The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology: A Multi-Level and Multi-Disciplinary Approach [1 ed.] 9780367250263, 9780429285608

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Series
Title
Copyright
Contents
List of figures
List of tables
Preface
List of contributors
Introduction: A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Religion and Its Evolution
Part 1 Evolutionary Biology
1 Cultural Evolution, Biology and the Case of Religion
2 The Evolutionary Biology of Religion-Specific Beliefs and Interreligious Conflict
3 Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality
4 The Biological Basis for Religion and Religion’s Evolutionary Origins
Part 2 Philosophy of Language, Psychology and Neuroscience
5 A History of the Evolution of Religion: From Religion to Religiosity to the Processes of Believing
6 The Processes of Believing in Religion’s Evolution: A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis
7 Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in Sensing the Divine: One Foundational Role in Religion’s Evolution
8 Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion: On the Evolution of Awe and the Origin of Religions
9 Whence This Need for Salvation?: Childhood Corporal Punishment and the Cultural Evolution of Religious Myth
Part 3 Theology
10 What a Theological Appropriation of Cognitive Linguistics’ Blending Theory Brings to a Scientific Understanding of the Evolution of Religion
11 The Evolution of Religiosity: A Theologian’s View
12 Neoteny and Homo Religiosus: Brain Evolution and Emergence of the Capacity for Spirituality
13 Emotions and the Evolution of the Belief in God
Part 4 Anthropology
14 The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion: Issues and Debates among the San of Southern Africa
15 Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols: Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Religion
16 Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself: The Evolution of Christianity
Conclusion
Index

Citation preview

The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology

This book takes a multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach to religion, religiosity and theology from their earliest beginnings to the present day. It uniquely brings together the natural sciences and theology to explore how religious practice emerged and developed through the four parts into which the book is organized: evolutionary biology; philosophical linguistics, psychology and neuroscience; theology; and anthropology. The volume features an international panel of contributors who develop an innovative picture of religion as a culturally created social institution; religiosity as a more personal and subjective anthropological element of people expressed through religion; and theology as the study of god. To survive in changing times, living systems  – a good characterization of religion, religiosity and theology – must adapt. This is a vital study of a rapidly burgeoning field. Thus, it will be of great interest to scholars in religious studies and theology and in the psychological, sociological and anthropological study of religion. Jay R Feierman retired as clinical professor of psychiatry at the University of New Mexico in 2006. He has degrees in zoology and medicine with postdoc specialization and board certification in psychiatry. Almost all of his academic publications in psychiatry and religion have been from the perspective of human ethology, the evolutionary biology of behavior. He has organized a number of international conferences on the evolutionary and biological aspects of religion. He also edited The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion (2009) and has a number of articles and book chapters in this area. Lluis Oviedo is full professor of theological anthropology (Antonianum University, Rome) and invited professor in the Theological Institute of Murcia (Spain) for questions of religion, society and culture. He has published the books Secularization as a Problem; Altruism and Charity; The Christian Faith and the New Social Challenges and is coeditor with A  Runehov of the Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. His research focuses on the scientific study of religion and its theological impact and on issues about secularization and religious social dynamics.

Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies

The Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies series brings high-quality research monograph publishing back into focus for authors, international libraries, and student, academic and research readers. This open-ended monograph series presents cutting-edge research from both established and new authors in the field. With specialist focus yet clear contextual presentation of contemporary research, books in the series take research into important new directions and open the field to new critical debate within the discipline, in areas of related study and in key areas for contemporary society. Theologising Brexit A Liberationist and Postcolonial Critique Anthony G Reddie Vision, Mental Imagery and the Christian Life Insights from Science and Scripture Zoltán Dörnyei Christianity and the Triumph of Humor From Dante to David Javerbaum Bernard Schweizer Religious Truth and Identity in an Age of Plurality Peter Jonkers and Oliver J Wiertz Envisioning the Cosmic Body of Christ Embodiment, Plurality and Incarnation Aurica Jax and Saskia Wendel The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach Edited by Jay R Feierman and Lluis Oviedo For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ religion/series/RCRITREL

The Evolution of Religion, Religiosity and Theology A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach Edited by Jay R Feierman and Lluis Oviedo

First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 selection and editorial matter, Jay R Feierman and Lluis Oviedo; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Jay R Feierman and Lluis Oviedo to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN: 978-0-367-25026-3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-429-28560-8 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of figuresviii List of tablesix Prefacex List of contributorsxiv

Introduction: A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Religion and Its Evolution

1

LLUIS OVIEDO

PART 1

Evolutionary Biology19   1 Cultural Evolution, Biology and the Case of Religion

21

HANSJÖRG HEMMINGER

  2 The Evolutionary Biology of Religion-Specific Beliefs and Interreligious Conflict

37

JAY R FEIERMAN

  3 Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality

54

DANIEL COHEN

  4 The Biological Basis for Religion and Religion’s Evolutionary Origins DONALD M BROOM

70

vi  Contents PART 2

Philosophy of Language, Psychology and Neuroscience85   5 A History of the Evolution of Religion: From Religion to Religiosity to the Processes of Believing

87

HANS-FERDINAND ANGEL

  6 The Processes of Believing in Religion’s Evolution: A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis

104

RÜDIGER J SEITZ

  7 Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in Sensing the Divine: One Foundational Role in Religion’s Evolution

120

MICHAEL N MARSH

  8 Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion: On the Evolution of Awe and the Origin of Religions

138

ELLIOTT D IHM, RAYMOND F PALOUTZIAN, MICHIEL VAN ELK AND JONATHAN W SCHOOLER

  9 Whence This Need for Salvation?: Childhood Corporal Punishment and the Cultural Evolution of Religious Myth

154

BENJAMIN ABELOW

PART 3

Theology171 10 What a Theological Appropriation of Cognitive Linguistics’ Blending Theory Brings to a Scientific Understanding of the Evolution of Religion

173

ROBERT L MASSON

11 The Evolution of Religiosity: A Theologian’s View

190

CHRISTOPHER C KNIGHT

12 Neoteny and Homo Religiosus: Brain Evolution and Emergence of the Capacity for Spirituality

205

WILLIAM ULWELLING

13 Emotions and the Evolution of the Belief in God CHRISTIAN EARLY

221

Contents vii PART 4

Anthropology237 14 The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion: Issues and Debates among the San of Southern Africa

239

ROBERT K HITCHCOCK

15 Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols: Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Religion

256

ANNE SOLOMON

16 Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself: The Evolution of Christianity

271

LAURA BETZIG

Conclusion

285

JAY R FEIERMAN AND LUIS OVIEDO

Index290

Figures

5.1 “Religious” – a double-wing but (practically) monopolized adjective95 5.2 Beyond the fixation on religion: the evolution of religiosity96 6.1 Hypothetical model of the processes of believing 107 6.2 Schematic display of the believing processes in social interaction 110 7.1 A plot scattergram of percentages (vertical axis) of subjects experiencing components of NDE/OBE (horizontal axis) 122 10.1 Jesus is the Messiah blend 181 10.2 Aquinas’s blends. (a) Aquinas’s God is simple blend and (b) God’s essence is “to be” blend185 12.1 Human brain growth curve 208 14.1 Map showing approximate distribution of major San groups across Southern Africa 244 14.2 A Tshwa traditional healer engaged in a trance dance in Manxotae, Nata River Region, Botswana 248 15.1 (a) The Venus of Hohle Fels and (b) A therianthropic 261 figure, with animal head and hooves

Tables

7.1 7.2 7.3 14.1

Components of near-death and out-of-body experiences 123 Egocentric and para-centric space, or body image 125 Predispositions to near-death and out-of-body experiences 126 Southern African Khoisan (non-Bantu) languages and their classification241

Preface

Overview The phrase “the evolution of religion” might sound like a contradiction in terms. For the first hundred years after Darwin’s On the Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection, published in 1859, religion and Darwinian evolution were competing paradigms for understanding who we are and how we came to be this way. However, the mechanisms by which humans came to be is a separate issue from the evolution of the social institution called religion, its anthropological expression called religiosity and the study of the object of faith (i.e., God) called theology. More recently, evolutionary scholars began collaborating with scholars in religious studies and theology. Natural selection, as a mechanism of evolution, could, with some reservations and modifications (see Hemminger, this volume), be applied to culture in general and religion, as a social institution, in particular. It likewise was recognized that biological (i.e., genetic) and cultural evolution of religion were similar to the evolution of human languages. Both must have a genetically transmitted foundation on which specific human religions and languages can, under the right circumstances, be culturally acquired and expressed as what in biology are called phenotypes, the interactions of genes with the environment. More recently, open-minded theologians began asking how theology could be reconciled with modernity. And so, the collegial interaction began. Religion became the explanandum and Darwinian evolution became the explanans, although other ways of scientifically understanding the evolution of religion also exist and are used in some of the chapters. An important question arises: Why did religion evolve, also meaning what are its functions or what does it do to increase adaptedness (survival and reproductive success)? Darwinian natural selection mainly addresses the how question. The why and what (are its functions) questions are more interesting and challenging. Two answers to the “how?” question have dominated: the adaptation position and the by-product position. According to the adaptation view, the genetics that underlie religion evolved specifically for the purpose of

Preface xi generating religion. According to the by-product view, the genetics that underlie religion evolved for purposes unrelated to religion and then religion evolved as aby-product. Regardless of which position is taken, religion exists and can be studied. Religion is a powerful force in society and in the world, and it needs to be understood. Interreligious conflict has historically divided the world, yet religion also arguably provides social cohesion, moral strength and hope amid great stress to billions of people in the world today. Thus, we can learn more about both humankind and often ourselves by studying religion and its evolution. Natural scientists do not look to revelation in sacred texts for answers. Theologians do. But many natural scientists will concede that some of these words are profound, have changed the course of human history and are at least “inspired.” And one could ask, “Inspired or revealed, what really is the difference?” Today, the discipline of theological anthropology is incorporating the outcome and inputs from the natural sciences. So we can all learn from one another, which is why this volume’s two editors come from the natural sciences and theology respectively. This volume emphasizes “high-level” ideas about religion rather than new empirical data. Such data are referred to, of course, but not for their own sake. Rather, they are cited to serve an overarching purpose: to support an argument, bolster an explanation or illustrate a fundamental principle. The volume is intended for a multidisciplinary, scholarly academic audience and does not require specialized technical knowledge in any particular discipline. When the volume uses disciplinary jargon terms, the authors have defined them at their first appearance. Additionally, the volume should be valuable to those working in disciplines such religious studies, cognitive science of religion, theology, philosophy of religion, sociology of religion, psychology of religion, evolutionary psychology, evolutionary biology, anthropology, human behavioral ecology and history of religion. The evolution of religion is spoken about in the present tense. Evolution is not something that happened only in the distant past. Rather, it is part of an ongoing dynamic process that extends to and encompasses our own time. One such evolutionary path – secularization – is not directly covered in this current volume. But readers might keep in mind a fundamental biological principle: form follows function, and as function wanes, so does form. The form in this case comprises the “physical” parts of religion itself. So the very process of secularization suggests that some of the functions of religion, which have been important in the past, are decreasingly important now.

About the Present Book The book begins with an introduction by coauthor and theological anthropologist Lluis Oviedo. The book is divided into four main parts: evolutionary biology; philosophical linguistics, psychology and neuroscience; theology; and anthropology. Not all the authors agree with the conclusions of each other.

xii  Preface In this early stage of the natural science study of religion’s evolution, this is both expected and healthy. Next, a short summary of each contribution is given as a guide to introduce the work that constitutes this volume.

Introduction Oviedo’s introductory chapter explains the need to have a multilevel (i.e., top-down and bottom-up) and multidisciplinary approach to develop a better understanding religion’s evolution.

The Evolutionary Biology section contains four chapters: Chapter  1 by Hemminger addresses the issues and controversies involved in applying the principles of the biological evolution of organisms by Darwinian natural selection to the cultural evolution of religion. Chapter 2 by Feierman focuses on religion-specific beliefs and one of their main biological functions in human evolution  – acting as in-group markers for religious in-group breeding populations. Chapter 3 by Cohen takes a neurobiological perspective that connects sexual orgasmic experiences with the capacity for self-transcendence, as deeply related with religious experience. Chapter 4 by Broom discusses the proto-morality features found in nonhuman animals. It then analyzes morality’s and religion’s respective origins and development as two closely entangled processes, especially after the Axial Age.

The Philosophical Linguistics, Psychology and Neuroscience section contains five chapters: Chapter 5 by Angel distinguishes the term “religion” from that of “religiosity,” a more anthropologically leaning concept, and then moves on to an interdisciplinary investigation of the processes of believing as the better way of understanding the evolution of religiosity. Chapter 6 by Seitz begins where Angel’s chapter ends to show how one can understand the processes of believing through neuroscience. Chapter  7 by Marsh focuses on the role that out-of-body and near-death experiences could have played in the formation of the human belief in the supernatural realm. He also reviews the neuroscience behind such experiences. Chapter 8 by Ihm, Schooler, van Elk and Paloutzian moves into the field of awe as a meaning- making emotion. They then propose how the evolution of awe as an emotion, which seems to have had precursors in our hominid ancestors, influenced the evolution of human religion. Chapter 9 by Abelow addresses the idea of salvation and the role that childhood corporal punishment plays in the cultural evolution of religious myth.

Preface xiii

The Theology section contains four chapters: Chapter 10 by Masson applies cognitive blending theory to the evolution of religious beliefs to better understand some developments in Christian faith and its struggles to find the right ways to express emerging beliefs. Chapter 11 by Knight develops a rich theological analysis, mostly devoted to showing that a right understanding of divine presence and action in the world would not prevent a naturalistic view of religious origins and evolution. Chapter 12 by Ulwelling links the experience of religious transcendence to neoteny, the prolonged brain growth after birth. Chapter 13 by Early deals with emotions – specifically fear, love, awe and gratitude – and their influence on the evolution of belief in God.

The Anthropology section contains three chapters: Chapter  14 by Hitchcock gives a rare view of religion in one of the few extant hunter-gatherer tribes today, the San peoples of sub-Saharan Africa. It is widely known that for most of religion’s existence, humans were hunter-gatherers. Chapter 15 by Solomon looks at the archaeological evidence, primarily in Africa, for the earliest human religions. Chapter 16 by Betzig’s offers an historically documented tour through the evolutionary origins of Christianity, to test a human behavioral ecology, Darwinian history theory connecting Christianity’s origin with reproductive competition.

The Conclusion The Conclusion by the two coeditors summarizes the study of religion historically from theology to the naturalistic study as well as the challenges and implications for a new dialogue between both approaches. This collection will offer the reader some introductory knowledge of the new natural science study of religion’s evolution. The volume’s chapters can be thought of as a collection of archaeological test pits dug over surface material (religion) that suggested that more is to be found about the surface material’s origins beneath the surface. This volume demonstrates that religion’s evolution is able to summon and commit a diverse-background group of scholars and awaken the interest of many different academic disciplines. We hope that our combined effort might inspire further research and new insights into a subject whose intriguing character has yet to be fully understood. Jay R Feierman (coeditor) Lluis Oviedo (coeditor)

Contributors

Benjamin Abelow (M.D. Yale; B.A. history, University of Pennsylvania) is an independent scholar of religion who has presented his work in peerreviewed articles and chapters and at academic conferences in the United States and Europe. He is currently completing a book on the connections between childhood trauma and religion. Hans-Ferdinand Angel trained in ancient philology, theology and history; became professor of religious education at the Technical University of Dresden/Germany (1996); and was appointed in 1997 as full professor of catechetics and religious education at the University of Graz/Austria. Since 2011, he has been director of the Credition Research Project https:// credition.uni-graz.at/. Laura Betzig sees sex, politics and religion as a means to the spread of genes. She’s lectured across Europe and the United States and published over a hundred articles and three books. She’s spent the last couple of decades at work on The Badge of Lost Innocence: A History of the West. Donald M Broom is emeritus professor of animal welfare at Cambridge University, Department of Veterinary Medicine. His research concerns assessing animal welfare, animal cognition, sustainable farming and the scientific bases for morality and religion. His 370 refereed papers and 12 books include The Evolution of Morality and Religion (Cambridge University Press). Christian Early is assistant chair of ethical reasoning at James Madison University. He is the editor with his partner Annmarie Early of Integrating the New Science of Love and a Spirituality of Peace: Becoming Human Again  (Cascade, 2013). Christian and Annmarie live in Harrisonburg, Virginia with their three children. Daniel Cohen is assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Missouri. His research involves the intersection of religious studies and neuroscience. He has published numerous articles on the neuroscience of spiritual experience and recently on evolution and religion, and he works to advance collaborations between the humanities and sciences.

Contributors xv Jay R Feierman retired as a clinical professor of psychiatry in 2006, when his interests changed from the evolution of psychiatric disorders to the evolution of religion. In 2009 he edited The Biology of Religious Behavior. He has written a number of articles and book chapters on various aspects of religion’s evolution. Hansjörg Hemminger retired 2014 as Commissioner for World View Questions of the Protestant Church in Germany. His scientific background is ethology, brain research and psychology. Robert K Hitchcock is an adjunct professor in anthropology at the University of New Mexico and a board member of the Kalahari Peoples Fund. He has a PhD in anthropology. His work is on human rights and development among Indigenous and minority peoples in Africa, the Middle East, and the Americas. Elliott D Ihm  is a doctoral candidate at the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is investigating the impact of mindfulness training on neural networks underlying perception and attention. Elliott’s research also addresses the phenomenology of awe-eliciting experiences. Christopher C Knight is a senior research associate of the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge, England. He is the author of Wrestling with the Divine and The God of Nature, both published in the Fortress Press’s Theology and the Sciences series. Michael N Marsh studied medicine at Magdalen College, Oxford; became a university-based gastroenterologist; and studied theology (Oxford) on retirement. He then followed a doctorate on near-death experiences, with further publications on the ethical problems of disability, abortion, the human fetus, death and assisted suicide. He is now at Wolfson College University of Oxford. Robert L Masson is an emeritus professor of theology at Marquette University and the author of Without Metaphor, No Saving God: Theology after Cognitive Linguistics (Peeters Press, 2014). He has served as chair of Marquette’s Department of Theology, president of the College Theology Society and coordinator of the Karl Rahner Society. Lluis Oviedo is full professor of theological anthropology (Antonianum University, Rome) and invited professor in the Theological Institute of Murcia (Spain) for questions of religion, society and culture. Raymond F Paloutzian is professor emeritus of experimental social psychology and edited The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion for 18  years. He wrote at Westmont College, Stanford University and University of Leuven. Widely published in the psychology of religiousness, he gave invited talks around the world on the psychology of religion in global perspective.

xvi  Contributors Jonathan W Schooler  is a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California Santa Barbara and director of UCSB’s Center for Mindfulness and Human Potential. His research includes discerning the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering and understanding the impact of exposing individuals to philosophical positions. Rüdiger J Seitz is a professor of neurology at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf and honorary professorial fellow at the Florey Neuroscience Institutes, Melbourne, Australia. His scientific interests are in clinical neurophysiology, neuroimaging and cognitive neuroscience, including postlesional brain plasticity and the control of human behavior. Anne Solomon is an archaeologist (PhD, University of Cape Town, 1995) specializing in Southern African hunter-gatherer rock arts and folklore. She has been a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Getty Center for the History of Art and the Humanities and was formerly senior curator of archaeology at the Natal Museum, KwaZulu-Natal. William Ulwelling completed his MD and psychiatry residency at UCLA. Previously, he had been in the Jesuit seminary for ten years, completing requirements for a master of divinity degree at the Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley. He currently works as a psychiatrist consultant for the National Nuclear Security Administration, The United States. Michiel van Elk is assistant professor at the University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. He completed his PhD in cognitive neuroscience at the Donders Institute in Nijmegen. His research focuses on religious experiences, and he uses a multidisciplinary approach, including self-report, psychophysical and neuroimaging methods.

Introduction A Multilevel and Multidisciplinary Approach to Understanding Religion and Its Evolution Lluis Oviedo Introduction Religion is a complex phenomenon that entails social, cultural and individual aspects, including beliefs, rituals and symbols. It includes also subjective and objective aspects. This broad set of features is unavoidably affected by the historical moment, our biological constitution, cognitive structure, personality and place of upbringing. It is difficult to classify and control each variable involved in such a dynamic interplay. The complexity of religion and its evolution justifies the need for a pluralistic approach. However, such an approach has not been the case in most recently published scientific studies of religion, where the most successful scholars often take a reductionistic approach and explore just one or at most two variables, one of which is often presumed to causally influence the other. The cognitive science of religion (CSR), one of the most vibrant new fields in the scientific study of religion, has applied the heuristics provided by contemporary developments in cognitive psychology, often combined with the so-called mental module aspects of evolutionary psychology, to explain religion. The alternative program we see today, often conjoined with the cognitive one, explores the more biological dimension of religion, giving rise to studies in which religion is studied on the basis of its evolutionaryadaptive or by-product origins. However, such programs have often ignored its social and cultural dimensions. In recent years, some of the same scholars have been paying greater attention to the more culturally acquired aspects. One cannot state, as yet, whether those aspects of religion acquired culturally through social learning are best treated as independent variables or are just assimilated within a more biological evolutionary framework as part of gene-culture coevolution (see Hemminger, this volume). For many religious scholars, the use of the aforementioned reductive methods are currently normative, since the inductive scientific approach to understanding religion moves forward step by step and focuses on one variable at a time. Then, as part of what Thomas Kuhn (1970 [1962]) has called “normal science,” what was empirically discovered is explained by one of the prevailing paradigms, which in regard to religion is always borrowed

2  Lluis Oviedo from other scientific disciplines. The borrowing occurs because currently there is no scientific theory of religion and its evolution. Theories born from related fields – like genetics, economics, sociology, psychology, ecology, systems and information theory – have found wide application in the study of religion and its evolution. When almost everyone in psychology had switched from behaviorism to cognitivism in the 1950s, it was natural that cognitive psychology’s offspring  – evolutionary psychology and the cognitive science of religion, which both started in the 1990s – would use cognitive paradigms. However, the current academic reformulation of both of these disciplines has not been followed by a similar rethinking in their application to the scientific study of religion. In reading this current volume, the reader will have the opportunity to look at religion and its evolution through several different paradigms or theories. Hopefully, exposure to new ways of thinking will result in new insight into and a new understanding of how religion evolves. This introductory chapter will report on the different strands that adopt the current scientific study of religion to provide a guide into this pluralistic panorama.

Pleading for Pluralistic Methods in the Study of Religion and Its Evolution The standard criteria assumed in the scientific praxis are difficult to meet in something as complex as religion and almost impossible to meet when one wades into religion’s evolution. However, many attempts are offered. Plurality in studying religion and its evolution emerges as a consequence of applying different methods or focusing on different aspects or functions. For instance, studying the functions of religious forms means trying to establish what they do, their function or, teleologically speaking, their “purpose.” Religious forms, like all forms in the life sciences, can have more than one function. So, a religious form, like a religious mythical story, can have theological, sociological, psychological and biological functions, all of which can be different. Religious forms are what things are. Religious behaviors, rituals, prayers, sacred texts and many other “physical” items associated with religion are considered religious forms. Most natural science studies of religion attribute functions to religious forms from a particular discipline’s point of view. Apart from the bottom-up reductive approaches, pluralism in the study of religion and its evolution can be conceptualized in two different ways: de facto deductive (top down) as a methodological choice of the investigator. As an example, the cultural transmission of a religious behavior via social learning can be considered top-down causation, whereas the activation of presumed religion-related “mental modules,” commonly used in the cognitive science of religion, would be considered bottom-up causation. It is not a zero-sum game where the presence of one contributing cause precludes the operation of the other. Both can be involved, each coming from different hierarchical directions.

Introduction 3 The de facto argument for pluralism The evidence is overwhelming in support of an existing pluralism in the current scientific study of religion and its evolution, as attested by the multidisciplinary nature of this volume. In a recently published book chapter, I  systematically reviewed 75 publications offering different naturalistic explanations of religion (Oviedo 2017). The list was incomplete and destined to grow. We can observe that some paradigms are currently dominant in the new scientific study of religion, like the cognitive and the ­evolutionary-adaptive and evolutionary–by-product ones. But, they can by no means exhaust the number of alternative paradigms and methods, some of which are well rooted in recent scientific developments, like cultural evolution, human behavioral ecology, life history theory, cybernetics and information theory, social psychology, sociology, neuroscience and so on. Pluralism as a methodological choice The other way of conceptualizing pluralism is the investigator’s choice to use one of the top-down deductive methods. Things are changing in recent years after a long season in which radical, inductive, bottom-up reductionism was the rule. The new heuristic climate has given place to more nuanced and moderate positions. Many expressions from that highly reductive season have lost their way by inductive errors and are becoming easy targets of criticism and even mockery. Examples include biological and neurological reductionism, not the medical or therapeutic applications but rather bold statements on human religious nature. In some studies, humans in their natural social habitats are presumed to act similarly to nonhuman animals in cages, robots, computer simulations, computerized prisoner dilemma game players and even emotionless zombies (Malik 2002; Tallis 2011). Such experimental designs study maps but then must address the degree to which the map fits the territory. This is not saying that all reductionism in the natural science study of religion and its evolution is bad, just that in reference to living and behaving religious human beings, it has to be balanced with complementary top-down multilevel approaches. A good example of a pluralistic approach is the wide acceptance of Eva Jablonka and Marion Lamb’s book Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005), which established a new paradigm for the study of human evolution. Another related issue is the strong presence in recent years of the cultural dimension in the study of human evolution. This was an aspect mostly neglected in the first paradigms used to explain religion with the new cognitive and biological frameworks. Accounting for the cultural dimension in our understanding of religion’s evolution, which is a top-down approach, now appears unavoidable. Cultural creation and transmission have to be integrated into the study of religion, as many specialists now acknowledge.

4  Lluis Oviedo One could also raise the objection that the study of culture often appears less as a sign for methodological pluralism and more as a new attempt to reduce every aspect of human and social life to the evolutionary “universal acid,” as Daniel Dennett once described (1995, 61 ff.). Time will help to discern whether this new interest in culture’s role – which has justified the creation of the new Cultural Evolution Society, with a big inaugural ­conference  – will point in the reductive or pluralistic direction or, more likely, a combination of both. Other issues surrounding more pluralistic approaches are found in the protests by many traditional scholars who study religion  – sociologists, anthropologists, historians and (obviously) philosophers of religion and theologians – concerning the flaws and mistakes that they perceive in the some of the current publications by the expert “newcomers” from other disciplines. Some of the traditionalists, like senior sociologist David Martin, have been vocal in their criticism. Among their arguments is that the new scientific study of religion, especially the cognitive branch, has been unable to explain a series of religious dynamics in advanced societies, because it overlooks historical, social and cultural influences (Martin 2011, 130 f.). The point is that today we cannot provide a universal paradigm that is able to cover and understand all aspects of those extremely complex phenomena called religion or its evolution. Given that we do not have a paradigm or theory of religion and its evolution itself, we might expect an attitude of modesty and restraint on the side of the newcomers. Their valuable contributions explain only a small amount of the variance in religion’s expression and evolution. To my knowledge, nobody has expressed such conviction better than Robert McCauley, a pioneer in the CSR, who publicly, and after witnessing critical notes about limits in CSR during a workshop held in 2015 in Amsterdam, stated that CSR just explains “some features of some features of a very complex phenomenon, which we, for convenience, call religion” (Oviedo, personal observation). The last argument to which I will draw attention is more epistemological. It has primarily been developed by Steve Horst in two of his books. From a more critical stance, Horst has shown the limits of the reductionist program (Beyond Reduction 2007). In a more constructive effort, he has recently pleaded for an approach that he labeled Cognitive Pluralism (2016). A core thesis is that human knowledge proceeds through stages that try to explain processes or events, which are tailored to specific situations and contexts. This creates barriers to unifying sciences, since after accounting for many explanatory levels, non-integrated pluralism is unavoidable. For an alternative position, consider consilience, which is the unity of all knowledge across disciplines, from the arts to the sciences and through the subjective experience of the theistic presence of a “law-giving God” (Wilson 1998). In contrast to consilience, when the disciplines are kept apart, rival paradigms can be seen as complementary models of a multifaceted reality. This can easily be applied to the scientific study of religion and religion’s

Introduction 5 evolution and to the de facto pluralism we witness. However, not only is this a de facto observation, something that just happens, but it also becomes a necessary and positive epistemological and methodological position, which pushes the study of religion in many directions and tries to exploit many programs and disciplinary fields, without the exclusion or dominance of one over the others.

Trying to Put Some Order in a Pluralistic Panorama First, it is convenient to clarify what is meant by the phrase “evolution of religion,” since that concept has many meanings and reflects different things for different researchers (see Angel, this volume). Of course, the concept of evolution, even though it means more than Darwinian evolution by natural selection, is often assumed to have biological (i.e., living matter) resonance, even though items like the automobile, a product of geneculture coevolution, has evolved over the past hundred years. And there is cosmic evolution as well. In this volume, we appreciate that “evolution” means gradual and incremental (usually more effective and efficient) change over time. Then, inside a presumed biological framework, evolution often implies “origins” from preexisting features or conditions, which in reference to religion’s birth are often called proto-religions. However, this is by no means the only meaning that the term “evolution” covers, as can be seen in several different chapters in this volume. And of course, religion did not “evolve”; it is still “evolving.” When speaking about religion, evolution is full of social and historical resonances, and it could not be otherwise (e.g., Betzig, this volume). Religions are evolving in time, and this change has happened at different levels in different parts of the world: beliefs, rituals, moral attitudes, structures and relationships with society. We can witness such processes in the most recent religions from literate societies that keep documents and have historical records. That religions register many changes along time is quite obvious; possibly the difficulty is to what extent those changes can be described as “evolution,” even in the broad sense. Not all change represents evolution. Some changes are just alternative, equally effective and efficient variants of the same religious form. Broadly speaking, “evolution” in terms of gene-culture coevolution by natural selection denotes that what is evolving is becoming better adapted and more effective and efficient for survival and reproductive success for individuals, their families and the in-groups to which they belong in current environments. But environments change. Many evolutionary changes can be adaptive in one environment and selection neutral or maladaptive in another. Evolution by natural selection makes adaptive changes probable. Many evolved changes in a population, such as those that occur as the result of immigration and emigration or random changes, are not necessarily adaptive.

6  Lluis Oviedo One central question in the attempt to better characterize religion’s evolution is to what extent all such processes can be identified and associated with Darwinian evolution’s biological logic or whether cultural evolution follows a somewhat different pattern, as many authors claim (see Hemminger, this volume). Most of what has changed and is still changing in the evolution of religion over the past few thousand years has been accomplished through gene-culture coevolution. Renouncing hasty solutions, prudence invites us to keep all options open and to decide later on in which instances religion follows a more Darwinian evolution paradigm or some alternative paradigms of change, such as those found in psychological, sociological, economic, historical, contingent circumstances, ideological developments and those influenced by other issues, like period changes in aesthetics or changing moral issues. In short, there are more than Darwinian paradigms for evolutionary change. The former introductory remarks should help in establishing a firstorder approximation to put the different perspectives used to understand religion’s evolution into some type of order. Let’s distinguish at least three main categories: (a) evolution related to religion’s origins; (b) evolution as a big change or crucial transformation; and (c) evolution as a long historical process. Evolution related to religion’s origins In the first category, “evolution” means the same as “origins,” in the sense that religion emerged through the “evolution” of preexisting traits or conditions, sometimes called proto-religions. In this case, evolution is less about following changes or refinements and more about religion’s creation. The idea behind such positions is that religion, even conceptualized as a human social institution, is the result of a “natural” process, as is every other evolved human trait, and nothing, including religion, arises out of nowhere or in a sudden and unexpected way. This category should be considered a stand-alone, since the study of religion’s evolution as its “origins” is mostly detached from the study of further developments, when religion is already in place and well established in hunter-gather bands and then tribes, where we have lived for almost all of our 200,000-300,000-year history as a species (Hublin et al. 2017). Religion – in most of the reported views, which are not for certain the correct views – is not seen as something new, sui generis, but more as a continuity with previously existing forms. The alternative possibility is that something totally new evolved in our species, such as the emergence of the capacity for symbolic speech, on which even the simplest forms of religion depend. Human syntactic and recursive symbolic speech might be only 50,000 years old, when for reasons unknown our cultural achievements rapidly advanced. Ancient, prehistoric religion is not like cave art or the advances in lithic industries that leave material objects to be studied. We also cannot even presume that

Introduction 7 extant hunter-gather religions are clues to religion’s prehistoric origins (see Solomon, this volume; Hitchcock, this volume). Even if ancestral origins and later developments in religion can be temporally correlated with changes in human social organization, it seems more fruitful to distinguish between the two dynamics. In addition, one can’t assume causality from just temporal correlation. It is just a presumption that what initiated the emergence of prehistoric religion is what kept and perhaps is still keeping religion alive today. The issue gets even more complex theologically, like a chicken and egg problem as to what came first. Did religion evolve to worship the human concept of (generic) god or did the human concept of (generic) god create the necessity for the origin of religion? Any answer would be highly speculative at this time. Evolution as a big change or crucial transformation The second category looks at some steps, events or crucial historical changes that have defined or deeply determined the nature of religion throughout its long history. Reference to this appears in many registered entries. In general, they is an evolution that points to the “moralizing phase” that “evolved religions” have known after the discovery of larger-scale agriculture and the emergence of large societies (i.e., greater than one million people) (Whitehouse et al. 2019). This includes the Axial Age religions, or those emerging during huge cultural changes that happened between the 8th and 3rd centuries bce (Bellah 2011). Evolution as a Long Historical Process The third category can be linked to stages of religious development through history, covering a spectrum that reaches from ancestral times, including the most “elementary forms,” until modern times and the more complex or elaborated expressions of religion. Sometimes, such theories contain concepts in our intellectual history that are the main factors that spur such developments, like “rationalization” (Weber 1993 [1963]), “differentiation” (Luhmann 1989) or “differentiation and growing complexity” (Bellah 2011). In other cases, a multilevel or complex set of factors is proposed, like epigenetic, cognitive-developmental, and social-historical factors (Whitehouse 2008, 2013). These three categories for accommodating religion’s evolution are clearly complementary and are not in competition, allowing for a fruitful pluralistic interplay.

Alternative Approaches Another approach in categorizing religion’s contributing causes and its evolution can make use of the factors that have influenced the process. In this case, it is relatively easy to distinguish between those pointing more to

8  Lluis Oviedo biological influences and those that stress more the cultural aspects, which include symbolic and meaning systems (see Ihm et  al., this volume) and those pointing more to social or structural factors, as is usual in sociological and anthropological approaches. Those pointing to more biological influences include features of religion’s role in facilitating in-group cohesion or what is sometimes called human eusociality (see Feierman, this volume; Betzig, this volume), or they point to other features. They include various elements that increase biological fitness through internal solidarity, such as the emergence of human altruism and empathy (see Broom, this volume; Early, this volume). Torrey (2017) has recently proposed an original biological theory of how our concepts of god and religion have evolved paralleling the progressive changes of the hominid brain. Another approach focuses on religion’s cognitive features as a symbolic system that provides meaning and other related capacities (see Ihm et al., this volume). Evolution therefore involves the progressive ability to perform new functions or expressions that enhance them. Then, a few more approaches can be characterized as “structural” and belong to the sociological or cultural anthropological fields, where identifying the big forces behind social evolution is paramount. In some cases, like the ones mentioned by Whitehouse (2008, 2013), a few sets of factors come together and combine in a multilevel format. To some degree, these other approaches correspond to disciplinary boundaries and reflect programmatic paradigms in each discipline. In this case, the complementarity principle can be stated with more conviction: The biological account should not deter or dismiss the sociological, anthropological or symbolic ones. Again, it seems pointless to force a choice among them. Indeed, all the described approaches make good sense and have enough heuristic power to be kept in our repertoire.

Factors That Influence the Evolution of Cultural Complexity A different path considers recent attempts to describe the factors that influence the evolution of cultural complexity (Andersson and Read 2016). After discussing the merits and limits of the so-called treadmill model, the authors lay out alternative models in a list that comprises eight distinct forms. They conclude – in a case that can be applied to the evolution of religious complexity. While in many cases it is a scientifically sound practice to isolate and explore causal factors, there is a big difference between expecting one such factor to be “the winner” in the end (a strong interpretation), and expecting it to be part of an explanation where the factor in question interacts with other factors (a weak interpretation). (Andersson and Read 2016, 274)

Introduction 9 Turner and colleagues defend a model that integrates biological and sociological forces and their selective pressures acting on religion in its origins and along its history (Turner et al. 2017). Wunn and Grojnowski (2016) review the available theories showing the respective limits and the need to move toward a different level, in which religion itself becomes the unit or object of selection. They are treating religion’s evolution in an analogous way to how one can treat the spear point’s evolution archaeologically in prehistoric times. Indeed, several of the current theories about religion’s evolution imply that evolution affects genes, individuals, kin and in-groups. These proposed distinctions can overlap with the theories that lean more toward cultural evolution as an autonomous process. Another related question concerns how to understand “religion” (the collective noun) when it is presented as a unit or object of selection, given that religion as a whole contains objective and subjective elements as well as functions and their forms. We could focus on religion’s beliefs, as a system that clearly evolves and influences behavior, groups and organization. But by the same token, we could also focus on behaviors, rituals, or religious organizations. In an earlier publication, Feierman (2009) argued that only structural design features associated with religion can be the object of genetic or cultural selection in that they are the forms (versus the functions) of which religions are made. The problem gets more complex in this volume when multilevel selection is used. Selection operates not just on one level but rather on many levels, including the interactions between these levels—for example, between beliefs and their individual holders; between beliefs, their holders and the in-groups/religions in which the individuals with their beliefs belong; or between all three levels, occurring concurrently in multilevel selection.

New Entries Waiting to Be Listed as Contributing to Religion’s Evolution The scientific study of the human condition and what renders us distinct as a species has advanced a lot in the last few years, drawing attention to aspects formerly neglected in the more reductive versions of the earlier scientific anthropology. The issue now is to what extent we can make good use of those contributions to enlarge the spectrum of the available explanations that help to narrate religion’s evolution, adding new factors and variables to an already rich panorama. The list of possible candidates is growing. We will focus on only a few: (a) the cultural evolution of religion (b) the development of human coordination; (c) the “super-cooperative” nature of human societies, (d) language and symbolic functions; and (e) the processes of believing. Cultural evolution of religion The book by Laland and Brown Sense and Nonsense (2011 [2002], 2nd ed.) is a good starting point and a qualified guide to a wide view on the different

10  Lluis Oviedo approaches to cultural evolution. The authors distinguish five major programs: human sociobiology, human behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution. Later, the study of Graber (2007) added some nuances to the cultural-evolutionary program, depending on the larger or smaller perspective taken when one observes a cultural process. The field appears divided between those with a more biological approach and those stressing more the culturally specific characteristics. The field is now more similar to a “spectrum” than to a single paradigm, and in many cases, authors plead for some sort of coevolution. The plural panorama is enriched with models trying to integrate different influences and levels in cultural evolution, as exemplified by the previously quoted paper by Andersson and Read (2016). The point is that cultural evolution has moved in some cases toward a prominent position that dares to challenge even standard evolutionary theory, as in the case of Kevin Laland and his colleagues, who even ask whether “evolutionary theory needs a ‘re-think’ ” and suggest an “extended evolutionary framework” including developmental bias, environment-driven plasticity, niche construction and cultural coevolution (Laland et al. 2014). Evolution seems to change its appearance and dynamics when culture is included. This is clearly the case when religious diversification and complexity are under study (Doebeli and Ispolatov 2010). Orlando Patterson (2014) published on the different attempts at explaining how culture relates to aspects of personal and social life. The exposed complexity and the richness that culture entails and its many interactions at different levels prevents a too-easy adoption of that category and invites a more engaged and diversified application to religion as a culture or subculture that evolves specific patterns involving interactions, mutual enforcement and creativity. The development of human coordination Michael Tomasello, for instance, has insisted on how coordination explains humans’ specific evolutionary path. He has analyzed the process that starts from joint attention and moves on toward more complex stages and then to the emergence of rules or norms that regulate common behavior (A Natural History of Human Morality, 2016). Some ideas about how moral evolution proceeds find easy application to religion and its evolution (see Broom, this volume). The lesson is that morality is the result of plural and complex human abilities, and not just straightforward cognitive development or adaptation; religion would fit in the same description. The second useful idea in the study of religion’s evolution is Tomasello’s two-step theory for the emergence of morality: first collaboration, then culture. The starting moment moved at the level of personal interactions and small groups; the second one required greater coordination capacity and the objectification of collective

Introduction 11 and broadly accepted norms. Here too, religion could have evolved along a similar path, from subjective experiences, fears or expectations, to widely shared views and codified doctrines within a cultural framework. The move from the individual or family level to the larger in-group has been decisive in religion’s evolution. That move may have little to do with the development of more prosocial religions. Indeed, many religions were well culturally codified before and after the emergence of social-enhancing versions we now identify around the Axial Age (8th to 3rd century bce). Even if Tomasello (2016, 131 f.) considers religion as an example of helping to enforce rules – a tradition in which Rappaport (1999) and many others can be identified – things could move in a different way. Religious ideas, symbols and rituals could have been in place in earlier times and only later, as a by-product, assisted in such functions or perhaps, even more probably, both, where morality and religion coevolved together. The history of human coordination could be simply a subchapter in the long history of religious beliefs and practices. Indeed, the historical record points rather in that direction. Many religious expressions were just individual or at most family or clan features, and their extension or success gave place to their application to ground or support moral codes or to exert coordination functions. We have to be able to admit that as of this day, the primary driving forces for religion’s evolution are largely unknown. One can’t do controlled scientific experiments on events that occurred ten thousand or more years ago. Then, religious coordination, mostly achieved through ritual activity that we see today in extant hunter-gatherers, does not necessarily entail general coordination, as it is obvious only in certain settings. Nevertheless, such exercises in coordinating rituals could involve a clear evolutionary path, since the religious beliefs that underlie the rituals can expand only to the extent that they involve more practitioners. The past few centuries have seen great advances in communicative technology, from the printing press to the telegraph, telephone, newspaper, television and then computers, most of which are now used as mobile devices. We are now in the information age with social media and cloud computing. All of these new technologies are facilitating human coordination in exponential proportions, including religious coordination. Social media “friends” present competing modern alternatives to co-religious congregants. The super-cooperative nature of post-agricultural human societies Human beings, as compared to our closest living relatives, chimpanzees, are exceptionally cooperative within their in-groups. This has recently led to considering human social organization, at least since the advent of agriculture, to be “loosely” eusocial, along with the “strictly” eusocial insects, such as ants, bees and termites (Nowak and Highfield 2011; Wilson 2012). The mostly agreed-on criteria for loosely defined eusociality include multiple generations living together, the cooperative care of young, the defense of

12  Lluis Oviedo a home locale and a division of labor. For the more strictly defined criteria, the division of labor includes a (sometimes reversible) reproductively suppressed cast. Two chapters in this volume (Feierman and Betzig) use the concept of human eusociality to understand religion’s evolution. Betzig presents evidence of strict human eusociality with a high male reproductive skew, which happened during one stage of our evolution in the Roman Empire around the time of the birth of Christianity. Language and symbolic function Human symbolic language  – expressed through behaviors that produce speech and eventually, in recent times, writing  – belongs to the list of human-specific features. That the evolution of language might run in parallel with the evolution of religion, and even that both coevolved reinforcing each other in some way, as for instance, implementing symbolic capacities (Deacon 1997; Rappaport 1999), should be considered. This thesis is still in its early development, and only a few authors have emphasized it. However, it seems quite plausible to conceive of a historical scenario in which symbolic language and religion coevolved, as symbolic language provides the unavoidable communication means and religion the symbolic content and regulatory enforcement. The relationship between religion and symbolic language or, in Christian biblical terms, between God and the “Word,” is more than just a classical inspiring motive. Religion can indeed even be seen as a “specialized language” and its evolution can be traced back as a dynamic and living communication means that follows many of the same rules as every living language (Oviedo 2015). We can also consider theories about the evolution of rationality to examine the extent to which religion follows similar clues. This is an old thesis that has been around since the Reformation, which found an excellent classical expression in Max Weber’s analysis of the rationalization process and religion. Many other additions have been made, such as the recent book by Roger Wagner and Andrew Briggs, The Penultimate Curiosity (2016), where “curiosity,” giving place to science, follows the path traced by the search for big and final answers, meanings and, more explicitly, religion’s role in all of this. In their approach, the evolution of religion and scientific knowledge are intimately interwoven and nourish each other along a millennia-long history. A further example is provided in the new book by Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber, The Enigma of Reason (2017), where rationality grows as we become better able to spot other people’s mistakes: not as a solitary skill but rather as a mutually correcting activity. This thesis adds new content to the issue of human coordination as a central evolutionary clue and again invites us to think of religion’s evolution in a similar way. As rationality grows through mutually critical assessment and feedback, doctrinal developments in various approaches to religion, through a long history, can be read in the

Introduction 13 same vein, like in the case of prophetic criticism against established religious forms. Indeed, such patterns could be quite easily applied to the evolving reconstruction of religious views in the biblical record and those corresponding to other religions. This model would put some more flesh into the formerly advanced thesis linking rational growth with religion’s evolution. The processes of believing This is a neglected feature among most scholars who study religion and its evolution but one that is recently capturing attention and needs to be included in the various pluralistic approaches to religion’s evolution. Three authors’ chapters in this volume specifically address the processes of believing – Angel, Seitz and Feierman. Briefly, beliefs have a life of their own and are subjected to their own dynamic processes of acquisition, retention, growth, stabilization, activation, decline and extinction. Such dynamics could be applicable to theories of religion’s evolution. However, as in the case of cultural evolution, the studies on beliefs reveal their own set of dynamics involving a complex network of cognitive, emotional, relational and environmental factors. The study of human general beliefs, not just religious ones, has grown in the past few years. At least six models have been proposed to understand their dynamic processes and evolution: the credition or functions model by Angel and Seitz (2016), the stages model by Connors and Halligan (2015), the network model by Castillo and colleagues (2015), the conversion model by Smith (2014, 2016), the dimensions-of-faith model by Donaldson (2015) and a new evolutionary biology model introduced by Feierman, in this volume. These different models offer valuable material for the ongoing research into religion’s evolution. Their common element defends the claim that beliefs should not be dismissed or considered as second-class immaterial, fictive mental items quite far from the certainties of science and empirical data. Just as no one has ever seen a Freudian ego, no one will ever see a belief, if beliefs are considered non-“physical” functional concepts of the human mind, as is traditional in philosophy and psychology. However, placing beliefs in the immaterial mind is not a given. If beliefs are informationladen entities, and if information is always “physical,” beliefs would have to exist in various formats in the actual physical brain, something like engrams are in memory, which eventually would make beliefs and the processes of believing accessible to neuroscience (see Seitz, this volume). The study of beliefs has also been afflicted by some negative biases, since they have often been associated with pathological delusions, as in schizophrenia and mania. There are certainly false religious beliefs (e.g., the earth is only six thousand years old), where the belief-word-prefaced propositions written in antiquity that are associated with the belief are clearly not true. However, as will be seen in many chapters, a belief’s importance can be related to what the belief does, even if what is held to be true is not true. Many (but certainly

14  Lluis Oviedo not all) religious beliefs assist in orienting human life and, once acquired, in making behavioral decisions with better cognitive speed and efficiency. Religion-specific beliefs also bind people of faith together. The Credition Research Project, which is based in Graz, Austria, is one of the most original and mature attempts at better characterizing belief dynamics. It is a functional model that deals more with what beliefs do in the processes of believing than with what beliefs are. The general model of beliefs and the processes of believing are also applicable to other nonreligious realms, such as politics and everyday life (Angel et al. 2017). Now, whether and to what extent beliefs and the processes of believing can be applied to religion’s evolution is still an open question. To begin with, religions contain hierarchically arranged beliefs (i.e., belief systems), and hence, beliefs’ evolution and dynamics would affect the general or broad pattern of religion’s evolution. However, it is convenient to show how beliefs can evolve as independent variables and discover what they do in the active processes of believing and how they interact with other variables previously discussed in this chapter, and they add a new piece to the puzzle’s solution. It would be unfortunate for scholars of religion to ignore beliefs and the processes of believing, because they are difficult to fit them into existing evolutionary or cognitive science of religion paradigms. After all, people of faith are often characterized as believers. The evolution of beliefs, including religious beliefs, might follow some of their own rules. We can call it evolution in a broad sense, but it needs to be wisely integrated into the plural panorama advocated here. In that sense, religious beliefs interact with ritual practices, moral rules and organizational dynamics. The interplay between the individual and the shared beliefs of religious communities is quite complex and has many potential expressions, as do the many ways that beliefs and religious practices interact in religious rituals.

Conclusion We can hope to eventually achieve some kind of consensus on which among various factors or variables intervene in the generation of religion and its evolution. This would already be a great achievement, but it requires a more multidisciplinary approach and more modesty from the individual practitioners in order to recognize the always-incomplete character of one’s own perspective and the need to complement it or connect it with other available paradigms. Perhaps the network model, integrating and harmonizing different approaches, would be more fitting, realistic and respectful of religion’s complexity. We hope that the various chapters in this volume reflect some of this diversity and that one day the various pieces might fit together more completely into a theoretical whole. As in other scientific endeavors, at the periphery, knowledge about the phenomenon seems to be more secure and reliable. But when we approach the core of the phenomenon, things become more intricate, complex and

Introduction 15 intriguing. As Günter Palm states about computational neuroscience, “The further we move away from the periphery into central information processing and true human cognitive abilities, the sparser gets the amount of insight or inspiration we can find in current computational neuroscience” (Palm 2016, 3). This volume’s contribution to the early stages of our quest to gain knowledge about religion’s evolution just scratches the surface of something whose interior is still mysterious and complex.

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16  Lluis Oviedo Laland, K, and G Brown. 2011 [2002]. Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior, 2nd ed. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Laland, K, T Uller, M Feldman, K Sterelny, GB Müller, A  Moczek, E Jablonka, J Odling-Smee, GA Wray, HE Hoekstra, DJ Futuyma, RE Lenski, TFC Mackay, D Schluter and JE Strassmann. 2014. “Does Evolutionary Theory Need a Rethink?” Nature 514: 161–164. Luhmann, N. 1989. “Die Ausdifferenzierung von Religion.” In Gesellschaftsstruktur und Semantik: Studien zur Wissenssoziologie der modernen Gesellschaft. Frankfurt aM: Suhrkamp, 259–357. Malik, K. 2002. Man, Beast and Zombie: What Science Can and Cannot Tell Us about Human Nature. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Martin, D. 2011. The Future of Christianity: Reflections on Violence and Democracy, Religion and Secularization. Farnham, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate. Mercier, H, and D Sperber. 2017. The Enigma of Reason: A New Theory of Human Understanding. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nowak, MA, and R Highfield. 2011. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. New York: Free Press. Oviedo, L. 2015. “Religion as a Language: Exploring Alternative Paths in Conversation with Post-reductionist Anthropologies.” Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science 59 (4): 982–1001. Oviedo, L. 2017. “Recent Scientific Explanations of Religious Beliefs: A Systematic Account.” In Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions, ed. by HF Angel, L Oviedo, RF Paloutzian, ALC Runehov and RJ Seitz. Dordrecht: Springer, 289–318. Palm, G. 2016. “Neural Information Processing in Cognition: We Start to Understand the Orchestra, but Where Is the Conductor?” Frontiers in Computational Neuroscience 10 (3). doi: 10.3389/fncom.2016.00003. Patterson, O. 2014. “Making Sense of Culture.” Annual Reviews of Sociology 40 (1): 1–30. Rappaport, R. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, ACT. 2014. Thinking about Religion: Extending the Cognitive Sciences of Religion. Basingstoke, UK and New York: Palgrave MacMillan. Smith, ACT. 2016. Cognitive Mechanisms of Belief Change. London: Palgrave Macmillan Tallis, R. 2011. Aping Mankind; Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. Durham: Acumen. Tomasello, M. 2016. A Natural History of Human Morality, Cambridge, MA and London, UK: Harvard University Press. Torrey, EF. 2017. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods: Early Humans and the Origins of Religion. New York: Columbia University Press. Turner, JH, A Maryanski, AK Petersen and AW Geertz. 2017. The Emergence and Evolution of Religion: By Means of Natural Selection. New York and Abingdon, UK: Routledge. Wagner, R, and A Briggs. 2016. The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Weber, M. 1993 [1963]. The Sociology of Religion, 2nd ed, E Fischoff, trans. Boston: Beacon Press.

Introduction 17 Whitehouse, H. 2008. “Cognitive Evolution and Religion; Cognition and Religious Evolution.” Issues in Ethnology and Anthropology 3 (3): 35–47. Whitehouse, H. 2013. “Rethinking Proximate Causation and Development in Religious Evolution.” In Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language, and Religion, ed. by PJ Richerson and MH Christiansen, 349–364. Cambridge, MA and London, UK: MIT Press. Whitehouse, H, P François, PE Savage, TE Currie, KC Feeney, E Cioni, R Purcell, RM Ross, J Larson, J Baines, B ter Haar, A Covey and P Turchin. 2019. “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History.” Nature Letters. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1043-4. Wilson, EO. 1998. Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Wilson, EO. 2012. The Social Conquest of the Earth. New York and London: Liveright/W.W. Norton & Company. Wunn, I, and D Grojnowski. 2016. Ancestors, Territoriality, and Death. A Natural History of Religions. New York: Springer.

Part 1

Evolutionary Biology

1 Cultural Evolution, Biology and the Case of Religion Hansjörg Hemminger

Reviewing Recent and Current Research No explanation for the evolution of religion can be regarded as relevant that is not embedded in a concordant explanation of cultural evolution (Bulbulia and colleagues 2013; Richerson and Christiansen 2013). Haidle and colleagues (2015) distinguish between culturalistic and naturalistic views on culture, which should be synthesized. The literature trying to integrate the evolution of culture and the evolution of organisms might be sorted into three categories of study, each of which will be discussed in more detail: 1 Evolutionary biology applied to culture, showing how cultural traits evolve following a pattern similar to biological evolution. They result in adaptationist or selectionist models of cultural evolution, including kinetic theories and theories of group selection. 2 The influence of culture in human evolution, as a form of niche construction that constraints individual and social developments. They lead to dual inheritance accounts and to theories of gene-culture coevolution. 3 The interaction of mind, behavior and culture as an integrated pack, in the sense of embedded cognition, including evolutionary studies of culture without cultural evolution: culture perceived as emerging from cognitive evolution. Evolutionary biology applied to culture A Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) colloquium, introduced by Whiten and colleagues (2017), advocated “the extension of biology through culture.” Feldman (2017) reaffirmed the project, as well as a sweeping manifesto signed by founding members of the Cultural Evolution Society, formed in 2014 (Brewer and colleagues 2017). They regard it as a reenactment of the Modern Synthesis in biology, which synthesized evolution and genetics between about 1918 and 1970. Laland and colleagues (2014) accordingly call for an extended evolutionary framework, including developmental bias, environment-driven plasticity, niche construction and cultural coevolution. The respective model of Brewer and colleagues

22  Hansjörg Hemminger (2017) has been characterized as the kinetic theory of culture, analogous to the kinetic theory of gases (Lewens 2015). Many similar attempts preceded them (Buskes 2015; Kundt 2015). Laland and Brown’s Sense and Nonsense (2011, 2nd ed.) distinguishes different starting points for evolutionary explanations of human nature: sociobiology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary psychology, cultural evolution and gene-culture coevolution. Mesoudi and colleagues (2006) argue that a “unified science of cultural evolution” has to be homologous (common evolutionary origin) with evolutionary biology, from subdiscipline to subdiscipline, from method to method (2006, fig.1). The concept presupposes that the transmission of cultural information across generations has some similarities to genetic transmission and operates through units, similar to units of genetic transmission. Among the many names given to such units, the most popular have been – following Richard Dawkins’ suggestion – memes (Aoki 2001). However, it is widely accepted now that the notion of cultural memes, which are closely analogous (i.e., same function but different evolutionary origin) with genes, is unsatisfactory. Nonetheless, Richerson and Boyd (2005, 14) claim that “natural selection acting on culture is an ultimate cause of human behavior, just as natural selection acting on genes.” Runciman (2005, 1) states that the “fundamental process of heritable variation and competitive selection of information affecting phenotypes (interaction of genes with environments) underlies both biological and cultural evolution despite their obvious differences.” Yet the terms “heritable” and “selection” pose problems. Acerbi and Mesoudi (2015) and Whiten and colleagues (2017) acknowledge that cultural contents are often not copied or randomly changed like genes. They are reconstructed by processes they call guided variation and biased transmission. The authors note that the latter is a Lamarckian (inheritance of acquired characteristics) rather than a Darwinian (evolution by natural selection) process. Nonetheless, they confirm that cultural evolution follows “broadly Darwinian principles.” On the other hand, there is a good deal of skepticism (Fracchia and Lewontin 1999, 2005; Ingold 2007; Read and Lane 2008). Gray and colleagues (2007) point to the need to leave aside memetics (information and culture based on an analogy with Darwinian evolution) and to focus more on phylogenetic (evolutionary history) studies, including new approaches like network construction, reconciliation analysis and Bayesian mixture models. Phylogenesis is the Darwinian biological process by which new lifeforms appear. Abrutyn (2016, 325) finds fault with “the construction of general theories of macro-level evolution” because they lead to models that either ignore or unsatisfactorily handle two facts: Some aspects of sociocultural evolution, arguably, are driven by purposeful, active collective efforts and the processes of selection, at some levels of social reality such as the group or the institutional sphere are driven by non-Darwinian selection forces.

Cultural Evolution, Biology and Religion 23 Gabora suggests models based on an autopoietic process (i.e., a system capable of reproducing and maintaining itself), a form of emergent self-­production or on communal exchange (2008, 2013). See also Sperber (1998), Claidière and André (2012), Claidière et  al. (2014). Turner and colleagues (2017) propose that four types of non-Darwinian selection processes were at work in the evolution of religions. Somewhat surprisingly, the authors still speak of “natural selection,” even though one type of selection pressure stems from consciously perceived “need states and behavioral propensities,” and the actors are, for example, “goal-seeking corporate units” or “social movement organizations.” Indeed, the authors pursue a nonscientific interest by their choice of terminology, “to expand inquiry and yet maintain some continuity with biology” (46). To the contrary, the literature discussed in the next section emphasizes the distinct dynamics of cultural evolution. The influence of culture in human evolution Many studies have stressed the specificity of human evolution, compared with that of our close biological relatives, by highlighting the crucial role that culture played in that process (Janson and Smith 2003; Heyes 2012; Barrett et  al. 2012). Not all other species lack elementary forms of culture. A  recent issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (2017) offers an introductory overview and a collection of 19 articles concerned with cultural phenomena in apes, monkeys and cetaceans (marine mammals), as well as human culture. Oviedo and Feierman (2017) argue that there is little evidence of religion in behavioral performances outside the genus Homo. (For a different perspective, see Broom 2008 and this volume.) The evolution of religion has to be embedded in human, or perhaps hominin, cultural evolution. Its sophistication, the enormous capacity to transmit and replicate cultural information that humans exhibit, renders our culture a uniquely human trait. Some theoretical concepts integrate culture into a broad pattern of multilevel factors or dimensions that influence human evolution. An almost classic example is a book by Jablonka and Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (2005). The title indicates that human evolution has been shaped both by biological factors and cultural ones, the latter depending on a world of symbols. The approach was further developed by Fuentes (2008), who proposed the use of the ecological concept of “niche construction” to account for the inevitable effect of culture on evolutionary processes. Haidle and colleagues (2015) propose a comprehensive three-dimensional model of cultural capacities and performances, which includes an evolutionary-biological dimension, a historic-social dimension and an ontogenetic-individual dimension. Brown and Strawn (2014) offer another holistic and complex model.

24  Hansjörg Hemminger Interaction between behavior, mind and culture The third approach to the topic of culture and its integration in a biological account of the human mind and human behavior concerns the interaction of cultural phenomena with the human mind. It is supported by a cultural scaffolding providing symbols and many auxiliary tools. Another notion is that of the extended mind, pointing to its unavoidable link with external means to fully develop its role. In the past 20  years, a copious body of specialized literature has dealt with these issues. Among the most quoted names are Merlin Donald, Edwin Hutchins, Terrence Deacon, Michael Tomasello, Andy Clark, George Lakoff, Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner. The culturally available symbols obviously evolve with a cognitive architecture adapted to their use and management. In other words, culture progresses as an evolving, abundant and dynamic system of symbols that helps to provide knowledge, meaning and specific skills to individuals. That complex interaction of mind and culture is vital for the explanation of many features of human behavior and its highly contingent character. If one regards the biologically evolved human mind in this manner as the basis of the evolution of culture, it is debatable whether their interaction can still be described as “Darwinian” and what such an analogy could still mean.

Evolutionary Biology and Culture: Basic Considerations An extended evolutionary synthesis? Brewer and colleagues (2017, 1) argue that “The scientific study of culture is currently undergoing a theoretical synthesis comparable to the ongoing synthesis of biological knowledge that began in the twentieth century.” They refer to the classic modern synthesis of evolutionary biology, which is connected with the names of Julian Huxley (1887–1975), Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) and Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900–1975). They emphasize that “Critical to both syntheses is the application of Darwinian evolutionary concepts and methods.” Yet, the present development in biology, which is often regarded as leading toward an extended evolutionary synthesis (EES), is not the result of establishing and asserting Darwinian principles or processes in more and more biological disciplines. It is the result of a much-extended knowledge about the inner workings of the evolving systems. The more the intricacies and subtleties of these systems are known, the less Darwinian principles look like ruling evolution absolutely, although the theory of natural selection specifies universal conditions with which all evolutionary processes have to comply. Its formalism does not exclude but rather includes the non-selective processes influencing a particular evolutionary trajectory:

Cultural Evolution, Biology and Religion 25 •

• •

•

•

•

Innovations and constraints of the process by which an organism develops from the fertilized egg cell (ontogeny) determine new possibilities and no-go zones for its further evolution. They are the subject of evolutionary developmental (evo-devo) biology. Niche construction is an ecological concept developed to consider how organisms actively change their own environment and thus their own evolution. They pass on an ecological heritage, not only a genetic one. The nongenetic plasticity of organisms ensures that the phenotype of a population (the sum of observable characteristics or traits) varies, depending on environmental factors, much more than its genotype (the genetic information that influences the characteristics of the phenotype). Epigenetics effects are environment-driven modifications of genetic information that directly affect the genome (the genetic material of an organism) and that, to a limited degree, can become heritable in humans. Neutral evolution, which was established as a concept decades ago, is much better understood today because of the progress of molecular genetics. Most of the genetic variation between individuals and populations is not caused by natural selection but instead by mutations, which do not affect their reproductive success, and by the random dispersion of these neutral mutations. It has been shown that, under specific conditions, natural selection works not only through the varying reproduction rates of individuals but also through reproductive competition between groups. The concept provides an alternative explanation to kin selection (i.e., nepotism) and other classical selective processes for the evolution of behavioral traits that are “good for the collective,” such as altruistic behavior. The formal conditions of group selection and multilevel selection are discussed by Nowak and Highfield (2011, 21–24, 87–90) and Allen and colleagues (2013).

The innovative components of evolutionary biology listed here by way of example do not suspend the formalism of natural selection, but neither do they expand its explanatory range. Charlesworth and colleagues (2017) in their review paper correctly regard them neither as a revolution nor as a unification of evolutionary theory but rather as a differentiation. The biological species Wunn and Grojnowski (2016) use a key concept of the modern synthesis: the natural, or biological, species. They insist that the various forms of religion are the equivalent of the biological species: they are “religio-species” (30). Consequently, it should be meaningful to classify “culturo-species” accordingly. But their close analogy is misleading. The biological species,

26  Hansjörg Hemminger defined as a reproductive community, exists on two levels: as genotype and as phenotype. The forces of selection act directly on the phenotype and thereby indirectly on the genotype. The vast majority of higher organisms reproduce sexually. They generate specialized, usually haploid (half the number of chromosomes), gametes (egg and sperm cells) genetically distinct from the usually diploid (full complement of chromosomes) parent cell. The gametes recombine to constitute the genome of the next generation. As a consequence, the species, generation after generation, offers a varied range of attributes to the forces of natural selection. When the term “biological evolution” is used in this text, it signifies such a process. The different phenotypical traits, acquired by the interaction of the genotype with different environments, are usually not heritable. The genome of the next generation results from a recombination of the parental genetic information, regardless of the parents’ life history. It is varied by replication errors, some other mutations, possible effects of lateral gene transfer and special epigenetic effects. The species adapts genetically because the corresponding phenotypes contribute an unequal share of their genetic information to the next generation. In addition, there are non-­adaptive processes like neutral evolution, which influence the gene pool. Because the culturospecies is without genotype, its analogy with the biological species seems remote. Every generation of the biological species comes from an elementary start, from a fertilized egg cell (zygote). The culture of the next generation is not produced from any elementary, or condensed, form of itself. The next generation of Christians does not come into being by developing a primeval state of biblical religion (if there ever was one) into Catholicism or Protestantism. In biological terms, there is no difference in the “cultural organism” between a germ line (cells that pass their genes on to the progeny) and a soma line (somatic cells that are not in the germ line). According to Wunn and Grojnowski (2016, 31–32), Gabora (2013, table 2) and Acerbi and Mesoudi (2015), that is why culture adapts by Lamarckian heritability, which means the inheritance of acquired characteristics. That would indeed bypass the cycle of phenotype and genotype. Adaptation by selection, called teleonomic adaptation, would be largely replaced by heritable plasticity (teleological adaptation). “The processes that fuel cultural change are goaldriven, intuitive, strategic, and forward-thinking” (Gabora 2013, 12). If cultural evolution follows such Lamarckian principles, it cannot likewise follow Darwinian principles. So far, no form of Lamarckian evolution has been found in biology other than epigenetic effects, which might for a few generations preserve an acquired modification (Charlesworth et al. 2017). Ecosystems and cultures The genome is a logistic center able to build the adult organism. This is why the natural species requires reproductive isolation to preserve itself.

Cultural Evolution, Biology and Religion 27 The genetic instructions for the ontogeny (development during the lifespan of the individual) are incompatible with those from different species, except from closely related ones. The narratives and practices of culture, which are reproduced in the next generation, do not include the basis of their own reproduction: the brain. Therefore, the cultural unit does not require reproductive isolation and cannot be defined as a sequestered reproductive unity analogous to the biological species. The closest equivalents might be biocenoses (ecological associations). They can be classified in the form of a typology. But as between cultures, the distinctions are somewhat artificial. Both can be regarded either as an integrated entity or as a point selected along some continuum. Regarded as entities, they have a certain historic stability: They propagate, and they evolve in time. But there is no genotype, and changes acquired in time are, as in cultural evolution, simply passed on. There is competition between the components of the association, the species present: New ones might intrude; others might disappear. And there is something like competition in a broad sense between associations. Environmental variables will cause American tall grass prairie to expand at the expense of forests or cause the forests to expand at the expense of the grass. The evolution of the biocenosis is superimposed as a higher system level (meta-level) on the evolution of the many species that make up its parts. Cultural evolution also must be regarded as a meta-level yet superimposed on a different, lower level: on the evolution of human society and the human mind. Genetic and cultural transfer Genes (which are not easily defined as functional units) are transferred as macromolecules. This simple fact is not as trivial as it seems (Portin 2015). Their material nature alone, if nothing else, bestows particularity, stability and discreteness to genes. Cultural contents – that is, mental representations stored in the brain or externally as symbols –might also appear discrete or stable on a snapshot in time. But they are not screened from changes “on the job” like genes are. Ideas, techniques and so on are subjects to be learned and stored, with all the interconnections and mutual influences that those imply. Gabora (2013) argues against Henrich and colleagues (2008) that the way mental representations (e.g., beliefs) are encoded in memory show both their distinct contents, and their contextual, reconstructive nature. They are there, however, not simply because of their adaptive advantage. A pan-­adaptationist or pan-selectionist concept of cultural evolution is even more misplaced than in biology. There might be drift phenomena in culture, though (as there is no genome) no genetic drift. Certainly, many cultural traits, which are there because of various reasons, remain there, as in the genome, because they are not harmful enough to be discarded. They are constrained by the natural environment in which a culture operates, by the structure of the society that upholds it, by functional principles of human cognition and other factors. But within such limits, cultural traits are

28  Hansjörg Hemminger broadly adjustable. In contrast, the evolutionary trajectories of each species, and of higher taxa as well, are far more constrained by their own systemic properties. Ontogeny is “loaded” by phylogeny (evolutionary history). Cultural evolution has a much higher degree of freedom. In biological evolution, there are no “hopeful monsters,” no individual organisms that turn into something else from one generation to the next. (There was a hopeful monsters’ hypothesis in the first half of the 20th century that was based on the idea that major evolutionary transformations occur by macro-­mutations.) But in the history of religions, there are macro-mutations, and there are hopeful monsters. John Smith, who founded the Latter-Day Saints in the late 1820s, combined elements of esotericism, theism, 19th-century evolutionism and even an arcane temple worship he could have known only from literature into not exactly a unity but a successful amalgam. The founding of a new religion by one individual has no counterpart in biology. Social learning Gabora (2013, 5) reaches conclusions similar to those presented so far, by analyzing the algorithmic structure of biological evolution on the basis of John von Neumann’s concept of a self-replicating automaton (SRA). Following John H Holland, she states that: Structures, natural or artificial, that evolve through a selectionist process share three fundamental principles. The first principle is sequestration of inherited information; the self-assembly code is shielded from environmental influence. The second principle is a clear-cut distinction between phenotype, which is subject to acquired change, and genotype, which generally is not. The third principle is that natural selection incorporates not just a means by which inherited variation is passed on, but a means by which variation acquired over a lifetime is discarded. Biological evolution is of the type characterized by these three principles, and cultural evolution is not. What is learned by individuals, or by a group, is obliterated as any other phenotypical modification, except when it is transferred by learning. But this exception is a formidable one. Processes of learning in a social context are common, not only for animals living in stable, individualized groups like monkeys and apes but also for those living in anonymous herds, in family units and so on. Yet humans depend on social learning to a much higher degree than any nonhuman animal. The term “dual inheritance” accounts for this, as does the concept of gene-culture coevolution. Its purport is that genetic traits condition cultural traits, that these in turn effect the further genetic evolution and so on by interconnected feedback circles. There are more than two levels to consider, though. Cultural evolution is itself multilayered and includes several intermeshed feedback loops. It has to be described (at least) as a “techno-social coevolution”

Cultural Evolution, Biology and Religion 29 (Barrett et  al. 2012). The concept of niche construction (Fuentes 2008; ­Kendal et  al. 2011) also elucidates the interaction between culture and genome. It regards culture as both the instrument and the result of an elaborate reconstruction of the natural environment. To maintain that such an evolution follows “broadly Darwinian principles” means to broaden them so much that they sometimes turn into equally broad Lamarckian principles. Why then should anyone choose biological terms at all, which do not apply to cultural phenomena without extensive specifications and reinterpretations? Remarkably, the model of cultural evolution presented by Haidle and colleagues (2015), although it includes an evolutionary-biological dimension, does not resort to “Darwinian” explanations.

Toward Understanding the Multilevel Evolution of Religion Strong emergence as an epistemological principle The evolution of human behavior has to be regarded as a process (or a number of processes) by which a complex, multilayer system adapts, changes and expands, from the prehistoric beginnings of the hominins to known history. Cultural evolution constitutes, from a scientific perspective, the uppermost system level, with religion as a subsystem. Such a complex system, within each layer, develops characteristics that cannot be completely reduced to the characteristic of its parts. The principle is one of strong emergence. It is not self-evident; reductionist views abound in science. Here, they cannot be criticized adequately. That is left to Drossel (2016), Deacon (2011), Gu and colleagues (2009), Clayton (2005), and Laughlin and Pines (2000). The following arguments presuppose that complete reductionism is impossible in an explanation of human evolution. There is nonetheless both upward and downward causation. Culture obviously acts not only on itself but also on the physiology of individuals, on their genetic fitness and on the genetic evolution of a breeding population (a group) maintaining a culture. For example, Blume (2014) collected data from contemporary religious groups showing that under modern conditions, religious people have larger, and more stable, families than secular ones. Kaufmann (2010) offers similar results. Thus, cultural (or religious) evolution, which is not like biological evolution on its own system level, produces “Darwinian” effects on a lower one. Likewise, biological selection processes affect the spread or disappearance of cultural contents. For example, the Amish people (in the United States) grow consistently without missionary activity (Blume 2012). Their strong group commitment might conceivably have a basis in a (probably slightly) different emotional and cognitive mindset, which in turn might have a genetic basis. The twin study of Lewis and Bates (2013) seems to indicate such a possibility. The reproductive success of the Amish would increase the prevalence of such hypothetical “social commitment genes” regionally, but not necessarily over

30  Hansjörg Hemminger many generations or in the human species as a whole. If they exist at all, we do not know if they are generally advantageous for human reproduction, only under specific historical conditions or perhaps only for groups like the Amish, which live as a religious minority among a diverging majority. The latter would mean that selection pressures on these hypothetical genes would, if at all, operate on the level of groups or sequestered breeding populations. Still, a relative or absolute fitness value could formally be ascribed to these genetic alleles (alternative genes at the same genetic locus) as to any others in the human gene pool. But it could not be quantitated. Thus, the concept contributes nothing to the understanding of the evolutionary trajectory of the Amish. If the term “fitness” (the ability to survive to reproductive age, find a mate, and produce offspring) is applied to cultural ideas or practices, its unsuitability is obvious. In the modern synthesis, the concept is part of the formalism that models genetic evolution. Without reinterpretation, it cannot be carried over to the cultural level. For example, the effective vertical transfer of Amish beliefs from generation to generation increases their relative frequency in the society as a whole. These beliefs contribute to their own propagation by stabilizing the boundary to majority beliefs and by supporting the reproductive isolation of the Amish. Yet to speak of a higher fitness of Amish beliefs as compared with the religious or secular beliefs of their contemporary neighbors, would be confusing. On the one hand, within the Amish culture, their religion is functional and is an integral part. On the other hand, their religious ideas are unsuitable for horizontal transfer. The Amish attract few converts, and secular convictions threaten their beliefs much more than vice versa. If one applies the fitness definitions of the modern synthesis, they are neither fit nor unfit. They are – as Gabora suggests (2013) – components of an autopoietic system, one which maintains itself and which usually changes as a whole. Religious evolution as a Darwinian process As a further example, the influential work of Norenzayan will be briefly considered. He states that “Religious beliefs and rituals arose as an evolutionary by-product of ordinary cognitive functions that preceded religion. These cognitive functions gave rise to religious intuitions” (2013, 8). The terms “by-product” and “accidental side effect” (10) imply that these intuitions had no initial fitness effect, and other selection pressures drove the process. But neither Norenzayan nor anybody else is able to refute the alternative, namely that even at the beginning “religious intuitions” provided a fitness advantage for genes associated with them. Also, he pictures the evolution of religions as closely analogous with the biological one. “The iron law of Darwinian evolution” governs it (Norenzayan 2013, 30):“These ever-expanding groups with high social solidarity, high fertility rates that ensure demographic expansion, and a stronger capacity to attract converts,

Cultural Evolution, Biology and Religion 31 grew often at the expense of other groups” (10). The author refers to biological fitness (“high fertility rates”) on the one hand and to the cultural attraction of a religion (“capacity to attract converts”) on the other. Yet the example of the Amish shows that religious beliefs might have important biological and cultural functions, even if they do not attract converts at all. Later, “within-group genetic transmission” (138) is regarded as essential for the evolution of religions. Such theoretically unconnected propositions leave it more or less open which processes on which system level drive religious evolution in general. Accordingly, Kundt (2015) diverges from Norenzayan when he argues that the evolution of religion is not adequately described as a second Darwinian process superimposed on biological evolution. Other analyses from different perspectives (Fracchia and Lewontin 1999, 2005; Gabora 2013; Lewens 2015) agree with Kundt. The “big gods” hypothesis “Big gods” are supernatural beings concerned with the moral behavior of humans. As Purzycki and colleagues (2016, 1) put it, “Cognitive representations of gods as increasingly knowledgeable and punitive, and who sanction violators of interpersonal social norms, foster and sustain the expansion of cooperation, trust and fairness towards co-religionist strangers.” The hypothesis offers a solution to the evolution of cooperation, trust and fairness in larger societies. But it is highly improbable that the rise of belief in “big gods” was based on genetic changes at all. Atkinson and Bourrat (2011) show by a cross-cultural survey that both the (certainly not genetically conditioned) belief in an afterlife and the one in divine punishment influence the cultural attitude toward moral transgressions. The meta-­analysis of Hartberg and colleagues (2014) augments the impression that belief in supernatural enforcement is part of a cultural, not a genetic, solution for the enforcement of prosocial behavior (see Slingerland and colleagues 2013; Norenzayan and colleagues 2015). However, the issue is far from settled, and several voices criticize the association of religion and prosocial behavior (e.g., Oviedo 2016). Other proposals for the adaptive value of religion are equally probable. Rappaport (1999) proposes that religious rituals helped to avoid cheating and lying; Bellah (2011, 268) expounds that religion became a cultural tool that enabled people to criticize and change the society they live in. Blume’s research (2014) suggests that religion, from its beginnings, might have supported confident action and future-oriented, farsighted decisions by providing an encompassing interpretation of everyday life. Gamble and colleagues (2015) think that the evolution of religion started well before the Neolithic revolution, in hordes of hunter-gatherers large enough to turn the maintenance of positive, personal relations into a problem. Wunn and Grojnowski (2016) are certain that religion arose from the territoriality of Mesolithic hordes and from an ever-present existential fear. As Feierman

32  Hansjörg Hemminger (2018) reports, Slone and Van Slyke (2016) argue that the biological theory of sexual selection explains the evolution of religion. Of course, all these deliberations are not mutually exclusive (Oviedo 2017, 5–7). Altogether, a large body of literature deals with supposed functional aspects of religion in the evolution of the hominins, with its possible adaptation value, its fitness advantages and so on. Only some examples have been mentioned here.

Looking for Alternative Paths Three main lines or orientations in the study of culture and its relation to human evolution give rise to three different sets of questions when they are applied to the scientific study of religion: 1 Given that religion has a cultural format  – among other dimensions – how did religions evolve or coevolve? What have been the main mechanisms assisting in that process? 2 Since culture influences human evolution, how did the cultural aspects of religion influence the course of human evolution? 3 Because culture generates meaning for social systems (see Ihm et  al., this volume), how can religion be characterized inside a framework of symbols that are codified to assist in the production of meaning? Some answers are available; others are in the making. Some issues have not been dealt with so far. For instance, the so-called universal religions or postaxial age (8th to 3rd centuries bce) religions obviously entail a sort of leap in religious history. How this development could be fit into an evolutionary framework remains unclear, although Turner and colleagues (2017) and Whitehouse and colleagues (2019) propose possible answers. Altogether, it would be a pity if the study of the evolution of religion remained limited to the first set of questions. There are good reasons for caution when evolutionary biology is applied to the study of religion. Although analogies are legitimate tools in science (Lorenz 1974), it is difficult to distinguish a scientific theory on the basis of an analogy from a simple metaphor.

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2 The Evolutionary Biology of Religion-Specific Beliefs and Interreligious Conflict Jay R Feierman

Introduction and Biological Background Form and function are biology’s ontological dualism. Religious forms are what religious things are. They are in the “physical” ontological realm of mass, energy, force, space, time and information. Religious functions are what religious things do. They are non-“physical” concepts that answer the question, what does this religious form do? Most religious functions are expressed as present participle verbs ending in -ing. This biological dualism is the foundation for the chapter. Religions are composed of a myriad of religion-general and religion-­ specific beliefs. This chapter is concerned only with the forms and functions of religion-specific beliefs. As forms, they can evolve by Darwinian natural selection (Feierman 2009a). This approach is similar to studying the forms and functions of Native American tribal-identifying pottery designs (i.e., religion-specific beliefs) rather than those of clay-fired pottery (i.e., religiongeneral beliefs). Evolution of any kind means slow, incremental change, usually where a form’s effectiveness and efficiency for a particular function is improved. Religious culture, which evolves, is defined as the religious forms or their construction instructions that are passed across (and within) generations by more than just the DNA (sometimes with epigenetic silencing) within human germ cells. Religion-specific beliefs, which contain culturally acquired information, are “physical” because they contain information, which is always “physical” (Landauer 1996). If one accepts religion-specific beliefs as “physical,” their form, function and evolution can be dealt with not much differently from the New Mexico pueblo people’s tribal-specific and tribalidentifying, but otherwise arbitrary, pottery designs. In humans, biological (i.e., genetic) and cultural evolution are not two mutually exclusive kinds. Rather, they have some features and mechanisms in common. They also influence each other and have features that are not shared. They both pass information across generations by human bodies. Gametic DNA does this in biological evolution. More parts of human bodies  – such as brains, muscles, mouths and hands  – do this in cultural

38  Jay R Feierman evolution. Variation, on which natural selection acts, is generated randomly in biological evolution by genetic mutation; and except for chance, “which favors the prepared mind” (Louis Pasteur), in cultural evolution, variation is usually goal oriented (e.g., building a better mouse trap). Selection forces are similar between them. Also, cultural but not biological evolution can pass information-laden forms horizontally within generations. Gene-culture coevolution, also known as dual inheritance theory (Richerson and Christiansen 2013) is about how biological and cultural evolution mutually influence one another. It is an emerging and controversial area of study. Only evolution by Darwinian natural selection can adaptively (i.e., benefits survival and reproductive success) accumulate religion-specific, gene-culture coevolved form variants in the current environment in an in-group breeding population, which is where and how all new religions start. Religion-specific form variants in gene-culture coevolution can also change in frequency by non-selective and not necessarily adaptation-producing processes. Within multilevel (individual and group) natural selection, if a religionspecific gene-culture coevolved form variant contributes to increased survival and reproductive success of a specific religious in-group breeding population that possesses it – irrespective of from what it was made, how it was acquired and whether the form variant can retain relative form constancy across generations – it will be considered an adaptation. That will hold true irrespective of its composition and architecture (if it has one) and even if it had another function before being acquired. When information is an adaptation, it is time, context and often specific-individual dependent. This definition of adaptation, which works well in human gene-culture coevolution, is modified from Williams’s (1966) definition, now putting the emphasis of natural selection on used for rather than made for. For example, humans can use hammers adaptively as weapons. For natural selection to adaptively act on a religion-specific belief, two criteria must be met: (1) At least one of its primary functions (e.g., bias behavior in a probabilistically predictable way) must be in common with its counterparts in other specific religions, and (2) there must be variation in form on at least one selection level (e.g., how the behavior is biased) for the same primary function with its counterparts in other specific religions. With no variability in form for the same primary function across specific religions, natural selection cannot act on religion-specific beliefs, which precludes them from evolving directly by gene-culture coevolution. Religionspecific beliefs that are form variants across specific religions for the same primary function (i.e., “cultural alleles”) can be adaptations or maladaptations or be selection neutral, depending on time, context and possessor(s). In gene-culture coevolution, only forms can be adaptations. Functions, as non-“physical” concepts, only can confer adaptedness on forms whose functions they are. Since gametic DNA codes only for forms, only the forms, not their functions, are transmitted across generations in the genetic code. In gene-culture coevolution, knowledge about what a form can do – that is,

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 39 its function or its construction instructions – is always transmitted across or within generations by using “physical” information through social learning.

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Their Belief-Word-Prefaced Propositions The noun “belief” or the transitive verb “believe” (where the object of the verb’s action would be the constitutive behavior of the believing individual) is defined in philosophy as some variation of “that which is held to be true” because of the way the word is used in discourse when it prefaces propositions, as in “I  have the belief that P.” This chapter does not address the attitudinal perspective on religion-specific beliefs, which is “the belief in.” That which is held to be true is the intellectualist perspective. There are also dispositional and feeling perspectives (Leicester 2008) as well as the evolutionary-biological perspective in this chapter. A religion-specific belief will be defined by what it is (i.e., its form) and what it does (i.e., its function). In a human brain, a religion-specific belief is neuronally instantiated. Its primary function is to bias its constitutive behavior (movement) in a (probabilistically) predictable way during the “physical” processes of believing. Functions have functions, like a child who asks “why?” to every answer given, so a religion-specific belief can have an almost unlimited number of subsequent functions expressed through its constitutive behavior, which includes vocalizing and writing behavior that can generate discourse and religious mythical stories. “A religion-specific belief” can be defined as “a formalized quantity of instructional information, which when instantiated in brain and formatted at a level above that of an individual neuron, which biases (influences) behavior in a (probabilistically) predictable way, where the accompanying behavior could be, if the individual is not being deceptive, constitutive of the religion-specific belief during the processes of believing.” A human religion-specific belief communicates something similar to the intellectualist-philosophical meaning of belief when prefacing propositions in discourse. When a devout Muslim woman expresses the religion-specific belief-word-prefaced proposition “eating pork is haram,” presuming she is not volitionally lying, she will probably not be eating pork. A religion-specific belief-word-prefaced proposition used in discourse that is produced by the constitutive behavior of a religion-specific belief is not liable to moral culpability as lying if through self-deception (Trivers 1976, vi; 2013) the person genuinely believes what they say, even if what they say is absolutely not true, as there is no intent to deliberately deceive (e.g., “the earth is six thousand years old”). This chapter’s evolutionary-biological way of understanding a religionspecific belief has a few similarities with and many differences from how the word “belief” has been used by other authors (e.g., Angel et al. 2017; Coleman et  al. 2018; McGuire 2013; Nilsson 2014; Pinto and Bright

40  Jay R Feierman 2016; Shermer 2011; Szocik and Oviedo 2018). Because the processes of learning are applicable to all vertebrates, a (generic) belief can be defined in such a way that it too would be applicable to all vertebrates, which does not preclude there being human-specific processes of both learning and believing.

Other than absolute truth-conveying functions of religionspecific belief-word-prefaced propositions Religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions that accompany (i.e., are not necessarily constitutive of) religion-specific beliefs have many biological functions other than conveying absolute truth: (1) getting a listener to do what is in the best interest of the speaker, (2) rationalizing past behavior, (3) giving a listener grist for their theory-of-mind mill, (4) allowing someone to talk about what they say they believe, (4) improving one’s higher-order cognitive prowess, (6) comforting oneself through credo consolans (“I believe because it is comforting”), (7) facilitating faster moral decision-making and (8) being an in-group marker for a religion-specific in-group breeding population. Later in the chapter, we will see where a biological approach can take us as we explore biological function 8. Before discussing religious belief’s in-group marking function, religionspecific relative versus absolute truth must be addressed, which is analogous to culture-specific relative versus absolute values and moral codes. Based on what was explained in the “Introduction and Biological Background” part of the chapter, for a religion-specific belief to evolve by gene-culture coevolution by natural selection, (1) it can be only relatively true (i.e., religionspecific) for the same function in other specific religions. (This generates the necessary variation in form for the same function upon which natural selection can act). And (2) it has to be held to be absolutely true by each of the specific religion’s members, creating an unsolvable paradox through self-deception (Trivers 1976, vi; 2013). Consider the following syllogism: (a) a religion-specific belief-word-­ prefaced proposition is either absolutely or relatively true; (b) it is not absolutely true; (c) therefore, it is relatively true. The following five examples are of relative truths in specific religions: 1

When heard by people of other religions or by secularists, many religionspecific belief-word-prefaced propositions in someone else’s religion can seem “crazy” [an exact quote from the chapter’s title] (Irons 2008, 51–60). Yet these seemingly (by majority consensus) “crazy-sounding” propositions for nonmembers, are by members, especially religious fundamentalists, believed to be absolutely true. If the religion-specific belief conflicts with that of other specific religions, an objective investigator has supporting evidence that the primary biological function of religionspecific beliefs is not conveying the absolute truth.

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 41 2 The presence of copying errors during oral transmission of religion-­ specific belief-word-prefaced propositions derived from a specific religion’s creation myth suggest that myths have other than absolute truth-conveying function. Among the Navajo people, between the mid19th and the mid-20th centuries, when their creation myth was finally memorialized by the tribe in English, each generation’s orally transmitted creation myth – as unofficially memorialized by non-Navajos – even though it had changed somewhat in detail, seemed as absolutely true for the Navajo as that of previous generations (Feierman 2014). 3 In the Native American pueblos of what is now called New Mexico, the same Christian religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions were taught to most of the Pueblo people starting in the late 16th century by the Franciscan missionaries. The Christian propositions have coexisted for five hundred years alongside the Pueblo ones. Most of the Christian belief-word-prefaced propositions can’t be made syncretic with the Indigenous ones (Parsons 1939). This suggests that the Christian ones have other than absolute truth-conveying functions. Several Jemez Pueblo members have told this author, “There is no conflict. They are from two different religions,” an example of underappreciated Native American wisdom (Mengelkoch and Nerburn 1993). 4 The 38 different tribes and bands of Athabascan-speaking Indigenous peoples (e.g., Navajo, Apache, etc.) all started in Alaska as one ingroup breeding population before some of them started splitting apart and migrating south between five hundred to several thousand years ago. The differences today in their 38 tribe or band religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions, which are derived from their oncecommon creation myth, suggest they have other than absolute truthconveying functions (Feierman 2014). 5 Corporations often grow through mergers and acquisitions. Religions, with a few rare exceptions, do not. They grow by relatively higher recruitment rates and larger families. Religions then have internal arguments over the absolute truth of particular belief-word-prefaced propositions and split, thereby creating competitive religions with contradictory and mutually exclusive, believed-to-be-absolutely-true, ­religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions. The religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions of the new and old religion cannot both be absolutely true, as that constitutes an unsolvable paradox.

Eusociality (sometimes called ultrasociality) Religion-specific beliefs and belief-word-prefaced propositions, as well as the specific religions in which they are embedded, can evolve by natural selection only when individuals who make up the species are not randomly distributed over space. Eusociality requires the individuals of a species be grouped together or clustered on some basis into numerous smaller in-group

42  Jay R Feierman breeding populations with borders that only under certain circumstances can be penetrable. This relative reproductive isolation creates “structure.” After all, “Where there’s life, there are lumps, clumps and colonies . . . all real populations have some structure.  .  .  . could there be structures that make [in-group breeding populations’] cooperation triumph over defectors?” (Nowak and Highfield 2011, 69–70). Religion, which is a social institution, is such a structure. Only 1 percent of all currently living animal species are eusocial. Most are social insects. All eusocial species are the most biologically successful animal species on earth. They are all only similar by analogy (same function but different evolutionary origin), which can be a source of knowledge (Lorenz (1974). Of the forty thousand vertebrate species, only three (0.0075 percent) are eusocial. Human beings, if eusociality includes loosely defined eusociality, are one of the three (Wilson 2012). The other two are rather “odd” but interesting (Bennett and Faulks 2000). Only one of the three has religion and speech. Since speech generates religion-specific beliefword-prefaced propositions, the relationship among human religion, speech and eusociality is important. The mostly agreed-on loosely defined criteria for eusociality require multiple generations living together, the cooperative care of young, the defense of a home locale and a division of labor. For the more strictly defined criteria, the division of labor includes a (sometimes reversible) reproductively suppressed cast in either sex, producing what is called reproductive skew (Hager and Jones 2009). In eusocial species, (almost) all members act as though they put the welfare and survival of their in-group breeding population (how all religions start) above that of themselves. The word “(almost)” refers to the rare exceptions: non-eusocial human psychopaths and sociopaths (Kielh 2014). Eusociality is a quantitative dimension of sociality with lots of intermediate species. Today, human beings in the industrialized, educated, wealthy democracies easily meet the loosely defined criteria (Nowak and Highfield 2011; Wilson 2012). Religious celibates, homosexuals, transsexuals, asexuals, post-menopausal grandmothers, and the 20 to 30% of mostly secularized, educated, middle-age women in many of these nations who have never had a child (irrespective of their self-reported reasons why), can all be considered reproductively suppressed by analogous mechanisms. They are all harbingers of an evolving, non-reproductive “worker caste” in our species. Comparison of genetic variation on the X (female) and Y (male) chromosomes throughout most of human history (which means mostly hunter-­ gatherer history) shows that about two to three women reproduced for every man who reproduced, with some temporal and geographic variation (Lippold et al. 2014). However, just after the advent of agriculture (about eight thousand years ago) in out-of-Africa human populations and also with some geographic variation, DNA studies show a genetic bottleneck, the interpretation of which is that for every 17 women who reproduced, only

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 43 one man reproduced (Karmin et al. 2015). In many ancient ­civilizations – e.g., the Roman Empire, the Near East, Egypt, India and China – the reproductive skew was so high for males that human beings came close to being a strict eusocial species (Betzig, this volume). Socially imposed monogamy, starting around the time of Christ in the Judeo-Christian world, slowly started lowering male reproductive skew over the centuries, where high skew means a relatively small number of individuals (of either sex) are breeders in a population (Hager and Jones 2009). Today, male reproductive skew is still relatively higher in polygynous societies, such as in the Islamic world, and in many tribal societies. All human societies are not equally eusocial. There is more division of labor in advanced technological societies than in hunter-gather bands or tribal societies. Supporting religion’s relationship to human eusociality (Feierman 2016a), shamans were one of the first within-gender specialists in hunter-gather and tribal societies (Sanderson 2018; Winkelman 2013). There are two different (and academically contentious) bookkeeping methods to account for how eusociality can evolve: kin selection (nepotism) and multilevel (group and individual) selection (Wilson 2016). This chapter uses the latter.

In-groups and out-groups Eusociality requires that there be in-groups and out-groups as well as ingroup favoritism, which started as nepotism, then became tribalism and today is nationalism. Individuals in any eusocial society must be able to recognize one another, if not as individuals then at least as members of their in-group breeding population. Think of large armies with their ingroup marking, nation-identifying uniforms. All eusocial species have ingroup markers. Eusocial ants use pheromones. Eusocial humans use facial features, language, non-foreign accent, dialect, clothing, hairstyle, jewelry, customs, rituals, religion-specific beliefs, prayer postures (Feierman 2009b) and other things. Biologically arbitrary symbolic markers, such as religionspecific beliefs, can evolve as in-group markers through their functional facilitation of in-group favoritism (Efferson et al. 2008).

The human paralimbic system, eusociality and psychopathy and sociopathy Behavioral, cognitive and affective changes associated with acquired lesions in various parts of the human brain’s paralimbic system appear to mimic aspects of psychopathy and sociopathy, a human phenotype (interaction of genes and environment) that is incompatible with eusociality. Psychopaths and sociopaths always put themselves first. True psychopaths and sociopaths, who account for a few percent of all human populations (Kiehl 2006; 2014), do not have observable neuropathology to date (with our current

44  Jay R Feierman technology) in their paralimbic system. They are thought to be evolved, frequency-dependent, uncooperative defectors who are prone to immoral, volitional deception (Harpending and Sobus 1987; Mealey 1995). They can evolve only by natural selection when the phenotype is rare, which is what “frequency dependent” means. Psychopathy and sociopathy (Hare 2003) are related to antisocial personality disorder (DSM-V 2014), which adds unlawful behavior. Through reverse engineering, the human paralimbic system, when functioning normally and not showing the dysfunctional features associated with psychopathy and sociopathy, is a good candidate, in a broad sense, for being one of the parts of the human brain that are associated with eusocial-facilitating in-group-­favoring, cooperative, altruistic, love-your-neighbor behaviors (Feierman 2018). The paralimbic system includes the orbital frontal cortex, insula, anterior and posterior cingulate, amygdala, parahippocampal gyrus and anterior superior temporal gyrus. As reviewed in more detail in Kiehl (2006), lesions in the human orbital frontal cortex and adjacent regions have been associated with impulsivity, irresponsibility, stimulation-seeking behavior, lack of empathy, superficial charm, pathological lying and grandiosity. Lesions in the human anterior cingulate have been associated with problems of pain perception, affect regulation, response conflict, emotional unconcern, hostility, irresponsibility, disagreeableness, perseveration, difficulty in affective face and voice identification, error monitoring and response inhibition. Lesions in the temporal lobe are often difficult to separate from damage to tracts passing through to the amygdala, which is involved in emotions, especially fear, and extracting emotional salience from linguistic stimuli and processing distress cues. On functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans, psychopaths and sociopaths do not show the normal pattern of differentiation between affective and neutral stimuli in parts of the paralimbic system (Kiehl et al. 2001). Apart from the paralimbic system, event-related potential (ERP) differences the fronto-central part of the brain to specific stimuli have been interpreted by Kiehl (2006) as an electrophysiological “signature” of psychopaths and sociopaths.

How beliefs (in general) could have evolved When beliefs evolved by natural selection in the earliest vertebrates hundreds of millions of years ago, the adaptation-collecting positive selection pressures would have been on the beliefs themselves. The beliefs would be the biological conceptualized (see the earlier definition of religion-specific beliefs) rather than the intellectualist and philosophical human conceptualized of “that which is held to be true.” Beliefs in the earliest vertebrates would include their constitutive, species-universal-in-form fixed (or coordinated or modal) action pattern behaviors in response to species-familiar, specific environmental “releasing stimuli.”

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 45 The beliefs of the earliest vertebrates are another way of characterizing “instincts” (Tinbergen 1951), as in the following example of the amphibious toad (Ewert 1980). The toad’s behavior can be interpreted as though it believes that a small, moving, fly-sized object on a leaf (or a computer screen) in front of it is edible food. In what can be interpreted as the processes of believing, it orients toward the fly-like object and then flicks its tongue to retrieve the object. The neural machinery used in what can be interpreted as these processes of believing in the toad is similar only by analogy (Lorenz 1974) to the neural machinery used in human religion-specific believing processes. The processes of believing, where heritable belief-constitutive behaviors were biased in a probabilistically predictable way in response to species-familiar environmental releasing stimuli, removed the need for each species to evolve metabolically costly decision-making neural structures for each decisional instance. In humans, where things are more complex, beliefs, often acquired culturally by social learning, can turn slow contemplative thinking – which monopolizes valuable energy, time and attention – into faster, more impulsive thinking when needed (Kahneman 2011).

How religion-specific beliefs could have evolved Apart from our original kinship ties, in-group favoritism (a part of tribalism) first appears developmentally in children at around age five (Plötner et al. 2015) and is influenced by gene-culture coevolved factors (Lewis and Bates 2017). Religion-specific mythical stories and beliefs, when repeated through vocal discourse in collective religion-specific rhythmic rituals, are thought to be associated with endorphin-mediated (Dunbar 2017) and ­oxytocin-mediated, (Bartz et al. 2011) primitive primate “troop-bonding” (i.e., tribalism) emotions to which adolescents are developmentally vulnerable (Alcorta and Sosis 2005). Specific spoken or written religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions signal in-group identity, which is also signaled by religion-specific ritual behaviors (Rappaport 1999). Belonging to an in-group, which, again for emphasis, stems from tribalism, is essential for survival. As a result, religion-specific belief-word-prefaced propositions, once acquired, are ­ resistant to being changed by outside forces. Religious fundamentalists in all the Abrahamic faiths defend their religion’s putative absolute truths with the same passion that combat war veterans show when defending the honor of their nation’s flag. Religion-specific spoken or written words, such as [I believe] “Jesus died for our sins,” are acquired by conformity and prestige bias in the context of social networking (Stark 2007). Religion-specific beliefs appear to be maintained by the strong emotional need to belong to, or at least not be rejected from, a social in-group breeding population (Lin et al. 2018).

46  Jay R Feierman

The religious arms race Among religious fundamentalists in all three of the major Abrahamic faiths, it is a strongly stated belief that their religion is winning (longevity or current membership or current growth rate) by being the guardian and purveyor of the most absolute religious truths, even though a few of the putative “absolute truths” are shared across sects, branches, denominations and even religions. This impossibility has to be the result of a self-deceptive cognitive illusion, similar the Muller-Lyer optical illusion where someone believes that one of two parallel lines of the same length to be longer (i.e., “truer”) or like the 90 percent of university professors who believe that they are better than average teachers. Geography accounts for most of the variance in what attracts someone to a specific religion. If a Christian fundamentalist takes the position that “winning” is based on the most absolute truths, they will have to concede that there could be more absolute truths in Islam than in Christianity. Pew Research Center data (2015, 2017) have shown that Islam, although currently a few percentage points lower in total worldwide members than Christianity, is the fastest-growing doctrinal religion in the world today and is expected to exceed Christianity in total members over the next few decades. Members of any specific religion could argue that that “winning” is achieved by attracting members to their religion, where they will have a better quality of life, more peaceful relations and greater personal development. Irrespective of what mechanisms members say attract people not born into their religion to join it, “winning” is also aided by higher procreation rates among existing members. For a good discussion of how a specific religion achieves measurable means for “winning,” see Stark (2007). Among the three major Abrahamic faiths at the present time, Judaism (at only 0.2 percent of the world’s population but 41 percent of the Nobel Prizes in economics, 28 percent of those in medicine and 26 percent of those in physics) wins on longevity and relative cultural contributions, Christianity on current members and Islam on the current relative rate of growth. They can all believe they are winners onto themselves, at least for now.

Religious, population-separating mechanisms Gene-culture coevolution generated variation in functionally similar ­religion-specific forms within the entire world human population allows natural selection to facilitate the evolution of discriminate sociality that can be modeled to simulate the spread of culturally transmitted traits (Ihara 2011). Although there have been exceptions in various historical times for men, as in diasporas and especially for warriors, the discriminate-maintaining barriers to gene flow between specific religions (i.e., “marry within the faith”), especially for women, cluster humans into separated in-group

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 47 breeding populations. They can be breached only through strong emotion (e.g., fear or love), primarily associated with the need to belong, or at least not be left out of, an in-group breeding population, one’s religion or tribe. Religious density (religions/area) increases in parts of the world in which having the population more structured would be adaptive, given that the most religion-dense areas of the world have the most contagious diseases (Fincher and Thornhill 2008). This finding supports that one of the ultimate evolutionary-biological functions of all religion-specific forms (including beliefs) was structuring human breeding populations. Population structuring by religion not only applied to pre–Axial Age (8th to 3rd century bce) tribal religions. It allowed Jews to have much fewer plague deaths than Christians in 14th-century Europe.

The maintenance of the unsolvable paradox EO Wilson’s (1978, 171) famous aphorism, “Men, it appears, would rather believe than know,” applies to the biological evolution of religionspecific beliefs. See also Brockman (2006). The unsolvable paradox of conflicting and mutually exclusive putative absolute truths across specific religions, which generates the variation in form for the same function and on which natural selection acts, is routinely maintained by religious fundamentalists. The author could not find evidence in the traditional, denominationaffiliated theology literature of using an alternative to the unsolvable paradox by simply changing absolute truth to relative truth. If it were adaptive within multilevel selection for a specific religion to do this, it would be common, which it is not. Only two modern religions known to the author have accepted the beliefs of other religions and also lowered the interreligious gene flow barrier – Bahá’í and Unitarian-Universalists (also a rare exception to “religions don’t grow by merging,” which they did in 1961). Denomination-affiliated theologians can be cordial and conciliatory among themselves out of necessity, given that they know what other religions believe. They can each talk about the “conditional truth status” in their respective religion (Lluis Oviedo, personal communication) while thinking to themselves that their religion’s conditional truths are more likely to be absolutely true. A  religious leader can preach using an unqualified truth, “We are convinced of the truth [absolute or relative not specified] and try to be faithful to it, respecting other faiths” (Lluis Oviedo, personal communication). Or, theologians can use non-universally agreed-on (across religions) definitions of “truth” (Depoortere et  al. 2012). None of these tactics really resolve the unsolvable paradox or change assortative mating by religion or “marrying within the faith,” which is how religion structures populations and facilitates human eusociality. The mundane copying of non-reproductive-related behaviors from other people’s religions, such as Christians practicing yoga or Jews giving

48  Jay R Feierman Christmas presents, makes no more of a difference biologically to the evolution of religion-specific beliefs than when a Christian European eats lunch in a Buddhist Chinese restaurant.

The double-edged sword As a general biological principle, when resources are limited, in-group breeding populations of the same species with limited gene flow between them, which is a good characterization of different religions, compete for resources. If a specific in-group breeding population/religion (e.g., Islam) is successful in relative growth today, the religion-specific in-group markers (e.g., “Muhammad is the messenger of Allah”) will increase through geneculture coevolution by natural selection in our species, which is occurring. In the wealthy, well-educated, industrialized democracies, Judaism and Christianity are losing members north of the equator and in Australia and New Zealand, primarily through smaller family sizes and secularization, and among non-Orthodox Jews, primarily through high rates of interfaith marriage. Yet these two religions, plus Islam, through the facilitation of biologically adaptive, in-group-favoring human eusociality (Feierman 2016a), have contributed in a positive way to us as being the exceptional species we are today. But for some, eusociality has come at a terrible cost, given that to have winners, there must also be losers. Religion, as social institutions, has always been a double-edged sword with the good – charity, cooperation, altruism and credo consolans – occurring within specific religions and the potentially bad – the Holocaust and other religious/ethnic cleansings, warfare and terrorism – occurring between them. We cannot salvage the good parts of religion until, using an iceberg metaphor, we understand more about what has necessarily been self-­ deceptively hidden from all of us under the water. Interreligious conflict is dangerously dividing our current world, which some historians have even called the beginning of World War III. In the process of understanding the evolutionary biology of religion-specific beliefs, this chapter has indirectly given some evolutionary biology–based insights into how and why interreligious conflict is being maintained. From a purely evolutionary biology perspective, the solution for reducing interreligious conflict is simple. We need to expand our sense of the tribal in-group (Kazen 2018). That can be done only if we (literally) make love, not war. The heart can be stronger than the sword.

Discussion One criticism of the chapter could be that cultural variations in religionspecific beliefs are “guided” by sentient beings and not randomly produced like genetic mutations, making the cultural variations more Lamarkian (inheritance of acquired characteristics) than Darwinian (evolved by natural

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 49 selection). Irrespective of how the variations are produced (whether they are “guided” or random), the powerful effect of directional natural selection makes almost moot the manner in which the variation is generated. This is especially true if the “guided” variations, most of which are derived from religious mythical stories, are arbitrary, given that what they do trumps what they are. Another criticism could be that cultural forms of religion-specific beliefs do not have the genetic equivalents of genotypes and phenotypes (interaction of genotypes with specific environments). However, the construction instructions for phenotypic religious forms (e.g., how to say the Roman Catholic Mass) can be analogous to genotypes. For the criticism that “cultural contents,” like the semantic contents of a religion-specific belief-word-prefaced proposition, are not screened from changes “on the job” like genes, I suggest seeing if there is any screening process that occurs when one says, “I believe Jesus is the Son of God” in front of a mosque in Saudi Arabia. To the criticism that there might be drift phenomena in culture, though (as there is no genome) no genetic drift, I counter by arguing that random errors in the culturally acquired instructions for how to tell orally transmitted religious myths or perform a religious ritual are culturally analogous to the genetic drift of the genome. To the criticism that cultural selection of religion-specific beliefs does not involve sequestration of inherited information, distinction between phenotypes and genotypes, one simply need look at religion-specific differences in what has evolved through selection (e.g., female priests and bishops). To the criticism that natural selection is also a means by which religionspecific variation acquired over a lifetime is discarded does not apply to religious cultural transmission, one need only look at how many Roman Catholics today ignore and don’t teach to their children much of what is in Papal Encyclicals (e.g., Humanae Vitae). There is no need to defend the lack of mention of religious forms emerging from cognitive evolution rather than by gene-culture coevolution by natural selection of the “physical” religious forms themselves. Cognitive evolution as a cause of religious evolution was never considered in this chapter. It is currently a well-respected and subscribed competing paradigm in the Kuhnian sense for religion’s evolution.

Summary From an evolutionary biology perspective, a “physical” religion-specific belief can evolve by natural selection by being, among other things, an ingroup marker for a human breeding population, which is how all specific religions start. A religion-specific belief in a eusocial human breeding population is analogous to a pheromone in a eusocial ant colony. They both function as in-group markers.

50  Jay R Feierman For a religion-specific belief to be effective as an in-group marker that maintains the clustering of religion-specific in-group breeding populations, it has to have at least one function in common and be incompatible and mutually exclusive in form for that function with its counterparts in other specific religions. Variation is required for natural selection to act, and this chapter discussed how this is accomplished. Given what is known about the differences in the human paralimbic system between most of us and the few percent of all human populations who are non-eusocial psychopaths and sociopaths, the “anatomical location not yet specified” a few years ago (Feierman 2016b) that facilitates our eusociality can be better specified as most likely coming from our brain’s widely distributed paralimbic system. When functioning well, it has contributed to making us the in-group-favoring, exceptional eusocial species that we are, albeit at a cost – so exceptional that 2,500 years ago, the ancient Israelites believed that we were “made in the image of God” (Genesis 1:26–27). Perhaps we are (Feierman 2012). And if we are (Feierman 2018), we can try to influence where we go from here.

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52  Jay R Feierman on the Mount (Studies in Ancient Religion and Culture), ed. by P Luomanmen, R Roitto and C Shantz. Sheffield, UK: Equinox. Pre-print Accessible at www.aca demia.edu/34899880/Altruism_and_Prosocial_Ideals_in_the_Sermon_Between_ Human_Nature_and_Divine_Potential. Kiehl, KA. 2006. “A Cognitive Neuroscience Perspective on Psychopathy: Evidence for Paralimbic Dysfunction.” Psychiatry Research 142 (2–3): 107–128. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2005.09.013. Kiehl, KA. 2014. The Psychopathic Whisperer: The Science of Those without Conscience. New York: Crown Publishers. Kiehl, KA, AM Smith, RD Hare, BB Forster and PF Liddle. 2001. “Limbic Abnormalities in Affective Processing by Criminal Psychopaths as Revealed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging.” Biological Psychiatry 50: 677–685. Landauer, R. 1996. “The Physical Nature of Information.” Physics Letters A 217 (4–5): 188–193. Leicester, J. 2008. “The Nature and Purpose of Belief.” Journal of Mind and Behavior 29 (3): 217–237. Accessible at http://222.jstor.org/stable/43854216. Lewis, GJ, and TC Bates. 2017. “The Temporal Stability of In-Group Favoritism Is Mostly Attributed to Genetic Factors.” Social Psychological and Personality Science 1–7. doi: 10.1177/1948550617699250. Lin, LC, Y Qu and EH Telzer. (2018). “Intergroup Social Influence on Emotion Processing in the Brain.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 201802111. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1802111115. Lippold, S, H Xu, A Ko, M Li, G Renaud, A Butthof, R Schröder and M Stoneking. 2014. “Human Paternal and Maternal Demographic Histories: Insights from High-Resolution Y Chromosome and mtDNA Sequences.” 5 (13). doi: 10.1186/ 2041-2223-5-13. Lorenz, K. 1974. “Analogy as a Source of Knowledge.” Science 185 (4147): 229–234. doi: 10.1126/science.185.4147.229. McGuire, M. 2013. Believing: The Neuroscience of Fantasies, Fears, and Convictions. Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books. Mealey, L. 1995. “The Sociobiology of Sociopathy: An Integrated Evolutionary Model.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 18: 523–541. Mengelkoch, L, and K Nerburn, eds. 1993. Native American Wisdom. Novato, CA: New World Library. Nilsson, NJ. 2014. Understanding Beliefs. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Nowak, MA, and R Highfield. 2011. SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. New York: Free Press. Parsons, EC. 1939. Pueblo Indian Religion, Vols. I and II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Pew Research Center. 2015. The Future of the World’s Religions: Population Growth Projections 2010–2050. Accessible at www.pewforum.org/2015/04/02/ religious-projections-2010-2050/. Pew Research Center. 2017. The Changing Global Religious Landscape. Accessible at http://assets.pewresearch.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/11/2017/04/07092755/ FULL-REPORT-WITH-APPENDIXES-A-AND-B-APRIL-3.pdf. Pinto, AA, and P Bright. 2016. “The Biology of Religious Beliefs.” Current Ethology 15 (1): 1–25. Accessible at www.researchgate.net/publication/321385678_ The_biology_of_religious_belief.

Religion-Specific Beliefs and Conflict 53 Plötner, M, H Over, M Carpenter and M Tomasello. 2015. “The Effects of Collaboration and Minimal-Group Membership on Children’s Prosocial Behavior, Liking, Affiliation, and Trust.” Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 139: 161–174. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2015.05.008. Rappaport, RA. 1999. Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge. Cambridge University Press. Richerson, PJ, and MH Christiansen, eds. 2013. Cultural Evolution, Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Sanderson, SK. 2018. Religious Evolution and the Axial Age: From Shamans to Priests to Prophets. New York: Bloomsbury. Shermer, M. 2011. The Believing Brain. New York: Times Books/Henry Holt and Company. Stark, R. 2007. Discovering God: The Origins of the Great Religions and the Evolution of Belief. New York: HarperOne. Szocik, K, and L Oviedo. 2018. “The Acquisition and Function of Religious Beliefs: A Review and Synthesis of Proximate and Ultimate Perspectives.” Theology and Science 16 (4): 520–538. doi: 10.1080/14746700.2018.1525230. Tinbergen, N. 1951. The Study of Instinct. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Trivers, R. 2013. Deceit and Self-Deception: Fooling Yourself to Better Fool Others. New York: Penguin/Random House. Trivers, RL. (1976). Foreword. In The Selfish Gene, R Dawkins, p. v–vii. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Williams, G. 1966. Adaptation and Natural Selection: A Critique of Some Current Evolutionary Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Wilson, DS. 2016. Does Altruism Exist? Culture, Genes, and the Welfare of Others. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. Wilson, EO. 1978. On Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Wilson, EO. 2012. The Social Conquest of the Earth. New York and London: Liveright/W.W. Norton & Company. Winkelman, M. 2013. “Shamanism in Cross-Cultural Perspective.” International Journal of Transpersonal Studies 31 (2): 47–62.

3 Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality Daniel Cohen

Introduction This chapter argues that certain neurophysiological mechanisms of human sexuality may have provided a foundation for the evolutionary development of the human capacity for potent experiences of spiritual transcendence, an idea that has been proposed before (Newberg et al. 2001). In this chapter, I develop this idea more specifically, arguing for a possible connection between the neurophysiological mechanisms of orgasm and the capacity for experiences of spiritual transcendence. Notably, others have argued that female orgasm in particular is simply an evolutionary by-product and just a matter of shared ontology between females and males, similar to nipples on mammalian males. However, more recent research is showing that this interpretation should be reconsidered, at least in humans, for reasons related directly to sexual bonding and mating (Puts et al. 2012). Mating is essential in all sexually reproducing species for evolutionary survival. This chapter proposes that certain aspects of the neural architecture that enables humans to experience orgasms also created the capacity for profound experiences of spiritual transcendence as a secondary (i.e., by-product) adaptation, called an exaptation. These transcendent experiences are connected, at least in part, to the temporary eradication or loss of certain aspects of the neuropsychologically mediated sense of self. This loss of self led to the capacity for spiritual transcendence. It may have provided some of the important foundations for the development of religion. Potent experiences of spiritual transcendence may include a sensation of unity with nature, the feeling of a special connection with the cosmos, an awareness of divine or higher powers or the perception of God (Hick 2004). To explicate the connection between orgasm and spirituality, which I  acknowledge as a delicate topic, I  will explore data on the neurophysiological and neurobiological aspects of human sexuality; in the final section of the chapter, I will propose that the evolution of human sexuality not only could have facilitated the development of human spirituality via transcendent experiences but more broadly may have been an important factor in the development of human systems of religion.

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 55

The Autonomic Nervous System and Finding a Sexual Partner Animal sexuality involves appetitive and consummatory sequences that are identifiable separately in neuroscience research (Porges 1998). In other words, related but different neuropsychic, neurophysiological, and physiological processes occur in sexual behaviors, including the processes of mate attraction, the potential for physical bonding between sexual partners, sexual arousal and intensified sexual activity, and orgasm (at least for males). In attracting a sexual mating partner, the first concern for any individual is to stay alive. However, often in courting activities, individual self-­ protective behaviors must be relaxed for sexual contact to occur. The sympathetic aspect of the autonomic nervous system is in play here, and fear or fright may lead to overt aggression or a hearty retreat (i.e., the fight or flight response). One must overcome the cautious default of self-protective behaviors to enable physical and social contact (see Karos 2009, 159–160). But letting one’s guard down is potentially dangerous, revealing the tension between individual survival and the evolutionary requirement to perpetuate the breeding population. For mating to occur, an important set of neurophysiological mechanisms need to be and are operating, in particular the dorsal and the ventral vagal complexes of the parasympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system. According to the polyvagal theory posited by Porges, these neural complexes are two functionally distinct branches of the vagus (tenth) cranial nerve. Importantly, these two components of the vagal neurophysiological complex operate separately. The dorsal vagal complex is phylogenetically much older (Porges 1997) and comprises a more primitive unmyelinated (i.e., slower) system of nerves that foster digestion and respond to threats by reducing cardiac output, eliciting behaviors associated with immobilization, which can include feigning death. However, at any moment, the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system can rapidly inhibit the dorsal vagal system, allowing an organism to engage fight or flight behaviors. The ventral portion of the vagal complex is phylogenetically more recent and myelinated (i.e., faster) and is unique to mammals. Without having to engage the sympathetic-adrenal system, the ventral vagus complex can facilitate rapid mobilization (fight/flight responses) in times of stress with much less biological cost then a full autonomic nervous system response. This is why Porges (1998) divides the vagal-parasympathetic nervous system into two separate components, both structurally and functionally. The phylogenetically newer ventral vagal complex provides a more complex neurophysiological basis for mammalian courting behaviors, signaling availability and facilitating proximity with a potential sexual partner. According to Karo (2009), despite the need for self-protective responses, transcending such default states may be related to the evolutionary underpinnings for orgasm (not simply ejaculation) and mystical states of consciousness.

56  Daniel Cohen

Sexual Arousal and Orgasm in Humans Sexual arousal shows both similarities and differences in men and women, neurophysiologically. According to Georgiadis and colleagues (2009), with genital tactile stimulation, both men and women show deactivation in the right amygdala and left fusiform gyrus, suggesting that fear and aggression responses of the autonomic nervous system are lowered; word and facial recognition is reduced as well. During sexual arousal, women showed greater activity in the left fronto-parietal and posterior parietal cortex, indicating significant motor and somatosensory input. Men showed stronger responses in the left claustrum and ventral occipito-temporal areas, perhaps to better integrate different modalities (which may reflect a form of increased male sensitivity to the physical needs of their sexual partner). Amygdala deactivation in both sexes is likely important in lowering fear and heightening trust in one’s partner, but research is not consistent here, in that some studies have shown increases rather than decreases in amygdala activity during sexual arousal (Stoleru et al. 2012). As Stoleru and colleagues suggest, this may be related to the different roles of the amygdala in how it responds to emotional reactions versus reward processing, including sex, food and drug incentives. Based on a variety of studies (see Suffren et  al. 2011 for references), autonomic discrepancies during sex may be reconcilable as it appears that the amygdalae may be involved in both sexual arousal and sexual release (orgasm) but that its roles in these different aspects of sexuality are lateralized, involving opposite brain hemispheres and variant timings of activation or inactivation. Interestingly, varying deactivations of the amygdala have been reported during genital/tactile stimulation, relative to the no-sex resting state, but they show no further deactivation during orgasm in either women or men (Georgiadis et al. 2009). Relevant here are the strong neurophysiological similarities reported for both sexes during orgasm, in contrast to what occurs in the phases of sexual and genital stimulation that precede orgasm. During orgasm, both sexes show a profound deactivation of the anterior orbitofrontal cortex (Georgiadis et  al. 2009), turning off decision-making processes, which may help lead to immersion in the experience of orgasm. Notably, lesions to this part of the brain are known to promote disinhibited behaviors (preceded by poor decision-making) and hyper-sexuality. The strong similarities among neurophysiological responses seen in women and men during orgasm (than occurs in sexual arousal) fit well with older sexological research, which showed that the written orgasm experiences of men and women were difficult to segregate when reviewed by gynecologists, medical students and psychologists (Vance and Wagner 1976). In other words, male and female descriptions of orgasm were found to be nearly indistinguishable (except for references to dimorphic sexual structures, such as genitalia).

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 57

Electroencephalogram and Orgasm An early electroencephalogram (EEG) study by Cohen and colleagues (1976) on self-stimulated orgasms found that both men and women exhibited a strong visible change in brainwave amplitudes that was lateralized. During orgasm, left parietal brainwave activity remained unchanged and was similar to baseline measurements – that is, alpha wave or relaxation mode with full awareness. In contrast, in both men and women, right parietal brainwaves showed a substantial jump in amplitudes at orgasm going from baseline alpha waves to delta waves typically associated with slow-wave sleep, but these conditions do not preclude awareness of what one is feeling. This rapid change in brainwave amplitudes during orgasm was seen in the right parietal lobe specifically, which is where important parts of our neuropsychological sense of self are located, such as a detailed map of the body schema, and it may indicate some form of loss of self-awareness of the body during orgasm. In the EEG study by Cohen and colleagues, when some of the female research subjects produced “fake” orgasms, these lateralized EEG brainwave changes were not observed. Similar results of alpha wave changes have been found in later studies with women who had orgasms versus those who faked orgasm where measures of rectal pressure (signals) were also included to verify orgasm occurrences (van Netten et al. 2008).

Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Orgasm Functional imaging studies of visual forms of sexual stimulation have been found to identify participants’ sexual preferences correctly on the basis of neurophysiological reactions to gender-specific materials presented (Hu et al. 2008; Paul et al. 2008; Safron et al. 2007). Additionally, studies involving visual sexual stimulation in males and females have shown no significant differences in areas of brain activation or deactivation between homosexuals and heterosexuals (see Georgiadis et al. 2012 for additional references). While not much research has occurred on gender, sexual orientation or gender identity in terms of orgasm, in studies where an occasional individual self-identified as gay or lesbian, no significant differences in brain activity were detected during orgasm when compared to heterosexual counterparts.

Epilepsy and Orgasm Functional imagining and EEG studies of healthy individuals during sexual activity show bilateral activations in various cerebral regions, and particularly in the temporal lobe (see Suffren et al. 2011 for references). But among some people with lesion-caused epilepsy, there is a distinction between the occurrence of hyper-sexuality and ictal (i.e., seizure-related) orgasm that clearly indicates that these differences are related to different right and left hemispheric lateralization.

58  Daniel Cohen After a lesion has occurred, hyper-sexual behaviors appear to be a lefthemisphere-dominant occurrence, whereas seizure-related orgasms are right-hemisphere-dominant occurrences. Interestingly, orgasmic auras caused by epileptic seizures are not always experienced as genital sensations (Komisaruk and Whipple 2005), although they still resemble normal sexual climax experiences described specifically as the subjective feeling of an orgasm, whether occurring either during a pre-seizure aura or at the beginning of a seizure episode (Suffren et al. 2011). In a review of a large number of published reports, Suffren and colleagues (2011) found that ­seizure-related orgasms were significantly more frequent with right hemisphere seizure foci (i.e., the seizure point of origin). A small but consistent subset of people with epilepsy describe having ecstatic experiences related to their seizures that produce heightened selfawareness and a feeling of union with the world or cosmos, as the division between their self as subject and their surroundings breaks down (see Gschwind and Picard 2016). Thus, despite being described at times as a heightened self-awareness, such seizures may involve a loss of the everyday sense of self and are sometimes described as experiences of profound transcendence that can seem akin to sexual ecstasy. One person with epilepsy distinguished sexual from seizure-related orgasmic feelings: Maybe the closest sensation that I  know would be orgasm, but what I felt was not at all sexual. I have no religious feeling, but it was almost religious. (quoted in Gschwind and Picard 2016, 2) While orgasm is typically connected to sexuality, in people with epilepsy it appears to engender a profound experience that goes beyond the physically pleasurable sensual experiences associated with sex.

Neurophysiology, Sex and the Self Before examining more of the possible connections between orgasm and spiritual experience, it is important to look at research on the relationship between the neuropeptide oxytocin and self-referential processing, to explore certain aspects of how the brain processes the sense of self. In an important study by Liu and colleagues (2013) that involved the intranasal administration of oxytocin versus placebo administration, oxytocin was found to significantly weaken self-referential processing. Self-versus-other processing was strongly affected by oxytocin administration: The right parietal lobe showed maximal deactivation in the loss of self-referential processing. This is significant because the right hemisphere, and especially the right parietal lobe, has been found to be strongly associated with many important aspects of the sense of self (e.g., body schema). Additionally, many neurophysiological studies have shown that self-recognition (in contrast to

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 59 recognizing others) is tied to the right parietal lobe (e.g., Devue and Brédart 2011; Decety and Moriguchi 2007; Feinberg and Keenan 2005; Decety and Sommerville 2003). Furthermore, many neurological disorders of the self have been mapped to injuries and lesions in the right parietal lobe. The right parietal lobe is associated with “self-orientation” and injury, or decreased functioning of the right parietal lobe leads to a decreased sense of the neuropsychic or cognitive self (or increased “selflessness”), and it has been associated with a stronger sense of spirituality and transcendence (Johnstone et al. 2012, 2017; Johnstone and Glass 2008). While the neurophysiological data on orgasm do not entirely support the importance of the model of selflessness proposed here, comparing different brain activations and deactivations in men and women during sexual genital stimulation (in contrast to orgasm) reveals some important differences. Men’s and women’s neurophysiological responses are similar during orgasm, in stark contrast to the significant neurophysiological differences that are observed in regional brain functioning during the arousal and plateau phases that precede orgasm (see Georgiadis et  al. 2009, table  1). The relative changes in parietal lobe activity in both sexes during the pre-­ orgasmic neurophysiological responses are different from what occurs in the brain during orgasm, where activity becomes similar. Georgiadis and colleagues (2012) have found that before orgasm, the parietal lobes show continually increased activations in one or more regions in men and women. This is not surprising, because the parietal lobe is strongly connected to body-related sensory and proprioceptive input and undoubtedly responds to sensuality: the significant sensory input often associated with sexual activity. But at orgasm (and immediately post-orgasm), this parietal neural activity suddenly quiets down (Georgiadis et al. 2012, table 1). The reduction of neurophysiological activity in the parietal and midline frontal regions at orgasm represents a significant reduction in the immediate sense of the self. This loss of the sense of self is bolstered by the release of oxytocin and may also be connected to feelings of unity with one’s sexual partner that may occur at orgasm and during the satiety or post-orgasmic refractory period. Thus, orgasmic deactivation of the self/other distinction may be neurophenomenologically related to what occurs in experiences of spiritual transcendence that involve loss of the sense of self (i.e., heightened selflessness).

Oxytocin and Spirituality Not only does oxytocin promote reduced self-focus, but also the oxytocin system seems to be critically involved in social bonding. Oxytocin appears to increase a positive focus on others (Bartz et al. 2011), enhances overall altruism (Israel et al. 2012) and increases empathy (Shamay-Tsoory et al. 2013). Recent research suggests that it also has influences on spirituality (Van Cappellen et al. 2016). Spirituality here implies a special sense of connection

60  Daniel Cohen with nature, the cosmos or a higher power. In this regard, profound feelings and sensations of relatedness or interconnectedness often help confer belief in the meaning or purpose of life, and such views, although highly varied and multifaceted, are expressed by millions of people from a multitude of religious (and even nonreligious) viewpoints. Oxytocin is a polypeptide synthesized in the hypothalamus in the brain. In women, stimulation of the vagino-cervix, as well as physical stimulation of the nipples, causes the release of oxytocin. These effects are important in mother-infant bonding during breastfeeding and also connected to the stimulation of the smooth muscles of the uterus for inducing powerful contractions during childbirth. Reduced levels of experienced pain are obviously relevant in childbirth, and increased oxytocin levels have also been found to be associated with other forms of pain relief (Tracy et al. 2015; Xin et al. 2017). Additional effects have recently been found in both men and women. Oxytocin concentrations can be measured by analyzing blood plasma or saliva. Research on the relationship between oxytocin levels and spirituality have been conducted using both of these (endogenous) sampling methods (Kelsch et al. 2013; Holbrook et al. 2015). Other research has used intranasal (exogenous) applications of oxytocin to study its potential effects on spiritual dispositions (Van Cappellen et al. 2016). Collectively, all of these studies have found a strong correlation between higher levels of oxytocin and increases in spirituality measured through a variety of validated subjective self-report measures (e.g., Ironson-Woods Spirituality/Religiousness Index; Piedmont’s Spiritual Transcendence Scale). Importantly, in one study, after the intranasal administration of oxytocin, these effects remained significant even one week later, suggesting that the spiritual experiences engendered were deeply embedded and left lasting impressions. These studies used control subjects, placebos and double-blind testing when methodologically suitable. Even when controlling for possible outside (cultural) influences, such as participant’s involvement in organized religion, studies measuring either the endogenous (internally produced) or the exogenous (externally administered) effects of oxytocin were consistent. Participants reported significantly higher levels of spirituality.

Oxytocin and Orgasm The relationship between increased oxytocin levels and spirituality are also relevant to the research on male and female orgasm. Significant oxytocin release has been found to occur in both sexes during orgasm, which suggests that exploring the link between spirituality and orgasm may be productive in identifying causally related factors. Interestingly, orgasm for both sexes is neurophysiologically similar, in contrast to what is observed during pair linking, sexual arousal and intense sexual activity, even when based on visual (nonphysical) or imaginary (nonvisual) stimuli. In other words, “differential brain responses across genders [i.e., the sexes] are principally

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 61 related to the stimulatory (plateau) phase and not to the orgasmic phase itself” (Georgiadis et  al. 2009, 1), where men and women show similar neurophysiological activity. During orgasm, oxytocin (and vasopressin) are discharged into the blood stream in high concentrations (Zeki 2007; see also the references in Komisaruk and Whipple 2005). Oxytocin (and vasopressin) are ­hypothalamus-produced neuromodulators that are stored in the posterior pituitary gland. A question that has arisen is whether oxytocin itself directly influences the brain during orgasm. Oxytocin secreted from the posterior pituitary gland cannot reenter the brain, because of the blood brain barrier. However, it is thought that centrally projecting oxytocin neurons, different from the ones projecting to the pituitary, are active during orgasm (Magon and Kalra 2011). Additionally, studies have shown the hypothalamic activation of the paraventricular nucleus, which produces oxytocin during but not before orgasm (Komisaruk et al. 2004). Although some studies have not found evidence of hypothalamic activity during orgasm (Georgiadis et  al. 2006), most evidence points to its association. Interestingly, Komisaruk and Whipple (2005) found, much to their surprise, that women with complete spinal cord injuries at or above T10 (and as high as T7) were able to experience vaginocervical stimulation via the vagus nerve and have orgasms. Using fMRI, they regularly found strong activation in the lower brainstem, forebrain and cerebellum in these women during the women’s orgasms. Similar to other studies, neocortical and executive regions of the brain appear to have been much less involved. They also saw activation in portions of the hypothalamus during orgasm, suggesting the release of oxytocin during but not before orgasm, a result that has also been found in studies of non-injured individuals. Overall, the effect of releasing significant amounts of oxytocin that affect areas of the brain during orgasm is becoming increasingly established (Komisaruk and Whipple 2005; Blaicher et  al. 1999; Carmichael et  al. 1994, 1987), suggesting a direct effect of oxytocin on the brain related to the perceptual experience of orgasm.

Oxytocin and Reward Centers in the Brain Another commonality between the two sexes seen in brain function during orgasm is a profound deactivation of certain regions of the prefrontal cortex. Georgiadis and colleagues (2007), calling their prior published results (Holstege et  al. 2003) on the neurophysiological aspects of male orgasm “artifactual,” corrected their earlier analyses and found deactivations throughout the prefrontal cortex and to a lesser extent deactivation in the (left) posterior parietal cortex associated with male ejaculation. Extending their earlier research, Georgiadis and colleagues (2009) later found strong deactivation in the anterior part of the orbitofrontal cortex, thought to be involved in turning off decision-making processes in both men and women

62  Daniel Cohen during orgasm, which may help lead to immersion in the experience of orgasm. During pre-orgasmic sexual activity, such as genital stimulation, these areas of the prefrontal cortex were often seen to be highly active. These neurophysiological differences between orgasm and pre-orgasmic states may be related to both sexual decision-making and to how pleasure works in the brain. Notably, lesions to this part of the brain have been known to promote disinhibited behaviors (preceded by poor decision-­making) and hyper-sexuality (Baird et al. 2006). Significantly, “gender commonalities dominate the picture for orgasm. . . [and] orgasmic experience is largely similar for both gender [i.e., sexual] groups” (Georgiadis et  al. 2009, 9). Thus, men and women may follow different neurophysiological functional paths in getting to orgasm, but once past the plateau phase and into the orgasm phase, they appear to respond neurophysiologically in similar ways. This supports the idea that the overall experience of orgasm for men and women may also have strong phenomenological similarities, notwithstanding the fact that women’s orgasms may be multiple and last considerably longer than men’s and thereby may be said to exhibit more built-in spiritual propensities in a (reductionist) neurophysiological perspective. Perhaps this is one of the reasons why women are in general more religious than men (Hackett et al. 2016).

Evolution and Female Orgasm Over that last 30  years or so, there have been debates about the evolutionary significance of orgasm in human females. The intent here is not to review the development of this discussion, except to note a few prevailing theories on this topic. One suggestion is that the female orgasm was merely a by-product of evolution with no evolutionary-adaptive function, likely a physiological and developmental happenstance related to the evolutionary significance of male orgasm. Despite the obvious misogynic orientation of this explanation (notwithstanding repeated denials of this intent), more recent research now makes this argument mostly an interesting (and unfortunate) artifact of past theorizing. One suggestion is that female orgasm evolved to better facilitate mate selection. This idea has growing evidentiary significance, but it may prove to be too narrow and thereby provide only a partial answer to this concern. Another aspect that has received increased attention is whether female orgasm promotes conception. As discussed, orgasm is associated with the release of oxytocin into the bloodstream, which can induce peristaltic muscular contraction in the uterus and oviducts. Additionally, orgasm reverses uterine pressure from outward to inward, which may aid sperm in getting to the oviducts (see Puts et  al. 2012 for references). Other related physiological reproductive advantages may also arise from orgasm. Thus, there is some merit to the idea that orgasm may enhance the chances of proximity between ovum and sperm and is thereby evolutionarily important.

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 63 Another potential evolutionary link between female orgasm and adaptation is pair-bonding. There is some challenge here because a review of primate literature on the female orgasm shows that in the majority of primates who also exhibit orgasm, multi-male social structures with no pair-bonding are found (Puts et  al. 2012). Additionally, humans are highly capable of separating sex from love. The literature on the pros and cons of each position is not central to the purpose of this chapter, which is the relationship between orgasms in both men and women and human spirituality. The data in support of both the adaptive and by-product theories are reviewed and evaluated by Komisaruk and colleagues (2006) and Puts and colleagues (2012).

Pleasure and the Neurophenomenology of Sex In reviewing published materials on the functional neurophysiology of human sexuality, sexual pleasure works similarly to other pleasures (e.g., food) in terms of underlying brain mechanisms and reward networks. Reproduction is certainly a requirement of evolutionary fitness, and its association with intense pleasure via orgasm may be significant. However, some research focuses too heavily on orgasm as a source of pleasure as its evolutionary explanation. Most humans are quite capable of separating orgasmic sex with self or others from romantic love and pair-bonding. There might be more to understanding the functions (note the plural) of human orgasm than merely which neurons generate experiences of pleasure and how they do so. We know that behavioral and physiological indicators associated with human orgasm have been observed in a variety of mammalian, especially primate, species (Allen and Lemmon 1981; Dixson 2009). However, there is growing evidence from psychology, biology and neuroscience that human sexuality and orgasms may also have some significant functional differences from what is found in other mammalian (especially primate) species. Although there are many commonalities, certain aspects of human sexual behavior and orgasm appear “quite unique,” similar to how “human language has no correspondence in other animals” (Agmo 2007, xii). It is beyond the scope of this chapter to explore the functions of orgasm in nonhuman mammals, especially primates, or to attempt to determine whether animals have anything equivalent to what humans call spiritual experiences, sexual or otherwise. One of the conceptual problems with interspecies comparisons is the assumption that sex and orgasmic experiences operates similarly in all animals. For example, despite some examples of pair-bonding or of continuous sexual receptivity in some species (in addition to humans), this downplays important biological and evolutionary differences, particularly in terms of reproductive adaptations like menstruation (see Dixson 2009). The development of spiritual orientations related to sexuality may be more uniquely human and connected in some ways to neural entrainment or

64  Daniel Cohen the coupling of mechanical and neuronal oscillatory systems (Safron 2016). For example, in humans, both slow and fast rhythmic and repetitive religious rituals are believed to induce enhanced neural activity in the sympathetic or parasympathetic branch of the autonomic system, neural activity, which if it peaks, then it may cause a spillover or breakthrough effect on the other branch, thereby ramping both sides of the autonomic nervous system to maximal levels. This is suspected to occur in experiences of intense spiritual transcendence (d’Aquili and Newberg 1999; Hugdahl 1996; Gellhom and Kiely 1972). Sexual arousal, copulation and orgasm may operate similarly to rhythmic religious rituals, entraining synchronous brain oscillations that can lead to trance-like states that involve altered self-processing and could contribute to feelings of connectedness, together with the expansion (or breakdown) of self-other boundaries (Safron 2016).

Conclusion: Orgasm as Spiritual Experience One problem in research on sexuality and neuropsychology is how, for example, views on the connection between sex, orgasm and oxytocin often center on an assumed understanding that the desire for pleasure (and especially male-centered pleasure) is connected to the reward systems of the brain and works as one of the core components of human sexual bonding. This limited view does not grasp what may be a more complex evolutionary relationship between the coevolution of human sexuality and spirituality, which may have facilitated profound experiences of spiritual transcendence and which perhaps provided the neurophysiological foundation for the evolution of human religious traditions. This subtle but crucial insight has gone largely unexplored because of the way that ideas about human sexuality have developed in modern times. The restrictions on sexual freedom in Western society in the first half of the 20th century, in part the detritus of the Victorian Age and its values, led to a later cultural rebellion against sexual limitations and the dissemination of a great deal of information about and experimentation with sexuality. The problem is that while the so-called sexual revolution of the 1960s and beyond has led to a great deal of sexual sophistication, it has not facilitated what has at times been called sexual maturity (Ellens 2009). But there are currently some signs that this superficial orientation toward sexuality and its relationship with spirituality may be beginning to change, and the increasingly widespread research on the neurophysiological aspects of sexuality may represent a dynamic movement in this new direction. The central argument of this chapter is that the evolution of mammalian sexuality provided one of the foundations for the eventual rise of spirituality as a secondary adaptation of human orgasmic sexuality. While (male and female) orgasm may have in part been selected for via natural selection to enhance pair-bonding and male parental investment, it also inadvertently enabled the neurophysiological groundwork that would eventually facilitate

Sex and the Evolution of Spirituality 65 the occurrence of profound spiritual experiences where aspects of the sense of the self are briefly inhibited. While male ejaculation appears ubiquitous in mammals as part of reproduction, the argument presented here is that through the neurophysiological mechanisms of orgasm, humans may have become able to experientially transcend the self, achieving the capacity to physically and spiritually unite with another human being, a potential reproductive mate. This development is not necessarily a completely conscious or volitional act but instead may have represented a subconscious development. From an evolutionary perspective, one of the reasons we can talk about the spirituality of human orgasmic sexuality is that it opens the potential for not only self-transcendence but also spiritual transcendence (Ellens 2009). The argument here is that the spiritual and transcendent potentialities of orgasm became adaptive in terms of natural selection and worked in conjunction with the emergence of complex family structures and religion in hominin society (Turner et al. 2018), developing the reproductive benefits associated with religion as a fledgling human institution (see, e.g., Blume 2009). Sexuality underlies the procreative necessity for the survival of human breeding populations, and the argument in this chapter is that it also potentially established the foundation for transcendent and spiritual dimensions for human beings. Sex and orgasm, as neurobiological functions, do not achieve this spiritual function when sexual beings are mere performers seeking self-satisfaction. On the individual level, sex remains inherently narcissistic and directed toward self-gratification, and while it may offer certain forms of release and relieve physical or psychological tensions, it can also leave a sense of spiritual emptiness. Masturbation works similarly and precludes the possibility of achieving unity with a mating partner or fostering procreation. These activities do not produce the same profound qualitative sense of the loss of self achieved through orgasm involving intimate sexual relations, and various lines of research show that addictions, including sexual addictions (e.g., to Internet pornography), often lead to feelings of emotional and spiritual emptiness (e.g., Grubbs et al. 2017). Profound experiences of interpersonal sexuality are said to be capable of producing sensations of ecstasy, similar to what is said about many profound mystical religious experiences. “Ecstasy” can be used to refer to both orgasm and mystical experience (Ellens 2009). Both of these occurrences have the potential to generate new levels of self-awareness, and evolutionarily, they may have coevolved in human beings as they began to work together. Spirituality has often been relegated to the transcendent and sexuality trivialized as acts of self-gratification (a situation that can also occur when religious traditions try to control people’s sexual expression). Nonetheless, the human orgasm can be viewed as an evolutionary development that helped facilitate experiences of self-transcendence, where an awareness of the self from a neuropsychological perspective becomes radically altered as the focus on and rational control over the self is temporarily abandoned.

66  Daniel Cohen In conclusion, if the human orgasm is the ultimate experience of the spirituality of human sexuality, it may have given humans the impetus to seek additional expressions of spirituality. One can thereby imagine that human sexuality became instrumental as one of the factors in the development of human religious traditions.

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4 The Biological Basis for Religion and Religion’s Evolutionary Origins Donald M Broom

Morality and Its Origins The main argument presented in this chapter is that morality has been a central part of all of the major doctrinal religions since the Axial Age (800–200 bce) and that the origins of these religions are closely tied to the evolution of morality. As explained by Broom (2003), there are many biological mechanisms that have evolved as a part of a system with many components for promoting morality and increasing the likelihood that individuals will be religious. Feierman (2009) and authors in this volume describe how a propensity for religion may have evolved. The preferences of individuals for certain stimuli, and several other mechanisms in the brain, tend to increase the chances of having experiences perceived to be religious. Many of these mechanisms promote moral and religious behavior and feelings. The link between moral actions and many religious practices has been key. Characteristics that facilitate religious attitudes may have evolved because they helped to increase moral actions so the effects were advantageous to individuals showing these actions. It may seem from our observation of the media, and even from reading novels, that people’s activity is mainly directed toward promoting themselves at the expense of others, even if the cost to others is high. However, analyses of actions during a lifetime indicate that actions with such consequences are relatively rare (de Waal 1996; Broom 2003). Most actions do not harm others, especially when the others are close by or likely to be encountered frequently. Why do people mainly do what is right rather than what is wrong? Other social animals, especially those that are sentient, do the same. Other predators feed on other living animals, but apart from times when food must be obtained, nature is seldom red in tooth and claw. Most individuals take particular care not to harm other individuals in their group and do not gratuitously harm members of other species. The idea that most of animal behavior is aggressive, or otherwise competitive, is entirely wrong (de Waal 1996; Broom 2003; Broom and Fraser 2015). Of course, humans and other species do sometimes cause harm to others, and these actions are important in life and well worth studying, but

The Biological Basis for Religion 71 popular views about behavior that emphasize the occurrence of competition are misleading. Biologically, helping others and not harming others are effective strategies, especially for animals such as humans who live in longlasting social groups (de Waal 1996; Broom 2003, 2006). Many animals have weapons or body mass that could easily harm group members. Cattle with long horns almost always move carefully in such a way that others are not touched by the horns. Elephants walk around without squashing young elephants or animals of other species. We humans can easily harm others as we move around in our daily life, but we seldom do so. If social animals harm others, the action is likely to make the society less stable. Harms might reduce the survival chances of kin and could elicit retaliation that could damage the individual both directly and indirectly – indirectly because of a reduction in social group cohesion. Collaboration in various species includes joining others who are likely to have found food; observing others to find food sources or learn how to find or acquire food; collaborating in hunting for, acquiring, handling or defending food or avoiding depleted sources; sharing food; and giving food to others (Broom 1981). As a result of the advantages of harm-avoidance actions, genes that promote avoiding harm or promote cooperation, and hence stabilize societies, confer benefits on their bearers and can spread in populations (Axelrod 1997; Riolo et al. 2001; Broom 2003, 2006). Morality has a wide variety of biological components and has evolved in animals that live in social groups whose members stay together or return to the group. “Moral” means pertaining to right rather than wrong. A “religion” is defined as a system of beliefs and rules that individuals revere and respond to in their lives and that are seen as emanating directly or indirectly from some intangible power. There are several genetic mechanisms encouraging altruism (Lehmann and Keller 2006). There is competition among some genes to continue in the phenotypes of animals, and some of this competition results in altruism. The use of the term “selfish gene” by Richard Dawkins (1976) has been misleading. Genes cannot be selfish, because this is a quality of whole organisms that are aware; only sentient individuals can be selfish (Midgley 1994; Broom 2003, 2006). “Selfish” describes an individual acting in a way that increases its fitness at the expense of the fitness of one or more other individuals while being aware of the likely effects on itself and on the harmed individual or individuals.

Some of the Arguments for the Evolution of Morality To consider how morality may have evolved in humans and other social animals, it is necessary to explain what people regard as right. Moral ranges from, at one extreme, the profound and life balancing to, at the other extreme, the relatively trivial. For example, what is referred to as true morality here does not include customs or attitudes to sexual behavior

72  Donald M Broom stemming from mate guarding, except indirectly when the action leads to a major harm: human sexual display is not immoral unless it causes real harm. Also, laws may indicate what is morally right but will not necessarily do so when they primarily protect the people and property of the powerful or perpetuate tribal or other customs. There is a large literature documenting the widespread occurrence of cooperative and altruistic behavior in social animals (de Waal 1996). Reference to altruism does not always mean that it is reciprocal. Reciprocal altruism is important in the evolution of morality but is only a part of the biological basis of morality. As Alexander (1987) said, “Moral systems are systems of indirect reciprocity.” To be able to avoid certain harms, to remember the altruistic or harmful actions of others, to predict future consequences of situations and actions and to take account of all of this information, a level of cognitive ability and awareness is needed. Every year, we have more information about awareness, feelings and cognitive ability in various species of mammals, birds, fish and invertebrate animals (Broom 2014, 2016). The abilities needed in individuals in order that moral actions can occur (after Broom 2003) are as follows: • • • • • • •

Ability to recognize beneficiaries and benefactors. Ability to remember one’s own actions and their consequences. Ability to assess risk. Ability to detect and respond to cheating. Desire to conform. Affection for certain individuals. Ability to feel empathy.

Strategies that involve moral action are likely to be successful in that, on average, individuals using such strategies will have more offspring than those that do not. This is the reason for a number of rules in a wide range of human groups. Human society condemns, albeit to different degrees, those who injure another deliberately, those who cause injury by careless contact with another (such as a push that leads to a head injury) and those who are negligent with the consequence that an injury is caused to another. For example, most people would condemn leaving a large hole in the ground uncovered in the dark or allowing a child access to a deadly weapon. There are also rules relating to the use of important resources. If plentiful quantities of food are only occasionally obtained by individuals in a social group, there is likely to be an expectation within the group that it will be shared when it is found (de Waal 2000). Many rules like these seem to exist in other social species. If altruism occurs, whether it involves direct cooperation or avoidance of harm, the possibility of cheating is important to take into account. This issue has been discussed by many authors, including Kitcher (1993), Axelrod

The Biological Basis for Religion 73 (1997) and Riolo and colleagues (2001), who explain that game theory models used in many of the arguments are too simple when the sophisticated intellects of any social vertebrate are considered. To understand how altruistic behavior might have evolved by individual selection, it is necessary to incorporate into modeling some information obtained from studies of real-life situations. Multilevel selection models have also been proposed (Nowak et al. 2010). As detailed by Broom (2006), the question of whether or not a gene-­ promoting altruism would spread in a population of social animals by individual selection depends on the detail of the strategy adopted. A gene that only promoted altruism to kin might be out-competed by either a gene that led to the bearer being altruistic except where the bearer’s monitoring shows that it is inadvisable because reciprocation is unlikely, or a gene whose bearer is altruistic to kin and also to others if monitoring shows that reciprocation is likely. Another possible strategy would involve being altruistic, with no reciprocation necessary, but with monitoring that allows for recognizing others who bear the same gene or recognizing kin. In addition to all of these possibilities is the risk of cheaters disrupting the social group, with negative consequences for all members, including the cheater.

Sentience and Capacity for Moral Action Some of the abilities required for moral action are components of sentience. “Sentience” means having the awareness and cognitive ability necessary to have feelings. The current scientific view is that adult vertebrates (mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, fish), cephalopod mollusks and decapod crustaceans are sentient. Other animals may be added to this list in future as we find out more about animal abilities. Sentience arises, in humans and other animals, at a certain stage of individual development and may be lost when there are some kinds of brain damage (Broom 2014). The advantages for socially living animals of being able to work together with other individuals have favored the evolution of sentience and the development of more and more sophisticated cognitive function. The concept of sentience has close parallels with those of the psyche and the soul. Sentience involves: having your own feelings, understanding the functioning of others, having awareness that others have feelings and having empathy for others. These are also central parts of the idea of a soul. “Psyche” is a Greek word, often translated as soul. It implies that what is directly perceived is interpreted according to the awareness that an individual has of a wide range of other aspects of life.

Empathy, Moral Value and God The concept of empathy is a key aspect of moral and religious decisions and behavior and was defined and discussed by Broom (2003). Empathy is the

74  Donald M Broom process of understanding the experience of another individual, cognitively and emotionally. This is different from compassion which is pity that results in sparing or caring for another individual. Where there is communication among individuals, especially those that frequently meet, there is a greater likelihood that there will be feelings of empathy. If there is empathy, then the more communication, the more empathy. The various aspects of empathy are considered to occur in a range of animal species, not just in humans (Preston and de Waal 2002). Moral behavior depends on the ability of one individual to appreciate the state of other individuals. Moral decisions by an individual rely greatly on evaluation of the feelings of others. Empathy is a particularly important part of these mechanisms. We know that many aspects of human morality have equivalents in the societies of other animals and also that many nonhumans show empathy for people or other animals with problems. We recognize empathy from behavior, in the same way that we do for humans. If individuals are aware of the empathy of others, their behavior changes and there is a bond between those individuals. Those bonds are, in turn, perceived by others in a society or small group where there is empathy. There is often much overlapping of groups and hence a cross-group awareness of empathy. Where many individuals have empathetic feelings, and there is evidence from their actions that they have such feelings, their further actions and beliefs can be affected by this commonality of empathy. The changes in behavior and an understanding of the causation of this change may result in local or widespread communication of common empathy. The links resulting from the empathetic feelings in communities of various sizes, including the world as a whole, can be thought of as a common spirit. The spirit need not be considered to be a tangible entity, and some of the empathy may be for only a narrow range of individuals, but the collection of empathetic feelings is something broader than the properties of the individuals. Exercising empathy for all humans, or for all sentient beings, is often encouraged. Individual human actions do not occur in isolation: the spirit adds to the complexity of a group of individuals and has an impact on many actions. This spirit need not be physically identifiable but is of great importance to humans and other sentient beings and can be thought of as an essential part of the concept of God. The idea of God as a spirit linking sentient beings (Broom 2003) fits with the view that group empathy is a major factor underlying moral codes. The empathy and respect felt by individuals toward other individuals is a link with that common spirit. The idea of a common good for every group, ranging from small groups to all sentient beings, and of something greater than the individual – a common spirit, a god or gods – helps moral systems to function. Many philosophers refer to humans and other sentient beings as moral agents: They can be the subject of moral actions and have moral value. The question of who has or what other animals have moral value is important

The Biological Basis for Religion 75 in decisions about how to treat others, human or nonhuman. Gert (1988) states that an act is morally relevant if it is done to “existing or potential sentient beings.” Rolston (1999) does not think of nonhumans as moral agents. Rottschaefer (1998) refers to considering “ourselves” as moral agents, but in doing so, nonhumans are not excluded from “ourselves” and hence could be considered moral agents. There are so many examples of nonhuman animals, especially those living socially, avoiding harming others or acting in ways that directly benefit others (Broom 2003) that it seems illogical to say that the individuals concerned are not moral agents. Whether or not nonhumans are thought of as being moral agents, they can be the subject of moral actions and so have moral value.

Obligations or Rights? How should we describe what should or should not be done to other individuals? I believe that we should describe the obligations of the actor rather than the rights of the subject. Although consideration of human rights has resulted in some good being done, assertions of rights and freedoms can cause problems (Broom 2003). Examples include a person asserting that they have a right to carry a gun at all times, determine the sex of their offspring or have the freedom to speak in public in such a way as to encourage the persecution of groups of people. One obligation is not to harm others except in self-defense. An aspect of this is to avoid killing, or at least to avoid killing for no good reason. Another is to insist that human systems be sustainable. Unsustainable may be unacceptable to the general public because of harms to the people involved in production, harms to other people, harms to other animals in that their welfare is poor or harms to the environment (Broom et al. 2013; Broom 2014; Broom and Fraser 2015). If we keep or otherwise interact with animals, then we have obligations in relation to their welfare. “The welfare of an individual is its state as regards its attempts to cope with its environment” (Broom 1986). We need to consider to which people and which nonhuman animals we have moral obligations. Also, which are moral agents, and what is our level of obligation? With increased knowledge of the functioning of humans and of nonhuman animals, more kinds of humans and more kinds of nonhuman animals are now included as “us” when moral obligations are considered (Broom 2003, 2014).

The Moral Core of Religion Helping others, even those not part of our local group, and not causing harm are central messages in the more mature writings in all long-lasting religions (Broom 2003), even if it is absent in some of the earlier religions. Longlasting refers to religions that have continued for thousands of years up to

76  Donald M Broom the present. Of course, not all individuals avoid harming others, and there are many examples of religious adherents harming those from other sects or tribes but the wrongness of such harm, unless in self-defense, is widely taught. For example, the Good Samaritan who aids another who might have been thought of as not being “one of us” is considered an important exemplar in Christian teaching, and there are parallels in the teachings and codes of conduct of other religions. Whether or not the person who helps is acting in order to gain religious credit, the action of helping is a good action and is perceived as such by the majority of people. Other religious images and symbols are easier to understand if the biological basis of morality and religions is carefully considered (Broom 2007): e.g., an image of a mother cow caring for a calf as a symbol of goodness or an image of a frightening vengeful god as a deterrent to antisocial behavior. The general message presented in the next part of this chapter is that religions are inevitable, and useful, in long-lasting societies. However, as explained later on, the conclusion that religions are useful does not imply that all their aspects are good. Religions need to change in some respects as knowledge progresses. Although there have been religions that attracted followers and had only self-seeking rules, all of the long-lasting religions of the world that still exist today have a moral code that is central to their functioning. A  survey of religions by Whitehouse and colleagues (2019) found that social complexity preceded the reference to what the authors call moralizing gods in a wide range of human societies. Today, most of the differences among religions are in peripheral aspects, including historical descriptions, specific rituals and tribal components. Some of the rules may have had the effect of defending the local tribe or promoting male dominance, but other rules had morally positive consequences. The rituals that are a part of a religion often have the valuable effect of encouraging people to identify with the religious group and to follow the code of that group. In the Whitehouse and colleagues study, rituals that might facilitate the standardization of religious traditions appeared before the advent of moralizing gods. These findings do not mean that the moral structure was not present in the early stages of the religion but rather that the concept of a remote, supernatural moralizing god developed after the society became large. Some rituals have positive or negative moral consequences. Each major religion has canonical texts, usually put together in one or more books. Holy books are a source of information about what is moral, but they also include history and some statements of a tribal nature that may be far from moral. The term “tribal” here implies helping the immediately identified group, whether or not the action is universally moral. The group can be one in modern society, and “tribal” is not intended to imply that the society is primitive or physically remote from other people. At their best, tribal actions preserve useful or aesthetically important culture, but at their worst, they harm individuals in other groups for reasons other than self-defense. Ultimately, harmful actions like the latter tend to destabilize larger societies and

The Biological Basis for Religion 77 sometimes lead to the destruction of some or all in the group that is behaving immorally. The key to understanding the value of religions involves distinguishing the fundamental messages in the religion about morality, and about how best to organize a society, from the tribal and sometimes harmful components. Some early religions, and religions in rather isolated communities, had a plethora of gods with dubious attributes. However, widespread and successful religions have a guide to behavior, which is part of a code for how each individual should live, and a system for discouraging cheats or those who harm others. Commandments include, in Buddhism, “ahimsa,” referring to non-injury to others; in Hinduism, the books of Manu, which lay out duties; in Confucianism, the idea that humans have a moral sense, the sensibility of the hsin; in Christianity and Judaism, the Ten Commandments and an imperative to love your neighbor as yourself, where “neighbor” is now widely interpreted as including all others; and in Islam, acts known to Allah, who rewards and punishes according to morality, though “other” is sometimes limited to “people of the book,” meaning the three Abrahamic faiths. Much wording of the holy books is similar in all of these religions. There are many other important tenets and traits that religions have in common (Whitehouse 2008). The idea of prayers, be they individual or communal, said or thought, is regarded as important in many religions. Prayers are difficult to study directly because most people regard them as personal and private. Attempts have been made by Geertz and colleagues (Schjoedt et al. 2009), who used fMRI imaging of the brain to explain some of the correlates of prayers. The effect of prayers on individuals has often been reported to be positive: social cohesion and deliberate contemplation of important issues in life being among possible beneficial components. Particular buildings are deemed to be sacred, certain people promote feelings of belonging to a group and there may be the concept that an ideal state exists with continuation of individuals after death because of group membership and good behavior.

Views of Humankind and Other Sentient Beings in Religions In some religions, as in many other aspects of life, people are told or develop the belief that humankind is special. Of course, every kind of organisms is different from all others, but a high proportion of humans have the idea that our species is more important than any others and that we, as humans, have priority when the use of world resources is under consideration. The idea of a pyramid with humankind at the top is still used by many religious teachers. We know now, in much more detail than was possible when the current doctrinal religions were being developed, that humans have differences from other animal species but also share characteristics with many organisms and where different are frequently not better. Humans have many genes in common

78  Donald M Broom with other species, many similarities in phenotype with other species and few characteristics that are not shared with some other animals. Many people who were part of monotheistic religions and who had the view of humans as special in some way rejected evidence for human origins from other animals. Some found the idea of evolution attractive because of the pyramid. Darwin (1872) drew attention to the similarities between humans and other animals. Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu and Jain views of humankind and other animals as parts of a larger community of value led to the rejection of the pyramid idea. It is written in the book of Genesis that God gave us dominion over the living things in the world, but who are “us” and what should dominion mean? The actual reference is to Adam and Eve and their descendants, but “us” could be interpreted as being wider than humans and including other sentient beings with a capability to be responsible in their actions. As many authors have said, dominion can mean acting in a caring and responsible way, being a steward of the world, rather than dominating and exploiting without consideration for present or future harms that are caused. For example, dominion should not mean eliminating large numbers of animals and plants and encouraging unsustainable and immoral actions. The statement in the Bible that humankind was made in the image of God led many Christians to think of a physical, mainly visual image. While many people, including artists whose works were widely seen, thought in this way, some religious teachers had a subtler view. At the time of the production of the Hebrew Bible, an important point that was being made was that all people, rather than just rulers, shared qualities with God. However, if the idea of God is largely visual, God is considered by many people to visually resemble humankind. Like many scholars from the past, I  argue that a more logical meaning of these words in the Bible is that the image is a moral image. In that case, one consequence is that humans, and other sentient beings, can aspire to a complete level of morality. The strategy of minimizing or avoiding harm to others works better than other strategies, such as to show frequent acts of aggression that are not self-defense. Since moral behavior is biologically and socially the most successful strategy in all communities, the teaching that humans can have a moral image of God, and can try to be like God in a moral way, is helpful.

Why Religions Arise In addition to the world’s major long-lasting religions, there are more ephemeral religions and many other sets of beliefs relevant to conduct that may or may not be called a religion. Religions centered on a moral system are likely to arise in all long-lasting societies (Broom 2003). This structure encourages the avoidance of harms, the promotion of cooperation and the detection and discouragement of cheating. The moral code may coincide with a legal structure but sometimes does not, since laws may just protect the rich. Religions can “define groups, coordinate behavior within the group and

The Biological Basis for Religion 79 solve the all-important problem of cheating” (Wilson 2008). They can also encourage signals of commitment to the group and hence promote group cohesion (Irons 2008). The group considered might start as just a local community but then expand to include all people in a region, all of humanity or all sentient beings (Broom 2003). The propensity for religion has always been widespread in human societies and to some degree in other species. When there are reforms to religions, the change is often a response to moral inadequacy in the religion’s organization. As Richerson and Newson (2008) point out, Calvin’s reforms to the Catholic Church were a response to corruption in its hierarchy. Muhammad’s religiously inspired code for living was aimed at regulating inter-tribal anarchy. At more local levels, Balinese water temples organized water supply and water use in rice fields. Genetics affects the structure for morality and religion, but no mechanism is genetically determined. It has long been emphasized by behavioral biologists that all characteristics of animals, behavioral or otherwise, are affected by both the genome and the environment (Broom 1981). Indeed, a wide range of recent studies make it clear that environmental factors play a part at every stage in the translation of genetic information to produce a phenotype (Alexander 2017). As a consequence, no characteristic is instinctive, innate or determined, where these qualifications imply being uninfluenced by environmental effects. No individual is hardwired to have a particular belief independent of environmental experience, and genes that promote moral and religious behavior do not make such behavior inevitable. Heritability of religiousness does not mean genetic control of the belief or action. Genetic and environmental information must always be involved, so cultural evolution cannot fully explain why religions arise. The biological mechanisms that promote morality and religion include some simpler perceptual and some complex cognitive and emotional components. (Taves 2009) described some religious experiences and commented on their possible physiological origins, and Feierman (2016) analyzed the nature of belief. Bulbulia (2004) explained some of the effects of religious rituals, and Cohen (2007) described reports of body possession by spirits. Some of the rituals and other practices carried out over the course of religious events may serve to impress the individual concerned and other individuals. Costly practices have impact because they are evaluated as a handicap impeding normal activity in humans and other species, and these costly practices may become more and more exaggerated in religions as time progresses (Zahavi and Zahavi 1997; Slone 2008). One example described firewalking as part of a religion and proposed that such actions promote prosociality (Xygalatas et al. 2013). A practical aspect of a long-lasting doctrinal religion is to enforce compliance with its moral code, such as by issuing threats, illustrating good behavior with personal examples (e.g., in the case of Jain renouncers (Wilson 2008)), ostracizing transgressors or excluding from the group those who do not behave in a moral way.

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Ideas about the Value of Religion Since moral behavior is adaptive and promotes stability in societies, the religious framework that governs such moral behavior is valuable in those societies. It makes life easier for the average person and increases the likelihood that potential transgressors of moral codes will understand what should and should not be done. The advance of knowledge helps to dispel groundless fears and to focus on what is really dangerous in life. Fear of dragons, for example, is not helpful if there are no dragons, but fear that minimizes contact with pathogens is valuable and is likely to continue to be promoted in societies because it reduces the risk of disease. Accurate risk assessment is important, so with the increase in awareness of it, more and more people are coming to understand how to plan their lives. Fear of being mugged can cause poor welfare in people. However, in many human societies where the risk of mugging is low, such fear should not be exaggerated. Similarly, some people have fear of traveling by aircraft. The risk per journey is low, so the fear is unreasonable, especially in people who regularly travel by motor car, a much more dangerous activity. Some partly irrational fears are starting to be identified as risk assessment incompetence. Just as knowledge about risk assessment helps us to manage our lives, knowledge about evolution helps us to understand and value religion and should not be considered contrary to religious teaching. Some of what is taught in religions is now archaic and should be updated as relevant knowledge progresses. If this is not done, people at present and in future will be less likely to accept the religion and will lose the benefits that it could provide them. For example, the negative attitudes of some Christians and Muslims to evolution by natural selection are causing much damage to both religions, in my view. Those who deny that evolution occurs may propose that the high level of complexity of the biological and physical world is evidence for creation. Since there are many other possible causes of complexity, in my opinion scientists and most other people in the world do not accept their argument. The concept of God presented here is not contradicted by an understanding of evolution. The idea that there is something more than just individuals, a spirit that is something linking individuals, would have been promoted by some evolutionary changes. Because of the advantages of religious belief, natural selection may have increased the likelihood of brain characteristics that promote belief occurring in populations. The wide concept of belief is relevant to many animal species. Many atrocities have been committed in the name of religion. However, there are important differences between tribalism, which here refers to helping the immediately identified group to defend property and land, and actions following the key teaching of the religion, which is to behave in a moral way. The view of God as a spirit linking sentient beings does not require that God be responsible for the physical world. I see no reason to include the

The Biological Basis for Religion 81 creation of the universe, or of other physical objects or actions such as lightning strikes, as being done by God. The story written in Genesis around 2,500 years ago was an attempt to explain unknown phenomena, and such attempts exist in the stories and writings of other religions. We now have much more information about the world in which we live. The view proposed here makes it much easier for religious teaching to be reconciled with discoveries about matter and with facts about astrophysics, as such facts do not have to be seen as depending on religious teaching. Neither does religious teaching have to explain all phenomena. Those who do not find religion useful say that too much of religion is irrational and conflicts with current knowledge. In reality, hardly anyone who is part of a religion, including most priests, imams and so on, believes all of what is written in holy books or said in religious services. If the writings and practices and at least some of the teaching were updated to take account of current knowledge, many of such misunderstandings could be avoided. The important central tenets of the major religions are helpful to many people. Hence, any person can be involved in a religion to a greater or lesser degree without having to accept all of what is written or said on behalf of that religion. Some religious groups argue that every word of a holy text must be accepted to be part of the group. Such an attitude harms their religion. Religions that do not change to take account of new information are unlikely to persist for long. As in all aspects of life, people can select what they believe without worrying about what is, or is not, a delusion (Dawkins 2008). Religion’s value is what religion does – that is, its function for each person – irrespective of the truth of individual components or propositions associated with that religion.

Does a Moral Core of Religion Mean That All Morality Is Religious? The argument that moral structures are biologically sound strategies in long-lasting social groups implies that some degree of moral behavior will occur in all such groups, so morality is not confined to groups with a religion. However, religion tends to strengthen the structure in various ways. This makes the social group more cohesive and likely to be perpetuated. If the religion emphasizes tribal, in-group-promoting aspects more than moral values, it is not likely to survive for a long time in a changing society. In societies where, as often happens, religions have failed to change fast enough to incorporate new knowledge, some members of the society may reject the religion or at least not directly practice any facet of it. In this circumstance, the moral teaching of the religion is likely to survive and be influential in the society in people who no longer practice the religion. People who claim to have nothing to do with a religion are still likely to be much influenced by the moral codes. As a consequence, people behave in a moral way for several generations after the decline in participation in religious activities.

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Conclusions • Morality has a wide variety of biological components and has evolved in humans and other animals that live in social groups whose members stay together. • Ethical questions include the welfare of animals and other sustainability issues. • Whether or not nonhuman animals are thought of as being moral agents, they can be the subject of moral actions and so have moral value. • Some of the qualities required to show moral behavior are also aspects of sentience. • The concept of sentience has close parallels with those of psyche and soul. • Contrary to the teachings of some religions, humans are animals, are similar to other animals and are not “special” in the sense of being more important. • Modern doctrinal religions are a development of having a sophisticated moral code and are a structure to support it. • All modern doctrinal religions have a moral code with a list of things to do or not do as a central aspect. • Widespread empathy can be the basis for the concept of a spirit linking all sentient beings. • We all have obligations, and we should describe the obligations of the actor rather than the rights of the actor. Arguments based on rights or on freedoms to act have sometimes been useful but can cause problems. • Arguments that religion is a bad thing and that God is a delusion (Dawkins 2008) involve a misunderstanding of how natural selection has acted and are damaging to human societies.

References Alexander, D. 2017. Genes, Determinism and God. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alexander, RD. 1987. The Biology of Moral Systems. New York: Aldine de Gruyter. Axelrod, R. 1997. The Complexity of Cooperation. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Broom, DM. 1981. Biology of Behaviour. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 320. Broom, DM 1986. “Indicators of Poor Welfare.” British Veterinary Journal 142: 524–526. Broom, DM. 2003. The Evolution of Morality and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broom, DM. 2006. “The Evolution of Morality.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 100: 20–28. Broom, DM. 2007. “Images and the Biological Origins of Religion.” In: Image and Imagination: A  Global Prehistory of Figurative Representation, ed. by C Renfrew and I Morley, 333–336. McDonald Institute Monographs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

The Biological Basis for Religion 83 Broom, DM. 2013. “The Welfare of Invertebrate Animals Such as Insects, Spiders, Snails and Worms.” In Animal Suffering: From Science to Law, International Symposium, ed. by TA van der Kemp and M Lachance, 135–152. Paris: Éditions Yvon Blais. Broom, DM. 2014. Sentience and Animal Welfare. Wallingford, UK: CABI, 200. Broom, DM. 2016. “Fish Brains and Behaviour Indicate Capacity for Feeling Pain.” Animal Sentience 2016.010: 5 pages. Broom, DM, and AF Fraser. 2015. Domestic Animal Behaviour and Welfare, 5th ed. Wallingford, UK: CABI. Broom, DM, FA Galindo and E Murgueitio. 2013. “Sustainable, Efficient Livestock Production with High Biodiversity and Good Welfare for Animals.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B 280: 20132025. Bulbulia, J. 2004. “Religious Costs as Adaptations that Signal Altruistic Intention.” Evolution and Cognition 10: 19–38. Cohen, E. 2007. The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in an AfroBrazilian Religious Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Darwin, C. 1872. The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. London: John Murray. Dawkins, R. 1976. The Selfish Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dawkins, R. 2008. The God Delusion. Wilmington, MA: Mariner Books. de Waal, F. 1996. Good Natured. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. De Waal, F. 2000. “Attitudinal Reciprocity in Food Sharing among Brown Capuchin Monkeys.” Animal Behaviour 60: 253–261. Feierman, JR. 2009. “How Some Major Components of Religion Could Have Evolved by Natural Selection.” In The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, ed. by E Voland and W Schiefenhövel, 51–66. Dordrecht, Heidelberg, and London: Springer. Feierman, JR. 2016. “The Biology of Religious Belief, Emotion, and Behavior: A  Natural Science Perspective.” In Studies in Science and Theology 15, 2015– 2016, Yearbook of the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology, ed. by D Evers, M Fuller, A  Ruhehov and K-W Saether, 41–62. Bamberg, Germany: Rosche-Much Druckerei. Gert, B. 1988. Morality: A New Justification of the Moral Rules. New York: Oxford University Press. Irons, W. 2008. “Why People Believe (What Other People See as) Crazy Ideas.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories and Critiques, ed. by J Bulbulia, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, 51–57. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press. Kitcher, P. 1993. “The Evolution of Human Altruism.” Journal of Philosophy 90: 497–516. Lehmann, L, and L Keller. 2006. “The Evolution of Cooperation and Altruism: A General Framework and a Classification of Models.” Journal of Evolutionary Biology 19: 1365–1376. Midgley, M. 1994. The Ethical Primate. London: Routledge. Nowak, MA, CE Tarnita and EO Wilson. 2010. The Evolution of Eusociality. Nature 466: 1057–1062. Preston, SD, and FBM de Waal. 2002. “The Communication of Emotions and the Possibility of Empathy in Animals.” In Altruistic Love: Science, Philosophy, and Religion in Dialogue, ed. by S Post, LG Underwood, JP Schloss and WB Hurlburt. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

84  Donald M Broom Richerson, PJ, and L Newson. 2008. “Is Religion Adaptive? Yes, No, but Mostly We Don’t Know.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories and Critiques, ed. by J Bulbulia, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, 73–78. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press. Riolo, RL, MD Cohen and R Axelrod. 2001. “Evolution of Cooperation without Reciprocity.” Nature London 414: 441–443. Rolston, H. 1999. Genes, Genesis and God: Values and Their Origins in Natural and Human History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rottschaefer, WA. 1998. The Biology and Psychology of Moral Agency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schjoedt, U, H Stødkilde-Jørgensen, AW Geertz and A Roepstorff. 2009. “Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer.” Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 4: 199–207. Slone, DJ. 2008. “The Attraction of Religion: A  Sexual Selectionist Account.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories and Critiques, ed. by J Bulbulia, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, 181–187. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press. Taves, A. 2009. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Whitehouse, H. 2008. “Cognitive Evolution and Religion: Cognition and Religious Evolution.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories and Critiques, ed. by J Bulbulia, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, 31–41. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press. Whitehouse, H, P François, PE Savage, TE Currie, KC Feeney, E Cioni, R Purcell, RM Ross, J Larson, J Baines, B ter Haar, A Covey and P Turchin. 2019. “Complex Societies Precede Moralizing Gods throughout World History.” Nature. doi: 10.1038/s41586-019-1043-4 Wilson, DS. 2008. “Evolution and Religion: The Transformation of the Obvious.” In The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories and Critiques, ed. by J Bulbulia, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, 23–29. Santa Margarita: CA, Collins Foundation Press. Xygalatas, D, P Mitkidis, R Fischer, P Reddish, J Skewes, AW Geertz, A Roepstorff and J Bulbulia. 2013. “Extreme Rituals Promote Prosociality.” Psychological Science 24: 1602–1605. Zahavi, A, and A Zahavi. 1997. The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Part 2

Philosophy of Language, Psychology and Neuroscience

5 A History of the Evolution of Religion From Religion to Religiosity to the Processes of Believing Hans-Ferdinand Angel Introduction The evolution of religion is a scientific topic that is attractive for different fields of research. There is no doubt that both terms, “evolution” and “religion,” comprise highly complex phenomena that cannot be briefly described in a satisfying manner.

Relation This complexity has an impact on the question of how both phenomena, evolution and religion, can be adequately combined. Such a relation is implied when religion and evolution are combined in the sense of evolution of religion. Any attempt to find, postulate or describe possible relations between evolution and religion will produce an ellipsis-like field (i.e., a field with something left out between two poles) of super-complexity in which religion is one of the poles and evolution the other. Ellipsis is used in this chapter as a metaphor to make the scientific challenge of defining what should be understood as relation visually imaginable. The notion relation itself is a vividly discussed topic in analytic philosophy, and supposing relations exist, it has to been asked, “What might the internal or external nature of those relations be?” (MacBride 2016). Therefore, it is crucial for any understanding of any (postulated) relationship between religion and evolution to clarify the underlying concept of relation.

Evolution When speaking about the evolution of religion(s), what will be understood as evolution has to be made clear. The term “evolution” is rooted in an understanding of a reality that will gradually show its inner nucleus (lat.: e-volvere  =  to roll sth. out). It was within the Neoplatonic philosophical tradition that terms like development or evolution were coined in their modern understanding (Weyand and Mühle 1972). For GW Leibnitz, for instance, “evolution” was like “involution,” a favorite term (Rentsch 1972).

88  Hans-Ferdinand Angel Additionally, which of the several concepts of “time” will be used will influence our understanding of evolution. However, the theoretical understanding of time itself is complex (Prior 1967; Markosian 2016). A  somewhat convincing argument has even been made for the unreality of time (McTaggart 1908). The theoretical understanding of evolution will therefore depend on which concepts of time are integrated or preferred. In the 19th century, especially after Darwin, the concept of evolution grew up in a biological context in which different manifestations within species were increasingly conceived and understood as changes in phenotypes. Methodically the challenge was to bring their appearance into a temporal order. The term already existing, evolution (by natural selection), seemed adequate for labeling the mechanisms by which those changes might be driven. Evolution theories evolved over time (integrating genetic and epigenetic factors or a geological perspective on the history of earth). The debate of the character of evolution has not yet come to an end. “Niche construction” is a good example, where organisms create the conditions for their own evolution (Odling-Smee 2003). In humans, it gets even more complex with gene-culture coevolution (Richerson and Morten 2013). The evolution of evolution theories has affected the debates about the evolution of religion, which includes God concepts (Wright 2009), concepts like altruism and forgiveness (Wilson 2002) and barbarism (Pocock 1999– 2011). However, many traditional positions can be identified as shaped by history (Achtner 2009). Talking about evolution of religion changes the focus of observation from an originally biological context to a context of culturally settled systems. But any contextual change of theories comes with some major challenges. For instance, when certain phenomena of one context are “detected” in another one, it has to be clarified under which relational conditions (see “Relation” section) it might be adequate to apply concepts like comparability, analogy, identity, similarity or dissimilarity. Finally, it has to be mentioned that the term “evolution” became theoretically influential in scientific debates more or less in the same period as the term “religion,” a fact which facilitated the idea of possible relations.

Religion and Evolution The relation of the pole evolution and a general pole religion was originally not the focus of interest. Rather, the relation of these two poles was discussed with regard to the tension between the Judeo-Christian belief in a creation by God on the one side and the idea of evolution by natural selection on the other side. These debates influenced a large number of subsequent topics. Some of them have been directed more to the pole religion, such as the existence of God (predominantly understood in a JudeoChristian sense); the possible influence of this God on the principles which are efficient in nature; the nature of wonders; the existence of a soul; and

The Evolution of Religion 89 the understanding of creation itself. Meanwhile, for instance, evolution by natural selection theory in general is on a high level, affirmed officially by the Roman Catholic Church (Pope John Paul II 1996), though it is rejected for the human soul (De Cruz 2017). Other debates have been concentrated on topics that are closer to the pole evolution, such as the question of time, the natural history of earth, cause and effect, contingency and necessity, the understanding of nature itself, the understanding of (natural) science and, last but not least, the role of knowledge and its relation to (religious) beliefs. When modern debates intend to relate religion and evolution under the perspective “evolution of religion,” all those terms need to be defined – also with regard to the context of their time. Indeed, the actual meaning and the actually favored concepts of explanation have to be explored for both poles  – for evolution-related concepts and for religion-related (and even theological) concepts. For example, in the debates of the 19th century, a highly influential concept of God understood God in an Aristotelian sense (Aristotle, Metaphysics XII, 1933–1935: 1072) as the “unmoved mover” (in ancient Greek, ὃ οὐ κινούμενον κινεῖ; in Latin, primum movens). From a Christian perspective this so-called God-of-philosophers concept (Pannenberg 2007) was often blamed as contradicting a specific biblical position, namely the one that proposes the idea of a merciful and compassionate God, which is part of modern Christian theology (Stump 2016). Such lines of debates are highly relevant within the frame of the evolution of religion, but they will not be followed in this this chapter. Instead, the chapter aims to highlight the underestimated role of the believing processes in the evolution of religion debate. For this reason, it might be sufficient to be aware of two different ways of interpreting the meaning of the evolution of religion. We may be talking about the role of religions in the evolution of humankind or the role of humankind in the evolution of religion, or we may be talking about the evolution of humankind and humankind’s effects on the surrounding environment in which religion lies. In both cases, the term “religion” is used in a seemingly self-understood way, where the object of evolution is religion itself. Without going into the depth of phenomenological, propositional, cultural or social aspects of religion, one can state that in both cases, the term “evolution” does not indicate a real encounter with religion(s). Instead, and this is crucial for the further reflection to be presented, religion is used as a scientific term that indicates a theoretical and distant reflection about religion. This demands a reflection on some of the linguistic aspects of the term “religion.”

Difference Between Concept and Notion In a linguistic and a philosophical sense, there is a difference between a notion and a concept. This topic seems to have different significance in the respective German-speaking and English-speaking literature. Whereas

90  Hans-Ferdinand Angel concept, as the constituents of thoughts (Goering 2013; Margolis and ­Laurence 2011), finds a lot of interest in the English-speaking tradition, this is less the case with notion. In contrast, the interest in the relevance of notions in the German-speaking academic tradition brought up a field known as Begriffsgeschichte. This established German term cannot be translated adequately into English. Most appropriately, it might be called the history of the meaning of notions, but this bulky label is not common in English-­speaking discussion. In English literature, we find expressions like the history of ideas (Breckman, Burke, Grafton, Moyer, and Kelley 1940) or the history of meaning (Bouwsma 1981). More widely spread might be the history of concepts (Richter 1995). This expression is used by proponents of so-called contextualism (King 1995), which was initiated by prominent members of the influential Cambridge School, like QRD Skinner (1979) and J Dunn (1980), who tried to understand texts in their respective contexts. As field of academic interest, Begriffsgeschichte has been established in the last quarter of the 20th century (Koselleck 2006) and hence became an influential section of sociocultural research (Ritter et al. 1971–2007; Gumbrecht 2006; Müller and Schmieder 2016). The basic idea of the Begriffsgeschichte is that a symbolic term may remain unchanged over centuries, although concepts and ideas that are signified by the term’s referent lose their influence, deeply modified or superposed over by new concepts. In my own words, concepts are temporary, more or less stable building blocks for the meaning of a notion. Without going into the details of constructivism, its history and its basic assumptions (Dewey 1910; Kelly 1955; Rawls 1980; Bagnoli 2017), I can still say that concepts, which are embedded in notions, guide the perception of reality: They calibrate the focus; they prefigure which is assessed as central or peripheral; they influence which relations among special aspects are made visible or remain hidden; and so on. Additionally and simultaneously, concepts ascribe  – in a circular way  – what is understood as the (actual or historical) meaning of a notion. Thus, in a metaphoric sense, it might be possible to state that a notion functions like glasses, and concepts are implicit or explicit components of those glasses that allow or do not allow phenomena to be perceived. Begriffsgeschichte highlights the need to distinguish between concepts and notions, and this approach influences the view on any debate that uses scientifically specific terms. Actually, this is the case in all debates that use the terms “evolution” and “religion.”

Religion: Concept and Notion Debates that use the term “religion” activate embedded concepts of religion (Stenmark 2004). So we have to ask, what kind of concepts and, mediated by them, what kind of phenomena come into our mind when we use the term “religion”? As mentioned earlier, the implicitly underpinned concepts of religion must be laid open, because they are functional to the perception

The Evolution of Religion 91 of religious phenomena. The long-standing debate about the relation between evolution and religion can be seen as a prime example showing that despite the use of a seemingly unchanged term, “religion” (and, of course, the seemingly unchanged term “evolution”), the implicitly embedded concepts of religion have changed over time; as a consequence, they brought to the floor different religious phenomena. What was said earlier for terms generally can now be applied in a specific way for religion: for our perception of the reality of religions, the notion religion functions like glasses and the concepts of religion are implicit or explicit component of these glasses. The role of changing concepts of religion was worked out brilliantly by WC Smith (1962). He stated that the use of the term “religion” signifies a reification of experiences of living people, which shows that terms like religion or religions “seem now clearly inadequate” (194). Let us not forget that these terms have been coined for the use of outsiders. He even drew the conclusion that the terms “religion” or “religious” should be abandoned and replaced by concepts like “cumulative tradition” or “faith.” Thus, the use of the metaphorical glasses influences which meaning is ascribed to the notion religion and what we perceive as religious reality. Therefore, whenever the term “religion” is used in actual debates about the evolution of religion, it has to be asked, which concepts of religion guide the perception of which phenomena of which religion(s)?

Religion: Concepts Throughout History The various meaning of religion throughout history have been quite well explored (Smith 1962; Feil 1986–2012; Dierse et al. 1992). So has the relationship between science and religion (Harrison 2015; De Cruz 2017), a matter crucial for understanding historical concepts of religion. In antiquity, especially during the Roman Empire, religion functioned as a sort of juridical term to correctly organize the cults and for veneration (of the Emperor). Christians were understood in this period as godless because of their refusal to follow the ordered veneration. For medieval writers like Thomas Aquinas the use of the term “religion” tended to describe an inner accepting and integrating of Christian rules into one’s personal attitude (De Cruz 2017). The term religiosus (religious) was also used to denote a member of a Christian religious order. The career of the term “religion” started in the time of the Protestant Reformation. It was possible to pacify different religious camps within the Holy Roman Empire because of the political function of religion as an umbrella term. This meaning of religion found place in a political document that was essentially based on the term “religion” and which became a law, the socalled Augsburger Religionsfrieden (1555). In the common English translation as Settlement of Augsburg, the term “religion” was skipped. In the peace of Westphalia (1648), which ended a 30-year religious war (1618–1648),

92  Hans-Ferdinand Angel the political principle cuius regio eius et religio [in a prince’s country the prince’ s religion] was articulated. After having been established as a political term this same term, “religion,” became the basis for a principle that influences the European landscape even today. It postulated that the religion (nowadays we would say denomination) chosen by the sovereign had to be accepted by all inhabitants living in the sovereign’s domain. Hence, this resulted in a narrow connection between church(es) and sovereigns (throne and altar). This politically functionalized understanding of religion was massively criticized by proponents of the Enlightenment, who claimed that there should be freedom of religion for every individual. No doubt, the meaning and history of religion has continued to change over time. For instance, it has been seen as part of culture (Geertz 1966; van Belzen 2010). From the late 1960s, the so-called secularization theorem became a central issue (Norris and Inglehart 2004). Sometimes the end of religion was predicted (Casanova 1994; Taylor 2007) or postulated (Harris 2005); sometimes the opposite position had favored a re-sacralization of society (Berger 1969, 1999).

Religion: Perceived Through the Cloudy Glasses of the 19th Century Following the debates on the evolution of religion, one can observe that the preferentially used meaning of religion was remarkably shaped in the 19th century. During this optimistic period, the modern interest in systematically understanding the phenomenon of religion was inaugurated. These attempts were settled in a now more global horizon that left behind Eurocentric reductions (Tylor 1871; Radin 1937). The new interest, also influenced by the experiences of colonialism, went far beyond the Abrahamic religions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, which had been traditionally practiced in Europe since the Middle Ages. Additionally, new disciplines, such as archaeology, psychology and linguistics, influenced and modified scientific approaches, which were based more and more on a worldwide academic exchange. All over the world, existing as well as former systems, groups or communities were discovered that showed similarities and dissimilarities with those religious phenomena known in Europe and the Americas. Their overwhelming variety inspired the scientific interest to focus on the multifaceted and iridescent forms of their appearances, like rites, conversions, taboos and religious symbols. The variety of religious experiences became predominant (James 1902/1985) and inaugurated fruitful fields of research. The capacity to comprise all this variety of phenomena was imputed to the notion of religion in its 19th-century shape, and all such aspects and phenomena have subsequently been subsumed under the term “religion.” Furthermore, challenged by the overwhelming variety of religious experiences,

The Evolution of Religion 93 the notion religion itself and its possible theoretical understanding became the subject of debate. One of the central topics of interest has been the contents of religious beliefs, which could concern tribal gods, ghosts and an incredible variety of phenomena. The approach to religion, which might be characterized in the 19th century as quite open, meanwhile appears quite reductive and inadequate for understanding the complexity of religious experiences. The reason is that the term “religion” in its meaning of the 19th century cannot cover the much broader perspectives on religious phenomena that guide our actual understanding. Thus, the 19th-century concepts of religion, which are embedded in the actually used term “religion,” serve as cloudy glasses. They produce only the illusion of a clear view on religious phenomena. And regrettably, they contribute to a limited and narrow view of religion.

Fixation on Religion: Fading Out of Religiosity Given the discussion so far, it is not natural that the term “religion” is commonly used to stimulate our everyday communication and scientific discourses. This fixation on religion is the more or less hidden side effect of the debates of the 19th century, which contributed to the spread of the term “religion” in a wide manner and made it omnipresent. This fixation on the term “religion” can be seen in many titles of academic works, such as the books of Shafranske (1996), Koenig and Rosmarin (1998), Taylor (2005, 2008) and many more. Unfortunately, the fixation on the term “religion” has also deeply influenced the debates on the evolution of religion. That the term was spread to such an extent has been one of the consequences of the aforementioned European history. Sociolinguistically, the modern understanding of religion started its career as a (politically and socially) relevant term in the time of the Protestant Reformation and stabilized its flourishing in the time of the Enlightenment. Interestingly, for the world of science, the 19th century brought the most sustainable fixation on religion. Religion became the central component in the denotation of a couple of newly established scientific disciplines, such as the history of religion, psychology of religion, sociology of religion, philosophy of religion, phenomenology of religion (in German, additionally Religions-Wissenschaft, Religions-Pädagogik, Religions-Didaktik, ­Religions-Unterricht) and so on. No wonder that the fixation on religion led to a perspective that connected all religious phenomena with the notion religion(s). In addition, to relate religious (adjective) phenomena exclusively with religion is an inadequate unidirectional perspective. It has become possible because no theoretical interest exists to clarify the function of the adjective “religious.” That its nature as an adjective is a problem is only rarely expressed, such as when Wilfred Cantwell Smith says that the adjective “religious” is an “attribute

94  Hans-Ferdinand Angel of people” (Smith 1962, 195), or when Eric Sharpe states that the trouble with “religious studies” is the adjectival use of the word “religious” (Sharpe 1983, VIII). To the best of my knowledge, there is no deeper discussion of this issue, and such dearth produces a great problem: this lack of theoretical interest nourishes the formation of a blind spot. What widely has been overlooked is the possibility that phenomena that can be labeled religious might be connected with the notion religiosity. In consequence, compared with the overwhelming amount of material that deals with the topic religion, one can find a quite restricted interest in a theoretical clarification of the term religiosity (Angel et al. 2006; Angel 2013b). Of little help are tautological definitions of religiosity, such as when it is defined as “mental ability to be religious” (Voland 2009, 10). Whereas theories of religiosity are rare, phenomena as components of religiosity and spirituality have been highlighted by many authors (Whitehouse 2004; Knight, in this volume). Phenomena and components of religiosity are the central part of the vast field of the psychology of religion.

The Hidden Problems of the Double-Wing Adjective “Religious” To avoid struggling with the definition of religiosity or with clarifying it, the adjective “religious” is predominantly used. Thus, the use of the adjective, combined with its quasi-natural association with religion, became a terrible burden, since it hindered the theoretical interest to suspend the totally inadequate religious-religion nexus. This problematic association suffocates the approach to a manifold “religious” (adjective) reality and prevents the ability to theoretically explore religiosity and its possible expressions by individuals throughout the history of humankind and in all regions of the world. This problem is inherent in a quite remarkable part of those reflections that intend to clarify the epistemic foundation of the psychology of religion (Wulff 1997, 1999). The discipline psychology of religion has in its name the term “religion” but deals mainly with anthropological aspects of religiosity, religiousness and spirituality (Platvoet and Molendijk 1999). This has provoked the question, “psychology of what?” (Paloutzian and Park 2013b, 7). Maybe the discipline would have been better labeled psychology of religiosity. The named aspect is also relevant for the topic of the evolution of religion. One of the most harmful effects of neglecting or fading out of religiosity is the rarely formulated awareness of the fact that religion on the one side and religiosity (religiousness, spirituality) on the other are categorically different. This means that it is impossible to easily switch from a talk about religion to a talk about religiosity. But exactly this categorical confusion can be observed in many debates about the evolution

The Evolution of Religion 95

religious

RELIGION

RELIGIOSITY

history of

religion

? of

religiosity

philosophy of

religion

? of

religiosity

sociology of

religion

?...

psychology of

religion

?...

freedom of

religion

?...

... religion ... Religions-Unterricht (German) Religions-Pädagogik (German)

Figure 5.1  “Religious” – a double-wing but (practically) monopolized adjective.

of religion. Certainly, the question of category systems and category differences, which has its roots in Aristotelian philosophy, remains unsettled (Thomasson 2016). Nevertheless, it might be adequate to understand religion as a systemic term (which can be described, for instance, in terms of system theories or theories of culture), while religiosity might be understood as an anthropological term (Angel et al. 2006; Angel 2013b). The adjective religious can be used to bridge both categories and is thus a double-winged term that should not be reduced to only one wing. To talk about phenomena that belong to different categories, we at least need an awareness of the existing categorical difference. To improve the situation, a theoretical framework has to be worked out that allows one to express the relation (see “Relation” section) between the systemic term “religion” and the anthropological term “religiosity” and which clarifies the bridging function of the widespread use of the adjective “religious.” Talks about religion have little common ground with talks about religiosity. Therefore, talks about religion that use the cloudy glasses of the 19th century fail more or less completely to provide an understanding

96  Hans-Ferdinand Angel of the evolution of religiosity. Instead, they support intentions to politically functionalize so-called (see “Religion: concept and notion” section) religions.

Beyond the Fixation on Religion: The Evolution of Religiosity No doubt, deep changes in religious (adjective) behavior, religious phenomena, religious self-concepts and religious beliefs can be observed over a period which comprises some thousands of years. But it is not adequate to articulate such changes mainly within a frame of the evolution of religion, as is often the case. Only once the fixation on religion has been overcome will a new perspective be able to end the almost total absence of theoretical debates about the evolution of religiosity. When focusing on the evolution of religiosity, it will be clear that also a broader theoretical discussion is needed to figure out the similarities and dissimilarities between religiosity, religiousness and spirituality. Additionally, the theoretical framework can be broadened and the scientific interest directed toward the evolution of the human ability to shape individual religiosity. In this case, the topic of the evolution of religion will be enlarged by the topic of the evolution of religiosity, as evidenced in the title of this edited volume. In an analog sense (see “Religion and evolution” section), it may be deciphered as the role of religiosity in the evolution of humankind, or the role of humankind in the evolution of religiosity, or as the evolution of humankind and its effects on the inner constitution of humans, among which the potentiality to develop and to express religiosity might be comprised.

RELIGION

SYSTEMS

EVOLUTION

RELIGIOSITY RELIGIOUSNESS SPIRITUALITY

ANTROPHOLOGY

Figure 5.2   Beyond the fixation on religion: the evolution of religiosity.

Credion

The Evolution of Religion 97

Beyond the Fixation on Religiosity: The Processes of Believing In the attempt to change the focus from the evolution of religion to the evolution of religiosity, the fact that religion and religiosity belong to two different categories has four consequences: 1 Disciplines such as neuroscience, cognitive science, information theory and psychology can contribute in only a limited way to an understanding of religion (as a systemic concept), but they are relevant for issues within the debates about the evolution of religiosity (as an anthropological concept). That is also the case for some of their subdisciplines that are especially dedicated to evolutionary topics, such as paleo-neurology. These disciplines cannot give any significant insights into the relation between evolution and religion, but they can provide data for an understanding of the evolution of humans and our possible capacity to develop our own religiosity. 2 The fixation on religion has stimulated a special interest in contents. That is a logical consequence of the fact that many similarities and dissimilarities become evident as different or even incompatible contents. Most of these contents have become visible as differences in religious beliefs. Hence, the question of contents of religious systems (dogmas) became overwhelmingly central. 3 In the debates about the evolution of religion, the fixed focus on religions and the contents of their beliefs has had the consequence that the theoretical interest has been focused on beliefs in general. That is compatible with the observation that in scientific debates, the noun “belief” is generally preferred even if it is intended to stress the fluidity of the believing processes. Thus, one predominantly finds expressions like the formation of beliefs (Langdon and Coltheart 2000; McGarty et al. 2002), dynamics of belief (Forrest 1986), erosion of beliefs (Beck and Miller 1999) or even evolution of misbelief (McKay and Dennet 2009). 4 In a linguistic sense, the term “belief” belongs to the group of nouns associated with concepts of substantiality and stability. That has not been without influence on the debates of an evolution of religion. Similarly, like in biology, different manifestations within species have been brought into a temporal order to understand their evolution. But interestingly, within the context of religion, this procedure has been transferred from the manifestation of species to different semantic “contents of belief.” Contents of beliefs have been compared with regard of similarity and dissimilarity. The attempt to bring the different contents of religious (adjective) beliefs into a temporal order was one of the theoretical approaches to the evolution of religions.

98  Hans-Ferdinand Angel Leaving behind the fixation on religion will allow us to draw attention not only to stable contents and stable beliefs but also to the processes in individuals, which underlie belief formation, namely the processes of believing. Understanding the processes of believing is relevant to understanding how semantic contents – regardless of whether they belong to religious systems (dogmas) or to secular systems (ideologies) – can even become central for individuals. In simpler terms, the semantic contents of beliefs can be understood as emotionally shaped representations of contents in the brain. For the issue of the evolution of religiosity, this may direct the scope of interest to the question of how the brain evolved from believing as a mental function to believing as embodied brain processes. To summarize the reflection so far, one can state that a remarkable part of the debates that focus on the evolution of religion follow a fixation on religion. As a result, the evolution-of-religion debates are caught by the trap of focusing on religion. It is even a double trap, because religion is understood in a reductive sense from the 19th century, and religiosity, as a different category, has faded out – at least as a theoretical concept. This is the case, even if many “religious” (adjective) phenomena can be conceived as part of a theory of religiosity. It is no surprise, then, that within this doublereductive framework, there is no trigger to include a crucial topic, namely the processes of believing even though the underestimated role of the believing processes can remarkably enrich the debate about evolution of religion. Because the processes of believing have recently become a prominent field of scientific research (Angel et al. 2017), we can and will provide several hints as to how to understand the processes of believing and how to integrate this topic into the traditional framework of evolution of religion, which follow.

Credition and the Evolution of the Ability to Believe To make evident the difference between belief and the processes of believing the term credition was coined (Angel 2006, 2013a). Credition is understood as normal and unavoidable activity which may take place in secular as well as in religious contexts and involves (at least in humans) the processes of meaning-making (Ihm et al., this volume). This aspect will become crucial once the ability to believe is integrated into a framework of the evolution of religion, because believing processes cannot be limited to the context of religions (Whitehouse 2005; Kundt 2015). The challenge to be faced will be the question of how individuals will integrate components of religion into their individual religiosity or how components of religion will shape over time the religiousness of individuals who are ready to develop their personal attitudes in the context of a religion. One of the theoretical backgrounds for understanding the processes of religious development will be concepts of religiosity. But to my knowledge, it

The Evolution of Religion 99 is difficult to find definitions of religiosity in the relevant literature. To avoid a tautology – that is, a fixation on religion and a fading out of r­ eligiosity – I have proposed to conceive of religiosity as analogous to homeostasis of a higher level. Humans (and all vertebrates) are able to regulate (e.g., like a thermostat) their biological processes in a way that is scientifically labeled as homeostasis. In a similar way, there should be a hypothesized homeostatic process/function to regulate higher cognitive processes that transcend mere biological concepts. Such a higher-level homeostasis, which takes place within a non-basal biological frame, could be named religiosity or homeostasis II, since it is able to integrate mental concepts like transcendence (Angel 2006). Thankfully, an empirically based fruitful research field on the measurement of religiosity already exists. Hill and Hood (1999), in their overview, list different types of scales, like scales of religious beliefs and practices, scales of religious attitudes, scales of religious orientation, scales of religious development and so on. The neurophysiological processes that underlie belief formation have become a target of neuroscientific research (Seitz 2017). This perspective opens a wide horizon for different fields of research, such as on empathy, placebo effects, emotion regulation, valuation processes and many more (Angel et al. 2017). The breadth of such different fields of research may nourish the impression of incoherency. But that is not the case if one follows the research line from the “question of belief to the question of [the processes of] believing” (Angel 2017). In a series of conferences, it has been worked out that the believing processes should be understood as fundamental brain functions (Seitz and Angel 2012; Angel and Seitz 2016), which result in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and which thereby guide individuals’ behavior (Seitz et al. 2017). Consequently, further issues could be addressed. Models and the neural base of the believing processes were explored (Sugiura et al. 2015), and first attempts have been undertaken to relate the processes of believing to meaning-making processes, especially within a religious context (Seitz and Angel 2014). The radius of neurophysiological research has been extended to explore the influence of transcultural conditions (Han et al. 2017) or to figure out how the believing processes play an important role for well-known neuropsychological concepts, such as decision-making and expectation management (Angel and Seitz 2017). Further research is needed, such as to clarify the evolution of the capacity to believe and its relation to learning, motivation, development and so on. For the topic of the evolution of religion/religiosity, it will be of theoretical interest how the processes of believing can be related to (religious and secular) belief systems. This needs to take into account the role of social groups and societies, which are central topics for social neuroscience (Seitz, this volume). A cultural approach will facilitate the understanding of how the processes of believing can result in such divergent particularities of religious thoughts and beliefs (Oviedo, this volume).

100  Hans-Ferdinand Angel The conceptual work behind these findings and the model of credition that is based on them cannot be fully explained in this chapter. The model shows how the processes of believing start with an irritating perception and are “translated” into a space of action in which concrete behavioral decisions are prepared. Because processes of believing are frequent events, every single process of believing stabilizes by reinforcing existing beliefs. We intend in the near future to work out the structure of the believing process also within the framework of evolutionary concepts.

References Achtner, W. 2009. “The Evolution of Evolutionary Theories of Religion.” In The Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, ed. by E Voland and W Schiefenhövel, 257–274. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Angel, HF. 2006. Religiosität als menschliches Potential. Ein anthropologisches Modell der Religiosität im neurowissenschaftlichen Horizont. In Religiosität. Anthropologische, theologische und sozialwissenschaftliche Klärungen, ed. by Angel, HF, M Bröking-Bortfeldt, U Hemel, M Jacobs, J Kunstmann, M Pirner and M Rothgangel, 62–89. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Angel, HF. 2013a. “Credition.” In Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religion, Vol. 1, ed. by ALC Runehov, L Oviedo and NP Azari, 536–539. Dordrecht: Springer. Angel, HF. 2013b. “Religiosity.” In Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religion, Vol. 4, ed. by ALC Runehov, L Oviedo and NP Azari, 2012–2014. Dordrecht: Springer. Angel, HF. 2017. “Credition: From the Question of Belief to the Question of Believing.” In Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions, ed. by HF Angel, L Oviedo, RF Paloutzian, ALC Runehov, and RJ Seitz, 17–36. Dordrecht and Heidelberg: Springer. Angel, HF, and RJ Seitz. 2016. “Process of Believing as Fundamental Brain Function: The Concept of Credition.” SFU Research Bulletin 3: 1–20. Angel, HF, and RJ Seitz. 2017. “Violation of Expectation as Matter for the Believing Process.” Frontiers Psychology 8: 772. Angel, HF, L Oviedo, RF Paloutzian, ALC Runehov and RJ Seitz, eds. 2017. Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions. Dordrecht and Heidelberg: Springer. Angel, HF, M Bröking-Bortfeldt, U Hemel, M Jacobs, J Kunstmann, M Pirner and M Rothgangel, eds. 2006. Religiosität. Anthropologische, theologische und sozialwissenschaftliche Klärungen. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Aristotle. 1933–1935. Metaphysics, Vol. II, H Tredennick and GC Armstrong, trans. Loeb Classical Library, 271, 287. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Bagnoli, C. 2017. “Constructivism in Metaethics.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter), ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2017/entries/constructivism-metaethics/. Beck, R, and JP Miller. 1999. “Erosion of Belief and Disbelief: Effects of Religiosity and Negative Affect on Beliefs in the Paranormal and Supernatural.” The Journal of Social Psychology 14 (2): 277–287. Berger, P.  1969. A Rumor of Angels: Modern Society and the Rediscovery of the Supernatural. New York: Doubleday.

The Evolution of Religion 101 Berger, P. 1999. The Desecularization of the World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Bouwsma, WJ. 1981. “From History of Ideas to History of Meaning.” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History 12 (2): 279–291. Breckman, W, M Burke, A Grafton, A Moyer and DR Kelley, eds. 1940. Journal of the History of Ideas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Casanova, J. 1994. Public Religions in the Modern World. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. De Cruz, H. 2017. “Religion and Science.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring), ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ spr2017/entries/religion-science/. Dewey, J. 1910 [2017]. How We Think. Sunnydale, CA: Loki’s Publishing. Dierse, U, CH Ratschow, S Lorenz, E Feil, W Jaerschke, HM Schmiding and C Elsas. 1992. “Religion.” In: Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 8, ed. by J Ritter and K Gründer, 632–713. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Dunn, J. 1980. Political Obligation in its Historical Context. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Feil, E. 1986–2007. Religio, 2nd ed, Vols. 1–4. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht. Forrest, P. 1986. The Dynamics of Belief. Oxford: Blackwell. Geertz, C. 1966. “Religion as Cultural System.” In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by M Bunton, 1–46. London: Tavistock Publications. Goering, T. 2013. “Concepts, History and the Game of Giving and Asking for Reasons: A Defense of Conceptual History.” Journal of the Philosophy of History 7 (3): 426–452. Gumbrecht, HU. 2006. Dimension und Grenzen der Begriffsgeschichte. Paderborn: Wilhelm Fink Verlag. Han, X, T Zhang, S Wang and S Han, S. 2017. “Neural Corelates of Believing.” NeuroImage 156: 155–165. Harris, S. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: Norton. Harrison, P. 2015. The Territories of Science and Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hill, PC, and RW Hood, Jr., eds. 1999. Measures of Religiosity. Birmingham, AL: Religious Education Press. James, W. 1985. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. John Paul II. 1996. “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth.” Address of Pope John Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (October 22). Vatican. Kelly, GA. 1955. The Psychology of Personal Constructs. New York: Norton. King, P. 1995. “Historical Contextualism. The New Historicism?” History of European Ideas 21 (2): 209–233. Koenig, H, and DH Rosmarin, eds. 1998. Handbook of Religion and Mental Health. Cambridge, MA: Academic Press. Koselleck, R. 2006. Begriffsgeschichten. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Kundt, R. 2015. Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture and the Study of Religion. London: Bloomsbury Academic. Langdon, R, and M Coltheart. 2000. The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Delusions. Mind & Language 15 (1): 184–218. MacBride, F. 2016. “Relations.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter), ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/ entries/relations.

102  Hans-Ferdinand Angel Margolis, E, and S Laurence. 2011. “Concepts.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring), ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/ archives/spr2014/entries/concepts Markosian, N. 2016. “Time.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall), ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2016/entries/ time/. McGarty, C, VY Yzerbyt and R Spears. 2002. Stereotypes as Explanations: The Formation of Meaningful Beliefs about Social Groups. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press McKay, RT, and DC Dennett. 2009: “The Evolution of Misbelief.” Behavioral and Brain Science 32: 493–561. McTaggart, JME. 1908. “The Unreality of Time.” Mind 17: 457–473. Reprinted in Le Poidevin, R and M McBeath, eds. 1993. The Philosophy of Time. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 23–24. Müller, E, and F Schmieder. 2016. Begriffsgeschichte und historische Semantik. Ein kritisches Kompendium. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag. Norris, P, and R Inglehart. 2004. Sacred and Secular: Religion and Politics Worldwide. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Odling-Smee, FJ, L Laland and M Feldman. 2003. Niche Construction. The Neglected Process in Evolution. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Paloutzian, RF, and CL Park, eds. 2013a. Handbook of The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2nd ed. London and New York: Guilford Press. Paloutzian, RF, and CL Park. 2013b. “Recent Progress and Core Issues in the Science of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality.” In Handbook of The Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2nd ed, ed. by RF Paloutzian and CL Park, 3–22. London and New York: Guilford Press. Pannenberg, W. 2007. “God of the Philosophers.” First Things. Accessible at www. firstthings.com/article/2007/06/002-god-of-the-philosophers. Platvoet, J, and AL Molendijk, eds. 1999. The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Context, Concepts, and Contests. Boston: Brill Academic Publishers Inc. Pocock, JGA. 1999–2001. Barbarism and Religion, Vols. 1–5. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prior, A. 1967. Past, Present, and Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Radin, P. 1937. Primitive Religion. New York: Viking. Rawls, J. 1980. “Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory: The Dewey Lectures, 1980.” Journal of Philosophy 77 (9): 515–572. Rentsch, B. 1972. “Evolutionstheore.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 2, ed. by J Ritter, 836–838. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Richerson, PJ, and MH Christiansen, eds. 2013. Cultural Evolution, Society, Technology, Language, and Religion. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Richter, M. 1995. The History of Political and Social Concepts. A Critical Introduction. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Ritter, J, K Gründer and G Gabriel, eds. 1971–2007. Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie. Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 1–13. Seitz, RJ. 2017. “Beliefs and Believing as Possible Targets for Neuroscientific Research.” In Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions, ed. by HFAngel, L Oviedo, ALC Runehov, RF Paloutzian and RJ Seitz, 69–82. Heidelberg and New York: Springer.

The Evolution of Religion 103 Seitz, RJ, and HF Angel. 2012. “Processes of Believing: A Review and Conceptual Account.” Reviews of Neuroscience 23: 303–309. Seitz, RJ, and HF Angel. 2014. “Psychology of Religion and Spirituality: Meaning Making and Processes of Believing.” Religion, Brain and Behavior 4: 22–30. Seitz, RJ, RF Paloutzian and HF Angel. 2017. “Processes of Believing. Where Do They Come From? What Are They Good For?” F1000Research 5: 2573. Shafranske, EP, ed. 1996. Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Sharpe, EJ. 1983. Understanding Religion. London: Duckworth. Skinner, QRD. 1979. The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, 2 Vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Smith, WC. 1962. The Meaning and End of Religion. Minneapolis: Macmillan. Stenmark, M. 2004. How to Relate Science and Religion: A  Multidimensional Model. Grand Rapids, MI and Cambridge: Eerdmans. Stump, E. 2016. The God of the Bible and the God of the Philosophers (The Aquinas Lecture in Philosophy). London and New York: Marquette University Press. Sugiura, M, RJ Seitz and HF Angel. 2015. “Models and Neural Bases of the Believing Process.” Journal of Brain and Behavioral Sciences 5: 12–23. Taylor, BR. 2005–2008. Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature, 2 Vols. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. Taylor, C. 2007. A Secular Age. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Thomasson, A. 2016. “Categories.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter). ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2016/entries/categories/. Tylor, EB. 1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom. London: John Murray. van Belzen, J. 2010. Towards Cultural Psychology of Religion. Dordrecht: Springer. Voland, E. 2009. “Evaluating the Evolutionary Status of Religiosity and Religiousness.” In The Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior, ed. by E Voland and W Schiefenhövel, 9–23. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Weyand, K, and G Mühle. 1972. “Entwicklung.” In Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, Vol. 2, ed. by J Ritter, 550–650. Basel and Stuttgart: Schwabe & Co. Whitehouse, H. 2004. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Whitehouse, H. 2005. Mind and Religion: Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity. Walnut Creek, CA: Alta Mira Press. Wilson, DS. 2002. Darwin’s Cathedral. Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Wright, R. 2009. The Evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Wulff, DM. 1997. Psychology of Religion, 2nd ed. New York: Wiley Wulff, DM. 1999. “Psychologists Define Religion: Patterns and Prospects of a ­Century-Long Quest.” In The Pragmatics of Defining Religion: Context, Concepts, and Contests, ed. by J Platvoet and AL Molendijk, 207–224. Boston: Brill.

6 The Processes of Believing in Religion’s Evolution A Cognitive Neuroscience Hypothesis Rüdiger J Seitz

Introduction This chapter is based on the hypothesis that the neuropsychic function of believing is brought about by fundamental brain processes that can be the object of neurophysiological investigation. On the neurophysiological level, the processes of believing involve the recognition of signals as probabilistic representations in conjunction with attributing subjective meaning to them (Seitz et al. 2017). This experiential process is perpetuated in the majority of instances without awareness of the individual and consolidated through declarative and procedural memory, leading to the subject’s sense of continuity. Thereupon, the processes of believing enables probabilistic cost/ reward predictions that guide the individual’s behavior. Owing to their character as neurophysiological, these processes of believing will result in a putative brain product or representation in neural code that may be called belief. Beliefs serve a purpose in that they are linked to personal intuitive judgments about the subjective certainty of sensory perceptions and abstract constructs, including imaginations (Harris et al. 2007). Owing to the rapid spread of cerebral network activity in the order of milliseconds, during which cerebral representations form (Seitz et  al. 2008; Potthoff and Seitz 2015), most beliefs are implicit, and only a few become explicit as they draw the subject’s attention. Accordingly, this descriptive level of analysis assumes the implementation of behavioral phenomena at the level of neurons, synapses and neural networks in the human brain as an essential constraint for the space of scientific exploration (Churchland and Sejnowski 1988). Nevertheless, this neuroscientific view does not exclude but rather is consistent with one of the long philosophical traditions that understand beliefs as tightly interrelated with knowledge as representing the worldview of a believing individual (Visala and Angel 2017). On the social level of description, it is a characteristic feature of beliefs that people attribute confidence to them and, therefore, base their behavior on them. Accordingly, beliefs have been considered to guide intelligent behavior in humans concerning interpersonal relations and adherence to societal or cultural norms (Elliott et  al. 1995; Howlett and Paulus 2015;

The Processes of Believing 105 Taves 2015). Specifically, social neuroscience has pointed out that the principles pertinent in neuroscience underlie the cerebral mechanisms according to which individuals relate themselves to social groups and societies (Vogeley and Roepstorf 2009). Moreover, religious beliefs have been hypothesized to reflect physiological brain activity brought about by neural circuits (Boyer et  al. 2003). If this is true, it similarly should be valid also for religious beliefs and, in the same way, for other types of conceptual beliefs, like political or moral ones. Against this background, the contextual picture for the formation of belief systems, such as religions, is of neuroscientific interest. As outlined by Angel (this volume), the notion of religion is based on concepts that differed in history and have become separate from the notion of religiosity and spirituality. In our contemporary understanding, religion can be seen as a systemic term, whereas religiosity is an anthropological term (ibid). Here, this discussion is extended to an empirical account of the processes of believing, which constitute a critical aspect of religion and religiosity in individuals, social groups and societies. The chapter will argue that the same neurophysiological principles guiding behavior on the level of interacting individuals apply on the level of anthropology. Key aspects for the relation of the processes of believing to religion as a research object of social neuroscience are narratives and rituals that are transmitted and practiced in social groups and societies for one’s entire life, from early infancy onward (Belzen 2010; Schnell 2012). In sum, the aim of this chapter is to explore the gap between human brainwork and the notions of religion and religiosity. First, it will be shown that the processes underlying believing take place in individuals in relation to the perception and valuation of objects and events. On the level of personal interactions, these processes are grounded in empathy, theory of mind and language that develop during infancy and childhood. Second, evidence will be presented showing that in the social domain, important constituents of the processes of believing are narratives provided to the individuals and the subjective meaning that those individuals associate with those narratives. The subjective relevance of narratives is reinforced by ritual activities, which are practiced in families, groups and societies. Thereupon, a sense of in-group belonging, safety and meaning of life is built up in the individuals, each of which is a potent force for the formation of cultures from prehistory onward. Finally, cross-cultural social neuroscience studies suggest that the human brain appears suitable for forming a variety of cultural products including religious beliefs.

The Neurophysiological Model of the Processes of Believing Neuroimaging has provided a means to explore whether cognitive activity, including religious worship, has a neurophysiological representation in the human brain. For example, Azari and colleagues (2001) performed a functional imaging experiment in which self-identified Christian believers recited

106  Rüdiger J Seitz or read Psalm 23. Using experimental control conditions and non-believing control subjects, the researchers found specific activations in the cerebral cortex that constituted a cortico-subcortical neural circuit (Azari et  al. 2005). The researchers hypothesized that this brain circuitry was related to attributing subjective value or meaning to the biblical narrative. As the study subjects were strong Christian believers, this attribution included also their sense of transcendence. These findings were substantiated by the observation that self-referential processing in Chinese Christians as compared to nonreligious Chinese people engaged similar brain areas in the medial frontal and parietal cortex (Han et al. 2008). Most prominent was the activation of the dorsal medial frontal cortex, which has recently been described as a key brain structure for regulating emotions and executive functions (Seitz et al. 2006; Niendam et al. 2012; Shalev et  al. 2017), including social self-esteem (Siegrist et  al. 2005). In more general terms, these findings provided neuroscientific support for the claim that the probabilistic attribution of meaning  – for example, believing – involves conceptual thinking and emotional loading (Angel and Seitz 2016). From this, a biomathematical model was elaborated that accounts for the interaction of perceptual experience and subjective affective value for the acquisition, maintenance and contextual modification of beliefs (Seitz et al. 2018). Notably, the involvement of affect makes a belief distinct from sensation and cognition (Sugiura et al. 2015). On the basis of this assumption, the processes of believing involve the elaboration of a probabilistic representation of an object or event in the external world and the association of this representation with an emotional loading (Figure 6.1). As in animals, such representations are typically based on the formal explorative analysis of stimuli in the environment by the dedicated senses. Perception is a dynamic process of reiteratively elaborating stimuli that collectively build multifaceted probabilistic abstract representations (Seitz et al. 2017). These representations pop up most likely against the background noise in a Bayesian sense (Friston 2010; Dehaene and Changeux 2011; Wiese et  al. 2014). Importantly, this bottom-up process is heavily intertwined with reciprocal top-down processing such that the actual abstract representation or image is matched against that of a previously perceived item (Adelson 1993; Olshausen et al. 1993). Usually, the processing speed is in the magnitude of some 20 to 40 milliseconds and, thus, below the limits of awareness (Bar et al. 2006; Sharan et al. 2014). Objects become more identifiable against a noisy background when either the signal-to-noise ratio or the duration of their exposure increase relative to the high processing speed inherent in the nervous tissue (Libet et al. 1991; Takai and Nishida 2010). The representations are coded in the brain by dedicated cortical units that are composed of assemblies of so-called cortical columns (Hubel and Wiesel 1968; Hubel et al. 1978; Juliano et al. 1981). These cortical columns have point-to-point correspondence with the external signals that were decoded by dedicated – for example,

The Processes of Believing 107

Figure 6.1  Hypothetical model of the processes of believing. Reciprocal processing of external signals and of the subject’s values leads to probabilistic representations or “beliefs” that are coded in the brain. These representations are the basis for the subject’s actions and reward-cost predictions associated with them. Note that actions induce new signals from the body and reactions from the environment, providing feedback for the subject that concurs with or contradicts previously established beliefs.

visual, auditory or somatosensory – receptors. At a remote or higher level of processing, there is a cross-talk across the sensory modalities, which is thought to be mediated by the binding of oscillatory brain activity in local and large-scale networks (Clark et al. 1988; Gray et al. 1989; Gross et al. 2004). This discussion, however, is open to the long-standing theoretical discourse over whether objects are coded in the brain by common supramodal geometry features or by domain-specific processing with subsequent generalization (Altieri 2015). Perceptions include events involving a sequence of different stimuli and – in the most advanced form – as present in heard or written music or language (Hauser et  al. 2002). As an example, narratives, such as religious mythical stories, convey information and images about the history, existence and fate of a social group or society as well as of individuals within social groups or societies (Belzen 2010; Schnell 2012). Yet narratives can also be rules and norms conveying authority and the bias to conform with them for groups of subjects or communities (Leicester 2008). The perception of narratives involves processing times, which are determined by the length and complexity of the story, extending up to minutes and even several hours. Neuroimaging has shown that subjects who shared the same interpretation of narratives showed widespread activations involving the default-mode, language, mirror-neuron and emotion networks (Amft et al. 2015; Yeshurun et al. 2017). Conversely, the activation patterns among those subjects who favored different interpretations differed in proportion to the difference in interpretation (Yeshurun et al. 2017). In addition, subjects dichotomize their perceptions with respect to the notion of what something means to them, which results in a positive/

108  Rüdiger J Seitz rewarding versus negative/malicious value (Figure 6.1). Consequently, the affect associated with a formal representation renders the representation for the subject as relevant or irrelevant (Seitz and Angel 2014). The personal probabilistic representations are typically established implicitly but can become explicit when the stimuli trigger a high level of personal meaning, which provides mnemonic priority (Packard and Cahill 2001; Friston et al. 2014; Hostler et al. 2018). Items of high personal meaning are also behaviorally relevant because they may evoke behaviors in the opposite direction, such as avoidance or desire (Rolls 2006; Leicester 2008). Fear signals, threats or danger make nonhuman animals rush away (LeDoux 2012). Conversely, a pleasant sensation is likely to cause nonhuman animals to turn toward the object or event. More generally, positive attributions consist of subjective values reflecting relevance, reward and ultimately survival (Rolls 2006; Vlaev et  al. 2011; Paloutzian and Mukai 2017; Seitz et  al. 2018). This view corresponds to the notion that cognition and emotion interact as a mode of automatic operation, leading to the motivation to act or to react (Izard 2009). The valuation process was shown to result in prominent activations in the medial dorsal frontal cortex (Seitz et al. 2008; Lindenberg et al. 2012), while affective meaning preferentially activated the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (Roy et al. 2012). Furthermore, the sense of reality, attitude and subjective assessment of confidence has been localized to the orbitofrontal cortex (Rolls 2006; De Martino et al. 2013; Liverani et al. 2015). Although these value attributions are not absolute but instead dependent on the given context (Rigoli et al. 2016a), the association of subjective relevance to perception is a key aspect of belief formation. Thus, the external world and internal world are fused into unitary meaningful representations of high probability (i.e., “beliefs”) held by a subject. Note that perception and valuation need not be balanced. Rather, even small or uncertain signals can have a large affective loading for the subject as large certain signals may have only a minor affective loading and vice versa. In fact, the emotional loading is most likely scaled gradually for different kinds of beliefs rather than being a categorical property. However, both perceptual and meta-cognitive information are processed in the anterior frontal cortex, limiting the processing resources (Maniscalco et al. 2017). Typically, an individual assumes that what they believe is indeed true. But owing to the probabilistic character of the representations, the subject may be mistaken and form a false belief (Leicester 2008; McKay and Dennett 2009). The latter is most severe in the case of pathological brain states, including delusions (Bell et al. 2006). Along with planning actions, beliefs are the basis for subjective predictions of the possible rewards and costs for achieving a certain goal (Seitz et  al. 2017). Functional neuroimaging has shown an activation of the anterior cingulate, the anterior medial frontal cortex and the putamen for better-than-expected outcomes compared with worse-than-expected out­ comes (Kurniawan et al. 2013; Bardi et al. 2017). The pre-supplementary

The Processes of Believing 109 motor area (pre-SMA), which is a distinct cortical area located in the anterior medial frontal cortex, is active as part of the basal ganglia loop for response selection (Korb et al. 2017; Ruan et al. 2018). Since neural activity in the sensory cortex was modulated in anticipation of a sensory action consequence (Stenner et al. 2015), sensory prediction was shown to be generated before an efferent (away from) motor action is present. Furthermore, choice behavior is mediated by the dorsolateral and medial frontal cortex (Federenko et al. 2013; Prochnow et al. 2014) in relation to activity in the hippocampus, ventral tegmental area and striatum, which represent information about the prevailing reward context (Rigoli et  al. 2016b). Notably, subjects are typically not aware of their decision preferences that are determined by activity modulation in the anterior prefrontal cortex (Tusche et al. 2010; Kahnt et al. 2010). Thus, widespread prefrontal and subcortical activity in the brain is involved in choice selection. Nevertheless, choice selection is intuitive which closely corresponds to belief-based guidance of behavior. The perceptual information on which subjects base their behavior and predictions was acquired in the past and stabilized by reinforcement learning, which causes the sense of a positive emotion such as familiarity, confidence and continuity (Chang et  al. 2010; d’Acremont et  al. 2013; Henkel and Mattson 2011; Meyniel et al. 2015). The real-world stimuli are represented in the cerebral cortex by dedicated cortical units that can be modulated in a dynamic manner upon further exposure (Merzenich and Sameshima 1993). Rituals are the driving force in establishing personal meaning to narratives held in a social group or society via reinforcement learning and habit formation (Belzen 2010; Seitz et al. 2018). In nonhuman animal studies, it was shown that reinforcement learning, which underlies habit formation, leads to the reorganization of cortico-subcortical circuits in the basal ganglia under the influence of dopamine (Graybiel and Grafton 2015). However, the predictions of subjects may be violated by contradictory events. The resulting prediction errors are evaluated by the given subject and may even result in their dismissing a previously held belief (Angel and Seitz 2017). Thus, continuously occurring error signals may be the origins of updating beliefs and, thereby, the basis for the context-adjusted modulation of behavior. The interaction of the orbitofrontal cortex with the amygdala has been reported to be crucial for updating beliefs about action outcomes (Fiuzat et al. 2017). When subjects interact with each other, they employ theory of mind and empathy to infer the cognitive and/or emotional state of their counterpart (Potthoff and Seitz 2015). This inference corresponds to a sense of causality, since there is the notion based on research on human evolution that the mindset of people is the basis for their actions (Teehan 2016). In the firstperson perspective, subjects plan their own upcoming actions such that they are putatively appropriate for the actual social situation, and they anticipate the actions of their counterparts according to what the subjects think is

110  Rüdiger J Seitz

Figure 6.2 Schematic display of the believing processes in social interaction. Similar perceptions (P) and similar values (V) associated with them result in similar beliefs (B) and therefore similar actions (A). Note that the scheme also accounts for the immediate social interaction of subjects where the action of one subject is perceived and evaluated by the other subject. The action may have been predicted by the former subject or may deviate from this prediction.

reasonably appropriate to the given social condition (Figure  6.2). Different perceptions and/or values associated with even identical external events can induce changes of held beliefs which are therefore unpredictable. When subjects base their actions on common beliefs that are held in a group or society, the actions tend to be more uniform among all subjects. Such an interpersonal resonance of group behavior is compatible with the notion of the human mirror-neuron system (Iacoboni and Mazziotta 2007; Rizzolatti and Fabbri-Destro 2008). In addition, it was found that subjects’ engaging in the same ritual behavior strengthens the sense of in-group membership and social cooperation (Power 2017). This is known as an important driving force for the formation of groups and probably also societies.

Relation of Beliefs and Belief Systems The functional brain activity operative during the processes of believing in the individual also applies on a larger scale to social groups and societies as conceptualized by social neuroscience (Vogeley and Roepstorff 2009). In essence, the neural processes occur as summarized in the previous section in each of the individuals that constitute social groups or even societies. In the social environment, individuals become exposed to complex events such as narratives and ritual acts (Belzen 2010; Schnell 2012). Narratives, such as mythical religious stories, provide semantic colloquial information, as in an individual’s report or formalized as in fairy tales or normative texts

The Processes of Believing 111 (Figure 6.1). So narratives are the source of abstract constructs or images on which groups of subjects agree on and to which they adhere. Rituals represent practices for occasions as specified in narratives and provide positive emotional attributes, including the sense of acquaintance, high level of predictable behavior and the feeling of transcendence (Figure 6.1). The multifaceted complexity of such repetitive external events, such as exposure to narratives and rituals, gives rise to belief systems, as can be observed in social groups and societies (Pechey and Halligan 2011). Again, there is the interaction of the beliefs held in the external world with the individuals’ subjective labeling of them. Subjects in a social group or society sharing beliefs through ritual acts fosters prosocial behavior and in-group identification (Power 2017). The psychophysical and neurophysiological processes underlying the expression of abstract probabilistic constructs, such as beliefs, have been found to engage the medial dorsal prefrontal cortex (Seitz et  al. 2012; Krueger and Grafman 2013; Kaplan et  al. 2016). Neuroimaging has shown that widespread areas in higher order brain areas become engaged in relation to believing (Howlett and Paulus 2015; Han et  al. 2017). Furthermore, as narratives are told and rituals are practiced repeatedly in social groups and societies – be it once a day, week, month or year – the time frame for establishing belief systems becomes correspondingly long and ultimately possibly lifelong. In fact, children are already exposed to narratives and ritual acts and take part in the latter, which have been found to shape their collaborative behavior and cultural traditions (Fernández 2015). The interaction of bottom-up perception, repetition learning and top-down prediction has ­ been conceptualized as an integrative model for accumulating information that was assigned the label of event cognition (Taves and Asprem 2016). Repetitions are the basis for procedural skills and declarative and autobiographic memory, which are all represented in different parts of the human brain (Frith and Frith 2003). Notably, these learning processes are also present in nonhuman primates and other mammals and have been studied neurophysiologically (Squire 2004; Eichenbaum 2010). Furthermore, ritual punishment for an offense of breaking rules or norms is an important factor to strengthen in-group coherence, since it raises social pressure on the individual subjects to comply with the rules and norms, constituting a nexus of morality (Teehan 2016). Thereby, in-group membership is signaled, allowing people to avoid endangering threats to their personal integrity and ultimately their lives. As people grow up and are imbedded in social groups, successful communication is fundamental to the interpersonal exchange of meanings of perceptions, imaginations and mental states (Figure 6.2). In fact, social groups and societies provide meaning systems that are received similarly across their members and that give meaning to people’s collective work. Moreover, emotional value and personal meaning are attributed to the belief systems that are shared by groups of people and societies. Social groups thereby

112  Rüdiger J Seitz provide the framework for the personal maturation of their individual members. For that reason, during conflict, most people do what is best for their group rather than for themselves (Feierman, this volume). As metaphysical beliefs are socially rooted in traditional narratives or, for example, religious mythical stories that refer to the past beyond the limits of personal experience, they constitute the belief systems of individuals from childhood onward (Seligman and Brown 2010). Interestingly, the neural systems supporting moral elevation have a high inter-subject consistency and synchronization (Englander et al. 2012). Examples of such belief systems include attitudes, worldviews and ultimate or transcendent concerns such as those provided in religions. Furthermore, religions are known to convey a sense of sacredness for objects or living beings in the environment as well as for ongoing events. In a parsimonious explanation, the experience of transcendence can result from large objects exceeding the size of humans and for events extending beyond the lifetime of humans. Interestingly, it has been reported that there is a high prevalence of strong beliefs in Western society in such things as the soul surviving death and that people should help those who are less fortunate than themselves (Pechey and Halligan 2011). Note that the medial frontal cortex plays a critical role in maintaining a stable belief, as found in a cross-cultural comparison of narratives about individuality and belonging to a social group (Han et al. 2008).

Discussion The perception-valuation-action model presented here aims at explaining the cognitive brain functions underlying the neuropsychic function of believing, couched in neurophysiological terms. It claims the integration of objective and subjective worldviews by synaptic activity within neural circuits of the human brain to be fundamental for the processes of believing. Since probabilistic representations coded in a person’s brain, including his or her beliefs, are not directly accessible to scientific exploration at this time, their existence cannot be confirmed or disconfirmed. However, recent neuroimaging studies have shown that extensive cerebral networks become involved when subjects are engaged in the processes of believing (Howlett and Paulus 2015; Han et al. 2017). These resulting representations are typically empirical beliefs and are thus experiential in origin (Nassar et al. 2010), but they can also be cognitive constructs or images. The resulting beliefs are intuitive and experienced as true or false and are thus not on a gradient of subjective uncertainty (Johnson et al. 2015). Importantly, people’s belief systems involve unique pre-evidential and probabilistic judgments of the world that bias subsequent categorizations and evaluations (Morewedge and Kahneman 2010). Accordingly, they can be a powerful component of an individual’s belief system and can include the individual’s implicit or explicit answers on how to cope with the future and how to find existential meaning, whether through secular, political, spiritual

The Processes of Believing 113 or religious means (La Cour and Hvidt 2010; Kaplan et al. 2016). Beliefs differ from knowledge about facts in that the latter is verifiable. Rather, beliefs display a high degree of momentary subjective relevance owing to their emotional loading. It may be speculated that the emotional loading of beliefs becomes stronger in relation to the complexity of a belief system. Particularly, political and religious belief systems can induce an affective stance of the individual to underscore their certainty, willingness to defend this stance and resistance to have the proposition questioned by others. Credition has been conceived as a psychological term denoting the cognitive processes underlying what “they believe” (Angel 2013; Angel and Seitz 2016). Central to the credition model is the self-organizing probabilistic assembly of perceptual and affective attributes of a given object or event. These cognitive constructs are used by the subjects for selecting a possible action that appears most appropriate for a given context according to the acting subject. This cybernetic model of credition assumes that the processes of believing can be stabilized by repetitions as in a learning process (Kristjansson and Campana 2010). Importantly, the contents of the processes of believing are typically secular, but they can also be non-secular, as in religiosity (Angel, this volume) and may differ across social groups, societies and cultures (Vogeley and Roepstorf 2009; Seitz et  al. 2017). In the most general sense, beliefs can be understood as epistemic attitudes toward certain propositions or content (Visala and Angel 2017). They can be based on subjective empirical evidence, a priori knowledge or social experience. But the meaning that renders beliefs personally relevant – especially certain interpersonal, political and religious beliefs  – creates subjective resistance against challenges by outsiders. Given the complexity of social structures and social-individual interactions, a multilevel understanding is mandatory to reveal the particularities of religious thoughts and beliefs (Oviedo, this volume). It was found in one study that political beliefs, similarly to religious beliefs, were relative resistant to contradictory statements rather than nonpolitical beliefs (Kaplan et al. 2016). Activity in the anterior dorsal medial frontal cortex was high in political beliefs. But in non-political beliefs, the activity decreased in proportion to the change of the strength of the belief (Kaplan et al. 2016). The content of religious beliefs can be explained by an experiential model involving the surrounding culture on a general level, as can intuitions of agency on a personal level (van Leeuwen and van Elk 2018). Typically, religious beliefs are quite stable. Therefore, small changes in religious beliefs (e.g., change from Protestant to Catholic) may be more likely to occur and less demanding than large changes in religious beliefs (e.g., change from Christianity to Islam), as highlighted by Paloutzian (2005). The ultimate construct is the human notion of a deity. However, scientific exploration and beliefs are inherently earthbound and reside within the limits of human existence, while the universal God is supposedly beyond human

114  Rüdiger J Seitz comprehension and thus irreducible to the natural causes within the world that can be subject to scientific exploration (Ellis 2014). Hopefully, the cognitive neuroscience schemas developed in this chapter that are proposed to underly the processes of religious believing contributed some new insights into of some of the many ways that religions may evolve.

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7 Near-Death and Out-of-Body Experiences in Sensing the Divine One Foundational Role in Religion’s Evolution Michael N Marsh Introduction Understanding the evolutionary origins of religion is a formidable task, since the physical remnants of ancient communities offer few clues. Historians of religion (Eliade 1958) suggest that self-reported “spiritual” feelings among animist tribes usually associate with naturally occurring objects – the sky, the sun, the moon, water, stones, vegetation and eventually sacred places engendering varied emotions like awe or fear (See Ihm et al. and Early, this volume). Additional relevant inputs include dreams, trances, psychedelic experiences (peyote) and shamanism. Following previous work on near-death experiences (NDEs) and out-of-body experiences (OBEs) (Marsh 2010, 2013), my aim in this chapter is to explore their possible role in fostering the early evolution of spirituality and religiousness. Cognate neuroscientific advances associated with them will also be evaluated. NDEs are self-reported, subjective experiences resulting from various life-threatening events, but contrary to certain popular writings, they are not “post-death” recollections about heaven or “the other side.” Self-reported OBEs describe floating outside one’s body or of sometimes perceiving it from external perspectives. NDEs and OBEs may, or may not, be related; indeed, their underlying mechanisms appear distinct. Recent studies indicate that for modern people, NDEs increase spirituality (2  percent), encourage belief in the afterlife (48  percent) and strengthen previously held religious beliefs (72  percent) (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998). From that, it seems reasonable that NDEs/OBEs could realistically contribute to early evolutionary origins of religion in ancient preliterate people. This chapter explores how ancient people first gained some inklings of the other world, or, in modern words, the supernatural or transcendent, but which here are identified as sensing the divine. This is an earlier issue separate from evolved religion, which is a social institution comprising mythical stories, rituals and theologically derived belief systems. Instead, the question

Sensing the Divine 121 is how NDEs/OBEs could have contributed to sensing the divine, since during the earliest phases of religion’s evolution, ancient people gained such perceptions out of day-to-day experiences. This chapter is conjectural given the few directly observable traces of personal, subjective experiences among ancient people. The standard of evidence could be considered plausible. While “ancient people” is also a purposely vague term, we are uncertain when, during our species’ 200,000 to 300,000-year evolutionary history, such divine perceptions first occurred. Whether the latter involved ancestral species preceding Homo sapiens is even more conjectural, although the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. We know for certain that extant groups of Homo sapiens are religious, so looking for its antecedents in our own species is certainly warranted. As will be shown, certain medical morbidities provide the etiological agency for NDEs/OBEs and thus offer an attractive approach for understanding one of several foundational prerequisites for religion’s earliest evolutionary origins. Parenthetically, given the accident- and illness-prone background to most NDEs/OBEs, an “adaptive” evolutionary outcome would not appear to have provided any selective advantage. This chapter argues that NDEs/ OBEs are a plausible substrate on which early religious behavior could have originated.

Near-Death and Out-Of-Body Experiences Aspects of NDE phenomenology Apart from those undergoing or formally studying NDEs/OBEs, most casual impressions are shaped by media reports using out-of-focus pictures, bright lights, individuals floating through space, tunnels and vague references to “spiritual” Beings, capitalized in purporting to reveal their true ontology. From my analysis of approximately eight hundred published NDEs (Marsh 2010, 2013), these events are clearly personal and contextually modulated – historically, culturally and geographically (Sabom 1982; Fenwick and Fenwick 1998; Pasricha 1992; van Lommel 2010; Marsh 2013). There is no definitive reproducible sequence or uniformity (Figure 7.1), despite contrary assertions (Moody 1976; Ring 1980). This is the first occasion when results based on approximately eight hundred published accounts (Moody, Ring, Sabom, Fenwick and Fenwick, Grey, Long, van Lomel) have been collated. Since these authors have used different words to describe these experiential aspects, data have been smoothed, as far as possible, to accommodate those differences. They refer to (a) blackness, (b) OBE, (c) tunnels, (d) light, (e) love, (f) sensations, (g) knowledge gained, (h) heaven, (i) life review, (j) meetings and (k) barriers. Contrary to popular opinion, there is no

122  Michael N Marsh

Figure 7.1   A plot scattergram of percentages (vertical axis) of subjects experiencing components of NDE/OBE (horizontal axis).

conformity or uniformity among these reports: In general, under 60 percent of all  subjects experienced every  feature  listed. Clearly, with this diagram in hand, any naïve observers would not draw such stereotyped conclusions; nor indeed would they immediately recognize the precept of “core” or “depth” experiences (Marsh 2015a). This diagram was first published in Antonianum (2015 2: 289–318). Permission to reproduce is gladly acknowledged. The author also thanks James Gray for his help in revising Figure 7.1 for this chapter. An improved classification of NDE/OBE, without needing “core” or “depth” misrepresentations, is offered here (Table  7.1), providing more truthful, valid portrayals of subjects’ recollections of early- and late-phase components. Late-phase experiences indicate returning conscious awareness, sometimes incorporating short dualistic periods when “otherworldly” and real-world events are undergone at the same time. Such recalled dualistic experiences critically demonstrate that subjects could neither have been outside their bodies nor their minds simultaneously. Together, these features indicate a neurological etiology, albeit dismissed by those insisting that NDEs/OBEs “prove escape of soul, mind or consciousness from corporeal bondage” (Nelson 2012, 144). But that is not true since NDEs/OBEs also involve “normal” people. Thus, not being exposed to lifethreatening catastrophes implies that a “dead” brain awaiting resuscitation

Sensing the Divine 123 Table 7.1 The “core” and depth” aspects (Moody and Ring) of NDEs/OBEs are descriptively invalid (see Figure 1). A more truthful portrayal of subjects’ recollections is summarized here as early-phase (left column) and latephase (right column) components. Late-phase features spell the return of full conscious awareness, sometimes with dualistic aspects when simultaneous experiences of “otherworldly” and the real world occur. Dualisms indicate that subjects cannot be outside their bodies or their minds simultaneously. Each of these experiences is neurologically determined. NO MORAL QUALMS LEAVING FAMILY

MORAL FEELING TO COME BACK

CROSSING OF SOLID OBJECTS

UNWILLING TO CROSS BARRIERS

WEIGHTLESSNESS

HEARING REAL VOICES

SEEING LIGHT AND DECEASED PEOPLE

BUMPY RETURN TO BODY

ABSENCE OF PAIN

INCREASED PAIN PERCEPTION

SENSE OF MOTION

DUALITY OF CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

is unnecessary. There are corroborating pieces of evidence, often overlooked, for a neurological etiology of the NDEs/OBEs: (1) The abrupt termination of an NDE/OBE as subjects’ conscious awareness returns to normal. That is an objective time point, as corroborated by modern examples: “The Angel [of Death] said my life was not as it should be, and that I was going back. The next thing was that I was back in the recovery room, back in my body” (Rawlings 1978, 116–6), and “He [Christ] embraced me. Then I felt this violent jolt. I started careering backward. Then I felt this thud and I was back in my body with a lot of pain” (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 86–7). Clearly, NDEs/OBEs occur not when the brain is “dead,” moribund or nonfunctional (Ring 1980; Sabom 1982; Fenwick and Fenwick 1998; van Lommel 2010) but rather as cerebral tissues are returning to their normal, coordinated activities. That conclusion obviously precludes any suggestion that mind, soul or consciousness escape from defunct brains (Marsh 2018). (2) The duality of conscious awareness as the NDE terminates, of which, again, too little recognition of its importance appears in the literature. As they recover (within mere seconds or after a minute or two), subjects hallucinate the “other world” but also now sample the real world, manifested by a needle prick, the application of face mask or bodily manipulations by clinical staff and hearing their voices.

124  Michael N Marsh (3) The growing urgency to “return” and resume unfulfilled responsibilities (spouse, family, household tasks): “I don’t know. I think it was because I had two young children; they needed me more than [me] up there” (Ring 1980, 71), and “I take my responsibilities very seriously, and I knew that I had a duty to my family. So, I decided to try to get back” (Moody 1976, 78). These seemingly moral concerns suggest returning influences by the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) in suppressing irrelevant, otherworldly hallucinations while conscious awareness supervenes. (4) “Dead” or seriously compromised brains cannot store memories: if they could, anterograde and retrograde amnesias following head trauma would not exist. NDEs should therefore be envisaged as brain-derived, but late, dream-like reminiscence occurring as full conscious awareness dawns. NDEs/OBEs are therefore comparable to extremely vivid, hypnopompic dream awakenings, since they also rapidly terminate as subjects awaken. And, like other states just before awakening, NDEs are remembered as highly pictured adventures (Moore and Greyson 2017). This is not unique, as similar brain-based vivid hallucinations accompany peduncular hallucinosis, psychedelic drug usage and partial occlusions of the vertebro-basilar arterial system (Marsh 2010, 183). Aspects of OBE phenomenology, especially as related to NDEs NDE phenomenology can embrace either hallucinatory motion like flying, ascending, floating, falling and bumping back into the body upon the resumption of consciousness  – or aberrant misperceptions of bodily location in peri-personal space: “I was in a black tunnel . . . shooting through it incredibly fast; I was spinning – like water going down a plug” or “Then I  was travelling in darkness in an unknown direction but at tremendous speed” (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 47, 122). The motor cortex accompaniments are invariably perceived supine (lying down) position (Table 7.2) given the relevant precipitating “crisis” etiologies, which would cause someone to be supine (Table 7.3) (Andersen et al. 1999; Blanke and Mohr 2005). In that position, the sensors for gravity (otoliths within the saccule and utricle of the inner ear and vestibular components of cranial nerve VIII) are largely inoperative (Mittelstaedt 1991), thus encouraging sensations of “non-corporeal floating in space.” As indicated, there are additional inputs from the joints and tendons, touch and the movements of the head and eyes. Together, these neural messages converge at the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of the right cerebral hemisphere, generating an internal sense of body image and of the body’s relationship to the environment. Disturbances (e.g., vascular, traumatic) in TPJ engender anomalous feelings of bodily displacements, non-ownership or projection into local, peri-personal space. The neurophysiological basis of OBE is clear (Blanke and Dieguez 2009) and not explicable as functional or psychological (Greyson 1983).

Sensing the Divine 125 Table 7.2  The major neurological players contributing to egocentric and para-­ centric space, or body image, include visual, haptic (touch), proprioceptive and vestibular inputs. Disturbances to the central representation of these varied inputs, in the temporo-parietal junctional cortex, result in weightlessness, spurious movements and hallucinatory body displacement. For simplicity, other important components (cerebellum, limbic system, hippocampus and memory) are excluded. AUDITORY CORTEX

VESTIBULAR CORTEX

SENSORY CORTEX

VISUAL CORTEX

OLFACTORY CORTEX

[hearing]

[self-motion, gravity, verticality]

[touch, joint position, neck rotation]

[visual fields, conjugate gaze]

[smell]

TEMPORO-PARIETAL JUNCTION [supramodal coordination center for body in space]

MOTOR CORTEX [action]

Is the brain predisposed for NDEs/OBEs? Another striking feature, although hardly commented on, is that only approximately 5–10 percent of the populace seems predisposed to undergoing NDEs/OBEs (van Lommel 2010), although such figures may be biased by widespread use of post-cardiac arrest subjects. Nevertheless, it seems approximately 90 percent never have NDEs/OBEs. That suggests that those who do have NDEs may have predisposed brains (due to the factors listed here), similar to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). On those grounds, the most important later outcome (following the antecedent “crisis” event) is the changed psycho-phenotype which reorients subjects’ viewpoints for the remainder of their lives. Consequently, NDE/OBE, although highly vivid and picturesque, may merely be a short-lived, re-wakening epiphenomenon. Why are most subjects not susceptible? The answer may lie in the effect of environmental effects on brain function. Studies have uncovered a surprising propensity for people to manifest features of subclinical temporal lobe dysfunction, related either to previously sustained minor closed-head injuries, or to acute febrile episodes and delirium during childhood or adolescence (Roberts et al. 1990). Similar findings were demonstrated through a variety of personality modalities, those with severer behavioral tendencies

126  Michael N Marsh Table 7.3 Since approximately 90 percent of subjects under stress never experience NDEs/OBEs, the data suggest that those who do may have predisposed brains (major factors listed), analogous to PTSD. Thus, the most crucial late-phase outcome (following the antecedent precipitating “crisis”) is a changed psycho-phenotype which reorients subjects’ viewpoints for the remainder of their lives. Consequently, NDE/OBE, although highly vivid, picturesque and remarkable, may be merely a short-lived re-wakening epiphenomenon. CEREBRAL PREDISPOSITIONS FOR NDE BRAIN NORMAL

PREDISPOSED Trauma   Febrile Insults   Physical Abuses   Infection – Viral

ADDITIONAL CRISIS Hemorrhage  Hypotension  Trauma  Infection   – systemic        – cerebral  Inflammation  Bereavement

Intoxication  Delirium   Anaphylaxis – toxins      – inoculation  Drugs  Obstetric

OUTCOMES

1. NO POST-EXPERIENTIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL CHANGE

1. LONG-LASTING, ALTERED PSYCHO-PHENOTYPE

2. NO NDE/OBE

2. NDE/OBE (Epiphenomenon)

revealing more sub-epileptic temporal lobe disturbances (45  percent vs. 6 percent controls) (Persinger and Makarec 1993). How then does this apply to NDEs? As a possible explanation, Britton and Bootzin (2004) found that of 26 NDE subjects, one-fifth revealed evidence of temporal lobe epileptiform (seizure-like) waveforms, and they,

Sensing the Divine 127 compared with control subjects, were correlated with different psychological profiles (Complex Partial Epileptic Signs and Temporal Lobe Symptoms inventories). Therefore, it follows that the approximately 10  percent of people who are susceptible may have sustained subtle, perhaps even clinically unrecognized, brain damage, as suggested by the studies noted earlier, but which predispose them to these experiential outcomes (Marsh 2016a). Thus, NDE/ OBE phenomenology, despite its vivid characteristics, could be an epiphenomenon, since the important outcome involves the individual’s long-term psychological and behavioral alterations (Marsh 2016a). The parallel here is with PTSD, where earlier childhood insults and abuses are important modulating factors (Mehta et al. 2013; Teicher et al. 2013). Thus, clinical events during early life, possibly regarded as trivial at the time, could injure the brain and render it susceptible to later insults, such as prolonged falls in blood pressure or other metabolic and infectious disruptions that precipitate NDEs/OBEs (Table 7.3). This hypothesis needs further empirical validation, however.

Relating NDE/OBE Phenomenology to a Sense of the Divine According to the foregoing, undergoing an NDE/OBE could potentially induce the earliest perceptions of the divine, thence to be exemplified in more-formalized, later religious systems (Bellah 2011). Two books, Otherword Journeys (Zaleski 1987) and Concepts of the Afterlife in Early Civilisations (Sushan 2009), have retraced possible historical pathways toward a sensing of the divine through NDE phenomenology. These works sampled societies not only that were highly literate but also whose formalized afterlife beliefs were highly elaborate. Since these books deal with Bellah’s Axial Age religions (roughly 800 bce to 200 bce), they have no direct relevance to the first sensing of divine presence by preliterate ancient people. Although it would be ideal to examine preliterate ancient humans, we cannot. Nor can we presume that religion in today’s preliterate tribal people is reflective of religion in ancient humans (see Hitchcock, this volume). Three factors in the history of NDEs/OBEs (1) Could ancient, preliterate Homo sapiens have undergone NDEs/OBEs, as currently understood? The answer is almost certainly yes. But why? The known “crisis” etiologies of NDEs (Table 7.3) were widely available to them: trauma; head injuries, brain damage, hemorrhage; drowning, falling off cliffs, obstetric complications, anaphylaxis, toxemias and delirium from ongoing microbial infections or abscesses, inoculations through poisonous bites or stings; intoxications from plant ingestion; and possibly even the psychological grief of bereavement. (2) When did this happen? Early Homo sapiens, who lived in small huntergatherer bands, controlled fire, consumed cooked meat, exhibited

128  Michael N Marsh more advanced than ancestral species’ tool use and developed symbolic speech, the latter involving the mutated FOXP2 gene (Lieberman et al. 2002; Dunbar 2014). That genetic alteration fostered linguistic syntax and recursion, as in “I know that you know that . . .” All we need, ultimately, is language capable of describing NDEs/OBEs so as to facilitate their experiential dissemination throughout successive communities. It is one thing for individuals to undergo NDEs with or without an OBE; a second for individuals to understand and ascribe meaning to them; and a third to communicate them to others through speech. We know for certain only that these three criteria were met in Homo sapiens, but how close to our origins 200,000 to 300,000 years ago these may have started we cannot know. (3) From all this, and once symbolic language was acquired by early Homo sapiens, questions arise as to specific aspects of NDEs modifying or even advancing perceptions of the divine. Although NDEs, in general, are not sequentially uniform (Figure 7.1), there are three relevant features often reported in modern times: (i) fictive movement; (ii) visions of light-engulfing, godlike apparitions; and (iii) most importantly personal interactions and even conversations, with the deceased. The latter are now seemingly alive, recognized and even spoken to, albeit inhabiting an ontological realm inaccessible to earthbound people. Acknowledging the pitfalls of an inductive error in applying these three modern features to those that were experienced by early Homo sapiens, the three features self-reported in modern persons will be further examined. Applying three NDE features to sensing the Divine (1) Fictive movement This motor accompaniment would, given the antecedent “crisis” etiologies (Table  7.3), be most commonly experienced when supine (Andersen et al. 1999; Blanke and Mohr 2005). Analogous happenings also occupy dreams: “I actually felt myself come away from my body. I twirled so fast up in the air, so free, no pain, weightless, then I  felt myself go back in my body”; “I  floated away from the light [and] had this looking-down-from-the-ceiling feeling, knowing it was my body”; and “I started zooming down this dark tunnel at what seemed like 100 mph” (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 26, 27, 50). (2) Seeing “divine figures” These usually involve encounters with a brightly illuminated, white-clad “godlike figure” that if actually experienced in one form or another in ancient human people, would have had enormous impact: “the Lord came and stood and held his hands out for me” (Sabom 1982, 49),

Sensing the Divine 129 or “I saw Jesus Christ. I was aware of him by the imprint of the nails in his hands and feet” (Grey 1985, 50). Compared with modern recollections, speculation clearly centers on the specter of an illuminated celestial “person” and whether it would have been regarded as “someone” with godlike properties in ancient, animist human people, given the differing cultural influences. Perhaps their encounter was with something more locally inanimate, a cloud or rock or tree, but with imbued particular spiritual powers. Only the retelling of the event to others, together with corroboration from similar recollections by others about their NDEs, would the possibility have dawned and thence have drawn others into a sense of the divine. Perhaps if the encounters were with clouds or mountains, that sensing might have been envisioned on high, situated above that which was actually sensed. In New Mexico today, the 10,600-foot Sandia Mountains on tribal land is sacred and worshiped by the Native American people of the Sandia Pueblo. High places and mountains have always had a special place in religious mythic narratives. Moreover, our existing grand cathedrals and basilicas, as well as many other denominational houses of worship, are traditionally built to be architecturally high and thus demonstrative of the divine. (3) “Sightings” of dead family members From contemporary self-reports: “I heard music [and] there was a beautiful smell. I stopped floating before I reached my father . . . then heard someone calling me [her husband, from the other end of the tunnel]” (Fenwick and Fenwick 1998, 33). “Then there was another part . . . where two aunts of mine – they’re dead now – were sitting on a rail . . . and calling me”, or “Suddenly, I saw my mother, . . . who died nine years ago . . . sitting in her rocker . . . and said to me [in Hungarian] ‘Well, we’ve been waiting for you . . . your father’s here and we’re going to help you’ ” (Ring 1980, 62, 63). These are the most influential components of contemporary, modern NDEs, conferring the greatest salience. In context, they offer a realization, especially if reinforced by the same type of information remembered from dreams, that there is another ontological realm, where these deceased people are still apparently alive, well and active. The post-experiential change of personality and demeanor Thus, far, we have identified three NDE elements reported by contemporary people, some versions of which are likely to have kindled the first inkling of a sensing of the divine in ancient humans: fictive movement; encountering a brightly illuminated “celestial being” or its animist equivalent; and,

130  Michael N Marsh crucially, “sightings” of dead people, thereby pointing to a mode of existence beyond the immediate reach of earth dwellers. However, there is a fourth relevant point. This can only be derived from modern NDE accounts. Yet by no means would it be irrelevant, in some way and in some form, to ancient human people. This fourth point involves distinctive changes in the post-experiential psychology of modern humans undergoing NDEs. The following excerpts are taken from Fenwick and Fenwick (1998, 130, 133, 137): (1) “The experience has had a lasting effect upon my life; if that was ‘neardeath,’ I have no fear when my time for dying comes.” (2) “I always did believe in God but only because it was bred into me . . . since that experience [NDE] I  have a lot of faith towards God and towards life beyond our lives on earth.” (3) “But I feel that it showed me more about life than death . . . value in life . . . I became more aware . . . I noticed things . . . more aware of people. ” Although a changed sense of being and personality is an often-reported consequence of NDEs, it is not exclusive, since it also exemplifies the symptoms of many drugs (LSD, peyote and other psychedelics) and even PTSD. For modern NDE subjects, the changed post-NDE profile can embrace a more outgoing sensitivity, with an enhanced receptivity toward family, as the excerpts illustrate. While such altered profiles, per se, have rarely encouraged new religious beliefs, they more often strengthen previously held ones. We can only infer that the same type of altered psychological profile might likewise have overtaken ancient human people at the dawning of religion’s evolution. In ancient hunter-gatherer bands, such changed psychological manifestations would have been noticed by others, thus demanding explanation; inviting reflection on NDEs, not only as an important personal event, but with widening social implications; raising questions about their significance, even being seen as events given by the deities or derived from nature; and thus, in the longer term possibly incorporating their outcomes into existing cultural mores and practices, which could have been expanded on and hence carried forward. Clearly, in that regard, a competent use of language would have been essential for these subtle changes in lifestyle to have been exchanged with others and throughout the wider community, so that over time they could be incorporated into their preexisting belief systems during the earliest animist phases of religion’s evolution.

Concerning Wider Genetic/Neurological Backgrounds Ancient human people were just as ill and diseased as moderns, if not more. That, in context, becomes pertinent for two reasons. First, archaeologists, sociologists and theologians do not routinely consider ideas about genes,

Sensing the Divine 131 disability and illness as antecedent causes of supernatural belief (Marsh 2016b). Second, reference to either the genetic and brain-based neuropathological backgrounds pertinent to the origins or expansion of religious precepts has potential for gaining new empirical insights. The following briefly outlines how genes affect behavior, especially within religious and spiritual domains. Genes, aminergic receptor polymorphisms and the behavioral spectrum We differ in behavior, demeanor and physique despite all of us possessing approximately 20,000 coding genes. The answer lies in differing basepairing alignments, or polymorphisms, particularly at key regions across the genome (Farde et  al. 1997; Ebstein et  al. 2000; Comings et  al. 2000; Moresco et al. 2002; Gross et al. 2002). Polymorphisms arise because most genetic loci along chromosomes have more than one possible variation. Certain polymorphic variants exert far-reaching influences on sensation, perception and behavior, especially when involving receptors on cerebrally responsive aminergic neurons. Such genetic changes have been associated with one’s predisposition toward religiosity and spirituality, although they don’t account for much of the variance (Lorenzi et al.2005; Borg et al. 2003; Urgesi et al. 2010). This is especially true for polymorphisms of the 5HT2A (i.e., serotonin) receptor. These considerations show that over the short term, but within the time-ranges evaluated here for ancient human people, those polymorphic variations in DNA would be fundamental in exercising crucial influences on human sensations, perceptions and behaviors associated with sensing the divine. Criteria of religious experience – defining James’s (1802) “ineffability” Nelson (2012) reminds us that consciousness comprises three state boundaries, wakefulness and two sleep modes – REM (rapid eye movement) sleep and deep (non-REM) sleep. They highlight the disturbances as due to regulatory defects between these three state boundaries, but especially between wakefulness and the hallucinatory-like dream content of REM sleep. These perturbations are probable genetic/molecular deviations that would have been relevant to the behavior of ancient humans. Nelson (Nelson 2012, 199–202) additionally showed that approximately 45 percent of NDE subjects demonstrated high levels of REM visual and/ or auditory penetration intrusion. These irregularities included REM-sleep intrusions into conscious wakefulness, manifested by either auditory or visual hypnagogic (sleep-onset) hallucinations; sleep paralysis on waking; a tendency to fall asleep during daylight; and a tendency for subjects’ legs to collapse. Such features are analogous to narcolepsy or the cataplexy

132  Michael N Marsh syndrome, the latter resulting from deficient secretion of orexin protein synthesized by lateral hypothalamic neurons, and whose continued production is essential for keeping all of us firmly in waking mode. Orexin directly targets the midbrain-switching mechanism with a bias toward maintaining wakefulness. The neurological foundations for these events These anomalies and the resulting states of arousal derive, in part, from dysfunctional coordination between hypothalamic, upper-pontine and caudal midbrain nuclei. The latter secrete noradrenaline (locus coeruleus), serotonin (raphe nuclei) and acetylcholine (pedunculo-pontine nucleus). They are the principle brainstem nuclei responsible for consciousness and states of arousal. The transition between waking or sleep is controlled by molecular switching between the relevant sets of mutually inhibitory neurons – the “flip-flop” switch (Lu et al. 2006), located at the midbrain-­ pontine junction within the ventrolateral part of the brain’s peri-­aqueductal gray (PAG) matter. But such an arrangement would be precarious in controlling state boundaries without additional regulatory inputs. Importantly, these include the stimulatory (orexin-secreting neurons of the lateral hypothalamus mentioned earlier in relation to narcolepsy/catalepsy) playing on midbrain serotonin and noradrenergic neurons, thereby showing a bias toward wakefulness. Many of these activities are under control by the hypothalamus, itself influenced by the circadian fluctuations of darkness and light and hence relevant to nocturnal sleep-on and diurnal sleep-off state-boundary controls. Good insights into NDEs come from patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome, which usually follows a viral infection and is exemplified by a form of muscle weakness. Patients often manifest bizarre instabilities in awake/ asleep state-boundary coordination. When the antecedent is the H1N1 influenza serotype, midbrain neurons associated with the awake/asleep switch mechanism are involved (Cochen et al. 2005). Patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome also report vivid hallucinations and NDEs (Mahowald and Schenk 1992; Buzzi 2002; Satvinder at al. 2009; Voss et al. 2009; Villiers et al. 2001). But another pertinent outcome is that such patients, when hovering between each of these varied awake/asleep state boundaries, are often uncertain of their location, engendering feelings of detachment from the world. This engenders a spurious sense of belonging to another ontological realm, which psychologically defies description, demonstrating its sheer ineffability. This is quite different from someone’s inability to recall every item of NDE. Ineffability, which often can’t be spoken of because of its sacred nature, is conceptually deeper in getting right to the heart of the profoundest spiritual and religious feelings. Indeed, the self-reported experiences of some patients with Guillain-Barré syndrome are similar to the sense of ineffability described by William James (1802).

Sensing the Divine 133 This pathological state of uncertainty probably differs little from other mystical states expressed as “absolute being,” union with God as hinted at by Christian mystics or even the desperation of “the dark night of the soul” vouchsafed to us by St. John of the Cross, accompanied by the intense despair that realizes an apparent completeness of the absence of God – like Luther’s Deus absconditus. Other neural influences on this awake/asleep-switching mechanism have direct relevance to NDEs. These influences follow prolonged periods of cardiovascular collapse, subsequently causing decreased blood flow and oxygenation to the midbrain nuclei, thereby promoting both REM-sleep intrusions, NDEs/OBEs and a sense of ineffability. One critical connection occurs via the Xth (vagus) cranial nerve, transmitting signals from the heart and great blood vessels directly into this switch mechanism (Puizillout and Foutz 1976; Vagg et al. 2008). Its relevance to NDE/OBE experiences is that it also would have affected ancient humans, for example, after heavy bleeding, congestive heart failure or anaphylactic shock. Here, then, we have come full circle regarding those precipitating factors (identified earlier) bearing directly on the potential of ancient humans to undergo NDEs, the spiritual insights deriving from them and the possible sampling of other deeply ineffable contexts resulting from disturbed molecular control of awake/asleep state boundaries.

Overview: Revelatory Origins in the Early Evolution of Religion This chapter proposes that for ancient, preliterate humans, NDEs/OBEs provide one possibility for discovering what can be called a sense of the divine, acting as one avenue into spirituality during religion’s earliest evolution, in addition to other factors, such as trances, dreaming and shamanistic rituals or ingesting psychedelic plants. We note that the commoner antecedents of NDEs/OBEs for modern humans would also have certainly confronted our ancient human forebears (Table 7.3). As humans, our understandings of any sense of the divine must inevitably be limited, involving our brain-based senses and innate tendencies for imaginative perception. Hardy (1979), in reviewing over three thousand declared religious experiences, found that most were visual, followed by auditory recollections (and minimally through touch or smell). Moreover, this experiential spectrum of Hardy mirrors their percentage representations in the cerebral cortex (van Essen et al. 1998). Clearly, “religious” experiences require properly organized cerebral locations. That is, religious experience can only be brain-based, albeit conditioned by cultural influence. Self-reporting of hallucinations among apparently “normal” individuals is also not so rare (Marsh 2015b). But modern viewpoints, and the associated vocabularies pertaining to “doctrine,” are inapplicable to ancient humans. A hunter-gatherer lifestyle

134  Michael N Marsh and their formulation of beliefs were based on natural phenomena and hence were highly influential to them. Additionally, undergoing NDEs/OBEs does influence the brain because post-experiential individuals are psychologically changed and behave in a different manner toward others. In ancient, preliterate communities, such a changed psychological profile would have been noticed and commented on, and others would have demanded explanations and to know the cause. Something new and persistent had happened to those individuals, something that really was different, thus necessitating further scrutiny. Indeed, it is reasonable that NDEs/OBEs, along with dreams, trances, shamanic and psychedelic experiences, were some of the earliest forms of culturally influenced “revelations” – that is, a seemingly divine or supernatural disclosure. To ancient humans, NDEs/OBEs would at first have been totally incomprehensible and uninterpretable before, at some point, attributing a sensing of the divine to the experiences. Nevertheless, there is an alternative contemporary belief among the New Atheists and others, that modern revelatory religion simply results from some kind of contemporary delusional gullibility. But in addition to what has been developed in this chapter, other alternative perspectives are possible (Knight et al. 1999, 5–6). Here, three NDE/OBE self-reports from contemporary modern human people  – encountering a brightly illuminated “godlike” specter, “sighting” dead relatives inhabiting another inaccessible environment and fictive motion toward the heavens – provide background for examining the underlying proposal of this chapter, which is that one of the ancient, evolutionary origins of revelatory religion comes from NDEs/OBEs. The eventual belief that previously dead members of the band or tribe inhabited another realm and were seemingly well disposed may well have been instrumental in allaying fears of death. The sense of fictive vertical movement of OBEs by modern people is crucial, since upward sky-bound flight characteristically exemplifies most laterdeveloped religions (Porter 1975; Séguy 1977; Charlesworth 1985; Zaleski 1987; Collins 1995; Sushan 2009). If ancient humans also experienced fictive upward-bound movement during NDE-related OBEs, that would have been a means for the belief of upward-bound celestial flight into heaven, or other high places, such as mountains, thus anticipating this almost universalized feature of modern religions. From where else could such an idea have arisen? Finally, genetic and allied conditions directly influence the propensity to undergo NDEs, especially resulting from REM-type penetrations into normal waking consciousness or underlying dysfunctions of the midbrain molecular awake/asleep-switching mechanisms controlling state boundaries. Such malfunctioning places the individual into a state of unknowing, which is directly referable to the ineffability associated nowadays with varied religious experiences. Such abnormalities would also have occurred throughout

Sensing the Divine 135 ancient human communities as religion first evolved. These varied differential aspects of NDEs/OBEs, detailed in this chapter, would therefore have had immense influence on the earliest religious thinking and belief systems of ancient, preliterate humans and their communities.

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8 Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion On the Evolution of Awe and the Origin of Religions Elliott D Ihm, Raymond F Paloutzian, Michiel van Elk and Jonathan W Schooler “religious awe is the same organic thrill which we feel in a forest at twilight, or in a or in a mountain gorge.” – William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience, 1982 [1902]

Introduction Awe is a powerful and mysterious emotion, elicited by a wide variety of stimuli. We may feel awe when taking in the view from a mountaintop or inside a cathedral, witnessing the birth of a child or watching the approach of a deadly hurricane. What characteristics do awe-eliciting stimuli have in common? And what is the nature of the common emotional response to such a diverse set of stimuli, religious and otherwise? This chapter explores these questions by examining the relationship between awe and meaning. Individuals understand the world through cognitive structures composed of foundational beliefs, values and goals. These structures are known as meaning systems (Park 2007). The content of meaning systems determines how we react to the world, both behaviorally and psychologically. If we see the world as a comprehensible place where our actions matter, we are rewarded with a subjective sense of meaning in life (MIL) (see Martela and Steger 2016). When a person’s core beliefs or sense of agency are challenged, they may feel disoriented and seek to restore a sense of meaning in one of two ways. They may cling more tightly to their closely held beliefs, but if the challenge to their meaning system is great enough, they may question and revise their beliefs in a process known as meaning-making (Proulx and Inzlicht 2012). We propose that awe is a meaning-making emotion. Awe-eliciting stimuli are not readily comprehended. They challenge preexisting meaning systems, inspiring people to explore their environments and think in new ways (Frijda 1986; Keltner and Haidt 2003). This can cause people to change their meaning systems, including core beliefs and sense of identity by the process of meaning-making. Such changes are frequently regarded as positive, and they may enhance feelings of MIL (Ihm, Baas, and Schooler, in prep).

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 139 If awe is a meaning-making emotion, could it have played a role in the development of religious meaning systems? To explore the evolutionary roots of meaning-making, we will consider evidence of awe-like states in chimpanzees. Since our ancestors diverged from the same ancestors of chimpanzees, the neural structures underpinning emotion and social cognition have grown larger and more complex. Explicit meaning systems, including religions, have come to govern both individual and social behavior. We propose that the precursors to modern religions were conceived and developed during awe-like states in our hominid ancestors.

Awe and Meaning The psychology of awe An experience of awe may feel blissfully positive, dreadfully negative or mixed in its affective valence (Gordon et al. 2017; Pearsall 2007). It may inspire hope, terror or some combination of the two. Experiences of awe are common in stories of religious revelation, including Paul’s conversion on the road to Damascus and Arjuna’s encounter with Krishna on the battlefield (Keltner and Haidt 2003). Yet awe also provides inspiration for secular and scientific worldviews (e.g., Dawkins 2012). The emerging scientific consensus suggests that awe is elicited by stimuli that are “big and baffling” (Pearsall 2007). The leading model of awe holds that the prototypical experience of awe involves two key cognitive appraisals: vastness and a need for accommodation (Keltner and Haidt 2003). Vastness may refer to physical scale and complexity, as found in rich natural landscapes. But the physical size of an object is not necessarily the key factor involved in awesome experiences. Rather, the key factor is the degree of psychological expansiveness triggered by the stimulus. Awe-eliciting stimuli may be vast in a more abstract sense, such as the extent of the Dalai Lama’s compassion or the explanatory power of the theory of natural selection. Thus, awesomeness implies a sense of scope beyond what one might ordinarily imagine in terms of size, beauty, implications or many other dimensions. Indeed, awe is commonly elicited by complex and information-rich stimuli, such as art, music and natural landscapes (Shiota et al. 2007). The second appraisal, need for accommodation, is a sense that one cannot fully comprehend the current situation and thus must adjust to it. The stimulus exceeds expectations and defies explanation. In Piagetian terms, the new experience cannot be easily assimilated into one’s existing understanding of the world. As a result, there is a felt need to revise one’s beliefs, a process that Piaget (1971) called accommodation (Gordon et  al. 2017; Keltner and Haidt 2003). States of awe are associated with an exploratory style of attention, which may facilitate changes in belief and behavior. In an early psychological discussion of awe, Frijda (1986) distinguished states of wonder or amazement from the surprise response that humans

140  Elliott D Ihm et al. share with many other animals. Frijda describes wonder/amazement as “a passive, receptive mode of attention” (18), with eyes wandering toward peripheral stimuli. These observations were echoed by experiments showing that awe is associated with the widening of the eyes, the dropping of the jaw and leaning forward, as if trying to extract as much information as possible from the current situation (Shiota et al. 2003). Responding in this manner would seem critical to the process of accommodation that is thought to accompany experiences of awe. Certain stimuli are widely regarded as awe-inspiring. Natural wonders such as the Grand Canyon and human-built structures like the Great Pyramid of Giza draw slack-jawed visitors from across the world. But in other cases, it is clear that awe is in the eye of the beholder. What inspires awe in one person may be another boring commencement ceremony or unremarkable painting for another person. The awesomeness of any given stimulus depends on an individual’s existing beliefs, values and goals – that is, their meaning system. Ihm and colleagues (in prep) found that meaningful life events were frequently the source of awe. These included traditional cultural events (e.g., marriage, birth, graduation), singular events of societal importance (e.g., the 9/11 attacks) and unique or idiosyncratic events with personal significance (e.g., discovering a personal interest). These events often represented major life turning points, and in many cases, they led to significant and lasting changes in worldview and identity. These findings suggest that personal relevance is another key determinant of awe, which may give rise to the need for accommodation.

The Psychology of Meaning We propose that awe is a meaning-making emotion. In addition to a sense of vastness and a need for accommodation, awe appears to be characterized by a subjective sense of meaning and self-understanding, which may stem from the cognitive effects of awe-eliciting stimuli. To introduce these findings, it is necessary to elaborate on the relationship between the cognitive and affective components of meaning systems. Meaning systems and meaning in life The pursuit of a meaningful life is a perennial human concern. People are motivated to try to understand the world around them. We like to feel that the world makes sense and that we have a meaningful role to play within it. The subjective sense of MIL is an intuitive understanding that one’s life has purpose and significance and that it matters. Research on the causes and consequences of the subjective sense of meaning has led to a tripartite model of MIL, which links it to the cognitive content of meaning systems. This approach distinguishes three subconstructs: (1) coherence/comprehension; (2) purpose; and (3) significance/mattering (George and Park 2016; Martela and Steger 2016).

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 141 Coherence (or comprehension) Coherence is the extent to which an individual can “make sense” out of their own experiences. This is related to the psychological need for control, which depends on perceiving the world as structured, consistent and comprehensible (Landau et al. 2015). Coherence is supported by meaning systems that are consistent and non-contradictory (George and Park 2016). In a similar vein, research on narrative identity theory suggests that the ability to tell a coherent life story, with a clear thematic and causal structure, is predictive of psychological health and well-being (McAdams 2011). The core values expressed in the life story relate to the notion of the “true self,” or a person’s idea of who they really are. The “true self” espouses a set of ideals and values that may not always be manifested in behavior. The concept of the “true self” is reflected in Aristotle’s eudaimonia, a sense of well-being derived from acting in accordance with one’s demon, or spirit. Less formal usage of the “true self” concept spans popular music, literature and folk wisdom, such as Shakespeare’s “To thine own self be true,” paraphrased by Cloninger (2004) as “just be yourself.” Modern psychological approaches have shown that individuals whose “true self” is more cognitively accessible tend to report a greater sense of MIL (Schlegel et al. 2011). The study of narrative identity and the “true self” highlights the connection between cognitive coherence and subjective meaning. Purpose This refers to one’s commitment to goals that are perceived as valuable and worthwhile (Martela and Steger 2016). Purpose can be viewed from the perspective of Carver and Scheier’s (1998) self-regulation model, which stresses that the continuous identification and pursuit of goals is central to human behavior. Meaning systems ultimately guide behavior by mapping the current situation onto existing knowledge and behavioral tendencies (Tullett et al. 2013). Significance (or mattering) This is the sense that one’s life has inherent value and significance (George and Park 2016; Martela and Steger 2016). Significance depends on a system of valuation that imbues one’s actions with a sense of importance. Something of significance, something that matters, is that which is worth living for (Frankl 1955). Overall, meaning systems that are characterized by coherence, purpose and significance provide a cognitive foundation for goal-directed action. They describe a comprehensible world, a set of goals to pursue and a framework for evaluating one’s actions and experiences. Thus, the psychological “need for meaning” appears to stem from the more basic imperative of

142  Elliott D Ihm et al. acting in the world, for which “making sense of the world” is a prerequisite. The three proposed components of MIL illustrate the connection between the experience of MIL and the capacity for goal-directed behavior. This analysis suggests that the sense of MIL may function as a subjective signal that one’s meaning systems are oriented toward effective action in the world, shedding light on the hypothetical “need for meaning” (Tullett et al. 2013). Meaning maintenance and meaning-making How do people respond when their sense of meaning is disrupted? An individual’s sense of meaning can be undermined in a variety of ways. Someone may feel disoriented if they lose control over a situation. Existential anxiety may overcome a person who reflects on their own mortality. Being ostracized by a social group may leave a person wondering where they truly belong. Such experiences are considered meaning violations, since they challenge the beliefs underpinning one’s sense of meaning (Heine et al. 2006). Meaning violations can be construed as a conflict between one’s general worldview, or global meaning system, and one’s appraisals of the current situation, or situational meaning (Park and Folkman 1997). The attempts to restore meaning following meaning violations are broadly referred to as meaning maintenance. The meaning maintenance model (Heine et al. 2006) is inspired by Festinger’s (1957) theory of cognitive dissonance, which holds that conflicting cognitions create an aversive psychological state that motivates attempts to restore cognitive consistency. It therefore emphasizes the coherence component of MIL. The meaning maintenance model describes two broad categories of behaviors that can restore a sense of meaning: fluid compensation and meaning-making (Proulx and Inzlicht 2012). Meaning violations can be elicited experimentally by confronting a person with information that conflicts with existing beliefs and expectations or that undermines one’s sense of control. When these meaning violations are relatively minor, they can be resolved by asserting one’s global meaning system more strongly  – a process known as fluid compensation. For instance, Kay and colleagues (2008) instructed research participants to recall past situations in which they lacked control. This led to increased self-reported belief in external sources of control, such as belief in a god that manages earthly events. However, fluid compensation does not require religious belief. Believing in science may play a similar role in fluid compensation efforts. Farias and colleagues (2013) found that the experimental elicitation of distressing thoughts about one’s own mortality led to a greater endorsement of a scientific worldview, among university students and staff. The assertion of existing meaning systems, both religious and secular, is a common strategy for addressing violations of meaning (Landau et al. 2015; Proulx and Inzlicht 2012). In the event of severe meaning violations, such as traumatic or life-­ changing events, one may bolster existing beliefs through fluid compensation

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 143 as a way to restore a sense of meaning, or one may revise one’s beliefs through accommodation or meaning-making (Park and Folkman 1997; Proulx and Inzlicht 2012). Fluid compensation, as illustrated here, may not suffice to restore a sense of meaning when a new situation seems irreconcilable with one’s former beliefs. In such cases, one makes an effort to accommodate global meaning systems into the new situation, akin to the need for accommodation that is associated with awe (Keltner and Haidt 2003). To illustrate, Larner and Blow (2011) give an example of a soldier who was unable to preserve the lives of the soldiers under his command. If this soldier believes that a good leader keeps his soldiers alive, then this belief may be difficult to reconcile with the deaths of his fellow soldiers. Based on the prior belief, the soldier might be forced to conclude that he is a bad leader and that he is responsible for these deaths. Coming to terms with incompatible information and restoring a sense of meaning and self-acceptance may require modifying one’s meaning systems – what one believes, values and pursues – through an accommodative process of meaning-making. We have seen that the subjective sense of meaning is related to one’s understanding of the world. In particular, the sense of MIL may depend on seeing the world as a comprehensible place wherein one’s actions are imbued with purpose and significance. This may help explain why humans are motivated to achieve and maintain a sense of MIL. When the beliefs, goals and values that constitute an individual’s meaning system are challenged, they are driven to restore meaning by bolstering existing beliefs or by revising their beliefs through an accommodative process of meaning-making. However, it remains to be established how awe may be understood as a meaning-making emotion.

Awe and Meaning-Making Ihm and colleagues (in prep) examined whether experiences of awe were associated with appraisals and outcomes related to meaning-making. In an online sample of American participants, those who reported more frequent experiences of awe tended to score higher on questionnaires measuring their sense of MIL, coherence of narrative identity and closeness to their “true self” or core values. These findings suggest that people who regularly experience awe are more likely to have coherent meaning systems, indicated by an enhanced sense of MIL and self-understanding. This raises two possibilities: (1) frequent experiences of awe serve to update meaning systems over time, and/or (2) having a coherent meaning system increases the likelihood of experiencing awe. Follow-up experiments investigated the first possibility by examining whether experiences of awe are associated with appraisals related to meaning and lasting changes in meaning systems. We encourage future research to investigate the second possibility: whether characteristics of meaning systems influence a person’s susceptibility to awe. To examine whether awe may play a role in the development of meaning systems, Ihm and colleagues (in prep) asked participants to reflect on

144  Elliott D Ihm et al. emotional experiences from their past. A  second online sample described either a positive experience of awe, a negative experience of awe or one of three control emotions: amusement, relaxation or fear. These descriptions were evaluated for the presence of accommodative changes in meaning systems, specifically self-described changes in worldview or personal identity. Both positive and negative experiences of awe, compared to other positive and negative emotions, were associated with lasting changes in worldview and identity. Describing the experience of giving birth, one participant proclaimed “I was one person before, and I was someone else right afterwards.” Such changes in worldview or identity were greatest for participants who reported having felt a sense of meaning and purpose during the experience. Finally, experiences of awe that led to accommodative meaning-making were associated with self-reported positive changes in mood, attitudes and behavior. These findings lend support to the hypothesis that awe-eliciting stimuli often inspire changes in meaning systems. The cognitive mechanisms underlying accommodative meaning-making remain largely speculative. Some light can be shed on this question by examining the appraisals that people report during and following experiences of awe. In addition to vastness and a need for accommodation, experiences of awe are also associated with a diminished sense of ego, or a dissolution of one’s everyday sense of self. This is indicated by the endorsement of appraisals, such as “I  lost all sense of ego” and “I  felt a sense of selftranscendence” (Ihm et al., in prep). This is consistent with reduced reliance on existing schemas, particularly one’s everyday understanding of the self, or self-schema (Mandler 1984). This interpretation is supported by an fMRI study by van Elk and colleagues (2019), which showed that absorption in awe-eliciting videos is associated with reduced activity in two key brain areas associated with meaning system processes, the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/precuneus and ventro-medial (vm)PFC. The PCC/precuneus is involved in the instigation of internally generated and self-referential thought, which is guided by preexisting schemas rather than novel information coming from the environment (Brewer et  al. 2013; Davey et  al. 2016). Strongly connected to the PCC, the vmPFC is a hub that links schematic knowledge in long-term memory with sensory and emotional information related to the current situation (van Kesteren et al. 2010). The (vm)PFC has thus been described as a generator of “affective meaning,” which makes it possible for an organism to conceptualize itself in the context of current and future situations (Roy et al. 2012). Reduced activity in the PCC/precuneus and vmPFC is therefore consistent with reduced reliance on schemas and internally guided thought during states of awe (although this interpretation is susceptible to reverse inference). This shift away from schema-driven processing provides a plausible mechanism linking states of awe with accommodative meaning-making. Awe reportedly involves a sense of self-diminishment  – that is, feeling small or insignificant in the presence of something greater than the self (Piff

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 145 et al. 2015; Shiota et al. 2007). The findings of Ihm and colleagues (in prep) suggest a different interpretation, though. Participants are more likely to endorse the appraisal “I felt small or insignificant” after experiences of awe, compared to other emotional experiences. However, Ihm and colleagues also found that for positive experiences of awe, the modal response to this item, on a Likert scale from 1 (not at all) to 7 (to a great extent), was 1. Related items that were more consistently endorsed – with a modal response of 7 – include “I lost all sense of ego,” “I felt a sense of self-transcendence” and “I felt the presence of something greater than myself.” In contrast to the self-diminishment hypothesis, other items with a modal response of 7 in the positive awe condition include “I felt closer to my true self,” “I felt connected with my personal values” and “I felt as though I knew who I really was.” This suggests that although certain aspects of the self or ego are felt to be diminished during states of awe, there is a set of core values, a “true self,” that is enhanced or made salient. The everyday sense of self falls away, laying bare the core features of a person’s identity. These central components of meaning systems are likely to be particularly stable, due in part to their cultural inculcation (Haidt 2012; McAdams 2011). We suggest that one’s core values and sense of “true self” serve as a relatively stable foundation for meaning-making when other schemas are undermined. As a consequence, during experiences of awe, individuals remain grounded in their core beliefs, which provide a foundation from which meaning-making can be pursued. Collectively, these findings suggest that awe can be viewed as a meaningmaking emotion. Experiences of awe are characterized by a sense of meaning and closeness to one’s core values or “true self.” Awe involves acute changes in attention, memory and neural activity, which may facilitate long-term positive changes in meaning systems, including worldview and identity. These processes may explain why awe-prone people tend to report greater trait-level MIL, coherence of identity and closeness to core values (or the “true self”), although future research should investigate this relationship through experimental and longitudinal studies.

Awe and Religious Meaning Systems What does awe as a meaning-making emotion have to do with human religions? To address this issue, the relationship between religions and meaning systems first needs clarification. Meaning systems are not only possessed by individuals but also shared within communities. By drawing on a common set of beliefs, values and goals, members of a society can engage in cooperative behavior and experience positive feelings of cohesion and belonging (Bellah 2012; Echterhoff et al. 2009; Haidt 2012). Religions are among the most pervasive and organized forms of shared meaning systems. They provide a shared set of beliefs and practices that may define an entire society, and they structure the meaning systems of individuals within that society.

146  Elliott D Ihm et al. Stories of awe-inspiring miracles and revelations are foundational to many major religions. Beliefs about deities with the awe-inspiring characteristics of omniscience and omnipotence motivate god-fearing people to behave themselves. Religious leaders dazzle their audiences with divinely ordained charisma, inspiring them to great action (Keltner and Haidt 2003). Religious ideas are spread and reinforced through both collective rituals and individual experiences, including singular awe-inspiring events that lead to religious conversion. Experiences of awe may therefore play a prominent and perhaps fundamental role in religions. Most central to the present discussion are religious explanations of the natural world. Religious beliefs are often invoked to explain awe-inspiring natural phenomena, from coincidental rainbows to deadly hurricanes. This is true even today, although scientific explanations are available. To what extent have religious beliefs been inspired by experiences of awe? Inherent in a state of awe is the struggle to understand something new and overwhelming. Awe-like states may have served a similar meaning-­making function in our hominid ancestors. Many stimuli that commonly elicit awe in humans – including birth, waterfalls and wildfires – have also been observed to evoke awe-like states in chimpanzees (de Waal 1996; Goodall 2005). These states are characterized by novel patterns of behavior, which can potentially be understood as rudimentary meaning-making. We can only speculate at this stage (well aware of the pitfall of generating “just so stories”); still we propose the intriguing possibility that religious beliefs may have been conceived and developed during awe-like states in our hominid ancestors, who already possessed many of the social cognitive abilities that underpin religious belief and behavior in humans.

Religions as Shared Meaning Systems Religions are said to contain many things: doctrines, myths, truths, falsities, messages from God or the gods, rules for how to live, pathways to ultimate reality and more. Each religion may manifest any variety of these or other elements. Such characterizations, however, are often claims made by an “insider” or descriptions as seen from an “outsider.” These characterizations are not necessarily false, but they are not complete in any scientific sense. Psychologically, religions are meaning systems full of the beliefs, values, goal orientations, categories of personal identity and loci of ultimate concern that exist in any global meaning system (Park 2007). The importance of shared meaning systems for organizing communities is illustrated by Haidt’s (2012) concept of moral matrices. Haidt suggests that early hominid communities began to flourish as they developed the ability to understand each other’s thoughts and intentions. This allowed for cooperation based on widely held goals and furnished such communities with a set of shared expectations for social behavior, eventually giving rise to more elaborated meaning systems, such as religions (Bellah 2012; Donald 1991).

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 147 The problem of the origin of religions can be recast in terms of meaning systems: How did our ancestors come to develop, share and reinforce meaning systems, religious and otherwise? Humans are motivated to maintain a sense of commonality with the beliefs and feelings of others. This pursuit of “shared reality” leads people to adjust their beliefs, and even their memories, to achieve consistency with the perceived meaning systems of others (Echterhoff et al. 2009). In turn, shared meaning systems provide a foundation for communication, cooperative behavior and feelings of social cohesion. The sharing of meaning systems is therefore made possible by social cognition, particularly by the capacity to represent the mental states of others, known as theory of mind (ToM). A shift in emphasis from studying religions to the broader category of meaning systems, and the processes by which they are maintained and updated, highlights evolutionary questions about more general cognitive processes that may have coevolved with religions, including meaningmaking, ToM, imitation, language and storytelling (Deacon 1997; Donald 1991). Religions serve the various functions of meaning systems, including the regulation of individual and communal behavior (Haidt 2012; Norenzayan et al. 2016) and the cultivation of a sense of meaning (Tullett et al. 2013; Park 2007). The beliefs, rituals and experiences that characterize modern religions can be considered as products of a set of building blocks that include social cognition, community organization, cultural transmission and awe-like states (Taves 2015). When did these building blocks appear in the course of hominid evolution? They may have been present in a rudimentary form roughly seven million years ago, at the time of our last common ancestor with chimpanzees.

Hominid Building Blocks of Meaning Systems Chimpanzees have a number of social cognitive capacities that may be considered building blocks of religions and other meaning systems (Taves 2015; Turner et al. 2017). Maryanski (2018) refers to this suite of proto-religious behaviors as the community complex. It consists in (1) the organization of communities beyond local groups, (2) ritual behavior in everyday interaction and community-wide events and (3) the social cognitive faculties related to ToM and self-awareness that underlie these social phenomena (Turner et al. 2017). The community complex also enables a basic capacity for cultural invention and transmission in nonhuman primates, including techniques for cleaning food and using tools (de Waal 1999). Paleontological and genetic evidence suggests that humans descended from a common ancestor with chimpanzees roughly six to eight million years ago, which suggests that the roots of religious meaning systems may run deep into our evolutionary history (Jensen-Seaman and Hooper-Boyd 2008; Turner et al. 2017). At some time in the past eight million years, these hominid building blocks came together under the rubric of religion. The emerging capacity

148  Elliott D Ihm et al. for language gave way to storytelling. Our ancestors codified their behavioral rules in the form of explicit beliefs and narratives, which likely provided benefits for the memory and transmission of shared meaning systems. Thus, the chimpanzee community complex, along with the emerging capacity for language and storytelling, gave our hominid ancestors the tools to create the unifying narratives that are central to human religions. But what was the proximal cause that inspired religious beliefs? We have seen that states of awe are frequently associated with accommodative meaning-­ making, which may be driven by a reduced reliance on existing schemas and increased exploratory attention and may produce lasting changes in belief and behavior (Ihm et  al., in prep). We contend that awe-inspiring natural phenomena were the proximal cause of meaning-making efforts that ultimately led to religious beliefs and facilitated the development of religious meaning systems. All mammals appear to share a palette of primary emotional states, including fear, anger, sadness and joy, rooted in subcortical neural systems (Panksepp 1998). Great apes, such as chimpanzees, have several distinct subcortical structures involved in emotion, such as the amygdala, septum and hippocampus. In modern humans, these subcortical areas have roughly doubled in size, along with a similar doubling in the size of the neocortex (Turner et al. 2017). Both of these developments likely increased the scope and richness of the emotional palette, creating a variety of extensions and combinations of the primary emotional states. For instance, Turner and colleagues (2017) argue that the human emotions of shame and guilt constitute elaborated combinations of the primary negative emotions of fear, anger and sadness. Primatologists have observed that chimpanzees display an awe-like response to stimuli that also tend to elicit awe in humans (e.g., de Waal 1996; Goodall 2005). The awe-like responses of chimpanzees appear to involve novel combinations of emotional behaviors outside of their usual contexts, including certain aspects of the human awe response. For instance, Jane Goodall describes the reaction to a raging waterfall or a sudden heavy rain: aggressive charging displays, followed by a silent period of motionless, wide-eyed attention, and rhythmic stomping in the water (1986, 2005). A  similar combination of divergent emotional responses and ritualistic behavior has been observed in chimpanzees in response to other natural phenomena (e.g., wildfires), as well as birth and death (de Waal 1996; Pruetz and LaDuke 2010), which are associated with awe in humans (Ihm et al. in prep). The aggressive displays that take place when chimpanzees encounter death or great natural forces (e.g., water, fire) are similar to predatory behavior (Goodall 1986). They involve bristling the hair, or piloerection, which is also a common correlate of awe in humans, often referred to as “chills” or “goosebumps” (Konecni 2005; Maruskin et al. 2012). This novel use of predatory behaviors to stimuli as diverse as waterfalls or the death

Awe as a Meaning-Making Emotion 149 of a community member suggests some capacity for abstraction and for the generalization of emotional responses (Deacon 1997; Donald 1991; Turner et  al. 2017). Rather than responding to a specific environmental threat, the power of natural forces may represent a more abstract threat that cannot be assimilated to existing meaning systems. Nevertheless, the behavioral response is the same – piloerection and charging behavior – despite its unusual co-occurrence with affiliative and exploratory behaviors. Thus, in hominid evolution, the capacity to experience awe may have been a natural by-product of the increasing richness and complexity of hominid meaning systems and their underlying neural structures. In turn, a rudimentary form of meaning-making may have contributed to the development of more elaborate meaning systems, including religions. We suggest that experiences of awe marked the boundaries of more primitive hominid meaning systems, as they appear to do in humans (Ihm et al. in prep; Keltner and Haidt 2003; Pearsall 2007). That is, awe may be experienced when meaning systems are pushed to the limits of their capacity to link stimuli with appropriate actions. In humans, this is frequently associated with a need to make meaning out of ambiguity, which Keltner and Haidt (2003) refer to as a need for accommodation. Notably absent from the repertoire of chimpanzee building blocks of religions are shared narratives about the supernatural world (Donald 1991; Turner et al. 2017). The ability to share collective narratives would likely have facilitated social organization, allowing behavior to be coordinated across greater spans of time (Haidt 2012) – but only to the extent that these narratives could survive the challenges posed by novel experiences. We propose that the content of these narratives was shaped by meaning-making efforts in response to awe-eliciting stimuli. In the absence of scientific explanations for birth, death and powerful natural forces, supernatural explanations may have been provided by neurocognitive systems tuned to detect agentic beings and represent the mental states of others (Atran 2002; Barrett 2000). Such explanations may also be provided, developed or reinforced through social processes of appraisal and attribution (Taves 2016). Once our ancestors developed the ability to conceive of the most rudimentary supernatural agents, these agents could have gradually assumed the characteristics of “big gods,” who keep communities in line through their constant threats of supernatural punishment, by means of continuing biological and cultural evolution (Fehr and Fishbacher 2003; Norenzayan et al. 2016).

Conclusion The psychology of meaning offers promising avenues for the study of awe and religions. Meaning systems, religious and otherwise, provide a framework for individual and collective behavior and contribute to a sense of MIL. The experience of awe is associated with stimuli that cannot be assimilated to existing meaning systems, which may motivate attempts at accommodative

150  Elliott D Ihm et al. meaning-making. Compared to other positive and negative emotions, experiences of awe are more frequently associated with lasting changes in meaning systems, including worldview and identity (Ihm et al. in prep). Frequent experiences of awe are positively correlated with MIL, coherence of narrative identity and feelings of closeness to one’s “true self.” Therefore, awe appears to be a meaning-making emotion involved in updating meaning systems while maintaining or enhancing their coherence and integrity. The presence of an awe-like state in chimpanzees points to the deep cognitive roots and potential evolutionary significance of awe. Chimpanzees exhibit an awe-like response to various stimuli that also tend to elicit awe in humans. This observation adds to a collection of social cognitive building blocks of religions present in nonhuman primates and highlights the utility of a meaning systems perspective in the study of awe and the cognitive science of religion.

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9 Whence This Need for Salvation? Childhood Corporal Punishment and the Cultural Evolution of Religious Myth Benjamin Abelow At least six world religions – Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – can be described as salvation religions. As traditionally conceived, these religions function to save the believer from some form of metaphysically mediated suffering. We usually accept this salvational function as something quite normal, not worthy of particular scrutiny. But when viewed from the perspective of a naïve observer – say, a hypothetical visitor from another planet  – a great puzzle confronts us: Whence this need for salvation? The answer, it often is asserted, lies in the inevitability of death and the anxiety that naturally arises from it. But this answer cannot be correct, because the fate from which these religions promise salvation is usually more horrific and often is a greater source of anxiety than is death itself. Rather than solving the problem of death anxiety, salvation myths often seem to create new and different problems where none existed before. Further, as we will see, in some of the religions, salvation is actually defined as the cessation of life – just the opposite of what one would expect. Clearly, something else is at play. But what? In this chapter, I provide an answer, one that at first may seem too simple or generic to be correct but that upon further examination is found to be surprisingly robust, intuitive, parsimonious and flexible: The salvation myths evolved culturally as a response to widespread historical norms of childhood corporal punishment. It is the child’s desperate struggle to avoid or escape physical and emotional suffering – to save himself or herself – that lies at the psychological and historical root of the salvation religions. This struggle, taking place during a crucial developmental window and enacted repeatedly by the individual child and on a vast scale within the culture, provided a thematic “template” from which these salvation myths differentiated and gained cultural traction. This chapter has four parts. Part 1 discusses Christianity, focusing on the most influential salvation teaching in the New Testament, found in Paul’s letter to the Romans. Building on that foundation, Part 2 discusses Islam, Judaism and the Abrahamic religions as a group. Part 3 investigates the karmic salvation myth that underlies Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.

Whence This Need for Salvation? 155 Part 4 introduces a number of terms and generalizations pertaining to the link between trauma and myth, and it concludes by commenting on several potential benefits and harms associated with religion.

Part 1: Christian Salvation in Paul’s Letter to the Romans Although patriarchy has been the dominant form of social organization in many cultures, patriarchy in the ancient Roman world, which provided the most immediate setting for the writing of the New Testament, was exceptionally explicit and well defined. Writing about the Roman laws of patria potestas (“fatherly powers”), Dionysius of Halicarnassus, a Greek teacher of rhetoric who lived in Rome from 30 bce to 8 bce, notes that [T]he founder of the Roman constitution gave the father unrestricted power over his sons. That power was to remain until the father’s death. He might imprison or beat him, chain him up and send him to work in the country, or even execute him. (Gardner and Wiedemann 1991, 12) While the execution of children by fathers was probably exceedingly rare, if present at all, harsh corporal discipline of children, especially sons, was common and well attested in the Roman world. The following examples are arranged in rough chronological order, starting in the century before the birth of Christianity. The Rhetorica ad Herennium (circa 80 bce, unknown author) advocates that parents and teachers “chastise the young with special severity” to shape them for a virtuous life (4.17.25). Cicero (106–43 bce) indicates that boys could be beaten by fathers, mothers, grandfathers and teachers (Saller 1994, 147). Seneca (3 bce–65 ce) explains that children are beaten for the same reason as animals, “so the pain overcomes their obstinacy” (De Constantia Sapientis, 12.3). Seneca also describes how the father’s role was primarily disciplinary, in contrast to maternal nurturance (De Providentia, 2.5). Quintilian (35–95 ce) hints that Roman children often became so terrified during beatings that they lost bowel or bladder control. “When children are beaten,” he writes, “the pain and fear often have results which it is not pleasant to speak of and which will later be a source of embarrassment” (Institutio Oratoria, 1.3.16). The New Testament itself asserts that corporal punishment by fathers was actually universal, at least among legitimate male children; the book of Hebrews, perhaps written around 65 ce and probably reflecting Roman cultural norms, indicates that “all” sons are punished by their fathers: “If you are without chastisement . . . then are you bastards and not sons” [Hebrews 12:7–8]. Galen (130–200 ce) indicates that corporal discipline could begin in early childhood. He asserts that children “can be made to obey by the use of blows, threats, reprimands, and admonishments” (Oribasius, Libri incerti, 17).

156  Benjamin Abelow Similar norms existed among Jews, for whom the pro-punishment admonitions of Hebrew “wisdom literature,” in particular Proverbs (e.g., “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him” [13:24]) and Ben Sira (e.g., “Beat his sides while he is an infant, lest he be hardened and disobey you” [30:12]), were commonplace in both Palestine and the Hellenistic diaspora during the late second-Temple and early Rabbinic periods, including during the development of Christianity. Statements by Philo and Josephus during the 1st century CE raise the possibility that certain offenses by older children against parents, including persistent disobedience, might be punished by death (The Special Laws, 2.232, 2.248; Against Apion, 2:28). Holding in mind these endemic patterns of childhood punishment, we now consider Paul’s seminal and historically decisive teaching about salvation, presented in its most classic form in the fifth chapter of his letter to the Romans, often considered the most important theological tract in the New Testament. In this teaching, which was one of the most influential ideas in all of Christian history, we observe remarkable thematic parallels with patterns of ordinary childhood punishment. To understand these parallels clearly, we first must say a few more words about corporal punishment. When children are punished, the immediate causes may be quite varied, depending on the particular circumstances. But the underlying cause is usually general and homogeneous: the child is punished for disobedience. Disobedience is the quintessential “crime” of childhood. Conversely, the essential and required route for avoiding punishment, and for obviating the escalation of punishment once it is underway, is obedience. Notice here that the child is effectively saved from punishment by obedience. The theological parallels are striking. According to Paul, disobedience (Adam’s sin in the biblical garden) leads to punishment for humans, whereas obedience to the heavenly Father (the behavioral and attitudinal stance of Jesus) leads to salvation. Paul expresses these ideas in a formulation that became foundational for Christianity: Then as one man’s [Adam’s] trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one man’s [Jesus’s] act of righteousness leads to acquittal and life for all men. For as by one man’s disobedience many were made sinners, so by one man’s obedience many will be made righteous. (Romans 5:18–19) Thus, for both the child in the family and the believer within Paul’s theological framework, punishment occurs in response to disobedience, and salvation is attained through filial obedience – that is, obedience to the parent, especially the father. This theological parallelism with childhood is found to be even more precise when we notice that within the Christian framework, human beings are themselves considered, quite explicitly, to be children of the heavenly Father. Thus, in both ordinary childhood and Christian teachings about damnation, it

Whence This Need for Salvation? 157 is children whose disobedience is punished by the father/Father. The parallelism goes deeper still, in that Adam himself is “the Son of God” [Luke 3:38] and, as many commentators have observed, his sin is distinctly child-like (see Abelow 2010 for a partial review). Thus, Adam’s sin is a specifically filial disobedience. According to Paul, the central function of Christianity as a salvation religion is to provide a metaphysically constructed process by which the believer replaces his or her innate filial disobedience (identification with Adam and his sin) with filial obedience (identification with Jesus and his obedience). This objective is epitomized in the following phrase: “to die to the self and be reborn in Christ” – which means to die to the innately disobedient self, which is identified with Adam, and to be reborn in the preternaturally obedient child, Jesus. To see the parallelism with childhood clearly, consider the following brief statement— Children are punished by the father for disobedience, and saved from punishment by obedience. —and ask yourself, does this statement apply to Christian salvation theology or, rather, to mundane human childhood? Of course, the statement applies equally to both – and that is precisely the point. Now consider this next question: How likely is it that this overlap between the most seminal Christian salvation teaching and childhood experience arose by chance? If, as a practical matter, chance can be excluded, then we are by definition in the realm of causality. In this case, the question becomes, what particular causal relationship most plausibly explains the overlap? These questions point squarely in the direction of a remarkable conclusion: that Paul’s seminal and historically decisive teaching about salvation and damnation in Romans was fundamentally shaped as a reflection of childhood punishment and its avoidance. In particular, it appears that Paul’s salvation teaching emerged as a theological projection of the child’s strategy for avoiding punishment through totally and implicitly obeying the parents, especially the father. Mechanisms of cultural evolution A variety of mechanisms can readily account for the salvational parallels we are considering. We begin with mechanisms that are rooted in psychological projection or mapping and then focus on cultural-evolutionary mechanisms modeled closely on Darwinian natural selection. One possibility is that Paul’s ideas emerged through an internally generated sensory experience – say, a hallucination or even a simple dream – which he understood to be a divine revelation. Such experiences can symbolically, or figuratively, reflect waking concerns and realities, including traumas. Paul asserts that he learned his distinctive ideas through direct revelation

158  Benjamin Abelow [Galatians 1:12], although it is not clear exactly what he means by revelation. Elsewhere, in referring to a visitation to heaven, Paul writes, “whether in the body or out of the body I do not know” [2 Corinthians 12:2]. Such uncertainty is not surprising, because in that cultural context, phenomena such as bodily transportation, astral projection, divine visitation in dreams, waking visual and auditory hallucinations and the like were not considered rare, and they were often not clearly differentiated. The casual way in which such experiences were (not) differentiated highlights the ease with which internal psychological states and putatively external divine realities could have become confounded. Another possibility is that Paul first developed his salvation teaching through a psychologically tendentious interpretation of another text. In this case, he may have understood and then modified the Genesis story of Adam’s sin in a way that, by juxtaposing personifications of childhood disobedience (Adam) and obedience (Jesus), conformed the story even more closely to actual childhood experiences. In a crucial assertion [Galatians 1:16], Paul writes, “God was pleased to reveal his son in me.” This word choice – “in me” – while not ruling out a hallucination, dream or related experience, also raises the possibility that Paul may have meant that his revelation was cognitive or otherwise non-sensory – for example, a kind of inner conviction or conversion or even a way of interpreting Hebrew Scripture that Paul thought was divinely inspired. Thus, Paul’s own words are consistent with a variety of mechanisms by which an internal experience or pattern from his own childhood could have been expressed in theologized form. Cultural-evolutionary processes modeled on Darwinian natural selection likely also played a role. It is useful to introduce this subject by commenting on the work of a particular biblical scholar. In The Oral and The Written Gospel, Werner Kelber (1997) posits that early oral traditions, such as those presumed to provide sources for the first Gospel, that of Mark, “diverge into a multiplicity of forms and directions” (94). Kelber argues that from among those multiple variants, the ones that listeners found meaningful and evocative underwent “selective retention” and continued to propagate (29, 31, 94) – a cultural process analogous to Darwinian random variation and natural selection. Although Kelber never considers the possible influence of childhood, his overall approach is consistent with the ideas presented here. That is, the presence of a thematic overlap with salient experiences from childhood could have functioned as an important selection criterion in determining which variant oral tradition would have been preserved in the culture. Kelber’s particular approach pertains most directly to orally transmitted narratives, rather than to theological letters such as Paul was writing, but it may be applicable in two ways. First, though the specifics need not concern us, it is at least possible that, Paul’s contention notwithstanding, his ideas actually did have their ultimate source in a process of oral tradition. More generally, Kelber’s approach is relevant to other religions that we

Whence This Need for Salvation? 159 will encounter in this chapter, some of whose salvation myths more surely emerged through oral tradition. Second, we must ask why Paul’s ideas  – regardless of their ultimate source  – proved so powerful and attractive. Because they were reared in similar cultural milieus, Paul and his audience likely shared a set of fundamentally similar childhood experiences. Thus, the same psychological factors that led to Paul’s original formulations would also powerfully affect their cultural reception. For an audience subjected to corporal punishment during childhood, encountering salvational themes that subliminally reflect those punitive experiences would likely “make sense” cognitively and evoke powerful emotions. I believe that these subliminal resonances, rooted in childhood, played  – and sometimes still play – a crucial role in the reception, spread and persistence of the salvation myths considered in this chapter. Such ideas also are consistent with anthropologist Dan Sperber’s concept (2012) of cultural attractors, which he proposed to help explain why certain ideas persist culturally in stable form. Sperber recognizes that adverse childhood experiences can play a role in this process, as he makes clear when discussing the stepmother trope common in folklore (Acerbi and Mesoudi 2015, 487). In sum, there is no shortage of psychological and cultural mechanisms, including some modeled on Darwinian natural selection, by which childhood corporal punishment could underlie Paul’s historically decisive salvation teaching. We are thus dealing not only with thematic parallels between childhood context and canonical text – parallels that appear to be too extensive and precise to have arisen by mere coincidence – but also with a variety of plausible mechanisms that could explain the “translation” of painful childhood experience into theological myth.

Part 2: Salvation Myths in Islam, Judaism and the Abrahamic Religions as a Group Let’s now examine the salvation myths of Islam and Judaism, and of the Abrahamic religions as a group. For background, we briefly consider the punishment of children in the formative contexts of Israelite religion and traditional Arab culture. We have already discussed the Jewish childhood context during the birth of Christianity. Here we focus on an earlier period, one more closely tied to the composition of the Pentateuch (also known as the Torah, Five Books of Moses). I have already mentioned Proverbs and its spare-the-rod admonitions. This biblical book is late (i.e., more recent) relative to the writing of the Pentateuch. Yet Proverbs is still the text most directly relevant, chronologically and substantively, to the routine corporal punishment of young children during the formation of the Pentateuch. In addition, within the Pentateuch itself are capital laws pertaining to children. These laws, though chronologically closer to the composition of the Pentateuch, are probably aimed not at young children but rather at adolescents and older (even adult) children, and they don’t pertain to ordinary

160  Benjamin Abelow corporal punishment. Still, the laws are likely relevant because they may have served indirectly to emphasize the importance of filial obedience per se, even for younger children. According to Deuteronomy, a persistently disobedient son should be executed by stoning [21:18–21]. According to both Exodus [21:17] and Leviticus [20:9], a son who curses his parents is subject to death. Striking a parent is also punishable by death [Exodus 21:15]. (These laws might, or might not, also apply to daughters; the male grammatical forms in Hebrew sometimes refer also to females, and the intention here is ambiguous.) These capital laws likely originated in varied regions and times, suggesting a widespread and enduring cultural norm. For example, within the model of the classical documentary hypothesis, these laws would be ascribed to D, E, and P. In the narrative (non-legal) material of the Pentateuch, a father unilaterally condemns a daughter-in-law to death [Genesis 38:24, ascribed to J], giving the impression of nearly unlimited paternal power. At a minimum, the capital laws and narratives of the Pentateuch reinforce the impression that more ordinary forms of childhood corporal punishment, such as those promoted later in Proverbs and Ben Sira, likely were carried out with alacrity in the earlier period. Regarding Islam, there is evidence that traditional Arab childrearing practices have been harsh and authoritarian. For example, in some highly traditional Bedouin groups, a well-established pattern appears to exist (or did until recently) in which the father threatens or actually cuts or stabs a disobedient son with a saber or dagger. One scholar averred of traditional Arab childrearing norms, “the entire system is calculated to subordinate son to father. . . . there is an almost total concentration of power in the hands of the father over both his sons and daughters.” (Patai 1971, 415). Although I have not yet surveyed the Quran, hadiths and subsequent Islamic literature to seek evidence directly relevant to the earlier, formative period of Islam, it seems likely that this scholarly assessment of traditional Arab culture can be taken as a loose proxy for the period of Islam’s development. It thus appears that the pattern of corporal punishment of children during the formative settings of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, notwithstanding some obvious surface differences, had a uniform structure. We can express this structure schematically, with arrows denoting causal sequence: Disobedience  Punishment Obedience  Non-punishment The first schematic succinctly portrays what we can call the “structure of punishment.” The second portrays the route for avoiding punishment. These schematics can be viewed as answering two closely related questions: (1) What lesson or lessons would a child learn in response to the childrearing regime? (2) What internalized mental schemas would we expect the child to develop in response to the childrearing regime? In answer to

Whence This Need for Salvation? 161 the first question, the child clearly would learn, as the schematics directly indicate, that disobedience results in punishment, retribution or pain and that obedience obviates these outcomes. The second question overlaps and largely restates the first; it has approximately the same answer and thus might seem superfluous. However, introducing the term “mental schema” implicitly raises the possibility that the corporal training experience might produce a durable mental patterning that could function as an automatic, unconscious, heuristic framework for interpreting new information or influencing behavior, or even for serving as a kind of template in the imaginative construction, via psychological projection, of a theologically imagined salvation system. Although this use of the term “schema” does not presuppose any particular neural mechanisms, schemas of this type ultimately may have biological roots in processes such as Hebbian potentiation – “neurons that fire together wire together” – or synaptic pruning – the deletion of infrequently used synaptic pathways. These processes create durable, preferential neural pathways in response to lived experience. Importantly, synaptic pruning is thought to begin in early infancy and to continue until sexual maturity, a developmental window during which corporal punishment has been normative. We now come to a key point: the structure of punishment and of avoidance of punishment, and hence the internalized mental schemas that likely emerge from them, map with considerable precision onto the salvational teachings of the three Abrahamic religions. In these religions, disobedience leads to divine punishment, and obedience leads to the obviation of this punishment. The likely explanation is that the culturally pervasive childhood schemas, which arise from widespread childhood corporal punishment, were projected onto a theologically imagined cosmos. We have already seen how these punitive and salvational relationships were refracted in the writing of Paul. The same relationships, refracted in different, culture-specific ways, appear to be central to Judaism, which is quintessentially a religion of divine commands from a patriarchal deity, and Islam, the very name of which literally means “submission” to the will of God. The salvation teachings of the Abrahamic religions, though fundamentally similar, are not identical in detail. In Christianity, obedience is understood to be attained largely indirectly and metaphysically, through belief in, and union with, an exemplar of absolute filial obedience (i.e., Jesus Christ). By contrast, in Judaism and Islam, obedience is attained largely directly and behaviorally, through personally and communally following divinely revealed or authorized dictates, which are contained in the Hebrew Scriptures and Quran, and the legal traditions based on them. In addition, in Christianity and Islam, punishment is understood to be largely individual and to take the form of damnation to hell. In contrast, in Judaism, especially in its early, biblical forms, punishment was understood to be largely collective, such as via the devastation of Jerusalem and the expulsion of the

162  Benjamin Abelow people from the Land of Israel – though the idea of punishment in hell eventually came to play an important role, too. These differences in the means of attaining obedience, and in the specific forms of punishment, are variations on a common theme. All the variations are consistent with the structure of childhood punishment and with the internalized mental schemas that this structure would entail. In light of these ideas, how can we explain the historical relationships among the Abrahamic religions? Although the details may forever be lost to us – and acknowledging that we are painting with the broadest of brushes, with little nuance or reference to ancillary factors – we can reasonably surmise the following: Ancient Israelite and early Jewish (e.g., second-Temple period) culture provided the initial monotheistic, or proto-monotheistic, expression of punishment-related themes from childhood, and Christianity and Islam later diverged as culturally modified mythic variants of the Israelite-Jewish pattern. Relative to Judaism, Christianity more specifically portrays childhood themes. God is a Father, the savior is a Son/Child and believers are children – all more fully, unequivocally and overtly than in Judaism. Keeping in mind the exceptionally explicit and well-defined patriarchy of the Roman world, we might properly think of Christianity as a psychologically resonant evolutionary refinement of the prototypical Israelite-Jewish pattern. For Islam, we might speculate that the Quranic portrayal of God as particularly unapproachable, unknowable and overawing in his power – and perhaps even in the focus on the term “submission” (Islam) – could reflect an especially distant and powerful father or tribal or clan leader.

Part 3: Salvation in Karmic Religion: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism In presenting the structure of punishment, we have so far focused only on the child’s behavior – that is, on disobedience per se, as represented in the earlier schematic: Disobedience  Punishment. We now expand this view to include the child’s inner psychological reality, specifically to include the mental phenomena that precede disobedience – those that lead to, underlie and are located “upstream” (causally prior) from disobedience. These psychological phenomena are complex, but we can portray them simply with reference to three words: self, desire and will. To start, let’s expand the schematic thus: Self  Desire  Will  Disobedience  Punishment Here we see that the child’s implicit or explicit sense of self gives rise to desires, which engender volitions – “internal commitments to action” – designed to fulfill those desires. These desires in turn generate behaviors that (often) entail disobedience, resulting in punishment. Notice that the

Whence This Need for Salvation? 163 integrated complex of self-desire-volition-behavior comes rather close to what is often described as “willful disobedience,” which is the form of childhood disobedience traditionally punished most severely. (Disobedience arising from the child’s misunderstanding or incapacity generally has been considered a less severe violation.) It is not possible for the child to alter his or her disobedient behavior in an unmediated fashion: to simply, by some metaphysical fiat, cause disobedience to cease. Instead, the child must intervene on the internal level. Three points of intervention  – three strategies  – are possible. One strategy is to undermine desires directly, by suppressing or disengaging from them. A second strategy is to sever or attenuate the volitional link between desire and behavior, thus blocking the behavioral expression of desire. A third strategy relies on the fact that desires do not arise in a vacuum but instead emerge from a living entity that is aware of its internal states: a self. Like spokes of a wheel, desires radiate from the hub of self. Thus, to obviate desire and volitional action, the child can learn to view the self as unimportant, as ontologically impaired or diminutive, as somehow “unreal” or “less real.” If the child can make this self-diminishing mental leap, desire will be experienced as unworthy of privileging and acting on. To avoid punishment, the child must implement one or more of these strategies. Before proceeding, we must make one small change to the structure-ofpunishment schematic. To the child, especially the young and potentially preverbal child who cannot conceptually understand notions of retribution and deterrence, the concept of “punishment” is an abstraction that cannot be fully grasped. What the child does experience, indubitably and directly, unmediated by concepts, is suffering. Thus, replacing “Punishment” with “Suffering” aligns the schematic more closely with the child’s actual experience: Self  Desire  Will  Disobedience  Suffering Finally, note that childrearing practices on the Indian subcontinent were likely harsh historically. One anthropologist describes Indian childrearing among traditional peasant groups: Young girls must be obedient. . . . Sons must . . . be not only obedient, but emotionally dependent. [Early childhood may include] threats of punishment and destruction. This early conditioning may be followed in later childhood by rather severe physical punishment. Neglect that results in death, and severe childrearing practices . . . may occur with some frequency among peasant groups in India. (Poffenberger 1981, 91) As with Islam, I hope eventually to identify documentary sources that pertain directly to the ancient context, but for now, it seems reasonable to

164  Benjamin Abelow accept scholarly descriptions of “traditional” Indian childrearing as suggestive of practices in the formative contexts of the karmic religions. We are now prepared to begin discussing the karmic religions themselves. Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism – the three major religions that emerged from the Indian subcontinent  – have as their metaphysical cornerstone a system of karma and reincarnation (Halbfass 1998), which we can refer to with the adjective “karmic.” Karmic concepts have been central to Buddhism and Jainism since the formation of these religions and to Hinduism since the time of the Upanishads  – all roughly mid first millennium bce. Because differences exist in how the karmic framework is understood across these religions and among their constituent sects and schools of thought, it is useful to work with a generic model of the karmic worldview, one that captures with reasonable accuracy important common components of many of the variants. According to these karmic religions, human life is characterized by an ongoing cycle of birth, life and death, known as samsara. The specific conditions of each rebirth are determined largely by the balance of good and bad karma, with this karma obtained during the current and previous lifetimes. Though some births are much more pleasant and less painful than others (births can range from ghosts and low animals to royalty and even gods), the overall experience of samsara is understood as one of suffering, permeated to an intolerable degree with pain, illness and death. As one scholar writes, “hell, so to speak, is the cycle of rebirth itself” (Pearson 1998, 122). Further, traditional karmic systems posit the existence of torturous purgatorial hells between earthly lives. Although many lay (non-monastic) believers focus on the more readily attainable goal of securing a better birth for the immediate next life, through the accumulation of good karma (Smith 2000, 114), the ultimate goal is to escape from samsara altogether. None of these religions “values a fortunate rebirth as such. . . . [They] are concerned not with gaining a happy rebirth, but with stopping rebirth” (Reat 1977, 175). The cessation of rebirth requires that no new karma at all, good or bad, be acquired. When rebirth ceases, one reaches an end point usually described as moksha (from the root for free, release, liberate, let go) or nirvana (extinguish). The accumulation of karma, which entraps one in samsara, is due most fundamentally to the illusion of an individual self. This illusion must be transcended, which requires extirpating “all sense of an ‘I’ that serves as an agent and owner” (Siderits 2015). In Buddhism, this self-negation involves recognizing that the “self” has never really existed; in Hinduism, self-­ negation involves the dissolution and merger of the individual self (Atman) into the vast, undifferentiated sea of divine reality (Brahman). Closely related to self-negation, salvation – often styled as “liberation” – requires the elimination of personal volition (will), of action based on this volition and of desire. The entire, integrated complex of self-desire-volition-action, which leads to karma and samsara, must be removed.

Whence This Need for Salvation? 165 By this point, readers have likely noticed something remarkable: the same three elements of self, desire and will are the ultimate source of suffering in both childhood and karmically understood reality. Likewise, the avoidance of suffering in both childhood and karmic reality requires that the individual intervene at the level of self, desire and volition. These self-directed interventions allow both the child and the believer to save or “liberate” themselves from suffering. Remarkable, too, is that a similar set of strategies is evident in the core teachings of the Abrahamic religions. In those traditions, punishment can be avoided by subordinating the self, desire and will to the will of God – or even, in the extreme view, replacing them entirely with God’s (presumed) self, desires and will. We thus observe a three-way overlap among the strategies of the child, the karmic believer and the Abrahamic religious adherent. We can further highlight the karmic-Abrahamic overlap by comparing two key phrases. Within the karmic framework, we have seen that the ultimate salvational goal can be described as nirvana – literally, to blow out, as with a candle. Nirvana refers to an extinguishing of the native and natural desires and of the sense of the individual self from which desires and volitions arise. Now compare the term nirvana with the Christian phrase “to die to the self” – which refers to the death of the self that is associated with Adam, the self that is associated with one’s native desire and will. The terms “nirvana” and “dying to the self” serve almost exactly the same function in their respective religions and are virtually interchangeable. Thus – convention aside – the Buddhist might well speak of “dying to the self,” and the Christian might refer to “extinguishing” the Adamological self. Likewise, for a child reared with strict physical discipline, avoiding physical punishment and maximizing parental nurture – the “salvation” of childhood – requires that the native, spontaneous self be rendered null and void. We have now identified a fundamental, three-way overlap among (1) childhood, (2) karmic religions and (3) Abrahamic religions. The overlap pertains to both the underlying structure of punishment (suffering) and the salvation strategies based on this structure. Is it likely these overlaps arose by chance? Is not a common causal pathway probable? The best and most parsimonious explanation is that Abrahamic and karmic salvation myths arose as psychological projections of childhood mental schema formed in response to corporal punishment. I conclude by focusing on three points that may form a stumbling block for those grappling with the argument made here. First, in both childhood and Abrahamic religions, the structure of punishment is portrayed by the same schematic (line A), whereas the structure in karmic religions is slightly different (line B). (A) Self  Desire  Will  Disobedience  Suffering (B) Self  Desire  Will  Karma  Suffering

166  Benjamin Abelow Can we reconcile this difference? The literal meaning of the word “karma” is “action.” Thus, in both (A) and (B), the complex of self-desire-will is understood to produce an effect that is primarily behavioral (“primarily” because karmic “action” is understood to entail both behavior and intention). This behavioral consequence precedes and directly mediates suffering. This is just what we’d expect if childhood punishment for disobedience were the ultimate source of both schemas. The two schemas are thus actually much more alike than they may at first appear. Second, within the Abrahamic religions, the innate, willful self is viewed as real: It exists, is undesirable and must be actively combated. In contrast, in the karmic systems, the self is understood to be largely or wholly illusory. Although the distinction between a real and an illusory self may seem profound, the practical consequence is small. In both cases, to avoid suffering, the natural self must be negated or transcended or, at a minimum, blunted; for within the Abrahamic religions it is God, not the human being, who is the ultimate and most important subject. These Abrahamic and karmic teachings about the nature and metaphysical status of the self can thus be viewed as variations on a common theme. Third and finally, in the Abrahamic religions, suffering is meted out by a divine, anthropomorphic Judge. In contrast, karmic retribution occurs through an autonomous process – a kind of natural law. The notion of a damning, usually patriarchal judge can readily be explained as a theological projection of the punishing father. But from where comes the image of a “natural law of karma”? One possibility is that when norms of corporal discipline are applied consistently, infractions are punished in a manner that is (or so it may seem to the child) almost automatic, arising through a kind of spontaneous, inevitable, natural process. This perception of retributive automaticity may be especially strong when the child is very young – during the developmental period when the child’s grasp of the distinction between self and other, and between the parent and the broader world, have not completely formed. Perhaps this dimension of the punitive experience preferentially shaped the karmic myth. Once we recognize that karma functions as a metaphysic of automatic retribution for willful desire, this speculation seems quite plausible.

Part 4: Thinking about Trauma and Myth My focus in this chapter has been on corporal punishment, but other problematic patterns and norms, including child abandonment and neglect, can also be found in religious myth (Abelow 2011, 2016). These varied patterns can all be considered under the rubric of childhood trauma. This fact suggests some useful terminology. The adjective “traumatogenic” and the cognate noun “traumatogenesis” derive etymologically from “trauma” and the root “gen,” which denotes creation or causation. Thus, traumatogenic can mean “caused by trauma” or “responding to trauma,” making it suitable

Whence This Need for Salvation? 167 for describing myths that have roots in harmful childhood experiences. We can thus describe the overall framework presented in this chapter as the traumatogenic theory of religious myth, which we can define as, The theory that religious myths, and the religious traditions and practices associated with myths, can arise and persist through a process of cultural evolution in response to endemic, stereotypical (or “culturetypical”) childhood traumas. When a myth is traumatogenic, the structure of the myth will map onto the structure of the trauma. We can thus say that the trauma and the myth are isomorphic (“same form”), or we can refer to the myth as traumatomorphic (“form of trauma”). If the structure of the trauma is A, B, C, D, a consistently traumatomorphic myth will take the form of A’, B’, C’, D’. We can usefully distinguish between narrative myths and salvation myths. This distinction is not absolute, but the categorization is often meaningful. By narrative myths, I mean myths that tell a story – for example, the Genesis telling of Abraham’s attempted sacrifice of Isaac. In their relation to these myths, believers are primarily third parties: listeners, readers or observers. In contrast, in salvation myths, believers perceive themselves to be active and direct first-party participants  – for example, the Hindu devout who assiduously struggles to escape samsara. An analogy can be made between watching a play (narrative myth) and performing in a play or – more precisely – performing on the stage of life (salvation myth). These two categories of myth tend to manifest distinct types of traumatomorphism. Traumatomorphism in narrative myths Many narrative myths figuratively portray endemic patterns of childhood trauma, but they do so in a way that embeds, or appends, a “happy ending” to the grim outcome that typically occurs in reality. If the structure of the original trauma is A, B, C, D, then the myth narrative now takes a form closer to A’, B’, C’, anti-D’. I call this process narrative amelioration, since the narrative now ameliorates the trauma that it figuratively portrays. This pattern is evident in myths from the Hebrew Scriptures and the Quran; in ancient Greco-Roman and other myths about abandoned children; and in the central narrative myth (Homeric Hymn to Demeter) of the historically important Eleusinian mystery religion and in the story of Jesus’s crucifixion, resurrection and ascension (Abelow 2011, 2016). Narratively ameliorated myths can be understood as providing a psychological distraction and cultural wish fulfillment – a way to make bearable a brutal and terrible reality by mythically overlaying a glorious outcome. This ameliorated portrayal is the classic pattern of a traumatogenic narrative myth. The pattern has much in common with what child psychiatrist and traumatologist Lenore Terr terms a “post-traumatic compensatory fantasy” (Terr 1990, 202).

168  Benjamin Abelow Traumatomorphism in salvation myths Instead of a completed trauma that is ameliorated, salvation myths let the believer enter directly into an in-progress reenactment of the trauma, symbolically staged within a mythically imagined cosmos. The believer now must try to prevent or escape from the mythically represented trauma. The myth is structured so that the believer uses the same salvational strategy that was forced on him or her during childhood. Thus, whereas narrative myths tend toward a vicariously experienced “undoing” or reversal of the completed, figuratively expressed trauma, salvation myths “reset” the trauma time line, directly place the believers into the mythically transformed scene and force them to seek the best outcome possible. This pattern has much in common with the phenomenon of post-traumatic repetition. Could religious myths serve a beneficial function for those adults who, during childhood, were traumatized in ways isomorphic to the myths? At a minimum, engaging with such myths – cognitively, emotionally and ritually – likely functions as a psychological palliative, diverting attention and emotional focus away from the original trauma and obscuring the pain of the trauma by superimposing a mythically imagined “happy ending.” Such palliation may provide a powerful yet largely unrecognized psychological motivation for religious engagement and religious faith. Conceivably, traumatomorphic myths might also have more specific or enduring benefits for adults traumatized in childhood. Possibilities include (1) reducing potentially chronic depression or anxiety associated with the trauma, (2) providing a stabilizing sense of meaning for an otherwise inexplicable or cognitively dissonant trauma (e.g., an assault by one’s parents) and (3) helping overcome the societally centrifugal effects of mass trauma by providing a unifying symbolic focus for traumas that might otherwise be expressed in idiosyncratic and incompatible ways. In listing these hypothetical benefits, my aim is to stimulate thought. I do not suggest that such benefits necessarily or inevitably accrue. Also, regardless of whether these or other benefits exist, religious engagement might still have a variety of negative consequences, especially for children. These may include inducing confusion, anxiety and new trauma as a result of potentially terrifying teachings about sin, hell, purgatory and – in the karmic religions  – the possibility of adverse births and purgation between lives.

References Abelow, B. 2010. “Paradise Lost: Childhood Punishment and the Myth of Adam’s Sin.” In A Cry Instead of Justice: The Bible and Cultures of Violence in Psychological Perspective, ed. by D Daschke and A Kille, 19–41. New York: T&T Clark.

Whence This Need for Salvation? 169 Abelow, B. 2011. “The Shaping of New Testament Narrative and Salvation Teaching by Painful Childhood Experience.” Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33: 1–54. Abelow, B. 2016. “Childhood Trauma and the Origins of Religious myth.” Richard Dawkins Foundation. Accessible at www.richarddawkins.net/2016/07/childhoodtrauma-and-the-origins-of-religious-myth/. Acerbi, A, and A Mesoudi. 2015. “If We Are All Cultural Darwinians What’s the Fuss About? Clarifying Recent Disagreements in the Field of Cultural Evolution.” Biology & Philosophy 30: 481–503. Gardner, JF, and T Wiedemann, eds. 1991. The Roman Household: A Sourcebook. London: Routledge. Halbfass, W. 1998. “Karma and Rebirth, Indian Conceptions of.” In Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Vol. 5, ed. by E Craig, 209–218. New York: Routledge. Kelber, WH. 1997. The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Patai, R. 1971. Society, Culture, and Change in the Middle East, 3rd ed. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Pearson, AM. 1998. “Hinduism.” In How Different Religions View Death and Afterlife, 2nd ed, ed. by CJ Johnson, and MG McGee, 109–131. Philadelphia: The Charles Press. Poffenberger, T. 1981. “Child Rearing and Social structure in Rural India: Toward a Cross-Cultural Definition of Child Abuse and Neglect.” In Child Abuse and Neglect: Cross-Cultural Perspectives, ed. by JE Korbin, 71–95. Berkeley: University of California Press. Reat, NR. 1977. “Karma and Rebirth in the Upanisads and Buddhism.” Numen 24 (3): 163–185. Saller, RP. 1994. Patriarchy, Property and Death in the Roman Family. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Siderits, M. 2015. “Buddha.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Spring 2015 Edition, ed. by EN Zalta. Accessible at https://plato.stanford.edu/archivew/ spr2015/entries/buddha/. Smith, BK. 2000. “Hinduism.” In Death and the Afterlife, ed. by Jacob Neusner, 97–116. Cleveland: Pilgrim Press. Sperber, D. 2012. “Cultural Attractors.” In: This Will Make You Smarter, ed. by J Brockman, 180–183. New York: Harper. Terr, L. 1990. Too Scared to Cry: Psychic Trauma in Childhood. New York: Harper & Row.

Part 3

Theology

10 What a Theological Appropriation of Cognitive Linguistics’ Blending Theory Brings to a Scientific Understanding of the Evolution of Religion Robert L Masson Introduction What does a theological appropriation of cognitive linguistics’ blending theory bring to a scientific understanding of the evolution of religion? The cognitive science of religion has given a great deal of attention to the implications of its research for the evolution of religion. And a small but growing body of work has looked at the implications of the relatively new discipline of cognitive linguistics in the humanities, religious studies and theology (Slingerland 2008; Masson 2014; Sanders 2016). But there has been little inquiry into the implications of theology for a scientific understanding of the evolution of religion. I will offer a few illustrative insights from a theological application of cognitive linguistics’ blending theory to suggest that a “new” scientific study attentive to the interaction of cultural, biological and psychological factors in the evolution of religion also calls for robust research agendas responsive to advances in theology.

A Brief Orientation to Blending Theory Neural mapping is the fundamental image in cognitive linguistics for thought, reasoning, conceptualization and imagination. In the early stages of the 1980s and 1990s, cognitive linguists, particularly George Lakoff and a number of collaborators, sought to understand how meanings are mapped from source domains, which are more familiar and concrete, to less familiar and more abstract target domains (Lakoff and Johnson 1980, 1999; Lakoff 1987; Lakoff and Turner 1989). This research has been extremely effective at clarifying a range of conceptual and grammatical issues that had previously resisted satisfactory theoretical explanation, such as how prepositions work across languages or categorizations work. According to this research, reasoning and concepts are not literal, abstract and disembodied. Rather our conceptual systems and inferences arise from, use and are crucially shaped by the perceptual and motor systems of our bodies and the neural systems of our brains. Metaphorical mappings are not secondary and illustrative. Reasoning is guided

174  Robert L Masson by metaphorical mappings derived from our embodiment. This metaphorical mapping is a fundamental and pervasive feature of human thought and language. Physical motion, for example, provides the underlying conceptual mapping that guides much of our thinking about time, change and actions. We conceptualize time as “flying,” “ahead” of us, “behind” us, “stopping” or “going on” forever. We “move” through time. Time “passes” us by. Lakoff and his followers conclude from their research that the imaginative aspects of cognition  – metonymy, metaphor, framing, image schemas and mental images – are crucial and primary, not derivative and secondary. From this perspective, objectivity, precision and stability in cognition are possible, but literal meaning is not the default position or foundation. It is just the opposite. Words call for meaning rather than capture it. Language is an underspecified tip of a giant iceberg of underlying and mostly unconscious cognitive processes of categorization and metaphorical mapping. Recent research in cognitive linguistics (Fauconnier and Turner 2002, 2008) provides evidence for the claim that conceptualization and inference are much more complex than the earlier metaphorical mapping model suggested. Conceptualization and inference are hardly ever the result of a single mapping between a source domain and a target domain. Rather, conceptualization and reasoning typically involve the integration of many mental spaces and mappings within more elaborate conceptual networks. Blending provides a process through which very complex networks of meaning can be compressed into human-sized concepts that we can handle and with which we can make manageable inferences. Then we can decompress these human-sized compressions when more fine-tuned explanations and reasonings are required. Such blends enable the compression of complex networks of meaning. Blending theory proposes an explanation of the processes involved in these complex conceptual integrations. Fauconnier and Turner describe the range of conceptual integration in terms of four prototypical blends that they name simplex, mirror, single scope and double scope. The first corresponds to what we conventionally describe as literal. A relatively simple example is the blend “Paul’s daughter.” The blend combines inputs from one space or frame (kinship roles, like father, mother, daughter, son, etc.) with another space (a set of individuals, like Sally, Molly and Peter). The blending of the conceptual spaces in “Paul’s daughter” is so automatic and unconscious that we do not even notice it. The second network is called a mirror blend because the two inputs mirror each other. Fauconnier and Turner (2002, 59–60) imagine a contemporary philosopher who tells us, I claim that reason is a self-developing capacity. Kant disagrees with me on this point. He says it’s innate, but I answer, that’s begging the question, to which he counters in The Critique of Pure Reason that only innate ideas have power. But I say to that, what about neuronal group selection?

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 175 One could take this as a straightforward logical argument. One might not even notice the complicated cross-space mapping that prompts us to conceptualize this situation as a dispute between two people in the same place and time. Kant and the professor lived centuries apart and in different countries and speak different languages. Such a debate never took place and never could. But we have no problem entertaining such a possibility in the course of a rigorous philosophical argument. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologiae is largely framed by such debates with authorities from the past. “Running the blend,” compresses time and space; cause and effect; change; and intentionality. In the Summa’s extended blend, Aristotle, Augustine and other ancients are put into dialogue with each other and with Aquinas’s “contemporary” resolution. Single-scope blends differ from mirror networks in that the structure derives from one of the input spaces. One of the inputs gives the overall organizational structure of the network and is the primary source of inferences. These are strongly asymmetrical. The framing input is a source of inferences and compressions. Much of what we commonly call metaphors, analogies and models are variations of single-scope blends. Single-scope blends highlight certain properties common to the two input spaces, such as similarities, parallels or proportions, even though the two input spaces are themselves quite different. Among the many blends that Fauconnier and Turner examine is a scenario in which competition between two CEOs is conceptualized as a boxing match in which one CEO delivers blows to the other CEO and ultimately knocks the other out of business (2002, 126–131). The most complex and distinctively human blends are double-scope ones. For cognitive linguists, “double scope” means that they are bidirectional blends that create new emergent meanings and new possibilities for inference. In double-scope blends, there are two inputs, both of which contribute to the blend’s meaning. The two inputs commonly clash. The differences between the spaces, particularly if they clash, prompt new, often unanticipated meanings. The key thing to note about double-scope blends is their capacity to call for a new understanding. For example, the mathematics we use today has evolved through the centuries and enables achievements not possible with the number systems available in earlier ages. Complex numbers, for example, are in effect a double-scope network with inputs from two-dimensional space and from real and ‌imaginary numbers (2002, 25, 134, 270–274). Structure is projected from both inputs. From twodimensional space, angles, rotations and coordinates are projected. From numbers, multiplication, addition and square roots are projected. The blend that emerges is something new and unique: numbers with angles and multiplication involving rotation. With this new and emergent dimension in mathematics, new ways of calculation and new understanding becomes available. This dramatically reconfigured what mathematicians were able to conceptualize and infer. It took roughly three centuries for mathematicians to accept these developments. The natural sciences provide other dramatic

176  Robert L Masson examples of the emergence of new understanding, such as the Newtonian synthesis that the laws of heaven are the same as the laws of earth, the Thompson/Joule discovery that heat is motion or Einstein’s E = mc2 (Gerhart and Russell 2001, 23–27, 53–54). In such cases as complex numbers and these revolutionary blends in the natural sciences, the emergence of new meaning creates conceptual space for ways of understanding and of making inferences that were not previously available. This potential for the emergence of entirely new meanings and inferential possibilities is what makes double-scope mapping so distinctive. Fauconnier and Turner postulate that this capacity explains the development of language in human evolution and explains the cognitive process at the heart of religion, art, science and technology. This double-scope blending gives human understanding an extraordinary open-ended equipotentiality to create and manipulate new conceptual networks. Languages, cultures, the sciences and religions have been built up over generations through the cobbling and sculpting of such integration networks. These networks of meaning are never built entirely from scratch or on the fly. Nor are they ever entirely preexisting conventional structures. They are always a mix of both. Cultures build networks over long periods of time, which are transmitted over generations. Each generation builds on previous integrations that have become conventional, and each adds novel mappings and compressions. Fauconnier and Turner argue that “for any situation, real or imaginary, there is always a way to use language to express thoughts about that situation” (2002, 179).

Conflicting Readings of Blending Theory’s Implications for the Evolution of Religion My own experiment with a theological appropriation of the research in cognitive linguistics was preceded by Edward Slingerland’s much more ambitious, broad-ranging and provocative analysis in What Science Offers the Humanities. That book’s central objective is to argue for the vertical integration of the sciences and humanities. For Slingerland, vertical integration means that “lower” levels of explanation are in significant ways more basic than “higher” levels (17). His goal is to articulate an understanding of the vertical integration of the sciences and humanities as an alternative to the status quo, which he sees beset by the excesses of objectivist intellectual imperialism, on the one hand, and postmodern relativism, on the other hand. As part of this larger agenda, Slingerland makes an avowedly atheistic case “that evolution is the best explanation for how people and everything else in the universe got here” and that consequently there is no scientific justification for believing in supernatural beings or souls (286). He contends that the inevitable conclusion of science “means that the self as we ordinarily understand it – as a disembodied something, soul or spirit or mind, caused by nothing other than itself – is nothing more than an illusion created by the workings of our embodied brain” (257).

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 177 Slingerland’s appropriation of blending theory provides an interesting contrast to my proposal. We both draw heavily on Giles Fauconnier and Mark Turner’s research, particularly their thesis that blending theory provides a compelling explanation of the emergence of the cognitive capacity from which language evolved and which accounts for the cognitive processes that made possible a “cultural big bang” in art, religion and technology 30,000 to 60,000 years ago. Likewise, we both argue that the emergence of these cognitive capacities is crucial for understanding advances in the sciences and humanities today. Moreover, as a sinologist, Slingerland draws his paradigmatic illustrations from his research in early Chinese Confucian thought, whereas I draw my illustrations from the Christian tradition. Finally, we both aim for more significant collaboration between the sciences and the humanities and draw on Charles Taylor’s conception of a scientific realism that includes human-level accounts of reality. At that point we diverge. Slingerland argues that with blending theory evolutionary science can explain how humanity’s open-ended consciousness emerges from a chain of causality that is entirely natural and physical. A vertical integration of the sciences and the lack of a viable alternative theory (278) lead him to the thesis that as products of a blind process of replication and selection, human beings as a whole – body and mind – differ only in degree of complexity from robots or machines: we, like everything in the world, are causally determined, purely physical systems. (250) I agree that blending theory and cognitive science help explain the emergence of the underlying biological mechanisms and cognitive processes entailed in human evolution. But blending theory also puts in sharp relief the emergence of dramatic and revelatory shifts in human conceptualization and inference that are ignored in Slingerland’s evolutionary construal. I am not talking here about the acquisition of new data or the extension of existing concepts but rather have in mind shifts in thinking that yield brand-new ways of understanding, such as the theory of evolution itself. The “discovery” of evolution and natural selection are not additions of new factual information or even extensions of what counts as fact. Evolution and natural selection are brand-new ways of thinking about the facts and of construing what counts as fact. While evolutionary theory provides a framework for explaining the underlying capacity for the emergence of new understandings of this sort, it does not and cannot provide a complete or even an adequate explanation of the new understandings themselves. Explaining the origins of new understandings of this sort, whether of evolutionary understanding or more broadly of scientific thinking itself or of religious thinking, is different from explaining the evolutionary origins of the cognitive capacities for these human-level activities. Explaining how these capacities have “evolved”

178  Robert L Masson historically, culturally and conceptually into fundamentally diverse ways of thinking and engaging “reality” requires entertaining further human-level ways of understanding (e.g., historical, philosophical, literary and theological) in addition to the natural sciences’ third-person empirical accounting. Slingerland makes this case to an extent in arguing that certain novel, and even counterintuitive, blends such as the mathematical concept of zero or the idea of weight as an extensive property “provide the cultures that possess them with new tools for reasoning about and even looking at the world” (207). But Slingerland does not entertain the possibility of emerging equally legitimate and counterintuitive religious blends that provide novel ways for understanding and explanting reality, because in his judgment, the natural sciences answer empirical questions more satisfactorily and because Darwinism has rendered meaningless the big “why” questions that now seem to be the sole concern of religion (231–232). Slingerland anticipates this line of objection. He admits that he struggles with the implications of Darwinism’s “universal acid”: I don’t believe in supernatural beings or souls. And yet, at some level, I  cannot help but feel that, for instance, I  was “meant” to meet my wife. . . . I don’t believe in an afterlife or a nonmaterial soul, and yet, if you press me, I would have to admit to a sneaking feeling that my favorite grandmother is somehow watching me. . . . We will apparently always see meaning in our actions – populating our world with “angry” seas, “welcoming” harbors – and other human beings as unique agents worthy of respect and dignity, and distinct from objects in some way that is hard to explain in the absence of soul-talk, but nonetheless very real for us. We will continue to perceive our work, families, and lives as being “meaningful” at some inchoate level, and to be strongly motivated to make the appropriate changes whenever we begin to lose this sense. (286–287) Despite this inevitability, Slingerland insists that we must admit that from the perspective of science, this feeling is an illusion with which, for better or worse, we must live: “We are apparently designed to be irresistibly vulnerable to this illusion” (287). He acknowledges that “this is where, in fact, we see the limits of a thoroughly ‘scientific’ approach to human culture and need to finesse a bit our understanding of what counts as a ‘fact’ for beings like us” (287). But finessing the account for Slingerland means “living with a kind of dual consciousness, cultivating the ability to view human beings simultaneously under two descriptions: as physical systems and as people” (293). But unlike Taylor, Slingerland is convinced that human-level descriptions and dual consciousness, however inevitable and unavoidable, are nevertheless based on misapprehensions. For Slingerland, Darwinism is a mortal threat

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 179 to conventional religious beliefs and conceptions of the self: “once we have begun down the physicalist path we cannot go back to the old certainties” (291). Because fundamentalists also recognize this, Slingerland believes they “are in fact a bit ahead of the curve” (255). Consequently, while Slingerland agrees with Taylor that human-level concepts necessarily have a hold on us and can serve valuable purposes, he is not willing to follow Taylor and say that human-level reality “is just as real as anything studied by the natural sciences” (290). Rather, “the short response to Taylor is that, at least for anyone even casually familiar with the current state of the art in the cognitive sciences, human reality is simply not as real as physical reality” (290). “Evolution is such a relatively new idea, and its message is so fundamentally alien to us, that its real implications for our picture of human reality have yet to fully sink in” (291). Despite how counterintuitive the evolutionary picture of reality is, it will and must, for Slingerland, prevail over the human-level dualist picture because evolution has built us “in such a way that we want to deal with and picture the world as it ‘really’ is, no matter how unpleasant” (291). Let me explain why I think an engagement of cognitive linguistics’ blending theory and theology suggests that Slingerland’s picture of the “world as it really is” is incomplete and does not overcome the dualist picture of body and spirit but is rather itself a captive of that picture. My different explanation about blending theory’s relevance to the multiple human-level ways of picturing reality as it actually is, while admittedly far short of addressing all Slingerland’s broad-ranging arguments, nevertheless has implications for how to construe a multidisciplinary investigation of the evolution of religion.

Tectonic Blends Slingerland sees the “ratcheted” innovations of conceptual blending as providing a framework for explaining how human thought can evolve from the embodied interaction with the physical world. He takes this framework to cohere seamlessly with the physicalists’ conception of evolution that he believes is warranted by the research in cognitive and evolutionary science and so explains the origins of religion. This inference that evolutionary theory is all that is needed to explain the origin of religion is the crucial point of disagreement between our appropriations of blending theory. I think some ratcheted innovations are more tectonic than Slingerland’s account appears to acknowledge. While Slingerland clearly emphasizes that blending involves a watershed development in the cognitive capacities of human beings, it is not clear, as I mentioned previously, that his position fully accounts for the degree to which some blends generate entirely new ways of explaining and understanding that are different from physicalists’ explanations but nevertheless are not necessarily opposed to realist understandings of our embodied human nature

180  Robert L Masson and physical world – and that are not necessarily dualist in the ways that Slingerland conceptualizes them. Moreover, his position does not clearly account for how the substance and details of blends are entailed in the generation of these new ways of understanding and explaining. No doubt Slingerland would see this reaction as indicative of a typically humanist slide into a dualism of spirit and matter that lacks the courage to face the implications of empirical evidence. But for the sake of argument, consider a few blends that I propose as evidence for a different way of picturing the situation. Jesus is the Messiah In the Christian faith, “Jesus is the Messiah” is a prototypical example of the kind of “tectonic” double-scope blend that gives evidence for a different way of viewing things. The blend is at the heart of Christian understanding. Despite appearances, the proclamation by his earliest disciples that Jesus is the Messiah could not have been literal. If Jesus was the Messiah, then he was no ordinary carpenter’s son, and he was much more than an itinerant preacher who was deserted by his followers and crucified. Moreover, “Messiah” at the time did not name a single category. It was associated with a multiplicity of expectations, some of which were mutually exclusive, including an otherworldly figure who descends from the heavens and a royal and “this worldly” descendant of David. Given these conventional meanings of Messiah, applying the term to Jesus after his crucifixion would not have made literal sense to the first disciples’ addressees. But it is also clear that when his disciples regrouped and proclaimed Jesus the Messiah, they were not speaking figuratively. This was not a mirror or single-scope metaphorical blend. His followers were not saying that Jesus is “like” a Messiah or proposing that people should think of him “as if” he were a Messiah. The disciples were not merely mapping some attributes of the Messiah onto Jesus nor simply mapping in the other direction attributes of Jesus onto the Messiah. Nor were the disciples analogically claiming that Jesus was partly similar and partly dissimilar to the expected Messiah. Instead, they clearly intended their claim to be taken quite “literally”: Jesus is the Messiah. And the claim can be taken in this way “literally,” or at least “properly,” to use a less misleading term, only if the affirmation is understood as a double-scope blend that maps in both directions at once and that calls for a tectonic alteration of the conventional meaning of Messiah and the network of meanings associated with the concept. The disciple’s blend, therefore, was extraordinary and uncalled for. In the blend, Jesus’s life becomes the new prototype for understanding the Messianic expectation, while the Messianic expectation discloses Jesus’s true identity. Further, the blend calls for a revision of the original inputs. The disclosure of a new frame of understanding in which Jesus is the Messiah radically extends the conventional meaning of the category of Messiah

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 181

Messianic •New David •New Reign •New Temple

Apocalypc •Son of Man •Resurrecon •Judgment Day

Prophec •Suffering Servant

Generic Space

Figure purporng to inaugurate God’s reign

Son of David Victorious King of Israel Acknowledged as Prophet or King Son of Man from the Heavens Suffering Servant

Carpenter’s Son Inerant Preacher Deserted Crucified Input 2: Historical Jesus in Scripture

Input 1: Messianic Expectaon Jesus is the Messiah Son of David & Carpenter’s Son Son of Man & Suffering Servant Son of God & Crucified Messiah & Deserted

Reconfigures meaning of •Messianic expectaon •Identy of Jesus •God’s relaon to humanity •God & God’s love

Blend: Jesus is the Messiah

Figure 10.1 Jesus is the Messiah blend. The blend maps in both directions between messianic expectations and the historical Jesus mediated by Scripture, thus prompting for a tectonic alteration of the conventional meanings of Messiah and of the network of meanings associated with the concept and with Jesus.

and establishes the crucified carpenter’s son from Nazareth as prototype against which all other conceptions are measured. Moreover, the advent of God’s kingdom in this unanticipated Messianic savior reveals a new understanding of God and of God’s relation to humanity. So the blend prompts for a tectonically altered understanding of Jesus, Messiah, God, humanity and the whole network of meanings and frames associated with these terms and entailed in understanding the relationship between the divine and human generally and understanding the case of Jesus specifically. The blend demands an understanding that would otherwise be unavailable, and it makes possible new inferences that otherwise could not have been envisioned. Thus, the details and substance of the blend’s inputs are constitutive of this new way of understanding. Although “Jesus is the Messiah” is not literal in the conventional sense, the Messianic claim in the blend makes an assertion that is proper, logically warranted and factually the case – hence the need to distinguish its tectonic logic from conventionally conceived literal, metaphorical and analogical logics.

182  Robert L Masson Jesus’s disciples were forcing an equivalence between him and the Messiah that would not have made sense to contemporary Palestinian Jews unless they were also ready and open to a significantly tectonic stretching of their language and understanding, so this shift emphasizes that the blend was calling for a new understanding. In this way, tectonic blends are a bit like quirky humor. We say that a person has to “get” a joke to think it funny. One can entirely “miss the joke”; that is to say, the person can miss that a joke is even being made. But when a person does not laugh at a joke, it could mean instead that the person understood the joke but didn’t find it funny. From the perspective of blending theory, we can distinguish at least six different possible receptions of a double-scope blend for a person: 1 2 3 4 5

Able to run the blend. Able to run the blend and accepts it. Able to run the blend and rejects it. Mistakes the double-scope blend for a literal claim. Mistakes the double-scope blend for an entirely metaphorical and figurative claim. 6 Mistakes the double-scope blend for a simple analogy. There are contemporary and historical instances of each of these responses to the disciple’s prompt (call for a new understanding). It is important to keep in mind two final points. First, the creation of conceptual blends and their reception are pervasive and largely unconscious cognitive processes. That was almost certainly the case with the “Jesus is the Messiah” blend. I  expect that while the blend was unexpected and world changing for his followers, it might have seemed obvious and natural to them, once proposed, given their experience of Jesus, his fate on the cross, reports of his appearances and how they had been primed by Messianic expectations and images. One can surmise that for those who got the prompt, like getting a joke, the processing was quick, reflexive, unconscious and natural. The same is likely true for those who rejected the prompt and those who missed it altogether. Second, prompting for new meaning in no way guarantees that the prompt will be grasped, understood or accepted. Recognizing that Jesus is the Messiah is a double-scope blend does not settle whether it is a helpful way of looking at things or whether it is true. The decisive point I  mean to illustrate, however, is that recognizing that it is a double scope-blend is absolutely necessary for understanding how the Messianic claim purports to be true and helpful. One can see in the gospels a multitude of narrative devices aimed to prime the hearer for the revelatory conclusion and tectonic prompt. That is the narrative function of the stories about uncomprehending disciples, Jesus’s abandonment on the cross, a doubting Thomas and post-resurrection appearances in a locked room and at Emmaus. Such narrative elements signal disruptions and reconfigurations in the conventional

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 183 Palestinian world of meanings. In this light, a fundamentalist appeal to historical evidence to justify the claim that Jesus is the Messiah suffers from the same shortcoming as the arguments of skeptical historians who contend that proof is lacking. Neither is ahead of the curve. Both miss the tectonic logic of the blend. Both miss that a quite different way of understanding is proposed. This is not to say that it would be impossible for a fundamentalist or a skeptical historian to comprehend that the Messianic attribution is a tectonic double-scope blend. But once recognized, this characterization demands different sorts of counterarguments and evidence than entertained by fundamentalists and skeptics. Nor does a double-scope interpretation of the Messianic claim fit the assumption in much of the research in the Cognitive Science of Religion that theological and doctrinal beliefs evolve from more literal and naïve conceptions (See Masson 2014, 165–188). Rather, seeds for the emergence of a new religion – that it to say, the emergence of a self-consciously new way of understanding God and of explaining God’s relationship to humanity – were inherent from the beginning in the tectonic double-scope logic of the disciples’ assertion that Jesus is the Messiah. This was the case even though the historical evidence does not prove that anything of the sort was consciously envisioned by Jesus or his first disciples. God is simple St. Thomas’s conception of God offers even subtler illustrations of tectonic theological blends. Let’s look at two which I  describe in Without Metaphor, No Saving God. The first is Aquinas’s affirmation that God is simple. Aquinas asks whether God can be located semantically the way other realities can. Is God a body? Is God composed of matter and form or of substance and accidents? Is there any way in which God is composite or enters into compositeness with other things? As David Burrell has shown, “In one article after another, Aquinas monitors each possible way to get hold of something: locating an object in space and time or saying anything about it” (1979, 18–19). The upshot is that for Aquinas, “God escapes our grasp on every count.” In the case of every other reality (whether physical, mental, real or imaginary), one can locate the thing and speak about it as a composite of matter and form, accidents and substance, potency and act, genus and species or form and esse. God is beyond this sort of description. Thus, Aquinas articulates a double-scope blend to call for an understanding that reaches beyond the available categories. The blend does not describe a feature or characteristic of God that we can directly grasp or comprehend. Even though the term “simplicity” is a substantive and thus sounds like a quality or description of God, Aquinas uses the term as shorthand for denying that any substantives, at least as we know them, can apply to God except in this indirect way. Both input spaces presume the metaphor predication is a form of containment, but the effect of predicating “simplicity” in the blend is to use a substantive in a way

184  Robert L Masson that denies that substantives apply to God. The blend uses the metaphor of containment to elicit the counterintuitive notion of an uncontained reality. So the “simplicity” that Aquinas attributes to God, although related to “simplicity” as it is known in this world, is at the same time nothing like “simplicity” as we know it and experience it. To grasp the meaning and assess the truth of the claim that God is simple, one has to understand the new logic and way of conceptualizing things inherent in the new meanings for which “simplicity” in the blend calls for. Moreover, this blend, like the Jesus is the Messiah blend, also calls for a change of meanings in the broader frame (the two input spaces). Since the blend entails that it is entirely proper to affirm that God is simple, God becomes the prototype of simplicity. Aquinas holds that simplicity and all other perfections are attributed to creatures only imperfectly. God’s essence is “to be” A similar logic is entailed in Aquinas’s affirmation that in God essence and esse are identical. Aquinas’s blend subverts the metaphor that categories are containers to call for a fundamentally different way of understanding God. The act of assertion (affirming that something exists) is logically different from predication (affirming that something has this or that quality). When we say that something exists, we are not describing any particular feature of the reality. In affirming that God’s essence is “to be,” Aquinas is not giving a description of God in the ordinary sense of things, because “to be” is not a thing or predicate in the ordinary sense. Saying that God’s nature is “to be” does not give a definition or grasp of God’s nature. What “to be” signifies cannot be grasped directly in a concept. Nevertheless, as David Burrell has pointed out, the grammatical analogy between asserting things “to be” and affirming predicates of things enables Aquinas to stretch predication and to generate a “substantive” for God in a way that denies substantives apply to God (34–50). In employing this structural analogy, Aquinas’s blend extends language. The blend forces an equivalence between the logic of asserting and the logic of predicating – to display and speak of what is beyond language’s grasp. Both of Aquinas’s blends call for a tectonic change in our fields of meanings, opening radically new ways of conceptualizing God and making inferences about God. Aquinas’s blends do not reify God. They do not conceptualize God as a disembodied something that we can reach through normal modes of predication. Indeed, the point of Aquinas’s conceptions of God’s simplicity and essence is to articulate blends that subvert the limitations of language that otherwise leave us with dualist notions of embodied and disembodied somethings, the material and immaterial, or the physical and spiritual. The point of Aquinas’s blends is to call for different “tectonic” ways of understanding and explaining these distinctions in the tradition that he inherits and passes on.

Blend: God is simple.

Simplicity, which sounds like a substanve, used by Aquinas to deny that any substanves can be predicated of God. Input 2: World of Experience

Simplicity conceptualized in terms of: ACCIDENT/SUBSTANCE MATTER/FORM POTENCY/ACT GENUS / SPECIES

Presupposes crossdomain mapping: PREDICATION IS A FORM OF CONTAINMENT

Input 1: Logic of Predicaon

PREDICATION = affirming that something has this or that quality.

Blend: God’s essence is “TO BE.”

Forcing equivalence between asserng and predicating enables Aquinas to generate a substanve for God that does not conceptualize God as a “substance.”

Making an affirmaon

Generic Space

Input 2: Logic of Asseron

ASSERTION = affirming that something exists.

Figure 10.2 Aquinas’s blends. (a) Aquinas’s God is simple blend subverts the cross-domain mapping that presupposes that predication is a form of containment by generating a predication (i.e., a meaning and affirmation of simplicity) that denies that God can adequately be grasped by any predication and (b) Likewise, his God’s essence is “to be” blend forces an equivalence between asserting that “God is” and predicating that God’s essence is “to be,” enabling him to call for a way of thinking about God that subverts the idea that God can be conceptualized or affirmed as a “substance.”

Subverts cross-domain mapping: PREDICATION IS A FORM OF CONTAINMENT

Input 1: God

ACCIDENT/SUBSTANCE MATTER/FORM POTENCY/ACT GENUS/SPECIES

Simplicity conceptualized as eluding categorizaon in terms of:

The noon of simplicity

Generic Space

186  Robert L Masson Of course, Aquinas and his followers would call this a different “analogical” rather than “tectonic” way of understanding. I use the term “tectonic” to draw attention to the double-scope tectonic character of Aquinas’s logic that blending theory brings to light. Some readers might react to this explanation with the response of skeptical analytical philosophers that Aquinas makes a naïve category error here: His metaphysics is language gone on holiday. While such skeptical readers would be inclined to suspect that Aquinas has been fooled by language and a metaphysical muddle, I argue that that Aquinas’s novel integration of Neoplatonic and Aristotelean metaphysics and his attentiveness to grammar enables him to articulate a tectonic double-scope blend that calls for a brand-new way of understanding God and of conceptualizing God’s relation to humanity. Aquinas is taking advantage of the way our minds are structured and stretching grammar to conceive God in a way that is consistent with the Christian tradition’s complex networks of meaning. That web of multi-scope blends developed over hundreds of generations, and it is embodied in the community’s complicated and often-fractious multiplicity of narratives, worship practices, doctrines, theologies and both personal and shared experiences of wonder, suffering and grace. Making a judgment about whether to accept or reject novel double-scope blends such as these requires that one has taken in the blends’ distinctive logics, motivations and warrants in their various historical and cultural contexts.

Implications for the Evolution of Religion In Slingerland’s picture, the only substantive factors that matter in the evolution of religion are empirical and they are fully explained by Darwinism. Slingerland does not seriously probe the conceptual mapping of notions such as God, spirit or soul. Rather, his picture equates such concepts with naïve, vague and static notions of “disembodied somethings.” Moreover, according to Slingerland, the idea “that the essence of religion is to explain the big ‘why’ questions is relatively recent” and in any case is rendered meaningless by Darwinism because among other things, “the big ‘why’ questions are not amenable to empirical testing” (231–232). He takes for granted the popular picture that “religion [is] used to explain a much wider range of phenomena, and it continues to do so in cultures less penetrated by modern science” (231). But for Slingerland, “religion seems to us now to be concerned solely with ultimate concerns because this is its last stronghold, to which it has systematically been forced to retreat” (231). In this picture, undergirded by the literature in the cognitive science of religion, the significant advantages of projecting agency into the world at large has so influenced our evolution that we cannot help but believe that we “inhabit a universe full of other soul-bearing human beings, as well as animals endowed with various degrees of consciousness, anthropomorphic gods, angry seas, and threatening storms” (26). So, we have evolved as human with a dual consciousness

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 187 that at one level makes us incapable of fully embracing the implications of science and evolutionary theory but at another level compels us to seek the truth about reality, which is at odds with our human-level experience. If fundamental conceptions in Christian thinking, such as the biblical claim that Jesus is the Messiah or Aquinas’s conception of God, are appropriately described as tectonic double-scope blends, a different picture is taken. These blends do the following: • Call for significant changes in a larger network of meanings. • Have roots in prior, conventional inputs but genuinely transcend them. • Result in the creation of new ways of understanding that would otherwise be inconceivable. • Create the possibility for inferences that would otherwise be inconceivable. • Make assertions that are semantically proper, logically warranted and factually the case but that cannot be read straightforwardly as either literal or metaphorical. • Require thick contextual interpretation because the new meanings and inferential possibilities are a function of the blend’s unique construction. • Call for meanings (e.g., Messiah, God’s simplicity, God’s being) that despite appearances do not necessarily conflict with a scientific understanding of the world as physicalist interpretations like Slingerland’s assume. In the picture I  am suggesting, the origins of Christianity are rooted in a highly differentiated call for a brand-new way of understanding God and of explaining God’s relation to everything else. Christianity’s inception was not just a matter of new information or beliefs. The two-thousand-year history of responses to that prompt is the community’s running of the blend. Running the blend entailed working out a cascading network of multi-scope mappings, including the identification of Jesus’s humanity with God and the tectonically different way of understanding God that Aquinas’s blends calls for. A second aspect of the picture I am suggesting is that the illustrations we have examined, in prompting for new ways of understanding the reality of God and of God’s relation to humanity, correspond to the big “why” questions of “ultimate concern.” Religions may once have sought in part to explain things that are now better understood by the natural and social sciences, but that does not prove that the big “why” questions for which the Messianic claim and Aquinas’s blends prompt were peripheral until recently. To the contrary, Michael Buckley has demonstrated that what in fact is “recent” is the conception of God as the specific kind of “causal agent” (the first in the chain of empirical causes) that developed in 17-century and 18th-century apologetics (1987, 2004). Aquinas’s tectonic blend entails entirely different notions of causality and agency (Burrell 1979; McCabe 1987). Countless contemporary theologians follow Aquinas’s prompt and insist that the human and divine, or matter and spirit, though distinct, are

188  Robert L Masson not opposed in the way Slingerland’s picture suggests (Masson 2014, 217– 249). Without seriously investigating these different religious and theological ways of understanding, it is premature to conclude that all talk of God, spirit or soul entails that particular notion of God as a “causal agent” that many theologians today also reject. It is also premature to assume that talk of God or the spiritual entails a commitment to a dualism that conflicts with the findings of evolution and empirical science. Moreover, given these examples in the Christian tradition, it is reasonable to expect that alternative tectonic ways of understanding are revealed in other religious traditions. Finally, the picture of tectonic blending highlights the constitutive role of the blends themselves and their inputs in the emergence of new ways of understanding, making inferences and interacting with the world. Humans are different from other animals not only because of the emergence of the cognitive abilities that come with the capacity for double-scope blending. Humans also are different because of the ongoing emergence thorough tectonic blends of different ways of engaging with reality, such as the development of modern science, which Slingerland admits was brought about by the ratcheted innovation of specific conceptual blends. I am not contesting those developments in science, and I agree, to use Dreyfus and Taylor’s wording, that “some accounts of nature provide a better explanation of how the universe works than do others, and that our natural science provides by far the best explanation available” for understanding those questions (2015, 142). Bringing into focus how religious and theological blends call for decidedly new and alternate ways of understanding, making inferences and interacting with the world, however, suggests, at the very least, the need to take these religious prompts seriously and the need to carefully examine them on their own terms with methods appropriate to their tectonic character. Hence, we need a multidisciplinary investigation of the evolution of religion that includes rigorous study of the specific conceptual blends of religions themselves to discover the “multiple ways of interrogating reality” that, like the natural sciences, “reveal truths independent of us . . . that require us to revise and adjust our thinking to grasp them.” (Dreyfus and Taylor, 154) and that call for other ways of engaging and being engaged by reality. A scientifically responsible investigation of the evolution of religion requires that this sort of attention to conceptual blending in the religions be part of the research agenda.

References Buckley, MJ. 1987. At the Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Buckley, MJ. 2004. Denying and Disclosing God: The Ambiguous Progress of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale University Press. Burrell, DB. 1979. Aquinas: God and Action. Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press.

Blending Theory on the Evolution of Religion 189 Dreyfus, HL, and C Taylor. 2015. Retrieving Realism. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Fauconnier, G, and M Turner. 2002. The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. __________. 2008. “Rethinking Metaphor.” In The Cambridge Handbook of Metaphor and Thought, ed, by RW Gibbs. New York: Cambridge University Press. Gerhart, M, and A Russell. 2001. New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion. New York: Continuum. Lakoff, GA. 1987. Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things: What Categories Reveal about the Mind. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Lakoff, G, and M Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: Chicago University Press. __________. 1999. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western Thought. New York: Basic Books. Lakoff, G, and M Turner. 1989. More Than Cool Reason: A Field Guide to Poetic Metaphor Chicago: Chicago University Press. Masson, R. 2014. Without Metaphor, No Saving God: Theology After Cognitive Linguistics. Leuven: Peeters Press. McCabe, H. 1987. “Creation.” In God Matters. London: G Chapman. Sanders, J. 2016. Theology in the Flesh: How Embodiment and Culture Shape the Way We Think About Truth, Morality, and God. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. Slingerland, EG. 2008. What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.

11 The Evolution of Religiosity A Theologian’s View Christopher C Knight

Overview of the Chapter Explorations into the evolution of human religiosity are frequently distorted by assumptions that are made about the nature of religion. These arise in part from the inexperience of scholars in interdisciplinary work, which makes them less than fully aware of the philosophical and theological oversimplifications in their approaches. I argue that it is not religion but religiosity as a whole that needs to be examined in an evolutionary context. When this is done, intuitive, prelinguistic religious experience becomes an important focus for research, especially in psychological understandings of religious beliefs and practices. This chapter argues in particular that explorations that focus on supernaturalist beliefs fail to recognize that these beliefs are not intrinsic to human religiosity and, historically, have been far more varied and complex than is often recognized. This is true not only of their outward manifestations but also in their fundamental understanding of how the supernatural is to be distinguished from the natural. The historical background of current assumptions about supernaturalism is outlined, and the ways in which important strands of both traditional and current theology transcend these assumptions are indicated. In these strands  – in which God is not viewed as a thing among things or a cause among causes – evolutionary insights become, for the theologian, not a threat but an important clarification.

Introduction: Religion, Supernaturalism and Language Scholars in many disciplines are now exploring evolutionary insights into the human propensity for religious experience, behavior and thinking. However, while these scholars recognize that insights from many disciplines are necessary for this exploration, interdisciplinary work is, in practice, novel for many of them. Because of this, all those involved in exploring the evolution of religion may find it useful to be aware of the insights of those theologians who have considered issues related to this evolution, since the theological discipline not only is in practice the only one that evokes reflection on this evolution but is also intrinsically interdisciplinary in nature.

The Evolution of Religiosity 191 One example of the contribution that may be made from this interdisciplinary perspective lies in the phrase “evolution of religion.” Although many scholars in this field make formal obeisance to the fact that the term “religion” is not well defined, they all too often still tend to use it as though it were some sort of natural kind (see the critique in Harrison 2015). In particular, they often, like David Lewis-Williams (2009, 154), see its “fundamental characteristic” as “some idea of a supernatural realm, dimension or influence that is immune to scientific investigation.” The theologian’s criticism here will essentially be philosophical rather than theological: This kind of definition simply moves the problem from one concept that is difficult to define – religion – to another that is equally problematic – supernatural. Not only, as we shall see, does Lewis-Williams, like many others, implicitly project onto religious believers a distinction between natural and supernatural that is alien to the views of at least some of them, but he also implicitly uses a notion of what is natural that is philosophically simplistic. Another example of a common and questionable assumption is also to be found in Lewis-Williams’s work. He and others plausibly argue that explicit religious beliefs could not have existed among humans before the cognitive and linguistic developments often associated with the Upper Paleolithic Period. However, what some theologians may tend to emphasize in this context is religious experience in itself rather than its interpretation in terms of particular beliefs. This emphasis relates in part to the anthropologist’s insight that a narrow focus on religious concepts is uncomfortably reminiscent of the notion that religion is to be understood primarily as a kind of rudimentary (and mistaken) science. This assumption was made in the “armchair anthropology” of the early 20th century but has long since been abandoned in anthropological circles. This notion of religion as essentially an explanation of the world is related, for theologians, to the kind of simplistic “natural theology” that they often now reject. This will especially be the case among those of them who stress the tradition of negative theology, or apophaticism, which is to be found in a number of different faith communities. In the more radical of these apophatic understandings, the function of religious language is seen in essentially mystical terms. (In evolutionary terms, this function might be expressed in terms of its capacity to foster a “return” to a prelinguistic, “paradisal” stage of human evolution.) Within Christianity, for example, an important strand of the Eastern Orthodox tradition has a strong sense of this character of theological language. In this strand, the terms that are applied to God are not understood as “rational notions which we formulate, the concepts with which our intellect constructs a positive science of the divine nature.” Rather, they are understood as “images or ideas intended to guide us and fit our faculties for the contemplation of that which passes all understanding” (Lossky 1957, 40). Such considerations suggest that by focusing on explicit religious understandings, Lewis-Williams and others may tend to treat simplistically

192  Christopher C Knight something that is either explicitly or implicitly accepted by them: Such understandings have emerged through a predisposition to certain kinds of experience, which existed in anatomically modern humans (and perhaps other hominids) before the cognitive and linguistic developments that made possible explicit religious beliefs. Lewis-Williams is probably correct, for example, in his comment that Neanderthals were unable to “conceive of a spirit realm or an afterlife.” However, this does not necessarily mean  – except in a trivial sense – that they were therefore (as he puts it) “congenital atheists” (Lewis-Williams 2009, 144). Worms are also congenital atheists in this sense, but it seems extremely unlikely that they can experience what the archaeological evidence of burial practices suggests Neanderthals might have experienced: some kind of intuitive sense of a divine reality. Here, Michael Polanyi’s famous philosophical observation that “we can know more than we can tell” (Polanyi 1966, 4) is surely relevant to a critique of this approach. Another criticism, based partly on anthropological perspectives, relates to the focus on shamanism in the work of Lewis-Williams (2009) and of others (e.g., Rossano 2006). What is significantly underestimated in such approaches is the cultural specificity of the various practices and understandings described as shamanistic or animistic. Moreover, this focus often seems to be linked to presumptions about these societies’ beliefs that not only are projections onto those beliefs of a particular kind of supernaturalism but also fail to fully take into account “perspectivist” approaches in anthropology (e.g., see Bird-Davis 1999), which challenge the metaphysical framework often assumed in discussions of animism (see the review in Halbmayer 2012).

Religiosity and the Unconscious All these issues point to the need to rigorously question the assumptions about religion that are frequently made in studies of its evolutionary background. As I  have put it elsewhere, although the concept of religion is problematic, we must still recognize in humans “a universal natural predisposition to the types of experience and to the patterns of behavior that have usually been studied under this heading” (Knight 2010, 26). With this in mind, it seems that we can bypass many of the problems associated with the term “religion” in this context by replacing it with the term “religiosity,” widely used by sociologists of religion (e.g., Glock 1972). This term may be used as a kind of convenient shorthand to cover a range of belief systems, types of experience and patterns of behavior. Moreover, the term can be linked to an explicit recognition that those who exhibit “religious” characteristics need not manifest conformity to some supposedly defining characteristic of “religion.” Rather, those who manifest religiosity may be seen as related to one another through the way each of them exhibits some of the traits usually associated with religion, but with no one of these traits

The Evolution of Religiosity 193 necessarily being present in all. In this sense, these people will exhibit what some philosophers (following Wittgenstein) call “family resemblances.” Religiosity (understood in this sense) will be interpreted by those with insight into the psychology of religion at least partly in terms of its unconscious roots, and such an interpretation will undoubtedly provide essential insights for interdisciplinary understanding. However, while a previous generation of scholars often used Jungian psychology for this purpose, those of the current generation are more wary of this approach. They recognize that in its classic form, the Jungian framework has numerous drawbacks, not least in relation to the simplistic connection to evolutionary perspectives implicit in Jung’s own understanding of what he called the collective unconscious. However, in relation to the kind of more complex scenario that some have begun to explore, there may be an important way forward that has not so far been developed in detail (see Knight 2016a). This is in terms of the suggestion from Harry Hunt (2012) that Jung’s collective unconscious is, in sociocultural terms, comparable to the sociological concept of “collective consciousness,” understood by Durkheim as most apparent in the collective representations of myth, ritual and religion. By adding to this observation the ideas of George Lakoff and Mark Johnson (1981) about the centrality of metaphor in human thinking, Hunt argues that it is possible to develop a “rapprochement between Jung and the contemporary human sciences” (2012, 76).

Varieties of supernaturalism Whether or not this approach comes to be seen as fruitful for the study of the evolution of religiosity, it seems likely that there will emerge, over the next generation or two, a robust naturalistic understanding of that evolution. Some theologians do not relish that prospect, since like many scholars in other disciplines, they believe that “religion” necessarily involves belief in supernatural entities or processes. Such a definition of religious belief depends, however, on an acceptable definition of the realm of the “natural,” and not only has this realm never had stable boundaries, but even the definition of naturalism has proved elusive. Moreover, what the term “supernatural” means is not even agreed on among those religious believers who use the term. In particular, for Christians of the late antiquity and medieval periods, and for the modern inheritors of their thinking, the relationship of the supernatural to the natural is a far subtler one than is assumed by most of those who speak about the supernatural today. In the late medieval Christian West, for example, the notions of the natural and supernatural were not only related to the earlier separation of grace and nature made by Augustine of Hippo, but were also strongly tied to scholasticism’s Aristotelian framework. In this scholastic framework – still held by some today  – there was the presumption that miraculous events occurred. Nevertheless, the natural and supernatural were strongly linked,

194  Christopher C Knight since it was believed that “grace completes nature.” In the medieval Christian East, moreover, the tendency was not to make a distinction between the natural and the supernatural but rather to stress the difference between the “uncreated” – God – and the “created.” This latter category included what in Western Christianity was regarded as “supernatural” entities, such as angels. The notion of the supernatural was only rarely used, and even then, its meaning was in some respects closer to the modern notion of the paranormal than to the Western notion of the supernatural (Knight 2016b). An important factor here was that the separation of grace and nature that was made in the West made no sense because Eastern Christian theology “knows nothing of ‘pure nature’ to which grace is added as a supernatural gift. For it, there is no natural or ‘normal’ state since grace is implied in the act of creation itself” (Lossky 1957, 101). Nowadays, by contrast, the most common distinction between natural and supernatural  – made by both believers in the supernatural and those who deny its reality  – derives directly from neither of these frameworks. Its prime origin lies in the (now-outmoded) Newtonian version of physics, which posited a mechanistic “clockwork” model of the universe. As a response to this model, the theological stress – especially within protestant communities  – was often on God as the “designer” and initiator of this clockwork universe. In this model, miracles were seen in terms of God intervening from time to time (as a kind of clock repairer) to keep the mechanism functioning as intended. There was thus a tendency to depart from medieval assumptions by seeing God as essentially “absent” from natural processes, and this tendency was reinforced by how an apologetic argument was perceived in the need to explain events that science itself seemed unable to explain. The focus was thus increasingly on “gaps” in scientific explanation, and divine action was increasingly seen as effectively limited to these gaps. There grew up what has been called the notion of the “God of the gaps,” in which the old distinction between natural and supernatural was understood and used in a new way. (This “God of the gaps” notion lies behind much of New Atheism and much of the thinking that characterizes the exploration of the evolution of religion.) Another apologetic argument, related to this “God of the gaps” model, also developed in this period. This was a kind of design argument for the existence of God. Considerations that had been set out in the early years of the new science were in this later period recast in more clearly rationalist form, most famously in William Paley’s book of 1802, Natural Theology. If you found a watch, Paley argued, then even if you didn’t know its purpose, its intricate mechanism would convince you of its design and manufacture by an intelligent watchmaker. In a comparable way, he argued, the world too could be seen as the product of intelligent design. In the 19th century, this argument was, in some Christian circles, considered an important one for apologetic purposes, and for this reason, Darwin’s

The Evolution of Religiosity 195 insights into evolution as the “blind watchmaker” evoked a complex and often critical response. However, we must recognize that the acceptance of Darwinian evolution among Christians was not as tardy as some seem to believe. In a book published in 1889, for example, the Anglican priest, Aubrey Moore, argued that the Darwinian view should be seen as “infinitely more Christian than the theory of ‘special creation,’ for it implies the immanence of God in nature and the omnipresence of His creative power” (Moore 1889, 184).

The Modern Science-Theology Dialogue This stress on divine immanence (in this world) has been crucial to the modern science-theology dialogue in its development since the early work of Ian Barbour (1966). Not only has scientific insight – including evolutionary theory  – been generally affirmed by participants in this dialogue but also the untraditional, early modern notion of the “God of the gaps” has been abandoned. This abandonment was reinforced, for several decades, by the development of a new model of divine action that was sometimes labeled “noninterventionist.” What was meant by this term was that the new approach shunned any understanding of divine action that seemed to require the laws of nature to be suspended while God acted directly. Instead, it was now claimed that God could act in, with, and under the laws of nature. Sometimes, it was said, this involved nothing more than sustaining the world and the laws obeyed by its components. There was thus a new stress on the “general” divine action that occurs through the normal operation of those laws. However, among proponents of this model, a widespread belief remained that there was a need to see certain events as the result of “special” divine action. There was therefore an attempt to seek to identify, in a scientifically literate way, what was often called a causal joint through which God might be able to respond to events and situations in the world without actually setting aside the laws of nature. Here, the development of quantum mechanics in the early 20th century seemed to many to provide the conceptual framework for exploring this approach. What was now stressed was the contrast between the nondeterministic universe envisaged in the new understanding and the deterministic, “clockwork” universe of the older, Newtonian model. This nondeterministic character of the universe seemed to allow for “special” divine action while not requiring the kind of supernatural intervention in which the laws of nature must be set aside. The simplest and earliest model of how this could occur was, in fact, based straightforwardly on quantum mechanical insights. More recently, however, a number of other causal joints have been suggested. This type of scheme is still dominant within the science-theology dialogue, and it provides the basis for the affirmation of naturalistic understandings that has become characteristic of that dialogue. Thus, whenever

196  Christopher C Knight a naturalistic explanation is proposed for religious experience, it is usually at least implicitly accepted by most participants in that dialogue that such experience is rooted in naturalistic processes that have an evolutionary history. Religiosity is understood as natural, and God is seen as being able to communicate with us on the basis of this religiosity, acting in, with, and under the laws of nature that are always operative. Theologians – at least those who have participated in this development – would therefore not see evolutionary understandings of human religiosity as a threat. However, this causal joint scheme has recently been criticized from a number of perspectives. Wesley Wildman, for example, has observed that its presuppositions seem to lie not in traditional understandings but in a “personalistic theism” that represents a “Protestant deviation from the mainstream Christian view” (2006, 166). The coherence of the model has also been criticized by both Nicholas Saunders (2002) and myself (Knight 2007, 22–27). However, my own critique is unlike that of Saunders’s, in one important respect. It is based not simply on pointing out the inherent problems of the scheme but also on a new proposal that may be seen as a manifestation of what Sarah Lane Ritchie has called a “theological turn” in the 21st-century debate about divine action. In this development, Ritchie observes, the basic relationship between God and the world, “rather than presuming an ontologically self-sufficient physical world,” is increasingly based on “questioning the metaphysical commitments” that lie behind this presumption. This means, she explains, that there is now a concerted attempt on the part of a number of theologians to develop “alternative ways to think about the causal nexus between divine and material realities.” She adds that “the theological turn is characterized by the question, ‘What does it mean for the physical world to be properly natural?’ ” (Ritchie 2017, 361). In these approaches, the old distinction between “general” and “special” modes of divine action is rejected, and the “God of the gaps” notion is more radically rejected than in the causal joint scheme, in which that distinction is retained.

Naturalism and the Limits of the Scientific Method My own contribution to this “theological turn” (Knight 2001, 2007) is rooted in what I see as convergence between an Eastern Christian theological understanding and a view of naturalism that is essentially philosophical rather than theological. I not only reject conventional supernaturalism but also affirm the sciences strongly and explicitly. This is possible within a theological context because of my definition of naturalism: not in terms of what can in principle be uncovered by the scientific method but in terms of the more general belief that the world always functions in a way that we can describe in terms of obedience to “fixed instructions.” These instructions, in their simpler manifestations, I see as susceptible to investigation through the scientific method, and thus nothing that represents robust scientific theory

The Evolution of Religiosity 197 need, in my view, be challenged. However, for philosophical rather than theological reasons, I  argue that not all such instructions are necessarily susceptible to investigation through the scientific method, since at levels of high complexity – such as that of the personal – these fixed instructions will simply not be susceptible to the repeatability criterion that is so important for the scientific method. (We cannot, for example, put two people in a laboratory and tell them to fall in love so that we can observe the process.) This is not to deny that such processes follow what we might call law-like patterns, with identical outcomes arising from identical situations. Rather, it means that there is an epistemological barrier to our exploration, in that the criteria for identifying identical situations are simply not available to us. This distinction  – between natural processes that are straightforwardly susceptible to scientific investigation and those that are not – may, I have suggested, be understood according to how Augustine of Hippo, in the late 4th century, wrote about miracles in a way that we might now interpret as suggesting a distinction between “ordinary” and “higher” laws of nature (Pannenberg 2002). This distinction is comparable, I have observed, to that involved in how nowadays there are some who speak about the normal operation of the cosmos and the “paranormal.” In terms of this understanding, I have suggested that what I call strong theistic naturalism need not, a priori, preclude events that are seen as paranormal or miraculous, since neither of these terms has any necessary connotations of the supernatural. Such events, I have suggested, may be seen as coming within the bounds of naturalism because they may be seen as analogous to what in physics are known as changes of regime, such as the onset of superconductivity in certain materials when they are cooled to below a particular temperature. In such changes, once a certain threshold has been crossed, discontinuities in properties occur. The difference between this kind of scientifically explorable regime change, and what is considered paranormal lies only, I have suggested, in how, in the latter, the repeatability criterion is not straightforwardly applicable at a practical level, such that investigation through the scientific method becomes difficult or impossible.

Human Psychology and Pluralistic Theology However, I do not regard the boundary here to be one that can be recognized straightforwardly. Even if we suspect that we will hit the epistemological barrier of which I  have spoken, we should not, in the face of the apparently paranormal, shrink from attempting explanation based on naturalistic understanding. In particular, I have suggested that when universal elements of human psychology seem to be involved, such attempts can and should be made in the way that they often are in the exploration of the evolution of religiosity. An example I have given is the set of experiences of the “risen Christ” recorded in the gospels and the Acts of the Apostles. A psychological understanding of these experiences, I have argued, has the potential to

198  Christopher C Knight provide important insight into their nature. I have suggested, in particular, that these experiences were essentially visionary in nature. This psychological understanding, I  have argued, points toward how a pluralistic understanding of the faiths of the world can be constructed (Knight 2007, 40–68). Each of these faith traditions, according to the model I have proposed, arises through experiences rooted in psychological characteristics that are fundamental to what it is to be human and that have arisen naturally through an evolutionary process. This understanding might, of course, be interpreted in reductionist terms as “explaining away” the types of experience that have been interpreted as revelations of some divine reality. What prevents this in my own analysis is that my understanding of human psychology and its evolutionary background is set in an overarching understanding of how the cosmos and its naturalistic development reflect what those in theistic traditions call the divine will.

Five Theses I have recently expressed this understanding (Knight 2010, 2013) in terms of five theses that do not rely on any particular faith tradition and seem particularly relevant to the question of how religious beliefs arise and evolve. These theses are as follows: 1 The human psyche may be understood in principle entirely in terms of the development of the cosmos through natural processes from the Big Bang to the evolutionary emergence of specifically human qualities. 2 All experiences that give the impression of being revelatory of a divine reality are the spontaneous, natural products of the human psyche and do not require any notion of “special” divine action to explain them. These experiences are culturally conditioned, in that their specific forms will relate to both the individual psychological makeup and culturally determined expectations of those who receive them. These factors are sufficient to explain why, in different individuals and cultural contexts, there is considerable diversity among the types of such experiences and of the religious languages that arise from them. 3 The belief of most religious people, that their own faith’s foundational revelatory experiences have given rise to a religious language that is genuinely referential to a divine reality, is a valid one. This divine reality – as something to which reference can validly be made – is therefore ontologically defensible. 4 The diversity of the religious languages that arise from different revelatory experiences does not necessarily imply that they cannot all validly refer to the divine reality. A pluralistic understanding of their referential success is possible. 5 The cosmos, in which the revelation-oriented human psyche has arisen naturalistically, is attributable to the “will” or character of the divine

The Evolution of Religiosity 199 reality to which authentic revelatory experience bears witness. (As those of the Abrahamic traditions might put it, the probability that some creatures would come to know their creator was built into the cosmos, by that creator, from its beginning.) There are, of course, tensions between these theses, since the first two of them manifest an uncompromising naturalism and the remainder are irreducibly theological, albeit manifesting the kind of religious pluralism defended by people like John Hick (2005). How we might overcome the tensions between these sets of theses has been the main subject of the books that I have cited (Knight 2001, 2007), and there is no room here to repeat or even to summarize all those arguments. However, it seems appropriate to note certain aspects of those arguments here, since they are particularly relevant to the questions that are likely to be asked by those interested in the evolution of religiosity.

An Untraditional Approach? One relevant aspect relates to many possibly thinking that this approach has little to do with traditional theology and that it is therefore irrelevant to exploring the early evolution of religiosity. However, for three reasons, it would be simplistic to think that this is the case. The first is that the commonly assumed notion that God must be seen as a supernatural “entity” has little to do with the traditional Christian notion of God. For this traditional Christian understanding, God is not to be seen as a “thing among things” or a “cause among causes” but as what some modern theologians call the “ground of being” or even “existence itself.” The notion of God as a supernatural “entity” is, in this understanding, a category mistake (as indeed may be the common interpretations of the “spirits” of animistic belief if perspectivist understandings are taken into account). The second point to recognize is that my focus on visionary experiences has clear links with the understanding of religiously oriented visions held by relatively traditionalist theologians who assume the ancient understanding in which grace completes nature (Knight 2001, 23–33, 2007, 40–46). More important than either of these issues, however, is a third factor, which is that an aspect of traditional theological thought turns out to be highly relevant to the approach that I have set out. This is the notion of the divine Logos or Word, which in Christian usage is primarily thought of in relation to the doctrine of the incarnation in Christ, as expressed in the prologue of the fourth gospel (John 1: 1–14). However, this prologue takes up an earlier use of the term Logos in Hellenistic Judaism, which was influential not only for Christian thinking but also for strands of Muslim thinking. (Indeed, it may even be compared to the Taoist notion of the eternal way.) The Logos – in this general sense – is that which makes the universe logical in its functioning, obedient to what we now call “laws of nature.”

200  Christopher C Knight Because – as the fourth gospel puts it – this Logos “enlightens everyone” (John 1:9), it has been used to argue for a radical religious pluralism. In this sense, the sort of religious pluralism that I advocate may be seen as a manifestation of a strand of traditional Christian thinking since – as Philip Sherrard notes – pluralistic perspectives of this sort are to be found at least implicitly in the thoughts about the Logos in many early Christian writers, including “Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, the Cappadocians, [and] St. Maximos the Confessor” (Sherrard 1998, 61). In the work of the last of these figures, the notion of the Logos was used to develop a sophisticated understanding of the cosmos that has not only continued to be central to the thinking of the Christian East but has evoked recent interest among Western theologians too. Moreover, it may be seen as compatible with the kind of naturalism that I advocate. My argument for this compatibility hinges on how Maximos’s thinking manifests a general intuition that is, as we have noted, implicit throughout the Eastern Christian tradition: Divine grace does not involve God somehow having to “get into” the natural world from some “outside,” supernatural realm. This is particularly clear in the work of Maximos, who uses the term “logos” (pl. logoi) not only of the divine Logos that existed “in the beginning” (John 1:1) but also of that which constitutes the inner reality of each created thing. The logos of each created thing is not only, for Maximos, a manifestation of the divine Logos but also what has been described as “God’s intention for that thing, its inner essence, that which makes it distinctively itself” (Ware 2004, 160). The logos of each created thing is that which makes that thing act logically, in the modern sense of that term, and it is arguable therefore that for the theological instinct manifested by Maximos, what we now call the laws of nature are essentially a manifestation of the presence, through these logoi, of the divine Logos itself.

A Return to Teleology? However, in exploring this parallel, we need to be aware that there is a characteristic of this ancient tradition of understanding the cosmos’s logical functioning that is not found explicitly in modern science. This is the belief that the logos of each created thing not only gives to that thing the being it has in the temporal world but also “draws it towards the divine realm” (Ware 2004, 160). Each created thing is seen as tending – from within and not through some external, “special” action  – toward its ultimate fulfillment. As one scholar has put it, the cosmos is, for this understanding, inherently “dynamic . . . tending always to its final end” (Lossky 1957, 101). The belief that things tend toward some final “place” or end is known as teleology, and it is a belief that is now unfashionable, especially among those who (rightly) see the development of modern science as relying, historically, on the rejection of scholasticism’s Aristotelian version of teleology. Maximos’s view is, however, rather subtler than the kind of teleology

The Evolution of Religiosity 201 with which scientific explanation then seemed to be in competition. Indeed, the sort of theological instinct manifested in Maximos’s teleological understanding is, I have argued, not only compatible with modern science but also clarified in important respects when interpreted in terms of current scientific insights into the predictability of the universe’s development from the time of the Big Bang up to the emergence of a specifically human psychology. The first of these insights arises from the apparent “fine-tuning” of the universe, which is perceptible to astrophysicists and has for decades been discussed in terms of what is called the anthropic cosmological principle (Barrow and Tipler 1986). This discussion is based on the observation that certain factors necessary to the emergence of humanity – the existence of carbon atoms, for example – seem to be predictable outcomes of the particular universe that we inhabit but to be impossible in other universes obeying the same laws of nature but with even slightly different values of various universal constants. These observations may not, as some have thought, allow for the formulation of a new argument for the reality of God. Nevertheless, for those who for other reasons already believe in that reality, it does seem that anthropic considerations can provide the basis for a theological view that discerns divine design and purpose in the predictability of the developmental processes through which we have emerged naturalistically. However, if astrophysical insights suggest that this view is a coherent one with respect to developmental processes in the cosmos up to the time of the emergence of life, an important question remains: whether this is a view that can be applied also to biological evolution. Here, a second scientific factor must be considered. This relates to the notion – often associated with the name of Stephen Jay Gould  – that biological evolution, because it is based on random processes, must be seen as unpredictable in its outcomes, especially when the termination of “promising” evolutionary routes in mass extinction events is taken into account. Our own existence, according to this view, can be seen only as a kind of freak accident.

Predictability in Biological Evolution and in the Evolution of Religiosity This view has been strongly questioned in recent years. One factor in this questioning is the recognition that random processes do sometimes make certain outcomes highly probable. (The predictable profitability of casinos, for example, does not depend on their roulette wheels being other than genuinely random in their selection of winning numbers.) Another factor is, as Richard Dawkins (2004, 603–606) has commented, that some evolutionary routes seem to be “easier” to follow than others. In this sense, he seems implicitly to see some routes as being initially more probable than others. The most extreme version of this perspective comes from Simon Conway Morris, who has emphasized the way certain adaptations to particular

202  Christopher C Knight ecological niches have happened, not only more than once but often from different evolutionary starting points. For Morris, this underlines the notion of evolutionary convergence, which suggests that a number of potential evolutionary pathways may, from different starting points, tend to converge on the same adaptive features in similar ecological environments (Morris 2003). My own argument is that teleology in the evolutionary process may be understood not in terms of the teleology of medieval Western philosophy but in terms similar to those that Morris has outlined. The interaction of chance and the laws of nature is such, it would seem, that certain developmental paths are in practice highly likely to be followed in biological evolution. My theological interpretation of this is to posit that Morris’s guess about the outcome of a scientific research program may be taken, for a theological model, as axiomatic: There is “a deeper fabric in biology in which Darwinian evolution remains central as the agency, but the nodes of occupation are effectively determined from the Big Bang” (Morris 2003, 309–310). Such a theological view can, I  have suggested (Knight 2013), clarify and expand Teilhard de Chardin’s theological interpretation of evolution. In relation to human religiosity, Morris’s understanding about physical evolution can, I argue, be extended to human mental properties too. Admittedly, the scientific parallels here are less clear since there are no known species whose intelligence and religiosity we can compare with our own in terms of convergent evolution. Nevertheless, given present trends in understanding both the predictability of evolutionary pathways and the evolution of religiosity, the emergence of human religiosity will arguably come in due course to be understood not only in terms of our ancestors’ adaptation to prevailing conditions through increasing intelligence but also in terms of how these conditions can be seen as directly comparable to the situation of any species in which an equal or superior degree of intelligence evolves. In particular, the evolution of this level of intelligence is clearly related to the adaptive advantages associated with a highly developed understanding of cause and effect. Significantly, this type of understanding is often seen as important for the evolution of religious understandings when cause is perceived in terms of real or supposed conscious agents (e.g., see Rossano 2006, 347–348). At present, the predictability of religiosity may be less a scientific insight than a theological axiom for the kind of naturalistic theism that I have proposed. Nevertheless, it may also be seen as a scientifically plausible hypothesis on which a scientific research program can be based. Moreover, it does make one clear prediction, which relates to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. According to this understanding, if and when such intelligence is discovered, its evolution will turn out to have involved the emergence of an associated religiosity. To put it simply, ET – if ever encountered – will turn out to have religious instincts.

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Conclusion My conclusion from all these considerations is that in the quest for an understanding of the evolutionary background to religious beliefs, the common focus on supernaturalist elements in those beliefs is a distraction. Religiosity is not tied to such beliefs, and moreover, not only is supernaturalism something that comes in many varieties, but in modern theology, it is sometimes bypassed altogether, since theologians are now in a position to articulate a model of divine presence and action in the world that reflects traditional theological perspectives and yet may also be seen as a form of naturalism. For this kind of model – as for the causal joint one that it attempts to replace – evolutionary insights into human religiosity pose no intrinsic threat to theology but instead provide an important clarification for its understanding.

References Barbour, IG. 1966. Issues in Science and Religion. London: SCM. Barrow, JD, and FJ Tipler. 1986. The Anthropic Cosmological Principle. Oxford: Clarendon. Bird-Davis, N. 1999. “’Animism’ Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology.” Current Anthropology 40: 67–91. Dawkins, R. 2004. The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Life. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson. Glock, CY. 1972. “On the Study of Religious Commitment.” In Religion’s Influence in Contemporary Society: Readings in the Sociology of Religion, ed. by JE Faulkner, 38–56. OH: Charles E Merril. Halbmayer, E. 2012. “Debating Animism, Perspectivism and the Construction of Ontologies.” Indiana 29: 9–23. Harrison, P. 2015. The Territories of Science and Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Hick, J. 2005. An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, 2nd rev. ed. New Haven: Yale University Press. Hunt, HT. 2012. “A Collective Unconscious Reconsidered: Jung’s Archetypal Imagination in the Light of Contemporary Psychology and Social Science.” Journal of Analytical Psychology 57: 76–88. Knight, CC. 2001. Wrestling with the Divine: Religion, Science, and Revelation. Minneapolis: Fortress. Knight, CC. 2007. The God of Nature: Incarnation and Contemporary Science. Minneapolis, Fortress. Knight, CC. 2010. “Homo Religiosus: A Theological Proposal for a Scientific and Pluralistic Age.” In Human Identity at the Intersection of Science, Technology and Religion, ed. by N Murphy and CC Knight, 25–38. Farnham: Ashgate. Knight, CC. 2013. “Biological Evolution and the Universality of Spiritual Experience: Pluralistic Implications of a New Approach to the Thought of Teilhard de Chardin.” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 48: 58–70. Knight, CC. 2016a. “The Psychology of Religion and the Concept of Revelation.” Theology and Science 14: 120–138.

204  Christopher C Knight Knight, CC. 2016b. “An Eastern Orthodox Critique of the Science-Theology Dialogue.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 51: 573–591. Lakoff, G, and M Johnson. 1981. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lewis-Williams, D. 2009. “Of People and Pictures: The Nexus of Upper Paleolithic Religion, Social Discrimination, and Art.” In Becoming Human: Innovation in Prehistoric Material and Spiritual Culture, ed. by C Renfrew and I Morley, 135– 158. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lossky, Vladimir. 1957. The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church. Cambridge: James Clarke. Moore, AL. 1889. Science and Faith. London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Co. Morris, SC. 2003. Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Pannenberg, W. 2002. “The Concept of Miracle.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 37: 759–762. Polanyi, M. 1966. The Tacit Dimension. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Ritchie, SL. 2017. “Dancing Around the Causal Joint: Challenging the Theological Turn in Divine Action Theories.” Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science 52: 361–379. Rossano, MJ. 2006. “The Religious Mind and the Evolution of Religion.” Review of General Psychology 10: 346–364. Saunders, N. 2002. Divine Action and Modern Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sherrard, P. 1998. Christianity: Lineaments of a Sacred Tradition. Edinburgh: T and T Clarke. Ware, K (Bishop of Diokleia). 2004. “God Immanent Yet Transcendent: The Divine Energies According to Saint Gregory Palamas.” In In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our Being: Panentheistic Reflections on God’s Presence in a Scientific World, ed. by P Clayton and A  Peacocke, 157–168. Grand Rapids: William B Eerdmans. Wildman, W. 2006. “Robert John Russell’s Theology of God’s Action.” In God’s Action in the World: Essays in Honour of Robert John Russell, ed. by T Peters and N Hallanger, 147–169. Aldershot: Ashgate.

12 Neoteny and Homo Religiosus Brain Evolution and Emergence of the Capacity for Spirituality William Ulwelling

Introduction What, if anything, can our knowledge of human evolution  – particularly brain evolution  – teach us about religion? This chapter proposes the following thesis: The evolutionary stage of a rapidly enlarging human brain gave rise to neoteny, which entails a long segment of continued rapid brain growth and development of the infant extra utero (or in familia), which in turn gave rise to profoundly intersubjective psychological structures. These psychological structures provide the relational underpinning for the adult’s capacity for spiritual/religious experience. This chapter’s brief outline of human brain evolution will conclude with the emergence of the evolutionary phenomenon of neoteny, which will be defined with rigor. Neoteny occasioned a new developmental social milieu for the human brain, within which the neurology for a relational, intersubjective developmental psychology was hardwired into the infant. This intersubjectivity is a foundational capacity for the emergence of human religion, and it enabled the adult Homo to be “religious.” This multidisciplinary chapter necessarily gathers summarized findings from a number of fields, none of which can be developed in detail, but all of which are meant to be reasonable, defensible summaries, preferably consensus positions from the various specialties.

The Evolution of the Human Brain As the human brain evolved, it changed in many ways, and its evolution can be studied from many aspects. This chapter will focus on changes in brain volume over time. The only direct physical knowledge of brain evolution is provided by paleoneurology studies of fossil skulls, and an endocast of the fossil skull’s intracranial space can estimate the brain volume. Brain volume is a good general indicator of brain functionality. Other factors, such as infolding the cortical surface into fissures, adding more neuronal layers in the cortical surface and reorganizing the relative size of various functional (Brodmann) areas, have also improved and modified cortical capacity, but brain volume remains a good general indicator of brain functionality (Jerison 2001).

206  William Ulwelling Beginning around ten million years ago, the prehominid brain had already attained an impressive size of approximately 300 cc (Sherwood 2008). By about four million years ago, encephalization was greater among prehominids than for other species. Encephalization is defined as the amount of brain mass relative to the total body mass. In every species, the brain must map sensory input, process information and coordinate motor and other outputs. A larger body requires a correspondingly larger brain. Jerison’s encephalization quotient gives the ratio of the actual brain size to the expected brain size based on body size (Jerison 1970). Anthropoid primates as a group are about twice as encephalized as other mammals; that is, they have two to three times as much brain as expected for their body mass (Jerison 2001, 10). Even by the time of Australopithecus, around three million years ago, the hominid brain was already larger than expected when compared to other species, which were adequately maintaining and controlling their bodies and surviving in their environments. The 300 cc primate brain of ten million years ago evolved into the 400 cc Australopith brain of three million years ago. (De Miguel 2001). The Australopiths were already the most encephalized apes on earth at the time of their existence (DeSilva 2016). About two million years ago, around the time of Homo habilis, the human brain began a dramatic evolutionary growth surge to nearly triple in size. Homo habilis brains were about 600 cc, while modern Homo sapiens brains average around 1,400 cc. The brain growth curve is exponential, and the slope of that curve becomes particularly steep during the last 200,000– 800,000  years (Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Program 2019). The brain endocast data is indeed sparse, with perhaps 0.000001 percent of human skulls represented (Holloway 2009), but the skull fossil sample size is nonetheless adequate to demonstrate such a large growth surge. One of many questions is, what caused this period of explosive growth? Any answer will necessarily be largely speculative. Theories explaining the rapid brain growth at the advent of Homo include climate change and/or ecological demands. A recent paper by Geary (2009) supports social interaction as a major factor in rapid brain growth. Geary found that the 175 analyzed skull fossils of hominids demonstrated a more rapid rate of growth as the population density of hominids increased. Holloway (1967) had earlier posited a socialization positive feedback loop that drove rapid evolution of larger brains. Another possible explanation is that after brain functionality, complexity and size achieved a certain “critical mass,” the brain’s importance became so great that dealing with other human brains became the primary selection pressure in the environment. By “dealing with,” I include competing, dominating, seducing, cooperating and nurturing  – the full gamut of human social interaction.

Neoteny Revisited A major difficulty in evolving a larger brain is the gestation and delivery of an infant with such a large brain. Initial theories about this problem focused

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  207 on the limited capacity of the pelvic opening into the birth canal, the socalled obstetrical dilemma. Recent studies have contested whether demands of a bipedal gait require a limited pelvic width and instead newly emphasize the importance of another limiting factor: the immense metabolic demands of a rapidly growing fetal brain (Holliday 1971). As much as 74 percent of the energy demands of the newborn are for the growth and development of the brain (Dunsworth 2016). At about nine months gestation, the energy needs of a rapidly growing human fetus meet the nutritional limits of what a mother can provide in utero – about 2.1 times the mother’s basal metabolic rate (Dunsworth 2012). Also relevant is the fact that the amount of oxygen available to the infant increases fivefold outside the womb (Nathanielsz 2001). Whatever the relative importance of limited pelvic capacity or limited in utero nutritional capacity, the evolutionary “solution” of Homo was to deliver the infant” early” – in an immature form – while brain development was still surging. The trend toward birthing neurologically less developed infants reached a modern level by late in the Pleistocene Epoch (Desilva 2016) [2.6 million years to 12 thousand years bce]. Modern human neonates are born with brains less than 30 percent of adult size, relatively less developed than any primate (Dunsworth 2012). We humans are born with an odd mosaic of mature (precocious) and immature (altricial) characteristics: We are born essentially without locomotion, but our eyes and ears are wide open, and we can smile and cry. Homo’s brain growth surge occurred after brain volume reached about 400 cc, around two million years ago. Figure 12.1 shows the ontogenesis of a modern human baby, which is birthed around the time its brain volume reaches about 400 cc. The evolutionary phenomenon of birthing a baby while the brain is still immature and rapidly growing has been called neoteny. This 19th-century neologism was fashioned from two Greek roots: “Neo-” comes from the Greek neo, meaning “new” or “immature,” and “-teny” comes from the Greek word teinein, meaning “stretch.” When defined with strict adherence to its Greek roots, the word “neoteny” refers to a stretching of the phase of human brain immaturity and rapid development into the postnatal period. The definition of “neoteny’ given here, however, is different from the way this term is used in much, perhaps most, of recent scientific discourse. Indeed, the originator, Julius Kolman, of the term, coined in 1884, did not use neoteny in the sense described here. Kolman studied the axolotl, and noted that this salamander “held” its immature larval morphology unusually long and began sexual reproduction while still retaining its tadpolelike immature morphology. In 1989, Ashley Montague noted that Kolman confused his etymology, defining the Greek word neo correctly as “new, immature” but confusing the Greek word teinein (“stretch, extend”) with the Latin tenere, which means “hold, sustain.” Perhaps the most common use of “neoteny” in current scientific literature is in the sense of pedomorphosis, or the retaining of immature forms into adulthood. The evolutionary theory to explain this hypothesized phenomenon is that such a retention

208  William Ulwelling

Figure 12.1  Human brain growth curve. Source: Adapted from Brain/Smithsonian Institution’s Human Origins Project, humanorigins. si.edu, 2016. Image by Karen Carr Studios.

of immature morphology might enhance sexual attractiveness. If you look up “neoteny” in Wikipedia, you will see an illustration of the comic book character Betty Boop, whose large head and eyes are pictured to illustrate neoteny. While this use of neoteny to mean pedomorphosis is common, it is not the one used in this chapter. The definition of neoteny used in this chapter is faithful to the Greek etymology and emphasizes stretching a process, not holding onto a form. The process that is extended is rapid brain growth and maturation. The emphasis is not on retaining fetal anatomical forms. Montague (1989, 158) wrote in his book Growing Young that “The idea that neoteny is the primary process for humanization was first formalized scientifically by Louis Bolk in 1926.” Montague also noted JBS Haldane’s emphasizing the “prolongation of childhood and retardation of maturity” (Montague 1989, 7) as an essential feature of the latest stage of human evolution. Penin and colleagues concluded in their 2002 study that “human neoteny involves not only shape retardation (paedomorphosis) but also changes in relative growth velocity. Before the eruption of the first molar (13–18 months), human growth is accelerated, and then strongly decelerated, relative to the growth of the chimpanzee as a reference” (Penin et al. 2002, 50). The phenomenon of neoteny likely facilitated the explosive evolutionary increase in brain size in Homo. It also occasioned other changes in human development. One of the most important changes was that the

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  209 environment within which subsequent brain growth and development was occurring was now markedly different. For example, most of the brain growth of chimpanzees happens before birth, whereas most human brain growth happens after birth (Penin et al. 2002). Rapid human brain growth in utero is succeeded by rapid human brain growth in familia. By the phrase “in familia,” I  stress the social nature of this second stage of rapid brain growth and development. This second stage of brain growth is so important that Bostock suggested we might celebrate another birthday, a “second birthday,” when “exterior gestation” is completed (Bostock 1958). Portman called this burst of growth after birth the “extrauterine spring” (Portman 1990). Montagu coined the term “exterogestation” to follow the period of “uterogestation,” each period being nine months long (Montagu 1961). This brain development in familia could be viewed as an effect, caused by a need to overcome physical and energetic in utero limits on larger brain size. However, this in familia development stage could also can be viewed as a cause of the evolutionary surge of increasing human brain size. As noted earlier, the evolutionary brain growth surge might have occurred when the brain reached a critical mass. However, perhaps the evolutionary growth surge might have occurred at the time infant brains entered a critical developmental milieu: development in familia. These two explanatory hypotheses – brain critical mass or critical developmental milieu – are not mutually exclusive; they could have occurred together. Regardless, this new in familia developmental milieu changed the nature of the brain and the nature of the society that nurtured this helpless infant. Recent work by Hrdy hypothesizes that “emotionally modern humans,” interested in the mental and subjective states of others, were emerging as early as 1.8 million years ago (Hrdy 2013). She notes a “paradigm shift in evolutionary anthropology” that stresses the fact that an extended period of helpless immaturity necessitated “the care and provisioning of immatures by male and female allomothers, who were pre-reproductive, reproductive, and/or post-reproductive group members, mostly but not always kin” (Hrdy 2016, 178). Kuzawa and colleagues (2014) also linked the massive increases in brain size between Australopiths and Homo sapiens with extended dependency and correspondingly greater care from mother and allomothers. In Silk’s study of that same year, “The Phylogeny and Ontogeny of Altruistic Social Preferences,” she concluded that human altruistic social preferences likely evolved sometime after the human/ape lineages split five to eight million years ago (2014). According to Santrock, the circumstances most likely to evoke altruism are empathy for an individual in need or a close relationship between the benefactor and the recipient (Santrock 2007). I am arguing that neoteny in particular fostered empathy. Neoteny entailed a second stage of rapid brain growth in familia and required that the caregiving group focus time and resources on this helpless infant, and these factors led to a new developmental psychology in the human infant.

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Infant Psychological Development Revisited: The Myth of the Isolated Mind Neoteny has implications for the neuropsychiatric development of the infant. At birth, the human brain possesses an excess capacity of neurons. As the brain grows, the number of neurons decreases and new synaptic connections are forged. Most neuronal and synapse development occurs in the first few months and years of postnatal life. Miller and colleagues write, “Activity-mediated myelin growth early in human life has the capacity to be shaped by postnatal environmental and social interactions to a greater degree than in other primates, including chimpanzee” (Miller et al. 2012). The basic unit of this cortical microcircuitry is the pyramidal neuron, and humans have delayed maturation of pyramidal neurons compared to other primates (Semendeferi 2016). The extensive brain growth and development during the first year after birth requires the infant’s interacting with those in the infant’s environment – the familia. In this second phase of rapid brain development, the developing brain “hardwires” social functioning and an interpersonal world. There is already an orientation toward sociability at birth. Babies’ eyes focus best at 12–18 inches, approximately the distance to mother’s eyes when breastfeeding (Brazelton 1966). A newborn expresses a preference for the human face as early as ten minutes after birth (Goren 1975). Within 12 to 23 days, newborn babies can imitate a number of facial and hand gestures that they see in adults (Meltzoff 1977). As Dunsworth summarizes, “It is well established that social and environmental stimulation is indeed crucial for child development” (Dunsworth 2016). Language centers in the brain develop rapidly during this period of surging infant brain growth. By around six months of age, a human infant can distinguish the approximately two hundred vowels and six hundred consonants from all the world’s languages, and by the end of their first year, they become selectively attuned to the approximately 40 speech sounds from their native languages (Kuhl 2004). Falk hypothesized that “it seems likely that selection for enhanced vocal communication between prehistoric mothers and infants provided the initial impetus for accelerated brain evolution” (Falk 2016, 124). DW Winnicott (1975 [1953], 235) succinctly described the psychological nature of the developing human infant: “There is no such thing as an infant, there is mother and infant.” Stolorow’s landmark self-psychology article on intersubjectivity pointed out “the myth of an isolated mind” (Stolorow and Atwood 1992). In this relational context, during the first 18 months of rapid brain growth in familia, the human infant develops a sense of self. In The Interpersonal World of the Infant: A  View from Psychoanalysis and Developmental Psychology, the psychiatrist Daniel Stern (1985) described a developmental progression of the infant’s sense of self during these first 18 months, which I will now summarize:

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  211 Birth to two months – the emergent self: “Their social capacities are operating with a vigorous goal-directedness to assure social interactions” (28). Two to six months – core self; capacity to experience a coherent physical self that is willful, affective, historical; core relatedness with mother who is separate physically, a different agent with different affects. Seven to nine months – subjective self; aware of other minds whose subjectivity is interpersonally related to one’s own; still preverbal, so this stage can only be alluded to not verbally described, “although poets can evoke it” (27). 15 to 18 months – verbal self; language as a transitional phenomenon. “The word is given to the infant from the outside by mother, but there exists a thought for it to be given to” (72), deepening intersubjectivity with nearly limitless possibilities for interpersonal happenings. “It is in this deeper sense that language is a union experience, permitting a new level of mental relatedness through shared meaning” (172). In Birth of the Living God: A Psychoanalytic Study, Dr. Ana-Maria Rizzuto (1979) parallels the stages of psychological development (as configured in various developmental theories) with concomitant stages of religious/spiritual development (cf. Rizzuto, Fig. 8). For example, the birth-to-18-months stage (named oral [Freud], mirroring [Kohut] or trust/mistrust [Erickson]) is given a spiritual/religious developmental stage: “God-representation stage.” At this stage, the infant might experience what Rizzuto calls “made-inGod’s-image,” which allows for healthy religious belief as an adult. Conversely, according to Rizzuto’s theory, but lacking empirical verification, if the infant experiences “not-cared-for” in this “God-representation stage,” then, as Rizzuto argues, theoretically the person should develop different forms of religious beliefs as an adult. Another important study that attempted to relate early human psychological development with early spiritual or religious capabilities was ­Winnicott’s (1958) paper, “The Capacity to Be Alone.” In his study of infants, Winnicott noted an important developmental capacity attained by normal infants raised by a “good-enough mother.” He named this the capacity to be alone. He distinguished the capacity to be alone from the fear of being alone, the wish to be alone, loneliness or withdrawal. It is a positive capacity, and Winnicott also saw it evidenced in transferential form in adult psychoanalysis at the times when the analysand was able to pause silently during the session. The ability to take such a silent, reflective pause was seen by Winnicott as an achievement, not a resistance. He distinguished the capacity to be alone from actually being alone and noted that solitary confinement can produce intense suffering in someone without an adequate capacity to be alone. For the infant and small child, the foundation of a capacity to be alone is a reliable, loving relationship with mother or a mother surrogate.

212  William Ulwelling Winnicott’s description of the development of the capacity to be alone is quoted at length: The main point of this contribution can now be stated. Although many types of experience go to the establishment of the capacity to be alone, there is one that is basic, and without a sufficiency of it the capacity to be alone does not come about; this experience is that of being alone, as an infant and small child, in the presence of mother. Thus, the basis of the capacity to be alone is a paradox; it is the experience of being alone while someone else is present. Here is implied a rather special type of relationship, that between the infant or small child who is alone, and the mother or mother substitute who is in fact reliably present even if represented for the moment by a cot or a pram or the general atmosphere of the immediate environment. I would like to suggest a name for this special type of relationship. Personally, I like to use the term ego-relatedness. (Winnicott 1958, 30) Later in this chapter, I  will propose that this capacity for ego-relatedness is a necessary, and perhaps sufficient, condition for an adult capacity for spirituality. Winnicott maintains that this capacity to be alone is for an adult a “sophistication,” a sign of “maturity,” although it is not necessarily an “awareness of the conscious mind.” Without such maturity, the adult will find it difficult to authentically ground their entire personal life and can easily drift in what Winnicott called a “false life”: “It is only when alone, that is to say, in the presence of someone) that the infant can discover his own personal life. The pathological alternative is a false life built on reactions to external stimuli” (Winnicott 1958, 34). Toward the end of the in familia brain growth spurt, around eight months postnatal, the crawling infant is mobile and physically free for first time, but they still desire a connection with caregivers. This new experience, in a new situation, is enabled and laid down in new neural structures that did not exist a month before. A  new psychological experience of what Winnicott called ego-relatedness arises in this transition period of connection and freedom, incorporating elements of both. This conjunction of connection and freedom is also a hallmark of an adult’s religious and spiritual experiences, which will be developed further in a subsequent section.

Religion and Spirituality Revisited The development of the argument thus far is that the evolution of a rapidly enlarging human brain gave rise to neoteny, which entails a long segment of continued rapid brain growth and development of the infant in familia, which in turn gave rise to profoundly intersubjective psychological

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  213 structures, which Stolorow and Atwood (1992) described in his landmark self-psychology article on intersubjectivity, “The Myth of the Isolated Mind.” I will now argue that this provided the grounding for the capabilities of a Homo religiosus. Arriving at an acceptable consensus definition of “religion” is particularly difficult. Perhaps the most venerable of such definitions in the United States is William James’s (1992) definition of religion as presented in The Varieties of Religious Experience. My working definition of religion will be along the lines of William James’s.: “Religion . . . shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine. (36) James leaves the definition of “the divine” quite open: accordingly when in our definition of religion we speak of the individual’s relation to “what he considers the divine,” we must interpret the term “divine” very broadly, as denoting any object that is godlike, whether it be a concrete deity or not. . . . The divine shall mean for us only such a primal reality as the individual feels impelled to respond to solemnly and gravely, and neither by a curse nor a jest. (38, 41) A similar working definition of the divine is provided by another 20th-­ century creative American spiritual movement: Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The third step of AA states that “We made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understood him.” The definition of the godhead is left almost wholly indeterminate, other than to affirm it involves a caring relationship. In fact, the AA member does not turn themselves over to “God” but rather to “the care of God.” William James purposefully neglected the organizational and doctrinal aspects of religion. The Aristotelian distinction between substance and accidents is helpful in defining “religion.” I consider “accidents” of religion to be such things as liturgies, institutions, sacred places or times and dogmas. While these are a part of almost every religion, I do not consider them essential. The essential substance of religion, expressed in William James’s definition of religion, might be called spirituality. To elaborate on the meaning of “spirituality,” I need to add that it first of all concerns matters of the “spirit.” The Latin word spiritus is derived from the word for breath. The Hebrew word for spirit, ruah, also is derived from the word for breath, an invisible but real, life-giving entity. The Hebrew

214  William Ulwelling word ruah is also applied to God and to that which animates humans. The term “spirit” is also used to describe human psychological realities, as well as the godhead (e.g., the Holy Spirit). Spirituality as a field of study might take its place within the discipline of theology, the study of the divine (from the Greek Theou logos, the study of God). Spirituality could also take its place within psychology (psyke logos, the study of the soul or spirit). The form of the English word “spirituality” is a type of abstract noun suggesting a capacity or quality, like creativity. While the exact nature of this spiritual capacity is typically said to be ineffable, it generally includes the capacity to relate to the divine, or ultimate, primal reality. As noted earlier, spirituality does not include such important topics as the evolution of religious artifacts, rituals or institutions. When someone bows before their king, bishop or God, they could be said to be performing a corresponding political, religious or spiritual act. All are proper domains of study, but this chapter focuses on the latter. Perhaps Homo spiritualis would have been a preferable title of this chapter, but Homo religiosus is more widely known and has a more venerable history, dating at least from Hegel (1770–1831). However, past scholars’ discussions of this quality in human nature typically concerned what I  am calling “spirituality” rather than a person’s formal credal beliefs or institutional affiliation, which most now associate with the word “religion.”

Spirituality: Ever Ancient, Ever New Thus far, this chapter has proposed the following evolutionary sequence: By three million years ago, Australopithicenes were the most encephalized of all apes. About two million years ago, a brain growth surge occurred around the time of Homo habilis. However, rapid in utero brain growth hit limits of size that the human pelvis could accommodate at childbirth and limits of energy that the placenta could deliver. “Neoteny” entails delivering the infant early, while its brain is still in an immature form, thereby allowing another nine months of rapid brain growth and development extra utero, or in familia. Brain growth and development within this in familia milieu produced a profoundly social creature, with intersubjectivity hardwired into the organism. An important developmental milestone for such an infant occurs when it achieves locomotion and encounters a crisis of connectedness versus freedom. A new psychological capacity to be alone (Winnicott) is attained at this time by a healthy infant with a good-enough mother. The infant’s new ego-relatedness (alone but somehow connected) forms the basis for emergent freedom and exploration. The new capacities for connectedness and freedom are further developed in the adult in what we call spirituality, the core of what we call religion. Two hallmarks of healthy spiritual experience are connectedness and freedom. Two foundational Christian texts will now be reexamined in light of this evolutionary model, illustrating this spirituality as ever ancient, ever new.

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  215 Spirituality described thus far is quite consistent with Christian religious traditions from its early origins. I will illustrate this by explicating two foundational Christian writings that speak to the core of Christian spirituality: the prologue of John’s Gospel, and the introduction of St. Augustine’s Confessions. John’s Gospel begins (John 1:1): En arkh hn o logos, kai o logos hn pros ton Qeon, kai Qeos hn o loςgos En archei hein ho logos, kai ho logos hein pros ton Theon, kai Theos hein ho logos. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The poetic style of the prologue is fitting for a topic difficult to pin down with prosaic speech. Religious scriptures commonly contain symbolism, metaphor and contradiction. For example, in this passage from John, it is contradictory to say an entity can both be God and be with God (how could someone both be Dave and be with Dave?). However, the primary focus of my present analysis for this passage will focus on the smaller phrase: “with God.” The English translation of pros ton Qeon as “with God” does not capture an important connotation of the original Greek. The Greek preposition pros also can mean “to or toward” and is commonly used with that meaning. The two other uses of pros in John’s Gospel are John 5:45, when Jesus says, “I do not accuse you before the Father” (pros ton Patera), and John 11:4, when Jesus says, “this sickness is not unto death” (pros qanaton). A foundational experience of being relationally aligned “toward the father” (or mother) echoes the child’s capacity to experience being “in the presence of” mother or a mother surrogate at all times, even when alone. Like all transformative experiences, the state is experienced in the present and is seen to have always been there, present from “the beginning.” In this opening line of John’s Gospel, Christ the Logos is depicted as originating both divine (Qeos) and in a state oriented “toward God” (pros ton Qeon), with the article ton giving a literal translation of “toward the God.” This duality expresses the two hallmarks of mature spirituality mentioned earlier: connection and freedom. Connection, experiencing being in a state oriented “toward God” (pros ton Qeon), and freedom, experiencing being in a divine state (Qeos), are described as the distinctive traits of Jesus. I had noted earlier that Stolorow’s pioneering intersubjectivity article, “The Myth of the Isolated Mind,” altered psychological understanding. The prologue of John’s Gospel altered spiritual understanding by moving beyond the myth of an isolated God. As human psychological reality is fundamentally relational, so our images of God are relational. The roots of this spirituality are evident in Judaism, with the Torah’s portrayal of the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of the people Israel – always “the God of . . .” In subsequent centuries, Christian theological explication of this understanding was expanded under the title of God as “Trinity.”

216  William Ulwelling From its onset, Christian spirituality emphasized that we are created in a state pros ton Qeon, as Christ is described in John’s Gospel. The traditional belief of Christians is that they share in the nature of Christ. For instance, in Saint Paul’s letters – which are older than the gospels – Paul expressed his belief that he and all Christians share in the nature of Christ. For example, he uses the phrase “in Christ” or its equivalent 164 times in his dozen or so preserved letters. The Christian religion stressed that we are created with a relational orientation toward God, whom no one has ever seen (1 Jn 4:12). In Western Christianity, perhaps the most important foundational document after the Bible is the Confessions of St. Augustine, written around 397 ce. Augustine writes in the introduction of the Confessions: Fecisti nos ad te, Domine, et inquietum est cor nostrum donec requiescat in te. You have made us for yourself, Lord, and our heart is restless until it rests in you. As with the prologue of John’s Gospel, I argue that our post-Cartesian psychological understanding has influenced our translation of Augustine’s spiritual insight. To make this point, I  focus on Augustine’s Latin clause commonly translated as “You have made us for yourself.” In his original Latin, the clause is, “fecisti nos ad te.” One objection to translating the Latin “ad te” as “for yourself” is that it seems to portray God as somewhat selfish, almost making humankind as his own plaything or a selfish possession (e.g., “I made these muffins for myself”). However, there is a more important truth lost in the mistranslation of the phrase “ad te.” The literal translation of the Latin word “ad” is generally given as “to or toward.” Like the Greek word “pros,” the Latin word “ad” stresses an orientation, a relational direction. You could say, for instance, that I am traveling “ad Romam,” which means to or toward Rome. The meaning of Augustine’s prayer might be captured more precisely with the translation, “You have created us oriented toward you,” or “tending toward you,” followed by, “and our heart is restless until it rests in you.” Again, the roots of Augustine’s Christian spirituality are relational, even if the object of that relation, God, is undefinable. Regarding our attempts to define the divine, Augustine prays later in the Confessions, as I loosely translate, “What can anyone say about you? Yet woe to those who are silent about you, if only to point out that those who chatter on about you are really mute” (Aut quid dicit aliquis cum de te dicit? Et vae tacentibus de te, quoniam loquaces muti sunt, Book 1.4). This attempt to articulate the nature of the divine brings to mind the 5th-century bce quote of Lao Tzu (Laozi), “Those who know don’t speak. Those who speak don’t know.” The poetically expressed Christian spirituality from John the Evangelist and Augustine of Hippo is rooted in a capacity developed during an infant’s early psychological development. Intersubjective neuropsychological structures

Neoteny and Homo Religiosus  217 laid down during brain development in familia provide the relational underpinning of spiritual experience. The ego-relatedness possessed by an infant who has developed the capacity to be “in the presence of another” even while “alone” foreshadows the hallmarks of mature spirituality: connection and freedom. This spirituality arises out of psychological capacities themselves rooted in changes in brain development that first evolved two million years ago with Homo habilis. As new forms of religion and spirituality emerge in the future, one test for authentic forms might be whether they are true to their roots. In the Christian religion, for example, new beliefs are tested by their fidelity to the roots of sacred scripture and accepted church tradition. Having traced the evolutionary and developmental roots of a capacity for any religion, this chapter offers a more widely applicable yardstick for testing the authenticity of a religious phenomenon: Is it true to religion’s evolutionary and developmental roots of empathy, connectedness and freedom  – that is, the necessary and sufficient conditions for an authentic religion?

Conclusion Spirituality and religion are high-order phenomena within human culture and psychology. They have an evolutionary history, threads of which can be traced back in time following the path of human brain evolution. At the time of Homo, a particular type of brain evolved within a particular type of culture, each affecting the other. The continuing early rapid growth and development of the brain in familia shaped the neurological structures underlying human relational psychological structures. These psychological structures in turn formed the infrastructure for the spiritual and religious creations of the adult, which continue to evolve in the individual and society.

Postscript Two dangers that threaten modern papers on the evolution of religion are dangers of becoming a “just so” paper or becoming a “just that” paper. “Just so” papers refer to Kipling’s (1902) famous children’s book, Just So Stories (Kipling 1902). Kipling had referred to these as his “just so” stories because his children demanded that the stories be repeated “just so,” with no variation. Kipling’s book is full of imaginative, fanciful, “explanatory” tales, like how a leopard got its spots. I have tried to present enough data on evolutionary history, infant psychological development and religious history to prevent this from becoming a “just so” paper. A “just that” paper is a reductionist paper. It traces the evolutionary history of a phenomenon and then says that the modern phenomenon is “just” its historical roots, only that and nothing more. For example, a man proposing to his future wife might be said to exemplify “just” another instance of the male of the species reenacting a mate selection strategy to ensure the

218  William Ulwelling dissemination of his genetic complement. The man would doubtless object that there is more going on than “just that.” Is this chapter on the evolution of religion reductionist? In other words, does it say that religion is “just” a recollection of a past infantile experience or a vestigial remnant of a previously evolved capacity? Psychologically speaking, is religion simply a regression to an earlier infantile state? I do not think so.Phenomena that are built on earlier capacities and that reflect back on past experiences are not simply a regression back to that level of capacity or simply a repetition of those experiences. Each new level of development builds on the experiences of the earlier levels and puts them in a new, richer context. In Ken Wilber’s universal developmental model, emergent cyclical levels build on the old but now at a higher level, like a spiral, with each new level transcending and including its predecessor (Wilber 2001). Consistent with this developmental model, my chapter argues that a capacity for religion and spirituality evolved at some point in time, likely the time of brain growth surge with Homo habilis two million years ago. Neoteny in turn affected the nature of early brain development, early psychosocial development and the structure of human societies. This developmental circumstance hardwired us to have a psychological structure that is fundamentally intersubjective and a spiritual capacity to declare that we are oriented “ad te,” as St. Augustine would say, or “pros ton Theon”, as John the Evangelist would say. As a final example of evolutionary theories and developmental psychology insights expressed as a higher level of spiritual discourse, I cite a quotation from Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, from the first book in the English language written by a woman. Julian uses the term “oneing” to express what I would call the infant’s capacity for ego-relatedness as it flowers in an adult. She wrote, “The love of God creates in us such a oneing that when it is truly seen, no person can separate themselves from another person” (Julian of Norwich 2006, 329).

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13 Emotions and the Evolution of the Belief in God Christian Early

Introduction Emotions stand at the busy intersection of religion, biology, psychology and culture. Yet emotions had been largely overlooked as a subject of scientific investigation until the mid 1990s, when the growing field of fMRI-driven neuroscience turned our attention to the central role of emotions in human experience (Damasio 1994; LeDoux 1996). As a result of the research that has been conducted on emotions over the past two decades, we now recognize that emotions are crucial to our capacity to navigate our world – and thus essential to our survival. Emotions shape the experience of how our world shows up for us, and consequently, they ought to be at the center of our understanding of the phenomenology of what it means to be human. (Phenomenology here simply means our understanding of the features of human experience and consciousness, but it also signals that the sharp dualisms of the Cartesian philosophical tradition between mind and body, subject and object, are rejected – as is common in the phenomenological philosophical tradition.) The significance of the role of emotions in shaping experience is therefore especially important to recognize when we try to understand the religious ways that human beings navigate and experience life. In whatever way we attempt to make sense of the relationships between religion, biology, psychology and culture, then, emotions must play significant part. Additionally, examining the relationship between religion and emotions seems particularly important at this time because our theories of emotions are currently undergoing revision. These new theoretical developments might in turn help us to better understand the phenomenology of religion. Given the recent entanglements of religion and politics in North America and in the wider world, a better understanding of religion seems highly desirable. In this chapter, I will examine specific emotions thought to be involved in religious belief formation and in religion in general. I look at fear and death anxiety by using insights offered by the new constructivist theory of emotion (Barrett 2017). Thereafter, I attend to other candidates for religious belief

222  Christian Early formation – a sense of the sacred, elevated love, awe and gratitude – suggesting that a nonreductive account of the relationship between emotion and religious belief formation is more plausible than the attempt to make fear or death anxiety causally account for the whole of religious belief formation and religion in general. The phenomenology of religious life, if its variety is taken seriously (James 1902), is experientially richer and displays a more colorful pallet than can be explained by making reference to fear and death anxiety alone (pace the cognitive science of religion). What might account for this richness? Drawing on insights from cultural anthropology and psychology, Jonathan Haidt has recently proposed that the phenomenology of human experience has an irreducible emotional and moral dimension that allows us to experience life religiously. He calls it “divinity” (Shweder et al. 1997; Haidt 2006). Felt experiences with particular emotional patterns move us along this divinity dimension of experiential life. These felt experiences are often on the edge between the implicit and the explicit, and they are therefore open to be interpreted in several ways using different languaging. William James called them “overbeliefs” (James 1902). If Jonathan Haidt is correct about this irreducible phenomenological divinity dimension, then we would be in a position to draw the conclusion that the search for a single emotional source of religion – the fountain of it all, as it were – is a mistake. We can draw this conclusion while still recognizing that fear and death anxiety play a role – even if not the only role – in religious belief formation and maintenance. Although this nonreductive conclusion with respect to religion and emotions is itself noteworthy, it prompts us to speculate whether, given the fact that we experience this variety of emotions and that they seem to track along a religious or “divine” dimension of experience, those features of human experience provide grounds for saying something about the shape of the world in which we live. Kantian protests concerning the limits of knowledge notwithstanding, this (admittedly speculative) question cannot be avoided, because it is raised by the recent constructivist theory of emotion mentioned earlier. According to the constructivist theory, emotions “couple” our inner and outer worlds such that the distinction between embodied brain and surrounding world cannot be maintained in a clear way. Do we experience life religiously, in part, because the world has a religious shape? Or, to put it in more evolutionary language, has the embodied brain adapted itself over time to be able to pick up and register a feature or aspect that is present in its surrounding world in order to navigate it more successfully?

Religion Based on Fear On Sunday 6 March 1927, in Battersea Town Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society, Bertrand Russell gave his famous lecture “Why I am not a Christian” (Russell 1957). Russell walked his hearers calmly and authoritatively through his reasoning for

Emotions and Belief in God 223 rejecting all of the standard arguments for the existence of God: first cause, natural law, design and Kant’s transcendental and moral argument. Near the end of the lecture, however, Sir Russell took an unexpected turn. “As I said before,” he comments, “I do not think that the real reason why people accept religion has anything to do with argumentation. They accept religion on emotional grounds” (Russell 1957, 19). Russell proceeded to provide some likely sources for accepting religion on emotional grounds, but these can be passed over in light of what he said next: Religion is based, I think, primarily and mainly upon fear. It is partly the terror of the unknown and partly, as I have said, the wish to feel that you have a kind of elder brother who will stand by you in all your troubles and disputes. Fear is the basis of the whole thing – fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. . . . Science can help us to get over this craven fear in which mankind has lived for so many generations. (Russell 1957, 22) The echoes of the Enlightenment and of August Comte’s positivism can be heard in this passage. Russell clearly hoped that science would help us get over our fear and that religion would eventually disappear. Religion has not disappeared. Peter Berger commented twenty years ago that the world is “massively religious” – perhaps more so than before (Berger 1999). This raises a question: How did religion arise, and why is it still around? What are the ontogeny (origin and development) and phylogeny (evolutionary history) of religion? These questions are particularly puzzling from an evolutionary standpoint because adopting a religious way of life is often costly with respect to fitness (by placing restrictions on diet and mating habits). If Russell’s analysis holds, then the clue to the origin and staying power of religion might be found in the benefits that religion provide with respect to fear. According to what has been called the standard model in cognitive science of religion, religious beliefs are an evolutionary by-product of a suite of cognitive adaptations (Powell and Clark 2012). Humans are equipped with a cognitive mechanism that detects agents in the environment. There are usually two targets of agency detection: one general and one specific. The general target attempts to uncover agency (good or bad) in the environment, whereas the specific target of agency detection attempts to uncover predators. Because I am examining fear as the source of religion – namely the possibility that the function of religion is to address the fear circuitry response triggered by the detection of a supernatural predator – I will interrogate the claim put forward by the cognitive science of religion that religion results from a mistaken firing of the predator detection device. From an evolutionary perspective, a maximally accurate predator detection device may not be optimal, because of the cost associated with two types of errors: false positives and false negatives. It is a small error for a

224  Christian Early human to mistakenly think that there is a predator behind the bush when there is not, but it is a catastrophic error for a human to think that there is no predator when there really is. Consequently, from a survival perspective, it is better to have a hyperactive predator detection device: better safe than sorry when it comes to predators. Applying this insight to religious belief formation, a hyperactive predator detection device disposes humans to posit predators in their environment, and when those predators cannot be directly observed, humans may go on to posit unobservable predators in the environment. This then seems to explain human beliefs in supernatural agents and predators. Crucial to the belief formation of supernatural predators, however, is the emotion of fear. So the cognitive science of religion has recently linked up with terror management theory (Solomon et al. 2015) to support its argument that the function of religion is fear (or death anxiety) management. I am interested in evaluating the claim that religion arises out of fear and that it has stayed around because of the hold on our lives that fear has. If, upon analysis, that claim turns out to be unlikely, then I will be interested in searching for alternative accounts of emotions involved in religious belief formation. To evaluate the claim, I will first need to take a look at current emotion theory and at how it might help us to understand fear.

The Constructivist Theory of Emotion Emotion researcher Lisa Feldman Barrett argues that we have been in the grips of a picture of how emotions arise inside human beings (Barrett 2017). She contrasts two theories of emotion: the classical view of emotion and what she calls the constructivist view of emotion. These are not just two theories of emotion; they are also two views of what it means to be a human being in the world. She says that “[m]ost of us think of the outside world as separate from ourselves. Events happen ‘out there’ in the world, and you react to them ‘in here in your brain’ ” (Barrett 2017, 153). This is an understanding of the human animal as reactive and as hardwired to respond to events in the world. According to the theory of constructed emotions, however, the dividing line between brain and world is at least permeable and perhaps even nonexistent. It is a picture of the human being as deeply embedded in and coupled with its world. In this picture, moreover, the brain is actively predictive – projecting what is likely to come next – rather than passively reactive (Clark 2016; Hohwy 2013). The embodied brain issues a “storm of predictions,” checking and correcting those predictions against actual sensory input through the body’s active engagement with the world. Along the way, she says, “your interoceptive predictions produce your feelings of affect, influence every action that you perform, and determine which parts of the world you care about in the moment” (Barrett 2017, 153). Interoception evolved to regulate the economy of your body’s energetic budget. Affective feelings of pleasure and

Emotions and Belief in God 225 displeasure or calmness and agitation are summaries of your body’s budgetary state (Barrett 2017, 73). Your brain uses past experience “to predict which objects and events will impact your body budget, changing your affect” in the present moment (Barrett 2017, 73). This is called your affective niche, which includes “everything that has any relevance to your body budget in the present moment”: It is the local, affective environment of our bodies in action, enabling us to re-present and construct our surrounding world and its significance. “Without interoception, you wouldn’t notice or care about your physical surroundings or anything else, and you’d be unlikely to survive for long. Interoception enables your brain to construct the environment in which you live” (Barrett 2017, 153). (I would like to pause here to suggest that the picture of the human being in its environment imagined by the cognitive science of religion is precisely that of outside world and internal reaction. If the constructivist theory of emotion and the model of the predictive mind are right, then this modern understanding of the human predicament is fundamentally mistaken. One future task for the cognitive science of religion may therefore be to work out what it would look like for the theory to bring on board this new picture of the human being in its environment.)

Fear and Religion Revisited How does this picture of the human being and of emotions help us to understand fear and its possible connections to religion? To understand fear, we need to look more closely at the perception-action loop and view it as an affective niche as opposed to a circuitry. Humans act in a variety of ways when we feel threatened. We often freeze, flee or fight – which are well-known responses – but we also “crack jokes, faint, or ignore what is going on” (Barrett 2017, 274). Such behaviors, Barrett insists, are all bodied responses to threat perception in various situations. Some of these responses involve what has been called the fear circuitry, but other responses do not, which raises the question whether fear is best understood as involving circuitry. Research on fear indicates that there is no such thing as a single universal fear circuitry. Minimally, then, we may need to talk in terms of multiple circuitries. Readers familiar with the work of Jaak Panksepp on affective systems – SEEKING, RAGE, FEAR, LUST, CARE and PANIC/GRIEF  – may raise questions at this claim, but even Panksepp talks sometimes of FEAR networks and other times of a single FEAR system (Panksepp and Biven 2012). In particular, Panksepp and Biven are clear that the basolateral amygdaloid (BLA) complex does not generate fear, as previously thought, but rather conducts information into the FEAR system. They also point out specifically that the amygdala itself is unlikely to be the “heart” of the FEAR system since humans suffering from Urbach-Wiethe disease, in which the amygdaloid nuclei (especially the basolateral complex) slowly degenerate

226  Christian Early completely, “still have abundant internal worries and rich emotional lives” (Panksepp and Biven 2012, 196). Perhaps thinking in terms of a fear circuitry, then, is not going to be helpful. It may instead be an instance of what Barrett calls “essentialism” – the idea that fear has an essential fingerprint that we can identify and recognize. If we give up the idea of emotions with essences, we can begin to recognize that the relationship between an emotion as an affective niche and behavior seems to be multiply realizable rather than locked into a mechanical behaviorist pattern of stimulus and response. There are many (if not infinite) ways of being afraid, and there are many (if not infinite) ways of responding to feeling afraid. This multiple realizability seems to me to be significant when trying to understand the role of emotions in religious belief formation. I suggest that if human beings are deeply embedded and coupled in their world and that there is no single universal fear circuitry, then something as universally experienced and as socially cohesive as religion or religious belief would likely – fountain-like – spring forth from a mistaken activation of our predator detection device. As Wittgenstein might have said: for a mistake, it is simply too big. The thesis that fear is the fountain for religious belief formation becomes even more unlikely when we consider more closely the distinction between fear and anxiety. Joseph LeDoux states that fear as an affective niche arises from the perception of an objective, specific and present threat (LeDoux 2015). Anxiety, by contrast, arises from imagining an uncertain event that may or may not occur in the future. “In fear, the anticipation concerns if and when a present threat will cause harm,” says LeDoux, “whereas in anxiety the anticipation involves uncertainty about the consequences of a threat that is not present and may not occur” (LeDoux 2015, 11). Fear is a brief and intense foreground emotion calling for immediate action, whereas anxiety is a longer and not-so-intense background emotion calling for reflection. Once this distinction between fear and anxiety is made clear, it also becomes clear that fear is unlikely to be the fountain of religious belief. If your predator detection device gets triggered, religious belief formation will be the last thing on your mind. Instead, you might fight, flee, freeze, laugh or faint your way out. Later, when you feel relatively safe, you might begin to think about what it was that caused you to engage in one or several of those behaviors – but the relevant affective niche would be anxiety, not fear, and your predator detection device would no longer be active. At this point, the cognitive science of religion may face a tough choice: either argue that religious beliefs are formed in the brief but intense moment in which we feel fear as a result of a hyperactive predator detection device, which upon further consideration seems highly unlikely, or argue that religious beliefs are formed during reflective moments of anxiety, which seems more plausible. This latter option could then encourage us to think of anxiety as being a milder form of fear – the difference between the two being intensity, temporality and specificity – and so seek to respond to LeDoux’s

Emotions and Belief in God 227 harder distinction between anxiety and fear by placing them at two ends of a spectrum rather than placing them into separate categories. For the sake of the investigation in this chapter, I am curious about the second option as it seems more promising.

Death Anxiety, Religion and Sacred Purity In pursuing this possibility, the question arises whether anxiety, and perhaps particularly death anxiety, can be causally linked to religious belief formation and to religion in general. This research is currently being done, but the preliminarily results so far are entirely inconclusive (Jong et al. 2017). Several studies have found a correlation: Religious people are less fearful of death than their nonreligious counterparts. However, several studies have also found the opposite correlation: Religious people are more fearful of death than their nonreligious counterparts. Still other studies have found no association at all. Some studies have found a non-linear association in which committed theists and committed atheists both report less death anxiety than people with moderate beliefs. Studies manipulating mortality salience – increasing a subject’s awareness that death is inevitable – have similar problems in that they also point to different conclusions. Some studies find that increasing mortality salience increases religious beliefs universally, whereas other studies find that increasing mortality salience increases religious belief only among individuals already highly religious. A recent study of 95 undergraduate subjects is worth discussing in detail (Jackson et al. 2017). Subjects answered questions such as “Do you agree or disagree that there exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God?” on a nine-point Likert scale running from -4 to +4, with 0 representing agnosticism. This enabled the subject to be located on the supernatural belief scale. Then subjects were asked to respond to the questions from the death anxiety questionnaire such as “Does it bother you that you may die before you have done everything that you wanted to do?” on a three-point scale, with 0 representing not at all, 1 representing somewhat, and 2 representing very much. This made it possible to calculate a death anxiety score. (Note that I do not have the space in this chapter to provide the actual scores and offer sufficient contextual commentary such that they could make sense to the reader. For the scores, please see the Jackson et al. article). There are a number of theological and philosophical problems with the way the questions are phrased and the underlying assumptions that the questions make. It is questionable, for example, whether beliefs about God or gods can be placed on a supernatural belief scale with an all-­powerful, all-knowing, loving God at the far end. It is also questionable whether one’s sense of having accomplished things in life is at the source of anxiety. These scales seem to smuggle in Western Enlightenment conceptions of the transcendent and of the significance of a sense of accomplishment in human life. Standing outside those assumptions, the study and others like

228  Christian Early it seem unpersuasive as most beliefs and practices (religious or otherwise) can function either to heighten or to relieve anxiety; it may say more about the subject and their situation in the moment than it does about the belief or the practice. Tucked away in the general discussion of the study, there is a noteworthy comment on the evidence for the relationship between religious belief formation and death anxiety: While there is now good evidence that people, even “non-religious” people, gravitate toward supernatural religious beliefs when death is salient,  .  .  . there is little or no evidence that such movement is warranted in terms of mitigating death anxiety. (Jackson et al. 2017) In the judgment of the authors, then, there is good evidence for a correlation between death anxiety and religious belief formation, but there is no evidence  – at least no conclusive evidence  – for a causal relationship between death anxiety and religion (the more anxious you are about death, the more you will tend to form religious beliefs). This lack of evidence for a causal relationship constitutes a serious problem for the central claims of the cognitive science of religion. There is reason, therefore, to wonder whether something more (in addition to relieving death anxiety) is going on in religious belief formation. Richard Beck examines how disgust psychology gives rise to and shapes our experience of the sacred (Beck 2011). Disgust involves the feeling of revulsion, which is a visceral response triggered by an appraisal of contamination or pollution. Disgust monitors the borders of the body, particularly its openings, to prevent something toxic or dangerous from entering. Disgust, then, is an expulsive boundary psychology: “Not only does disgust create and monitor boundaries,” says Beck, but “disgust also motivates physical and behavioral responses aimed at pushing away, avoiding, or forcefully expelling an offending object. We avoid the object. Shove the object away. Spit it out. Vomit” (Beck 2011, 16). Since disgust motivates concerns about purification, separation and cleansing, it is also implicated in regulating our experience of the sacred. Significant for the purposes of this chapter, and the connection between disgust and death anxiety, disgust has an existential aspect. Disgust can be triggered by reminders of our animal nature – the fact that we are vulnerable and that we will die (Becker 1973). To think of disgust in the context of existential concerns about death might be a little surprising because we usually think of death anxiety exclusively in terms of our fear of nothingness (maybe having read Kierkegaard or Heidegger) or fear of punishment (maybe having read Jonathan Edwards). If disgust monitors and regulates our sense of the sacred, however, then what motivates our aversion to death would not merely be a concern for the continued existence or safety of our

Emotions and Belief in God 229 soul but also, and perhaps more importantly, a concern for its state of purity. The notion of purgatory, for example, is supported by the conviction that it is the impurity of the soul that keeps it from entering heaven. This suggests that death anxiety, while real enough, may play the role of the dependent variable, whereas concerns over purity may be the independent variable.

A Divinity Dimension Experimental psychologist Jonathan Haidt recalls the old flatland story of a three-dimensional object fruitlessly trying to explain itself to a two-­ dimensional object (Haidt 2006). In desperation, the three-dimensional object pulls the two-dimensional object into the third dimension so that it can experience it for itself. Analogously, Haidt suggests, our Western secular world is like a two-dimensional moral flatland: We acknowledge a horizontal dimension of closeness and a vertical dimension of hierarchy. We use first names for those with whom we are intimate or we deem superior, and we use last names for those with whom we are distant or we deem inferior. We intuitively track these two dimensions, but we find it difficult to believe that there may be a third moral dimension. Imagine the surprise of witnessing an extraordinarily virtuous act or perhaps of having an overwhelming experience of natural beauty. As a result of that experience, you might feel lifted “up” as if you were in a world with another dimension. “My claim,” he says, “is that the human mind perceives a third dimension, a specifically moral dimension that I will call ‘divinity’ ” (Haidt 2006, 183). Using insights from the constructivist theory of emotions, I  argue that the divinity dimension is part of how our brains have wired themselves to our world through interoception. Perceiving a divinity dimension does not, of course, entail that something like God or gods exist, merely that it is part of our perceptual apparatus (I will return to this question in the conclusion). It also does not entail that we hold any particular religious beliefs. There are two reasons for this: The first reason is that much of what we experience religiously cannot easily be put into words, and it often eludes full conceptualization, and the second is that there is no empirically “raw” data available against which we can measure or correlate religious beliefs. Religious beliefs are underdetermined. Haidt claims to have found divinity in three emotions: the sense of the sacred, elevating love and awe. We have already discussed the sense of the sacred, which is involved in concerns over purity and disgust, but love and awe remain. To this list, I add a significant fourth emotion: gratitude. Elevating love Haidt notices that people self-report experiencing an open, warm or “glowing feeling” in their heart when they witness something good happening. In a subsequent study, Haidt discovered that elevating love could be

230  Christian Early distinguished from closely related emotions such as admiration. To his surprise, however, he was not the first to have identified and described elevating love. Indeed, he found an exact description of this emotion in a letter from Thomas Jefferson. According to Jefferson, elevating love has a trigger (an event in which a character displays virtue), accompanied by physical changes in the body (dilation in the chest), a motivation (a desire also to act virtuously) and a characteristic feeling (elevated sentiments). The movements felt in the chest region  – what Jefferson talked about as dilation  – may not be entirely metaphorical. The vagus nerve is the main nerve of the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms people down, and it undoes arousal caused by the sympathetic (fight-or-flight) system. The vagus nerve is involved in controlling heart rate and breathing, and it works with oxytocin to create feelings of calmness, love and connection. Oxytocin’s role in morality is well established, having been the subject of philosophical and scientific investigation (Churchland 2011; Zak 2012). The sense of love that accompanies elevation usually does not have a specific object, which suggests that elevating love is not the kind of love that grows out of the attachment system. It is, by contrast, a general love of all humankind. This feeling of elevating love can be interpreted in theist, nontheist and atheist ways: Christians call it agape (Jackson 2015), Buddhists call it compassion (Dalai Lama 2011) and utilitarians call it the greatest good (Flanagan 2007). It is a human motivation that is experienced by and understood from different existential and ethical stances. (Note that I am not claiming that the motivation is the same in all traditions; it is not. I am merely claiming that experiencing a general love for humankind is itself a human experience that different traditions discuss from within their own vocabulary and resources.) Awe Jules Evans, policy director at the Centre for the History of Emotions, recounts an interview with astronaut Edgar Mitchell in which Mitchell describes the experience of seeing the Earth in the middle of space (Evans 2013). During its time in space, Apollo 14 was rotating such that Mitchell had a full view of the Earth, the Moon, the Sun and the stars every two minutes. He suddenly felt the vastness of it all and smallness of our own planet. He called the experience the big picture effect, and the impact of the experience changed his life (Evans 2013, 100–101). In the interview, Mitchell speculates that the big picture effect is the experience that gives rise to religion. Haidt says that “something about the vastness and beauty of nature makes the self feel small and insignificant, and anything that shrinks the self creates an opportunity for spiritual experience” (Haidt 2006, 200–201). In looking for research on awe, he found that experimental psychologists have almost nothing to say about it. This lack in the literature is partly due to our inability to study it in animals and partly due to the problems of evoking

Emotions and Belief in God 231 awe in a lab setting. Consequently, it is a difficult emotion for experimental psychologists to study empirically. Other disciplines however, in particular philosophy and theology, have rich histories on the topic of awe (Borg 2017). Awe usually occurs once two conditions have been met: a person perceives something vast (usually a physical vastness but also possibly the vastness of a theory or even a display of vast power), and the vastness of that something cannot readily be accommodated by existing mental structures (Haidt 2006, 203). Awe often plays a role in conversion stories and can lead to lifelong changes. Psychologist and philosopher William James describes the change in a person who used to live hedonistically but now lives in his “religious center of personal energy” (James 1961, 217). Actuated by spiritual enthusiasm, this person is immune “against infection from the entire groveling portion of his nature.” “The stone wall inside has fallen,” adds James; “the hardness of heart has broken down” (James 1961, 217). Many of us sense this feeling when we experience “melting moods” in life – especially when accompanied by tears. It is as if our tears break through, says James, “an inveterate inner dam, and let all sorts of ancient peccancies and moral stagnancies drain away, leaving us now washed and soft of heart and open to every nobler leading” (James 1961, 217). If we are looking for an emotion that contributes to religious belief formation, awe surely qualifies. Awe does not, however, always produce religious belief. So, for example, Richard Dawkins’s The Magic of Reality is an attempt to evoke awe providing a non-theist explanation of life in the universe (Dawkins 2011). Still, awe has a record of producing religious belief that is hard to ignore. For more on awe, see Ihm and colleagues this volume. Gratitude Gratitude is not on Haidt’s list, but it deserves to be. Most of us have been in situations the favorable outcomes of which we did not entirely control or determine. Maybe it was landing a job when things seemed hopeless; maybe it was a successful fishing trip; or maybe it was surviving a situation that could have easily ended in death. Life in that moment seems to arrive as a gift, and no amount of working – no amount of willing – could have secured the outcome, because it was out of your control. Gratitude has long been lauded as a religious-belief-forming emotion. The plot of Homer’s Odyssey, for example, turns on Odysseus’s capacity or willingness to be grateful for the untimely death of the Seer at the mouth of the sea serpent sent by Poseidon to protect the Greeks hidden inside the large wooden horse. The centrality of gratitude in the plot of the Odyssey is no accident. Philosophers Dreyfus and Kelly argue that “excellence in the Homeric world depends crucially on one’s sense of gratitude and wonder” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 61). Excellence, on Homer’s understanding, “involves the necessity of being in an appropriate relationship to whatever

232  Christian Early is understood to be sacred” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 62). As inhabitants of the Homeric culture, the Greeks were constantly sensitive to, amazed by and grateful for those actions that one cannot perform on one’s own simply by trying harder: going to sleep, waking up, fitting in, standing out, gathering crowds together, holding their attention with a speech, changing their mood or indeed being filled with longing, desire, courage, wisdom and so on (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 63). To live one’s life in such a way – to respond to life with gratitude – was essential to a well-lived life. Gratitude was protected by epic stories of heroes and by rituals such as sacrifice. Ritual sacrifice is important in Homer’s world not just because it communicates gratitude but also because it cultivates gratitude. Ritual sacrifice was “a way of bringing about that sense of gratitude in people who don’t already have it, or don’t have enough, and reinforcing it in those who do” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 74). In short, ritual sacrifice at once expresses and induces gratitude. This, for Homer, embodies and articulates the deep sense of the sacred: “[I]t is the highest form of human excellence to recognize, be amazed by, and be grateful for whatever it is that draws you to act at your best” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 74). This experience of being drawn to act at your best and to recognize, be amazed by, and be grateful for “whatever that is” is significant. It is not necessary to believe in the Greek gods to take something of important away from Homer’s sense of the sacred. What is significant is not so much the metaphysics of gods but the lived experience of human agency. In experiencing gratitude, one has “to reject the modern idea that to be a human agent is to be the sole source of one’s actions” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 79). One has to, as it were, be open to the world in a way that is difficult for modern minds to understand, because it requires us to “give up on the modern notion that we are fully responsible for our actions” (Dreyfus and Kelly 2011, 79). Homer is not the only one to have recognized the significance of gratitude to a well-lived life. Gratitude is receiving attention from contemporary experimental psychologists. Robert Emmons and McCullough, leading researchers on gratitude, have shown that gratitude increases prosociality and human thriving (Emmons and McCullough 2004; Emmons 2007). Fundamentally, as Homer saw, gratitude acknowledges a source of goodness outside yourself, and it evokes a change of perspective on one’s life  – a frequently religious one. That source of goodness and change of perspective, however, can of course be interpreted in many ways. As Willard van Orman Quine (1953) would remind us, changes in the web of beliefs are underdetermined.

7. Conclusion In this chapter, I have investigated the emotional roots of religion. I began with Bertrand Russell’s claim that religion is based on fear, and I proceeded

Emotions and Belief in God 233 to summarize the project of cognitive science of religion to provide a ­fitness-oriented explanation of religious belief formation through an adaptive, hyperactive predator detection device. Through an examination of two recent works on emotion and fear (Barrett 2017; LeDoux 2015), I concluded that it was highly unlikely that fear was the single emotional source of religious belief formation. If a fitness-oriented explanation of religion were to hold, I suggested that it ought to turn its attention from predator detection (and fear) to death anxiety, which seems more promising. Problematically, there is little evidence to suggest that death anxiety is the cause of religious belief formation; there is abundant evidence, however, to suggest that religious beliefs and death anxiety are correlated. This may be because death anxiety is entangled with our sense of purity and of the sacred. The entanglement with the sacred opens a door for the possibility of another explanation for the relationship between death anxiety and religion – something more may be going on than fear of nothing or of punishment. One such explanation is Jonathan Haidt’s idea that human beings irreducibly experience life religiously along a divinity axis. Pursuing the possibility of Haidt’s phenomenological anthropology, I  examined other emotions – such as elevating love, awe and finally gratitude – as phenomenological experiences that move us along the divinity axis. Recognizing this plurality of emotions supports a nonreductive account of the relationship between emotions and religious belief formation. This conclusion does not brush aside death anxiety and fear as significant in religion, but it does suggest that neither death anxiety nor fear ought to be understood as the sole or even primary source of religion. A final, more speculative, point remains. Certain emotions in life – such as our sense of sacredness, general love, awe and gratitude – move us up out of the flatlands along the divinity axis. They open up our awareness to a third dimension, offering a different place from which to experience and navigate the world. Religions attempt to cultivate and nurture life lived from that place, and in so doing, they acknowledge and respond to that aspect of experience. These phenomenological experiences of “divinity” are, structurally speaking, dyadic – which is to say that they are essentially relational between the self and the world or the self and the other, in which we experience action as not entirely originating within ourselves. Given Lisa Barrett’s understanding of the coupling that happens during emotion construction between human beings and our world, one might legitimately wonder whether human experience has this relationally dyadic aspect, in part, because the world is this way. The possibility is that the phenomenological feature, in some ways, is genuinely a response and not just a projection. Each of the emotions is open to non-theological interpretations, but simply because non-theological interpretations are possible, theological interpretation are not invalidated. Immanuel Kant would, I think, concur that the speculative question remains open (Kant 1838).

234  Christian Early

References Barrett, LF. 2017. How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Beck, R. 2011. Unclean: Meditations on Purity, Hospitality, and Mortality. Eugene, OR: Cascade. Becker, E. 1973. The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press. Berger, P. 1999. The Desecularization of the World: Resurgent Religion and World Politics. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B Eerdmans. Borg, M. 2017. Days of Awe and Wonder: How to Be a Christian in The Twentyfirst Century. New York: HarperCollins. Churchland, P.  2011. Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Clarke, A. 2016. Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Dalai Lama. 2011. Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Damasio, A. 1994. Descartes’s Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: GP Putnam’s Sons. Dawkins, R. 2011. The Magic of Reality: How We Know What’s Really True. New York: Free Press. Dreyfus, H and SD Kelly. 2011. All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics to Find Meaning in a Secular Age. New York: Free Press. Emmons, RA. 2007. Thanks! How Practicing Gratitude Can Make You Happier. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Emmons, RA, and ME McCullough, eds. 2004. The Psychology of Gratitude. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Evans, J. 2013. Philosophy for Life and Other Dangerous Situations. London: Rider Books. Flanagan, O. 2007. The Really Hard Problem: Meaning in a Material World. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Haidt, J. 2006. The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom. New York: Basic Books. Hohwy, J. 2013. The Predictive Mind. New York: Oxford University Press. Jackson, JC, J Jong, M Bluemke, P Poulter, L Morgenroth and J Halberstadt. 2017. “Testing the Causal Relationship between Religious Belief and Death Anxiety. Religion, Brain & Behavior. doi: 10.1080/2153599X.2016.1238842. Jackson, TP. 2015. Political Agape: Christian Love and Liberal Democracy. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. James, W. 1961 [1902]. Varieties of Religious Experience: A  Study in Human Nature. New York: Macmillan. Jong, J, R Ross, T Philip, S-H Chang, N Simons and J Halberstadt. 2017. “The Religious Correlates of Death Anxiety: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” Religion, Brain, and Behavior. doi: 10.1080/2153599X.2016.1238844. Kant, I. 1838. Religion within the Limits of Pure Reason, JW Semple, trans. Edinburgh: T Clark. LeDoux, J. 1996. The Emotional Brain: The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Emotions and Belief in God 235 LeDoux, J. 2015. Anxious: Using the Brain to Understand and Treat Fear and Anxiety. New York: Penguin. Panksepp, J, and L Biven. 2012. The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroevolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. New York: W. W. Norton. Powell, R, and S Clarke. 2012. “Religion as an Evolutionary Byproduct: A Critique of the Standard Model.” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 63: 457–486. doi: 10.1093/bjps/axr035. Quine, W van O. 1953. “Two Dogmas of Empiricism.” In From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 20–47. Russell, B. 1957. Why I  Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. London: George Allen and Unwin. Shweder, RA, NC Much, M Mahapatra and L Park. 1997. “The ‘Big Three’ of Morality (Autonomy, Community, Divinity), and the ‘Big Three’ Explanations of Suffering.” In Morality and Health, ed. by AM Brandt and P Rozin, 119–169. New York: Routledge. Solomon, S, J Greenberg and T Pyszczynski. 2015. The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House. Zak, PJ. 2012. The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity. New York: Dutton.

Part 4

Anthropology

14 The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion Issues and Debates among the San of Southern Africa Robert K Hitchcock Introduction The San (Bushmen) of Southern Africa have frequently been used as models for the origins and evolution of religion and ritual (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2004; Barnard 2012, 126; Whitley 2014, 1227; Turner et al. 2018, 63–67). As people whose histories were linked closely to hunting and gathering, the San have sometimes been called Southern Africa’s “model people” (Jenkins 1979, 280). Lewis-Williams (1977, 1981) points out that San expressive culture is essentially ritual in nature. The ritual that he sees as the most important is the San trance dance, in which individuals connect with the spiritual world and are able to heal others or influence the forces of nature. This chapter will address issues of San spirituality and religion in an effort to provide insights into how the San peoples engaged in religious practices, and it will seek to examine changes over time in San religion, especially over the past two centuries. The issue of the “authenticity” of the San will also be addressed, particularly in light of the questions raised about the degree to which they were isolated from other groups and whether their social and belief systems remained intact or had been modified through acculturation and change (Wilmsen 1989; Kuper 1993; Barnard 2007, 96–111). For our purposes here, religion can be defined as an organized set of concepts, beliefs, values and ideas about the supernatural, the spiritual sphere and the sacred. Religion incorporates the ceremonial practices that are used to try to influence or interpret elements of the universe beyond people’s control (see Biesele 1976, 1978, 1993; Guenther 1979, 1986, 214–250, 2000; Purzycki et al. 2018). In line with Clifford Geertz, I see religion as part of a cultural system and as a part of a society’s “most comprehensive ideas of order” (Geertz 1966, 89). As Geertz notes, As we are to deal with meaning, let us begin with a paradigm: viz., that sacred symbols function to synthesize a people’s ethos – the tone, character, and quality of their life, its moral and aesthetic style and mood – and their world view – the picture they have of the way things in sheer actuality are, their most comprehensive ideas of order. (Geertz 1966, 89)

240  Robert K Hitchcock Geertz also makes the point that the anthropological study of religion is a two-stage operation: (1) an analysis of the system of meanings embodied in the symbols that make up religion and (2) relating these systems to socialstructural and psychological processes (Geertz 1966, 124). As Turner and colleagues (2018, 3) note, At a fundamental and basic level, religion consists of (1) a community of individuals, (2) who share representations, ideas and beliefs about a supernatural realm and the forces or beings inhabiting this realm, (3) who practice both individual and collective rituals addressing supernatural beings and forces inhabiting a sacred realm, and (4) who are often organized into small or big cult structures (religious corporate units) with specific practitioners charged with organizing the community and their ritual practices. (Turner et al. 2018, 3) Hunter-gatherer societies fit criteria 1–3, while criterion 4 fits food-­producing societies (farmers, pastoralists and agropastoralists). Isaac Schapera, the anthropologist best known for his work on the agropastoral Tswana (Schapera 1938, 1971), conducted the first comprehensive overview of the Khoisan (also known as the Khoekhoe and the San) peoples of South Africa (Schapera 1930). Schapera (1930, 160–201) had a chapter on “religion and magic” that addressed (a) death and burial, (b) beliefs concerning the dead, (c) worship of heavenly bodies, (d) supernatural beings and (e) magic and magicians. Schapera pointed out that the San and the Khoikhoi both had an awareness of and a fear of death, and they, like other hunting and herding people around the world, had beliefs in an afterlife. He also noted that they engaged in rituals and ceremonies to influence natural and supernatural forces and beings. Witchcraft or sorcery – negative magic – was generally not practiced by San and Khoikhoi, unlike some of their Bantu-speaking neighbors, such as the Tswana (see Guenther 1992). The San (Bushmen) of Southern Africa include a wide array of people residing today in seven countries (Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Namibia, South Africa, Zambia and Zimbabwe) who number some 130,000 (Puckett and Ikeya 2018). They are divided into several dozen self-identifying groups who speak a diverse range of languages organized into three language families (see Table 14.1). There is no San lingua franca that all San speak, so today many of them speak non-San languages, such as Setswana, Afrikaans or English. Virtually all San today have mixed livelihoods in which hunting and gathering plays but a relatively small part. Some San peoples persist to the present, but they represent a small fraction of the ancestral population whose former geographical spread is reflected in a great linguistic diversity that can be seen today. Genetic, fossil, and archaeological evidence suggests that the San represent some of the earliest people (Homo sapiens) to have occupied Southern

Table 14.1   Southern African Khoisan (non-Bantu) languages and their classification. Data obtained from Güldemann (2008, 98, table  4, 2014, 7, table  1); Gertrud Boden, Hirosi Nakagawa, Bonny Sands, Sheena Shah and Hessel Visser (personal communications, 2015–2018). Name of Language Group KHOE-KWADI Kwadi Khoe (Central Khoisan)  Khoekhoe   North   South  Kalahari   East    Shua

   Tshwa   West    Kxoe    Gana    Naro JUǀ’HOAN Juǀ’hoan Ju (Northern Khoisan)   Northwest

  Southeast TUU (Southern Khoisan) Tsa-Lower Nossob   Taa    West    East

  Lower Nossob !Ui

Languages or Dialects

Comments

Single language

† = extinct

Eini†, Nama-Dama, Haiom ǂAakhoe !Ora†, Cape Varieties Deti†, Cara, ǀXaise, Danisi, Ts’ixa, etc.

Kua, Cua, Tsua

Ts’ixa – Ts’exakhwe; Deti maintain that they exist and still speak some of their language

Khwe, Ani, Buga, ǀGanda, etc. Gana: Gana, Gǀui, ǂHaba, etc. Naro, etc. Single language !’O!Xuun, Northern !’Xuun Ekoka !’Xuun, Okongo !’Xuun (Northcentral Namibia) Grootfontein !’Xuun (Central Namibia) Juǀ’hoan, ǂX’ao-||’aen

Northern !’Xuun (Angola)

Nǀu’en†, West !Xoon Nǀamani†, Kakia†, ‘Nǀohan, East !Xoon, Tsasi*, ǀHasi, Seroa (ǂHoan)* ǀAuni†, ǀHausi† ǀXam†, Xegwi†, Nng, Nǀuu, ǂKhomani, ǂUngkue†

!Xoon = !Xóõ *added by Gertrud Boden and Bonny Sands

ǂKx’au’en

The ǀXam contend they are not extinct

242  Robert K Hitchcock Africa, going back over 200,000  years (Mitchell 2010; Schlebush et  al. 2017). Archaeological sites containing artifacts that resemble those of the Ju/’hoansi and other San date back some 40,000  years (Mitchell 2012). There is significant genetic diversity among the various San groups residing in Southern Africa. While a few San groups have genetic connections with east African hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, most of them appear to have been indigenous to Southern Africa. Contemporary San differ significantly from those individuals and groups of 100,000–200,000  years ago, and social and religious practices that we see today should not be assumed to be reflective of patterns in the Pleistocene. The San peoples of today are the original inhabitants of Southern Africa. Their presence predates that of other groups by thousands of years. Scholars categorize these immigrant non-San groups into two broad types: Bantuspeakers who originated in western and central sub-Saharan Africa, and as Nilotic and Cushitic speakers whose origins were in the East African Horn. From what the /Xam, Ju/’hoansi, Hai//om, !Xóõ, Khwe, Naro, G/ui, G//ana, Tshwa, Hai//om and other San peoples have said in interviews and public meetings, their religious beliefs are complex, holistic and representative of their world views. The religious beliefs of the Central Kalahari G/ui, for example, “are not formulated in doctrinaire creed but are part of their general knowledge” (Silberbauer 1981, 51). The G/ui have beliefs in a remote god or creator who created all life-forms. They also have beliefs in an afterlife. G/ui San do not have prayers or incantations that can be employed to influence god (Silberbauer 1981, 53–54). Among the G/ui, god is known as N!adima, his wife is N!adisa, and they occupy the upper region of a three-tiered universe (Silberbauer 1981, 51–57). The belief systems of the G/ui and other San demonstrate their ties to the natural and supernatural worlds (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1989; Skotnes 1996; Guenther 2000). They are flexible and capable of changing, depending on both external and internal factors, and they are responsive to conditions in which they and their creator and other gods live. The balance of this paper will consider San shamanism, spirituality, the trance dance, healing, conceptualization of the religious realm, the evolution of San religion and the changes that have occurred over time as a result of the introduction of new belief systems in Southern Africa.

Brief Preview of the Chapter This chapter addresses questions about the evolution of San (Bushman) religions in Southern Africa. Attention is paid to several features of San spirituality, including shamanism, the San trance dance and other methods of San healing. San perspectives on higher powers, spiritual and natural forces and ways of influencing the supernatural and natural world are also examined. The question of the authenticity of the San peoples as models for the past is considered briefly in a discussion of the Kalahari Debate and its

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 243 significance. Issues surrounding the interpretation of San rock art and the debates about the degree to which this art is influenced by San shamanism and vision states or other factors follow. Conclusions are drawn concerning changes that have occurred over time in recent and contemporary San religious systems as they were impacted by the introduction of non-San belief systems, globalization, tourism and social, economic, political and religious transformations in Southern Africa.

The San and Their Belief Systems A crucial issue in the study of the San of Southern Africa is to what degree their religious practices were similar to or different from the wide variety of groups found in the Kalahari and adjacent areas, in the deserts, savannas and mountains (for an overview of the San, see Puckett and Ikeya 2018). The anthropological study of religion among the San of Southern Africa goes back to the latter part of the 19th century in what is now South Africa (Orpen 1874; Barnard 1992, 77–97, 250–264). Wilhelm Bleek and his sister-in-law Lucy C Lloyd worked closely with /Xam San who had been brought to Cape Town as prisoners and who were required to help build the Cape Town breakwater in the 1870s (Bleek and Lloyd 1911). Bleek and Lloyd and their colleagues recorded stories, folklore, memories, dreams, language information and insights of /Xam and other San (e.g., !Xun) from 1874 to the early part of the 20th century. Historically, the /Xam were hunter-gatherers who depended on natural resources for their livelihoods. Like all hunter-gatherers, the /Xam were close to nature and the environment. Many of their religious practices related to topics such as the land, rainfall, surface water, the seasons, animals, plants, insects, the stars and the influence of the moon (Skotnes 2007; Deacon and Skotnes 2014). Sometimes characterized as extinct (e.g., Bennum 2004), the “last words” of the /Xam were recorded by Bleek and Lloyd and Bleek’s daughter Dorothea (Bleek 1924, 1929, 1933, 1935, 1936). However, the descendants of the /Xam in South Africa today maintain that they are still living in and around areas that they had occupied in the 19th century or are residing in urban areas such as Grahamstown and Port Elizabeth (for a map showing the location of the /Xam and other San in Southern Africa, see Figure  14.1). Visits were paid to the ancestral homeland of the /Xam by archaeologists and anthropologists (e.g., see Deacon 1986, 1988; Deacon and Poster 2005) and assessments were made of their habitats, archaeological sites and adaptations. Over the years, stories and testimonies were collected from /Xam descendants, many of which related to their belief systems (Lewis-Williams 1981; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2004; Wessels 2008). Based on their words and insights, the /Xam saw themselves as having been animals in the past, who then transformed into people. Relationships

244  Robert K Hitchcock

Figure 14.1 Map showing approximate distribution of major San groups across Southern Africa.

with animals were key, and there were “ropes to god,” which were threads or cords or beams of light that linked people to their ancestors or to god, as well as to other San (Keeney 2003; Lewis Williams and Pearce 2004, 5). The /Xam had a god and other spirit beings, including a trickster deity, /Kaggen, who is a central figure in many /Xam myths and narratives. Lewis-­Williams and Pearce (2004, 112) consider /Kaggen to be the “original shaman” (!gi:xa). Shamans were crucial figures among the /Xam. They obtained their power in part through experiencing altered states of consciousness (trance, or !aia) which they achieve by engaging in dances or through extended periods of exhausting activity. Hunting was a crucial area of concern for the /Xam, and there were numerous rituals associated with it. /Xam were not supposed to hunt the eland (Taurotragus oryx) without taking special precautions. Elands were considered by the /Xam to be a “rain animal.” If they did happen to dispatch an eland, its blood was sometimes used in the manufacture of red paint that was used with ochre in rock paintings. Some of the /Xam in the Eastern Cape of South Africa saw themselves as “People of the Eland” and there are numerous rock paintings that contain elands (Vinnicombe 1976; Mitchell and Smith 2009; Wessels 2014). Complex rituals surrounded eland

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 245 hunting, and there were apparently a number of similarities between those of the /Xam and the Ju/’hoansi in northeastern Namibia and northwestern Botswana (Lewis-Williams and Biesele 1978). Lee (1978, 104) says of San hunting that it is open-ended, and that luck, skill, dreams and divination all play roles in the hunt.

Direct Ethnographic Fieldwork on the San Direct ethnographic fieldwork on the San was done among the Ju/’hoansi (sometimes called the !Kung) by the Marshall family in what is now Namibia beginning in 1950–1951 and continuing to 1959 (Marshall 1976, 2–11; Marshall Thomas 1958, 2006). Ju/’hoansi participate in the medicine dance (Marshall 1969), a ritual healing dance that transforms n/um (“medicine”) into powerful forces that can bring about improvement of individuals’ physical, social and spiritual well-being. The Ju/’hoansi had two gods, the Great God, ≠Gao Na in the east and //Guawa in the west. The name //Gauwa was the same as that of the spirits of the dead, //gausi. The Ju/’hoansi fear (koa) to utter the names of the gods (Marshall 1999, 4). The //gausi were thought to bring bad and dangerous things. The Ju/’hoansi danced around the fire on full moon nights, and people in trance would sometimes run out into the darkness to repel lions, who were considered dangerous but who generally did not eat people in Nyae Nyae (Baynes Rock and Marshall Thomas 2017). Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (personal communication, 2018) says that the trance dance was an old feature of a Ju/’hoansi religious ritual, dating back to the time when lions were seen as more dangerous than they are now. As Lewis-Williams (1999, xii) notes in his foreword to Lorna Marshall’s Nyae Nyae !Kung Beliefs and Rites, For the !Kung there are two worlds: this world of hunting, gathering, living, and dying, and another world that is inhabited by the gods and nameless spirits of the dead, the //gawasi (//gausi). Movement between these two worlds is achieved by those who learn to control powerful medicines (n/um) that can be turned in to k!ia, an enhanced state of consciousness that originates from the gods. (Lewis-Williams 1999, xii, see also Katz 1982, 93–95) Ju/’hoansi who engage in specific kinds of dances, such as the Giraffe Dance, may go in to trance (!áĩá) (Marshall 1999, 62, 72, 85–90). While in trance, Ju/’hoan healers (n/um kxausi) may transform into other animals, such as lions, thus allowing them to travel more rapidly to “god’s village” and to venture widely to check up on relatives and, if necessary, heal them if they are sick (Katz et  al. 1997, 24–25). This shape-shifting ability is also seen among the Naro (Guenther 2000, 187) and the G/ui and G//ana of the Central Kalahari (Roy Sesana, Jumanda Gakelebone, personal communications,

246  Robert K Hitchcock 2015, 2018). It is not uncommon to hear Tswana, Ovambo, Herero and other groups remark about the San’s ability to turn into lions, an ability that they say worries them. Healing among the Ju/’hoansi takes a variety of forms: laying on of hands, herbalism, going into trance, “sucking” (removing objects from the bodies of individuals that are assumed to cause illness) and a kind of divining (e.g., “throwing the bones”). The Ju/’hoansi have beliefs about the power that can cause the rain to fall (n/ow) (Marshall 1957, 1999, 168–173). Some Ju/’hoansi and other San are well-known in Southern Africa for their ability to bring rain (!khwa), and they travel widely to places as far as Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Windhoek and Lusaka to engage in rainmaking. Among the Ju/’hoansi, all adults can become trance healers (Marshall 1999, 47–56). In some cases, this may occur as a result of dreams that they have. There are also individuals who may apprentice themselves to wellknown, powerful healers (Ama – “the real ones”), in essence becoming a g!úg ǂàbà (an apprentice healer). Healers and the people who support them in ritual dances are familiar with songs (tcxái), some of which they define as n/um tcxái (medicine songs). Dances are done both during the day and at night; the ones that the Ju/’hoansi talked about most frequently were those done at night, usually beginning around 9:00 p.m. and lasting into the early morning hours. Singing waxes and wanes depending in part on the tiredness of the individuals involved and the degree to which some of them are in trance (Marshall 1999, 70). /Kunta Bo, a well-known healer who now lives in Tsumkwe in northeastern Namibia, often has people approach him who want to become his apprentice (/Kunta Bo, personal communication, 2015). It appears from recent fieldwork by Megan Biesele in Nyae Nyae (personal communication, 2018) that the number of powerful healers like /Kunta Bo are declining significantly, a process that is also seen among the Naro of western Botswana (Guenther 2000) and the G/ui and G//ana of the Central Kalahari (Roy Sesana, personal communication, 2017). With the deaths of the older healers, the knowledge of trance healing and other kinds of healing practices among the San is waning. At the same time, another process is occurring that relates to the professionalization of San healing, with individuals becoming healers to take advantage of the cash and goods available from researchers, tourists and members of the public, a change that concerns many San.

Transformations in San Belief Systems Several factors are responsible for the transformation in San belief systems. One factor is their exposure to non-San religions and beliefs, a process which goes back some two millennia with the in-migration of Bantu-­ speaking and Cushitic-speaking agropastoral groups in Southern Africa. The process of interpenetration of lands occupied by hunter-gatherers by

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 247 the culturally and economically distinct peoples went on for over two millennia. In most areas, it was a slow process since the immigrant groups needed time to adapt their food crops and domestic animals to successively unfamiliar ecological zones. Denbow (1986) and Wilmsen (1989) question the authenticity of San identity who were observed ethnographically, particularly the Ju/’hoansi, arguing that they have only recently become full-time foragers after a lengthy period of raising livestock and working with cattle and small stock owners (Wilmsen and Denbow 1990). On the other hand, the Ju/’hoansi, who in the past occupied remote parts of the Kalahari, were argued to have been influenced to a lesser extent than some other San by the influx of agropastoralists (Solway and Lee 1990; Lee and Guenther 1993; Smith 1996, 2001; Sadr 1997). What has come to be known as the Kalahari Debate continues (Barnard 2006, 2007, 97–111; Mitchell et al. 2008) among anthropologists, archaeologists and historians. Some of the changes among the San as a result of exposure to non-San peoples such as the Batswana and Bakgalagadi were remarked on by James Chapman in 1852, who described a dance among Tshwa San in the northeastern Kalahari as follows: I witnessed the Porra, or Devil’s Dance, when they worked themselves up to a pitch of excitement, fell to the earth and writhed in agony, and foamed at the mouth til relieved by letting of blood. It was a wonder that the men who fell were not suffocated by the dust raised as they danced in a circle around the fallen to the tune of l, 2, 3 and twisted their bodies, arms and legs. The men carried fans of gnu tails, plumes of black ostrich feathers waved on their heads, and moana (baobab, Adansonia digitata) seed pods encircled their ankles as rattles. The women clapped hands and stamped loudly to keep time. (Chapman 1868, 159–160) Interviews of Tshwa in the Nata River region of northeastern Botswana revealed that some of them believed that their dances and other religious activities were influenced, at least so some extent, by neighboring Bamangwato, Kalanga and Ndebele (Hitchcock et al. 2016). Some of the changes can be seen in the costumes worn by Tshwa (Tuaa, Tsua) healers engaged in dances (see Figure 14.2). Although many of the features of the Tshwa trance dance were similar to those of the Ju/’hoansi, Naro and G/ui, there were elements of their dances that were borrowed from their neighbors, including the use of drums and the clanging of metal hoes to accompany the clapping of the women who took part in the dances. A third factor that has influenced San religious beliefs and practices is the introduction of Christianity (Livingstone 1857; Gulbrandsen 1993, 2012; Guenther 2000, 9, 20, 62, 115). There was initially considerable resistance on the part of San to following Christian teachings (see Guenther 2000,

248  Robert K Hitchcock

Figure 14.2   A Tshwa traditional healer engaged in a trance dance in Manxotae, Nata River Region, Botswana.

209–214, 223–225), but more recently, some San have opted to attend Christian churches and take part in prayer and baptism sessions. Interviews with some of these individuals in Nyae Nyae and Ghanzi suggest that some San who have become Christians continue to practice their traditional religions in a syncretic way. Some of the Pentecostal churches and the Zion Christian Church (ZCC) are having an impact on the beliefs of San, particularly those in Botswana (Roy Sesana, personal communication, 2015). One effect of the ZCC and Pentecostal churches is a reduction in the use of alcohol and tobacco among some contemporary San. A fourth set of factors causing modifications in San religious practices includes globalization and tourism. The upsurge in international cultural tourism in particular is resulting in an expanded number of visitors to the Kalahari and adjacent areas (Ritterband 2018). Some of these tourists want to take part in San trance healing dances or to be healed themselves by San healers. The Ju/’hoansi of Nyae Nyae have been exposed to sizable numbers of tourists and individuals interested in witnessing and learning about Ju/’hoan healing traditions (Biesele and Hitchcock 2013; Keeney and Keeney 2013, 2015; Hitchcock and Babchuk 2018). Some tourists want to

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 249 sit around the fire with Ju/’hoansi and hear their stories (for an insightful discussion of storytelling around the fire at night, see Wiessner 2014). These trends have raised questions about the rights of the Ju/’hoansi and other San to control the kinds of research and visits that are being undertaken in their areas. The expansion in the number of visitors to the Kuru Dance Festival in Ghanzi District in Botswana in recent years is another indicator of the interest in San dances (Rapoo 2016). Interestingly, San healers from a number of different groups attend the Kuru Dance Festival each year. A motivation for doing so for some groups is that they can get prizes for their dances, and they can demonstrate their cultural heritage and traditions. One of the more highly respected healers in Ghanzi told me in 2017 that he prefers to avoid participating in commercially oriented dances, as he put it, “to maintain his power.” There is concern among many San across the Kalahari about the apparent trend toward involvement of some people in sorcery and witchcraft, practices that the San generally say they do not practice themselves but that they have significant concerns about.

Rock Art and Religious Interpretation The rock art of Southern Africa, while still difficult to date precisely, stretches back thousands of years, and it contains images of people, animals and symbols of various kinds, some of which are interpreted as being religious in nature (Lewis-Williams 1981; Dowson and Lewis-Williams 1994; Coulson and Campbell 2001; Campbell et  al. 2010). There is an intense debate over the origins and meanings of rock art in Southern Africa (e.g., see Solomon 1992, 1997, 2008, 2013 and this volume; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2004, 2012, 2015; Dederen and Mokakabye 2018). This contentious debate relates in part to whether the art is a product primarily of trancerelated shamanistic activities or whether it is done for other purposes, such as hunting magic, or is representational or individually aesthetic in nature. Some of the rock art includes scenes such as battles between groups, group hunts, contacts with cattle-keepers, people on horses and half-human, half animal figures (“therianthropes,” see Guenther 2000, 8, 67–69, 98, 236; Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2004, 43–45, 166–176). Many of the rock paintings and engravings in the Tsodilo Hills of northwestern Botswana depict animals, human figures and symbols of various kinds. There are over forty-five hundred individual images spread through four different hills that jut out of the landscape (Campbell et  al. 2010). There is evidence of change over time in the rock art, a sizable proportion of which is done in red ochre, with the inclusion of white paintings that may have been done by other people, some of them herders and farmers who came into the hills in the past fifteen hundred to two thousand years. At one point, when one of the Ju/’hoan guides was asked about the meaning of a set of red figures on the side of a boulder on the top of the Male Hill

250  Robert K Hitchcock in April 1976, the man said, “What? Those aren’t paintings by people; they are places where birds who had eaten red berries defecated on the rock!” Other Ju/’hoansi and Mbukushu who lived in the hills in the late 20th and 21st centuries were a bit more forthcoming, saying that “The rock art represents our history and our beliefs about how the world works, and some of it shows our origins.” When queried about rock art, some San say that the idea of art came to them in a kind of “creative explosion” (see Pfeiffer 1982). Three of the Ju/’hoansi who visited the Upper Paleolithic Caves of France with Cologne University’s “tracking in caves project” (Tsamkgao Ciqae, Ui Kxunta, and Thui Thao, personal communications 2018) said that the Pleistocene art resembles their own and that it was done in part to honor the animals that were so much a part of their lives. When asked about whether the art was done as a means of “hunting magic” or to increase the numbers of wild animals on the landscape, they said that they did not know if that was the case. The art, they went on to say, was important to their culture and to the way that they thought about the world and the creatures that populated it. The Ju/’hoansi who were the main informants in the “tracking in caves” project, all maintain that there is a close association between San rock art and traditional religious practices.

Conclusions The San have a tremendous tolerance for ambiguity (Guenther 1979, 2000, 226–237). They have no problem in seeing animals turn into people and people into animals. They are not surprised by their god being both creative on the one hand and destructive on the other (Guenther 2000, 227). They are not bothered at all by some of the inconsistencies in their belief systems. They are highly practical and at the same time deeply religious. They have an extensive fund of Indigenous knowledge from which they draw. They are highly creative and at the same time more than willing to adopt new and innovative ideas. Their beliefs and religions are grounded in social, economic, environmental and historical reality. In some ways, the San religious practices and beliefs fit well with those of other hunter-gatherers, such as the Hadza of what is now called Tanzania (Peoples et al. 2016), Indigenous peoples in what is now called Australia, and some Indigenous peoples in what is now called the United States and Canada (Whitley 2014). Many San and the social scientists who work with them would agree with the perspectives of Lachmann (2014), who discusses moral codes and ethics, along with religion. San often say that their belief systems represent a kind of moral code and a set of values about “the best way to live.” The Ju/’hoansi, for example, say that “healing makes our hearts happy” (Katz et al. 1997), a sentiment that is echoed by the Tshwa of Zimbabwe, who maintain that their healing activities, while admittedly diminishing, are the source of considerable social satisfaction.

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 251 The San, like many other Indigenous peoples around the world, see the importance of attachment to place and the varied roles of the sacred in their landscapes. They recognize that the origins and evolution of their religions and belief systems are products of their creator god and the result of both natural and cultural selection. Some of them are quick to point out that religion, art and ceremonies are all part of a complex whole. The San would be the first people to admit that there is tremendous diversity in San religion, and they recognize the numerous changes that have come about in San belief systems. It is no surprise, as some San researchers have pointed out, that the San have a syncretic view of religion, combining traditional and modern and both Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives. While their trance dances, shamanistic activities and other healing practices are perhaps the most compelling and dramatic religious activities, particularly to outsiders, these are but a small part of the large constellation of religious beliefs and practices that make up San religious life.

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252  Robert K Hitchcock Bleek, DF. 1933. “Customs and Beliefs of the /Xam Bushmen, Part V: The Rain, Part VI; Rainmaking.” Bantu Studies 6: 47–63, 233–249, 323–342. Bleek, WHI, and LC Lloyd. 1911. Specimens of Bushman Folklore. London: George Allen. Campbell, A, L Robbins and M Taylor, eds. 2010. The Tsodilo Hills: Copper Bracelet of the Kalahari. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press and Gaborone: Botswana Society. Chapman, J. 1868 [1971]. In Travels in the Interior of South Africa 1849‑1863. Hunting and Trading Journeys from Natal to Walvis Bay and Visits to Lake Ngami and Victoria Falls, 2 Vols, ed. by EC Tabler. Cape Town: AA Balkema. Coulson, D, and A Campbell. 2001. African Rock Art: Paintings and Engravings on Stone. New York: Harry N Abrams. Deacon, J. 1986. “My Place Is the Bitterpits: The Home Territory of Bleek and Lloyd’s /Xam San informants.” African Studies 45: 135–155. Deacon, J. 1988. “The Power of a Place in Understanding Southern San Rock Engravings.” World Archaeology 20: 129–140. Deacon, J, and C Poster. 2005. My Heart Stands in the Hill. Cape Town: Cornelius House. Deacon, J, and P Skotnes, eds. 2014. The Courage of //Kabbo: Celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Publication of Specimens of Bushman Folklore. Cape Town: University of Cape Town Press. Dederen, J-M, and J Mokakabye. 2018. “Monologue and Multivocality in San Rock Art Studies.” Acta Academica 50 (1): 41–60. Denbow, JR. 1986. “A New Look at the Later Prehistory of the Kalahari.” Journal of African History 27 (1): 3–28. Dowson, TA, and D Lewis-Williams, eds. 1994. Contested Images: Diversity in Southern African Rock Art Research. Johannesburg: University of Witwatersrand University Press. Geertz, C. 1966. “Religion as a Cultural System.” In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion, ed. by M Banton, 87–125. London: Tavistock. Guenther, MG. 1979. Bushman Religion and the (Non)sense of Anthropological Theory of Religion.” Sociologus 29: 102–132. Guenther, MG. 1986. The Nharo Bushmen of Botswana: Tradition and Change. Hamburg: Helmut Buske Verlag. Guenther, MG. 1992. “’Not a Bushman Thing’: Witchcraft among Bushmen and Hunter-Gatherers.” Anthropos 87: 83–107. Guenther, MG. 2000. Tricksters and Trancers: Bushman Religion and Society. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Gulbrandsen, O. 1993. “Missionaries and the Northern Tswana Rulers: Who Used Whom?” Journal of Religion in Africa 3 (1): 42–83. Gulbrandsen, O. 2012. The State and the Social: State Formation in Botswana and Its Precolonial and Colonial Genealogies. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. Güldemann, T. 2008. “A  Linguist’s View: Khoe-Kwadi Speakers as the Earliest Food-Producers of Southern Africa.” Southern African Humanities 20: 93–132. Güldemann, T. 2014. “Khoisan’ Linguistic Classification Today.” In Beyond ‘Khoisan’: Historical Relations in the Kalahari Basin, ed. by T Güldemann and A-M Fehn, 1–44. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Hitchcock, RK, and WA Babchuk. 2018. “Tourism, Heritage Preservation, and Sustainable Development: Kalahari San Perspectives.” Paper presented at the 78th annual meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology, Philadelphia, PA, April 3–7, 2018.

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 253 Hitchcock, RK, B-C Benjamin and A Murwira. 2016. The San in Zimbabwe: Livelihoods, Land and Human Rights. IWGA Report No. 22. Copenhagen: International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA), Johannesburg: Open Society Initiative for Southern Africa (OSISA), and Harare: University of Zimbabwe. Jenkins, T. 1979. “Southern Africa’s Model People.” South African Journal of Science 75: 280–282. Katz, R. 1982. Boiling Energy: Community Healing among the Kalahari !Kung. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Katz, R, M Biesele and V St. Denis. 1997. Healing Makes Our Hearts Happy: Spirituality and Cultural Transformation among the Kalahari Ju/’hoansi. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Keeney, B. 2003. Ropes to God: Experiencing the Bushman spiritual universe. Philadelphia: Ringing Rocks Press. Keeney, B, and H Keeney. 2013. “Reentry into the First Creation: A  Contextual Frame for the Ju/’hoan Bushman Performance of Puberty Rites, Storytelling, and Healing Dance.” Journal of Anthropological Research 69 (1): 65–86. Keeney, B, and H Keeney. 2015. Way of the Bushman: Spiritual Teachings and Practices of the Kalahari Ju/’hoansi. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Kuper, AJ. 1993. “Postmodernism, Cambridge, and the Great Kalahari Debate.” Social Anthropology 1 (1): 57–71. Lachmann, PJ. 2014. “Evolution, Ethics and Religion.” Global Bioethics 25 (3): 156–163. Lee, RB. 1978. “Ecology of a Contemporary San People.” In The Bushmen: San Hunters and Herders of Southern Africa, ed. by PV Tobias, 94–114. Cape Town: Human and Rousseau. Lee, RB, and MG Guenther. 1993. “Problems in Kalahari Historical Ethnography and the Tolerance of Error.” History in Africa 20: 185–235. Lewis-Williams, JD. 1977. “Believing and Seeing: An Interpretation of Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings.” Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Natal. Lewis‑Williams, JD. 1981. Believing and Seeing: Symbolic Meanings in Southern San Rock Paintings. London: Academic Press. Lewis-Williams, JD. 1999. “Foreword.” In Nyae Nyae !Kung: Beliefs and Rites, Vols. ix–xvi, ed. by L Marshall. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Monographs. Lewis-Williams, JD, and M Biesele. 1978. “Eland Hunting Rituals among Northern and Southern San Groups: Striking Similarities.” Africa 48 (2): 117–134. Lewis-Williams, JD, and DG Pearce. 2004. San Spirituality: Roots, Expressions, and Social Consciousness. Cape town: Double Storey Books. Lewis-Williams, JD, and DG Pearce. 2012. “The Southern San and the Trance Dance: A Pivotal Debate in the Interpretation of San Rock Paintings.” Antiquity 86 (333): 696–706. Lewis-Williams, JD, and DG Pearce. 2015. “San Rock Art: Evidence and Argument.” Antiquity 89: 732–739. Lewis-Williams, JD, and TA Dowson, eds. 1989. Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers. Livingstone, D. 1857. Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa. London: John Murray. Marshall, L. 1957. “N/ow.” Africa 27 (3): 232–240. Marshall, L. 1969. “The Medicine Dance of the !Kung Bushmen.” Africa 39 (4): 347–381.

254  Robert K Hitchcock Marshall, L. 1976. The !Kung of Nyae Nyae. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Marshall, L. 1999. Nyae Nyae !Kung: Beliefs and Rites. Cambridge, MA: Peabody Museum Monographs. Mitchell, P, and B Smith, eds. 2009. The Eland’s People: New Perspectives in the Rock Art of the Maloti-Drakensberg Bushmen: Essays in Memory of Patricia Vinnicombe. Johannesburg: Witwatersrand University Press. Mitchell, P, I Plug, G Bailey and S Woodborne. 2008. “Bringing the Kalahari Debate to the Mountains: Late First Millennium AD Hunter-Gatherer Interaction in the Highlands of Lesotho.” Before Farming 2: 1–22. Mitchell, PJ. 2010. “Genetics and Southern African Prehistory: An Archaeological View.” Journal of Anthropological Sciences 88: 73–92. Mitchell, PJ. 2012. “San Origins and Transition to the Later Stone Age: New Research from Border Cave, South Africa.” South African Journal of Science 108 (11/12): 1–2. Orpen, JM. 1874. “A Glimpse into the Mythology of the Maluti Bushmen.” Cape Monthly Magazine 9: 1–13. Peoples, HC, P Duda and FW Marlowe. 2016. “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.” Human Nature 27: 261–282. Pfeiffer, JE. 1982. The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion. New York: Harper and Row. Puckett, RF and K Ikeya, eds. 2018. Research and Activism among the Kalahari San Today: Ideals, Challenges, and Debates. Senri Ethnological Studies 99. Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology. Purzycki, BG, J Henrich, C Apicella, QD Atkinson, A Baimel, E Cohen, RA McNamara, AK Willard, D Xygalatas and A  Norenzayan. 2018. “The Evolution of Religion and Morality: A Synthesis of Ethnographic and Experimental Evidence from Eight Societies.” Religion, Brain & Behavior 8 (2): 101–132. Rapoo, C. 2016. “Performance and the Economies of Cultural Heritage Festivals in Botswana: Cashing In or Selling Out?” Botswana Notes and Records 16: 351–361. Ritterband, S. 2018. Tracking Indigenous Heritage: Ju/’hoansi San Learning, Interpreting, and Staging Traditions for a Sustainable Future in Cultural Tourism in Tsumkwe. Munster and Wien: Lit Verlag. Sadr, K. 1997. “Kalahari Archaeology and the Bushman Debate.” Current Anthropology 38 (1): 104–112. Schapera, I. 1930. The Khoisan Peoples of South Africa: Bushmen and Hottentots. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Schapera, I. 1938. A Handbook of Tswana Law and Custom. London: Frank Cass. Schapera, I. 1971. Rainmaking Rites of Tswana Tribes. African Social Research Documents, Vol. 3. Leiden: Afrika‑Studiecentrum. Schlebush, CM, H Malmstrom, T Gunther, PA Coutinho, H Edmund, AM Munters, M Vicente, M Stein, H Soodyall, M Lombard and M Jakobsson. 2017. “Southern African Ancient Genomes Estimate Modern Human Divergence to 250,000 to 260,000 years ago.” Science 358: 652–655. Silberbauer, GB. 1981. Hunter and Habitat in the Central Kalahari Desert. New York: Cambridge University Press. Skotnes, P, ed. 1996. Miscast: Negotiating the Presence of the Bushmen. Rondebosch, Cape Town, South Africa: University of Cape Town Press. Skotnes, P. 2007. Claim to the Country: The Archive of Wilhelm Bleek and Lucy Lloyd. Johannesburg: Jacana Press.

The Evolution of Hunter-Gatherer Religion 255 Smith, AB. 1996. “The Kalahari Bushmen Debate: Implications for Archaeology of Southern Africa.” South African Historical Journal 35 (1): 1–15. Smith, AB. 2001. “Ethnohistory and Archaeology of the Ju/Hoansi Bushmen.” African Study Monographs Supplement 26: 15–25. Solomon, A. 1992. “Gender, Representation, and Power in San Ethnography and Rock Art.” Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 11: 291–299. Solomon, A. 1997. ‘The Myth of Ritual Origins? Ethnography, Mythology and Interpretation of San Rock Art.” South African Archaeological Bulletin 52: 3–13. Solomon, A. 2008. “Myths, Making and Consciousness: Dynamics and Differences in San Rock Arts.” Current Anthropology 49 (1): 59–76. Solomon, A. 2013. “The Death of Trance: Recent Perspectives on San Ethnographies and Rock Arts.” Antiquity 87: 1208–1213. Solway, JS, and RB Lee. 1990. “Foragers, Genuine or Spurious? Situating the Kalahari San in History.” Current Anthropology 31 (2): 109–146. Thomas, EM. 1958. The Harmless People. New York: Knopf. Thomas, EM. 2006. The Old Way: A Story of the First People. New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Turner, JH, A  Maryanski, AK Petersen and AW Geertz. 2018. The Emergence of Religion by Means of Natural Selection. London and New York: Routledge. Vinnicombe, P. 1976. People of the Eland: Rock Paintings of the Drakensberg Bushmen as a Reflection of their Life and Thought. Pietermaritzburg, South Africa: Natal University Press. Wessels, M. 2008. “Religion and the Interpretation of the /Xam Narratives.” Current Writing: Text and Reception in Southern Africa 20 (2): 44–66. Wessels, M. 2014. “The Creation of the Eland: A close Reading of a Drakensberg San Narrative.” Critical Arts 28 (3): 555–568. Whitley, DS. 2014. “Hunter-Gatherer Religion and Ritual.” In The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunters and Gatherers, ed. by V Cummings, P Jordan and M Zvelebil, 1220–1242. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wiessner, P.  2014. “Embers of Society: Firelight Talk among the Ju/’hoansi Bushmen.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 111 (39): 14027–14035. Wilmsen, EN. 1989. Land Filled with Flies: A Political Economy of the Kalahari. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Wilmsen, EN, and JR Denbow. 1990. “Paradigmatic History of San‑Speaking Peoples and Current Attempts at Revision.” Current Anthropology 31 (5): 489–524.

15 Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols Archaeological Evidence for the Origins of Religion Anne Solomon

Introduction Behavior guided by religious beliefs and imperatives has unquestionably played an enormous role in shaping the material world and the residues of daily life – the subject of archaeology. The origins and evolution of religious awareness are, inevitably, difficult to investigate because of the antiquity of the materials and the nature of the evidence (not only because of issues of preservation but also because archaeologically recovered evidence is only a tiny sample). The general consensus among archaeologists and paleoanthropologists is that behaviors indicative of a religious sense are principally (though not exclusively) related to the emergence of Homo sapiens, anatomically modern humans, who later also attained cognitive modernity. The materials from which the development of a religious sense can be inferred include intentional burial, burial with grave goods (implying ritual acts) and art as an index of symbolic culture – in particular cave paintings, though sculptures and other artifacts are also relevant. This overview considers some of the evidence for the emergence of religious consciousness in the deep past, principally as evidenced by prehistoric art but also other materials that are likely proxies for such awareness. (For detailed discussions of early burials and art, see Lorblanchet and Bahn 2017; Pettit 2010).

Symbolic Capacity The key notion underpinning many efforts to understand the ancient mind concerns the capacity to use symbols, as one of the prerequisites for language, religion and art. A  minimal definition of a symbol is that it is a mark, object or word that stands for something else. Symbolic capacity is inferred from varied archaeological evidence. Until recently, it was generally believed that the turning point occurred in the European Upper Paleolithic, c. 50,000 years ago (hereafter, “1,000 years ago” will be shortened to kya). Dubbed “the human revolution,” it highlights the emergence of traits including language, religion, art, certain artifact types and technologies, demographic and economic indicators and forward planning ability.

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 257 Striking as the emergence of this suite of modern human behaviors is, it has also been argued that in Africa the behavioral capacities and traits involved had been emergent for at least 200 kya (e.g., McBrearty and Brooks 2000), associated with humans who (on the basis of skeletal features) were anatomically modern but not yet fully cognitively modern. The evidence from African and Middle Eastern materials suggests that symbolic capacity emerged around 100 kya. This is a minimum date, since ritual behaviors that leave no archaeological trace could have existed earlier. Given the difficulties of inferring mental abilities from artifacts, debates continue. Indeed, until the 1970s, and even since, the possibility of any “archaeology of mind” was widely considered speculative, overly interpretative and unscientific. In addition, perspectives on “symbolism,” which has played a prominent role in anthropology generally, keep evolving. See Hoskins (2015) for an overview.

The Evidence from Burials The burial of the dead is regarded as a likely index of symbolic capacity and, at least, a nascent religious sense, described by Lieberman (1991) as a concern for the deceased that transcends the everyday. Mundane explanations are nevertheless possible – for example, burial prevents the stench of decay and protects corpses from attracting scavenging animals; however, protecting corpses may also indicate respect for the dignity of the deceased. Early evidence for disposing of the dead Finds in the Atapuerca Mountains in Spain and in South Africa’s Cradle of Humankind fossil sites have been claimed as the earliest evidence for disposing of the dead. In both instances, it has been argued that the deceased were intentionally placed in caverns (rather than buried as such). The former, dating to c. 430 kya, concerns 28 individuals of the archaic human Homo heidelbergensis (Arsuaga et  al. 1997). The latter relates to a possible new hominid species, Homo naledi (Berger et al. 2017). In the South African site, fragments of perhaps 15 individuals are dated to 236–335 kya. This is primarily based on the absence of other animal species (bar a single owl), which may rule out carnivores as the bone accumulators. In both instances, whether the finds indicate deliberate disposal of the bodies, and if so, whether that is indicative of ritual, or even respect for the dead, continues to be debated. The firmest evidence for intentional burial comes from three Israeli sites: Skhul, Qafzeh and Tabun, all dating to 100–130 kya (the Middle Paleolithic). The last one mentioned – a single Neanderthal burial – is of interest because it feeds into long-standing debates about the behavioral modernity and cognitive capacity of Neanderthals. Inland from the coastal cave of Tabun lies Skhul, where ten modern-type individuals, but with archaic features, were buried. Further inland, the cave of Qafzeh contained 15

258  Anne Solomon individuals of modern human anatomical type (Ronen 2012). Other sites dating to c. 60 kya (the Middle Paleolithic) include La Chapelle-aux-Saints 1, France (Dibble et  al. 2014), which may be evidence of Neanderthals intentionally burying their dead. Grave goods and ritual The inhumation of bodies is itself significant, but the presence of grave goods interred with the person is additionally notable. These are items deemed to be “exceptional either by their context, size or their arrangement in the grave” (Vandermeersch 1976, 727, cited by Ronen 2012, 558). One of the Skhul individuals and an adolescent at Qafzeh were buried with grave goods. A boar mandible was found among the arm bones of the Skhul individual and deer antlers were placed on the Qafzeh individual’s chest. It is deemed significant that the bones come from the head of the animal and that the species involved are large mammals not typical of the food debris found in contemporaneous living sites. It would seem, therefore, that they had some symbolic significance and were not buried with the dead as food for the afterlife (Ronen 2012) – though the latter would in itself imply a sense of a future, arguably also a modern cognitive trait. Other artifacts and features Stones found in or near burials have been reported; some may have been placed on top of the grave; others were, or may have been, intentionally interred grave goods, such as the stone artifact placed in the hand of one of the Skhul individuals (Ronen 2012). Other artifacts regarded as “symbolic” include shell ornaments and pigment pieces, made by both modern humans and Neanderthals (d’Errico et al. 2005; Zilhão et al. 2010). Shells pierced for stringing and interpreted as personal ornaments are especially regarded as bearing “symbolic” meaning (including as status indicators). However, this view has been contested by linguists and philosophers, on various grounds (e.g., Sterelny 2011) See Abadia and Nowell (2015, 967–969) for an overview of the “terminological, conceptual and interpretative” problems of these arguments. Pigments are associated with the earliest burials, with 85 ochre pieces found at Qafzeh and some at Skhul (though none were directly related to the burials themselves). Not only are they regarded as probable evidence for “symbolic thought” but mineral pigments are also clearly relevant to the emergence of art and its relation to early religion.

From Pigments to “Art” and Religion The use of pigments, particularly red ochre (iron oxide), is considered a key marker of symbolic, or symbolically mediated, thought (e.g., Knight

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 259 et al. 1995; Henshilwood et al. 2009). Such allegedly symbolic objects are seen as “functionally equivalent to language” (d’Errico et  al. 2003) and indicative of cognitive development. Additionally, “The conceptual ability to source, combine, and store substances that enhance technology or social practices represents a benchmark in the evolution of complex human cognition” (Henshilwood et  al. 2011, 219). Evidence from African sites (in Zambia and Kenya) suggests that this may date back to 300 kya (e.g., Barham 2002). Inevitably, that evidence is not straightforward, and debates have centered on whether pigments in fact served mundane functions: curing hides, as an abrasive to aid drilling or as a component of the mastic used in hafting stone tools to handles. As Wadley (2005, 3) suggests, “the symbolic nature of ochre needs to be demonstrated, not assumed, in the deep past.” Finds from Blombos, a South African coastal site, have been especially important. Here, over 8,000 pieces of ochre from Middle Stone Age layers date to > 70 kya. Key finds include pierced Nassarius kraussianus shells (some with ochre traces), apparently used as beads. Ochre chunks with incised marks have been hailed as the world’s oldest art, while a 73 kya small stone flake, marked with lines apparently made with an ochre “crayon,” has been publicized as the world’s oldest “drawing.” Some have argued that these cannot be regarded as having a utilitarian function, so they indicate symbolic capacity (Henshilwood et  al. 2009, 2011, 2018). The significance of these finds is not uncontroversial, not least because mark-making and a sense of pattern do not necessarily imply symbolism. What the “abstract” marks on the ochre pieces symbolize – if anything – remains mysterious, and it seems overly ambitious to claim that the marks on the Blombos pieces are “designs” that “are almost certainly the final outcome of the engravers” intention” (d’Errico et al. 2003, 55). This cannot be deduced from the objects themselves or their context. Nor does selecting a color imply color symbolism; as Luuk (2013, 260) suggests, there is a possibility that pigment was used because definitive colors were preferred for esthetic or cognitive (salience) reasons. Even nonhuman species differentiate between esthetic and non-esthetic stimuli and utilize definitive colors as behavioural cues . . . and so do children in their first year. . . . While coloring is probably uniquely human, there is nothing inherently symbolic about it. Even if some claims for early art are overstated, studies certainly suggest that symbolic capacity and elements of cognitive and behavioral modernity were emergent or in place by 100 kya, contradicting the view that cognitive and neural modernity resulted from a genetic mutation in European populations only 50 kya (e.g., Klein and Edgar 2002).

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The Evidence of “Art” The Blombos finds aside, other candidates for the world’s oldest art include cupules (hammered depressions in horizontal or vertical rock faces), some of which may date back to the Middle Paleolithic, or even Lower Paleolithic (Le Tensorer et al. 2015), and stones naturally resembling human figures (Berekhat Ram, Israel; the “Venus of Tan-Tan,” Morocco) that may have been further modified (see Lorblanchet and Bahn 2017, 161–64). The oldest known European “art” comes from Spanish sites, notably the Cave of Maltravieso (Hoffmann et al. 2018); the dating of crusts overlying pigments indicates a minimum date of 64 kya, meaning that it is attributable to Neanderthals (since current evidence suggests that modern humans only populated Europe twenty thousand years later). The earliest materials reveal little about early religion as such; it is figurative art that permits more extensive hypothesizing about its contents and forms. Unsurprisingly, the evidence is complex and ambiguous. At Maltravieso, the 64 kya date relates to a hand stencil where paint was blown or spat over a hand placed on the rockface, leaving a negative outline – a recognizable subject, though arguably not figurative art proper. In Sulawesi, Indonesia, hand stencils dating to c. 40 kya have also been found and, in Indonesian Borneo, a painting of an animal (species indeterminate), also c. 40 kya, is the oldest known “representational” image (Aubert et al. 2018). In Africa, the oldest known painted pieces are seven plaques from a Namibian cave, dated to 30 kya (Vogelsang et al. 2010). In terms of three-dimensional art, the oldest known European works similarly date to this period, belonging to the Aurignacian (or proto-­Aurignacian) culture of the Upper Paleolithic. Perhaps the oldest, again at c. 40 kya, is the Hohlenstein-Stadel sculpture, an ivory figure with a lion’s head and humanlike body (Kind et al. 2014). Also notable, dating to 35–40 kya, is the Venus of Hohle Fels (Figure  15.1a), a tiny (6  cm tall) ivory female figure, with the visual emphasis on the figure’s enormous breasts and genitalia (Conard 2009). In terms of cognitive modernity, less than a meter away, excavators found the earliest known musical instrument: a flute made from vulture bone. Elsewhere, a woolly rhinoceros vertebra from Tolbaga, Siberia, carved with a bear’s head, is dated to c. 35 kya (Abramova 1995). From here on, cave art (both petroglyphs and paintings) is abundant, with numerous identifiable subjects, if not recoverable “meanings.”

Upper Paleolithic Art and Early Religion Thinking about early religion has long been intertwined with the study of European Ice Age art. In the 19th century, scholars believed that “primitive humankind” had little or no sense of either art or religion (Bahn 1998; Palacio-Pérez 2013). As Palacio-Pérez (2013) recounts, this view changed in

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 261

Figure 15.1 (a) The Venus of Hohle Fels. Photo by Hilde Jensen, used with permission from Nicholas Conard and the University of Tubingen and (b) A therianthropic figure, with animal head and hooves, created by San hunter-gatherer artists; Game Pass, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. Source: Photo by the author.

the late 19th century: the cultural evolutionist Tylor refocused attention on “animism” as primitive religion from the 1860s, and at about the same time, McLennan introduced ideas of “totemism” as the original animism. Later, Frazer’s notion of sympathetic magic became influential. Over time, these views coalesced into ideas about ancient art as expressing ancient religious thought (Palacio-Pérez 2010), with cave art (as opposed to art mobilier, or portable art) also included in the equation. The rise of anthropology and ethnographies from living hunter-gatherers contributed to the shift. Via Reinach’s work, especially his 1903 paper entitled “L’art el la magie,” both parietal art (on cave walls or large stone surfaces) and portable art came to be regarded as “the primary testimony of the oldest religion” of humankind (Palazio-Pérez 2010, 858). Reinach effectively displaced notions of ancient arts as merely decorative or playful, ushering in “symbolic” interpretations. But what might the art reveal about the contents of ancient religion?

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Iconography and Interpretation: Early Speculations The predominance of animals in the European sites, and a paucity of human figures, encouraged interpretations of this body of art as linked to sympathetic hunting magic and/or totemism (e.g., Jones 1967). In the former reading, painting animals magically facilitated success in the hunt and/or increase in the numbers of animals to prey on. Totemism is a phenomenon whereby groups or subgroups claim a special association with an animal or plant, which is their emblem. Today the complexity of totemism and its variability is well documented. In the 19th century, Frazer borrowed from Spencer and Gillen’s (1899) work on indigenous hunter-gatherers in Australia; however, the result was an erroneous and oversimplified view of totemism in this indigenous society, which failed to appreciate its relation to complex kinship systems and reduced it to “a simple set of magic practices aimed at ensuring the fecundity of the totem species and therefore of the ‘clan’ that identified itself with it” (Palacio-Pérez 2010, 3). One category of European Paleolithic art mobilier attracted special attention: carvings of female figures, often called “Venus figurines.” Over 140 examples are known, dating from the Aurignacian (e.g., the Venus of Hohle Fels, see earlier) through the Gravettian and into the Magdalenian (c. 17–12 kya). The most famous (the Hohle Fels, Willendorf and Lespugue examples) are those with greatly exaggerated breasts and body fat; the head and feet often are reduced or absent. However, the category includes diverse renderings, in various materials. (In view of the importance of ochre in the early record, it is surely significant that some have ochre traces; the materials chosen may also have carried symbolic significance.) They have variously been interpreted as talismans (objects thought to have magical or protective powers) relating to motherhood/childbirth or initiation, as “fertility symbols” or as “mother goddesses,” belonging to a pre-patriarchal religion. Other Paleolithic art contributing to the notion of early religion as celebrating fertility includes the supposed depiction of vulvas in the parietal engravings; this was a particular interest of a certain priest and prehistorian, the abbé Henri Breuil, but as Bahn (1986, 1998) notes, unless associated with female figures, this simple design, consisting of a triangle-like form with a median line, is ambiguous at best. Whatever the shortcomings of early iconographical readings, the notion of Paleolithic art as linked to religion persists: “In this initial discourse were born ideas such as ‘Paleolithic sanctuary,’ initiation art,’ ‘totemic images’ and ‘shamanic symbols’ that have conditioned, in modified forms, the interpretation of Paleolithic art until the present time” (Palacio-Pérez 2010, 11).

New Directions The 20th century saw various attempts to create a more theoretically and scientifically sound basis for understanding both religion and early art. Among

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 263 the most innovative was work by Laming-Emperaire (1962) and LeroiGourhan (1965), drawing on Levi-Straussian structuralism. Both eschewed the traditional analysis of content alone, focusing instead on the syntax and placement of images (e.g., at the entrances to or in the depths of caves). Both concluded that images were placed according to a male/female binary distinction (though they came to opposite conclusions about which animal motifs were thus gendered). The evidence has been questioned, and the value of the approach has diminished, but it remains notable for introducing ideas about art and paleo-religion as expressing deep mental structures. In the 1980s, social sciences research (e.g., Guthrie 1980) laid the foundations for the cognitive study of religion (CSR). Some see it as an heir of structural anthropology,  .  .  . but the core feature of the cognitive approach to religion is the strong emphasis it lays on the empirical research that is being performed in cognitive and evolutionary psychology and cognitive science in general. . . . it is not uncommon to see the cognitive scientists of religion call their approach “the scientific study of religion. (Näreaho 2008, 83) Similarly, one of the most influential approaches to ancient art and religion focuses on shamanism. Also emerging in the 1980s, with an emphasis on adding scientific rigor to anthropological interpretation (e.g., LewisWilliams 1983), it claimed to provide a neuropsychological bridge to the Paleolithic (e.g., Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988; Lewis-Williams 2006).

Shamanism and Art “Shamanism,” broadly defined, is characterized by the use of altered states of consciousness for religious revelation, and unlike in organized religion, power and wisdom is not embodied in a priestly figure, within a hierarchical structure governed by established dogma and formalized rules and practices. In hunter-gatherer societies, religious prescriptions and power invested in religious functionaries are typically absent. Recent interest in shamanism owes much to the armchair anthropology of Eliade (1964), who was not primarily concerned with religion’s origins and who cautioned against overgeneralizing the term to apply to all so-called “medicine men.” However, particularly through the work of Lewis-Williams, many now see shamanism as an urreligion (i.e., the earliest or original religion) synonymous with  – though not restricted to – hunter-gatherer religions, and hence the earliest art, which predates agriculture. Many writers (see Francfort and Hamayon 2001; Kehoe 2000) have criticized such anti-historical overgeneralizations, and extension of the term “shaman” to describe religious practitioners other than those of the Siberian Tungus people, from whom the term originates.

264  Anne Solomon The Lewis-Williamsian hypothesis, locating the origins of art in shamanic visions, grew from his initial efforts to explain San rock art in South Africa (Lewis-Williams 1980) and drew heavily on 19th-century and 20th-century ethnographies of southern African hunter-gatherers (for further detail, and issues of terminology and naming of peoples, see Hitchcock, this volume). The healing “trance dance” of the Ju’/hoansi (Namibia and Botswana) was described by earlier anthropologists (Marshall 1969) and in detail by Katz (1982). Those who mastered trance believed that they encountered supernatural beings that caused disease and misfortune; in trance, they were able to repel or overcome them. San rock art, Lewis-Williams proposed, depicted such vision experiences and functioned to reveal shamanic wisdom to the larger group. The initial hypothesis became a “neuropsychological” model for interpreting rock arts of other times (Ice Age and Neolithic rock arts) and places (North America), addressing the origins of making images (Lewis-Williams and Dowson 1988) and even (tentatively) the 70 kya Blombos engraved ochres (Lewis-Williams and Pearce 2004). A supposed strength of the model was that it offered an account of “geometric” or “abstract” marks and of image forms, as well as their contents. Visual forms, supposedly generated by the brains of all modern humans in ritually induced or psychoactive drug-induced altered states, were allegedly culturally “construed” in images. Shamanic consciousness was itself posited as a driving force in the evolution of cognitive modernity. The shamanistic hypothesis has been popular and controversial in equal measure. The debates arising during its four decades defy summarization. Some matters pertinent to the character of early religion can be considered here, via one key category of images, “therianthropes”: figures with both human and animal features.

Therianthropic Figures Therianthropes (Figure 15.1b) are suggestive evidence for belief in the existence of supernatural beings, but their imaging still requires further explanation. Shamanists claim that they relate to a third stage of trance, in which “people feel themselves to be blended with their imagery” and “often . . . feel themselves to be blended with animals, partially or completely” (LewisWilliams and Clottes 1998, 19). Images function to communicate in ways that words supposedly cannot. This reading is open to multiple challenges. From a neuropsychology perspective, it seems that hallucinatory imagery of this kind is restricted to certain kinds of altered states of consciousness and is not characteristic of ritual trance (Helvenston and Bahn 2002). It also fails to accommodate the inherent ambiguity of images. Plainly, other interpretations of therianthropic figures are possible; although it seems intuitively unlikely, some animal-headed figures may even be “literal” representations of people in animal masks. In terms of art theory, the notion of painting as the mere copying of vision

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 265 contents is contrary to the notion of art (or craft) as inventive use of the (graphic) medium itself; the process of making always involves the thoughtful, considered replication of the subject (Davis 1996). Even if it is accepted that therianthropic figures are supernatural beings of some kind, their features may have had different connotations: Was a figure with leonine features a brave hero, a dangerous spirit or something else entirely? The shamanistic hypothesis, with its homogenizing of huntergatherer religions, occludes the possibility that ancient religion was a more diverse and contingent phenomenon, arising from the specifics of experience, neither determined nor shaped by neurophysiological universals. Similarly, even if the concept of the first ever animal-human figure came to its maker in trance, once in the domain of awareness, no altered state is required; the source of later therianthropic images might equally be preexisting paintings of therianthropes, with which the artists were familiar or the presence of such beings in myths and oral lore (shamanists argue that certain myth motifs are also, wholly or partly, derived from trance (e.g., Lewis-Williams 2010)). It may also be that the contents of trance experience are themselves shaped by preexisting beliefs (e.g., Solomon 1997). The general ahistoricity of the model – here, the failure to accommodate both visual and religious traditions and their independent evolution – has been much criticized. It therefore seems that, as with many grand theories, the shamanistic model’s claimed explanatory potential has ultimately proven illusory in its failure to accommodate complexity.

Sex and/or Gender and Religion The second persistent theme in interpreting early religion via art is that of sex and/or gender. Some early religions celebrated fertility, embodied in female figures. More recently, various claims for worship and early matriarchal religion have been made (e.g., Gimbutas 1974). Although, as always, the evidence is ambiguous, such work has at least directed attention to male bias in interpretation. Such rethinking of the evidence has dove-tailed with a different approach to early religion, away from seeing it as a cognitive and spiritual phenomenon and towards understanding it in terms of power relations within supposedly egalitarian hunter-gatherer societies (for an elaborate Marxist-cum-Darwinian account, see Knight 1991).

Problems in Ethnographic Analogy Ethnographies have long been key to thinking about early religion, from initial speculations about Ice Age art as informed by totemism through to recent shamanistic readings. That ethnographies of recent peoples can provide food for thought about religiosity, and its relation to art, is not in doubt. The implication that peoples of the last few centuries somehow retain elements of early religion is nevertheless problematic, carrying with

266  Anne Solomon it (although not necessarily intentionally) the idea that recent groups are somehow living fossils or Stone Age survivals. This is particularly evident in shamanistic accounts, where 19th-century and 20th-century testimonies are used as analogies for much older, and even early human, religious thought and practice. Other problems are similar to those encountered in interpreting the art. The /Xam testimonies that are invoked in support of a shamanist reading of San rock art are themselves open to more than one interpretation. For example, I contend that the beings described in San oral accounts are not shamans, as Lewis-Williams claims, but instead deceased kin to whom the living would appeal for rain and help in hunting. I also contend that, though the art does not “illustrate” myth, San stories of part human, part animal ancestors indirectly inform San images of therianthropes (Solomon 1997, 2011, 2013). Indeed, ethnographies also alert us to the possibility of more diversity in early religion than grand theories can accommodate. Known hunter-gatherers are not as uniform as has sometimes been assumed  – in multiple domains of life, including religion (cf. Finlayson and Warren 2017).

Conclusions Leroi-Gourhan (1986, 9) wrote three decades ago that “The establishment of the religious character of paleolithic art and the contribution of even incomplete proof constitute a glorious record for the prehistorical scholarship of preceding generations” but conceded that there was a long way to go. This remains true. Prehistoric art provides a glimpse of ancient thought, but our understanding is overwhelmingly hypothetical, and this will surely always be so. Research into the origins and development of religion and art alike consists of modeling new possibilities as much as establishing new facts. Such modeling is nevertheless productive, and necessary, but it is seldom conclusive. The shamanistic hypothesis is a case in point: hailed by many as a leap forward, only to wane as its deficiencies have become increasingly apparent. Initially, it appeared to be not only a bridge to the Paleolithic mind but also a way to bridge art and science, adding scientific rigor to interpretation (Lewis-Williams 1983). In general, the application of scientific methods has certainly enhanced our knowledge of ancient art and religion, most obviously in the application of new analytical techniques and dating methods, which provide a chronological framework for interpretation. However, adding science is clearly not a solution to ever-present issues of interpretation. Also, how much CSR, for example – which draws heavily on the social rather than the hard sciences – has really added to our understanding of religion is unclear, despite contributing interesting and creative mental modular explanations. Evolutionary approaches sometimes seem to worship what Cherry (1985) has called the idol of origins, risking reducing complex phenomena to their supposed origins and conflating antecedents and beginnings with beginnings and causes.

Bones, Pigments, Art and Symbols 267 It has been argued that CSR also sometimes risks “monochromatic theorizing about polychromatic phenomena” (Saler 2010, 337). In the quest to understand the prehistory of religion, this perhaps applies doubly. Art, like religion, may also be seen as a highly complex, polychromatic phenomenon, and some discussions of it would be much enhanced by engaging with more sophisticated approaches to visuality. One of the more controversial issues within CSR concerns whether religion is an evolutionary cognitive by-product. A parallel problem is the way art is treated as an epiphenomenon of ritual (in the shamanistic hypothesis, merely as a medium for communicating the contents of religious experience). The reverse process – the ways images may influence religious consciousness – receives little attention. Similarly, the ways art and other elements of culture may shape cognition are often neglected (Jensen 2009). In other ways too, the relationship of early art and religion is not clear-cut. Excavations at Diepkloof Rock Shelter, South Africa, uncovered 270 fragments of ostrich eggshell engraved with linear marks, dating to c. 60 kya (Texier et al. 2010). They are most likely the remnants of ostrich eggshell water containers, functional everyday items that are not – or at least not obviously – implicated in religious thought or practice. The blurred boundaries between symbolism, art and religion are among various issues ripe for revisitation. Archaeology and ancient arts provide clues to the time frame of the emergence of religious consciousness and something of the timeless concerns with the larger themes of life and death, and survival and prosperity, which preoccupy all humans. Although clinching evidence is absent, it seems more than probable that red pigments, at least sometimes, “stood for” blood, a multivalent symbol of both life and death, which – along with sex and/or gender and accompanying power relations – are apparently perennial existential problems for us and probably other human species. Although some pessimism about uncovering truths about the origins and evolution of religion is appropriate, new finds, new ideas and further interdisciplinary (that is, more than multidisciplinary) engagements will surely continue to provide scholars and general readers with intriguing food for thought.

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16 Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself The Evolution of Christianity Laura Betzig

Introduction One day in 9 ce, Augustus, toward the end of his long reign, got mad in the forum. He had the married men line up on one side and the unmarried men on the other. The bachelors outnumbered the fathers. So to the fathers the first Roman emperor offered honors and offices. But he laid into the bachelors. “Mine has been an astonishing experience, for though I am always doing everything to promote an increase of population among you and am now about to rebuke you, I grieve to see that there are a great many of you.” Bachelorhood was the worst crime on earth. The unmarried were murderous for not raising successors; they were sacrilegious for putting an end to their ancestors’ honors; and they were unpatriotic, destroying the state by disobeying its laws and leaving it without heirs. Romans had never been allowed to neglect having legitimate wives and raising legitimate children: not under the republic and not under the empire, either. “The state cannot survive without numerous marriages” (Dio 56.3–8). That would be repeatedly pointed out by Augustus’s best poets. Virgil hoped that the birth of a child might bring peace to the world: It was time to make love, not war (Eclogues 4.8–9). Horace was much more explicit. If every citizen raised an heir, the state would last; but if marriages were rare, the state would fall apart. “Youth, made few by parents’ vice, shall hear of swords whetted for civil strife,” he wrote in an ode; “Whoever may wish to root out seditious killings and internecine madness, if he wants to be styled Father of Cities on monuments, let him dare to bridle unbroken license,” he wrote in another (Odes 1.2, 3.24). And in the Centennial Hymn, commissioned after Augustus’s Marriage Laws were passed, Horace asked the patroness of childbirth to protect Rome’s parents. “Goddess, rear our young and prosper the senate’s edicts on wedlock, that the new law on the marriage of women produce abundant children” (lines 17–20). Augustus’s prose propagandists made an effort to remember the republican precedents. Dionysius of Halicarnassus, who covered ancient history in his Roman Antiquities, came up with a 700-year-old law of Romulus that made Romans raise all the males in their families or otherwise lose half their

272  Laura Betzig property (2.15.1–2). Valerius Maximus, who collected Memorable Doings and Sayings, wrote about how the censors had made bachelors pay copper coins into the treasury as early as 403: “Nature writes a law for us: as we are born, so must we beget” (2.9.1–2). Cicero’s essay On Oratory remembered how one of the censors for 184 had asked every paterfamilias in Rome, “Do you, to the best of your knowledge, have a wife, for the purpose of bearing children?” (2.260). And Titus Livy, who wrote 142 chapters of Roman history, remembered how Quintus Metellus, another censor, had a lecture, On the Need for Larger Families in 102 bce: “Everybody ought to be forced to marry and create more children” (Livy, Periochae 59). That was the speech, Livy thought, that Augustus read out to the knights. Over the course of Augustus’s long reign, the proud were worn down in many ways. Ostentatious houses were leveled; extravagance was repressed; promiscuous senators were asked to resign from the senate; and offenders against the imperial majesty, or maiestas, were put to death. With the Marriage Laws, the first emperor split up their estates. Rome’s oldest families – the Marcii, the Fabii, the Quintii and the Valerii, families that Augustus was after in his forum speech  – had always become rich, and stayed rich, by keeping their estates intact. They’d passed their names, offices and inheritances onto just one daughter or son. They’d encouraged just one heir to marry and to raise an heir of their own. And the rest – bastards, daughters and younger sons – were left with less. But Augustus laid penalties on caelibes, or people without a lawful husband or wife. And he imposed punishments on orbi, or people without lawful children. Other emperors would persecute them. Within a generation after there was an emperor in Rome, a descendant of king David was born. Jesus would encourage people to pay Caesar’s taxes, but he never told them to obey his Moral Laws. As he put it to his disciples, “Every kingdom divided against itself is laid waste, and no city or house divided against itself will stand” (Matthew 12:25, with Mark 3:24, Luke 11:17). Christians around the Mediterranean became virgins or made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. And emperors from Nero to Diocletian had them thrown to wild animals, burned alive or had them decapitated. For centuries, well-to-do Romans disinherited their children. They passed the bulk of their assets onto one legitimate son, and the rest were expected to fend for themselves. For centuries, Roman emperors sabotaged that. They rewarded parents of large numbers of legitimate children; but they punished orbi and caelibes. They did that with the Moral Laws passed under Augustus, who offered parents of legitimate children promotions to political offices, civic privileges, large legacies and lands. And they did it by persecuting the Church. Men undefiled by women, and virgins devoted to religion, fought with wild animals in the circus, or were turned into human torches. Then the capital was relocated to Constantinople, and the Christians were left alone. Constantine issued an edict in 313 ce at Milan that promised freedom of religion, and Augustus’s penalties for celibacy and childlessness were

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 273 soon afterward annulled in Rome. Monks started to wander off into Egyptian deserts, and daughters were offered to convents. For centuries, the Caesars had disintegrated their competitors’ lands. Then Jesus reassembled them.

The Moral Laws Soon after Julius Caesar won his first civil war at Pharsalus, he was encouraged to look into Roman marriage. Lust had to be curbed and children raised, Cicero insisted in a speech (For Marcellus, 23). A  census of the Roman population was ordered, and fathers of large numbers of legitimate children were rewarded: having three or more children eared fathers good plots of Italian land (Suetonius, Caesar 20.3). But Caesar’s efforts were cut short on the Ides of March. So Caesar’s successor, Augustus, started to push through his own marriage reforms. The lex Julia de maritandis ordinibus of 18 bce laid heavy assessments on the unmarried. But it brought about open revolts, and Augustus was unable to get that part of his legislation enforced. So a full 40 years after his own civil wars were over, the first emperor tried again. Those laws are lost; they survive in bits. The fragments suggest that legitimate mothers and fathers were rewarded with honors, and that legacies were taken away from the unmarried (see Treggiari 1991; Levick 2010; compare Aristotle, Politics 1270b, Polybius, Histories 36.17.10). The Digest cites the law’s last (35th) chapter. People who wrongfully prevented their children from marrying could be forced to arrange marriages for them. Clauses in wills offering money or property on condition that the beneficiaries didn’t marry, or on condition that they didn’t have children, were considered invalid. “Those who do not try to arrange marriages are held to prevent them” (Digest 23.2.19). The numbers of legitimate children became a decisive factor in choosing officers in Rome (Digest 4.4.2, with Pliny, Letter 7.16, Tacitus, Annals 2.51). And there were other, smaller punishments and rewards: bachelors and spinsters lost the right to attend shows and banquets (Dio 54.30.5); and parents were relieved of jury duty (Suetonius, Claudius 51.1). But mostly, celibacy made it harder to come into money. Caelibes were forbidden to take testamentary gifts. “People who are unmarried are, by the lex Julia, relating to wills, prohibited from receiving estates and legacies.” And orbi were forbidden to take more than half. “In the same way, people who have no children, for this reason under the terms of the lex Papia lose half of their legacies and estates” (Gaius, Institutes 2.111, 286). Stoic philosophers understood what was going on. Seneca sent a letter to his mother, Helvia, to congratulate her on rearing a full brood. “You never have been ashamed about the number of your children,” he remembered with gratitude; “you have never tried to conceal your pregnancy as if it were an indecent burden; nor have you crushed the hope of children already conceived” (To Helvia 16.3). Musonius Rufus, one of Seneca’s

274  Laura Betzig Stoic friends, disapproved of family planners: “They impiously contrive the prosperity of their children by the murder of their siblings; that is, they destroy their brothers and sisters, so that the earlier children may have a greater share of the inheritance,” he noted in one of his Discourses (Fragment 15b). A number of senators were sympathetic. Pliny the Younger was full of admiration for the father of many children: “He has chosen to enjoy the blessing of a fruitful marriage at a time when the advantages of remaining childless make most people feel a single child a burden.” Pliny elaborated on those drawbacks in another letter: “Pleasures for the ear and eye need no recommendation, in fact they are better restrained than encouraged in a public speech; but carefully chosen and persuasive words as well as material rewards are needed to prevail on anyone to submit willingly to the tedium and hard work involved in bringing up children” (Pliny, Letters 1.8, 4.15). Pliny’s friend Tacitus remembered a debate in the senate on the onus of becoming a father: “It is ample compensation for the childless that, almost without a care and quite without responsibilities, they should have influence, honors, anything and everything, ready to their hand.” And in his Germania, Tacitus held up barbarian mothers as foils to the barren women in Rome: “To restrict the number of children, or to kill any of those born after the heir, is considered wicked. Good morality is more effective than good laws” (Annals 15.19 with 2.37, Germania 19). Many tried to get around the Marriage Laws. Men took wives the day before lots were cast for public office then divorced them the day after; candidates for public jobs adopted sons then emancipated them after the elections were over (Suetonius, Tiberius 35.2; Tacitus, Annals 15.19). Roman emperors countered with espionage. Under Augustus, inducements to spies were written into the lex Iulia and lex Papia Poppaea; they caused widespread panic (Digest 49.14.15–16). Tiberius appointed a commission to look into accusations (Tacitus Annals 3.28). Caligula was surrounded by delatores, or informers, and Claudius bungled the job by charging fathers with being bachelors on inaccurate tips from his agents (Suetonius, Gaius 30.2, Claudius 16.3). Nero lowered the squealer’s fee by three-quarters (Suetonius, Nero 10.1), but the spies held onto their posts. There was hypocrisy in all this. Neither Marcus Papius nor Quintus ­Poppaeus – the consuls who introduced Augustus’s law in 9 ce – had a wife or legitimate children (Dio 56.10.3). Neither of Augustus’s best propagandists was a family man. Virgil – who was generally known as Parthenias, “The Virgin” – was unmarried, and Horace – who was otherwise known as “Flaccid,” or Flaccus – was short, fat and childless, if not also chaste (Suetonius, Life of Virgil 9–11; Life of Horace). Maecenas  – who paid ­Virgil and Horace  – was notoriously promiscuous: he wore ringlets and lent his wife out to Augustus, but he had no legitimate heirs (Seneca, Moral Letter 114.6, Velleius 2.88.2). The first emperor was the father of just one

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 275 legitimate daughter but was widely considered an adulterer (e.g., Suetonius, Augustus 71.1; Dio 54.16.3, with Betzig 1992a, 1992b, 2014a, 2014b). And they had sexual access to thousands of slaves (Scheidel 1997, 2009). The hypocrisy went deeper than that. Augustus was after the rich. He was maddest at the bachelors who represented Rome’s great families  – the Marcii, the Fabii, the Quintii and the Valerii – and asked, “Do you desire that your families and names alike shall perish?” in his forum speech (Dio 56.7.6). But the poor were left alone. Slaves had never been legally able to marry; and soldiers’ marriages were banned. The law that soldiers couldn’t legally have wives probably goes back to Augustus. Matrimonium non possit: marriage was inappropriate for men in military service (Digest 24.1.61, with Wells 1999). Slaves had never been able to form legal unions: “Conubium is the capacity to marry a wife in Roman law,” and “there is no conubium with slaves” (Tituli Ulpiani 5.3–5, with Gaius, Institutes 1.57). Plebeians were free not to breed. Roman men worth less than 100,000 sesterces and Roman women worth less than 50,000 sesterces could take legacies from anybody: They were exempt from the Marriage Laws (Gnomon of the Idiologus, 32). “The rich are urged by huge rewards to raise children,” as an Antonine emperor was reminded in a speech (Pliny, Panegyric 26.1). But the poor had to fend for themselves. Besides, bastards were explicitly kept off the birth register. Augustus knew his bachelor knights weren’t interested in a solitary existence. “None of you either eats alone or sleeps alone; no, what you want is to have full liberty for wantonness and licentiousness” (Dio 56.7.1). So he made sure that their illegitimate issue, or spurii, were kept off the public lists (Digest, 28.3). Imperial families had always limited the number of their heirs. Augustus’s legitimate grandsons, Lucius and Gaius, died young, so the first emperor ended up having to leave Rome to a stepson. Tiberius was predeceased by Drusus, his only legitimate boy, and was succeeded instead by his brother Germanicus’s son. Caligula, who died young, never had any legitimate children of his own, and Nero fathered just one legitimate daughter, who died four months later. Claudius, who became an emperor unexpectedly at age 50, left behind two legitimate daughters and a legitimate son, but Nero killed all of them. “For which many forgave him, remembering the old discord between brothers, and the indivisibility of the realm” (Tacitus, Annals 13.17). From then on, any emperor survived by two of his wife’s sons left the job to just one. Titus, who was Vespasian’s first son, put up with endless conspiracies by his younger brother, Domitian, who may have had him murdered (Suetonius, Titus 9.3). Marcus Aurelius’s wife, Faustina, gave her husband six sons, and all but Commodus died young. Although Septimius Severus warned his boys not to haggle with each other – “be harmonious, enrich the soldiers” – Caracalla eliminated his younger brother, Geta, along with tens of thousands of his supporters (Dio 77.15.2). In a speech to the

276  Laura Betzig senate, he credited the immortals: “Jupiter, as he is himself sole ruler of the gods, so gives to one ruler sole charge of mankind” (Herodian 4.5.7–8). Senators behaved the same way, whenever they got the chance. There’s some hint of that in their names. A father’s first name always went to his oldest legitimate son. Marcus Tullius Cicero, for instance, was the son of a Marcus (Marci filius), the grandson of a Marcus (Marci nepos), the great-grandson of a Marcus (Marci pronepos) and the father of a Marcus – though Cicero’s brother, who was five years younger, was a Quintus (e.g., Hopkins 1983). There are other hints in high office. Late in the republic, just a quarter of all consuls had more than one son who was also a consul. And early in the empire, just eight out of 393 consuls had more than one consular son. People didn’t pass offices on to all of their children; they passed them on to one (e.g., Hopkins 1978). There are more hints in wills. A number of will makers favored their sons over their daughters (Champlin 1991). In the Digest, one father disinherited his daughter because he intended her to be “satisfied” with her dowry; another asked his daughter to be happy with a string of pearls (Digest, 28.5.61(61), 30.108.13). Other will makers had a bias toward older over younger sons. One father, “having instituted Primus as heir,” named “Secundus the substitute heir” (Digest, 28.2.8). Another made one son his heir and added, “let all the others, sons and my daughters, be disinherited” (Digest, 28.2.25.pr). The Digest is full of disinherited children. Parents with estates to pass on favored their firstborn sons. But celibacy wasn’t uncommon. There were bachelors all over the forum.

The Persecutions A few would end up in the Church. Like Jesus’s cousin, John the Baptist, some wore leather girdles and camelhair garments and lived on locusts and wild honey; like Jesus’s mother, Mary, others were παρθένος (parthenos), or virgins. Like Paul’s correspondents  – from Thessalonica to Galatia to Philippi to Corinth to Rome – they guarded against ἁσέλγεια (aselgeia), or lust, and did their best to stay αγνος (hagnos), or chaste; like Paul’s rough contemporaries – who wrote the gospels attributed to Mark, Matthew and Luke – they encouraged each other to leave brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and children and spouses behind and find them in the age to come (Mark 10:29–31, with Matthew 19:29–30, Luke 14:26–27). Christians drew inspiration from these words in one of Paul’s letters: “To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:8–9, with Brown 1997; Ehrman 2011). And they remembered that Matthew had put this speech in Jesus’s mouth: “There are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 277 kingdom of heaven. He who is able to receive this, let him receive it” (Matthew 19:12, with Brown 1988; Cowdrey 1998). For that, from the Great Fire to the Great Persecution, they would be harassed and hunted down, stripped and beaten and stoned. In the gospels and in the epistles, many of the early Christians were married. Simon Peter had a mother-in-law who was cured of a fever by Jesus (Matthew 8:14, Mark 1:30, Luke 4:38). The “brother of Jesus-who-iscalled-the-messiah,” who was Jerusalem’s first bishop, James the Just, didn’t drink or eat meat, shave or bathe, but he seems to have had a wife (Josephus, Jewish Antiquities 20.9.1, with Mark 6:3, 1 Corinthians 9:5 and a description in Jerome, On Illustrious Men 2). The other apostles may all have been married; Philip, one of seven honest men who looked after the Jerusalem church, had four virgin daughters who prophesized at Caesarea (Acts 6:3–5, 21:8–9). Even Paul – who told the Corinthians it was better to remain unmarried – might have been married, once. He referred to his “true yokefellow” and asked, “Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a wife, as the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas?” (Philippians 4:3, 1 Corinthians 7:8–9, 9:5–6; on the first Christians see Meeks 1983; Olson 2008). But others were unattached. Anna the Prophetess, a widow of 84 or older who fasted and prayed night and day, looked for redemption in the boy Jesus at Jerusalem (Luke 2:36–38), and John the Baptist was apparently unmarried (Matthew 3:4, Mark 1:6, Luke 1:36). Jesus’s mother, Mary, supposedly conceived as a virgin: Joseph, her husband, “knew her not” before she gave birth (Matthew 1:18–25, Luke 1:26–38, with Isaiah 7:14). And Jesus was probably a bachelor (compare Phipps 1970; King 2014). After he was delivered up for crucifixion by Pontius Pilate, Tiberius’s prefect of Judea, his followers were immediately harassed (see Frend 1960; Ste Croix 2006). Within a generation after Jesus was crucified, Stephen the deacon was thrown out of town and stoned; then the great persecution started in Jerusalem (Acts 7:58, 8:1). James, the brother of John, was run through with a sword, and Simon Peter was locked up – though he later escaped, made his way to the capital and founded a church (Acts 12:2–7). Paul would suffer wherever he traveled. He was beaten 39 times with lashes and three times with rods; at Damascus, he escaped through a window in a basket, and he was shipwrecked at Malta on his way to Rome. He was hungry and thirsty, cold and exposed, harassed in the wilderness and hunted in towns (2 Corinthians 11:25–33). He was dragged before the authorities at Thessalonica and shamefully treated at Philippi – stripped and beaten in the marketplace, accused of “customs which it is not lawful for us Romans to accept or practice” and thrown into prison; at Corinth, he was brought before a tribunal headed by Claudius’s proconsul, Annaeus Gallio, the Stoic philosopher Seneca’s brother: “I refuse to be a judge of these things,” he said, and sent him on his way (Acts 16:19–23, 17:1–6, 18:15, 1 Thessalonians 2:2). But Paul was beheaded in Rome – where he was sent by Porcius Festus, Nero’s

278  Laura Betzig governor of Judea, to be tried as an agitator. “You have appealed to Caesar; to Caesar you shall go” (Acts 24:5, 25:12). Nero was the first emperor to inflict punishments on Christians in Rome. The notoriously depraved adherents of a destructive superstition, members of a sect that was everywhere spoken against, they were arrested after the Great Fire of 64 ce, odio humani generis – because they detested the human race. Some were dressed in wild animals’ skins and torn to pieces by dogs in the circus; others were turned into torches (Tacitus, Annals 15.44). Peter was hung upside down, “at his own request,” on a cross (Acts of Peter, 37–38), and Paul – “having taught righteousness to the whole world” – had his head cut off (Clement, Letter to the Corinthians 5). Roughly a generation later, Flavia Domitilla  – a niece of the emperor, Domitian, who ended the next dynasty in Rome – was accused of “atheism” and thrown out of town; Titus Flavius Clemens – who was Domitian’s cousin, and Domitilla’s husband – was executed in 96 ce on the same charge (Dio 67.14). Other evidence of Flavian persecution comes from a man who called himself John, sent off to bear witness on the Aegean island of Patmos. In his vision, the smoking whore of Babylon had burned to the ground: “For all nations have drunk the wine of her impure passion, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her.” But 144,000 of the unblemished were redeemed on Mount Zion, where they played harps: “These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins” (Revelation 1:1–2, 9, 14.3–4, 18:3–9, 19:7–9). After the turn of the 1st century, when Pliny the Younger wrote from the provinces to ask the emperor Trajan for advice, he worried that “a great many individuals of every age and class” were being accused of Christianity in Asia Minor and that a disturbing number were martyrs. So the emperor wrote back: “These people must not be hunted out” (Pliny, Letters 10.96–97). But there were a number of martyrs under the adoptive emperors, and many were bachelors. Ignatius  – who succeeded Simon Peter as Antioch’s bishop – was martyred under Trajan in Rome, and Ignatius’ friend Polycarp – who was promoted as bishop of Smyrna by another of Jesus’s disciples – was martyred there in his 86th year. “If any one is able to abide in chastity to the honor of the flesh of the Lord, let him so abide,” Ignatius had said, and Polycarp agreed: “it is a good thing to be cut off from the lusts of the world” (Ignatius, Letter to Polycarp 5; Polycarp, Letter to the Philippians 5). The philosopher Justin, who corresponded with Antoninus Pius, knew countless people with celibate habits – “many, both men and women, who have been Christ’s disciples from childhood, remain pure at the age of 60 or 70 years ” – and was one of a group of seven beheaded in Rome for their faith (Justin Martyr, 1 Apology 15, 2 Apology 12). Another 48 would be martyred by Pius’s son-in-law and successor, Marcus Aurelius, in Lyon. Ponthius, the nonagenarian bishop, was beaten and died in his cell; Vettius Epagathus, who headed an episcopal dynasty in Gaul, lost his head; Attalus, a pillar of the church at Pergamum, was led into

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 279 the amphitheater and offered to the beasts more than once; and Blandina was scourged, set on the roasting seat, bound in a net and tossed around by a bull. They went out rejoicing, glory and grace being blended in their faces, so that even their bonds seemed like beautiful ornaments, as those of a bride adorned with variegated golden fringes; and they were perfumed with the sweet savor of Christ (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.1.55). There were more martyrs under Marcus Aurelius’s son, Commodus, in Africa, where they defended themselves to the provincial governor: “We have never done wrong; we have never leant ourselves to wickedness.” All 12 were executed by the sword (Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs, 2). Under the Severan emperors, more celibates died for the cause. Men and women, young and old, poor or highborn, were passing over to the Christian faith; they filled towns and cities, companies and camps, the palace and the senate: “The outcry is that the state is filled with Christians” (Tertullian, Apology 1, 37). Many of them were unmarried. As far as Tertullian, the church father from Carthage, was concerned: “How many men, and how many women, in ecclesiastical orders, owe their position to continence, who have preferred to be wedded to Go,; who have restored the honor of their flesh, and who have already dedicated themselves as sons of that future age, by slaying in themselves the concupiscence of lust, with that whole propensity which could not be admitted within paradise!” (Tertullian, Exhortation to Chastity 13). Many others were persecuted. Of them, 22-year-old Vibia Perpetua, a newlywed with a son at her breast, and Felicitas, a newly delivered unwed mother, were stripped, bound in nets and tossed about by a mad heifer in Carthage (Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Blandina 2, 20). The blood of the just was poured out in Rome: “Both virgins and women shall be corrupted in openness and shall be shamefully mocked” (Hippolytus On Daniel 4.51). In Corinth, a virtuous young woman was handed over to the magistrate: “Take her, and bring me 3 coins by her every day,” he told the manager of a πορνείο, or porneion, or house of ill repute, who wanted a fair profit. “But she went forth uncorrupted from that place, and was preserved perfectly stainless by the grace of Christ” (Hippolytus, The Story of a Maiden of Corinth). In Egypt, the prefect threatened to hand over another young woman, Potaminaea, to his gladiators, to rape her. “Boundless was the struggle she endured against her lovers in defense of her bodily purity and chastity in which she was preeminent, for the perfection of her body as well as her soul was in full flower” (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.5). As Tertullian concluded: In condemning a Christian woman to the leno rather than to the leo you made confession that a taint on our purity is considered among us something more terrible than any punishment and any death. Nor does your cruelty, however exquisite, avail you; it is rather a temptation to us. The oftener we are mown down by you, the more in number we grow; the blood of Christians is seed. (Tertullian, Apology 50)

280  Laura Betzig The emperor Decius posted an edict in December of 249 ce that ordered sacrifice, throughout the empire, to the emperor’s gods, and many apostatized. On 44 bits of papyrus signed and dated, people insisted, “I have always and without interruption sacrificed, and poured libations, and manifested piety toward the gods” (Knipfing 1923; Rives 1999). The emperor was after worshippers, not martyrs (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.39–41). But Origen, the Alexandrian church father, incited his students to die for the cause. He knew that many would be unmarried and that the quarry would be large: “Among Christians, those who maintain a perpetual virginity do so for no human honors, for no fee or reward, from no motive of vainglory, but as they choose to retain God” (Origen, Against Celsus 7.48). He’d already set an example. Origen had taken Matthew 19:12 to heart and thus castrated himself (Origen, Exhortation to Martyrdom 49, Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 6.8). For the first 13  years of his reign, Diocletian seems to have left Christians alone. But from February of 303 to the spring of 304, a set of four edicts ordered churches razed to the ground and scriptures burned. People had to choose among gods: they could go free if they picked the emperor’s but were mutilated by countless tortures if they did not. Altars were set up in the courts so that subjects could apostatize before their cases came up. The reluctant were mutilated, scourged, suffocated, burned or thrown to the leopards, bears, bulls or wild boars. Many were bachelors. Virgins in Rome became martyrs – with the fearlessness of Agnes, who “protected her chastity, and exchanged life for immortality” and died by the sword though she was just 12  years old (Ambrose, On Duties 1.41, with On Virginity 2.5–9). There may also have been other martyrs as far away as Britain  – where Alban, later praised as a virgin, was tortured with “many others of both sexes” and decapitated (Bede, History 1.7). Diocletian’s judges gave Alexandrian women, “virgins who had devoted themselves to the duties of religion, to pimps”; in Palestine, “others who were in mature life were turned into eunuchs” (Eusebius, Martyrs of Palestine 5.3, 7.4). The prisons were crowded, tortures were invented, multitudes were burned alive and many were knotted to millstones and drowned (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 15). Then in the spring of 305 ce, Diocletian stepped down. The Christians had won. In the spring of 313 ce, Constantine drew up an edict at Milan. “We grant to the Christians and all others liberty to follow that mode of religion which to each of them appeared best” (Lactantius, Deaths of the Persecutors 48, with Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 10.5). On the first day of April in 320 ce, Constantine posted the following order in Rome: “Those people who were formerly considered celibates by the ancient law shall be freed from the threatening terrors of the law” (Theodosian Code 16.2.4).

Discussion Plenty of evidence suggests that the Roman Empire, like other empires, should be considered eusocial. Eusocial societies are characterized by highly

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 281 prolific breeders, supported and protected by large numbers of workers – who make up a permanently sterile caste (Sherman et al. 1995; Choe and Crespi 1997; Rubenstein and Abbot 2017). Roman emperors had sexual access to their wives, to the wives of their friends, to the wives of their enemies and to thousands of slaves. But they were fed and defended by an enormous corps of eunuchs – under a prefect of the sacred bedchamber (or praepositus sacri cubiculi), a manager of the sacred household (or castrensis sacri palatii), a manager of the imperial wardrobe (or comes sacrae vestis) and a manager of the imperial estates (or comes domorum) – who swarmed around the palace like honeybees, with no chance to reproduce (Jones 1964; Betzig 2013, in press). Plenty of other evidence suggests that Europeans in the Middle Ages should be considered cooperative breeders. Parents in cooperatively breeding societies are less prolific than eusocial kings and queens, and they’re provided for and guarded by smaller groups of helpers – who are temporarily, or facultatively, sterile (Hrdy 2010; Clutton-Brock 2016; Koenig and Dickinson 2016). Medieval lords hoarded trollops (or gadales) in palaces from Paris to Aachen to Goslar and corrupted serfs in the women’s rooms (or gynaecea) that they set up on hundreds of estates. But those lords were supplied and secured by a small army of chamberlains (or camerarii), and counts of the palace (or comites palatii), counts of the stables (or comites stabli) and custodians of the palace (or mansionarii) – who were celibate, or unmarried, if not always chaste, or uninterested in sex (Betzig 2013, 2014b, with Betzig et al. 2019; Betzig in press). Successful emperors divided and conquered the family assets of ambitious subjects; successful subjects resisted that. For centuries after Augustus became an emperor, his successors went after orbi and caelibes. They did that with the Moral Laws, and they did it with the Christian persecutions. Households were divided against themselves. Then Constantine and his eunuchs moved off to Constantinople, and the celibates took over out west.

References Acts of Peter. 2005. In The Apocryphal New Testament, MR James, trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Acts of the Scillitan Martyrs. 1972. In Acts of the Christian Martyrs, H Musurillo, trans. Oxford: Clarendon. Ambrose of Milan. 1969. “On Duties of the Clergy and On Virginity.” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, H de Romestin, E de Romestin and H Duckworth, trans. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans. Aristotle. 1969. Politics, JB Jowett, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Bede. 1969. A History of the English Church and People, L Shirley-Price, trans. Harmondworth: Penguin. Betzig, L. 1992a. Roman Polygyny. Ethology and Sociobiology 13: 309–349. Betzig, L. 1992b. Roman Monogamy. Ethology and Sociobiology 13: 351–383.

282  Laura Betzig Betzig, L. 2013. Darwin’s Question: How Can Sterility Evolve? In Foundations of Human Behavioral Evolution in the Works of R. D. Alexander, ed. by K Summers and B Crespi, 365–374. New York: Oxford University Press. Betzig, L. 2014a. Suffodit Inguina: Genital Attacks on Roman Emperors and Other Primates. Politics and the Life Sciences 33: 1–15. Betzig, L. 2014b. Eusociality in History. Human Nature 25: 80–99. Betzig, L. in press. “Eusociality in Humans.” In Handbook of Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behavior, ed. by L Workman, W Reader and JH Barkow. New York: Cambridge University Press. Betzig, L, W Scheidel and D Smail. 2019. “Evolution and History.” In Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, ed. by T Shackelford. New York: Sage. Brown, P. 1988. The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity. New York: Columbia University Press. Brown, RE. 1997. An Introduction to the New Testament. New York: Anchor Bible Reference Library. Champlin, E. 1991. Final Judgments: Duty and Emotion in Roman Wills. Berkeley: University of California Press. Choe, J, and B Crespi. 1997. Evolution of Social Behavior in Insects and Arachnids. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cicero. 1942. On Oratory, H Rackham, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Clement of Rome. 1950. Letter to the Corinthians, K Lake, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Clutton-Brock, TH. 2016. Mammal Societies. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons. Cowdrey, HEJ. 1998. Gregory VII: 1073–1085. London: Oxford University Press. Digest of Justinian.1985. T Mommsen, P Kreuger and A Watson, trans. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Dio. 1914. Roman History. E Cary, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Dionysius of Halicarnassus. 1937. Roman Antiquities. E Cary, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Ehrman, B. 2011. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 5th ed. New York: Oxford University Press. Eusebius of Caesarea. 1927. Martyrs of Palestine, H Lawler and J Oultron, trans. London: SPCK. Eusebius of Caesarea. 1932. Ecclesiastical History, K Lake, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Frend, WHC. 1960. Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church. Oxford: Blackwell. Gaius. 1946. Institutes, F de Zulueta, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Gnomon of the Idiologus. 1968. Fontes Iuris Romani Antejustiniani, S Riccobono, trans. Florence: Barbera. Herodian of Antioch. 1969. History of the Roman Empire, CR Whittaker, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hippolytus. 1968. “On Daniel and The Story of a Maiden of Corinth.” In Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, JH MacMahon, trans. Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdman’s. Hopkins, K. 1978. Conquerors and Slaves. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hopkins, K. 1983. Death and Renewal. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Horace. 2004. Centennial Hymn and Odes, N Rudd, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hrdy, SB. 2010. Mothers and Others. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Every Kingdom Divided Against Itself 283 Ignatius of Antioch. 2003. Letters. The Apostolic Fathers, B Ehrman, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Jerome. 1999. On Illustrious Men, T Halton, trans. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. Jones, AHM. 1964. The Latter Roman Empire. Oxford: Blackwell. Josephus. 1930. Jewish Antiquities, H Thackeray, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1930. Justin Martyr. 1997. The First and Second Apologies, LW Barnard, trans. New York: Paulist Press. King, KL. 2014. “Jesus Said to Them, ‘My Wife. . . ’: A New Coptic Gospel Papyrus.” Harvard Theological Review 107: 131–159. Knipfing, J. 1923. “The Libelli of the Decian Persecutions.” Harvard Theological Review 16: 345–390. Koenig, WD, and J Dickinson. 2016. Cooperative Breeding in Vertebrates. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lactantius. 1984. On the Deaths of the Persecutors, J Creed, trans. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Levick, B. 2010. Augustus: Image and Substance. London: Routledge. Livy. 1959. Periochae, AC Schlessinger, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Marci, A, ed. 1836. Tituli Ulpiani. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. “Martyrdom of Saints Perpetua and Blandina.”1972. In Acts of the Christian Martyrs, H Musuriillo, text and trans. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Meeks, W. 1983. The First Urban Christians. New Haven: Yale University Press. Musonius R. 1947. “Discourses.” In Musonius Rufus, CB Lutz, trans. New Haven: Yale University Press. Olson, C. 2008. Celibacy and Religious Traditions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Origen. 1979. Exhortation to Martyrdom, RA Greer, trans. London: SPCK. Origen. 1994. “Against Celsus.” In Ante-Nicene Fathers, F Crombie, trans. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers. Phipps, W. 1970. Was Jesus Married? New York: Harper & Row. Pliny. 1969. Letters and Panegyric, B Radice, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Polybius. 1992. Histories, WR Paton, trans. Cambridge: Harvard. Polycarp. 2003. “Letter to the Philippian Church.” In The Apostolic Fathers, B Ehrman, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Rives, JB. 1999. “The Decree of Decius and the Religion of Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 89: 135–154. Rubenstein, D, and P Abbot. 2017. Comparative Social Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Scheidel, W. 1997. “Quantifying the Sources of Slaves in the Roman Empire.” Journal of Roman Studies 97: 159–169. Scheidel, W. 2009. “Sex and Empire: A Darwinian Perspective.” In The Dynamics of Ancient Empires: State Power from Assyria to Byzantium, ed. by W Scheidel and I Morris, 255–324. New York: Oxford University Press. Seneca. 1969. Moral Letters, R Campbell, trans. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Seneca. 1996. “To Helvia.” In Moral Essays, JW Basore, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Sherman, PW, EA Lacey, HK Reeve and L Keller. 1995. “The Eusociality Continnum.” Behavioral Ecology 6: 102–108.

284  Laura Betzig Ste Croix, G de. 2006. Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Suetonius. 1979. The Twelve Caesars, R Graves, trans. Revised by M Grant. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Suetonius. 1992. “Lives of Virgil and Horace.” In Lives of Illustrious Men, JC Rolfe, trans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Tacitus. 1937. Annals, J Jackson, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tertullian. 1931. Apology, T Glover, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Tertullian. 1991. “Exhortation to Chastity.” In Ante-Nicene Fathers, S Thelwall, trans. Grand Rapids: Eerdman’s. Theodosian Code. 1969. C Pharr, trans. New York: Greenwood Press. Treggiari, S. 1991. Roman Marriage: Iusti Coniuges From the Time of Cicero to the Time of Ulpian. Oxford: Clarendon. Valerius Maximus. 2000. Memorable Doings and Sayings, DR Bailey, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Velleius Paterculus. 1924. Compendium of Roman History, FW Shipley, trans. London: Heinemann. Virgil. 1999. Eclogues, GP Goold, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wells, C. 1999. “Celibate Soldiers: Augustus and the Army.” American Journal of Ancient History 14: 180–190.

Conclusion Jay R Feierman and Luis Oviedo

Some Historical Remarks The study of religion has evolved from a long season, in which it was mainly understood as a hermeneutic activity or an interpretation of texts that were taken as divinely revealed, toward a rationally motivated reflection on its meaning and function, beyond any normative text or authority, and giving place to analysis at different levels. Probably the first attempts in modern times produced the so-called philosophy of religion as a program aimed at understanding religion “inside the limits of reason” (Kant). Those first steps trying to render a view of religion in more “rational” terms were followed through the 19th century by successive programs aimed at showing the structure and hidden motives that explained religion and its function in society. In many cases, such projects served the interests of those who, looking for social progress, considered religion a hindrance that needed to be overcome and replaced by better means. Revealing how religion worked could help to get rid of what was perceived, at least by some, as a social burden. As J Samuel Preus (1996 [1987], xv) writes in Explaining Religion, more and more European, non-theologian scholars began to ask, “if God is not a given, how is one to explain religions?” It was not a commitment to the belief that God does not exist. One of the earliest European non-­theologians, Edward Herbert, who tried to explain Christianity more naturalistically, is the “father of deism.” Preus (1996) and Waardenburg (1999) give a history of the centuries-long slow reformulation of religion from the insider theologians to the outsider non-theologians, the latter of which were using methodological and metaphysical naturalism. The described development finds its more mature expression in the new discipline of the sociology of religion, with its main contributions coming at the end of the 19th and beginning of 20th century from Durkheim, Weber and Simmel. These authors were trying to explain religion as a social phenomenon with identifiable traits and common dynamics in most social settings. This attempt can be considered the first scientific approach to explaining religion in its social dimension.

286  Jay R Feierman and Luis Oviedo

The Issue of a Naturalistic Treatment of Religion The social sciences, like sociology and anthropology, were applied conspicuously to the study of religion along the 20th century. Psychology started its own program, perhaps with William James, and followed with the critical attempts by Freud and many others who tried to psychodynamically formulate the psychological dimensions of this human experience. However, these programs could be seen not as explaining religion per se, just its social and psychological aspects. This is right only to some extent. Indeed, the maturation of these scientific and scientific-like (i.e. Freudian) approaches brought more and more to a naturalistic understanding of religion, or to the idea that we could explain religion in sheer rational or scientific and scientificlike terms, without resorting to any supernatural means or reference. Recent decades have seen a flourishing of new approaches to the naturalistic study of religion, notably the cognitive, biological-evolutionist and the neuroscientific. Often, these different approaches have been combined and have produced more broadly scoped explanations, followed by looking for empirical and experimental evidence to endow them with scientific luster and authority.

Explaining Religion and Its Challenges “Explanations” are statements or accounts that make something (religion in this case) clear. They are used as reasons or justifications for given actions or beliefs. Yet there are no agreed-on criteria to make something (like religion) clear. Clarity is often based on not creating cognitive dissonance with already-held beliefs. As a result, clarity, like information, is recipient dependent. This is especially true for religion. Neither are there agreed-on criteria for judging the superiority of one explanation over another. What posits epistemological and methodological challenges for all scientific endeavors become still harder when religion is the object of study. Whether we have to explain religious experience (i.e., the subjective dimensions in believers); objective contents; sets of beliefs that are held by those who believe; social expressions, like churches and congregations; or rituals or behavioral rules and practices is not clear. A  good theory, rather than just an explanation of religion, should account for all this, but in that case, nobody knows what such a theory would be like given these quite different aspects that encompass so many distinct realms. In reality, a theory of everything (about religion) has yet to be found. The other great difficulty in a naturalistic approach lies in trying to provide good empirical data and to undertake experimental research. Such a problem has been revealed many times and renders the empirical approach to religion difficult. That does not mean that this is impossible. Indeed, we can observe a lot of religious behavior, but it becomes more problematic to rely on the subjective self reports of believers. The contrast between internal

Conclusion 287 perception and external expression continues to haunt many scholars of the scientific study of religion. Furthermore, the field has recently been shaken by troubles and methodological problems, such as replicability issues and so-called priming methods. The described difficulties should not discourage those who try to build a more naturalistic and scientific understanding of religious expressions, but we need to be more careful and conscious of the potential problem. If a naturalistic approach to religion is conceivable and desirable, the discipline’s practitioners should become more modest and aware of its limits and of how it might interface and create dialogue with a long tradition of religious wisdom.

Applying Scientific Theories to Religion For a scientific theory  – such as a scientific theory of religion or some of its component parts  – to be “useful” (Popper 1985 [1934]), which is the correct word rather than “true,” it has to make falsifiable predictions. The predictions should (1) be about that which has not yet occurred, (2) be counterintuitive (i.e., not able to be made by common sense) and (3) not able to be made by simple observation and inductive inference. However, Popper’s is not the only philosophy of science (e.g., Kuhn Lakatos, Feyerabend and others). Although all of these standards are high and difficult to meet, the new scientific study of religion has recently seen a great expansion. Many of its authors have been successful at publishing in the best academic journals and getting generous funds to undertake their research. Many of their findings have challenged centuries-old shared theological traditions and values, which is good because to stay viable and relevant, theology must adapt to modernity. It can no longer isolate itself from the body of knowledge outside of itself. Comparing the scientific study of religion to scientific studies of language, economies and polity, at least some scholars in the future should try to do more than simply “explain” religion (the explanandum) by theories developed in other disciplines (the explanans). In the meantime, only scientific theories whose predictive potencies have been well tested on numerous species of the same genera (using these taxonomic terms broadly) from which the theory was developed should be used with impunity to “explain” post hoc any phenomenon and its evolution, including religion.

The Naturalist Study of Religion and Theologians as Colleagues Some believers and theologians might perceive the project of a naturalistic approach to religion as an intrusion into an area that is not theirs and even a “profanation” of what they consider sacred. From a more academic

288  Jay R Feierman and Luis Oviedo perspective, theologians and other traditional scholars of religion view the new scientific approach with suspicion and sometimes with declared hostility, especially when claims from scientists clearly conflict with long-held views that are supported by a long history of religious scholarship. The seeming conflict between the traditional study of religion and the new naturalistic methods lead to Stephen Jay Gould’s (1997) “Non-overlapping Magisteria,” a widely circulated proposed solution to the conflict: Science deals with “facts,” and religion deals with “values.” Unfortunately, many developments in science have clearly entered the value territory traditionally reserved for religion, and many religious beliefs are held as justified facts. However, religion’s value is not always dependent on the historical accuracy of the so-called facts within ancient religious mythical stories. For many of these ancient stories, their values, which can be profound, appear to be in the principles rather than in their historical accuracy. Starting in the 1970s, some scientists, theologians and clergy began dialogues, which is much more vibrant in Europe than in other parts of the world. Christianity is also much more involved in this interchange than Judaism or Islam. But an open question still looms: To what extent can theology learn from a study of religion that uses evolutionary and other scientific theories and scientific methods? In our opinion, evolutionary views introduce a much-needed dynamic dimension to religion and its evolution, against a too-static view unable to perceive changes and adaptations. Such new views could represent a challenge to many theologians, who are too used to seeing revelation – at least within Christianity – as a static and immovable corpus. What many theologians see as fixed-in-stone revelation, natural scientists are more inclined to see as temporally dependent, inspired writing. Obviously, religion’s evolution – and still more Christian evolution – has followed many more paths and has been influenced by many more factors than can be accounted for completely by Darwinian evolution or cognitive science of religion perspectives. Nevertheless, the forms and functions of religion have changed over time, and they can be traced back in history. This knowledge can help to reconstruct many dust-covered religious elements and factors in a new light. For theologians, this probably requires a change of mind and a greater openness to science. As has been the case in past stages in theological development, new models of thought have enriched the tools available and can allow for a better understanding of how faith and religion proceed in each historical time period and context.

Conclusion This is the second multi-authored edited volume on the evolution of religion. The first one was edited by Bulbulia et al. (2008). In the following year, two more multi-authored edited volumes on the evolution of different aspects of religion were published (Feierman 2009; Voland and Shiefenhövel 2009).

Conclusion 289 Most recent is a large multi-authored Festschrift honoring Armin W. Geertz (Petersen et al. 2019). We hope that at least some of what we have done in this edited volume has advanced the field, and we await what the future holds for the evolutionary study of religion, religiosity and theology.

References Bulbulia, J, R Sosis, E Harris, R Genet, C Genet and K Wyman, eds. 2008. The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques. Santa Margarita, CA: Collins Foundation Press. Feierman, JR. ed. 2009. The Evolution of Religious Behavior: The Biological Origins of Faith and Religion. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO. Gould, SJ. 1997. “Nonoverlapping Magisteria.” Natural History 106 (March): 16–22 and 60–62. Petersen, AK, IS Gilhus, LH Martin, JS Jensen and J Sorensen. 2019. Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis. Leiden and Boston: Brill. Popper. 1985 [1934]. “Scientific Method.” In Popper Selections, ed. by D Miller, 133–142. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Preus, JS. 1996 [1987]. Explaining Religion: Criticism and Theory from Bodin to Freud. Atlanta: Scholars Press. Voland, E, and W Shiefenhövel, eds. 2009. The Biological Evolution of Religious Mind and Behavior. Berlin and Heidelberg: Springer. Waardenburg, J. 1999. Classical Approaches to the Study of Religion: Aims, Methods and Theories of Research. New York and Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.

Index

Note: Boldface page references indicate tables. Italic references indicate figures. Abraham 167 Abrahamic religions: childhood punishment in 165 – 166; fundamentalists in 45 – 46; moral code and 77; in 19th century 92 – 93; overlap with karmic religions 165 – 166; salvation in 154, 159 – 162; as “winning” 46; see also specific type absolute truth 39 – 41, 45 – 47 Adam 78, 156 – 158, 165 adaptation 10, 26, 32, 38, 54, 63 – 64, 202, 223 afterlife see death affective systems 225 ahimsa 77 Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) 213 Alcorta, CS 45 Alexander, RD 72 Allah 48, 77 alone, capacity to be 211 – 212 aminergic receptor polymorphisms 131 Amish people 29 – 30 Angel, HF 13, 105 Anna the Prophetess 277 anthropology 191, 233, 261; “armchair anthropology” 191; see also archaeological evidence for origins of religion anxiety 226; see also death anxiety apophaticism 191 Aquinas, Thomas 91, 175, 183 – 184, 185, 186 – 187 Arab childrearing norms 160 archaeological evidence for origins of religion: art 258 – 261, 261, 265; artifacts, other 258; Atapuerca Mountains 257; Blombos pieces

259, 264; burials 257 – 258; Cradle of Humankind 257; early religion 260 – 261; ethnographies, problems in 265 – 266; fossil sites 257 – 258; grave goods 258; iconography 262; overview 256, 266 – 267; pigments 258 – 259; rituals 258; shamanism 263 – 264; symbols and, capacity to use 256 – 257; therianthropic figures 261, 264 – 265; 20th-century interpretations 262 – 263 Aristotle 141 art: Blombos pieces 259, 264; cave 260; “cultural big bang” in 177; European Paleolithic 262; gender and 265; iconography 262; pigments 258 – 260; religion evolution and 267; rock (Southern Africa) 243, 249 – 250, 264; sex and 265; shamanism and 263 – 264; therianthropic figures 261, 264 – 265; 20th-century interpretations 262 – 263; Upper Paleolithic 260 – 261; Venus of Hohle Fels sculpture 260, 261 astrophysics/astrophysicists 201 Atapuerca Mountains (Spain) fossil site 257 Athabascan-speaking indigenous peoples’ beliefs 41 Atwood, G 213 Augsburger Religionsfrieden 91 Augustine of Hippo, St. 215 – 218 Augustus 271 – 275, 281 Australopithecus 206 Australopithicenes 214 automatic retribution 166 autonomic nervous system 55

Index  291 autopoietic process 23 awe: change and, lasting 150; in chimpanzees 147, 149 – 150; describing 138; emotions and evolution of the belief in God 222, 230 – 231; meaning and 139 – 140; meaning in life and 138, 140; as meaning-making emotion 138 – 139, 143 – 145; natural wonders and 140; preexisting meaning systems and 138; psychology of meaning and 140 – 143, 149 – 150; psychology of 139 – 140; religious meaning systems and 145 – 146; stimuli eliciting 138 – 139 Axelrod, RD 72 – 73 Azari, NP 105 – 106 Barbour, Ian 195 Barrett, Lisa Feldman 224 – 226, 233 basolateral amygdaloid (BLA) complex 225 Begriffsgeschichte 90 behavior: aggressive 70 – 71; altruistic 72 – 73; antisocial 43 – 44, 76; autonomic nervous system and 55; awe and 146, 148 – 149; charging 149; constitutive 39, 45; cultural evolution and 21 – 23, 25; cultural transmission of 2 – 3; disobedient 156, 160, 162 – 163; evolution of human 29 – 30; genes and 131; group 110 – 111, 147, 149; interaction of mind and culture and 24; meaning systems and 141 – 142, 145 – 148; moral 31, 70 – 72, 74, 77, 79 – 81; paralimbic system and 43 – 44; processes of believing and 104 – 105, 108 – 109, 139; ritual 45, 76 – 77, 79, 110, 257258; symbolic language and 12; see also specific type behavioral spectrum 131 beliefs: ability to believe and 98 – 100; absolute truth and 39 – 41, 46 – 47; of Athabascan-speaking indigenous peoples 41; belief systems and 110 – 112; belief-word-prefaced propositions 39 – 41; biological background information 37 – 39; Christian 41, 88; conditional truth status of 47; confidence about 104 – 105; copying errors and 41; crazy-sounding 40; Darwinian evolution and 37; eusociality and

41 – 42; evolution of 44 – 45; five theses about origin and evolution of 198 – 199; fluid compensation and 142 – 143; in-groups and 43, 48; knowledge about facts versus 113; linguistic sense of 97; models proposed to understand 13; Native American 41; as non-physical functional concept 13, 38; out-groups and 43; overview 49 – 50; paradox of 47 – 48; paralimbic system and 43 – 44; political 113; populationseparating mechanisms and 46 – 47; purpose of 104; relative truth and 40 – 41; religion and 37; religion as double-edged sword and 48; religionspecific 38 – 39, 45, 48 – 50; semantic contents of 97 – 98; study of 13 – 14; of “winning religion” 46; see also emotions and evolution of the belief in God; processes of believing belief systems 110 – 112, 243 – 249 belief-word-prefaced propositions 39 – 41 Bellah, R 31 Belzen, JA 92, 107, 109, 110 Biesele, M 239, 245, 246, 248 “big gods” hypothesis 31 – 32 biological basis for religion see morality biological evolution: constraints 25; ecosystems 26 – 27; epigenetics 25 – 26; genetic transfer 27 – 28; natural selection 25; neutral evolution 25; ontogeny 26 – 28; phylogeny 28; predictability in 201 – 202; religion evolution 21 – 29; species 25 – 26; unpredictability in 201; see also cultural evolution biological fitness 30 – 31 biological species 25 – 26 Birth of the Living God (Rizzuto) 211 blending theory, cognitive linguistics’: cognitive science and 177 – 178; conflicting readings of 176 – 179; double-scope 175 – 176, 182 – 183, 187; God is simple blend 183 – 184; God’s essence is “to be” blend 184, 185, 186; Jesus is the Messiah blend 180 – 183, 181; mirror networks 175; orientation to 173 – 176; overview 173; religions evolution and 173, 176 – 179, 186 – 188; single-scope 175; Slingerland and 176 – 179, 186, 188; tectonic 179 – 188

292 Index Blombos pieces 259, 264 Blanke, O 124, 128 Blume, M 29 Boyd, R 22 Boyer, P 105 brain: fear and 225 – 226; language centers in 210; lesion 55; mating and 55; meaning-making and 144 – 145; near-death experiences and, predisposition for 125 – 127; orgasm and spirituality and 57; out-of-body experiences and, predisposition for 125 – 127; oxytocin and reward centers in 61 – 62; paralimbic system 43 – 44; processes of believing and functions of 99, 106, 108 – 109; see also beliefs; brain evolution; neurology brain evolution: alone and, capacity to be 211 – 212; ego-relatedness and, capacity for 212, 217; “Godrepresentation stage” and 211; historical perspective 205 – 206; in familia brain growth 208, 209, 212 – 214, 217; infant psychological development 210 – 212; isolated mind and, myth of 210 – 212; “madein-God’s image” concept and 211; neoteny and 205, 207 – 210, 214; overview 205, 217; religion and 212 – 214; spirituality and 212 – 214; in utero brain growth 206 – 209 Briggs, Andrew 12 Brockman, J 47 Broom, DM 70, 73 – 74 Buddhism 77, 154, 162 – 166, 230 Bulbulia, J 79, 288 burials/burial practices 192, 257 – 258 caelibes 273 Caesar, Julius 273 Caligula 275 “Capacity to Be Alone, The” (Winnicott) 211 cave art 260 Cave of Maltravieso (Spain) 260 celibacy 42, 272, 273, 276, 278, 279, 280, 281 charging behavior 149 charisma of religious leaders 146 childhood punishment 155 – 157, 160, 162 – 163, 165 – 166 Christianity: beliefs 41, 88; childhood punishment and 156; childhood

themes in 162; Darwinian evolution and 195; God in, notion of 199; inception of 187; interchange of dialogue with other religions and 288; spirituality and 215 – 217 Christianity evolution: background information 271 – 273; complexity of 288; cooperative breeders and 281; Europeans in Middle Ages 281; eusociality of Roman society and 280 – 281; Marriage Laws 271 – 272, 274 – 275; Moral Laws 272 – 276, 281; persecutions 276 – 280; Roman Empire and 271 – 276, 280 – 281 Cicero 155, 272 Claudius 275, 277 Clayton, P 29 cognitive dissonance 142 cognitive linguistics 173 – 174; see also blending theory, cognitive linguistics’ Cognitive Pluralism 4 cognitive psychology 1 – 2 cognitive science: model of religion 223, 226; study of 97, 177, 179; see also cognitive science of religion (CSR) cognitive science of religion (CSR) 1, 4, 150, 173, 183, 223 – 225, 263, 266 – 267 coherence 141 Commodus 279 compassion 230 comprehension 141 Comte, Auguste 223 concept, notion versus 89 – 90 Concepts of the Afterlife in Early Civilizations (Sushan) 127 conditional truth status 47 Confessions (Augustine) 215 – 217 Confucianism 77 conscious awareness 123 consilience 4 constructive theory of emotions 222, 224 – 225 contextualism 90 conversion model 13 copying errors and beliefs 41 corporal discipline of children 155 – 157, 166; see also childhood punishment Cradle of Humankind (South Africa) fossil site 257 creation story (Genesis) 81 credition 98 – 100, 113; model 13 Credition Research Project 14

Index  293 cultural evolution 21 – 29; Cultural Evolution Society 4, 21; cultural selection 9, 49, 251; cultural transfer 27 – 28; innovations 25; memes 22; niche construction 25; social learning 28 – 29; see also biological evolution culture: biological evolution and 21 – 29; complexity of, evolution of 8 – 9, 29 – 30; ecosystems and 26 – 27; evolution and 21 – 23, 157 – 159; religion evolution 3 – 4, 9 – 10; religious 37; synthesis in study of 24 – 25 culturo-species 25 – 26 damnation 156 – 157 Darwin, Charles 78 Darwinian evolution: beliefs and 37; biological resonance of 5; Christianity and 195; cultural evolution and 22; religion evolution and 6, 30 – 31 Dawkins, Richard 22, 71, 201, 231 dead family members, “sightings” of 129 dead, practices of disposing of 257 – 258 death 134, 143, 148 – 149, 154, 165, 240; anxiety of 221 – 223, 227 – 229, 233; see also near-death experiences Decius 280 deep (non-REM) sleep 131 Dennett, Daniel 4 Deuteronomy 160 De Waal, F 70, 71, 72, 74, 146, 147, 148 development: human coordination 9 – 11; infant psychological 210 – 212; Wilbur’s universal model of 218 Digest (Roman) 273, 276 dimensions-of-faith model 13 Diocletian 280 Dionysius of Halicarnassus 155, 271 – 272 disgust 228 disobedience 156, 160, 162 – 163 divine figures, “seeing” 128 – 129 divinity 222, 233 DNA 37 – 38 dorsal vagal complex 55 Dreyfus, H 231 – 232 dual inheritance 28; see also geneculture coevolution Dunbar, RM 45, 128 Durkheim, E 193

Eastern Orthodox tradition 191 ecosystems and culture 26 – 27 “ecstasy” see orgasm ego-relatedness, capacity for 212, 217 Eleusinian mystery religion 167 Eliade, M 263 Ellens, JH 64, 65 Emmons, Robert 232 emotions 221 – 222, 224 – 225; see also emotions and evolution of the belief in God; specific type emotions and evolution of the belief in God: awe 222, 230 – 231; constructivist theory of emotion and 224 – 225; death anxiety 227 – 229, 233; disgust 228; divinity dimension 229 – 233; fear-based religion 222 – 227, 232 – 233; gratitude 231 – 232; love, elevating 229 – 230; overview 221 – 222, 232 – 233; purity, sacred 227 – 229; sacred, sense of 222, 229 – 232 empathy 73 – 75, 109, 209 Enigma of Reason, The (Mercier and Sperber) 12 Enlightenment 223 epigenetics 25 – 26 epilepsy and orgasm 57 – 58 esotericism 28 essentialism 226 eternal way 199 ethnographic analogy, problems in 265 – 266 ethnographies, problems in 265 – 266 Eudaimonia (sense of well-being) 141 eusociality 8, 11 – 12, 41 – 43, 47 – 48, 50, 280 – 281 Evans, Jules 230 Eve 78 event-related potential (ERP) 44 evolution: of beliefs 44 – 45; as big change/transformation 7; of cultural complexity 8 – 9; culture and 21 – 23, 157 – 159; as historical process 7; history of evolution of religion and 87 – 88; macro-level theories 22 – 23; of morality 71 – 73; by natural selection 5, 23, 25, 38, 88; natural selection and 5; neutral 25; process of believing 45; religion and 6 – 7, 88 – 89; of religion-specific beliefs 45; slow change of 37; theories 88; see also specific type

294 Index evolutionary biology see biological evolution evolutionary biology model 13 evolutionary convergence 202 evolutionary psychology 1 Evolution in Four Dimensions (Jablonka and Lamb) 3, 23 exaptation 54 Exodus, book of 160 Explaining Religion (Preus) 285 faith 168, 198, 288; dimensions-of-faith model 13; see also religion; specific religion false life 212 Fauconnier, Gilles 24, 174, 177 Faustina 275 fear/fear-based religion 108, 222 – 227, 232 – 233 FEAR system 225 – 226 Feierman, JR 9, 13, 23, 31 – 32, 70, 79 female orgasm 62 – 63; see also orgasm fictive movement 128, 134 fight-or-flight 225, 230 firewalking ritual 79 “fitness” 30 – 31, 32, 71, 223, 233; biological 8; evolutionary 63; genetic 29 fluid compensation and beliefs 142 – 143 forms, religious 2, 5 – 9, 13, 25, 37 – 38, 46 – 47, 49 – 50, 158, 211, 217 fossil sites 257 – 258 Frazer, JG 261 – 262 Frijda, N 139 – 140 Friston, K 106, 108 Fuentes, A 23 functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) 44, 57, 77, 108; see also neuroimaging function, religious 37 fundamentalists 45 – 46 Gabora, L 23, 26 – 28, 30 Geertz, Armin W (Festschrift) 289 Geertz, Clifford 239 – 240 gender 57, 265 gene-culture coevolution 46 – 47; see also dual inheritance Genesis 81, 158 genetics 79, 130 – 131 genetic transfer 27 – 28, 31 genotypes 25 – 26, 27, 28, 49 geography and religion 46

Georgiadis, JR 56, 59, 61 – 62 Germania (Tacitus) 274 God: awe and belief in 230 – 231; in Christianity, notion of 199; humanity and, relation to 187 – 188; morality and 73 – 75; naturalism and 194 – 195; religiosity and 196; as supernatural 199; see also emotions and evolution of the belief in God “God of the gaps” model 194 – 196 God-of-philosophers concept 89 “God-representation stage” 211 Goodall, Jane 148 Good Samaritan 76 Gould, Stephen Jay 201, 288 Grafman, J 111 gratitude 222, 231 – 232 grave goods 258 Great Fire (64 CE) 278425 Great Persecutions 277 Grojnowski, D 9, 25 – 26, 31 Growing Young (Montague) 208 Guenther, M 239, 240, 242, 245, 246, 247, 249, 250 Guillain-Barré syndrome 132 Haidle, MN 21, 23, 29 Haidt, Jonathan 146, 222, 229 – 231, 233 Hardy, A 133 harm to others 79 – 80 Hebrew Bible 160 – 161, 167 helping others 75 – 76 Herbert, Edward 285 Highfield, R 25 Hinduism 77, 154, 162 – 166 history of evolution of religion: beyond fixation on religion 96 – 97, 96; complexity of topic 87; concept of religion 90 – 91; concept throughout history 91 – 92; concept versus notion 89 – 90; credition and evolution of ability to believe 98 – 100; evolution 87 – 88; fixation on religion 93 – 94; nineteenth century 92 – 93; processes of believing 97 – 98; relation of evolution and religion 87; religion and evolution 88 – 89; religiosity 93 – 96, 95, 96; religiosity evolution 96, 96; religious 94 – 96, 95 Holloway, R 206 Homer 231 – 232 Homo habilis 206, 214, 217 – 218 “Homo religiosus” 214

Index  295 Homo sapiens 121, 127 – 128, 206, 256 “Homo spiritualis” 214 Hood, RW Jr. 99 Horace 271 Horst, Steve 4 Hrdy, S 209 human coordination, development of 9 – 11 hunter-gatherer religion evolution: background information 239 – 240, 241, 242; belief systems 243 – 245; ethnographic fieldwork 245 – 246; overview 242 – 243, 250 – 251; rock art of Southern Africa 249 – 250; trance dances 242, 247, 248; transformation of belief systems 246 – 249; see also San of Southern Africa Huxley, Julian 24 iconography 262 ideas, history of 90 Ihm, ED 143 – 145 in familia brain growth 208, 209, 212 – 214, 217 infant psychological development 210 – 212 in-groups 38, 43, 48 instincts 45 interaction of behavior, mind and culture 21, 24 interoception 224 – 225 interreligious conflict 48 in utero brain growth 206 – 209 Irons, W 40, 79 Isaac, attempted sacrifice of 167 Islam 39, 48, 154, 159 – 162, 288 isolated mind, myth of 210 – 212 Israeli fossil sites 257 – 258 Jablonka, Eva 3, 23 Jainism 154, 162 – 166 James (brother of John) 277 James the Just 277 James, William 132, 138, 213, 222, 231, 286 Jefferson, Thomas 230 Jesus 180 – 183, 181, 277 Jesus is the Messiah blend 180 – 183, 181 John the Baptist 276 John of the Cross, St. 133 John the Evangelist 216, 218 John’s Gospel 215 – 216 Johnson, Mark 193

Josephus 156 Judaism 154, 159 – 162, 288 Julian of Norwich 218 Julius Caesar 273 Jungian psychology 193 Just So Stories (Kipling) 217 Kahneman, D 45, 112 Kalahari Debate 242 – 243 Kant, Immanuel 175, 223, 233 karma 164 karmic concepts 164 karmic religions 154, 162 – 166; see also specific type Karo, R 55 Katz, R 264 Kelber, Werner 158 – 159 Kiehl, KA 44 Kipling, R 217 Knight, CC 196 Komisaruk, BR 61, 63 Kuhn, Thomas 1 – 2 Kundt, R 31 Kuru Dance Festival 249 Kuzawa, CW 209 Lachmann, PJ 250 Lakoff, George 24, 173 – 174, 193 Laland, K 9 – 10, 21 – 22 Lamarckian principles 22, 26, 29 Lamb, Marion 3, 23 Laming-Emperaire, A 263 language 12 – 13, 97, 173 – 174, 190 – 192, 210 laws of nature 195, 199 learning processes 28 – 29, 111 Leibnitz, GW 87 – 88 Leviticus, book of 160 Lewis-Williams, David 191 – 192 Lewis-Williams, JD 239, 244, 245, 263 – 264 linguistics see blending theory, cognitive linguistics’; cognitive linguistics Logos 199 – 200, 200 Lorenz, K 32, 42, 45 love, elevating 222, 229 – 230 Lucius 275 Luhmann, N 7 Luuk, E 259 macro-level evolution theories 22 – 23 “made-in-God’s image” concept 50, 78, 211

296 Index Maecenas 274 – 275 Magic of Reality, The (Dawkins) 231 Marcus Aurelius 275, 279 Marcus Papius 274 Marcus Tullius Cicero 276 Marriage Laws 271 – 272, 274 – 275 Martin, David 4 Mary (mother of Jesus) 276 Maryanski, A 147 masturbation 65 mating 54 – 55 mattering 141 – 142 Maximos the Confessor, St. 200 – 201 Mayr, Ernst 24 McCauley, Robert 4 meaning: brain and meaning-making 144 – 145; history of 90; in life 138, 140, 143; maintenance 142 – 143; of notions 90; psychology of 140 – 143, 149 – 150; of spirituality 213 – 214; subjective sense of 143; violations 142 – 143 meaning in life (MIL) 138, 140, 143 meaning systems: awe and religious 145 – 149; behavior and 141 – 142, 145 – 148 brain and processes of 144 – 145; in chimpanzees 147 – 150; coherence/comprehension and 141; maintenance 142 – 143; meaning in life and 140; preexisting 138; purpose and 141; religions as shared 146 – 147; significance/mattering and 141 – 142 medicine men 263 memes, cultural 22 “mental models” 2 Messiah, Jesus as 180 – 183, 181 mirror networks 175 modern science-theology dialogue 195 – 196 Modern Synthesis in biology 21 Montague, Ashley 207 – 209 moral action 72 – 73 moral behavior 31, 70 – 72, 74, 77, 79 – 81 moral code 76 – 77 morality: biological components of 71, 79; capacity for 73; empathy and 73 – 75; evolution of 71 – 73; genetics and 79; God and 73 – 75; moral action 72 – 73; moral behavior 74; moral value and 73 – 75; obligation of actor and 75; origins of 10 – 11,

70 – 71; religion and 75 – 79; religious versus nonreligious 81; rights of subject and 75; rituals and 76 – 77; “selfish gene” and 71; sentience and 73; summary statements about 82; Tomasello’s two-step theory of emergence of 10 – 11; value of religion and 80 – 81; view of humans and 77 – 78 Moral Laws 272 – 276, 281 moral value 73 – 75 Muller-Lyer optical illusion 46 multilevel/multidisciplinary approach in studying evolution of religion see pluralistic methods in studying religion/religion evolution “Myth of the Isolated Mind, The” (Stolorow and Atwood) 213, 215 myths, salvation 155, 159, 166 – 168 narratives 105, 107, 110 – 111, 149 Native American beliefs 41 naturalism: God and 194 – 195; religion and 6; religion and, study of 286 – 288; scientific method and, limits of 196 – 197; supernaturalism versus 191, 194; theistic, strong 197 natural selection 5, 23, 25 – 26, 38, 88; see also Darwinian evolution natural theology 191 Natural Theology (Paley) 194 natural wonders and awe 140 nature, laws of 195, 199 Neanderthals 192, 258, 260 near-death experiences (NDEs): awake/ asleep switching mechanism and 132 – 133; brain’s predisposition for 125 – 127, 126; change of personality/demeanor after 129 – 130; classification of 122, 123; conscious awareness and 123; dead family members, “sightings” of 129; describing 120; “divine figures,” seeing 128 – 129; divine and, sense of 120 – 121, 127 – 130, 133 – 135; fictive movement and 128, 134; genetics and 130 – 131, 134; Guillain-Barré syndrome and 132; high places and 129; historical perspective 127 – 128; Homo sapiens and 121, 127 – 128; ineffability and 131 – 132; neurology and 123, 132 – 133; overview 120 – 121; phenomenology 121 – 124,

Index  297 122; post-traumatic stress disorder and 125, 127; religion evolution and 120, 134 – 135; REM sleep and 131 – 132, 134; termination of 123 – 124 negative theology 191 neologism 207 neoteny 205, 207 – 210, 214 Nero 275, 278 network model 13 neural mapping 173 neuroimaging 105 – 107, 111 – 112; see also functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) neurology 123, 124, 125, 132 – 133; see also brain neurophenomenology of sex 63 – 64 neurophysiology 58 – 59 neutral evolution 25 New Testament 155 niche construction 25, 29, 88 nirvana 165 non-physical concepts 13, 37 – 38 nonreductive method 222 non-REM sleep 131 Norenzayan, A 30 – 31 notion, concept versus 89 – 90 notions, meaning of 90 Nowak, M 25 obedience 156, 160 – 161 Odyssey (Homer) 231 ontogeny 26 – 28 Oral and The Written Gospel, The (Kelber) 158 orexin 132 orgasm and spirituality: autonomic nervous system 55; brain and 57; “ecstasy” and 65; electroencephalogram study 57; epilepsy and 57 – 58; female 62 – 63; gender identity and 57; neurophenomenology and 63 – 64; neurophysiology and 58 – 59; orgasm as spiritual experience and 64 – 66; overview 54; oxytocin and 60 – 61; self-referential processing and 58 – 59; sexual arousal and 56; sexual orientation and 57; as spiritual experience 64 – 66 Origen 280 Otherworld Journeys (Zaleski) 127 out-groups 43

out-of-body experiences (OBEs): brain’s predisposition for 125 – 127; change of personality/demeanor after 129 – 130; classification of 122, 123; conscious awareness and 123; describing 120; divine and, sense of 120 – 121, 127 – 130, 133 – 135; fictive movement and 128, 134; historical perspective 127 – 128; neurology and 124, 125; noncorporeal floating in space and 124; overview 120 – 121; phenomenology 124, 125; religion evolution and 120, 134 – 135; tempo-parietal junction and 124, 125; termination of 123 – 124 overbeliefs 222 Oviedo, L 23, 47 oxytocin: brain’s reward centers and 61 – 62; measuring concentrations of 60; orgasm and 60 – 61; release of 60; self-referential processing and 58 – 59; spirituality and 59 – 62 Paley, William 194 Paloutzian, RF 113 Panksepp, Jaak 225 paralimbic system 43 – 44 parasympathetic system 55 patriarchy 155, 161 Paul 139, 156 – 159, 161, 277 – 278 Pentateuch 159 Penultimate Curiosity, The (Wagner and Briggs) 12 peri-aqueductal gray (PAG) matter 132 persecutions of Christians 276 – 280 personalistic theism 196 Pew Research Center 46 phenomenological anthropology 233 phenotypes 22, 26; nongenetic plasticity of organisms 25 Philip 277 Philo 156 phylogenesis 22 phylogeny 28, 209 Piaget, J 139 pigments 258 – 260 piloerection 148 – 149 Pius 278 pleasant sensation 108 pleasure of sex 63 – 64; see also orgasm plebeians 275 Pliny the Younger 274, 278

298 Index pluralistic methods in studying religion/ religion evolution: alternative approaches 7 – 8; argument for 3; bottom-up causation 2; choosing 3 – 5; cognitive psychology and 1 – 2; complexity of religion and 1; concept of evolution of religion and 5 – 7; conceptualization of 2; cultural complexity and, factors influencing 8 – 9; de facto 2 – 3, 5; emergence of 2; issues 3 – 5; new contributions to evolution of religion and 9 – 14; overview 14 – 15; top-down deductive 2 – 3 pluralistic theology 197 – 198 Polanyi, Michael 192 Polycarp 278 polymorphisms 131 polyvagal theory 55 Porges, SW 55 positivism 223 post-agricultural societies, supercooperative nature of 9, 11 – 12 posterior cingulate cortex (PCC)/ precuneus 144 post-traumatic compensatory fantasy 167 post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) 125, 127 prayers 77 pre-supplementary motor area (preSMA) 108 – 109 Preus, J Samuel 285 primates 45, 63, 111, 147, 150, 206 – 207, 210 Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNS) 21, 23 processes of believing: ability to believe and 98 – 100; background information 104 – 105; behavior and 104 – 105, 108 – 109, 139 brain functions and 99, 106, 108 – 109; credition and 113; evolution of 45; God and, notion of universal 113 – 114; history of evolution of religion and 97 – 98; neurophysiological model 104 – 110, 114; overview 104; perceptionvaluation-action model 107 – 109, 112; perceptual information and 107 – 109; predictions and 104 – 105, 108 – 109; probabilistic representations and 106 – 108, 107; relation of beliefs and belief systems 110 – 112; religion evolution and

13 – 14; in social interaction 109 – 112, 110 Proverbs 156 psychology: of awe 139 – 140; cognitive 1 – 2; evolutionary 1; Jungian 193; of meaning 140 – 143, 149 – 150; pluralistic theology and 197 – 198; of religion 94 psychopathy 43 – 44 punishment 161 – 162; see also childhood punishment purity, sacred 227 – 229 purpose 141 Purzycki, BG 31 Puts, DA 63 Quintilian 155 Quintus Metellus 272 Qunitus Poppaeus 274 Quran 161, 167 Rappaport, R 11, 31 reductive methods 1 – 4 relation of evolution and religion 87 relative truth 40 – 41, 47 religion: as anthropological term 95; Aquinas’s definition of 91; atrocities committed in name of 80; beliefs and 37; beyond fixation on 96 – 97, 96; brain evolution and 212 – 214; challenges of 286 – 287; cognitive science model of 223, 226; commandments in 77; common traits of various 77; complexity of 1, 120; concept of 90 – 92; critics of 81; death anxiety and 228; defining 191; as double-edge sword 48; emotions and 221 – 222; evolution and 6 – 7, 88 – 89; fear-based 222 – 227; fixation on 93 – 94; geography and 46; gods and 77; growth of 41; helping others and 75 – 76; historical comments about studying 285; morality and 75 – 79; naturalism and 6; naturalist study of 286 – 288; in 19th century 92 – 93; prayers and 77; psychology of 94; religiosity and, replacement for 192 – 193; risk assessment in life and 80; salvation and 154; of San of Southern Africa 239 – 240, 242, 250 – 251; science and 93; scientific theories and, applying 287; as shared meaning systems 146 – 147; symbolic

Index  299 language and 12; as systematic term 95, 97; theologians as colleagues and 287 – 288; value of 80 – 81; “winning” 46; see also pluralistic methods in studying religion/religion evolution; religion evolution religion evolution: alternative paths 32; art and 267; “big gods” hypothesis 31 – 32; biological evolution and 21 – 29; blending theory and, cognitive linguistics’ 173, 176 – 179, 186 – 188; complexity of 1, 8 – 9, 288; concept of 5 – 7; cultural 3 – 4, 9 – 10; culture in evolution and 21, 23; dangers threatening modern papers on 217; Darwinian evolution and 6, 30 – 31; evolution theories and 88; human coordination, development of 9 – 11; interaction of behavior, mind and culture 21, 24; “just that” paper and 217 – 218; language/ symbolic function 12 – 13; multilevel 29 – 32; near-death experiences and 120, 134 – 135; out-of-body experiences and 120, 134 – 135; process of believing and 13 – 14; psychological understanding of risen Christ and 197 – 198; religiosity and 190 – 191; super-cooperative nature of post-agricultural human societies 9, 11 – 12; talking about, change of focus and 88; unknown driving forces 11; volumes on 288 – 289; see also history of evolution of religion; pluralistic methods in studying religion/religion evolution; specific foundations religiosity: defining 94; as double-wing adjective 94 – 96, 95; evolution of 96, 96; fading out of 93 – 94; God and 196; Jungian framework and 193; as natural 195 – 196; religion evolution and 190 – 191; religion and, replacement by 192 – 193; term of 192 – 193; see also religiosity evolution religiosity evolution: five theses about 198 – 199; history of evolution of religion and 96, 96; language and 190 – 192; modern sciencetheology dialogue and 195 – 196; naturalism and 196 – 197; overview 190, 203; pluralistic theology and

197 – 198; predictability in 201 – 202; psychology and 197 – 198; reasons for exploring 199; religion and 190 – 192; scientific method and, limits of 196 – 197; supernaturalism and 190 – 195; teleology and 200 – 202; traditional theology and 199; unconscious and 192 – 193; untraditional approach and 199 – 200 religio-species 25 – 26 religious 94 – 96, 95 religious culture 37 religious density 47 religious experience 131 – 133; see also near-death experiences; out-of-body experiences REM (rapid eye movement) 131 – 134 Rhetorica ad Herennium 155 Richerson, PJ 22, 79 risen Christ, psychological understanding of 197 – 198 risk assessment in life 80 Ritchie, Sarah Lane 196 rituals 76 – 77, 79, 257 – 258 ritual sacrifice 232 Rizzuto, A-M 211 rock art of Southern Africa 243, 249 – 250, 264 Roman Catholic Church 89 Roman Empire and Christianity evolution 271 – 276, 280 – 281 “running the blend” 175 Russell, Bertrand 222 – 223, 232 – 233 sacred purity 227 – 229 sacred, sense of 222, 229 – 232 sacrifice 167, 232 salvation: in Abrahamic religions 154, 159 – 162; in Buddhism 154, 162 – 166; childhood punishment and 155 – 157; Christian 154 – 159; in Hinduism 154, 162 – 166; in Islam 154, 159 – 162; in Jainism 154, 162 – 166; in Judaism 154, 159 – 162; in karmic religions 154, 162 – 166; myths 155, 159, 166 – 168; need for, questioning 154; overview 154 – 155; Paul and 156 – 159; religion and 154; trauma-myth link and 155, 166 – 168 samsara 164, 167 Sanderson, K 43 San of Southern Africa: attachment to place and 251; authenticity of 239;

300 Index background information 239 – 240, 241, 244; belief systems of 243 – 245; ethnographic fieldwork on 245 – 246; globalization and 248; groups 241, 242, 244; religion of 239 – 240, 242, 250 – 251; rock art of 243, 249 – 250, 264; tourism and 248; trance dances 242, 247, 248; transformation of belief systems of 246 – 249 schema 161 science-theology dialogue 195 – 196 scientific method 196 – 197, 287 scientific realism 177 Seitz, RJ 13 selective criterion 158 selective retention 158 self-awareness 147 “selfish gene” 71; see also Dawkins, Richard self-protective behaviors 55 self-psychology 210, 213 self-referential processing 58 – 59 self-regulation model 141 self-replicating automation (SRA) 28 Seneca 155, 273 Sense and Nonsense (Laland and Brown) 9 – 10, 22 sex 265 sex and evolution of spirituality: autonomic nervous system 55; electroencephalogram study of orgasm 57; epilepsy and orgasm 57 – 58; evolution and female orgasm 62 – 63; gender identity and orgasm 57; mating and 54 – 55; neurophenomenology of sex 63 – 64; neurophysiology 58 – 59; orgasm as spiritual experience 64 – 66; overview 54; oxytocin 58 – 62; self-referential processing 58 – 59; sexual arousal and orgasm 56; sexual orientation and orgasm 57 sexual arousal and orgasm 56 sexuality see sex and evolution of spirituality sexual orientation 57 Shakespeare, William 141 shamanism 263 – 264 significance 141 – 142 sin of Adam 156 – 158 slaves 275 sleep 57, 131 – 134 Slingerland, Edward 176 – 179, 186, 188 Slone, DJ 32 Smith, Wilfred Cantwell 91, 93 – 94

social learning 28 – 29 sociopathy 43 – 44 Solomon, A 249, 265, 266 Sosis, R 45 species, biological 25 – 26 Spencer, B 262 Sperber, Dan 12, 23, 159 spirituality 212 – 217 spirituality evolution and sex: autonomic system and 55; electroencephalogram study of orgasm 57; epilepsy and orgasm 57 – 58; female orgasm 62 – 63; gender identity and orgasm 57; mating and 54 – 55; neurophenomenology of sex 63 – 64; neurophysiology 58 – 59; orgasm as spiritual experience 64 – 66; overview 54; oxytocin 58 – 62; self-referential processing 58 – 59; sexual arousal and orgasm 56; sexual orientation and orgasm 57 stages model 13 Stark, R 46 Stephen (deacon) 277 Stoicism 273 Stolorow, R 210, 215 structuralism 263 suffering 154, 163 – 166, 181, 186, 211 Summa Theologica (Aquinas) 175 super-cooperative nature of postagricultural human societies 9, 11 – 12 supernaturalism 190 – 195 Sushan, G 127, 134 symbols 12 – 13, 256 – 257 sympathetic magic 261 sympathetic [nervous] system 55 Tacitus 274 talismans 262 Tallis, R 3 Taoism 199 Taylor, Charles 177, 179 techno-social coevolution 28 – 29 tectonic blends: function of 187; God is simple blend 183 – 184; God’s essence is “to be” blend 184, 185, 186; Jesus is the Messiah blend 180 – 183, 181; picture suggested by 187 – 188; Slingerland’s conception of blending theory versus 179 – 180 Teehan, J 109, 111 Teilhard de Chardin, P 202 teleology 200 – 202 Ten Commandments 77 Tertullian 279

Index  301 theistic naturalism, strong 197 theologians 4, 47, 130, 187 – 188, 287 theological turn 196 theology: dialogue with science 195 – 196; natural 191; negative 191; pluralistic 197 – 198; traditional 199 theory of mind (ToM) 109, 147 therianthropic figures 261, 264 – 265 Tiberius 275 Tinbergen, N 45 Titus Flavius Clemens 278 Tomasello, Michael 10 – 11, 24 Torah 215 Torrey, EF 8 totemism 261 – 262 traditional theology 199 Trajan 278 trauma-myth link 166 – 168 traumatomorphism 167 – 168 treadmill model 8 tribalism 80 Trivers, RL 39 – 40 troop-bonding 45 “true self” concept 141 truth: absolute 39 – 41, 45 – 47; conditional, status of 47; relative 40 – 41, 47 Tshwa trance dance 247, 248 Turner, JH 9, 23, 32, 240 Turner, Mark 24, 174, 177 ultrasociality see eusociality unconscious 192 – 193 Urbach-Wiethe disease 225 – 226

Valerius Maximus 272 van Elk, M 144 Van Slyke, JA 32 Varieties of Religious Experience, The (James) 213 vasopressin 61 ventro-medial (vm)PFC 144 Venus of Hohle Fels sculpture 260, 261 vertical integration of sciences 177 Vespasian 275 Vibia Perpetus 279 Virgil 274 Waardenburg, J 285 Wagner, Roger 12 Weber, Max 12 What Science Offers the Humanities (Slingerland) 176 Whitehouse, H 8, 32, 76 Wildman, Wesley 196 Williams, G 38 Wilson, DS 43, 79, 88 Wilson, EO 47 Winnicott, DW 210, 211 – 212 wisdom literature 156 Wittgenstein, L 193, 226 Wunn, I 9, 25 – 26, 31 X chromosome 42 Y chromosome 42 Zaleski, C 127, 134 Zeki, S 61