Jonathan Jong - Five Way Interview

Jonathan Jong is an Anglican priest in West Sussex, England, and also an experimental psychologist. He has spent most of his career trying to understand why people are—and why he himself is—religious. Most of his previous research has had to do with the fear of death, and its relationship to religious belief. These days, he spends a lot of time thinking about the nature of belief itself. His new book is Experimenting with Religion.

Why science?

As I'm usually asked 'Why religion?', this question is a breath of fresh air! And, coincidentally, I was first and remain drawn to science because I never gave up the child's game of persistently asking 'why' questions. For some people, science is a means of describing the world; for others, it is a means of improving it, via technology. But for me, it has always been science's explanatory power—or at least, its explanatory promise—that's captured my imagination and delight. I want to know about the causes of things, and especially about the causes of human behaviour. And while modern science operates on a relatively thin notion of causation - compared to those of our medieval forebears, for example - it operates with remarkable clarity and rigour. Or it does at its best, at least.

Why this book?

Most science books - and especially those aimed at the general audience rather than at the guild - focus on discoveries, and what they might mean. This gives the impression that science is essentially a collection of facts, or a method for collecting facts. But the reality of what it is like to be a working scientist is much messier than that. When I said earlier that science enjoys a remarkable clarity and rigour, I am describing an idealised - or perhaps better, aspirational - version of science. This is not to suggest that it's a fictitious version of science; but it is to admit that, like all intellectual pursuits, science is a human and social one. I wanted to show something of the human and social aspects of doing science. And I hope that it will help the reader understand something of the uncertainties in science, and how science might be said to progress. 

You are very honest about the problems experimental psychology has faced. Are issues with sample size and lack of reproducibility being addressed now?

The continuous tense is important here: methodological issues in experimental psychology are being addressed. I have not seen any systematic data on this, but as a journal editor I do see more studies with larger samples now, and fewer studies with obviously inadequate sample sizes. The pre-registration of studies and analyses are becoming more common. Institutions—including journals and funding bodies—are prioritising such methodological improvements. But, according to a few recent analyses, the reproducibility of scientific findings has not yet improved much. So we have a long way to go. There's cause for hope, perhaps, but maybe not quite optimism. There is, in any case, cause for increased vigilance. My worry is that the pressure to publish—and to publish novel discoveries—remains too strong.

What’s next?

Well, we have just welcomed a new baby boy into our family, so next is mainly nappy-changing. But then I'm mainly working on two things. First, I'm working with a large longitudinal dataset that follows the same individuals over the span of over three decades. Very few of these datasets consider religion as a topic of study, so I'm excited to be working with one that does. Second, I'm thinking a lot about what it means to believe something. We use the word "belief" very casually, but upon close inspection, it's actually not very clear what we mean. It's "undertheorised", as academics sometimes say. So I've been working with experts on religion and delusions and political views and memories and imagination to try to figure out how these things relate to one another and to belief.

What’s exciting you at the moment?

Interdisciplinary work. Once upon a time, philosophers and theologians were mostly interested in the physical sciences: but these days, there's more and more attention paid to the psychological and social sciences. I'm currently working with quite a few philosophers and theologians, who are interested in how psychological research might inform their theories, especially about religion and morality. But I'm also interested in how better philosophical and theological training can help scientists understand our own work better. We make lots of assumptions in our work—like about the nature of causation, as I hinted at earlier—that are worth occasionally unpicking, lest they lead us astray. 

Interview by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a digest free here