Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Epiphenom

Home
About

Home
Nonreligious
Defacing Bible is ‘disgusting’, says Pope

Defacing Bible is ‘disgusting’, says Pope

Last updated on: November 28, 2015 at 9:51 pm by Epiphenom

Defacing Bible is ‘disgusting’, says Pope 2015-11-28T21:51:12+01:00 Epiphenom

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

An exhibition at Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow is proving to be just a bit more controversial than the organizers had hoped for. One of the exhibits featured a bible, and a pen, and an encouragement homosexuals to write uplifting messages in the margins. Tragically, it seems that some homosexuals don’t feel too warmly to the Bible and some of the comments were unkind, even going so far as to call the book “the biggest lie in human history”.

All this has upset the Pope, according to the Telegraph:

The adviser to the head of the Catholic Church said the project was “disgusting and offensive”.

It’s an interesting choice of words, that. Offensive I can understand, but disgusting?

As luck would have it I’ve just been reading a new study on ‘disgust’. The authors tackled a long standing problem on how to classify different types of disgust. The classical model, based on a study done by Jon Haidt, breaks disgust into three domains – core disgust, animal reminder disgust, and interpersonal disgust.

The problem with this is that it’s hard to figure out what the functional value of these three domains is. What’s the survival value – why would they evolve?

So the new paper proposes a revised model, based around three domains that are linked directly to evolutionary benefit. Now, the interesting bit is how they developed the model.

Basically what they did was to a group of 14 people to write down 15 different things that some people might think were disgusting. They whittled this down to 58 unique items, and asked a larger group of undergrads to rate them on how disgusting each was. Then they used a statistical technique (factor analysis) to see how the groups bunched up.

As they expected, they found that there are basically three types of disgust:

Pathogen disgust (things like “Standing next to someone who has strong body odour”), which helps to keep you free of infection.
Sexual disgust (e.g. “Having sex with a much older person”), which safeguards against bad reproductive decisions, and is much more powerful for women than for men.
Moral disgust (e.g. “Forging a signature”), which helps to stop you doing antisocial things, which could lead to you becoming ostracised.

So where does the Pope’s disgust for the Glasgow exhibition fit into this list? You might think that it fits under ‘moral disgust’, but in fact all the examples in that category are about social interactions – lying, cheating, and stealing. They don’t seem really to cover it.

Perhaps it’s sexual disgust. The offending people were homosexuals, after all, and a lot of the scribblings that caused the ruction were sexual (“I am Bi, Female & Proud. I want no god who is disappointed in this”). What’s more, another of the exhibits featured video of a woman tearing out pages of the bible and stuffing them into her underwear!

But my gut feeling says something different. I think that a lot of religious people experience ‘sacred disgust’. They feel that certain objects and places have special, magical properties, and they react with disgust when these objects are violated in much the same way as they would when a person is violated.

If that’s true, then the Pope’s disgust is a form of moral disgust, but it’s moral disgust transferred to objects, rather than people.

The problem with this idea is that the three domains of disgust (pathogen, sexual, moral) are supposed to have evolved because they provide a clear survival benefit. But what would be the survival benefit of moral disgust linked to objects?

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Tybur, J., Lieberman, D., & Griskevicius, V. (2009). Microbes, mating, and morality: Individual differences in three functional domains of disgust. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 97 (1), 103-122 DOI: 10.1037/a0015474

This work by Tom Rees is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 UK: England & Wales License.

Effects of religion - psychological

Disgust

Previous Post

July 28, 2009

How not to cure headaches

Next Post

August 3, 2009 The dependence of religion on dysfunctional societies

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Causes of religion - evolution Causes of religion - psychological Causes of religion - social Demographics Digest Effects of religion - health Effects of religion - psychological Effects of religion - social Notifications Politics Uncategorized

Select a Month March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

How old was Abraham when Sarah died?

Select your answer to see how you score.

137 years 117 years 127 years 147 years