Over the past few weeks, a theme of discussion on the Internet has been the proposal that atheists may not exist. Of course people who think they’re atheists exist, but a study discussed in Nature proposes that people really aren’t functionally atheists because we’re innately predisposed toward religion. In an article titled “Scientists discover that atheists might not exist, and that’s not a joke,” Science 2.0 has a nice summary: While militant atheists like Richard Dawkins may be convinced God doesn’t exist, God, if he is around, may be amused to find that atheists might not exist. Cognitive scientists are becoming increasingly aware that a metaphysical outlook may be so deeply ingrained in human thought processes that it cannot be expunged. While this idea may seem outlandish — after all, it seems easy to decide not to believe in God — evidence from several disciplines indicates that what you actually believe is not a decision you make for yourself. Your fundamental beliefs are decided by much deeper levels of consciousness, and some may well be more or less set in stone. This line of thought has led to some scientists claiming that “atheism is psychologically impossible because of the way humans think,” says Graham Lawton, an avowed atheist himself, writing in the New Scientist. “They point to studies showing, for example, that even people who claim to be committed atheists tacitly hold religious beliefs, such as the existence of an immortal soul.” This shouldn’t come as a surprise, since we are born believers, not atheists, scientists say. Humans are pattern-seekers from birth, with a belief in karma, or cosmic justice, as our default setting. “A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith,” writes Pascal Boyer in Nature, the science journal, adding that people “are only aware of some of their religious ideas”. Boyer’s article in Nature continues this line of argument: “Religious thought and behaviour can be considered part of the natural human capacities, such as music, political systems, family relations or ethnic coalitions.” He continues, “religious thoughts seem to be an emergent property of our standard cognitive capacities.” In a striking comment, he points out that these religious predispositions exist in humans from a very young age: Humans also tend to entertain social relations with these and other non-physical agents, even from a very young age. … It is a small step from having this capacity to bond with non-physical agents to conceptualizing spirits, dead ancestors and gods, who are neither visible nor tangible, yet are socially involved. Boyer gives every sign that he himself is an atheist, writing things like, “When people proclaim their adherence to a particular faith, they subscribe to claims for which there is no evidence,” or “Religious concepts and activities hijack our cognitive resources.” So it’s not surprising that he suggests evolution is the ultimate cause of our religiosity: Is religion a product of our evolution? The very question makes many people, religious or otherwise, cringe, although for different reasons. Some people of faith fear that an understanding of the processes underlying belief could undermine it. Others worry that what is shown to be part of our evolutionary heritage will be interpreted as good, true, necessary or inevitable. Still others, many scientists included, simply dismiss the whole issue, seeing religion as childish, dangerous nonsense. Here’s my take. Evolutionary explanations of the origin of religion typically have two things in common: First, they’re dreadfully predictable. They simply look at some aspect of religious life or faith and ask how that behaviour (or belief) might aid survival by endowing us with a beneficial trait (we’ll call that “X”). Second, in doing so, they utterly fail to explain the totality of religious experience and belief. Trait X might indeed aid in survival, but there’s no reason why evolving Trait X would imply or necessitate evolving anything like the full-fledged religion that’s so common throughout human societies today. Thankfully that’s not Boyer’s approach. Instead, he simply sees religion as an extension (or “hijacking”) of human “standard cognitive capacities,” however they might have arisen: So is religion an adaptation or a by-product of our evolution? Perhaps one day we will find compelling evidence that a capacity for religious thoughts, rather than “religion” in the modern form of socio-political institutions, contributed to fitness in ancestral times. For the time being, the data support a more modest conclusion: religious thoughts seem to be an emergent property of our standard cognitive capacities. At least Boyer is being honest that it’s difficult as of yet to provide a full-fledged evolutionary account of the origin of religion. He argues, however, that evolutionary attempts to explain the origin of religion challenge key tenets of religion: The findings emerging from this cognitive-evolutionary approach challenge two central tenets of most established religions. First, the notion that their particular creed differs from all other (supposedly misguided) faiths; second, that it is only because of extraordinary events or the actual presence of supernatural agents that religious ideas have taken shape. On the contrary, we now know that all versions of religion are based on very similar tacit assumptions, and that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are normal human minds processing information in the most natural way. So the fact that all religions think they’re right and involve belief in supernatural agents mean they’re all basically the same? That discounts, in a naïve way that one comes to expect from atheists, the profound differences among the world’s religions. And why should our being predisposed to faith somehow mean no religion is correct? That doesn’t follow at all. If anything, it would seem to support a key premise of theistic religion: that God gives us a capacity and desire to believe.
Posted on: Thu, 07 Aug 2014 09:56:57 +0000
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