The innate human disposition to acquire ideas of all-knowing supernatural agents fundamentally interested in one’s moral behavior can be demonstrated as adaptively advantageous in the context of its emergence in ancestral human populations.
It seems undeniable that human beings appear to be graced with the predisposition to accept as reasonable the idea that some form of supernatural agent capable of knowing all strategically-valuable information exists and acts to reward or punish behavior deemed as moral or immoral, respectively. As sympathetic to theological discourse as that may sound, it is actually far from it. The validity of specific religious sentiments is not the concern of this paper, as aren’t any unfalsifiable claims the concern of scientific considerations. What I’m intrigued by is the relationship between the apparent ubiquity of this disposition to acquire such religious notions and the reality of Darwinian evolution.
I would like to answer the question of what makes this disposition a characteristic of the human species with a phenotypic expression frequency rivaling that of the most obviously adaptive of our behaviors. What I’m referring to is the anthropologically-demonstrated fact that nearly all human populations, past or present, have subscribed to some religious notion of the type mentioned above. As a parallel, consider that the proportion of individuals found to lack such notions is indeed similar in magnitude to the proportion that lacks the capacity for complex social interaction in general (e.g. Autism). My intent is not to equate the two but to emphasize how exuberantly prevalent this religious predisposition is among the human species, in societies past and present the world over. It is a reasonable inference that any functionally-normal human brain is evidently predisposed to acquiring the idea that his moral judgments are necessarily being scrutinized by an external agent with complete knowledge of all relevant events at all times. This requires some explanation.
There are several questions that need to be answered as part of any reasonable explanation as to the origin of the disposition to acquire such notions. First, one must prove that this particular disposition is indeed a real one. If this condition is met, which I intend to prove it is, then several subsequent questions arise and pose further constraints on what constitutes a reasonable mechanism for the inclusion of this disposition in our genomic repertoire. Of these arising questions, one stands out as demanding the most immediate of our attention.
In general terms, one must address how in fact a disposition to acquiring a particular sort of mental representation manifests itself from a genetic code subject to Darwinian selection into the omnipresent cultural phenomenon directly observed. This task is accomplished by considering meme-theory in combination with cognitive psychology and other sciences of the mind. In particular, one must keep in mind the ways in which any such mechanism evolves out of several levels of selection, operating independently of each other yet affecting the same ultimate outcome, culminating in the most selection-friendly population of individuals that evolution can come up with.
On the surface, consider the conclusions of meme theory, the study of the transmission of ideas from person to person. Originally introduced into the scientific lexicon by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book “The Selfish Gene,” meme-theory acts to apply Darwinian selection processes to the realm of human culture. While Darwin had originally fashioned his theory to explain the process of speciation, Dawkins has in effect demonstrated that the same principles of selection that justify Darwin’s original theory, also extend to any system in which a population of constantly-mutating entities competes for a common resource. As physical nutrients and potential mates dominate the arena of natural genetic selection, the human propensity to accept, interpret, and transmit concepts governs the tendency for one idea to spread through a population at the cost of another. In other words, it seems quite self-explanatory, that those ideas that take the shape of concepts which we can cognitively represent take precedence to those which we can’t. Likewise, those ideas which we can remember, take precedence to those which we can’t; and those ideas which we are likely to transmit take precedence to those which we are likely to keep to ourselves.
This is all simple enough, but how does this relate to the concept of a supernatural entity capable of enforcing moral-dispositions? Well, as it turns out, this idea is one that we very well can represent cognitively. In fact, piles upon piles of evidence suggest that this concept resides very comfortably in the cognitive inference systems that make up our ability to process incoming information from the outside world. Indeed it can be demonstrated that the particular systems necessary to conceptualize this notion are in fact necessitated by the most fundamental requirements of our survival.
On other words, the fact that we can successfully represent (that is: understand) these notions is a product of the particular inference systems we have and the particular kinds of inferences these systems can make from the particular kinds of input information that these systems accept. As inference-system theory suggests, the brain, any brain (not just human) operates as an incredibly complex interaction of independent inference systems, designed by evolution to selectively parse all available information into units which can be used to make meaningful inferences about one’s environment. These inferences then guide one’s behavior in response to environmental conditions toward the ultimate evolutionary goal, of producing viable offspring.
Intuitively then, it seems obvious that the human mind can only entertain those concepts which it is capable of representing—this is essentially an inarguable fact. This fact alone, however, does nothing to the effect of details. Indeed, inference-system theory can be invoked to justify the observed limits of just about any of our cultural phenomena, but I intend to focus my efforts on this one particular religious concept. The systems involved in representing this concept are vast and plentiful, but they are conveniently summarized by renowned religious Anthropologist Pascal Boyer in his 2001book “Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought.”
Using the latest relevant findings of various relevant fields of research including psychology, anthropology, and biology, Boyer demonstrates the efficacy of inference-system theory in describing the experimental outcomes of tests designed to evaluate its accuracy. Indeed, according to Boyer, the research has come a long way to identify individual inference systems in animals from humans to pigeons; to justify the evolutionary development of these systems in terms their individual adaptive value; and ultimately to account for the inclusion of religious concepts like the one I am considering in the list of representations that these systems can make using the same old set of environmental input available to all creatures big and small inhabiting this planet alongside ourselves.
An illustrative example is Boyer’s discussion of what is called the “agent-detection” system. This system is proposed to be responsible for the task of detecting environmental cues representative of agency in one’s environment, where agency is defined as goal-oriented behavior and includes the identification of those observed goals. Indeed children as young as one year old appear to possess such cognitive machinery and indeed so do other species of animals as well. The adaptive value of such agency-detecting is apparent immediately as is the relevance of such capability to the acquiring of notions of supernatural agents whose goal is identified as the enforcement of morality. Further important, is the capacity for this system, and others, to make false inferences, detecting agency where there is none, and perceiving imaginary goals of imagined agents. Indeed this capacity for false inferences is itself adaptively advantageous as the system has clearly been molded by evolution not for its tendency to create valid illustrations of reality but for its ability to detect and avert danger, among other vitally important functions, which is a pursuit important enough to justify accepting the risk of making false inferences from time to time.
Another such system (and please do take the word ‘system’ lightly as any of these can likely be further broken down into component sub-systems) is that responsible for moral evaluations. It is demonstrable that certain information (as it pertains to the actions of others) is processed by an inference system independent of logical reasoning and any other cognitive functions. That is, the criteria by which this information is evaluated as representative of permissible rather than impermissible behavior stems from an integrated conception of morality, as hardwired into our brains by millions of years of group-living and a selection favoring reciprocal kindness in favor of universal selfishness. Indeed, I intend to conclusively defend the proposition that morality is an inherent function of normal human minds, separate from logical reasoning, and that religion in fact takes residence partially in this system; as opposed to the backward notion that religious ideas act to inspire moral ones. Using evidence primarily derived from the study of individuals afflicted by deficits of proper functioning in these and other systems, researches have reasonably reached a near-consensus regarding the general theory pertaining to these systems defining the functioning of normal minds.
In the case that my discussion of these systems is sufficiently conclusive, it stands reasonable to move on to further description of how millions of years of directional selection has resulted in a species capable of applying the cognitive machinery resident in their heads not only to those tasks for which they were specifically evolved but to secondary, further favorable considerations—favorable of course in the selfish Darwinian sense of supporting the survival and subsequent reproduction of populations in possession of these considerations.
Ultimately, my discussion of these systems aims to discount the competing notion among researchers that religious concepts are derived from their own discrete inference systems. On the contrary, I aim to prove that religious concepts, like the one I am specifically interested in, are (in the least offensive way it can be put) parasitic upon the cognitive machinery of the typical human being. In this view, it isn’t that the brain is born with a disposition to arrive at religious conclusions in the way that it is born to arrive at conclusions regarding goal-oriented behavior; but rather more indirectly, that certain kinds of religious notions, once introduced to the mind, proceed to be represented and embellished by intuitive expectations generated by cognitive inference-systems in place for performing non-religious functions with the ultimate result that these notions are represented as factually-accurate ways of perceiving the world.
To prove this, I will consult relevant neuropsychological literature, which prominently features evidence that people’s religious experiences are manifested by predicted inference systems—namely those pertaining to agency-detecting and special-orientation (which turns out to be a particularly important system in relation to metaphysical “out-of-body” experiences).
So the notion of a supernatural agent in a form invariably capable of possessing all relevant strategic-knowledge necessary to affect moral judgment, is a function of our mind’s inherent tendency to represent certain input stimuli in a specific fashion, leading to the capacity for representing, remembering, and transmitting this notion to others. This aspect of the solution is enough to explain why our minds can support such an idea but it does little toward demonstrating why in fact it is bound to support this idea by the statistical laws governing all life as we know it. It is this question that I shall devote the remainder of my paper to.
It is my view, and indeed a view shared by many, that this particular religious notion of strategically-aware supernatural entities interested in maintaining moral behavior, is a cultural phenomenon that once acquired by a population results in a substantial increase in the survival tendency of this population as compared to a population lacking such a conception.
The mechanism by which it translates into an adaptive advantage is evidenced by the theory of group-selection. Group selection theory states that in an evolutionary sense, when two groups compete for the same set of resources, that group which cooperates receives more resources per person than does a group that competes both with outside groups and with itself. It stands to reason then, that if it can be shown that the religious disposition discussed above is a promoter of cooperation, then those groups which subscribe to it are likely to outbreed and outlast groups which do not and will subsequently ensure that their traits dominate the species as a whole.
As evidenced in Behavioral Psychologist Richard Sosis’s 2009 Article titled “The Adaptive Value of Religious Ritual,” several studies have gone to demonstrate a correlation between levels of religious belief and levels of cooperation among compared populations. I must now mention a cautionary note regarding use of the word ‘belief’ to describe religious convictions. Indeed, as Boyer pointed out in “Religion Explained,” the concept of ‘believing’ one’s religious notions is altogether foreign to many peoples who see no reason to ‘believe’ something that they recognize as fact. It is akin to asking something like whether one believes that trees have leaves.
In any case, it is my view that the religious notion which I have singled out is indeed the one responsible for the observed levels of cooperation among religious societies, which, for all their variety share a common core in the conception that some supernatural entity or another is affecting the consequences of their moral behavior and in fact little else. Perhaps a better explanation is out there, but all my research has led me to this path and I am willing to assert that until more evidence is uncovered, that this explanation bears the support of the greatest proportion of the relevant scientific community and is in fact one which makes most coherent sense of the available data.
