Religion and evolution mix like water and oil-covered cats; they just don’t seem to
get along.
But is it possible we evolved to have religion?
Hey believers and skeptics, Julian here for DNews.
Recently a study published in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
examined how a certain part of the brain is linked to belief in God.
The study used 39 college undergraduates who were all religious and politically moderate.
They were split into two groups, the first group had their posterior medial frontal cortex,
or pMFC, temporarily inhibited with pulses from a transcranial magnet, and the second
group got a similar treatment but with the magnet turned down so it didn’t actually
affect how their brain worked.
The participants were first primed with a discussion on death and then asked whether
they believed in various aspects of a religion: the devil, hell, God, heaven.
Those who had their brain inhibited reported believing in all that almost a third less
often than the students in the uninhibited group.
The conclusion the researchers drew is religion could be a method for overcoming an ideological
problem.
You see, according to the researchers the pMFC they were tinkering with is used for
solving concrete problems, like figuring out the best way to climb over a fallen log.
It perceives a problem, determines the threat, and decides a course of action.
So the scientists from the University of York and UCLA wanted to see if the same hardware
was implemented when a person is confronted with the knotty problem of death.
Death is scary and inevitable, so our brains need a way to cope with that.
This echoes what some other scientists believe about religion.
In 2008 the prominent atheist Richard Dawkins was asked if religion must give humans some
evolutionary advantage, considering how ubiquitous it is across culture and history.
Dawkins responded that he did indeed believe that humans had evolved to believe in God,
but that it was the byproduct of mental machinery that was advantageous in some other way.
He compared it to a moth’s tendency to fly into a candle flame because they evolved to
use bright but distant light sources like the moon to navigate, and a candle confused
what had been useful for their survival for millions of years before artificial light.
Self immolation is clearly a bad survival strategy for a moth, so it’s easy to write
that off as some other biological function being coopted.
But it’s possible believing in a higher power helps our species.
In a 2006 study published in the journal of Developmental Psychology,Psychologist Jesse
Bering devised an experiment where he challenged children to play a game that was impossible
to win without cheating.
For a third of the children, each child played by themselves with no supervision.
For another third a researcher stayed in the room with them.
And the last group were told that there was a magical invisible princess who would be
there watching them play.
The result was the unsupervised children cheated way more.
And the ones who believed a presence was there cheated about as often as when an actual adult
was sitting right behind them.
Bering repeated the experiment with adults, although presumably he didn’t tell them
a magic princess was there, and the results were about the same.
The thinking goes that if we believe we’re being watched and judged, we all benefit.
Professor Domenic Johnson of the University of Edinburgh liked it to riding the subway:
in order for the subway to function, we all have to pay.
If one person cheats and doesn’t pay, sure they have given themselves a little advantage.
But if too many people do it, the whole system collapses.
It’s possible there are other explanations for why dialing down the posterior medial
frontal cortex made participants say they were less religiously inclined.
The same study also found that those with their brains inhibited were more accepting
of immigrants criticizing their country.
A 2011 study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that similarly inhibited participants
conformed to social norms less, and another study in the journal from earlier this year
showed that the pMFC keeps us making choices that are consistent with ones made in the
past.
So maybe this part of the brain, along with helping us solve problems, preserves how we’ve
learned to solve them before and so keeps religious beliefs rigid.
To quote the researchers of the original study themselves, “more research is needed.”
Like it or not, religion is an essential part of the human story.
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The topic of God and science is a great one, there’s so much to talk about we couldn’t
possibly do it in one episode.
So Trace devoted an entire week to discussing it over on Test Tube Plus.
Check it out right here.
This is normally the part where I’d say something to get you involved and talking,
but I know for this episode I don’t have to.
Just remember to keep it civil, even if you believe there’s no higher power watching.
We’re all human beings people, let’s work together for the benefit of the species.
Subscribe for more, and I’ll see you next time on DNews.