Here are some thoughts about the article, Darwin's God. The author of the article, Robin Marantz Henig, outlines three evolutionary developments that may have primed the human mind to embrace religion.

The first is agent detection:

Agent detection evolved because assuming the presence of an agent — which is jargon for any creature with volitional, independent behavior — is more adaptive than assuming its absence. If you are a caveman on the savannah, you are better off presuming that the motion you detect out of the corner of your eye is an agent and something to run from, even if you are wrong. If it turns out to have been just the rustling of leaves, you are still alive; if what you took to be leaves rustling was really a hyena about to pounce, you are dead.

["¦.]

What does this mean for belief in the supernatural? It means our brains are primed for it, ready to presume the presence of agents even when such presence confounds logic. "The most central concepts in religions are related to agents," Justin Barrett, a psychologist, wrote in his 2004 summary of the byproduct theory, "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" Religious agents are often supernatural, he wrote, "people with superpowers, statues that can answer requests or disembodied minds that can act on us and the world."

I would simply add that all of this would apply to mice, deer, even rabbits. In other words, this form of cognition would be ancient. And while it might be a necessary condition, it is not sufficient (for example, after all my hard work, the rabbits still don't worship me). On the contrary, the full potential of "agent detection" would only be unleashed once the other two forms of cognition come on-line. First, we need causal reasoning:

A second mental module that primes us for religion is causal reasoning. The human brain has evolved the capacity to impose a narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic, on whatever it encounters, no matter how apparently random. "We automatically, and often unconsciously, look for an explanation of why things happen to us," Barrett wrote, "and `stuff just happens' is no explanation. Gods, by virtue of their strange physical properties and their mysterious superpowers, make fine candidates for causes of many of these unusual events." The ancient Greeks believed thunder was the sound of Zeus's thunderbolt. Similarly, a contemporary woman whose cancer treatment works despite 10-to-1 odds might look for a story to explain her survival. It fits better with her causal-reasoning tool for her recovery to be a miracle, or a reward for prayer, than for it to be just a lucky roll of the dice.

What's fascinating here is that causal reasoning is also at the heart of science, suggesting that the same brain properties that would elicit religion would eventually elicit science (thus, the historic love-hate relationship).

We can also bring in the traditional ID debate at this point. What's the main problem with ID? Where is the "narrative, complete with chronology and cause-and-effect logic?" By excluding this aspect from ID, the concept of ID, while intriguing and controversial, doesn't appeal to our causal reasoning. It just floats out there. Yet on the other hand, while conventional science provides us with a robust Darwinian narrative, it comes up short, because in the end, it too abandons causal reasoning by invoking things that "just happen." For example, molecular machine X comes into existence because part A just happened to fortuitously interact with part B and confer some ability that just happened to make it more likely to get passed on. Plausible? Sure. Satisfying? Not really. The conventional Darwinian approach merely gives the appearance of causal reasoning.

Anyway, let's get back to evolution and religion. The third factor at play is the recognition of other minds:

A third cognitive trick is a kind of social intuition known as theory of mind. It's an odd phrase for something so automatic, since the word "theory" suggests formality and self-consciousness. Other terms have been used for the same concept, like intentional stance and social cognition. One good alternative is the term Atran uses: folkpsychology.

Folkpsychology, as Atran and his colleagues see it, is essential to getting along in the contemporary world, just as it has been since prehistoric times. It allows us to anticipate the actions of others and to lead others to believe what we want them to believe; it is at the heart of everything from marriage to office politics to poker. People without this trait, like those with severe autism, are impaired, unable to imagine themselves in other people's heads.

The process begins with positing the existence of minds, our own and others', that we cannot see or feel. This leaves us open, almost instinctively, to belief in the separation of the body (the visible) and the mind (the invisible). If you can posit minds in other people that you cannot verify empirically, suggests Paul Bloom, a psychologist and the author of "Descartes' Baby," published in 2004, it is a short step to positing minds that do not have to be anchored to a body. And from there, he said, it is another short step to positing an immaterial soul and a transcendent God.

The ability to recognize others minds (and empathize) probably stems from the mother/child relationship, something that is greatly enhanced on our species. Never forget that childhood, especially early childhood, is not merely a psychological, experiential thing. It is also a physiological, neurological thing.

So yes, I can see how the evolution of the three brain properties, agent detection, causal reasoning, and recognition of other minds, would "front-load" the emergence of belief in God and religion. Does this mean that God-belief is, in the end, a delusion/hallucination?

No. I agree with theologian Mahanoy, who wisely noted:

How one responds to the hypothesis of the brain being "hard-wired" for belief in God will depend on one's presuppositions. An atheist might respond by reaffirming what Feuerbach concluded in the 1840s - all religion is nothing more than projection of human wishes and desires, the objectifying and deifying of human nature. God is nothing more than the ultimate wish fulfillment. A religious person might respond by affirming what John Calvin wrote in the 16th century - all human beings are naturally inclined to believe in God, and religiousness is an essential component of human nature.

Atran's research lends credence to positions as diverse as the pious John Calvin's and the atheist Ludwig Feuerbach's. It provides the questions and some answers but, because of the nature of the question itself, it can never answer the ultimate question of religion: What is God?

I would also add that the truth of God's existence is not dependent on humans having some supernatural ability to perceive such existence. After all, our perception of the physical world must also have a biological/evolutionary explanation. Would numbers, other minds, and history cease to be real because we could come up with a biological explanation for how we came to believe in such things?

Finally, there are tantalizing ID angles to all this. Human beings are unique in our religiosity. That is, despite our recent ancestry with chimpanzees, and striking similarities in terms of physiology and genetics, chimpanzees have no religiosity, while humans come dripping with it. So what uniquely happened in our lineage to make us so special? What genetic events elicited both "causal reasoning" and "recognition of other minds?" Why are we the only lineage to evolve this religious awareness? Was it something that "just happened?"

And at what point did the intelligence and free choice of our ancestors become causal factors themselves? Did religious behavior, and God-belief, ever function as a selective pressure?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 6th, 2007 at 3:34 pm and is filed under Evolution, Intelligent Design, Religion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site. The trackback link is: http://telicthoughts.com/some-thoughts-on-darwins-god/trackback/