Making God In Our Image
I have to chalk this one up to, “As if we didn’t already know that.” But it helps to have a little scientific research to validate the idea.
Ryan Sager offers up a neat little experiment from a guy named Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago. Ryan describes the experiment below.
Epley asked different groups of volunteers to rate their own beliefs about important issues such as abortion, same-sex marriage, affirmative action, the death penalty, the Iraq War, and the legalisation of marijuana. The volunteers also had to speculate about God’s take on these issues, as well as the stances of an “average American”, Bill Gates (a celebrity with relatively unknown beliefs) and George Bush (a celebrity whose positions are well-known).
Epley surveyed commuters at a Boston train station, university undergraduates, and 1,000 adults from a nationally representative database. In every case, he found that people’s own attitudes and beliefs matched those they suggested for God more precisely than those they suggested for the other humans
Of course, correlation doesn’t imply causation – rather than people imprinting their beliefs onto God, it could be that people were using God’s beliefs as a guide to their own. Epley tried to control for that by asking his recruits to talk about their own beliefs first, and then presenting God and the others in a random order. And as better evidence of causality, Epley showed that he could change people’s views on God’s will by manipulating their own beliefs.
He showed some 145 volunteers a strong argument in favour of affirmative action (it counters workplace biases) and a weak argument opposing it (it raises uncomfortable issues). Others heard a strong argument against (reverse discrimination) and a weak argument for (Britney and Paris agree!). The recruits did concur that the allegedly stronger argument was indeed stronger. Those who read the overall positive propaganda were not only more supportive of affirmative action but more likely to think that God would be in the pro-camp too.
Ryan breaks it down for us.
In another experiment, Epley had people change their own opinions, by writing an essay in favor of or opposed to their own view on a subject. Needless to say, God’s opinion once again moved along with the the subjects’ (and the subjects’ views moved in line with whatever they wrote — another little cognitive bias we have).
Finally, Epley found that when people contemplated God’s opinions, their brains activated similarly to when they were contemplating their own opinions — the same was not true when they contemplated the opinions of other people.
So, what does it mean? Well, as they say: “God created man in his own image and man, being a gentleman, returned the favor.”
All I can say is, “Doooooooooh!” I’ve said it before that I think neuroscience is going to go a long way towards breaking down our traditional notions of religion, so that we can get back to what it means to be human.
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