I enjoy comedy that makes me laugh.
Recently I was watching a clip from comedian Ricky Gervais’s new special, in which he joked about receiving thoughts and prayers from religious friends when his family members fall ill. Gervais, an avowed atheist, expresses that while he is appreciative of the gesture, he would never opt to receive prayers in lieu of medical treatment.
The punchline of the joke is that he would prefer that everyone prays and agrees to the medical treatment – which will produce the same result as just the medical treatment.
The logical sequence of a good joke makes up only half its brilliance. Gervais is a renowned comic who clearly understands this, having mastered timing and conciseness while delivering broader commentary on subjects.
Yet, rather than laughing in reaction to his performance, all I could think of was how excellent his joke would be as a proposal for a randomized controlled trial testing the impact of prayer on health outcomes. My path to a social science PhD dissertation was cemented.
The single greatest impediment to convincing the public that economics is a science is omitted variable bias. Economists’ inability to predict the future is due to the sheer magnitude of unobservable variables that could affect what happens. Even explanations behind past events such as inflation or trends in wages are inconclusive because of uncertainty about the interactions among variables that aren’t even known to begin with.
Randomized controlled trials, while very limited in its scope of applications, are the best tool that economics offers to overcome our uncertainty about these unknown variables and credibly claim that X causes Y.
I could already imagine conducting a randomized controlled trial that would basically prove or disprove God’s existence.
I would simply set up shop outside of an ICU where the families of near-death patients are waiting. Then I would ask each family whether they agree to be randomly put into a group that either prays or does not pray for their loved one in the ICU. We could even have another experimental group of families whose loved ones only receive prayers and no medical treatment to really isolate the effect that prayer has on health outcomes.
After attracting enough participants in the experiment, which I imagine being quite easy, I could then measure whether the fatality rate of the group of patients whose families prayed was less than other groups by a statistically significant amount. Because of the design of randomized controlled trials, a statistically significant difference between the experimental and control group would indicate causation, which would mean, without a shred of doubt, that prayer works and God is real.
With my head rushing with excitement, I already got started reviewing related literature – only to find, to my disappointment, that my path to a potential social science PhD dissertation was one that was already paved.
Reading through Harris et al to find that my idea for a randomized controlled trial had been executed back in 1999 was bittersweet.
On the one hand, it was validation that I had a research idea that was good, even if it was an idea for a ridiculous blog post introduction. On the other hand, I was in disbelief that my intentionally tone-deaf idea for a ridiculous blog post introduction was fully realized as a published academic paper.
As I sat in front of my computer, thinking about what I could possibly do with the information in this paper, I began reflecting on my own relationship with prayer and religion. Deep down, I knew that the paper was a pointless exercise.
God is an Economist
Every Sunday morning from age 9 to 17, I attended classes where I learned about the foundations of religious thought and religious practice. I really credit the discussions we would have during class for expanding my capacity to think and my ability to share my thoughts concisely. While I don’t consider myself any more or less religious than before I started attending these classes, I now find religion and religion’s place in society incredibly interesting.
Eleventh grade was when I began thinking about “religion’s place in society” as a system of incentives that could be deliberately configured to affect behavior. I really should have known that I would be interested in economics when others in class would question the viability of God existing, while I would consider how to develop the most effective religion from an economic policy perspective.
I imagined that leaders of early civilizations must have grappled with the problem of organizing large groups of people with unpredictable behavior and that religion surely must have been part of the solution.
How can a domesticated animal that is important to the civilization’s economy be protected from abuse and endangerment? Perhaps, by making the animal “sacred.” Can the authority of an undemocratically elected King be respected by everyone? Well, if the authority is backed by the will of God and the King himself is considered a deity, then people might not have as much of a problem.
Religion could also be wielded to influence choices in the labor market. Individuals now are relatively economically mobile, but in early civilization, religion would be an instrument to create divisions of labor that were enforced across generations.
Aside from macroeconomic channels, religion shapes individual behavior at the microeconomic level. The doctrine of sin, Karma, Heaven, Hell, and any guidance from fables or texts whose legitimacy is backed by God, can all be viewed as mechanisms that incentivize certain behaviors over others.
Whether or not my characterization of religion’s role in planning early societies is under-researched and historically inaccurate, I think it demonstrates a thought process about religion that is often overlooked by atheists such as Ricky Gervais. Considering religion on the merits of its societal costs and benefits could possibly help believers determine and attain what they want from religion more successfully, as well as help atheists develop criticisms of religion more persuasively.
I understand the tendency to ponder the logical impossibilities of religion that swaths of irrational people have seemingly caused carnage and conflict to uphold, instead of the economic implications of religion. But constructing a compelling argument against religion should mean debating its effectiveness in achieving desired positive outcomes.
It is conceivable that the carnage and conflict caused by religion is too big of a cost to justify the marginal benefit it provides to believers today. On the contrary, as a country becomes as secular and liberal as the United States, perhaps the microeconomic benefits religion provides to believers searching for happiness outweigh the negative macroeconomic “spillover” effects of religious practice such as war and conflict, which are minimal in the U.S.
Every practice or concept within a religion, including prayer, could be analyzed as an economic policy rather than uber-realistically.
If religion truly plays an effective role in making someone happier, is a randomized controlled trial that uber-realistically portrays prayer as having no effect on health outcomes really going to change a believer’s mind? Conversely, is a randomized controlled trial that indicates a statistically significant effect of prayer on health outcomes going to change the mind of an atheist? Maybe, the important question is whether the results of a randomized controlled trial should change either of their minds at all?
Randomized controlled trials are a tool that leads to rational conclusions in economics, which is a field that has rationalism tattooed across its chest. But its conclusions are irrelevant to the importance of prayer or even whether engaging in prayer is a rational thing to do.
Atheism and “theism” are often pitted against each other in a false dichotomy between faith and reason. In reality, faith and reason are prominent in both points of view.
Whether a believer is self-aware of it or not, it is the act of surrendering oneself and professing faith that makes prayer effective while a loved one is sick. Whether or not the loved one heals, prayer provides solace at the moment that you did everything you could, appealing to both the known and the unknown, to will your loved one to health. If prayer achieves this feeling for you, is it not rational to engage in prayer to calm stress and engage in reflection about the sacrifices you might have made and the feelings you have for your loved one?
Meanwhile, an atheist who may elect not to pray in the same situation also professes faith, albeit through a different channel. Maybe the atheist believes it is irrational to place faith in anyone but the doctors and medical treatment – but faith backed by science is still faith. And if faith in science provides solace that you did everything you could, appealing to both the known and the unknown (which exists even in science) — then it may be rational to put complete faith in medicinal science to calm stress and engage in reflection about the sacrifices you might have made and the feelings you have for your loved one.
Applying the economic policy framework, what distinguishes prayer from not praying is not the tangible effects on health outcomes. The distinction instead stems from whether it is effective at giving you peace of mind during a stressful period, which will yield distinct answers on a person-to-person basis. Nevertheless, whether you pray or not, being honest and acknowledging you have faith in something is key.
Faith sometimes underlies, not juxtaposes, reason. Failing to accept this can lead to counterproductive conversations about religion that sidestep discussing its purposes and ability to achieve said purposes. I can’t guarantee that we could reform religions to reduce their negative consequences if we all thought of religion as economic policy. But at least our conversations would be more interesting and less difficult across different perspectives.
I almost majored in Religious Studies for the same reason as your interest in religion -- not because I'm particularly religious but because I'm fascinated by religion itself and its role in our society/culture. I think you should still proceed with your dissertation but in a more robust manner! It sounds like the path that was already paved before you had some dubious qualities.
"At the same time, Harris acknowledged that his study had limitations. Among other things, many patients in the comparison group undoubtedly had friends and relatives praying for them, too."