Introduction and Speaker Background

Part 1 of 5 · Ep. 338

James Nagel [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org but with joy. Hello and welcome to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, and I'm very excited to have with us today Dr. James Nagle. Hi, James.

James Nagel [00:00:44] Hello. Great to be here.

John Dehlin [00:00:45] How you doing?

James Nagel [00:00:46] Very good.

John Dehlin [00:00:47] Good. Quick introduction. I've known about James and his work for a long time, but just to keep it short, James has done a lot of study on the psychology of religion. And if I could just give a background for why I thought this, this particular interview would be interesting. Even though James has a PhD in electrical engineering, he really has done a lot of cool work on understanding why people believe things and specifically believe things about religion. And, you know, there's really one main purpose to all this as far as I'm concerned, and that's that regardless of where you live, and we'll get into this later, regardless of what you believe, if you're Mormon, if you're Hindu, if you're Buddhist, if you're Catholic, even if you're atheist, you've got to be curious about what it is that enables people to believe what they believe. And I'm sure even the most devout Mormon would wonder why it is that a Catholic would say, for example, that they feel inspired to follow Catholicism or a Muslim might feel inspired to do the same. And how do we make sense of all that, given that whatever religion we happen to claim to believe in, if we still believe in a religion, we consider our experiences to be authentic. And, and chances are our doctrine sort of is somewhat mutually exclusive from the truthfulness of other churches. And so we have to sort of reconcile that different people feel inspired or called to believe things that can't mutually be true. And that's kind of what this discussion is about today. It's about, you know, what's the psychology behind belief in religion? How could we understand it better? Because based on what scientists and psychologists, the research that they've done, and that's kind of what James is going to be talking about with us today. Does that sound like an okay introduction, James?

James Nagel [00:02:49] Yes, that's a very good description of what we'll be doing.

John Dehlin [00:02:51] All right. And it's going to be a multi part series. And I think the most Important part I want to mention is that James has put together some really cool PowerPoint slides. So this podcast is going to be released both as audio format, traditionally on the Mormon Stories feed, but it's also going to be released on YouTube. So you can go and check out the slides. We'll probably provide the slides as well, just as downloads. But I really recommend, if you can, that you check out the slides for this presentation because the visuals in some instances are almost crucial to understand the concepts and the studies that we're going to discuss. Although, James, we've done a lot to try and simplify that. Right?

James Nagel [00:03:33] Yeah. So we're gonna do our best to try and make it audio friendly, even though there are a bunch of pictures to go along with our discussion.

John Dehlin [00:03:40] Yeah, yeah. All right, well, let's. Let's dig in. Just tell us a little bit about yourself, James.

James Nagel [00:03:46] So, well, I guess we'll just skip ahead to slide number two then. Yeah, we'll talk about the overview you've more or less discussed, what we'll be doing for our discussion here. A little bit of background on me and then discussion on social psychology and how I got involved in this study. And then we're gonna talk a little bit more about this idea of where religions come from and how they grow and evolve and just really a nice scientific explanation for their interactions. Okay, so slide number three. Now, this is what you just asked about me. What's my background and where am I from? Like you said, I have. My official academic background is actually electrical engineering. And so that's kind of interesting how I suddenly got this sidebar project getting involved in social psychology. And we'll really explore that as we move along. So it's kind of interesting that my real background is electromagnetics, things like antennas and propagation. I have a lot of research in solar cells and light emitting diodes. So essentially how there's just this huge disparity between what I do professionally and what I've done in this psychology realm here. But something to emphasize is I got my bachelor's degree and master's de byu and then I worked in industry for a while before coming to the University of Utah where I got my PhD. So something I'd like to sort of stress is my official study in social psychology is a very sort of amateur level, something I stumbled into and started putting together and just reading the college level books and digging through the actual original research papers that people published throughout the years. And it's just really fascinating stuff, this great journey of self discovery, learning how people think and how they organize information in their lives. Something to just sort of emphasize is it's all just kind of science in the end. I've been through the scientific process, so I'm pretty well trained in telling the difference between good science and bad science. So what I want people to try and remember through this discussion is don't really take my word for it. This is sort of an amateur passion of mine, not a professional. Don't treat me as an authoritative expert on this. Although I'm sure a lot of authorities will agree with what I've been saying throughout this discussion, because I'm really just going to base everything we say on the actual original experiments and just draw conclusions from the science itself. So this is kind of the classic disclaimer. Disclaimer. Why should I trust you? Well, don't. You shouldn't. You should trust the science.

John Dehlin [00:06:25] Excellent.

James Nagel [00:06:27] So we'll go on to slide four here, a little more personal history. About Me I was born in California and raised LDS and I moved to Utah when I was 16. Just my parents divorced and I came to Provo, Utah with my dad. That's actually a really interesting culture shock to be born in a place like the Bay Area. San Francisco Bay Area is a very culturally diverse place. And it's interesting being Mormon in a place where practically no one's even heard of what a Mormon is, and then to suddenly move to a world where everybody, 90% of the population around you is LDS. So I think that really kind of influenced the way I perceive my relationship to the big picture of things. And we'll kind of see that crop up in some of our discussions as we look at where do we fit as Mormons in this grand scheme of world religions. So that's something I think really was helped by growing up in a very diverse culture where there really is no dominant religion or dominant ethnicity. It's just a very intermixed cultural and ethnic place. So like I said, I went to BYU and got my degrees in electrical engineering. Part of that is if you've ever been to byu, they also require that you go through a formal religious study. So this is a nice sort of, I guess, contrast in my education is being very technical and scientific at one moment and going to the sort of spiritual education in the other. So just kind of to emphasize that I've got a nice perspective on both of these worlds and how we're going to reconcile them together.

John Dehlin [00:08:11] Got it.

James Nagel [00:08:13] So after that I then came to University of Utah and did my PhD. Officially, I did it in solar Cells. But one of the great things about going to a university is you have a lot of access to academic journals, so you can study just about anything you want in your spare time. One of the best things I loved about living on campus there at the U is if you wanted to download a journal article, they actually had the Internet rigged through our student housing such that it would automatically authenticate through the University of Utah library. So you didn't have to worry about purchasing journals or articles. You could just get them. Man, it was great.

John Dehlin [00:08:52] It's nice. I can attest to it. I got it myself.

Skeptical Empiricism as a Guiding Framework

James Nagel [00:08:58] So this final bullet point talks about just skeptical empirical rationalism. And these are important points that I want to just emphasize that are going to guide our discussion and the way we approach our knowledge about religion and belief in psychological mechanisms that intertwine them all. So the first principle I really want to emphasize is this idea of skepticism.

John Dehlin [00:09:22] Now, to an average Mormon, that term kind of denotes being negative, right?

James Nagel [00:09:28] Yeah, it actually has a very bad reputation, you know, ooh, Mr. Skeptics coming in to poop on all our beliefs and tell us we're all wrong about everything. But really, at the end of the day, skepticism is just an idea that says, withhold your judgment until after you have some justification for it. Evidence first, belief second, not the other way around. And there's very practical reasons for viewing the world this way. And it's because if you believe first, then you're kind of a sucker. People will take advantage of you in a heartbeat if you just believe anything that comes along.

John Dehlin [00:10:04] Even believing Mormonism can support skepticism. And the Book of Mormon says, you know, plant the seed, try it out and see if it's true or not, and then pray about it. And if you get a witness. So, I mean, skepticism doesn't necessarily have to be contradictory to religion, right?

James Nagel [00:10:21] Exactly. And we'll talk about that a little bit later on. And it's okay to believe crazy things. Just have to be very careful about what your justification is for that belief. So empiricism is just an idea that says, you know, physical evidence is the guiding light of what you use to justify your beliefs. Not what some big wig authority says, not what your gut feeling tells you to do, and not what is written down in a book.

John Dehlin [00:10:47] Not even what James and John say

James Nagel [00:10:49] in a podcast, not even what we say. It's about the evidence itself that should determine your beliefs. I'm really emphasizing this because we're going to address these ideas later on as we look at some of these experiments. And What a proper rational way is to approach a belief and how these experiments are rigged to just completely fool people by appealing to are sort of intuitive epistemology. And then of course, rationalism is just an idea that it says use logic and reason to draw inferences about the world and make conclusions. Because we're going to do a lot of that as well in this discussion and really see how there's the correct way to draw inferences and then there's bad ways that can be taken advantage of.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Got it.

James Nagel [00:11:30] So that's really all I'm trying to do is set a tone for how be approaching our discussion here.

John Dehlin [00:11:35] Beautiful. All right, I'm good.

James Nagel [00:11:37] Okay, so next slide, Slide number five. These are just a couple of books that really, I guess, sparked my interest in really understanding myself and psychology and how they relate to science and what science does to, I guess, correct our mistakes. And so these are two books written by Carl Sagan. One is called the Varieties of Scientific Experience, and the other is called the Demon Haunted World. And they're both just. I'm really plugging these because they sparked a lot of this discussion we're about to have. They set the seeds and built the foundation that got me interested in this psychological study. And in particular, they're very good at helping appreciate what science is all about. It's a series of tools that are designed to build knowledge. But part of the rules of science is figuring out how to fallible you are as a person and then building into the method safeguards that keep you from falling into these pitfalls of your own fallibility. These are just great books that help really set that tone and give you an appreciation for what science is and what it does. And for me, I'm just plugging them because they are very influential for me as well.

John Dehlin [00:12:49] It's kind of about just how to seek for truth, right?

James Nagel [00:12:51] Yes, exactly. It's about truth. And what are the standards you use for determining truth. In the end of the day, that's another really key thing that I don't think people really realize is what is a good standard of evidence and what is a bad one. These are other things we'll really be addressing as we go along in our discussion.

John Dehlin [00:13:11] Got it.

The High Stakes of Religious Belief

James Nagel [00:13:12] Okay, so slide number six. Now, this, I think, is really going to kind of set the tone, says the religious stakes. And you see here on the left, heaven is placid and fluffy and colorful and happy and hell a very miserable state of existence. Now, Mormons don't exactly have this dichotomous view of heaven and Hell and most Christian theologies have various nuances, but more or less, this principle of being good and believing the right things will lead to some kind of eternal reward. And if you are bad and you make the wrong choices and believe the wrong things, then you're going to pay for it for eternity and be miserable and have no recourse. So these are ideas for me kind of as a young kid that really forced me to take my religion seriously. I was kind of terrified of this idea of what if I'm wrong? What if those Muslims, the Shiite Muslims, are actually the correct theology of how you're supposed to come close to God? How would you know that? Because if you're wrong, are you prepared to stand before God someday and say, well, I picked this Mormon thing, and he's going to say, no, sorry, that was wrong. You should have listened to my Prophet Muhammad. Why didn't you? You had his book. No excuses off. The hell with you.

John Dehlin [00:14:37] No virgins for you.

James Nagel [00:14:40] Yeah, exactly. Or conversely, if you're a Muslim and it turns out the LDS faith is correct, is he prepared to make that same choice? What are you going to tell a Muslim to convince him that what he's doing is going to have everlasting consequences? This is something that, in my brain as a kid really drove me to take this stuff seriously because I was just so terrified about being wrong that I just started studying everything I could.

John Dehlin [00:15:12] If I could just. I hope you're not going to talk about this later, but I remember us in some of our pre discussions talking about what type of researcher and engineer and scientist would you want if you were going to be an astronaut flying up in a rocket, Right. Would you want one who went purely by his feelings and trusted his first gut responses and built a rocket sort of based on faith and intuition and his first best guesses? Or would you want an engineer and a scientist that was willing to make lots of tests attempting to disprove something and willing to accept changing his mind re engineering and going through this crucial process of proving and disproving to get to the point where there was a high level of certainty that that was going to be a safe, successful journey? Which type of scientist would you. Researcher. Engineer. Would you want if you were that astronaut who was gonna be flying ship? Right?

James Nagel [00:16:15] Yeah, that's a really great metaphor. And I kind of had that same idea of when I'm dead, am I gonna rest comfortably knowing that I tried everything I could to figure out the truth of the matter? Or am I just gonna be some sucker who Falls victim to whatever crazy belief happened to come along first.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] Because you happen to be born Mormon or is Muslim or Hindu. Yeah, yeah, right. So everyone, everyone who believes in heaven, hell and God in an afterlife sort of has a stake in the game and should take these questions pretty seriously.

James Nagel [00:16:47] Yes, exactly. So this, this was a personally a strong motivator for me. And so there's a quote here from Carl Sagan that I think really captured my attitude as I approached these matters. And it goes like this. It seems to me that there is only one conceivable approach to these matters. If we have such an emotional stake in the answers, if we want badly to believe, and if it is important to know the truth, then nothing other than a committed skeptical scrutiny is required. Okay, so this is really kind of guiding how I approached my religious beliefs and my studies of the matter.

John Dehlin [00:17:24] Got it.

The Global Landscape of World Religions

James Nagel [00:17:25] So now that brings us to the next slide. Slide number seven just says so many billions. And you see here a pie chart. I think this chart was made in something like 2002. I don't know if the 2005.

John Dehlin [00:17:39] I think.

James Nagel [00:17:40] 2005, yeah. Oh, there it is. Yeah, 2005. So it just shows a pie chart of religious denominations around the world as of 2005. So obviously the big huge chunk of the pie, 33% is Christianity. Then the second biggest is Islam, 21%. And then you have non religious at 16, Hinduism 14. There's some indigenous primal religions in Chinese, traditional Buddhism, a little slice saying other. There's an itty bitty piece like saying Judaism in there. So something to really guide your thinking is to step back and look at this picture and ask yourself, you know, if you were just sort of born yesterday and had no idea what, what cultural predispositions there happen to be. And you just had this chart here and you're asked to pick a faith, on what basis are you going to choose one? And remember, there's some serious consequences here. You can't just throw a dart at it and pick the faith that it lands on. Right? So some important consequences logically follow just by the mere existence of this chart. And the first and foremost is billions of people around the world possess absolute convictions in mutually inconsistent and incompatible ideas about God. Okay? If Christianity is true, Islam cannot be true, Muhammad is a false prophet. But if Muhammad was a true prophet and Islam is the correct religion, then Joseph Smith is absolutely not a correct real prophet. So the key thing though is people believe this stuff. That is billions upon billions of people are really very hell bent convinced in the reality of their faith. That's a really important thing to just step back and realize. And that confidence does not equal correct. Because it is a simple fact that they cannot all be right, but they certainly can all be wrong. Wrongness is kind of the default assumption we should make if we're going to look at this from a very blank slate.

John Dehlin [00:19:46] Because even Christianity, of which Mormonism is just a sliver, doesn't even represent the majority.

James Nagel [00:19:52] It's still a minority, right? Technically it's the biggest, but it's not greater than 50%. It's only one third of the world's religions, or one third of the world's population representing Christianity. So this is a point you made earlier. Whatever faith you have, or whatever lack of faith you, you have, whatever chunk of this pie you choose to believe, you're left with this question of where did all those other pies come from? I'm not trying to say you should believe one of these over the other. What I'm really trying to emphasize is where did they come from in the first place? Why is there this massive divide of religions? Why aren't they all converging onto one form of theology? Whatever you believe, you still have this issue of the fact that other believers exist. And it's not a very compelling answer to just say, well, I'm smart and I found the correct religion and they're all dummies, or it's not very useful to say, maybe the devil is deceiving them. These are not answers that explain this diversification of these religions. So this is really the question I just want to pose and we're going to try and explore as we move along. So this brings us now to slide number eight. So you saw that big chunk of the pie was Christianity. So now we have yet another pie chart, or in this case, it looks like a lifesaver. So the lifesaver chart, a little hole in the middle. This is just Christianity alone, which again follows its own pie chart distribution. So you see Roman Catholics there make up the vast majority. And then you look at very closely, you see Anglicans, you know, 80 million Anglicans, 105 million Baptists, 75 million Methodists, 87 million Lutherans. And you got Presbyterians, Reformed, Pentecostals, other Protestants, non denominational, Eastern Orthodoxy, 230 million Eastern Orthodox Christians. So growing up as a Mormon, you know, something that really I find humbling is we don't even register on this chart of Christianity. Yeah, this is Christianity. And we're like a subset of the other slice of the pie. It's funny how Mormons like to brag about we've got what, 13 million members? 14 million.

John Dehlin [00:22:13] 15, 16.

James Nagel [00:22:14] Now, I think in the grand scheme of things, that's nothing compared to Pentecostals. They have 10 times that number, 130 million. So there's a certain humility that I think should be built into this fact that a central thing that defines Mormon culture is this idea of we have the one true faith, the restored gospel. Thank goodness for that. But you still have this issue of are you really so sure about that? Because there's 130 million Pentecostals will say otherwise. What makes you so confident given the fact that there's over a billion other people who seem to think otherwise?

John Dehlin [00:22:56] We're less than one half of 1% of the world's population.

James Nagel [00:23:01] Exactly. This really then begs that question, what is that standard you have that makes you think you're right? And everyone else is deceived or incomplete in their belief. What criteria determines the validity or error of any particular belief we have here?

John Dehlin [00:23:17] Yep.

James Nagel [00:23:18] And again, the question again that we've raised before is how do you explain the existence of all these other Christian sects? Because there's this reference to the great and abominable church. But that's not a particularly compelling answer of why people should feel so inclined to split into all these subsects within subsects of their particular religion. So that's a prelude now to the next slide, slide number nine. And I want to just do a little primer on what it means to be scientific. And so I'm going to open with a very classic experiment in physics because it's a totally wacky counterintuitive result, but you have to accept it just because the evidence is so overwhelmingly compelling. So I like to play a little game. So I'll say, hey, John, pretend I'm a physicist at MIT and I'm giving some discussion. I'm talking with you and I say, did you know that time, gravity and motion and space are all intertwined in this one single thing called space time? Do you believe that?

What Is Scientific Thinking?

John Dehlin [00:24:26] Sounds fuzzy, but I'm open.

James Nagel [00:24:28] That's kind of crazy. I'm open, Right? Maybe I'm making it up. That almost sounds like some crazy new age talk. Right? How would you tell the difference? If only we had some kind of tool that differentiates between real knowledge versus a bunch of made up hokum. Okay, so this experiment is called around the World Atomic clocks. There's actually two papers where they made a prediction and then they measured it. And what they did, they just took cesium atomic clocks, put them in airplanes and flew them around the world and actually measured a time deviation associated with that motion. That the simple fact that you pick up a clock and move around with it is enough to desynchronize it with other clocks. Or the simple fact that you move it farther away from the center of the earth means the gravity is reduced a little bit. So then it moves a little, the clock experiences time a little bit faster and it has nothing to do with the clocks and everything to do with the fact that time itself is changing.

John Dehlin [00:25:31] That sounds crazy.

James Nagel [00:25:33] It sounds crazy. But you can do this experiment yourself and you'll see the clocks deviate. And you can even compare them against Einstein's equations and they'll agree. Einstein's theory of relativity predicts the deviation that you would expect to find. So the take home point here is that it's okay to believe wacky things about this intertwined notion of time and space and gravity. But that belief has a price. You have to be able to demonstrate it somehow. You need a test that would differentiate between a real event versus something you're making up. So this is why evidence matters. It's the ultimate arbitrary of what's right and wrong.

John Dehlin [00:26:13] Got it.

James Nagel [00:26:14] So another key point is belief in such things. It's not a choice. I've heard one guy describe it. My belief is not a choice. It's a matter of obligate compliance in the face of, of physical evidence. I don't believe this because I like it. I don't believe it's because it's simple or intuitive. I just have to believe it because it's the way things are and we have to work with it. I want this to really set the tone because we're going to learn a lot of very uncomfortable things about ourselves as human beings. That we're not very rational, we're not very intuitive, our memories suck, and our perceptions are extremely flawed. And we don't believe this because we like it. We believe it because we can show it. And it's something we have to deal with if we want to really understand the world. So hopefully that kind of sets the tone.

John Dehlin [00:27:02] All right, I got it.

James Nagel [00:27:04] So now we're on slide 10. This is a personal experience that I really want to talk about because it's a fun demonstration of social psychology in action that happened to me personally and that really motivated me to understand this phenomenon in greater detail. So the story begins. I am in my probably 18 or 19th year starting at BYU as a freshman. And I took classes from the BYU Army ROTC, Reserve Officer Training Corps. Okay. And these are just future army officers in training getting their college educations. Now it turns out you can take their classes. They offer them as actual academic classes. And so I thought it'd be fun. I just took them enrolled and they gave me a nice uniform and some boots, and they taught me how to salute and how to march in formations and how to assault a fixed position, all sorts of great army stuff. How to kill people and break things. And you don't actually have to enlist. It's only if you go through the upper levels that you have to contract with them to be to become an actual officer. So it was a good time. I learned a lot. I thought it was really fun. But one experience in particular is very relevant to this discussion. So it's like early October ish or so, and we're doing PT, which is physical training.

Guest [00:28:25] Okay.

James Nagel [00:28:26] It's like 5:30 in the morning, very cold out. The sun hasn't even risen. You're completely exhausted because you'd rather be in bed. And you're out exercising with a group of your fellow soldiers. So after about mile four of running around Provo, you're obviously very tired. You're sweaty, your head hurts, your joints are aching. It's not a very pleasant experience to put yourself through some rigorous exercise. So I remember thinking to myself, oh God, this sucks. I wish I was home in bed. Why am I doing this? And all of a sudden we started singing our cadences. So what a cadence is, is you start running in a rhythm and you start singing these songs that are designed to keep you in a rhythm, keep you in a formation and help you sort of pass the time. So the funny thing though is the things you sing about are usually revolve around how much fun you're having and how awesome you are for doing this. So you start singing about, this is a great time. You're ready now, Here we go. One mile, no sweat, two miles. Better yet, that kind of stuff. I remember thinking to myself, the irony of these songs because I was not having a great time. And yet here I am singing about how much of a wonderful time I'm having. I thought that was funny until I got home finally at the end of our training session, and I suddenly realized I caught myself thinking, gee, that was really fun. I'd like to do that again. And I suddenly caught myself like, wait a sec, it's five in the morning, I'm totally tired. I missed so much sleep from this I should have been, could have been doing homework or something. I'm behind on some other classes. I'm tired, I'm sweaty. It was totally miserable. And yet here I am thinking, God, I wish I was doing this again. I can't wait for the next time. So I realized another subtle effect of singing these songs as part of this group is that it's basically brainwashing. You're telling yourself that something that's intrinsically miserable is actually a good time. And to their credit, physical training is good for you. It's important to take care of yourself and your health, to be athletic and to be fit. So you have a choice. You can either hate it or you can love it. Part of the idea is to sort of push you towards loving the experience rather than hating it, so that you'll be more motivated to push yourself harder. And of course, to this day, I mean, avid fitness freak and I exercise a lot and I love it, even though deep down there's always that part of me that would rather just go home and eat ice cream and watch tv. So I learned a really valuable lesson that day in that simply telling yourself something can make it true in a sense. That is, you explain something even though it's wrong. You just let yourself believe it and you'll come to believe it. That really struck me as a weakness on my part as a person, that it's something you should be very wary of because it's very simple to do. The effects can happen very quickly and subtly. And if you're not careful, you can find yourself believing in something totally bogus and yet have a very strong conviction in it. So that really trained me that day to be skeptical about the world because it's very easy to slip up. You should demand evidence first and then come to your belief. But don't do it the other way around, otherwise that belief will transform you and bias your perceptions.

John Dehlin [00:32:05] Yeah, it's an interesting example to use, James, because on the one hand it's true that inherently exercise isn't enjoyable and inherently being cold and having a headache and being sore is not fun. And that's true. And it's also true that there's a lot of suffering in life. And the extent to which we can, even if it's deluding ourselves, but the extent to which we can convince ourselves that it isn't so bad. It may be self deception, but it's also, it also can be very adaptive in helping us pass the time. So it can be viewed as a weakness and as a strength depending on to what ends? To what ends it's used. So I just want to extend this analogy. You know, if it helped you pay for college, if it helped you fall in love with exercise, and it helped you have a positive attitude and you made some good friends, well, then that's. Maybe it's a self delusion worth making because you enjoyed it and it had a big payoff. But if you were to go on and enlist in the army and bomb, you know, bomb villages where men, women and children were burned to a crisp, you know, then you could say that the price of that ability to convince yourself that something's okay can have a really dark side. And it depends on kind of how it's used. Is that right?

James Nagel [00:33:37] Yeah, exactly. I'm glad you brought that up. It's not that this was like a good thing or a bad thing. It was just a realization. It's something that can be used for good or can be totally contorted to use for very selfish and destructive ends.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] And you could bet that Hitler's army thought he was awesome. They thought they were doing God's will. They thought that Hitler was inspired. You could find all sorts of examples of people who do things that end up being bad where the whole time, just Jonestown in Guyana, where people thought they were doing God's will, but they just unfortunately were wrong.

James Nagel [00:34:16] And of course, on the flip side, it's something that you can use to motivate yourself. If health matters to you, you have to teach yourself to enjoy your exercise. So this is a tool you can use to help change your attitude.

John Dehlin [00:34:30] Got it.

Introduction to Social Psychology

James Nagel [00:34:32] So that brings us now to slide number 11 is our introduction to Social psychology. I was trained as an engineer, an electrical engineer. And this is a very hard science, very rigorous, mathematically based. For a big chunk of my life, I had kind of a negative opinion about you poor sloppy psychologist.

John Dehlin [00:34:56] Watch it.

James Nagel [00:34:57] Yeah, we're so high and mighty. We've got math and all sorts of things. We're a hard science. You pesky soft scientists. I remember a big chunk of my life I had this huge bias where psychologists were just making crap up. But then that kind of changed one day where I was at the BYU bookstore. This is about my second year as a master's student, and I was just kind of thumbing through some books and I stumbled into the used book section. So what a lot of college campuses will do is, you know how they require books for classes, but they can't use those books forever. Eventually they have to change to a new book or update to a new edition or something. And then they're left with a bunch of used books that they can't use anymore. So normally what they do is they'll just sell them off at this huge humongous discount. And so, for example, in this particular instance, it was 95% off.

John Dehlin [00:35:53] You got a good cheap textbook.

James Nagel [00:35:54] Yeah. And most of the books are just a bunch of crap you're not really interested in. There would be stuff like marketing or business management. It's probably useful if you're into that, but didn't really interest me. And somewhere in the corner I found this book on social psychology. The actual one you see here is by Saul Kassin. And I kind of just thumbed through it, like social psychology, whatever. But then I read like the. I kind of skimmed through the first chapter in the book and it was just a huge discussion on scientific method and the importance of experiments and justifying your conclusions with physical data and being tentative in those conclusions and willing to be wrong and all that. And that actually really impressed me. Like, wow, if they're actually devoting an entire chapter to this, it means they must be taking their science seriously. So normally this book would go for like 100 bucks, but 95% off meant it was $5. So I just like, okay, sure, why not? I bought the thing, I read the whole thing cover to cover and I was just hooked. From that day on, I had to study this stuff in great detail because it is this huge journey in self discovery as you go through this. So one of the first things you learn that I said before, and I'll say it again, is people are not nearly as intuitive or rational as we like to think we are. It's very common to think that we human beings are the apple of God's eye and we are the rational creatures of this world and we're capable of figuring out everything through logic and reason. And to some extent we can do those things. But one thing you learn is that by and large, we really kind of suck at it. We don't do it very often. It's a very humbling experience to just discover how much of a complete sucker you are.

John Dehlin [00:37:40] That's not a fun thought.

James Nagel [00:37:43] I'm kind of using that jokingly, but I'm being half serious at the same time. I'm going to demonstrate this through a lot of experiments of just how easy it is to tweak people's understanding and perceptions and their actions. Another thing you learn is that peer pressure is huge in the way we perceive the world and make our decisions. You Also learn that there's this idea called cognitive bias. Just these weird little pitfalls that human beings have in the way we think and process information. And you got to be careful of these because they're great ways to sort of absorb information and figure stuff out. But if you're not careful, they're also very great ways to just be wrong about stuff. So the third point here is these techniques and these pitfalls. People take advantage of them and they exploit them a lot. You see it a lot, especially in sales and marketing. We'll see some examples of that. Military recruiting and indoctrination just exploits the crap out of these techniques. You see it a lot in political discussions and the way people form their political beliefs. And you especially see it a lot in religion. We're going to focus a lot on that religion bullet point for our discussion. But I really want to emphasize that that's just a narrow application of the stuff you can learn from this, that it really does have this expansive application to all these other fields and interactions we have in life. The fourth thing you really learn to appreciate when you study psychology is what scientific method is trying to do. And we're going to do a lot of contrasts throughout our discussion is what good science is versus bad science. Scientific method works very, very hard to neutralize these pitfalls in our thinking. So I alluded to that before with Carl Sagan, and I'm going to say it again, that a study of psychology and social psychology really gives you an appreciation for what science is trying to do and why it's very important to follow the rules of good science. And then finally, hopefully, this will ring with a few people, is that knowing these techniques is a great way to protect yourself against being exploited by them or to teach others how to not be taken advantage of. Because if you don't understand this stuff, I guarantee sooner or later someone will come along and take advantage of these things and exploit something out of you.

John Dehlin [00:40:09] And it can be a salesman or a politician, or it can be anybody.

James Nagel [00:40:14] It can be a clergyman, could be

John Dehlin [00:40:18] your boss, family member, whatever.

James Nagel [00:40:20] Yeah, anybody. So it's important to realize these pitfalls because the only way to defend yourself is to understand how they work. That's a key point.

John Dehlin [00:40:28] Yep.

James Nagel [00:40:30] So if there's any questions, we can hop into our first experiment.

John Dehlin [00:40:34] All right, so we're ready to launch in now, huh?

James Nagel [00:40:37] Yes. All right, so we're on slide number 12 here, called the Asch Conformity Experiment.

Conformity and the Asch Experiments

John Dehlin [00:40:42] All right.

James Nagel [00:40:43] And this is one of, like, the greatest experiments in all of social psychology. Just because of, first off, how simple it is and how dramatic the results are. So I love this experiment because it's just fun to talk about and it makes you embarrassed to be a human being almost to read this experiment. So let's go in. I'm trying to be joking about this too. Have a good sense of humor as we study this stuff. So the experiment begins. Imagine you volunteer to take part in an experiment with some psychology professor at a university. Okay. So all you're told is that it's an experiment on, quote, visual acuity. That's all you know about it. That's actually kind of a fun little theme that psychologists like to play, is making up some wacky name for their experiment that has actually nothing to do with the experiment itself. But it's fine. So, okay, you're led into this room. They sit you down at a desk, and they present in front of you a chart. Okay, so you see here on the left, this chart with three bars on it labeled A, B and C. And they're just three lines of varying height. Okay, so you can see that right in front of you.

John Dehlin [00:42:00] Yep. A small bar, a tall bar, and a medium sized bar.

James Nagel [00:42:04] Yep, that's it. So off to the side now, they have this bar labeled bar X. And it's the same height as one of those other bars. Okay. And so you can look at that and see X is about the same height as C. Right.

John Dehlin [00:42:17] And it's pretty obvious. There's pretty much no question right there.

James Nagel [00:42:20] No question at all. So the question for you is which bar is the same height as the reference?

John Dehlin [00:42:26] So X is the same as what? And you would say A, B or C. Right, Exactly.

James Nagel [00:42:32] So you would say, oh, X is the same height as C. Right. Okay, now to put, kind of paint a picture of this, you're in this little room and these charts are like 3ft tall and barely like 6ft away from you. So they're literally right in front of your face. I can't emphasize this enough. This is going to be important. When subjects are alone, they put them in this room, they give them this test, and they go through it like 20 times and then average it over like 50 people. And all in all, they averaged about 98% accuracy. Because it's obvious and you can understand every now and then someone would maybe get one wrong. But Overall it's about 100% accuracy. Okay, that's important. All things being equal, people are pretty perfect at this exercise. So now this brings us to the next slide. So that was the control group. So now, they rearrange the experiment a little bit. It's all basically the same. They bring you into a room, they sit you down, they put the charts in front of you. Only now there's six other people in the room with you. And before you get to give your answer, you have to sit and listen to six other people giving their answer. Okay?

John Dehlin [00:43:42] Okay, got it.

James Nagel [00:43:43] And they rig it so you have to go last. You don't know this, but they force you to listen to the other six people.

John Dehlin [00:43:50] And you don't know that the other people are actually part of the experiment.

James Nagel [00:43:53] Yeah, exactly. There's a word for that. They're called confederates. A confederate is someone who's planted there as part of the experiment to mess with your head. Only as far as you're concerned, they're just other subjects in the experiment. That's key. So they run this test 18 times, and on 12 of them, this group, they pick the wrong bar. So you can see right in front of your face, oh, it's C bar C. But what you hear is A, A, a, A, A, A.

John Dehlin [00:44:27] All the wrong answers, all the wrong,

James Nagel [00:44:29] and they're all unanimous with it. So put yourself in this poor guy's shoes. You're in this little room, and you can see with your eyes what the truth is. But you have this group of six people who all just completely disagree with you. So what would you do if you were this person? Would you stick to your guns or would you try risk standing out and being the maverick of the group? Do you want to make trouble? Maybe there really is something wrong with you. Maybe they see something you don't. Maybe your eyes. Maybe you need to get your eyes checked. What would you do? This brings us now to the next slide. Slide 14 just shows the results. In a perfect world, people would get the exact same results as before.

John Dehlin [00:45:20] They would still get 98% right accuracy.

James Nagel [00:45:23] Yes, but. So here are some interesting numbers. Now, simply due to the fact that other people in the room give wrong answers. So, first and foremost, statistically averaged overall subjects, the average conformity rate, that is people who agreed with the incorrect majority, 37%. That's almost 4 in 10 people, or 4 out of 10 trials, people will agree with the majority rather than stick to what their own two eyes are

John Dehlin [00:45:53] telling them, even when it's obvious that they're giving the incorrect answer.

James Nagel [00:45:57] Yeah, you can see the charts right in front of you. So another interesting statistic. So individuals who conformed at least half of the time. Okay, so remember, they had 12 trials where they tried to mess with you. And so this means percent of people who went along with the majority at least six or more times out of the 12, and the percentage is three out of 10 people were convinced at least half the time.

John Dehlin [00:46:25] So these people are just really, really affected by social pressure.

James Nagel [00:46:30] Yeah, at least 30% of people will just trust a group rather than their own two lives more often than not.

John Dehlin [00:46:37] Go with the group. Group no matter what.

James Nagel [00:46:39] Exactly. So a converse statistic, I.e. refusal to agree with any incorrect majority. These are the people who stuck to their guns no matter what. How many do you think it was? 1 out of 4 people stuck to their guns.

John Dehlin [00:46:54] 1 out of 4 will be honest no matter what, regardless of the consequences. But the other 75% will. It will knowingly give the wrong answer or doubt their own abilities to see and go with the incorrect majority at

James Nagel [00:47:18] least some of the time. Yes, that's the key. That is three out of four people will, at one point or another cave in to peer pressure. And it's important to realize it's not like they're pressuring you, really. They're not like glaring at you or telling you to pick one in particular. They just raised their hand and said B and then ignored you.

John Dehlin [00:47:40] It's not super high stakes in this instance.

James Nagel [00:47:43] Yeah. It's not like they've got guns to your head or they're all pointing fingers and laughing at you or even like commenting on it. They just are taking part and giving their answer. So this, you know, hugely illustrates just how social pressure controls us in a very deep, fundamental level.

John Dehlin [00:48:01] Got it. Wow. What a study.

James Nagel [00:48:04] Yeah. I love this experiment just because it's so dramatic and in your face. So what's interesting, I got a little note here. Ash, the guy who ran the experiment, in some instances, he actually tried to vary the disparity of the lines because sometimes they could be fairly close together and you might be inclined to trust the group, but sometimes the lines are really far apart and it's just absolutely obvious. And so he says here, in one case, he made them a full seven inches apart. So for a sign right in front of you, that's a very obvious disparity. And even then, some subjects still just kept going with the majority, even when it wasn't just obvious, but glaringly obvious. Another fun fact is he would interview subjects after the fact, and most of them would describe this sheer terror of being like this renegade or standing out or making trouble with the group. Some subjects even, like, literally trusted the group over their own perception and thought there was something Wrong with them. So it's interesting how people feel when you put them under this kind of pressure.

John Dehlin [00:49:11] They weren't lying. They just said, well, I must be wrong, because everyone else is right, everyone else is agreeing, so I must be wrong.

James Nagel [00:49:18] A lot of them didn't really believe it. They could see with their eyes and they knew something was wrong, but they just overwhelming terror about standing out from the group. So now we go to another experiment. Slide number 15. Some variations on this same theme is this idea of uncertainty coupled with task importance. This is another experiment basically on the same theme of what happens if we subject people to social pressure, but then tweak some other parameters, like put them under some incentive to really get it right, or we can make it really easy or really difficult and so on.

John Dehlin [00:49:54] Again, the visual visuals here are going to make this study a lot easier to understand. So check out the visuals if you can.

James Nagel [00:49:59] Yeah. So this experiment, your job is to identify a culprit from a lineup. So kind of like a police lineup, Right?

John Dehlin [00:50:08] Right.

James Nagel [00:50:09] So what they do is they show you a picture of a guy for some fixed amount of time, and they wait a little bit for you to mull on it, and then sometime later, you're shown a lineup and your job is just pick the culprit. That's pretty easy.

Guest [00:50:23] Right.

James Nagel [00:50:24] And there's two conditions they placed on this, the easy and the hard. So the easy one was they showed you the culprit for five seconds, which is a pretty long time to study a guy's face and memorize his features. Right. So you actually see like a little cartoon of some guy. Like that's an actual screen capture from the paper. Then you see him again in the lineup. He has the same face, the same mustache, even though his clothes are a little different, but overall, you can kind of recognize the guy's face. So five seconds is obviously a long time to study that image and try and commit it to memory. Then the hard condition, they only showed you for a half a second. So just a brief moment on, off, and that's all you get to memorize the guy's features. So they call that task difficulty. Easy, difficult. Easy. Hard is what we'll say. So the baseline is, you know, all things being equal for the easy case, again, you know, people came in pretty accurate 97%.

John Dehlin [00:51:24] So if you can see a guy's face for five seconds, you can 97% of the time, pick him up out of a lineup later.

James Nagel [00:51:31] Yeah, okay, exactly. I think the lineup would be like five to 20 minutes after the Fact. But, you know, sometime later, subjects were able to pick them out with about 97% accuracy. Then the hard condition, half a second, the accuracy fell down to about 70%. So still pretty good. But you can see how it's more difficult for people to get the right answers. That's kind of the baseline of how people would perform. Now, they also threw another curveball into this experiment, and they called it task importance. That is, they offered you a reward for doing well and getting good numbers.

John Dehlin [00:52:07] Or not.

James Nagel [00:52:09] Or not. Yeah. So the low importance was just simply, you're doing it for science. Go through the motions and see how well you can do. Thanks a lot. The high importance was they offered you 20 bucks if you do well. So now you have this incentive to really try hard and take this study seriously. Right. You know, there's 20 bucks at state. You know, I'm gonna try and see what I can do well. Right, right. So they call that task importance low versus. So those are kind of the four variables in there.

John Dehlin [00:52:38] So easy, hard, low importance, or no money or high importance. Lots of money.

James Nagel [00:52:43] Exactly.

Guest [00:52:43] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:52:45] So now we go to the next slide. And this is the quirk that makes things interesting, is they do this normative influence thing again. So you're there to pick out the guy from the lineup, but before you can answer, you have to listen to two other guys give their answer first. Okay. So unbeknownst to you, they're confederates again, and their job is to give the correct answer a few times, and then 7 out of 13 give the wrong answer. And they want to see if you conform with them or if you stick to what your memory is.

John Dehlin [00:53:15] So similar to the previous experiment.

James Nagel [00:53:17] Yeah. Only this time the answer isn't right in front of you. It's something in your memory that you have to think about. They're also not trying to overwhelm you with 6 to 1 odds. It's only two guys, so it's a little bit of a pressure, but not quite so in your face this time. Okay, so now we go to the results.

John Dehlin [00:53:36] Okay.

James Nagel [00:53:37] This is slide 17. And so you see, there's four bullet points on this data. You have the low importance, high importance, and then easy and hard.

John Dehlin [00:53:45] Right.

James Nagel [00:53:45] So for low importance, there's actually no difference in the conformity. That is, what they're really after is how much did you conform with those two confederates. So it turned out when they weren't offering you any money. So it's not very important whether you're right or not. People on average conformed, like two to three Times out of the seven.

John Dehlin [00:54:09] Right. Whether or not it was difficult or easy.

James Nagel [00:54:12] Yeah, exactly. That's key. Sometimes they were right, sometimes they're wrong. But there was a little baseline where they would tend to follow the group a little or not. So then what they did was they offered you 20 bucks now, so now you're really motivated. You want to get the right answer.

John Dehlin [00:54:28] Okay.

James Nagel [00:54:30] But remember now, one group, it was easy to tell the right answer. Another group, it was hard. So you see the split in the data where.

John Dehlin [00:54:38] Yeah. So all of a sudden there's a big difference, because in one group, the conformity goes down and the other. The conformity goes up.

James Nagel [00:54:45] Exactly. So it turns out when you raise the stakes and you make the task difficult, then people tended to go along with the group more. They conform more when they're not sure, but they're motivated to get the right answer. So if you're not quite sure, you have two other guys next to you who seem to be agreeing. Well, you might be inclined to trust their judgment over your own. What if you are really, really sure and the two guys next to you, you have a very strong feeling they're wrong and there's 20 bucks at stake. Would you be more inclined to go with your own gut or trust the other guys?

John Dehlin [00:55:21] Right.

James Nagel [00:55:21] So the answer is if it's certain and you know the answer and there's high stakes, people tend to defy the group more. They'll stick to their own guns. But if it's uncertain, it's difficult. But there's money at stake and there's two guys there who seem really sure of the answer. The default thing people will do is tend to go group more.

John Dehlin [00:55:41] So if you know, if money's at stake and you. And you're pretty sure you're right, you're going to be less likely to conform. But if there's a lot of doubt and uncertainty and the stakes are high, then you're likely to go with the. The peer pressure and do what. What people around you are doing. Because you're not sure and you want to be right.

James Nagel [00:56:04] Exactly. You're not sure. There's a lot at stake and. And people around you seem to be sure, so you tend to go with what other people are doing.

John Dehlin [00:56:12] Gotcha.

James Nagel [00:56:13] That's the key. Take home point from this experiment.

John Dehlin [00:56:16] Gotcha. Okay, I'm with you.

Social Pressure and Religious Conformity

James Nagel [00:56:18] So let's go to the next slide. We're on slide 18.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Okay, now you're gonna apply it to religion. I got it. Okay, give it to us.

James Nagel [00:56:26] So now this has some really Important cultural consequences.

John Dehlin [00:56:30] Describe this map for me.

James Nagel [00:56:32] So you're looking at a map here of the United States and it shows leading church bodies. This is a data set taken in the year 2000. And you see a geographic distribution of which religious denomination dominates some geographic region of the US There's a majority, obvious

John Dehlin [00:56:51] concentrations of religions, right?

Guest [00:56:54] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:56:55] You can see like a big chunk of Texas and all of the south is this big red blob for southern baptism. Right. That's hugely the dominant religion in that part of the US you look up in areas like New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts. There Catholicism is the dominant religion. You look up at say the Dakotas and Minnesota. And so, yeah, there it Lutheran.

John Dehlin [00:57:24] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:57:25] And then you look over, you know, more California, Seattle, it's Catholic again. And there's this little blob here in Utah, Idaho, Arizona. That's lds, Latter Day Saints. So an interesting issue comes up. Why are there these stark cultural boundaries with religious beliefs?

John Dehlin [00:57:42] Why such deep concentration in geographical areas?

James Nagel [00:57:47] Right, yeah. And very sharp cultural boundaries too. You can see it's not like it's just some random mixture all over the place of colors. It's very solid regions of the US So let's think about this in light of what we just learned from these conformity experiments. Remember, I emphasized heaven and hell are serious issues. A very strong reoccurring theme among Christianities is you better pick the right faith and live the right way and have the correct morals and make the right actions or you're going to suffer. Or if you make the right actions, you're going to very richly rewarded.

John Dehlin [00:58:27] So high stakes. It's like the money.

James Nagel [00:58:29] Exactly. This is the $20 at stake only times a billion. Right.

John Dehlin [00:58:34] It's salvation. It's eternity.

James Nagel [00:58:35] Yes. Now, another interesting fact about religion is that God isn't exactly shaking your hand and dictating to you in person which faith is the correct one. You know, you might have some subtle impressions that you feel bias you towards one faith or another, or you may

John Dehlin [00:58:52] have overwhelming emotions where you're crying and you know you have these emotions. Right?

James Nagel [00:58:59] Right. But is that something that's a rigorous standard.

John Dehlin [00:59:03] You still, you still have to decide what it means. It's not clear. Even though you're crying and weeping, you have to decide what that means. And it's not clear that that means do one thing or another because people cry and get deeply emotional in every faith spectrum and even without faith. So it's. There's uncertainty even though there's strong emotion.

James Nagel [00:59:24] Yeah, there's a lot of strong Emotion. But there's a lot of uncertainty. The key thing is God isn't exactly coming down and explaining to you in person what to do. There isn't an official factbook of which religions are correct and not. We just have a lot of these competing faiths.

John Dehlin [00:59:41] Telegram that says James goes through this. That it's feeling that you've got to interpret.

James Nagel [00:59:47] Okay, so the third bullet point though is there's huge amounts of peer pressure associated with your faith. Even if the people around you aren't actively proselytizing you, the simple fact that they live their religion around you is enough to really pressure you and couple into the fact that a lot of religions are extremely evangelical. They love to pressure everyone else around. They're very tight knit and socially oriented. They love to send out missionaries and preach and try and gain converts. So it's not just that social pressure exists and that people around you believe certain ways. They pressure you directly to believe. So the simple fact, I'll just add

John Dehlin [01:00:30] that if you think about, if I think about the people that I know that converted to the church or that join the church, it's sort of one of three scenarios, and this is just my experience. One is you're born into it, right? The second is that you fall in love with someone and you want to be with them and they're part of this religion and so at some point you sort of miraculously get that spiritual experience that your loved one has already had. Or the third option is you, you come to church and fall in love with the ward community in Mormonism's case, and you just feel such good things because these people are so wonderful. Either in any of those three cases, social pressure is extremely high. Missionaries rarely have someone just knocking on the door saying, I stumbled on a Book of Mormon, I want to get baptized. Right?

James Nagel [01:01:22] And in fact, the single one of those three instances you listed being born into it is by far the dominant predictor of what faith you'll be because it basically boils down to all things being equal. The default reaction that people are going to have under these conditions is to follow the faith of everyone around them to conform with the group by far. Statistically, speaking, we can't help it. It's just part of how we are as human beings. An important thing to realize I was raised lds, and so are you. We live in Utah here in a very dominantly LDS culture. But if we were in Georgia right now we'd be having this exact same discussion about baptism. If we were in New York or Massachusetts, we would be Talking about the Pope. And this is something that should really, you know.

John Dehlin [01:02:13] Yeah, you don't have Mormons spontaneously erupting in India or China where like at age 6 they say, Mommy, Joseph Smith, you know it. They're Hindus, right? They're Buddhists. Because that's where they're raised.

James Nagel [01:02:29] Yes. And this doesn't mean, like people don't convert, but just by far the single greatest predictor is the people around you and what you're born into. So that's a really strong take home point from these experiments. So next slide is called descent slide number 19. So this is a key take home point that's really important to emphasize in these conformity experiments is imagine those 6 to 1 odds of people unanimously disagreeing with you. What if you simply replace one of them with a fellow dissenter, someone who believes the same as you. So instead of being B, B, B, B, B, B A, it's B, B, A, B B B. Now what are you going to pick? Are you more inclined to stand up for yourself because you're not alone, or are you going to still go with the majority?

John Dehlin [01:03:25] So what difference does one extra dissenter make when the peer pressure is overwhelmingly against the decision that you feel is right?

James Nagel [01:03:34] Yes, exactly. So you can see a chart here where they compare the correct responses versus the trials. So you see, solo, the statistics are about like 60% accurate. Okay. So four out of 10 times, like we said before, people tended to fall victim to conformity. But when you insert that ally, you see the correct responses shifts way up into like the 90s, 80s and 90s. So it takes this huge bite out of conformity to have a fellow descent.

John Dehlin [01:04:05] Just one. Does this explain why, let's just say Scientology or Jehovah's Witness might be so hard or hardest on those who disbelieve or leave the faith? It's because just one dissenter that, you know, can have a dramatic influence on whether you continue to conform against what you feel is right.

James Nagel [01:04:29] Yeah, that's a good point. Is, you know, in any group trying to conform to some activity, you're going to have dissenters and doubters, or at least people who privately doubt. But the moment somebody starts openly vocalizing it, that is sort of the release valve to get lots of people voicing their doubts as well. So a lot of organizations, they strive very hard to crush dissent and silence it or just get rid of it as quickly.

John Dehlin [01:04:53] What does the military do if you dissent or defect?

James Nagel [01:04:58] Yeah, severe, right? Yeah, they're very harsh in their punishment there as well. So this is a key idea though, for me that motivates me to really speak out and try and get these ideas across and educate people is a lot of people might be aware of this stuff subconsciously and experiencing it and just need to have it spelled out for them, realizing they're not alone in this thinking because it'll help encourage people to stand up and express doubts as well.

John Dehlin [01:05:26] Got it.

James Nagel [01:05:28] Finally, this brings us to the last slide, slide number 20. Just some generic take home points. These are just the key points to take home, if nothing else. Number one, people experience very subtle yet profound behavioral pressure from social groups. Peer pressure is just amazingly powerful at making us do things. So another point, conformity with false ideas can still occur even when the truth is literally sitting right in front of your face. And it always just blows me away to sit and think about that. And I can often imagine if I was in that poor guy's shoes, I'd probably cave into the pressure as well. It just makes me embarrassed to be a human being. But it's something to be realized as a fault in yourself in order to correct it and stand up to account for it. The next point is uncertainty plus importance or difficulty plus reward means greater conformity. Okay. When there's something at stake and you're not sure of the answer, conformity is what people are going to do. Go along with the group, especially if

John Dehlin [01:06:37] there's something important at stake.

James Nagel [01:06:38] Yeah, yeah, exactly. And then finally, dissent is a very key principle to keeping people honest and critical, rather than just falling into a herd mentality.

John Dehlin [01:06:49] So we want critical dissenting people to help keep us honest.

James Nagel [01:06:54] Right, Exactly. Because oftentimes people may share those doubts and they're just too shy or timid to stand up to the group. And all they need is just that one person to set an example and initiate that snowball effect, that chain reaction to get more of a group momentum going.

John Dehlin [01:07:12] Got it, Got it. All right. Well, that's fascinating, James. This ends, I guess, part one of our presentation. I'll refer our listeners and our viewers to MormonStories.org to have a conversation about this presentation and we'll continue with this presentation in the next episode. And I'll remind people to check out YouTube for the visuals or download the PowerPoints on MormonStories.org so thanks, James.

James Nagel [01:07:40] Excellent. Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:07:49] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@saber rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [01:08:04] Come, come Ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cat tears from us to drive to the San Jo. Your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? Think I? Our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight Good afternoon. Your l Fresh courage take our God Will ever us for sake soon we'll have tale to tell oh, all is well all is well oh, is well all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey is through Happy day. All is well we let are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our

James Nagel [01:11:29] lives

Guest [01:11:31] are spared Again to see the saints there and rest obtain Or I will make this ch. Oh. All is well all is well all is well all is well all is well all is well. Is well all is.

John Dehlin [01:12:30] Sam.

Cognitive Dissonance Theory Explained

Part 2 of 5 · Ep. 339

Guest [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello and welcome to part two on a series of Morin stories on a series discussion about the psychology of religion. I'm here with Dr. James Nagle. Hey, James.

James Nagel [00:00:43] Hello.

John Dehlin [00:00:44] Hey. And I just want to remind our listeners that all of this not only is available in audio format, but also up on YouTube@YouTube.com MormonStories you can see the videos that correspond to what we're going to be talking about, or you can download the PowerPoints from MormonStories.org but the visuals are extremely helpful, so check them out if you can. I'm here with James and the first hour we've already talked about a little bit of background, but mostly we talked about a few things. Let me see if I can recap, James. Number one is that people are susceptible to, highly susceptible to social influences, peer pressure, to the point where they will often conform to things that they either don't believe at all or that they, they, if they question the. They're, you know, oftentimes likely to conform to the, to peer pressure, to social pressure around them. We also know. Yep. We also know that the extent to which there's some uncertainty and high stakes coupled together, you're going to see an actual increase in conformity.

James Nagel [00:01:56] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:01:58] And finally, that if there's a dissenting voice, even if there's a lot of peer pressure, one dissenting voice can make a pretty big difference in whether or not people conform.

James Nagel [00:02:11] Yes. Dissent is a key variable.

John Dehlin [00:02:13] Yeah. Okay. So that's what I think we've learned so far. And now we're on to cognitive dissonance, is that right?

James Nagel [00:02:20] Yes. So we're looking at the first slide here and we're going to introduce a field of psychology called cognitive dissonance theory. So we're just going to look at one of the classic experiments on this field. But something I wanted to emphasize throughout this discussion is we're just kind of cherry picking the really fun and dramatic experiments. But the psychology literature is just littered with dozens and hundreds of experiments of these same varieties where they confirm and reinforce or even supplement a lot of these studies we've been giving. It's not like these are just a single study in a vacuum. Every time I show you something there's probably a series of a dozen or so follow ups that have filled in a lot of the gaps and reproduce these results.

John Dehlin [00:03:03] Got it.

James Nagel [00:03:05] Now we're going to talk about this idea of cognitive dissonance. This idea was introduced to me indirectly when I was a teenager. I guess I remember, like all teenagers, we go through this sort of crisis of your faith. Right. You're not sure if you believe or not. And you got your mission coming. You have all this pressure to regularly attend church and prepare for your mission. And I remember being very unsure whether or not if I genuinely believe this stuff. So a lot of people, including say, my bishop and Mormon friends, when I would explain this feeling to them, I was very strongly encouraged to just simply act as if I believed anyway. In a sense, the seed of faith was basically saying, if you don't believe, just start taking part in the experience and acting as if you do. Go to the church and pay your tithing, take part in the activities and the charity events and see if it

John Dehlin [00:04:01] works for you and say you believe.

James Nagel [00:04:03] Yeah. And a key variable in there that people often encourage me was bear your testimony. As in, even if you don't really believe this stuff, stand up and bear your testimony anyway. So one quote I remember receiving, a friend emailed this to me was from Boyd K. Packer, saying, a testimony is to be found in the bearing of it. I found that very odd because I felt uncomfortable. If I don't really believe this, is it really an honest thing to stand up and say, I believe it? So this idea is not exactly rare incident. In 2008, Dallin H. Oaks really reinforced this with one of his talks where I have a quote here says we gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it. And if you continue with the quote, it's, you know, some people even suggested that testimonies are better gained on the feet bearing them than on the feet than on your knees praying for them. You've heard that quote before?

John Dehlin [00:04:58] No. That's interesting.

James Nagel [00:05:00] So it's interesting because I don't think Dallin Oaks realizes how right he is.

John Dehlin [00:05:08] Or maybe he does. Or maybe he does.

James Nagel [00:05:10] Maybe he does. The thing to be careful of, though, is that this works for anything.

John Dehlin [00:05:14] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:05:14] Okay. If we were talking about the Pope and I gave you this exact same motivational speech and encouraged you and you took part in it, then it would lead you to a testimony of the Pope and the Catholic faith.

John Dehlin [00:05:27] Yeah. And if you think about, like the Jews and the bar mitzvah and the bat mitzvah or the Catholics and the first communion or the Muslims and the, you know, the madrasas and the schools. It's clear that religions train their children from a very young age to say they believe stuff, you know, before they're probably able to really, truly investigate.

James Nagel [00:05:51] Yeah, just sort of go through the motions, even if you don't understand it.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:05:56] So the key idea, though, is this concept of you gain a belief by expressing a belief. And that's what we're going to illustrate here in the next slide. Slide number two. It's called Festinger and Carl the Cognitive Consequences of Forced Compliance. This is a really fun experiment, just because it's so twisted and insidious and subtle, what they did to these poor subjects. So I love talking about it just because it's very funny and entertaining to go through it. So it begins by pretending you are a subject. You just volunteered for a psychology experiment, and all you're told is it has something to do with thinking processes. So remember those nicknames. I tell you, they like to come up with some fancy nickname that sounds all scientific Y, but doesn't really mean anything. Right. So you show up, you. You're in this laboratory setting, and you are greeted by an official scientist. They literally say in the paper that he put on a lab coat and had a clipboard ready and was geared to look as scientific as he could. So he sits you down at a desk and says, thank you for joining. I would like you to do some experiments for me and complete some tasks. The first task is you're presented with a tray sitting on a table, and around it are just a bunch of spools, some random little knickknacks. And you are told using only one hand, I want you to insert all the spools into the tray. So you see the first picture. On the left is an empty tray with spools, and then on the right is a tray with spools in it. So that's pretty easy, right? 1, 2, 11, 12. Done. That was easy. And while you're doing this, he's got his clipboard and his pencil, and he's watching you very intently. He scribbles all sorts of crazy notes on his clipboard and gives you the overall impression that this task is of the utmost scientific importance. So once you finish, you put them all in. He says, great, very good. Now I want you to take them all out again using only one hand. So, okay, you take them out. 1, 2, 11, 12. Okay, that was easy. And again, he's scribbling his notes and watching you very intently. And then Once you're done, he says, very good. Now I want you to put them all back in again. And you repeat this cycle for a full half hour. Take him out, put him in, take him out, put him in.

John Dehlin [00:08:15] So it's this menial, tedious task.

James Nagel [00:08:17] Exactly. It's completely monotonous. You're not really doing anything constructive. You're just being very dull and repetitive.

John Dehlin [00:08:23] Got it?

James Nagel [00:08:24] Okay. But you know the science guy, he's got his lab coat. You're in the laboratory, the sterile environment. He's watching you very intently.

John Dehlin [00:08:32] Got it.

The Boredom Study and Cognitive Dissonance

James Nagel [00:08:33] So next slide, slide number three. Obviously, you're going to get a little bored after a half hour of this, so maybe now he gears you up for the next section of experiment.

John Dehlin [00:08:43] So there's a change.

James Nagel [00:08:44] Maybe something will be different. It'll be more exciting this time. So he presents you with a tray with a bunch of square pegs in square holes. And you are instructed, using only one hand, rotate the pegs by 90 degrees one at a time.

John Dehlin [00:08:56] Oh, boy.

James Nagel [00:08:58] And it's like 48 pegs here in front of you. So, okay, 1, 2, 3. So on, all the way down. And you see the picture there. All the pegs are pointed up. And then you rotate them all 90 degrees.

John Dehlin [00:09:09] Got it?

James Nagel [00:09:09] And then once you finish, he says, very great, very good. Thank you. Now do it again. You repeat over 48 pegs, and he scribbles away and he says, thanks. Now do it again and again and again for another full half hour.

John Dehlin [00:09:23] Right. So an hour of boring monotonous.

James Nagel [00:09:26] Exactly. So I have a little quote here from the paper. It says this. The hour which the subject spent working on the repetitive, monotonous tasks was intended to provide for each subject uniformly an experience about which he would have a somewhat negative opinion. Okay, that's the scientific way of saying we bored them out of their skull.

John Dehlin [00:09:45] Now, you're not trying to draw parallels of sacrament meeting here, are you?

James Nagel [00:09:48] No, no, of course not.

John Dehlin [00:09:49] I'm just. I'm just kidding. I'm just joking. I actually enjoy soccer meeting. I was just funny.

James Nagel [00:09:56] So the key here is, you know, they put you through an hour of complete boredom. The tasks you did were completely aimless and pointless and repetitive. Okay, so now we go to the next slide. Slide number four. Now that you've finished your hour of boredom, you are presented with survey on a scale from minus 5 to plus 5. Please rate your response to the following questions. Number one, were the tasks interesting and enjoyable? Number two, do you think the results may have scientific value? And number three, would you have any desire to participate in another similar experiment. So remember, these were boring by design, so it shouldn't come as any particular surprise when all the subjects rate their experience at about the zero level. Okay. You know, it was. It was boring and unpleasant, but at least they weren't, you know, putting you through electroshock. Right.

John Dehlin [00:10:50] And because the guy had the lab coat on, it was scientifically valuable because clearly he's gathering important data.

James Nagel [00:10:55] Yeah. So you give him the benefit of the doubt. Okay. But the key, though is this is the control group, and they all came in at about 0ish on this scale. That's the baseline to be aware of. Okay. That should be obvious or nothing surprising about this. So we now go to the next phase of the experiment. So that's all the control guys, and you got to feel bad for them. They just came in, do something boring for an hour and then report that it was boring and leave. Thank you. We have our control group. So the next group comes along, they go through that hour of boredom. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:11:30] Okay.

James Nagel [00:11:31] So they're now bored out of their skulls and frustrated and want to strangle themselves. But you're not given the survey right away. Instead, they put you through this business. Elaborate song and dance. Okay. So it basically goes like this. You finish the tasks, and you're about ready to jump into the next phase of the experiment. And the science guy starts looking very agitated. He's looking at his watch, he's fidgeting and scratching his chin a little, looking like he's in a bit of a stressful condition. So he talks to you for a minute and says, we need to get to the next phase of the experiment. But the guy who normally does it, he called in six. So we're shorthanded. We need to think of something quickly. So since you just went through the experiment, would you mind taking part in the next section and filling in for this guy who was supposed to be here? So most people are pretty eager to help. They cleared out their afternoon already, so they've got time on their hands. And he tells you, your job is to go to the waiting room, and there you'll find a girl sitting there. So the subjects were male, and there happens to be a female there just sitting in the waiting room waiting for her turn to go through the experiment. Your job is to sit down with her and motivate her.

Guest [00:12:40] Okay.

James Nagel [00:12:42] That is, you have to get her prepped up and ready to engage in these monotonous tasks. They don't call them monotonous. It's just, you know, it's monotonous. But your job is to sit down and make the following points. It was very enjoyable. I had a lot of fun. I enjoyed myself. It was very interesting. It was intriguing and it was exciting.

John Dehlin [00:13:04] So lie through your teeth, basically.

James Nagel [00:13:05] Yeah, exactly. I think they even. I'm not sure. I think they actually even gave you like a checklist, a little card, so you'd remember to make these points directly. So you have to describe the experiment in exciting terms, even though you just went through it and it was boring. Okay, Your job. Go lie to this person, please. Okay. Tell them something untrue. That's the key. They go through this whole elaborate song and dance just to put you in this predicament. Okay, so that brings us now to the next slide. Slide number six. So they broke it down into two groups. The first group, as a reward for their help in this experiment, they're offered $20.

John Dehlin [00:13:44] Okay?

James Nagel [00:13:46] Now a key thing to realize. This is 1959, okay? So if you adjust for inflation, the $20 by today's standards is somewhere between 100 to $150 in value. So that's like a lot of money for barely 10 minutes of work. Right?

John Dehlin [00:14:01] Right.

James Nagel [00:14:04] So, okay, I feel pretty good about that. So effectively, you know, let's talk about this in terms of today's standards. Would you sit down with someone for five minutes and tell them a little white lie? If there was a hundred bucks in it?

John Dehlin [00:14:16] Yeah. And if I thought it was, if it was part of science, you know, I'd say, yeah, it's okay.

James Nagel [00:14:22] Yeah, my conscience is pretty clear with that one. It was 150 bucks. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:14:26] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:14:27] You might be inclined to feel a guilty for bending the truth a little, but 150 bucks is a pretty heavy justification for that.

John Dehlin [00:14:35] Right? If it's science and it's not really hurting people. Right.

James Nagel [00:14:39] It's a little white lie. You're not really hurting this person. So what we say is these people had what you would call sufficient justification. Their conscience is clear. So they go in, they give the prep, talk to the girl in the waiting room, and they come back, they're given their money, and then they are sat down and given the survey again. Remember, the survey was, did you think the tasks were enjoyable? Would you like to participate again in the future? And do you think they have scientific value? They give them the survey again. And this group, nothing changed. They came in about the same as the control group. You look at all the bars there on that chart and average them together, and it's about 0ish. Again, just like the control group. So that's why we say sufficient justification. They went up, they lied, and they felt okay with that and still reported. Yes, the experiment was dull and silly and a waste of my time. Okay, so now we go on to group B. So now we're on slide number seven. This group, instead of offered $20, or by today's standards, you know, $100, they're offered $1. So you adjust for inflation, that's maybe like $5 by today's standards. Okay, so again, put yourself in this person's shoes. You're basically lying your teeth off to this poor girl, and your only reason for doing it is because you're getting five bucks. How would your conscience feel about that? Would you be uncomfortable in that? Maybe some of us might. At least a little part of you in the back of your brain might get a little agitated and uncomfortable with this action. So there's actually a word for that in psychology. We call that cognitive dissonance. It's basically that awkward feeling your brain gets when your beliefs are not coinciding with your actions. Okay. Sort of. Sort of like a feeling of guilt. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:16:31] And you're not receiving some big reward that kind of makes your cognitive dissonance disappear. Right?

James Nagel [00:16:37] Yeah, exactly. So we call that insufficient justification. So you're stretching the truth and you have insufficient justification for doing so. So what would your brain do? Well, it's too late to undo your action. You're already there lying your teeth off. So you can't, like, stop lying. You can't come clean because that would spoil the experiment. So what happens is your brain actually adjusts itself to suit your actions. We like to think that our brain, you know, is this thing underneath our control, but it will actually, your belief subconsciously shifts to represent your actions, and that's what you see after the fact. So they go in, they motivate the girl, they come back and remember, again, they're given the survey. Were the tasks interesting and enjoyable? Would you like to participate again? And do they have scientific value? And you look at all the results and there's like a full point and a half shift towards the positive rating

John Dehlin [00:17:29] where they say they enjoyed it, they had a good time, and it was highly valuable for science.

James Nagel [00:17:34] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:17:36] And, you know, the shift is fairly subtle, but you can see just across the board, it is a significant shift that is a full point difference between the other two groups. So this is the essence of what cognitive dissonance theory predicts is when your beliefs are not in line with your actions, your beliefs tend to shift to align with your actions. Okay, that is, or to put it another way, is, I'm not really lying to this person. The tasks really were interesting. Yay. I'm not lying anymore. Right. They were actually kind of fun. They were pretty interesting.

John Dehlin [00:18:11] Another example is if you ever gotten in a fight with a spouse or a girlfriend where you kind of knew that they were wrong. Sometimes they're the most vehement and adamant defending their position when. When it's pretty clear that they're wrong. In other words, it seems like sometimes the brain kicks in on overdrive when you kind of know you're wrong when you're trying to defend yourself. Is that correct?

James Nagel [00:18:39] Yeah, kind of. It's just an idea that once you're kind of committed to the action, you might feel guilty about it, but since you can't undo the action, your brain will just change its beliefs to stick with your actions. So the way just to say it again is, I'm not really lying. I really did enjoy the experiment. Now I'm not lying anymore. I think if you've ever watched Seinfeld, there's a great quote from George Costanza, who once said, it's not a lie if you believe it's true. All you have to do is just believe your own nonsense. And all of a sudden, your conscience is now satisfied. You're not deceiving this person anymore. And that reflects in the ratings of the survey. People had a genuine positive bias now in their responses. So that's the insufficient justification effect. You get people to do something even if they don't believe it, their beliefs will change to follow their actions.

John Dehlin [00:19:34] Got it?

Cognitive Dissonance and Religious Testimony

James Nagel [00:19:35] Okay, so now this comes to slide 8. So think about how this applies to what we just discussed earlier. We gain or strengthen a testimony by bearing it well. Is that because the Holy Spirit is working some miracle in your heart and rewarding you with an increased testimony?

John Dehlin [00:19:52] Or maybe.

James Nagel [00:19:54] Maybe. Or is it this other thing that we just demonstrated is a real phenomenon that works on anything.

John Dehlin [00:20:02] Were you where, like, I. You know, I just remember on my mission, I really tried to get that witness that I knew the church was true. I felt all sorts of good things, but I didn't. I never got this witness that I knew it was true. So I'm out in Guatemala and I was told, bear your testimonies if you know it's true, and that'll be what gets you through it. And so I just remember that day where I said, all right, I'll trust you. I'll Say I know it's true when I'm actually not quite sure. And I started just saying it, and eventually I became quite comfortable saying, I know the Church is true. And I just stopped thinking about whether I actually knew it or not. I just. It was if my brain adjusted.

James Nagel [00:20:48] Exactly. And so the key thing that. The question that should arise in your brain now at this point is, you know, is this because, you know, some divine miracle is working in me, or could I reproduce this under Catholic conditions? You know, if I get people to bear their testimony of the divinity and the. What's the word for the perfection of the Pope?

John Dehlin [00:21:10] The infallibility.

James Nagel [00:21:11] Infallibility. The papal infallibility. You know, if you get people to testify to this and behave as if it's true, it'll work there, too. So this is something to be very careful of and aware of that exists in us is your evidence should come first and then your beliefs, not the other way around. That is belief first, then action, not action then belief, because it works on anything. So this is why religions. Mormons are very big on bearing their testimonies, but this is true of any Christian denomination. They love to testify constantly. And this is basically what's going on, why they constantly reinforce their beliefs with each other verbally, because then their brains have to keep up with their own words. So that's the essence of cognitive dissonance theory and how it relates to religious principles. Another, I guess one other point is the ROTC experience. I told myself I was having a good time, and then I suddenly started having a good time again. It's just cognitive dissonance kicking in. So now we go to slide number nine. This is a phenomenon called confirmation bias. And this one, one researcher in an article described this as probably one of the most pervasive biases in all of human reasoning. And it's very subtle, but it's extremely profound. Okay, so the essence of it is simply people have a strong tendency to seek out evidence that confirms what they already believe rather than potentially falsify it or disprove it.

Confirmation Bias and Belief Perseverance

John Dehlin [00:22:45] Right.

James Nagel [00:22:46] So there's a very powerful lesson in scientific method here that we'll talk about. Excuse me. So we move along to slide 10 now. So the essence of the experiment is pretty straightforward. You come in, you sit down at a desk, and there is an experimenter there, and he's just going to play a game with you. He says, I'm going to write three numbers on the chalkboard here, okay? And these numbers conform to some mathematical rule that I'm thinking of, okay? So he says, I want you to see if you can guess my rule. So the game works like this. You have in front of you a piece of paper and a pencil. He writes his numbers on the board. You think about it for a second, and then you pick any three numbers and write them down on the paper in front of you. He will then inspect your paper, look at your numbers, and give you a smiley or a frowny. Yes or a no. Yes. These numbers conform to the rule I'm thinking of or no, they do not. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:23:46] Okay.

James Nagel [00:23:47] And you can repeat this as many times as you like, no limit. Just keep writing triplets of numbers until you're absolutely sure you figured out my rule. That's the whole game. Just write three numbers, yes or no. Write three numbers, yes or no? Write three numbers, yes or no, and keep going until you think you figured it out.

John Dehlin [00:24:03] Okay, so give us an example.

James Nagel [00:24:06] So the example he wrote was just 2, 4, 6, right on the board. Okay? So you look at that. Strictly speaking, there's any number of wacky rules that could produce this three numbers. Okay. Mathematically speaking. But the obvious rule might be, say, oh, even numbers incrementing. Okay. 2, 4, 6. So the next set would be like 8, 10, 12. Right. So you might be tempted to write down 8, 10, 12. So he comes over, he looks in, he gives you a smiley face, and you'll try a bunch of triplets of the same rules, even numbers incrementing. So, you know, a billion, a billion and two. A billion and four. Yes. A thousand. A thousand and two. A thousand and four. Yes. And you keep trying and you keep getting yeses. Right. So

John Dehlin [00:24:50] once you've received a confirmation, an apparent confirmation that. That the conclusion you've arrived at is true, then what you tend to do is just keep applying that rule to everything.

James Nagel [00:25:05] Yeah, that's the key here, is people tend. You notice how I just subtly guided our discussion that way, is that this is what people tend to do, is they get a rule in their brain and they just keep testing that very same rule, and they keep getting positive results.

John Dehlin [00:25:20] And as long as they keep getting the smiley face, they don't really feel any need to try a different rule.

James Nagel [00:25:27] Yeah. And every additional smiley face is just confirmation that you're right. Hey, except you're wrong. So we go to the next slide.

John Dehlin [00:25:35] How can you be Wrong?

James Nagel [00:25:36] Slide number 12. The correct rule was any three increasing numbers.

John Dehlin [00:25:41] Oh, so it could have been 1, 2, 3.

James Nagel [00:25:44] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:25:45] But because the first one you saw was 2, 4, 6, you assumed they had increased by 2, exactly. Because it was confirmed then. You just kept applying that rule.

James Nagel [00:25:56] Yes. So the results is, you know, the experiment, they tried it on 28 people, 22 out of 28 couldn't guess the rule. They just stuck with their idea and kept going with it. Only 4 out of 28 or 6 out of 28 actually got the correct because they kept.

John Dehlin [00:26:12] They kept getting the smiley face for the increments of 2.

Guest [00:26:15] And.

John Dehlin [00:26:16] And then they said, oh, I know the answer now. And then when they gave it, it was the wrong answer.

James Nagel [00:26:20] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:26:20] Got it.

James Nagel [00:26:21] You keep trying. You keep trying. Eventually you stop, you raise your hand and say, I know your rule. And you say, it's even numbers going up by two. And he says, no, it was any three increasing numbers at all.

John Dehlin [00:26:30] So it could have been 1, 5, 7, it could have been 10, 10, 11, 100.

James Nagel [00:26:35] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:26:36] Okay, got it.

James Nagel [00:26:37] So we go to the next slide, and this illustrates a principle called falsification, or an idea of testing alternatives to what you believe. So the problem with just confirming what you believe is that the thing you believe is only a subset of a grander whole. So you keep getting positive and positive results, even though it's completely wrong. The way you're supposed to approach it is try different things. So, for example, what if I tried multiples of four? Oh, I got a smiley face.

John Dehlin [00:27:07] So they. 4, 18, 16.

James Nagel [00:27:09] Yeah, 4, 8, 16.

John Dehlin [00:27:10] That would disprove the increments of two theory.

James Nagel [00:27:14] Exactly. I falsified the previous one by getting a positive result on something else. So like you said, I could try 1, 2, 3. I could try multiples of 3, and I don't even have to increment them by 3. So, like 3, 12, 21. Those are all multiples of 3. And I get a smiley again. Oh, goody. And then the next one, what if I change the order up? Oh, I got a frowny. So order matters.

John Dehlin [00:27:36] So you get 12, 3, 21. That's not increasing order. You get the frowny face. And you know, whoa, looks like order matters, right?

James Nagel [00:27:45] Yeah, exactly. Then you might say, well, maybe they have to be decreasing or increasing. They can't just be random. So you might try just decreasing numbers, and you get another frowny face, the final one. You know, what if they have to be whole numbers? Can I try fractions? And so you see 1/2, 6/5, 7/3, you know, and then you get another smiley. So they don't even have to be whole numbers. But the key to all this is that you're testing alternatives. With each test, you're not Just confirming something you already know. You're trying alternatives and every yes or no answer proves something wrong. That's the key. You have to prove things wrong in order to get to something that's right. So we go to the next slide here. This is a very key Principle, Slide 14, called falsifiability. And this is a central tenet of what it means to think scientifically. So there's a quote here from Albert Einstein that says, no amount of experimentation can ever prove me right, but a single experiment can prove me wrong. This is a very key principle of science, that nothing in science is genuinely true in that strict capital T principle,

John Dehlin [00:28:54] even gravity is still a theory, even though no one would question it. Right?

James Nagel [00:28:58] Yeah, Right. We believe in the theory of gravity and Newtonian gravitation or relativistic gravitation. We believe these things because we tried to falsify them. And failed theories and science are true because they are able to withstand a continuous barrage of attempts at falsification. So this is a very key Turner180 in terms of how to think properly in figuring things out. Our very nature is to get an idea in our head and then just stay fixated on that idea and confirm it and confirm it and confirm it. Even though it's wrong, you keep getting that confirmation. And this is a very pervasive way of thinking. It's natural to want to look at things that way.

John Dehlin [00:29:43] So if you learn to say the Muslim church, you know, is the true church, as a five year old, you're going to keep sort of viewing the world and selecting your evidence in a way that conforms and confirms that conclusion. You drew very early.

James Nagel [00:30:00] Yes, we only seek out evidence to confirm what we already believe rather than to potentially falsify what we believe. So this is why it's a weakness

John Dehlin [00:30:10] when we do that.

James Nagel [00:30:11] Yeah, exactly. This is why in science, if you don't have, if you have an idea in science, if it can't be proven wrong, it's useless because if it can't be proven wrong, it can't be supported or rejected in any sense. It's just random gibberish. You spoke into the air at that point. Nobody wants to hear it. So a key principle here is unless we are willing to be wrong, we can never figure out what is right. Being wrong is awesome in science because it means you have something to learn, you discovered something when you're wrong.

John Dehlin [00:30:41] It goes back to that rocket thing. You want engineers for rockets that are going to do everything they can to try and make the thing fail. So that once it's time for it to succeed, it has its best.

James Nagel [00:30:54] Yeah, that's actually a nice way to think of it, is do you want to be in the rocket that was put together ad hoc, or do you want one that people tried to break and couldn't break? That's a nice way to think about it. Which one would you be more confident in? One last quote is one that Carl Sagan gives in this regard. He says there are many theories and hypotheses in science which are wrong and that's perfectly alright because they are the aperture to figuring out what is right. So I really just can't stress enough that the expression I was wrong is the greatest thing in the world of science. And you really need to be comfortable with being wrong about things because a lot of people are not comfortable with that. The expression eating my humble pie usually accompanies saying I was wrong about something. It's not a pleasant experience, but it's something that's really the sign of it, of a intelligent person who cares about truth, who is willing to admit being wrong.

John Dehlin [00:31:55] That's one of the things that I think is beautiful and highly ethical about science. You know, you have to publish the detailed procedures of how you arrived at your findings, and it's only considered legitimate when someone else can replicate it.

James Nagel [00:32:11] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:32:12] So it's not trying to hide this thing where like, I had this experience and everyone's got to believe me. It says, no, here's how I did it and prove it for yourself. That seems highly ethical to me. And if you get the example of like cold fusion, where a scientist actually is discovered to have falsified data, what happens to the career of that scientist

James Nagel [00:32:38] is tanked in a heartbeat.

John Dehlin [00:32:39] It's pretty much destroyed, right? I mean, you pretty much can't recover from that. In the world of science, it's okay

James Nagel [00:32:44] to be wrong, but to fabricate is a, ooh, oh yeah, you could be

John Dehlin [00:32:48] wrong 99 out of a hundred times. That's okay, right?

James Nagel [00:32:52] Yeah, it's interesting. So, anywho, so moving along now, that's a very important lesson in the beauty of science and scientific method. So now we're going to do another supplement to this idea of confirmation bias. So on slide 15 says Belief Perseverance. And this is a very related idea to confirmation bias. But the idea basically says even after supporting evidence for a belief has been discredited, the belief still tends to linger. So as a metaphor, it'd be like building a foundation and then putting a building on it and then tearing Away the foundation, but the building just still sits there. That's kind of what belief perseverance is.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Once you start believing something, it's hard to change that belief.

James Nagel [00:33:37] Exactly. Generating belief is a lot easier than erasing beliefs. That's kind of the theme we'll see here. So Next slide. Slide 16. This is a fun one because it's so easy and simple how they went through this experiment. So it begins, you sit down, you're going through this again. You're a volunteer for some psychological experiment. You're this subject. They sit you down and they start asking you questions about who do you think would make a better firefighter. You're given a dichotomy between risky, gung ho, maverick type people versus very cautious, by the book, conservatives. So the dichotomy is maverick versus conservative, risky, cautious. Generally speaking, most people don't know the first thing about firefighting other than put water on the fire and it goes out. I don't know anything about firefighting. I'm not a firefighter. I don't know any firefighters. So I don't know the first thing about firefighting. And I'm in no position to make the judgment or have any preference between risky or conservative.

John Dehlin [00:34:42] Got it.

James Nagel [00:34:43] So rationally speaking, if this is who you are, then you should give a generally neutral response somewhere in the zero range. Right. No preference one way or the other.

John Dehlin [00:34:53] And you'll get people guessing either way, and they'll kind of generally equal each other out to zero.

James Nagel [00:34:59] Yeah. And generally speaking, though, the baseline is a slight bias towards maverick, like plus one half on a scale of minus five to five. So essentially zero, though you can kind of approximate it there. And that should make perfect sense. Okay, there's our baseline. So now we go to the next phase of this experiment, slide 17. So they bring up this issue of risky versus conservative firefighters, and they get you thinking about it and talking about it, and then they present you an essay, five pages of a comprehensive dissertation written by an expert fireman on why risky firefighters are better than conservative firefighters. Written by Joe Fireman of the Salt Lake City fire department, with 20 years of experience putting out fires.

John Dehlin [00:35:45] Okay. Okay.

James Nagel [00:35:46] So you got this nice golden essay from a genuine expert explaining to you why the one position is better than the other. So with this piece of evidence in hand, it's perfectly natural to feel justified in saying risky firefighters are better. Right. You got an expert opinion. So we call that the training condition. So they train the subjects. Here is your essay. Here's what you should believe. And then they give Them, the survey again, who do you prefer, Risky or maverick Now? Well, obviously they prefer risky. They got this perfectly good essay saying risky is better, so they report risky is better.

John Dehlin [00:36:19] Got it.

James Nagel [00:36:20] So you look at the relationship, it's like plus two and a half now, more or less. So a nice big positive boost towards preference in favor of the mavericks. Okay, so now comes the fun part. Slide number 18. So again they go through those motions, the risky versus conservative. Here's this big essay. Risky firefighters are good. Now, before they give you the survey, they confess something to you.

John Dehlin [00:36:45] Okay, so these are, this is a whole new set of people who, they haven't been asked to give an answer yet they've received the training. And then before they get tested on what they prefer, you're saying something else happens.

James Nagel [00:37:01] Yeah. So yet another condition is piled on to another group of subjects where they confess. Now, by the way, that essay we gave you, it's bogus. We made it up.

John Dehlin [00:37:13] It's not really an expert. It's not really an expert.

James Nagel [00:37:16] Yeah, we handed it off to some undergrad. He just made up the name and made up the arguments and fabricated the data and the graphs and just. It's all a bunch of complete nonsense. Don't draw any conclusions from it whatsoever.

John Dehlin [00:37:28] So first they formed the belief that risky gung ho mavericks were better, but they were told, okay, the information that we based that on was not credible.

James Nagel [00:37:38] Yeah, exactly. They basically say, yeah, we made up this essay because we wanted to get you thinking and discussing, you know, just some made up excuse for why they put you through it. And then they confess at the end that it was just a fabrication. Okay? So now rationally speaking, the foundation has been taken away again. You shouldn't have any preference one way or the other because you were trained to believe something. But they didn't just took away the foundation. Everything you built that belief on is now theory.

John Dehlin [00:38:04] It should go back to close to zero.

James Nagel [00:38:05] Right, exactly. In principle, if we were all rational people, it should go back towards the baselines again. But, and it's funny because it doesn't. So you look at the graph there you still see this huge bias towards mavericks where all things being equal, with no training they would give about a zero. But then you train them and confess they still that the training was bogus. So we say the belief perseveres, or it's belief perseverance is the idea. There's no rational basis for the belief, but it lingered anyway. And all you had to do is just implant the idea in their brain and, and Then walk away.

John Dehlin [00:38:42] That's like, I heard these rumors about. They used to show movies where they would flash the popcorn subliminally in the trailers and kind of plant that idea for getting popcorn. And somehow that might influence you later. I guess that's a different title.

James Nagel [00:39:01] But there is actually a huge body of experiments where they do exactly that sort of thing. I could probably put together a whole nother half hour hour slideshow and just those kinds of wacky experiments. Flash your images and, you know, subconsciously implant ideas. It actually works where you won't really see the image, but your brain will. It's kind of funny.

John Dehlin [00:39:24] Okay.

James Nagel [00:39:24] Anyway, but that's a kind of a whole separate topic. So we go now to slide 19.

John Dehlin [00:39:29] All right.

James Nagel [00:39:31] So it's funny, you know, you might be inclined to think, well, you know, they trained them the one way and they'll retain the other way. But it actually works if you do the exact opposite. So the red bars there show training to be cautious. And the exact same thing happened just with the opposite.

John Dehlin [00:39:45] Wow, that's pretty powerful. They looked like almost the exact inflections of each other.

James Nagel [00:39:50] Yeah, it's great. So this is a very key idea. It's called belief perseverance. You train somebody to believe something, then even if all the justification for it vanishes, they'll still believe it. And they'll believe it, no matter how wrong or made up or arbitrary it was to begin with. That's the key, the whole thing. Nobody to this day knows whether conservative or mavericks are better, but the fact that you can train people to believe one or the other and then admit entirely that they have no justification for that belief. It's been planted, and they still believe it anyway. That's the great thing about this experiment, just how in your face it is. So the way I kind of look at this is think about what's physically going on inside your brain when you form ideas and conclusions and beliefs. When you come to a conclusion, neurons in your brain are physically forming connections at synapses. So that idea is hardwired almost literally into your brain.

John Dehlin [00:40:48] Yeah, it is. It is.

James Nagel [00:40:49] So what happens when you debunk the idea? Well, you can't forget the hardware.

John Dehlin [00:40:54] It's not like the neurons unravel. Right.

James Nagel [00:40:56] Yeah. They don't just break apart. So what happens in order to forget an idea, you have to generate a new set of neurons that physically overrides the old set.

John Dehlin [00:41:06] Yep. And the old beliefs are still there. You've just overpowered them with new ones. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:41:12] The old beliefs are still There they just are overridden like you said. So that is why I think this idea of beliefs perseverance exists. It's a fundamental manifestation of the way our brains function.

John Dehlin [00:41:25] Got it.

James Nagel [00:41:27] So learning things is a lot harder than forgetting things and correcting things. That's kind of the key. So again, one of those principles of science is you have to be willing to admit you're wrong and stop acting on the belief that was wrong in the first place. But this is a very difficult thing for our brains to do. So just another great illustration of the wackiness in human thinking. So now we go to the next slide. Think about this now, in religious matters, like for example, how many religions can you think of that try very hard to indoctrinate children at early ages?

John Dehlin [00:42:06] All of them. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:42:10] Whether they're right or not, the simple fact that you expose them to these ideas very early and very strongly means no matter how right or wrong the idea is, it's going to stick in their brain for a very long time. And it becomes a very, very difficult and almost traumatic thing for people to give up a religion entirely or to maybe shift faiths into a new face. I mean, you ever just met anyone whose transition out of religion was just a simple, oh, I was wrong. And this is a better idea.

John Dehlin [00:42:38] It's rare. It's rare.

James Nagel [00:42:40] That rarely happens. It's always this big traumatic thing because it's so ingrained into your brain from the get go.

John Dehlin [00:42:47] And when they say they can leave the church, but they can't leave it alone, partly that's because their brain is literally wired, you know, into this stuff. And so you don't just undo that wiring without causing some pretty significant reactions, right?

James Nagel [00:43:01] Yeah, exactly. So another interesting idea is the Moroni promise itself. So an interesting quote here is from Elder Cook, Gene Cook, and listen to the language he uses to describe how the Moroni promise works. He says the Lord offers us the opportunity to let him confirm truth already in our hearts. But in order to confirm religious truth, one must at least have the idea or the thought or the belief, however small, that he has found something true, and then pray to receive the Lord's confirmation. Now, in light of what we just learned about how easy it is to form a belief, and then once you have that belief, the default perception you'll have in the world is to just confirm the belief.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] Right.

James Nagel [00:43:49] So not that I want to attack anyone's testimonies directly, but something needs to be realized. Is this action works on anything? It works if you're Mormon. It'll work if you're Catholic and it'll work if you're Buddhist.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] So once it gets planted there, that religious belief, and then your confirmation bias kicks in and all around you, you're now interpreting whatever you see as confirming that belief you've already decided upon. You're sort of deeply ingraining your brain to believe that belief for the rest of your life.

James Nagel [00:44:28] It's not by accident that this is something you see across religious cultures. This is something, I don't want to say it's by design, but it's something that people do because it works. So the important thing is, however right or wrong you are at the outset, unless you're willing to falsify things, then that's how right or wrong you're going to forever remain. So this is why science. Again, compare this with what scientific thinking says. You want to put God to the test because you want to know if he's genuinely this is the truth or not. So you need some potential way to falsify it, not simply come to your conclusion first. Interpret everything in that light, because that is a great way to start wrong and stay wrong no matter what you believe. Or better way, it's a better way. It's a great way to form a belief and hang on to that belief irrespective of whether it's true or not. That's the key. So some take home points. Now slide number 21. Just a really brief summary of everything we learned so far on this section. So first and foremost seen that human brains are very good at generating beliefs, but not very good at erasing beliefs. This is a very fundamental point. Another key point is religious doctrines work very hard to generate belief without evidence, because once the belief is there, then everything is interpreted as confirmation by default. So I got a couple scriptures like blessed are those who have seen and not have, or blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed. Is this really a scientific way to approach the world? Another one, faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. They're doing this deliberately to generate the belief first so that you will see the evidence later. So like I said, once a belief is generated, the natural tendency is to seek out evidence that only confirms the belief. However wrong you are at the outset is however wrong you shall forever remain. You have to have some sort of self correction mechanism to seek out errors and fix them, not simply reaffirm your preferred position. The importance of science is that it works very hard to avoid this stuff because falsification is the Key. It's all about proving things wrong, not about asserting things and reinforcing things we believe to be true. So being wrong is the virtue in science, not something to shy away from. So that's how science corrects us.

John Dehlin [00:46:53] And we shouldn't scoff at what science has given us. It's given modern medicine, it's given us aviation, it's giving us, you know, mass transportation, it's given us, you know, germ theory and just all sorts of wonderful things that have, you know, extended our lives, that have improved our quality of life. And of course, it's brought us, you know, pollution and other types of things as well. But it's hard to argue with its effectiveness. Right.

James Nagel [00:47:20] Yeah. There's a great expression that says, you know, if knowledge causes problems, it's not through ignorance that you're going to solve them. So a great idea of, you know, if science is important, whether you like it or not, it works for good, for better or for worse, it produces the good.

John Dehlin [00:47:37] And if science is. If science is. And if science is failing you, what you need is what?

James Nagel [00:47:42] More science. Right, Exactly.

Guest [00:47:45] Right. Right.

Eyewitness Testimony and Memory Reliability

James Nagel [00:47:47] So now we go to slide number 22. So this is one, and we should probably tread lightly is the idea of eyewitness testimony. Many religious faiths are built on eyewitness testimony, including Mormon faith, for example. You know, the entire faith, everything about Islam is contained in the Quran and the writings of Muhammad, but everything about the nature of God and the reality of things that we know about Islam and the reality of the Quran is just in the Quran. We're supposed to take it on the say so of the guys who wrote this book that what he says is true.

John Dehlin [00:48:26] So Muhammad has an experience and we're all supposed to believe him. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:48:31] And by a similar situation, think about the four gospels of the New Testament. They are all secondhand eyewitness hearsay testimonies written decades after the events being described. How much stock do you want to put in that kind of a standard of evidence? If somebody tells you he saw Bigfoot or Elvis, are you going to take him at his word? What if 5,000 people all collectively claim they saw Elvis? Does that really mean Elvis came back to life? It's a fundamental idea that how much can you trust the word of other people? And we're going to see the answer spoiler is simply you can't. It's very bad. You got to be very careful on how much you trust eyewitness testimony. So to jump into that, we'll go to slide number 23. So this is a fun little experiment, the hit versus smashed experiment. So imagine again, you're a subject, you're volunteering for an experiment. They sit you in a chair and they show you a video of two cars coming to an intersection and bashing into each other. Okay, so in reality, the cars are only going 25 miles per hour. But your job, then they ask you, is simply, how fast were the cars going when they hit each other? Now, a fun fact, people aren't very good at measuring velocity by looking at things. And so when they ask you this question, people tended to respond higher than the truth. And it came in around 34. So it's actually not relevant to the experiment, but it's a fun fact that people are really terrible at estimating velocities of things. But it actually gets worse than that because then you can take that group, grab another one, show them another video, two cars colliding with each other. You then ask them the same question. How fast were the cars going when they smashed each other? Same question, just a different verb. Hit versus smashed. It turns out the verb you use to ask the question actually changes the response you get. Hit comes in around 34 miles per hour. Smashed will come in at over 40 miles per hour. An actual detectable, reproducible difference in responses based on nothing more than the verb you use in the question. So this is why leading questions are bad. If you want honest information from people, you have to be extremely careful. And how you ask them for the information, because they'll actually listen to the question itself and use the words in your question to bias their response. So that's just a primer to the next set of the experiment. So now we have what's called the misinformation effect. We're on slide number 24. So you have that experiment again. You show some people two cars crashing into each other. You then wait a week and you have them fill out some essay and questionnaires. And buried in it is the question, did you see broken glass? Now the correct answer is no, there was no broken glass. So without any conditioning or priming, out of 50 subjects, six of them said they saw broken glass, 44 said, no, no broken glass. So for the most part, people tended to be getting it correct. So then now you repeat the experiment on another group. You show them the video, Two cars crash into each other. You then ask them how fast were they going when they hit each other. They get their answer. You wait a week or so, bring them back, and you give them this follow up study. And the question Again, did you see any broken glass? What's funny is the hit group actually didn't really perform any differently from the control. That is, they just said 7 out of 50 as opposed to 6 out of 50. So no significant change. Now, the fun part is the smashed group. So again, you get a bunch of people, show them the video. Two cars crash into each other. How fast were the cars going when they smashed into each other? So they give their answer, you wait a while, come back, you do the follow up. And again, did you see any broken glass? So the key to this is the smashed group was twice as likely as the controls to say, yes, we saw broken glass. 16 out of 50, as opposed to 60 out of 50. A huge disparity. All of a sudden, more people saying they saw broken.

John Dehlin [00:52:45] So just the change of a word of how you ask a question can actually make people more likely to say that they saw something that they actually could never have seen.

James Nagel [00:52:57] Or another way to think of it is the question you use to describe the event or ask about the event literally changes the memory of the event and the subject. You say smashed. And so they replay it in their mind as something more violent than it really was. Then that replay actually becomes the new memory.

John Dehlin [00:53:15] Memory is very malleable.

James Nagel [00:53:18] That's the key. Memory is not this static thing we like to think it is. It's hugely malleable, and it updates based on nothing more than just the questions you ask about the events. That's kind of the freaky part is as you're trying to reproduce the event and describe it, the simple act of being asked about it changes your memory of it.

John Dehlin [00:53:40] Maybe over time, you can ask lots of things. And that's probably where we get the fish story of where the fish keeps growing each time the story gets retold. Because over time, memories morph. It's not that someone's necessarily a liar. It's just that the brain can add things based on prompts and cues and memories and other things.

James Nagel [00:54:03] Right, Exactly. And that's an important thing to realize is this is like the most sterile laboratory conditions you can get. You know, here's a video. Here's a question. What do you say? And they're trying to be, like, as gently and gentle and unbiased as they can. And this effect is still very detectable and prominent. So then you just imagine, what about the more chaotic world where you have social pressure and maybe even desire to prefer one response over another? And.

John Dehlin [00:54:30] And you're basing it on emotion instead of something you saw. So you cried or you felt a tingly thing, and that's what you're trying to use as evidence, Right?

James Nagel [00:54:42] Exactly, yes. So this is a huge stake through the heart of eyewitness testimony. It's something you just cannot rely on very implicitly. So now this brings us to the Next slide. Slide 25. What happens if I throw peer pressure into the mix? Okay. Yeah. What do you think is going to happen here? So this is a fun little quickie experiment. I just like the title it says, I still think it was a banana. Memorable Lies and Forgettable Truths.

John Dehlin [00:55:14] That's the title of the article, the

James Nagel [00:55:16] title of the paper. Yeah. So the experiment, basically, you see an image here in front of you of some kitchen. You can see there's some chairs, there's a painting on the wall, there's a stove in the back, some dangling lights, fruit bowl, some hardwood floor, and so on. Okay. So you're told you're going to see this image for 2 minutes. Try and study it as best you can, because we're going to test you. There will be a test. So it's just a simple little memory experiment. So we go to the next slide, slide number 26. You then probed about specifics of the image. What color was the painting in the back? Was there one refrigerator or two or things like that? But the key question was, did the fruit bowl have a banana or not? Did you see a banana? The correct answer was actually no. If you go back, there's just lemons.

John Dehlin [00:56:08] There's lemons, but no banana.

James Nagel [00:56:10] Yeah, exactly. So all things being equal, people were about 70% accurate with this. So that's kind of the baseline.

John Dehlin [00:56:17] Okay, so 70%, they say, no, there's

James Nagel [00:56:19] no banana, which is the correct answer.

John Dehlin [00:56:21] Right. Okay.

James Nagel [00:56:22] Right. So then to shake it up a little, they put a confederate there with you. So before you can give your answer, you have to listen to someone else give his answer.

John Dehlin [00:56:31] It's not six. It's just one.

James Nagel [00:56:33] Just one guy. Yeah. And he says, yes, I absolutely saw a banana. He sounds very confident in his response. So just simply listening to someone else say, I saw a banana, what do you think happens to other people in their responses, their memory?

John Dehlin [00:56:49] Right.

James Nagel [00:56:50] Yeah. And they actually are more wrong now because they have this influence giving them incorrect information. So with the confederate there, the accuracy went from 70 down to 50%. And just from one guy simply just saying, yes, there was, and people suddenly start saying, yeah, I remember there being a banana. Sure. That's called sort of an extension of the misinformation effect coupled with informational influence of other people around just the simple presence of other people updates our memories. That's kind of the key there. So now let's go to slide 27.

John Dehlin [00:57:29] Yeah. So how does this relate to religious experiences?

James Nagel [00:57:33] So, yeah, this is a great example of this exact phenomenon called the transfiguration of Brigham Young.

John Dehlin [00:57:39] Where'd you get. Where'd you get this? This is brilliant.

James Nagel [00:57:45] There's a paper right there, actually. The Making of a Mormon Myth.

John Dehlin [00:57:49] This is not a dialogue. A Journal of Mormon Thought, 1995. It's an article.

James Nagel [00:57:54] Yeah, this guy went through all the journal diaries of all the people involved in this event and put together a nice reconstruction of what happened. So the date is August 8, 1844. Right after Joseph Smith was martyred. You have this power vacuum in the Mormon Church. Who's going to be the next president? So Brigham Young and Sidney Rigdon were the two guys competing for the presidency now. So they actually got together in, like, this big town hall setting and had kind of this public debate with each other where they both, you know, bashed on each other and explained why they were the rightful successors to the church. So what happened was eventually Brigham Young won out, obviously, and Sidney Rigdon was soundly defeated by just the sheer awesome force of Brigham Young's oratory skill. So reading the journal entries and diary entries of everybody who was there at the event that day, that's basically what they recorded. Yes. Brigham Young gave a nice speech, and it was awesome. He has the rightful president of the church. The end. It was funny. He even mentions in the article that, like, there's actual recorded minutes of the event. You know, somebody was there writing down events as they happened, minute by minute, basically. And that's what he records, you know, Brigham Young stomp. Signe Rigden, the end. Now, the funny part is, decades later, after the fact, this rumor started somehow that Brigham Young somehow transfigured himself into the spirit of Joseph Smith.

John Dehlin [00:59:22] So, like, you could even see his. Joseph Smith's face on Brigham's face. Or somehow when Brigham spoke, you could hear Joseph Smith's voice. Is that right?

James Nagel [00:59:31] Yeah, exactly. That's how people suddenly started describing this event. You have, like, diaries and journal entries written decades after the fact where they just completely invented this event out of nothing. And the really funny part is some people in particular, by name, John Lee and Orson Hyde, they record this event in their journals, even though they weren't actually at the event to see it.

John Dehlin [00:59:53] Yeah, so they were, like. They were, like, still traveling abroad, so they couldn't have been there at the actual meeting.

James Nagel [01:00:02] Exactly.

John Dehlin [01:00:02] But somehow after hearing the story so much and memories got fuzzy. They recorded in their journal that they were there, even though we know they weren't. And not just that they were there, but because they had heard other people tell the story about the transfiguration. None of them being contemporaries necessarily, none of them having experienced that transfiguration themselves as contemporaries. These people who weren't even there, just from their suggestion not only wrote that they were there, but that they also experienced the transfiguration. Right.

James Nagel [01:00:38] Yeah, exactly. So this is a great example of the extent to which misinformation can spread in our memories. Because I don't doubt for a second that these guys were completely sincere. Yeah.

John Dehlin [01:00:50] It's not that they're liars. Right.

James Nagel [01:00:51] They're not liars. They probably believed what they reported. But their memory is just so fallible that the mere act of hearing the event from other people caused them to remember it.

John Dehlin [01:01:03] Science shows that this is absolutely repeatable in a lab.

James Nagel [01:01:07] Yeah. You can produce this exact effect under laboratory conditions and replicate it. This is just sort of a practical extent of how far it can go if left unchecked. So next slide, final slide. Some take home points here. Human memory is just embarrassingly fallible. This is why you cannot trust your own memory. I guess I want to say it's kind of depressing when you think about it. We like to think of our memory as like some tape recorder that transcribes events and burns them into our brains and then we just replay them as we need it.

Guest [01:01:45] Like.

James Nagel [01:01:46] No, it's this dynamic thing that updates itself with new information and was social information. So human beings tend to subconsciously rely on each other when they construct their memories. That's a key, a cue there. We'll remember things simply because someone else says they saw it. We'll suddenly just. Our memory will update itself to include that information. And so this is why in science, personal eyewitness testimony is absolutely the least reliable form of evidence. You go to some science guy and say, I saw an alien, he will say, I don't care, I'm sorry, not useful to me. Bring me the ash. As Neil Degrasse Tyson would say, bring me the ashtray off the spaceship and we'll talk about it. I can't go on your word. Sorry. Just not reliable. So ridiculously error prone that we just have to throw it out entirely. You can't trust it. So this has some very serious implications. Like for example, I alluded earlier the entire New Testament is built on nothing more than the say so of a bunch of guys. How do we know Jesus rose from the dead? Well, because a bunch of guys wrote it down and said so. Like, all the evidence for all the events within the Bible are contained solely within the Bible itself. That is an important thing to bear in mind when you're studying Christianity and the history of the Gospels in the Bible. Another important thing is the Bible was edited after the fact. The events were written down, and then a council, a literal committee had to pick and choose which things could go into the Bible and which things couldn't. So, you know, again, are you going to trust these guys to be very objective and what is real and what isn't, or they just. You got to be careful? And again, you know, I don't want to feel like I'm just picking on Mormons and Christians because this is true. Even if you're a Muslim, you know, everything about the Quran is buried. All the evidence for the events in the Quran are contained in the Quran itself. Is that really a standard you want to live by? And of course, you have ideas of testimony, meetings, our own personal experiences. You may have an experience in your life where you felt like something very profound happened, but honestly, maybe it didn't. You have to be open to the fact that your memory is not very reliable and that it will change as you retell the event and get more exciting and interesting.

John Dehlin [01:04:14] Right.

James Nagel [01:04:15] So these are important things. This is why we just, in science, we do not accept eyewitness testimony. We just reject it outright. Unless you can show it physically, we just aren't going to accept it.

John Dehlin [01:04:26] So you videotape it, you audio record it, you do whatever you can.

James Nagel [01:04:33] Okay, so that brings us to the end of part two.

John Dehlin [01:04:37] All right, so thanks, James Nagel. For this Part two of the Psychology of Religion on Mormon's Stories, check us out@mormonstories.org you can comment on this episode or other ones. Make sure. And check us out@YouTube.com MormonStories for the video. And we've got a couple more parts coming which I think are going to be fascinating. So thanks for sticking with us and we look forward to joining you again very soon. Thanks, James.

James Nagel [01:05:06] Thank you.

John Dehlin [01:05:07] All right, Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

Guest [01:05:30] Come, come ye saints no toil nor labor fail but with joy when you're away Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will swell oh, all is well all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard Tis not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shine the fight Good up your lo Fresh courage take our God Will ever us first sake soon we'll have tale of tales oh, all is well all is well oh, all is well all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey is through Happy day I'll be well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain I will make this chorus well oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all

James Nagel [01:09:26] is well

Guest [01:09:30] oh, all is well. All in the well all in the way.

Part 3 of 5 · Ep. 340

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello, and welcome back to another edition of Mormon Stories Podcast. I'm your host, John Dehlin, here with Dr. James Nagle. Hello. We're talking about the psychology of religion. This is part three. I want to remind everyone to if you can check out the video on, you can get it mormonstories.org under this post you can go to YouTube.com mormonstories or, or you can just download the PowerPoint presentations. But the video is going to help with your understanding of these concepts, but hopefully it's not required. So those of you listening with audio should be fine. We're on the third part of this series and James, why don't you just go ahead and take us away for part three.

Compliance Techniques and Persuasion

James Nagel [00:01:16] All right, so the next section I want to talk about is this top subject known as compliance techniques. It is things you do to elicit compliance or get people to follow along with you in something. Okay. And this is a really fun subject in social psychology because you could pretty much call it how to be a great salesman. So this really ties into a lot of religious belief because many faiths love to proselytize and they go to door and they have this whole sales pitch and this crazy set of rules for how to get people to listen to your message and comply with your request of conversion. So there's some these great techniques out there and these extend way beyond just religion. These are extremely common in marketing. You will see a lot of these just by watching any commercial on any TV show ever. You'll see a lot of this stuff. A lot of these actually are geared originally from like door to door salesmen and the tricks that they would learn to sell items door to door. So there's a lot of real overlap and practical application of this stuff. So I got a list here of some of the really common ones like the door in the face technique, the foot in the door technique, a really fun one called low balling. And then the that's not all effect. These are actual scientific names for these phenomena. So we'll move on to slide number two here. And one of my favorite is low balling. And one of the fun part about these compliance techniques is just how easy they are to demonstrate. So the classic experiment in low balling is, begins with a class in freshman level social psychology. So one thing professors love to do is require their students at freshman level to participate in some kind of experiment for extra credit, so they're told. You'll be contacted about some extra credit experiment to participate in. So imagine now you're a freshman at college, all right, and you receive a call one day that says, do you. Dear sir, Dear John, would you like to participate in this experiment on again, thinking processes? And all you have to do is show up at Wednesday at 7am and give us two hours of your time. Okay. Does that sound like a reasonable request to you? Sure, sure.

John Dehlin [00:03:34] Right.

James Nagel [00:03:35] Now the key though is 7am on a Wednesday. Not really.

John Dehlin [00:03:38] I mean, that's way early, right?

James Nagel [00:03:39] Yeah, that's a somewhat demanding request even for extra credit. Because, you know, when you're a College level freshman, 7am is pretty early, especially on a school day.

John Dehlin [00:03:49] It's true, it's true.

James Nagel [00:03:51] So only 24% of the students agreed to the commitment.

John Dehlin [00:03:56] Right?

James Nagel [00:03:56] Okay, so seven out of 29. So then, okay, that's the baseline. They then do a little switcheroo. So they get another group of students, they call them up the phone. Dear John, we hear you would like to participate in extra credit. And we've got one going on at Wednesday, this coming Wednesday for two hours. Would you like to participate?

John Dehlin [00:04:14] Right.

James Nagel [00:04:15] Yes or no? Come on, play along.

John Dehlin [00:04:17] Absolutely. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:04:18] Yeah, absolutely. Okay. By the way, it's at 7am

John Dehlin [00:04:23] so I've already said yes.

James Nagel [00:04:24] Exactly. You've already said yes. And then I reveal the 7am to you. So for all intents and purposes, it's the exact same offer. Extra credit assignment, 7am on a Wednesday. The only difference is I reveal the cost to you after you've already made a verbal commitment. Now, in principle, you're well within your rights to say, oh, whoa, that's way too early. No thanks. Okay. But in practice, people don't do this. In fact, the compliance rate doubled. Instead of 24%, it jumped way up to 53.

John Dehlin [00:04:58] So just waiting to explain the cost until after you've gotten the commitment doubles the number of complex commitments you get.

James Nagel [00:05:05] Exactly. You have cost, then commitment or commitment, then cost. So this phenomena is called low balling. And every psychological textbook you read will always give you the used car problem, where some sleazy used car salesman will say, I'll sell this to you for $5,000. Oh, okay, great. And then they'll go, they'll get the paperwork and they'll say, oh, I Can't quite sell it to you. For that, I have to bump you to 5,500. Which originally people would say, no, it's way too expensive. But once you get that commitment, people are more inclined to stick with it. So this is a very classic technique, and I just love how simple it is to demonstrate. So now we go to another really fun one. Slide number three. This is called the that's not all effect. Okay. And again, it's so simple to demonstrate, it's almost embarrassing. So they actually, the psychology department, set up a booth at this bake sale at some college campus bake sale, and they're offering these deals on cupcakes and cookies and whatever. And some poor hapless customer comes along and says, what do you got for sale? And they respond, we have one cupcake and two cookies for 75 cents. What do you say? What do you say, John? Does that sound like a great deal?

John Dehlin [00:06:19] Yeah, that sounds great.

James Nagel [00:06:20] Yeah, sure.

John Dehlin [00:06:21] Okay. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:06:22] And Overall, they got 40% compliance with that just by simply presenting that offer. So now let's reverse the clock and play it again. So you're the customer, you come up. What have you got for sale? So I am the salesperson. I say, well, I can give you one cupcake for 75 cents. And then all of a sudden, someone taps me on the shoulder, whispers in my ear, oh, sorry. No, wait, wait.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] Hang on.

James Nagel [00:06:46] My mistake. That's one cupcake and two cookies for 75 cents. Now do you see what's going to happen?

John Dehlin [00:06:52] So you made me one offer, and then all of a sudden, you made it seem like I was getting an extra special deal. And you added something to it for the same price.

James Nagel [00:07:02] Exactly. Even though it's the exact same offer as before. I just artificially pretended to elevate the value. So in this case, instead of the baseline was 40% compliance, it jumped up to 75%, almost double again.

John Dehlin [00:07:18] So it's. Yeah, it's like two for one. You get this extra special deal. If you act now, you'll also receive.

James Nagel [00:07:24] Yeah, exactly. The act now. And you know, act now and receive. That's a classic. That's not all effect. I mean, you even look at the paper. Increasing compliance by improving the deal.

John Dehlin [00:07:35] The.

James Nagel [00:07:35] That's not all technique.

John Dehlin [00:07:36] Yeah, right.

James Nagel [00:07:38] So I love this because they come up with these cool names for these effects. This is a classic sales tactic, and it's just amazing how subtle it is and how just spectacularly it works. You'll double your compliance with this or your money back. So we go to slide Number four, this one's called the foot in the door effect. This one's kind of hilarious, too. So imagine now you're at home some weekday afternoon and you get a call on your phone. Dear John, I am with the California Consumers Group. We're just an organization doing consumer studies and collecting data and information. Would you be willing to give us free access to your home so that a team of five or six strangers can rummage through your stuff and search through your cupboards and your pantries and catalog the household products you use?

John Dehlin [00:08:26] Not so much, no.

James Nagel [00:08:29] That's obviously a pretty intrusive request. Right. So only 22% of subjects agreed to this over the phone.

John Dehlin [00:08:37] Right.

James Nagel [00:08:37] So now let's try this again. Dear John, I am with the California Consumers Group. We're collecting information over the phone for our upcoming issue of Consumer Reports. Blah, blah, blah. Do you mind if I ask you a few questions about your usage of household soap?

John Dehlin [00:08:53] Oh, no, not at all.

James Nagel [00:08:54] No. For example, what soap do you use in your kitchen sink?

John Dehlin [00:08:58] Dove.

James Nagel [00:08:59] Dove. What soap do you use to wash your hands in your bathroom? And so on and so on. What do you use for shampoo? What do you use to clean your floor? Seven or eight questions about soap.

John Dehlin [00:09:08] Okay, thank you.

James Nagel [00:09:09] That was very informative. We're glad you could participate. While I have you on the phone, would you mind if a survey team of five or six men come to your home and are allowed free access to rummage through your cupboards and your pantries and catalog all your household products?

John Dehlin [00:09:22] Oh, and you're saying that the people are twice as likely to say yes to the large request after they've accepted the small ones?

James Nagel [00:09:38] Exactly. Ace. Eliciting compliance to something small will double the likelihood of compliance to something large.

John Dehlin [00:09:45] So get them saying yes, yes.

James Nagel [00:09:47] Just agree to something so they're comfortable with you, and then hit them with your massively intrusive request, and they'll be far more likely to go along with it.

John Dehlin [00:09:56] Got it.

James Nagel [00:09:56] So this is the essence of what's called the foot in the door effect. It literally pays homage to the idea of door to door salesman. If you can just get that foot into the door, then he's way more likely to make a sale as opposed to just slamming the door and saying, go away.

John Dehlin [00:10:10] Got it.

James Nagel [00:10:11] That's the essence of this technique. So I love these because they're just so simple and subtle and yet profound and just dramatic in their consequences and their results. So now let's go to slide number five. So how does this apply into some real applications? So One of the first lessons from these experiments should be that we people are just suckers. Anyone who's ever gone and bought a used car, someone has probably attempted one of these techniques on you. And statistically speaking, a lot of us have probably fallen for it. And I would wager I've fallen for these things a dozen times over, and a dozen times again. These are just facts of life, of being people. We're just suckers. You shouldn't feel bad about it. It's just kind of how we are. We're very trusting and. And we try to give people the benefit of the doubt, and we just sometimes are taken advantage of for that. Now, another thing to realize is this is something that exists in non sales context. For example, the milk before the meat doctrine is a textbook example of foot in the door effect. The LDS Church has a literal policy of saying, tell people the nice stuff first and then wait for them to get invested before you tell them the crazy stuff or the deep stuff or

John Dehlin [00:11:35] the harder, the harder to accept stuff.

James Nagel [00:11:38] For example, you start with, jesus loves you and died for your sins, and God answers all prayers and families can be together forever. That's very nice stuff that people will become invested in. And then you start breaking the news to them, oh, you have to give up drinking and smoking, and you have to give us 10% of your money, and you have to wear these garments and you start piling on things that if you were open about it up front, people would be a lot more inclined to reject it.

John Dehlin [00:12:04] And there's some stuff you don't tell them until after their baptism.

James Nagel [00:12:07] Yeah. Or after the temple ceremonies too. There's just these levels of investment you have to get into before you're told certain things. Now, is this a good thing or a bad thing? It's just a tool of marketing to try not to scare people away. And they do it deliberately because, again, it works. You would see the same thing. Maybe in Scientology they have the same policy of, you know, you're not allowed to know any of the inside stuff about Xenu and the nuclear volcanoes until you've been invested for a very long time in the church. So, you know, these are just sales techniques that work that are designed to get people to comply with some kind of idea or doctrine or action.

John Dehlin [00:12:48] Yep.

James Nagel [00:12:49] That's the essence of what's going on.

John Dehlin [00:12:50] Yep. Got it. Yeah. I remember as a missionary, you know, the door approach that was most effective was, hi, we're missionaries, and we wanted to talk to you for a few minutes about how you can Be with your family forever, right? So you say only a couple minutes. You don't lead off with, you know, let me tell you about, you know, the golden plates. You lead off with something that appeals to them, building on common beliefs. Talk about Jesus, talk about families. And then the five minutes are up and you've hopefully ideally hook them into wanting more. And like you said, the tithing discussion, the live chassis discussion, doesn't happen in the first or second discussion, as I understand it. Those things come later, right?

James Nagel [00:13:36] Yeah, actually, there's kind of a. You ever see the, like, listen to the Book of Mormon musical?

John Dehlin [00:13:42] Oh, yeah.

James Nagel [00:13:42] Because there's one joke in the musical that really reflects this exact idea where they're, you know, doing the big song and dance about ringing the doorbell and sharing the gospel. Yeah, hello, that one. And then it suddenly comes to this grinding halt where he says, hey, would you like to change religions and have this free book written by Jesus? And obviously that's kind of not really how people approach things, but in a certain subtle way, that is kind of the ultimate goal is here, have this book and change religions. That's what your ultimate goal is. But if you were just upfront with it, hey, would you like a book and change religions? People would just slam the door on your face. So that's the essence of these sales taxes. It's designed to smooth the gears. So moving on to the next slide. This is just a little flowchart.

Hearing Voices and Religious Experience

John Dehlin [00:14:30] Whoa, excuse me.

James Nagel [00:14:32] Showing kind of this intertwined chain of belief. So while putting together these presentations and studying the psychology, me and my brother had this idea of kind of assembling a flow of causality and how you can start with some arbitrary idea and get people to genuinely believe it. So we started putting together this flowchart and just adding to it and adding to it and adding to it every time, we discovered some cool new psychological technique. So we started getting this flowchart idea together, and it turned to this sort of visual metaphor for the scrambled, intertwined feedbacks that go on in our brain and determine how we approach the world. So the ultimate goal is, as we keep learning more and more of these biases, this flowchart just gets more and more intricate and complicated and convoluted and feedbacking and loopy and just turns into spaghetti mess. And it's a nice, fun little visual metaphor for kind of our brain. It's this thing we think is awesome and amazing, but it's kind of scrambled and fallible at the same time. But there's also kind of a serious Point is, every one of these arrows we've justified empirically. There is an experiment that shows that you can go from peer pressure to a public conformity, and you've got all these techniques from normative influence to foot in the door. And then when you have public conformity, how this idea of cognitive dissonance and insufficient justification then forces you to a private conformity. And then once you believe something, you have confirmation bias and belief perseverance all tied into it, and so on.

John Dehlin [00:16:04] Got it.

John Dehlin [00:16:04] So.

James Nagel [00:16:04] So it's just something to realize every one of these arrows is more or less empirically justified.

John Dehlin [00:16:09] So there's a certain rigor buried underneath

James Nagel [00:16:11] this chart, even though it's kind of

John Dehlin [00:16:13] just designed to be a little fun little presentation. So now that brings us to the next slide. Hallucinations. This. I wonder if it's going to be a touchy subject, but it's really interesting

James Nagel [00:16:29] and fascinating to me.

John Dehlin [00:16:32] If nothing else, this discussion should convince you that if you hear voices or see things that aren't there, you're not crazy. Everybody has some kind of hallucination, some point or other in their life. And this really kind of blew me away when I started researching this stuff. And it really just all started. Listening to the radio at night while on the road, and there was a lady discussing what it's like to hear voices. She was a perfectly normal lady, except for that she just heard a voice in her head as if another person was just talking to her all the time. She was going on about how she copes with it and when it began and so on. But she made some interesting comments in particular. She discussed how she would go to therapy and try and work through her problems. And the trigger that caused this voice to begin was just extreme stress in her life. Yeah, that is. You know, she just. She got fired from her job, she had health troubles, her husband divorced her,

James Nagel [00:17:31] and then her dog died.

John Dehlin [00:17:32] And all of a sudden one day she starts hearing voices.

John Dehlin [00:17:35] That's common. There's. There's almost always, in my experience, some major psychological trauma that. That. That comes before some type of major manifestation. Psychological illness.

John Dehlin [00:17:51] Yeah, that really just fascinated me to see that, like, wow, you can trigger this stuff physically. And another comment she made that really blew me away is how this is actually very common. And like, that just stunned me because up to this point, my total experience of hallucination was basically watching A Beautiful Mind with Russell Crowe, where if you see things and hear things, you're just completely nuts. That was my perception. But suddenly coming to this realization that it's actually something normal people go through very regularly. So for example, you see here on the slide intervoiceonline.org there's actual online communities where people come together and support each other with their voice hearing experiences. And they talk about what it's like to hear the voice, what sort of personalities their voices have, how much control they have, how debilitating or helpful. These voices are just this huge wide range of experiences. So that really inspired me to start digging deep into what causes hallucinations and what they're like. So we go to the next slide. Slide number eight. This just is a list of voice triggers. And this is something.

James Nagel [00:19:05] It only took me like three hours

John Dehlin [00:19:07] to dig this stuff up. I love Google Scholar, by the way.

John Dehlin [00:19:09] Sure.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:19:10] And all I really looked up was trigger for hearing voices, voice triggers. So one of the first and foremost ones you'll find is head trauma. So for example, people get in car accidents all the time, right? And out of the people who get in car accidents, at least some of

James Nagel [00:19:26] them are going to bash their head on something really hard.

John Dehlin [00:19:29] So statistically speaking, severe head trauma. If you go to the emergency room with a blow to the head, a severe blow to the head, then about three out of a hundred people will hear voices. Just with statistical reliability, just out of pure bashing your head on something will cause voices. And it's funny, is like the symptoms will actually be fairly consistent. Oftentimes there'll be whispers, and oftentimes people will hear the voice calling their names and generally it'll fade away after a few weeks. So I thought that was really neat how you have this like, reliable, natural trigger for something that normally you would associate with just crazy but isn't. It's kind of normal. So this is the idea of like a normal hallucination. You're perfectly sane, otherwise you're just hearing voices in your head. So another great example is bereavement. That is, if you've been married to someone for a good 60 years and that someone dies, then there's a very high likelihood you'll start hearing and seeing that person around you. And there's even like a range of percentages and likelihood that the most likely is voices. Next likely will be tactile, as you'll actually feel the person maybe touching you. And some people even just see glimpses of the person periodically. And again, it's perfectly normal. It's just this severe psychological gap all of a sudden torn out of you. And your brain just kind of starts seeing things and hearing things that aren't there. So just to sort of skim through the list now, you got drug abuse, sexual abuse, solitary confinement, childhood neglect, bipolar disorder, migraine headaches, schizophrenia, social anxiety, multiple personality disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and sleep deprivation. Okay, this is just the list I compiled after casually perusing scientific literature where people were documented to produce voices, to hear voices in their heads. This is just voices not counting, like visual hallucinations or memory distortions or tactile. This is just voices alone. So the key point is, you know, hearing voices is freakishly normal. It's almost abnormal how normal this is. And so this has, like, some interesting consequences. So, for example, let's go to, like, the next slide, slide number nine. You know, consider the idea of, like, distilled small voice. I know a lot of people really hold this as a sacred idea to feel what it's like when the spirit compels you to do something. But something you really need to appreciate is Mormons do not have a monopoly on this experience. I can produce videos on YouTube in a heartbeat where people describe this exact

James Nagel [00:22:16] same thing, and they're Pentecostal or something. So this is an important idea that it's a common experience that you don't have to be Mormon to have. And what's interesting is this particular study I'm showing. I'm showing a table here called Differences Between Normal Thoughts Intrusions and Voice Hearing in terms of loudness, I.e. acoustic control, autonomy, and conformity with personality. So the idea is, how loud is this voice? How much control do you have over this voice? How much does this voice seem to conform with your personality or not? So the first one is just like, how loud is this voice? And there's like this chart of people reporting various experiences of how loud their voices are. And you actually have healthy obsessive compulsive disorder and schizophrenia all kind of lumped together in this chart. I think it's great that they have healthy here that healthy people who hear voices compared to OCD and others. So you look at this chart here, you see, for example, absolutely silent cannot be heard. This is very common for people to feel like a voice is compelling them to do something, even though they don't actually hear the voice. It's like a thought that enters your brain that compels you to do something and feels like it's not really your thought, but it's there intensely in your mind. So that's one example of a silent voice. And there's actually a word for that. It's called a psychological intrusion. Other examples, like a quiet whispering, 7%, somewhat audible, kind of where you can tell the difference maybe between male and female voice. You know, that's another 11% of people, and then you have a small minority will experience voices as being as loud as an external voice.

John Dehlin [00:24:01] Okay.

James Nagel [00:24:02] So there's this huge range of voice hearing experiences in healthy people. Like, we haven't even looked at OCDs and schizophrenias and such.

John Dehlin [00:24:11] Right.

James Nagel [00:24:12] So this idea, though, of a psychological intrusion when you describe it, is absolutely how people describe what it's like when they manifest from the Holy Spirit type experiences. That is, it's this idea of a thought entering your mind. It's not really your thought, but it kind of is. And it compels you to do something or another and motivates you or might be reassuring in some way. This is exactly what a psychological intrusion feels like. Some people experience them all the time. Some people experience them to the point of being debilitating, like ocd.

John Dehlin [00:24:47] Right, right.

James Nagel [00:24:48] I'm actually curious about what some of your thoughts are on this because I know this really overlaps in a lot of your specialty area, right?

John Dehlin [00:24:54] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, just, just. I mean, there's this notion of comorbidities within clinical psychology where you could have multiple diagnoses. And in fact, it's more common to have multiple diagnoses than just to have an individual one. And yeah, ocd, you know, is defined. The obsessions are obtrusive thoughts that come into your mind. And so they're not necessarily thought of as voices in their. In their base form. You know, kind of the difference between OCD and something like schizophrenia, at least in terms of the obsessions, is that in ocd, the term is ego dystonic, which means that the thoughts come into your mind as obsessions, but you recognize that they're unreasonable, but they're still coming in. So you're still getting the thoughts. You may not be audibly hearing them, but the thoughts are coming in, and you don't want them to be there, but they're coming anyway. And that's what OCD is about. When you actually audibly hear something that moves from OCD into schizophrenia. And. But the other. The other criteria for schizophrenia is that it's ego syntonic, which means that you actually think that that's a credible voice or a voice of God or it's, you know, you think it's real and it's credible. And that's kind of the difference between OCD and schizophrenia.

James Nagel [00:26:24] Yeah. So one of the key ideas, though, kind of think is, should be emphasized. Just this wide range of experiences of what it's like to hear a voice. It's not just someone talking to you. It's this whisper, this thought, the intrusion, a loud yelling and so on. This huge range.

John Dehlin [00:26:41] It's types of communication that come into your mind against your will, that may or may not be audible, that may or may not be loud or soft, that you may or may not even like. But it's coming in anyway.

James Nagel [00:26:54] Yeah, exactly. And again, the emphasis that you can be perfectly healthy and still there's nothing like necessarily debilitating or crazy about it. It just happens to all of us to varying degrees.

John Dehlin [00:27:06] Yep.

James Nagel [00:27:08] So one key lesson I learned from studying this is a profound experience. I remember as a kid was going to youth conference, and our bishop was bearing his testimony to us about how he converted to the church. And one of the key moments in his testimony involved him actually hearing the audible voice of God. He actually described it as a voice as if it was in the room talking to him. But he was also in this very intense, psychologically depressed state when it happened, which is very common. You're going through something very hard and trying, and then you seek comfort from the church. And then in some form or another, that comfort comes. This is a very common theme for religious conversions. So I just remember, though, his sort of finale was hearing an actual voice, and I didn't want to. I remember thinking, like, you know, he's not a crazy guy. He's perfectly normal. You know, as far as I could tell, he really did have this experience. He wasn't lying. He didn't make it up. He's not schizophrenic. This was very real. But in light of this sort of information, that this sort of thing happens all the time. You know, is that really the voice of God talking to him or the. Did he just have a normal human experience? So that's something we should really be confronted with in this discussion of hallucination. That it has this very negative connotation to say you hallucinated, but really it should be kind of like, oh, you hallucinated. It happens. Oh, well, it shouldn't really feel that bad. Another example is I've had discussions when I ask people, what's it like when you hear the voice of the spirit compelling you? And they always describe this still small voice. And again, it's this thing that seems to replicate the symptoms of an intrusion. Are you really hearing some ghost talking to you telepathically? Is God divining this information to you, or is this Just another normal human experience. Because again, Mormons aren't the only people who have this, any religious theology you can think of. There will be people within it who have these experiences.

John Dehlin [00:29:21] And I'm just going to add one last thing and that's that what if you're told as a child from a very young age that you are going to hear voices?

James Nagel [00:29:31] Yeah, right.

John Dehlin [00:29:32] If you're, if you're, if you're, which we are, we learn the still small voice song as young children. And so, you know, if saying there was a banana when there really wasn't a banana is going to cause you to remember, seeing a banana is being told from the time that you're four that you're going to hear a still small voice, is that going to make you more likely, prime you, so to speak, to think that you heard that voice?

James Nagel [00:30:01] Yeah, that's actually another point I wanted to make is what consequences do you think this information has towards eyewitness testimony? Again, even if you legitimately experience the event and you remember it with perfect clarity, for all I know, you hallucinated it. If you saw ELVIS at the McDonald's the other day, you know, did you, let's just assume for a minute there wasn't an actual, you know, Elvis impersonator there, but you saw the form of Elvis there in his glowing glory and you remember this perfectly and you wrote it down immediately as it happened. You know, even if you remember it perfectly, there's still the possibility that you imagine the whole thing and it felt real to you. So again, this is just another nail in that coffin of eyewitness testimony. No matter how strongly you think it happened, no matter how clearly you remember it, it might not happen. If you can't replicate it for others to see and examine and scrutinize, then you just can't use it as a valid basis for framing your beliefs. So that's really the take home point from here. So we go to slide number 10. This is a nice little checklist. You can ask yourself, if you're hearing a voice, how do you tell the difference between a voice and an actual hallucination? This is how an actual scientist would approach the problem. Because maybe you are hearing something from God or from an alien communication or from a dead person speaking to you. How would you know? Well, first and foremost, can other people hear the same voice? Is the information consistent between people?

John Dehlin [00:31:38] Right.

James Nagel [00:31:39] If five people, all, you know, you lock them in different rooms and they're all hearing the same voice verbatim and replicating each other, that Would be pretty compelling.

John Dehlin [00:31:47] Right.

James Nagel [00:31:48] But you know, you don't really see that as a problem. What does the voice actually say? Because most of the time the voices are just very reassuring or they say things that people pretty much already knew anyway. Can your voice do something that you didn't already know? Like predict where the next earthquake is going to be? That would be very profound if you could just reliably pinpoint the time and epicenter of the next five major earthquakes. Right.

John Dehlin [00:32:11] You know what if there were a person on earth who reliably predicted earthquakes, Science wouldn't care if their predictions came true. Right. If science could not explain where their predictions came from, but their predictions always came true, that would be enough for science to care. Right.

James Nagel [00:32:35] It would at least be grounds to like take you seriously.

John Dehlin [00:32:38] Right.

James Nagel [00:32:39] Rather than just dismiss you as another random person experiencing normal human noise. So another, just another fun example. Can your voice manifest something physically? Can your voice convince your pet to do dog tricks or your cat to do dog tricks?

John Dehlin [00:32:54] Right.

James Nagel [00:32:55] You know, if you said pluffy, sit and your cat sat and did things that dogs would normally do, you know, that's a very difficult thing to make cats actually do. So, you know, manifest itself physically. Maybe like pick up an object and float it and move it somewhere, like, that'd be pretty compelling.

John Dehlin [00:33:11] Right?

John Dehlin [00:33:11] Right.

James Nagel [00:33:12] So that's just the idea of, you know, we're not discounting the possibility, but these are the criteria you'd have to meet in order to stand out above the natural background noise of ordinary human perception. That's kind of the point of this. We're still open minded, but you gotta give us something more than what we already know. So slide number 11. Just some take home points. We've already said this before and we'll just reiterate it again. Auditory and visual hallucination is absolutely normal. Everybody goes through it at some point or another to varying degrees. So don't think you're special just because you heard a warm voice or some compelling urge that got you through a hard time. It happens to everybody. So voices come in a wide variety of volumes. Personalities, intrusiveness, and apparent conscious control. That's just an interesting thing I find fascinating. Just the diversity of the experiences. Another point. This is going to probably strike home from people, but the idea of a psychological intrusion, as far as I can tell, replicates the, the still small voice of the Holy Ghost very accurately down to the T. So this is why Mormons aren't the only people who feel the spirit. This idea of feeling the Holy Ghost is very ubiquitous among Christianity as a whole.

John Dehlin [00:34:33] Yeah, they can replicate. They can also be highly disturbing and troublesome. And in those cases, they don't replicate the Holy Ghost. But when they're.

James Nagel [00:34:41] Some cases, like Pentecostals, they have like Holy Ghost on steroids where they do, like, speaking in tongues.

John Dehlin [00:34:47] Right, right.

James Nagel [00:34:49] In their eyes, your experience of that still small voice is like they think it's laughable. They'll point fingers and scoff you for that's all you got. We pretty much overwhelmed it and have these big song and dance routines with it. It's overwhelming experience.

John Dehlin [00:35:05] And I'll just add the opposite of that as well. If you're hearing voices that are telling you to do or say evil or bad things, it's very easy to sort of attribute those to Satan or the devil, even though, again, they're psychological phenomenon. But if it's a bad thing that makes you uncomfortable, you know, it's. It's. You know, you read the New Testament and the man who seemed to have demons in him and Jesus casted him out. I mean, that seems very much like someone who's schizophrenic that, you know, was hearing voices and responding to them, right?

John Dehlin [00:35:43] Yeah.

James Nagel [00:35:43] I mean, schizophrenics still existed 2,000 years ago, just like they do today. If you don't know any better, how would you react to somebody hearing voices?

John Dehlin [00:35:52] Yeah, you'd say they're possessed by demons. Right.

James Nagel [00:35:56] So that's a fundamental point. Now, the idea of spiritual communication, as most Christian denominations describe it, it carries the exact same qualities of just the natural background noise in human perception. So this is a fundamental theme, I want to say. I don't deny the experience itself, but you do have to be very careful of what conclusions you draw from it. That's kind of the key. Think about it.

John Dehlin [00:36:22] Point here.

God of the Gaps and Need for Closure

James Nagel [00:36:24] So now we'll go to the next slide, slide number 12. We're going to discuss this idea of the God of the gaps. So sort of a lead into this is, you know, think about something like lightning bolts. You know, 500 years ago, how do you think people explained lightning bolts?

John Dehlin [00:36:40] Yeah, it's like God's angry, right?

James Nagel [00:36:42] Yeah, it was God's angry, you know, hurling him down at poor little sinners. And before that, it would be, you know, Zeus is hurling him down at his enemies and so on. And then eventually people like Benjamin Franklin and James Clark Maxwell and Michael Faraday came along and. Excuse me. Came up with this theory of electricity and magnetism and said, oh, lightning bolt is just this static Discharge from the sky. It's a perfectly natural, random thing. So all of a sudden, people just stopped attributing lightning bolts to God. And this is a pattern you can see a lot like, you know, again, think of schizophrenia. What do you think people used to think of schizophrenia? They would think, demons haunting this person. But eventually this more reliable thing, explanation comes along. The scientific explanation is, you know, this guy's brain is just a little scrambled, and he's experiencing things that aren't real. It's all in his head. And so that supernatural explanation then gave way to the scientific. So this idea is called the God of the gaps, where you have some hole in our scientific knowledge of the world. And it's very natural to just want to put God into it. This happens all the time. There's a huge history of it throughout science. And you even see a lot of it today. Like a lot of, like, Christian philosophers, they have these arguments, like what's called the cosmological argument or the teleological argument or the moral arguments. They're designed to sort of say science has no explanation for where the universe came from. Therefore, the only possible is that God created it or the idea of design in the universe. You know, you look at a chicken and it's this very intricate machine. And it could have only gotten that way because some force specifically designed it that way. So this is more God of the gaps thinking, how do. Where did life come from? I don't know. It seems to be designed, therefore it must have been designed.

John Dehlin [00:38:33] Right? Right.

James Nagel [00:38:33] So these are very compelling arguments. There's a huge history of these arguments and these ideas infesting human thinking. It's very common to look at the world this way. So this we're going to actually explore this. There's a psychological explanation for why we're so prone to look at the world this way. So this brings us to slide 13. So it starts off, meet Bob. Okay, so you're a subject for an experiment, and you are told, you know, we want you to make a personality impression of this individual. Okay, you're just going to rate him on a scale of minus 5 to plus 5 of how favorable is this guy's personality? They really call it the favorability score. It's basically, you know, would you want to be friends with him and would you want to hang out with him? Would you want to punch him in the stomach? You know, rate your response? Okay, so the information you're given is six adjectives, and you're just simply told, we interviewed six of his friends and Asked them give us one word that describes this guy. Okay, so you have six adjectives, and based on these six words, we want you to just rate his favorability. How much do you like the guy? Is that clear?

John Dehlin [00:39:44] Yep, got it.

James Nagel [00:39:45] So the words are the smart, artistic, sentimental, cool, awkward, and then fault finding. Okay, So, I don't know, you give this to a bunch of people and ask them to rate this guy, and statistically, they come in around a slightly positive bias, 1.4.

John Dehlin [00:40:04] Okay?

John Dehlin [00:40:04] Okay.

James Nagel [00:40:06] There's nothing special here. That just is what it is. That's the baseline. Okay, so we go to the next experiment, slide number 14. Now, we're going to repeat that whole thing. Here is a guy named Carl. Again, we want you to form your overall impression of how awesome Carl is. Would you want to be his buddy or go drinking with him? Or would you maybe want to avoid them altogether and punch them in the face? Okay, so here's the following words. Fault finding, awkward, cool, sentimental, artistic, smart.

John Dehlin [00:40:37] Okay?

James Nagel [00:40:38] So now, interestingly, that's the exact same set of words as before. You'll notice all I did was flip the order, and what happened is people all of a sudden came in with a slightly negative score. Negative 0.7.

John Dehlin [00:40:51] Ish.

James Nagel [00:40:51] Okay? So this effect is called the primacy effect. That if you take the difference between the first set and the second set, that's a score called a primacy score of about two. That's the difference between them. So the key is these words are not just random words. They are deliberately handpicked words designed to give a general feeling of positive to negative impression.

John Dehlin [00:41:14] Right?

James Nagel [00:41:15] So, for example, fault finding is a pretty negative adjective. Awkward is a little negative. Cool kind of is neutral. Sentimental, artistic is kind of.

John Dehlin [00:41:26] Cool could be taken. Cool could be taken multiple ways. So can sentimental, because cool can mean cool as in awesome, or cool can mean kind of cold. And maybe those earlier negative words prime you to interpret cool to mean distant or not very warm. You know what I mean?

James Nagel [00:41:46] Yeah, exactly. So the point is, though, people are biased by whatever information came along first, right? That's the key. The words that came first determine the

John Dehlin [00:41:58] overall impression people form.

James Nagel [00:42:02] So that's the key idea here. Information that comes along first. Brain. Human brains will tend to kind of latch onto it, and then it overly biases their response. That's the key, because it's the exact same information, just different order. And so you get different responses out of people for this. So again, that's called the primacy effect. This is a very crucial effect because we've seen it before, like in belief perseverance and confirmation bias, information comes along, you form an impression, and then you just kind of stick with it. Okay, so now let's go to slide 15. There's this idea in psychology called need for cognitive closure, and it's defined as the desire for an answer on a given topic, any answer as compared to confusion and ambiguity. So a great example of this is there's an interview between Bill O'Reilly and this atheist guy and Bill, basically, his entire argument was, I don't like your position because you can't explain how things happen. And the big joke was, tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that. Therefore I'm throwing in with Christianity.

John Dehlin [00:43:12] And he was offering that as evidence that God exists because there's order and structure to the universe, and there must have been a God that put it there.

James Nagel [00:43:23] Not exactly. Bill's exact words were, you can't explain it, but they can. Therefore I am going with them. Literally how his argument kind of boiled down.

John Dehlin [00:43:33] Who can explain the tide goes in?

James Nagel [00:43:37] The atheist guy. You know, Bill is saying, tide goes in, tide goes out. You can't explain that. But it's kind of funny because he got a lot of flack for it because obviously the moon is responsible for the tides.

John Dehlin [00:43:47] Right, Right.

James Nagel [00:43:48] But his attitude was simply, you know, I don't like your position because you can't explain how stuff got here.

John Dehlin [00:43:54] Right, right.

James Nagel [00:43:55] And I'm going to side with the people who have an explanation.

John Dehlin [00:43:59] Who are they? Who has the explanation? Christianity.

James Nagel [00:44:01] He's a Roman Catholic.

John Dehlin [00:44:02] Okay, got it.

James Nagel [00:44:03] Because I think he's Roman Catholic. Is he?

John Dehlin [00:44:05] I think he is.

James Nagel [00:44:05] I believe so. But that was basically kind of his whole defense. And he's done similar things with, when he interviewed, like, Richard Dawkins, he did the exact same ploy of, you know, you don't know how it all got here. And these. These Christian guys say they have an answer, so I'm throwing in with them because they have an answer.

John Dehlin [00:44:20] Right.

James Nagel [00:44:22] So this is an idea, again, need for cognitive closure, picking the side that has an answer, irrespective of whether or not it's a good answer.

John Dehlin [00:44:30] Okay.

James Nagel [00:44:31] That's kind of his attitude. He's very proud of this in these interviews. And so I'm using him as kind of a prototypical example that there are people who genuinely think the same way. Any answer is preferable to no answer. So next slide, slide 16. There is an actual psychological scale called the need for Closure Scale. And it's basically just a questionnaire. And you just Rate your response to the following questions. Like, for example, on a scale of minus 5 to plus 5, tell me how much you agree with the following statement. I think that having clear rules and order at work is essential for success. Or maybe I don't like situations that are uncertain. When dining out, I like to go to places where I have been before so that I know what to expect. Or another example is, when considering most conflict situations, I can usually see how both sides could be right. These are actual questions on the need for Closure scale. And depending on how you answer, they just kind of add up your score to what's called a Need for Closure score. It's just a number representing your overall desire for closure on structure.

John Dehlin [00:45:43] All right.

James Nagel [00:45:43] Okay. And it's just this self reporting questionnaire. Now what's interesting about this, depending on your score on this study, this test, you can actually predict personality traits about people and how they'll respond to certain questions and stimuli. So let's now go to slide 17. So it's the same idea of you're introduced to a person and you have to form an impression of how successful or creative or awesome this person is. So in this case, the study says, here's this guy Phil. You are the manager of a major firm and Phil is a potential employee. And your job is to determine the potential success or failure of this guy Phil. It's just a little role play that they're playing with you during the experiment. And you're told, of course, there's all sorts of practical application for corporations and hiring and labor markets and so on just to get you excited over the experiment. But the essence is we need you to evaluate the success or failure of this guy Phil. Okay, got it with it so far. So now we go to.

John Dehlin [00:46:51] I just have to note that the picture on that slide is from a Monty Python movie.

James Nagel [00:46:56] Oh, yeah, the Very Big Corporation of America.

John Dehlin [00:46:59] Yeah, that looks like Graham Chapman in the middle and John Clark police on the left. So I just had to note that. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry about that.

James Nagel [00:47:06] Just a little homage to a bunch of business guys evaluating each other. So the way they get you to evaluate the employee is they play you audio recordings of Phil doing things under various business conditions. They'll show, for example, him dealing with a customer. They'll show an audio clip of him handling a troublesome employee. Things like that. But again, they rig the order of the information, just like we did before. We know that if you show people positive things first and negative second, or the opposite, negative, positive, then you'll elicit A primacy out of them. Right,

John Dehlin [00:47:45] got it.

James Nagel [00:47:46] So what they did is they separated subjects by high need for closure and low need for closure.

John Dehlin [00:47:52] Right. So there's some type of people who need to have some type of answer, and there are other people who are okay with not having an answer.

James Nagel [00:47:59] Exactly. People who score high on that need for closure scale have a high need for cognitive closure. So remember, that means they want answers now they're uncomfortable with ambiguity and uncertainty.

John Dehlin [00:48:12] Yep. And then they're asked to evaluate these candidates based on some audio recordings. And they're given, you know, two types of options are given. One, where the positive stuff is given first, then the negative, and then in the reverse, where negative stuff's given, then the positive.

James Nagel [00:48:27] Yes, exactly. So the prediction is people with high need for closure should experience high primacy. That is, they'll be heavily influenced by whatever information comes along first. Then hopefully, people with low need for

John Dehlin [00:48:40] closure, they're willing to suspend final judgment, hear all the data, and then arrive at their conclusion after they've heard the whole deal.

James Nagel [00:48:47] Exactly. That's exactly the hope. All right, so we go now to the next slide with the results. And that's exactly what happens. People who score high on need for cognitive closure are heavily biased by whatever information comes along first on a given question. So they have what's called a strong primacy effect. So what you're seeing here on this chart is just their scores for Phil, where high numbers means he'll do be very successful and low numbers mean he'll be unsuccessful. You see, there's this huge disparity based on the order in which information was presented. That's what you're saying. High need, foreclosure. They have this massive disparity based on nothing more than the order of the information.

John Dehlin [00:49:26] I see.

James Nagel [00:49:27] Then the low need for closure. It's actually no different. No different at all. They're almost identical scores 88 and 90 as opposed to 112 and 60, where the other guys is massive. Like 50 point difference versus a two point difference.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:49:39] Instead of highly disparate, large swings in favorable or negative impressions, you get sort of these moderate impressions that are almost equal.

James Nagel [00:49:51] Exactly.

John Dehlin [00:49:52] Because the information positive versus negative is the same in both cases. It's just the order switched a little bit.

James Nagel [00:49:59] Yeah, that's the key. It's the same information. We just change the order that it's given. So this, at least is hope for humanity. We're not all as crazy as we think. There are some people among us who really are capable of evaluating information. Rationally but the key is you have to really be kind of comfortable with uncertainty until you get all the facts in and then make your decision. This is not something everyone can do. So we go to the next slide, slide number 20. This is just a quick slide. There are some studies where people actually try and link things like fundamentalism to need foreclosure. And there are some moderate links. It's not a huge link, but. But there is some indication that heavy fundamentalism in particular does seem to correlate with a strong need for closure.

John Dehlin [00:50:47] Right, right. That makes sense.

James Nagel [00:50:49] So I've got two studies listed here, and there's probably a dozen more out there, but these are just kind of the two big ones I've been able to find.

John Dehlin [00:50:55] And you kind of hear this. The people who, let's just say, become atheists or agnostics, they basically say, I don't need to know what happens in the afterlife. It's. It's sufficient for me to just have the present moment and I'm going to make the most of it. And whatever happens in the afterlife, if there's a God, that's a bonus. And if there's not, I will have lived a good life. You contrast that with the types of people who say, if I didn't believe that there was an afterlife, I would not see a purpose in living and want to kill myself. Well, those are clearly the types of people that need closure and are uncomfortable with uncertainty. And so they quickly do as you say. They fill in the gaps with God, right?

James Nagel [00:51:40] Yes, exactly. So we're going to see kind of the flowchart of this exact process. So we go to slide 21. And this is why God of the gaps is a very common way of looking at the world, that when you don't understand something, it's very common to just attribute it to God, because first and foremost, a lot of people have a high need for closure. They just cannot live with, I don't know, ambiguity makes them physically uncomfortable. So you present people the question, like, where did the universe come from? Why do we have morality? What are lightning bolts? Why does life seem to be so designed? And in the absence of any explanation, they're just going to latch on to whatever comes along first. And a fundamental principle that I'm sure you've experienced before is it's very common to just attribute God to everything.

John Dehlin [00:52:29] Yep.

James Nagel [00:52:31] Like God is in charge of everything. He's running everything. Something goes good for you, it's because God is working for you and things go bad. God is testing you. This God did it is a very common answer to essentially everything. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:52:44] Another way it happens is just to say everything has a purpose. And if you. If it happens, it had a purpose. Right.

James Nagel [00:52:51] So this is why God of the gaps is so pervasive, because for people who have a high need for closure, they have to latch onto whatever comes along first. And since this is a very common answer is God is responsible, that's just what they use to fill the gap and pretend like they've answered it. So you see, the flowchart need for closure leads to primacy, which when coupled with uncertainty, follows up with whatever comes along first being the latching onto of an idea. And then you get private conformity. And then once you believe something, confirmation bias and belief perseverance all just kick in to strengthen it. Yes. So this is why a lot of these arguments and these ideas are so pervasive and compelling. It fits in with how people naturally want to think. Okay, so now we're on our final slide, slide 22. I really want to emphasize this is just the tip of an iceberg.

Psychological Forces Converging in Religion

John Dehlin [00:53:47] Okay?

James Nagel [00:53:48] Every single one of these studies we've done is just one out of dozens, if not hundreds. Okay. And we haven't even touched on all sorts of cool psychological effects. This is the flow chart as it stands now. You notice I've added tons and tons of stuff to it, like groupthink, placebo effects, false consensus effects. What else have we got here? Anthropomorphization, Dunny Kruger effects. There's just this huge variety of psychology that we could be talking about, but we gotta cut it short somewhere. So this flowchart to me is just this big scrambled feedback mess, just as a nice visual metaphor for how crazy and mixed up human brains are and how careful you have to be when you approach the world because there's just so many ways to be wrong. It's just innumerable. And it emphasizes again, why science is so important, is it works very hard to navigate this minefield and get around to truth without stepping on any of these little biases. Okay, so that's the end of this discussion and our final point before we begin part four.

John Dehlin [00:54:55] And so part four, we can look forward to what kind of a summary

James Nagel [00:55:01] we will start asking the ultimate question of where does religion come from in the first place? How did those primal religions begin and develop into the religious space that we see today? That's the key principle. And we're almost to the point where we can formulate a theory, a very comprehensive theory. There's one or two more little ideas we have to push towards, but we're almost there.

John Dehlin [00:55:26] All right. Well, Dr. James Nagle, thank you for joining us on Mormon Stories.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] Thank you.

John Dehlin [00:55:31] Yes, this is part three of the four part series. Make sure and join us for the final part. It's three grand conclusion. You can check us out@mormonstories.org to have a conversation about all this. Make sure and check us out at YouTube or download the PowerPoint presentations. But we're really looking forward to part four. So thanks for joining us and stay tuned for more. Thanks again, James.

James Nagel [00:55:56] You're welcome.

John Dehlin [00:55:57] All right, Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out@sabre-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [00:56:19] Come, come ye saints. No toil nor labor fear but with joy wend your way though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive I our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well. All is well. Why should we mourn? I think our light is high. Tis not so all is right. Why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight? Gird up your lo fresh courage take Our God will never us forsake soon we'll have let's tell a tale. Oh, all is well. All is well all oh, all is well all is well. Sam. And should we die before our journey is through Happy day. All is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the same the rest obtain. I will make this chorus well. Oh, all is well all is well all is well all is well all is well. Oh, is well, Is well. Sa.

Part 4 of 5 · Ep. 341

John Dehlin [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. hello, and welcome back to part four of this Mormon Stories series on the psychology of Religion with Dr. James Nagle. I'm John Dehlin, your host. Hey, James. Hello again. As this is part four, I'd like to remind you guys to listen to parts one, two, and three if you can. Also want to remind you that there are some fantastic visuals accompanying these four episodes, you can either download the PowerPoints@MormonStories.org or you can go up to YouTube and watch this thing in full multimedia splendor@YouTube.com MormonStories I encourage you to do that as well because it might help you understand. But we're going to still try and speak in a way to where the audio only audience will still benefit. So, James, it seems like we've laid out kind of a framework in episodes one through three. Is it fair to say that this fourth part is sort of just a conclusion?

James Nagel [00:01:37] Yeah, we're basically just tie it all together and really answer that ultimate question of where do spiritual supernatural beliefs originate from? What is the abiogenesis of religion and culture? All right, so that's going to really tie it all together and hopefully explain a lot about the way people look at the world.

John Dehlin [00:01:57] Okay, cool. Well, let's start with signs from God.

Signs, Natural Disasters, and Agenticity

James Nagel [00:02:01] Okay, so remember where we left off was this idea of primacy and how coupled with need for closure, it causes people to get an idea in their head and latch onto the first thing that comes along. So what we're going to show in the next few slides is how not only is a religious answer sort of a popular one, it's kind of the default place your brain goes to explain things, that agents are in charge of things

John Dehlin [00:02:33] to kind of apply this. If we're taught from an early age to see God in everything, and we have this tendency to not want to deal with uncertainty, and so we apply the God of the gaps sort of tendency, then we're sort of primed to see signs and evidence of God everywhere. Is that what you're saying?

James Nagel [00:02:56] Yeah, but I'm also kind of taking it one step further in that even if nobody taught you any religion your entire life, you were born on a desert island and raised by wolves. You would still have this innate sense to want to look for agents as the explanation for everything in your world, and that God is just kind of a development from that base concept.

John Dehlin [00:03:18] Okay. Okay, cool.

James Nagel [00:03:20] Okay. So this next set of experiments was kind of inspired when I saw this poll on the news here. So I have a screenshot from Fox News where the reporter is talking about a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute. And this was in last year, actually March 2011. And they showed that four out of 10Americans, when they see natural disasters and hurricanes, like hurricanes and earthquakes and tornadoes, they tend to see these things as a sign from God. And the key event at the time of this reporting was that big tsunami in Japan. Remember, there was that huge earthquake, and the tsunami rushed in, did billions of dollars of damage. It had that huge nuclear crisis. Their nuclear power plant got flooded, and the reactor almost melted down. So there's a perception that suddenly came to light that people look at this and they see the hand of God acting in our lives. So that brings us now to the next slide. So you see here geology in Japan. So there's one thing I really want to emphasize, because this was triggered by that tsunami in Japan and the earthquake. So the thing I want to emphasize is this idea that there's nothing magical about natural disasters. We're going to do a little quick geology lesson here because it was actually really fun to study up on this because it makes a nice complete overshadowing of this idea of natural disasters and signs from God. So the first thing to realize, where do earthquakes come from? What causes an earthquake? Physically, it's not God reaching down with his finger and shaking the the earth around us. You know, there's a very natural process of subduction where tectonic plates collide into each other. So what you see here on the left is a graphic that you can actually find at just Wikipedia, and it just shows what an actual subduction zone looks like, where you have an oceanic tectonic plate just being forced underneath a continental tectonic plate. And so, hopefully, I don't have to explain plate tectonics to you. Just this idea of the Earth's crust is like these little rafts floating around and being forced into each other. But what happens is at these intersections of these plates, where one gets forced underneath the other, you get a lot of elastic tension that builds up in the plate. And every now and then, that tension just releases. And that's essentially what an earthquake is. It's just these tectonic plates cramming into each other. Tension builds up and then releases. Okay. So wherever you have these intersections of tectonic plates, you have a strong tension tendency to see earthquakes. Another interesting thing is this is also the cause of things like volcanoes. That is, this one oceanic plate gets shoved underneath the continental plate. It tends to scoop up a bunch of ocean water with it. So as it goes further and further in the crust, it obviously heats up. And when mixed, the rock and the ocean water together creates these little pockets of magma. So magma is the stuff that liquefies. And then eventually, because it's sort of less dense than the rock around it, it pushes its way to the surface. And that's where you get volcanoes.

John Dehlin [00:06:34] And Japan has lots of volcanoes.

James Nagel [00:06:36] Exactly. I think a fun statistic is, you know, Japan is like 1-500th of the earth's surface, but it has one tenth of the Earth's volcanoes on it.

John Dehlin [00:06:45] And it's not because the Japanese are wicked.

James Nagel [00:06:48] Yeah. So you look at the picture on the right here, and that shows the actual tectonic plate structure around Japan. There's actually four tectonic plates bashing into each other right underneath the Japanese mainland.

John Dehlin [00:07:00] Ouch.

James Nagel [00:07:02] So it's no surprise that Japan is a geological hotspot. I got a little note here. Earthquakes with magnitude 7.0 or greater occur about two to four times per decade in Japan. I think another statistic is they'll have maybe 4.0 or less earthquake earthquakes almost daily. Okay. So the key take home point from all this scientific rambling. Yeah. Get out of there. Even if all the people on Japan were just collectively moved to Alaska and the island was left completely bare, these things would still be happening. Okay? The earthquakes would still happen and the volcanoes would still happen and the tsunamis would still happen. So it has absolutely nothing to do with the people on top of the land. It's just a fact that geology is working its magic underneath. So that is a key principle. I just want to emphasize with this discussion. There's nothing magical about this. There's nothing to do with the wickedness. Even if the entire nation of Japan converted to Christianity and was living as absolute saints, they still have this geology going on underneath them. They still have earthquakes, they still have volcanoes. Even if they all just became those horrible, wicked people in the world, whole Sodom and Gomorrah type thing, they'd have just as many earthquakes and volcanoes. So that is the real key thing. So when you look at, like, tornadoes, lightning, forest fires, and hurricanes, there's nothing magical. There's just natural forces at play. And even if all human Beings on Earth just collectively drop dead. These things would still just happen with or without us. Okay.

John Dehlin [00:08:44] And I'll just add that as a missionary, I purchased the three volume set of Doctrines of Salvation by Joseph Fielding Smith, one of our former prophets. And he absolutely says in those books, the natural disasters are the work of God. And so, you know, Mormons would come by these beliefs honestly if they based their beliefs on the writings of Joseph Fielding Smith.

James Nagel [00:09:11] Yeah. You also have ideas of like, the end times, of how they'll just. You can help me out here. Is it one of the signs of the times, this prevalence of disasters and earthquakes as well, Right? Yeah. No. I hate to break it to you, I don't want to crush anyone's spirit, but this is stuff that's been happening and will happen irrespective of how we're living or what day it is. It's just part of the fact that we live on a geologically active planet.

John Dehlin [00:09:42] So if religions say, hey, you know what, watch out for earthquakes and hurricanes and volcanoes and, you know, tornadoes as, you know, indications that the end is near, then it's. Its followers are gonna.

James Nagel [00:09:59] Can't go wrong.

John Dehlin [00:10:00] That's right. They're gonna win no matter what. Obviously, 20 million years ago or whenever the Ice age happened, that was pretty catastrophic. But none of us were around to witness that. Right. So it may have even been more catastrophic earlier, but we just weren't around to see it.

James Nagel [00:10:16] Yeah, yeah. All this stuff happened before humans entered the scene too. So now let's move along to slide three here. And this is an interesting little experiment. It's called the Scope of Teleological Thinking in Preschool Children. So this experiment was intended for preschool kids. It's going to sound kind of dumbed down in a very explicit way, so you'll kind of have to bear with me for that express reason. But the goal of this experiment was to just see how much children and adults see design in the world. So you've probably heard, you know, like the watchmaker argument or these arguments out of design. Another one of those God of the

How Children Perceive Design and Purpose

John Dehlin [00:10:59] gaps things, which is that, you know, if you found a watch on the sidewalk, you wouldn't assume that the elements just randomly organized to create the watch. You would assume that there was a watchmaker behind the watch. And if that's. Then if we have Earth and these beautiful humans and nature and honeycombs and, you know, even, you know, hummingbirds that fly or bumblebees that logically can't fly, but they still do, there must be, you know, There must be a divine creator that made all this. It's just too wonderful to have happened randomly.

James Nagel [00:11:32] Yeah. And there's a reason why this argument is so powerful, is because it resonates with a natural tendency in human thinking that is not only are we good at recognizing the design in something like a watch, but we see design in everything, whether there's design there or not. That's the key finding from this experiment. So it begins like this. We're just going to draw a distinction between this idea of made for a purpose and not made for any purpose at all. This is a training exercise to build you up for the rest of the experiment. And remember, this is intended for kids. So they explicitly had to explain this idea to them. And they had a script they had to read, too. And it kind of goes like this. So you look at this, you see this. This is the tip of a pencil. The pencil tip is made for writing with. That is what it's made for. So then the experimenter points to this picture of pencil shavings over there on the right, and she says, but some things aren't made for anything. You see this pile of stuff. It isn't made for anything. It's just something that is there. Maybe somebody could use it for something, but it isn't made for anything. So that's the actual training script they would go through with these preschool kids, just to emphasize in their brain that there are things made for something and there are things in this world not made for anything. And your goal is to just simply spot the difference.

John Dehlin [00:12:53] Okay?

James Nagel [00:12:54] That's the essence of this experiment. So now we go to the next slide, slide number four. This idea of made for something. So once you train these preschoolers, you show them pictures of various. So I have a list here. Tiger, mountain, baby, finger, leg, cow, cloud, clock, tree, bird, genes. Okay. You know, that's a list of some of the pictures you just hold up in front of this kid. And their job is to identify whether it's made for something or not made for anything. And in fact, just to, like, really force these kids into a dichotomous position, you invent these characters, Ben and Jane, who are describing this object. So an example would go like this. You hold up a picture of just a tiger in front of some preschool kid, and you say the following to them. Do you see this? This is a tiger. Ben. So you see the picture of Ben on the left? Ben says that a tiger is made for something. It could be that it's made for eating and walking and being seen at the zoo. Or it could be that it's made for other things. But Ben is sure that a tiger is made for something and that's why it's here. Okay, so that's the made for something position. And then you have Jane who says that this is silly. A tiger isn't made for anything. Even though it can eat and walk and be seen at the zoo, that's not what it's made for. They're just things that it can do or people can do with it. Jane is sure that a tiger can do many things, but they aren't what it's made for and they aren't why it's here. Okay, so that's the dichotomy you present to these kids and then their job, you tell them the point to who you think is right. Literally all the kid has to do is hold up his finger in one direction or the other. So point who you think is right. Ben who thinks a tiger is made for something, or Jane who thinks that's silly because a tiger isn't made for anything. So that's the whole experiment in a nutshell. And you just repeat this little game for all these various objects on the list. Point made for something, not made for anything. Made for something, not made for something. And just go through the list and tally up the results. And then what they did, they also gave this experiment to adults so they can contrast how adults view the world with how children view the world. So now we are on slide number five, which shows the results for this experiment here. And so you see a little set of bar graphs and you notice it's contrasting children with adults. But they're also contrasting artifacts which are man made objects, and then biological organisms like tigers and then natural objects like a mountaintop. Alright, so we'll just look at the children bars first. And you see how children in all three categories are like 70 to 80% or almost 90%. And above there you see the three white bars.

John Dehlin [00:15:45] Okay, so children tend to see most things as being made for something.

James Nagel [00:15:50] Exactly. They look at objects in the world and they see something that was deliberately put together.

John Dehlin [00:15:55] Whether it's a pencil, which is an artifact, or an animal, which is a biological hole or a cloud. They see all those things as being made for something.

James Nagel [00:16:06] Right. And the key there is mountains and clouds. So mountains and clouds are definitely not made for anything. Like we said before, mountains are like volcanoes and earthquakes. They're just geology working its magic and literally just piling dirt and rocks really, really high. That's what a mountain Big giant pile of rocks due to a bunch of geological forces. In fact, the picture you see here is Mount Everest. Literally that's the result of the Indian subcontinent just bashing into the Eurasian continent and just the dirt piles up as the continent moves in. Or the tectonic plate just crams into the other one. So it's not made for anything. It is about as random and purposeless as you can get the same idea with a cloud. It's just this random hodgepodge of where water vapor happened to coalesce and condense and create a cloud. So to see this, children when they look at this stuff, 70% and more look at mountains and clouds and will say made for something. Now contrast this with adults. You see the adults there? It's about 30 to 40% of adults will look at mountains and clouds and say this is made for something. Which is kind of interesting. It's about the same value that we saw before as the signs from God statistic. People just look at random stuff in the world and see design. Even though there are definitely things in this world that are not designed at all. Now we go to biological holes. Tigers and birds and cows. Now what's interesting is I hope this doesn't offend a few people or it'll probably be controversial. But. But biological organisms are not made for any purpose either. They are not technically designed. The maker of a tiger is nothing more than evolution and natural selection.

John Dehlin [00:18:00] In your view? In your view?

James Nagel [00:18:02] Yeah. As someone who's a scientist and someone who's studied biology, when you really break it down, tigers, like biological organisms like tigers and birds, are the product of a long chain of inherited allele variations in reproductive populations. After subjecting them to natural selection, they do have an apparent design to them because they have complicated structures. But from a purely natural point of view, there's nothing magical about them. Nothing came down. There's no blueprint for a tiger sitting around somewhere that somebody made. You know, they're going to continue to evolve and modify as time goes on. So to look at biological holes and see design is not.

John Dehlin [00:18:51] There's no evidence.

James Nagel [00:18:52] Yeah, there's no evidence for that. It's very natural to want to see design in these things. Yeah. But from my perspective, honestly, you know, they're not really designed. They're like mountains, they're just products of nature. So that's an interesting statistic there that even in this in between zone where something probably isn't really designed either, we still see 70 to 80% of people, children and adults look at tigers and Birds. And they see design, something that was made. So that's the key finding from this experiment is this overwhelming tendency to look at stuff in our world and see the action of some deliberate intention.

John Dehlin [00:19:33] And I think that that's pretty easily explainable. My guess is that, you know, especially LDS people, but everyone, you know, Christians, probably all faith traditions have this creation story where God, where they're taught from a young age that God created the earth and animals and humans and that they all had a purpose. And you know, I could even see why an adult would say that a mountain was created by God to allow us to ski and to, you know, allow us to mountain climb. And again, I can see a scientific point of view that says there's no evidence, you know, no empirical evidence for any of that. And I can also see why adults and children would still see design and purpose without the evidence. Right.

James Nagel [00:20:25] Well, there's one key piece of information that should be included in that discussion is the fact that this experiment was performed on preschool children. People who are not indoctrinated with religious beliefs yet, or at least many of them. We're talking about four year olds. Does a four year old really kind of understand this stuff? And they're also from various mixed backgrounds. Some were Christians, some were just secular parents too. So it's one thing to say that our culture kind of makes us look at the world this way, but when you do this, well, in people who haven't really been influenced by that culture yet, and they overwhelmingly see design and everything, it means there's something innate to our brains themselves, our natural tendency.

John Dehlin [00:21:14] Yeah, that's true.

James Nagel [00:21:15] It indicates very strongly, I could say.

John Dehlin [00:21:17] I'll also say that I've taught Sunbeams in the LDS church and that's literally one of the lessons. And some beams are like 2, 3, 4 years old, as I remember. And you are taught literally that God makes the birdies and God makes the clouds and God makes the sunshine. So I think I can see your point. And I can also, I have evidence for culturation or teaching religious teachings to this effect at very young ages. So anyway, I just, I'm not trying to undermine what you're saying. Yeah, I guess I'm saying I acknowledge your point and I think there might be a lot of that going on as well.

James Nagel [00:21:59] Yeah, it is, you know, kind of difficult to decouple the culture because they are influenced at a very young age. But again, this was just a random sampling of preschool kids too. It is, it is interesting from various backgrounds.

John Dehlin [00:22:11] Yeah. And it is interesting to See how adult, how beliefs regarding design change over time. You know that is interesting, right? That adults actually see 100% of artifacts as being designed.

James Nagel [00:22:32] Right.

John Dehlin [00:22:32] So they actually see more design than children with artifacts. But then as you get to natural objects, that drops down to 30%. So it seems to be pretty significant that being an adult has a significant impact on whether you see design or not.

James Nagel [00:22:48] Exactly. But yeah, that sort of. That lingering 30 to 40% though, when you look at a cloud is still an interesting statistic. But any case. But that's the essence of the experiment. This tendency to see purpose in things. This is just one out of a few I'm going to show.

John Dehlin [00:23:09] Actually.

Agenticity, Patternicity, and the Origins of Religion

James Nagel [00:23:11] We go now to the next slide. There's this idea called agenticity. And this was coined by Michael Shermer, actually, I thought it was a really great word to describe what we're talking about here. And he calls it the tendency to believe that the world is controlled by invisible intentional agents. So it's this idea, you look at stuff and it's not just the product of nature, but something deliberately put it there or made it that way, or has its hand involved in its destiny and its progress. We're going to actually show where agenticity comes from from an actual psychological perspective. So we go to the next slide here. So this is an idea called theory of mind. And it basically goes like this. You see these two pictures here. One is a rock and one is a baby, right? So you casually look at these things and one of these objects you want to hold and play with, and the other one, you would just as soon step on it. Now it seems really, really trivial, but it's important to realize that something in your brain made that distinction. And we'll show later on that not everybody has this immediate capacity, but there exists in your brain some mechanism that's basically scanning the environment around you, looking for other humans. And this is a really important idea to grab onto that. Our survival as human beings depends on each other. So somewhere in there, nature has given us the power to look at objects in our environment and make a distinction between rocks and other things that are like us. I specifically use vague terminology as we're looking specifically for other human beings so we can interact with them, so we can cooperate with them and form relationships and work toward mutual survival and benefit and well being. But it boils down to this idea of we're looking for things like us, things that are motivated, have intention and feelings and really ask yourself what is it would be like, what would it be like For a person who had trouble with this capacity, who was difficult, who had difficulty empathizing with others, and simply looked at people almost like stimulus from their environment. I say this specifically because not all animals have this capacity. Like a frog or a snake can't really make this distinction. This is why they don't form highly sophisticated cultural groups. As far as a snake is concerned, you're just stimulus from the environment. It doesn't look at you and have any capacity to see you as a motivated thing.

John Dehlin [00:25:59] As far as we know. As far as we know, yeah.

James Nagel [00:26:01] As far as we can tell, yeah. So that's a key principle is in order to form cooperative groups, you have to have some capacity for recognizing others like you and working together with them. This is a fundamental key to what drives human success.

John Dehlin [00:26:19] But snakes can. I mean, every. Every. Every species has to rep, has to. Has to replicate.

James Nagel [00:26:27] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:26:28] And so they needed. A snake, obviously can tell the difference between a male and a female snake, and it knows enough to be able to replicate, right?

James Nagel [00:26:37] Yeah. But I wouldn't go so far as to say that a snake has any empathy for you. You know, if you hold a snake in your arms, it doesn't really look at you and see something to interact with or cooperate with or to share feelings with or empathize. That's kind of the distinction.

John Dehlin [00:26:54] Would you say the more advanced the animal, the more chance there is that there is some of that, like maybe dog.

James Nagel [00:26:59] Yeah, definitely. Creatures like dogs almost certainly have this because they form. They're pack animals. They're very social animals, and they have to have some kind of structure for working together. And I would say cats have much less of this capacity because they're far more lonely in their lifestyle. Or solitary is a better word.

John Dehlin [00:27:17] Got it, got it.

James Nagel [00:27:19] So that's kind of the key idea, is this ability to see others like you, and especially to empathize with them, feel what they feel, and work together with them. Okay, so now we go to the next slide. And this is going to further, really drive home the point. So there's a phenomenon called pareidolia. And so this is a great little experiment because I just show you a bunch of pictures on the screen here. And so, John, how many faces do you see on this screen right now?

John Dehlin [00:27:47] Okay, so I'm going to describe what I'm seeing to the listeners. I see a picture of Barack Obama on the left.

James Nagel [00:27:53] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:27:53] I see other objects to the right. There's four objects. One kind of looks like a face, but it also looks like it's almost an object on the moon, but I'm not sure what it is. But it.

James Nagel [00:28:06] It's actually the face on Mars.

John Dehlin [00:28:08] Okay, so it looks like. It kind of looks like a face, but it also looks like it's some type of planetary thing. Then below that, it looks like a piece of pizza on a piece of tin foil.

James Nagel [00:28:18] It's actually a grilled cheese sandwich.

John Dehlin [00:28:20] Okay, okay, okay. That's. That's grilled cheeses, basically.

James Nagel [00:28:24] It's actually the Virgin Mary.

John Dehlin [00:28:26] Oh, okay. There was a Glee episode where Jesus appeared on a grilled cheese sandwich, and they called it grilled Jesus. But, yeah, it looks like there's a face in the grilled cheese sandwich.

James Nagel [00:28:39] Yeah. This is a really famous sandwich, by the way. I think some casino bought it for, like, $20,000 because it generated all this hype when the lady claimed that it had the Virgin Mary on it.

John Dehlin [00:28:49] Fantastic.

James Nagel [00:28:50] So it's a really famous piece of grilled cheese sandwich. You see the big bite taken out of it, too, right?

John Dehlin [00:28:55] Yep. And then. And then on the right, I see what it looks like. Kind of like a candlestick, but. But the grooves in the candlestick look like two faces on either side looking at each other.

James Nagel [00:29:09] Yeah, it's that classic optical illusion of the vase with the faces.

John Dehlin [00:29:13] Yep.

James Nagel [00:29:13] So you see two faces kind of into each other, and then the last

John Dehlin [00:29:16] one is kind of like not a smiley face, but a straight face. It looks like a circle. Two eyes, and then a line that looks like a straight mouth.

James Nagel [00:29:26] Yeah, you got a big circle for the head, two circles for the eyes, and just a straight line for that. A blandy face. Not really a smiley face.

John Dehlin [00:29:33] So I can kind of see five faces, you know, if I look.

James Nagel [00:29:36] Six faces. Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:29:37] One, two. Oh, right. Six. Yeah. If I look hard because the candlestick has two.

James Nagel [00:29:42] Yeah, yeah, exactly. Now, only one of these images is an actual person human face.

John Dehlin [00:29:48] Right.

James Nagel [00:29:49] You saw how your brain immediately, without even trying, recognized faces in these other objects.

John Dehlin [00:29:55] That's right.

James Nagel [00:29:55] So pareidolia is defined as seeing faces where there aren't actual human faces. And an interesting fact about facial recognition is that human brains are amazing at this. If you were to devise some kind of computer algorithm for recognizing faces and put it on your desktop computer, it could never hope to compete with your capacity of recognizing faces per second. So this is something really hardwired into our brains is to look for other faces. And we're so good at it that we see faces everywhere. That's a key idea that I'm trying to sort of repeat and emphasize a lot is that we're so good at looking for faces. Even when there isn't a face, if it remotely has features of a face, our brain looks at it and sees a face and then recognizes the emotions in that face. Even.

John Dehlin [00:30:49] You know, it's funny because my family and I went to Moab last week, and we went on this big, long river raft trip all day long, and I've never. I haven't really thought about faces. I don't think about seeing faces other than when a news article comes out once every couple years claiming that, you know, the Virgin Mary is on a refrigerator, on the refrigerator panel or something. But the truth is, as we were gliding down the Colorado river and our kids were looking up at the. At the rock walls in Arches and in Moab, I think probably 10 times they said, oh, there's an old lady or there's an old man, you know, in the rock formation. So. So I can. I don't think we trained them to do that, but I think that is. That appears to be a natural tendency we have.

James Nagel [00:31:36] For my experience, yeah, I would say this is biologically hardwired into our brains to look for faces. And, you know, there's a reason for that. Again, it's this idea that a huge part of our survival and prosperity as human beings requires us to work together to find other human beings, form relationships with them, empathize with them, and cooperate for our mutual benefit. This is a defining feature of what it means to be human as opposed to virtually every other thing that's ever lived. So imagine if you're born into this kind of culture and that part of your brain is broken. You're not quite as good at seeing faces as other people. What is the evolutionary cost of to that? Are you very likely to forge relationships and prosper and have lots of children, or will you just kind of get marginalized in the culture? So from the perspective of evolutionary biology, there is a massive, massive bias towards social recognition. And in fact, so much of a bias that we see we accidentally recognize each other everywhere, even where there isn't an actual person. And that's a key idea, is compare and contrast the evolutionary cost of a false positive versus a false negative. You accidentally see a face or see a person where there isn't one. You shrug it off, or maybe do a rain dance and get on with your life. But you fail to see a person where there is one. Maybe he's not someone who likes you very much, and he bashes your head in with an axe and takes your stuff and you don't go have any more babies. So just strictly biologically speaking, there's this massive bias that we have to recognize each other. And there's so much of an urgency in this that will recognize each other even in ordinary, mundane things.

John Dehlin [00:33:33] Got it.

James Nagel [00:33:34] Because the cost of that is so much less than the failure to do otherwise.

John Dehlin [00:33:37] Okay, got it.

James Nagel [00:33:38] That's the theme I really want to push. So now we're going to do a really interesting experiment. So we're on slide number nine. And this is an idea called spontaneous social attribution. It's just a tendency to look at something and without being told to just completely spontaneously, you describe it and see it in terms of agents, this agenticity thing we talked about. So the experiment itself is actually really famous. It's called the Heider and Simmel experiment. And you can look this up on YouTube and they'll show you the actual video footage of the experiment. So the essence of it goes like this. You get a bunch of just subjects, and you sit them down in front of a tv, and you tell them, you know, we're going to show you some video footage, and you give them a piece of paper and a pencil, and all you tell them to do is write down what you see. Okay, we're going to show you stuff. Write down what you see happening. So the video itself is nothing more than these geometric objects moving around on the screen.

John Dehlin [00:34:41] So a couple triangles and a circle

James Nagel [00:34:44] and a box you see here kind of a still image of it. And like I said, you can watch the full movie online, but the essence of it is you have a little circle, a little triangle, a big triangle, and this rectangle thing that looks like

John Dehlin [00:34:57] a house with a door kind of thing.

James Nagel [00:34:58] With a door thing on it. Yeah. So the little circle and the little triangle come in, they dance around each other, they move away, they come close and they circle. And then the big triangle comes in and starts colliding with the little triangle and pushing it around. And they have what appears to be some kind of a struggle and eventually culminates with some climax. And then they all leave the scene. That's literally all you see is a bunch of geometric shapes, enter the scene, move around each other, and then they leave.

John Dehlin [00:35:29] Right.

James Nagel [00:35:30] Now, out of 33 subjects, only one of them described it in literal terms. That is, a circle enters the scene, moves to the left. A small triangle enters the scene and follows the circle. A big triangle comes into the scene and collides with. These are geometric descriptions of the literal events happening before you. The other 32 out of 33 subjects will say things like, two lovers enter the scene. A jealous ex boyfriend then follows them, tracks them, and picks a fight with. Okay, they just arbitrarily assign genders and feelings, motivations and even backstories to these little gmt.

John Dehlin [00:36:13] Probably not arbitrarily. I mean, there's probably either either a biological or some other type of social reason why we do this, Right?

James Nagel [00:36:21] Yeah. We're hardwired, again, to see agents in the world, even if these agents are nothing more than they're literally cardboard cutouts in stop motion animation. And that's all they are. And we'll see intent and motivation in these little things. Now, what's really interesting, this is the key, is that if you show the same footage to people with autism, they will be far more likely to use the geometric descriptions rather than the social descriptions. So this is an interesting finding about autism is it heavily relates to our ability to recognize other human beings. Even the word autism itself literally means selfism. You have trouble empathizing and recognizing other members of your species or looking at things in your environment and seeing another person. That's literally what severe autism creates in people. And we even know at least partially where some of that neurological basis is. You ever hear of a thing called mirror neurons?

John Dehlin [00:37:29] No.

James Nagel [00:37:32] Well, there's a great article in Scientific American a few years back where they describe this. And the essence of it is when you look at another person doing anything like waving at you, there is a piece of your brain that vicariously replicates that experience in yourself, and you experience the wave in yourself, even though you're not actually waving. That's what mirror neurons are. They're these neurons that fire when you see other people do things and give you the vicarious experience of doing what someone else is doing. I guess a great way to demonstrate this is go to YouTube and watch skateboard accidents. And the next time, the moment you see some guy fall off his skateboard and crush his crotch on something or bang his head into something really hard, you notice that feeling where you go, you know, that you could almost look at that as you're vicariously experiencing that other person's event, even though you're not actually experiencing.

John Dehlin [00:38:32] Yeah. Another example of that is if you ever are watching a high jump event where people in a truck and field do hi jump, somebody runs up to try and jump over the bar, you'll often see people around or even yourself lift your leg, the other people are going through their hijack motion. Yep. I used to do this as a High jumper. I was a high jumper myself. Yeah.

James Nagel [00:38:57] So a key thing, though, is people with autism don't do this.

John Dehlin [00:39:01] Right?

James Nagel [00:39:01] Their mirror neurons will not fire when they see other people doing things. And it's actual, like, full Fmr. FMRI studies of this where they show, you know, ordinary people and their mirror neurons light up when you see a person wave at you.

John Dehlin [00:39:15] And.

James Nagel [00:39:15] And then autistic subjects, those same bundles of neurons don't fire when they see other people. So I'm just trying to make the point that there is a neurological basis for our capacity to work as a social species, and it's possible to break that capacity. And there's a huge evolutionary push to make sure that capacity is hardwired into us and natural and normal.

John Dehlin [00:39:41] Got it.

James Nagel [00:39:42] This experiment, I think, is really great because, like I said, it's just called spontaneous social attribution. The Heider and Simmel experiment. You can watch this yourself. And it's very hard to look at this and not see a struggle between people, even though it's just triangles in a circle. So it's a fun little experiment.

John Dehlin [00:39:59] Okay. Yeah, I recommend it, too.

James Nagel [00:40:02] So we go to slide number 10. And this. This is an argument I'm making personally, is that these are all the ingredients you need to explain this idea of agenticity. That is, people have need for closure, which makes them susceptible to primacy. So whatever idea comes along first to fill a question, a lot of people just naturally grab onto that and then use that as the answer. But as we just learned, it's extremely natural, like hardwired into our brains to look at the world and see agents, things deliberately moving and shaking the environment. So it's not just that there are some answers more culturally prevalent than others. It's that our brains are physically hardwired to see agents in the world. And so that is the default answer our brain will fall towards in the lack of any other explanation, because we can't help it. So this, I feel, explains this tendency for agenticity in human populations, this overwhelming drive to see the world as controlled by things. Because you raise a question, your brain looks for an answer and invents its own natural answer that it's hardwired to invent. And then that fills your question, that fills your need for closure.

John Dehlin [00:41:22] Got it.

James Nagel [00:41:23] Okay, got it. So this takes us now to slide number 11. And at this point, I would say we have all the ingredients we need to explain. Explain where primitive religions originate. Okay. So I call this a cognitive theory of natural religion. So just to emphasize is whether you are religious or not, you still have this question of where did religion come from? Where do all these other faiths originate from? How do they trace their origins? What was the genesis of some spiritual belief? So this is what we're going to answer. And there are actually scientists publishing books on this stuff. This one here on the left is called Born to Believe. It says God, science and the origin of ordinary and extraordinary beliefs. So that's an interesting book, just describing a lot of the various mechanisms by which we believe random stuff and see agents in charge of the world. This other book here called why We Believe in Gods, the S is in parentheses. It's called the Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. It's actually only like 100 pages. A pretty quick read. But the essence of this is this guy is a clinical psychologist from the University of Virginia, I think, and he is basically going to make the exact same argument I am. This overwhelming tendency to see agents in the world forces us to see spiritual things in everything. And then the final book here, you see says Psychology of Religion and Spirituality. This is actually a quarterly journal, so there's actual like full blown journals dedicated to the study of this phenomenon, with people doing experiments like we've seen before and making discoveries almost daily. So what I'm going to show you is somewhat incomplete, but it is essentially the backbone framework that a lot of scientists are putting together. And we are getting very, very close to completely just building what I would call a neurological, psychological and biological foundation for where religious beliefs originated and come from and propagate. Okay, so that's, that's the big picture we're shooting for. So we go now to the next slide, slide number 12. And I think it basically all starts with imagine a hunter gatherer culture. Okay, so Homo sapiens as a species have been around for about 100,000 years and 96% of that has been living out in the bush as a hunter gatherer culture. Okay, so I just got some picture of some African bushman here. And they're just basically illustrative of what the vast majority of human history was like, living out in the wild in very close knit social groups or sort of clans, you could say. And this is how nature, I guess, intended us for us to be before we started building cities and sophisticated cultures. So first and foremost, a group like this is obviously going to be very scientifically naive. Okay? They don't know the first thing about the fact that the Earth is round or that the earth goes around the sun or what the stars are. They just see A big, mysterious world around them. But they are very inquisitive, so they want to answer these questions about the world. This is a huge part of human nature, is to ask questions and explore. They're going to be very superstitious, and a huge, huge fraction of their perception and behavior is going to be governed by the instincts nature has programmed into them. But the key is they're interdependent, this group. Any individual in this group needs the group to survive. That's the defining characteristic of what it's like to live in this culture. Very, very highly social lifestyle with the capacity to look at other objects in your environment, identify other humans and empathize with the humans, and even empathize with things that aren't people. That's kind of the key principle here. So we go now to the next slide. Slide 13. This, I feel, perfectly explains where animism comes from. That is, the natural human tendency is to see everything in terms of agents with desires and motivations. So as an example, you see here some pictures of just random stuff, like you got the ocean on the left, some lightning bolt in the middle, and some grass and wheat on the right. Imagine you're part of this culture and you see the ocean. You don't know the first thing about what the ocean really is or what it's made up of and what it's like. All you see is something that is sometimes rough, sometimes it's calm, sometimes it's warm, and sometimes it's cold. Sometimes there's lots of fish, Sometimes fishing is difficult. How do you explain this without any scientific framework? Because that's what people are going to do by their nature is inquire. And the default answer is to look at something like this and. And think something must be in charge of it. Something must be causing it intentionally. It has a personality, it has moods, it has motivations. There is a spirit, a mind of the ocean in effect. Same would go for things like the weather. Sometimes the weather is rough and vengeful, and sometimes the weather is calm and placid. How does our human brain answer this stuff? Without any particular understanding of weather or electricity or fluid dynamics, you just see something that varies in its intensity and helpfulness to you as a function of time. And by default, you're gonna look at this and just assume it's a personality, something is angry at you, sometimes it's friendly with you, and so on. Maybe you could try and placate it and do a little rain dance. Right.

John Dehlin [00:47:13] So remind me what totemism is again.

James Nagel [00:47:17] Totemism is. Well, I'll get to that in a second. So the key point of this is. I'm just going to state this as fact. Virtually all spiritual beliefs in hunter gatherer cultures are based on some kind of animism, totemism, or anthropomorphization. So animism is the idea of looking at an object in your environment and seeing a mind, an agent, a spirit of the tree. If I kick the tree, then the tree might feel pain from that. That's basically animism. Totemism is sort of a different form of animism that also adds the idea that we're related to things in our environment. That is, the tree isn't just a thinking spirit agent, but that spirit is actually my dead grandmother or my great grandmother. That's basically what totemism is. The objects in our environment are reflective of our relatives. We're related to them. They're like our ancestors, things like that. Anthropomorphism is simply giving these things human form, human shape. So, for example, what's the ultimate difference between the spirit of the ocean versus Poseidon of the Greek pantheon? And ultimately, the only difference is Poseidon has an actual human shape, whereas the spirit of the ocean is just the ocean with a motivational intent. So that is, in essence, where animism comes from. Our brains can't help but see agents as the movers and shakers of the world. And then, since we live in these cultural groups where all our beliefs, our actions, are heavily biased by peer pressure and culture, these ideas are just going to take root within the culture itself and feedback on themselves and reinforce each other. So given that, what do you think is the natural tendency for these beliefs? As time just wears on in generation after generation, as groups have to move and expand in new environments, what do you think these beliefs are going to do? And the short answer is, in principle, they should just follow the groups around and diversify with the groups. That is, as cultures encounter each other and compete with each other and encounter, say, new environments and have to adapt, then those beliefs buried within the culture are going to adapt with that culture. So, in effect, we now come to slide 14. That idea predicts diversification with time. Okay? And that's actually exactly what we see in every major religion. So the chart you see here just says major branches within Christianity. And so what you see is sort of the stem of early Christianity branching off with the Council of Ephesus, producing the Assyrian Church. And then you have the Council of Chalcedon, or do I have that? Right, yeah. Producing Oriental Orthodoxy. Then there's the Great schism of the 11th century, where you get Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodoxy and some of them reunite back together and then divide again with the Reformation and Protestants and Anglicans and Anabaptism and Restorationism. And you see, as time goes on, Christianity just branches and branches as time wears on. So these are just like the major sections of Christianity, not counting, you know, remember, there's dozens upon dozens of subsects in Christian faith. So there's a word for something like this in biology. That is when you trace the lineage of something and you see it branching and branching at various points in time. We call that a cladogram. Okay. And the thing to realize when you see a cladogram, something branching and diversifying as time goes on, there is only one thing in the entire known universe that explains this behavior, and that is evolution through natural selection. Maybe there's another explanation, but I have not seen in biology. In biology, yeah. But, you know, all the elements are there. You know, these beliefs are formed by culture and formed by groups. They are competing with each other for scarce resources and for belief within the members of those groups. And so they have to just diversify and adapt to suit environments. That's the essence of what evolution and natural selection entails is this diversification and sophistication as time wears on and generations within generations start trying out variations and mutating, so to speak, their ideas within their cultures. So this is a prediction of what we should expect given the conditions, and it's exactly what we see. And I should point out I'm picking on Christianity here, but every major religion has these schisms. Okay? Islam has dozens of Judaism, Hinduism, Hinduism and Buddhism. They all show this sort of branching behavior where just more and more varieties keep emerging as time goes on. So, you know, I can't think of any explanation for this other than just what I've stated. It's cultural group selection in a nutshell. So remember at the beginning of this discussion how we showed all the major subsects within Christianity and all the major beliefs around the world? This explains it. This is a perfectly valid theory grounded in empirical science that explains this behavior and where it comes from. So that leads us now to slide 15. So what you see here is kind of a flowchart of the process. So this is something I kind of put together based on what I've been able to glean from the literature. This idea where you start with hunter gatherer cultures and a propensity for agenticity and Those things come together to give you animism. Animism then couples with culture to produce sophisticated religions with their own mythologies and spiritualistic beliefs, which then, coupled with group selection, gives you a diversification and sophistication with time. So the key point to this, there is no ultimate religion that humanity is going to converge into, all things being equal. The result is just going to be branching upon branching and diversification. But you're not going to see faiths converging together.

How Religion Originates and Spreads

John Dehlin [00:53:40] Or extinction. Or extinction.

John Dehlin [00:53:41] Right.

James Nagel [00:53:42] You do see extinction. How many subsects of various religions do you think have died off? Do you see a Greek pantheon anywhere? How many people believe even Zeus these days? Yeah, I should actually include extinction into that chart as well. That's a good point. So this is the backbone framework for how religion originates, how it spreads itself and how it behaves under successive generations. And you see these little boxes down here in the corner. I say mythology, origins, death and morality. These are, in my opinion, sort of unknowns because they're unifying themes that you see in a lot of religious beliefs around the world. They all have some kind of mythology of a great hero triumphing over things. They like to talk about origins, where everything came from. They definitely obsess over death. That's a huge underlying theme in spiritual beliefs, is what happens after we die. And you also see a lot of religion coupling itself with moral behavior, and that morality tends to reflect the culture in which it's born, which also couples itself with the religious and spiritual beliefs. So they tend to intertwine themselves a lot as well. But it's really kind of unclear how they seem to make their way in there. So I kind of left them off in the corner as, you know, maybe if you want to go study psychology and get your PhD, you could take part in the research that fills that death block in there somehow and explains why that tends to intertwine so much. But this is. This is the process right here. This is how it begins and how it behaves as time goes on. So next slide, we're on slide 16, and you just see the big picture. So we alluded to this with that chart earlier with religious boundaries in the US and now we're basically seeing that same chart only reflecting the entire world. And you can obviously see religious beliefs follow very distinct cultural boundaries and geographic. Yeah, yeah, cultural. Geographic boundaries. This would make no sense if there was some ultimate true religion that everyone was trying to converge to. But it makes perfect sense if it's a product of the culture which gave birth to it. So for example, you see all these subsects of Christianity breaking up the United States. There's a little Mormon blob there in Utah, Idaho. You see big chunks of the world have sort of primal indigenous religions like way up there in northern Canada and Alaska and parts of Siberia. You see, obviously the Middle east is broken down between Islam where you have Sunnis and Shiites in various regions. You see Hindus right there in India. The entire Indian subcontinent is just all Hinduism. Big chunks of China and Tibet are all Buddhism. You can see Eastern Orthodoxy there in Eastern Europe and sort of the areas like the Ukraine. Just very, very distinct cultural boundaries across the world. This again makes perfect sense if you look at it in terms of a product of the culture itself. And it makes no sense if you look at it in terms of some ultimate truth that everyone's trying to converge to. So hopefully this picture now should be perfectly well explained. You should look at that and think, oh yeah, that's natural, of course it's that way. At least that's kind of the goal. Whatever belief you are, you still have to recognize the significance of this image that there's all this grab bag of religious beliefs out there and where did they come from? Why do they follow these boundaries?

John Dehlin [00:57:17] To be honest, the only other explanation or theory that I've ever heard of this diversity was stuff that I read on my mission from a general authority of the LDS church, which is basically that in the pre existence we had different levels of righteousness or valiancy. And depending on our level of righteousness or valiancy in the pre existence, we were assigned to a specific region or culture or religion based on what we earned in the previous life. And that's the only other I've heard to explain. And he even had like, you know, like white, white Christian was at the top and then there was like Asian and then there was like, you know, brown people and then black people. And there was even this gradation of his attempts to decide what the hierarchy was of valiancy as associated with race and culture. And that's the only other attempt I've heard to try to explain this.

James Nagel [00:58:20] Yeah, you got to be really careful if you say that out loud to people because you're basically saying my belief is superior to yours because I'm more righteous than you were in the pre existence. That's kind of a slap in the face if you say that to a Muslim or a Buddhist. I'm higher up on the 20th, the hierarchy, the totem pole than you are. I was More valiant. That's kind of. If I heard that and I was a Hindu, I'd be kind of offended. You really should be careful, that sort of idea. So now we're on slide 17 and this just is a plug for my YouTube channel, Anti Citizen X. A lot of these experiments we've talked about, I have actual sort of video presentations of them where I'll show some religious claim contrasted with the scientific demonstration of the psychological mechanism that makes these claims so compelling. I have this 10 part video series called the Psychology of Belief. Just really spelling out all these various things we've talked about and a few extra that we didn't talk about. For example, we didn't talk about projection. So that's actually kind of a fun one is people tend to see faults in themselves and then project it onto other people as a mechanism for feeling better about themselves. It's kind of interesting. I also do some other videos periodically on just general philosophy of science and skepticism as well. So that's my shameless plug for myself.

John Dehlin [00:59:52] Good, good.

Concluding Scientific Analysis of Religion

James Nagel [00:59:54] So now we're on the final slide, just our final concluding section. This is pretty text heavy, so I just wanted to kind of read a few remarks just summarizing the things we've learned. So first and foremost, we've shown that there is a scientific theory of religion which is pretty well grounded. We've demonstrated all the key elements of it. Just says religious and spiritual beliefs are derived from the natural human tendency to perceive the world in terms of personal motivated agents. When coupled with cultural groups and natural selection, the result is diversification and sophistication over time. We've seen all of these elements in action. So now I'm going to really be frank and up front here. I'm going to say very bluntly that all religious and spiritual organizations, without exception, in your opinion? In my opinion. This is now my personal conclusions from what we've discussed. Without exception, all religious and spiritual organizations are cultural phenomena. We have this theory that explains them all and shows them all and they behave exactly as you would expect if they are determined by culture and they rely on social pressure, cognitive dissonance, manipulation tactics, sales tactics, hallucination and perceptual bias in order to survive and to propagate. Because remember, each time we did one of these, we've seen how you can exploit this mechanism to generate real belief and that people genuinely do exploit these things. It's no wonder people believe this stuff is because the beliefs are driven by these biases in our thinking that are guaranteed to make us believe anything so by itself that's not really a bad thing, I should say. It's just part of our culture. The same thing happens with Pokemon. Why do people like Pokemon? Well, because it got popular and people were pressured into it and became this self reinforcing thing. Same thing would be true for fashion trends every year. There's nothing particularly wrong with it as long as you recognize it for what it is. The danger in this is when you start generating staunch personal convictions without any regard for empirical evidence and rational skepticism, that is. That's where you start getting into the world of dogmatic assertions that affect everybody. That people start acting on their beliefs in ways that affect the people around them and do so without any care for evidence for facts. That's the real thing to beware of when we're talking about cultural phenomena this way. Okay.

John Dehlin [01:02:34] It's sort of this confidence that you, that you, that you've got a special claim on an understanding of how God works and that it just so happens to work in your favor and not in other people's favor. Another way I've heard someone say this is there's never ever been a group of people that have received a revelation from God that those other guys over there were God's chosen people. In other words, everyone thinks that they're chosen by God and doing what is right, but they never happen to sort of get that revelation on behalf of others. It's always privileged to the people receiving whatever they're receiving. Is that right?

James Nagel [01:03:21] Yeah, that's a good way to think about it. It's very self serving in that bias. And like I said, I remember growing up lds where this was really driven into me me is we are the one true church and everyone else is just sort of misguided and lost. And I had no idea that other people say the same thing about us. So you really have to ask yourself on what basis do you make this assertion? And physical evidence is kind of the ultimate arbiter of stuff. But if you're going to ignore facts, then that makes you a dangerous person and a dangerous ideology. So I really just want to emphasize facts matter because that's kind of all we have to arbitrate. Right and wrong in this world is the world itself. So kind of a final remark on this is we live in a world that I would say is flooded with superstition, misinformation, ignorance, bamboozle, scarcity, hatred, greed, corruption, and maybe not so much today, but 20 years ago, I would say the grim specter of nuclear annihilation. We live in A world where there exists weapons of mass destruction and people who want to use them. People have fingers on buttons right now, ready to push at the slightest provocation. Do you want to live in a world where people make dogmatic assertions about their beliefs as being superior to others, or do you want to live in a world where people are more rational and open to facts and discussion? So I would conclude by saying scientific method is the best and the only tool we have for mitigating the pitfalls in human reasoning and really illuminating our darkness and superstition. That is, as we've gone through all these psychological biases, we've seen how science is designed to counteract them, to keep us from falling into those traps. So people who reject science scare me because it's an idea that you don't acknowledge the faults in yourself and your capacity for being wrong about things. So I should say, only by learning to embrace, not ignore, but embrace the cognitive shortcomings which we've seen. Nature is programmed into our brains for good reasons, but only by learning to embrace them can we ever hope to overcome their negative consequences. That is, you can't undo your bias unless you understand what the bias is in the first place and what triggers it so that you can then take active measures to counteract it. So that, to me, is the beauty of science in a world of cultural superstition.

John Dehlin [01:06:00] Got it.

John Dehlin [01:06:01] Okay.

James Nagel [01:06:03] And that. I would just say. I say that in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. One, two, three.

John Dehlin [01:06:16] Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattlers. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

John Dehlin [01:06:31] Come, come, ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're away Though hard to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the San Jo your hearts will swell. Oh, all is well, all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our lot is hard

James Nagel [01:07:35] Tis

John Dehlin [01:07:36] not so, all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shout fight good up your lo Fresh courage take our God will ever us first sake soon we'll have tale to tell oh, all is well, all is well oh, all is well all is well. Sa. And should we die before our journey is through Happy day All this well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again to see the saints the rest obtain or I will make this chorus well. Oh, all is well, all is well, all is well, all is well, all

James Nagel [01:10:27] is well

John Dehlin [01:10:31] oh, all is well, All is away, all in the.

Part 5 of 5 · Ep. 342

James Nagel [00:00:00] 1, 2, 3.

John Dehlin [00:00:07] Mormon Stories Podcast is a production of the Open Stories Foundation. All donations to Mormon Stories are fully tax deductible and go directly towards keeping the podcast alive and towards building a community of support for Mormons like you. To support the podcast or to join the community, please become a monthly subscriber today@mormonstories.org. all right, well, if you don't mind, this has been really interesting. I find it in many ways compelling. Do you mind if I close just by maybe making this a little bit? I don't know. I just want to ask you some questions and push back a little bit just to kind of have a discussion. Okay.

Are Religious Beliefs Psychologically Adaptive?

James Nagel [00:00:50] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:00:51] So first of all, you know, I think we already started with the idea that. That one of the benefits of science is that it acknowledges that at any point in time, it could be wrong, Right?

James Nagel [00:01:02] Yes. That's a key feature. Actually, there's a word for it called tentativism, is that nothing is for certain. Everything is just tentative until better evidence comes along and overturns it.

John Dehlin [00:01:13] So you acknowledge that all this falls under that category of tentative, right?

James Nagel [00:01:19] Oh, I could be wrong about everything I've discussed, and I would welcome the opportunity to be corrected by people.

John Dehlin [00:01:25] Okay. Okay, Good, good, good. Okay. So. So. So let's begin by just talking about, you know, sort of from a pragmatic perspective. You know, you talk about evolution, and you not only talk about biological evolution, you talk about social evolution. You. And that you sort of value. You think evolution is what's driven, you know, biology to arrive at humanity, which is a more advanced, sophisticated sort of form of biological being. Right.

James Nagel [00:02:05] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:02:05] And in the same way, if you look at social evolution over time, you know, it seems like we've gotten less barbaric over time. It seems like we've gotten more fair over time, more just as a. As a society in the whole. Over time. And religion has sort of been with us every step of the way. Like, you could argue that if religion was not adaptive, that it would. That it would have died off really early. But instead, it's sort of. In many ways, it's. It's stronger in 2012 than it was in 1915. Like, in some ways, the 21st century and the 20th century has seen an increase in religiosity on a global scale, although I know that there's a growing group of secular people, too. But I'm just saying.

James Nagel [00:03:03] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:03:04] Can you acknowledge the value and the goodness of religion to individuals and to society?

James Nagel [00:03:14] In a sense, yeah. It's a part of who we Are we can't help but perceive the world this way, and it's a defining feature of our culture. So the key word for this is that it's for better or for worse. I don't want to say all religion is bad and terrible. The only thing I really want to pick on is the idea where you start, like I said before, generating those beliefs so strongly that you start ignoring reality and ignoring facts.

John Dehlin [00:03:43] I get that point, but I'm asking you something very specific. Isn't there good evidence that religion is adaptive?

James Nagel [00:03:50] Oh, absolutely, yes.

John Dehlin [00:03:52] So positive, right?

James Nagel [00:03:55] By positive you mean in the sense that it's going to adapt to for the better? In the sense. Is that what you mean?

John Dehlin [00:04:03] That it's been a component to our advancement as a more sophisticated society?

James Nagel [00:04:15] So you're saying, is religion itself the driver of advancement?

John Dehlin [00:04:18] A driver?

James Nagel [00:04:20] A driver. I would say it's more of a product of our advancement. That is, at the end of the day, all that matters is how good can your group compete against other groups? And whatever beliefs, whatever traditions you have, whatever fact faculties you have for working together and overcoming obstacles and prospering as a culture, that is all that matters at the end of the day. And religion doesn't care if it's barbaric or saintly or just. All that matters is how well can you compete against the other groups and generate new members of your culture.

John Dehlin [00:04:54] Could you say that the groups with the better religion perhaps did better than the groups with the inferior religions?

James Nagel [00:05:06] I have to tread lightly on this, but in a sense, there is a lot to be said for that. For example, one argument I've seen is the idea of why did monotheism beat out polytheism so quickly? And one argument I've heard is that monotheism is a powerful tool for building national cultural identity, which is, yeah, okay,

John Dehlin [00:05:28] and show me the atheistic society that has achieved social and cultural domination.

James Nagel [00:05:38] I believe there's a few in Europe that are really pushing that way. You know, Sweden and Denmark are some of the most secular cultures in the world. I can't cite specifics, but I do know there are at least some cultures where secularism is like the vast dominant, you know, 50, 60, 70% of the population.

John Dehlin [00:05:55] That's a recent trend. And it's hard to say how that. Whether that's going to lead to extinction. You know, you could argue that in Western Europe, within Western Europe, the religious immigrants who are becoming more populous are in some sense infiltrating these societies, such that at some point, these groups like Sweden and Denmark and Norway that have sort of, you could argue, have been protected by, you know, United States and Great Britain as more religious societies. If at some point these protective countries become more secular and don't be as protective, there's a chance that these Western sort of secular societies are going to get overtaken by the religious minorities. Right?

James Nagel [00:06:48] Yeah. Secular doesn't automatically mean better or more suited to long term survival and propagation. It just is what's happening right now. And as time goes on, we're going to see how well it competes against other cultural phenomena. We might very well see this rise of secularism all of a sudden just get squashed out when some big cataclysmic event shakes up the world economy. Maybe that might drive things up. You might just see, maybe secularists will suddenly just give rise to the next Hitler by sheer fluke and then all the more religious countries will just gang up on them and stomp it out. Or you might see the exact opposite happen. Or some very religious country might do exactly that and the secular ones will wind up dominating. It just depends on. It's not just the secularism itself, it's how do you propagate that? Are you instilling that into your children? Are you pushing it on other people? Or you're more just content to live the way you are? And how strong are you in that belief? How much is it ingrained in your identity? All these things come together to determine how long that cultural idea will survive.

John Dehlin [00:07:57] Right. And my only point is that there seems to be pretty good evidence that religion has been an important component to our advancement as a species.

James Nagel [00:08:08] I won't dispute that. I should say it's part of who we are is to see the world and as I said, to look for the agents in the world. And that religious belief is just a reflection on that throughout our history, but

John Dehlin [00:08:20] maybe it's been a part of our

James Nagel [00:08:22] success in a sense. Yeah. It would be very naive to think that this religious idea would just sit out there in a vacuum and do its own thing. It has to intertwine itself in our success somehow, which means it has to adapt itself to either facilitate that success or it dies off.

John Dehlin [00:08:39] Right, right, right. Okay. So the second thing I wanted to say is that, you know, it's pretty clear from the psychological data that I've seen that overall religion has a protective psychological effect on its adherence. That overall, on average, you're happier, you live longer, you're healthier. If you are religious on whole, would you concede that as well?

James Nagel [00:09:08] Honestly, no, I would not. A great Sort of counterpoint to that is something like, consider prison populations are predominantly religious in comparison with the sections of the population secular people are less likely to. At least in America, secular cultures is far less likely to produce things like teen pregnancy and divorce. So in a sense, some respects you're probably right. But in others, it's very not true. And the question is, what do you ultimately value most? And how do you measure happiness and prosperity in this regard? Because you can make a case in many directions one way or the other. It's not just religion or secularism itself. It's really, you got to step back and just see culture as a whole.

John Dehlin [00:09:57] Okay. And all that.

James Nagel [00:09:59] Is that a fair response?

John Dehlin [00:10:00] All I'm saying is I can't. I'm not going to claim to be an expert in the literature, but. But I have read a fair amount on. On the psychological and health benefits of religious participation and belief. And my, my take from the reading is that there is consensus in the literature that overall, I'm not saying that, you know, religious, you know, the religion never produces criminals. I'm saying that overall religion appears to have a statistically significant psychological and physical health benefit to both belief and participation. And, you know, it's hard to break that down. How much of that is the social benefit? How much of that is just positive thinking? How much of that is, you know, the moral values that get reinforced? You know. But I'm just saying, if you don't want to concede that, I just want to sort of make the assertion that that's what I've understood from the scientific literature. And maybe.

James Nagel [00:11:03] Yeah, and sort of a supplemental point to that would be, you know, what if believing in your faith made you nauseous? If you grew up as religion a and every time you went to church, you just wanted to scratch your eyes out. And then you go to your buddy's church and it's actually a fun social event. You're going to gravitate towards the thing that is more beneficial. So the kind of supplementary point to that is religious belief has to fulfill us in some way, otherwise it wouldn't be here.

John Dehlin [00:11:33] That's right. That's right. Okay, so I think we're on the same page. And I'm not saying that there aren't bad things. I am not saying at all that religion is never responsible for bad things or that religions don't harm individuals. I'm just talking about the overall impact to both individuals in society seems to so far have been, on average, favorable and adaptive. So I guess what I'm going to say is as a member of the human race, as a member of the human species or whatever, as someone who probably I'd say cares about, you know, humanity, do you ever worry that teaching things that would cause people to question or even undermine their religious beliefs would in a sense be harmful to either individual psychological well being or to humanity's well being?

James Nagel [00:12:30] So that's an interesting question. You know, is it really in our best interest to make a case for secularism or not? Maybe we're inadvertently going to wind up destroying ourselves culturally, is that kind of what you're saying?

John Dehlin [00:12:45] Or individually?

James Nagel [00:12:48] I would say in personal experience. And from what I've seen, the answer to that is definitely no. Because most people, secularists I meet today, are way more happy in their secularism than they are in their prior religious life. So at least in the short run from most people I've seen, they feel better off once they finally stop believing so strongly. But on the other flip side of that, there is a lot of social consequence that comes from giving up a spiritual belief because it's so ingrained in culture and conformity. Because again, a key to human survival and human perception of the world is this overwhelming drive to find other people and work together with them, because our survival depends on that. So our brains are really not well suited for solitude, in a sense, for rejection from groups. That is something that really can crush a lot of people. So that is something I've also seen when people leave their religious faith is they get crushed socially because their social groups reject them. So it goes a lot of different directions. Some people are better off when they leave. Some people generally suffer in other indirect ways. But overall, I've never really met anyone who is genuinely sorry if they've left their faith. And one thing to realize is you don't actually have to leave your faith at the end of the day to be secular. At the very least, I would say just recognize it for what it is. It's a cultural phenomenon that gets people together and working together and cooperating for survival and their benefit. The only danger is when you start overriding science. The only thing I've boldened here and read on this slide here is this idea of generating convictions without regard for rigorous empirical evidence or rational skepticism. That is when your cultural beliefs start trying to override reality. That's the only part where you start really facing danger. And not just like danger in terms of personally destructive, but like destructive to the group itself. Because you start ignoring reality, you generate a culture that doesn't care what's real, just has to affirm its belief no matter what. That's self destructive.

John Dehlin [00:15:01] Got it, yeah. And the truth is, I have felt a consistent antagonism towards science from my early years in the church, you know, and I felt it not only in seminary growing up, but also at byu. Yes, there were pro science professors, obviously, and even pro evolution professors like Bill Bradshaw. But in general, because of science's questioning of the age of the earth, because of scientists questioning, you know, the literality of things like Adam and Eve or, you know, Noah's ark or Jonah and the whale or, you know, other types of things, evolution. I've always felt like religion has a somewhat hostile relationship towards science. And frankly that whenever religion and science have come into conflict, that it's usually religion that ends up retreating. So I acknowledge the dangers of what

James Nagel [00:16:10] you're saying and I'd actually even add one key point. Remember what religion is. It's a cultural phenomenon that has to adapt to its environment in order to survive. What would religious belief like if the Catholic Church still held to geocentrism? It would be a laughing stock today. And that's the idea. Religion's okay with adapting itself to suit the environment. Science is just a hard, never ending drive to figure out what's real. And that's why you generally see religion retreating, because it's more than happy to adapt. Because by its nature, that's what it does. And science just every now and then drives onward and steps on the toes of a few cultural beliefs about the world. And then eventually when people realize that that belief is probably kind of silly, they just give it up for the sake of the cultural and the identity and the survival. So. So just like you said, religion retreats because it's more than happy to. It's in its nature to adapt, whereas science is not really a cultural thing, it's a process.

Epistemology, Science, and Religious Knowledge

John Dehlin [00:17:18] So here's the next thing I wanted to talk about. It's kind of around epistemology, what you'll often hear from religious people. And Dan Witherspoon sort of represents this class of, of people within Mormonism more than probably anyone else I know. It's this idea that, you know, you can know, you know, certain things empirically, scientifically, but there's also just this gut feeling or essence that there's more to life than what science can explain. And it's, you know, maybe love would be a metaphor for that. You know, know, you could reduce love down to the hormones and the chemicals, but there are many humans who just have this sense that Love is something bigger than what science will ever be able to fully or adequately explain. And they would say the same thing about religion, that sometimes you get promptings, sometimes you get a sense of fulfillment or awe or majesty or even of sort of influence in the universe. That is, that will always be meaningful and uplifting in ways that science will never be able to replicate or capture adequately. And so given that there's a lot of people that say, science, do whatever you want, there's this realm of knowing and of believing and of feeling that religion has the corner on and it's tapping into something and we shouldn't invalidate that different type or way of knowing in an epistemological sense. You know, there are plenty of believing, you know, religiously believing scientists that say, yes, I respect science and I'm still religious. And what would you say to those types of people who want to say, let's have both, let's have all of science, let's have the best of science, but let's not mock or discount or discredit genuine spirituality or religious belief, because that's a crucial component of what makes life meaningful, what makes life interesting, what makes life enjoyable and worth living, and in some sense makes it healthy, beneficial.

James Nagel [00:19:48] Oh gee, that was like a 10 part. Where should I begin? The first thing I would really want to just take issue with is when you said how like science is not fulfilling and.

John Dehlin [00:19:59] Okay, wait, I didn't say that. I didn't say that science isn't fulfilling

James Nagel [00:20:04] or how did you put it?

John Dehlin [00:20:07] I did say that there are ways, there are ways of, for, for many religious people, there is a fulfillment and a meaning and a purpose and an identity and a sense of strength that comes from religion that they're not able to find outside of religion. I was not saying that science is not meaningful, not fulfilling is not rewarding. That's not what I was saying. I'm saying that.

James Nagel [00:20:36] Or that science can't replicate that same experience.

John Dehlin [00:20:38] Maybe, well, maybe science can replicate, replicate components of it. But my, I would say that there's many religious people who would say that science will probably never be able to replicate the totality of what is for people, spirituality.

James Nagel [00:20:55] And yeah, I would personally take a lot of issue with that, being a professional scientist and engineer myself who's devoted a huge chunk of my life to just discovery. You know, there are a few things in this world that are as exhilarating as making a very profound discovery. And it's almost like being high in that sense when you've discovered something very crucial about the world that ties it all together. Understanding the world is a very powerful tool. It builds a great deal of confidence in yourself and your ability to handle events in life when you understand the driving forces that make them happen. And just like the idea of studying astronomy and learning about things like black holes and accretion and event horizons or relativity, quantum mechanics, these are extremely counterintuitive and bizarre things that have their own sort of majestic beauty in and of themselves. So it's not, it's kind of naive to say that science can't replicate a lot of these experiences that religion gives. You get a lot of the exact same experiences. And I would even go so far as to say personally that it's even better. It's more profound and life changing and uplifting in the scientific realm. But that would just be my personal bias, of course. What were some of those other points you made? You made a lot of points. Let's focus on another one.

John Dehlin [00:22:28] No, no, I don't know that. I was trying to make several points other than that people. There's different ways of knowing. Some religious people have a sense that there's different ways of knowing. And you can know something spiritually, just like you know that you should, you know, choose a certain career or marry a certain person or be a certain type of parent. And you know, that spiritually and biological or scientific or chemical explanations just don't quite capture the full essence of that way of understanding the world or being influenced by.

James Nagel [00:23:10] Okay, yeah. What I was going to say to that is, if nothing else you've learned from this discussion, you should realize that a lot of those intuitive ways of viewing the world and perceiving it are great ways to be wrong about everything. I don't want to sound mean in that. You know, we've learned that people hallucinate. Hallucination is a regular, normal thing. We've learned that people are heavily biased just on what the people around them do. We've learned that your memory itself will update and change just based on what you need it to change into or what other people pressure you into. So a lot of these sort of intuitive epistemologies sound very tempting. But the thing to realize is, if nothing else, we human beings are very good at getting things wrong. And when you rely on these intuitive epistemologies, it's not that you're going to be wrong. You're going to find yourself believing whatever you want. And there's a difference between belief and knowledge. When you talk about belief, you can believe anything you want, but knowledge is an idea that genuinely reflects reality. And if knowledge is what matters to you, if you want to understand the world as it genuinely is and not just trick yourself into believing something comfortable or popular, then you have to use scientific method. Because we've shown that relying on all these intuitive epistemologies just gets you wrong all the time. It's an extremely unreliable way of figuring out the world. Now, if you want to use it as just sort of cultural tool for building relationships and experiencing life, that's fine. But don't step over the bounds and claim that you're privy to some special knowledge about the universe just because you feel warm and squishy about something. That's not a standard by which we claim to know things. Does that sort of make sense?

John Dehlin [00:25:09] It sounds like you're saying that there's. That there's risk in sort of having a religious or spiritual worldview, in that it can cause you to think you're better than other people. It can cause you to ignore important evidence. It can cause you to base decisions on things that you think might be divine, but in reality might be cultural or social, and that may not be to your ultimate benefit.

James Nagel [00:25:41] Yeah, that's a key word you said is making decisions. At the end of the day, we all want to make good choices that lead to good outcomes. And you can't generate good choices consistently if you don't know what you're doing. If you base your choices on assumptions that are wrong, then your consequences are not going to be very optimal. So I would say again, it's okay to build this cultural identity and have these experiences. But remember, at the end of the day, you know, we have to make choices. And if you want to make good choices, you have to make them on a firm understanding of the world. And as we've seen, you know, the natural human tendency of viewing the world is good in some ways and very bad in a lot of others. And science is a methodology. It's a tool designed to help us overcome ourselves so not land in these traps that get us wrong about things. So that's what I would say. I hope, if nothing else, you gain this appreciation for what it's trying to do. It's trying to help you understand the world so that you can make proper choices grounded in a correct understanding and not in some naive intuition.

John Dehlin [00:26:52] Well, let me flip it around. What would you say about someone who would say, I agree with that, but I also believe that trying to make all your decisions based on data and the most recent psychological component study, you know, is also A potentially dangerous and flawed way to live your life. That there are going to be crucial moments in your life where you don't have all the data, where you are going to have a certain set of feelings and in some cases you may even feel. You call it intuition, call it instinct, or call it inspiration. You're gonna feel this unexplainable non empirical desire to make a choice that you're gonna say, that was the best choice I ever made and it made no sense, but I made it and I'm glad it's the best decision I ever made. And I made it based on all these sort of crazy non empirical mamby pambambi, warm fuzzy sort of things that a scientist might discredit. And that there's danger in looking at the world purely intellectually, purely rationally, purely empirically because it ignores a really important human element which is emotion and maybe even spirituality. What would you say about that?

James Nagel [00:28:08] There's two things I would say to that. You know, first and foremost, you're still a human being. You still have drives and you still have preferences. So you know, you shouldn't make your choice of career based purely on what's going to make you the most money in the world. Unless that is physically what makes you happy. You know, it's okay to look at yourself and say what makes me happy? And then make your decisions grounded on just trying to maximize your own happiness and well being. But you have to set a goal somewhere. The goal itself is completely arbitrary and whatever you want it to be. But the process for making good decisions to achieve that goal is gathering all the data you can and trying to make reliable predictions about what your choices, what the consequences of your choices will be. The second thing I would say is this idea of every time somebody makes some wild decision that turns out to be good for them, there's 10 other instances where somebody did the exact same thing and wound up dying from it or having it completely blow up in their face or things like that. You can't cherry pick individuals who wound up getting lucky in some gut decision. And because like I said, every time somebody does that, there's going to be 10 other people who just completely fail at it. But also don't forget that we are what we are and we have motivations and it's okay to make decisions based on what those motivations are. It's just make sure your goals are clearly defined and that your methodology for understanding the world and making good choices is clearly defined. Does that kind of make sense?

John Dehlin [00:29:44] Yeah. Do you Ever make decisions based on emotion or just gut or feeling?

James Nagel [00:29:51] Yeah, all the time. And sometimes they work out great. Sometimes I regret them.

John Dehlin [00:29:58] Do you? Do you, like. You know, one thing that science will probably let it readily admit, and I'm aware of the flying spaghetti monster argument, but science will admit that it can't disprove the existence of God because you can't logically disprove the existence of everything, right?

James Nagel [00:30:18] Yeah. It's called proving a negative.

John Dehlin [00:30:19] Yeah. I'm not saying that that's a strong argument, but I am wanting to make sure that you agree that you can't disprove. And so my question to you is, do you ever wonder if there's more? Do you ever feel like there might be more that there, I mean, let's say an anthropomorphic God for you is off the table. Do you ever wonder? I mean, like, here's kind of what I've said in the past, that the idea that there's an anthropomorphic God seems absurd to me. It seems highly improbable, right?

James Nagel [00:30:56] Yeah.

John Dehlin [00:30:57] But I also feel like there's just something in me and it's just a feeling. Maybe it's these biopsychological components that you've described. But if I just try and look logically, it just. It logically seems irrational to me that the splendor and the marvel that is the human existence, or even the natural existence, is purely some random, inherently meaningless collision of particles that over a billion years resulted in the sophistication that is me and you having a language where we can relate to each other, communicate with each other over the Internet, and that now 30,000 people are going to listen to our discussion and all the complexities and advancements that went into all that. It just seems. It seems as illogical that that is completely meaningless and random and just. Just sort of just random as it is that there's an anthropomorphic God. Do you resonate with that at all or not?

James Nagel [00:32:12] Yes and no. The first thing to remember is think back to the very beginning of today's discussion. We saw an experiment where people are programmed almost physically to see the world as being designed. People look at mountains and clouds, which are the spitting epitome of random conglomerations of atoms with no purpose at all. And people see design in that, which means it's natural to want to look at the world and the majesty of it all and think, how could have it all gotten here? We also have to recognize that you're biologically hardwired to look at the world and see that, whether it's there or not. And that's kind of the danger you have to realize is there is a piece of you that will look at anything at all and see that. And that's what you have to be careful of. It's okay to feel it, it's okay to talk about it, but just don't take that step of saying that you actually know what the answer is. Sure, it absolutely has to be. It's okay to feel that way. Like I said, we all feel that way because we have to, as a byproduct of the fact that we need to recognize each other and work together. That's the key thing to realize. We all have sort of these innate intuitions about what seems logical or rational the way it ought to be. And we all have that. We can't help it. And the only line you shouldn't cross is this declaration that you know what that answer actually is. Because, remember, again, need for cognitive closure. Some people are not comfortable with the idea of, I don't know. I don't know where the universe came from. And I'm okay saying that.

John Dehlin [00:33:51] And so you called it. What did you call it with science? Uncertainty or hesitance.

James Nagel [00:33:57] Tended to.

John Dehlin [00:33:57] Yeah, you're saying that. You seem to be saying that religion, religion should also have a healthy dose of tentativism to avoid, you know, leading people to draw premature or unhealthy decisions.

James Nagel [00:34:12] I would even take it one step further and say everybody in every cultural context whatsoever should have a healthy dose of tentative ism because we've been picking on religion a lot. But remember, this stuff applies equally well to things like political ideology.

John Dehlin [00:34:26] Yep, that's right. That's right.

James Nagel [00:34:27] I'd even go so far to say, you know, whatever your political ideology is, you should have some tentativeism buried in there as well, that you're not 100% sure and your views will change in spite of evidence. Not, we should live in a hardcore fill in the blank of your favorite political ideology, and that's the way it ought to be. Be careful with that as well.

Personal Beliefs After Examining Religion Scientifically

John Dehlin [00:34:47] Okay, so given all this, I'll just ask this question in a slightly different way. Do you, James, still sometimes wonder or even believe in the possibility of there being a spiritual realm or even of an afterlife? Or for you, is it a closed deal, or do you have hopes or sometimes inklings in that direction?

James Nagel [00:35:15] Again, I have had those hopes and inklings since the day I was born. But the more I just study human nature and the ultimate nature of Physics and the cosmos and how everything works together. I have never seen anything beyond that innate inkling.

John Dehlin [00:35:30] What about felt? Felt? Felt, yeah.

James Nagel [00:35:34] What do you mean by have I ever felt like there was more or

John Dehlin [00:35:37] some spiritual, some, some higher purpose? Some, you know, like I believe that like, you know, Mormon stories, which I think has helped some people came out of some feelings that I got, you know, on a walk or sitting down in my basement, just like I feel like I need to do this. I feel like there's something prompting me to want to help these people and to do it. And maybe it's from a power, a greater power. Do you today ever have feelings that way that you are open to being from a higher or different non material or non logical empirical realm?

James Nagel [00:36:21] In a sense, yes. I have all those same feelings and nuances that everybody else does. The only thing that makes me different is the temperament to say, is my gut feeling really a valid basis for saying I know anything? And recognizing again, my brain is physically hardwired to look at the world and perceive these things. You just have to be careful. Again, do your feelings determine this ultimate state of reality? Or are they just things you should embrace for what they are? But just be careful about making grand sweeping generalizations about the way things are.

John Dehlin [00:37:00] Okay. And that's kind of. That feels how I kind of describe myself. I don't know that there's a God. I don't know that there's a spiritual realm. It could be that when I die, that's it. And there's no meaning or purpose to any of this. But I kind of feel like there might be. And I've just found that living with that hope or with that sense of purpose and of inspiration just kind of so far has led me to. Has motivated me to want to do some things that I think have in the end have been constructive and maybe valuable. But I'm very open to the fact that it could all be nothing and that it could be self contrived. But I'm open. And it sounds like you're saying maybe you and I are somewhat similar in that respect.

James Nagel [00:37:47] Yeah. This actually boils down to the very first paper I cited in our entire interview is the relativity stuff. It's okay to believe wacky things and to be open to that belief, but there's a price you have to pay before you can actually act on the assumption that this thing is true. And that is you have to demonstrate it in some capacity.

John Dehlin [00:38:09] Well, let's.

James Nagel [00:38:10] Because if you can't demonstrate it, there's no reason to Suppose it's actually there. That's kind of the ultimate take home point.

John Dehlin [00:38:15] Okay, so let's, let's end, you know, you've sort of self identified as a skeptic, as a rationalist, as, you know, an empirical guy, as a scientist and as kind of, you know, rejecting religion generally for you personally. Right, okay. And there are stereotypes, there are stereotypes, you know, on behalf of religious people towards, you know, atheists and agnostics and secularists, you know, and some of those are that they're, you know, that their life for them doesn't have as much meaning, doesn't have as much purpose, that maybe they're less moral and maybe they're just less happy people and that they don't have higher beliefs. They just sort of live in this sort of scientific, analytical, immoral malaise of sadness. And so what I want to do to close is have you, James, bear sort of a semi testimony about, you know, what do you believe now? What are your morals, what are your values and what's your level of happiness and what are the things that you do believe in that inform and inspire you? And we'll just kind of close with that sort of secular testimony.

James Nagel [00:39:36] Okay. It's actually funny you mentioned morality because I could do like a whole other hour long discussion about the cultural basis of morality itself, but you know, what do I believe in? Some key things to realize is, you know, our lives are finite. Okay. There's a huge vast cosmic time that preceded me and there will be a great big time after I'm gone. And this tiny little window is all I'm going to get as far as I can tell. So that places an urgency to live your life as something fruitful and meaningful and really maximize the happiness you can get from it. Something that really sort of saddens me. I remember I had a discussion once about calculus when I was first taking calculus. It was this great journey of discovery. I was learning this great new way to look at the world and I was explaining it to some of my friends who were not really technical students. I said, don't you want to learn calculus? This is great stuff. The response was something to the effect of, yeah, it would be nice to know, but I'll just wait till I'm in the Celestial College and I'll learn it then after I'm dead, when it's more important and I have more time in effect. And that really kind of broke my heart to see someone putting off this very uplifting life changing discovery of something like physics and calculus and the nature of astronomy. And just saying I'll learn it when I'm dead was basically what it boiled down to. And I think that's an extremely terrible way to look at the world is putting things off till after you're dead. That is everything that's going to matter now matter in this world is going to have to be performed today and now in your life. If you don't step up, no one else will. There isn't some ultimate guardian that's going to do things for us. The responsibility for making the world better rests on us and us alone. And I think that really motivates me to make the most out of my life, to discover the most I can, to live as best as I can and make the most of a finite time that I have. So you talked a little bit about morality. And morality is a whole sticky issue in and of itself. And this might sound a little weird to some people, but I can honestly make a case. The ultimate standard for good moral behavior is your own selfish interest. And I hope that doesn't turn anybody off. But it turns out when you really go through the study of what it means to be a cooperative human being, that your well being, your personal well being as an individual depends on the cooperation of others. You have to, as a matter of self interest, get along with other people in order to benefit yourself. If you can't do that, your well being in this world will suffer. And virtually all morality from cooperation and generosity and gratitude and the golden rule.

John Dehlin [00:42:41] Charity, honesty.

James Nagel [00:42:44] Honesty, yeah.

John Dehlin [00:42:45] Sexuality, Yeah.

James Nagel [00:42:48] A lot of these things stem from the fact that we have to get along with each other and form relationships and that our happiness is very closely tied to the relationships we can build with others. So it's in your own best interest to get along and cooperate and do well by other people. That is what morality is, is a society and a group flourishing because the people are better at cooperating with each other and getting along with each other. So, you know, you don't need religion to tell you how to live with people. You just have to look at what seems to work out best for me and my group. And it turns out all these great traits of honesty and industry and a good study of ethics and discipline really are for your own benefit.

John Dehlin [00:43:38] So you're not some immoral guy lying and stealing and sleeping with everything that moves. That's not how your secularism plays out for you.

James Nagel [00:43:47] This is an argument I hear, without God, how can you be a moral person? It's kind of like saying now that God doesn't exist why don't you just stab yourself in the thigh with the nearest sharp object? How would that personally benefit me to just go rampaging around, stabbing people and lying to them and murdering and raping? All that would do is anger everybody and get them to retaliate on me and make my life miserable. It is my own self interest that makes me a good person. And when you recognize it, I think you become a far better person because you understand what you're doing and why you're doing, and you don't feel constrained by some of the superfluous aspects of morality. So I guess a good example of things like, I know a hot political issue might be something like gay marriage. What moral basis is there for banning homosexual relationships? I know this is something I see a lot of Mormons and religious people really going back and forth on is what is the ultimate moral basis for this banning of homosexual marriage? And it just boils down to a purely religious argument that you cannot force in a public sphere. And like I say, giving up religion, in a sense, helps you shirk off some of those superfluous things of morality that maybe don't make sense and don't serve any cultural goals nowadays. So that's how I would describe my morality in a nutshell, is just, you know, good virtue is literally its own reward. You do good for yourself by doing good with others.

John Dehlin [00:45:21] Got it. So what do you believe in?

James Nagel [00:45:26] What do I believe in? I believe that there exists an external reality independent of our brains and that we are. That our decisions have an influence on that reality, which can in turn affect our internal happiness and prosperity. That you can't make good decisions unless you understand the world around you. And that scientific method is the only tool I've ever seen that genuinely helps us come to a firm understanding of reality and making good decisions that benefit us. Is that a pretty good.

John Dehlin [00:45:59] That's good. I just want to. I want to add something and then follow up. But it's not just that there's a reality. We have an impact on the reality, and the reality has an impact back on us. And so understanding not only the reality that we live within, but also the role that we play in interacting and affecting the environment, that's a mutual, reciprocal relationship that's crucial for understanding on both sides. And the extent to which we have ignorance on either side, either regarding our ignorance or apathy regarding our impact on the environment or our understanding of the impact of the environment on us is the extent to which we probably live a suboptimal existence. Maybe.

James Nagel [00:46:52] Maybe yes. Ignorance is not a good way to make decisions that benefit us.

What Drives Meaning Without Religious Belief

John Dehlin [00:46:57] So what do you believe in? What other transcendent things do you believe in? You know, things that are. That you would say other than reality. You know, what are the things that sort of get you up in the morning that get you excited, that. That make you want to. Do you want to get married and have kids someday?

James Nagel [00:47:17] That's on the table. Yes.

John Dehlin [00:47:18] What's the point of it all? The point of it all to you? What's the point of living for you?

James Nagel [00:47:24] Because it's happy and serves my self interest. And if I did not act in that way, then the cultural attitude and genes which define it will just die off and be replaced by someone else who does behave that way. And that's kind of what a lot of it boils down to, is, if there's no purpose to it all, why don't you just kill yourself? Well, because if I believe that way, I'd kill myself and then just be replaced by somebody who didn't believe that way, and then he would be here, and he would just act accordingly under his own interests. So what really drives me and gets me up in the morning is just life itself. The thought of getting out and discovering something new, the thought of. Thought of experiencing new things, the thought of understanding the world and making a difference in it before I'm gone. Those are things that I believe in and that motivate me to do what I do.

John Dehlin [00:48:19] Very nice. Well, I think that's a very nice way to end.

James Nagel [00:48:24] I hope that was very uplifting.

John Dehlin [00:48:25] Yes, yes. I'm inspired and uplifted in a very secular way.

James Nagel [00:48:32] Okay.

John Dehlin [00:48:32] All right. Well, so first of all, Dr. James Nagle, I want to thank you for coming on Mormon Stories podcast. Thank you.

James Nagel [00:48:43] And thank you for having me.

John Dehlin [00:48:47] I want to encourage people to check out your YouTube site. I guess that's YouTube.com anticitizenx. Is that right?

James Nagel [00:48:55] Yes.

John Dehlin [00:48:55] Okay. Check that out. I also want to encourage people to check out, you know, to continue this conversation on the blog MormonStories.org here, you can interact with James and ask him questions. He'll respond back, hopefully, and you guys can have a bit of a discussion about what you liked and didn't like or what you thought about what we talked about. I want to, you know, encourage everyone to keep listening. And basically, I want to thank everyone for their support. Those who are supporting Mormon stories, just let them know that your support makes a difference and it allows this all to happen. So thanks again for listening, James. Thanks for coming on and we look forward to more good conversations in the future. So everyone take care. Thank you for joining us today on Mormon Stories. Music today was provided by the Saber Rattler. Check them out at saber-rattlers.com the Mormon Stories logo was generously donated by StudioCase.com thanks for listening.

James Nagel [00:50:05] Come come ye saints no toil nor labor fear but with joy when you're away those heart to you this journey may appear Grace shall be as your day Tis better far for us to strive Our useless cares from us to drive to the sand Enjoy your hearts will swell oh, all is well, all is well. Why should we mourn? I think our Lord is hard

James Nagel [00:51:10] t

James Nagel [00:51:10] not so all is right why should we think to earn a great reward if we now shun the fight Gird up your lo fresh courage take Our God will never us forsake soon we'll have. Oh, all is well, all is well oh, all is well all is well. And should we die before our journey's

James Nagel [00:53:04] through

James Nagel [00:53:06] happy day all is well we that are free from toil and sorrow too with the just we shall dwell but if our lives are spared again Just be the saints the rest obtain I will make this oh all is well, all is well all is well all is well all is well oh, all is well way all is well, all is away.

Transcript © 2026 John P. Dehlin. All rights reserved. Brief quotations are welcome with attribution and a link to mormonstories.org; all other use requires written permission.