Most religions emphasize an afterlife where the Good will be rewarded and the Wicked punished. Their practitioners worry that atheists have no incentive to be good. Atheists retort that they are worried about people who are only good due to a perceived threat from an omnipotent being. They claim that they can have a moral code outside of religion which serves them just as well.
It has always seemed to me that the atheists had the high ground on this argument - we shouldn't need external motivation to do the right thing. But a piece of me nagged that, as nice as that would be, I didn't see why people would want to be good by default if there was no motivator in the form of God. I figured this was due to some deficiency in my moral compass. It turns out, I was just being rational.
Moral codes, religious or non, guide our interaction with other humans and with the world.
The most basic is the Golden Rule Everything else builds up from there. Why?
Because life is a repeated game! The most basic motivator for people being nice to each other today is the prospect of retaliation tomorrow. At the root of our Golden Rule is "what goes around comes around." And, as un-noble as that motivator sounds, it makes sense.
The religious objection to the atheists' moral codes then, can be boiled down into this key difference:
A religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived as) an Infinite Repeated Game.
A non-religious moral code guides humans through what is (perceived to be) a Finite Repeated Game.
This means that, technically speaking, a cooperative strategy should unravel for an atheist.
The key difference here is the belief in an afterlife. In cases where the God involved has the potential to become angry or retributive (Christianity versus Hinduism), I would expect the strength of the moral code to drive behavior to further increase.
Despite this, the Games could have similar results if
-The time-span is long enough, and the players' time horizons short enough
-There is some other motivator that lasts past death - e.g. concern for one's legacy
-There is another basic motivator involved - e.g. kinship
I don't know that these would apply universally. They seem to me to make a nonreligious moral code workable for some but not all of the population.
I should also note that I am not claiming here that just because the religious moral code may drive more cooperative results it is therefore preferable. My intent is simply to point out that the consideration of heaven and hell is quite similar to extending a repeated game to infinity, fundamentally changing the game theory behind moral decisions. And it makes sense to at least question the enforceability of moral codes which are based on a Finite Repeated Game model of life.
Thoughts?
This is a really interesting observation.
ReplyDelete-The time-span is long enough, and the players' time horizons short enough
I think this is exactly the case in the real world. Our time horizons are so short -- a month? a year? two? -- and the time-span of the game is long enough -- 70 years on average in the United States -- that cooperative behavior is sustained even for people who don't believe that the game is infinite.
I wonder if atheism is more relevant and humane now precisely because the game has become long enough. Maybe when you were only expecting to live to 30 cooperation was harder if you didn't believe in an afterlife.
Oh right, forgot this bit --
ReplyDeleteCompare the very different outcomes of a 10-day Guild game (50% of game dead!) to the real world in times of crisis. Some of this is just because of how games work, but I think some of it is also because players know they don't have to live with post-game consequences. In one-night games this effect can be even more pronounced.
The infinite game seems to apply better for reincarnation-based religions.
ReplyDeleteArguably, how you interact with other people affects the norm of interactions in the world. This world or culture exists even after you die. If you treat people crappily, you're more likely to create a world in which it's okay for people to treat each other crappily.
So the question is, what does religion contribute to your culture?
Interesting thoughts!
ReplyDeleteI am particularly intrigued by the idea that increasing lifespans could increase the social sustainability of atheism among the general population... I wonder if we could observe a series of games of varying lengths to determine some sort of curve for the effect.