Why Religious Beliefs Are Irrational, and Why Economists Should Care

 

by Bryan Caplan

 

Larry Iannaccone and his co-author Rodney Stark once wrote that the belief that society is getting less religious says "less about empirical fact than it does about secularization faith � a faith that, despite a mountain of evidence to the contrary, sustains the conviction of many social scientists that religious institutions must soon decay..."� In short, belief in secularization is just a religion.�

 

Larry's critics were, unsurprisingly, not pleased.� To tell people that their non-religious beliefs are just a religion is an insult.� Why is it an insult?� There isn't any nice way to answer, so I'll be blunt.� It is an insult because the way that people form religious beliefs is so intellectually irresponsible that their conclusions are almost guaranteed to be false.� People:

 

�        accept their religious beliefs with little or no evidence

 

�        accept religious beliefs that are contrary to the evidence

 

�        accept religious beliefs without studying competing views

 

�        are certain about religious beliefs that are dubious at best, and

 

�        accept their religious beliefs not because they are intellectually compelling, but because they are emotionally comforting.�

 

Forming non-religious beliefs in a religious way is irrational because forming any beliefs in a religious way is irrational.

 

Now I am not one of those people who says that modern science has disproven religion.� If I said that, it would imply that two thousand years ago, there was not solid evidence against the claims that Jesus was born of a virgin and rose from the dead.� But the counter-evidence has always been overwhelming.� Everyone else is born of a non-virgin and stays dead.� It is absurd to recognize an exception without overwhelming evidence, but all we have is the testimony of a few of his disciples.� And yet not only do Christians believe these things; they often claim to know them with certainty, and get angry if you disagree.� Christianity has always been irrational, and of course the same goes for Judaism, Islam, Greek mythology, Satanism, and belief in Santa Claus.

 

Larry has won a great deal of attention for his rational choice theory of religion.� But if you look closely, he doesn't really have a rational choice theory of religion; he has a rational choice theory of group membership.� As Larry occasionally admits, virtually everything that he says about religion applies just as well to fraternities, chess clubs, and football teams.� Yes, belonging to a fraternity has costs and benefits; yes, competition between fraternities leads to more efficient outcomes.� And both religions and fraternities have been known to use what Larry calls "bizarre" rules � such as "You can't drink any alcohol," or "You can only drink alcohol," to exclude half-hearted members.

 

What Larry's research strangely neglects � or, to use his word, "sidesteps" - is the differences between religions and fraternities.� The most obvious of these, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, is doctrine.� Fraternities don't have much of a doctrine; religions do.� To ignore doctrine is to ignore the very thing that makes religion special � and the main reason why critics of religion consider it irrational.� Furthermore, to ignore doctrine is to sidestep the deepest objection to Larry's rational choice view of religion: How can you have a rational choice theory of irrational belief?�

 

Larry's neglect of irrational beliefs is glaring because in the last decade economists have started to take irrationality seriously.� Behavioral economists emphasize, for example, that people overestimate the riskiness of air travel because plane crashes are vivid and memorable.� But if that's irrational, how much more irrational is it to believe that someone rose from the dead because one old book says so?� Economists who study religion know enough about irrationality to send Kahneman, Tversky, and Thaler back to the minors.� But � presumably out of respect for religion � they refuse to swing their bats.

 

What would economists learn if they started paying attention to the doctrinal side of religion?� Now is my time for shameless self-promotion.� In a series of papers on what I call "rational irrationality," I try to handle the deep objection that Larry sidesteps.� I defend a rational choice theory of irrational belief.� The gist of my theory is that people persistently hold wildly irrational religious beliefs because the material cost is usually very low.� In terms of daily life, what difference does it make if the earth is 6000 years old or 6 billion?� So it's not surprising how readily people shut their eyes to the geological evidence.� In contrast, when the cost of irrationality is high, believers conveniently forget the teachings of their religion.� Lots of religions promise paradise to martyrs, but adherents eager to die for their beliefs are one-in-a-million.

 

Is religion rational?� In an important sense, NO.� The doctrines of every religion are at best extremely improbable, but adherents are still very certain about them.� Religious beliefs and standard economic models don't fit together.� However, rather than ignoring or denying this incompatibility, economists should deal with it.� If I'm right, it's not hard.� Yes, religious beliefs are irrational, but they are so divorced from reality that they are rarely costly.� When they do become costly, a few fanatics lay down their lives, but the overwhelming majority of the faithful open their eyes and face the fact that it's crazy to bet your life on fairy tales.��