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Psychology, Religion, and The Good Thomas Merton

February 25, 2010 by Joe Kloc

A RECENT STUDY ABOUT THE PSYCHOLOGICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF RELIGIOUS FAITH ILLUSTRATES THE DIFFICULTIES FACING SCIENTISTS WHO TRY TO BATTLE BELIEF ON ITS OWN TERMS.

In a study¹ published in the January 8 online edition of Psychological Science, researchers at the University of Waterloo looked at what they called the “psychological underpinnings of religious faith.” They found that students who were made to think about ideas related to disorder and randomness in the world were more inclined than their peers to believe in God or a similar nonhuman entity. According to the researchers, the findings suggest that “belief in supernatural sources of control, such as God and Karma, may function, in part, to defend against distress associated with randomness.” In short, when our sense of order in the universe is threatened, we start thinking about the supernatural. 

Undoubtedly I’ve already lost more than a few readers with the phrase “psychological underpinnings of religious faith” and the suggestion of a “nonhuman entity” similar to God. But for those of you still with me, I think a closer examination of the study actually articulates a fundamental limit to many of the arguments that attempt to convince Christians of a psychological basis for religious faith. 

During the Waterloo study the 37 participants were unknowingly divided into two major groups: Those who were made to think about randomness in the world and those who were not. In order to prime thoughts of randomness in the first group, the researchers gave each member a set of 16 scrambled sentences to correct, eight of which contained words with connotations of disorder like “chaotic” and “unpredictability.” In this way the first group was made to confront concepts closely tied with randomness and and confusion. The second group of students was given a similar set of jumbled sentences to correct that did not contain any chaotic words. To evaluate the effect this “randomness-priming” had on the religious beliefs of first group of students, both groups were asked to rate the likelihood on a seven-point scale that each of the following statements was true:

1. It is feasible that God, or some type of nonhuman entity, is in control, at least in part, of the events within our universe.
2. The events that occur in this world unfold God’s, or some other nonhuman entity’s, plan.
3. There exists a spiritual order in the universe, such as Karma.

The researchers compared the results and, as I mentioned earlier, the students who had been randomness-primed found each of these statements more likely than those who had not been primed. But that isn’t quite the whole story.

All of the students in the study had been led initially to believe they were participating in an experiment testing the “effects of an herbal supplement on color perception.” (This, of course, was to ensure an unbiased sample of the student population for the actual study about faith.) Upon arrival at the test site, each participant had been given a pill that they were told was the herbal supplement being evaluated. In reality the pill did nothing, but some of the students had been told it may have side effects of “arousal or mild anxiety.” So in fact each of the two major groups was divided into two subgroups: students who thought the pill they took had side effects and students who did not. 

It was only the subgroup of the randomness-primed students who had not been warned of any side effects that actually proved to be statistically more likely to believe in God. What all this means is that those randomness-primed students who could attribute their uneasiness to anxiety caused by the pill they had taken did so; it was those with no explanation that looked to the supernatural for answers. 

It is here, at the idea that only when we can’t immediately make sense of the chaotic do we turn to religion, that I think the study might be helpful in illustrating the problem facing scientists trying to convince Christians that faith has a psychological basis. When I originally read this study I began looking through some essays on Christianity, curious to see how the issue of disorder and unpredictability was dealt with. I was surprised to find that in The Ascent to Truth,² the Catholic priest Thomas Merton more or less seemed to affirm the researchers’ findings:

[W]e stand in very grave danger of a wave of false mysticism. When the world is in greatest confusion, visionaries become oracles. Panic, like every other passion, blinds the intelligence of man, and he is glad of an excuse to take refuge from everything that bewilders him by giving it a “supernatural” interpretation.

It struck me as strange that the ideas of a Catholic priest would jibe so well with findings about the psychological underpinnings of religious faith: both seem to agree that unexplainable panic drives people to God. How then could Merton be arguing for the existence of God while the researchers from Waterloo seem to be explaining it away scientifically?

I’m certainly no theologian, so take this for what it’s worth³, but the answer seems to rest in Merton’s concept of false mysticism. For him, those who use religion to alleviate their panic over chaos in the world are deceiving themselves. He would happily agree that religion founded in a psychological fear of chaos is no religion at all. The Waterloo researchers have simply provided experimental evidence that this deception occurs. The problem, then, with psychological arguments against mysticism is that all they can do is explain away a belief in the supernatural that (at least some) Christian scholars already concede is false.*

For Merton, however, there is also true mysticism⁴—an honest-to-goodness faith arrived at through wisdom and contemplation. And this true mysticism is what scientists would really need to explain psychologically in order to confront religious faith on its own terms. Unfortunately, by Merton’s definition of genuine mysticism as that which is not false, it is untouchable to studies like those of the Waterloo researchers. Simply put, any time scientists find a psychological justification for a particular instance of mysticism, all they have done, in the “Mertonian” Catholic’s eyes, is more explicitly define false mysticism—and by extension, that honest-to-goodness true mysticism. It’s an unlikely collaboration not without a hint of irony. 

Notes:

1. Randomness, Attributions of Arousal, and Belief in God
2. The Ascent to Truth
3. Not much
4. “True mysticism” is my word for the mysticism that Merton would not consider false.
* After posting this piece I received an email from a psychology student suggesting that I had misinterpreted the results of the Waterloo study. The student explained that “the psychology of religion is not meant to confront religion and wage battle against it, but merely to understand it.” I in no way meant to imply that the Waterloo researchers claimed to have shown religion to be false. They did not make such a claim. At the same time, it is hardly controversial that some scientists do “wage battle” against religion (and often, in fact, I agree with them). And even when scientists don’t, their results are often used to that end. This piece is about understanding why using the Waterloo study and psychology studies like it in that way wouldn’t seem to hold much water with Christian scholars. Considering the myriad ways in which general science is translated to a popular audience, I find it hard to imagine that this is a point that doesn’t need to be made. As I mentioned in the piece, religion isn’t my strong suit, and as such I had thought criticisms would be of the theological nature. But in any case, please feel free to send them my way if you have them.

 

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