Video
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
Is there a faith instinct?
By Nicholas Wade
Every known society has some form of religion, so it might seem obvious that an instinct for religious behavior is an innate part of human behavior. But biologists and social scientists have for years ignored this possibility.
In my book "The Faith Instinct," I argue that the roots of religion reach deep into the human past, being intricately interwoven with those of music and dance. Anyone who reflects on the emotion-tugging powers of these three behaviors may wonder how they arose and why they are part of the natural equipment of the human mind.
Modern religions differ considerably from their ancient predecessors, making their original role less evident. In today's societies religion's connection to music is still much in evidence but the ancient relationship with dance has been substantially lost. The communal dance, an emotionally exalting experience that binds its members to a common purpose, was the principal expression of religion in many primitive societies. The drilling of soldiers on the parade ground is a secular imitation with the same goal, that of drawing on the strange power of rhythmic motion in unison to unite a group.
For early human societies, hunters and gatherers who lived in small bands continually at war with each other, religion provided two incomparable advantages. It laid down moral codes that compelled members, through fear of the gods' punishment, to put the group's interest ahead of their own, creating a binding social fabric. And it motivated people to disregard their lively sense of self-preservation so thoroughly that they would unhesitatingly lay down their lives in the group's defense.
It is easy to see how groups with a strong religious leaning would have prevailed over those that were less religious, until genes that promoted religious behavior had become universal in the early human population. Evidently this happened before modern humans dispersed from their African homeland some 50,000 years ago, explaining why religion is found in every known society.
What is inherited is a propensity to learn and emotionally commit to the religion of one's community. Just as there must be a genetically-defined machinery for learning whatever language an infant hears being spoken (language is far too complex for a baby to work out its rules from scratch), so also there is a genetic program for committing to a religion. The language program unfolds in the first few years of life, the religion-learning program around the age of puberty. People who don't commit to a religion at this time may never do so, though many may find themselves searching for one later in life.
This evolutionary explanation is a tribute to the high biological significance of religion, but can also be taken as a deconstruction of it. Hoping that my book would be of interest to people of faith as well as to those with none, I stressed that it was an analysis purely of religious behavior, and had nothing to say about whether God does or does not exist. I'm glad to have heard from many believers that the book was of interest to them.
Neo-atheists such as Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris, largely miss the point of religion, in my view. They view religion's essence as a sacred text with pretensions to be historical fact. Having dismissed these claims, they feel there is nothing left to say, and that religion and all its works deserve only derision.
But given that religion emerged some 50,000 years before people learned to write, it evidently concerns something rather more than the written word. In fact, much like opera, it is a system for communicating emotions too deep for words. These emotions, for many thousands of years, have bound people together in a resolve to obey the rules set by the gods for the benefit of their community, and to sacrifice even their lives in the community's defense. Those who assert religion is no longer necessary fail to recognize its continuing role in maintaining the social fabric.
"Religion is first and foremost a system of ideas by means of which individuals imagine the society of which they are members," wrote Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of sociology. But social scientists have failed to follow up Durkheim's insights and in their antipathy to evolution they have neglected to look for a genetic basis for human sociality, of which religious behavior is a major component.
Biologists too have ignored religion. Even those who acknowledge that religion must have a biological basis argue that it has been favored as an accidental by-product of something else. Intellectuals have developed a disdain for religion, failing to understand that an instinct for religion is an ingrained part of human nature.
If religious behavior is ingrained, then religions need to be understood in a different way. Christianity is not the bible. It's the set of behaviors that define Western civilization, just as Islam is the set of behaviors that characterize Muslim civilization. So the question should be not how quickest to discard religion but rather how best to make use of its matchless cohesive properties.
By Nicholas Wade |
October 4, 2010; 8:18 AM ET
Save & Share:
Previous: Our puppy's keeper: Christianity and the care of animals |
Next: The good news about the end of Christian America
Posted by: cornbread_r2 | October 5, 2010 11:59 PM
Report Offensive Comment
Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are butchered each day in the sight of the others; those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
Science can tell us nothing.
Context, Cornbread, context. The second comment is made in the light of the preceding blockquote (italicized in the first post).
I know you can figure it out, if you try. You need to combine both quotes and see them as one entity.
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | October 5, 2010 4:08 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Science can tell us nothing. Mary_Cunningham
I'm extremely curious how you weigh competing truth claims about natural phenomena or, more importantly, how you think they should be weighed.
Posted by: cornbread_r2 | October 5, 2010 1:05 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Wow. This is a great article, I agree with Mr. Wade's viewpoint.
I participated in a debate on these pages a few months ago taking the same basic position. I think that's really neat.
I should probably go buy his book.
:-)
Posted by: ZZim | October 4, 2010 2:27 PM
Report Offensive Comment
If any religious person here wants to read a great book by a religious person-- IMHO one of the greatest intellects of the early 20th century--read Henri Bergson: The Two Sources of Morality and Religion .
His works fell out of print after WWII (a French Jew, he died in 1941 of pneumonia) but Notre Dame Press has reissued this work.
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | October 4, 2010 11:40 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Let us imagine a number of men in chains and all condemned to death, where some are butchered each day in the sight of the others; those who remain see their own fate in that of their fellows and looking at each other with grief and despair await their turn. This is an image of the human condition.
fr. 199
Science can tell us nothing. But make a god of it if you must--I think your belief system is called "scientism".
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | October 4, 2010 11:14 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Well, Mr Wade, IMHO you are the one who has missed something. Religion answers man's oldest--yet newest--questions: "Why am I here?",
"What is my place in the universe?"
"How shall I live,
"How shall I die?"
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham
___________________________________________
Sorry Ms. Cunningham no religion has answered those question truthfully or correctly. Each religion has attempted to and offered just sill and stupid mambo jumbo, which have long been established as just that mambo jumbo. Science has answered those questions correctly the purpose of our lives is what we make of them. You are indeed reaching out for straws if you are looking for the answers in any religion.
Posted by: Secular | October 4, 2010 10:30 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Mr. Wade I have your book on top of my list, as soon as I am done with my second reading of Dawkins' Selfish Gene. I am in complete agreement with your thesis on the origins of religion and its survival, as you put it. You went on to say "For early human societies, hunters and gatherers who lived in small bands continually at war with each other, religion provided two incomparable advantages. It laid down moral codes that compelled members, through fear of the gods' punishment, to put the group's interest ahead of their own, creating a binding social fabric".
While I agree with the above for the most part, I would take issue with the characterization of it as "Moral Code" in the context of the 21st century. At best they were they promoted in-group morality and out-group hostility.
You then go on to say "And it motivated people to disregard their lively sense of self-preservation so thoroughly that they would unhesitatingly lay down their lives in the group's defense". I cannot but agree with this a close analogy being the stinging bees giving up their lives in order to protect the hive by killing themselves while stinging the predator.
Then you explain the religious trait becoming universal as the more religious groups ultimately surviving over the less religious groups. I believe that is quite a compelling case for the pervasiveness of religiosity, across the globe.
(continued below)
Posted by: Secular | October 4, 2010 10:20 AM
Report Offensive Comment
(Continued from above)
Then you go on to say "This evolutionary explanation is a tribute to the high biological significance of religion, but can also be taken as a deconstruction of it", as though deconstruction of religion is a bad thing. In 21st century the battle the species is fighting is not of survival of one group over the other for meager resources available in the surroundings. We are as a species have for all practical purposes solved the supply-chain problem. The evidence of it is the manner in which we cope with natural disasters across the globe. All that religion does now is promote divisiveness and often thwarts the supply-chain solutions when they are the most needed. Clearly the religion served its purpose in the evolutionary sense in the dawn of human history. That in of itself does not establish its or their truthiness - vis-a-vis a deity exists an dhas provided us with eternal guidance via prophets, charaltans, etc, etc and all that bull. While Hitchens' thesis that it destroys everything, may be inaccurate in the historical sense, it is not an over reach in 21st century. I also disagree with you about Dawkins, Harris, & Hitchens. Dawkins clearly acknowledges the organizing glue of religion. Their derision of the texts is indeed on the money today. We need to destroy all religion if the entire species has to survive, as religion is divisive, we no longer in the need to corner the limited resources in our surroundings. The problems we face are planet wide and have to be solved collectively. Religion gets in the way. Perhaps evolutionary forces are destroying religion for good.
Posted by: Secular | October 4, 2010 10:20 AM
Report Offensive Comment
"For early human societies, hunters and gatherers who lived in small bands continually at war with each other, religion provided two incomparable advantages. It laid down moral codes that compelled members, through fear of the gods' punishment, to put the group's interest ahead of their own, creating a binding social fabric. And it motivated people to disregard their lively sense of self-preservation so thoroughly that they would unhesitatingly lay down their lives in the group's defense."
The group selective process involved in intergroup warfare is one of the main threads that led to the evolution of our species. Using that theory can explain many of the puzzlements of our species, from the unique artistic expressions cited by Mr. Wade to the more prosaic quandary of hidden estrus.
The realization that we are at base a warlike species presents a present difficulty. Our outsized brains have devised weapons of war so powerful that they threaten everyone. IMO, the only way to overcome the imbedded instinct of out group demonization that is a handmaiden to in group altruism is the appeal to a universal transcendent reality.
If we are to break free from the dangers imposed by our evolutionary legacy, faith and religion can offer a lifeline that also can escape that same legacy.
Posted by: edbyronadams | October 4, 2010 9:40 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Nicholas Wade of the book "Before the Dawn", man's beginnings? Outstanding book. I try to tell people constantly that they had better keep abreast of the genetic sciences and to prepare intelligent laws concerning racial, ethnic and sex findings but people just call me a racist and nothing more. I recommend your book but no one bothers to read it.
About your latest book though--just from what you wrote here--I would have to say there is no religion instinct and that emotions are not the primary factor in religion but a general consciousness that man is in this immense and inexplicable thing and he suffers within and hopes to be delivered from suffering and believes there must be some answer behind the immensity. There seems to be no particular emotion which would lead to religion unless we point out the general rise to exaltation from a depressed or even average state. Extreme exaltation especially can make one wonder if something or someone entered one's mind so powerful is the difference from ordinary reality. I had a profound mystical experience many years ago and to this day I am not sure if I was just pushed beyond my normal consciousness--greatly inspired--or if something divine made a descent, if only minor in comparison to the great historical examples, into my heart. Probably both reason and rapid and profound changes in emotion have had much to do in the creation of religion.
Posted by: daniel12 | October 4, 2010 9:26 AM
Report Offensive Comment
Well, Mr Wade, IMHO you are the one who has missed something. Religion answers man's oldest--yet newest--questions: "Why am I here?",
"What is my place in the universe?"
"How shall I live,
"How shall I die?"
Posted by: Mary_Cunningham | October 4, 2010 9:05 AM
Report Offensive Comment
The comments to this entry are closed.
Mary_Cunningham:
All I'm seeing is an implied false dichotomy. If you need teleological explanations to make your life worthwhile, fine, but please don't assume that those who don't are all locked into some kind of nihilistic death spiral. There are far too many happy atheistic scientists with families, friends, art collections and hope for the future to make that position tenable.