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  • Faith, death and violence: A researcher seeks to determine why somep

    The Vancouver Sun (British Columbia)
    November 26, 2004 Friday
    Final Edition

    Faith, death and violence: A researcher seeks to determine why some
    people turn to hatred

    Douglas Todd, Vancouver Sun


    University of B.C. psychology professor Ara Norenzayan grew up in
    Beirut, Lebanon, during a savage religion-fuelled war between
    Christians and Muslims. As an altar boy in the Armenian Orthodox
    Church, he sensed the power of religion for good and evil.

    He also became familiar with death.

    Now, 15 years after emigrating to North America at the peak of
    Lebanon's bloody conflict, Norenzayan is returning to his roots to
    research the relationship between faith, thoughts of death and
    violence.

    The soft-spoken social psychologist has received a $105,000,
    three-year grant from Canada's national research council to deepen
    his exploration into why people become religious and some turn to
    hatred.

    Devising unique psychological experiments, Norenzayan has already
    discovered that the more people are exposed to the reality of death,
    the more likely they are to believe in "supernatural agents," like
    God, angels or ancestral spirits.

    He's also concluded prominent scientists, such as Richard Dawkins,
    are off track when they argue belief in God is, along with the atomic
    bomb, the greatest danger to world peace.

    Norenzayan's studies suggest antagonism toward outsiders is not a
    result of belief in God. It's the byproduct of people finding a sense
    of identity in a religious group.

    To find out if there is a link between thoughts of death and belief
    in the supernatural, Norenzayan devised two series of tests, one
    involving hundreds of students at UBC and another involving subjects
    in Malaysia.

    He asked one group to write essays about death, reflect on pain in
    the context of mortality and read a short story about a boy who dies.
    He asked the control group to think about pain in relation to
    visiting a dentist and read a story about a boy who doesn't die.

    Norenzayan and his team found subjects asked to contemplate death
    were much more likely than those who weren't to report they strongly
    believe in supernatural agents.

    Norenzayan says his experiments are the first to provide "solid
    empirical evidence" to back up theories by Soren Kierkegaard and
    Ernest Becker that humans become religious because they're capable of
    recognizing they will die.

    "One of the definitions of religion is it's a way of dealing with
    anxiety-provoking thoughts," Norenzayan says in his tidy third-floor
    office overlooking the forest and ocean surrounding UBC, as quiet
    classical music plays.

    "All religions say death is not literally death, that mortality is
    not the end of our being."

    Norenzayan -- who maintains he's not a "strict" religious believer,
    despite maintaining ties to the Armenian Orthodox Church -- says it's
    shocking how little research psychologists have done into the origins
    and effects of spirituality.

    "Most academics are blind to the power of religion."

    A typical psychology textbook, he says, contains virtually no mention
    of religion, despite the 19th-century American founder of psychology,
    William James, devoting a great deal of energy to the subject.

    "Most psychologists have no idea why two people who are probably
    equally religious -- the Dalai Lama and Osama bin Laden -- could end
    up being so different, with one teaching peace and one preaching
    violence."

    - - -

    With his grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
    Council, Norenzayan plans to make his first trip to Lebanon since he
    left at age 18.

    He'll explore more deeply the impression he developed as a young man
    in the war-torn country that spiritual beliefs can be exploited by
    leaders to foment aggression against outsiders.

    And he'll continue his experiments into why religion can breed both
    peace-loving tolerance and intolerant fury, in the Middle East and
    North America.

    Norenzayan recognizes religion isn't the only cause of violence, but
    he also believes it "is at the top of the list of ideologies that can
    kill."

    How exactly does religion lead to mayhem?

    Norenzayan and his graduate student, Ian Hansen, have discovered it's
    not spiritual devotion that causes violence.

    Norenzayan's work builds on studies of Palestinian Muslims by his
    alma mater, the University of Michigan, where researchers found the
    more often Palestinian Muslims attended mosque, the more they
    supported suicide terrorism. There was no link, however, between
    Palestinians' support for violence and how often they prayed at home.

    The goal of one of Norenzayan's experiments was to test North
    Americans on their tolerance of religious pluralism. In effect, he
    wanted to explore how subjects would respond to someone like the main
    character in Yann Martel's book, The Life of Pi, who claims he's a
    Hindu, a Muslim and a Christian.

    Norenzayan's team discovered Buddhists were most tolerant of
    followers of other religions. Christians were less tolerant and
    Muslims were the least tolerant.

    Norenzayan believes that may be because Christianity and Islam
    provide more group cohesion, leading to a belief there's only one
    true religion.

    So how does thinking about death relate to religious tolerance?

    For one thing, Norenzayan found study participants who were reminded
    frequently about death were more likely to believe in supernatural
    agents from not only their own religion, but from other religions.

    In other words, a Christian contemplating death would become more
    open to the Asian idea of revering ancestors.

    "There's an old saying: 'In a storm, voyagers will believe in any god
    to rescue them.' To some extent, it's hopeful that people facing
    death will consider addressing other supernatural agents," says
    Norenzayan.

    But his research also led him to a more negative side-effect tied to
    when people think often about death: They become less accepting of
    people who don't belong to their culture.

    Many Christians, for instance, became less tolerant of Jews and less
    tolerant of prostitutes. More intense thoughts about death "seemed to
    make people draw stronger cultural boundaries."

    Norenzayan is also wondering what the ramifications of his research
    are for North America since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001,
    which made a lot more North Americans anxious about their mortality.

    He believes the terrorist attacks created a unique experimental
    condition for a study of how increasing consciousness of death
    affects religious tolerance.

    "Sept. 11," he says, "was one humongous manipulation of North
    Americans' thoughts about death."

    [email protected]

    GRAPHIC: Color Photo: Glenn Baglo, Vancouver Sun; Ara Norenzayan:
    'Most psychologists have no idea why two people who are probably
    equally religious -- the Dalai Lama and Osama bin Laden -- could end
    up being so different, with one teaching peace and one preaching
    violence.'
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