No, Really, I've Deceived Myself

When I first read "Belief in Belief", I liked it, and agreed with it, but I thought it was describing a curiousity; an exotic specimen of irrationality for us to oooh and aaah over. I mentally applied it to Unitarians and Reform Jews and that was about it.

I've since started wondering more and more if it actually describes a majority of religious people. I don't know if this is how Eliezer intended it, but it was two things that really convinced me:

The first reason was behavior. Most theists I know occasionally deviate from their religious principles; not egregiously, but they're far from perfect. But when I imagine a world that would make me believe religion with certainty - a world where angels routinely descend to people's bedsides to carry their souls to Heaven, or where Satan allows National Geographic into Hell to film a documentary - I find it hard to imagine people sleeping in on Sundays. Not even the most hardened criminal will steal when the policeman's right in front of him and the punishment is infinite.

The second was a webcomic: http://www.heavingdeadcats.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/02/file1126-2.jpg It wasn't so much that theists wouldn't drink the poison as that they'd be surprised, even offended at being asked. It would seem like a cheap trick. Whereas (for example) I would be happy to prove my "faith" in science by ingesting poison after I'd taken an antidote proven to work in clinical trials.

I see two ways this issue is directly important to rationalists:

1. Is this solely a religious phenomenon, or are our own beliefs vulnerable to this kind of self-deception?

2. What kind of tests can we create to determine whether a belief is sincerely held?

It's worth mentioning that one can actually believe in god yet only say "I believe in god".

When I talk to religious people, I usually say "I don't believe in god" rather than "God does not exist". They both get the point across that I'm an atheist, but nothing else. The second, however, is less confrontational, and it often takes effort to keep people from seeing the discussion as a "battle".

Eliezer's post focuses on the distinction between two concepts a person can believe (hereby called "narratives"):

1. "God is real."

2. "I have something that qualifies as a 'belief in God'."

Either narrative will be associated with positive things in the person's mind. And the person, particularly with narrative #2, often forms a meta-narrative:

3. "My belief in God has positive effects in my life."

But: Unlike the meta-narrative, our analysis should not proceed as if the relationship between narrative and effects is a simple causal link.

The actual cognitive process that determines the narrative might go something like this:

• Notice that the desirable aspects of life enjoyed by religious people in the community conflict with undesirable properties (e.g. falsehood, silliness, uselessness) of religious beliefs.

• Trigger a search: "How do I make the undesirable properties go away while keeping benefits?"

• Settle on a local optimum way of thinking, according to some evaluation algorithm that is attracted by predictions of certain consequences and repulsed by others.

The search can have a very different character from one individual to another. For example, if the idea of not having a defensible narrative isn't repulsive, then the person says: "I'm happy in my religious community, so I don't think too hard about my religion." The kind of thing they are actually repulsed by would be "for me or my peers to believe that I am not a fully committed member of my in-group".

Or, if the person is given to conscious reasoning, then it would be extremely repulsive to not have a defensible narrative. What their search evaluation algorithm is actually repulsed by might be something like, "the self-doubt that I am not a capable reasoner", or "the loss of respect and status among other intellectuals". So the quick fix is: Add more layers of justification and arguments surrounding religion, so that both you and your peers can plausibly feel that you are a capable reasoner occupying a justifyable stance on a complex issue.

So regarding Eliezer's post, it's not surprising that someone with narrative #2 can get a "placebo" version of the positive effects that come with narrative #1. The narrative doesn't independently cause the positive effects; the narrative is shaped by a cognitive algorithm that predicts the benefits of believing it.

One goes through life thinking one's mistakes are unique to one, only to discover that they are much more common. Yet, I thought I was the only Muslim to force himself to belief like that. But I find that all of the Muslims I know, save perhaps one exception, follow this same pattern. And when I said: "I believe I will go to hell if I don't believe in God, but I can't bring myself into believing in God" they used to tell me "Do your five prayers, read then Qran, if you strive to get closer to God, God will get closer to you." Needless to say, whenever I did that, it backfired: I only got more scared of hell (anyone here who has read the Qran will agree with me that the threats are very vivid) but less believing in God, because it just didn't make sense that God be as he said he was and there be a Hell built after Judgement Day. Among other things.

I wonder if anyone ever fully analysed the Qran and all the resources it uses to tug at the feelings of the reader? I've started seeing some patters since I started reading this site, but I'd like to know if there is a full-blown, complete, exhaustive deconstruction of that book, that is not dripped in islamophobia, ethnocentrism, and other common failures I have seen in Western theologians when applied to Islam.

I may not be too far from this. I started to be an atheist but (as best as I can describe) found myself believing in god anyway. I interpreted it as catholicism having etched a god shaped hole into my brain. It seemed like more trouble than it was worth to fight it. In this context 'I believe in god' isn't a conclusion but an observation.

Knowing that your brain hasn't updated correctly does not make it trivial to force it to.

By my current theology, my Gods are rather a lot like the dragon in my garage which is invisible, can't be touched, and leaves no thermal signature. For example, I may be wired to believe in divinity, but I am apparently not wired to believe in a creator (Thanks PBS!) so in my thinking on cosmology, physics, or evolution, my theology just doesn't come up. This is at least partly by design.

Georges Ray has defended a position he calls "Meta-Atheism." He believes that just about nobody who says they believe in God actually does, for reasons somewhat like the ones Eliezer mentions. I highly recommend checking it out. Here's a link: http://stairs.umd.edu/236/meta-atheism.html

Persian legend about the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar, and the rival Elamite gods Humman and Vashti

Although this does not speak directly to the heart of your argument, the Elamite etymologies you provide are almost certainly incorrect, and seems that the reference to the legend is even weaker.

Here is a good discussion of the point, with references.

Mordechai and Esther are of course theophoric, but theophoric names, including those named after the gods of the dominant culture but given by non-believers in the respective gods, are common in many cultures, ours included.

I can't help but think of Simulacra Levels [LW · GW]. She Wants To Be A Theist (aspiring to Level 3), but this is different from Actually Being A Theist (Level 3), let alone Actually Thinking That God Exists (Level 1). She's on Level 4, where she talks the way nobody on Level 3 would talk - Level 3's assert they are Level 1's; Level 4's assert they are Level 3's.

This I can understand.

I am a protestant Christian and your friend's experience with "belief" are similar to mine. Or seem to be, from what I gather in your post.

One thing I've come to realize that helps to explain the disparity I feel when I talk with most other Christians is the fact that somewhere along the way my world-view took a major shift away from blind faith and landed somewhere in the vicinity of Orwellian double-think.

The double-think comes into play when you're faced with non-axiomatic concepts such as morality. I believe that there is a God - and that He has instilled a sense of right and wrong in us by which we are able to evaluate the world around us. I also believe a sense of morality has been evolutionarily programmed into us - a sense of morality that is most likely a result of the formation of meta-political coalitions in Bonobo communities a very, very long time ago.

These two beliefs are not contradictory, but the complexity lies in reconciling the two. This post is not about the details of my Escher-esque brain, so suffice to say there are questions unanswered by viewing only the scientific side and there are just as many unanswered if viewed only from the spiritual side.

Simply because your friend is not blind to contradictions in the Orthodox Jewish belief system does not mean she does not sincerely believe - or that she's deceived herself into believing that she believes. It means that she, as all intelligent believers who practice crisis of faith should, understands just how much she doesn't understand.

What is the evidence that "she does not receive any benefit of believing in God"? I would expect that with her attitude she would be accepted and included into religious communities.

I'm a little surprised that the lack of evidence for peripheral stories that aren't in the Torah is considered significant, compared to the lack of evidence that Hebrews were ever slaves in Egypt.

Rationality is about winning. Sometimes it's a great psychological relief to be able to use belief as a shield or help. I have never had any qualms about using it to counter other irrational beliefs, fears, anguishes. Like for instance, when I was a child, the fear of darkness or monsters below my bed or whatnot.

Telling myself "ok, this isn't real and you know it, so no fear should be necessary" doesn't have quite the same effect as "God will help me chase them away / protect me".

Those are two different ideas, even though we use "belief" for both. I believe in God, gods, fairies, anything and whatever, whenever I find it convenient, just the same way I'll use nootropics when I'll find those convenient, both to the purpose of enhancing my mood or cognition. That is believing, as in, making up a comfortable, warm, fuzzy story, that recovers myself my serenity. Not believe as in "what can help me understand or manipulate the real, physical world, what is real and what will have a causal effect on that external world".

The only wrong consequence I can foresee for such a behavior is to go too far, to really start believing in such things, and hence loose some of your potential for rational reasoning as you'll then have to defend a lie and forgo truth sometimes, or also, feeling the need to elaborate further and further upon the stories, whether you believe them or not, wasting your time upon fantasizing.

Please note here how such stories which were at first understood to be fiction became serious stuff. Science fiction that becomes religion, as in scientism (to end up believing in your own story), or how some people will go to ludicrous lengths to demonstrate how star wars is still physically "not impossible" (to waste your time embellishing your fantasy and rationalizing it).

This is of a piece with the Doublethink article. I think you just don't get it, as too many atheists don't.

This seems a case of someone concluding consciously and subconsciously that believing in God had greater instrumental rationality - more winning - than not believing in God. The supposed mystery of her stress on her belief in God, rather than his existence, is easily explained by this. Her belief pays the freight, not God.

To be clear, I'm an atheist. But it's clear that belief in God does have instrumental benefits for lots of people. If your goal is winning, and not just accurate prediction, it could be perfectly instrumentally rational to believe in God.

I remember having a similar discussion with a friend in college. She "decided she would have a better life" if she believed in God. Being an atheist and epistemic rationalist at the time, I was appalled. How peculiar and unfathomable it was. What gibberish. She's wasn't saying it was true, just that believing it would give her a better life.

Well, turns out she had a greater appreciation for instrumental rationality than I had, though I doubt it was particularly conscious on her part. My appreciation for that kind of instrumental rationality is now conscious. I haven't quite made the leap yet, and don't know that I will, but dismissing it as irrational is just incorrect.

Many people cannot distinguish between levels of indirection. To them, "I believe X" and "X" are the same thing, and therefore, reasons why it is beneficial to believe X are also reasons why X is true. I think this, rather than any sort of deliberate self deception, is what you have observed.

Is it possible that this person was deliberately avoiding such statements of declaration?

I imagine myself, hypothetically, discussing physics with an opponent who only believes in Aristotelian mechanics. I'm not going to come right out and declare "Objects at rest stay at rest". Instead, I'm going to say "I believe that objects at rest stay at rest", going under a mock hypothetical that perhaps my belief is an opinion and not a fact, and then slowly try to win my opponent over. Making guarded declarations instead of absolute declarations is a common tactic of persuasion. (I almost typed "appears to be a common tactic of persuasion" in the last sentence, which shows how strong this tactic is.)

Given that, I find it possible that the person actually did believe that God exists, but felt that saying "Oh, and by the way, God actually does exist" would have been unproductive. She could have been trying to construct an argument that goes somewhat like this:

(1) I believe that God exists. (2) I am an intelligent person, therefore my beliefs are true. (3) Therefore, God exists.

Perhaps it was clear to her that you didn't believe (3), but she was holding out hope that she might convince you of (1) and (2), which would then force you to believe (3). If that is her line of attack, it would do her no good to declare (3), as it would more likely alienate you and make it harder for her to persuade you to believe (1) and (2).

This sounds very like she enjoys the feeling of doublethink. Applying aesthetics to one's own feelings. I suspect this is behind New Age as a grab-bag people tend to give credence to all of, or crank magnetism - people assess beliefs by how it feels to profess them.

Whether this is "real" belief depends then on what you call "belief". It's a real something, I think, and "belief" is not an invalid word for them to use for it, but we might benefit from separate ones for "I like this belief" (which I mean in a sense stronger than "I think I should believe") and "this belief pays off in expected experiences." It may be covered by "belief in belief", but I have a nagging feeling that it's a bit stronger.

I like this article (but then I liked Dennet's ideas of belief in belief right from the start) and I've been thinking about this off and on all day.

But I think perhaps Eliezer over-analyses: On the surface this person's beliefs and thoughts seem fuzzy, so Eliezer admiraly digs deeper - but perhaps it's just fuzz all the way down.

Perhaps she believes P and ~P, perhaps she believes P>Q and she believes P but she beleives ~Q.

Perhaps you just have to shrug, and move on.

My experience is that most religious people give very, very, very little thought to what they actually believe. (About 10,000th of the introspection that Eliezer performs, say :-) ) and analysing it terms of doctrine, beliefs (or indeed impressions) is simply using the wrong tools. Perhaps better to think about emotions invovled in 'being religious' and being 'part of' a religion.

I think some of the commentary about religion on LessWrong could use some more genuine humble curiosity.  Not the kind of curiosity of "how can someone so intelligent be so mistaken?", but rather "what are the effects of religious faith and practice on individuals and societies that go beyond simple self deception mechanisms?", or "Is the persistent belief in god(s) in human history only explainable by ignorance, or does it tell us something important about ourselves?".  I could start to hypothesize about some of these questions if I had time, but I dont right now.

In the otherwise astute community of LessWrong, this has seemed like a persistent blindspot to me that is less about answers and more about framing of questions.

Faith is a major component of Christianity. For example, Jesus says to Thomas“Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.” So Thomas, who knows Jesus is resurrected because he has seen and felt him, is less blessed than those who simply believe (but don't know). Likewise, though God could easily get a bunch of converts by showing Himself, doing that would lose the faith aspect.

Don't go being smart and saying that you by definition have faith in things you know -- Christians don't mean this definition of faith, nor is it necessarily true. You can also set up certain experiments you personally know by the laws of physics won't hurt you, yet if you measure your fight or flight response will realize that you "believe" they are dangerous despite knowing they are not. Or compare how you feel about roller coasters compared to other activities you know to be of comparable likelihood of injury.

Another thing is that it is the dogma of many Christian denominations, that faith is a prerequisite (for some the only prerequisite) to salvation. Thus I claim that for Christians, faith is a more praiseworthy trait than knowledge of the same thing as a fact. A Christian who says that they know God exists, is signalling a very strong faith and most definitely not that they don't need faith because they have factual knowledge.

Now although Christian, Jew, and Muslim all claim to follow the same God of Abraham, I can't say for sure how this applies to your Jewish friend. The Torah also has "thou shalt not put God to the test", and various bits praising faith, plus they also need something that predicts that God doesn't go show Himself to the world population. Anyone here know whether for Jews it is better to believe in God than to know God exists?

So although she does not receive any benefit of believing in God—because she doesn't—

I would disagree. She does receive a benefit—by the Bible, faith in God would save her from Hell. My guess is that she deceives herself into believing in God because she wants to go to heaven in case God actually does exist. 

I personally do this, and it seems consistent with what you described in this post. As you pointed out, she doesn't seem to ACTUALLY believe in God, only acts as if she does. I do the same. I pray sometimes, I tell myself that I believe in God, but I have never said, "There is a God." I don't think I truly believe in Him. Yet, I still "believe in God" just in case the Bible is right. 

Now that I've admitted this, I'm curious to know if this is just me being a terrible person or if this is something others have considered before.

Okay not knowing your friend I think she could do following: 

premise one. God probably exists

premise two. I want to believe in him

conclusion I believe in god. That’s it. 

of course it’s weird but if you really want to believe it works. For me and you this isn’t enough. But for her it seems to be

My curiosity is drawn to the nature of the benefits the woman expects. Does she get a high from the false belief or does her mental model inform her that the false belief will favorably affect external reality -- e.g., she will have friends more likely to behave charitably towards her than atheist friends will be?

A very intelligent conservative Christian once gave me the latter as a primary reason she become a Christian. OTOH, Garcia thought that the former was usually the motive in the population he interacted (which was very different from the population at large though).