Religion -Is the Human Brain a "Belief Engine"?

Lewis Wolpert believes that mankind's "incorrigible and wholly irrational" religiosity is as human, and as explicable, as the flint axe and the computer. It is a tool for the soul.

Religion and belief in a supernatural being is a natural consequence of how we are wired as human beings: our brains evolved to become "belief engines." And for that reason, we should not accept that our beliefs, particularly our religious beliefs, are correct.

Along with Richard Dawkins, the provocative Wolpert is one of Britain's best known atheists explainers of science. An eminent developmental biologist at University College London, he believes it is "ethically unacceptable and impractical to censor any aspect of trying to understand the nature of our world."

Wolpert penned a book-length meditation on "the evolutionary origins of belief," published as Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. Having pondered the subject, Wolpert sees no reason to modify his reductionist, materialist, atheist view of the universe. Deconstructing the belief engine will usefully explain how humans are different from other animals. "I believe that religious beliefs are at least partly genetically determined. How else can you explain the fact that there's no society ever discovered that didn't have some sort of religious belief?"

"What makes us human," Wolpert explains, "is causal beliefs. What makes us different from other animals is that we have a concept of cause and effect in the physical world."

Wolpert believes that what made us human is technology: "It can be summed up in Kenneth Oakley's definition, 50 years ago, that 'man may be distinguished as the tool-making primate'." Once our ancient human ancestors figured out how to manipulate the natural world. Toolmaking made us human. Early hominids understood cause and effect and came to believe in unseen gods and spirits as causes for life's great mysteries, including illness and death.

But how does that get us to God? In an interview last year Wolpert said "It was the mental concept of cause and effect which was critical. Once you had that concept which enabled you to manufacture complex tools, you then wanted to understand other things as well - why we got ill, what happened when we died, why the sun shone or disappeared. Those, too, must have causes. And that's the origin of belief."

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Story Link

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Comments

[David]

This is fantastic, but there are certainly other animals which share this sense of cause and effect. Obviously not in the more evolved way which we do, but in some rudimentary way, many animals learn. They have to if they want to survive. Simple cause and effect reasoning is observed in the primate that uses a stick to catch ants in an anthill, the horse that swats flies with its tail, any animal that fears humans...

Thinking is one of the things that drives the evolution of many different species, not just our own. It's a prerequisite for fear, after all, and fear is a direct consequence of the nervous system in numerous organisms.

What I'm saying is that any animal which has the capacity to feel pain is in some way logical and can understand certain causes and effects. They just don't have the ability to manipulate their environment (no opposable thumbs, sucks for them) so they never moved on to think about more complex problems, they are instead forced to live with what they've been provided, the ability to get away from predators and eat.

[joseph]

david, you just used a primate with a stick as your example for proof that other animals are capable of calculating cause and effect, and then said "They just don't have the ability to manipulate their environment (no opposable thumbs, sucks for them) so they never moved on to think about more complex problems".The article was referring to more complex tool making, bow and arrow, wheel, lever / pulley, ect. While that primate was eating ants and throwing his poop around, we were killing and eating much bigger animals, that are high in protein.

[Al Fin]

Interesting. That explains why so many people believe in anthropogenic climate catastrophe. The tendency to try to explain something that is not ready to be explained.

It also helps explain election results, how easily politicians can fool voters. In the modern world, the news media is the new priesthood, and the ideology-of-the-day is the new religion.

[Graycard]

I think it's hilarious that another article attempting to prove that religion is bogus calls it "A tool for the soul." If the soul isn't a religious construct, what is?

Come on, people. Sure, religion is a human universal, at least at the cultural level, and rationalism is just another of those true beliefs that allow us to feel some measure of comfort (i.e., predictability) in a cosmos where we can directly perceive literally nothing that doesn't change.

Religion attempts to make even the entheogenic experience predictable, so that maybe we can believe G*d will always be there for us even when the social contacts that constitute our human meaning die off or go away. Even hermits respond to this inherent social need in their withdrawal from contact, perhaps aiming to make more of that elusive right-brain contact with the divine that is also available to every society we know anything about. For a recent scientific example see Jill Bolte Taylor's My Stroke of Insight. This neuroscientist had a stroke that took out her left brain, leaving her unable to speak or, for instance, dial a telephone but in close contact with nirvana.

So visions really happen. It's not just something people make up to get attention, though some do try. This doesn't require anybody to devote themselves to old robed dudes sitting on clouds and flinging thunderbolts, but it might encourage us to consider that rationality has its limits in what it can explain.

[Tom]

Causal evolution of genetic predisposition to religious belief flies in the face of evolutionary theory – it would not provide a single benefit allowing the advancement of the species and therefore, it would be much more likely that the majority of the population would not have the “religiosity gene.”

If we are created by God, it only stands to reason that we are imbued with “religious beliefs (that) are at least partly genetically determined. How else can you explain the fact that there's no society ever discovered that didn't have some sort of religious belief?"

Quite simply, no matter how much or how often God is denied, it does not cause him to no longer exist. Napoleon (granted, not known as a great thinker) once said, “You think your are too intelligent to believe in God. I am not like you.”

Belief in the non-existence of God requires 1) the belief that there may be a god to not believe in and 2) a complete lack understanding of your station in the universe.

Belief in the possibility of a god requires the humility to accept there may be forces greater than an accidental existence.

Belief in God as your creator requires the humility to accept that existence came from something bigger than yourself, something other than a mere accident.

The God I believe in is “…immutable, immense, eternal, incomprehensible, almighty, most wise, most holy, most free, most absolute, working all things according to the counsel of his own immutable and most righteous will,” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Ch II.1)

A closer reading will note that it does not limit God to my interpretation of him. He is incomprehensible – I can understand aspects of him, but I cannot understand him in totality – because, although I am created in his image, I am not him.

When I free my interpretation of God from the box I want to place him in, I understand that science is a good and great tool for us to understand the universe, that it will likely be used to discover new life forms and that those life forms were created by the same God in which I believe.

[Anonymous]

Lewis Wolpert needs to take the time to study early religion with its shamans and their use of etheogens. He should give the latter a taste too. The effects of those types of plants can produce genuine religious experiences even in modern man. I'm sure as experience of their use has declined in Western civilization the true meaning of God(s) has been lost and replaced with super-natural Santa Clause like figures which Wolpert rightly rejects.

[Helder]

From the time I understood we do not need to explain, immediately, everything we do not understand until we get some time to stud it, I became a free man.
If you want to be immortal you should do something like the Egyptian Pyramids or be like Barack Obama.
After all, the life is so simple, general speaking.

[EvilCosmicMonkey from Knoxville]

The human brain is very likely wired for belief. But by blind evolution or by A Higher Power ? This debate's probably going to be around as long as humans exist.

Puts me in mind of one of Isaac Asimov's " Robot " stories, where a bunch of robots on a space station started malfunctioning & expressing belief in a station component called the L - tube. They started praising it, & believing that it had divine powers. Why a machine component instead of humans ?

As to belief / spirituality / faith, I think that it is very hard to remove & quantify something like that, anymore than you can study & measure a person's preference for a certain color, flavor, or artistic style, whatever. Science can't always reduce everything to its component elements, even though it can try to explain why they're there.

[claudio]

Disagree with the UK man that is presented in this article.

Yes we could have quite few 'hard-wired brain functions' ....in fact inscribed in our DNA....... But also many animals have those.

Capacity of abstraction and abstract thinking and reasoning ???? YES we have.

Sorry for Mr. Darwin that eventually did not know much about genomas and genes and DNA....and that was NOT an expert of Learning and Knowing and Reasoning....and of Cognitive sciences.

Capability to expand our mind to questions and need for an answer...It is the Upmost capacity of us the socalled 'sapiens-sapiens' or 'Sapiens 2'....It drives our evolution....many says and sustain.

Now the magic question : 'God' or 'NO-God' ??

It is an individual answer that we have to have in our mind and reasoning....and 'beliefs' ....as the MAN says.

If we cannot prove the very existance of God He cannot prove the opposite.....NOBODY can ...with brain pre-wired ...or mind reasoning ...or with brain feelings ...as 'felt'.

So what is the matter ???

Beliefs are prewired ?? He does NOT appear to be an expert of Human mind , cognitive sciences and of the Intelligence...a quite difficult subject...for everybody....and likely extraordinary difficult for HIM.

We DO NOT know...Does HE know ????...CLEVER UK guy...Clever and provokative...

May be he likes the popularity of being listened ...read ...and interviewed.

He seems to like as many of 'his kind' to believe that HE is smart and intelligent...and in fact he ends up in articles ...press and may be TV interviews.

Are these 'capabilities' PRE-WIRED in his brain ???

He should let us know...otherwise we take him as a 'NOT serious person' ...which in fact I DO.

Regards to the review BUT not to him.

[emmanuel frigstien]

i happened to read the holy book of Islam The Holy Qur'an and in it God said that '' everything on earth was created for the mankind''...its very true when we think of it. science has been getting revised every now and then. it keeps changing...every time there's a new theory emerges revising the old one. as we know it had been said that atoms cannot be divided and later discovered that it can be divided so much further. Qur'an says God created everything in pairs.

I also refer to the speculations around the landing of man in the moon. So how can we trust every scientific claims. Qur'an also said God has given only a drop of knowledge from the vast ocean of knowledge which exists.

thank you