The science blog “Mixing Memory” has a story about a clever experiment designed to test the extent to which fundamentalist Christian beliefs help believers deal with angst. (Chris, the proprietor of “Mixing Memory”,is interested in Terror Management Theory, which asserts, among other things, that “in order to avoid the fear that comes with thoughts of our own mortality, we erect and cling to belief and value systems.”)

In this particular study, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Mark Friedman and Steven Rholes measured a number of things about their subjects’ belief systems, and they assigned each subject to one of two categories: Low Fundamentalists and High Fundamentalists. They then divided the subjects into groups and had them read several texts, some from the Bible and some, as controls, from texts that had nothing to do with religion. The reading for two of the groups was designed specifically to demonstrate inconsistencies in the Gospels, thus challenging the subjects’ fundamentalist beliefs. Finally, all subjects were presented with a task in which they were asked to complete words for which they were just given a couple of letters (imagine Jeopardy without the clues). Some of those word stems could be completed by words that were related to death.

Those subjects who were in the High Fundamentalist category and whose faith in biblical inerrancy had been shaken by the gospel inconsistencies that were made salient for them in the readings were much more likely to complete the word stems with death-related words than subjects in other groups. Chris draws the (unsurprising) conclusion that “religious beliefs, for fundamentalists at least, serve to minimize existential anxiety”, and he goes on to point out how the study’s results indicate problems ahead for those who would teach evolutionary theory, or, indeed, any good science that threatens fundamentalist belief.

I would draw a slightly different conclusion from the study. I believe that many of us are engaging in a more directly challenging discussion with our religious colleagues than we used to engage in, back in the days before the fundamentalists themselves began to ratchet up the heat on such discussion. What studies like this one tell us is that we must make an effort, without backing down on our insistence that fundamentalist beliefs are irrational and delusional, to help those whose faith we challenge to see that it’s possible to live perfectly well without such delusional thinking – that they can, even without maintaining faith in impossible things, still be good people and lead good lives, rich in happiness and friendship; that they do not need to fear death, which comes to all; that they can, by exercising their rationality and keeping their minds open, develop the intellectual and emotional strength to face even very painful experiences and very uncertain outcomes without becoming paralyzed by terror or surrendering to morbid thinking. In other words, when we are challenging another’s deeply held faith, it is important to maintain our compassion, and to focus more on what rationality adds to ones life and not so exclusively on what it takes away.

I have been reading three books recently that take just that approach – Stephen Batchelor’s “Buddhism Without Beliefs”, Sam Harris’s “Letter to a Christian Nation”, and Richard Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”. All three are uncompromising in their rationality and direct and powerful in the challenge they present to delusional thinking. But all understand, clearly and compassionately, the emotional significance of belief to the believers, and all three authors are positive in demonstrating ways of thinking about the world that are emotionally rewarding and intellectually bracing.

I will have reviews of the three books in the coming days.