NEUROTHEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
The relationship between evolution and religion has a storied past. The theory of evolution frequently has been used to debunk the stories of the sacred texts of various religious traditions, particularly those of the origins of the universe, the earth, and human.1 Perhaps more important from a neurotheological perspective, evolution has been used as an argument for the origins of religion in terms of brain development. In its most general form, this argument states that religion provided some adaptive advantage that allowed humans to survive more effectively than in earlier times and that is why religion became an essential aspect of early human culture. In other words, religion has nothing to do with an actual God but rather with brain capacity and social or adaptive advantage. Of course, even this conclusion argues for a unique power and persistence of religion. The biologist E. O. Wilson stated that “the predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind and in all probability an ineradicable part of human nature.”2
Neurotheology might ask us to consider the persistence and evolution of religion from a more neurologically adaptive perspective. First, neurotheology would suggest that any evolutionary ideas about the development of religion or spirituality have some basis in neuroscience. Thus, neuroscientific data should be used to support or inform any theories about how and why the impetus to religious ideas, beliefs, and practices developed in humans. Second, neurotheology would suggest that the evolutionary argument based on neuroscience runs something like this: Religion developed along with or as a result of brain functions that ultimately helped humans survive more effectively. Again though, the implication is that religion was a consequence of brain evolution. Neurotheology would also ask us to consider other possibilities, including those that are more theologically oriented. But we will discuss this a little later.
Some of the initial work in neurotheology, conducted by Eugene d’Aquili, was based heavily on the physical evolution of the human brain. In 1974, d’Aquili, along with Charles Laughlin, published Biogenetic Structuralism, which argued that as the human brain evolved in its structure and function, religion naturally evolved as well.3 A number of findings pointed to this relationship between the development of more complex brain functions and the advent of religious and spiritual belief systems. The most cited example of this relationship is the burials that began to take place among Neanderthal species starting about one hundred thousand years ago. These burials, with the individuals painted bright colors and laid to rest with flowers, jewelry, and various tools, suggest the belief in an afterlife. It appears that the Neanderthal brain allowed for some conception that there is more to the human person than just the physical body. Something nonphysical, a spirit or soul, lives on after our physical body dies. And somehow, burying people with a variety of paraphernalia allows them to exist more effectively in the afterlife. Neanderthals had a particular enlargement and development of two areas of the brain, namely the frontal and temporo-parietal regions, thought to allow for the ability to think about religious and spiritual ideas in a way that was different than any other animal species before.
One of the main questions here is whether these religious ideas and practices evolved of their own accord or were somehow epiphenomenal with the more complex processes of the evolving brain. If one makes the former argument, that religion has its own specific adaptive advantage, then one has to think about ways in which particular religious ideas and behaviors can contribute directly to a survival advantage. If one argues the latter, then one would maintain that the brain evolved various functions such as the ability to solve problems, think about the future, and contemplate death, and out of these processes ultimately conceived of a spiritual realm consisting of deities and an afterlife.
Let’s explore the various possible interactions between evolution and religion in the context of neurotheology.
THE EVOLUTIONARY BASIS OF RITUAL
In addition to the evolutionary development of the brain, d’Aquili’s early work was predicated on the notion that religious behaviors were directly advantageous in that they were the culmination of the adaptive process of ritual. In his two earliest books on the topic, Biogenetic Structuralism and The Spectrum of Ritual, d’Aquili, along with his colleagues Charles Laughlin Jr. and John McManus, laid out a theory based on the evolution of animal rituals, which they suggested ultimately led to the development of human rituals that were incorporated into religious and spiritual beliefs systems.4 Part of this theory also included the thesis that religious concepts arose from earlier developed brain mechanisms that were adaptive in animals. The argument went something like the following.
The primary basis of evolution is adaptation that fosters the production and survival of offspring. For an animal species to survive, it must be able to produce enough offspring that each generation can survive and expand the population. Sexual reproduction was more advantageous than asexual reproduction, as it allowed for greater genetic variation. Animals ultimately developed the ability to reproduce through the coming together of a male and female member of a species. There was, however, a critical problem that needed to be overcome: Evolution had to figure out a way to bring two animals of the opposite sex together for the mating process to occur. This may not always be so easy since animals, in general, maintain a certain degree of isolation. Of course, in some animal species the sense of isolation is greater than others. In fact, members of some species interact with each other only at times of mating, whereas others congregate in groups ranging anywhere from a few animals to a larger extended family to large groups or herds. However, even within a herd, animals of different sexes tend to be separated through large portions of their daily activities. So the first issue that evolution had to resolve was how to bring two animals into close enough contact for mating to occur.
But there is more to the process of mating than simply bringing two animals together. While an obvious observation, it is essential that the two animals are of the same species. And there are times where the identification of animals from the same species is not easy. For example, animals that live in jungles or rainforests may have difficulty figuring out where a particular mate is located, especially when there are predators that try to mimic the appearance or sound of potential mates, ultimately leading to the demise of the animal rather than its successful reproduction. And finally, for mating to occur, it would seem that on some level, the process needs to be beneficial or pleasurable to the individual animals. If mating was a horrible experience, it would seem that the animals would never want to do it. This seems particularly curious in the setting of animals who devour their mates after sex since potential mates still seem to want to engage in the practice. This is the true meaning of the phrase “love hurts.”
Eugene d’Aquili has argued that the fundamental mechanism of animal mating relies on rituals. Mating rituals allow for all three primary processes to occur within one behavioral process: the coming together of two animals of the same species, the appropriate identification of a member of the same species, and the production of a positive experience. We will consider the physiological correlates of rituals in chapter 10, but an understanding of these important aspects of mating seems fundamental to our understanding of how religion, and particularly religious rituals, arose with the development the human brain.
Another important aspect of ritual is that it appears to occur in virtually every animal species. Even animals with very simplistic nervous systems like insects seem capable of accommodating mating behavior and ritual. In The Spectrum of Ritual, a number of scholars discuss the various elements of rituals in different animal species, the most common component of which is a rhythmic pattern of behavior. These rhythmic patterns arise in a variety of ways, ranging from vocalizations to various colorings or presentations of the animals themselves, various movements, and some combination of all these and other elements. Through species-specific rituals, animals are able to identify other members of their species. Birds of a species that typically waves its wings several times in an upward fashion while flying will be able to differentiate themselves from birds of a species that simply hold their wings out while flying. In addition, the particular call of an animal will resonate with the call of another animal of the same species. In this way, the nervous systems of two animals that are about to come together for mating literally resonate with each other, allowing the animals to recognize each other as members of the same species.
These rhythmic patterns have another effect on the autonomic nervous system. If you remember, the autonomic nervous system regulates basic life-sustaining processes in virtually every animal, and this is true in humans as well. The autonomic nervous system has two arms: the sympathetic and parasympathetic. The sympathetic, or arousal, arm is responsible for the fight-or-flight response. It activates the emergency systems of the body and prepares an animal for immediate action. The parasympathetic, or calming, system allows an animal to relax, rejuvenate energy stores, eat, and sleep. In mating rituals, the rhythmic pattern can drive one or both sides of the autonomic nervous system. Most mating rituals activate the sympathetic nervous system, as these behaviors tend to be very active and are associated with rhythmic patterns that increase in intensity as the mating ritual goes on. This is also true in humans, especially in the act of mating where sexual activity typically rises to a peak right before orgasm and the reproductive process begins to occur. Orgasm requires activation of both the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems, which is why we feel ecstatic and then sleepy.
If we then look at the mating rituals of animals along the evolutionary spectrum, what we typically find is that species that evolved earlier have more rigidly patterned rituals than those that evolved later. The silver-washed fritillary butterfly is an excellent example of this with the highly stylized set of movements it performs, darting above and below a potential mate in a flying dance. As animals evolved more complex brain functions, particularly mammals and eventually primates, the basic functions that supported mating rituals not only continued but also began to link to the higher brain functions. The result is that human rituals can be highly elaborate and varied but still result in very intense feelings of connectedness among individuals. When these rituals ultimately became part of the fabric of society and culture, they help to connect people to one another.
Religious and spiritual rituals are the culmination of an evolutionary process that linked concepts of ultimate meaning to various behaviors. The rudiments of religious rituals were already part of the rituals of the most basic animals. As the basic mechanisms of rituals became “encephalized,” or built into the higher processes of the expanding human brain, humanity witnessed an elaborate development of rituals.5
These rituals not only helped connect people to each other but also to the basic beliefs of a given religious or spiritual tradition.6 In fact, it might be argued that those traditions that created the most effective rituals ultimately had an adaptive advantage over those whose rituals were less effective. If we look at the present-day religions, we typically find religions with very elaborate yet effective rituals that have drawn millions, if not billions, of people to their congregations. When these rituals tap into a particular idea or concept in a powerful way, religious traditions can gain millions of followers that become indoctrinated through the further use of these rituals.
Religions provide not only rituals but ways of understanding the life cycle changes that occur in every given individual and also across generations. Religions typically have birth rituals, childhood and adolescent rituals, marriage rituals, and death rituals. These rituals allow individuals and groups to negotiate life as effectively as possible. Especially when we consider the basis of evolutionary adaptation to be related to mating and the generation of offspring, these life cycle rituals can be crucial in helping a group of individuals reproduce and live effectively, ultimately being successful in passing on their genes to future generations.
The important point here is that d’Aquili has suggested that religious rituals were essentially a key direction that evolution took. Rituals were adaptive, and religious rituals were equally adaptive. Thus, the components of religious rituals were the primary driving evolutionary process that helped make human beings more adaptive. The brain evolved specifically to incorporate these rituals rather than the rituals arising out of the development of the brain.
Of course, it is very difficult to determine the actual causal link between brain evolution and religion; that is, which caused which. One could argue that religious rituals were built upon simpler mating rituals and that the religious elements were more epiphenomenal with the developing brain. This appears to be the argument made by Pascal Boyer who states, “A lot of human culture consists of salient cognitive gadgets that have a great attention-grabbing power and high relevance for human minds as a side effect of these minds’ being organized the way they are.”7 His point is that rituals are attention grabbing because of the side effects of how the brain works.
OTHER PERSPECTIVES ON THE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION
A number of other scholars have explored the relationship between evolution and religion. Many arguments do not rely so much on the development of ritual, but on the potential evolutionary value of religious and spiritual belief systems in supporting human survival and creating cohesive societies. Over the years, scholars have argued that religion has a number of adaptive advantages. However, others have suggested that religion is more epiphenomenal, building off of brain mechanisms developing for other adaptive purposes.
One important argument regarding the evolution of religion is that if it is adaptive, there should be some genetic or heritable characteristics involved, and a number of studies have pointed to such a component. Dean Hamer, a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, has identified a “God gene” that codes for a brain receptor that regulates serotonin and dopamine and correlates with feelings of self-transcendence.8 In a study, he asked a variety of questions to determine the various psychological and spiritual perspectives of the participants. He also did a genetic analysis to determine which genes might be correlated with which cognitive, behavioral, and emotional attributes. One of the most significant findings from the study was a correlation between feelings of self-transcendence and a particular gene. In the study, feelings of self-transcendence identified people who felt they were able to go beyond themselves in a spiritual way. The correlation was statistically significant, although rather weak. However, the implication of this finding is that there is an association between a specific gene and feelings of self-transcendence.
But there is a larger body of research on twins that explores traits that are the same in identical twins versus fraternal twins.9 These studies don’t typically point to specific genes, but do indicate genetic transmission. In general, the data from a number of twin studies have shown that religiousness, as well as authoritarianism and conservativism, seem to be reasonably heritable. This makes a strong argument that religiousness, or the cognitive processes associated with religiousness, have some adaptive advantage.
As Daniel Dennett points out, many scholars suggest religion helps to provide comfort, explain life events, and create group cooperation. He goes on to remind us not to accept such explanations too quickly, however, since there are many important questions that arise from these among other possible adaptive advantages.10 Dennett ponders why religion provides comfort or meaning. Neurotheology would agree that we must not rely on simplistic explanations of the evolutionary basis of religion and would provide further direction on how to evaluate the importance of religion. For example, there are a number of studies that have pointed to the ability of religion to provide comfort and assist with coping. Perhaps when a person engages religious beliefs, there is a release of certain neurotransmitters such as dopamine. Dopamine helps us to feel good so a release would be associated with feelings of comfort during stressful times. Perhaps oxytocin is released, a strong hormone for generating social connections between people. Future studies need to better explore how this happens both subjectively—that is, why do people feel religion is helpful—and objectively by studying the effects of religion within the workings of the brain.
One potentially adaptive function of religions is the ability to create a cohesive social group. David Sloan Wilson, in his book Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, argues that religion is a powerful force for improving cooperation within human groups.11 Religions allow a group of people to come together around a common identity that provides a strong intragroup bond, although it can also create strong intergroup animosity. Such a psychological set-up may have very powerful adaptive advantages. The group becomes more and more cohesive over time, helping to support the growth of families. It also creates a society that may effectively compete for resources by actively destroying or converting other groups of people to its belief system. In this way, the belief system persists and expands relatively quickly, and provides an excellent survival mechanism for its followers. Wilson argues that the effect is an adaptive advantage of religion on a group scale.
This perspective is also consistent with the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s “hive hypothesis.” He argues that humans have an innate “hive switch,” which “is a group-related adaptation that…cannot be explained by selection at the individual level…[It] is an adaptation for making groups more cohesive.”12 It is possible that religion and spirituality play an important role in this hive switch by providing a mechanism by which humans can disregard their individual survival for that of the group and the group ideology.
The discovery of evidence of early religious activity, such as the ancient temple at Göbekli Tepe in southern Turkey, would seem to support this contention.13 Many had argued that religion arose from the development of societies and civilizations. However, this temple was built in approximately 9000 BC, predating any society or civilization. Thus, such data point to religion arising first and the civilizations arising later, possibly surrounding a religious belief system. It should also be noted that the Neanderthal burials and ancient cave paintings point to religious and spiritual ideas preceding by thousands of years the development of societies and cultures. This at least suggests that religion came before social groups and hence may have paved the way for the development of such groups.
A related concept has to do with what is called costly signaling theory. The idea here is that religion represents a signal to other members of a group that you are also part of the group. Because religious behaviors are frequently very costly from a personal perspective, the willingness to perform those behaviors clearly means that you are, and want to be, a member of the group. It eliminates free riders, or cheaters, who want to get the benefits of the group without really participating. Whether it is a ritual involving painful mutilation of the body, or simply many hours spent performing prayer or attending services, all these behaviors come at a significant cost to the individual. Counterarguments raise the issue of religious experiences, which do not necessarily relate to any costly behaviors. In addition, private religious beliefs and practices would seem to run counter to this theory, although supporters would argue that private practice teaches people how to perform the costlier public behaviors. The neurotheological perspective might state that costly signaling is a reasonable theory but question how it relates to specific brain functions. And if there are brain functions associated with costly signaling behaviors, does that actually support them as an evolutionary adaptation?
Neurotheology would argue that whether group cohesion is beneficial on an individual or group level, religion ultimately affects the brain structures that help support the ability to create cohesive groups. From the perspective of the brain, the notion of in-group and out-group perspectives seems to be an important evolutionary advantage. The brain areas involved are associated with social categories (prefrontal cortex), empathy (insula and anterior cingulate cortex), and face perception (fusiform face area).14 Research suggests that these areas also are active during a variety of religious practices such as meditation and prayer. Other social areas of the brain support language and communication, which has a further adaptive advantage for the group. Communication allows for new ideas to arise and be transmitted throughout a group, helping to advance not only religious ideas but technological ones (e.g., pottery making, cooking, and weaponry) that have survival advantages for the group.
Another approach to the adaptability of religion may come from its ability to create a sense of moral values that fosters a cohesive society. Ancient societies, such as the Babylonians under Hammurabi, codified the earliest forms of moral behavior. The Bible itself, with the Ten Commandments (actually a total of 613 in the Torah), further enhances the notion of morals and appropriate behavior. When a group of individuals within a society follows a specific moral belief system and set of behaviors, those individuals are more likely to feel a sense of security. People within that society will know how best to interact with others and will feel protected with respect to themselves and their belongings. If a moral system is adopted by the majority of people in the group, they will likely work and live together to enhance the survival of the group. Although these morals systems occur at the group level, the brain is responsible for enabling each person to incorporate particular laws or rules into his or her beliefs and behaviors. Areas of the brain that support abstract ideas, modulate emotions, and generate language all play an important role in the elaboration of moral systems within and among individuals. Further, when people follow the moral system of the group, they experience positive emotions, and when they does not follow the system, they experience negative emotions such as guilt or embarrassment. Such emotions are also mediated by brain structures such as the reward and limbic systems, which support positive and negative emotions.
Religions also offer effective ways of coping with the uncertainties of the world. Religions provide a sense of control, helping us understand when we should plant or harvest crops and how to avoid specific dangers such as floods. Religions can provide answers to ontological questions about the meaning and purpose of life, thereby reducing “ontological anxiety.” Humans face a great many dangers throughout life in a world that often appears capricious and dangerous. Religion provides a resource for people to better avoid the dangers in life and help reduce fears and anxieties so that they may function more effectively. A person who can deal with his or her ontological anxieties may be able to turn his or her behavior toward actions necessary for survival. And if a religious tradition provides a road map for performing behaviors relating to diet, mating, and lifelong habits, it would provide a very adaptive advantage for an individual. In fact, from a medical perspective, it is well known that reducing anxiety, fear, and depression has a beneficial effect on both physical and mental health. A religious tradition that can provide this type of psychological support would ultimately be very adaptive for the individuals participating in that religion.
It is at this point that I am often asked, “What about those people who do not find themselves drawn to religious conventions? Does the presence of such individuals negate the evolutionary theories about religion and its adaptability?” There are two primary ways of responding to this issue. One is that, as with all human traits, there is a range of ability and thus, while religion may be adaptive in general, there are those who are more able to access it than others. In much the same way, if language is adaptive, there are some people who are adept at using language, and there are others who are not. This latter group also helps us understand another explanation for individuals who do not embrace religion. Namely, it is not so much that they have no sense of the spiritual, it is just in a different form. A person might pursue other spiritual avenues or find God in the mathematical equations of physics. The point of the evolutionary arguments for religion is that on a population basis, there are adaptive advantages even though such adaptations might not be endowed in every person.
In our early work together, Eugene d’Aquili and I argued that many cognitive processes, such as the abilities to perceive causality and create language, are ultimately part of how the brain helps establish various religious and spiritual beliefs and attitudes. Scholars such as Scott Atran and Pascal Boyer also point to a variety of aspects of religious traditions that demonstrate their adaptive function in human history but also emphasize that religion is more a byproduct of the complex workings of the human mind. The mind has a powerful capacity to understand complex ideas about the world; make inferences about difficult problems, such as why we are here, the nature of right and wrong, and what happens when we die; and intuit what others are thinking. These general abilities of the mind led Justin Barrett of the Fuller Theological Seminary’s School of Psychology to conclude that the “belief in God is an almost inevitable consequence of the kind of minds we have.”15 Because our mind brings in certain assumptions about the world and functions to make sense of the world in specific ways, the development of a notion of God is quite natural. However, even if something is initially a byproduct, it can have an adaptive advantage in and of itself.
The famous evolutionary biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, raised the question, “What good is half a wing?” to help people rethink the evolutionary process.16 Prior to Gould, most people thought of evolution as a slow process in which physical properties slowly changed into more adaptive ones. Thus, it was believed that the size and complexity of the human brain slowly evolved from small brains that progressively enlarged. This might make sense with regard to certain attributes. But there are problems with this idea. Gould’s point about the evolution of the wing is that it is difficult to understand how the wing of a bird would develop slowly since a small part of a wing (i.e., a stubby protrusion coming from the body) would not actually elevate the bird. A wing only works like a wing if it is a particular size. But how could a small stub keep growing larger if it didn’t work like a wing in the first place? How would it “know” what it was going to become? Gould argued that the body part that ultimately would grow into a wing must have started as something else. Perhaps it was a structure that helped radiate heat away from the body. As the structure got larger so as to radiate heat more effectively, it eventually became large enough to take on a new function: flight. Then, once the structure actually became a wing capable of flight, it could adapt in new directions based on aerodynamic mechanisms. The result would be the highly complex workings of a bird’s wing. Gould refers to this overall adaptive process as an exaptation: something that started as one thing and then became adaptive as another.
Virtually all birds have wings that allow them to fly, even if they were initially the byproduct of some other physiological structure. Similarly, religion may have its own adaptive properties, even if it initially arose from basic cognitive processes. Characteristics or traits that are universal strongly suggest that they are adaptive,17 and religiousness and spirituality are certainly fairly universal aspects of humanity. While it seems reasonable to consider religion adaptive, it remains a complicated issue with a number of possible explanations.
Scott Atran takes an evolutionary psychology approach, focusing on the notion of religion as a byproduct of cognitive domains such as folk mechanics, folk biology, and folk psychology. These domains refer to how people think about things without having a more formal or complex understanding of them. The general problem with these basic ways of approaching the world is that in the face of counterintuitive issues that are difficult to resolve, supernatural agents (i.e., God or gods) are invoked to help resolve the issues. Problems that these supernatural agents help people with include dealing with a capricious universe and the ultimate threat of death. Atran argues that supernatural agents help people resolve such important life issues.
The notion of agency may also be highly relevant in the context of religion. Agency refers to the perception that another being or entity has the capacity to act within a given environment. The human brain appears to have a predilection for perceiving agency in various objects, usually via the function of the frontal lobes.18 These areas are active in theory-of-mind tasks that require us to infer what another person, another consciousness, is thinking. That is why we see faces in our cars or the man in the moon and why we think a predatory animal might be plotting against us. Similarly, we perceive a mind in God and other supernatural beings. We infer that there is a mind out there, other than ours, that we can interact with.
In his book Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Pascal Boyer begins by considering scenarios similar to those of Dennett’s.19 Boyer proposes that there are several categories of scenarios in which religions arose and were adaptive. Religion provided explanations (including those related to the origins of the universe and the existence of good and evil in the world). Religion provided comfort to people confronted with a scary world. Religion provided social order by holding societies together and supporting moral ideas and behaviors. Finally, religion may just be a cognitive illusion based on a brain that can be highly superstitious and fallible in interpreting the world. However, Boyer argues that each of these arguments fails to ultimately explain religion.
Boyer makes several interesting arguments with respect to religious beliefs and bases much of his thesis on the notion that the brain makes many inferences about the world. The reason for these inferences, I would argue, is that we are trapped within the prison of our brain. But he is correct that our brain is constantly trying to interpret the world as a way of helping us survive. Thus, our brains are information hungry, cooperative with others, and eager for social interactions. In our attempt to use these various brain functions, religious ideas of supernatural forces or beings frequently arise. For example, Boyer proposes that what he calls ontological violations, such as a “table that feels sad,” trigger strong memories in people. Although he does not tie this point to brain function per se, it is likely that ontological violations are attention grabbing because they stimulate the amygdala to recognize that something interesting has just happened. Along with the hippocampus, activity from the amygdala is more likely to be encoded into our memory. Supernatural agents thus become easier to remember as they often violate various ontological rules. But because of our social desires, supernatural beings allow us access to them and their powers. Boyer argues that belief in God or gods helps us deal more effectively with misfortune, moral questions, and death. While his arguments are too complex to discuss in detail here, his ultimate conclusion is that “I have explained religion in terms of systems that are in all human minds and that do all sorts of precious and interesting work but that were not really designed to produce religious concepts or behaviors. There is no religious instinct, no specific inclination in the mind, no particular disposition for these concepts, no special religious center in the brain.”20 Similarly, Scott Atran describes his position with the statement, “Religion exploits ordinary cognitive processes to passionately display costly devotion to counterintuitive worlds governed by supernatural agents.”21
One way to integrate many of these theories might derive from a neurotheological perspective. In our earlier work, Eugene d’Aquili and I argued that religion helps support two fundamental processes of the brain: self-maintenance and self-transcendence.22 Self-maintenance refers to ensuring our personal survival by navigating effectively through the world, avoiding dangers, finding food, creating social groups, and maintaining overall physical and mental well-being. The arguments presented in this chapter regarding the use of supernatural agents to help us to deal with the counterintuitive and scary world effectively are consistent with this notion. Some have argued that religions directly support physical and mental well-being by quelling anxiety and improving mental health, which in turn reduces stress responses in the body and allows the immune system and cardiovascular system to function more effectively. In some sense, religion becomes a kind of placebo effect that works because our mind allows it to work.23 The placebo effect should not be denigrated, as the bulk of medical research shows that the placebo effect is very powerful and accounts for as much as 50 percent of the health benefits of certain interventions. The brain processes involved in religion and the placebo effect are varied, which also explains the variety of potentially adaptive elements of religion.24
The self-transcendence aspect has to do with our ongoing ability to adapt our mind and brain to our environment and ultimately to strive for something greater than the self, something that can deal most effectively with the world. Genetic and epigenetic evidence might support the importance of self-transcendence, but this concept is also related to the rituals we participate in that connect us to each other, the world, and perhaps even something beyond the world. If our brain is naturally calibrated to change and adapt, religion might represent an ultimate expression of this process. This can account for the social cohesion religion fosters since it connects us to a greater community. Religion also can enable us to experience the mystical that connects us, at least experientially, to the greater universe and fundamental reality.
While it seems true that there are no religious centers in the brain, the question arises of the temporal relationship between the development of various brain processes and the elaboration of religions. Which came first and which ultimately guides the development of the other remain uncertain.
THE FUTURE EVOLUTION OF RELIGION AND THE BRAIN
Looking forward, we might wonder where the winds of evolution will take religion. With the relatively rapid increase in the number of atheists in the world, as well as that of certain religious traditions, it will be most interesting to find out how the adaptability of both of these perspectives ultimately plays out. From a brain perspective, neurotheology might find that both have the potential to be adaptive with respect to a given individual. As I have often said, there are many atheists, as well as many religious people, who are quite happy and socially integrated. Whether one particular perspective will be more effective in the end remains to be seen. Neurotheology may offer some ideas as to which type of perspective will ultimately be the most adaptive, but only time will tell which one is the true winner from the perspective of evolution.
Interestingly, studies that have tried to find differences between believers and nonbelievers typically do not find one alternative better or worse than the other in any absolute way. Both perspectives can have flaws and biases. Boyer also makes the argument that fundamentally, there may be no difference in the basic brain mechanisms of the religious person and the atheist. People have simply come to different conclusions about the universe based on their own individual predilections and experiences. But how do we know whether religious belief will continue into the distant future? Perhaps the answer to this question requires us to leap forward to see how various adaptations provide new and better ways of surviving.
If we apply Gould’s notion of half a wing not being sufficient for flight to the evolution of religion, we might consider how various brain processes, such as language, emotion, thought, and mating rituals, came together in such a way that religious ideas could arise. This aspect might be epiphenomenal in that religion did not evolve by itself, but rather as the result of other evolutionary adaptations of the human brain. But once it took hold, religion’s adaptability helped it to become firmly entrenched in human minds and societies. Thus, it might be a combination of epiphenomenal processes followed by more specific evolutionary development. Neurotheology would require a thorough evaluation of the data and an exploration of the potential epiphenomenal and adaptive forces that ultimately allowed religious and spiritual traditions to arise within the human brain.
It must also be realized that evolution is not linear. Gould suggested that rather than think about the evolutionary tree that led to human beings, we consider it to be more like a bush.25 His point is that many different species come about that have different traits, some of which are more adaptive than others. Eventually, the most adaptive traits tend to rise above the others and manifest in the most recent species on the planet. Looking at human evolution, the predecessor species had a variety of physical characteristics in terms of the mobility of their hands, the ability to walk upright, and brain size. Evolution is not predetermined: Not until a species such as modern Homo sapiens comes into existence and eliminates, either directly or indirectly, the rest of the predecessor species, can we know which traits are most adaptive.
Perhaps most important in this regard is the notion that adaptations result in the species that, at the moment, survives the most effectively. This does not mean that any given species is “better” than others, only the most adaptive at the moment. This is in stark contrast to the way people think in general, and the way religions typically depict human beings as the pinnacle of evolution. We certainly have the most amazing brain on the planet at the moment, but there is no reason to believe that we represent a “pinnacle of evolution.” Neurotheology would remind us that the brain has many different functions, some of which are adaptive and some not. And these brain functions continue to evolve and adapt.
And for those who believe in God, religions are considered to arise as the natural consequence of the actual existence of God. Such individuals would argue that since God exists and created the universe and humans, naturally God created religion, or at least the evolutionary processes that led to the development of the human brain and religion.
Perhaps the greatest conundrum for evolutionary models of religious and spiritual phenomena is that it is almost impossible to prove any of them. Without being able to go back in time to determine when religion started and how it related to the brain, any relationship is speculative. Even when studies point to similar brain areas involved in both religious beliefs and specific cognitive processes, the “chicken or egg” question is always unanswerable. This lack of proof also makes problematic any evolutionary argument designed to relegate religion purely to brain processes. We must even consider the possibility that religion is simply not adaptive. Some scholars have warned that evolutionary processes and religions are so complex that trying to bring them together in any coherent way is highly problematic if not impossible. The psychologist Lee Kirkpatrick has stated, “Anybody with a modicum of understanding of evolution can posit a plausible-sounding idea about why religion—or any other characteristic or trait displayed by people—evolved because of some hypothesized benefits it might have offered. However, many such ideas break down quickly on further scrutiny if the right questions are asked.” For these reasons, neurotheology might also suggest a more focused approach to the neuroscience of religion rather than trying to understand its evolution. But given the multidisciplinary nature of neurotheology, it is always appropriate to consider how each perspective might contribute to our larger understanding of religious and spiritual phenomena. From the neurotheological perspective, pondering the relationship between the brain, evolution, and religion, is most interesting. An understanding of the relationship may be helpful in framing future scholarship, but sticking to neuroscience may be more fruitful in terms of uncovering the neurobiological basis of religion.
A final point about evolution and religion is to consider whether this topic really falls within the realm of neurotheology. Many of the scholars discussed in this chapter work in fields such as evolutionary psychology or anthropology. Appropriately, they would consider their arguments to be stemming from their fields of scholarship. I would argue, though, that the complexity of the approaches favors a true interdisciplinary field spanning science and religion. As scholars consider the adaptability of religion, one requirement would be to clearly determine what is meant by the term religion and which elements of religion may be adaptive. This also includes a touch of theology in terms of concepts of deities and supernatural agents. In addition, some arguments revolve around brain processes and other physiological processes that support health and well-being. Taken together, it would seem that understanding the evolution of religion ultimately requires neurotheology, or at least a neurotheological approach.