Read more: “The God issue: New science of religion“
THE human mind has no specific department for religion. Instead, religions appear to be a by-product of various cognitive systems that evolved for unrelated reasons. Research on the cognitive foundations of religious thought has spawned insights about religion itself, as well as providing a fresh perspective on the long-standing project of comparing religion and science.
From an early age humans confront numerous fundamental problems that must be solved in order for them to function in the world. These include distinguishing between inanimate objects and “agents” that can act on their surroundings, recognising faces, avoiding contaminants, parsing speech and reading other people’s intentions. By the time children are 6 or 7 years old, their cognitive systems for solving these problems are mostly up and running (see “The God issue: We are all born believers”).
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Such cognitive systems are “maturationally natural”; they emerge without effort and virtually define normal cognitive development. Although culture infiltrates them – for example, determining the language a child learns – acquiring them does not depend upon instruction or education.
Maturationally natural systems are also what Nobel prizewinning psychologist Daniel Kahneman calls “fast” – they operate automatically and effortlessly. Because of this, they are highly susceptible to false positives. For example, our hair-trigger system for detecting human forms leads us to see faces in the clouds, and our “agency detection device” leads us to talk to our computers and cars.
These rapid and automatic systems also make people receptive to religions. Humans are ready to leap at, swallow and digest religious stories like a hungry frog will leap at, swallow and (attempt to) digest a ball bearing that flies within reach.
Successful religions are adept at engaging these dispositions. Supernatural beings trigger our natural beliefs about agents, and our theory of mind. Sacred spaces and objects cue our involuntary precautions against contaminants; it is no coincidence that so many religious rituals involve cleansing and purification.
Similar elements have recurred in religious systems throughout human history all over the world. New religions pop up all the time but the ones that last mostly stir in the same old ingredients. These recurrent themes – myth, ritual, sacred spaces, belief in supernatural agents and so on – are the elements of what I call popular religion.
None of this, however, bars the application of Kahneman’s “slow” forms of thought to religion. Deliberate, conscious reflection about the meaning and truth of religious claims is called theology. Theologians try to make intellectual sense of the enigmatic claims of popular religion. They reflect, debate and sometimes generate abstract formulations that religious and political authorities decide to label as doctrines. Not all religions have theology but many do, especially the proselytising Abrahamic ones.
Unlike popular religion, theology routinely makes abstract and radically counter-intuitive statements that are conceptually complex and difficult to understand: God is three persons in one, for example, or a disembodied person who is present everywhere at once. In addition, theological proposals are not at all memorable compared with, say, a story about Jesus’s virgin birth. This is why religious people must often make an effort to memorise them and why religious leaders adopt a variety of measures to indoctrinate and police “theological correctness”. These include everything from religious education and catechisms to inquisitions.
Maintaining theological correctness is difficult, however, as the mental systems that underpin popular religion consistently intrude. The consequence is that theological incorrectness is inevitable: the religions that the vast majority of people actually practise are not the same as the doctrines they learn and recite.
“The religions that the vast majority of people actually practise are not the same as the doctrines they learn”
Theological incorrectness is seen across cultures and religious systems. When asked in experiments to talk or think about gods’ thoughts and actions in stories, religious people immediately and completely abandon theologically correct doctrines in favour of popular religion – even if they have just affirmed and recited those doctrines. The way they think and talk reveals that they see God as more like Superman than the omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent ruler of the universe in whom they say they believe.
This view of popular religion offers a new perspective on the project of comparing religion and science. It suggests that science poses no threat whatsoever to the persistence of religion. The fears and trepidation of so many believers – and the jubilant anticipation of so many critics of religion – that science will eventually displace religion are wrong-headed on many counts.
First, they underestimate the power and pervasiveness of maturationally natural cognition. Not everyone is religious, but religious ideas and actions spontaneously and inevitably arise in human populations.
Second, they underestimate the creativity and imaginativeness of theology, and so its ability to accommodate any change in our understanding of the universe that science produces. Theologians eventually accommodated our displacement from the centre of things by Copernicus, Galileo and Darwin. It took some time because of the size of the challenge, but it happened.
The third point is that believers and critics alike underestimate how hard it is to do science. Science is far more complicated than theology. Its esoteric interests, radically counter-intuitive claims and sophisticated forms of inference are difficult to invent, learn and communicate. Science depends on extensive and elaborate social arrangements which are complex and expensive. Its continued existence, at least in the long run, is therefore fragile, certainly in comparison to the continued existence of religion.
Finally, the difference between popular religion and theology suggests that standard comparisons of religion and science are often ill-conceived. Cognitively, science has more in common with theology than it does with religion; both rely on slow, deliberate, reflective thought. Popular religion, on the other hand, is more like a common-sense explanation of the natural world. Those who would criticise either religion or science need to be sure what it is they are attacking.