By Dov Michaeli
Moses on Mt.Sinai; What's the big light behind him?
Why do people believe in flying saucers? Or conspiracy theories? Or in gods? These thoughts occupied me recently, when the print and broadcast media endlessly analyzed the evangelical vote and its effect on the Republican primaries. Is it ignorance of science? If so, how do you explain the existence of some eminent religious scientists, like Francis Collins, previous director of the Human Genome project and current director of NIH? Could it be that the natural order is belief in supra-natural beings,and that rationality is actually a late addition to our culture, a thin veneer over deep-seated impulses?
Is there a God gene?
Some claims to this effect surfaced in the last few years. Evidence for? flimsy to non-existent. Evidence against? It is hard to prove the absence of something. But consider: there are millions of atheists in the world; do they all suffer from a gene deletion, or some other mutation? The anthropological record shows that the rise of religions coincided with the advent of agriculture, namely about 10,000 years ago. This is quite recent in terms of human existence. What did earlier cultures believe in? They were animists, believing that their physical and spiritual beings are one with their environments, (like soil, sky, rocks, rivers, animals, plants), which are also endowed with a spiritual being. The currently accepted definition of animism was developed in the 19th century by Sir Edward Tylor, who created it as “one of anthropology’s earliest concepts, if not the first”.
Is god-belief a brain-trick?
Not quite, but we are getting warmer. Michael Shermer is a psychology professor and the author of The Believing Brain: From Gohsts and Gods to Politics and Conspiratories – How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths. Now, Shermer is not just your run-of-the-mill academic looking at the question of faith from 30,000 feet high. He was once an evangelical Christian and he lost his faith as a result of his college studies of psychology and cognitive science. His main point is that we form our beliefs first and then look for support for them afterwards. Why do we form those beliefs in the first place? Because our brain is wired, but not for the existence of spirits and gods, but for pattern-seeking and for agency (or intent)-attributing propensities, meaning that there is a pattern to everything, including random events, and that there is a reason and a will behind everything.
Is it irrational? It depends. In the early days of our species it was adaptive. If you didn’t recognize a silhuette of a leopard moving through the bush as a pattern of a stalking predator, who has the intention and power to make you his lunch -then you most certainly would end up being one. But this belief-machinery is neutral; when circumstances changed and people became inextricably dependent on rain, wind, thunder and sunshine due to agriculture -our brain reosrted to its hard-wired mechanisms: pattern and agency- seeking. Given their state of knowledge the ”obvious” answer would have been: there must be a super-natural force that controls those patterns of nature.
So why can’t science change this archaic way of looking at nature? Here is another psychological trait we all share: confirmation bias. It is the phenomenon, amply demonstrated and confirmed, that we tend to accept evidence that confirms our beliefs and ignore that which refutes them. Hence the slow progress science is making in this respect. But progerss is being made, albeit slowly. Consider: people used to believe in withches in the middle ages. I dare say, most people don’t believe in it today (belief in Satan and exorcism notwithstanding). The notion that the earth circles the sun and not vice versa, qualified for the Inquisition’s ultimatum to Galileo:recant this heresy, or burn at the stake. And who believes today the earth was flat? And how many, outside the South, truly believe that the earth is 5400 years old? So progress is slowly being made.
Church Revival
The notion that a supernatural deity is a ”god of the gaps”, meaning that it occupies only gaps in our knowledge, predicts that as our knowledge of our physical world increases, the need for a metaphysical explanation will diminish. So stay tuned.
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{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
There’s the link between temporal epilepsy and hyper-religiosity, suggesting the human brain is wired for religion:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temporal_lobe_epilepsy#Social_and_artistic_influence
Think of the survival value of being religious: Strong group cohesion through shared beliefs, and a convenient way of dealing with authority (I’m not telling you to do X, [S]He is telling you to!). In this view, sharing a religion matters, but the specifics of a religious belief are inconsequential.
Interesting comment regarding temporal lobe seizures as evidence for the existence of a “god circuit” in the brain. I think this is quite a logical jump, Remeber the information bias we are all prone to. What happens in epilepsy is a chaotic activation of various circuits that normally are not connected. This is a pathological situation which tells us little or nothing about circuits dedicated to religion per se. I think the situation in the brain during epilepsy is more akin to what happens during oxygen deprivation. Neuronal activity is a voracious consumer of energy, and the frenzied and uncontrolled activity of epilepsy is bound to create this condition. People who experience oxygen deprivation report all kinds of visual experiences, such as halo, a long tunnel with light at the end, out-of-body sensation, etc. Some people call it ” a religious experience”. I don’t see much religiosity here, only a physiological derangement.
As to the evolutionary advantage of religion, you may have a point. Groups that are cooperating have an unquestioned selective advantage. Just look at social insects vs. solitary insects. Or the elaborate behaviors whose purpose is to enhance social cohesion in troops of primates, Indeed, they (and we) have centers that control sociability, cooperation, and empathy. But from that to ascribing brain circuits dedicated to religion is just as implausible in us as it is in our cousins the primates. At best, religion is a relatively late cultural addition to our repertoire which is possibly consistent with advantages of group cohesion, but not required. To wit, the Israeli Kibbuz is an economic and cultural cohesive group, but also thoroughly secular.
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I think the question isn’t so much whether or not there is a “God-gene”, but instead whether there is a faith gene–in which case atheists have that same gene, expressed in certainties and absolutes. Atheists are fundamentalist true believers too. Pattern-seeking or agency-seeking faith behavior will exist forever, because there will forever be gaps in understanding of the natural world. As the gaps in our knowledge close or become smaller in certain areas, new ones simultaneously open with new mysteries to explore. This may be why many scientists, in their awe of nature, didn’t consider their work and their faith to be mutually exclusive.
The assertion that there is a “faith gene” is just that, an assertion. I personally doubt that such a gene will ever be found. Why? because we share genes with animals lower on the phylogenetic tree, and it would require blind faith to believe that chimps (or even Drosophila) have a gene coding for a faith protein. As far as the statement that atheists are akin to fundamentalist fanatics, where is the evidence for it? In fact, sociological studies show that atheists tend to be liberal in their views and open-minded
in their attitude, whereas religious people tend to be more conservative, more deferrential to authority, and less open to opposing views. Of course, these are averages; not all atheists are open-minded and not all religious people are intolerant. But the fact that there are many atheists is an indication that thre is no such thing a “god gene” of a “faith center” in the brain, unless we assume that they carry a “faithless” mutation.
Perhaps it’s a question of language. To be an atheist is to assert an absence of God with the same absolute certainty as someone asserting the existence of God; it’s an assertion equally based on faith. Agnostics, on the other hand, are liberal and open-minded in their views, recognizing what they don’t know.
Oops part of my comment got cut off: your argument is that closing gaps in knowledge makes process-seeking or agency-seeking (faith in a deity, for example) increasingly unnecessary. My point is that knowledge gaps will never close, they’ll just become different gaps because each new discovery raises new questions. If we’re on some kind of developmental trajectory where all the questions ultimately get answered, that would mean not only the end of process-seeking or agency-seeking faith behavior but also the end of scientific inquiry.
I agree more work would be needed before making any strong claims about people being wired for religion. Just saying that if there’s a survival value to being religious, the trait will be selected for. As to why our primate cousins are (probably) not religious; they don’t have the language to make religion ‘work’! In this light, it sure would be interesting to research temporal epilepsy in other primates..