(307) Intermittent reinforcement, magic wand of human religion

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Religion as a perpetuum mobile

B.F. Skinner is one of the founders of Behaviorism. In this branch of psychology the soul is not understood from the inside, but manipulated from outside as a black box. 

1) Continuous reinforcement means a pigeon is always rewarded for good behavior. But when the reward ceases extinction will occur. The animal simply does not believe in the reward any longer.

2) However, intermittent reinforcement strengthens the resistance to extinction. When one rewards its behavior erratically, then the animal simply does not know when to extinct his learned behavior. It remains believe in the final reward. In fact intermittent reinforcement is the strongest reinforcement.

3) Which means if we want to unlearn a child some behavior, we must always be very consistent. Parental ambivalent behavior is intermittent reinforcement.

4) Religious beliefs are fueled by ambivalent behavior of God. Sometimes Allah comes to the rescue but mostly not. To see it differently, if God does not exist the 'hand of God' might come down to natural events which accidentally happen. But believers simply accept the vagaries of nature as given by the mercy of God. And so religion becomes a perpetuum mobile driven by the invisible hand of God. Intermittent reinforcement is the power of religion.

                                                   

Christianity

Christians have Jesus, who was not that aggressive. Hence, you will never hear the yell: Jesus, Jesus Akbar, in a demonstration of furious Christians. But is it really because Jesus has that peaceful aura? 

What makes Christians different from Muslims? Christians know it makes no sense to call upon Christ. They must show their strong faith in Him. He will never come to their rescue and they must bear their fate in masochism to come into Heaven. That is His test upon them. 

Matthew 5:44 

King James Bible Jesus:

But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you;

Well then, how must Christians know if Jesus really exists? They can't. So, 'no answer' points to the existence of Jesus. No reward (no appearance) just is the reinforcement of their belief! Even worse, punishment (being killed by Muslims) is their reward:

Conversely, if Jesus would show up they lose their faith in Christianity:

We see Black Box Behaviorism of Skinner works after the reversal of the common meaning of reinforcement:

Intermittent reinforcement interacts with the sadomasochistic dimension of religion. For Christians and Muslim women applies: suffering is lust in masochism:

Punishment (suffering is lust in masochism) becomes the reward and leads to the reinforcement of Christianity. 

Is Christianity as sick as Islam? Yes, it is, but it is less destructive to females. Both, Islam and Christianity, are the extremes of the sado-masochistic axis through Judaism:

It costs these sexual deviant ideologies enormous indoctrination power to keep full tension on this SM-axis. As mentioned so often on this site both religions are collapsing to the center and will swallow up each other in a Chrislamous vortex:

Which all means Black Box Behaviorism is not sufficient, more is needed to explain what is happening in Human Religion. We need also depth psychology.


Islam

In Islam it is the other way around. In the name of Allah, Muslims must kill unbelievers to come in Heaven and of course they expect Him to come to their help and rescue in this lustful battle. So they compulsively beg for his help, crying: 'Allahu Akbar'.

A compulsion is a repetitive, rule-based behavior that a person feels he must perform in order to feel normal and in some cases to prevent negative consequences from happening. It is an impulse to repeatedly perform an act even if it doesn't seem rational or goes against an individual's will.

Massively yelling Allahu Akbar must be seen as an obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), which apparently underlines Muslims as a group. 

Of course, Allahu Akbar is a slogan, a battle cry, but here we want to take it seriously as a religious cry for help. And then again, this repetitive behavior does not establish much trust in Allah, because he must have heard their yell the first time already. Here again, statistically random help of God strengthens intermittent reinforcement, the real power of Human Religion:

So if Muslims are successful in killing unbelievers they think it was the helping hand of Allah, otherwise they think He was angry at them. 

Only if Behaviorism works together with Depth Psychology we might offer a splendid explanation for the success of Islam.

Nowadays Muslims

So, it looks as if Muslims are uncertain about the existence of Allah. Do they grasp somehow there must be more in their unconscious what is unattainable for them?

How can we see how much trust Muslims place in Allah? Well, if Muslims operate in groups and need a God to protect them all, they call on Allah on a compulsive manner.

As mentioned earlier a furious Muslim crowd always yells: 'Allahu Akbar'. That suits better in battle. They seemingly think a shared God makes them stronger, gives them the courage they never felt in former Paradise cultures of individual gods of their ancestors. So, individualism is not their strongest quality:

Gods are sexual roles

Allah is a not to know, anonymous God without a face. This was the brilliant solution to unify numerous hostile and hateful Bedouin tribes:

Assumption 76: Consider the polytheistic set of n tribal heads in paradise culture as an overdetermined set of n-equations in the space of gods, which has to be caught by a single principal component: the assumed factor of sadomasochism. The angle to this main axis has to be given by the God of monotheism (m=1), who by definition is a known but unknown parameter, because God is defined as not to know. What means that this invisible God, the proposed principal binding factor among all those tribes, is agreed not to be known in an also unknown universe. What means that God gives a fake angle to the SM-dyad in space. But then it may be more parsimonious to define the power dimension of human sexual space directly as sadomasochism and to forget about 'God'. 

Assumption 77: Because the God of monotheism is defined as a known but unknown parameter (angle) of His Principal Axis in the space of (tribal) gods, the system of equations of paradise culture actually seemed unresolved. Nevertheless the n-space of tribes was reduced to a by tribal heads accepted single dimension: monotheism. Knowing that hatred and hostility is the most common factor among Bedouin tribes, God and Allah must be based also on hatred and hostility. Hence, God and Allah are personifications of Sadism on the throne, and the real nature of monotheism must be sadomasochism.

Assumption 68: In humans, the number of interdependent gods (n) in the polytheistic space of gods (rank=m=5 vectors) in the archetype of God (rank=p=5 factors) is unlimited, with the SM-dyad as principal component (main factor) (p=1). SM-dyad is called 'monotheism' otherwise. With male testosterone this space will be gradually restricted to only one conscious dimension (p=1), the SM-dyad or Allah-construct, named otherwise monotheism or sadomasochism. Remaining (m-p=4) components are relegated to the unconscious. But in case of estrogen all sexual factors (p=5) remain unaffected in the conscious of women.                                                           

Hostile Bedouin tribes feel 'brothers' under the umbrella of this invisible and maybe fictitious God. It makes them stronger than they are, it gives them their illusive involvement. But behind this façade the Muslim incrowd has no substance, no real brother love, it's all fake.

Allah is the new overarching God of Muslims but they know him just for 1400 years. Compare this with their earlier gods, the tribal ancestors from earthly reincarnation of Homo erectus (2 Ma; 900cc). Belief in earthly reincarnation dates from 2 million years ago and has become an instinct. 

Their belief in Allah is too recent to be a competitive instinct. Therefore we see Muslims desperately trying to believe in Allah as they are indoctrinated. They are kneeling, begging and pleading for his help in killing unbelievers. Allah is in their conscious and they cannot stop compulsively yelling 'Allahu Akbar'. It is the invocation of their doubt in the authenticity of their common God.

                                      

(306) Human religion as operant conditioning

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Conditioning in religion

Conditioning in religion is a mixture of classical and operant conditioning. Classical conditioning describes the very basis of religious indoctrination, while operant conditioning treats magical thinking as a learning process. However, both techniques fail in describing the complete process of religious indoctrination. We describe both techniques briefly and then make our choice.

Classical conditioning (Pavlov's dog):

Conditioned and unconditioned stimuli:

Natural relations are mostly unconditioned. They happen by inherent causality. The saliva of Pavlov’s dog is an example of an unconditioned response on the offering of meat as an unconditioned stimulus.

Before experiment: 

Meat: unconditioned stimulus.
Saliva: unconditioned response.

But later, saliva becomes a conditioned response on the light as a conditioned stimulus in an artificial relation:

  Experiment phase 1 (reinforcement):

Light: conditioned stimulus.
Meat: unconditioned stimulus.
Saliva: unconditioned response.                          

  Experiment phase 2:

  Light: conditioned stimulus.                                                                              Saliva: conditioned response.

As we see, there is no natural causal relation between light and saliva. Light is a superimposed stimulus leading to a psychologically caused association.

SR-relations (Stimulus - Response)
Now, religion turns also natural caused relations into psychological ones, into magical thinking. Religion exists of artificial SR relations. We can only understand religion scientifically if we are able to trace conditioned SR relations back to their former unconditioned ones.

Operant Conditioning (Skinner's pigeons)

Operant conditioning is the reinforcement of desired behavior with a reward afterwards:

Classical situation:

Unknown trigger: unconditioned stimulus.
Pigeon pecks on button: unconditioned response. 

          Transition to operant conditioning: 

Unknown trigger: unconditioned stimulus.
Pigeon pecks on button: unconditioned response.
Reinforcement: conditioned by reward afterwards.

Operant conditioning: 

Operant response (OR): pecking the button
Reinforcing stimulus (RS): getting a grain 

Classical and operant conditioning

In classical conditioning the conditioned response (saliva) resembles the response elicited by the unconditioned stimulus: the meat. The saliva response is identical in conditioned and unconditioned situations. And that means that the behavior of the dog will not be shaped. 

Light: conditioned stimulus.
Meat: unconditioned stimulus.
Saliva: unconditioned response.

In operant conditioning however behavior can be shaped into all kinds of directions:

Unknown trigger: unconditioned stimulus.
Pigeon pecks on button: unconditioned response.
Reinforcement: conditioned reward afterwards.
Pigeon pecks two times on button: conditioned response.
Reinforcement: conditioned reward afterwards (new direction).

With all kinds of procedures one can influence behavior by operant conditioning. Operant conditioning means that the individual has to take some particular behavior to attain the reward. A pigeon must peck in some order to get the grain. His behavior 'operates' on the environment to get a reward. Hence, it is called operant behavior.

But in classical conditioning, respondent behavior is directly under control of the stimulus: the dog has to salivate if it smells meat.

Now it is obvious that religious indoctrination must consist mainly of operant conditioning. 

We only need classical conditioning where religious indoctrination starts as a passive process. But soon thereafter it becomes operant conditioning: a learning process with punishment for bad thinking and reward for good thinking. 

All modern human religions have become very sophisticated forms of operant conditioning with "high" moral standards. In millions of years they have driven far away from the original reality, from classical conditioning. Driven away from natural thinking of the first bipedal primates, what changed into magical thinking, what lost any connection with the original religion, with sexuality.

So, we hid sexuality into 'religion', at least we tried. But actually we are putting perpetual orgasm in a newer jacket every time: 

Are we ashamed of our basic sexual needs? No, not so much, but we had to mislead and deceive the females with an absurd moral sugar coating around our most primary sexual drives.

Assumption 217: Perpetual orgasm is the core of human male religion.

But happily we can trace back to the original start of human religion by simple reasoning. It is when the first bipeds noticed that farfetched inbreeding would led to extinction of the species. Many groups died out by administering the 'classical response' of further inbreeding on demand of the newly established human religion (Inbreeding), resulting in autosomal recessive disorders by prolonged inbreeding.

But some felt that captivating or exchanging juvenile females with other groups was the solution to extinction. And through trial and error (OR, Operant Response) they found their way back to how quadrupeds live, which exchange juvenile females with the male kin bonded lineage of neighboring chimps in the other tree (RS, Reinforcing Stimulus). But for chimps, this has nothing to do with operant conditioning. It happens because juvenile females simply follow their outbreeding instinct. But for bipedal primates it came down to an operant conditioned learning process (OR-RS). And so, we see operant conditioning is used in magical thinking, but also in rational problem solving:

When Australia dried out in the last ice age and the forests disappeared, 20 thousand years ago, aboriginals organized festivals on many hundreds of miles away to exchange females. And that's operant conditioning: