Born to Believe: Theism as Supported by Natural Selection

Ian Franzen J. DiPrete 20 November 2005

The concept of God, or a being infinitely more knowledgeable, providential, and powerful than ourselves, is one of the most abstract and profound ideas in all modern and ancient civilizations. In all human cultures, people largely believe that the soul lives on after death, and that ritual can change the physical world and divine the truth (Pinker, 2004). According to ethnographers, religion is a human universal. Submitting to a higher power and holding the belief that there is more to this life that meets the eye are common beliefs that unite a myriad of cultures around the globe. In the United States, 96% of people report belief in a God or some kind of universal spirit (Sample, 2005). In Nigeria, a country thousands of miles away physically, and many years away in terms of modernization and industrialization, 98% report to have always believed in God (Sample, 2005). Although the God(s) to which we pay homage, the rituals we perform, and the sites we use as centers of worship differ greatly, the concept of a higher power is something that unites every society on the face of the globe. Even after science has explained such natural phenomenon as floods, lightning, earthquakes, and has even started to break the code of our own biology, faith is still prevalent in the modern world.

What is the reason for this faithfulness? How can countries separated by thousands of miles, or separated by thousands of years, come to have developed such similar natural religion? It is my contention that the human species as a whole is predisposed to spirituality and religion. Submitting to a higher spiritual power gave our ancestors many unique survival advantages, and made them more likely to pass their genes on to future generations. Religion fostered such evolutionary advantages as social cohesiveness, stress reduction, moral development, and intrinsic health benefits. Religion is a psychological adaptation that has been used by almost every modern and ancient culture to deal with the pressures of surviving in competition with each other to pass our genes on. The importance of dealing with these survival issues, coupled with the strides made in finding a specific gene linked to such beliefs provides strong support for linking genetics with our religious beliefs. We are truly born to believe. Adopting a religion promoted social cohesiveness between our ancestors, which afforded them a unique survival advantage to overcome selection pressures. By bonding together in groups, our ancestors could find more food more efficiently, and even fight off physical threats. Out of two similar groups going to war with one another, the group who was most socially cohesive would have a strong survival advantage. Religious groups were more likely to sacrifice their individual good for the good of the group (Brooke, 2003). Many point to this as a reason religions can be seen displaying ingroup morality and out-group hostility. (Brooke, 2003). Even the Ten Commandments were only intended to apply to Israelites; killing someone from a different tribe would never have been deemed murder (Kirkpatrick, 1999). Sharing common ground with one another and physically moving to a central location to pray or perform rituals encouraged

cohesion already set forth in many religious doctrines. In Christianity, we are urged to treat each other as brothers and sisters, all under the same universal parent, God (Kirkpatrick, 1999). Both implicitly and explicitly, the survival advantage of social cohesiveness is encouraged by religious groups. Another important evolutionary advantage that is provided to us by religion is the reduction of stress and fear about the natural world. As far as we know, human beings are the only species that can contemplate its own death (Kluger, 2004). Having faith in a migration of our soul, or some existence beyond our physical death is a central tenant of many world religions. The need for a religion came about only after we were able to form self-consciousness. This allowed uniquely human traits like empathy and the projection of ourselves into the future to occur. However, these amazing qualities came with a price. One psychologist claims that, The realization of the inevitability of our own demise is the unique price paid for self-awareness (Maser & Gallup, 1990). As soon as we saw our fallen comrades lying lifeless on the ground, traits like empathy and projection enabled us to visualize ourselves in the same position. Dealing with our own mortality was made easier through religion. By providing a reassurance that we would live on, either spiritually or in another physical existence after death, religion made us less likely to flee from battle or let fear of our impending non-existence overwhelm and consume us. One psychologist says that our belief in God frees us from the existential fear and despair about our own mortality (Maser & Gallup, 1990). Now that humans didnt have to constantly consider their own death, their minds were free to think about others issues. Michael Persinger, a professor of behavioral neuroscience even goes as far as to call our tendency to embrace religion, a built in pacifier (Kluger, 2004). Only

recently have researchers uncovered close ties with stress and the immune system. Scientists point out that the body diverts energy from immune system to stress when we fear for the future (Myers, 2005). Our ancestors religion made them more likely to be hopeful about the far future, thereby reducing stress about their own mortality, and endowing them with better health. It is evident that possessing a religion gave our ancestors an instant response to the problem of their own non-existence, letting them deal with simpler day-to-day problems so they could survive in the long run and pass their genes on to future generations. Although some say it follows naturally from the benefits of social cohesion, many think that religion is a way to enforce a moral contract on its subscribers. By providing a group, the natural result was that bonding within that group created a moral code. Also, the possibility of punishment in the afterlife for misdoings in this world, which are all seen by an omniscient being, was enough to encourage many of our ancestors to act in a way that was beneficial to the group instead of themselves (Sample, 2005). Religion fosters reciprocal altruism, sharing, and giving. (Maser & Gallup, 1990). When an environmental challenge like drought or flood occurred, it was those that exchanged resources or assistance with one another, even at a cost to themselves that ultimately led their group to evolutionary success. Some argue that this altruism was a separate adaptation, having nothing to do with religion. However, the religious context in which we find moral commandments leads one to think that for our ancestors, they were inextricably linked. Also, altruism on its own does not provide a separate method for enforcement of such rules; being able to promise pain or pleasure after death gave religiously motivated morality a strong grasp on the followers actions concerning group-

linked behavior. Religion afforded our ancestors unique survival advantages by setting standards for moral behavior to ultimately ensure the prosperity of their group. Lately, how spiritual we are has been shown to correlate directly with good health and longevity. In fact, 99% of all family physicians agree that personal prayer, mediation, and other spiritual and religious practices can enhance medical treatment (Myers, 2005). Researchers point to religion as a source of stress protection, enhanced

well-being, and a sense of hope for the future (Meyers, 2005) The support networks that religious organizations have encourage the mental health of their followers. However, two mitigating factors should be taken into account concerning a direct link to spirituality and health. First, most of the data available concerning the relationship between the two topics only shows a correlation, not a cause. Also, the health benefits shown to correlate with spirituality might be a result of the other evolutionary benefits that religion provides. For example, an increased sense of local community, and all of the social safety nets that go along with this cohesion might be available to a frequent churchgoer. However, stronger health (compared to those who lack this social network) is due to the positive effects of social cohesiveness not as a direct benefit from the religious institution offering such support. The medical director of the American Psychiatric Association said, Anyone involved in providing health care services...cannot...ignorethe important connections between spirituality, religion, and health (Myers, 2005). The relationship that is appearing between basic biological health and spirituality makes their evolutionary relationship increasingly clearer, and should be a topic for future scientific studies. There is no question that spirituality and the institution of religion foster characteristics that afford human beings a survival advantage. A skeptic might argue that

although it does offer these benefits, the existence of a god gene or specific DNA code making us more likely to be spiritual people, cannot be inferred from the survival advantages it provides. After all, how can we prove that religion isnt the natural human solution to environmental problems? How do we know that religion is an adaptation, and not just a side benefit of creative thinking, culture, or intelligence? Modern science stepped in to uncover such a gene when molecular biologist Dean Hamer discovered that a variation in a gene known as vmat2 seemed to directly relate to how subjects rated their own spirituality (Kluger, 2004). Also, when scientists studied separated pairs of fraternal and identical twins, they discovered that identical twins were about twice as likely as fraternal twins to believe as much or as little as their sibling did (Kluger, 2004). Genes clearly play some part in how much a tendency we have to become spiritual people. Lastly, as one common-sense writer puts it, When tribes living in remote areas come up with a concept of God as readily as nations living shoulder to shoulder, its a fairly strong indication that the idea is preloaded in the genome rather than picked up on the fly (Kluger, 2004). Because modern science has shown a direct correlation between genes and spirituality, and because of the overwhelming human tendency to embrace religious belief and tradition, it is certain that religion is not simply a way we have picked up to deal with scarcity of resources or a coming war. Natural selection worked within our species by forming and nurturing this adaptation to deal with selection pressures. This adaptation has been so successful in driving our evolutionary fitness that it is literally instilled in all of us. Spirituality is one of the most profound and complex subjects that human beings deal with. How we respond to questions such as, What happens when I die?

What meaning can I find in life? and How do I get here? guide our spiritual lives. Spirituality has been a common link in all of humanity, showing up in every culture known to history. Only recently has the link between the theory of natural selection and spirituality and religion been shown. By looking at the biological advantages religion and spirituality afforded to its followers, we can see how essential religion was to those that came before us, and to the world we find ourselves in today. Although it might seem attractive to brush religion off as simply a way we deal with selection pressures ourselves, and not anything hard-wired into our genetic code, modern scientists have uncovered genome data to prove otherwise. The preponderance of evidence that suggests that we are biologically predisposed to being spiritual people cannot be ignored. It is evident that we are really, born to believe.