The New York Times
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG
Published: March 4, 2007
Anthropologists like Atran and psychologists as far back as James had been looking at the
roots of religion, but the mutual hands-off policy really began to shift in the 1990s. Religion
made incursions into the traditional domain of science with attempts to bring intelligent
design into the biology classroom and to choke off human embryonic stem-cell research on
religious grounds. Scientists responded with counterincursions. Experts from the hard
sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, joined anthropologists and
psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry.
The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You
might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to
explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who
can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you
might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own
devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does
not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and
surprising this debate has become.
Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since
mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this in “The Descent of Man.” “A
belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies,” he wrote, “seems to be universal.” According to
anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features — belief in a
noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to
change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth.
This is certainly true in the United States. About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005
Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the
existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92
percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of
character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”
When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder
how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success. In many ways, it’s
an exercise in post-hoc hypothesizing: what would have been the advantage, when the
human species first evolved, for an individual who happened to have a mutation that led to,
say, a smaller jaw, a bigger forehead, a better thumb? How about certain behavioral traits,
like a tendency for risk-taking or for kindness?
Atran saw such questions as a puzzle when applied to religion. So many aspects of
religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world. Wouldn’t this
be a liability in the survival-of-the-fittest competition? To Atran, religious belief requires
taking “what is materially false to be true” and “what is materially true to be false.” One
example of this is the belief that even after someone dies and the body demonstrably
disintegrates, that person will still exist, will still be able to laugh and cry, to feel pain and
joy. This confusion “does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy,” Atran wrote
in “In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion” in 2002. “Imagine another
animal that took injury for health or big for small or fast for slow or dead for alive. It’s unlikely
that such a species could survive.” He began to look for a sideways explanation: if religious
belief was not adaptive, perhaps it was associated with something else that was.
Atran intended to study mathematics when he entered Columbia as a precocious 17-year-
old. But he was distracted by the radical politics of the late ’60s. One day in his freshman
year, he found himself at an antiwar rally listening to Margaret Mead, then perhaps the most
famous anthropologist in America. Atran, dressed in a flamboyant Uncle Sam suit, stood up
and called her a sellout for saying the protesters should be writing to their congressmen
instead of staging demonstrations. “Young man,” the unflappable Mead said, “why don’t you
come see me in my office?”
By ROBIN MARANTZ HENIG
Published: March 4, 2007
Anthropologists like Atran and psychologists as far back as James had been looking at the
roots of religion, but the mutual hands-off policy really began to shift in the 1990s. Religion
made incursions into the traditional domain of science with attempts to bring intelligent
design into the biology classroom and to choke off human embryonic stem-cell research on
religious grounds. Scientists responded with counterincursions. Experts from the hard
sciences, like evolutionary biology and cognitive neuroscience, joined anthropologists and
psychologists in the study of religion, making God an object of scientific inquiry.
The debate over why belief evolved is between byproduct theorists and adaptationists. You
might think that the byproduct theorists would tend to be nonbelievers, looking for a way to
explain religion as a fluke, while the adaptationists would be more likely to be believers who
can intuit the emotional, spiritual and community advantages that accompany faith. Or you
might think they would all be atheists, because what believer would want to subject his own
devotion to rationalism’s cold, hard scrutiny? But a scientist’s personal religious view does
not always predict which side he will take. And this is just one sign of how complex and
surprising this debate has become.
Angels, demons, spirits, wizards, gods and witches have peppered folk religions since
mankind first started telling stories. Charles Darwin noted this in “The Descent of Man.” “A
belief in all-pervading spiritual agencies,” he wrote, “seems to be universal.” According to
anthropologists, religions that share certain supernatural features — belief in a
noncorporeal God or gods, belief in the afterlife, belief in the ability of prayer or ritual to
change the course of human events — are found in virtually every culture on earth.
This is certainly true in the United States. About 6 in 10 Americans, according to a 2005
Harris Poll, believe in the devil and hell, and about 7 in 10 believe in angels, heaven and the
existence of miracles and of life after death. A 2006 survey at Baylor University found that 92
percent of respondents believe in a personal God — that is, a God with a distinct set of
character traits ranging from “distant” to “benevolent.”
When a trait is universal, evolutionary biologists look for a genetic explanation and wonder
how that gene or genes might enhance survival or reproductive success. In many ways, it’s
an exercise in post-hoc hypothesizing: what would have been the advantage, when the
human species first evolved, for an individual who happened to have a mutation that led to,
say, a smaller jaw, a bigger forehead, a better thumb? How about certain behavioral traits,
like a tendency for risk-taking or for kindness?
Atran saw such questions as a puzzle when applied to religion. So many aspects of
religious belief involve misattribution and misunderstanding of the real world. Wouldn’t this
be a liability in the survival-of-the-fittest competition? To Atran, religious belief requires
taking “what is materially false to be true” and “what is materially true to be false.” One
example of this is the belief that even after someone dies and the body demonstrably
disintegrates, that person will still exist, will still be able to laugh and cry, to feel pain and
joy. This confusion “does not appear to be a reasonable evolutionary strategy,” Atran wrote
in “In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion” in 2002. “Imagine another
animal that took injury for health or big for small or fast for slow or dead for alive. It’s unlikely
that such a species could survive.” He began to look for a sideways explanation: if religious
belief was not adaptive, perhaps it was associated with something else that was.
Atran intended to study mathematics when he entered Columbia as a precocious 17-year-
old. But he was distracted by the radical politics of the late ’60s. One day in his freshman
year, he found himself at an antiwar rally listening to Margaret Mead, then perhaps the most
famous anthropologist in America. Atran, dressed in a flamboyant Uncle Sam suit, stood up
and called her a sellout for saying the protesters should be writing to their congressmen
instead of staging demonstrations. “Young man,” the unflappable Mead said, “why don’t you
come see me in my office?”
Minorities Interests
Knowledge, Culture, Social
Meet And Share
Knowledge, Culture, Social
Meet And Share
