Before I begin I want to encourage you to restrain your capacity for amusement because what I am about to tell you concerns very sincere beliefs held by very sincere people.

Verse 3 and 4 of chapter 40 in the Book of Isaiah reports,

A voice cries: “In the wilderness prepare the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God. Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill be made low; the uneven ground shall become level, and the rough places a plain. And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken.”

I begin here because it seems that some sincere citizens in Amarillo, Texas became convinced that these particular verses had a particular meaning for them. You see Interstate Highway 40 runs through Amarillo. And Interstate 40 is most commonly called “I-40,” which was to these good people a clear reference to another “I-40,” or “Isaiah 40.” In short, the second coming of the Lord would take place somewhere along Interstate 40 upon which the “Glory of the Lord shall be revealed.”

Well. The things that people believe and do in the name of religion can be astonishing. People see images of the Virgin in pizza pans and bridge abutment water stains. Or take the case of the Pitcairn Islanders all of whom are steadfast 7th Day Adventists. I’ve always wondered, “Why not Presbyterian?” It turns out that an Adventist missionary reached them first. Was there a race? Would their lives be any different if they had been baptized as Presbyterians?

I once had a file which I labeled, “Religious Oddities” in which I kept reports of what I considered to be amazing and sometimes bizarre behavior done in the name of religion. The file got too fat and eventually I recycled it. As Scott Atran reports in his very important book In Gods We Trust religiously motivated unusual behavior is not at all unusual. In fact, it’s the norm. Why did that megalithic civilization drag 40-ton stones at least 13 miles and four ton stones 240 miles to create Stonehenge? Why did those Native American tribes in Louisiana, Ohio and Illinois build those immense earthen mounds? Why human sacrifice? Why pray to or rub a statue? Why martyrdom? What is it about human beings such that they can believe that a small tasteless wafer is the actual body of a God—and why would they want to eat such a thing? Of course, why do some people, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, believe their lives can be completely organized by purely intellectual considerations?

So why is religion so, well—weird?

A great many people find some of the weirdness just way too weird and so simply have nothing to do with religion. Some join a Unitarian Universalist congregation because at least we seem to have scraped off the roughest edges of what seems weird. Many other people pay little attention to the strange things that religions profess or ask their followers to do, and by means of a mental compartmentalization, focus on what they believe are the positive things in their faith community. Still others do not think at all about the weirdness, simply accepting the fact that, since others are doing it or believing it, it can’t be totally weird.

But as Scott Atran points out, there are some fundamental reasons why religion as it has been practiced the world over commonly contains unusual beliefs and practices. And from his perspective as a scholar, they all make sense, of a kind. He also recommends that we spend less time judging other people’s faith or practice and more time understanding other people’s faith and practice. Yes, what others do may appear to be weird, but it is important to understand the underlying logic. What appears weird on the surface makes considerably greater sense when we understand that logic behind the faith or behavior. I should also point out that the logic itself does not make the faith right or wrong. What it does do is help us understand the powerful reasons behind what people hope to accomplish with faith and religious practice.

To create that deeper learning I would like to introduce you to two famous individuals, Sally and Ann. Sally and Ann are dolls which have been used in a very famous test for childhood development. The test works like this. Children are shown a film featuring the dolls Sally and Ann. In the beginning of the film Sally is shown playing with a ball. She then puts the ball in a basket and leaves the scene. The Ann doll then comes into view, picks up the ball and places it in a box. That’s the end of the film—the ball is in the box..

Children are asked after the film has ended where Sally would look for the ball if she came back into the room. The answers that children give depend entirely on whether they are under or over four years of age. Children under the age of four always say that Sally will look in the box. Children over the age of four always say that Sally will look in the basket. What, you might ask, is so important about this difference?

Children under four always believe that what others know is identical to what they know. Since they know that the ball is in the box they are convinced that Sally also knows the ball is in the box even though Sally could not know that. After age four, however, something amazing happens to children. Children at that age learn that people can hold false beliefs, that people can be mistaken. The children after age four who are viewing the film know that even while they are aware that the ball is in the box, Sally would still believe that the ball is in the basket.

This may seem like a very small distinction, but this little distinction is the foundation upon which religion, as it is traditionally practiced, rests. How exactly does that work?

Now I suspect that some of you are thinking, “Hah! Just as I suspected, the foundation of religion is nothing but people being fooled!” And conversely, “Hey, how dare you reduce something so complicated and significant as religion to children making mistakes about what dolls believe!” But holdeth onto thy theological, or anti-theological as the case may be, horses for a moment. The real point about the test is that human beings from the age of four and up have this remarkable ability to understand that others have minds which operate independently of their own, that other human beings have minds which can think things which differ from what they themselves might know. Human beings have a very pronounced capacity for not only knowing things, but also being aware that other human beings have an independent mental existence.

Technically this capacity is called “theory of mind,” and it refers to one of the signature realities of human consciousness. What this theory of mind allows us to do is have a conversation with someone else about a third person’s intentions, a person who is not present. It is not at all hard for us to conceive of what another person believes—whether we know them or not. In fact, two people can talk about someone’s intentions that are not directly known by either of them, but were described to one of them by someone else who is not present. Someone can accurately describe what they heard someone else say about details in a historical biography, written by an author that none of the individuals knows, to yet an entirely different person. No other creature on Earth can do this. It is the unique human ability.

This neurological capacity for describing the intentions of people we do not know and have never met is that foundation upon which religion rests. How? Several weeks ago in the Easter sermon I talked about my father. None of you had any reason to doubt what I said about him even though you have never met him. It turns out that you were quite willing to believe something for which you had absolutely no evidence beyond what I said. Well, if people are willing to believe that much about someone they have never met, how large a leap is it for people to believe things about a God who is, in a fashion, simply someone they have never met? It turns out that we all have a substantial capacity for believing things about realities that are entirely invisible to us. The difference in believing things about unknown, not directly experienced people, and unknown, not directly experienced spiritual forces or Gods, is not that great. As we can easily believe things about Samuel C. Lange the Father so too can we believe things about God the Father.

Of course many of you have far more doubts about God the Father than Samuel C. Lange the Father. And there are pretty good reasons for that doubt. Human beings in general are pretty good at detecting the difference between truth and lies. And, of course, some things are more testable than others. You could actually meet Samuel C. Lange if you made the extra effort and thought it was worth your time to check my statements against your own perceptions. But claims made about God the Father? That’s not something you can test very well. But our willingness to believe even dubious claims is not simply a matter of a claim’s inherent testability. I want to call your attention to three factors which can lead us to discount our doubts about claims. These three factors do not enhance our capacity for testing a claim’s veracity. Rather, they subtly alter our requirements for what we are willing to accept as reliable. These three factors are important when empirical evidence is scant or non-existent and yet we still may feel it is important to make a judgment.

The first factor is what we might call the “Lottery” effect. Most people really do know that they are more likely to be hit by lightning than win a lottery jackpot. But that normal suspicion is reduced by the attractiveness of the sheer size of the ultimate prize. It seems that if you offer a large enough prize many people will be more convinced, not that winning the prize is more likely, but that the one offering the prize is probably sincere in their desire that you win. Small prizes, by comparison, do not seem nearly as sincere. This increased sense of the offer’s sincerity then allows people to discount their doubts. People think they can win the jackpot, not because the odds are any better, but because they believe that someone wants them to win.

In a like manner, people are far more likely to believe a claim about religion if they are offered something really big like eternal life or miraculous healing. Lesser rewards are not nearly as persuasive. It is not the case that people are convinced to believe that something big like eternal life is factually possible—but since someone offering such a thing is obviously sincere we are more willing to consider the offer.

The second factor can be called the “Brooks Brothers” effect. Our ordinarily skeptical nature is also affected by the status of those who are making claims. It is a common reality that people with higher status enjoy higher credibility. It is not simply the case that we believe that high status confers greater truthfulness. Instead, our basis for judging credibility is altered by the realization that we could benefit from believing the claims made by those with higher status. There is considerably less benefit to be gleaned from adopting the views of those with lower status. It is therefore more important to accept the sincerity of those with higher status. This is one of the reasons why you may have to wear nice clothing at work—to enhance your credibility. You think, “Of course!” But there is a close to zero relationship between any article of clothing and empirical reliability. The point here is that religious claims are most often made by those with higher status and so they can afford to be less restrained in their musings about the true nature of the universe. If a High Priest says, “The world is an apple, probably a Granny Smith.” people are more likely to intone, “The world is an apple.” not because they think the world is an apple, but because it is advantageous to think like the High Priest. By comparison, if your neighbor says “the world is an apple,” you’d think he was out of his mind.

You can see how these two factors create a greatly enhanced capacity for adopting beliefs or customs that one might otherwise think were, well, weird. The third factor, however, creates weirdness which is off the charts.

Let’s say you had reason to doubt my story about my Father. There you are sitting with your arms folded across your chest with a very dubious look on your face. But if I were to stab myself with a four inch dagger in my arm while speaking about him you would automatically think, “Whoa, that’s intense. He must be sincere.” It turns out that extreme behavior such as the willingness to harm oneself, and by extension, harm others, is very persuasive. So there is an abiding tradition in religion of sacrifice, particularly of one’s own children, that is used to prove sincerity. There is a relationship between the costliness of a behavior and our sense of someone’s sincerity. Personal physical discomfort and deprivation of any kind support claims, not because they may or may not be truthful, but because the person making the claim is obviously quite convinced.

You add these three factors, Lottery, Brooks Brothers, and “Whoa, that’s intense” together and you can see why religion can be so weird. If you are a chief of a tribe you might say, “Let us drag these four ton stones 240 miles to create a temple that will heal your mother’s illness.” Carrying little stones fifty yards, by comparison, is just so spiritually lame. It’s got to be an impressive feat. And if tribe members remain unconvinced, you could sacrifice something very valuable, at which point the tribal members do the “Whoa, that’s intense!” thing and put their shoulders into the big blue rock. Heave!

Scott Atran believes that the neurological equations, particularly that of sacrifice of any kind, which create this feeling of enhanced sincerity are so strong and reasonably successful that religion as it is commonly practiced is here to stay. But I sent him an Email, to which he will undoubtedly not respond, asking him, “Since you know this pattern is very robust, which religion, then, are you?” I could be wrong but I doubt that he is a practicing member of a religious community. His problem, and ours, is not unlike that of Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. That is, once you see the gizmos that create the stupendous effects it becomes very difficult to accept the effects at their face value. At the heart of the problem is that the three factors that lead to weird religious behavior are means for enhancing sincerity. But once you know the mental gizmos behind the effort you can no longer be sincere in practicing them. Once you have to fake sincerity the game is up.

There is an even larger problem. If sincerity of faith is demonstrated by the Lottery, Brooks Brothers, and “Whoa, that’s intense!” effects, what happens when sincerity is questioned? Doubts put pressure on the faithful to only intensify the effects. And it is clear that the sincerity of all of the world’s faiths is under assault. First, consider the continuing discoveries of science which provide an entirely different technique for establishing reliability. Second, each of the world’s faiths can no longer be practiced in relative isolation from each other. The presence of others who are pursuing claims different than one’s own is a challenge which, if the faithful can see no other option, requires ever more pronounced Lottery, Brooks Brothers and “Whoa, that’s intense!” efforts. Those efforts will take the form of ever more virulent fundamentalisms and violence. And, ironically, people become more attracted to orthodox religions, not because they are suddenly discovered to be true, but because those adherents who increase their demonstrations of sincerity are very neurologically reassuring. This attraction flies right in the face of two things that we really do know: that none of the world’s religions are empirically robust; and, it is extremely unlikely that any one of them will be adopted by all people as the one true religion.

I stake our future on a different outcome. I can’t help but notice that as different as all these religious practices are, they are all practiced by extremely similar human beings. So taking a cue from that similarity, I believe that somebody has got to stand for the reality of our universal humanity, stand for the fact that a Muslim child in Mogadishu, Somalia is no different than a Christian child in Katy, Texas. Somebody has got to lift up the fact that all the crazy quilt practices of the different religious communities are just that—practices, and not final products. We all have got to be able to ratchet down the intense loyalties by admitting that, hey, it’s just practice! We all have got to admit that sincerity alone is not proof of anything more than what it is—sincerity. We all have to develop a sense of graciousness about each other’s wisdom and ways. It would help if believers in all the world’s religions could admit that sincerity does not imply nor even remotely guarantee sole possession of grand and eternal truth. And we all have to develop a taste for the fact that whatever we may call God, whatever name we use for God, or even if we do not accept such a reality at all, there is an identity to the people who cry out in celebration or in agony.

And how do I know that such an identity exists? It is a very firm fact that what makes up the life of every single human being has been profoundly shaped by exactly the same place and the same forces that sweep across that place. That place is our own home, our Earth. So let us be counted among those who stand up for all Earth’s children— for they are indeed all our children.