Christianity and confirmartion bias
Do christians manipulate themselves into belief?
Confirmation bias is the tendency we have to overvalue information that goes along with our beliefs, ignoring of rationalizing away information that falsifies them. It is the reason why people believe in conspiracy theories long after they have been disproven, but it is also the reason why scientists stick with their theories despite being laughed at by the rest of the scientific community (sometimes being proven right after all). Confirmation bias essentially is stubbornness.
A few days ago, I watched a documentary about a group of investors who got obsessed with the stocks of a company called Bed, Bath and Beyond. This was a dying company being shorted by the stock market, which means many wall street “one percenters” were essentially betting a lot of money on the company’s bankrupcy. These investors thought they could “stick it to the big man” by buying the company’s shares, in the hope it would turn things around, winning the financial bet and getting money from the rich by winning at their own game.
While a very risky idea, of course, this seemed cool. Until the company actually went bankrupt and the shares dissolved, letting these poor everymen, some of whom invested money they could not afford losing, not to speak of time and community ties created, into and around a failed cause.
The shocking thing is that even after the stocks dissolved, these guys still believed all of this was part of a bigger plan, that they would eventually be compensated and make a lot of money out of that. So great was the weight of having a community of shared beliefs, a noble cause, a lot of skin in the game and a hope of finding a way out of their banal existance, that even well educated people (people with PhD in data analysis, imagine that) chose to find a way to racionalize a belief they felt warmer having. Confirmation bias at its best.
Despite being a christian myself, I could not help but imagine the situation of the apostles after watching the man they were convinced was God incarnate, the man responsible to bring eternal salvation to mankind, be brutally and humiliatingly tortured to death in public. I could not help but see the analogy between both cases: powerless people who thought they had an ace up their sleeves, a power to trump the bigger power that subjugated them; powerless people who, having nothing better to invest themselves into, devoted their lives to this promise, only to see it anti climactically squashed by those in power.
Similarly to the investors, the apostles and early followers of Jesus denied the death of their ideal. He rose from the dead, and those that deny him will pay the price. Even after being squashed, they choose to double down.
The funny thing is: contrary to these investors, who are left with nothing and basically lost; christianity began to spread with shocking speed. Three hundred years later, the emperor of the very empire responsible for Jesus’ crucifiction was a christian convert, publicly acknowledging his divinity. And this empire was the seed that turned christianity into the biggest religion in the world to this day. The empire is long gone, but more people in the world worship Jesus than anything else. Christianity actually succeeded in “sticking it to the big man”, more than any other such endeavor ever. And it succeeded by losing.
What are we to make of this? Is it just that christianity is simply a better version of the same kind of deception? Perhaps christianity simply had more universal features, being capable of captivating the hopes of more and more people, instead of this niche thing about stocks from a household products company. It was good enough in the intellectual front, eventually winning the battle against “pagan neoplatonism”, while maintaining a narrative simple enough so that it could be followed by illiterate people. And so it is to this day.
But none of this makes any of christianity’s claims true, at least in any conventional sense. These are reasons or explanations for the amazing adaptability of christianity, which apparently gave it an evolutionary edge over every other kind of idea.
Not only does it perfectly exploit our innate stubbornness, but it also works very well with our need to fit in with a group. At the same time it preaches universal acceptance, christianity also threatens infidels with eternal damnation (a very clear tension within christian doctrinal theology). Anyone can feel welcome and every member has the fear incentive not to leave. Not only that, but the infinite hope of heaven and eternal union with God also keeps people willing to believe life goes on after the death of the body — and that we will actually be reborn in the flesh one day, as Jesus himself was.
It taps into fears much deeper, hopes more resounding and needs more primal than every other idea or doctrine, all at the same time.
It makes perfect sense that we would believe in such an idea, even if it weren’t true.
Every successful conman knows that the best way to get people to believe in you is to manipulate them, to make the question of truth irrelevant.
“If you want to belong, if you want to be loved, donate money to our institution!”
How many have not been fooled by this type of tactic? And is this not similar to what very often happens in churches? Is this not precisely what Luther criticed the Catholic Church for? After succeeding by losing, after being the ultimate “graceful revenge”, christianity turned itself into something very similar to what it conquered: it became “the big man”. Of course, it would be ludicrous to suggest it matched the absurd cruelty of the Roman Empire, but still, as Ceasar used to be, so became the Pope.
What does this mean? Is this a lesson about how power corrupts? Maybe about why religion must avoid the world of men, never venture into it’s fallen borders, lest it loses its ability to ever come back into the eternal and sacred again? Is it a lesson about the dangers of belief? Is it possible, or even desirable, to never believe in promises and noble causes, to avoid manipulation? How does one know one’s belief is true and not manipulated? How does one know the real reason behind one’s belief is truth and not something else? Is it ever?
I don’t know.
