Did the Evolution of Human Imagination Lead to Belief in Gods?

French-British anthropologist, Maurice Bloch, of the London School of Economics believes that humans alone practice religion because they're the only creatures to have evolved imagination. The development of imagination occurred at the time of the Upper Palaeolithic 'revolution' 40-50,000 years ago. Bloch challenges the popular notion that religion evolved and spread because it promoted social bonding, as has been argued by some anthropologists (Image is prehistoric rock painting from south of Spain).

According to Bloch's theory, initially humans had to develop the essential brain architecture to imagine things and beings that don't exist physically, and the possibility that people somehow survive on after their death.

Once this was acquired, we had access to a form of social interaction unavailable to any other creatures on the planet. Exclusively, humans could use what Bloch calls the "transcendental social" to unite with groups, such as nations and clans, or even with imaginary groups such as the dead. He explained that the transcendental social also permits humans to follow the idealized codes of conduct linked with religion.

"What the transcendental social requires is the ability to live very largely in the imagination," New Scientist magazine quoted him, as saying.

"One can be a member of a transcendental group, or a nation, even though one never comes in contact with the other members of it. Moreover, the composition of such groups, whether they are clans or nations, may equally include the living and the dead," he added.

He argues that no animals, not even our nearest relatives the chimpanzees, can do this. Instead, he says, they're restricted to the routine and Machiavellian social interactions of everyday life.

The reason for this, he says, is that they can't imagine beyond this immediate social circle, or backwards and forwards in time, in the same way that humans can.

Bloch believes our ancestors evolved the essential neural architecture to imagine before or around a time called the Upper Palaeological Revolution, the final sub-division of the Stone Age.

"The transcendental network can, with no problem, include the dead, ancestors and gods, as well as living role holders and members of essentialised groups," he said.

"Ancestors and gods are compatible with living elders or members of nations because all are equally mysterious invisible, in other words transcendental," he added.But Bloch argues that religion is only one expression of this exceptional ability to form bonds with non-existent or distant people or value-systems.

"Religious-like phenomena in general are an inseparable part of a key adaptation unique to modern humans, and this is the capacity to imagine other worlds, an adaptation that I argue is the very foundation of the sociality of modern human society," he said.

"Once we realize this omnipresence of the imaginary in the everyday, nothing special is left to explain concerning religion," he added.

Posted by Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

Cosmic "X" or God? -Religion vs Science
Origin of Religion -Human Brain as a "Belief Engine"
Darwin's God -The Legacy of the HMS Beagle
Neurotheology -Is God Hardwired in the Human Brain
The Biology of Awe

Source Links:

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13782-religion-a-figment-of-human-imagination.html

Bloch has detailed his findings in the journal of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B.

Comments

[jer35mx]

For me personally, the thing is like the is a noise in the woods if there is nobody to hear it?.

[Chicklewitz]

Has it ever occurred to anyone that the reason people believe in God(another hypothesis) is because there is something in them that turns them toward God as a plant turns toward the sun.
The above article proposes and interesting hypothesis.

[Tubbs]

I'm sure that point would be valid Chicklewitz if it made any sense.
Plants don't turn toward the sun because they feel like it, it provides them with energy like food does for us. Although it is possible that you just discovered the new biological process of theological photosynthesis.

[piercival]

Tubbs-

That response just cracked me up.

Theological Photosynthesis - I'll be snickering all day long....

[Mifkin]

Middle Row, far right.

Is that a drum kit?

Also Middle Row, Far Left:

"These are spirit Fingers!"

[Mifkin]

On topic.

I find it ironic that a discovery like this will be used by both sides as proof that there side is right.
Religion will use it to prove that Humans are unique and we are the chosen species.
And science will ask what it means when religion cant exist without imagination. And religious people wont get it so someone will have to tell them.

[neimado]

Most likely religion was born from altered states of concsiousness induced by plants, fungi, cacti, etc.

Imagination was necessary but even that could be stimulated by ingestion of these sacred plants.

People have been 'tripping' for 1000s of years.. and many still do. In the jungles, in the cities, everywhere. If you ever try eating a psychoactive mushroom, you probably won't have much doubt left about where religion comes from.

[Barrie O'Leary]

Well stated, Neimado. Did you notice how very much this 'script' olooks like the linear writing of Minoan Crete. Bull jumping is on a cave in Spain, too. But when men did not even have any idea of social community was, they would have all been just too willing to go beat the crap out of the other mob just to prove that their god was the stronger.

[EvilCosmicMonkeyfrom Knoxville]

Sometimes articles about religion & science trying to find common ground are like trying to dance in a mine field. That's the way it is for me. I believe in God, but think that He ( She ? ) may have used evolution as a catalyst, because the Earth is older than the 6 - 10,000 year age limit that some fundamentalists set for it.

Let's say that this is true, & that God wired a predisposition for religion & spirituality into our DNA & / or our early neural make - up. Why couldn't evolution lead to a belief in a Higher Power ?

Besides, I believe in a God who wants people to use the brains, imagination & creativity that He ( She ? ) gave them.

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