Sunday, January 6, 2019

Part 6: Another Test


This paper by Jonathan Jong discusses two classic tests for religious definitions: 
  1. the football test and 
  2. the (atheistic Theravada) Buddhist test.


The football test analyzes whether hyper-zealous football fanatics, who are extremely tribal, get incorrectly classified as a religion.  This is a false positive test.  The atheistic Theravada Buddhist test analyzes whether a clearly religious group which lacks supernatural appeals is incorrectly missed as a religion.  This is a false negative test. 

Jong, and others, step around these issues by promoting a multi-factored cognitive science phenomenological approach to religious definitions. James Lindsay has done much the same thing.  Here is a rather long quote from Jong (2015)

CSR (cognitive science of religion) deals in specific hypotheses about specific features that often occur across religions traditionally conceived, but also elsewhere, in the secular world as it were. us, such phenomena as the belief in supernatural agents, ecstatic experiences, participation in causally opaque action sequences, formation of socially cohesive non- kin groups, obedience to moral codes, and so forth may contingently co-occur in different ways under different circumstances, in both ostensibly religious and nonreligious contexts. Furthermore, they are all products of different psychological mechanisms or cultural strategies, which themselves emerged to solve different evolutionary problems. Indeed, the causal relations between and among these phenomena are demonstrably variable and contingent.
This approach to religion entails that some previously apparently intractable research problems turn out to be meaningless because they were predicated on a mistaken reification of religion. Does religion lead to moral behaviour? Is religion an evolutionary adaptation? These questions imply that there is such a coherent, identifiable thing as religion, such that it can lead to moral behaviour (or not), and be an evolutionary adaptation or a spandrel or an exaptation. 


FOOTBALL FANATICS TEST
So let’s test if our original multi-factored behavioural definition of religion, which was determined to have a religious threshold value of 16 or 17 out of 27 passes the football fanatic test…
Football Fanatics

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother

x
x

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level


x

Sacred values (volume)

x
x

Sacred values (significance lvl)

x


Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)
x



Costly commitments

x


Clean hand actions


x

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
x



Steepness of In-group out-group gradient
x
x


Sum = 18.5/27

Here’s my thinking
Moral Big Brother - Is supporting another team fundamentally wrong? For everyone? Does it make them evil? No. But there are actions that fans can take that might be wrong on a transcendent level.  Disloyalty is the main example.

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level - Is there a group agent that is somewhat embodied? No. There is the team’s historical essence. Alignment to that history and its moral values plays some role in fans actions, and a large role in their football related actions. But, this historical essence, isn’t overly embodied. It is sensed, but minimally personified.
Sacred values (volume) - There are certain taboos that can’t be broken with respect to football. Wearing the wrong color. Cheering for the wrong team. Not being a mate. etc.
Sacred values (significance lvl) - What would happen if someone wore the opposing team’s colours to an event? They wouldn’t be killed, but they may be disfellowed.
Costly commitments - Travelling to other countries to watch and support matches is costly.
Clean hand actions - I couldn’t think of much here. The only obvious thing I could think about was having a weakly loyal fan carry in the group's historically significant banner.

Avg degree of member’s identity fusion - Their life and identity revolves around their team.
Steepness of in-group out-group gradient - Once you’re in the group, switching to another team would prevent future fellowship. But do football fanatics refuse to interact with agnostics? No. Do they refuse to interact with people who are ostensibly on the opposing team’s side but who minimally interested? A bit, but their degree of reservation probably falls off quite quickly with distance from a football event. The gradient is most steep for opposing team fans. Then it is high; probably as high as modern pluralistic religions, but not as high as medieval and older religions.

Conclusion
Football fanatics meet my threshold for religion. They are about as religious as more radicalized versions of Proud Boys are. Indeed, the two groups seem to have very similar dynamics. Football fanatics are higher on sacred values, while Proud Boys are higher on moral big brothers. It is interesting to note which religious features come out with each group. Proud boys have stronger Moral Big Brothers. Footballers have stronger sacred values. Holistically, I think radical Proud Boys would be more religious than football fanatics? Why? The moral big brother issue strikes me as more significant than the sacred values issue. Moral narratives matter. Sacred values can get teased together with loyalty issues. 
So, in general, I think my rating scale works fine with the Football test. I would consider them quasi-religious. It’s just that their religiosity gets turned on and off depending upon the social situation. I don’t have a problem with that. I think turning on and off religion based upon context is a very interesting “religious” innovation. It makes for a very neat pluralistic solution.
Whitehouse’s imagistic versus doctrinal categorization of religion is probably highly relevant to football fanatic and Theravada Buddhism tests. He proposes that imagistic incarnations of religion make up for ritual frequency via rarer episodes with correspondingly large emotive depth.



ANTIFA TEST
Where would Antifa fit?
Antifa

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother

x


Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level

x


Sacred values (volume)
x
x


Sacred values (significance lvl)
x
x


Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)
x



Costly commitments
x



Clean hand actions
x
x


Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
x



Steepness of In-group out-group gradient
x
x


Sum = 23/27

Anita is clearly very religious. It is on par with most traditional religions. My rating scale does not seem able to reflect cult-like dynamics.  I would guess there it needs a non-linear weighting for extreme measures. For instance, Antifa’s cult-like social dynamics may be so extreme that the “steepness of in-group out-group gradient” may need an “extreme” column with a value of 6. But, as with the football case, it is hard to tease out what effect acceptance of casual associations have on group gradients. Footballers and Antifa seem fine with casual interactions with “unbelievers”. Many cultists are not. Such interactions stain.

ATHEISTIC THERAVADA BUDDHISM TEST
I admit to not knowing a lot about Buddhism or its Theravada branch. But, based on a few hours on online reading and a two month trip to Thailand….

Theravada Buddhism

High 
(3)
Moderate (2)
Low 
(1)
Non-existent (0)
Moral Big Brother

x
x

Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level
x
x


Sacred values (volume)

x


Sacred values (significance lvl)

x


Common ritual (combo of significance & frequency)

x


Costly commitments
x



Clean hand actions

?


Avg degree of member’s identity fusion
x



Steepness of In-group out-group gradient

x
x

Sum = 19.5/27

Moral Big Brother - There is a moral group agent, but it is not embodied. The moral big brother is more the inferred superpositions of this belief system’s various positions.
Moral Big Brother’s embodiment level - There are no supernatural agents. There is a historical Buddha.
Sacred values (volume) - Theravada Buddhism certainly has sacred values. Have you tried going to monastery in shorts or without a shirt? Just because people think one’s actions will produce its own consequences doesn’t mean that in practice things are operationalized in terms of taboos and sacred values. It’s just highly pluralized.
Sacred values (significance lvl) - What would happen if someone wore the opposing team’s colours to an event? They wouldn’t be killed, but they may be excommunicated.
Costly commitments - Travelling to other countries to watch and support matches.
Clean hand actions - I couldn’t think of much here. Perhaps the only act would be carrying in a banner by someone who is weakly loyal.
Avg degree of member’s identity fusion - Buddhists seem tied to a cultural group and tradition.

Steepness of in-group out-group gradient - I'm not sure on this one. I get the sense they are fairly pluralistic. But normal cultural affinities can't be denied.


Conclusion
Theravistic Buddhism is on the edge between quasi-religiosity and classic religiosity.  Its atheistic character does not result in a false negative reading. My amateurish model catches it as it should.

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