THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POVERTY, IGNORANCE, AND RELIGION

        The Science Channel recently aired a controversial and surprising new television program entitled Through the Wormhole. It is a discussion of current scientific issues with the actor, Morgan Freeman, as its host. In one episode entitled “Did we invent God or did God invent us?” Freeman explores the question of whether the concept of God is purely a product of our brains. As part of the discussion, Freeman tells about the ideas of a University of Texas psychologist named Jennifer Whitson. Through experiment, Whitson illustrates how people who feel that they have no control over their lives and surroundings are more likely to look for explanations in something mystical. On the other hand, people who feel well in control of their lives are less likely to believe in mystical or  spiritual beings controlling their destinies.

            One of Whitson’s experiments involved having people try to solve random problems. There were no right or wrong answers to the problems, but Whitson designed the experiment so that some people would feel that they were solving all of the problems while others were made to feel that they were failing to solve any of the problems. As a final part of the experiment she gave each of the people a picture of random static noise such as appears on a television screen. There were no pictures in the static, but the people who had been made to feel that they had failed to solve any of the problems, and who were discouraged with the feeling that they had no control, regularly claimed that they saw a picture of something in the static. Those who thought they had done well with the problems and felt in control said that they did not see anything in the static.

            The conclusion drawn by Whitson was that people tend to look to mystical and spiritual things for help when they feel that they have no control. People who feel totally in control are far less likely to adopt spiritual and mystical explanations. Morgan Freeman said that this might explain why the most religious and superstitious people in the world are in the poor and ignorant populations.

            Poor and ignorant people seem to be far more religious and superstitious than rich and educated people. Religion is basically a form of encouragement, support, and reinforcement. It is a crutch for people who feel they have no control over the world and need something to back them up. Poor and ignorant people want to believe that this is not all there is to life. They want to believe that there is a life after death that is much better than this one and is the best of all possible worlds.

            According to Gallup polls, there is a direct relationship between poverty and the religiosity of countries around the world. In the world's poorest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes of $2,000 or lower -- the median percentage of people who say religion is important in their daily lives is 95%. In contrast, the median for the richest countries -- those with average per-capita incomes higher than $25,000 -- is 47%.

Highly educated people tend to be less religious than people with little education. A poll of those distinguished scientists who are members of The National Academy of Sciences disclosed that 93% are atheists or agnostics.

            The anthropologist Scott Atran says: “In Britain and the United States, the highest measures of religious commitment and the most radical forms of religious affiliation (Pentecostal, Baptist, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh-Day Adventists etc.) are registered among the most marginal or underprivileged social groups, especially minorities and persons at the bottom of the socioeconomic totem pole.”

            When you look at it from the point of view of very poor people the world over, belief in God has a rational basis. We are all born with a natural inclination to assume that everything in the world should make sense. Very poor people cannot accept that their lives of want, hunger, crime, infirmity, discrimination, and disrespect, are all there is or will ever be for them. They believe that life should be fair, and that there must be something to balance their hardships.  If you wander in the worst ghettos of American cities, or the teeming, indigent barrios of Latin American cities, or the fetid warrens of India’s slums, you will find people with nothing in the way of material goods, but a great deal of hope for a better life after death.

They need to believe that somehow in the afterlife God will level the playing field and that they are not condemned for all eternity to being poor, backward, inferior, or ignorant. They need to believe that in eternal life there will be no aristocrats and peasants, no intellectuals and simple minds. The poor of America need to believe that in the afterlife they will have everything they want and will get as much respect as if they were millionaires. The poor of the arid deserts of Arabia need to believe that in the afterlife there will be cool rivers flowing through green pastures with plentiful flowers and fruit.

            Religion is not nearly as important to middle and upper class Americans as it is for the poor. For many of the comfortable and educated, there is considerable doubt and lax adherence to required church-going expectations. I have known many middle class people who say that they believe in God but who go to church only once or twice a year. I have found that of those middle and upper class people who are deeply religious, many tend to be less educated or intelligent than others. The more educated and intelligent one is, the more such a person has a curious mind. People with great curiosity tend to be more skeptical. People with great skepticism are more likely to be atheists.

PUTIN AND UKRAINE

      It was distressing and scary to see Russian military forces move into and take-over the Crimea in southern Ukraine. It is even more distressing and depressing to see American conservatives blaming our president for these dangerous events and showing admiration for Vladimir Putin, the man behind this aggression.

            Anyone who has read history will be aware that World War I was started with the same kind of occurrences as are happening now in Ukraine. Back then, the assassination of a Grand Duke, followed by a series of demands, confrontations, and clashes, led to greatest bloodletting the world had ever known. World War II was preceded by Hitler’s claims that he needed to invade neighboring countries in order to protect the German populations therein. Putin has made similar claims about the Crimea, and has hinted that he feels the same about other areas in nations surrounding Russia.

I believe that what happened before World Wars I and II could happen in Ukraine. If the Russian army were to move into eastern Ukraine, and the Ukrainian Army were to confront the Russian invaders, and if European nations were to come to the aid of Ukraine, and the United States was to fulfill its treaty obligations with NATO, we could be in a bloody world of trouble—all caused by the insecurities of Vladimir Putin. Contrary to the image he likes to project, I believe that Putin is a terribly insecure man.

            Let’s not forget that Putin is a former KGB officer. After the fall of the Soviet Union he was in charge of the Federal Security Service which was the successor to the KGB and which retained many of the old KGB thugs. He has said that the fall of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin has never denounced the police state that existed under Communism. The Soviet Union may have been powerful, but it existed on the basis of a harsh, ruthless, violent tyranny that denied its people most of the freedoms we experience in the United States and confronted the United States and Europe with brutal hostility. Putin may not want a return of Soviet Communism, but he would surely like to reestablish Russian homogeny over the states that were formerly part of the USSR.

Under Putin’s dictatorial rule the democratic freedoms that arose in Russia after the fall of Communism have gradually eroded, and opposition groups have come in for serious attacks. In 2006, Anna Politkovskaya, a reporter who was critical of the Putin regime, was murdered outside her Moscow apartment. In the U.K., Alexander Litvinenko, a noted Putin critic, was poisoned with a lethal dose of polonium 210. The chess master, Gary Kasparov, was thrown into jail for campaigning for justice and civil rights. Other opponents of Putin have incurred similar attacks.  The Russian media has seen its freedoms of speech and the press eliminated.

            Putin has made it clear that he desires to restore the influence and power of the Soviet Union. In 2008, when the President of Georgia, Mikhail Saakashvili, sent troops into the rebellious Georgian republic of South Ossetia , Putin sent tank units of the Russian Army into Georgia and crushed the Georgian forces. Putin has succeeded in intimidating Russia’s former republics, and dissuaded them from becoming members of NATO.

            In July 2007, Putin suspended Russian observance of the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE). This treaty established limits on key categories of conventional military equipment in Europe and mandated the destruction of excess weaponry. It restricted Russian freedom to expand its military might.

            Perhaps those conservatives who seem to admire Putin so much should consider whether they want a return of the Soviet Union. The Russian Federation has a huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. Putin has enlarged the Russian armed forces. We could easily return to a Cold War status.

            It used to be a rule between the major political parties in America that whatever domestic disagreements we had, we came together as a nation on foreign policy. The reason for this was obvious. Internal disputes over foreign policy make a nation appear confused and weak. When dealing with other nations, especially potential enemies, we should speak with one voice. For some reason, conservatives have depicted President Obama’s efforts to bring-about peace in the world as weakness. They show admiration for a macho thug like Putin. They ignore the likelihood that the reason for Putin’s tough-guy stand, and for his international defiance and aggression, are insecurities about himself and his country.

            President Obama is obviously not a weak man. He is a decent man who has no need to prove his masculinity. He shows his deep strength and humanity by working for peace and understanding. I wish that his conservative critics had the courage to do the same.