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Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't: Explaining Theological Incorrectness in South Asia and America

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Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't: Explaining Theological Incorrectness in South Asia and America Western Michigan University ScholarWorks at WMU Dissertations Graduate College 8-2002 Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't: Explaining Theological Incorrectness in South Asia and America D. Jason Slone Western Michigan University Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations Part of the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons, and the Sociology of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Slone, D. Jason, "Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't: Explaining Theological Incorrectness in South Asia and America" (2002). Dissertations. 1333. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/dissertations/1333 This Dissertation-Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate College at ScholarWorks at WMU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks at WMU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. WHY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY SHOULDN’T: EXPLAINING THEOLOGICAL INCORRECTNESS IN SOUTH ASIA AND AMERICA by D. Jason Slone A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of The Graduate College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Comparative Religion Western Michigan University Kalamazoo, Michigan August 2002 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. WHY RELIGIOUS PEOPLE BELIEVE WHAT THEY SHOULDN’T: EXPLAINING THEOLOGICAL INCORRECTNESS IN SOUTH ASIA AND AMERICA D. Jason Slone, Phi). Western Michigan University, 2002 Cross-cultural descriptions of religious thought and behavior in South Asia and America show that people commonly hold ideas and perform actions that seem to be not only conceptually incoherent but also “theologically incorrect” by the standards of their own traditions. For example. South Asian Theravada Buddhists are taught that the historical Buddha is unavailable because he attained enlightenment and achieved parinirvana (“complete extinction”) and yet conceptually and ritually represent him as if he is present and available for petition. Similarly, American Protestants represent the Christian God as having absolute divine sovereignty and yet reveal confidence in an inner locus of control. Furthermore, despite their theological commitments, people in both cultures commonly attribute event-outcomes to the forces of luck and perform actions that try to influence luck, even though luck implies that events are beyond human control. Even more perplexing, people might in turn attribute luck to the wills of superhuman agents, which would mean that luck is not actually luck at all. The widespread existence of such theological incorrectness cries out for explanation because it challenges both scholarly theories and conventional wisdom Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. about how religion works. Religion, it seems, is not simply learned from culture in toto. nor does it determine worldviews. Rather, the actual thoughts and behaviors that religious people have are constrained by how the human mind-brain processes information as much as they are by the contents of cultural systems that people happen to be taught. This dissertation synthesizes research from the cognitive sciences and employs it to explain theological incorrectness. Research findings demonstrate that human beings, regardless of their religious commitments or cultural environments, employ inductive reasoning for most cognitive tasks and therefore infer representations about the world and its working from both culturally learned ideas and from cognitively constrained tacit knowledge, even though, deductively, information from those domains might not cohere systematically. This explains why religious people commonly think and do things they “shouldn’t,” as well as why religious systems undergo constant transformation. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. ProQuest Information and Learning 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 USA 800-521-0600 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. UMI Number. 3065410 UMI* UMI Microform 3065410 Copyright 2002 by ProQuest Information and Learning Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. ProQuest Information and Learning Company 300 North Zeeb Road P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106-1346 Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. © 2002 D. Jason Slone Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to begin by acknowledging the influence of my teachers. I’ve had many over the years, but three stand out in higher education: Ah-Seng Choo, the sage; Thomas P. Kasulis, the swordsman; and E. Thomas Lawson, the scientist The first taught me to think seriously, the second taught me to think differently, and the third taught me to think properly. In the end, it was Tom Lawson’s mentorship and work, which pioneered the most important advance in the study of religion to date, that inspired me to pursue and complete a dissertation on the cognitive science of religion. In addition, I would like to thank Brian C. Wilson and Justin L. Barrett for serving on my committee, for their collegial candor, and for their helpful suggestions on this project In particular, I would like to thank Dr. Wilson for forcing me to think about what is needed to convince socio-culturalists and theologians of the fruits of this approach, and I would like to thank Dr. Barrett for giving me powerful tools to do just that I must also thank those people outside of academia (where one still manages to live some of life during the completion of a Ph.D ), namely my family and friends. To Larry and Irene Appleby, Ed, Kim, and Amber Hensley, Dick and Pauline Schiffer, and the many others, I thank you dearly for your support It meant more to me than you will most likely ever know. I also want to thank Scott and Marj Johnson Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS—CONTINUED for their support of my pursuit of advanced education, especially but not only, the “Johnson Family Scholarship," which kept us afloat Finally, I must thank my wife, Brooke. First, thank you for having the patience to put up with my many highs and lows during die last two years. Somehow you knew when to pat me on the back, when to kick me in the rear, and when to just sit by quietly and let me vent or pound away on the keyboard. Second, thank you for your invaluable help, especially typing and commenting on important parts of the dissertation. And, finally, thank you for being willing to put off a normal life (if we'll ever have that) until I finished. I hope it's all worth it in the end. D. Jason Slone Reproduced with permission of the copyright owner. Further reproduction prohibited without permission. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS................................................................................. ii CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION................................................................................ 1 2. THE PROBLEM AND ITS BACKGROUND...................................... 5 The Early Scientific Study of Religion ........................................... 11 Social Science and The Enlightenment Paradigm .......................... 15 The Naturalist Theories .................................................................. 22 The Anthropological Naturalists - Tylor and Frazer .............. 23 The Psychoanalytical Naturalist - Freud ............................... 24 Non-Naturalistic Social Scientific Theories ................................... 25 The Ideological Non-Naturalist - Marx ................................. 25 The Socio-Culturalists - Durkheim and Weber ..................... 26 Explanation is Reduction - The Transcendentalist Response 28 To Reduce or Romanticize? ................................................... 32 3. POSTMODERNISM AND STANDARD SOCIAL SCIENCE 37 The Standard Social Science Model ............................................... 39 Postmodernism and Its Discontents ................................................ 48 The Method in
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