In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Karl Giberson and Randall Stephens lamented “the evangelical rejection of reason.” The lay evangelical community, they explain, would rather get its science from folks like the young-Earth creationist Ken Ham than from the evolution-believing NIH director Francis Collins, even though both are evangelicals.

As someone raised in the evangelical community, I am poignantly aware of the problem they describe. I grew up listening to James Dobson on the radio, reading books by Ken Ham, and learning to view the environmental movement as a left-wing conspiracy. I was shocked, then, when upon going off to study biology at an evangelical college, I discovered that the vast majority of professors at such colleges accept evolution and support the environmental movement.

Why is there such a disconnect between the lay evangelical community and the best evangelical scholars when it comes to science? In my book Broken Words: The Abuse of Science and Faith in American Politics, in addition to critiquing popular evangelical beliefs, I also explore the sources of this discrepancy.

Lay evangelicals evaluate the arguments made by “experts” in a manner different from many non-evangelicals. The latter will often ask: How prestigious is her academic pedigree? Is she representing the consensus of similarly credentialed experts? Insofar as I can understand her arguments, do they convince me? Lay evangelicals ask different questions: How good of a Christian is this guy? (Or, in evangelical parlance, “How is his walk with the LORD?”) How closely do his arguments line up with my understanding of the Bible? Is this guy one of us?

Evangelicals also tend to come under the sway of those with the biggest microphones, not the best arguments. Although many evangelical scholars are also capable of projecting piety, they rarely have the resources to flood the airwaves or the communication skills to connect with the average believer. What’s more, evangelical scholars, despite often lamenting the intellectual problems with the lay community, are generally more interested in pursuing scholarship than becoming the type of rousing, populist leader necessary to redirect evangelical Christianity.

The evangelical community also keeps its scholars in check. When a college’s base of donors, prospective students, and even board of trustees are made up of lay evangelicals, this places severe limits on what its scholars can say publicly. This fact became apparent at my alma mater, Calvin College, when public outcry and the powers that be combined to silence two scholars advocating the acceptance of human evolution.

A final major source of this disconnect is the evangelical community’s understanding of the Bible. Most lay evangelicals understand the Bible as offering all they need to know on matters ranging from the origin of species to imminent destruction of the Earth. This notion makes experts unnecessary to form valid beliefs. But it is also untenable; what communities think is the “clear teaching of the Bible” varies throughout time and among cultures in a manner that can be directly traced to different starting beliefs. How lay evangelicals interpret the Bible, ultimately, reflects how those they take as authority figures interpret it.

The disconnect between lay evangelicals and scholars is a problem with tremendous consequences, both for politics and for the level of scientific literacy in America. The vast majority of evangelicals are lay people, and thus, their beliefs, and not those of their scholars, are what end up mattering politically. What the lay evangelical community believes about evolution or global warming impacts which GOP candidates will succeed (Jon Huntsman doomed his campaign by voicing his belief in science on both issues). It impacts how much support will exist in the House and Senate for legislation dealing with climate change. It impacts what local school boards will teach in public schools about human origins.

It’s a problem, therefore, that affects every American. The first step to addressing it is to understand that. Secular America often laments the impact of evangelicals in politics, thinking their anti-intellectualism is inherent in evangelical Christianity. But as the community’s scholars demonstrate, it doesn’t have to be this way. The real question is how to replace the James Dobsons and Ken Hams of the world with their more qualified evangelical counterparts.

Patrick McNamara, the director of the Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory in the department of neurology at the Boston University School of Medicine, has worked on “developing an evolutionary approach to problems of brain and behavior and currently is studying the evolution of the frontal lobes, the evolution of the two mammalian sleep states (REM and NREM), and the evolution of religion in human cultures.”

McNamara is also the author of The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. “For billions of people the world over,” he writes, “religious experiences and beliefs influence who they marry, how they rear their children, whom they spend time with, and how they comport themselves in dally life. It may well be that we would not be as we find ourselves in the 21st century if our ancestors had not been intensely religious for most of the ‘life’ of our species.” McNamara thinks it’s the perfect time to develop a “real science of religion,” aided by breakthroughs in “anthropologic, cognitive, and neuroscientific studies of the manifold features of religious experiences and in evolutionary approaches to religious experiences and behaviors.”

I met up with McNamara at his office at Boston Medical Center about eight months ago. In the two-part interview embedded here, I ask him about recent developments in neuroscience and pose questions about how the biological sciences can inform religious studies and, even, religious history.

In my latest book, Principles of Neurotheology, I try to espouse a set of principles that might help guide the neurological study of religious and spiritual experiences moving forward. The goal is to address the philosophical, theological, and scientific issues related to this field. The question is, what will the future of neurotheology look like? What might neurotheology accomplish in the next five, 10, or even 50 years?

Neurotheology is still very early in its development. Truly combining neuroscience with religious and spiritual phenomena was only possible with the advent of modern brain imaging techniques. Before the development of these techniques, the rudiments of neurotheology were developed based primarily on animal models and speculation. Today, we have begun to uncover substantial information regarding the relationship between the human brain and religious and spiritual practices and experiences

In the next five years, neurotheology will likely continue to advance our understanding of how the brain is associated with religious and spiritual phenomena. Most likely, the brain imaging studies that have become an important aspect of neurotheology will continue to expand. There are many types of practices and experiences that remain to be evaluated using brain imaging techniques. Traditions might be compared, as well as the wide variety of practices within each tradition. Imaging studies, along with other clinical studies, will help us better understand not only what happens in the brain at the time of a particular practice, such as meditation or prayer, but also how such practices affect us over time. Already, we understand that practices like meditation and prayer can lower anxiety and depression, and even help the brain remember better. Such improvements are associated with long-term changes in the brain’s function. Thus, religion, spirituality, and God all can change your brain.

In addition to what we know about general brain function, future studies in the next five to 10 years will hopefully evaluate how a variety of neurotransmitter systems relate to religious and spiritual phenomena. Several early studies suggest that both dopamine and gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) are associated with practices like meditation. This is interesting since dopamine is associated with the reward system, movement, and memory. GABA is the primary inhibitory neurotransmitter, perhaps related to blissful experiences, that helps shut the mind down. But other neurotransmitters may be involved in complex interactions during religious and spiritual practices.

It may be that in the next 10 years, we can begin working toward what might be called a “religionome.” In this context, a religionome would be an attempt at cataloguing every different type of religious and spiritual practice and experience across all people, cultures, and traditions. This would integrate both subjective experiences, doctrinal and theological concepts, health-related components, and physiology in an overall evaluation of how human beings are religious and spiritual. This would also require an understanding of the differences between those who are religious or spiritual and those who are atheist or agnostic. In addition, neurotheology must help us try to understand when religious and spiritual beliefs turn negative, leading to hatred, violence, and terrorism.

In the far future, neurotheology could open up some fascinating possibilities. Since practices like meditation result in altered states of consciousness, neurotheology may help us understand the nature of consciousness and how it relates to the material world. Perhaps we might better understand how our consciousness affects ourselves and the world around us. Neurotheology may help us fully realize our religious or spiritual potential, finding the most effective ways of optimizing this part of ourselves and hopefully contributing to a more compassionate and understanding period of human existence. And it has always been my hope that a neurotheological approach might yield answers to some of the greatest questions in human history: Why are we here? Why is there something rather than nothing? What is the true nature of reality?

While these questions may seem impossible to address, I would argue that the best attempt requires an approach that integrates the best we can derive from science and the best we can derive from religious, spiritual, and philosophical pursuits. Will neurotheology lead humanity toward a new enlightenment? Only time will tell.

The Shroud of Turin is again on short-term display. When I first saw it many years ago, I immediately realized it was a fake because of gross errors in the image. Yet many continue to believe it is the actual burial shroud of Jesus, encouraged by a body of pro-shroud researchers who were allowed to present their case without rebuttal in a two-hour cable documentary timed to coincide with the exhibition. The Catholic Church had long maintained a neutral position on the nature of the object, but according to the Associated Press, the pope has now endorsed the shroud as a photographic image of the crucified Christ, which is already encouraging belief that the shroud is what it seems to be.
Unfortunately, Pope Benedict did so just before I posted an analysis that shows that, although they do not know it, he and other shroud advocates are in effect proposing that Jesus was pathologically hypocephalic. This embarrassing mistake
is occurring even though it has long been understood that the image’s body is too long relative to the head. Having done some work on the evolution of brain size, I realized a few weeks ago that that if this is because the head is too small, then the brain has to be undersized. The results of calculations confirm that the brain volume of the shroud image would have been well below human norms, and in the range of ancient Homo erectus. This awkward defect of the image has yet to be noticed.
The actual explanation for the deformity is that the shroud is a Gothic forgery, small heads being a standard artistic convention of the time, and radiometric dating places the cloth at that period. Hopefully, the results of this analysis will make a major contribution to finally discrediting the validity of the notorious shroud.

Humanism is a system of thought that rejects religious beliefs and centers on humans and their values, capacities, and worth. It gets its start, at least in the form we know it today, as a cultural and intellectual movement of the Renaissance, mainly as a result of the rediscovery and study of the literature, art, and civilization of ancient Greece and Rome. Thus, it has a negative and positive agenda. Down with religion; up with—well, whatever is otherwise understood to be the high products of human culture.
In some ways, humanism should now strike us as a very strange philosophy.
To show why, let me note some casual observations about a couple of recent magazine covers. First, there’s the December 19, 2009, issue of Science, which is, even now, precariously balanced on the cushy, cowhide leather arm of my recliner. There, emblazoned in full color, is a nearly photo-realistic, though painted, depiction of Ardipithecus radius, hailed as the “Breakthrough of the Year.”
So, 4.4 million years ago, we have this very near great-ape ancestor—not human, but very close in terms of primate morphology. And yet, even now, there is a celebrated philosophy of the human, the end-product result of some earlier creature, one extraordinarily similar to “Ardi.”
Then, there’s the January 2010 issue of National Geographic. On its cover, set against a techno-blue background, is an actual photo—one showing a shiny yet subdued metallic, 20-motor, cutting-edge bionic hand that mimics a human limb with unprecedented accuracy. Its user can control it via nerve impulses, and it also has sensors that register touch. But still, it’s attached to a human, the totem object of a celebrated philosophy.
Which brings me to the reason why humanism should strike us as strange. What is identifiably human sits precariously between two such conceptual bookends—the furry, prehuman apes that have yielded their place to us, their evolutionary prize, and the custom-designed bionics that hint humans can be but transitory figures in an ongoing development of biological beings. Humanism is a strange philosophy because its past is from the nonhuman and its future is toward the nonhuman, and yet it holds the celebration of what’s human to somehow be of ultimate value. Advocates of a religious worldview can rightly point to the limitations of such an outlook.
As a thought experiment, suppose a group of precocious 12-year-olds get together and formulate a philosophy, call it “adolescentism.” They celebrate newly noted bodily traits and all the fun and games of prepubescence. They know what they were, but are now not (e.g., primers); still, for the moment, they value what they are, not really in a position to understand what they shall be (adults). Thus, they declare their current state of ultimate value.
Adolescentism’s flaws are easily seen, since we all know the natural developmental cycle of children is to become adults. But contrast this with humanism, which does not entail a final, natural development. Humans are a temporary natural kind of biological entity; they will eventually become some other kind of thing.
In a way, theistic religion can offer a kind of generalization about evolutionary development that humanism cannot. Even when humans, as a species, transition into nonhuman kinds of entities, these entities will, for the fathomable future, still have minds. A flexible theism might take its cue from the 19th-century figure Ludwig Feuerbach, as one interpreter summarizes his thoughts:

What the devout mind worships as God is accordingly nothing but the idea of the human species imagined as a perfect individual. Once they are unmasked, shown for what they really are, religious belief and the idea of God can be useful instruments of human self-understanding, revealing to us our essential nature and worth.

Feuerbach thought any such illusory projections about God, stemming as they were from merely human minds, would alienate us and make us feel unworthy. However, there is another way to understand such ideas about God. The illusion of religion might be like the illusion of the center of mass between two objects, an applicable and proper abstraction about real empirical relationships. And a nuanced idea about God need not merely be an illusion, but also can apply to real things—humans (for now)—and to real goals, like an increase in the capacities of consciousness (coming later); a flexible (and prudent) theism would hold that the ideal of God stands as the infinite limit of where consciousness is going. So it should strike us as strange that humanism is waved as the banner of ultimate values. Better, I think, to wave a bigger banner.

From Brint Montgomery, who teaches philosophy at Southern Nazarene University:

The media has been reporting on a procedure that removes tumors from the parietal region of the brain and leaves the patient with a different view of their own spirituality—in this case, perceived self-transcendence (Field Notes, February 11, 2010). Typically a person’s viewpoint of their own spirituality remains constant over time, but Cosimo Urgesi, one of the study’s lead researchers, explains that “changes of neural activity in specific areas may modify even inherently stable dispositional traits.” So the quick takeaway is that the brain can be modified to produce spiritual experiences by means of surgical intervention on a particular area.
Fine. Of course, producing the phenomena of spiritual experiences by modifying localized brain states has seemingly been done before by Michael Persinger, who used a modified helmet that contained solenoids strategically placed over the brain’s temporal lobes. Although controversial, his apparatus apparently induces a kind of epilepsy (via magnetic fields). People who are psychologically disposed to process experiences in a particular way come away form the procedure having felt the presence of another entity. (It’s no big surprise that Richard Dawkins wasn’t one of them and Susan Blackmore was.)
People have rightly noticed that the physical modification of the brain, whether through an intervention like surgery or the passive electromagnetic force of waveforms, is not a sufficient condition for encountering the spiritual world. Even without techno-intervention, about 50 percent of people claim to have had at least one experience that they would describe as spiritual; but there are many reasons why a genuine spiritual experience causally originating from a transcendental plane or source of reality should be carefully differentiated from mere phenomena of such. (By analogy, the genuine experience of being chased by a polar bear should be carefully differentiated from when you merely dream it.)
Temporal lobe epilepsy, chemical imbalances in the brain, and other quite this-worldly chains of causation can certainly give someone the phenomena of a spiritual experience without it being the real thing. Suppose, for instance, someone were to surgically modify the V1 through V4 areas of the brain, or perhaps even passively influence them with a magnetic wave, vision-inducing helmet. If that person were to then have an experience like seeing a dancing pink elephant, this would say nothing about the existence (or not) of such an entity. It would merely show (in yet one more way) that manipulation of localized brain states have causal influences on changes in particular mind states. That some very specific brain states correlate with, and even cause, some specific and often peculiar mind states is hardly a radical claim. This kind of analysis has been well noted before now, so I want to push the issue in another direction.
Recently, 60 million people (including me) sacrificed some portion of our collective 2 billion dollars in spare change to watch James Cameron’s 3-D movie, Avatar. By donning a pair of polarized, plastic, cheap sunglasses (which could not have otherwise given a greater thrill to even the most ardent of ZZ Top groupies), fans were given the phenomenal experience (both literally and metaphorically) of immersion into a 3-D world. Movie industry observers have claimed that Cameron’s effort heralds the next great move in cinema experience, and such claims don’t seem overstated. People seek the same full-fledged, robust phenomena of experience in entertainment—and perhaps, more generally, in their interaction with all available technologies—as they would otherwise note in real life.
Within the last few years, futurists have spoken breathlessly about advancing virtual-reality environments, even posting the eventual appearance of touch-sensitive, force-feedback full body suits. But I find even these visions to be but stale leftovers filched from the drab reductionist tables of Enlightenment empiricism. Our minds are not just filled with reflections on the various modes of sense data. The most tasty manna in the 21sth century might very well fall from magnetic heaven.
Cameron had to wait 10 years after his 1997 vision of what he wanted to do, so that what technology can just now barely do would catch up. (The computing power necessary required a 10,000-square foot server farm making use of 4,000 servers, with 35,000 processor cores, which placed it well above the halfway mark of the world’s 500 most powerful supercomputers.)
Perhaps in the next 15 years, magnetic field technology will give us, as it were, just a little walk with Jesus, Vishnu vision 2.0, or an infinity of sequels reflecting the ever-reborn Buddha. (Of course, faith traditions that prohibit any image of their prophets, gods, or God will be limited to downloading an e-text novel adaption, sadly.) But beyond the sense-data visions of virtual piety will come the very phenomena of experience, all the aesthetic thrill of enlightenment, revelation, and the uncanny—now conveniently custom-canned by Universalist Studios, or some such Leviathanic, publicly traded stock issuer.
Of course, the dawning of entertainment’s heaven in a helmet has the corollary of offering a horror movie in hell. Even today’s standard-fare movies can be dangerous to the health of some people, posing an increased risk of photosensitive epileptic fits, a condition present in a small portion of the population. Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical novel Night and Steven Spielberg’s movie Schindler’s List were existentially overwhelming. What happens when we amplify these kinds of works? Would there likewise be an analogous risk to moral psychology with the super-addition of an artifactually induced, psycho-spiritual layer of experience?
It’s hard say, given that moral psychology has not been conveniently localized to some area or module of the brain. But hang on, sooner rather than later, we’ll all find out.

In 2003, Loren Coleman started the world’s first cryptozoology museum in Portland, Maine. Coleman’s International Cryptozoology Museum opened publicly in November 2009, and I recently made the trek north to see it. Cryptozoology—the search for animals not yet verified by Western science—is either a useful and legitimate zoological endeavor or a pseudoscience, depending on whom you ask. The media has focused intensely on the most legendary subjects of cryptozoology: the Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, and the Yeti. But aside from “the big three,” cryptozoologists claim a number of recent discoveries, including the woodland bison, the giant panda, the okapi (an African mammal related to the giraffe), and the coelacanth—a fish once believed to have been extinct since the Cretaceous period.
You cannot get a degree in cryptozoology. It is not a scientific discipline but rather a network of investigators (often using their own funds) with training in zoology, anthropology, or marine biology. Cryptozoology often resembles scientific research before the advent of professionalization, when discoveries were made not by research institutions but by “men of science” epitomized by individuals like Benjamin Franklin.
Like the first museums of the Enlightenment, Coleman’s museum evolved from his private “cabinet of curiosities.” The collection features a variety of plaster casts made from possible Bigfoot prints, primate skulls, and unusual pieces of taxidermy. Prizes include an 8-foot statue of Bigfoot covered in musk oxen fur and the rather hideous “Feejee mermaid” prop from the film P.T. Barnum.
However, the real attraction of the museum is Coleman himself, who gives personal guided tours of the collection. Coleman has training in both anthropology and zoology, as well as a master’s degree in social work and uncompleted doctoral work in both social anthropology and sociology. He began doing field investigations in 1960. Since then, he has published 30 books as well as countless articles and is one of the foremost experts on cryptozoology in the world.
Having written on the religious dimension of a West Virginian cryptid known as the Mothman, I wanted to talk to Coleman about the strange relationship between cryptozoology and religion. As it turns out, the search for hidden animals attracts two very different religious elements: the New Age and creationism. Cryptozoology has long been associated in the public consciousness with UFOs, ghosts, and the paranormal. Meanwhile, some creationists see cryptozoology as a way to gain scientific support for their claims. For example, textbooks created for private schools by the Accelerated Christian Education program claim that the Loch Ness Monster disproves evolution.
Coleman seemed mildly annoyed that his work has gained these associations. When the term “cryptozoology” was coined by Ivan Sanderson in the 1930s, and then extended in the 1950s by Bernard Heuvelmans, the field built on a history of “romantic zoology,” a way for explorers and animal collectors to find new species. Often, this work included the study of folklore, hypothesizing that legends of monsters could have a basis in fact. Since the 1970s, the discipline has struggled to distinguish itself from paranormal research and other studies involving the anomalous, especially as media interest began to focus on cryptozoology at the close of the 20th century. However, the search for funding often compels cryptozoologists to work with television shows that juxtapose the hunt for cryptids alongside psychics, hauntings, and alien abduction. This has occasionally led to confusion as to what cryptozoologists actually do.
“I’m just not interested in ghosts and aliens,” said Coleman. Coleman’s approach is empirical, and he remains agnostic as to the existence of Bigfoot. “Belief in Bigfoot”, he argues, “is the providence of religion.” Many sociologists of religion agree; in fact, the Baylor Religion Survey has been monitoring belief in Bigfoot for some time (see table 19).
But why would New Agers and creationists both be drawn to the hunt for Bigfoot? For many in the West, Darwin’s On the Origin of the Species (1859), as well as The Descent of Man (1871), seemed to confirm that religion and science had become incompatible. This perceived split inspired two very different responses.
In 1875, the Theosophical Society was established. Founders like Madame Helena Blavtasky sought to reconcile religion and science into an esoteric doctrine greater than both. Blavatsky’s writings describe enlightened beings from other planes of existence, the inhabitants of other planets, and a process of spiritual evolution that is largely at odds with Darwin’s ideas. Most of the features of the modern New Age milieu are derived from Theosophy.
In 1876, the first annual Niagara Bible Conference was held. This conference set the stage for the interdenominational fundamentalist movement. While early fundamentalists sought to reconcile religion and science, by the 1920s, a movement had begun to openly discredit evolution. This gave rise to several varieties of creationism and finally to what has been called “creation science.”
Both movements can be read as a religious response to the cultural authority of science. Within this struggle, the search for “the unexplained” becomes a powerful asset.
Because cryptozoology has positioned itself on the periphery of the scientific establishment, it offers these groups hope of undoing scientific paradigms and creating room for new sources of meaning and cultural authority. “Creation science” groups like Accelerated Christian Education and Answers in Genesis seek scientific credibility despite the overwhelming opposition of the scientific establishment. As such, they must rely heavily on fringe theories, sometimes distorting them to suit their own ends. The claim that Nessie disproves evolution is a case in point.
The periphery of science may also be a source of religious meaning unto itself.
If science “disenchanted” the world as Max Weber famously claimed, deviant fields of study like parapsychology and Ufology can offer a type of “re-enchantment” by introducing new mysterious forces into the world. A sighting of a cryptid is sometimes akin to what Rudolph Otto called “the wholly other,” an experience of both wonder and dread that takes on religious significance. In some cases, quasi-religious rites have formed around specific cryptids. Numerous rituals have been devised to summon Bigfoot and Nessie, often involving drums and chanting.
So what are we to make of cryptozoology? Perhaps we would do well to take Coleman’s advice to keep “an open but critical mind”—but it’s tough when spiritual seekers and polemicists are using it as ammunition against the scientific establishment.

From Brint Montgomery, who teaches philosophy at Southern Nazarene University:

The Wall Street Journal recently reported on religious independents. From the article:

According to the most recent American Religious Identification Survey, only 76 percent of Americans identify as Christians, down from 86 percent in 1990. But interestingly, while non-Christians are not choosing Islam or Judaism, neither are they choosing atheism. A poll done by Gallup in 2008 found that 15 percent of Americans—up from 8 percent in 1999—say they don’t believe in God, but they do believe in a “Higher Power” or “Universal Spirit.” More and more, Americans believe that the world was created by a spiritual being, but they reject the Torah, the Quran, and the New Testament as the explanation for it.

That article notes a well-known observation that, “Demographically speaking, the Religious Independents, like their political counterparts, are more affluent and well-educated than traditional God-believers.” More than one study has shown that people become less religious when they perceive themselves both as reasonably affluent and as much so as their neighbors. Moreover, a lack of income inequality and insecurity is a nice way to liberalize the religious outlook. Add a strong educational element and a pluralistic social environment, and that becomes a sure-fire formula against traditional religious affiliation.
Not surprisingly, such religious independents are also more likely to care about ethics and social justice than metaphysics and dogma:

Perhaps most importantly, 83 percent of Religious Independents say it is more important to be ethical than to be devout, compared to only 64 percent of traditionalists. Seventy-two percent of Religious Independents say that living a good spiritual life depends on how you act, not what you believe—compared with only 59 percent of traditional followers. In other words, Religious Independents have just as strong a desire for repairing the world, even as they reject the habits and practices of religion.
All this has substantial implications for American culture. Religious Independents don’t want to get involved in cultural wars or fights over Christmas crèches. They are focused on self-improvement, not evangelism. Without high priests of any sort, they’re more apt to resolve political and ethical questions on issues like abortion on a case-by-case basis, rather than with dicta handed down from on high.

That might be frustrating to advocates of institutional religion, since such an autonomous, case-by-case thinking style makes it difficult for such organizations to tell people what and how to think. Independent thinking on religious matters might merely be a corollary to the growing attitudes about privatization of religion. Indeed, for some time now, Americans have been sliding into a mode of privatized religion, one that see-saws opposite from their institutional religious loyalty. On the hit list of most likely to be privatized are men, whites, young Americans, liberal Protestants, and people of an indeterminate religious affiliation. Pacific and New England states also appear to be the most privatized. There is, of course, the subtle matter of teasing out the difference between independent thinkers generally and religious independents, for neither the latter nor the former entail one another. Still, both camps could present new kinds of difficulties for traditional religious institutions.
First, independent thinkers might come to decide that even if science never presents a complete and final explanation of the world, its method of encountering the world can, in fact, function as a fully satisfying, overall philosophy of life—something akin to the popular proverb that it’s the journey, not the destination that gives life meaning. In fact, there are even new kinds of collaborations in contemporary music that outright support this link between a scientific worldview and its unique, underlying aesthetic for human existence.
Second, religious independents might come to decide that large institutions are ultimately a corrupting force for true spirituality, and that such social structures are merely the dying relics from an age when kings and corporate titans were required to manage people. But human coordination now trends toward flat, highly networked models of teamwork rather than vertical models of authority. So, with the ever-growing connectivity of both technological and social networking, religious advocates can finally decouple themselves from the necessity (or perhaps even necessary evil) of large, managing bureaucracies and any  concomitant subordination to their autocracies of piety.

Although there has been contention between the forces of supernaturalism and the (until recently small number of) rationalists going back to ancient times, the struggle ramped up 150 years ago when On the Origin of the Species scientifically removed the need for a great designer. Since then, it has widely been assumed that the spiritual portion of the culture war is primarily an ideological struggle in which the side with the better arguments, or public relations campaign, will win. This view is unsubstantiated, however, in that it is not based on a scientific analysis of data published in the technical literature. Instead, it is the sort of conversational opinion that too easily becomes the conventional wisdom.
I am increasingly fed up with conversational opinions of all stripes, and for the last few years have been working to solve some of the basic problems concerning popular religion—why is it popular, why is it failing in the Western democracies, and do societies need religion to be successful as theists contend (to the degree that nonbelievers are the targets of discrimination in much of the world)?
Sociological research by me and others is producing results that at long last are answering some of the basic questions about popular religion and secularism. The 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth happened to see the publication of an unprecedented number of technical papers on the subject, four, which were built upon a series of earlier studies. It is becoming increasingly clear that much of the conventional wisdom about religion is wrong. Most people do not believe or not believe in the gods because they have examined and weighed the arguments, or even because they have been persuaded by propaganda from one side or the other, or are following their heritage. Nor do highly religious societies perform better than those that have abandoned supernaturalistic faith in the context of democracy.
A remarkably clear pattern provides the critical information for understanding why religion is and is not popular.
About a dozen nations that enjoy First World status based on a large middle-class majority feature universal health care, job and retirement security, low levels of income disparity, and relatively low rates of social pathology, including lethal crime, incarceration, juvenile and adult mortality, and adverse consequences of sexual activity. Without exception, these socioeconomically successful countries have seen severe declines in popular religion, to the degree that strong majorities do not believe in gods and an afterlife in the least dysfunctional democracies.
It is not hard to figure out why this is happening. It has long been understood that people do not feel as great a need to seek out the aid and protection of supernatural entities when they feel sufficiently safe and secure in their daily lives. So the majority of the populations of most First World nations have abandoned the churches. Even in the United States, only a quarter or less attend church on most Sundays, and just half have an absolute belief in a personal God, according to the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life. It follows that it is literally impossible for well-run societies to be highly religious because the mere achievement of low levels of social and economic problems (which humans naturally aspire to) consistently and dramatically reduces the popularity of religion.
Basically, folks are usually more focused on their daily lives than they are on matters divine and theological. Most people are vulnerable to turning to the supernatural only when they’re under strong psychological pressure to relieve stress and anxiety created by a defective environment. That religion is a form of mental self-medication in response to adverse environmental conditions is not all that surprising—and is far more plausible than the idea of the supernatural being real (much as crop circles are far more likely to be the result of pranksters having a good time than they are messages from extraterrestrials).
Religion is not, therefore, universal or deeply set in the human psyche, so fear of death or hell and a desire for a pleasant afterlife cannot be the primary motivating factor for mass faith. Nor is there a “God gene” or a “God module” that compels people to be pious. It is mainly a matter of socioeconomics. What humans are really strongly genetically programmed for is the materialism that our opposable thumbs and big brains evolved for and that civilization arose to satisfy. It is also becoming understood that people are not all that rational—that’s why three-quarters of Americans believe in something paranormal, whether it be ghosts or ESP, and why investment programs repeatedly devolve into pyramid schemes doomed to collapse.
Because the level of popular religion is largely the side effect of socioeconomics, the contest between nontheism and theism is not primarily an ideological contest, and partisans on both sides have much less ability to directly alter the course of events via argument and PR than they may wish or realize. This fits with what happened in Western Europe and other secular First World nations in the last few decades: With little fuss or bother, hundreds of millions casually dropped religion as their personal circumstances and safety improved. There was little in the way of a grand culture war. The churches proved impotent to stop the great Western secularization; even wildly popular John Paul II found he could do little about it. Nor was any major pro-atheist movement necessary to de-Christianize nations.
If the entire planet enjoyed the same level of secure prosperity seen in France and Sweden, there is little doubt that the number of devout believers would sink to the teens or single digits, no matter what organized religions did to save themselves—even if nontheists did little to promote secularization.
In principle, a mass education campaign to inform the world that successful societies cannot be strongly religious might have some impact. But because many would remain mired in a dysfunctional environment that favors supernaturalism, and because people are not highly rational, many if not most would reject the information as propaganda, much as many believe evolution and CO2-driven warming are deceits perpetuated by liberal secularists. (That billions believe in a loving, moral God despite massive suffering from disease and other “acts of God” is another example of mass defective thinking.) In realistic terms, the ability to educate people about the inability of religion to produce better societies is somewhat limited—consider the mediocre scores on tests of science and history knowledge even in the advanced democracies. But it is well worth the effort.
Efforts to change societies by incremental, democratic means work at the margins by persuading more of the fence sitters to join the movement than are recruited by the other side. Assuming that real-world evidence continues to demonstrate that a majority belief in the gods does not produce superior societies—as a scientist I will continue to favor this conclusion only as long as the evidence does so—and assuming that the public becomes increasingly aware of this fact, then the theists’ attempt to promote faith should lose ground. But an information campaign is not the core means to achieve success.
In the end, the churches, temples, and mosques will be emptied, and creationism will become a minority opinion, as a side effect of making America and Second and Third World nations into more equitable, stable, and secure middle-class consumer societies where people do not live in excessive fear of financial ruin due to losing their job, a serious illness, or old age. That sort of society, which has practical benefits to ordinary citizens, happens to be deadly to faith across the theological spectrum. The change can occur with startling swiftness. Spain was still a Catholic fascistic state ruled by the dictator Franco the year Saturday Night Live premiered. Now it is a prosperous democracy so secular and liberal that gays can get divorced and married.

In my mind, it all started with those signs on the sides of city buses. You know, the ones that say things like, “You can be good without God” or “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.” There are quite a few other pithy sayings as well, if you care to look. Soon enough, it hit me—the quaint social roles of the sly village atheist or disenfranchised ex-believer just ain’t what they used to be.
What’s put the “new” in the New Atheist movement is their assertiveness, or even outright aggressiveness, in the public space. For instance, at a recent speech at the University of Toronto, Christopher Hitchens exhorted that “religion should be treated with ridicule, hatred, and contempt,” and he is well known for practicing what he preaches when on the speaking and debate circuit.
This is in contrast with the more laid-back style of traditional atheists, such as that practiced by Paul Kurtz, the original founder of the Center for Inquiry (among other secular and skeptical organizations). Kurtz sought to offer a positive alternative to religion, known as eupraxsophy—roughly, a collection of philosophical commitments and practices that provide a cosmic outlook and ethical guide to living. He often joined in alliances with religious groups on matters of social justice, and hence had a much more cooperative disposition with religious institutions (though not with religion itself). Fortunately for everyone, some atheists, like Kurtz, dissent and modify their claws.
Then there’s Sam Harris, a subspecies of atheist with yet a different rhetorical manner than either of these two kinds. He takes a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach between the aggressive and cooperative style. “It’s really just a matter of conversation, and releasing these taboos that prevent us from applying pressure to people’s religious beliefs,” he says. As an example of where pressure is needed, he points to evolution-denying politicians: “there’s no penalty paid by these guys endorsing the starkest ignorance about the state of our knowledge about biology.” In Harris’ view, “there has to be a price paid.” Social pressure is being successfully applied to racism, which has fallen into disrepute in the last 50 years, and “real progress” has been made in talking about this social problem; likewise, he argues, “we can make the same kind of progress in talking about religion.”
Harris might want to recalibrate his manometer, though, since the pressure against racism and the pressure against religion are not of the same variety.
Although racism is straightforwardly bad for those to whom it’s applied, and demonstrably bad for societies that advocate it, the case for religion is much more ambiguous. In his discussion on whether religion oppresses women, for example, Nicholas Kristof makes some particular observations that apply more generally to religion’s role in greater society:

I’ve seen people kill in the name of religion, and I’ve seen people reject condoms in the name of religion even as a tool for fighting AIDS (which usually means people dying). But I’ve also seen Catholic nuns showing unbelievable courage and compassion in corners of the world where no other aid workers are around, and mission clinics and church-financed schools too numerous to mention. And in Islamic countries, I’ve seen mullahs who are hypocritical misogynists but also some imams who are leading a push for education and justice.

Admittedly, taking only what Kristof (or anyone) has seen is but anecdotal evidence. Fine—but just how would one measure billions of hidden, unreported acts of kindness or of oppression and then quantify these into a risk assessment for deciding whether to be religious or to allow freedom of religious practice within a society?
The difficulty is not just gathering the data but asking the right questions. This always struck me as the problem behind Richard Dawkins’ histrionic claim that religion and faith-based education is a form of child abuse. Yes, sometimes injurious results come from religious practice and religious eduction, but sometimes wondrous results appear too. Yet what’s injurious and what’s wondrous? Dawkins likes to anecdotally cherry-pick sexual abuse stories for appraisal of religion’s effects on children. This method nicely poisons the stimulus-response well by setting up emotional revulsion just before a discussion on religion. But he does not seem to give equal time to stories about children who started as throwaways of society and then found success in life through opportunities provided by institutions dedicated to religion. (Call me, Richard, I’ll be happy to supply you a few.)
If something really is an evil, then social pressure, even to the point of aggression, may be called for. But since religion’s overall effects have not been (and perhaps cannot be) scientifically established one way or another, I find it somewhat ironic that those New Atheists who rightly advocate evidentiary thinking by means of scientific investigation so readily default to either offensive vitriol or a bad-until-proven-good stance against religion.
There’s more than a bit of dissent within the ranks of atheism on how best to engage religion without alienating society, and my hope is that some healthy crossover from agnosticism will make all of them a bit more fit for our 21st-century environment.