Evolutionary Approaches to Religion, Spirituality, and the Denial of Death

Introduction to Evolutionary Approaches to Spirituality

• The lecture covers evolutionary perspectives on spirituality, superstition, and religion.
• A central text for this discussion is The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, specifically the foreword and related passages.
• Students are expected to reflect on a dialogue between Stephen Colbert and Dr. Deepak Chopra regarding worldviews surrounding death.
• Cal Poly offers a full-length course entitled "Psychology of Death" for those interested in deeper study beyond this brief overview.
• Supplementary reading includes a nine-page summary of adaptive approaches to religiosity found in the week three module.

Universal Psychological Biases and Supernatural Beliefs

• Organized religion is approximately $6,000$ years old.
• Virtually every human culture, whether indigenous or industrialized, practices some form of supernatural tradition.
• The primary exception to this universal trend is found in Scandinavian countries, which are largely atheist. Notably, these countries also possess very strong social support networks.
• Evolutionary psychologists investigate whether a "universal psychological bias" exists that makes humans naturally attracted to supernatural causal explanations of the material world.
• The goal is to identify the psychological mechanisms and potential adaptive benefits associated with the human predisposition toward religious ideas.

The Four Leading Evolutionary Frameworks of Religion

• Gad Saad, a psychologist at Concordia University in Montreal who works at a business school, outlines four ways to study the evolutionary roots of religion:

• Religion as an Adaptation:

  • This view posits that religion confers a survival advantage to groups (Group Selection).
  • David Sloan Wilson, in his $2002$ book Darwin's Cathedral, argues that religious groups out-survive non-religious groups due to greater communality, cooperation, and cohesion.
  • Richard Sosis, an anthropologist, proposed the "Costly Signaling Theory of Religion." He argues that religious rituals are difficult to fake (costly signals). Adhering to these rituals builds deeper cooperation within the group.

• Religion as an Exaptation (Byproduct):

  • This view suggests religion is not an adaptation itself but "piggybacks" on cognitive systems that evolved for other purposes.
  • Pascal Boyer, in his $2001$ book Religion Explained, identifies several mechanisms, such as "Coalition Psychology."
  • Coalition Psychology involves an innate "us versus them" mindset. Religions are highly adept at utilizing this pre-existing psychology to create strong group identities.

• Religion as a Meme (Memetics):

  • Richard Dawkins introduced the term "meme" in his $1976$ book The Selfish Gene.
  • A meme is a cultural analog to a gene; it is a unit of information (ideas, beliefs, jingles) that is reliably copied from one brain to another.
  • Religions are viewed as "collections of memes" typically codified in holy books.
  • The success (infectiousness) of a religious meme complex can be linked to demographic factors. For example, there are roughly $1,600,000,000$ Muslims compared to $13,000,000$ to $16,000,000$ Jews. This difference may be attributed to higher fertility rates in Muslim-practicing populations, as people tend to adopt the religion of their parents.

• Religion as Fossils of the Human Mind:

  • Cultural products (song lyrics, religious texts) can be studied as psychological fossils.
  • A Darwinian historian performed a content analysis of the Old Testament, finding a direct correlation between the status of male characters and their sexual access to women. Higher-status males in the text had significantly more access, validating Darwinian predictions.

The God Instinct and Cognitive Architecture

• Jesse Bering's book The God Instinct suggests humans possess neural architecture specifically dedicated to religious cognitions.
• Key cognitive components include:
  • The belief that the mind is immortal and exists independently of the body.
  • The innate sense of an afterlife.
  • The belief that invisible agents (ancestors or gods) are present and can influence fate or behavior.
• This perspective argues that these beliefs are "preloaded" psychologically and do not necessarily require social conditioning to emerge.

Supernatural Causal Explanations: The Azande Case Study

• Anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard documented the Azande people in Central Africa.
• He observed an incident where a hut collapsed and killed eight people. The physical cause was clearly termites, which had degraded the structure over time.
• The Azande acknowledged the termites as the physical cause, but they rejected "coincidence" as an explanation for the timing of the collapse and the specific individuals killed.
• They concluded that witchcraft must have been involved to explain why the hut fell at that exact moment on those specific people.

The Denial of Death and Immortality Projects

• Ernest Becker argues that humans suffer from "existential angst" due to the awareness of their own mortality.
• To cope, humans invent "cultural analogs" or "immortality projects" to perpetuate a sense of existence beyond death.
• Religion is a primary immortality project, but humans also project immortality onto their kin, society, or achievements.
• Becker discusses the "character armor" people build to protect themselves from the fear of death.
• A consequence of these immortality projects is that people often bring "evil into the world" in the name of their perceived "good" or their specific group's immortality project.

Dialogue: Stephen Colbert and Dr. Deepak Chopra

• The discussion explores different worldviews regarding reality and death.
• Deepak Chopra's Perspectives:
  • Reality is a projection of consciousness, including perception, biology, and environment.
  • A "constritive and afraid" consciousness reflects a limited reality; a compassionate consciousness reflects expansion.
  • He argues we are experiencing "life after death" right now because the self is a deeper, infinite reality.
  • He claims "heaven" would be a place where "nothing ever happens" because it lacks the "creative impulse."
  • The concept of "Divine Discontent": Discontent is necessary for creativity. This is influenced by Taoist thought regarding the paradoxical nature of life (light/dark, pleasure/pain).

Philosophical Synthesis and Universal Ethics

• Becker’s work resonates with the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism:
  1. Life involves suffering (Dukkha).
  2. There is a cause for suffering (Attachment/Cravings).
  3. Suffering can end (Nirvana).
  4. The path to end suffering (The Eightfold Path).
• Living an Authentic Life:
  • Cultivating awareness of one's own death leads to the loss of "character armor."
  • Accepting the fragility of life leads to greater gratitude and appreciation for the present moment.
  • An authentic human must curate a "universal ethic" that applies to all of humanity rather than a tribal or group-specific identity.
  • This universal ethic is seen as the best strategy for collective survival on Earth.