I found a very interesting article in the Atlantic archives (from December 2005). The author is Paul Bloom.
It’s a fairly detailed article (four pages) searching for an evolutionary explanation for religion. It’s well worth reading in its entirety, but here’s a bullet-point outline:
- Introductory observation: even in our scientific era, most of the world persists in religious faith. (Western Europe may be an exception.)
- Mr. Bloom explores, and rejects, two conventional, naturalistic explanations for religious faith:
- Religion as the opiate of the masses: to soothe the pain of existence and give meaning to human life;
- Religion as social glue. Groups with a shared religious faith have an evolutionary advantage over groups without, because religion facilitates social cohesion, which in turn improves the odds of survival.
- Having explored and rejected those two theories, Mr. Bloom turns his attention to a third explanation which he regards as more plausible.
To be precise, the author’s prefered explanation is presented in two complementary parts. I intend to explore only the first half of his explanation here.
Mr. Bloom argues that human beings make a distinction between the physical and the psychological aspects of the world. Here’s his thesis:
We perceive the world of objects as essentially separate from the world of minds, making it possible for us to envision soulless bodies and bodiless souls. This helps explain why we believe in gods and an afterlife.
The tendency to make this distinction is already present in children:
In a significant study the psychologists Jesse Bering, of the University of Arkansas, and David Bjorklund, of Florida Atlantic University, told young children a story about an alligator and a mouse, complete with a series of pictures, that ended in tragedy: “Uh oh! Mr. Alligator sees Brown Mouse and is coming to get him!” [The children were shown a picture of the alligator eating the mouse.] “Well, it looks like Brown Mouse got eaten by Mr. Alligator. Brown Mouse is not alive anymore.”
The experimenters asked the children a set of questions about the mouse’s biological functioning — such as “Now that the mouse is no longer alive, will he ever need to go to the bathroom? Do his ears still work? Does his brain still work?” — and about the mouse’s mental functioning, such as “Now that the mouse is no longer alive, is he still hungry? Is he thinking about the alligator? Does he still want to go home?”
As predicted, when asked about biological properties, the children appreciated the effects of death: no need for bathroom breaks; the ears don’t work, and neither does the brain. The mouse’s body is gone. But when asked about the psychological properties, more than half the children said that these would continue: the dead mouse can feel hunger, think thoughts, and have desires. The soul survives. And children believe this more than adults do, suggesting that although we have to learn which specific afterlife people in our culture believe in (heaven, reincarnation, a spirit world, and so on), the notion that life after death is possible is not learned at all. It is a by-product of how we naturally think about the world.
Thus the distinction between body and soul is innate. That suggests (in Mr. Bloom’s mind) that the distinction arose through evolution.
In fact, we’re talking about two separate systems in the brain. One system processes information about the physical world; the other system processes information about the social world.
It’s crucial to note that the two systems evolved separately:
They evolved at different points in our prehistory; our physical understanding is shared by many species, whereas our social understanding is a relatively recent adaptation, and in some regards might be uniquely human. …
The separateness of these two mechanisms, one for understanding the physical world and one for understanding the social world, gives rise to a duality of experience. We experience the world of material things as separate from the world of goals and desires.
Our innate dualism lays the groundwork for religious convictions:
- A corpse is seen as a body that used to have a soul.
- God is conceived as a soul without a body. Other examples of soulless bodies include angels/demons, poltergeists, and succubi.
- Our dualism also opens up the possibility that “we” (i.e., our souls) can survive the death of our bodies.
I admire Mr. Bloom’s explanation (actually, it isn’t original to him; he refers to several scientists and their studies). It strikes me as reasonable — a coherent explanation of the data.
Nonetheless it is only a hypothesis. I hinted, at one point, that we might interpret the data differently.
But let me turn the floor over to you: what do you think of Mr. Bloom’s hypothesis?
That article was absolute brain-candy. Loved it!
Man… I’m boring when I agree with things.
In my recent review of the review of The God Delusion, I wrote the following:
Dawkins devotes much of The God Delusion to evolutionary explanations for the development of religious impulses, morality, altruism, etc. Apparently, he views these explanations as the death knell of theism. As a theist who has thought long on the concept of “Evolutionary Creationism”, I found little in these explanations to disagree with. Furthermore, I did not see how his arguments inherently favored atheism over theism.
It is an intriguing thought to me that a Creator, allowing life to develop physically along natural lines, might allow the same life to ultimately find him through the same mechanism.
Cliff: It’s an intriguing idea to me as well… But it strikes me that you actually find the idea, intriguing though it is, to be plausible – and if so, I would have to digress from you on that particular point.
…
Yep, I’m much happier when I have someone around to disagree with!
The hint I dropped was here:
Like Cliff, I believe in evolution; so my faith wouldn’t crumble if Mr. Bloom was proven right on that point. But he hasn’t proven the point, he has merely interpreted the data a certain way.
Granted, it is innate for humans to make a distinction between body and soul. Is the tendency present as the product of an evolutionary process, or is it present because God created us with a capacity to contemplate and (dimly) perceive spiritual realities? Mr. Bloom is welcome to an opinion that is consistent with his worldview — but that’s all he provides on this point.
I believe in natural processes, punctuated by points of divine intervention. Three, in particular:
• the creation of something where previously there was nothing;
• the leap from inanimate matter to living organisms;
• the gift of full consciousness to human beings.
(The first two, properly speaking, are outside of evolution, of course.)
So I’m not prepared to concede that the innate distinction (which is the core evidence Mr. Bloom appeals to) is a product of natural cause-and-effect processes.
btw, a hearty welcome to Ubiquitous Che. Disagreement is fine by me … though I wouldn’t say my happiness is contingent on it.
Thanks for the welcome.
Science doesn’t say that something came from nothing. There’s some research currently being done on what the state of the universe might have looked like before the big bang. Maybe we’ll find out. Maybe we won’t. But if we don’t know what the answer is, all that means is that we don’t know what the answer is. Ignorance is not evidence.
On top of that, there are a few ideas floating around relating to how something could come from nothing. They tend to be vauge, psuedo-scientific psycho-babble, ususally involving fanciful musings on the subject of entropy, anti-matter, quantum mechanics, and set theory. But any one of them could be correct. There’s currently no evidence to validate or invalidate them – in some cases, they’re not even falsifiable. They’re interesting only to point out that there are alternative explanations that are just as ‘validated’ by evidence as that of a divine creator.
Science doesn’t say that there was a single leap from inanimate matter to living organisims. It is still undecided which of the competing theories of abiogenesis – if any – are correct. But none of them cite a single leap from inanimate to living organisims.
Instead, they will argue the case of how organic compounds could be formed in the primordial envioronment, polymerize into simple chains, generate a cell wall, compete for resources, and copy themselves. The series of steps is complicated, and there is much argument over what the precise steps were and in some cases what order the occurred in. But there’s some inital research that is quite promising that this line of thinking is on the right track.
Here’s four videos on the subject of how abiogenesis is understood to have worked. The first video is really, really good.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6QYDdgP9eg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ozbFerzjkz4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NiNGK3y5Ypg
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhWds7djuWo
Science doesn’t say that only humans are conscious. In fact, science says very little about consciousness at all.
I’m very convinced that consciousness is what the brain does, but this is based on my intuitive understanding of computer programming (I’m a software developer) and how software functions ‘inside’ hardware, and my intellectual understanding of artificial intelligence algorithms, neural networks and some very good articles being produced on the philosophy of mind along the lines of Paul Bloom’s article – and others.
These six links are all in the same series – it’s a lecture given by Daniel Dennett in his capacity as a specialist philosopher on the subject of consciousness – or to put it another way, the subject of the subject.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIdxbJyvfNw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsXiC1O7_PI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XresYg25W_A
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPkGeL_MS8E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcXNGsv_5Ps
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEK3EPFBGMM
And yes – I’ll even grant that much of my agreement with the idea that consciousness is a function of the brain stems from my personal introspection on the subject. I know that this doesn’t really count as evidence, I just thought I should get that particular bit of bias out in the open.
Basically, I’m yet to come across a single point in our understanding of naturalistic processess that would require divine intervention.
I’ve linked to a lot of material in this post, and I don’t really expect you to watch it all. It’s only supposed to lend weight to the points I’ve been making. However, I do strongly reccomend you have a look at the first abiogenesis link and Dennett’s lecture, even if they’re not going to convince you of anything. They’re brain-candy.
Thanks, U.C. Your comment was initially directed to “moderation” because of the number of links in it.
I take your point that ignorance is just ignorance, and doesn’t constitute proof. I certainly don’t claim that any of the points I mention constitute proof of theism (or even evidence of theism, for that matter).
But because science has left some of the most fundamental questions unanswered, it is not absurd to continue to posit the existence of a G/god. And the hypothesis is consistent with the intuition most people in most places have with respect to G/god. In my books, that counts for something.
I’m also aware of the dangers of a “god of the gaps” argument. Should science succeed in explaining all mysteries, perhaps there wouldn’t be any valid reason to believe anymore. But, frankly, I’m not worried that science will succeed in explaining all mysteries.
I’ll look at (at least) your first video on abiogenesis, which is an interesting topic. But at this point, my understanding is that the probabilities are still profoundly against it.
I would never contend that gaps in our understanding must be filled by a Supernatural. However, like nonesoblind, there exists a number of mysteries which make theism both plausible and reasonable. Abiogenesis is one. I read somewhere that the complexity of a living cell is roughly equal on a microscopic scale to the macroscopic scale complexity of the entire Universe. I don’t know if that is true, but we are a long way from solving this mystery. On the other hand, since God, as I understand him, works through natural processes, the filling of such gaps as abiogenisis does not threaten my faith. To the contrary, if and when we solve this mystery, I will be even more in awe of a Creator who arranges a cosmos such that life arises quite on its own. To me, that will never cease to be a mystery. And it only makes God more amazing.
After posting the above comment, I did view the abiogenesis video. I’ve read some of this information before. I do recognize that early cells were not as complex as cells today … and that the earliest of “cells” were not living in the sense we would normally use that word. While some of the chemistry flew right over my head, I am excited about the progress being made in this field. Still, in back of it all lies mysteries that we are not likely to ever solve through science.