(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: