The Theists Dance - or Pigeon-Logic

Some years ago, a researcher named B.F. Skinner set-up an experiment where Pigeon’s were kept in a cage and fed at random intervals of time by an automatic pellet dispenser.  The pigeons were observed for any odd behaviour associated with the feeding.  What the results were was that the pigeons developed a sort of dance that seems to have evolved from movements by the pigeon when a pellet was dropped from the dispenser.  The idea behind this is that the food would come and the pigeon would try to copy its previous movements at the time of the pellet dropped before in order to get another pellet to eat.  If the movement seemed to work again in the future, that movement would be incorporated in the repertoire.  If the movement seemed to fail to get a pellet, the pigeon would revise or remove said movement.  On top of that, movements were combined in the idea that some combination of movements would and wouldn’t get a pellet.  After a while, the pigeons in their cages began performing elaborate dances including twirls, head bobs, and footloose all based on previous trial runs. 

Now the thing to remember as the dance evolved was that the dance really didn’t have any effect on getting the pellet.  The pellet dispenser was set to dispense pellets using a random number generator from a computer.  In fact, one not even need to know that the computer existed to know that the dance didn’t have any effect.  One could simply observe the statistical data and show no correlation between the dance and the pellet drop, and I doubt the pigeon itself thought of creating a controlled experiment to test its dance. 

For me, and probably for many others, this behaviour pattern is reminiscent of the irrational cause and effects that theists claim to exist that are due to the deities they respectively believe in.  It’s probably more readily observed by the more primitive indigenous people who perform rain dances and blood sacrifices for a good harvest, but it can also be seen in the more ‘major’ religions which historically have had many of the same superstitious rituals as the rain dances and blood sacrifices. 

Prayer is used by theists to achieve something they desire.  When it ‘works’ they think their god caused it and believe similar prayers will work again.  When prayer doesn’t work, they think they’re not worthy of the answer.  So they either conform the prayer to ones that have worked or try a new one.  As an example, when people pray for a loved one to be cured of cancer they probably go through a series of slightly different prayers until one works, or rather this has already been done and priests will claim to have the developed prayer already necessary to have the desired outcome.  If it doesn’t work, oh well, someone must have been doing something wrong or god doesn’t think it should work this time.  If it does work, the people will think their prayers work, even though all research into the effects of prayer have shown no effect other than a few cases of placebo (sometimes having the opposite desired effect). 

We can also see this behaviour in theists reasoning.  They’ll argue a point but then be shown that their point doesn’t work.  So they revise their point (by changing the words or the meaning of the words) or try a new one.  They’ll repeat this process and even sometimes come back to their previous points that they have been shown to be invalid in hopes that some combination of unreasonable points will make a difference or more simply for the single reason that the theist and/or his/her arguer has forgotten why the point doesn’t work.  Then all it takes is one or two arguers against the theist to fail to recognize a counterpoint (or give-up on the theist being able to reason) and the theist will claim triumph, even though subsequent arguers will show them wrong.  But it worked in the past for the theist, and by their logic (or pigeon-logic) there must be something right about their argument.  We can observe this readily in this group as we see the same people bring up the same arguments and get refuted over and over… and over.  And many times they’ll distance themselves from the original point only to come back to it again in hopes that such distancing removed any counterarguments.  This group is a testament to the claim. 

The basic surmise is that theists generally use this sort of weaseling, wriggling, and twisting of arguments or actions to justify their claims, even though any person could readily test their hypothesis and show it to have no correlation between the action and the outcome.  But showing the theist this isn’t enough because they will always claim there was something wrong with the experiment, not their claim.  Or if they admit something wrong with their claim, they’ll just argue that their claim was mostly right, but it just needed a little adjustment even though they and many others have undoubtedly gone in circles with their adjustments.  I suggest (as many others before me have) that pretty much all of theists supernatural claims (including witch trials, football team wins, lucky charms, etc.) are a result of this sort of ‘dance’ that theists do in order to make one falsely believe in correlation when there is none.  This is pigeon-logic. 

But if theists are so similar in behaviour to pigeons, doesn’t it beg the question of whether or not we should treat theists any differently than we do pigeons?  Should we feed them a bunch of uncooked rice? More importantly, shouldn't we not let them perch on higher ground so they can shit on the rest of humanity?