April 12, 2016

April 12, 2016

Written by Maximus Peperkamp, M.S. Verbal Engineer

Dear Reader,

In “Religion as Schedule-Induced Behavior” (2009) Strand writes that “a genuine religious act – prayer in the foxhole – serves as a minimal unit out of which less foundational, acquired religious behavior results.” Presumably, even such an extremely aversive situation can lead to a religious experience, albeit a less foundational one.  Strand mentions  that “the acts of revising one’s self-descriptions, of seeking like-minded companions, and attending religious services, are effortful and not graceful.” After surviving his foxhole ordeal the atheist becomes a believer as the situation forced him to contemplate his death. The resulting “re-description of self”, which “functions to generate consistency between current verbal descriptions of the self and one’s actual past behavior” and “derives from past social interactions in which reinforcement accrued to the construction of self-narratives characterized by consistency between word and deed” (Skinner, 1974), is made possible by a change of environment from one in which one experiences immanent threat to one in which one experiences safety. 

Behaviorists can and should demystify this fearful begging and praying for an imaginary helper, which presumably turns the atheist into a believer, as a form of private speech, which derives from public speech. As neither the higher power nor the inner, behavior-causing agent exists, it should be considered as a form of verbal behavior. More precisely, it is covert Noxious Verbal Behavior (NVB) or private speech, colloquially known as negative self-talk, which is a function of overt NVB or public speech, which explains the religious conversion. Strand writes “the point of the [foxhole] example is to illustrate the relation between graceful religious behavior and effortful religious behavior” [word between parentheses added by this writer]. However, the graceful religious behavior is a form of SVB private speech, which can only derive from SVB public speech. Thus, from this natural, behavior analytic account, we should no longer explain foxhole prayer or any other effortful behavior as religious behavior.