Humans 'hardwired for religion'

[IndianaGreen]

Humans 'hardwired for religion'

James Randerson
Monday September 4, 2006
Guardian Unlimited

The battle by scientists against "irrational" beliefs such as creationism is ultimately futile, a leading experimental psychologist said today.

The work of Bruce Hood, a professor at Bristol University, suggests that magical and supernatural beliefs are hardwired into our brains from birth, and that religions are therefore tapping into a powerful psychological force.

"I think it is pointless to think that we can get people to abandon their belief systems because they are operating at such a fundamental level," said Prof Hood. "No amount of rational evidence is going to be taken on board to get people to abandon those ideas."

He told the annual British Association Festival of Science in Norwich that the standard bearers for evolution, such as the biologist Richard Dawkins and the philosopher Daniel Dennet, had adopted a counterproductive and "simplistic" position.

"They have basically said there are two types of people in the world," he said - "those who believe in the supernatural and those who do not. But almost everyone entertains some form of irrational beliefs even if they are not religious.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,1864748,00.html

[Ezlivin]

1. I upgraded my wetware

The new version takes care of the viral nature of religion.

I don't see farther, but I see better.

[NOLADEM]

7. Well put.

[Nozebro]

2. A. Lincoln once said: "I can understand how a man could look down on

the Earth and not believe in a God, but I can't understand how a man could look up into the sky and not believe in a God."

[banjoterror]

3. I look in the sky every day

and I still don't believe in God. I must be wired all wrong.

[NVMojo]

10. same here ...

[Warpy]

4. Believers always say that stuff

but it doesn't impress me or any other nonbeliever.

Just accept the fact that some of us are NOT hardwired for religion. We have a right to be who we are and we live here, too.

You don't have to understand us. You do have to figure out how to tolerate us.

[NoodleyAppendage]

6. We all have an innate basis...just some of us outgrow it.

It is a higher level of moral and social development to not adhere to religious dogma and to see that justice and the world comes in shades of gray.

Believers are just stunted in their moral/social development. Full human potential is to outgrow the "innate irrationality" of our youth.

J

[david_vincent]

12. Well, I think the problem

is that believers of a fundamentalist stripe don't feel any obligation to try to tolerate others; their efforts are directed toward controlling others in order to make their behavior more tolerable, not at tolerating them as they are.
Given the nature of those that seek to control other people, it then becomes incumbent on US to resist them, by any means necessary.

[NoodleyAppendage]

5. BULLSH*T. Just because it's innate doesn't mean we shouldn't fight it.

It is also an innate tendency to have sex, and for males to have many partners with which to spread their genetic material. But, that doesn't mean that we should abandon social mores to feed that innate tendency.

It may also be an innate tendency to want to harm or kill someone who has wronged you or your progeny, but we don't give in to that tendency either without suffering social consequences.

Irrational beliefs may be innate, but if we are to advance socially and promulgate our species beyond our self-imposed dangers (e.g., war, poverty, pollution, etc.) those irrational beliefs must be suppressed and eventually selected out of our genetic code.

J

[MindPilot]

8. So the question remains...

"But almost everyone entertains some form of irrational beliefs even if they are not religious."

Does that mean those of us who don't harbor any irrational beliefs have something wrong with us or are we in fact a little farther along the evolutionary path than the believers?

[Ravenseye]

19. I think irrational beliefs are a good thing....sometimes

For instance the article mentions a wedding ring as being irrational (at least an attachemnt to your actual wedding ring). Sentimentality is irrational. A desire to stay at your tribal village's location rather than move on could be irrational. Irrationality can sometimes serve a good purpose. Connections are one of the things that tie people together and sentimentality and irrationality help that. Emotions aren't always quantifiable.

They can also lead to amazing rational leaps. Out of the box thinking can often be called irrational, but it's another way of making giant leaps...or falling to your death.

So I think it's probably a good survival thing to be hardwired for irrationality and belief. We need to be able to believe what we're told and not always see it for ourselves. Even scientists are believers to some extent. We believe and trust. I can't reproduce someone else's experiment. All I can do is read their research and conclusions, and the reviews of those. There's more of a basis in verifiability than in say christianity, but at a certain level we have to trust and believe what we read.

I think everyone harbor's irrational belief's. I think that if you were to take twins and raise one with rationality and science only, with no exposure to 'religion', and raise another with religion and no exposure to 'science', that you'll have two people who think their twin is nuts. We'll never truly get rid of irrational beliefs, nor do we really want to, as we need people to be irrational.

We just need to limit the ability of irrational belief to dictate laws and start wars.

[Book Lover]

9. Misleading headline

It appears the presenter's assertion is that the brain's mechanics allow for irrationality and illogical thinking, and that mechanism is leveraged by religious thought, among other thoughts. And in a tidy manner, he himself demonstrates this when he says that it is pointless to try and persuade people to "to abandon their belief systems" when clearly some people have and do. Irrationally holding onto our own precious theory, Professor Hood?

[NVMojo]

11. people have hard-wiring to believe in Santa Claus too

[hyphenate]

13. I was just reading somewhere else

that scientists have actually said the opposite--that there is no hardwire for religion in the brain.

Now, logically speaking, we are really the first generation who has enough science in our background to be able to, with clarity, say that there is no god, or have the facts to at the very least back us up. People through the rest of history have long been persecuted for being atheists and agnostics, and many would simply believe in a "god" like presence in the universe without going any further.

But we're still a primitive species in many ways. We are not that far from our beginnings as aggressive cavemen, as we can see with so many favoring war over peace. It's going to be a long time before the rest of the world's population can think without factoring in superstitions and personal prejudices.

Religion to many is a safe harbor. Believers often are quite happy being "illogical" about it, because to them, belief in a deity is a sign of their free will in making the implausible leap to an all-powerful figure. They know it's illogical, but emotionally, it feels right. They tend to think that atheists and agnostics have lost their sense of wonder in not believing in something as wonderful as a "god."

Legends, myths and long existing anecdotes make religion a tradition more than a belief system. Unless you are in an aggressive legalistic cult such as fundamentalism, religion is just "there" as it's been for so many people through the years. It's a comfort that doesn't require much analysis, and some decide internally that belief in a deity doesn't really influence them in one broad way or another. That's how most people are with their religion--it's a part of them that is basically benign, and since it doesn't get in their way, it continues.

I think the changes will come in the next 100 years or so. Someone said fundamentalism would be wiped out in 50 years, but I think it will create a lot more damage before it does. Those who believe in such archaic ideas as fundies are fervent enough and belligerent enough to put up a major battle before they can be defeated. And, I suspect, there will always be people who grasp onto the harsher aspects of religion and will try to perpetuate those beliefs eternally. They will remain in a minority as long as rational people keep an eye on them, but if there is laxity in that watch, it can threaten the world like it has threatened us here right now.

If there is a hardwire to religion in the brain, eventually it will evolve out. As we become more scientifically based, a lot of the superstitions and other notions will fade into the background, and we will be more capable of looking at the universe with a more critical eye. If there is other intelligent life out in the universe, we certainly can't meet our galactic or universal neighbors with a lot of religious baggage. It's only when we dispose of those prejudices, intolerances and superstitions that are manifested with religion that we will be best prepared to come into contact with extraterrestrial beings. Let's hope that that hardwire really doesn't exist, so that the first contact will be sooner, not later!

[RC]

14. Amen sister.

"If there is other intelligent life out in the universe, we certainly can't meet our galactic or universal neighbors with a lot of religious baggage. It's only when we dispose of those prejudices, intolerances and superstitions that are manifested with religion that we will be best prepared to come into contact with extraterrestrial beings." :hi:

[AlienGirl]

15. Why would it "evolve out"? How does it impair reproduction?

Doesn't that kind of sound like the "Great Chain of Being" view that evolution leads inevitably to "higher" forms of life?

More than likely, IMO, some people are neurologically put together to have religious experiences and others are not; but to say that this means the religious wiring will eventually evolve out is kind of like me saying that the rising rate of autism implies that in a few generations humans will all make sense. There will always be those with the wiring for religion and those without, just as there will always be autistics *and* neurotypicals, those who love poetry *and* those who don't, left-handers *and* right-handers.

Maybe an easier goal than the evolutionary elimination of a particular kind of brain would be the development of a religion that would change its beliefs as scientific knowledge increased, that did not seek to impose constraints on anyone involuntrarily, and that promoted critical thinking and logic as sacraments...

Tucker

[hyphenate]

20. You are right

My evolutionary leaning would hold toward a higher form of life. Perhaps I read too much science fiction, but it seems to me that a higher life form is the next logical step for homo sapiens. However, and I say this with emphasis, that evolutionary step is a couple of million years in the future IF we are going to make it that far! It's not going to be something just around the corner, nor even in our viewable future. It has taken mucho million years to get to where we are now, and a major evolutionary step like that would be far away.

In my view, I think it will be technology itself which will help inhibit religion even more. We've seen a lot of changes even in the past two hundred years since science has made some major and significant advances. Many notions and beliefs (other than religion) have gone the way of the dodo because science has proved them completely false and as a result, the mindset in respect to a lot of things has changed. An example would be easy: bacteria and germs, for instance, killed as many people as their original illness or condition before the idea of sterilization. Being able to look at far away stars has shown us that the universe is so much larger than we might have ever thought. And who would have ever considered that we would have been to another planetary body in the solar system 100 years--even 50 years ago?

Right now, every 25 years, it seems, our technology makes a tremendous leap forward and pretty much changes everything that we knew before. Sometimes, I believe we, as a species, are making bounds too fast, and that we're not quite mature enough to deal with some of these advances in so short a time. But since it's not going to change, and since we're not likely to go backwards anytime soon in technological strides, we have to accept that spurt and learn to accept the changing paradigms with some grace.

That is why I think we will see a change in religious beliefs. It won't be the change inherent in humans of physical evolution, but mental evolution. I know that fundies and others who can't handle change will likely try every weapon in the world to keep us from changing, but it's not going to help if the changes are so great that they can't be stopped. Even now, there has been a crisis brewing in Christianity with the fictional book, "The Da Vinci Code." While there is already a great deal of evidence mounting that perhaps the divinity of Jesus Christ is in doubt in some way, the novel helped spark a wider revelation, and this has been a shot across the bow of most Christians who found doubt in their beliefs as a result. Many will change their beliefs to accommodate such a change, because to ignore it would be far worse.

I doubt that there could ever be a one-religion system that could satisfy everyone. Many of us are already out of the running as agnostics and atheists, and there would need to be some major and phenomenal change that could ever bridge the gap among such disparate beliefs. I could see, however, a philosophy that might help--philosophy versus religion requires less of a leap of faith and more of an acceptance of a series of ideals.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about the future, and I really do wish we could come together as a species here on earth and work toward a unification, but I can't see it happening in my lifetime, though perhaps as I originally said, 100 years would be enough time to see those changes finally come. I tend to view a "Star Trek" futuristic view rather than a dimmer, "Blade Runner" or "Max Headroom" type of world, where optimism reigns rather than pessimism.

[DeSwiss]

16. hyphenate I agree wholeheartedly...

...and as Book Lover states above the assertion he is making is misleading. The presentation talks about "irrational" ideas being inherent in all humans. Of course many leaps in our knowledge and inventions as well were the result of "irrational" ideas.

The examples used to comfirm his theory relate experiments he posed where people were presented with an ugly sweater and he asked for a show of hands of those who wanted to wear it for £10. Only to see them draw back in horror once confronted with fact that the sweater was once worn by a killer (which it had not). Or the galvanic responses (lie detector science) of people when they are asked to cut up a photograph. Quite a leap to being "Hardwired For Religion," I'd say.

Do we have irrational ideas? Yes, maybe so. But the relationship that this theory has to the development of religious beliefs are neither confirmed nor denied from the examples used. As you point out in your examples about early humanity, religion "developed" in response to our need for things to make sense. For them to be explained in some way. If these responses are located in specific parts of the brain, that would be little different than other "responses, drives and inherited traits" of other kinds of human respones which have developed over the generations. IMO

One study you might be referring to about there being no specific location or "God Spot" in the brain:

Brain Scan of Nuns Finds No Single God Spot In the Brain

A new study at the Université de Montréal has concluded that there is no single God spot in the brain. In other words, mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems normally implicated in a variety of functions (self-consciousness, emotion, body representation). The study published in the current issue of Neuroscience Letters was conducted by Dr. Mario Beauregard from the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal and his student Vincent Paquette.

"The main goal of the study was to identify the neural correlates of a mystical experience," explained Beauregard. "This does not diminish the meaning and value of such an experience, and neither does it confirm or disconfirm the existence of God."

Fifteen cloistered Carmelite nuns ranging from 23 to 64-years-old were subjected to an MRI brain scan while asked to relive a mystical experience rather than actually try to achieve one. "I was obliged to do it this way seeing as the nuns are unable to call upon God at will," said Beauregard. This method was justified seeing as previous studies with actors asked to enter a particular emotional state activated the same brain regions as people actually living those emotions.

This study demonstrated that a dozen different regions of the brain are activated during a mystical experience. This type of research became very popular in the United States in the late 1990s. Some researchers went as far as suggesting the possibility of a specific brain region designed for communication with God. This latest research discredits such theories.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/brain-scan-of-nuns-finds-no-single-god-spot-in-the-brain-11388.html

[hyphenate]

21. Yes!

Thank you for finding the article. That is the one I was referring to.

As human beings, we all work with both our brains and our bodies all the time. When we find an explanation, regardless of how simplistic it is, we tend to take it as the first step toward finding the truth. When our scientific knowledge increases, we can examine older beliefs and change them accordingly to what new information reveals. As I stated in the above example, such discoveries as germs and bacteria revolutionized medicine to a dramatic point, and over the course of time has saved so many more lives as a result. My own mother, as another example, had triplets in 1958, which did not survive, but today those triplets would likely be as healthy and hearty as any premature baby born. Back in 1960, computers filled entire rooms, now they're so small that we carry them with us on trips!

You are right about religious thoughts not differing much from other thoughts that our brains create. Pretty much the same areas of the brain function for all thoughts that require the same type of conclusions. It's only when we try to assimilate that data that our own personal biases interrupt and censor the material before it is realized. We can never go from A to B without interfering and embellishing the data before it means something to us. And how we eventually look at the data will always be dependent on our own levels of education, skill, intelligence and worldview.

If people took time out to to truly look objectively at how we learn to understand, they might be surprised at how much extraneous interference there is to the final conclusion. It's obvious that it's not part of our conscious mind, but how our subconscious mind filters some things in and other things out.

Perhaps within the next 25 years or so, scientific research on our brains will be better able to determine ways to get around all the personal prejudices and give us more equal and objective results. In the meantime, I guess, we will just have to go with the old expression, "Think before you speak."

[Evoman]

22. I disagree with you.

Religion will not "evolve out", nor will irrational thinking. I base this on two assertions

1)Religion is not a trait, but something that is learned. As is irrational thinking, to some degree. Most of us "rational" people are people who have either been trained to be rational or learned to be rational due to experience and cicumstance (we aren't anymore intrinsically rational that even a fundie).

2)Evolution is all about reproduction. And we scientists, and well-educated people, aren't reproducing nearly as fast as those fundies, or the uneducated believers in poorer countries. Even if we did, it doesn't necessarily matter, since rational thought may not be genetic (I don't know).

Maybe I'm wrong. A rational approach to love, sex and seduction (playing "the game" in a systematic fashion based on fairly static seduction rules, and not pretending life is a movie) will get you laid more, after all.

I can't see things being radically different even far in the future...but again, that just may be an irrational belief.

[Ready4Change]

17. Hardwired for irrational belief, I'll buy. But NOT hardwired for religion.

Such a headline is misleading and biased.

I could buy that our human brains are hardwired for irrational belief. I might go so far as to say that is a pre-requisite for self awareness. The ability to concieve something which is not immediately present (imagination) is just a skip away from BELIEVING in something not immediately present. To me that probing of imagination vs reality is a sign that something in there is conscious and thinking.

However, I don't see how we are hardwired for RELIGION. There is no catholic thought processor. No judaism gland. No islamic synapse. (I had a bad case of hari krishnitus, then I had my krishna removed, and I've been fine ever since?)

Sure, our wiring for irrational beliefs includes beliefs in god(s), but it includes belief in my lucky rabbits foot, and four leaf clovers, and little green martians sneaking into my bedroom at night. Religion is just one little corner of irrational belief.

[depakid]

18. Paging Dr. Dawkins

LOL.

Hopefully, he'll write in with an LTTE or a rebuttal piece.