R. Elisabeth Cornwell, PhD and J. Anderson Thomson, MD
The Human Niche
Humans, like all other living beings, are a product of four billion
years of evolutionary processes. We have been shaped and pounded by the
rhythms of our planet's geology and climate as well by the continual
interplay among biological organisms. You exist because eons of your
ancestors, from bacteria to primates, struggled and reproduced
successfully. The genes that reside in each and every one of us are the
ones that helped our ancestors not only to survive, but to
out-reproduce their competitors. And as improbable as it might seem,
you are here through the success of billions and billions of
generations.
Every living species on the planet -- from cabbages to whales -- has
gone through this process, and evolved to fit a particular niche. Our
human niche just happens to have emphasized brains over brawn, which
has given us language, creativity, curiosity, and the most complicated
social system of any species. However, our incredibly powerful brain is
locked in a continual battle between reason and ancestral fears. This
conflict helps us understand why religion has held such a grip on
humanity and why reason must still fight to be heard.
Our ability to solve complex cognitive problems evolved over our long,
tenuous, evolutionary history. Many adaptations that squeezed through
the sieve of environmental constraints have led up to more and more
complex brains. This culminated in fine-tuned software for negotiating
the competitive social hierarchies that have been a crucial aspect to
primate, especially human, evolution. We humans evolved the uniquely
complex communication system that is language, and it in turn drove the
evolution of more and more complex social interactions.
Adaptations: Designs for Success
But we are getting ahead of ourselves: we need to consider a host of
adaptations that have brought us to where we are today. Adaptations are
the physical and behavioral characteristics that equip a species to
survive in its own particular way. The human way being as unique and
complex as it is, untangling concepts of culture, including religion,
is not an easy undertaking and we are only in our infancy in exploring
our evolutionary roots. One way to think about these peculiarly human
adaptations is as a series of software and hardware upgrades, each
dependent on the other.
A common fallacy hoisted up by creationists (including 'intelligent
design' sophists) is that adaptations can't work until every part is
finished and in place: they ask questions like, "What good is half an
eye?" The biologist
Richard Dawkins
has devoted more than one book to answering questions of that kind.
Darwin's theory of natural selection uncovered the mystery of how the
tiniest of incremental adaptations over vast amounts of time could lead
to the evolution of something as complex and sophisticated as an eye or
language [*1]. The mutually supportive development of computer software
and hardware echoes how adaptations have built up over time, but orders
of magnitude faster. Your laptop is a supercomputer by yesterday's
standards, which can dance circles around the giant computers of living
memory. Through small incremental steps in both hardware and software,
computing technology has advanced beyond the dreams of only a few
generations ago (if you doubt this, watch an old rerun of
Star Trek
and wonder at the huge banks of on-board computers). Of course, the
mutations and adaptations witnessed by the computing industry were
actually designed by intelligent beings who had specific goals in mind.
Biological adaptations, by contrast, were driven by the blind and often
cruel hand of natural selection. Evolution has only one goal:
successful replication.
In humans, the trajectory that took us from bacteria to fish to
reptiles to mammals including primates has left an indelible mark. An
interesting and fun read on our unique evolutionary pathway is
Your Inner Fish
by Neil Shubin. Shubin suggests that when we take a look at how our
bodies are put together, an intelligent designer becomes ever more
implausible -- there are too many flaws, too many 'patches' that don't
quite work right, but good enough to squeak by. The mind is no
different: we are a product of millions of tiny adaptations -- and with
no one in charge to make certain they all run smoothly and correctly in
conjunction -- we end up with all sorts of psychological hiccups.
Religion is one of them.
Tool Making: Goals and Process
Early in our hominid past, Homo hablis -- 'handy man' -- developed the
ability to make tools. Such a skill required them to plan ahead, to
learn from mistakes, as well as to learn from other individuals,
perhaps in 'master-apprentice' relationships. Psychologically this
might have been the seed from which grew our need to see purpose in not
only man-made things but all things -- tools and weapons were made for
a purpose, so why not stars and rivers too? Those hominids who became
slightly more proficient at tool-making, planning and orienting toward
goals would have been more successful, left more descendants -- and
those successful individuals became our ancestors. Through tiny
mutations, both physical and psychological, our ancestors became more
adept at these skills. Adaptations necessary for advanced tool-making
and use would have driven the psychological need to see purpose.
Picking up a piece of flint, your ancestor would have needed the skill
to determine if it possessed the qualities necessary to produce a
cutting tool or spear head -- and that skill is the direct result of a
purpose driven mind. We will get back to the critical importance of
purpose in a moment.
Theory of Mind
The ability to build tools in order to achieve an end goal is only one
adaptation that might have predisposed us to cultural and religious
beliefs. After all, chimps are capable of making-tools, learning from
other chimps, and employ goal-directed behavior. A significant
adaptation that guided the course of human evolution has been our
capacity to view the world through the eyes of another -- known as '
theory of mind'.
This ability, which allows us to attribute mental states such as
beliefs and desires to others, and intentions that differ from our own
[*2], is so complex, it does not fully develop in children until around
the age of four [*3]. While some scientists argue that our closest
cousins, the chimpanzees, possess some abilities to perceive the
intentions of others -- it is humans who have honed this ability to a
fine art.
What does this have to do with religion? As our ancestors developed a
sensitivity to the thoughts of others as an aid to second-guessing
their outward and visible behavior, they would have started to see an
intelligent creative force wherever they looked. An individual watching
another chip away at a flint would attribute to him a purpose, similar
to his own when he created a tool. So too would he assume that
lightning, rain, the sun, the stars, the moon must have had some sort
of purposeful creative force behind them. Here lie the very deepest
roots of our religious beliefs.
Kinship
One of the most important contributions to evolutionary science was kin
selection as proposed by William D. Hamilton [*4]. His theory, which
was steeped in complex mathematical equations, was brought to life in
Richard Dawkins' ground-breaking book
The Selfish Gene.
Hamilton proposed that, while passing on our genes directly to our
offspring is one way of ensuring our reproductive success, helping
those individuals who are closely related to us, even at our own
expense, could also ensure the survival of our genes -- more
specifically the genes for helping. Any social species where relatives
are likely to live in the same troop, band, or flock, would have
evolved adaptations to recognize kin, assess their relatedness, and
assist those who were most related. This is probably why you are more
likely to donate a kidney to your sister than to your third cousin.
While all animals that live in social groups may have varying
strategies to recognize and reward kinship, humans are unique in that
language has allowed the development of
fictive kin.
Shepherds have long manipulated the concept of fictive kin within their
flocks. When spring arrives and lambing begins, both ewes and lambs
die. If the ewe dies, the orphaned lamb will die too unless a ewe is
found who will suckle her. However, it is not in the best interest of
the ewe to suckle an unrelated lamb, so shepherds have learned that by
skinning the ewe's dead offspring and placing it on the orphaned lamb
the ewe could be fooled into thinking that the lamb was hers. In other
words, she was manipulated into accepting fictive kin.
Kinship recognition in humans comes about in two ways. The primary
method is extremely archaic. We simply recognize those individuals who
eat with us, share the same sleeping quarters, and provide us with food
and comfort as our kin. However, with the advent of language,
definitions of kinship became more complex. All cultures throughout the
world name and track kinship. As our ancestors formed larger and larger
groups, keeping track of kin through verbal definitions of kinship
became more and more important (this helps to explain ancestor
worship). But this also opened the door to creating fictive kin -- that
is, giving kin names to individuals who were not closely related. This
would have been extremely useful for group cohesion, especially in
times of war [*5].
With the onset of agriculture, land ownership, and accumulated wealth,
our ancestors began to aggregate in large, permanent settlements. The
birth of villages, towns and cities, brought together masses of
unrelated individuals. As these settlements grew and expanded, tribal
wars over territory would have been inevitable. In a small group where
everyone was closely related, sacrificing one's life in defense of
close kin would have benefitted one's own genes. However, in large
groups where most people were not close kin, how could leaders convince
warriors to die for people who were unrelated? Language acts like the
lamb's skin and tricks our minds into attributing kinship where none
exists by using kin terms such as 'brother', 'father', 'sister', and
'mother'[*6]. In order to keep a small nation together, fictive kin
would have been essential. It is not without reason that even today the
military strives to create a sense of 'brotherhood' among soldiers.
While language would have provided the platform on which to construct
fictive kin, it would have been ritualized ceremonies that solidified
it. Next time you attend a baptism, note the ritualization of a child
being accepted into 'God's family'.
The Conflict Between Archaic Minds and Reason
Very late in our journey to modern humans, we evolved the ability to
think abstractly. We could not write this article without the ability
to abstract and reason, and you could not comprehend it without these
abilities either. To think in such a fashion is apparently unique to
humans, and even then not everyone is able. Pre-adolescent children
simply do not have the brain configuration to do so. The brain
configuration of a pre-adolescent child is far different from the one
she will possess as an adult. It takes about 12 years or so for the
frontal lobes to develop fully after reaching puberty [*7]. Our frontal
lobes are key to social behavior, abstract thinking, planning and
solving complex problems. Humans have evolved the most elaborate set of
frontal lobes on the planet -- it is our evolutionary niche.
But highly developed frontal lobes came late into the game, and they
have to compete with the archaic brain that was the engine behind our
evolutionary success. Just as Shubin argues that our bodies are more
like bits and bobs from a rummage sale that have been shoe-horned
together and sort of work...the brain too is made up of parts that are
often in conflict because they have different jobs and priorities.
Let's call our frontal lobes the 'smart-self' and the more archaic part
of our brain the 'primal-self'. Our smart-selves know that over-eating
and under-exercising is bad for us, leading to heart disease, diabetes,
and a shorter life-span. But our primal-selves are still primed for the
risk of starvation, thus it simply cannot understand why the smart-self
would deny you a nice Big Mac with a large order of fries and a
chocolate shake. It throws fits as you drive by those Golden Arches,
and causes your brain to send messages that scream 'STOP or we could
die!’. The smart-brain is just not designed to prevent the primal brain
from taking over because the abundance of food most of us are
surrounded by is a fairly new development in human history. Perhaps
given another few thousand years, those individuals with the will-power
to resist all that tasty fat, protein, sugar and salt will
out-reproduce those that don't.
The point is, that there is an instant conflict between what we know is
good for us and what we feel we want -- and we often fall victim to our
more primal needs even when we know they are harmful.
Religion As The Ultimate Big Mac
Religion's success is undeniable. It is in every culture, and in every
corner of the world. We spend billions and billions of dollars on
building monuments to it, supporting it, and of course proselytizing on
behalf of our own favored brand of it. Individuals give up sex and
eschew family and friends for religion. Beyond that, we sacrifice time
and effort to its rituals, and indoctrinate our children and
grandchildren to do the same. We are even willing to kill for it.
Modern science, particularly modern biology, has given us the freedom
to shuck off the idea that our existence and the existence of the
universe requires an intelligent being. In fact, as Richard Dawkins
pointed out in
The God Delusion,
invoking an intelligent being doesn't explain anything -- it just
pushes the question back to 'Who designed the designer?' Despite the
illogic of believing that some great being in the heavens, capable of
creating not only the laws of physics, the principles of evolution, and
the vastness of time also cares a great deal about whether or not you
use your left hand to clean up after defecating, eat a cracker while
sinless, or not mix cheese with chicken, we still seem to sup it up
like mother's milk.
The reason religion is so successful is that it taps into our
primal-brains in much the same way that a Big Mac does -- only more so.
Religion gained its foothold by hijacking the need to give purpose at a
time when humans had only their imagination -- as opposed to the
evidence and reason that we have today -- to fathom their world.
Spirits and demons were the explanation for illnesses that we now know
are caused by bacterial diseases and genetic disorders. The whims of
the gods were why earthquakes, volcanos, floods and droughts occurred.
Our ancestors were driven to sacrifice everything from goats to one
another to satisfy those gods.
Along with the need to attribute purpose, our faculty to intuit the
intent of others spills over into a predilection for determining the
intentions of gods and goddesses (or spirits, demons, and angels). Of
course the major problem has been that we can never quite agree among
ourselves about god's intentions, which often ends in unfortunate
violent discussions. Our evolved proclivity for aggression feeds into
that as well. We justify our prejudices, hatred, murders, and war by
attributing our own biases to a god. As long as we kill in god's name,
we are doing good.
Our primal-brains that keep track of kin can be easily hijacked through
language and rituals, which is why religion uses terms such as 'god the
father', 'Mary the mother of heaven', 'brother', and 'sister'. Rituals
reinforce fictitious kin through feasts, worship, and ceremonies such
as marriages and funerals. Despite our smart-brains being able to
recognize the difference between real kin and not, those ties created
within religious organizations bind tightly. Leaving the faith one was
born into would certainly have led our ancestors to being shunned if
not worse. In Islam, the punishment for apostasy is death. And in
Western cultures, it is not uncommon to hear of individuals whose
families and friends have turned their backs because they have
disavowed their religious beliefs.
The fear of losing family and friends is a powerful force for keeping
people in tow. It is far easier to ignore the evidence that there is no
god than to give up the love and friendship of a community. Our
survival depends much more on being part of a community, even in
today's modern world, than on abandoning religion. Psychological
studies strongly suggest that our social network, that is family and
friends, are essential to personal happiness. For our ancestors it was
more than that, it was necessary for our very survival itself.
Exclusion would have meant death, and our primal-brains have not
forgotten. We did not evolve to be solitary creatures, nor to be
independent of social support. Religion has, for better or worse,
always offered a ready social network, an entire (fictive) extended
family. Our primal brains are designed to not only strive to maintain
close family and social relationships, but when coupled with the
attribution of our own primal fears to the mind of god along with our
tendency for aggression, we are more than willing to commit the most
heinous acts to protect our fictive kin and beliefs.
Of course there are other factors that contribute to this tangled web,
such as the desire for power, land, wealth, and, where men are
concerned, access to females for reproduction. All of these extant
drives ingrained in the human psyche have also been justified through
religion. No matter how terrible the deed, by attributing to god our
own fears and hatreds -- anything could be justified. Religion and gods
were extremely useful to the ruthless and power-hungry.
The Battle For Reason
Our archaic brains, which served us so well during our evolutionary
past, now threaten our very existence. While our smart-brains have
given us modern technology and science and the privilege of
understanding not only ourselves but our universe, our primal brains
are stuck in the stone-age. Reason must always fight our tendencies to
give way to superstitions and fears. This is especially true when we
have the capability to destroy not only ourselves, but our planet.
Much of the world's population still believe in a god forged out of the
fears of a desert people and, worse, fully believe not only that their
view of god and his wishes are right, but that those who disagree must
be converted or face eternal torment (sometimes even offering some help
to get there). The primal fears instilled by religious fever act as
impenetrable walls to reason. According to a recent Gallup poll, 66% of
the US population agrees strongly with the statement 'God created human
beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last
10,000 years'. Given the overwhelming amount of scientific evidence to
the contrary, such obstinate belief should frighten any reasonable
thinking person. It also is testimony to the wealthy and powerful
religious organizations who spend billions of dollars on public
relations, creating controversies where none exist and spewing lies
about the evidence for evolution [*8]. But none of this would be
possible without our brains being ready and available to take in the
message they are delivering. It is easy enough for atheists and
humanists to chuckle at the credulity of believers, but we do so at our
own peril.
Religion needs to be taken seriously. Understanding its roots, how it
can seize command of our psychology and take control of our culture,
may well be one of the most important endeavors we pursue. For even
with all our grand technology, modern medical advances, and volumes of
knowledge, if we do not stop our archaic past from overriding our
modern reason we are surely doomed.
