• Diverse religions and beliefs throughout the world
• Batu caves – hindu – pierce cheeks, hang from hooks, many different
gods, Cameron highlands woman; Abrahamic one true god but also a
pantheon of angels, demons, saints etc. Other religions deify people
– e.g. Confucius, buddha, boddhisatvas, paganism and Japanese
tradition honour nature spirits ‘kami’ ancestor worship; cargo cult in
Papua New Guinea worship a particularly special set of ancestors
known as the ‘Village Government’ who will return to earth one day
in Western bodies with Western materials and knowledge and turn
the island into the Utopia that we have : )
• Obviously, throughout history – roman, greek norse gods etc
• How do we account for the ubiquity but also the diversity of belief in
‘supernatural beings’?
• Cognitive psychology – brain/mind as an information processor - workshop
with a rack of tools to help it analyse the world
• Face tool – show examples of pareidoilia
• assumption is that we process ideas about gods in the same way as other
ideas – although these concepts are different in many ways from ordinary
concepts and are remarkably successful
• Evolutionary psychology (and anthropology) has a massive influence in
suggesting how the development of the mind/brain has shaped and limited
god concepts with anthropology demonstrating these effects in real life –
Boyer – “there are only so many ways to build a god”
• This talk will outline a few of the main ideas from this newly emerging
approach to understanding religious belief and behaviour but is of course
only one way among many of approaching the issue and relies on many
underlying assumptions.
• Evolution – central assumption – the way in which our mind works has been
shaped by selective pressure in order to survive and reproduce – and this was
shaped 100 000 years ago – Atran – “stone age minds in a space age world”
• Fodor – “it is, no doubt, important to attend to the eternally beautiful and true,
but it is more important not to be eaten”
• For survival – we are not particularly powerful physically nor do we have
defensive capabilities. – huge increase in survivability comes from living in cooperative groups :more eyes and ears to see predators, to confuse predators if
attacked or to defend against predators, better chance of foraging, hunting,
building, sharing of resources, and defending of territory
– this requires significant changes in the information we need to be successful and
the way that information is processed – development of language to facilitate
group living subserves development and transmission of ideas.
• How the mind is organised affects survivability too
• Early idea was phrenology – use prop
• Localisation of function – further idea of modularity
• Specialised processors that are very fast and (usually) very accurate at
what they do – but they can’t do anything else and give very
particular output based on quite particular input – increasing
communication between specialised processors is the basis for
theories of consciousness (Baars) and intelligence (Rozin)
• Wason card selection task demo
• Cosmides and Tooby - argue for predator detection modules, mate
selection, cheater detection etc
• One survival ‘mechanism’ – ability to detect agency
• Example of branch and snake – why hypersensitive?
• HADD and gods – the world moves around a lot so HADD often pushes its way
into interpretation of objects as well as living things • Barrett and Johnson – marbles moving in unexpected ways via magnets under a
table – people tended to describe the marbles as if they had agency but when
controlling the marbles themselves did not – HADD tries to find the most obvious
agent for an event - rock in cave, volcano erupting – no evidence of human or
animal so spirit – superhuman abilities – one reason why knowledge of gods is
important – powerful allies, dangerous enemiesd
• Sartre – Hell is other people – another module is ToM – understanding that other
people have intentionality based on thoughts and beliefs – beliefs which may be
wrong but we can understand why – autism – shapes moving
• Children – clouds move because they want to
• “a woman wearing a coat and carrying a purse walks into a kitchen.
After scanning the countertops and even the floor, she quickly opens
several drawers, searches through their contents and then closes
them. Finally she throws her hands up in the air and walks out”.
• She wanted something because she believed it was in the kitchen and
was frustrated when she couldn’t find it
• A dog would observe movement (or think food food food)
• Ascribing beliefs and intentions to agents may help them to be seen
as real whereas no sensible motivation being found may cause the
HADD detection to be questioned – “god works in mysterious ways”
• Just experiencing detections of agency probably not enough to cement a
belief in gods – religious ideas are exceptionally durable showing
transmission across continents and down through generations for
thousands of years.
Something memorable about these ideas that when encountered may
further reinforce the earlier detection of agency in an ambiguous situation or
keep the concept in memory to later explain such an instance
Minimally counterintuitive concepts – what is intuitive – young children
seem to be intuitive ‘biologists, physicists and (with ToM) psychologists’
Can spot violation of these – objects moving down slope and then obscured,
horse with gears inside it isn’t an animal
Violation of these basic understandings of the world are counterintuitive and
are better remembered than intuitive, maximal or counterschematic
Example rose speaking Latin, maximal one – doesn’t make sense and so not
predictive
• MCIs draw attention, may be talked about more – more memorable
• What’s this got to do with gods – stories in the bible man walking on
water, burning bush talking
• Are gods MCI – the forest spirits are – they need to spy on us
• But what about Abrahamic – omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, allpowerful – doesn’t sound very minimal
• Theological god vs anthropomorphic god – people reason about god in a
human-like way – moves to help someone, does things in order, act of
praying? Bishop and me primed the anthropomorphic vs theological
concept of god
• Alternative – Barrett suggests that ToM has no problem in conceiving of
‘theological’ superpowers in a god based on experiments with children and
what they think good would know, see etc as compared to their mother,
other pertinent comparisons
• Thus belief in a ‘supreme’ type of god favoured by early mental
processes and so the Abrahamic religions are easier to transmit
vertically (Barrett argues)
• Of course, there are other ways that our minds help reinforce belief
e.g. through rituals (e.g. cognitive dissonance – if I don’t believe in
god why am I here in church) – rituals that are successful are hard to
falsify – e.g. African rituals for rain, return of ancestor spirits etc may
obviously not work whereas major religions tend to use rituals for e.g.
blessing, marriage, forgiving of sins – etc – so difficult to show it
didn’t work. These rituals thus stick around and reinforce belief
• Why are there atheists? Given the ‘naturalness’ of beliefs with
respect to the underlying mental processes that are argued to
subserve
• Is it education? There is a correlation between IQ and religiosity but
only a correlation – it doesn’t account for the many very highly
intelligent people who are religious there may be no causal link and
perhaps a 3rd factor related to IQ – SES?
• Religion tends to decrease where urbanisation happens – in
subsistence farming, e.g. poverty means your crops must not fail or
you will starve – you will pray to get any advantage you can – but
what about the large religious population in the USA?
• Being immersed in a situation where reliance on the intuitive tools is
diminished and having access to alternative models which can explain
‘stuff’ (a bit like when Darwinism came along) can help
• So why might scientists be religious?
• Do they need something extra?
• Lewis Wolpert – ‘magical thought’
• James’s study – creativity – and linked with positive schizotypy
• Only predicted religiosity in scientists – not in non-scientists
• PS – a bit like ‘magical thought’ though – unsatisfactory
• (although PS is linked to the ability to make disparate connections in
memory more easily??)
• PS also linked to Transliminality – hand over to Heather