The "Mickey Mouse problem" commonly referenced in religious psychology refers to the difficulty in predicting which supernatural beings are capable of eliciting belief and religious devotion. Why, for example, don't fictional characters such as Mickey Mouse achieve the same belief and devotion as society's more traditional religious icons?
In research published in the journal PLOS ONE , lead author Dr Thomas Swan has developed a god template that distinguishes such religious and secular supernatural beings by exploring the attributes people associate with each. The study asked just over three hundred participants to invent a religious or a fictional being and assign them five supernatural abilities. Participants assigned religious beings a higher proportion of mind-based abilities, such as mindreading or omniscience, that defy typical expectations about what minds can do.
Fictional beings on the other hand, defied different kinds of expectations, such as having the ability to pass through walls, fly, or live forever. Other significant differences included religious characters being judged as more potentially helpful, and being regarded as more ambiguous, meaning they had abilities that were less well-defined. And whereas fictional beings were given character traits that defined them as heroes or villains, religious beings were more ambivalent and associated with similar ratings of benefit and harm, potentially making them capable of eliciting both love and fear.
The study found that these differences in attributes held up regardless of whether the agents were invented or well known to participants. They are appealing to us. They are psychologically useful. While myths are completely made up, legends are based on events that really happened.
The Greeks believed in gods and goddesses who, they thought, had control over every part of people's lives. The Ancient Greeks believed that they had to pray to the gods for help and protection, because if the gods were unhappy with someone, then they would punish them.
They made special places in their homes and temples where they could pray to statues of the gods and leave presents for them. The Greeks had a different god for almost everything. They imagined that the gods lived together, as a family, up on the top of Mount Olympus.
They did not see them as perfect, but just like people. In the Greek myths the gods argue, fall in love, get jealous of each other and make mistakes. There are many famous Greek myths and legends.
Who is likely to be top dog, so to speak: Yahweh, Allah or that other Abrahamic god we know simply as God? Or is there another contender? Step forward Gaia: a god that even militant atheists can respect, if not revere. Unlike the God of the Bible, Gaia is one of those lustful, irritable and contrary gods that populate Greek mythology. One of her first offspring was Ouranos - the sky god - better known today as Uranus, who became her lover and later abuser.
In a gruesome twist, she encouraged her son Kronos to castrate Ouranos and throw his genitals across the sea. In short, Gaia is not a god to mess with.
Today, however, the granny god is back with a vengeance, largely thanks to the scientist and environmentalist James Lovelock , whose Gaia hypothesis describes how all living organisms form part of an interconnected, self-regulating ecosystem.
Classicist John Dillon believes so. In ancient times, plague was seen as a message from the gods. Does the current pandemic contain a message too? We have certainly sinned, as a civilisation, but this time it is a rather novel sort of sin, that against our environment, and part of that involves rushing about all over the planet, emitting vast amounts of CO2 in the process, and distorting the economies of many countries. Take time to appreciate your immediate environment, and what you can derive from it.
Smell the roses! Listen to the birds! Had Gaia a special status among the Greeks or was she just one god among many? Do you view Gaia, though, as a real lifeforce or just a useful fiction?
But - slightly more seriously - I am prepared to believe that the Earth, as a living system, is capable of taking steps, instinctively, to preserve its equilibrium, even at the cost of decimating its most potent species. This plague seems different to others in that societies have put saving lives ahead of economic prosperity.
Does this suggest humans are making moral progress? And, as you suggest, it does seem to be bringing out the best, and the most rational element, in the populations of many countries - though not of all, regrettably.
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