Science and its Discontents: Is There an End to Knowing?

Gennady Shkliarevsky^* | Article first published online: 31 JUL 2012 | DOI: 10.1002/sres.2127

 

How to Cite

Shkliarevsky, G. (2013), Science and its Discontents: Is There an End to Knowing?. Syst. Res., 30: 43–55. doi: 10.1002/sres.2127

Author Information

1. Bard College, Professor of History, Department of History, Bard College, NY, USA

^* Gennady Shkliarevsky, Bard College, Professor of History, Department of History, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504, USA. E-mail: shkliare@bard.edu

Publication History                                                          

1. Issue published online: 14 JAN 2013
2. Article first published online: 31 JUL 2012
3. Manuscript Accepted: 20 JUN 2012
4. Manuscript Received: 8 DEC 2011

 

Abstract

Is there an end to our scientific quest? This question that continues to divide the scientific community between those who believe that the progress of science is infinite and those who think that we already understand how the universe works and no major discoveries are to be expected in the future. This article explores the philosophical worldview of modern science that has given rise to this question. It argues that an approach to knowledge that focuses on the process of construction of knowledge rather than its products offers a possibility of definitively answering this question and opening paths for a more rational approach in advancing and managing the scientific progress. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In 1996, John Horgan, then a senior writer for Scientific American, wrote a book that made quite a stir in the science community. The title of the book was very provocative: The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age (Horgan, 1996). As the title indicates, the author made a claim that modern science had reached its limit. Horgan argued that although some incremental progress was still occurring and might even continue to occur for some time, nothing comparable to the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics or the discovery of the structure of DNA was even in the realm of possibilities. Science simply already made all the major advances there were to be made; our understanding of how the universe worked was, on the whole, completed.

Responses to Horgan’s book revealed sharp divisions in the scientific community. Numerous disagreements with the arguments and the main conclusion of the book ranged from well-mannered academic criticisms to sharp vitriolic attacks. John Maddox, former editor of the Science magazine, for example, produced a lengthy book entitled What Remains to Be Discovered in which he politely challenged Horgan’s contentions and outlined major areas of science where significant advances should take place in the future. By contrast, biologist Stephen Gould described Horgan’s book as ‘boring’ and physicist Stephen Hawking called it ‘nonsense’. There were also much harsher reactions that revealed raw emotions, irritation and even anger. Horgan was called a quack and a phony whose views of contemporary science were extremely subjective, ill informed and very biased.

However, there were a significant number of scientists who, on the whole, agreed with Horgan’s arguments and did not dispute his reading of the facts. Like Horgan, they believed that in its main contours, the work of science had been completed and no major illuminations awaited us in the future. Biologist Kenneth Miller, for example, observed that ‘at the core of his [Horgan's] thesis was an observation that met with agreement among most of the scientists I know—namely, that in a general way, we really do understand how nature works’ (Horgan, 2008, p. 43).

The book definitely touched the nerve in the scientific community. Unlike some critics of science from among its opponents (e.g., religious extremists), Horgan was, for many decades (and continues to be), an integral part of the scientific scene. He was well informed about scientific developments and had written a great deal on the subject. He received numerous awards for his writings about science; his contributions appeared in some of the most prestigious publications both in the United States and around the world. He personally knew many distinguished scientists. In a word, Horgan was definitely an insider. His pessimistic conclusions did not spring up from some anti-scientific persuasion but from the very midst of the modern scientific scene.

By his own admission, Horgan was a believer in the open-endedness of science and its infinite progress. His first doubts appeared at the end of the 1980s largely in response to proud affirmations of the capacity of modern science to solve the remaining mysteries of the universe. Stephen Hawking, for example, categorically declared in 1988 that there was a good chance that ‘the study of the early universe and the requirements of mathematical consistency will lead us to a complete unified theory within the lifetime of some of us who are around today’ (Horgan, 2008, p. 43). Although Hawking later retracted this statement (Hawking, 2003), there are still many physicists who continue the search for the elusive final theory of everything. The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) has spent over 10 billion dollars on the Large Hadron Collider to search for the so-called god particle—the Higgs boson—that is supposed to explain gravity and, thus, solve the last mystery of the physical universe. What is going to happen when the last mystery is solved? Where would physics go then? In his book, The End of Science, Horgan describes his interview in 1989 with distinguished physicist Roger Penrose. Their conversation drifted to the theory of everything—a theory that is supposed to unite all known physical forces in nature and provide the ultimate answer to the puzzle of the universe. ‘Solving mysteries is a wonderful thing to do’, Penrose ruminated. ‘And if they were all solved, somehow, that would be rather boring’ (Horgan, 1996, p. 3).

Penrose’s words were a revelation for Horgan. Indeed, if the final theory is attained, what does it mean for the scientific enterprise? Does that mean the end of the scientific quest? After all, how much is there to know? As we learn more about the fundamental aspects of reality, is it possible that we will one day learn it all? ‘In the same way’, Horgan argues, ‘scientists might be unlikely to discover anything surpassing the big bang, or quantum mechanics, or relativity, or natural selection, or DNA-based genetics’ (Horgan, 2004, p. 38).

The publication of The End of Science has had no significant practical consequences for the scientific community. Scientists continue to do their research as they had had for many years before the publication of the book. The controversy has largely subsided. However, the problem that the book raised has not gone away, and the questions the book asked have remained unanswered (Ben-Ari, 2007), and they are interesting questions. Indeed, many of us are brought up to believe that the progress of science and knowledge will be infinite. However, why should this progress be infinite? Can our belief be proven? In his review of John Maddox’s riposte to Horgan for The New York Times, Paul Raeburn, while recognizing that Maddox makes a persuasive case for the future development of science, adds

Does that mean Horgan was wrong? It may take a few centuries to find out. Horgan recalls the early explorers, to whom the swelling seas seemed infinite. They were wrong; but perhaps the belief sustained them (The New York Times, January 10, 1999).

The debates that have followed the publication of The End of Science have largely focused on whether Horgan is right or wrong. This approach has not proven to be particularly productive. No consensus has emerged between those whom Mordechai Ben-Ari calls accelerationists and the end-of-science scholars (Ben-Ari, 2007, p. 20). This paper will take a different approach. Rather than deal with the existing division among scientists and decide who is right and who is wrong, it will focus on the possible source of this problem. Why has this problem come up in the first place? What is it in the contemporary scientific worldview that has made the emergence of this problem possible? To answer this question, one needs to examine the worldview of contemporary science.

The philosophical perspective that dominates modern scientific worldview is realism. John Searle provides the following succinct definition of realism:

Realism is the view that there is a way that things are that is logically independent of all human representations. Realism does not say how things are but only that there is a way that they are (Searle, 1995, p. 155; emphasis in the original).

According to Searle, the realist view of the world has the following structural features (Searle, 1995, pp. 150–51)¹:

1. World (or alternatively, reality or the universe) exists independently of our representations of it.
2. Human beings have a variety of interconnected ways of having access to and representing features of the world to themselves.
3. Some of these representations .purport to be about and to represent how things are in reality. To the extent that they succeed or fail, they are said to be true or false, respectively. They are true if and only if they correspond to the facts in reality.
4. Systems of representation are human creations, and to that extent arbitrary.
5. Complete epistemic objectivity is difficult, sometimes impossible.
6. Having knowledge consists in having true representations for which we can give certain sorts of justification or evidence. Knowledge is thus by definition objective in the epistemic sense, because the criteria for knowledge are not arbitrary, and they are impersonal.

As one can see from the above, the realist perspective does not promise a complete knowledge of reality; rather, and rather pessimistically, it promises only an infinite asymptotic approximation to such knowledge. Also, according to this perspective, our knowledge in the final analysis depends on the reality external to our mind; this reality is the ultimate arbiter in determining what constitutes knowledge and what does not. Validation of knowledge involves a fit between a theory and the way things are. As a definition standard among realists goes, knowledge is ‘justified true belief’. It means that to constitute knowledge a belief must be true, that is, it should correspond, at least approximately, to the way reality is independently of our theory (David, .; Searle, 1995; Otte, 1990; Weston, 1992). In other words, the fit is a necessary condition of knowledge; without it, a belief cannot be considered true and, therefore, cannot constitute knowledge.

Thus, as one can see, the dominant view of modern science is that reality external to our mind validates scientific knowledge. It is only fair to acknowledge that on close reading the view of validation implies a strong possibility that science may indeed come to an end or at least to an end of big discoveries. One can submit several considerations in support of this apparent possibility. First of all, because of our constitution and the constitution of the physical universe, our access to the reality external to our mind and available for validation is limited. According to modern science, we live in a universe where nothing can exceed the speed of light. This universe may or may not be infinite, but because of our physical limitations and the laws of nature, we can physically see only so far in our universe. Our universe has a horizon beyond which our gaze does not penetrate. To put it simply, we cannot see or hear anything that does not reach us. The Big Bang is the ultimate limit to how far we can see into the history of our universe. Also, we cannot see what is going on inside a black hole because gravity prevents light from reaching us. Still, another example of what one might call a natural limitation is the principle of uncertainty that is widely accepted in our theorizing about subatomic events. In accordance with this principle, there is no way we can know the actual state of a particle or a quantum system as it is irrespective of our experimental tools. We cannot, in principle, know the exact state of reality at the subatomic level but only its statistical probability.

This is not to argue that our universe is infinite or finite. It may very well be infinite, but we have access only to its finite part. Because the accepted method of validation requires the establishment of one-to-one correspondence, our knowledge about the inaccessible part of the universe cannot be validated and, therefore, does not constitute, according to the existing standards, proper knowledge. It is simply a speculation at best.

Second, our current theory of evolution also supports the view that our capacity to know, even when enhanced by technological devices, is limited. The evolution made us fit to survive in this world, not to know it; our senses are shaped by the evolution for the purposes of survival. Our knowledge that, according to science, is based on our senses is merely a survival tool. In other words, we need knowledge only to the extent required by our survival, and because there are aspects of reality that are not essential for our survival, we may very well never know anything about them. Finally, science is about discovering the laws of nature, and the number of these laws, however big it may be, still must be finite. If it were not, reality would be chaotic, and it is not. Therefore, there are only so many laws of nature that we can discover.

In light of these considerations, one may very well conclude that reality accessible to us limited creatures is limited and therefore our knowledge of it also has a limit. Moreover, according to realism, we may be able only to approximate this limit without ever reaching it. In accordance with the dominant approach to validation of knowledge, whatever ideas or beliefs we may form about the rest of reality, these ideas and beliefs cannot, in principle, be validated and, therefore, cannot constitute knowledge.

Although the realist perspective on knowledge dominates the modern scientific worldview, it is not unopposed. There are numerous philosophical perspectives that disagree with realism. Despite their differences and even incompatibilities, they share some common features and are usually grouped together under the general rubric of anti-realism (for an overview of realism and anti-realism, see Psillos, 1999; Ladyman, 2001; Searle, 1995). Broadly speaking, anti-realism is a philosophical critique of the main tenets of realism. It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into all the specifics of issues contested by realism and anti-realism. Although their number is extensive, they largely boil down to one fundamental disagreement over the issue of validation. In contrast to realists, anti-realists maintain that we can never be sure how things actually are because a fit between a theory and data is insufficient for truth claims. Paul Horwich, for example, offers the following generalization:

It [anti-realism] derives from an impression of conflict between the alleged autonomy of the facts (their independence of us) and their accessibility (the possibility of our gaining knowledge of their existence). Consequently, it seems to the anti-realist that something of our naive point of view must be given up; some philosophical move must be made (Horwich, 1996, p. 188).

In support of their argument, anti-realists refer to numerous theories in the past that fitted well with empirical data but have ultimately proven to be false (e.g., the theory of flat Earth, the theory that placed Earth in the center of our planetary system or the ether theory of light). They also point to the phenomenon of underdetermination (i.e., the existence of different and often conflicting theories that are supported by the same empirical evidence) as a proof that a fit is no guarantee of the validity of a theory (on underdetermination, see Hoefer and Rosenberg, 1994; Leplin, 1997; Bergström, 1984; Cordero, 2001; Belousek, 2005).

As one can see, in the anti-realist perspective, we cannot make truth claims based on the validation by a fit between theory and fact. In this perspective, knowledge is not circumscribed by external reality and, therefore, is not limited to the states that the world may be in. Clearly, such view frees knowledge from being dependent on reality for validation; the progress of knowledge can be infinite. However, this freedom comes at a price. In accordance with the anti-realist view, this knowledge is not about anything except our capacity to create. Knowledge has nothing to do with truth; it is relativistic. Although anti-realists reject the realist approach to validation, they offer no adequate approach of their own.

Thus, the realist position maintains that science can attain true knowledge about reality, but the dependence that they establish between knowledge and the reality external to our mind cannot explicitly reject a possibility that scientific exploration may, at some point, come to an end. The anti-realist perspective, on the other hand, provides a strong support to the idea that the progress of our knowledge is infinite, but they also assert that this knowledge has little, if anything, to do with the way reality actually is. Neither of these positions seems to be satisfactory. We are reluctant to accept the notion that our scientific exploration will come to an end, but at the same time, we do not want to give up the notion that our science provides us with true understanding of how things are. Unfortunately, there just does not seem to be any possibility for reconciling these two positions.

For the purposes of this paper, I want to point out that despite significant differences between the realists and the anti-realists, in one very important respect, their worldviews are very similar: they both posit a gap between the subject and the object. As has already been indicated, the realists believe that this gap can be mediated, whereas the anti-realists think that such mediation is impossible. The gap between the knower and reality indicates that traditional dualism still plays an important role in both perspectives. This dualism can be traced back to the early periods in the evolution of human thought. Plato, for example, believed that mind and body were ontologically distinct. The division between thought and reality, mind and matter, body and soul, subject and object, and the knower and the known is characteristic for much of the European, and not only European, intellectual tradition (Dickens, 2010; Robinson, 2011).² However, is the positing of this gap justified? Is it supported by empirical evidence?

In his remarkable study, The Origin of Intelligence in Children and in his other books, Piaget provides a very detailed empirical account and analysis of the development of symbolic thought (Piaget, 1998). Piaget shows that the process of construction of symbolic representations is bi-directional. On one hand, it constructs mental representations of objects, and on the other, it also develops consciousness or what we often call the subject. Thus, one can see that the same process is involved in the construction of both the subject and the object and intimately relates one to the other. The constructed object and the constructed subject are not mere mental categories; they are represented by the physical organization of neurons and neural networks.

Based on what we know about the way our thinking operates, we can conclude the following:

1. There is no ontological gap that separates the subject and the object. The ontological status of this gap is not supported by empirical evidence. Both the subject and the object are products of the same process of construction.
2. The ontological distinction between thought and reality is also unsupported by empirical evidence. As organization of neurons and neural networks, thought is merely one of the forms of organization of reality. In other words, it is reality. In fact, it is the most powerful form of organization of reality. Unlike other forms of organization of reality, the process of organizing and re-organizing neurons and neural circuits has no limitations and is capable of infinite number of combinations.

Empirical evidence shows that symbolic thought emerges as a result of combinations of neural networks that conserve sensori-motor operations by regulating them. Although neural networks regulate sensori-motor operations, they, in turn, also need to be conserved—the function that is performed by their own regulatory operations. The combination of these regulatory operations leads to the emergence of mental images—a new level of organization represented by a new functioning organization of neurons and neural circuits. The conservation of these new functioning operations also requires regulatory operations and so on and so forth. Thus, conservation and regulation play a crucial role in the creation of new forms of organization of reality. Conservation is the real drive of this process, and regulation makes conservation possible. Conservation of regulatory operations also requires regulation of these operations. It is always possible and even necessary for the purposes of conservation to construct another level of regulation. Given the number of neurons in an average human brain and their plasticity—the fact that there are no physical limitations to their combinatorial capacity—the number of possible combinations that their networks can compose is infinite.

It is also important to remember that the evolution of human thought has an important social dimension. Conservation of symbolic representations also takes place in the inter-subjective space, not just inside an individual brain. Human thinking evolved as a cooperative social activity. Language is an important tool that serves this inter-subjective mode of conservation and symbolic construction. The spontaneous organization of interacting brains combined with technology that supports and enhances our mental activity (such as computers, the internet, various data repositories, etc.) vastly increases our capacity to construct new forms of organization of reality with increased combinatorial power. Each new level of organization is more powerful than the one it regulates because it offers more combinatorial possibilities; the forms of organization that each new level regulates become merely particular cases in a more general organized whole. Unlike other forms of organization of reality, organization of reality that involves symbolic thought has no limitations; it is, in fact, infinite.

The empirical evidence related to the emergence and development of human thought does not support the positing of the ontological gap between thought and reality, mind and matter, subject and object, the knower and the object of knowing. This gap is not a product of empirical observation; it is an example of what Kant called synthetic a priori judgment or what we more commonly call self-evident or common sense truth. As the term indicates, common sense truth is not a product of rational judgment. The word ‘sense’ indicates connection to biological factors, whereas the word ‘common’ suggests coherence—the fact that this knowledge is a product of an agreement among knowers. Neither of these terms signifies any connection to rational and critical assessment. The commonly accepted belief regarding the unbridgeable gap that separates the subject from the object does not exist in reality. It appears only if the process of construction is excluded from our conception of knowledge production. We all have an immediate experience of this process. Without it, we would not be able to know anything. It is real and so are its products—new forms of organization of reality represented by new organizations of neurons and neural circuits.

The controversy that has surfaced in connection with Horgan’s book is not accidental. Its source is the worldview held by contemporary science and, specifically, its conception of knowledge production. This conception fails to recognize and embrace the very source of our knowledge—the process of construction that generates reality. Our knowledge production is an integral part of this process. Our capacity to produce knowledge is infinite. This capacity is the most compelling proof against Horgan’s assertion that our scientific quest will come to an end. It is also a convincing proof—in fact, the only definite proof we can have—that reality is infinite because our capacity to shape and reshape it is infinite. We are the agents who have the potential to make reality infinite, and our true destiny as a civilization is to realize this potential.

The controversy that this article originally set out to explore leads to a different set of questions that transcend the boundaries of its original subject. How do we realize our infinite potential for constructing reality? What are the best conditions to sustain and enhance this potential? How will its realization affect our life?

These questions are not new. Many thinkers from the Renaissance through the Enlightenment and down to our own time have asked these questions in one form or another. They were captivated by the power of human thought; many of them devoted their lives and careers to seeking ways in which the power of human intellect could be harnessed for the benefit of humanity. Their visions continue to inspire us in our quest for infinite progress, rationally organized political and social order, economic prosperity, and world without violence and wars. Although these goals remain elusive, the inspiration is enduring. We continue to believe that control over the power of our knowing will open unlimited possibilities for humanity.

C. West Churchman is one of the most important and influential thinkers who pursued this quest in recent times. His book, The Design of Inquiring Systems, is an extensive, insightful, and engaging exploration of various approaches to understanding the production of knowledge and the most efficient ways of organizing this production (Churchman, 1971). It is certainly beyond the scope of this article to provide a detailed and exhaustive examination of Churchman’s ideas—an enterprise that would require a full book-length study. However, it is quite appropriate to engage some of the seminal themes of his works in the following reflections.

The theoretical perspective outlined in this article builds to a significant degree on major themes of Churchman’s heritage. It fully embraces his vision of progressively expanding nested levels and forms of organization that he sees as characteristic for inquiring systems. It is an inclusive vision of a democratic and cooperative process. In this regard, Churchman’s thinking about design of inquiring systems and the way they operate stands in sharp contrast to the prevalent practice in the contemporary scientific community.

As has been shown, the dominant conception of knowledge production in the scientific community does not recognize the role of the process of construction and does not incorporate this process. This failure has several consequences. First of all, without incorporating the process of construction, one cannot see the vital connection that always exists between the subject and the object. The world appears as ontologically divided by an unbridgeable gap. The discord between the realists and the anti-realists that plagues our intellectual community is a result of this division. This discord works against an objective and comprehensive understanding of reality, discourages critical introspection on both sides and ultimately hinders our scientific progress. The overall situation is disorienting for all involved. The failure to recognize the process of construction makes realists oblivious to the impact of subjectivity and leads to frequent uncritical projection of specific theoretical conceptions on reality. Insensitivity to the problem of subjectivity often tempts members of the scientific community to substitute their own theoretical perspective for reality. Claims that external reality fully validates theory merely conceal a triumphant subjectivism clad in the mantle of objectivity. The anti-realists do not fare much better and only add to overall theoretical confusion. Their emphasis on subjectivity merely renders all knowledge relativistic. In their case, reality appears as ultimately inaccessible to human reason. As one can see, both approaches are ultimately not conducive to a successful scientific enterprise.

The problem of validation is another important consequence of the failure to embrace the process of construction. Anti-realists simply dismiss this problem. In their view, all knowledge is relativistic—a view that leads to a facile conclusion that no knowledge is valid. By contrast, realists claim that knowledge can be validated by the reality external to our mind. Their approach also does not solve the problem. Human thought is by far the most powerful form of organization of reality. Because it is the most powerful form, are we justified in using other and much less powerful forms of organization to validate knowledge? The obvious answer is no. The less powerful forms cannot validate more powerful ones. They cannot fully encompass all the possibilities of these forms. Conversely, because of the greater power of symbolic operations, there are no obstacles that can, in principle, prevent establishing correspondence between thought and the reality external to our mind. Scientific theories of the past, such as flat Earth or the geocentric theory of the universe, were perfectly capable of establishing such one-to-one correspondence. Underdetermination also shows that pronouncing any theory to be a unique explanation of empirical data is ultimately a very problematic claim.

Churchman was keenly aware of the problem of validation or what he saw as the problem of the guarantor of the validity of knowledge (Churchman, 1971, pp. 274–75). In his efforts to resolve this problem, Churchman combined the legacy of American pragmatism and the intuition about syncretism of human intelligence that perceived an intimate connection between knowledge, on one hand, and ethical and aesthetic values, on the other. He sought to counter the relativistic implications of pragmatism by associating knowledge production with the pursuit of ideals, both ethical and aesthetic. (Ulrich, 2004). Although this approach opened new and very productive directions in Churchman’s quest, it ultimately has not resolve the problem of subjectivity and relativism. As he soberly acknowledged at the end of The Design of Inquiring Systems, the problem of the relationship between relativism and non-relativism still remained, in his view, the most important philosophical problem of the 20^th century. (Churchman, 276).

Churchman’s most enduring legacy is his profound belief in human capacity to know—a capacity that is infinite and yet one that we can grasp and understand in its totality. He pursued this quest for objective and universal knowledge throughout his intellectual career. The perspective that centers on the process of construction follows up in this quest and seeks to shed new light on the problems of subjectivity, relativism, and objective and universal knowledge that Churchman confronted in his work.

The following observations may be a good starting point in addressing these problems. If, indeed, there is some dimension that allows observing reality in its entirety, we should have access to this dimension precisely because it must be truly universal and must include our activity. Also, if this dimension is truly universal, the knowledge we gain from this dimension should cover all the future forms of organization of reality and not just forms that exist now or have existed in the past. Finally, objectivity and universality requires that knowledge should critically incorporate the process of knowing, that is, the knower, or observer, should be part of knowing/observing.

The most essential characteristic of reality is its dynamic character. Reality never stands still; it constantly evolves, constantly creates new forms. We, humans, are one of the forms of organization of reality, and we are endowed with the same capacity for creating new forms as the rest of reality. Therefore, we do have full access to the most essential dimension of reality.

The past and the present of our universe is the story of the construction of new forms. We have every reason to believe that such continued construction will also be the future of our universe (unless, of course, we destroy ourselves). The fact that we can produce knowledge infinitely and that our knowledge is one of the forms of the organization of reality supports this view. Therefore, through understanding the process of construction, we, in a way, gain some knowledge about all forms that this process can create—past, present and future. We may not know in all details what specific forms this process and we will produce in the future, but, as this article argues, we can know how they will be produced.

Objective and universal knowledge should incorporate the activity of knowing, that is, the process of construction itself. In other words, it should include the observer/knower into the field of observation. However, how can we observe the process of construction and ourselves without entering into infinite regress? Observing the process of construction requires constructing a position from which this process can be observed. What such observational position requires seems impossible: to observe the process of construction, one must construct a position outside this process. However, how can one be outside the process of construction because taking such position also involves construction? How is it possible to be inside and outside the process at the same time? Is not this a contradiction? In other words, can one reflect on the process of construction itself?

As has been pointed out earlier, the process of construction involves regulation. Regulation is essentially a reflective function. The fact that the process of construction is infinite may suggest, as it does to Niklas Luhmann, that there is really no way to reflect on the process of construction because for every reflective position, there will always be a possibility of constructing another one (Luhmann, 1984, p. 479). Every point of reflection can and will be succeeded by another one, no less embedded in the process of observing/constructing than its predecessor. Should one conclude, then, that the problem of the embedded observer/knower cannot be resolved and all that is left is to rely on palliatives, such as Luhmann’s conditioning (Luhmann, 1984, p. 485)?

It is logically correct to regard, as Churchman has, the process of construction itself as a system. Just like any other system, it requires stabilization and, therefore, regulation that offers a possibility of reflection. If the process of construction requires regulation, there must exist a position from which one should be able to reflect on the entire process without at the same time being outside of this process.

As has been indicated earlier, conservation and regulation are at the heart of the process of construction. Conservation of functional operations requires regulation. At its inception, the regulatory operation is unstable. To stabilize itself, it needs its own regulatory operation that marks the inception of a new level of organization that also needs to be stabilized. Thus, the process of construction combines both equilibrium and disequilibrium. Both equilibrium and disequilibrium are dynamically related in the process of construction. An increase in equilibrium, or entropy, on one level of organization leads, at the same time, to an equal increase in disequilibrium, or order, because it generates a new and more powerful level of organization that regulates this level. This conception of the process of construction is in total agreement with the second law of thermodynamics that says that entropy can only be equal or more than zero (see Shkliarevsky, 2011). In the process of construction, the total amount of entropy is always zero as it constantly maintains a balance between equilibrium and disequilibrium.

The repetition of the cycle of construction eventually leads to the improvement of the function of regulation, and the process of construction becomes increasingly more stable, despite constant changes. One can probably best describe this dynamic stability as homeorhesis—the term that was introduced by the biologist Conrad Waddington—rather than homeostasis. Homeorhesis is not a static condition and, as such, requires a stable balance between equilibrium and disequilibrium. This dynamic balance has a function of regulation and, as a regulatory operation, offers a possibility of reflecting on the functioning of the system as a whole (Shkliarevsky, 2007).

The universal knowledge cannot be reduced to any particular product of the process of construction. There are no god particles. The search for a universal knowledge in this direction is utterly futile. Rather, the universal knowledge can only be about the common denominator that underlies all that have emerged, is emerging and will emerge in the future. It involves knowledge of the process of construction itself. This knowledge is not a lifeless abstraction that lies outside our daily experience. On the contrary, it is integrally connected to our life. We just have to know how to look to recognize this fact. Every phenomenon that we encounter is a product of the process of organization in its constant interplay between equilibrium and disequilibrium. Every level of organization of reality is a product of equilibration, and every equilibration creates disequilibrium. Observing reality from the vantage point of this delicate but very stable balance will include in our field of vision not only the particular phenomenon that we are trying to understand but also the knowledge of the universal process that made this and all past, present and future phenomena possible. This conclusion suggests that the current differentiation between epistemology and ontology is purely analytical. As this article suggests, ontology (i.e., what relates to being) and epistemology (i.e., what relates to knowing) are intimately connected because, despite isomorphic differences, the process of construction that underlies reality is structurally the same process that we use in constructing knowledge.

The perspective that incorporates the process of construction offers a different approach towards validating knowledge that is non-exclusive and, at the same time, non-relativistic. As has been indicated earlier, the combinatorial power is what distinguishes one level of organization of reality from another. Therefore, we can use combinatorial power—or in other words, inclusiveness—as the criterion for validating knowledge. The more inclusive a theory is, the greater is its combinatorial capacity and, therefore, the greater is its explanatory power. For example, non-Euclidean geometry includes Euclidean geometry as its particular case with the curvature equal to zero. Therefore, non-Euclidean geometry has greater explanatory power. It can operate with both flat and curved space.

This approach to validation demonstrates a vital aspect of knowledge production that resonates with Churchman’s view of cascading inquiring systems. Knowledge production is ultimately inclusive. Old theories are not discarded as a result of the adoption of new theories; preceding levels of organization are not obliterated as new ones emerge. On the contrary, old theoretical perspectives and their levels of organization are conserved in new and more comprehensive constructions. They merely become a particular case of a broader and more inclusive perspective. It is also a profoundly democratic approach. All knowledge is part of our quest, and no knowledge should be excluded. Legitimate disagreements should not trigger power struggle where one perspective seeks to de-legitimate and obliterate another. Rather, they should motivate a search for another, more inclusive and even orthogonal perspective that would dissolve the dissonance into a new harmony.

Such approach stands in stark contrast to the dominant current practice of knowledge production that tends to be exclusive. Dominant theoretical perspectives seek to silence alternatives. Control over funding, exposure, publishing and academic appointments provides ample opportunities to enforce orthodoxy. More often than not, knowledge production turns into an exercise of power.

The driving force in this exercise of power is fear. The exclusion of the process of construction from our conception of knowledge production often leads to uncritical projection of specific subjective interpretations on reality. Such uncritical projections foster an institutionally supported and proliferated illusion in which a particular theoretical perspective stands for the actual reality. Alternatives that compete with accepted standard models get little consideration or exposure. Research programs that choose to focus on other than mainstream approaches are not particularly high on the list of projects that receive funding.

Fetishization and absolutization of specific constructs is among some of the most adverse effects of the conception of knowledge production that excludes the process of construction. A limited one-sided consciousness impaired by this exclusion takes its own projections for a true reality. As the process of construction evolves and new forms and levels of organization of knowledge emerge, such consciousness experiences this legitimate process as a loss of reality.

There are few traumatic experiences that can compare to losing one’s ability to understand and interpret reality. For a consciousness that undergoes this experience, reality becomes a void, an abyss devoid of any meaning; or worse, filled with negative meaning. In words of Shakespeare, ‘time comes out of joints’. Such consciousness develops a sense of disorientation, confusion and fear. To make things worse, its capacity to cope with this condition is severely limited to only one cognitive operation—assimilation. Such consciousness is incapable of critically examining itself; it simply cannot see internal sources of its predicament. Rather, it takes an easier approach: it rejects the challengers and uses power to silence them. Thomas Kuhn has discerned the disruptive effects of such conflicts in his Structure of Scientific Revolution (Kuhn, 1970).

There is no rational justification for resistance to new forms and levels of organization. These changes do not destroy the old forms. They conserve them in broader and more comprehensive visions. When old forms are subject to pressure of change, we are not losing reality. On the contrary, it is precisely during these transitional moments that we experience the most direct and most intimate contact with the ultimate reality—the process of construction. The focus on the process of construction helps to understand that it is this process, its constant and unimpeded evolution, and not the specific forms it creates, that we should view as the only true and desirable product of our efforts.

The perspective that embraces the process of construction also recognizes, as Churchman has, the essential and necessary syncretism of all human mental activities—a profound connection between our capacity to create knowledge and our aesthetic and ethical values. Gratification of our functions is the source of pleasure and contentment. When we perform our essential functions—visual, audio, gustatory, tactile, and others—we exercise these functions and experience pleasure. A familiar face activates mental operations in the mind of a child. Exercising these mental operations gratifies and conserves these operations, and the child experiences a sense of pleasure and contentment, as he or she does when seeing a familiar face of the mother.

Construction of knowledge is the most essential human function. All humans are capable of performing this profoundly creative act. The fact that we all become conscious beings by the end of the first year of our lives is a compelling proof of this capacity. It is hard to overestimate the magnitude of this creative transformation. Nothing that we humans have or will accomplish—no theory of relativity or quantum mechanics— will ever exceed in its significance this act of creation. When we construct knowledge and perform acts of creation, we exercise our most essential human functions and, as a result, we, experience pleasure and contentment. It is this pleasure and gratification conferred by the act of creation that is the source of enjoyment that we associate with aesthetic value.

Construction of knowledge involves two basic operations—assimilation and adaptation. Assimilation is an operation that incorporates objects of reality into internal functional schemata of the organism. This operation reduces the multiple and diverse world to the internal functions of the organism. It is, to be sure, a violent operation that essentially denies any autonomy to the reality external to the organism. Devouring of one organism by another is a good example of this operation.

By contrast, adaptation adjusts internal functions of an organism to reality. Recognition of autonomy of the reality external to the organism is essential in this operation. Such recognition is the basis for the development of moral sentiment that grants autonomy and agency to other human beings in our moral universe. Thus, our capacity for constructing knowledge, that is, exercising both assimilation and adaptation, is closely related to our ability to function as moral beings in our universe. Piaget has noted this connection in his book The Moral Judgment of the Child (Piaget, 1965). His remark that ‘Logic is the morality of thought just as morality is the logic of human action’ is a poignant affirmation of the essential connection between knowledge and morality (Nicolopoulou and Weintraub, 1998, p. 222). We cannot get an objective view of reality if we insist on viewing reality on our terms, rather than on its own. Objective knowledge requires granting the same autonomy to reality and its objects that we grant to ourselves and others in our moral universe.

Our civilization firmly holds on to an inspiring belief that knowledge is the key to ensuring unimpeded progress, rational political order, economic prosperity, judicious use of natural resources and a world free of wars and violence (see, e.g., Banathy, 2000; McIntyre-Mills, 2010; McIntyre-Mills and De Vries, 2011). Both Churchman and Piaget, among many other thinkers, fully grasped the importance of understanding knowledge production for achieving these goals. By combining systems thinking with the constructivist approach, the perspective outlined in this paper largely builds on their legacy. Much has been carried out to understand the specific aspects of the process of construction, including works by this author (Shkliarevsky, 2007, 2008, 2010, 2011), but much still has to be learned. It is the hope of this author to contribute to further exploration of this important subject.

This paper has shown that the problem raised by Horgan in his book is not a fortuitous one. It is not due to ignorance, obscurantism or some insidious agenda. It is deeply rooted in the views on knowledge production, the relationship between subject and object, and our relation to reality—in a word, the philosophical worldview held by modern science. The resolution of this problem requires a critical rethinking of this worldview. This paper suggested some ways in which this worldview can be revised.

Fundamental revisions are not easy and are often resisted. There is a reason for such resistance. Conservation plays a crucial role in the process of construction. However, conservation inevitably requires regulation, and regulation leads to the emergence of new levels of organization. This process works in the universe, and it works in the world of man. We are its practitioners, and our creativity over the entire period of human history is a vivid testimony to this fact. This process has profoundly shaped our civilization and us. Our intimate relation to this process compels us to understand it. Such understanding will help us to practice it more efficiently and with fewer losses. However, most importantly, it will help us embrace our true destiny in shaping and reshaping reality in our infinite quest for knowledge.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to thank the two anonymous external reviewers for their engaged reading of the original draft, their provocative questioning of my ideas, and their most useful suggestions for revision. Their contribution has helped me a great deal to clarify my own thinking. This experience has been a wonderful example of cooperative and collaborative enterprise that one should expect from the community of the “republic of equals”.

 

1. For reasons of convenience and economy, I provide a slightly abridged verbatim version.
2. In philosophy of science, dualism often refers to the dichotomy between the ‘subject’ (the observer) and the ‘object’ (the observed). Criticism of Western science may label this kind of dualism as a flaw in the nature of science itself.

 

Link: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/sres.2127/full

 

Creating a Godless Community: The Collective Identity Work of Contemporary American Atheists

Author: Jesse M. Smith^* | Article first published online: 1 MAR 2013 | DOI: 10.1111/jssr.12009

 

How to Cite

Smith, J. M. (2013), Creating a Godless Community: The Collective Identity Work of Contemporary American Atheists. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 52: 80–99. doi: 10.1111/jssr.12009

Author Information

1. Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder

^*Correspondence should be addressed to Jesse M. Smith, Department of Sociology, University of Colorado at Boulder, UCB 327, Boulder, CO 80309, USA. E-mail: jesse.m.smith@colorado.edu

Publication History                      

1. Issue published online: 1 MAR 2013
2. Article first published online: 1 MAR 2013

 

Abstract

Based on 45 in-depth interviews, textual analysis, and participant observation with seven different atheist organizations, this article investigates the collective identity work of atheists in the United States. It explores the social psychological and interactional dynamics of atheist organizations as well as how they contribute to the construction and maintenance of atheist identities. I discuss the various strategies atheists employ as they collectively manage a stigmatized identity and negotiate the meaning of their atheism with one another and with the nonatheist public. This is accomplished in part through an analysis of the identity politics and minority discourse contemporary atheists currently engage. In addition, and more broadly, this study explores the relationship between collective identity and social action through an analysis and description of contemporary atheist activism.

 

Introduction

There have been atheists in this country since its inception, but an expressed atheist presence in U.S. society has never been anything other than a very small minority. And despite the pervasiveness of theism, and the historical importance of religion in America, there have for some time existed organizations that instead proffer a secular and/or godless worldview. For instance, secular/humanist groups such as the American Humanist Association have existed since the early 1940s. But with the exception of the American Atheists, founded by Madalyn Murray O’Hair in 1963, only within the last decade have explicitly atheist groups all across the country proliferated and become conspicuous. These groups have become increasingly interconnected, and an expanding network—an American atheist community—is developing a more recognizable place in American culture. The Internet and new social media have facilitated much of this expansion. But the new atheist community is not merely an online or virtual one. Granted, much of the atheist conversation indeed takes place online (Smith and Cimino 2012), but like other groups and movements, the Internet and social media have also mobilized individuals and created active “concrete” communities. Indeed, the 2012 “Woodstock for Atheists,” where tens of thousands of atheists (the largest gathering in U.S. history) descended on the National Mall, underscores this reality. Increasing numbers of people joining atheist groups and engaging in atheist activism suggests a grassroots atheist mobilization.

This research examines the development of a community—via the organizing principles of identity and meaning—that stands outside the American symbolic and moral structures traditionally suffused with theism. It examines the relationship between collective identity and social action. Thus, investigating the collective identity work of atheists will add to the broader understanding of the processes of formation, negotiation, and maintenance of contemporary social groups at the margins. Atheists in the United States constitute an especially salient example, particularly useful toward this end, because unlike other minority groups, atheists are viewed as not only differing in some way from the rest of society, but as having rejected what many Americans consider the very foundation of a moral and functioning society: belief in God. And as scholars have only recently begun to respond, in a focused way, to the admonition put forth by Campbell (1972) over 40 years ago that the study of irreligion should be of sociological concern, and that doing so will yield analytical fruit, the present study is intended to meaningfully contribute to this response.

 

Background

Surveys vary on their estimates of adult atheists in the United States. The American Religious Identification Survey (2009) reports less than 1 percent, whereas the World Values Survey (2005) reports over 4 percent. According to these surveys, there are anywhere from 1.6 million to nearly 13 million atheists. Either way, this represents noticeable growth considering only a few decades ago the number of self-identified atheists was in the low hundreds-of-thousands nationwide. But the discrepancy in the estimates reflects deeper difficulties in tallying the number of actual atheists. In part, this stems from an inconsistency between the technical meaning of atheism—the absence of belief in a god¹—and other identities (freethinker, agnostic, naturalist, nontheist, etc.) that may not carry the same connotations. Difficulties also arise in assessing whether growth in the number of atheists reflects more willingness on the part of the already unbelieving public to use the label, or actual growth in the numbers of those who do not believe in God. It also seems plausible that surveys are not capturing the actual numbers of atheists, as there may be more adults in the general population who hold no belief in a god (technically atheist), but do not self-identify, or report, their atheism.

Irrespective of the “true” current number, atheists have become increasingly visible in the media, and have gained influence—if only incremental—in the public and political sphere. Though still a marginalized and dismissed group in many ways, the atheist community enjoys an emerging sense of broader legitimacy and collective solidarity that did not previously exist. “New atheist movement” has been in use since at least 2007, when Wired magazine ran an article using the phrase. Although part of my analysis is framed within the social movement literature,² whether or not the growing atheist community constitutes a veritable social movement is not the central concern of this article. Rather, this study is concerned with the construction of collective identity and meaning, and their relationship with collective action. However, there is little reason to doubt that organized atheism in the United States today has more saliently defined social and symbolic boundaries and social/political goals, and there is strong evidence that it has developed a more distinct politicized group identity—both at least elements of the concept of social movements. As the mission statement of the Atheist Alliance of America puts it: “[Our] vision is to transform society into one that understands and respects atheism; that supports and respects a worldview based on the values of reason, empiricism and naturalism; and that respects and protects the separation of religion and government and the constitutional and human rights of atheists as members of society in free, democratic and open nations” (2011). This statement is characteristic of many atheist organizations, and almost without exception, organized atheism in America today is oriented toward these sociopolitical ends.

Various definitions of collective identity have been proffered over the years (see Melucci 1995; Snow 2001; Taylor and Whittier 1992). The concept has found itself useful in cohering disparate theoretical frameworks such as structuralist accounts of social action and rational choice theories of group participation (Friedman and McAdam 1992); it is of strong import in the constructivist paradigm (Melucci 1995); and as mentioned, the usefulness of collective identity as a conceptual tool in the analysis of social movements has become well established. Beyond this, the concept of collective identity is studied in its own right, and it represents an important part of the analytical repertoire for understanding social meaning and action more broadly. As scholars have shifted focus from the structural and material dimensions of social action and movements toward more thorough treatment of the issues surrounding identity generally, our scholarly understanding of the micro, social psychological, and interpretive processes underlying social action has deepened. Scholars generally agree that collective identity is essential for understanding these processes, and that at base, the concept refers to “the shared definition of a group that derives from members’ common interests, experience, and solidarity” (Taylor and Whittier 1992:105), as well as “a shared and interactive sense of “we-ness” and “collective agency” (Snow 2001:1). Even more simply, collective identity is “a public pronouncement of status” (Friedman and McAdam 1992)—a way of indicating to self and others some meaningful identity. But it is also important not to overly abstract the concept. As Polletta and Jasper offer: “collective identity [is] an individual’s cognitive, moral, and emotional connection with a broader community, category, practice, or institution” (2001:285). Collective identity is thus a concept with empirical grounding.

The scholarship on collective identity most recently has highlighted its socially constructed nature. Taking from this my analytical point of departure, I employ the constructionist approach in analyzing the collective identity work of atheists. In this view, collective identity is not something a priori to collective action. Nor is it something that by itself explains collective action. Rather, collective identity, like other forms of identity, is constructed in and through the ongoing dynamics of social action as it is played out, in real time, in the social arena. As Snow notes: “collective identity is a process, rather than a property of social actors” (2001:4). It highlights the importance of meaning, consciousness, and the subjective in the discussion of what propels collective action and how it operates in the course of every day social life.

Although qualitative work on atheists remains in the beginning stages, the last few years have produced several studies in pursuit of understanding the sociodemographic correlates of atheism (Baker and Smith 2009; Cragun, Hammer, and Smith ); the social and moral boundaries between atheists and theists (Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann 2006); the personal identity development of atheists (Smith 2011); how atheists negotiate their identities (Fitzgerald 2003); and how atheists relate to religious family and communities (Ecklund and Lee 2011). Some sociological analyses examine the organizational strategies of atheists (Cimino and Smith 2007). But no extant qualitative study describes the collective identity processes of atheists—that is, how they go about constructing a shared understanding of themselves and how this relates to the collective action(s) of the growing atheist community.

Closely connected to collective identity conceptually, and empirically connected by way of formation and process, is the notion of identity work. In a now classic statement, Snow and Anderson define identity work as a generic process that refers to “the range of activities individuals engage in to create, present, and sustain personal identities that are congruent with and supportive of the self-concept (1987:1348). Although they focused on personal identity, I add to this literature by discussing how identity work functions within collective identity. Taking insights from each of these concepts, combined with the broader conceptual framework of the socially constructed nature of collective identity and action, is the basis of the following analysis. I explore the processes of collective identity construction and how contemporary American atheists are building an active community. I begin with a discussion of the methods used in the study before offering an analysis of the collective identity work of atheists by way of two generic conceptual categories, “seeking community” and “seeking change.” Within these, I describe and discuss how atheists collectively define themselves, offer support to one another, challenge and compete with religion through identity politics, and engage in social activism.

 

Methods

This article draws on data collected as part of a broader project on atheist identity. I employ a combination of qualitative methods including participant observation, in-depth interviews, and interpretive and textual analysis of various kinds of documentation. During multiyear fieldwork with seven different atheist groups in Colorado and Texas, I participated in dozens of atheist functions including small local group meetings, larger conferences and workshops, volunteer work activities, sites of atheist activism, formal debates, informal socials, and a national atheist convention. The interview sample consists of 22 males and 23 females between the ages of 18 and 74. The majority of respondents were white (n = 42) and highly educated (38 had a bachelor’s degree or beyond; see the Appendix for further demographic information). Interviews lasted between one and two hours. All participants self-identified as atheists, most were recruited by solicitation at atheist functions, and several were recruited in a snowball sampling fashion. Thus, this study is based on—and can only make an argument about—atheists who organize.

Semi-structured, yet open and conversational-style, interviews allowed participants to speak freely about the issues important to them while still addressing the basic concerns of the research. I digitally recorded and transcribed all interviews. I disclosed my role as a researcher to everyone I interviewed, and left them with contact information so they could follow up with me later if they chose. After transcribing all interviews, I used a combination of line-by-line and focused coding to begin the analysis (Emerson 2001). I also kept detailed field notes throughout the research. I identified patterns in both the interview and field note data, made and elaborated on conceptual connections, and sorted the data by dominant themes.

Finally, a substantial aspect of the data collection for this article comes from other document sources. From 2008 on, after connecting with several atheist groups, joining e-mail lists, visiting dozens of atheist websites, subscribing to popular atheist/secular magazines, and engaging with various social media, I collected a large body of relevant textual data. These data include 700+ e-mail, blog, and message board communications between atheists from six different atheist organizations. I also followed news and the general discourse regarding atheism from various online and print newspapers, magazines, and social media sources. I printed, reviewed, and coded all of the relevant documentation for analysis. I constructed my argument after carefully sifting through all the textual data and comparing them with the interview and participant observation data I had obtained in the field.

Consistent with much qualitative research of this kind, I took an inductive and grounded theory approach in analyzing the data (Charmaz 2001). I developed the concepts and arguments below out of the empirical data collected throughout the research process. Rather than narrowing in only on the data that supported what was becoming salient in the analysis, I also scrutinized any countervailing evidence or other kinds of information that did not seem to “fit” properly within the developing analysis. As qualitative, interview-based research, this study has limited generalizability. However, given the depth of the data collected, the national representation of atheists in parts of the research setting, and the analysis of documentation that extends well beyond the regional setting of the fieldwork, the forthcoming analysis is nevertheless suggestive of the broader collective identity processes of the organized atheist community at large.

 

The Collective Identity Work of Atheists

Although millions of Americans do not believe in the existence of a god, this nonbelief itself does not imply a need to join a community of nonbelievers, or even to identify with one of the many terms associated with nonbelief. Nevertheless, evidence suggests the atheist community is becoming more member-based. Despite oft repeated sentiments (often by atheists themselves) along the lines of “organizing atheists is like herding cats,” accumulating evidence suggests atheists can, and are, organizing themselves—and doing so with some measure of success. The diffusion and disorganization that has characterized atheists appears increasingly to be something of the past. This means the theoretical import of collective identity work is now more significant and meaningful in terms of the need for better conceptualization and broader understanding of the atheist community.

Seeking Community: Identity and Group Consciousness

Social media have played an important role in the growth and development of the atheist community over the last decade. Local groups can now connect and work more effectively toward growing their membership. Much of the effort in creating a more vibrant atheist community, both online and off, has revolved around appealing to the perceived scores of atheists who are already out there, but who are not yet “out” or involved in the community. The phrase “seeking community” is particularly apt in the case of atheists because activists have focused on drawing out and mobilizing nonbelievers already present in society. Atheists, sometimes lamenting the organizational strengths of their religious counterparts, invest work in building an active community by rallying and organizing an already extant constituency by encouraging closeted atheists to come out.

But there are reasons for a nonbeliever to avoid referring to himself or herself as an atheist, let alone join official groups. Avoiding identification with atheism primarily has to do with its deviant and stigmatized status in American culture. Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartman (2006) discuss how atheists in the United States are viewed as an essential other—an undesirable or even evil threat to the basic moral order. It is not surprising then, as Cragun, Hammer, and Smith (forthcoming) recently observed, that this attitude sometimes results in discrimination against atheists. Given that the public’s distrust of atheists is even more salient than their distrust of almost any other minority group, it is not surprising that a nonbeliever would resist the label “atheist.” But these are the people who the organizing atheist community is attempting to bring into their ranks. This often involves organizers declaring that there is indeed a community of atheists out there and that they are poised to offer a supportive social structure to those that desire it.

Atheist Awareness and Identity Support

The American chapter of the “Out Campaign,”³ sponsored by the Richard Dawkins Foundation, is a notable example of these kinds of efforts. An appeal to the public as outlined on the Foundation’s website reads: “Come Out: Atheists are far more numerous than most people realize. COME OUT of the closet! You’ll feel liberated, and your example will encourage others to COME OUT too … Reach Out: … let others know they are not alone” (Richard Dawkins Foundation 2011). Such pronouncements are not put forward only by high-profile public atheists. One local organizer of a small Colorado group remarks plainly: “For people who are closeted nonbelievers, we just want them to know there are other people out there who think the same way they do.” Comments from ordinary atheists often reflect the implication made by the Out Campaign that there are many more atheists out there than is realized—they just need to become more aware of each other. As one blogger remarked: “There are more of us out there than there are of many other minority groups that get specific recognition, yet people often seem to think we are practically nonexistent.” Likewise, the recent atheist billboard and bus campaigns made similar appeals to closeted atheists. One leader remarked on the purpose of a project he was involved in: “The single major goal of this billboard project is to reach out to the 450,000 citizens of Colorado (10 percent of the total population) who don’t believe in god and are feeling isolated and marginalized.”

The implication that atheism is accompanied by isolation and social marginalization is also apparent in the comments of “everyday” atheists; as Amy⁴ remarks in an online posting: “Many atheists are alone, like flying a glider solo. We take responsibility for our actions and stand on our own two feet … we do not have the support of religion [or] the promise of life after death.” The suggestion that atheists, lacking the social benefits, inclusion, and the ready-made answers to existential questions that religion provides, and who are thus compelled to “make it on their own,” signifies the sentiments of many of the atheists I encountered. The rhetoric of isolation and the feelings of “flying solo” are important for both incentivizing the building of an atheist community, and for sharing a distinct sense of collective experience.

Groups across the country have advertised on billboards and the sides of buses with statements such as “Don’t Believe in God: You are Not Alone” and “No God, No Problem: Be Good for Goodness Sake.” These visible public space messages, in addition to attracting media attention and rousing controversy, appear to have had some intended effect. Cynthia’s comments to a local organizer reflect the sentiments of some reached by the campaign: “I saw your billboard just down the street from where I currently live. It really encouraged me, I have been alone for so long surrounded by my Christian family.” How many responded to the awareness campaign by joining groups is difficult to assess. One California group reported that the billboard effort gained them 60 new members in just one month. But regardless of actual member growth, these efforts had the effect of heightening the collective awareness of the atheist community. Although some simply joined after learning about the existence of a local group, most were drawn in not merely by dint of learning there were “like-minded” individuals getting together in their communities, but after being persuaded by the strategies of organizers. These strategies, discussed below, are characteristic of social movements, and promote collective identity. But as Friedman and McAdam (1992) note, collective identities and movements are not created from scratch or because isolated individuals simply choose to identify with and join them. Rather, they typically come embedded in existing social arrangements that incorporate other valued identities and orientations. This means atheist groups have had to employ a variety of identity incentives in order to grow. Indeed, I found organizers rarely incentivize participation in the community by appealing only to the shared attribute of absence of belief in God. Instead, the positive social values of freethinking, scientific progress, social justice and equality, charity, and issues of citizenship appear in the rhetoric of recruiters. Websites typically make statements similar to this one from a Colorado group: “We value and promote science, reason, and critical thinking.… We hold that beliefs must be formed on the basis of science and logic instead of emotion, authority, tradition or dogma.” Naturalistic and scientific worldviews and humanistic values are either made explicit, or strongly implied, in much atheist discourse. This is also apparent in the conversations atheists have with one another. In some cases, atheism is even viewed as incidental to—although most compatible with—science and humanist values. As Steve, a 27-year-old I met at a group social tellingly remarked when asked about his views on religion: “I really consider myself more pro-science than I do antireligious. It’s only when religion tries to influence or block scientific progress that I become angry about it.” From our conversation, it became clear that the atheist group was for Steve primarily a venue for advocating science and reason, and only partly about joining others in their nonbelief. Thus, organized atheism is not merely the coalescence of individuals around a single issue: their lack of belief in a god. Rather, it tends to involve and imply a host of other social and political issues, and other goal/value-oriented activities. These social goods, and the individual benefits offered by atheist groups, are readily apparent in the language of both the public campaigns, and in the conversations of atheists.

Although atheists cannot employ any clear institutional structure or set of “preexisting solidarities” (Polleta and Jasper 2001) to motivate participation,⁵ a focus on science, education, rationality, evidence-based thinking, and other basic Enlightenment values clearly form part of the rhetorical repertoire through which they make their appeals—appeals that figure heavily in the “identity framing” strategies discussed by social movement scholars. People distill these values by referring to individuals of historical/cultural import whom they think embody or represent them. For instance, many local meetings include presentations that highlight prominent scientists, authors, philanthropists, and other cultural elite (past or present) who are atheists, and who are generally viewed by the public as having positively contributed to society. The point here is that when an individual joins an atheist group, he or she is often affirming other pro-social, normative, and socially desirable identities and values that are consistent with that of the broader culture. This represents one way that the collective efforts of atheists focus on influencing the public’s view of them. The affirmation of pro-social and mainstream values is part of the identity “framing” processes (Snow and McAdam 2000) of social groups. That is, organizations must effectively link with the personal meaning structures and value orientations of individuals in order to survive and succeed. As atheists collectivize and coordinate, the values, motives, and goals they share come to reflexively “act back” on the growing collectivity, eventually providing an organizational and interpretive framework that will help to set the parameters for future participants.

Structural and network explanations of why people join particular groups or movements ultimately locate the causes as being outside the individual (Friedman and McAdam 1992). Regional, structural, and status positions are important influences in the identity groups with which people come to affiliate. These explanations are relevant to atheists given the fact that where one lives, what social positions one comes to occupy (e.g., vocational and educational statuses), and what a person’s social background was like generally will play a role in one’s group affiliations. These factors, along with the social and demographic correlates of atheism, are discussed at length elsewhere (see Cragun, Hammer, and Smith 2012). However, the micro and personal meaning structures, and the desire of individuals to carve out meaningful self-concepts from the expanding alternative identity options available to them, are at least equally important for explaining movement participation and group belonging as are the structural factors. Although the appeals to the atheist public, and the specific strategies of recruitment used to bring in new members are clearly relevant, these do not by themselves explain the basic social psychological processes or reasons for the emergence of—and individual participation in—an atheist community. Development of this community has less to do with people being convinced by organizers that they should join “the fight for reason” than with the processes involved in individuals’ value orientations, self-concepts, motivations, and need for group solidarity and meaning. Here, the spoiled identity thesis and the identity verification argument provide useful insights (see Snow and McAdam 2000). The spoiled identity thesis holds that personal identities that correspond to stigmatized categories encourage people to seek out and participate in social groups that challenge the mainstream’s negative view of the group. An integral part of this process is what the verification thesis underscores: that these social groups in turn become an important source of identity validation; a supportive structure and identity resource from which individuals can rework their stigmatized personal identities (or potentially stigmatized for those who are not “out”) into something that becomes more stable, concrete, and improves the self-concept through the legitimizing forces of group participation.

Sean, a man in his 60s, in talking about the negative views toward unbelievers, discussed in an interview why he joined a group several years ago. His comments illustrate the importance of belonging: “[I needed] a group that supported rational thought. It’s a social outlet, a church for people who don’t go to church [laughs]. I wanted to be with those who think the way I do. It’s more comfortable … it’s kind of like a support group.” Similarly, Tim, a man in his early 20s who had moved to a very conservative town in Colorado after serving in the military remarked: “Before the group, I was pretty lonely out here. I needed a freethinking community.… I moved here and realized that I needed some support and some new friends. I was feeling uncomfortable in this very theist community.” Many echoed the idea that they received encouragement and felt more comfortable with their atheism after joining a group.

Sometimes, joining a group involves a more dramatic experience. Darren, a man in his 50s, and a former Catholic who experienced abuse by his religious leaders, shared his experience with me: “one day, I came across a copy of Freethought Today. It had an article about ‘Black Collar Crime’ and it talked about the abuse of children in the Catholic Church. And it was the first time … that I’d ever heard honest discussion about the problem.” After this experience, he immediately sought out atheist and secular groups. Several others discussed how they sought out groups, in part, as a means of escaping the religious organizations they grew up with. In this light, the notion of an atheist group as a “support group” for “ex-believers” or as a place where, as one atheist remarked, one could “recover from religion” seems to carry some weight. Many meetings involve people sharing their stories of how they came to identify as an atheist. Group members draw intellectual and emotional support from one another, validate each other’s nonbelief, and encourage one another to be more assertive about their views.

 

Defining “We” and Shared Expressive Atheism

Much like the self-described heathens Snook (2008) studied in her examination of the identity work and community dynamics of neopaganism, atheists put significant work into discussing, defining, and negotiating just what it means to be an atheist. In fact, I discovered a substantial amount of time both in online conversations, and group gatherings, is consumed by a (sometimes contentious) back-and-forth on the meaning of atheism itself. Consider the following from online exchanges between members of several different groups, “I think most people think atheism is the belief that there is no god. That is incorrect. Atheism is simply the lack of belief in god(s). Atheism is not a belief. Atheism is not a religion or a philosophy. It’s just the absence of a belief in theism.” Contrast with this: “People think that atheism is a lack of belief. They are wrong. Atheism is a belief. It is belief in philosophy and science as opposed to religion…. It seeks to define right from wrong through philosophy (ethics) rather than vague notions and unfounded rules.” Having sifted through extensive correspondence, I found these comments represent reasonably well an important identity conversation that is taking place in the atheist community.

Thus, even atheists themselves do not uniformly agree on the meaning of atheism. The collective work of defining atheism constitutes an important part of the active and ongoing negotiation of not just the meaning of the word, but also the meaning of what and who atheists are collectively. This raises the question of how collective identity becomes possible without consensus even on the meaning of atheism itself. Ironically, the underscoring of difference can result in this sense of “we.” As Hunsberger and Altemeyer (2006) found, atheists tend to place high value on autonomous critical thought. But this is not just an abstract value for many atheists; it is a product of biography, narrative, and interaction. As Smith (2011) found, atheists tend to perceive their atheism as the result of critical assessment and independence of thought. This is especially the case for atheists who have undergone a deconversion process and who had to struggle with their own religions of origin and former faiths. Indeed, as the Pew Forum’s recent “U.S. Religious Knowledge Survey” (2010) shows, atheists ranked highest in terms of general knowledge of religion—suggesting that those who come to identify as atheists have spent more time than others in learning about religion and analyzing its claims. This individual penchant for the narrative of critical free thought becomes a valued collective end. One participant sums up the views of many, “I’m a member of many atheist organizations. It has been increasingly obvious that atheists are not of like minds. Sure they may feel that they want to be around people who don’t have a belief in a god, but that is such a small part of what makes a relationship.… Atheists come from all walks of life.” These atheists consider themselves autonomous, freethinking, and independent-minded. But scholars have recently examined the values, beliefs, attitudes, and social characteristics of atheists and other secularists and we know from such research that atheists in the United States do share many sociodemographic and ideological characteristics (see Pasquale 2012 for an informative account of the sociodemographic similarities, as well as the diversity found within secular and atheist groups). For instance, Baker and Smith (2009) show that atheists are more likely to be young, educated, single, and politically liberal. Variables such as living in a city versus rural areas can be important predictors as well (Hunter 2010). But these atheists tended to overlook such social patterns and instead focused on difference. It is in part this shared focus on difference itself that somewhat counterintuitively acts as a means of uniting and organizing atheists. The common narrative of individualism and difference lends itself to a shared sense of experience and identity.

It is not only the perception of uniqueness and individual difference—consistent with what social psychologists refer to as personal identity—that atheists have in common. In addition to the collective narrative of difference, broad consensus exists among these atheists regarding their overall naturalistic worldview. When asked by a national secular group what “fundamentals” atheists share, one atheist responded, “I’d definitely say that the phrase ‘Love of Life’ is a standard thing among atheists, which is ironically contrary to what many believers think about us. Also, [we have] ‘knowledge,’ ‘understanding’ and a strong sense of innate ethics.” Though other answers to this question were more or less elaborate, each tended to coalesce around this basic idea; that atheists are life-affirming, informed citizens, with a strong sense of morality. But if this quotation seems more sentiment than statement of verified fact (as we can no more say with certainty that these qualities are “a standard thing” among theists), this is not coincidental. The necessity of shared positive affect for the collective identity construction of any social group has been observed. As Polletta and Jasper (2001) argues, collective identity is not only an individual’s cognitive connection and shared sense of identity with a group or community; it involves both moral and emotional connections as well. In fact, as Snow (2001) states, only when a social group is activated or “infused” with a shared sense of affectivity and morality can it properly be termed a collective identity.

The everyday interactions and communications of atheists with one other reveal their development of affective bonds. Facilitated especially by social media and networking, more atheists are getting together in their communities. No longer is it the case as it was just under two decades ago that small groups met with each other once a month in a public library or other rented space. Today, the atheist community landscape of activity includes both formal and informal weekly socials, atheist camping excursions, “godless drinking” at local bars, science museum field trips, atheist parenting workshops, debates, winter solstice parties, kids’ “skeptic retreats,” atheist concert events, atheist blood drives, book clubs, science education events, flying spaghetti monster socials, and even “atheist skydiving.” Such activities of course go well beyond the “topic” of atheism. These gatherings are more about creating community and enjoying solidarity through social activity. Atheists are increasingly constructing the affective bonds so central to collective identities and forming the “emotional communities” (Hetherington 1998) that foster solidarity and facilitate collective action. This is revealed in the somewhat jocund practice of sharing pithy quotes online with one another that poke fun at religion or in some way imply the virtues of atheism: “Give a man a fish, and you’ll feed him for a day; give him a religion, and he’ll starve to death while praying for a fish!” Or, “Good luck and God Less!” This relatively low-cost form of emotive expression has the immediate “microvalidation” effect of tightening the social and affective bonds between atheists and encouraging further on and offline interaction, as well as the less immediately apparent result of facilitating atheist solidarity at the community and organizational level over time.

The affective bonds forged by atheists come about not just through the exchange of quips. Nor are they effective without a broader social context and “atheist experience” from which to draw upon. As Melucci (1995) has stressed, affective ties and collective emotive forces are only possible in the context of a broader interpretive field of social meaning, and the symbolic, cultural/material resources that are forged out of interaction itself. These resources then, in a reflexive manner, become available to their participants to draw from as they continue to collectively construct themselves and negotiate community. The “content” of an atheist collective identity is thus revealed by the employment of these resources. Polletta puts it plainly: “collective identities are expressed in cultural [and symbolic] materials—names, narratives, symbols, verbal styles, rituals, clothing and so on.” (2001:285).

Collective atheist identity is expressed through a variety of these cultural/symbolic materials. Not surprisingly, atheist writings, symbols, clothing, and other materials have grown in number and popularity commensurate with the growing community itself. On Richard Dawkins’s website alone, one can purchase almost any of the items typically offered to consumers by organizations and their “brands”—from atheist t-shirts, to jewelry, to coffee mugs and key chains. These materials are more than just things purchased for personal enjoyment; they become identity markers, or “badges” that announce a personally valued attribute, and make sometimes bold statements to others about who a person is (Gardner 1995:3). The popular “scarlet letter: ‘A’” for instance, printed on all kinds of products, is one of the more recognizable atheist symbols (the result of atheists across the nation submitting ideas for an international atheist symbol). Although consistent with the concerns of individualism discussed earlier, these atheist cultural/symbolic materials are not only expressions of personal identities, or idiosyncratic penchants. They are of collective concern and express collective identity in that, in addition to showing solidarity as a member of a broader atheist community (or seeking controversy with those outside the community), they can be used with the intention of accomplishing strategic and collective goals. John, a local organizer who was producing his own atheist merchandise, remarked: “The goal with my shirt and [atheist] design were not to scream atheism or bash religion, but instead to serve as a curious stimulus that could help start a simple dialogue with someone open to it. The shirts could also help increase outreach to other closet atheists who don’t know about our group.” And member Stephanie agrees that these symbolic identity markers can be useful tools for the atheist community in obtaining specified objectives: “We have to be conspicuous in public in a nonconfrontational way. This means to roam around in public acting like everyone else, but wearing something that identifies you as an atheist. The problem is that most believers don’t know any atheists in public so they don’t have any way of realizing that we aren’t any different from them.”

Of course, not every atheist would agree to “roam around” donning overt “atheist signifiers” or even agree in principle to the idea of distinguishing themselves in any way with atheist symbols. However, as members would like to see atheism become more socially acceptable, and demonstrate to the public that there is indeed a community of atheists in this country, and that this community is not a threat to American life, this is generally viewed as a goal worth collectively pursuing by a variety of means.

Another important aspect of collective identity production includes written materials that express and advocate an atheist perspective. In addition to local efforts, there have been recent forays into formal transnational declarations meant to represent entire nonbelieving segments of democratic nations. For example, the 2010 World Atheist Conference in Copenhagen sponsored by the Atheist Alliance International—whose recent merger with American Atheists was purposed in order to “strengthen both the United States and international atheist community”—produced the “Copenhagen Declaration on Religion in Public Life,” which outlined about a dozen sociopolitical propositions that reveal an underlying concern with what it means to be a nonbeliever and/or part of the atheist community. In addition to affirming statements about democracy and equality, the document is explicitly inclusive of nonbelievers in all areas “of public life and their right to equality of treatment” in it. Specific criticisms of religion are offered, and the values of nonbelievers asserted: “We reject any special consideration for religion in politics and public life, and oppose charitable, tax-free status … for the promotion of any religion as inimical to the interests of non-believers…. We reject all blasphemy laws and restrictions on the right to criticize religion…. We support the right to secular education, and assert the need for education in critical thinking and the distinction between faith and reason as a guide to knowledge” (Copenhagen Declaration 2010).

But official declarations do not simply reflect the views of an already collectively defined will. Rather, it is constitutive of group consciousness itself. As Taylor and Whittier (1992) discuss, group consciousness is a key ingredient to the relationship between collective identity and collective action. This is because consciousness of membership in a collectivity itself imparts a larger social significance to that collectivity; and one primary way in which consciousness is constructed and imparted is through the development of “a formal body of writings, speeches, and documents” (Taylor and Whittier 1992:114). One should expect that as atheists continue to organize, the formal body of writings, speeches, and documents will likewise grow.

Seeking Change: Atheist Activism and Identity Politics

Establishing the elements of community that give rise to a sense of collective identity crystallizes more completely with purposeful sociopolitical activities designed to promote some collective end. Group support and internal validation for one’s identity is, by itself, not sufficient for many. Seeking to change the social meaning and status of atheism and advocating specific sociopolitical ideas become shared goals that orient and shape the collective and organizational actions of atheists.

Challenging Theism and Competing with Religion

An identity politics requires some type of perceived oppressive structure that becomes the object of resistance and the target for which change is sought. For many social groups engaged in activism, their collective actions are squared against concrete administrative, bureaucratic, economic, or other structural forces that apply inequitable treatment—thus providing cause for grievance. Organized atheism resists not only a long-standing and highly valued human institution—organized religion—but also challenges the culturally entrenched belief in the underlying and legitimizing force of this institution—belief in the supernatural. Rejecting this can present real problems for atheists, explaining in part the sometimes extreme distrust and prejudice leveled at them (see Zuckerman 2012 for a detailed analysis of the forms and processes of rejecting religion and theistic belief). Thus, constructing boundaries with relation to religion and theism are a central aspect of the collective identity work of atheists.

Social, moral, and symbolic boundaries are apparent in the communications and activities of atheists. Boundaries are central to collective identity “because they promote a heightened awareness of a group’s commonalities and frame interaction between members of the in-group and out-group” (Taylor and Whittier 1992:110). The major substantive source of creating boundaries for atheists is—not surprisingly—religion and theism. Often, this means atheists discussing their differences from theists. As Brad, a local organizer remarks:

How are our lives different from that of believers? Are atheists happier than believers?… It stands to reason that atheists, who believe we have but a single life to live would have strong ideas on how to live that life. This touches on those fundamental questions that most atheists are asked by believers regarding morality, ethics … [and] happiness. I believe this sort of exercise [addressing these questions with other atheists] is one of many necessary components of building a solid secular community (something religions have consistently beaten us at … and with).

These “exercises” have the effect of clarifying and strengthening collective identity. Of course, not all discussions are quite so abstract or neutral sounding. More combative statements also frequent discussions. In part of a long correspondence with fellow atheists in response to controversial public comments made by a Christian about the necessity of religion for Americans, Jason had this to say:

We need to get our noses out of that vial [sic] book (the bible) and put them instead into a scientific journal.… We need to spend less time praying and more time putting our hands to work…. Put your hands together for freedom by doing some work to earn it. This is battle. It is serious…. Our very freedom is at stake. We are now on the slippery slope back to horribly and violent oppression. God is the only one who can put us there. Reason is the only one who can keep us out!

But again, atheists differ on how best to interact and react to theist challenges from without. Arguments concerning lawsuits advanced by a prominent atheist demonstrate this. Many were on board, happy to sign petitions concerning a variety of legal issues such as prayer in schools, “God” on our currency, and a host of other issues. One respondent, who favored atheists as a group litigating, stated:

The propaganda put forth by the religious right and their political … maneuvers is geared to isolate reality from their flock so that they can get enough Supreme Court Justices on the bench to abolish any Amendment that protects nonreligious people…. We do need to litigate because much of the public doesn’t understand the reality of history. Many are convinced that “In God We Trust” has always been on our currency.… We are being attacked. We have no choice but to fight back to keep our constitution intact.

Whereas others expressed essentially the opposite view:

This is ridiculous; when will atheists realize that the way to convert people is not through nit-picky behavior or sophomoric lawsuits? What we don’t need is people fighting “under god” in the pledge, or “in god we trust” on money…. We also don’t need militancy—isn’t this the mode we are fighting? We will never win by sinking to their level.

This back-and-forth, however, ultimately does not undermine unity and a shared sense of identity and purpose. The reason for this is twofold. First, the narrative of independent-mindedness that atheists value finds expression in exchanges of this kind. Second, and more important in this case, is the shared sense of a common threat. Both statements suggest that atheists are ultimately “fighting” against ignorance, unreason, and the undesirable elements of religion. This itself provides enough collective purpose to override disagreement about what approach atheists should take in accomplishing their goals. Organized atheists appear united on the key principles of the separation of church and state, a secular value system, and the promotion of science and evidence-based reasoning. This is consistent with Snow’s observation that: ‘The shared perceptions and feelings of a common cause, threat, or fate that constitute the shared ‘sense of we’ motivate people to act together in the name of, or for the sake of, the interest of the collectivity” (2001:4).

The boundaries atheists construct between themselves and nonatheist others are important for the consciousness of the in-group, but also might produce unintended effects. As Taylor and Whittier (1992) observe, it is usually the dominant group (in this case the “theist majority”) that erects the most salient boundaries between itself and the minority group it refers to. However, “paradoxically, for [minority] groups organizing to pursue collective ends, the process of asserting ‘who we are’ often involves a kind of reverse affirmation of the characteristics attributed to it by the larger society” (Taylor and Whittier 1992:118). This can be the case with atheists, as often their minority views are seen as validating—for instance—the stereotype of the “angry atheist.”

Another implication of creating boundaries appears in the notion that the atheist group offers a “social outlet” for participants. Combined with the activities that organized atheists participate in, the group may be viewed on one level as an alternative for, or in some way competing with, the most salient social dimensions/benefits that organized religion offers. I do not claim that organized atheism is the “functional equivalent” of organized religion for reasons that cannot be elaborated here. However, at the level of group validation, and the fulfillment of particular social “needs,” the atheist group appears to facilitate the meeting of these. Recent developments are illustrative. For instance, instead of Bible camp or other religiously themed summer retreats for children, kids can attend “SkeptiCamp,” or Camp Quest, or parents can participate in Parenting Beyond Belief workshops where they can learn about “raising ethical caring kids without religion” as well as “handling family pressure to participate in religious activities, easing fears about death without an afterlife, and [teaching] children about religion without indoctrinating them.” Likewise, several atheist groups promoted the recognition and celebration of secular holidays—for instance, H. Res. 81 in the 112th Congress (2011), which sought to establish February 12 as Darwin Day. In addition, the celebration of winter solstice instead of the religious-themed celebrations during the holiday season has become more of a focus. One group in Colorado even published and disseminated an “atheist holiday calendar,” which features relevant secular events and commemorates significant atheists in history.

In addition to secular holidays and the veneration of atheist leaders, there have been efforts to develop practices around basic life transitions (that are usually suffused with and dominated by religious practice) such as birth, marriage, and funerals that are explicitly atheist and that highlight a nonreligious character. For example, one group organized a meeting to discuss death and funerals for atheists. The bulletin read:

It seems that when someone dies, everyone who gathers at a memorial service either recites prayers, plays religious music, invokes god, and the like. I want to have a discussion about how to create a non-religious death service, and what kind of things should go into a will or other legal document to carry out the wishes of the person who doesn’t want others’ religious beliefs introduced into a funeral.

Such discussions demonstrate the importance of symbolic boundaries for atheists. And as Smith (2011) observes, part of constructing an atheist identity involves articulating what it is one does not believe. Given the inextricable link between our personal and social identities—those things that make us unique and those things that give us a sense of sameness—I would suggest further that this “not-self” is also a formative process of collective identity.

Key Issues for Activists

Constructing boundaries and underscoring difference is not only accomplished through rhetoric and discourse, it is also a part of the social and political actions of organized atheists. As Hetherington (1998) observes, the identity politics of today at play within many social groups are as often about the politics of difference and the expanding alternative identity choices available to people, than they are about experiencing more obvious oppression due to marginal statuses. Put differently, the conditions of the contemporary social/political landscape are such that groups might engage in identity politics as a way of “choosing to be marginal” (Hetherington 1998:27). But why would one choose a stigmatized social status? Because choosing a marginalized identity—which often brings with it opposition and subsequent opportunity for resistance—can itself be an important source of meaningful activity. Adopting the label “atheist,” and affiliating with an atheist organization, is an important identity choice even if one does not properly choose their atheism.

As the literatures on protest and social movements show, the sources of activism are complex and varied. Here, I focus more narrowly on specific connections between activism and collective identity. Atheist activism is a means of constructing both personal and shared meaning. As Polletta states: “Activism for many people is a way to construct a desirable self” (2001:290). It involves work toward some goal, the effort of which is not merely what must be endured in order to achieve the goal; the work itself becomes the source of meaning and identity. When people collectively pursue desired goals (and selves) the process becomes more dynamic. Organized activism develops from a shared sense of grievance with some aspect of the broader society. There exists a shared felt need to respond to, and sometimes protest against, what is seen as unjust or untrue. To properly speak of “atheist activism” then, one must identify the set of grievances most common to groups of atheist actors. These can be distilled into two basic categories: (1) those that deal with the issue of separation of church and state and the perceived ubiquity and encroachment of religion/theism, and (2) those that deal with the marginal status of atheism itself.

One recent example of the first kind involved the coordinated effort of several groups in protesting the presence of a nativity scene displayed by a local sheriff on public property in a Colorado city in 2008. The lighting of the scene was to be accompanied by a public prayer meeting, and the local sheriff was selling sweatshirts that read: “Have a politically incorrect holiday, just say Merry Christmas!” After phone calls and meetings with the sheriff, the groups were ultimately unsuccessful at getting the display removed. The sheriff reportedly remarked that he would display the religious scene every year as long as he was sheriff. But the atheist groups persisted, bringing in an attorney and seeking help from national secular organizations. After continued negotiations they were allowed to create and place their own “atheist plaque” along with the rest of the Christmas display, which read: “During this Winter Solstice season, illuminate your mind with reason, let friends and family warm your heart, and celebrate that we all take part.” The atheists in attendance at the lighting wore name tags that read “Promoting the Separation of Church and State.” One of the leaders that coordinated the effort described its outcome this way, “this project was a three-point field goal success, but not a six-point touchdown success. A touchdown success would have been removal of the manger scene. [But] our field goal atheist display is a success that says we nonbelievers will not accept violations of church and state lying down.”

This “field goal success” seemed to provide some impetus for further activism. A variety of other church/state separation issues ensued over the next few years that groups became involved in. In addition to the billboard campaigns, these included protesting the Westboro Baptist Church’s antihomosexual picketing in Colorado, signing local petitions for the filing of lawsuits challenging “the intrusion of monotheism into the inauguration of U.S. Presidents,” petitioning a school district’s adoption of an official document titled “Forty Developmental Assents,” which includes the need for “a religious community for all children,” challenging Hobby Lobby’s “Christian Nation” advertisements, and protesting faith-based initiatives and the tax-exempt status of churches.

Increasing numbers of atheists became involved in these activities, in part persuaded by the impassioned appeals made from organizers; as one announced in a mass e-mail: “[We are] members of a disenfranchised minority … we need each and every one of you right now!” The implication that these local efforts are ultimately about achieving national significance and cultural change was always present. At a large state convention in Colorado, for instance, where atheists were protesting a faith-based initiative embraced by the local government, many expressed their feelings about their activism along these lines: “This protest is to note the nearly 15% of Americans who claim no religion … this [state political convention] is a chance to speak to the [national] issue of separation of church and state in front of the whole country.” Local efforts across the country helped to set the conditions for activities of broader national significance. For instance, in 2010 groups celebrated the Secular Coalition of America’s official policy briefing with presidential administration at the White House—the first time in history a explicitly nontheist organization had met with officials to focus on issues important to them. A representative of the SCA commented:

The [SCA] is poised to make history with an official meeting with White House officials. [We are] encouraging non-theists to take a poll indicating what issues are of greatest importance to you. The SCA exists to ensure that [atheists and secularists] have a voice in Washington; to oppose injustices resulting from theocratic encroachments on government [and to] to win Americas respect and recognition befitting our community.

Other national organizations such as the American Humanist Association seemed to increase their efforts as well, as evidenced by their recent national multimedia advertising campaign, which they claimed was “the largest, most extensive ever by a godless organization.” During this period local groups became increasingly interconnected and coordinated, giving the community more influence on public discourse. From a new social movements perspective, it is not surprising that atheists have developed a tone consistent with the language of civil rights and minority discourse. One local organizer sums up the perspective of many activists: “Many of us think of secularism [and atheism] as being on the cusp of a wave to protect separation of church and state.… We think of ourselves as about the fourth or fifth wave of civil rights movements, after people of color, women, the homosexual/transgendered community and people with disabilities.” With many invoking the phrase “new atheist movement” and remarking how they could even “become a political force” it is clear that, whether these statements are empirically accurate or not, the atheist community has gained a sense of unity that perceives itself—within a contemporary sociopolitical context—as a coordinated collectivity with clear values, goals, and a desire for a greater sense of social and political legitimacy.

Framing atheism as a civil rights issue is not accidental. If organized atheists are to implement the cultural shifts they desire and persuade the public to be more accepting of them, they must appeal to the culturally valued and embedded discourse of freedom of expression, and choice of worldview. Pluralism and religious freedom is something to which atheists can appeal when engaging the public. Thus, combined with the use of media and outreach, atheists on a basic level use existing institutional means of pursuing change: engaging in public discourse and identity politics. Important for these atheists, however, is the question of how to best pursue this engagement. As one organizer remarked, “we need to build a real community without being combative; we need to persuade [people] at an institutional level to achieve a cultural shift.” Discussion about whether atheists are better off aggressively pursuing this cultural shift, or whether they should take a more accommodating approach in accomplishing their goals frequented conversations. Gatherings that centered on this question had a way of energizing members and triggering what Snow and McAdam refer to as identity amplification, or “the embellishment and strengthening of an existing identity that is congruent with a movement’s collective identity” (2000:49). Though identity amplification does not guarantee activism on the part of members, it is nevertheless an important component toward that end.

Good Works Without God

The second category of collective grievance involves the marginal status of atheism. Challenging and/or competing with religion, and political atheist activism, either directly or indirectly connect with the collective desire to destigmatize atheism. This motivates work toward making atheism socially acceptable. Demonstrating through collective actions that they are “good without god” is a central concern of organized atheism. A sense of group legitimacy would not be possible absent the view that atheism can become an accepted social position. Therefore, a great deal of atheist activism is actually about publicly demonstrating the consistency of atheists’ morals and values with that of the mainstream. There are many examples in recent years of this work toward destigmatization. For instance, one group created what it called its “Ask an Atheist” project. Members, one weekend afternoon each month, would set up booths in public parks to attract attention and start conversations with passersby. The stated intention on the announcement read “[we want] to show believers that as people we have more in common than not, and to show them we are, in fact, good people.” They even moved this to a perhaps more obvious venue, with “Ask an Atheist at Church” where a group convened at a local Baptist Church (with permission) to show believers “they are good, normal people.”

A more organizationally ambitious project involved the recent development of an intergroup collaborative charitable organization called Atheists for Humanity (2011) launched in Denver in 2011. The website’s homepage (which states: “Doing good for goodness sake”) allows people to donate to any of 23 well-known charities in the name of atheism. The effort to change public opinion of atheists is made explicit by the organization: “Our goals are simple: raise money and awareness for worthy charities and actively work to destigmatize atheists and atheism.” The creator of the nonprofit spoke enthusiastically in an online announcement about the project:

Each time we send money, food, or clothing to a charity, we’ll include a letter stating the donations came from Atheists for Humanity. Once we get a little momentum we’ll start sending out Press Releases to local papers and magazines…. We can do good for those in need while also polishing the perception of atheism and atheists. If you’re an atheist and are tired of the negative stigma that comes with it, come help us do something about it!

Likewise, the growing number of volunteer activities atheist groups are engaging, such as street cleanups, food drives, and benefit events, are instances not only of the stated goal of effecting positive change in the broader community, but effecting change in the way people view atheists and their organizations. The goal of destigmatization is also apparent in the atheist activism. As one participant remarked, in his proposing to other atheists that they counterprotest the WBC’s antigay demonstrations, “I would like to see a group stand up to these people—why not us? Even the religious tend to shy away from this radical group. If atheists stand up, perhaps society will think twice about what they believe we stand for.” This slightly ulterior motive shows how important destigmatization is for contemporary atheists.

The “Good without God” and “National Secular Service Day” campaigns illustrate at a broader level the current impulse of the secular/atheist community to become more accepted. As a leader of NSSD stated in a correspondence with many local groups: “Our mission [is to] unite secular groups across the country in the interest of public service, and to demonstrate our commitment to leading full and ethical lives … to raise the visibility and sense of unity among local groups in the community of reason, to create a national dialogue on the role of nontheists in American Society.” Suggesting competition with the role that religious organizations often play, the creation of NSSD, endorsed by many local atheist groups states further that: “We want our nonreligious community to be able to offer the same fantastic service opportunities that churches and religious groups are known for … we want to show the nation that we too are committed to charitable and ethical lives with or without religion.” Participants were encouraged to submit to the project organizers “specific examples about your god-free involvement in service to country or community.” The moral underpinnings in these comments suggest that imbuing atheism with positive moral meanings is important not just for the personal moral identities of atheists, but for the development of a collective atheist identity. As one member expressed: “What we need to do is work together, and show people that atheism doesn’t mean the death of morality; it actually means a stronger morality.” The emphasis on “we together” challenging the prevailing ideas about religion and morality, and as a group showing people that atheism is compatible with morality, is demonstrative of collective stigma management (Martin 2000). The organizational identities that define atheist groups parallel the activist organizational framework that Martin wrote about in his analysis of differential organizational approaches to managing social stigma. Atheists collectively aim, through their organizational frameworks, to educate the public about who they are through various forms of self-advocacy and social/political activism in an attempt to acquire greater control over the social meaning of atheism—thereby creating greater consistency between their identity and the public’s perception of them.

 

Conclusion

This study examined the collective identity work of contemporary atheists in the United States. Little sociological scholarship has investigated the ways in which atheists collectively negotiate their identities in the context of atheist organizations, and with the nonatheist public. Consistent with Cimino and Smith’s (2007) observations about the minority discourse of organized atheists, the current study finds that atheists indeed are engaged in identity politics, and avail the rhetoric of marginalization by framing atheism as a political issue. Cimino and Smith (2007) go further, however, arguing that atheists are responding to the “failure of secularism” by adopting the strategies of evangelicals. There is some evidence to support this. For instance, the rhetoric of the “dangers” of theism and activities such as “Ask an Atheist at Church” can reasonably be construed as examples of the “defensive competition” and “mimicry” of evangelicalism that Cimino and Smith (2007) discuss. However, in contrast, the present study finds that, far from adopting an inured posture regarding the supposed “failure” of secularism, or taking refuge in a subcultural niche, in fact, many organized atheists are actually closer to seeing themselves as part of the “secular vanguard,” something Cimino and Smith (2007) suggest they have had to abandon. Organized atheists perceive both the possibility, and necessity, of not just defending their views, but growing, increasing their influence, and becoming an accepted part of the mainstream. The comments of the president of American Atheists at the 2012 Reason Rally make this clear, “America is not far behind [secularism in Western Europe]. I believe in two decades we will be in a position where secularism is the norm” (National Public Radio 2012). Irrespective of the historical/empirical accuracy of this claim, the point is that organized atheists perceive the progression of secularism in America. Scholars should therefore resist accepting the premise that atheists no longer operate under this assumption until further research can bear this out.

I have argued the interplay between atheists seeking both a defined community and a meaningful change in how the public views that community is at the core of their collective identity. From seeking to bring others “out of the closet,” to employing the rhetoric of an identity politics, to engaging in social/political activism, contemporary atheists are constructing a shared sense of identity and community. Rather than internal differences undermining collective identity, a narrative of difference, combined with an acknowledgment of shared values, serves to strengthen group boundaries and self-understanding. The activity of atheists, which involves the (re)negotiation of the meaning of atheism vis-à-vis the American public, is an organizing principle of collective identity construction.

Social media and networking has played an important role in the development of the atheist community (Smith and Cimino 2012). There is no centralized leadership in this community, so atheists have relied on lateral, cooperative, local activities. Participants may come from a variety of backgrounds, and have differing views on specific issues, but cooperative action is possible to a significant degree because of the collective narratives atheists employ online. As Wuthnow (2011) reiterates, “talk” is an essential element in both the production and analysis of social life. Though he was referencing religious discourse, talk is no less critical in irreligious discourse. For atheists construct collective identity, in part, by the talk they engage in with one another and with the public.

Goal-oriented social action requires the aligning of personal and collective identity. From this view, when atheists engage in activism it is because their shared sense of “we” has animated and mobilized them “cognitively, morally, and emotionally” for a common cause, and against a common threat (Snow 2001:4). The normative status of theism in United States, and the public and political nature of religious life provide plenty of opportunity and justification for atheists to organize. The notion of collective identity acts as a conceptual bridge between individual motivations/dispositions and collective action. As Friedman and McAdam write: “One of the most powerful motivators of individual action is the desire to confirm, through [collective] behavior, a cherished identity” (1992:166).

Organized atheism occupies an interesting space when viewed in the light of social movement theory. As Polletta and Jasper (2001) discuss, mobilization on the part of the civil rights movement was based on seeking full inclusion as equal citizens. This is in contrast to postcitizenship movements, which are “peopled by those who already enjoy most or all of the normal rights of citizens, including the ability to mobilize legally and to put pressure on political decision makers” (Polletta and Jasper 2001:287). Given their sociodemographic and educational characteristics (see Cragun, Hammer, and Smith 2012; Pasquale 2012), atheists as a group fit into this latter category. Yet, atheists perceive both stigma and marginalization. This perception is not unfounded, as research documents (Cragun, Hammer, and Smith 2012). Indeed, much of the American public does not include atheists as full citizens because they are believed to have rejected the moral foundations of American life (Edgell, Gerteis, and Hartmann 2006). This helps to explain the minority discourse and the rhetoric of civil rights that organizing atheists have increasingly come to adopt. Related to this is my suggestion that organized atheism can be viewed as an example of the not-self at the collective level. And although there is currently much more evidence of “not-us” language and discourse being employed by atheists, if the contemporary patterns of atheist community and solidarity described earlier continue, it seems reasonable to expect these discursive narrative practices will begin to more frequently “translate” into actual explicit collective atheist behavioral practices (such as “atheist funerals”).

Bainbridge suggests that atheism results from weak social obligations; applying the “compensator” model, he claims that atheists “lack intimate, personal obligations of the kind that might benefit from secondary compensation” (2005:5). Compensator theory argues that in the absence of desired supernatural rewards (e.g., promise of an afterlife) compensators act in their stead as a kind of temporary “place-holder” for the promise of the reward in the future. Social relationships, and their attendant obligations, are themselves compensators (“secondary” because they are social, whereas primary compensators are personal and psychological). Thus, “someone who lacks strong social bonds of a kind to incur [social] obligations is more free to espouse atheism” (Bainbridge 2005:7).

The current study reveals potential problems with this reasoning. Most basically, Bainbridge tends to view atheists as isolated individuals. But the range of social relationships and activities described earlier, in which atheists increasingly engage, seems to contradict the premise of the “lone atheist” with few social connections or obligations. However, if future research confirms that atheists do in fact tend to have fewer social obligations than the religious, perhaps this is because, aware of their deviant status, they are less likely to pursue relationships with those who may not accept them. This is particularly the case in the context of family relationships (which are an important part of what Bainbridge refers to in speaking about social obligations). As Fitzgerald (2003) shows, many atheists use avoidance techniques (especially with religious family members) to reduce stress or conflict in relationships. In this case, lack of obligations would not be the source of atheism; it would be its outcome. I did not assess the “causes” of atheism in this study, but my general findings are more consistent with Hunter’s (2010) argument that greater consideration of social, demographic, and social psychological factors, such as exposure to an atheist viewpoint, gender and race, and whether or not one is likely to find social support for atheism is required for a more complete sociological picture of contemporary atheists.

1. See Bullivant and Ruse (2013) for a discussion of the usefulness of this versus other definitions of atheism with regards to conducting social scientific research.
2. I use the social movement literature because the concept of collective identity is employed most often in this literature.
3. Other examples include the “We Are Atheism,” and the “Good without God” campaign.
4. All names used throughout are pseudonyms. Quotes from interviews are noted; otherwise, they reflect the online communications discussed in the “Methods.”
5. In the same way that civil rights activists drew on preexisting church networks and specific Christian theologies.

 

Source: Creating a Godless Community: The Collective Identity Work of Contemporary American Atheists

 

UNTANGLING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ATHEISM AND HEALTH

By Jonathan Morgan | Article first published online: 24 FEB 2013 | DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2012.01316.x

 

How to Cite

Morgan, J. (2013), UNTANGLING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ATHEISM AND HEALTH. Zygon, 48: 9–19. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2012.01316.x

Author Information

1. Jonathan Morgan is a masters of theological studies (MTS) student specializing in psychology and theology at Boston University’s School of Theology, Box 128, 745 Commonwealth Ave., Boston, MA 02215, USA; email: jrmorgan@bu.edu.

Publication History                                        

1. Issue published online: 24 FEB 2013
2. Article first published online: 24 FEB 2013

 

Abstract

In the past decade, the cognitive science of religion has worked to find an evolutionary explanation for supernatural belief. The explanations are convincing, but have created the stereotype that atheism is unnatural. In a similar way studies linking religious belief and health have vilified atheism as unhealthy. But belief is too complex, health is too nuanced, and the data are too varied to draw such a generalization. Catherine Caldwell-Harris has developed a psychological profile to understand nonbelief as an expected outcome of individual difference and therefore natural. In a similar manner I argue that we should study the relationship between belief and health through the lens of individual differences. This approach is especially promising given recent research which indicates personality fully accounts for the relationship with well-being previously attributed to belief. This approach has the added benefit of neutralizing the conversation by understanding atheism as the healthy expression of a natural personality.

“Atheism represents realism, but also sadism.” –Marie Bonaparte (1958)

Given the growing consensus that religiosity correlates with health, “sadism” may be more than just a witty quip. Each month new studies emerge linking religiosity and health: pro-religiosity correlates with cardiovascular health (Masters and Knestel 2011); “higher levels of religious and spiritual engagement have been shown to be associated with better adjustment in dealing with serious illness” (Kristeller et al. 2011, 550). These snippets caricature a nuanced and complex field of study. All research concerning religion and health faces the challenge of navigating construct validity, sampling, and analysis (Hwang et al. 2011, 609). But despite these challenges, the general impression is that religion and spirituality are good for your health.

The inverse of this general impression seems to imply that atheism is unhealthy. But labeling atheism as unhealthy defames the nuanced worldviews of nonbelievers and may be the result of a mistaken syllogism. The stigma surrounding atheism has also been implicitly supported by cognitive scientists and evolutionary psychologists working to understand religion as a natural phenomenon. The result of their work “is a growing interdisciplinary consensus that religious belief may be the default setting for our species” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 5). Just as linking religiosity and health implicitly links atheism and unhealthiness, describing belief as a natural phenomena implies that nonbelief is unnatural. This implication furthers the social stigma of atheists, adding unnatural and unhealthy to the already prodigious list of defamations.

Catherine Caldwell-Harris, a psychologist at Boston University, argues that viewing religion as natural need not imply nonbelief is unnatural. Instead both belief and nonbelief arise as the natural expression of particular personalities in particular environments (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 5–6). By explaining belief, of any sort, as a product of individual differences, Caldwell-Harris helps untangle atheists from implicit vilifications within the psychology of religion. Her work also sheds light on the link between atheism and health. By understanding health as affected by the same personality traits that govern worldviews, we can build an empathic understanding of atheists as a natural part of any healthy community.

This paper will first explore how the assumptions that nonbelief is unnatural and unhealthy persist. Then I will follow Caldwell-Harris’s argument for why atheism is natural. Her argument will also reveal a personality profile of nonbelievers. Given this personality profile I will follow her example and try to untangle the assumption that atheism is unhealthy. To do so, I will argue that the complexity of belief and health as categories elude facile generalizations. Recent research shows that personality traits may fully account for the relationship between belief and health. If that research is correct, it provides a way to empathically understand the relationship between worldview and health.

 

Atheism Is Unnatural and Unhealthy?

“Religion thrives because it addresses people’s deepest emotional yearnings and society’s foundational moral needs.” –Scott Atran (2006, 407)

In “The Scientific Landscape of Religion: Evolution, Culture, and Cognition,” Scott Atran presented his understanding of religion as “a converging by-product of several cognitive and emotional mechanisms that evolved under natural selection for mundane adaptive tasks” (Atran 2006, 408). Atran was not the first to understand religion from an evolutionary perspective. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion, by Stewart Guthrie (1993) can be seen as the first to develop an evolutionary explanation of religious belief.

Guthrie developed what has since been called the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD) hypothesis: our adaptive tendency to overattribute agency to phenomena led to religious belief as a by-product. But this is not the only evolutionary explanation for supernatural beliefs. The psychologist Justin Barrett and others have developed a similar argument: belief in God arises from our evolved ability to recognize mental states to others (Barrett 2004). Barrett argues that the Adaptive Theory of Mind causes us to imagine an all-powerful mind behind natural processes. So again, supernatural belief arises as a natural byproduct of our evolutionary development. These are just two of the adaptive traits that evolutionary psychologists believe give rise to belief in a supernatural entity, or entities. The arguments vary slightly, but the general thrust is that religious belief is a natural by-product of evolved traits. While these arguments are well supported and convincing, they implicitly support the inverse assumption that atheism is unnatural.

Barrett in particular does not stop at religion-is-natural and is adamant in pushing the inverse: atheism-is-unnatural. Caldwell-Harris summarizes his view: “atheism and nonbelief are cognitively difficult and unnatural because of the mental effort incurred in resisting the brain’s meaning-making centers” (2012, 7). Since the mind has been tuned by evolution to believe in God, atheists are working against their cognitive defaults. In other words atheists are unnatural. Caldwell-Harris also chooses the psychologist Jesse Bering to represent the atheists-are-unnatural stance. Bering, himself an atheist, agrees with Barrett, a religious believer, that nonbelief requires a continual uphill battle against our cognitive instincts.

Bering and Barrett represent a larger camp within evolutionary psychology that believes if religion is natural then atheism must be unnatural. Caldwell-Harris will challenge the validity of this syllogism. In a similar way, linking health and religiosity reinforces the assumption that atheism-is-unnatural. Yet, the relationship between belief and health need not imply atheism is unhealthy.

Many studies linking religion/spirituality and health have focused on physical health. A strong positive link has been established for religious individuals coping with a wide array of conditions: cardiovascular health (Masters and Knestel 2011), cancer (Laubmeier et al. 2004), HIV (Ironson et al. 2011), and many others. Other studies have established an equally strong link between psychological health and religiosity/spirituality by examining depression (Perez et al. 2011), adjustment (Kristeller et al. 2011), anxiety (Inzlicht et al. 2011), and other affect states. These studies cross cultures, age, and social groups. They are prevalent enough that The Journal of Behavioral Medicine devoted their entire December 2011 issue to this research.

The general impression from this research is a strong correlation between religiosity/spirituality and health. But drawing the line of causation is a complex task. Is health a product of the social support religious communities provide or the religious beliefs that bind those communities? Are healthy individuals simply more likely to seek out religious participation? Do attachment styles or personality account for both the type of belief and well-being?

To handle this complexity researchers nuance the categories of religiosity and spirituality while also focusing on particular types of health. As early as the 1960s researchers were distinguishing between different kinds of religiosity when Gordon Allport (Allport and Ross 1967) used the categories of intrinsic vs. extrinsic religiosity to understand prejudice among believers. While these categories have been thoroughly critiqued, the trend of distinguishing between different types of religiosity and spirituality has only continued. Just drawing from the December issue mentioned above, researchers distinguish between: prayers of gratitude and prayers of petition (Perez et al. 2011); different views of God as loving or judging (Ironson et al. 2011); different levels of spiritual struggle (Park et al. 2011); and religiosity and spirituality as categories (McIntosh et al. 2011). To nuance the categories of belief is the norm. But if researchers are trying to study the difference between people who believe in a loving god and those who believe in a judging god, they cannot include those who believe in no god.

The implicit consequence is already drawn: any degree of religious belief is better than nonbelief for your physical and psychological health. This assumption may originate in the early work of Herbert Benson in The Relaxation Response (Benson and Klipper [1976] 2001), or the study by Randolph Byrd in the San Francisco General Hospital’s coronary care unit (1988). Regardless of its origin, the negative perception that atheists are unhappy and unhealthy persists (Hyman 2006). This perception is latent within studies that link health and religiosity but it is also supported by studies that explicitly posit that nonbelievers do not fare as well as their religious peers (see Zuckerman 2009, 956).

Other research paints a more flattering, but still ambiguous, picture. Ventis represents this ambiguity by describing nonbelievers as psychologically healthy with such positive traits as self-control, self-acceptance, and flexibility; but he also acknowledges that high levels of neuroticism and anxiety are often related to nonbelief (1995, 43). In Maslow’s study of personality development he reported that nonbelief seemed to be correlated with the highest levels of development (1970). Sociologists also support this positive view of nonbelievers: the highest levels of happiness are reported among the most secular nations (Zuckerman 2009, 956). Given the wide distance between these studies supporting nonbelief and those condemning it, the relationship between nonbelief and well-being is necessarily complex.

But this complex picture has not translated to the general public. Instead “unhealthy” is grouped within the broader stereotype that atheists are poorly parented, immoral, unhappy, antisocial hedonists (Hwang et al. 2011, 613). As Zuckerman points out, “non-believers are still stigmatized to this day, with recent studies showing that a negative view of atheists is quite pervasive, especially in the United States” (2009, 949). This stigmatization is furthered by the assumption that atheism has negative effects on health; an assumption that often lies latent in research exploring the health benefits of belief. Through silence the negative perception continues.

In the next section, I present Caldwell-Harris’s argument that this perception is unnecessary if we instead understand atheism as a product of individual differences. After following Caldwell-Harris’s study I will look more closely at why these health studies are problematic and how Caldwell-Harris’s understanding of atheism points toward a solution. By dismantling some of these false associations, I hope to help de-stigmatize atheism.

 

Atheism and Personality

Catherine Caldwell-Harris’s article, “Understanding Atheism/Nonbelief as an Expected Individual-Differences Variable,” is a response to the assumption that since religion is natural, atheism must be unnatural. Barrett and Bering, vocal advocates of this assumption, act as her primary conversation partners. But she is not alone in her stance that atheism can be perceived as natural.

Sociologists have long supported the idea that atheism is natural because “what is natural (or expected) depends on broad characteristics of social organization” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 7). Therefore religion and atheism are expected responses to different social environments. Similarly, nonbelief and belief are expected expressions of personality differences: “explaining religious belief as a consequence of human nature opens the door for a complementary explanation that degree of religious belief (including zero belief) is an expected individual-differences variable” (2012, 5–6). Where one falls on this spectrum from zero belief to full belief is predictable as the natural expression of particular personality traits within different social environments.

Caldwell-Harris’s article goes on to describe those personality traits that predict nonbelief. Her work is based on a wide array of studies including demographic research, surveys of cognitive and personality measures, and research combining surveys, interviews, and free response questions (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 9). Combining these findings she proposes three personality dimensions that predict atheism: “These are individualism and low sociality, preference for logical reasoning over intuition, and focus on here-and-now problem solving instead of concern for transcendence” (6). Within a permissible social environment atheism is a natural worldview given this combination of personality traits. I will take each of them up in turn.

The first group, “Lower sociality, individualism, nonconformity” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 9) like any other group of traits, has benefits and downsides. One positive aspect of this personality is the internal locus of control which is more likely among atheists (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 9). On the other hand, this individuality can also lead to less social support than religious counterparts. Drawing from studies by Vassilis Saroglou (2010) and others, nonbelievers have also been shown to be “more open to new experience, less extroverted, less conscientious, and less neurotic than believers” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 10). These traits, drawn from the “Big Five” personality traits, further establish that nonbelievers are typically individualistic. The link between nonbelief and individualism may also explain the high prevalence of young, white, male atheists, but such correlations are still little more than conjectures.

The second trait is a “preference for logical reasoning, naturalism and skepticism” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 11). This trait could also be called systematic thinking and is often described simply as skepticism, which among the Big Five traits, is understood as nonagreeableness (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 11). But logical reasoning and a naturalistic perspective are important facets of this trait. One of the most common findings among sociological studies of atheism is the disproportionately high number of atheists in academia and scientific fields. This preference for systematic thinking would partially account for these statistics. It would also partially explain the common misconception that atheism grew out of the European Enlightenment where the values of reason and naturalism were lifted high. Social correlations aside, this trait also explains why atheists typically cite intellectual and logical arguments for not believing in religion (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 12).

The final trait that Caldwell-Harris draws from her survey is a “focus on here-and-now problem solving rather than concern for transcendence” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 13). This does not mean that atheists are not concerned about the meaning of life. Far from it, atheists are just more prone to find their meaning in “this world.” Making this case Caldwell-Harris draws from Zuckerman (2009) and many others who have argued that secular nonbelievers “have a stronger sense of social justice than do religious individuals” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 13). Any comparison and competition between the social justice ethic of believers versus nonbelievers is unnecessary within this paper. To understand the personality of nonbelievers it is sufficient to understand that they typically “focus their moral concerns on the here-and-now” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 13).

By drawing from a wide array of past empirical studies, Caldwell-Harris supports her case that these three personality dimensions co-occur with nonbelief. This correlation is used to mount her argument that atheism is just as natural as religion. But the latent argument supporting this naturalization of atheism is the belief “that specific personality traits and/or thinking styles facilitate non-belief” (Caldwell-Harris 2012, 15). This comes close to claiming causality, but she does not need to go that far. The correlation is enough to support her claim that when the social context allows, those people who are highly individualistic, systematic thinkers concerned with the here and now are likely to describe themselves as atheists.

Caldwell-Harris effectively uses this psychological profile to dismantle the assumption that nonbelief is unnatural. Understanding that a set of personality traits facilitates atheism also begins to unravel the misconceptions connecting atheism and unhealthiness.

Atheism and Health

While the general view associates atheism with poor psychological health, the debate is still fiercely contested. Phil Zuckerman, a sociologist of Pitzer College, offers an extensive review of this complex debate (2009, 949). Some research correlates religiosity with reduced levels of depression, while others find no relationship. “Some studies indicate that secular people are less happy than religious people… yet international comparisons show that it is the most secular nations in the world that report the highest levels of happiness among their populations” (Zuckerman 2009, 956). The relationship between belief and health is not straightforward.

This complexity is expected given the nuanced studies cited above. There is no clear agreement about which type of religiosity correlates with which types of health. Certain types of religiosity may help your heart health but be bad for your psychological well-being (Masters and Knestel 2011). Religious people with a positive view of God may recover more quickly than strong atheists, but what about highly religious people with a negative image of God or a socially-engaged agnostic? The field only becomes more complex.

Despite the complexities, Zuckerman acknowledges “that a preponderance of studies do indicate that secular people don’t seem to fare as well as their religious peers when it comes to selected aspects of psychological well-being” (2009, 956). Some argue that this is because being an atheist in the United States means being a member of a distrusted, stigmatized group, which would take a toll on anyone’s sense of well-being (Zuckerman 2009, 949). But perhaps the strongest critique of the link between health and belief is the paucity of research on nonbelievers (Hwang et al. 2011, 613). To fully understand the relationship between nonbelief and health requires studying nonbelievers as systematically and meticulously as researchers have studied believers.

This meticulous research is especially called for if we follow Caldwell-Harris’s suggestion that we understand one’s belief as being facilitated by individual-differences variables. If this is the case, then the spectrum of belief, from zero to full, is facilitated by personality difference. To understand the health of nonbelievers would require studying the health effects linked to varying degrees of individualism, systematic thinking, and pragmatic focus on the here-and-now. What is likely to emerge is a more complex appreciation than the simple atheism-is-unhealthy conclusion. This is an especially promising route given recent research by Corinna Loeckenhoff.

In a systematic study, Loeckenhoff et al. (2009) examined the association between personality traits, religiosity, and mental health in a group living with HIV. Through careful analysis they argue that “personality traits explained unique variance in mental health above spirituality and religiousness” (1411). In other words, personality accounts for the link between belief and health.

Previous research has studied the relationship between personality and mental health or religiosity and mental health, but how personality and religiosity are jointly related to mental health has been left unexamined (Loeckenhoff et al. 2009, 1412). Researchers have also studied the relationship between personality and religiosity. These studies suggest that “personality traits in adolescence predict religiousness and spirituality in late adulthood, whereas the empirical evidence for the converse pattern (i.e., religiousness and spirituality predicting future personality) is scarce” (Loeckenhoff et al., 1414). Loeckenhoff takes this to mean that personality has primacy over belief.

This conclusion is stronger than Caldwell-Harris’s assertion that personality facilitates belief, but it is supported by a wide range of studies. Loeckenhoff draws extensively on Saroglou (2010), who provides a comprehensive meta-analysis of these studies. The specific association revealed by this research is that “Agreeableness and Conscientiousness were reliable correlates of religion across most samples” (Saroglou 2010, 115). Saroglou’s meta-analysis legitimates Caldwell-Harris’ work to find the correlates for nonbelief. But it goes further. Drawing from four recent longitudinal studies, Saroglou concludes “that personality has chronological priority and impact on religiousness rather than vice versa” (118). If Saroglou is correct in his meta-analysis, then studying the personality traits underlying belief, or nonbelief, may lead the way out of the complexity demonstrated above.

Loeckenhoff’s work attempts to test these findings empirically. “If one adopts the notion that spirituality and religiousness can be understood as characteristic adaptations based on core personality dimensions, one would expect that any beneficial effects of S/R are at least partially accounted for by the effects of underlying personality traits.” (Loeckenhoff et al. 2009, 1417). If personality predicts belief, then perhaps personality also accounts for some of the health benefits associated with belief.

Loeckenhoff ‘s findings confirmed past studies linking Conscientiousness with all S/R scales. Openness and Agreeableness also showed positive correlations, which helps legitimate her measures (Loeckenhoff et al. 2009, 1429). From this foundation her analysis goes on to “suggest that when the five NEO-PI-R domains are considered in combination, underlying personality traits fully account for the association of S/R with mental health” (1431). In other words, personality not only predicts belief, or nonbelief, it fully accounts for the correlation between religiosity and mental health.

To draw such a strong line of causation, in-depth longitudinal studies would be required. But this research tentatively strengthens Caldwell-Harris’s theoretical claim. Loeckenhoff’s words echo her thesis: “religiousness and spirituality are characteristic adaptations that develop as basic personality traits are channeled by cultural and environmental influences” (Loeckenhoff et al. 2009, 1431). Caldwell-Harris would merely add that nonbelief is an expected type of characteristic adaptation.

So, what does this reveal about the assumption that nonbelief is unhealthy? Given the complexity of the debate, Loeckenhoff and Caldwell-Harris provide a new lens that may untangle the complexities. As researchers distinguish between the different types of religiosity and spirituality, personality traits are a useful metric for describing the differences. If Loeckenhoff is confirmed by further research, then personality may be more than a useful descriptor, it may be the explanatory cause of any correlation between belief and health. If Caldwell-Harris’s argument stands, then atheism should not be grouped to the side as a homogenous category of nonbelievers. Instead nonbelief can be understood as an expected worldview of highly individualistic, systematic thinkers who are pragmatically focused on the here and now. With this understanding of atheism, researchers can study the relationship between traits and health in a way that is less stigmatizing and more illuminating.

 

Conclusion

Atheists have been historically stigmatized. They are the village outcast, the “other,” the abnormal. As cognitive science and evolutionary psychology have begun to explore the origins of religion, this stigmatization has emerged in a new form. Atheism is portrayed as an unnatural worldview that goes against our cognitive defaults. Such a view echoes an essentialist belief that we all must have evolved to display the same characteristics and is antithetical to the diversity which fuels evolution.

By highlighting the diversity of personalities, Caldwell-Harris dismantles the syllogism that if religion is natural then atheism is unnatural. Instead we can understand belief and nonbelief as the natural outcomes of given personalities. The expression of these personalities is channeled by the cultural milieu in which they are situated. So if a culture punishes nonbelievers in a more extreme form than ostracism, the highly individualistic, systematic thinkers are not likely to call themselves atheists. But now, with a more pluralistic cultural environment, these personalities express themselves as atheists.

This empathic understanding of nonbelievers begins to unravel the stigma of atheists as unnatural. Like a Rorschach test, the deeply seated distrust of atheists shapes what we see in complexity. In the complexity of research on belief and health, this presumption sees a negative correlation between atheism and well-being. But belief is too complex of a category, health is too multifaceted, and the data are too nuanced to draw such a broad conclusion.

One way through this complexity may be offered by Loeckenhoff’s research. If she is correct, then the relationship between belief (or nonbelief) and health can be accounted for by personality traits. Just as Caldwell-Harris argues that individual-differences account for the natural emergence of nonbelievers in a culture, Loeckenhoff argues that these same individual-differences explain the links between different types of belief and health. Her argument is supported by past research showing that personality is primary to belief and by her own empirical findings that personality accounts for the emotional well-being previously attributed to belief.

This research may help untangle the complex relationship between belief and health. Whether personality fully accounts for the relationship is yet to be seen. But this approach has the added benefit of neutralizing atheism. Instead of viewing nonbelief as an unhealthy choice, we can study the effects of individualism on heart health or how systematic thinking relates to emotional well-being. This approach detoxifies the conversation. Ultimately true health may come simply from the freedom to naturally express your personality.

 

Source: UNTANGLING FALSE ASSUMPTIONS REGARDING ATHEISM AND HEALTH

 

The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered

Authors: Evan D. Murray, M.D.; Miles G. Cunningham, M.D., Ph.D.; Bruce H. Price, M.D.

The Journal of Neuropsychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences 2012;24:410-426.10.1176/appi.neuropsych.11090214

 

Abstract

The authors have analyzed the religious figures Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and St. Paul from a behavioral, neurologic, and neuropsychiatric perspective to determine whether new insights can be achieved about the nature of their revelations. Analysis reveals that these individuals had experiences that resemble those now defined as psychotic symptoms, suggesting that their experiences may have been manifestations of primary or mood disorder-associated psychotic disorders. The rationale for this proposal is discussed in each case with a differential diagnosis. Limitations inherent to a retrospective diagnostic examination are assessed. Social models of psychopathology and group dynamics are proposed as explanations for how followers were attracted and new belief systems emerged and were perpetuated. The authors suggest a new DSM diagnostic subcategory as a way to distinguish this type of psychiatric presentation. These findings support the possibility that persons with primary and mood disorder-associated psychotic symptoms have had a monumental influence on the shaping of Western civilization. It is hoped that these findings will translate into increased compassion and understanding for persons living with mental illness.

 

Figures in this Article

A man in his late 20s with paranoid schizophrenia explained during a neurological evaluation that he could read minds and that for years he had heard voices revealing things about friends and strangers alike. He believed he was selected by God to provide guidance for mankind. Antipsychotic medications prescribed by his psychiatrists diminished these abilities and reduced the voices, and therefore he would not take them. He asked, “How do you know the voices aren’t real?” “How do you know I am not The Messiah?” He affirmed, “God and angels talked to people in the Bible.”

Later, we reflected on what he had said. He raised poignant questions that are rarely discussed in academic medicine. Every day, physicians, nurses, psychologists, and social workers alike encounter and care for people who experience psychotic symptoms. About 1% of emergency room visits and 0.5% of all primary care visits in the United States are related to psychotic symptoms.^1,2 As many as 60% of those with schizophrenia have religious grandiose delusions consisting of believing they are a saint, God, the devil, a prophet, Jesus, or some other important person.³ Diminished insight about having a mental disorder is part and parcel of the condition, occurring in 30%–50% of persons with schizophrenia.⁴ How do we explain to our patients that their psychotic symptoms are not supernatural intimations when our civilization recognizes similar phenomena in revered religious figures? On what basis do we distinguish between the experiences of psychiatric patients and those of religious figures in history?

A review of the medical literature revealed little discussion of these specific issues utilizing modern neuropsychiatric and behavioral neurologic principles. An examination of the revelation experiences of prominent religious figures was needed to determine whether new insights could be achieved about their nature through the application of neuropsychiatric and behavioral neurologic principles. We undertook this examination with the intent of promoting scholarly dialogue about the rational limits of human experience and to educate persons living with mental illness, healthcare providers, and the general public that persons with psychotic symptoms may have had a considerable influence on the development of Western civilization. The selection of personalities for analysis was based on 1) the existence of narratives recounting the individual’s mystical experiences and behaviors; 2) the potential similarity of these experiences to psychiatric phenomena; 3) the high degree of impact their life stories had on Western civilization in terms of influencing themes found in literature and art, religious thought and practice, philosophy, concepts of social order, and jurisprudence. The following is a retrospective diagnostic examination of Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and St Paul. It is hoped that this investigation will help translate the veneration, love, and devotion felt by many for these religious figures into increased compassion and understanding for persons with mental illness.

 

Abraham

Abstract  

The Bible is the earliest source of information about the life of Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The historical existence of Abraham is the subject of some academic controversy. Our discussion will proceed on the premise that he was a historical figure. The events occurring during his lifetime are generally thought to have taken place sometime between 2000 BCE and 1630 BCE, but this is a subject of some debate. He is described as having had interactive mystical experiences of an auditory and visual nature (see Figure 1), that influenced his behaviors throughout most of his life (see Table 1). This phenomenology closely resembles that described in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV-TR).⁵ Applying the DSM-IV-TR paradigm, Abraham’s auditory and visual perceptual experiences and behaviors could be understood as auditory hallucinations (AH), visual hallucinations (VH), delusions with religious content, and paranoid-type (schizophrenia subtype) thought content (see Table 1 for examples). These psychiatric features occur together as a constellation in psychotic disorders of both primary psychiatric origin and secondary to medical and neurological conditions.⁵ According to the DSM-IV-TR, the diagnosis of schizophrenia requires at least two out of five symptoms from Criterion A and then fulfillment of the five remaining criteria (see Table 2). Criterion A might theoretically be fulfilled by the presence of his auditory and visual perceptual experiences. Abraham is not recounted as having had symptoms that can now be appreciated as disorganization, catatonia, negative psychiatric symptoms (affective flattening, alogia, or avolition), or cognitive difficulties such as impaired concentration, attention, or memory. The lack of detailed information about his life prevents us from understanding whether he experienced a decline in social or occupational functioning, as compared with the period before the onset of his perceptual experiences, as required by Criterion B. Criterion C’s requirement about persistence and duration of symptoms is fulfilled by the period of 100 years or more during which he had these experiences. His generally good state of health is indicated by a purported lifespan of 175 years without mentioned infirmity. Abraham appeared not to suffer from debilitating depressive- or manic-like symptoms, thereby diminishing the likelihood of mood disorder associated psychoses, such as depression with psychotic features, bipolar disorder, or schizoaffective disorder.

 

 

FIGURE 1. Abraham Being Stopped From Sacrificing His Son Isaac by a Vision of an Angel (Genesis 22:9-12)Laurent de la Hyre: Abraham Sacrificing Isaac (c1650), Musée Saint-Denis, Reims, France

 

 

TABLE 1.Selected Examples of Passages With Features Resembling Psychiatric Phenomena

Abraham

Auditory and visual hallucinationsa: Genesis 12:1–3; 12:7; 13:14; 15:1–11; 17:1–21;22:1–2; 22:11–12 (Figure 1)

Paranoid Type (PS subtype) thought processesb: Genesis 12:3 (implies a very Abraham-centered worldview of dispensing universal blessings and curses based on one’s interactions with Abraham); 12:11–13; 14:22; 17:14; 20:11; 21:11–14 (potential mistrust, as seen by the sending-away of his first-born son to eliminate competition for his second son); 23:4 (He referred to himself as a stranger in a land he understood to be his inheritance from God); 24:3 (potential mistrust seen in the rejection of intermarriage for his son Isaac with any women in his region); 25:6 (potential mistrust as seen by the sending-away of of all his sons so as to remove Isaac’s competitors).

Moses

Auditory and visual hallucinations of a grandiose nature with delusional thought contenta: Exodus 3:2 (Figure 2); Exodus 33: 21–23 related to 34:5–6

Paranoid Type (PS subtype) thought contentb: Exodus 32:25–29

Phobia: Exodus 34:33

Referential Thought Processes: Exodus 8:12–13, 8:31, 9:23, 9:33, 10:13–15, 10:22 (possible sandstorm)

Jesus

Paranoid-type (PS subtype) thought contentb: Matthew 10:34–39, 16:21–23, 24:4–27; Mark 13:5–6; Luke 10:19; John 3:18; John 14:6–11

Auditory and visual hallucinationsa: Matthew 3:16–17, 4:3–11; Luke 10:18; John 6:46, 8:26, 8:38–40, 12:28–29

Referential thought processes: Mark 4:38–40 (Figure 3); Luke 18:31

Paul

Auditory and visual hallucinationsa: Acts 9:4–6,16:9,18:9, 22:7–11 (Figure 4), 26:13–18; 2 Corinthians 12:2–9

Paranoid-type (PS subtype) thought contentb: 1 Corinthians 10: 20–22; 11:29–32; 1:20–21; 2 Corinthians 6:14; 7:1; 11:12–15; 11:21–23

^aHallucinations in PS are typically related to the themes of delusions.⁵

^bParanoid-type (PS subtype) thought content: Delusions are typically persecutory or grandiose or both. Delusions with other themes, such as jealousy, religiosity, or somatization may also occur. They are usually organized around a theme.⁵

All biblical references are from The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version. Edited by May HG, Metzger BM, New York, Oxford University Press, 1977.

 

TABLE 2.Diagnostic Criteria for Schizophrenia

A. Characteristic symptoms: Two or more of the following, each present for much of the time during a 1-month period (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment).

Delusions

Hallucinations

Disorganized speech

Grossly disorganized behavior or catatonic behavior

Negative symptoms: affective flattening, alogia, or avolition

Note: Only one Criterion A symptom is required if the delusions are bizarre or hallucinations consist of a voice keeping up a running commentary on the person’s behavior or thoughts, or two or more voices conversing with each other.

B. Social/occupational dysfunction: For a significant portion of the time since the onset of the disturbance, one or more major areas of functioning, such as work, interpersonal relations, or self-care, are markedly below the level achieved prior to the onset.

C. Duration: Continuous signs of the disturbance persist for at least 6 months. This 6-month period must include at least 1 month of symptoms (or less, if symptoms remitted with treatment)

D. Schizoaffective and mood-disorder exclusion

E. Substance/general medical condition exclusion

F. Relationship to a pervasive developmental disorder

Adapted from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition, Text Revision. Washington, DC, American Psychiatric Association, 2000, pp 297–343.

 

Other potential causes of such experiences need to be explored. The ingestion of hallucinogenic substances is known to produce mystical experiences. There has been speculation that plants with psychoactive properties were valued by the ancient Israelites, but no direct evidence has been uncovered for their actual use for inducing mystical experiences in this population.⁶ Another possibility would be that of epilepsy-induced mystical experiences. Persons with epilepsy may experience ictal, postictal, or interictal schizophrenia-like symptoms, which can be indistinguishable from primary psychotic disorders^7,8 and occur in roughly 2%–7% of persons with epilepsy;⁹ 2.2% of temporal lobe-onset seizures may be associated with religious experiences.^10,11

Grandiose and messianic-type delusions are recognized as occurring in association with complex partial seizure disorders.¹² Published cases show ictal religious experiences to be awe-inspiring or ecstatic, but generally not successful in imparting detailed or complex information.^10,13–17 Postictal psychosis (PIP) is more common and tends to occur in close proximity to seizure clusters and can also be associated with a recent exacerbation in seizure frequency.¹⁸ It is estimated to account for a quarter of psychosis in epilepsy^19,20 and occurs in up to 18% of medically intractable focal epilepsy patients.^21,22 Of persons with PIP, up to 25% may have religious delusions.

Only 2% of those who go on to have interictal psychosis have religious delusions.^23,24 Interictal psychosis is otherwise not readily distinguishable from schizophrenia, but may manifest preservation of affect, fewer negative symptoms, and, arguably, greater insight. The greater similarities may lay in positive symptomatology; that is, that of thought disorder, delusions, and hallucinations.⁷ Reliable prevalence data are lacking, but it has been proposed that between 30% and 60% of patients with partial seizures will also have secondary generalized seizures.^25–27

Abraham is not recounted as having had any infirmities that might resemble the phenomena we now commonly understand to accompany seizures. Specifically, there are no signs of repetitive behaviors, such as uncontrolled generalized or partial shaking, orofacial automatisms, stereotyped behavioral changes, recurrent and consistent auras of fear (although fear did accompany some episodes), staring spells, loss of consciousness, falling spells, tongue-biting, or incontinence. His ability to engage in varied dialogue with his hallucinations would not be very typical of an ictal perceptual change, since seizures tend toward being stereotyped in nature and not to be so changeable and interactive.^{10,13–17,28,29} Most generalized seizures, and, often, complex partial seizures, are associated with amnesia for the period during and immediately after a seizure, and persons often have baseline day-to-day cognitive impairments in memory and executive domains.^30,31 There are no indications that Abraham experienced uncontrolled motor events, amnestic periods, or cognitive impairments of any kind. A postictal or interictal psychotic state cannot be excluded, but is not particularly suggested on the basis of the available information.

The absence of apparent affective, medical, or neurological conditions increases the possibility that a psychotic disorder could have been present. Schizophrenia is often accompanied by both disorganized behavior and thought processes that interfere with life functioning.⁵ In the case of Abraham and in the others that follow, disorganization and cognitive impairments are not apparent. Paranoid schizophrenia (PS), however, is a subtype of schizophrenia that tends to manifest little or no disorganization, has preserved functional affect, and is associated with better occupational and social functioning.⁵

Psychotic disorder, not otherwise specified (PD NOS) is another reasonable diagnostic alternative. PD NOS includes those persons with psychotic symptomatology for which there is inadequate or contradictory information or symptoms that do not meet criteria for any specific psychotic disorder.⁵ Abraham’s clinical profile would appear to best resemble that of PS or PD NOS, and perhaps, less likely, an affective disorder-related psychosis. Abraham stands as the earliest case of a possible psychotic disorder in literature.

 

Moses

Abstract

The story of Moses in the Bible is thought to have its setting sometime between 1550 BCE and 1200 BCE.³² The stories about Moses include a great deal of information about his background, life functioning, beliefs, actions, and perceptual experiences (see Figure 2). Moses had perceptual experiences and behaviors that find closest parallel today with the DSM-IV-TR–defined phenomena of command AHs, VHs, hyperreligiosity, grandiosity, delusions, paranoia, referential thinking, and phobia (about people viewing his face). (See Table 3 for examples.) Many of these features may occur together in schizophrenia, affective disorders, and schizoaffective disorder.⁵ Moses also did not appear to have any disorganization, catatonia, or negative psychiatric symptoms, or difficulties with concentration, attention, and memory (see Table 2). Criterion A for schizophrenia could theoretically be fulfilled by his experiences that resemble delusions and hallucinations. In fulfillment of Criterion B, Moses’ social and occupational functioning could be said to have declined from that of a presumably educated member of the Egyptian royal family to having fled Egyptian society to become a shepherd working on the periphery of the desert in a foreign land (Exodus 2:15–22). His flight from Egypt occurred before the onset of AH and VH, thereby suggesting a prodromal decline in functioning before the onset of psychosis. A prodrome refers to the early symptoms and signs of an illness that precede the characteristic manifestations of the acute, fully developed illness. A prodromal period may precede the onset of schizophrenia by months to up to 10 years in 70% of patients³³ and up to 20 years in some cases.³⁴ The period over which Moses had these experiences was in excess of 40 years, fulfilling Criterion C. His social functioning and leadership skills were sufficiently intact to have made it less likely that he had periods of debilitating major depression or florid mania that might have undermined his effectiveness as a leader. This could fulfill Criterion D by reducing the likelihood of mood disorder-associated psychosis. It should be noted that the religious writings attributed to Moses’ authorship, the Pentateuch, could suggest the presence of an exaggerated urge to write. Such hypergraphia is a nonspecific finding more commonly associated with mania, hypomania, or mixed states; however, it is also a feature of schizophrenia and temporal lobe epilepsy.^35–37 Trimble writes that the hypergraphic output of schizophrenic and epileptic patients is rarely creative. They are often loosely mystical, and both perseverative and vague in content.³⁷ In contrast to the relative paucity of poets with schizophrenia or epilepsy, he observes that the number of poets suggested to have mood disorders are represented in far greater numbers.³⁷ Therefore, mood disorder-associated psychoses remain quite viable in the case of Moses.

 

 

FIGURE 2.Moses’ Vision of the Burning Bush (Exodus 3:2) Moses Before The Burning Bush (1613–14) By Domenico Feti, at Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Austria

 

TABLE 3.Clinical Signs and Symptoms of Schizophrenia

	Religious Figures
Behaviors Resembling	Abraham	Moses	Jesus	St Paul
Auditory hallucinations	+	+	+	+
Visual hallucinations	+	+	+	+
Hyper-religiosity	+	+	+	+
Grandiosity	+	+	+	+
Delusions	+	+	+	+
Paranoia	+	+	+	+
Disorganization	—	—	—	—
Negative symptoms	—	—	—	—
Duration of symptoms	years	>40 years	>1 year	years
Decline in occupational functioning	I	+	I	I

+: present; —: not present; I: inconclusive evidence or unknown.

 

There is no indication in the Bible that Moses experienced metabolic dysregulations or that he used hallucinogenic intoxicants as an explanation for his behavioral or perceptual changes. There are also no key features, as previously mentioned, to implicate epilepsy as a cause of mystical experiences. He lived a long life, in excess of 100 years, arguing against the presence of progressive medical or neurological illnesses. The criteria for diagnosis of PS would be fulfilled by the predominance of delusions and hallucinations in the absence of disorganization, negative psychiatric symptoms, or cognitive impairment.

An increased propensity for violence has been observed in some individuals with PS.³⁸ Moses’ increased propensity for violence could be viewed as corroborative for a diagnosis of PS. Reasonable diagnostic alternatives might include PD NOS, bipolar disorder, and schizoaffective disorder. If the first five books of the bible are credited to Moses’ authorship, then a bipolar disorder or perhaps schizoaffective disorder would be more compatible with his writing abilities.

 

Jesus

Abstract

Jesus is the foundation figure of Christianity, who is thought to have lived between 7–2 BCE and 26–36 CE. The New Testament (NT) recalls Jesus as having experienced and shown behavior closely resembling the DSM-IV-TR–defined phenomena of AHs, VHs, delusions, referential thinking (see Figure 3), paranoid-type (PS subtype) thought content, and hyperreligiosity (see Table 1). He also did not appear to have signs or symptoms of disorganization, negative psychiatric symptoms, cognitive impairment, or debilitating mood disorder symptoms. NT accounts about Jesus mention no infirmity. In terms of potential causes of perceptual and behavioral changes, it might be asked whether starvation and metabolic derangements were present. The hallucinatory-like experiences that Jesus had in the desert while he fasted for 40 days (Luke 4:1–13) may have been induced by starvation and metabolic derangements. Arguing against these as explanations for all of his experiences would be that he had mystical or revelation experiences preceding his fasting in the desert and then during the period afterward. During these periods, there is no suggestion of starvation or metabolic derangement. If anything, the stories about Jesus and his followers suggest that they ate relatively well, as compared with the followers of his contemporary, John the Baptist (Luke 7:33–34). Epilepsy-associated psychotic symptoms are possible, but Jesus is not recounted as having any of the previously-mentioned common hallmarks of epilepsy. A decline in his occupational and social functioning cannot be established because of a lack of sufficient information. His experiences appear to have occurred over the course of at least the year before his death. The absence of physical maladies or apparent epilepsy leaves primary psychiatric etiologies as more plausible. As seen with the previous cases, Jesus’ experiences can be potentially conceptualized within the framework of PS or psychosis NOS. Other reasonable possibilities might include bipolar and schizoaffective disorders.

 

 

FIGURE 3.The Boat That Held Jesus and His Followers Before Jesus Bid the Storm to Subside (Mark 4:38–40)

Storm on the Sea of Galilee By Rembrandt van Rijn (1633; whereabouts unknown since the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery in 1990)

 

There is a 5%–10% lifetime risk of suicide in persons with schizophrenia.³⁹ Suicide is defined as a self-inflicted death with evidence of an intention to end one’s life. The NT recounts Jesus’ awareness that people intended to kill him and his taking steps to avoid peril until the time at which he permitted his apprehension. In advance, he explained to his followers the necessity of his death as prelude for his return (Matthew 16:21–28; Mark 8:31; John 16:16–28). If this occurred in the manner described, then Jesus appears to have deliberately placed himself in circumstances wherein he anticipated his execution. Although schizophrenia is associated with an increased risk of suicide, this would not be a typical case. The more common mood-disorder accompaniments of suicide, such as depression, hopelessness, and social isolation, were not present,⁴⁰ but other risk factors, such as age and male gender, were present. Suicide-by-proxy is described as “any incident in which a suicidal individual causes his or her death to be carried out by another person.”^41,42 There is a potential parallel of Jesus’ beliefs and behavior leading up to his death to that of one who premeditates a form of suicide-by-proxy.

 

St. Paul (Saul of Tarsus)

Abstract

St. Paul lived during the first century CE. It has been speculated that his religious experiences resulted from temporal lobe epilepsy.⁴³ We would argue that it is not necessary to invoke epilepsy as an explanation for these experiences. St Paul’s mood in his letters ranged from ecstatic to tears of sorrow, suggesting marked mood swings.^44,45 He endorsed an abundance of sublime auditory and visual perceptual experiences (2 Corinthians 12:2–9) that resemble grandiose hallucinations with delusional thought content. He manifested increased religiosity and fears of evil spirits, which resembles paranoia. These features may occur together, in association with primary and mood disorder-associated psychotic conditions.

In 2 Corinthians 12:7, St Paul relates “a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger from Satan, to harass me, to keep me from being too elated.” This thorn has been speculated to be a reference to epilepsy.⁴³ Other theories have proposed that the thorn was a physical infirmity, the opposition of his fellow Jews,⁴⁶ or a harassing demon.⁴⁷

We propose that he perceived an apparition or voice that he understood to be a harassing, demonic messenger from Satan. This perception might have afflicted him with some amount of negative commentary of the type characteristic for psychotic conditions, resulting in psychological distress.

The complexity of Paul’s interactions in his perceptual experiences weighs against a seizure ictus as a cause, as does the lack of evidence for more common epileptic accompaniments, such as repetitive stereotyped behavioral changes and cognitive symptoms, as previously discussed. Paul does, however, manifest a number of personality characteristics similar to the interictal personality traits described by Geshwind,^48–50 such as deepened emotions; possibly circumstantial thought; increased concern with philosophical, moral and religious issues; increased writing, often on religious or philosophical themes; and, possibly, hyposexuality (1 Corinthians 7:8–9). These characteristics are controversial as to their specificity for epilepsy,^51,52 with a preponderance of larger studies not confirming a specific personality type associated with seizure disorders.^51–57 Similar features may also be present in bipolar disorder^5,35,36 and schizophrenia.^35,36 As previously mentioned, productive writing tends to be more strongly associated with mood disorders than psychosis or epilepsy. This is persuasive toward Paul having a mood disorder, rather than schizophrenia or epilepsy.

Paul’s religious conversion on the road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–19, 22:6–13, 26:9–16) is an event understood as marked by the acute onset of blindness. This blindness has been hypothesized to have been postictal in nature⁴³ or psychogenic.⁵⁸ There appears to be a lack of clarity as to whether this was literal visual blindness or metaphorical, since Paul refers to persons outside his immediate belief system as spiritually blind or having their eyes closed to spiritual truth (Acts 28:26; Romans 11:8, 11:10; 2 Corinthians 4: 3–5; Ephesians 1:18). Differences in the three most detailed conversion-experience accounts contribute to this ambiguity. Acts 26:12–18 relates his conversion, during which a vision of Jesus tasks him to spiritually open the eyes of the people to whom he will be sent (see Figure 4). In this account, there is no mention of acute-onset visual loss followed by its restoration. The application of the blindness metaphor in Acts 26:12–18 may suggest that Paul’s own loss of vision was equally metaphorical and served as a descriptor of his profound realization of feeling suddenly bereft of spiritual understanding; that is, realizing his eyes to be spiritually closed, before the completion of his conversion to the new religious sect. In such an emotional state, it is speculated that he might have required encouragement and emotional assistance to reach Damascus. Another possibility would be that of blindness due to conversion disorder. The absence of other episodes of visual loss (i.e., lack of event stereotypy), the absence of features often seen with postictal blindness (a generalized seizure, anosognosia for deficit, or a gradual return of vision),⁵⁹ the presence of complex, mood-congruent auditory–visual experiences resembling hallucinations, and the possible sudden return of his eyesight with a compassionate touch does not fit well into a readily discernable neurological pattern of vision loss. His perceptual experiences, mood variability, grandiose-like symptoms, increased concerns about religious purity, and paranoia-like symptoms could be viewed as resembling psychotic spectrum illness (see Table 1). Psychiatric diagnoses that might encompass his constellation of experiences and manifestations could include paranoid schizophrenia, psychosis NOS, mood disorder-associated psychosis, or schizoaffective disorder. Paul’s preserved ability to write and organize his thoughts would favor a mood disorder-associated explanation for his religious experiences.

 

 

 

FIGURE 4.Saul of Tarsus Experiencing a Vision of Jesus While on the Road to Damascus (Acts 9:1–19, 22:6–13, 26:9–16) The Conversion of Saul by Michelangelo Buonarroti (c.e. 1542–1545), Cappella Paolina, Vatican Palace, Vatican City

 

Source: The Role of Psychotic Disorders in Religious History Considered

 

Ignorance to Science: Re-examining ADD’s claims on Science

This article is about a review of Mr. Soriano’s understanding of science and its relationship to biblical claims.

Scientific proof

Everytime Mr. Soriano wants to prove something by using science on his biblical claims; he keeps on using the term called scientific proof. Read more here: From Dust to Man: a Scientific Proof.

What the guy has not clearly understood about is that there is no such thing as scientific proof. The truth is, science is not a self-evident truth and the veracity of its claims is determined by evidence, not by proof. Proof only exists in math and logic, not in science. Because mathematics and logic are both closed self-contained systems of propositions, whereas science is empirical and it deals with nature as it exists. To simplify, evidence is object, whereas proof is semantics. Read more here: From Dust to Man: A Scientific Proof.

Missing link                                                  

According to him the missing link in evolution is a proof the theory is wrong.  The guy believes that evolution is about a continuous changing of forms that can be described as a straight-long-chain of evolutionary events. This is one of the most misinterpreted concepts of evolution. The truth is evolutionary scientists don’t use the term missing link to imply transitional and intermediate fossils. To have a missing link, you need to visualize evolution as a chain. If there’s a gap in the chain, then you have a missing link. But evolution, at least at the scale of animals and plants, is mostly a tree, a bushy kind of tree. And all we see are individual nodes of the tree, the extant species that form, in Darwin’s metaphor, the leaves of the living tree, and the extinct species that form branching points deeper in the tree. We call it Phylogenetic tree. Read more here: ‘Hurrah for the missing link!’: a history of apes, ancestors and a crucial piece of evidence.

Archeological proof for Jesus

The guy believes that since some of the prominent people during the allege timeline of Jesus, some of the places mentioned in the bible also existed, and some of the alleged historical events in the bible happened therefore it does follow he also existed. This is a classic example of a logical fallacy called the argument from false-choice and related fallacies. By following the logic of the guy and his tendency to commit cognitive biases, it just like saying, both King Arthur and Robinhood existed. That is not how to determine the veracity of claims. We have to use method. In science we have this thing called scientific method.

Just so you know circumstantial evidence is evidence in which an inference is required to connect it to a conclusion of fact. By contrast, direct evidence supports the truth of an assertion directly—i.e., without need for any additional evidence or the intervening inference. The problem here is there is no single direct evidence linking Jesus Christ to all prominent persons mentioned in the bible. If they have found one do bother to inform me. What they have so far is a direct reference to the bible. We all know that it is a classic case of circular argument.

Aside from that, there is a thing called let the evidence to speak for itself, not let us interpret evidence to suit in the claims we have possessed. What the guy has done here is he’s trying to link those biblical claims to historical events and archeological artifacts (as if they have connection) by relying heavily on circumstantial evidence to make a point. That is a classic case of “let us interpret evidence to suit in the claims we have possessed” which is a classic example of confirmation bias. Read more here: Let us allow the archaeological findings to speak for themselves, The Mind of Confirmationist, and Jesus Historicity and Plagiarism.

Biblical science

The guy believes that the bible has complete information when it comes to modern knowledge of reality. He was amaze by the idea that it was predicted and written 2,000 years ago before science discovered them (I was referring to the biblical claims). This idea leads him to believe that science and bible can be melded. Read more here: The Attempt to Meld God and Science.

The truth is, from its literal form to figurative one, bible and science cannot be melded. First, in science, every hypothesis should be and must be falsifiable. Whereas in the case of biblical verses it appeals to beg the question and appeal to authority (which is a bunch of logical fallacies to begin with). Read more here: Bible Science Debunked

The brain god

The guy believes that we have wired by a god in order for us to know he existed according to a study. He was referring to the article from DailyMail.Com: Why we are born to believe in God: It’s wired into the brain, says psychologist.

Before anything else, the word wired in science in this context means is either through influence or it’s either a product of evolution or by-product of evolution, or both. It means to say, to be wired, it must undergo either by influence or by the process of evolution, or both.

Regardless of its true origin, some of us are predisposed to believe and some are not. The truth is, human is predisposed to believe that there is a god and to be superstitious, not because of there is a god wired our brain, but is because of intuitive thinking and cognitive biases. Read more here: How Our Brains are wired for Belief and The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief.

Speaking of influence, I’ve constantly bombarded by religious and superstitious thing every day because I am surrounded by them. If it is just a product of influence then why it is I am no longer a religious believer? The truth is there are several factors surrounding the true nature of atheism. Unfortunate for the guy’s claim there is no published study supporting his claim. Read more here: The Nature of Atheism and Eliseo Soriano’s Imaginary Argument.

And, in the case of wired through evolution, the belief that there is a god goes back as far as 300th millennium. That was the time of Hominids, such as Neanderthals and even Homo heidelbergensis, before Homo sapiens existed. This finding directly contradicts to what Mr. Soriano believes: the belief that human-evolution is a myth. Read more here: Hardwired By God and Is This Your Brain On God?

 

The Mind Of Confirmationist

What does confirmationist means?

Confirmationists are people who have the tendency to believe any idea through when it confirms their preconceptions or hypotheses regardless of whether the information is true and accept it as if it is real or fact.

Example

In the mind of the confirmationists, any idea that doesn’t conformed to what they believe in regardless of whether the information is true is automatically not true. For instance, any scientific theory that doesn’t conform to Christian’s bible is automatically not true and should not be accepted as part of its dogma.

Let us take for example to the classic biblical case of the theory of evolution. Though the acceptance of the said theory is increasing variedly through time for Christian’s society that is diverse (and other religions), the arguments for and against its acceptability still depend upon on how they interpret the biblical claims (those narratives they believe conformed to the theory), not entirely by the evidences supporting the theory and the logical valid arguments behind it.

 

Explanation                                                                  

Cognitive Dissonance

Since dissonance can also lead to confirmation bias, the denial of dis-confirming evidence, and other ego defense mechanisms, it is important to discuss first the cognitive dissonance in the brain.

Using fMRI, Van Veen and colleagues investigated the neural basis of cognitive dissonance in a modified version of the classic induced compliance paradigm. While in the scanner, participants “argued” that the uncomfortable MRI environment was nevertheless a pleasant experience. The researchers replicated the basic induced compliance findings; participants in an experimental group enjoyed the scanner more than participants in a control group who simply were paid to make their argument. Importantly, responding counter-attitudinally activated the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insular cortex; furthermore, the degree to which these regions were activated predicted individual participants’ degree of attitude change. Van Veen and colleagues argue that these findings support the original dissonance theory by Festinger, and support the “conflict theory” of anterior cingulate functioning.

Using the free choice paradigm, Sharot and colleagues have shown that after making a choice, activity in the striatum changes to reflect the new evaluation of the choice object, increasing if the object was chosen and decreasing if it was rejected. Follow-up studies have largely confirmed these results.

Confirmation Bias

Confirmation bias is often described as a result of automatic processing. Individuals do not use deceptive strategies to fake data, but forms of information processing that take place more or less unintentionally. According to Robert Maccoun, most biased evidence processing occurs unintentionally through a combination of both “hot” (i.e., motivated) and “cold” (i.e., cognitive) mechanisms.

Cognitive explanations for confirmation bias are based on limitations in people’s ability to handle complex tasks, and the shortcuts, called “heuristics”, that they use. For example, people may judge the reliability of evidence by using the availability heuristic, i.e. how readily a particular idea comes to mind. It is also possible that people can only focus on one thought at a time, so find it difficult to test alternative hypotheses in parallel. Another heuristic is the positive test strategy identified by Klayman and Ha, in which people test a hypothesis by examining cases where they expect a property or event to occur. This heuristic avoids the difficult or impossible task of working out how diagnostic each possible question will be. However, it is not universally reliable, so people can overlook challenges to their existing beliefs.

Motivational explanations involve an effect of desire on belief, sometimes called “wishful thinking”. It is known that people prefer pleasant thoughts over unpleasant ones in a number of ways: this is called the “Pollyanna principle”. Applied to arguments or sources of evidence, this could explain why desired conclusions are more likely to be believed true. According to experiments that manipulate the desirability of the conclusion, people demand a high standard of evidence for unpalatable ideas and a low standard for preferred ideas. In other words, they ask, “Can I believe this?” for some suggestions and, “Must I believe this?” for others. Although consistency is a desirable feature of attitudes, an excessive drive for consistency is another potential source of bias because it may prevent people from neutrally evaluating new, surprising information. Social psychologist Ziva Kunda combines the cognitive and motivational theories, arguing that motivation creates the bias, but cognitive factors determine the size of the effect.

Explanations in terms of cost-benefit analysis assume that people do not just test hypotheses in a disinterested way, but assess the costs of different errors. Using ideas from evolutionary psychology, James Friedrich suggests that people do not primarily aim at truth in testing hypotheses, but try to avoid the most costly errors. For example, employers might ask one-sided questions in job interviews because they are focused on weeding out unsuitable candidates. Yaacov Trope and Akiva Liberman’s refinement of this theory assumes that people compare the two different kinds of error: accepting a false hypothesis or rejecting a true hypothesis. For instance, someone who underestimates a friend’s honesty might treat him or her suspiciously and so undermine the friendship. Overestimating the friend’s honesty may also be costly, but less so. In this case, it would be rational to seek, evaluate or remember evidence of their honesty in a biased way. When someone gives an initial impression of being introverted or extraverted, questions that match that impression come across as more empathic. This suggests that when talking to someone who seems to be an introvert, it is a sign of better social skills to ask, “Do you feel awkward in social situations?” rather than, “Do you like noisy parties?” The connection between confirmation bias and social skills was corroborated by a study of how college students get to know other people. Because, highly self-monitoring students, who are more sensitive to their environment and to social norms, asked more matching questions when interviewing a high-status staff member than when getting to know fellow students.

 

ISCB Public Policy Statement on Open Access to Scientific and Technical Research Literature

Preamble

The International Society for Computational Biology (ISCB) is dedicated to advancing human knowledge at the intersection of computation and life sciences. On behalf of the ISCB members, this public policy statement expresses strong support for open access, reuse, integration, and distillation of the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature, and for the infrastructure to achieve that goal.

Knowledge is the fruit of the research endeavor, and the archival scientific and technical research literature is its practical expression and means of communication. Shared knowledge multiplies in utility because every new scientific discovery is built upon previous scientific knowledge. Access to knowledge is access to the power to solve new problems and make informed decisions. Free, open, public, online access to the archival scientific and technical research literature will empower citizens and scientists to solve more problems and make better, more informed decisions. Attribution to the original authors will maintain consistency and accountability within the knowledge base. Computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature will produce new and as yet unforeseen knowledge.

We strongly encourage open software, data, and databases, issues that are not addressed here. A prior ISCB public policy statement on sharing software provides very clear support for open source/open access (http://www.iscb.org/iscb-policy-statemen​ts/software_sharing). We support open database access, standards, and interoperability. We also recognize that databases are complex dynamic entities, with ongoing roles and needs that cannot be treated properly within this statement. In contrast, the publicly funded archival research literature, addressed here, is the static historical record of publicly funded research outcomes.

ISCB supports many of the principles set forth in other open-access policies and statements, including the “Budapest Open Access Initiative,” the “Bethesda Declaration on Open Access Publishing,” the Bulletin of the World Health Organization “Equitable Access to Scientific and Technical Information for Health,” the US National Academies of Sciences report on “Sharing Publication-Related Data and Materials: Responsibilities of Authorship in the Life Sciences,” the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development “Principles and Guidelines for Access to Research Data from Public Funding,” and the “Berlin Declaration on Open Access to Knowledge in the Sciences and Humanities.” Details on the documents mentioned here may be found in Text S1. Further background material is available in Text S2.

The public policy statement (Box 1) put forward here builds upon these principles to elucidate in more detail the public policy position of ISCB and its members on this important issue in scientific dissemination.

Box 1. Public Policy Statement

The International Society for Computational Biology strongly advocates free, open, public, online (i) access by person or machine to the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature; and (ii) computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature into higher-order knowledge elements.

Supporting Statements

1. The possibilities latent in the digital information age make it essential to achieve open access, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation, of the publicly funded archival research literature.
   1. Immediate access is preferable, and when access is at an interval following publication, that interval should not exceed one year.
   2. At a minimum, every scientific journal should offer an open access option to every published research paper, as does every official or affiliated journal of the ISCB.
   3. Copyright licenses explicitly should permit computational reuse, integration, and distillation, using standard existing language that eliminates the need for manual or legal review.
   4. The format of the available article should be easy to parse by both human and machine (e.g., HTML). Ideally, a plain text version should be available as well (e.g., TXT), to facilitate computational reuse and integration (e.g., computational text mining for knowledge extraction).
   5. Computational reuse, integration, and distillation should give attribution to the original authors.
2. Existing open access models show high impact, scientific benefit, feasibility, and acceptability.
   1. The public benefit from open access to the world’s online information via the publicly funded Internet provides a good model of expected impact.
   2. The scientific fertilization from open access to genomic information via the publicly funded Human Genome Project provides a good model of expected scientific benefit.
   3. Open access policies by the US National Institutes of Health, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and the Wellcome Trust provide good models of feasibility and acceptability.
   4. The Creative Commons Attribution License and the Science Commons Open Access Data Mark provide good models of legal mechanisms for computational reuse, integration, and distillation.
3. Open literature access, reuse, integration, and distillation will enable a whole new generation of innovative computational tools and processes. The literature will be endowed with enriched commentary and usability. It will be connected seamlessly, by proper semantic links, to relevant Web sites, data, databases, and algorithms. Creating a web of knowledge around publications is an important consequence of semantic enrichment of the research literature. Such tools already are being built by publishers, researchers, entrepreneurs, and others. The further development of these tools should be supported aggressively. Removing all barriers to literature open access, reuse, integration, and distillation is critical to achieving such a knowledge-level transformation.
4. Supplementary data and methods should be openly available online, in sufficient detail to replicate the reported research results and facilitate reuse. Such material should be deposited in appropriate public repositories, in compliance with accepted community standards, and in accord with the existing ISCB public policy statement on sharing software. It should allow for application of other computational methods to the data and application of other data to the computational methods.
5. Publishing high-quality peer-reviewed scientific literature incurs costs. We recognize that cost recovery is a serious issue that must be addressed carefully if open access is to be a mandated policy.
6. Open-access policy details—which version, where stored, how annotated and organized, what incentives, etc.—must be considered carefully. However, it has now become essential to put forward a broad policy mandate for public access to, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation of, the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature.
7. This statement is intentionally neutral about any specific funding policy. Many implementations all may achieve the same essential goal. Acceptable funding policies should:
   1. Remove barriers to open access and subsequent computational reuse, integration, and distillation.
   2. Encourage public, private, and philanthropic funding organizations to establish policies that mandate free, open, public, online access to, and computational reuse, integration, and distillation of, the research results funded from their public, private, or philanthropic support.
   3. Promote the body of publicly funded archival research literature as a public investment that bears interest, and not as an ongoing access cost to the public.
   4. Establish copyright licenses in standard terms that permit literature access, reuse, and integration.
   5. Specify a format that is easy to parse by both human and machine (e.g., HTML); and, ideally, also provide a plain text version (e.g., TXT) to facilitate computational reuse and integration.
   6. Recognize the need to fund activities of peer review, copy editing, and publishing.
   7. Provide fairness to several groups, including the developing world and its health concerns, unfunded or under-funded researchers, and others.
   8. Provide fair interim support or compensation, if and where needed, to facilitate making transitions and adaptations to new models for publishing and sustaining essential revenue.
   9. Be consistent with government laws, patent requirements, other existing regulations, and research dissemination through viable commercial mechanisms.
8. The expected cost of complete open access to the publicly funded archival research literature is only a very small percentage of the entire publicly funded international research endeavor. Nevertheless, it is undesirable to divert funding from current research and thus risk underfunding basic science. New funding should be made available for open-access policy implementations.

Conclusion

Currently, scientific advancement is limited by article availability, access costs, copyright restrictions, document formats, bulk download limits, etc. All such barriers should be removed.

The publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature represents a substantial investment by the public, governments, foundations, non-profit institutions, publishers, individuals, and others. We in the ISCB are committed to the continuous enhancement and leveraging of society’s knowledge resources. One of our primary missions is the computational integration of individual pieces of knowledge from the research literature and databases, in ways that provide powerful new ideas and insights for next-stage research, for the benefit of the scientific community and society in general.

To achieve these public benefits, we strongly advocate free, open, public, online access to the publicly funded archival scientific and technical research literature, and the computational reuse, integration, and distillation of that literature into higher-order knowledge elements.

The example scenario shown in Box 2 illustrates an important public health benefit that could be achieved immediately: the opportunity to pursue useful knowledge-based innovations, by computational reuse, integration, and distillation of the publicly funded archival research literature, across many areas in biology and medicine.

Box 2. Example Scenario

An automated malaria Web site might access location-specific information from thousands of publicly funded malaria research articles daily, and then integrate that information into a free online interactive world map. Such a map might be annotated with up-to-date information about disease occurrences, drug resistance profiles, current best control practices, etc., as distilled from the research literature extracted for and attached to each local region. A hypothetical user might be a public health official in the developing world responsible for controlling a sudden malaria outbreak in a remote area. Such a Web site should encounter no barriers while performing this free, useful, and potentially essential public service.

Example Discussion

A search for “malaria” in the US NIH/NLM PubMed literature database yielded more than 55,000 hits (July 2010; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/). The publicly funded portion of these 55,000 “malaria” hits should be freely available in bulk to this hypothetical malaria Web site, using technologies well suited to bulk tasks, for purposes of (i) the initial bulk literature download; (ii) regular updates; and (iii) intermittent bulk repeat downloads to reinitialize an improved knowledge base. The relevant copyright permissions should permit computationally recombining the publicly funded portion of these 55,000 texts into whatever final form is most useful and informative to the user.

 

Source: ISCB Public Policy Statement on Open Access to Scientific and Technical Research Literature