Atheism Stack Exchange Archive

Has evolutionary psychology explained the origin of religion?

I have seen several evolutionary-psychology based attempts at explaining the existence of religion, with various dependencies on genetic tendencies.

What I wonder is:

  1. How strong is the evidence, if any, for such explanations?
  2. Are there any equivalent explanations for Atheism?
  3. Is any research group currently taking one or more of these hypothesis seriously, and investing both time and money into researching their validity?

Answer 2478

Richard Dawkins argues in “The God Delusion” that religion is a byproduct of the way in which humans learn from their parents (and other people) during childhood. Knowledge and experience acquisition during childhood is definitely modulated by genetics; for example, we humans have a long childhood because we need to acquire a large amount of knowledge and experience from our parents and other family. Other animals with simpler brains and simpler social structures have shorter childhoods. The length of the childhood (as a component of the maturing rate) is genetically established. And, thus, religion, as a byproduct of this, is related to such genetic modulation.

In summary, I don’t think there is a “God gene” or a direct connection between genetics and religion. But there are indirect, complex interactions. In your own words, yes, there is a genetic basis for blindly imitating and perpetuating what we see in our parents, and therefore, religion.

EDIT: This answer was written in response to the question originally posted by @blueberryfields. After I wrote it, the question was substantially altered through an edit, making my answer less than adequate. I am keeping here my answer untouched because I don’t have any evidence that the original author would like to have his/her question altered in this manner.

EDIT: See meta here for further discussion.

Answer 2479

There is a lot of evidence that there is. Here are a couple of snippets from wikipedia articles:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_experience#Neurotheology

According to the neurotheologist Andrew B. Newberg, neurological processes which are driven by the repetitive, rhythmic stimulation which is typical of human ritual, and which contribute to the delivery of transcendental feelings of connection to a universal unity. They posit, however, that physical stimulation alone is not sufficient to generate transcendental unitive experiences. For this to occur they say there must be a blending of the rhythmic stimulation with ideas. Once this occurs “…ritual turns a meaningful idea into a visceral experience.” Moreover they say that humans are compelled to act out myths by the biological operations of the brain due to what they call the “inbuilt tendency of the brain to turn thoughts into actions”.

Studies of the brain and religious experience

Early studies in the 1950s and 1960s attempted to use EEGs to study brain wave patterns correlated with “spiritual” states. During the 1980s Dr. Michael Persinger stimulated the temporal lobes of human subjects with a weak magnetic field. His subjects claimed to have a sensation of “an ethereal presence in the room.”. Some current studies use neuroimaging to localize brain regions active, or differentially active, during religious experiences.

And here’s a partial list of experiences that tend to produce ‘religious’ or ‘spiritual’ states of being:

Meditation

Praying

Music

Dance, such as: Sufi whirling

Extended exercise, often running in a large communal circle, which is used in various tribal and neo-pagan religions.

Extreme pain, such as:

Mortification of the flesh

Profound sexual activity,

Use of Entheogens, such as: Ayahuasca (Dimethyltryptamine) Salvia divinorum (Salvinorin A) Peyote (Mescaline) Psilocybe cubensis (Psilocybin) Amanita muscaria (Muscimol)

Psychological or neurophysiological anomalies, such as:

Profound depression or schizophrenia, Temporal lobe epilepsy, Stroke Near-death experience, Learning

The thing that all these have in common is that they strongly affect the brain. Although the science in this area is emerging (and some is very questionable), there seems to be a working hypothesis that there are areas of the brain that produce ‘ecstatic’ and religious chemical states.

It’s not clear what purpose these areas of the brain served in early man that would be an evolutionary advantage, except for the rather obvious hypothesis that religiously reinforced communalism increases the chance for the survival of the organism.

I personally find it extremely interesting that some of the evidence for a ‘god circuit’ points to it being in a relatively primitive part of the brain. This wouls tend to lead one to suppose that if that’s the case, most mammals have “religious” experiences of some kind, and it completely invalidates all forms of supernaturalism as external phenomena.

Answer 2499

Yes, there are evolutionary-psychology based attempts at explaining the existence of religion. If you do not interpret “evolutionary-psychology” in a strict sense, and you include general antropology, an attempt that I think is particularly interesting is that of Roy A. Rappaport, one of the most important American antropologists (I think he died not long ago). His book “Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity” is truly an extraordinary book on this subject.

How strong is the evidence? Well, I do not think the question is settled. Seems to me that there is still space for new ideas for understanding how humanity came up with the ides of “gods” in the past.

Equivalent explanations for Atheism? I have never heard of any, but I am not even sure the question would make sense. Atheism refers to the “lack” of a credence. It would be like asking: “Is there an evolutionary explanation for the fact that bluberryfields does not believe that there exist flying dogs?

I do not about research group currently working on this, but I would be surprised if there aren’t.

Answer 2506

The evidence isn’t all that strong, but that may be just a function of the limits of our understandings of psychology in the first place. The lack of a grand, overarching theory in psychology – unlike other disciplines – contributes to this. 

But here is what we do know:

  1.  Our cro-magnon and Neanderthal ancestors were social beings, in many aspects just like we are today. We likely found that cooperation – especially as a part of a big hunt or for protection of ourselves and our children – worked better than going it alone. Thus tribes became small communities began to develop. 
  2.  Relatively recent archaeological discoveries demonstrate that there was some type of ritual involving death and disposal of corpses from as long as 30000 years ago. Rituals surrounding death usually point to some desire or need that can’t be satisfied by merely seeking a sanitary and hygienic means of corpse disposal. It represents, at the very least, a desire to ensure that the deceased is being tended to in a manner that transcends their physical body. It’s not unreasonable for either the evolutionary psychologist or the anthropologist to import a fear of death into this ritual. 

These two facts are not a smoking gun, per se, to explain the origins of religion. But young children today, practically from when they learn to talk, will look at the sky with a wonder and awe and ask what’s out there. We still don’t know everything out there, but before we had any scientific means of answering that question, is the decision to make up a supernatural creator really all that outrageous?  

There may also be a memetic explanation but that’s the stuff of another question. 

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