oneself against the crushingly superior force of nature” (p. 21). According to Freud, we project supernatural agency onto reality because it helps us deal with a cruel and unpredictable world. Karl Marx resonates with this view, as evidenced by his famous claim that, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world...It is the opium of the people” (quoted in Pals, p. 146). In sum, religion is attractive because it helps us cope with losses, fears, weakness, and deprivations. 

In a series of two blogs, I take a quick look at the relative-deprivation theory of religious conversion. Among the various theories explaining why people convert to religion, the relative-deprivation theory claims that deprivations are at the root of conversions and sect formations. Individuals experience a subjective sense of deprivation -- disconnect between what they want and what they actually have -- which creates a desire (whether conscious or subconscious) for compensation or relief from the perceived deprivation. The result is either conversion to an existing religion or creation of a new religious sect. Religion is attractive because it purports to offer compensation for our deprivations (see part 2 for more on these deprivations). Compensation may come in the form of hope of an afterlife, community acceptance, relief from guilt, acclaimed healing (whether spiritual, emotional, or physical), existential meaning and purpose, and so on. Clearly, there are Freudian and Marxist overtones to the relative-deprivation theory.

  Some Thoughts

It isn't uncommon to hear something like the relative-deprivation theory echoed among skeptics of religion. In the neighborhood of psychological objections to religious belief, the following are ubiquitous:

"you only believe in God because it helps you cope with [insert struggle]"

"religion is a crutch"

"religion is a psychological projection"

"You pick Christianity over other religions because [insert some reason having to do with personal preferences and/or cultural upbringing]"

My general concern with these "you-just-believe-because-psychology" claims is this: even if these claims are true about many people, we need to be careful about what else we conclude from them. Some fallacies loom. First, suppose Jones believes in God only because it helps her cope with life or because she finds it convenient to believe what her parents believe. Here's what we know: Jones's belief in God is not rationally driven [1]. But it does not follow that belief in God is not or cannot be rationally vindicated. Even if some believer cannot rationally vindicate her beliefs, it does not follow that what she believes couldn't be rationally vindicated. Jack may believe that the earth revolves around the sun for reasons that have nothing to do with the evidence for heliocentricism (perhaps Jack is comforted by believing that the Earth is secure orbiting around a massive hydrogen-eating ball of gas like the sun). While Jack's belief in heliocentricism is not rational, it does not follow that the sun-centered model cannot be rationally defended. In fact, it has some pretty good evidence going for it...even if some of its adherents don't accept it on the basis of such evidence. We need to be sensitive to the same thing when it comes to religion. While someone's belief in God may not be rational, belief in God could still be rationally vindicated. Hence, it is a fallacy to move from "Jones's belief in God/religion is irrational" to "belief in God/religion is irrational." So, we can ask:

      (Q1) Is Jack's belief in X rational?

And we can ask:

      (Q2) Is X rationally vindicable?

Getting an answer to Q1 is a matter of understanding Jacks' psychology, Jack's evidence, Jack's evidential standards, and so on. Q2, on the other hand, bracket's considerations of any particular adherent of X and is answered by considering the rational grounds for X that are available to us.

Second, and related to the first point, even if belief in God is a helpful crutch or the result of wish fulfillment for some people, it doesn't follow that belief in God is false. Maybe belief in God is rewarding in all the ways people envisage while also being true. The simple point is this: wishing for something doesn't mean it isn't true. I really long for water after a long run, but that doesn't mean water doesn't exist. Of course, wishing for something to be true doesn't make it true, either. In any case, maybe religion is both existentially rewarding and true. The two aren't incompatible.

Third, while my upbringing in a Christian home may have played a significant causal role in leading me to accept Christianity, it doesn't follow that my Christian beliefs can't be rationally held. If I had grown up in the medieval ages, I wouldn't believe in modern atomic theory, Newtonian mechanics, heliocentricism, and so on. My belief in modern atomic theory is, to a significant degree, a result of my upbringing in a 21st century western culture. Does that mean that my belief in atomic theory is unjustified? Hardly. In addition to whatever causal role my historical position plays in my current beliefs about atoms, my beliefs are blessed to have good evidence in their favor. And, moreover, being lucky to have good evidence for X does not make one's evidence cease to be good evidence for X [2]. If someone flips a coin to decide whether to share with you all the evidence for modern atomic theory and the coin lands in your favor, the evidence doesn't lose its quality. You should believe what your evidence supports even if you are, in some sense, lucky to have it.  Likewise, you can be lucky to have evidence for God's existence because of your religious background or environment. That doesn't necessarily make the evidence poor evidence. 

Finally, if a skeptic brings up psychological considerations to argue that a person's religious beliefs are not rationally justified, they're facing a double-edged sword, no? If religious folks are susceptible to wish-fulfillment and cultural influences, why are skeptics immune to the same forces? "You only believe in God because you want to believe that life has an ultimate meaning," can cut the other way: "you only disbelieve because it suits your personal interests [fill in some story about how belief in/relationship with God would thwart one's personal interests" (agnostic philosopher, Thomas Nagel, makes a confession like this).  

The most important point is this: the evidence for religious belief (rather than the origins of and psychological motivations for holding them) are what really matter when it comes to evaluating religion. We're all susceptible to various psycho-social factors when it comes to our doxastic lives. Here's the question we should really care about: does my evidence provide on-balance support for belief in religion/God? 

In sum, we need to distinguish between the psychology of religion and the rationality of religion. Some people will and do believe for non-rational (and even irrational) reasons. But whether or not a religion itself is rational to believe depends on evidential and rational considerations, not usually upon the psychology of its adherents [3]. Likewise, whether a religion is true depends on how the world is, not on the motivations for and origins of people's belief in it. Third, we can be lucky to have all sorts of beliefs and all sorts of evidence without the luckiness corroding the rational goodness of those beliefs or the quality of the evidence. Finally, if Christianity is true, then God has invited the broken and weary to lean on him like a crutch (Matthew 11:28) while also (I think) giving them good evidence to believe that he is the right crutch to lean on. Of course, we need to be careful. There is a fine line between merely using God as a compensator, on the one hand, and treating Him like someone worth loving and following even when things are difficult, on the other. The real beauty of Christianity is not, I think, that God promises to compensate us for all our deprivations (he doesn't), but that He will rectify the losses that truly matter, making us more and more suited for enjoying that without which we are truly deprived––relationship with Him.

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Footnotes and Bibliography:

[1] Hereafter, any use of "rational" and "justified" is intended to refer to epistemic rationality/justification rather than practical rationality/justification. Another clarification: I am not suggesting that someone is unjustified for believing what their parents or religious authorities believe. Testimony can be a source of justification. So it may be that for some people (especially young children) testimony to the truth of some religion serves as solid justification for belief. As a person's knowledge increases, however, they may need more evidence or "defeater-defeaters" to sustain a justified belief. Just imagine that Jones in the example above is not basing her belief in Christianity in the right way. One can become aware of X because a trusted figure testifies to X, without that testimony being the basis for one's belief that X.
[2] It might make one's evidence or justification incapable of generating knowledge, though. But I'm not too sure. On this matter, there are some weird "barn cases" discussed in epistemology that cause quite a bit of philosophical ruckus. For some helpful thoughts about "lucky/accidental" beliefs and their relationship to knowledge, see McGrew and Mgrew's 2007 work, Internalism and Epistemology.
[3] Here's a possible exception. If religion X predicts that some psychological state of affairs Y will be true of its adherents and Y fails to obtain, then, all else being equal, the failure of Y to obtain counts as evidence against religion X.

Dawson, Comprehending Cults: The Sociology of New Religious Movements. 

Pals, Introducing Religion: Readings From the Classic Theorists.