Video of the Day: Korean mudang (shamans) being possessed by changun (warrior-general spirits)

Interesting thing about this one: the mudang being interviewed about how they stand on the edges of chaktu (a type of knife) describe how doing this makes them feel "very good". They don't seem to be talking about what I would normally think of as a stereotypical sort of 'ecstasy' state. They just look cheerful, which is unexpected (by which I mean, unexpected for me, someone who has extremely limited experience when it comes to standing on knives. At least if we're talking about doing it intentionally.)

Also: damn, that armour's pretty.

Review of 'The Concept of Shamanism: uses and abuses' (part 1)

(edited by Henri-Paul Francfort and Roberte N. Hamayon in collaboration with Paul G. Bahn, 2001, Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó)

So I'm currently reading two different books on shamanism. They take different approaches- Piers Vitebsky's Shamanism is an image-heavy book which feels like it probably works better as an intro book for someone without a social science background (in that it's interesting and well-written and very very pretty, but not as thoroughly referenced as I'd like). The Concept of Shamanism, on the other hand, is an essay collection with a very analytical approach. So far I'm enjoying the latter one more.

If you take a Popperian view of science (which I do), the vast majority of ethnographies are non-scientific studies. Ethnographic data is usually presented in a way that makes it impossible for anyone else to try to test or replicate it. There are many reasons for this. Obviously there's a major issue in that ethnographers tend to work alone and focus very much on local variation (so if someone else feels your ethnography doesn't sound plausible, then even if they have considerable knowledge of the culture in question it's often possible to just say "well, my understanding is very specific to the individuals I spoke to and the time period when I was there. If the study had been done in a slightly different place, at a different time, or with a different researcher, then differences in interpretation would be inevitable."

This sort of attitude would seem to make the idea of reliable replication of results pretty problematic (although it is sometimes possible to go back and re-interview the specific people who acted as informants for an earlier anthropologist, and see if their statements still seem to support the original researcher's conclusions. Derek Freeman's research with Margaret Mead's informants would be an obvious example, although I'm not massively familiar with his work and I'm aware that some people feel he ends up resorting to ad hominems against Mead- I'll have to go read it properly sometime).

However, I think that even if we accept the methodological limitations of research on human belief systems, there are ways in which it's possible to pursue scientific research by phrasing your theories in terms of testable predictions. Not many people actually seem interested in doing this- which is fair enough, and if researchers are interested in a pursuing a humanities approach rather than a scientific one then it makes total sense. What REALLY annoys me, though, is when someone advances a theory which seems to involve testable hypotheses, but then when you actually engage with their research it often turns out that their hypotheses aren't really testable. Or worse, they're testable as initially phrased, but any apparently contradictory evidence is met by attempts by researchers to redefine terms or otherwise move the goalposts in order to save the theory from falsification. That just seems to render the entire debate completely pointless.

Caveat: I'm not totally up to date on the theory that's under question in this book. I read Clottes and Lewis-Williams' The Shamans of Prehistory (1998) about three years ago, but I certainly wouldn't claim to be an expert on that book and I haven't read more recent stuff like Lewis-Williams and David Pearce's Inside the Neolithic Mind (2005). So I'm basically going on the reviews presented by the various essay authors in The Concept of Shamanism (who were published in 2001, so theoretically Lewis-Williams & co. could have penned a devastating rebuttal by now for all I know). So that aside: here's a summary of what I understand to be the core theory that's being proposed:

• 'Shamanism' is a word which applies to customs practiced in a very broad range of cultures throughout human history. 'Shamanism' here seems to mean localised belief systems inspired by certain kinds of altered states of consciousness (ASCs) experienced on a regular basis by individual ritual practitioners.
• These ASCs are often induced by drugs, but they can also be caused by other things such as sensory deprivation.
• There are certain types of vision/hallucination which frequently arise from shamanic ASCs, regardless of the cultural context. This is because all humans share the same sort of brain structure and visual system, and these can internally generate certain kinds of images (e.g. entoptic phenomena).
• Shamanic ASCs often inspire certain types of artwork (thus leading to certain patterns of images which can be found in art from a broad range of cultures).
• Therefore, if we find art which fits these patterns, we can infer that the culture which produced it practiced shamanism.
• European Paleolithic cave art and San rock art show these patterns. Therefore the (long-dead) people who created these works were shamans.
  

The contributors to this volume are archaeologists and anthropologists who are sceptical of this theory.

The anthology kicks off with 'Shamanism: symbolic system, human capability and Western ideology' by Roberte Nicole Hamayon (p.1-27). Hamayon instantly earns my love by starting off with a quote from Unended Quest (I am a Popper fangirl). The quote in question goes:

"Never let yourself be goaded into taking seriously problems about words and their meanings. What must be taken seriously are questions of facts and assertions about facts: theories and hypotheses, the problems they solve and the problems they raise." (cited p.1).

This is an especially important point in discussions on 'shamanism', where there's rarely a clear consensus over exactly what the word means, and so you tend to wind up with a series of overlapping but non-equivalent definitions plus a substantial number of researchers who don't really care whether the word has a precise definition as long as it can be used in a sort of broad, common-sense, "but at least everyone knows roughly what I mean by this" sort of way (see p.5, 8).

Hamayon is concerned that popular interest in shamanism (from Western subcultures like the New Age and Pagan movements, or people interested in experimenting with drugs) is in danger of distorting research on shamanism in other cultures (by providing an incentive for people to attach the shamanism-label to a very wide range of practices, and then only emphasise the elements of those practices which accord with the vague mental image which non-specialists have of 'shamanism').

A couple of key quotes here:

"At the risk of oversimplifying the debate, we may put it in the straightforward manner it was initially put no matter how obsolete this may appear today: Is shamanism basically and ultimately the expression of a type of religion or worldview or of a type of personality or inner innate disposition? If the former, is it characteristic of certain types of societies and cultures or an elementary constituent of religious systems in general? If the latter, is it specific to a certain type of individuals or inherent in human beings?" (p.4)

"On the basis of this [Korean shamanism] and other similar examples, it has come to be largely admitted that shamanism is inherently oral, not as a reflection of illiteracy and backwardness but as a condition for its specific practice. According to tradition, shamanic efficacy comes from being in 'direct contact' with spirits and acting under their inspiration. It is precisely for this reason that shamanic practice is claimed to be an object of personalised performance exclusively, basically incompatible with the very idea of doctrine and, more broadly, with the idea of fixed ways of expression." (although written songs have been used to train beginner Korean shamans, established Korean shamans argue these songs lack efficacy and so an experienced shaman should only sing songs they have learned directly from their spirits). (p.10)

Hamayon thinks 'shamanism' appeals to some modern Westerners for the following reasons:

• it sounds 'exotic' and 'primitive', and therefore represents a rebellion against Western culture
• people feel it's connected with 'nature' and therefore environmentalism
• it sounds relatively vague and non-culturally specific. Therefore a commitment to 'shamanism' does not not necessarily imply a commitment to any particular culture or way of life (which is good from a memetic transmission perspective, because a definition of 'shamanism' which implied that to be a 'shaman' one must be a hunter-gatherer, for example, would make it much harder for Westerners to participate).
• shamanism is conceptualised as a phenomenon which encompasses a wide range of cultural variation but has some universal features (such as a specific type of ASC which humans from any culture can learn to induce). This implies that if you want to become a shaman, it's not strictly necessary to learn about specific types of non-Western cultures, or be initiated into an existing non-Western tradition. You can theoretically tap into the universal features of the shamanic experience from the comfort of your own home and culture.
• sometimes these universal features of shamanism are speculated as being connected to universal features of the human brain. This relatively vague reference to neurology helps reassure some people that 'shamanism's efficacy has scientific backing.
• 'shamans' are conceived as individuals, working outside of any institutional structure, who are capable of 'mastering' spirits. This means that, compared to some other religious options on offer to Westerners, 'shamanism' seems to make fewer demands which might conflict with individual's existing desires or moral beliefs (p.12-13)

Hamayon then goes on to argue that members of the Western counter-culture are using the concept of 'shamanism' as a tool to reshape Western culture into a form which they find more compatible with their own interests. In some areas, they have been remarkably successful in doing so- for example, concern for the environment and for individual health and well-being are values which began mainly as features of the counter-culture, but have since become widely accepted by mainstream Western society. Hamayon states quotes Bernard Dupuy: "mysticism is the form taken by a religion when new tendencies refuse to break out of the shell of the old religious system to create a new one but instead remain confined within its limits." (cited p.13).

Hamayon believes that the type of shamanism practiced in the West is more individualistic than non-Western 'shamanisms', more internalised within individuals (due to Western conceptualisations of 'ASC' and 'trance' rather than an emphasis on ritual performance), and less focused on spirits (especially spirits with specific roles, such as embodiments of discrete aspects of the natural environment, or of individual ancestors) (p.14). I agree that the Western shamanic movement seems a lot more individualistic than non-Western shamanisms- I can't really comment on the other two points, since I don't know enough about Western shamanism to say what would count as 'typical'.

This leads to my one major area of concern with Hamayon's very intriguing essay: she doesn't make it very clear how much direct experience she's had with the Western shamanism movement. Has she done any textual research, interviews, or participant observation? If not, then does she have a good reason why we should take her arguments on trust? Her description of Western shamanism feels relatively plausible to me, but I'm definitely not an expert and so I'm not convinced that 'plausible to me' is good enough.

For example, she cites Weber's comment that ecstatic states, spirit possession, and ASCs caused by drugs or dancing play the same role for 'peasants' that 'mysticism' plays for intellectuals (see p.14). Setting aside the fact that my level of respect for many of Weber's generalisations is not terribly high, I'm not convinced that this statement really applies to much of the Western shamanism movement. It sounds like it might be a reasonable argument in relation to most of Western history (although I'm not a historian so I don't really know), but it seems to me that most of the people who are drawn to the Western shamanic movement are attracted by the idea that it involves ASCs and/or drugs and/or dancing and physical ritual- this is something which serves to distinguish it from most of the other options on offer. I also don't understand what Weber's supposed to be implying by the word 'mysticism' in this context- earlier we had a quote from Dupuy which seemed to be saying that 'mysticism' is basically just any attempt to radically reform a religious tradition from the inside, rather than starting a whole new tradition in order to achieve the sort of religious framework that you want. Where does that imply 'intellectualism' or a lack of emphasis on ASCs and dancing? Possibly Weber has a narrower definition of 'mysticism' that addresses these questions, but if so it would have been helpful for Hamayon to mention it.

All in all, though, it's an interesting essay- definitely food for thought.

Reading 'On Spiritual Edgework' by David G. Bromley

Bromley, David G., 2007, 'On Spiritual Edgework: the logic of extreme ritual performances', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 46, 3, pp.287-303

A rough paraphrase of Bromley's concept of 'spiritual edgework' might be 'rituals in which participants deliberately do things that people in their cultures would normally consider dangerous, in order to publically demonstrate that their spirituality enables them to transcend normal human limitations' (p.289). He illustrates this with two examples: Christian snake-handling and New Age firewalking. I think this make sense, but I had a couple of issues with the way Bromley goes about explaining this concept.

First of all, there's Bromley's explicit definition of the concept: in spiritual edgework, "practitioners challenge the presumptive safe limits of human activity by regularly and deliberately engaging in ritual practices that apparently risk certain physical or psychological injury or even death" (p.289). Bromley further clarifies that his definition of 'edgework' excludes cases where the practitioner actually "goes over the edge", as with martyrdom (p.301).

Most of this is reasonable, but I'm curious as to what he means by 'risk of psychological injury'. What's a 'psychological injury'? Is Bromley thinking in terms of specifically medical labels, like PTSD? Is it meant to be an emic judgement? Or is he just assuming it should be 'common sense' for us to define etically what this means? Guessing the answer to these questions is made harder by the fact that he may not intend this part of his definition to apply to either of his two examples. Or at least, snake-handlers and firewalkers don't seem to feel that their practices are likely to cause psychological harm, and I don't recall ever seeing any of their detractors argue that either (that is, there are obviously people who think that snake-handlers and firewalkers "must be crazy", but it seems like the usual argument is that they must already be psychological unstable in order to want to participate in rituals in the first place- not that the rituals seem likely to cause psychological harm).

Another problem with the vagueness of the 'psychological injury' issue is that if you start picking religious practices at random, you can probably always find somebody SOMEWHERE who would argue that they're potentially psychologically damaging. For example, it's not too hard to find people who argue that Catholicism instils a sense of pathological guilt (for the record, I'm not arguing that it does, but this is a claim which you do see cropping up fairly often). Does that imply that going to Mass is a type of spiritual edgework? I doubt Bromley would label it as such, but if he doesn't like a definition of 'psychological injury' that includes basic Catholic doctrine then that does raise questions about whose definition he would prefer to apply.

My other main issue with this paper is Bromley's frequent use of the word 'empowering'. Bromley doesn't define this word, so I'm kind of left to guess at what he means by it. I've always assumed that the word implies a value judgement. It's hard for me to imagine someone applying the word to a practice which they don't actively agree with (unless they were being sarcastic, or making it clear they were using it in the context of emic views- "some participants argue that this ritual is empowering", etc). Maybe it's just me, but if the word is generally assumed to carry a value judgement, then I don't think it's appropriate to use it in the context of etic statements in an academic article.

It's possible that Bromley just meant it as a value-neutral way to say "things that people believe give them power", but if so then I think it would have been helpful to state it explicitly. It's also possible that Bromley feels that the groups he's discussing have been the target of so many negative value judgements that it's necessary for him to use positive value judgements to compensate. Bromley discusses criticism of these groups on p.288. Small point- as evidence that snake-handlers have "often been treated derisively" even by academics, he quotes Williamson and Pollio: "unfortunately, most analyses of this practice tend to decontextualize it as pathological or characterize it in functional terms, that is, as mitigating the difficulties of life. For example, La Barre (1962/1992), a psychoanalytically trainedanthropologist, cast his unfortunate subject, Beauregard Barefoot, as a compulsive snake handler who attemptedthrough ritual to resolve the sexual conflicts of his childhood life." While I agree that these approaches to snake-handling don't sound massively helpful, it's worth pointing out that functionalists tend to describe EVERYTHING as functional, and followers of some psychoanalytic tend to describe EVERYTHING in terms of dysfunction resulting from childhood sexual conflict- it's not helpful, but it's not necessarily a sign than snake-handlers suffer from any special prejudice either.

The issue is further complicated by the fact that the first sentence in the entire paper states that "religion as a social form is constructed to provide adherents with a sense of empowerment and control" (p.287). I have no idea what Bromley means by this, or whether he's speaking in the context of religion in general or just religion in the modern West. I also don't know what he means by the word 'constructed'- is he thinking in terms of top-down or bottom-up models? That is, is he thinking in terms of the motives of people who start religious movements (or push for major changes within them)? Is he saying that these people are motivated by the desire to make the religion better at 'empowering' ordinary worshippers? Or is he thinking from the perspective of ordinary worshippers themselves? Is he arguing that they're always trying to find a way to make their religion more empowering for themselves personally? That would make more sense, assuming Bromley would be happy with this statement applying equally to pretty much every kind of social system (not just religion).

Although, weirdly, on p.289 he seems to be saying that some religions/spiritualities are more concerned to provide adherents with a sense of empowerment than others are ("The [New Age] movement is concerned withtranscending the apparent limits of human capacity through a diverse array of methods for personal growth and transformation. One common characteristic of many New Age quasi-religious therapies (Greil and Robbins 1994), therefore, is a ritualized means of enhancing a sense of individual empowerment and control.") Unless there's some nuance here I've missed (maybe New Age stuff stresses INDIVIDUAL empowerment whereas many other religions/spiritualities mainly discuss empowerment in a group context?), this seems to kind of contradict the idea from p.287 that providing adherents with a sense of empowerment is a function of religions in general.

On p.289, Bromley states that "while there is a substantial literature exploring the nature of ritual as a social form and different types of ritual (Bell 1997; Grimes 1995; Turner 1969), there is little inquiry into the issue of how ritual empowerment, particularly in its more radical forms, is socially constructed" (p.289). Maybe there's actually a substantial amount of academic literature examining the issue of empowerment in a descriptive way, and I've missed it (obviously the term gets used by consciously partisan academics like feminist activists and psychiatrists trying to find a way to enhance clients' self-esteem, but those are fields that have made a deliberate decision to use normative rather than desciptive terms, so it's a different thing). If so, then I've obviously missed it (entirely possible)- but at the moment, I suspect that maybe Bromley feels that there's "little enquiry" into the issue because he's using an idiosyncratic term and hasn't come across people who are using synonyms for whatever it is he means by it.
Final quibble: I don't understand why this paper was published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion when it's not a scientific study (I'm not trying to be snarky and use 'scientific' as a generic word for 'good' or 'intellectually rigourous'- I mean it's non-scientific in the sense that it doesn't involve any hypothesis testing. There are plenty of good non-scientific journals of religious studies out there, so I would have assumed that this particular journal would stick to scientific stuff).

So that's all the stuff I didn't like- what about the rest of the article? Distaste for the word 'empowerment' aside, I'm intrigued by what Bromley seems to be saying here:

"A foundational assumption of classic sociological interpretations of religion- that the transcendent is socially constructed is critical to the issue of empowerment and control. If the transcendent is socially constructed as an autonomous source of power, independent of humans,then it can be potentially both constraining and liberating, as has been noted in formulations of the holy (Durkheim 1965; Otto 1923). It follows that groups determine, through the way the transcendent is constructed, the extent of constraint/liberation to which they are subject and the means through which the transcendent can be apprehended and influenced. In fact, this is a common theme in sociological theory and empirical work on religious groups." (p.287)

On the one hand, I'm a little leery of the fact that he's apparently coming right out and saying "let's start with the assumption that religion is 'socially constructed as an autonomous source of power'" (I'm of the opinion that social scientists of religion should be really cautious about taking sides on this issue- reflexive passages where they explain their personal views on the matter are fine, but I feel their actual analyses should do their best to describe emic belief or scepticism without passing judgement. But obviously not everyone feels this way (and obviously one could argue it's kind of convenient for someone who's personally agnostic to endorse professional agnosticism as best practice). And I guess Bromley isn't coming right out and saying "I'm an atheist", or anything he's just stating the fact that most social science analyses start with the assumption that we can describe a religious system entirely in terms of human efforts, so I guess if you don't plan on doing anything differently then arguably it's better to just say that straight off rather than dance around the issue.

If I understand Bromley correctly, he's going on to say that cultures are to some extent 'choosing' the constraints or restrictions which they're prepared to abide by (particularly in terms of supernatural prohibitions, although obviously pretty much the same argument would apply to systems of secular law). Therefore, if we come across a group which abides by something that looks like a particularly harsh imperative (e.g. a commandment to handle venomous snakes), it's relevant to ask why the group has generally accepted this (even if some individuals have rejected the idea). If anyone here has read the Sandman graphic novel (that's an expensive comic book, for those of you who aren't as pretensious as me), I can see 90's-era Neil Gaiman really going for this idea.

So in the context of edgework, then, he's saying that communities accept the idea of doing stuff they'd normally consider dangerous because they believe that a higher power will enable them to transcend their normal limitations. When people make it through the ritual unscathed, they feel like they've achieved something miraculous, and so get a sense of empowerment. Bromley reckons that from this perspective, firewalking and snake-handling are both practices which are really well-suited for edgework (he argues this is why they've been picked up by multiple cultures- see p.291). There are several features of these rituals which make them especially suitable.

Firstly, they're both genuinely dangerous, in that it's possible to point to real examples of people who've been injured or died as a result of participating. This is particularly true of snake-handling, since it's apparently emically accepted that anyone who handles snakes on a regular basis is going to get bitten eventually, even if they're a faithful Christian. It's thought that snake-handling has killed around 75 people, presumably during public services with a lot of witnesses (thus potentially making the whole thing more obviously scary than if they'd died alone in their homes). With regard to fire-walking, it's not too uncommon to get blistered feet. Occasionally people get seriously burned, and there are a few documented cases of people dying because they tripped and fell onto the coals. So, most fire-walkers probably won't have personally witnessed a death or serious injury, but most fire-walking workshops will mention the possibility in their introductory talks (p.294, 299, 302).

However, Bromley reckons that neither ritual is actually as dangerous as it might appear at first. People can and do get through these rituals uninjured on a fairly regular basis (p.301). This is often true even if people behave in a way that looks pretty reckless to observers (e.g. just reaching into a box of snakes and grabbing one without checking if they seem about to bite you, or practicing firewalking until you can spend quite a long time on the coals- see p.297, 298).

"Both firewalking and serpent handling are regarded as a confirmation and not a test of
[practicioners'] beliefs" (p.299). That is, if someone engages in one of these rituals and comes away unharmed, that's seen as proof that they've been mystically sustained by God or your higher self. However, if someone DOES get burned or bitten, that's not usually emically seen as something that contradicts the validity of the ritual. Harm sustained during rituals can be blamed on several possible factors, such as:

• the injured person was foolhardy and refused to take proper instruction
• the injured person was too prideful, and was thus in need of a reminder of their human limitations
• it was necessary that participants' faith should be tested and thereby strengthened
• the ritual was disrupted by harmful forces, such as demonic interference (p.300)

In other words "in the cases of firewalking and serpent handling, the empirical probabilityof success is considerably higher than it appears to be, and the definition of successful outcomes is expanded while the definition of failure is narrowed, so that even injuries or deaths in limited numbers are confirming events" (p.302).

Reading: 'The God Delusion', chapter 1

(2006, London: Bantam press)

Cards on the table: I'm not a big fan of Richard Dawkins' views on religion. I think The Selfish Gene is one of the best introductory biology books ever written, and I think his ideas about memetics are also pretty interesting. But I find his writings about religion to be frankly obnoxious. I don't see why theists should feel obliged to engage in debate with someone who doesn't seem to prepared to refrain from ad hominems. If the point is that the origins of religion should be an object of scientific study (not just theology), then said scientific studies should do their best to maintain some level of neutrality, even if the researchers also have pretty strong personal opinions too. It's the same way as how a biologist can get very passionate about conservation work, but if they publish a scientific journal article about cheetah ecology, then I don't expect them to write something like "the cheetah is a proud and noble beast and the lions who eat their cubs are evil monsters who make me feel sick whenever I look at them" (even if that's what they believe). Some scientists who study religion are actually pretty good at this, but many aren't, and it's really frustrating for those of us who are interested in the topic to have to explain that science + religion doesn't equal "fan of Dawkins who thinks we'd all be better off if religion ceased to exist".

So, speaking as a fence-sitting agnostic, I'm not exactly predisposed to like this book much (although I appreciate the fact that he's at least written an entire book on religion, rather than a book which is mostly about biology but keeps getting sidetracked by discussions of atheism). I'm going to do my best to take his arguments seriously, but if I start misreading him then hopefully someone will point it out.

Chapter 1 is basically Dawkins arguing that 'religion' implies 'theism', by definition. Therefore, feeling a sense of awe at the beauty of the Milky Way is not a religious experience unless the person in question consciously links the feeling to their belief in God. This is important, because Dawkins frequently gets accused of being secretly 'religious' because he talks about getting these feelings of awe in response to natural phenomena. I can see how it must be incredibly irritating to be told you secretly believe the opposite of what you claim to believe. I also agree that Dawkins probably isn't 'religious' by the Western layman's definition of 'religious' (still not sure what I think of 'belief in one or more gods' as an academic definition of religion, although it's probably more useful in some contexts than in others).

Dawkins' definition of 'God', incidentally, appears on p.13: "a supernatural creator that is 'appropriate for us to worship'" (cf Steven Weinburg). At first, I didn't like this definition very much. 'Supernatural' is a notoriously hard word to define cross-culturally. Not all gods are creators, and when they are, that aspect often isn't stressed heavily by their worshippers. Also, I'd want to know whether he's got a definition of 'worship'. It seems like many definitions would apply equally to the behaviour some people display towards kings and rockstars (in which case this definition threatens to make Mick Jagger a 'god'). You could obviously fix that by saying "worship is behaviour directed at a god", but in that case, defining "God" as "beings that people worship" seems a bit tautological.

But then I rethought it, and I decided that most people in the West would probably be happy with that definition, so it's probably workable as long as he's not planning on applying it to cross-cultural contexts.

Dawkins thinks that many scientists have a tendency to use the word 'God' to mean 'the universe', in a kind of pantheistic way. Example: Einstein made various comments like "God does not play dice", then got very irritated when people read those as indicating that he believed in a personal God. Dawkins thinks this sort of use of the word 'God' is just confusing, and should probably be avoided. I can see his point, although I don't agree with his argument that using the word 'God' in depersonalised sense constitutes "an act of intellectual high treason" (p.19).

Something I've never quite understood is why Dawkins seems happy to invest huge amounts of time into talking about religion, but doesn't seem particularly interested in doing much reading on the topic (I could be totally wrong about this, but the kind of people he cites generally seem to give the impression of someone who's middle-class and generically well-read, but not someone who goes out of his way to systematically read through specialist books). There's a quote on p.16 which sheds some light on this:

"The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed 'fairyologist' on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings."

I can kind of see what he's talking about here- I don't think that someone needs to have completed a theology course before they're allowed to call themselves an atheist or enter into casual debate about religion. But a major part of Dawkins' career seems to be built on making sweeping claims about religion. For example, Dawkins seems to believe quite strongly that religion has a tendency to increase the frequency of wars (based on the fact that when wars happen, the clergy often refer to them as necessary in order to uphold divine will)- see p.1, for a start, I expect there'll be more later. I suspect that in many or most cases, it's actually the other way around- the war is going to happen anyway, due to local political tensions, and so the clergy are expected to fall into line and say that God is also backing the plan. Now, I could be wrong about this, but I think that if Dawkins wants to keep pushing his argument, then it couldn't hurt for him to do some reading up on 'religious wars' in different historical periods, to see whether there's any way to speculate what would have happened if everyone involved had hypothetically been atheists instead.

Even if Dawkins is 100% certain that God doesn't exist, he's presumably aware that religion exists and that some people have put quite a lot of effort into studying it. If he wants, he can opt not to read things written by people who are consciously trying to promote religion, but even then, there's been quite a lot of stuff written by atheists who are doing their best to understand and accurately describe religious beliefs.

Even if we assume, as Dawkins seems to, that religious people are basically all unstable schizophrenics, it seems a bit stupid to believe that 'fairyology' is thereby rendered irrelevant. For example, if some fairyologists believe that fairies are basically kind and gentle, others believe that they're mischevious but can be persuaded to help people, and then others believe that they are wrathful creatures which support the stoning of unbelievers- well, I'd have thought Dawkins would have an interest in knowing roughly what percentage fall into the third category.

Reading: 'Quest Religion, Anti-Fundamentalism, and Limited Versus Universal Compassion'

Batson, C. Daniel, Drew M. Denton, Jason T. Vollmecke, 2008, 'Quest Religion, Anti-Fundamentalism, and Limited Versus Universal Compassion', Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 47, 1, pp.135-45

'Quest religion' is religion pursued as an open-ended journey towards spirituality, with the assumption that there is no one true path. Obviously these people are more likely than most to disapprove of 'religious intolerance', so this leads to the question: does it make sense to describe followers of quest religion as being intolerant of intolerant people? That is, do they just get annoyed when people are actively trying to promote 'one true way' religion, or do they also personally dislike anyone who believes in a 'one true way'?

Batson et al. conducted an experiment to explore this idea. Undergraduate students were asked to take part in some research on the effects of disclosing information about yourself. They were also told that they'd been randomly selected as 'recipients' and would be receiving notes from other undergraduate students who'd been selected as 'disclosers'. In fact, the notes from the dicloser were all standardised and written by experimenters.

The recipients then got given two pieces of paper with randomly generated numbers on them. They were told to circle a specific number whenever it came up (e.g. every time they saw the numbers 13 and 47). They had two minutes to do this, and could decide which of the two pages they wanted to focus their efforts on. They were told that if they did well at finding all the target numbers on page 1, the discloser they'd been paired with would be entered into a raffle to win a $30 gift certificate. If they instead focused on circling numbers on page 2, the raffle ticket would go to an unknown student.

The subjects were split into three groups. Group 1 got notes saying that their imaginary discloser had been worried about starting college and making new friends, but really hoped they'd win the gift certificate because they'd been saving every penny so that they could afford to go to Dallas and visit their grandparents. Group 2 got the same note as Group 1, except it also said that the main reason the discloser had been worried about making friends was that they were a fundamentalist Christian who believed very strongly that their faith was the only true religion, and they weren't sure how the people at their college would react to that. Group 3 got the same note as Group 2, except that the reason they gave for needing the money was to go to a Dallas rally for evangelical fundamentalists.

So, basically, subjects were able to decide how much they wanted to help the person who they thought was writing to them. If they felt like their discloser deserved a chance to win a $30 gift certificate, they could opt to focus on circling numbers on page 1. Alternately, they could choose to help the unknown student instead, by circling numbers on page 2.

In experiments like this, people normally choose to help the discloser rather than an unknown student. So if it's true that people into quest religion dislike fundamentalists on a personal level, then we'd expect such people to opt to help the unknown student more often when the discloser says they're fundamentalist. If, however, followers of quest religion are ok with fundamentalists as people even though they may dislike their belief systems, then we'd expect them to help the fundamentalist discloser when they need money to visit grandparents (although they might still choose not to help them when they wanted money to go to a fundamentalist rally).

The subjects were also asked to complete psychological questionnaires called the Quest Scale, the Balanced Quest Scale, and the Fundamentalism Scale. I haven't read any of these, so I don't know how sensible they look. The Quest Scale is meant to measure the extent to which someone is a follower of Quest Religion. The Balanced Quest Scale is a different test which is meant to do the same thing, but Batson et al. suspect it may actually be measuring how anti-fundamentalist you are (and someone may be hostile to fundamentalism without being a fan of quest religion). The Fundamentalism scale is a measure of how fundamentalist someone is. Batson et al. reckon these scales only really make sense when you're studying people with a Christian background, so of their 60 undergraduate subjects, there were 21 Protestants, 25 Catholics, and 14 with Christian backgrounds but no current religious affiliation. Also, all subjects had scored 4 or higher when asked to rate how interested they were in religion (on a scale of 1 to 9).

Results: scores for the Balanced Quest Scale had a fairly low positive correlation with results from the Quest Scale (r=0.5), but a very high negative correlation with results from the Fundamentalism Scale (r= -0.81)- which reinforces Batson et al's sense that it's more of measure of how much you hate fundamentalism than how much you like quest religion. People who scored low (i.e. below the median) on the Quest Religion Scale tended to help the discloser about 70% of the time, regardless of which note they got. People who scored high also tended to help the discloser about 70% of the time if they got the note saying that didn't mention the discloser's religion.

So, did people who score high on Quest Religion opt to deny help to fundamentalists? If the dicloser said they were going to the fundamentalist rally, then followers of quest religion chose to help them about 50% of the time (which is still higher than it might be). If, however, they said they wanted to see their grandparents, then followers of quest religion chose to help them about 90% of the time- even more often than they chose to help non-fundamentalist disclosers (although the difference between the two wasn't statistically significant). So, the only statistically significant difference here was that between helping the fundamentalists visit their grandparents vs helping the fundamentalists go to the rally (p < 0.005, via ANOVA). I suspect that this is partly because, like many otherwise interesting psychological studies, the sample size is smaller than I'd like. Some of the cells in the ANOVA have less than 10 subjects in them.

Something else that may be worth filing in the 'quirks specific to psychology' column: on p.143, Batson et al. remark that "ever since the classic work of Allport (1950, 1966), religious orientations have been conceived at a theoretical level in terms of psychological process rather than religious content." I'm assuming there's meant to be an invisible "within psychology" caveat on that (I don't know if this is a psychology-specific journal- from the title, I'd assumed that it would also attract quantitative sociologists, at least, but maybe I'm wrong). In any case, Batson et al. don't think religious content is totally irrelevant (that's why they argue that Quest Religion scale is derived from research on people with Christian backgrounds, and therefore we shouldn't just assume that it can be applied to people from other backgrounds without any change in results. Given the amount of time I spend bitching about psychologists who seem to start off with the assumption that culture is irrelevant, I approve of this.