Borley Rectory, and the problem with anecdote

There's a reason skeptics have a problem with anecdotal evidence and eyewitness testimony.

It's not that that it's impossible that you saw a ghost, or Bigfoot, or an extraterrestrial spacecraft.  What we're saying is that we need more than your assurance that you did.  Not only do we have the potential for outright lies and hoaxes -- some of them very subtle and clever -- we have the fact that the human sensory apparatus more or less sucks.

To put not too fine a point on it.

I mean, it works well enough.  It keeps us sufficiently aware of our surroundings to stay alive.  But we're easily tricked, we miss things, we misinterpret what we see and hear.  As astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson put it, "The human perceptual system is rife with all sorts of ways of getting it wrong."

As an illustration, let's consider one of the most famous "haunted house" stories in the world -- the infamous Borley Rectory, of Borley, Essex, England.

Borley Rectory always shows up on those websites with names like, "Ten Most Terrifying Real Ghost Stories!", usually somewhere near the top of the list.  So here are the bare bones of the story, just in case you don't know it.

Borley Rectory was built in 1862 by Reverend Henry Dawson Ellis Bull, Rector of Borley Parish.  He designed the building to replace an earlier rectory that had burned down in 1841, and also to accommodate his wife and family of fourteen children, which indicates that Reverend Bull put a lot of stock in the "be fruitful and multiply" thing from the Book of Genesis.

Be that as it may, the parish was certainly steeped in history.  The parish church is thought to date to the 12th century, and the town was the site of Borley Hall, the ancestral seat of the Waldegrave family.  But here's where truth starts twisting in with fabrication; because the additional claim that the rectory had been built on the site of an old Benedictine monastery appears to have no basis in reality.

Which means that the tale that is the basis of the haunting also is of dubious provenance.  Because the story goes that a monk in the (almost certainly non-existent) monastery was having an affair with a nun from a nearby convent.  They made plans to elope, and had in fact arranged a coach driven by a friend of the monk's in order to get away, but the plan was discovered.

Sexual indiscretion by the clergy was a major no-no back then.  The coachman was beheaded, the monk hanged, and the nun bricked up in a wall inside the convent.

Except... none of them existed, remember?  Because there's no evidence there ever was a monastery on the rectory grounds.

But that didn't stop the tale from growing.  Here's one account of what Reverend Bull et al. saw:

On July 28th, 1900, three Bull daughters reportedly saw a figure on a path, which later became known as the "Nuns Walk", to the rear of the rectory. They were joined by a fourth sister to help greet the stranger, but the apparition disappeared. Harry also told of seeing the nun, together with the phantom coach in which she had eloped. 

She was also seen wandering the grounds around the Rectory, in and out of the bushes, dressed in grey. There are reports of the Monk and Nun passing across the grounds. Several people said they observed "A lady in grey cloak" and "A gentleman with a sort of bald head, dressed in a long black gown."

Once the story of the haunting began to spread, others reported seeing spectral nuns and monks.  But that's not all.  A later rector of the parish, one Lionel Foyster, moved in in 1930 with his wife Marianne, and they began to experience poltergeist activity in addition to the continuing presence of ghostly figures loping about.  Marianne began to receive messages written on walls and scraps of paper, such as the following:

Both of the Foysters reported having peculiar experiences:

During the first year of their tenancy, Lionel described many unexplained happenings including; bell ringing, the appearance of Harry Bull [son of the first rector of Borley], glass objects appearing out of nowhere and being dashed to the floor, books appearing, and many items being thrown, including pebbles and an iron. After an attempt at exorcism, Marianne was thrown out of bed several times.

The Foysters eventually moved out, apparently because of Lionel Foyster's declining health, and afterwards no one could be found who was willing to live in the rectory, almost certainly because of its reputation.

And then Harry Price got involved.

Price was a psychic investigator of significant fame, who had founded the National Laboratory of Psychic Research as a rival to the more reputable Society for Psychical Research.  Price himself was a strange mixture of skeptic and sketchy.  He was instrumental in unmasking outright hoaxers such as Helen Duncan, who used cheesecloth and paper soaked in egg white to simulate "ectoplasm."  But his investigation of Borley Rectory, leading to the publication of a book by Price in 1940, was unequivocally in support of its having been haunted -- despite a stinging critique by researchers for the SPR who said that Price himself was a trained conjuror (which was true), and had "salted the mine" by faking some of the evidence from Borley, in collusion with Marianne Foyster, who "was actively engaged in fraudulently creating [haunted] phenomena."

Price, of course, denied any such thing, but further inquiries by the SPR left his role in the alleged haunting in serious question.  And the matter came to an unexpected close when the rectory burned in 1939 because of an accident with an oil lamp.

The remnants of the building were demolished in 1944.  But people still visit the site, and the adjacent cemetery, and still report ghostly appearances, lo unto this very day.

See what I mean about anecdote?  We have a story that started out with a most-likely-false claim of three executions on the rectory grounds, followed by what many believe was an outright hoax perpetrated by Harry Price and Marianne Foyster.  Blend that together with overactive imaginations, and the rather dubious quality of the human perceptual systems, and you have a mishmash out of which any kernel of truth -- if there is one there -- becomes impossible to discern.

So is Borley haunted?  The most honest answer is "there's no way to know for sure," with a strong corollary of "... but probably not."  There's nothing here that any unbiased individual would consider hard evidence, just tall tale piled upon unsubstantiated claim, mixed with "I heard that people saw ghosts there."

If this is "one of the best-authenticated haunted sites in Britain," as one website claimed, we've got some serious problems.

To return to my initial point, it's not that I'm saying that any of the claims of the paranormal are impossible.  What I'm saying is that thus far, no evidence I've seen has been convincing, at least not to someone who wasn't already convinced.  But despite all that, I'm hoping to visit Borley this summer.  My wife and I are spending two weeks in England in August, and I'm going to try to convince my wife to pop in to say hi to the spectral monks and nuns.  I'll definitely report back with anything we happen to see.

Not that it should make a difference.  Because eyewitness testimony is still subject to all of the caveats I've mentioned -- even if it comes from yours truly.

Group discount on exorcisms

There's no doubt that Mexico has become a pretty rough place to live, in the past couple of decades.

The crime rate is astronomical.  According to the demographics site Nation Master, Mexico ranks in the top five nations in the world for homicides and violence committed by youths.  They are #3 for number of prisoners per capita, and have a wealth gap that staggers the imagination -- 16% of the citizens of Mexico earn less than a dollar a day.  Corruption is rampant, the drug cartels are in charge of many cities, and the air and water pollution, especially in Mexico City, result in thousands of preventable deaths per year.

So all of those problems, what do you do?

You have a mass exorcism, that's what.

Because clearly what's doing all of this awful stuff is... demons.  At least that's what Cardinal Juan Sandoval Íñiguez, Archbishop Emeritus of Guadalajara, and his sidekick, Spanish priest and exorcist Father José Antonio Fortea, think.

With the permission of the Archbishop of San Luis Potosí, Jesús Carlos Cabrero, the "Grand Exorcism" was held in the Cathedral of San Luis a couple of weeks ago. "This celebration is a sacramental [sic] of the Church,," Cabrero said.  "During the ritual, some priests were present, and Cardinal [Sandoval] did me the favor of accompanying us, in response to an invitation I sent him."  The ceremony was conducted in private, Cabrero added, because otherwise, "morbid interests appear, and misinterpretations."

Hey, you're the one who thinks that demons are running rampant in your country, harming and killing innocent people.  How much more morbid can you get?

Cardinal Sandoval, however, was in full support of the event.  "The Great Exorcism is a prayer asking God to drive away the Enemy, to drive him away from these places.  From San Luis, first of all, and then from all of Mexico.  People should become aware of the very grave situation we are living through in Mexico, whose root is very deep, beyond human malevolence; it is the devil, who is very connected to death.  He is a murderer from the beginning...  Acts of revenge, now occurring between assassins and the government; deaths here, deaths there, and deaths everywhere.  This violence is nothing else but the Devil who is tearing us apart."

As far as how they know all of this, apparently they found out from one of the demons itself.  Roberto O'Farrill, a Catholic journalist and "demon specialist," said that during an exorcism of a devil from a guy named Ángel (I'm not making this up), the demon kind of spilled his guts regarding what is going on.

O'Farrill explained that "the demons possessing Ángel said, 'you are stupid, because She [the Virgin Mary] cast us out of Mexico, and now you with your stupid laws have allowed sacrifices to return to Mexico, human sacrifices. We don't want to say this but She is stepping on our head and forces us to.'"

"During that exorcism," O'Farrill added, "the Virgin Mary forces the demons to say that they have returned to Mexico, that there is once again an infestation, principally in Mexico City and in other parts of the country."

Well, that's proof enough for me.  Time to reboot the Inquisition, sounds like.

So anyhow, Cabrero and Sandoval had their Grand Exorcism on May 20, and in the four weeks since the ceremony, we've seen a miraculous decrease in... um... a heaven-sent... um...

Okay, nothing much has changed.  In fact, just last week, a bunch of "radical teachers" in the town of Tuxtla Gutierrez went on a rampage, and attacked and burned the headquarters of five different political parties, demanding, amongst other things, "100% pay raises."  A few days before that, 42 suspected drug dealers who had taken over a ranch in the state of Michoacán were killed in "sprays of machine gun fire" by police.  Violence has recently spiked in Tijuana during the lead-up to elections on June 7, with gang and drug related killings reaching record numbers, and including such grotesque horrors as "severed heads in an icebox."

So yeah, Cardinal Sandoval really seems to have those demons on the run.

But we can't have reality intruding on the worldview, after all.  Bad for business, in one of the most staunchly Catholic countries in the world.  Gotta keep having meaningless rituals so they can pretend they're actually accomplishing something, rather than throwing their accumulated wealth and resources behind things like remediating the crashing poverty and hiring more law enforcement.

And, of course, dealing with all of the "radical teachers."  Those sonsabitches are mean.

Diagnosis by zodiac

Every once in a while, I see a piece of valid scientific research that makes me cringe, because I know how the woo-woos are going to interpret it.

I know, I probably shouldn't care.  Let 'em think what they'll think (since they're going to anyway), and don't lose any sleep over what the wingnuts believe.  But given that I've been at this blog for five years now, I suppose that's a forlorn hope.

Take, for example, the research published a couple of weeks ago in The Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association by Mary Regina Boland, Zachary Shahn, David Madigan, George Hripcsak, and Nicholas P. Tatonetti, of Columbia University, that shows that for some diseases, susceptibility is correlated with birth month.  They used data on 1,688 medical conditions in over 1.7 million patients, and found that 55 of the disorders were "significantly dependent on birth month."  Boland et al. state:

We present a high-throughput algorithm called SeaWAS that uncovers conditions associated with birth month without relying on a priori hypotheses.  SeaWAS confirms many known connections between birth month and disease including: reproductive performance, ADHD, asthma, colitis, eye conditions, otitis media (ear infection), and respiratory syncytial virus.  We discovered 16 associations with birth month that have never been explicitly studied previously...  Seasonally-dependent early developmental mechanisms might play a role in increasing lifetime disease risk.

So are you seeing where this is going, yet?  Because as soon as I read the abstract, I said, "Uh-oh."

Wait till the astrologers get a hold of this.

To their credit, the researchers anticipated this.  Co-author Nicholas Tatonetti said, in an interview with Time magazine:

Astrology puts a lot of stock on what month you were born in, and that really hurts this type of research, since there isn’t much scientific evidence to support that.  But seasonality is a proxy for variable environmental factors present at the time of your birth, and we are learning more about the very large role that environment, and gene-environment interactions, plays in our development.  This could be one way to start mapping out those gene-environment effects.

Which is right on, except that I'd change "there isn't much scientific evidence" to "there is zero scientific evidence."  But it's clear that the authors realized what was going to happen.

Let's start with The Washington Post, which in their article on the research, included the faceplant-inducing statement, "The scientific community has long since discarded astrology as pseudoscience.  Yet new scientific research suggests your "sign" actually may have more to do with your health than you might think."  Even though they went on to say that the researchers explicitly stated that their results have nothing to do with astrology, you know that zodiac buffs are going to remember this line and virtually nothing else.

Then we head further out into the ozone layer with the always-entertaining Natural News, which had the following to say:

While many people believe astrology is responsible for everything from your choice of spouse to career decisions, others maintain that one's birth month is nothing more than a date on a calendar. The latter group suggests that astrology is essentially hogwash, reserved for those who are so desperate for guidance that they resort to such "entertainment." They don't feel that whether one is a Leo or Capricorn should dictate a person's actions, much less help someone gain insight about their health. 

However, according to a new Columbia University study, these hesitant folks might want to consider changing their mind.

The title of the article?  "A Scientific Basis for Astrology."

Then, there's the inclusion of the study on a site called Interesting Studies in Astrology. which begins with the following:

Many sceptics insist on 'irrefutable scientific proof' before they can entertain the possibility of a connection between the celestial and the terrestrial...

Over the past fifty years, scientists and astrological researchers are discovering a growing body of objective evidence of correlations between celestial positions and terrestrial life. These statistically significant results have been published in peer reviewed journals (including Correlation, a specialist astrological journal). Ironically, some of the strongest evidence has come from experiments backed by sceptical groups.

The Boland et al. study -- i.e., actual science -- is then thrown in amongst horseshit like a "study" that allegedly found that more redheads are born when "Mars is ascending."

So the whole thing is just upsetting.  Here we have a thorough and careful piece of research that gives an interesting lens into how the timing of conception and birth can interact with environmental factors to influence later health issues, and it gets twisted into support for a worldview that claims that the reason I like shrimp curry is because I'm a Scorpio.  (I didn't make this up.)

I know, you can't control what people think, or how they'll interpret things.  But confirmation bias -- the tendency of people to overemphasize minuscule pieces of evidence when they're in favor of a belief they already had -- is crazy-making.

Of course, I probably only think that because on the day I was born, Saturn was in Capricorn.  You know how that goes.

Another dam prophecy

Back in 1956, a trio of social psychologists, Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken, and Stanley Schachter, wrote a book whose premise still kind of blows my mind, almost sixty years later.

Called When Prophecy Fails: A Social and Psychological Study of a Modern Group That Predicted the Destruction of the World, the book chronicles the apocalyptic prophecies of one Dorothy Martin (in the book, under the alias of Marian Keech), who claimed that she was in telepathic communication with an alien civilization on the planet Clarion.  Her contact informed her that the Earth was going to be destroyed in a huge flood on December 21, 1954, but that the Clarionites were dispatching a spaceship to rescue Martin/Keech and a small group of true believers.

On the fateful day, Martin/Keech and her followers met in her house to await the cataclysm and subsequent rescue.  As midnight approached, they became more and more fearful -- "sitting in stunned silence," as the book describes it.  An hour before the fatal moment, Martin/Keech informs them that she's had a further communiqué that they can only be rescued if they have no metallic objects on their persons -- so off come jewelry, belts, watches, even bras with metal clasps and pants with metal snaps or zippers.  When 12:05 rolls around, and there has been neither flood nor spaceship, someone decides to check a different clock -- because, of course, the clock that says 12:05 has to be wrong.  They find one that says 11:55... so hallelujah!  The prophecy might still be true!

By 4:00 AM, though, even the most devout believers have to admit that something's wrong.  Martin/Keech is devastated, and begins to cry.  But 45 minutes later, she straightens up, and says, "Wait!  I'm getting another message!"  Using "automatic writing," the contact on the planet Clarion informs the true adherents that because of their devotion, the catastrophe has been cancelled.  In the words of Festinger et al.: "The little group, sitting all night long, had spread so much light that God had saved the world from destruction."

So far from losing their faith in Martin/Keech, the failure of the prophecy actually increased her followers' strength of belief.  They were so galvanized that they started a widespread publicity campaign to pass along the message.  In fact, Martin/Keech was apparently so encouraged by the whole thing that she founded the Association of Sananda and Sanat Kumara, a group devoted to religious and spiritual messages from contact with alien civilizations.  She called herself "Sister Thedra" and managed the Association until her death at the age of 90 in 1992 -- but the Association itself is still in existence, and has hundreds, possibly thousands, of members.

What is apparent from this, and other prophecies like it (think of Harold Camping and his forecasting of the End Times a couple of years ago), is that the self-styled prophets actually believe what they're saying.  In other words, they're not liars or charlatans; they're actually delusional.  And since making wacko claims is de facto what delusional people do, that part is hardly surprising.  What still baffles me, though, is that they convince others -- and that those others continue to believe, even after the prophets of doom are proven wrong, again and again.

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Because we have a new date to worry about.  Don't know if you've heard about it yet.  It's September 13, 2015, and we're already seeing the usual gamut of Signs and Portents that always prefaces the end of the world.  According to an anonymous author over at the site WorldTruth, we're in for some seriously bad shit -- starting with the destruction of the Hoover Dam on September 13 in an "Antichrist Birthing Ritual," with the consequent terrible flood and destruction and death.

And that's only for starters.

How do we know this, you might ask?  Well, it has to do with secret messages on the $50 bill, a conspiracy by Mercedes-Benz/Daimler automobile company, the Georgia Guidestones, the "Jubilee Year," drums, The Economist magazine, the movies Cloud Atlas and Evan Almighty, the San Andreas Fault, and confetti.  It's really quite entertaining, and I highly recommend taking a look.

So we have yet another replay on the way of the Harold Camping nonsense, the Martin/Keech episode described in When Prophecy Fails, and countless others.  In fact, Wikipedia lists 164 times that there have been failed prophecies of the end of the world, going back to Jewish zealot Simon bar Giora and the Essenes, a messianic cult in the First Century C.E., who predicted that the messiah was going to arrive, initiate the End Times, and along the way kick the Romans' asses.  The whole thing more or less came to nothing, as one might expect.  Simon bar Giora was captured, brought back to Rome, and executed by being thrown off a cliff.  The Essenes were pretty well wiped out once Jerusalem fell in 70 C.E.

...  although the Rosicrucians claim that their secret society (so secret, in fact, that there's a Wikipedia article on them) claim direct mystical descent from the Essenes.  So I suppose even the earliest apocalyptic prophecies are still with us, lo unto this very day.

Be that as it may, I don't think you have a lot to worry about, come September 13.  I'm planning on business as usual, which is honestly kind of disappointing, because that's the first week of the new school year, and I'm sure we'd all appreciate something to liven things up at that point.  I don't wish catastrophic floods on anyone, but one or two Apocalyptic Horsepersons could be kind of entertaining.  More interesting, at least, than biochemical functional groups, which is what we'll be studying at that point.

Celebrating the small steps

Today I am off to the wedding of one of my oldest and dearest friends (and long-standing partner-in-crime), who is finally able to marry her sweetheart because same-sex marriage recently became legal in the state of Florida.  Their happy day is a tribute to the hard work of people who have worked tirelessly to make sure that love receives official recognition -- regardless of the genders of the people involved.

But of course, such a sea change in attitudes, not to mention laws, is not going to be met with universal support.  Just as alterations in our culture regarding women's rights and racial equality did not occur rapidly (and you might add, with complete accuracy, that they still haven't changed as much as they need to), our stance toward LGBT individuals still has a tremendously long way to go.

And such objections haven't just come from loudmouthed bigots such as Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham, and Mike Huckabee.  Ordinary folks have decided for some reason to make this issue their cause célèbre.  Take, for example, the couple in Australia who are threatening to divorce if same-sex marriage is legalized.

Nick and Sarah Jensen, whose statement got them their fifteen minutes of fame on the cover of the Canberra City News, made a fairly unequivocal statement regarding their beliefs:

My wife and I just celebrated our 10-year anniversary. But later this year, we may be getting a divorce. 

The decision to divorce is not one we’ve taken lightly.  And certainly, it’s not one that many will readily understand.  And that’s because it’s not a traditional divorce. 

Our view is that marriage is a fundamental order of creation.  Part of God’s human history.  Marriage is the union of a man and a woman before a community in the sight of God.  And marriage of any couple is important to God regardless of whether that couple recognises God’s involvement or authority in it.

If our federal parliament votes to change the timeless and organic definition of marriage later on this year, it will have moved against the fundamental and foundational building block of Australian society and, indeed, human culture everywhere. 

Indeed, it raises a red flag when a government decides it is not content only having sovereignty over land, taxes and the military — but ‘words’ themselves. 

This is why we are willing to divorce.  By changing the definition of marriage, ‘marriage’ will, in years to come, have an altogether different sense and purpose.

And if Australia does legalize same-sex marriage, and the Jensens do go through with their divorce, my guess is that the response by the public will be:

*YAWN*

Because you know what?  No one gets to step in and tell the Jensens what they are allowed to do regarding their own marriage.  That's not what LGBT people want to do to the Jensens; it's what the Jensens want to do LGBT people.  It is, in fact, kind of the whole point.  If two consenting adults want to marry -- regardless of who they are -- they should be allowed to.  If they want to divorce -- for whatever reason -- they should be allowed to.  No one should have the right to limit two adults' public expression, and recognition, of love, except the two adults themselves.

It's also a little funny that the Jensens are objecting to someone changing the "timeless and organic definition of marriage" as it comes from the bible, when the various biblical laws regarding marriage weren't exactly what most people come up with when they think of "traditional marriage."  To quote an op-ed piece by biblical scholars Robert Cargill, Hector Avalos, and Kenneth Atkinson that appeared in the Altoona Herald:

In fact, there were a variety of unions and family configurations that were permissible in the cultures that produced the Bible, and these ranged from monogamy (Titus 1:6) to those where rape victims were forced to marry their rapist (Deuteronomy 22:28-29) and to those Levirate marriage commands obligating a man to marry his brother’s widow regardless of the living brother’s marital status(Deuteronomy 25:5-10; Genesis 38; Ruth 2-4).  Others insisted that celibacy was the preferred option (1 Corinthians 7:8; 28)...  In fact, during a discussion of marriage in Matthew 19:12, Jesus even encourages those who can to castrate themselves “for the kingdom” and live a life of celibacy... [And] Ezra 10:2-11 forbids interracial marriage and orders those people of God who already had foreign wives to divorce them immediately.

So not only are the Jensens objecting on biblical grounds to something that isn't even clearly defined in the bible itself, inadvertently, what the Jensens are doing is highlighting exactly the reason why same-sex marriage needs to be legalized.  The Jensens' choice to divorce only exists because they already have a right that is being denied to others.  And giving LGBT individuals the right to marry no more alters the Jensens' marriage than giving African Americans the right to vote altered the voting rights of privileged whites.

But enough of the negative stuff.  Today is for celebrating the small steps.  And to my two dear friends Wendy and Renee, I wish love, prosperity, and a long and happy marriage.

Order out of chaos

As regular readers of this blog know, I've spent a lot of time thinking about what motivates people to buy into irrational worldviews.

Some of them, of course, can be explained from wishful thinking.  The belief in an afterlife -- at least the more pleasant sorts -- is likely to stem from some desire to assuage the fear of death.  And the idea of divination, that you can predict what you're in for through supernatural means, may well come from a need for reassurance that the future isn't going to suck.

It's more of a mystery, however, why people would gravitate toward the less cheerful models of how the world works.  Conspiracy theories, and punitive sorts of religions, and belief in black magic and curses -- how can those be appealing?  I've wondered for some time if it may not be some kind of compensatory mechanism for feeling powerless, or because even a horrible meaning for the universe is better than no meaning.  But I've had no evidence for this other than "it seems reasonable."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

But now, Jennifer A. Whitson of the University of Texas' Department of Business Management, has co-authored a paper with Adam D, Galinsky (of Columbia University) and Aaron Kay (of Duke University) that puts a lens on these sorts of beliefs.  Entitled, "The Emotional Roots of Conspiratorial Perception, System Justification, and Belief in the Paranormal," the paper appeared in the Journal of Social Psychology earlier this year -- and it sheds some fascinating light on this rather dark facet of human understanding.

Whitson et al. designed an experiment to see if what was going on was a response to something ramping up our emotional state.  The authors write:

We predicted that experiencing emotions that reflect uncertainty about the world (e.g., worry, surprise, fear, hope), compared to certain emotions (e.g., anger, happiness, disgust, contentment), would activate the need to imbue the world with order and structure across a wide range of compensatory measures... It has long been known that people experiencing uncertainty engage in processes intended to reduce that uncertainty... We propose that emotions which embody an underlying appraisal of uncertainty about the world will instigate processes of compensatory control, e.g., attempts to regain a sense of perceived control over the uncertain landscape.  When people are gripped in the emotional vise of uncertainty, regardless of the valence of that emotion, they will engage in mental gymnastics to imbue the world with order — from putting faith in external sources of control like the government... to seeing illusory patterns, i.e., identifying a coherent and meaningful interrelationship among a set of unrelated stimuli.

So they tested 251 people, and and set up a situation where particular emotions would be heightened.  Different people were asked to focus on different kinds of emotions:

They were randomly assigned to one of eight emotions: happiness and contentment (certain and positive emotions), anger and disgust (certain and negative emotions), surprise and hope (uncertain and positive emotions), and worry and fear (uncertain and negative emotions).  Consequently, the design was 2 (certainty: certain, uncertain) × 2 (valence: positive, negative) between-participants, with two emotions in each cell... 

Participants were asked to, “Please recall a particular incident in which you were very [emotion]. What made you feel [emotion]? Recall this situation as vividly as you can. Please describe this situation in which you were [emotion] — what happened, how you felt, etc.”

The idea was that memories of situations in which strong emotions were experienced would create a re-experience of those emotions, and would change the test subject's perceptions of the world -- and thus, their confidence about how the universe operates.  And it worked:

When participants recalled an uncertain emotion, regardless of its valence, they demonstrated evidence of compensatory control in the form of greater government defense...  We further tested the robustness of the link from uncertain emotions to compensatory control by looking at a different means of imbuing one's world with structure and non-randomness — belief in conspiracies and paranormal activity (Whitson & Galinsky, 2008).  While beliefs in the existence of paranormal phenomena or vast conspiracies do not on their face appear comforting, they are appealing because they provide structure to the world, making it appear less random.  Indeed, there is evidence that even threatening beliefs which provide structure are preferred to believing that the world is made up of unpredictable and chaotic forces.  For example, individuals reminded of uncontrollable hazards in their environment will attribute increased influence to focal enemy figures (Sullivan, Landau, & Rothschild, 2010), and reduced control increases preferences for structured yet pessimistic outlooks on the progression of a disease versus less structured but more optimistic outlooks (Rutjens, van Haneveld, van der Pligt, Kreemers, & Noordewier, 2013).  Similarly, conspiracies simplify complex and unpredictable social environments by attributing events and behavior to one organized, malevolent force (Hofstadter, 1965 and Zonis and Joseph, 1994).  In general, “conspiracy theory gives causes and motives to events that are more rationally seen as accidents. By attributing motives to chance happenings, believers gain control of the uncontrollable” (Pipes, 1997).

So the Whitson et al. study confirms what I'd always suspected; beliefs in the paranormal, and in religions (even harsh, punitive ones), and in conspiracy theories, are attractive because they give answers and meaning in a universe that otherwise would be a random, chaotic hash.  Even in the absence of evidence, people who feel uncertain or fearful will gravitate toward something that makes sense of things -- even if that something is unpleasant, or makes no particular sense in and of itself.

For myself, I'd like to know the world as it is.  A reassuring falsehood is still a lie, and approaching the universe with honesty is more important to me than telling myself stories.  As Carl Sagan put it, in his essay, "A Universe Not Made For Us":

What do we really want from philosophy and religion?  Palliatives?  Therapy?  Comfort? Do we want reassuring fables or an understanding of our actual circumstances?  Dismay that the Universe does not conform to our preferences seems childish.  You might think that grown-ups would be ashamed to put such disappointments into print.  The fashionable way of doing this is not to blame the Universe—which seems truly pointless—but rather to blame the means by which we know the Universe, namely science. 

Science has taught us that, because we have a talent for deceiving ourselves, subjectivity may not freely reign. 

Its conclusions derive from the interrogation of Nature... and are not in all cases predesigned to satisfy our wants.

Meddling with science

Something I find really peculiar is the selectiveness with which people apply the tenets of their own religion.

Take, for example, staunch Catholic and Republican presidential contender Rick Santorum, who last month opined that Pope Francis was out of his depth to speak on climate change:

He’s someone who is as committed to the nuclear family as I am.  I’m a huge fan of his and his focus on making sure that we have a healthier society. 

I understand and I sympathize and I support completely the pope’s call for us to do more to create opportunities for people to be able to rise in society, and to care for the poor.  [But] the church has gotten it wrong a few times on science, and I think that we probably are better off leaving science to the scientists. 

I think when we get involved with controversial political and scientific theories, then I think the church is probably not as forceful and credible.  And I’ve said this to the bishops many times when they get involved in agriculture policy or things like that, that are really outside of the scope of what the church’s main message is.

Some people have responded with comments like, "Don't you people think the pope is infallible?"  Now, even an atheist like myself knows that the official church policy is that the pope only invokes papal infallibility when he is "speaking ex cathedra;" in the words of Catholic Encyclopedia author P. J. Toner, "When, in the exercise of his office as shepherd and teacher of all Christians, in virtue of his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine concerning faith or morals to be held by the whole Church."  But shouldn't his word still carry weight, even when he's not claiming to be infallible?

I mean, he is the pope, right?

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

And as far as Santorum claiming that we should "leave science to the scientists" -- well, it's not like the politicians are scientists, either.  Hell, they don't even listen to the scientists.  So what it seems like is that the policy is "people speaking with authority should be believed as long as it's politically expedient and I already agreed with their position."

Even more striking are the comments this week from Catholic League President Bill Donohue, who said that Catholics don't have to follow the pope's call to environmental stewardship because God has no specific opinions thereof:

The pope has the authority to speak on matters of faith and morals. Once you get beyond that, can you speak to other issues?  Of course you can speak to other issue, but I don’t care whether it’s Pope Francis or his predecessors or his successors some day, once you get outside the domain of faith and morals, be careful.  Be careful and be careful particularly when you get into the weeds and get very specific. 

For example, are we God’s stewards?  Are we supposed to take care of the Earth?  Of course, that’s out of the Old Testament, it’s out of the New Testament, it’s totally unobjectionable... 

The problem is, the more specific you get [on issues like climate change], Catholics will scratch their heads and say he's a very nice man. 

His encyclical on climate change will come out later this month, and he's going to speak to the UN, so we'll see more at that time.  And Catholics will offer him respect, but in terms of accepting what he has to say as guiding their thoughts, no, it’s not going to happen.  We know, for example, that even on issues as the death penalty, for example, or on gun control or on helping the poor, there’s a lot of different issues where Catholics can disagree on.  When it comes to things that are non-negotiable -- I'll give you two quick ones, abortion and euthanasia -- it's not my opinion, it's in the catechism, it says that these are intrinsically evil.  No one has ever said that air pollution is intrinsically evil.  So, people need to get up to speed on this.

So, basically, god is vehemently against the killing of one person at a time, but has no problem with the killing of lots of people at the same time -- such as in Beijing, where the estimates are that over 400,000 people die yearly from the effects of air pollution?

Of course, that's not the only place where the "word of god" kind of misses the boat.  Interesting how there are all sorts of commandments about worshiping god, and honoring your mother and father, and all that sort of thing, but never once does the bible say, "Slavery is bad.  It's immoral to claim that you own another human being."  No prohibitions against rape, either.  No, we're just given rules regarding how badly we can beat our slaves (Exodus 21:20-21) and rules requiring a rapist to marry his victim "and never divorce her as long as he lives" (Deuteronomy 22:28-29).

What Donohue and his ilk are doing is the usual; cherry-picking what they like from the bible and the catechism and the pope's declarations, and ignoring the rest.  So once again, what it sounds like is that we have someone who's making god in his own image.  Abortion and euthanasia -- which, allow me to point out, weren't mentioned in the bible, either -- are "non-negotiable," but the pope's commentary on climate change is nothing more than the musings of "a very nice man."  So take your own opinions and political biases and put those in the mouth of god, and dismiss anything else.

The whole thing reminds me of a joke my dad used to tell.  A fire-and-brimstone preacher was intoning to his congregation a litany of the evils they needed to avoid in order to escape being sent to hell.  Old Mrs. Jones, sitting in the front pew, was listening with rapt attention and great appreciation.

"And who can argue," the preacher thundered, "about the evils of strong drink?  Liquor is the devil's own brew!  Every sip scorching its way down your throat should remind you of the hellfire waiting for you!"  And Mrs. Jones took a pinch of snuff, and said, "Aaaaaaamen, Brother!"

"And immorality of the flesh!" the preacher continued.  "Fornicating and thinking lustful thoughts may make you burn inside, but that is nothing to the burning your body will experience in the fiery furnace!"  And Mrs. Jones took a pinch of snuff, and again said, "Aaaaaaamen!"

"And evil rock music, all that hootin' and hollerin' and chantin' of unholy words!  You must close your ears, brothers and sisters!"  Another pinch of snuff for Mrs. Jones, and a rolling, "Aaaaaamen!"

Then the preacher said, "And the horrors of the use of that evil weed, straight from the pits of hell... the evil scourge of tobacco..."

And Mrs. Jones said, "Wouldn't you know it?  He's stopped preachin' and started meddlin.'"