Religion- The Unfortunate Bi-Product of Natural Selection: A Psychoanalysis

American philosopher Daniel Dennet has offered a helpful three-way classification of the stanes that we adopt in trying to understand and predict behaviour of entities such as animals, machines or each other. They are the physical stance, design stance and the intentional stance.

The physical stance always works in principle, because everything ultimately obeys the laws of physics (religious people, take note). But working things out using the physical stance can be very slow. By the time we have sat down to calculate all the diction of its behaviour will probably be too late [interestingly, Buddhist meditation is devoted to understanding the physical stance in full detail, particularly the Abhidhamma. Perhaps seeing things as they are- a combination of atoms and temporary feelings, is the answer to true understanding and thus happiness?]. For an object that really is designed, like a washing machine or crossbow, the design is an economical shortcut. We can guess how the object will behave by going over the head of physicas and appealing directly to the design. So anyone can predict when an alarm clock will sound by casual inspection of the exterior. One doesn’t know or care to know whether it’s spring wound, battery driven etc.- one just assumes that it is designed so that it is designed so that the alarm will sound when it is set to sound. The intentional stance is a further shortcut. An entity is assumed not merely to be designed for a purpose but to be, or contain, and agent with intentions that guide its actions. When you see a tiger, you had better not delay your prediction or its probable behaviour. Never mind the physics of its molecules, and never mind the design of its limbs, claws and teeth. That cat intends to eat you, and it will deploy its limbs, claws and teeth in flexible and resourceful ways to carry out its intention. The quckest way to second-guess behaviour is to forget physicas and physiology and cut to the the intentional chase.

Where does religion fit into this? Just as the design stance functions even for things that were not actually designed as well as things that were, so the intentional stance works for things that don’t have deliberate conscious intentions as well as things that do. It seems to me entirely plausible that the intentional stance has survival value as a brain mechanism that speeds up decision-making in dangerous circumstances and crucial social situations. (Dawkins, the God Delusion, pp211-2).

Consider how religion created the following agents out of ignorance and fear:

1) the ’soul’. The soul is what a person truly is. A better word is ‘agent’, and we make quick judgment of the agent of the thing we encounter.

2) the devil. We have unhappiness, therefore it must be caused by a creator. But the creator is perfect, so we must create an opposite. Call him shaytan, lucifer, belzebaab etc.- this agent then extends to anything negative that *humans* do to us. Fortunately, the religious aren’t foolish enough to ascribe the satan agent to animals, natural disasters or other ills (wait, cats were persecuted throughout Europe for being demonic. My mistake).

Dualism-Monism: Dennett speaks of a third-order intentionality (the man believed that the woman knew he wanted her), fourth-order (the woman realised that the man believed that the woman knew he wanted her) and fifht-order intentionality (the shaman guessed that the woman realised that the man believd that the woman knew he wanted her).  Natural selection has shaped brains to deploy the intenational stance as a short cut. We are biologically programmed to impute intentions (fictional and non-fictional) to entities whose behaviour matters to us. Paul Gbloom quotes experimental evidence that children are especially likely to adopt the intentional stance. When small babies see an object apparently following another object (for example, on a computer screen0, they assume that they are witnessing an active chase by an intentional agent, and they demonstrate the fact by registering surprise whent he putative agent fails to pursue the chase.

While intentional stance has clear benefits, it also misfires by imputing intentions to weather, waves, currents, falling rocks, fires, earthquakes and more. All of us are prone to do the same thing with machines. This is what Justin Barret coined HADD- hypactive agent detection device. We hyperactively detect agents where there are none, and this makes us suspect malice or benignity where, in fact, nature is only indifferent. Other my-product explanations of religion have been proposed by Hinde, Shermer, Boyer, Atran, Bloom, Dennett, Keleman and others.

Irrational religion may also be a byproduct of falling in love. Neurologist John Smythies notes significant differences between the brain areas activiated by religious and sexual love, but also the similarties: “One facet of the man faces of religion is intense love focused on one supernatural person, ie God, plus reverence for icons of that person. Human life is driven largely by our selfish genes and by the processes of reinforcemeent. Much positive reinforcement drives from religion: warm and comforting feelings of being loved and protected in a dangerous world, loss of fear of death, help from the hills in response to prayer in difficult times etc.  Romantic love can also be triggered by icons of the other, such as letters, photographs etc. Misfiring results in falling in love with the rain-god YHWH, Neo-pagan godess Diana (now the ‘Virigin Mary’, the moon-god Allah) and performing irracitonal acts motivated by such love.

Look at the aurora borealis. We know, of course, that people would have seen it as a sign from the gods at one time. I don’t know what causes it, and without a rational mind I would also claerly believe this a sign from the divine creator of his presence. I now know better.

 

My recommended methods:

1) Learn the abhidhamm (Buddhist philosophical psychology)