Is cleanliness next to Godliness?

We had a chaplain at school who used to spread his immaculately clean nail-brushed hands on the dining room table exclaiming "outward cleanliness is a sign of inner and spiritual cleanliness". I hid mine (dirty) under the table thinking "Poor deluded man - he's thinking it's possible to scrub his soul clean"!

But what is it that religions see in cleanliness, ritual washing and baptisms? A recent article (Sept 12, p 46) in New Scientist magazine [ht*p://w*w.newscientist.com/article/mg20327252.200-icy-stares-and-dirty-minds-hitchhiking-emotions.html] describes some recent research - and the results are not quite what one might expect:-

It is not only in the language of playwrights such as Shakespeare [Will these hands ne'er be clean?" asks Lady Macbeth] that complex emotions like guilt, grief or loneliness are compared to physical sensations. These metaphors crop up in everyday phrases, too, in many languages. In English, for example, we talk of being "left out in the cold" when we feel socially excluded, a sentiment echoed in the Japanese saying "one kind word can warm three winter months".

At face value, these connections seem purely symbolic. In real life, loneliness doesn't really send us shivering, and guilt doesn't really make us feel dirty. Or do they? Recent research has found that these physical sensations can often accompany our emotions. It works the other way too - by provoking a feeling of disgust, a scene from the film Trainspotting shaped the way subjects in an experiment made moral judgements.

Many now believe that this reflects the way complex emotions arose in our evolutionary past. As our brain evolved to process more and more complex emotions, the theory goes, there was no need for new neural machinery: our emotions simply piggybacked onto the circuits that handle basic sensory perceptions. Here are some of the most striking experiments linking physical sensations with emotions and behaviour.

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In a paper entitled "Experiencing Physical Warmth Promotes Interpersonal Warmth" Lawrence Williams and John Bargh report:-

"Warmth" is the most powerful personality trait in social judgment, and attachment theorists have stressed the importance of warm physical contact with caregivers during infancy for healthy relationships in adulthood. Intriguingly, recent research in humans points to the involvement of the insula in the processing of both physical temperature and interpersonal warmth (trust) information. Accordingly, we hypothesized that experiences of physical warmth (or coldness) would increase feelings of interpersonal warmth (or coldness), without the person's awareness of this influence. In study 1, participants who briefly held a cup of hot (versus iced) coffee judged a target person as having a "warmer" personality (generous, caring); in study 2, participants holding a hot (versus cold) therapeutic pad were more likely to choose a gift for a friend instead of for themselves. ht*p://w*w.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/322/5901/606

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In "Cold and Lonely: Does Social Exclusion Literally Feel Cold?" Chen-Bo Zhong and Geoffrey Leonardelli report the results two experiments that revealed social exclusion literally feels cold:-

Experiment 1 found that participants who recalled a social exclusion experience gave lower estimates of room temperature than did participants who recalled an inclusion experience. In Experiment 2, social exclusion was directly induced through an on-line virtual interaction, and participants who were excluded reported greater desire for warm food and drink than did participants who were included. These findings are consistent with the embodied view of cognition and support the notion that social perception involves physical and perceptual content. The psychological experience of coldness not only aids understanding of social interaction, but also is an integral part of the experience of social exclusion.
ht*p://w*w3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/121433746/abstract?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

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In "Disgust as Embodied Moral Judgment" Simone Schnall, Jonathan Haidt, Gerald Clore and Alexander Jordan write:-

How, and for whom, does disgust influence moral judgment? In four experiments participants made moral judgments while experiencing extraneous feelings of disgust. Disgust was induced in Experiment 1 by exposure to a bad smell, in Experiment 2 by working in a disgusting room, in Experiment 3 by recalling a physically disgusting experience, and in Experiment 4 through a video induction. In each case, the results showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls. Experiment 4 found that disgust had a different effect on moral judgment than did sadness. In addition, Experiments 2-4 showed that the role of disgust in severity of moral judgments depends on participants' sensitivity to their own bodily sensations. Taken together, these data indicate the importance—and specificity—of gut feelings in moral judgments.
ht*p://psp.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/34/8/1096

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In "Washing Away Your Sins: Threatened Morality and Physical Cleansing" Chen-Bo Zhong and Katie Liljenquist report:-

Physical cleansing has been a focal element in religious ceremonies for thousands of years. The prevalence of this practice suggests a psychological association between bodily purity and moral purity. In three studies, we explored what we call the "Macbeth effect"—that is, a threat to one's moral purity induces the need to cleanse oneself. This effect revealed itself through an increased mental accessibility of cleansing-related concepts, a greater desire for cleansing products, and a greater likelihood of taking antiseptic wipes. Furthermore, we showed that physical cleansing alleviates the upsetting consequences of unethical behavior and reduces threats to one's moral self-image. Daily hygiene routines such as washing hands, as simple and benign as they might seem, can deliver a powerful antidote to threatened morality, enabling people to truly wash away their sins. ht*p://w*w.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/313/5792/1451

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Counter-intuitively, you might conclude from these experiments that a cleaner environment makes us more tolerant of the bad behaviour in others, rather than less, and the act cleansing doesn't induce us to behave more morally ourselves, as religious people seem to make out.

In separate experiments analysing brain activity, Matthew Lieberman and Naomi Eisenberger found a link (the same area of the brain 'lights up') between social and physical pains and pleasures.
ht*p://w*w.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/323/5916/890

Most animals make efforts to keep themselves clean, which is a sensible strategy for avoiding parasites and infection, but as the New Scientist article suggests, from an evolutionary point of view, some of our more complex emotions could have evolved out of more basic sensory pathways and activities. Thus, we feel chill if we are socially excluded and have the desire to physically clean ourselves from feelings of guilt.

Jazmyn said:

Baptism and that is supposed to be symbolic of death, and then I suppose living a new life. The water itself isn't supposed to wash sins away.

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Baptism a symbol of death? I don't think that's true.

In Christianity, baptism (from Greek baptizo: "immersing", "performing ablutions", i.e., "washing") is the ritual act, with the use of water, by which one is admitted to membership of the Christian Church and, in the view of some, as a member of the particular Church in which the baptism is administered.

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Baptism was seen as in some sense necessary for salvation, until Huldrych Zwingli in the sixteenth century denied its necessity. Martyrdom was identified early in church history as baptism by blood, enabling martyrs who had not been baptized by water to be saved. Later, the Catholic Church identified a baptism of desire, by which those preparing for baptism who die before actually receiving the sacrament are considered saved.

Some Christians, particularly Quakers and the Salvation Army, do not see baptism as necessary. Among those that do, differences can be found in the manner and mode of baptizing and in the understanding of the significance of the rite. Most Christians baptize "in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit" (following the Great Commission), but some baptize in Jesus' name only. Most Christians baptize infants,[14] many others do not. Some insist on submersion or at least partial immersion of the person who is baptized, others consider that any form of washing by water is sufficient.

The English word "baptism" has been used in reference to any ceremony, trial, or experience by which one is initiated, purified, or given a name. See Other initiation ceremonies below.
ht*p://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baptism

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Jazmyn said:

As Jesus said, all the outward rituals in the world only make one like "whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of dead men's bones and everything unclean." (Matthew 23:27)

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Jesus showed great knowledge and wisdom - and the experiments performed 2000 years later confirm that what he said is true.

Jazmyn said:

Finding convoluted evolutionary explanations for absolutely everything just wanders into strangeness.

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I think I know where you're coming from; the imagination of some people to fit things into an evolutionary paradigm do, on occasions, seem ridiculous. However, the article in New Scientist is not being dogmatic, but is simply suggesting that some of our higher sensibilities, like the chilly feelings of exclusion and the dirtiness of guilt, MAY be adaptations of the more physical sensations of cold and filthiness.

The experimental results need an explanation one way or the other.

Jazmyn said:

no I meant the suggestion religion is explained by disgust

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None of the articles expressed this opinion. The 'disgust' experiments to which you refer "showed that disgust can increase the severity of moral judgments relative to controls".

The results simply demonstrate a link between physical disgust, brought on by foul smells for example, and moral judgement. Personally, I think all these experiments are best explained on the basis of differentiated common neurological pathways.