'religion Explained': Contributions From Psychoanalysis And Evolutionary Psychology

Candidate Number: B00810

Degree:

BA Psychology & Philosophy

Module code & title:

LE300 Undergraduate Dissertation

Title:

‘Religion Explained’: Contributions from Psychoanalysis and Evolutionary Psychology

Word count:

8, 700 words

Heythrop College, University of London May 2009

‘Religion Explained’: Contributions from Psychoanalysis and Evolutionary Psychology Debate as to whether religious belief is a kind of psychological illusion has been raging since the early years of the age of enlightenment. As the title suggests, this essay shall lean heavily upon Boyer’s 2001 work, ‘Religion Explained’, but with contributions from other sources, such as Feuerbach, Freud, Pargament and Sorensen. Firstly, this essay shall discuss a small part of the wealth of empirical evidence that supports the view of religion as a coping mechanism, and then show how this is based in the psychoanalytic concepts of wish-fulfilment and projection. This will lead into discussion of the prevalence of agent-concepts in religions, through which a cognitive basis for the acquisition of religious belief will be established in the form of evolved hyper-active agency detection systems and default reasoning. More analysis of the detail of religious concepts shall follow, producing a possible ‘template’ for religious belief of minimally counter-intuitive concepts that produce a wealth of inferences. Focus shall then be made on the method of religion, ritual, which this essay will explore the idea of ritual as purely a construct of mis-activated cognitive capacities, limitations in naive sociology and blind belief in the charisma of early religious figures. Finally, a speculative personal hypothesis of religious development consisting of three stages shall be postulated, on the basis of the transmission factors that all successful religions experience and observations of the current direction the religiosity of the world is taking. Through this, this essay shall examine the idea that the ‘trappings’ of religion, ritual, is mistaken, but that the decision to believe is too subjective and idiosyncratic to be conclusively argued against as an illusion. The cognitive basis for the desire to believe: The cliché that ‘there are no atheists in foxholes’ is supported by a great deal of empirical evidence that show religion to be ‘often intimately involved in life’s most stressful moments’, suggesting that in many cases religious belief is used as a coping mechanism (Pargament, 1997; pp. 218). Coping is defined by Pargament as ‘the search for significance in the face of stressful life situations’, which can include external or internal crises as well as transition events (Pargament, 1997; pp. 217). When significance is threatened by such negative events, either of two coping mechanisms can be implemented, conservational or transformational (Pargament, 1997). As the terms suggest, a conservational coping style involves acceptance of the event and integration into existing belief structure, whilst a transformational coping style involves the abandonment of the existing belief structure in favour of new belief system into which the event can be integrated. The most commonly implemented style is conservational as people are understandably reluctant to turn their back on their core beliefs. Indeed, many religious people go to great lengths to conserve their faith, for example the Amish who keep themselves separate from modern society in order to preserve their ‘distinctive dress, language and way of life’ (Pargament, 1997; pp. 127). On the other hand, extremely negative events can cause even a deeply religious person to lose their faith altogether, for example a soldier who goes to

2

war to protect freedom and democracy only to become totally disillusioned by the terrible events he encounters (Pargament, 1997); in such a case all sense of significance may be lost, and new sources of significance must be found. However, once new sources are found coping style generally becomes conservational again in order to protect the newfound significance (Pargament, 1997). These two mechanisms thus act as ‘complimentary, interdependent processes that help guide and sustain the person throughout the life span’ (Pargament, 1997; pp. 217). A study by Shrimali and Broota in 1987 showed that a group of patients in India who were about to undergo major surgery reported higher levels of anxiety and belief in god than another group who were about to undergo fairly minor surgery and a control group. It was also found that after the major procedures both anxiety levels and belief in god fell to the same level as in the minor and control groups. Pargament argues that whilst family members and friends may come and go, god can be an ‘everpresent partner’ (1997; pp. 220) providing constant support to the anxious mind. Here it is important to note that anxiety and belief levels changed in tandem with each other, suggesting that higher levels of belief did not lead to lower levels of anxiety, but merely made the anxiety easier to bear. But it is not only god that can provide support; there are also a huge number of religious institutions and individuals associated with the sacred that can also be turned to in times of crisis. Indeed, there are many people who would rather go to their priest in times of stress than other human and health service systems; furthermore, there is generally much less stigma associated with the seeking of religious aid rather than, for example, psychiatric care (Chalfant at al., 1990). Other studies have shown church attendance to be linked to reduced alienation, more frequent higher quality social interaction as well as better compliance with treatment in African-American chronic dialysis patients (O'Brien, 1982), as well as less trouble sleeping for terminally ill cancer patients who received support from their church (Gibbs & Achterberg-Lawlis, 1978). In short, there is a huge wealth of evidence that shows that religious support is highly beneficial during times of stress and hardship. All of this evidence goes some way to support the idea that religious belief is a useful coping mechanism, and further that it is often used during times of crisis by people who are normally unreligious. There have been several studies that have supported the beneficial effects of confession, both religious and atheist, showing that ritual purification can also serve as a mechanism for coping with guilt (Pennebaker & Beall, 1986). Rituals such as the Catholic confession are well designed to produce feelings of tension during explications of sins and character flaws and release through the acceptance and forgiveness of the priest. Interestingly, a study performed by Lilliston and Klein in 1989 showed that people who believed that their actual selves were very different from the people they wanted to be were more likely to use religion as a coping mechanism. They concluded that times of crisis made people with a large actual-desired discrepancy try to adhere more closely to the guidance of their religion, further suggesting that religion is often used as a method of coping with our own shortcomings.

3

Another important mechanism associated with religious methods of coping is religious reframing, during which negative events are reconciled and integrated into the existing belief system. Religious reframing can concern the situation, the individual or the sacred. For the situation, studies have shown that likelihood of viewing negative events as challenges or opportunities is a function of strength of religious belief (Pargament et al., 1992; Wright et al. 1985), perhaps because those with stronger faith are more convinced that their suffering is part of a greater plan and their god will not push them beyond their endurance (Pargament, 1997); essentially creating reason by an appeal to divine forces where reason cannot be found. Reframing the individual refers to the tendency of religious people to attribute negative events to the actions of people rather than god, in doing so they can accept and integrate the evil in the world whilst conserving their belief in a loving god, in turn allowing them to conserve significance (Pargament, 1997). An opposite method with similar results is used by members of the Hindu religion who believe current misfortunes to be a result of immoral acts performed in previous lives (Pargament, 1997). Whilst at first look this may seem a rather harsh method of coping, it allows the Hindus to view misfortune as an opportunity to learn more about themselves and to atone for their previous sins (Pargament, 1997). Finally, reframing the sacred generally involves the idea of punitative god, one that has sent misfortune due to some moral infraction. Such a reappraisal allows the individual to view the misfortune as ‘deserved rather than something random or malicious’, allowing them to preserve their belief in a just world (Pargament, 1997; pp. 224). Also, such a view can provide comfort in that the individual can believe that by living in accordance with their religion in the future will enable them to avoid further misfortunes. Finally, William James was the first to observe that along with prolonged negative events, a history of uneasiness and stress is an important factor in religious conversion (1902), and there have been many studies since that have provided empirical support for this observation (Pargament, 1997). Whilst not a deterministic factor, as many people who report high levels of stress do not convert, those that do convert also report a strong sense of 'personal futility' in their dealings with stress (Pargament, 1997; pp. 228). This suggests that conversion most often occurs when all other methods of coping have been exhausted, supported by the common assertion of a new ‘sense of self’ after conversion. Indeed, ‘giving up’ and ‘self-surrender’ (Pargament, 1997; pp. 228) are common themes of religious conversion, further suggesting that religion is often turned to by the psyche when events or personal attributes can no longer be rationalised. The beneficial psychological effects of conversion are summed up well by Pargament: ‘with self centeredness replaced by a new source of significance and personal futility replaced by a new source of power, the religious convert feels radically transformed, now able to pursue newfound goals with newfound vigour’ (1997; pp. 228). Turning to a new god not only allows the individual to feel that they have left their old selves behind them or moved on from the event, essentially providing some kind of closure, but also provides a new code and standard for living, backed by religious authority.

4

Whilst the wealth of studies that have been performed into very specific instances makes it difficult to provide a fully coherent and exhaustative summary of the ways in religion is used as a coping mechanism, this is not the purpose of this section. Rather it is designed purely to provide strong support for the idea that many people use religion as a coping mechanism. There are clearly many cases in which religion has been used as a tool through which a believer can find hope, purpose and significance. It is intuitively obvious how this reflects the concept of wish-fulfilment, for without religion there is no real reason to believe that our hopes will come true or that our lives have purpose or significance beyond our own ascriptions. The concept of wish-fulfilment is most famously used in psychoanalysis, a school of psychological thought almost synonymous with its founding father, Freud. Although better known for his pioneering work on the structure of consciousness and the pleasure principle, Freud also had a great deal to say about religion, writing several works on the subject most notably ‘Totem and Taboo’ and ‘The Future of an Illusion’ that built on the ideas of Feuerbach (Faber, 1976). Whilst the finer details of the psychoanalytic view of religion are highly debateable, such as the validity of Freud’s view of the primal horde or of the parallels between his psychosexual stages of development and the development of religion, this essay shall only make use of the well-founded concepts of wish fulfilment and projection, first applied to religion by Feuerbach that were given a psychological foundation by Freud (Faber, 1976). Together, these two phenomena give religion its power as a coping mechanism. All religions have within them a moral code; indeed, in several cases this is all that sets them apart from one another. Furthermore, a large proportion of modern religious folk believe that living in accordance with their religion’s moral code is worship enough, which has led to a sharp decline in ritual worship. This shall be returned to later, but for now the point is simply that religious belief fulfils a wish in defining a clear moral code in an otherwise morally ambiguous world. This is clearly of great psychological benefit, the idea that there is no guiding force of good in the world is a difficult concept to accept; it entails the highly fearful premise that any justice in the world is merely accidental, that the just rewards and punishments of our actions in the world may never come. Also, if there is no god any distinction between good and evil becomes entirely subjective and thus loses its significance. Parallel to this, the holding of religious beliefs also allows the individual to believe that they have some control over the things that happen to them, that living in accordance with their religion will mean that less misfortune will befall them. Finally, the conception of a forgiving god enables believers to assuage their guilt; one of the most important of Freud’s discoveries was that all religions were centred around notions of guilt, a discovery that formed the basis of ‘Totem and Taboo’ (Faber, 1976). All this suggests that in many cases, if not all, religion is a form of wish fulfilment, it is a construct of the subconscious mind that shields the conscious mind from highly painful truths. For example, our knowledge that we are weak, finite and morally imperfect conflicts with our subconscious desires to be strong, infinite and morally perfect. In order to shield us from these difficult realities, the subconscious mind projects our desire for morality and control onto a deity,

5

belief in which is supported by other cognitive facilities as will be discussed later. In the case of non-theistic religions projection still occurs but onto some other force, for example karma in Buddhism. Hence it can be argued in a succinct turn of phrase that we are not made in god’s image, he is made in ours. Here it can be clearly seen how religious belief can be argued to be a form of wish-fulfilment, an attempt by the subconscious mind to shield us from certain difficult realities, and this is the psychological basis for the desire for religion. It is important to note here that Freud thought that if religion was wish fulfilment then it was delusional (Faber, 1976), whilst Pargament believes that the usefulness of religion as a coping mechanism makes it more likely to be true (Pargament, 1997). This highlights the point that religion is not necessarily false even if it can be explained in psychological terms; a point that will be returned to later in this essay. The cognitive basis for the willingness to believe: One of the most central features of any religion is that it contains some sort of agent, a being that is able to act on the world in some way in accordance with its beliefs and desires. Without an agent, a religious concept would be empty, if a deity is either unable to act or has no beliefs or desires its existence would be entirely trivial. Buddhism is one possible exception to this rule, but it could be argued that the agency of Buddhist belief is founded in the power of Karma. Thus, one of the core themes of religious beliefs is that there is a supernatural agent at work behind the scenes, a being with knowledge of events in the world and certain abilities to cause events in the world. Just like acquisition of counter-intuitive concepts, widespread belief in such agents is arguably caused by cognitive factors. As a species, humans are endowed with a cognitive agency-detection system that allows us to determine whether details in the world are ‘natural’ or caused by some agent with a mind. Such a capacity has obvious evolutionary advantage, if a being is unable to understand features of their environment as evidence that some predator or prey is lurking around they would have great difficulty avoiding being eaten or finding food, actions central to survival (Guthrie, 1995). As such abilities are so important for survival, it is advantageous for agency detection systems to be ‘hyper-active’ (Boyer, 2001; pp. 165); as to occasionally not detect agents where there are some could be fatal, whilst the occasional detection of agents where there are none will generally have little consequence (Guthrie, 1995). The application of this point to religious concepts is nicely supported by evidence from religions such as shamanism, where many predatory metaphors are used such as hunting for souls or chasing away evil spirits (Boyer, 2001). Agency detection is necessarily an instant inference, due to its evolutionary advantages the mind is disposed to assume the existence of an agent, and only to abandon the assumption once a lack of agent is proven. There is a nice parallel with the transition from religious beliefs to atheism here that highlights the idea that a religious nature is the default human condition, one to be disproved rather than proven. However, in any person’s religious life there will be many instances when the required agency will not be detected, or may be

6

apparently detected along a complex chain of broad inferences. Either way what makes religious beliefs so robust in the face of a lack of evidence is not clear. A lack of direct evidence is often rightly used by sceptics as a strong argument against god, to which the common, albeit counter-intuitive, reply is simply that god moves in mysterious or unfathomable ways. From arguments perspective, such a retort is very weak as it is necessarily based on a confession that there is no evidence for god’s hand in the events under consideration. However, it is very telling of the cognitive processes that can allow people to have faith without evidence. In order to elucidate these processes, a conception of strategic information must first be established. Strategic information in this sense is defined by Boyer as ‘the subset of all the information currently available (to a particular agent, about a particular situation) which activates the mental systems that regulate social interaction’ (2001; pp. 173). The best example of strategic information in this sense is gossip, although it is not information that is necessarily used for any particular purpose, it is social information upon which many rich inferences about other people can be easily made. Further, the example also highlights the subjective nature of strategic information as it also depends on the inferences of the individual’s representation rather than any intrinsic qualities of the information itself; a certain piece of workplace gossip may be ‘juicy’ to certain members of a social group, but trivial and uninteresting to others. Not only do humans represent strategic information, we also have the ability to represent whether or not others have strategic information, a highly useful and complex skill that is generally developed at around age three. It requires the understanding that access to strategic information is limited or ‘imperfect’ and is extremely important for social interaction, with deficiencies in this capacity resulting in pathologies such as autism (Boyer, 2001; pp. 175). What is particularly interesting relevant to religion is that all deities are believed to have full or ‘perfect’ access to strategic information; in other words they have knowledge of every social action a person performs (Boyer, 2001). This means that deities are believed to have access to a much greater amount of information than people are, thus able to move in ways that are mysterious or unfathomable to us. Perfect access to strategic information is a very important property of successful religious concepts (Boyer, 2001). As mentioned above, religious concepts without agents are empty, and a deity cannot have a relevant agency without any strategic information. In a similar vein, agent concepts with perfect access can provide a much greater wealth of inferences than those with imperfect access (Boyer, 2001). Thus, deities with perfect access tend to be more successful as religious concepts, not only because they are highly resilient to apparently contrary evidence. The cognitive basis of a template for religious concepts: Now, having discussed some of the evidence for the existence of a cognitive basis for the acquisition of religious belief, next we must consider what sort of religious concepts are entailed by cognitive factors in order to find a psychological basis for the sorts of religious concepts people hold. Firstly, the structure of religious concepts must be considered. Religious concepts are

7

necessarily counter-intuitive in that they consist of a subject from an ontological category, such as person, animal, plant, tool or inanimate object, as well as certain violations to the intuitive criteria of the category (Boyer, 2001). For example, there are a great many religions in the world that are centred around the concept of ancestors; they consist of a subject from the ontological category of person, and ontological violations such as being immaterial. These violations must be ontological in order to be sufficiently interest-grabbing by providing a rich source of paranormal inferences. Whilst kind-concepts violations are often found in religion, the work of Stewart has shown that these are rarely constant features within a religion, often differing over short periods and even within groups (Stewart, 1991). The list of potential ontological violations that produce workable religious concepts is quite small, consisting only of violations to physical, biological or psychological properties (Boyer, 2001), for example, in the case of the concept of ancestors the physical and biological aspects of the ontological category of person are violated. Whilst such observations are all well and good, the question remains as to why the human mind is so receptive to counter-intuitive concepts in general. The cognitive basis for counter-intuitive god concepts comes from the cognitive phenomenon of ‘default reasoning’ (Boyer, 2001; pp. 85). Default reasoning occurs when information such as the shape of pac-man is stored as ‘a circle with a triangle removed’. Such a phrase does not correspond to any precise geometrical shape, rather it is a conjunction of a precise shape with a violation in the form of another shape. Computers are unable to recognise such shapes, at least without a great deal of subtle programming, whereas the human mind is able to create representations of pac-man without any great difficulty. Thus, the human mind is highly receptive to counter-intuitive propositions as the ability to use such concepts is much more cognitively efficient than, for example, storing the shape of pac-man as a computer would. The effects of default reasoning become more apparent in the light of the fact that people often hold highly detailed representations on the basis of little information (Boyer, 2001). For example, when people argue the existence of ghosts, they will most probably postulate that there are spirits in the world that can perform certain supernatural acts, such as being able to walk through walls. It would be considered highly patronising for such individuals to also state that these spirits have minds much like ours, that they can see, hear and remember things in much the same way as we do, such information literally goes without saying (Boyer, 2001). This is because default reasoning immediately ascribes such abilities to the ghosts, unless it is explicitly stated to the contrary (Boyer, 2001). In such cases, the normal, non-violational aspects of the concept are acquired through default reasoning via the ontological category of person. It is only the counter-intuitive properties to the category that require explication. The phenomenon of default reasoning also serves to clarify the nature that the counter-intuitive violations can take. If the violations were too numerous or complex to allow default reasoning to produce a wealth of interesting inferences, the religious concept may become too complex to hold or transmit. Looking at this the other way, default reasoning will be much more effective if a concept has few violations that produce many interesting inferences. This will make the

8

concept much easier to integrate into existing knowledge structures, and therefore more convincing for the believer. Thus, many religious concepts are convincing as they fit well into existing knowledge structures despite ontological violations, which are accepted due to their compatibility with the human cognitive capacity for default reasoning. Successful concepts produce a wealth of interesting inferences that override intuition by shifting cognitive focus. However, this template for religious concepts appears not to fit with many of the god concepts found in the major religions of today. For example, Christians would argue that god is able to perform more than one act at a time. This belief forms a part of their theological conception of god, which is most likely stored in the form of ‘explicit sentence like propositions’ (Boyer, 2001; pp. 103), such as ‘god is able to perform many acts at the same time’. However, studies performed by Barrett have shown that although Christians may hold this theological view, their ‘spontaneous view’ of god is quite different (Barrett, 1996). Barrett had his participants read stories that implicitly described one or other of the Christian god’s supernatural abilities, one of which described god performing two acts in the world at the same time. Now, as the human mind is unable to store a text word for word if it is longer than a few sentences, the participants would have created memory traces of the main themes within the prose and of how they are connected. Thus, when later asked to recall the story some of the finer details of the story that appeared unimportant may be distorted, reflecting more how the participant perceived the occurrences of the story than the story itself. Barrett found that most of the participants reported that god first performed one of the acts and ‘then went on’ to perform the other, strongly suggesting that the participants did not actually perceive god as being able to perform many acts at the same time. Boyer marks the distinction by arguing that within the religious mind there is both an official theological concept and an implicit spontaneous concept; the latter of which tends to fit the framework outlined above, stored in the form of ‘direct instructions to intuitive psychology’ rather than explicit propositions (Boyer, 2001; pp. 103). The cognitive basis of ritual: Having discussed the cognitive basis for the desire to believe, the willingness to believe and the cognitive basis for the concepts believed in, the cognitive basis for the method of religion, ritual, must be considered. Just like religion in general, rituals can be split into two main types, imaginistic and doctrinal (Whitehouse, 2004). Moreover, just like religion in general, imaginistic rituals tend to produce great emotional intensity and tend to be a feature of immature religions, whilst doctrinal rituals tend to produce less emotional intensity and tend to feature in more mature religious practice (Whitehouse, 2004). However, it is unclear exactly how and why ritualistic practices can come to have religious significance they do despite the lack of any apparent connection between the ritualistic acts and their expected outcomes. Further, it is also unclear how such tenuous links can be transmitted over time without adequate explanation, if any at all, of the supposed underlying processes. For example (Boyer, 2001), before performing a sacrifice to the goddess Chandli in India, the goat must be taken to her temple to have it purified by a

9

Brahman. The Brahman first pours consecrated water on the goat’s body whilst praying to the goddess. He then presents flowers, incense, rice and water to the animal, worshipping it and whispering prayers into its ears, whilst at the same time worshipping a sacred sword. Another follower then uses the sword to remove the goat’s head in one stroke, which is then taken and offered to Chandli. The rest of the body is taken away by the worshippers to share with friends and relatives. It is clear that participants in such rituals believe them to have a great deal of intrinsic meaning, but it is not clear what this meaning could be. Perhaps the participants would argue that they grasp or express some important message about themselves and their relationships to their gods and community through such rituals (Boyer, 2001). However, there appears to be no message inherent in the ritual described above, the ‘dialogue’ of worship not only appears very one-way but also has no directly perceivable effects. Boyer argues that rituals are actually designed to reduce the amount of information transmitted (2001), supporting his argument by citing the work of Bloch (pp. 266) who pointed out that most ritualistic language is either archaic or formulaic, meaning either that no one really knows what it means or that the words are the same as every previous ritual. Roman Catholicism is a perfect example of such a phenomenon; not only were all their rituals are prescribed and performed in Latin until relatively recently, but they also reacted very strongly when the Protestants first attempted to perform their religious rituals and translate the Bible into the vernacular. The combination of rigid prescriptions for action and lack of connection between the acts and outcomes of rituals turns them into events that actually convey very little meaning than other instances of social interaction (Boyer, 2001). Boyer goes on to argue that, within doctrinal constraints, any meaning associated with such rituals is tantamount to free association due to the lack of information transmission and the rigidity of ritual; he argues that this is the only way to fully explain how religious meaning can be gleaned from ritual with no apparent justification. Furthermore, as argued by Rappaport, even if some meaning was conveyed through ritual it would not be enough to explain why the information must be conveyed in the way dictated by the ritual (Boyer, 2001; pp. 267). Even once the meaning of a ritual is established we are only left with a message that could be conveyed with greater clarity via some other method. For example, during Christian marriage ceremonies, the bride is led to the altar by her father who then takes his seat. It can easily be argued that the meaning of such a ritual is to symbolise the transmission of authority over his daughter to the groom, but there is nothing intrinsic to this meaning that dictates that the ritual must be carried out in that exact manner. Thus, the problem of why rituals are performed in the way they are remains even if the meaning is established. Because ritual is found in almost all religions, it is clear that there must be some sort of psychological basis for them (Boyer, 2001). It is not clear how ritual could provide any sort of evolutionary advantage. Perhaps they create a greater sense of community which may create a stronger society that is more likely to survive; however, evolution ‘creates mental organisation that makes people behave in particular ways’ rather than specific behaviours and the use of rituals

10

is not nearly consistent enough to warrant such an assertion (Boyer, 2001; pp. 268). Boyer argues that perhaps the answer is unclear because it is not a ‘unique capacity or propensity’ (pp. 269) of the human mind that causes ritual, but rather a group of ‘salient cognitive gadgets’ (pp. 269) made up of several separate capacities, each with a specific function unrelated to religion, that together produce a propensity for ritual as a by-product. In support of his argument, Boyer identifies three aspects of ritual that appear in almost all successfully transmitted rituals (2001; pp. 270). They are ‘sense of urgency’, ‘social effects’ and ‘supernatural participation’. Boyer argues that the sense of urgency felt during ritualistic acts is a result of over activation of the contagion system in the brain (2001). The contagion system specifically deals with undetectable contaminants; it is the system in the brain that provides us with the intuition not to eat rotting meat or to avoid excrement and so on. The system produces feelings of disgust or fear without needing to directly identify the potential dangers. Ritualistic practices contain many acts that would cause the contagion system to be activated, most notably the focus on cleansing, certain conditions for or complete avoidance of contact, the marking off of areas as sacred and so on. Such practices persuade our subconscious minds that there is some dangerous contaminant that can be avoided by adherence to the ritual, and causes worshippers to look upon the violation of ritualistic rules as something disgusting or to be feared, even without any clear conception of why. There are a great many religious rituals associated with changes in social status, examples include births, marriages and rites of passage (Boyer, 2001). In such cases, it is of extreme importance that the rest of the social group is informed of the changes. In the case of births, the social group must be informed that they have a new member that will require looking after and integration into the group; in the case of marriages, the social group must be informed that there is a new sexual-economic partnership that will affect the society by removing potential mates and possibilities for economic coalition. Why these social effects are generally marked with religious rituals can be explained by an appeal to the limitations of ‘naive sociology’. The term ‘naive sociology’ describes our understanding of social groups and relations as the combination of the intuitions we hold due to our social-mind systems and the concepts we use to define social categories (Boyer, 2001). The concept of social-mind systems is best described as our tendency to personify social groups with many members as wanting something or believing something as a whole, whilst social categories can be groups such as potential mates or family members. The ascription of social-mind systems is a useful yet flawed tool; it is useful to think of a group of people that want the same thing as a single abstract organism, but in reality they are clearly individuals. For example, if the members of a particular village have fought against another village for longer than any of them can remember, they will all hold the intuition that they do not fight because of something to do with themselves, but rather because of some political factor that transcends the current population. However, such a concept is too complex for naive sociology to explain so it is expressed in other ways, for example the villagers may claim that they fight because the blood of their

11

ancestors runs in their veins. In terms of marriage, the villagers will all have the intuition that the union has consequences for the rest of village, but will most likely lack the concepts to describe fully why this is the case. The performance of rituals gives an abstract foundation and explication of these intuitions that can be easily understood. The presence of a deity at such rituals is clearly optional, many nonreligious marriage rituals are conducted along very similar lines to religious versions, and many non-religious people choose to perform a religious ceremony whilst clearly not convinced of the presence of a god. However, the flaws in ascriptions of social-mind systems give such explanations an obvious parallel with religious ideas, namely that there is no direct perceivable link between the hidden causes and their effects. This creates an ‘opening for gods or spirits’ (Boyer, 2001; pp. 293), as the gap between cause and effect can be filled with pretty much any representation people choose. The performance of a marriage ritual provides abstract foundation and explication of the intuitions surround the social change, the effects, whilst a representation of a god or spirit can be used not only to provide the cause but also to explain away the sense of urgency created by the ritual. Whilst it is clear worshippers may perform rituals to, for example, become closer to or to please their deity, these are explanations of why they worship and not explanations of why they worship through ritual. Instead, these three aspects of ritual can be used to explain why religious rituals are so commonplace as methods of worship, at least in very general terms. However, the question remains as to how such rituals came about in the first place; who designed them, why they did so and, perhaps most importantly, why people chose to follow them in particular. Sorensen argues well in his 2002 that in order to establish or change a ritual, the protagonist must have some ‘charismatic proclivity’ (pp. 170) that appears to give them authority. Such charismatic authority comes from intrinsic qualities of the protagonist themselves, unlike the traditional and legal-rational authority conferred on religious officers based on the constitutive rules surrounding their position (Sorensen, 2005). These intrinsic qualities cause potential followers to believe that the protagonist has some sort of direct link with ‘superempirical agency and powers deriving from this connection’ (Sorensen, 2005; pp. 169). These powers allow protagonists to transcend these constitutive rules and thus ‘abolish existing practices and establish new ones with divine sanction’ (Sorensen, 2005; pp.169). There are two main factors that lead to the ascription of charismatic proclivity (Sorensen, 2005). Firstly, perceptual features, such as clothing or behaviour, act as ‘iconic signs’ (pp. 171) that mark out religious persons from lay people. Secondly, these same features can be interpreted as ‘outward manifestations’ (pp. 171) of some religious nature essential to those in religious authority. These two factors enforce one another and serve to set religious figures apart from and above the lay people in religious matters. Because they combine many of these perceptual features into a single communal act, rituals are the primary means to producing an apparent superempirical connection and

12

thus the most effective way of conveying such charisma and religious authority (Sorensen, 2005). Revolutionary charismatic proclivity is necessarily unstable and involves a high level of emotional arousal, for example the widespread iconoclasm of the early protestant movement. Once the new practices have been established they are unlikely to be able to produce such intense effects, and thus other less emotionally arousing methods of conveyance of religious authority must be put in place for the religion to survive. The establishment of rituals also causes ‘routinization’ of the charisma (Sorensen, 2005; pp. 169), allowing the initial charisma of the protagonist to grow and be passed on to others making the new religious practice more stable. As well as ritual actions and instruments, routinization can occur through the creation of bureaucratic religious offices and official doctrines (Sorensen, 2005). In summary of this section, ritual is a central feature of any religion as it allows the initial charisma of the protagonist religious figure to be entrenched in religious practice, stabilising the religion and allowing it to grow beyond the protagonist and their immediate followers. The natural tendency of the human mind to follow and believe in ritual practices can be explained, for the most part, by three psychological factors, the sense of urgency caused by activation of the contagion system, the social effects of social events such as rites of passage, and the supernatural participation that fills the position of apparent cause to the rituals effect. The transmission of religion & a hypothesis for three ‘stages of religiosity’: Thus, having determined the cognitive basis for the desire and willingness to believe, the cognitive basis for the concepts believed in and for the method of religion, ritual, one final detail is left to discuss; the transmission of religion. For any religion to survive it must be transmitted to new followers, be they new converts or the children of current believers. If not then it would surely die out with its founders. Thus, a successful religion requires transmission advantages, certain traits that facilitate its spread (Boyer, 2001). Using Boyer's concept of transmission advantages with the other points discussed above, the author suggests that it is possible to argue that the path a religion takes from first conception to maturity can be split into three stages, idiosyncratic belief, ‘primitive’ cultural belief and ‘developed’ cultural belief, each of which requires different kinds of transmission advantages for the religion to continue to the next level. This speculative hypothesis shall be discussed in the remainder of this essay. The advantages required for the first stage have already been discussed in this essay, a combination of minimally-counter intuitive agent concepts and charismatic founders. These are the factors that allow a fledgling religion to be spread from the mind of the founder to the first group of followers. A perfect example of this stage is Jesus, a charismatic figure who transmitted his beliefs to his small band of disciples. Whilst it could be argued that his beliefs were not strictly minimally counter-intuitive in the ways discussed above, they were not vastly different from the existing Jewish beliefs. Furthermore, using the term rather loosely, it could be argued that the new Christian beliefs were minimally

13

counter-intuitive to the Jewish beliefs, thereby building upon an already rich set of inferences with the added benefit of an injection of charisma; perhaps a subject for another essay. Thus, the first stage of transmission requires theoretical transmission advantages, backed by charisma. Once a few followers have been acquired, the religion can be considered as a primitive culture, which therefore requires cultural transmission advantages. Good examples of such advantages include religious war, such as crusade or jihad, and the assimilation of local beliefs. Encouragement of aggression has clear advantages for a religion at this stage as it allows for easy expansion and conversion. The faith of the followers is founded on the charisma of the religious figures at this stage, which would include marauding religious knights, and as such they are unlikely to question the moral code presented to them. The assimilation of local beliefs, for example the Christian propagation of pagan festivals such as the winter solstice and the vernal equinox which facilitated the spread of Christianity across England by simply renaming the gods already worshipped; as mentioned above, the work of Stewart has shown such details to be surprisingly easy to change. Thus, the second stage of transmission requires cultural transmission advantages, backed by ritual. Once a religion has been fully established, charisma becomes less important and is replaced with theology, contributing to a ‘developed’ system of religious belief. Faith is no longer based in the religious figures and method, but rather in the considered belief in the religion itself. Consequently, the finer details of the religious belief system come under theological debate. Such debate allows believers to transcend the early transmission factors, no longer are they enamoured by the charisma of their leader, willing to believe him because of the reliance on default cognition, they now seek a rational basis for their belief. Unfortunately, rational evidence is highly subjective and hard to come by, meaning that the religion will experience many transmission disadvantages, most notably cessation of ritual. Evidence for this can be found in the general ‘religiosity’ of the world today, which seems to be evolving into two main ideologies, atheism and spirituality. For both parties, religious method or ritual really has only cultural significance. For example Christmas, whilst clearly a modern Christian festival, is mostly celebrated by people who see it only as a time for family, or even only as a time for presents. Another example is marriage, for many religious people marriage is one of the few rituals they perform, and as mentioned above there are many non-religious people who have Christian weddings. Because such rituals are a product of the limitations of our naive sociology rather than any inherent religiosity, as our naïve sociology improves the gap between cause and effect closes and the religious significance of these rituals will diminish, to be replaced with purely cultural significance in both cases. As cessation of strict ritual occurs, the considered theological belief of religious folk centers on the moral code of their religion rather than the deities involved. This is because once considered, it is hard to believe that a moral deity would be offended if one of their followers were to live in perfect accordance with the moral code because of their belief, but perhaps ate the wrong sort of meat a few times, or perhaps did not attend church quite as many times as they should.

14

To use a rather personal example as evidence, several Hindu friends of mine have eaten beef in Argentina despite being otherwise observant of the Hindu respect for cows; arguing that they would be missing out on an important aspect of argentine culture and that their deity ‘would surely not mind’ a small number of transgressions. Thus, the importance of the more exact details of religion also diminishes during this third transition. Consequently, the ‘trappings’ of religion caused by the psychological factors outlined above are removed from religion due to their inherent transmission disadvantages during this stage. What is left is the core of religious belief, the belief in the agent concept, belief that there is some sort of force with a moral code that governs the universe. This is the view of the spiritualist, which has obvious parallels with the view of the atheist in that both believe that the matter of the universe consists of energy, the ‘trappings’ of both are the same whilst the core differs. The difference is that the religious believe this energy to have some kind of consciousness, whereas the atheist believes this energy to be random in the sense of being unguided by a consciousness in its interactions within itself. Thus, the third stage of transmission is beset by cultural transmission disadvantages, and consists of the refutation of charisma and ritual, leading to either spirituality or atheism depending upon how the individual deals with refutation. This, the author tentatively postulates, is the final stage of religiosity into which the world is currently moving. The transition began during the age of enlightenment, during which people were first able to overcome cognitive biases and theological debate began in earnest. The strength of this conception of the phases of religiosity lies in its ready application to both the history of religion in general and within each individual, to use an idea inherent in Freud’s discussions of religion (Faber, 1976), the religion of society has developed in much the same way as the religion of a child develops, first based upon the charisma of religion and religious figures, then entrenched through ritual and finally truly considered, allowing for a developed and coherent system of belief that transcends cognitive biases. However, it is important to note that the linear progression suggested by the model is not a necessary feature of all its applications. Fluid, even recursive, movement in and out of phases is clearly possible, especially within individuals. Whilst the atheist would readily argue that the spiritualist is still a victim of hyper-active agency detection and wish fulfilment, study of the psychology of religion cannot really be used to refute religion in its entirety. For if there were some deity that created the world and the people within it, there is no reason to suspect that they would not have created within us psychological tendencies for religiosity. Consequently, arguments from psychology of religion can be used in favour of the existence of a spiritualist version of god just as much as they can to refute it. This is why the third stage is most likely the final stage. When separated from the trappings of religion, whether or not there is some consciousness guiding forces in the world simply cannot be shown through argument, it can only be interpreted from argument. As such it is necessarily idiosyncratic, a belief that may change often over the course of an individual’s life, yet remains ever present in some form. Thus, whilst the psychological and evolutionary factors may be used to explain the phenomenon of religion, such

15

explanation does not form a conclusive argument against religion itself as it can be viably argued that ‘god moves in mysterious ways’. Summary and conclusions: There is a large amount of evidence that supports the common usage of religion as a coping mechanism, which in turn supports the idea of religion as wish-fulfilment and projection. Combined with hyper-active agency detection and default reasoning systems this provides both a cognitive basis for the acquisition of religious beliefs and for the types of belief prevalent in successful religions. As argued by Boyer, the conception of religious belief as consisting of minimally counter-intuitive ideas provides a solid template for successful religious beliefs that is well supported by observation of religions successful in the world today. For the method of religion, ritual, cognitive basis can be found in over-activation of the contagion system and flawed naive psychology based in the charisma of the early leaders within the religion. Overall, these factors form the basis of the transmission advantages any new religion requires for successful spread. Once successfully spread, religions come under theological debate, and the trivial and arbitrary parts become transmission disadvantages. Thus, they are slowly stripped away as believers start to consider the core of religion, their belief in agent concepts, rather than merely accepting the existence of their god and debating the method of worship. On a global scale, this process began during the enlightenment. Once stripped of the trappings of belief, religious persons hold a spiritualist belief where an agent concept with a moral code is used to provide guidance and significance rather than strict method in everyday life. This core does not experience transmission disadvantages as it is purely subjective and idiosyncratic. Furthermore, the arguments outlined above, whilst useful for showing the trappings of religion to be an illusion, are ineffective against the core. Thus, this line of argument suggests that the religiosity of the world is slowly evolving into one of two systems of belief that hold many parallels with one another, atheism and spirituality. To conclude, it is possible to fully explain the existence of religion in psychological terms, but such explanations can only be used to streamline the phenomenon rather to than refute it.

Bibliography: Barrett, J. (1996). ‘Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts.’ Cognitive Psychology, 31(3); pp. 219-247. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion Explained; the Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors. Vintage Books London. Faber, H. (1976). Psychology of Religion. SCM Press LTD. Guthrie, S. (1995). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Altamira Press.

16

James, W. (1902). The Varieties of religious Experience. Touchstone Press. Pargament, K. (1997). ‘Religious Methods of Coping: Resources for the conservation and Transformation of Significance.’ In Shafranske, E. (ed) (1997). Religion and the Clinical Practice of Psychology; pp. 215-234. APA Press, Washington D. C. Sorensen, J. (2005). ‘Charisma, Tradition, and Ritual: A Cognitive Approach to Magical Agency.’ In Whitehouse, H. & McCauley, R. (eds.) (2005). Mind and Religion; pp. 167-185. Altamira Press. Stewart, C. (1991). Demons and the Devil: Moral Imagination in Modern Greek Culture. Princeton University Press.

Citations for studies taken from Pargament: Chalfant, H., Heller, P., Roberts, A., Briones, D., Aguirre-Hochbaum, S. & Farr, W. (1990). 'The clergy as a resource for those encountering psychological distress'. Review of religious Research, 31; pp. 305-313. Gibbs, H. & Achterberg-Lawlis, J. (1978). 'Spiritual values and death anxiety: Implications for counselling with terminal cancer patients. Journal of Counselling Psychology, 25; pp. 563-569. Lilliston, L. & Klein, D. (1989). A self-discrepancy reduction model of religious coping. Paper presented at the American Psychological Association. Boston, MA. O'Brien, M. (1982). 'Religious faith and adjustment to long-term haemodialysis'. Journal of Religion and Health, 21; pp. 68-80. Pargament, K., Olsen, H., Reilly, B., Falgout, K., Ensing, D. & Van Haitsma, K. (1992). 'God help me (II): The relationship of religious orientations to religious coping with negative life events.' Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 31; pp. 504-513. Pennebaker, J. & Beall, S. (1986). 'Confronting a traumatic event: Toward an understanding of inhibition and disease.' Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95; pp. 274-281. Shrimali, S. & Broota, K. (1987). 'Effect of surgical stress on belief in God and superstition: An in situ investigation.' Journal of Personality and Clinical Studies, 3; pp. 135-138. Wright, S., Pratt, C. & Schmall, V. (1985). 'Spiritual support for caregivers of dementia patients.' Journal of Religion and Health, 24; pp. 31-38.

17