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Religion: Bound to believe?

Article · November 2008

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Religion: Bound to believe?

Is religion a product of our evolution? The very or ethnic coalitions. Findings from cognitive that people best remember stories that include
question makes many people, religious or oth- psychology, neuroscience, cultural anthropol- a combination of counterintuitive physical feats
erwise, cringe, although for different reasons. ogy and archaeology promise to change our (in which characters go through walls or move
Some people of faith fear that an understand- view of religion. instantaneously) and plausibly human psycho-
ing of the processes underlying belief could logical features (perceptions, thoughts, inten-
undermine it. Others worry that what is shown Based on assumption tions). Perhaps the cultural success of gods and
to be part of our evolutionary heritage will be One important finding is that people are only spirits stems from this memory bias.
interpreted as good, true, necessary or inevita- aware of some of their religious ideas. True, they Humans also tend to entertain social rela-
ble. Still others, many scientists included, sim- can describe their beliefs, such as that there is tions with these and other non-physical agents,
ply dismiss the whole issue, seeing religion as an omnipotent God who created the world, or even from a very young age. Unlike other social
childish, dangerous nonsense. that spirits are hiding in the forest. But cogni- animals, humans are very good at establishing
Such responses make it difficult to establish tive psychology shows that explicitly accessible and maintaining relations with agents beyond
why and how religious thought is so pervasive beliefs of this sort are always accompanied by a their physical presence; social hierarchies and
in human societies — an understanding that host of tacit assumptions that are generally not coalitions, for instance, include temporarily
is especially relevant in the current climate of available to conscious inspection. absent members. This goes even further. From
religious fundamentalism. In asking whether For instance, experiments reveal that most childhood, humans form enduring, stable
religion is one of the many consequences of people entertain highly anthropomorphic and important social relationships with fic-
having the type of brains we come equipped expectations about gods, whatever their explicit tional characters, imaginary friends, deceased
with, we can shed light on what kinds of reli- beliefs. When they are told a story in which a relatives, unseen heroes and fantasized mates.
gion ‘come naturally’ to human minds. We can god attends to several problems at once, they Indeed, the extraordinary social skills of
probe the shared assumptions that religions are find the concept quite plausible, as gods are humans, compared with other primates, may
built on, however disparate, and examine the generally described as having unlimited cog- be honed by constant practice with imagined
connection between religion and ethnic con- nitive powers. Recalling the story a moment or absent partners.
flict. Lastly, we can hazard a guess at what the later, most people say that the god attended It is a small step from having this capacity to
realistic prospects are for atheism. to one situation before turning his attention bond with non-physical agents to conceptualiz-
In the past ten years, the evolutionary and to the next. People also implicitly expect their ing spirits, dead ancestors and gods, who are nei-
cognitive study of religion has begun to mature. gods’ minds to work much like human minds, ther visible nor tangible, yet are socially involved.
It does not try to identify the gene or genes for displaying the same processes of perception, This may explain why, in most cultures, at least
religious thinking. Nor does it simply dream memory, reasoning and motivation. Such some of the superhuman agents that people
up evolutionary scenarios that might have led expectations are not conscious, and are often believe in have moral concerns. Those agents
to religion as we know it. It does much better at odds with their explicit beliefs. are often described as having complete access
than that. It puts forward new hypotheses and Research has shown that unlike conscious only to morally relevant actions. Experiments
testable predictions. It asks what in the human beliefs, which differ widely from one tradition show that it is much more natural to think “the
make-up renders religion possible and success- to another, tacit assumptions are extremely gods know that I stole this money” than “the
ful. Religious thought and behaviour can be similar in different cultures and religions. gods know that I had porridge for breakfast”.
considered part of natural human capacities, These similarities may stem from the peculi- In addition, the neurophysiology of compul-
like music, political systems, family relations arities of human memory. Experiments suggest sive behaviour in humans and other animals
1038
NATURE|Vol 455|23 October 2008 BEING HUMAN OPINION

god-concept convincing is not what makes a rit-

G. BECKER
that would be taken as obviously wrong ual intuitively compelling or what makes a moral
is beginning to shed light on religious rituals. or ridiculous in other religious groups. This norm self-evident. Most modern, organized
These behaviours include stereotyped, highly signals a willingness to embrace the group’s religions present themselves as a package that
repetitive actions that participants feel they particular norm for no other reason than that integrates all these disparate elements (ritual,
must do, even though most have no clear, it is, precisely, the group’s norm. morality, metaphysics, social identity) into one
observable results, such as striking the chest consistent doctrine and practice. But this is pure
three times while repeating a set formula. Ritu- Cognitive cache advertising. These domains remain separated in
alized behaviour is also seen in patients with So is religion an adaptation or a byproduct of human cognition. The evidence shows that the
obsessive-compulsive disorders and in the our evolution? Perhaps one day we will find mind has no single belief network, but myriad
routines of young children. In these contexts, compelling evidence that a capacity for religious distinct networks that contribute to making reli-
rituals are generally associated with thoughts thoughts, rather than ‘religion’ in the modern gious claims quite natural to many people.
about pollution and purification, danger and form of socio-political institutions, contrib- The findings emerging from this cognitive-
protection, the required use of particular col- uted to fitness in ancestral times. For the time evolutionary approach challenge two central
ours or numbers or the need to construct a safe being, the data support a more modest conclu- tenets of most established religions. First, the
and ordered environment. sion: religious thoughts seem to be an emergent notion that their particular creed differs from
We now know that human brains have a set of property of our standard cognitive capacities. all other (supposedly misguided) faiths; second,
security and precaution networks dedicated to Religious concepts and activities hijack our that it is only because of extraordinary events or
preventing potential hazards such as predation cognitive resources, as do music, visual art, the actual presence of supernatural agents that
or contamination. These networks trigger spe- cuisine, politics, economic institutions and religious ideas have taken shape. On the con-
cific behaviours such as washing and checking fashion. This hijacking occurs simply because trary, we now know that all versions of religion
one’s environment. When the systems go into religion provides some form of what psycholo- are based on very similar tacit assumptions, and
overdrive they produce obsessive-compulsive gists would call super stimuli. Just as visual art that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are
pathology. Religious statements about purity, is more symmetrical and its colours more sat- normal human minds processing information in
pollution, the hidden danger of lurking devils, urated than what is gen- the most natural way.
may also activate these networks and make rit- erally found in nature, “The mind has myriad distinct Knowing, even accept-
ual precautions (cleansing, checking, delimiting religious agents are ing these conclusions is
a sacred space) intuitively appealing. highly simplified versions
belief networks that contribute unlikely to undermine
Finally, studies of social and evolutionary of absent human agents, to making religious claims religious commitment.
psychology demonstrate a specifically human and religious rituals are quite natural to many people.” Some form of religious
coalitional capacity, which impacts on religion. highly stylized versions thinking seems to be
Humans are unique among animals in main- of precautionary procedures. Hijacking also the path of least resistance for our cognitive
taining large, stable coalitions of unrelated occurs because religions facilitate the expres- systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the
individuals, strongly bonded by mutual trust. sion of certain behaviours. This is the case for result of deliberate, effortful work against our
Humans evolved the cognitive tools to achieve commitment to a group, which is made all the natural cognitive dispositions — hardly the
this. They know how to gauge others’ reliabil- more credible when it is phrased as the accept- easiest ideology to propagate. ■
ity. They can recall episodes of interaction and ance of bizarre or non-obvious beliefs. Pascal Boyer is at the Departments of Psychology
infer what people’s characters are like. They can We should not try to pinpoint the unique ori- and Anthropology, Washington University in St
emit and detect costly, hard-to-fake signals of gin of religious belief, because there is no unique Louis, Missouri, USA, and the author of Religion
commitment. domain for religion in human minds. Different Explained.
This coalitional psychology is involved cognitive systems handle representations of e-mail: [email protected].
in the dynamics of public religious commit- supernatural agents, of ritualized behaviours,
ment. When people proclaim their adher- of group commitment and so on, just as colour See http://tinyurl.com/4f84wm for further
ence to a particular faith, they subscribe to and shape are handled by different parts of the reading. For more on Being Human, see www.
claims for which there is no evidence, and visual system. In other words, what makes a nature.com/nature/focus/XXXX.
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