Let’s Fix It: Is It Religion’s Turn to Step into the Confessional?

In this series of posts, Influencers explain what they wish they could fix — and how. Read all the stories here and write your own (please include the hashtag #FixIt in the body of your post).

Religion is one of the oldest existing institutions and, according to the logic of evolutionary psychology, its endurance implies that religion is not entirely without merit. Whether or not you agree with this argument, there are a few features that spring up across many religions that I believe are worth saving.

The Golden Rule is one: Treat others as you would like to be treated. This is a beautiful rule, and I can’t imagine anyone arguing that it isn’t important for society. Then there is the concept of generosity, the precondition for helping those who are less fortunate than you. In Judaism, we have “tithing,” where we give 10 percent of our income to charity, a tradition I try to keep. Or think about the cathartic act of confession. Confession, or atonement, allows us to take a moment to reflect on our personal failures and make amends with ourselves and others. These are just a few principles that appear in some form or another across religions. More generally, religions create rules to simplify choice sets and, ideally, to help us make better decisions.

I could continue with all the aspects that I like about religion, but at the same time it’s impossible to look at the world and ignore religion’s bloody histories. It doesn’t take a religious scholar to know that countless wars have been fought in the name of religion. Religion is a mixed blessing, as they say; it has a wonderful potential but appears to be inherently divisive in nature. What is it about religion, then, that creates such animosity toward others? The answer, I believe, can be found as a consequence of a most basic tendency of humans: the need to categorize.

As humans, we have an affinity for categories. We can’t help placing everything we see, hear, touch, smell, think, and so on, into the neat little buckets where we think they belong. It simplifies our lives, for the most part, saving time and energy by decreasing cognitive load. But it can also get us into trouble.

You see, sometimes it is fine to make assumptions involving people in other categories — such as how likely you are to get a speeding ticket when the car behind you is a stretch limo versus a police car (and for those of you who have any doubts, you are certainly more likely to be pulled over by the police car). However, the danger of discrimination reveals itself when white people are more likely to receive job offers than black people, or when women are promoted less and paid less than men, or… well, you get the point.

The insidious nature of categorical thinking brings with it stereotypes and the mentality of ingroups, or “us” versus “them.” Religion is particularly prone to categorical thinking; one inevitable consequence of having many religions is that it divides people into categories, and these people form strong ingroups within their own religions. Highly religious people tend to be extraordinarily close within their own religions and have strong community ties, but not be as accepting of other religions.

This tendency occurs because there is a tradeoff between ingroup cohesion (and strong identification with others of the same ingroup, which is religion in this case), and outgroup acceptance. It is very difficult to have both of these, both within and outside the religious arena. We see people in our own category as subjectively better (smarter, kinder, more thoughtful, more generous, and so on), and outgroups as worse on every dimension. For a group to be cohesive and have a strong group identity, it must have a strong differentiation between insiders and outsiders.

This is the fundamental problem that we are faced with when we consider how to “fix” religion. We don’t want to rid the world of cognitive diversity, but we do want to get along. So, to keep the good and do away with the bad, we would need to get rid of this tradeoff (i.e., have the strong cohesion within religion A without pitting it against religion B).

Changing this fundamental aspect of human behavior would require a minor miracle, but since we are on the topic of religion, anything is possible. And if we really do need an outgroup to team up against, why not choose the Martians? Team Earth could even decide that the Martians are trying to burn us to death with their solar rays, and we’ll band together as a cohesive unit to do something about global warming.

Photo: boscorelli / shutterstock