The Believing Brain

Editor's Note:  This was originally published in August 2013.

July's book for The Debunking Christianity Challenge was Michael Shermer's The Believing Brain:  From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies - How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths.  Shermer's relaxed and easygoing style, as well as his knack for making difficult subjects (e.g., neuroscience) accessible to the layman, makes this an enjoyable and entertaining read.   There were several laugh-out-loud moments, and, to be frank, I never thought I'd find fMRI's so interesting.  Now, having said that, Shermer engages in several logical stumbles.

I want to be clear:  Michael Shermer is not an idiot.  He is clearly an intelligent man with a gift for processing information at a level much deeper than most of us could ever dream of achieving, but intelligent men are still men and they are still prone to the same flaws and broken minds with which the rest of us are prone.  Shermer hides behind his science - which we'll address in a moment - in order to cover those flaws, but they are there, nonetheless.

The basic premise, which he states no less than a dozen times, is that we form beliefs first, and then seek out reasons for those beliefs.  He attributes most beliefs, whether they involve religion, aliens, politics, or conspiracy theories, to an emotional response.  He uses, as an example, the idea of a hominid determining whether a rustle in the grass is a predator, or the wind.   This proto-human must decide - quickly - whether to flee or to stay, and in order to do so, must look for patterns that can clue him in to whether or not there is danger.  Shermer calls this technique - looking for patterns - patternicity.  Because it was vital to our survival as we were evolving, he argues, we have retained it in our modern lives, even when it is no longer vital.

And to a degree, he's right.  We do have a natural tendency to try and find patterns:  shapes in clouds, traffic during our commutes to and from work, what foods we feed our toddlers and how that translates into a diaper, stock market behavior . . . in fact, many of our nation's economic advisors rest their theories on trends and patterns.  What he assumes from this, however, is that we always form our beliefs first, and then find patterns to support those beliefs, and this is not always the case.  He is, in fact, overlooking a key component to much of our decision making:  observation.

C.S. Lewis did not emotionally decide to become a Christian one day.  He took years of observing, discussing, reading, and thinking, and even then he very slowly moved from atheism to agnosticism, from agnosticism to a believer in God, and from a believer in God to a follower of Christ.  For Lewis, the decision was not an emotional one until after the fact.

When my wife and I refinanced our home, I did not decide to do it emotionally.  I read the terms, I asked lots of questions, and then, once I had begun to sway to one side, I did more research.  The belief that it was the right thing to do was not formed first, but rather came later.

So it was with my discipleship.  I did not have an emotional moment where I fell to my knees, and have then spent the last decade trying to convince myself that my response was valid.  Rather, I had a season of deep study and reflection.  I had a season of examining what the Bible had to say regarding humanity (it's sinful), and seeing that this, indeed, played out in my life and in the lives of everyone I knew.  I had a season of examining the evidence for and against the Gospels.  I had a season of researching other faiths (not joining them, just learning about them), and of seeing where they fell short.  And it was then, and only then, that I formed my belief that Christ was who he claimed he was, that he did die for my sins, and that he rose again.  It was also then, and only then, that the emotional experience happened.

Yet according to Shermer, this is precisely what is wrong with religion.  A decision based on emotion, rather than rationale and logic, is often times "weird" - and therefore religions are "weird."  What is interesting about this, though, is that this is the same process used by Shermer to ultimately reject Christianity.

He tells a story of how his college girlfriend was in a terrible car accident that left her paralyzed from the waist down.  He spent that night praying to a God in which he only halfway believed, asking Him to heal her.  His response to God's apparent inactivity is interesting:  

A just and loving God who had the power to heal would surely heal Maureen.  He didn't.  He didn't, I now believe, not because "God works in mysterious ways" or "He has a special plan for Maureen" - the nauseatingly banal comforts believers sometimes offer in such trying and ultimately futile times - but because there is no God (44-45). 

There are two logical stumbles in this revealing text.  The first is that he practices the very same patternicity with which he criticizes all religion.  If faith in God is "weird" because it is based on an emotional response, then wouldn't that make his faith in no God equally as weird?  He formed his belief, after all, because of his hurt, because God didn't do what Michael Shermer asked Him to do.

Which is the second problem.  Shermer ultimately rejects God because God doesn't bend to his will.  Shermer defines God, rather than letting God define Himself.  Shermer decides what God ought to do, rather than allowing God to do what He will.  Shermer defines justice, when it is God Who is justice.


Francis Chan once commented:

"'I wouldn't believe in a God who would' . . . 'Who would,' what?  Do something that you wouldn't do, or think in a way that's different from the way you think?  Do you ever even consider the possibility that maybe the Creator's sense of justice is actually more developed than yours, and that maybe His love and His mercy are perfect, and that you could be the one that is flawed?  See, when we make statements like, 'Well God wouldn't do this, would He?' do you understand that at that moment you're actually putting God's actions in submission to your reasoning?  You're in essence saying, 'Well God wouldn't think that way or act that way because I wouldn't act that way or think that way.'"  

I do not say this to make light of the situation.  I do not say this because I believe that Maureen was a terrible person who got what she had coming to her.  But I do believe that we are all - including Maureen - sinners, and that God owes us nothing.  He gave us a planet.  He gave us trees that bear fruit, He gave us animals which provide meat, He gave us life, and, most importantly, He gave us His Spirit, which is the greatest need of all.  God owes us nothing, but He gives us everything.  He gave Michael Shermer a "sweet, loving, smart, responsible, devoted, caring spirit" (44) in the person of Maureen.  He did not owe Shermer this, but He gave it.  What Shermer has done, in essence then, is thrown an adult temper tantrum.  "But I WANT HER HEALED!"  And now he has spent the rest of his life pouting.

How does Shermer defend his patternicity?  Science.  And yet, to reject something because it doesn't do what you think it should is bad science, which is, ultimately, where Shermer stumbles the most.  Michael Shermer believes with everything in his body that science is the key to figuring out when our patternicities are right, and when they are wrong (2).  For example, near-death-experiences (NDE's) aren't real, because science has proven that the components (a feeling of floating, bright lights, tunnels, etc.) are caused when the brain is deprived of oxygen and begins to shut down (152-153), and therefore, he argues, there is no afterlife.

Shermer believes science has proven there is no afterlife, yet this is not a logical step.  Science has proven that NDE's are not a transition into the afterlife, perhaps.  I can agree with that, because the evidence is fairly clear, but that does not prove (or disprove) the afterlife at all.  In fact, science can't prove (or disprove) the afterlife, because we would have to go into the afterlife to see whether or not it exists.  The afterlife happens . . . after life.  NDE's happen . . . near death, not after death.  NDE's are, therefore, not the same thing as the afterlife.  They simply aren't.  To disprove a near-death-experience does nothing for the other.

"Supernatural" beings can't exist, Shermer argues, because the brain, when under duress, produces vivid hallucinations.  Mountain climbers often experience a strange "presence" hanging about, and science has determined that it has to do with the climate, altitude, and deep fatigue.  Shermer makes the assumption, then, that science has "proven" there is no supernatural.  Yet again, this is not a logical step.  A climber, in the subzero, high-altitude terrain of the Himalayas is likely to hallucinate.  But does that mean that all such encounters are matters of the brain?  What of the encounters with lucid individuals who are not climbing the Himalayas, biking cross-country in six days, or waking up at two in the morning, still halfway asleep?  What of a shepherd who stumbles upon a bush that speaks?  Moses wasn't under great mental strain, nor was he in an extreme climate or an oxygen-deprived altitude.  So what, then, caused him to "hallucinate," and become so convinced that he would go on to face one of the most powerful men in the world?  How does science, I wonder, explain that?

Yet for Michael Shermer, science is the key to understanding life.  He describes science in this way:

"It is time to step out of our evolutionary heritage and our historical traditions and embrace science as the best tool ever devised for explaining how the world works . . . science and the secular Enlightenment values expressed in Western democracies are our best hope for survival" (186-187). 

In other words, science can solve our problems and answer most (if not all) of our questions.  In other words, this self-proclaimed skeptic (someone who is an agnostic in theory but an atheist in practice) actually does believe in a god, he just calls his god "Science."  He admits it's "flawed" (187), but it still remains our "best hope."

I'm not certain a flawed god whom I can control is a god I'd like.  I've caused three car accidents in ten years, Mexican food causes me issues, and my pancreas doesn't work . . . do I really need to be in charge of God?  More than that, how can I trust a god who is, admittedly, flawed, as Shermer's god is?

There are several other illogical assumptions and leaps that Shermer makes throughout the book, but I've highlighted the big ones.  As I said at the beginning, it's an entertaining book, and he is certainly not an intellectual slouch.  The fact remains, however, that his basic premise is certainly true sometimes, but not always.  And hope for humanity can't come from within, because broken things can't fix themselves.