The New York Times has written another article about religion without even knowing it.
The author, Benedict Carey, theorizes that people who play the lottery have their own brand of motivating psychology that drives them to make fools’ bets week after week. After all, playing the lottery is the nation’s most popular form of gambling: 66% play sometime during the year, and 13% make it a weekly gig. It’s not intimidating, allows for harebrained numerology schemes (my birthday is magic!) and has almost zero learning curve.
Professor Lloyd Cohen, a law professor at George Mason University, argues that we see this behavior because people don’t understand the intrinsic pleasures that playing — not necessarily winning — the lottery can bring. The anticipation of winning, the fantasies it can spawn, are powerful, he says. It should be noted that Professor Cohen is himself a gambler and self-proclaimed card counter.
Where does religion fit into this? In many places. Throughout the article, I found myself wondering if the neurological mechanism that drives people to believe in the empty promises of the lottery is the same that leads people to believe in fundamental religious dogma.
“The people who denigrate lottery players are like 10-year-olds who are disgusted by the idea of sex: they are numb to its pleasures, so they say it’s not rational,” said Lloyd Cohen…
Playing a lottery is NOT rational. Indulgent and pleasurable in its own way? Maybe for some — but hardly rational. There’s absolutely no reason or rationality in it. This is where it hit me — this same thinking applies to religion. Religion is patently irrational, but for many, pleasure is found in the belief.
Dr. Cohen argues that lottery tickets are not an investment but a disposable consumer purchase, which changes the equation radically. Like a throwaway lifestyle magazine, lottery tickets engage transforming fantasies: a wine cellar, a pool, a vision of tropical blues and white sand. The difference is that the ticket can deliver.
Religion isn’t a mechanism of a rational mind but instead, to many people, a flexible belief system that anyone can play. Religion provides transforming fantasies too (heaven, the avoidance of eternal punishment, meeting God, reunion with deceased loved ones), and the ticket that can deliver it all is belief and adherence, to one degree or another, to religious practice.
And as long as the fantasy is possible, even a negligible probability of winning becomes paradoxically reinforcing, Dr. Cohen said. “One is willing to pay hard cash that it be so real, so objective, that it is actually calculable — by someone, even if not oneself,” he said.
Isn’t this what drives people to religious belief? That even a negligible chance of it being right becomes all the reinforcement they need to keep believing and practicing something that requires a lifelong suspension of disbelief? Is this thinking nothing more than Pascal’s Wager in disguise?
Neurobiological studies show that the brain areas that are triggered by the anticipation of winning the lottery are the same as those triggered by winning itself. I hypothesize that the same applies to religious folk: the prospect of a reward (heaven) stimulates the same pleasure centers of the brain as does the actual reward. It’s the means, not the end.
Are some people just neurologically hard-wired to believe in some things whereas others aren’t? Is the argument less about whether or not there really is a God and more about why we are so hell-bent on believing?
I’m thinking it is.
12 responses so far ↓
Stiletto Girl // March 14, 2007 at 4:00 pm
You know that thing called marriage and monogamy? Not natural but people aspire to do it anyway.
You know what they say, it’s not the kill it’s the thrill of the chase. Perhaps religious people want to be rewarded not because of the promise of pleasure that is guaranteed in the afterlife, but because they want to see some results for all the godd*mned hard work it takes to remain so virtuous and pious! But I suppose you said that in your own way.
Florida Lottery » The thinking behind playing the lottery and religious belief is … // March 14, 2007 at 4:24 pm
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Photo Buffet // March 14, 2007 at 9:31 pm
Benedict Carey hasn’t done his homework: “Religion provides transforming fantasies too (heaven, the avoidance of eternal punishment, meeting God, reunion with deceased loved ones), and the ticket that can deliver it all is belief and adherence, to one degree or another, to religious practice.”
There’s a huge difference between “religion” and “relationship” and that’s the chasm Carey has not crossed in his comparison. An empty religion based on “adherence” would be a sad state for anyone. The real deal brings joy that’s barely describable, and in no way can it be compared to the behavior that spawns gamblers.
Jeff Ventura // March 14, 2007 at 9:50 pm
Photo: the words you quote aren’t Carey’s; they’re mine.
Care to describe what the “real deal” is? Because I see the motivations of reward to be quite an interesting parallel.
Neal Watzman // March 14, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Thought provoking article here. On one level I can see the connection being made between religion and the fantasy or pleasure of playing the lottery, on the other hand, I cannot.
For some of the rather fundamentalist people that I’ve talked with, I get the sense that religion is a way to explain a rather bewildering and frightening world that they live in. It provides that rock of stability that enables them to carry on. As one guy quite sincerely remarked when I wondered if there really was a god, “don’t take that away from me, what then, would I believe?”
Jeff Ventura // March 14, 2007 at 10:24 pm
Neal: very astute comment. My point with my article is just to point out the similarity between the two psychologies for *some* people. For others, perhaps not so much.
Interesting what you say about your recent conversation: so many times I too have found that people are willing to accept a belief system on insufficient evidence to help them feel like they have greater meaning in the world, that there’s more to life. I suspect that in itself is an evolutionary mechanism, but that’s another topic.
Dentist // March 14, 2007 at 10:27 pm
Jeff, interesting take, what do you mean by this; “Religion isn’t a mechanism of a rational mind but instead, to many people, a flexible belief system that anyone can play.”
Specifically, I agree that some religious fanatics may be irrational but how is all religion irrational, or at least, why do you think it is?
Also, what do you mean by “a flexible belief system?” Are you refering to the different flavors of religion or something else?
Jeff Ventura // March 14, 2007 at 10:36 pm
Dentist: I don’t view religion as rational. I believe true faith in a religious context requires a perpetual suspension of disbelief, as some of the basic precepts of religion — as well as modern-day behavior of religious people — defy reason.
What I mean by flexible belief system is essentially religious moderates. So many people I know claim to be religious yet modify Christianity to be whatever they want it to be — not what it’s dogmatically defined as.
nonbeliever // March 15, 2007 at 1:20 am
Religion does defy logic according to the scientific/materialist paradigm currently dominant in most parts of the western world, because its central concepts do not proceed from any provable hypothesis, it does not provide any evidence that its claims are true, instead, at the very heart of the religious belief system, is the concept of “Faith”. In ideological discussions, religious people are invariably reduced to the baseline arguement that either “the Bible says so” or “I know because God spoke to me”.
Neither of these wholly subjective arguments would be expected to be taken seriously in any context outside the religious, as Richard Dawkins points out in his book, I could claim that there is a tea cup exactly half way between Earth and Mars and no-one would take me seriously, yet we live in a world in which we are required to respect totally subjective arguments on the basis that they are religious.
Jeff Ventura // March 15, 2007 at 6:22 am
nonbeliever: I’m familiar with the magic teacup theory that illustrates the concept of disprovability — which is a fallacy of trying to validate God’s existence. It’s similar to the flying spaghetti monster. I’ve read Harris and Dawkins.
90% of the National Science Foundation reject the idea of God. 90%. I’d say that’s defying the logic and reason these scientists know govern the natural world in which we live.
“Faith” is a strange license religious men and women grant one another when they knowingly embark into discussion that is patently unreasonable. In other areas which require evidence and data and proof to stand on their own, religion gets a pass under the guise of “faith.” It’s a complete departure from reason. I don’t buy it.
Neal Watzman // March 15, 2007 at 2:53 pm
Us humans use and likely need a lot of irrational, if you must, beliefs often simply enough to get us through another day. And I would think we could categorize “faith” as a belief.
For instance, we don’t know it to be a fact, but we have faith our car will start in the morning to get us to work. We have faith our children will grow up, be healthy, and live a long and prosperous life. We even have faith that the sun will rise tomorrow morning, and as humans, we come to depend on this “irrational” beliefs.
Anonymous // May 15, 2008 at 6:23 am
you are all insane
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