On 28 August 1963, at a peaceful civil rights rally in Washington, D.C., USA, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "I Have a Dream!" speech to more than 200,000 people.
Well, I have a suspicion!
Okay, I apologize to MLK for co-opting him, unwarranted, into this post, notwithstanding that he's dead and therefore can neither accept or reject it. And, it's true that I don't have an audience of 200,000. But why let mere trifles such as those get in my way? Back to my suspicion.
I suspect that most people's idea of Heaven (that is, those non-atheists who think that such a place exists, and it is their desired destination) is something like: "a place where everybody universally agrees with my point of view, including God."
I doubt that they would be comfortable with that description, and some would proabably rail against me for writing it (which those of you who have learned about logical fallacies will understand to be a possible ad hominem attack).
So let's rephrase it: "Heaven is a place where I agree with the point of view universally held by everyone else, including God."
Does that feel more comfortable?
How about: "Heaven is a place where everyone universally agrees with God's point of view, including me."
Better?
The thing is, research suggests that my first phrasing is probably nearest the mark, even if people don't like to admit it. Researchers at the University of Chicago did some experiments to see what people thought their god's opinion was about various issues. You can read their research paper, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, by downloading this PDF entitled, Believers’ estimates of God’s beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people’s beliefs, but I'll give you an excerpt or two if you're too lazy, er, short of time, to read it for yourself.
Writing about their research, the authors say: When people try to infer other people’s attitudes and beliefs, they often do so egocentrically by using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. This research examines the extent to which people might also reason egocentrically about God’s beliefs. We predicted that people would be consistently more egocentric when reasoning about God’s beliefs than when reasoning about other people’s beliefs. Intuiting God’s beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber that reverberates one’s own beliefs.
They also note that: Unlike inferences about people, however, inferences about God’s beliefs cannot rely as readily on information directly from the judgment target. One can quiz neighbors on their beliefs, read editorials about celebrities’ positions, or observe public opinion polls. Religious agents do not lend themselves to public opinion polling. Even within Christianity, for example, groups differ quite dramatically in their interpretation of God’s attitudes toward such topics as same-sex marriage, the death penalty, and abortion. The inherent ambiguity of God’s beliefs on major issues and the extent to which religious texts may be open to interpretation and subjective evaluation, suggests not only strong egocentric biases when reasoning about God, but also that people may be consistently more egocentric when reasoning about God’s beliefs than when reasoning about other people’s beliefs.
The emphasis in the above paragraph is mine. I think that's so diplomatic as to be worthy of some praise. The paper is not that long, only six pages, which include some graphics, but here's a snippet from their summing up: Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging methodologies all suggest that religious believers are particularly likely to use their own beliefs as a guide when reasoning about God’s beliefs compared to when reasoning about other people’s beliefs. People’s estimates of God’s beliefs were more strongly correlated with their own beliefs than were their estimates of a broad range of other people’s beliefs. Manipulating people’s own beliefs similarly affected their estimates of God’s beliefs more than it affected estimates of other people’s beliefs, demonstrating that estimates of God’s beliefs are causally influenced at least in part by one’s own beliefs. Finally, neuroimaging evidence demonstrated that reasoning about God’s beliefs tends to activate the same regions that are active when reasoning about one’s own beliefs (indeed, statistically indistinguishable in the whole-brain analysis), whereas reasoning about the average American’s beliefs activates relatively distinct regions associated with reasoning about other people.
And then: ...these data have interesting implications for the impact of religious thought on judgment and decision-making. People may use religious agents as a moral compass, forming impressions and making decisions based on what they presume God as the ultimate moral authority would believe or want. The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing. This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.
In that time-honoured tradition of legal types, I rest my case.
From Traffic's Mr Fantasy album.
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