The Authoritarians

5. Happiness, Joy and Comfort

Fundamentalists get their joy in life much more from standing firm and believing what they stand for than from exploring and discovering. I once asked a large sample of parents how much happiness, joy or comfort they got, in various ways, from science, and how much they got from religion. For most people, religion proved a lot more satisfying than science did. (This ought not knock us off our horses. Pure science is “head stuff,” not intended to satisfy any human want except our desire to understand.)

But the religion-versus-science comparison proved especially striking among fundamentalists. They said religion brought them enormous amounts of happiness. It brought them the joy of God’s love. It showed how they could spend all eternity in heaven. It assured them they would rejoin their loved ones in the kingdom of God. It brought them closer to their loved ones on earth. It brought forgiveness of their sins. It made them feel safe in God’s protection. In contrast, they got almost no happiness from science. Notably, they said science did not enable them to work out their own beliefs and philosophy of life, it did not bring the joy of discovery, it did not provide the surest path we have to the truth, it did not make them feel safe, it did not show how to live a happy life, and it did not bring the satisfaction of knowing their beliefs were based on objective facts.

We should note that fundamentalists indeed get great joy from their religion. While most people tell pollsters they are happy, highly religious people number among the happiest of us all. You can see why they would. They believe they know the meaning of life on its deepest level. They believe they are in personal touch with the all-good creator of the universe, who loves them and takes a special interest in them. They say they are certain they will enjoy an eternity of happiness after they die. In the meanwhile they have answers at their fingertips to all the problems of life that depress others, such as sickness and personal failure. And they are embraced on all sides by a supportive community. Why wouldn’t they be very happy? The real question ought to be: why do so many people, including some of the fundamentalists’ own children, turn their backs on all this happiness?

It’s that old Devil, isn’t it? We shall take this up shortly.

Zealotry. OK, you told me who you are a few pages ago. Now I want to know, in my constantly nosey way, what you believe in. Do you have a most important outlook or way of understanding things? Maybe it’s a religion, a philosophy, a social perspective like socialism or capitalism. What do you use, more than anything else, to make sense out of things, to understand “life”?

___ I don’t have a basic, most important outlook.

___ It’s a religious outlook.

___ It’s a personal outlook all my own that I developed by myself.

___ It’s a personal outlook that I developed with a few friends.

___ It’s a capitalist perspective, a capitalist theory on how society should operate.

___ It’s a socialist perspective, a socialist theory on how society should operate.

___ It’s a scientific outlook. Science gives me my most basic understanding of things.

___ It’s the feminist movement; feminism gives me my most basic understanding of things.

___ It’s the environmental movement; environmentalism gives me my most basic understanding of things.

___ It’s some other “special cause” movement, such as “animal rights” or “right to die.”

All right, if you’ve decided what makes sense out of the world for you, what you use most to comprehend the hurly-burly of life, then to what extent are the following things true for you?

___ 1. This outlook colors and shapes almost everything I experience in life.

0 = Not at all true of me

1 = Slightly true of me

2 = Mildly true of me

3 = Moderately true of me

4 = Decidedly true of me

5 = Definitely true of me

6 = Very definitely true of me

___ 2. I try to explain my outlook to others at every opportunity. (Use the scale above.)

___ 3. I am learning everything I can about this outlook.

___ 4. I think every sensible person should agree with this outlook, once it has been explained.

___ 5. I get excited just thinking about this outlook, and how right it is.

___ 6. It is very important to me to support the leaders of this outlook.

___ 7. Nothing else is as important in my life.

___ 8. It angers me that certain people are trying to oppose this outlook.

___ 9. No other outlook could be as true and valid.

___ 10. It is my mission in life to see that this outlook becomes “No. 1” in our country.

___ 11. This outlook is the solution to all of humanity’s problems.

___ 12. I am very committed to making this outlook the strongest influence in the world.

This is called the Zealot scale, for reasons I think you can easily understand, and it’s time to add up your numbers. If you are the kind of rather normal person who answers my surveys, your total will be something around 10—20. Which means you don’t get terribly worked up about your way of understanding things. But fundamentalists who say their religion provides them with their basic outlook in life score about 40. They are especially likely to say their religion colors and shapes almost everything they experience in life, that it is the solution to all of humanity’s problems, that it is very important to them to support the leaders of their religion, that they are learning everything they can about their religion, that nothing else is as important in their life, and no other outlook could be as true and valid.

No other group comes close to being as zealous. Feminists usually come in second in my studies, but way behind the religious fundamentalists, and one finds far, far fewer of them. And if you took all the zealous capitalists and socialists in my last study of over 600 parents and put them in a room to slug it out, not a punch would be thrown. You want to know who’s on fire, you want to know who’s making a commitment, you want to know who are putting their money, their time and their energy where their beliefs are, you want to know who are constantly “on call” for the cause—and in large numbers—it’s the fundamentalists. ^[21]

Zealotry and conversion. Fundamentalists, you may have heard, proselytize. Whether they go door to door, or just gently approach co-workers and neighbors, or pleasantly invite classmates to their youth group, fundamentalists usually believe they have an obligation to try to convert others. “Suppose a teenager came to you for advice about religion,” I have asked in several studies. “He had been raised in a nonreligious family as an atheist, but now this person is thinking about becoming much more religious, and wants your advice on what to do.” Even though fundamentalists often speak of parents’ sacred right to raise their children as they see fit, the vast majority of the fundamentalists said they’d tell the teen his parents were wrong. And virtually all said they would try to persuade the teen to join their religion.

One can wonder what fundamentalists would say if one of their children went to an atheist for advice on religion, and the atheist said the parents were wrong and tried to lead their child into atheism. But would such nonbelievers?^[22] I have given several groups of atheists the mirror-image scenario in which a teenager who had been raised as a strong and active Christian comes to them for advice because he is now questioning things. Very few Manitoba parent atheists said they would tell this teen that his parents were wrong, nor would they try to get him to become an atheist. Instead they almost all said they’d tell him to continue searching and then decide for himself. A sample of active American atheists was pushier. About two-thirds would have thumped the drum for atheism, loudly or softly, and about half said they would want the teen to become a nonbeliever. But far, far more of the fundamentalists, we saw, would have tried to convert an atheist’s child.