Knowing God

Let me remind you of the quotation from Immanuel Kant that got me thinking on this subject:

An experience of God is possible, not in the sense that experience would make known to me the God whom I could not know without it, but in the sense that I can experience God if I already know him.

As I have indicated, this somewhat enigmatic statement really sums up the entire message of this book, though that will take some unpacking!

It is a statement that offers hope that there are indeed experiences that testify to the existence of God. However, they are not of the sort we have so far unsuccessfully been seeking – evidence that compels belief in God. Rather, the kind of evidence on offer is of a nature that confirms what one already accepts. But that, of course, immediately raises the question of how, in the absence of objective proofs of God’s existence, one comes to ‘know’ God in the first place. What might ­persuade, or indeed compel us to drop the sceptical approach we have so far adopted in favour of a more positive approach? I repeat: how does one get to ‘know’ God?

What is certain is that Kant did not mean ‘know’ in the sense of having a complete understanding of God. One might master one’s multiplication tables and hence know that 3 x 3 = 9. But one does not have that kind of knowledge of God. Countless theologians down through the ages have asserted that God in that sense is completely unknowable. No, what we have in mind here is a different meaning of the word ‘know’. We are using it in the sense of being acquainted with someone. You might be asked, for example, whether you know the people living next door to you. By that one does not expect you to know everything about them. Rather, you are being asked whether you are at least on speaking terms with them. Do you know their name? That sort of thing. An ancient use of the verb ‘to know’ is ‘to have sexual intercourse’ with someone. That, of course, is the ultim­ate way of getting acquainted with someone – without it necessarily implying that one knows anything at all about the other person in the other sense of ‘know’.

The same holds true of the use of the word ‘know’ in the context of God. Kant did not mean having knowledge or understanding of God. Having explored attempts to find the kind of convincing evidence that leads to acceptance that there is a God, he concludes, ‘I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge to make way for faith.’ It is clear that one cannot have knowledge of God in that sense, but only in the sense of being acquainted with God.

Closer to our own times, the celebrated Swiss psychologist Carl Jung was once asked in a television interview whether he believed in God. He replied, ‘I know. I don’t need to believe. I know.’ Again we have the claim that it is possible to know God in this latter sense. But in the apparent absence of any clinching scientific evidence, how does this conviction arise?

The conscious God

Earlier we noted that the language we use in describing God is not that which is employed for the description of the physical world. For instance, if one were allowed just one word to describe God, what would it be? That word has to be ‘love’. On being asked which was the greatest commandment, Jesus replied:

‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. (Matthew 22.37–40)

This God of love has a purpose in mind for us: he wants us to behave in certain ways and not in others. A distinction is drawn between good and bad behaviour. God wants us to enter into a relationship with him. He offers hope in time of trouble, for example. Furthermore, Christians believe in a God prepared to suffer on our behalf.

But as we earlier pointed out, words such as ‘love’, ‘purpose’, ‘wanting‘, ‘good’, ‘hope’, ‘suffering’, together with a host of other terms such as ‘joy’, ‘despair’, ‘fear’, ‘making a decision’, do not figure in scientific descriptions of the physical world. They do not appear in physics equations. Physics has no need to refer to such things. Neither does biology. The biological description of humans and other living creatures deals with cells, chemicals, the flow of blood, the flow of electrical signals in nerves, and so on. Such descriptions make no use whatsoever of the kind of terms we need to use when describing the type of God we seek. When speaking of God, the language needed is that commonly used when describing conscious experience.

That being the case, does this not throw into doubt the wisdom of beginning the search for God with a consideration of the physical realm – a study that inevitably relies wholly on the use of terms none of which apply to that which we are seeking? Surely our search has got off on the wrong foot. If so, you might ask, why did we begin our investigation with the physical world? Simply because we are children of our time. It seemed the natural thing to do. We live in an age of unprecedented scientific progress in the fields of physics, chemistry and biology. The focus has been on the properties and behaviour of matter. This has resulted in consciousness taking a back seat; it has been neglected, or even ignored as an inessential epiphenomenon. But it did not have to be so. In the past, many, indeed most classical philosophers chose the study of consciousness as their starting point, rather than unthinking matter. It was argued that the only thing one can be sure of – absolutely sure of – is the contents of one’s mind. Everything else, including even the existence of the physical world and our interactions with it, are but hypotheses for trying to make sense of conscious experience. Understanding what goes on in the mind is ultimately what it is all about.

So it is we set aside our consideration of the physical world – for the time being at least. It is a subject to which we shall return in due course, once we have, through our study of consciousness, got to ‘know’ God. Only then shall we be in a position to acquire the necessary perspective for recognizing the confirmatory evidence for God made available through that physical world.

The phenomenon of consciousness

Consciousness is a mystery. By that we do not mean a puzzle awaiting a solution. We are using the word ‘mystery’ in the sense of something that is likely always to lie beyond human understanding. It faces us with the recognition that human knowledge has fundamental limita­tions. That does not stop writers from time to time claiming to have solved the problem. One thinks, for example, of the American phil­osopher Dan Dennett‘s book Consciousness Explained (1991). But none of these attempts has been convincing. And I suspect it will remain that way.

So how can one begin to come to terms with consciousness? Each of us can only speak with certainty of one’s own experience of it. I know I am conscious; I have mental experiences. Of that I am certain. But what else can I be certain of?

Those mental experiences of mine make me aware of the phys­ical world. In particular, I note that a specific feature of that physical world – namely my physical body – seems to have a close connection with my mental life. If the body sustains a cut, I feel pain. Put things in the mouth and I experience a taste – sometimes pleasant, sometimes not. It depends on what I am eating. Taking certain pills relieves a headache. Lower the temperature of the body and I feel cold. Warmth, on the other hand, is accompanied by a feeling of comfort. And so on.

This raises the question as to whether other features of the physical world are also accompanied by mental experiences – experiences of their own. A worm, for instance. Cut it in half and it writhes about as though it is in agony, as indeed I would if I had, say, a finger cut off. But one notes that both halves of the cut worm are writhing about. So what does that mean? Both halves are in agony? Does it now have two minds whereas previously it had only one? Or does it not have a mind at all?

How about a fish? I know what I would feel if I had a hook stuck in my mouth. So is the fish also in pain? We appear to be assuming that it is not, or that the pain is not significant, for otherwise angling would presumably have been banned. The truth is that we simply do not know what, if anything, a fish mentally experiences.

So how about something easier? What about other humans? My observations of the physical world reveal bodies very similar to my own. Knowing the close connection between my body and my mental experiences, it is only natural to assume that these other bodies will also be accompanied by analogous mental experiences. These other bodies have brains like mine, and I know there is a link between my brain and my conscious experience. Electrical signals travelling along nerves in my body to the brain are associated with various mental sensations. I observe that these other human bodies behave in the same way with the passage of electrical signals to their brains. Presumably they too produce analogous mental experiences in their minds. Not only that but these other human bodies talk and claim to be conscious. The conscious experiences they describe resonate with those that one experiences oneself. It is therefore a reasonable assumption to make that these other bodies are indeed accompan­ied by their own minds – far more reasonable than to assume they aren’t. To claim to be the only sentient creature in the world would be absurdly egocentric.

And, of course, the acceptance of minds other than one’s own radically alters how one views the world and how one behaves in it. The recognition that other people are not just intricate arrangements of unfeeling inanimate chemicals, but are likely to experience love, pain, hope, fear, joy and so on, enormously enriches one’s appreciation of the totality of existence and how one should treat other people, to say nothing of other advanced animals.

All of which sounds very reasonable and straightforward. Except that I have no proof – absolutely no proof at all – that anyone, apart from myself, is conscious. Let us be clear: everything about the physical actions of other people can be explained in a fully self-consistent manner using purely the language of the physical sciences. We have seen how Laplace, in his description of the physical world, declared that he had no need of the hypothesis of God. I imagine if he had been asked about what role consciousness played in his scientific equations, he might well have added that he had no need of that hypothesis either.

And yet despite finding that the physical world provides no scientifically verifiable proof of the existence of the consciousness of other people, we have, nevertheless, been trying to find evidence in the physical world for a conscious God – a Super Consciousness, if you like to call it that. If studies of the physical world and its workings are incapable of offering incontrovertible proof of the consciousness of other people, it is clear that applying such an approach to finding evidence for the consciousness of God was doomed from the outset.

The God within

If one is searching for a conscious, personal God, then it seems only logical that one should begin with an examination centred upon the phenomenon of consciousness. That should have been our starting point; not, as we have so far assumed, the physical world. Rather we should have been asking ourselves what we know about ­consciousness – what experience of it does one have?

As I have already said, I myself have direct experience of my own consciousness – the contents of my own mind. And that is all. You are subject to the same kind of restriction. You can access nothing but the contents of your mind. (Here, of course, I am giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming you do have one!) Hitherto we have been looking outside ourselves for evidence of God. Changing course, we now look inwards.

There is nothing new about this change of outlook. St Augustine put it well when he said of God: ‘Late have I loved you . . . You were within me and I was outside, and there I searched for you . . . You were with me, but I was not with you.’ He was not alone in ­directing attention to one’s innermost being rather than the external world. The seventeenth-century philosopher Blaise Pascal said: ‘It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason.’ He went on to talk about ‘a God-shaped vacuum in the heart of every man which cannot be filled by any created thing, but only by God’. The fourteenth-century monk and theologian St Gregory Palamas declared that God was not to be known through created things but through direct experience of God through the heart. He held that we must empty the mind of everything else in order to find God within.

But how? Surely, one might think, if one looks into one’s own mind, all one will find there is oneself! As we have already noted, what is offered there is an alternative, inward perspective on oneself to that gained by a physical examination of one’s body from the outside. Let me repeat: there are various ways of describing what it is to be oneself. There is the physicist’s view of us as an assembly of atoms and molecules subject to the laws of physics. The chemist sees us as a collection of chemicals undergoing chemical reactions. The biologist sees us an evolved animal. The psychologist regards us as one who has mental experiences associated with the brain. And one might add that the theologian sees us as a spiritual creature relating to the Divine. Each level of description has its own insights to offer as to what it is to be human. No single description is reducible to the others. Though physics might be regarded as the most fundamental of the sciences, it is simply not true to say that once one understands everything that goes on at the atomic level one has a complete description. It would be arrogant for the physicist to claim that chemistry and biology are reducible to physics. At each of the higher levels new concepts come into play – those that are called emergent properties. We see this even within the discipline of physics itself. Take, for example, the properties of pressure and temperature. These parameters describe the overall average behaviour of an ensemble of atoms. Where would weather forecasting be if one could not refer to high and low air pressure systems, or what the temperature was likely to be? Yet these properties do not even exist at the level of the individual atom. If we can see these new properties emerging within a single discipline, how much more common is it likely to be as one moves from one discipline to another?

Although emergent properties offer us new insights as to what is going on, nevertheless they have to be understandable and consistent with what is going on at the lower level. Air pressure, for example, is a measure of the amount of momentum (i.e. mass multiplied by velocity) being transferred to the surface of the Earth by the air molecules. Momentum is indeed a property of an individual atom. But what the individual does not possess is an average momentum; that has to be the characteristic of an ensemble of atoms. In the same way, we think it useful to distinguish between living and non-living matter. But what do we mean by this emergent property called ‘life’? As described earlier, it really involves a combination of features such as nutrition, respiration, responsiveness to the environment, excretion and reproduction. It is the combination of the full set of properties that is important and leads to our recognizing that a new feature has emerged. But as I have said, the new feature must be understandable and consistent with the lower-level description, in this case the description of the various component features.

In the same way, although the psychological description of ourselves upon which we are about to embark will not be reducible to the descriptions of ourselves given by physicists, chemists and biologists, it must nevertheless be consistent with what is going on at those other levels.

And so it is we turn our attention to the psychological description of ourselves. We examine the contents of our mind with the aim of seeking the elusive evidence for God. We do it in order to get to know God. But as already pointed out, this raises an obvious question: how might an examination of something that is nothing more than one’s own mind lead to our getting to know God? On examining the mind, what do we find there?

Before embarking on that quest, though, a brief word as to what is to come. Although this is a book about belief in God, in the next 50 pages or so there will be no mention of the word ‘God’ . You might start wondering where all this might be leading! So as to orientate you, the plan we are following is this.

On examining the contents of the conscious mind we find traces of all that has ever happened to us in the course of our lives so far: memories of past experiences, knowledge we have gained, character-­forming lessons we have learned, personal detail after personal detail. All these are exclusively to be found in the mind of the particular individual. As such, they are of no interest to us in the context of our search for God. Forget about them. Instead, we concentrate on a ­second feature of the mind – one we all share. This concerns the way all of us, from the moment we are born, come into the world with minds that are not blank; they already have a structure of sorts to them, leading us automatically to think and feel along certain well-­defined lines. This arises from the way our evolutionary past has left its imprint on the brain we have inherited from our distant ancestors, and consequently its thinking.

But that is not the whole story. There are inborn characteristics of the mind that are difficult if not impossible to explain in this manner. How do these latter characteristics arise? I will be contending that God, as the source of all existence, is to be seen not only as the source of the physical world, as we have already discussed, but is also the source of consciousness. Our consciousness derives from God’s consciousness. That being so, it would seem reasonable to anticipate that our minds, by their very nature, will in some respects incorporate features characteristic of the mind of God. Indeed, we shall be finding that those innate qualities that are difficult to account for in terms of our evolutionary inheritance are in many respects the very features we have traditionally come to associate with God. Truly, as it says in the Bible, we are made in the image of God. Yes, our evolutionary past has left its indelible imprint on our minds, but so also has God. It is the aim of the following pages to try and disentangle the two. It is by isolating those contributions attributable to God that we get to know him. That at any rate is the plan.

No easy task. Evolutionary scientists have already achieved much in accounting for features of our inborn mental characteristics and are making further progress today. Deciding which additional features might be open to explanation along these lines, and which ­others lie outside that sphere of competence and require some other type of explanation, is bound to be controversial. Hence the rather lengthy, but I hope interesting, discussion upon which we now embark.

The mind: evolutionary psychology

The medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas held that there is ‘nothing in the intellect which was not previously in the senses’. In other words, at birth the mind starts out as a blank slate upon which subsequent experiences are to be written. Moving closer to our own times, this same stance has been incorporated into much of the thinking of the social sciences. What some people call the ‘standard social science model’ holds that the mind does indeed start out essentially as a blank. It might have a few innate generalized abilities that can subsequently be applied to a range of problems, but there is no specific content to them. More or less everything has to be learned by the individual. The culture we are brought up in is what moulds who we become. It is society that shapes us. Society in its turn, so it is claimed, has been shaped by what it was in the past. As we shall see, though seemingly reasonable, this viewpoint has come in for heavy criticism.

An alternative approach is to note that the mind is especially associated with what is going on in the brain. So let’s begin by looking at the structure and function of the brain. It is a physical system that operates something like a computer. It is carbon-based rather than made up of silicon chips. It is composed of neurons that are cells specialized for the transmission of information. Electrochemical reactions cause the neurons to fire. Neurons are connected to form circuits much like those to be found in computers. These brain circuits are connected to neurons extending throughout the body. Some of these neurons fulfil the function of collecting sensory information from outside. Take, for instance, those signals coming from neurons associated with the retina of the eyes. The circuits process this information so that what is presented to the conscious mind is not the raw data of a pair of two-­dimensional pictures, one from each eye, but a three-dimensional object. This construction of a three-dimensional image is not something we consciously have to work out each time. It is automatically done for us by the way the brain has been constructed. Additional specialized circuits process the information contained in air pressure differences detected by the ears. The recognition of different sounds, and the direction from which they are coming, is again done automatically. In addition to the neurons associated with gathering sensory information, others that extend throughout the body are connected to the muscles and cause them to activate. Hence, in response to the sensory information gathered from the environment, the body undergoes movement. In this way the brain governs behaviour and the mental processes that go with those physical actions.

These innate characteristics can go far beyond the simple automatic processing of visual stimuli from the eyes to form three-dimensional visualizations, or the instinctive perception of the direction from which sound is coming based on the signals coming from the two ears.

Here we enter a field of study known as evolutionary psychology. Though Darwin himself recognized that the evolutionary process would not only shape our physical characteristics but also our minds, evolutionary psychology did not really get going as an academic discipline in its own right until the 1930s and 1940s. Evolutionary psychologists, while accepting that the culture into which one is born and raised does indeed influence how we develop, nevertheless maintain that we come into the world with many brain circuits, each adapted to meet quite specific problems that our ancient ancestors faced. With there already being set patterns in the brain at birth, then we must expect that there will be set patterns to the way we think. Though it is true that culture helps shape who we become, these inborn psycho­logical tendencies we all share have, in their turn, helped shape culture.

Evolutionary psychology is based on three assumptions. First, just as we come into the world as an evolved animal with certain innate genetically influenced behavioural characteristics – characteristics that are universal for all humans – so in the mental sphere we should expect that there will be a common psychological nature.

Second, the genetically influenced behaviour patterns were honed as adaptations to recurring problems posed by the environment – problems that in some way were related to reproduction and the passing on of genes. They were concerned with such factors as the need to find food, shelter, a mate, and the ability to avoid predators. We would therefore expect that our pan-human psychological nature would parallel those concerns. Just as the physical body has developed a variety of features, each adapted to deal with some specific problem, so the mind has a modular structure where each component has been fashioned in response to meeting a specific challenge. Whereas some psychologists regard the mind as a kind of all-purpose central processing computer, evolutionary psychologists prefer a model whereby the mind is likened to a whole array of mini-computers, each adapted to deal with some specific problem.

In this respect the mind has been likened to a Swiss Army knife with its collection of tools (scissors, nail file, corkscrew, bottle opener, knife blades, magnifying glass, not to mention the thing for getting stones out of horses’ hooves), each dedicated to meeting a particular need. Just as it is easier to assemble a wide range of individual tools rather than try to devise some ingenious device capable of dealing with all problems, so it seems to evolutionary psychologists that it was more likely that the mind over time would have evolved a range of simple input/output mental devices, rather than a single, flexible, comprehensive, central computer capable of handling any problem it might confront.

Finally, we have to bear in mind that when we think of adaptive behaviour we are not necessarily talking about behaviour in our modern-day world with all the challenges that can throw up. Evolutionary change is a slow process, particularly if one has in mind the evolution of complex structures. Humans spent some 2 million years, or 100,000 generations, as Pleistocene hunter-gatherers, a few thousand in a civilized society, and only 100 or so in the technological age. Whereas we instinctively avoid snakes and spiders, which might be poisonous, are repelled by the smell of rotting food and experience vertigo when venturing too close to the edge of a cliff – all hazards that have been around for ever – there has not been enough evolutionary time for us also automatically to avoid touching exposed electrical wires or to look both ways when crossing a busy road. These latter survival techniques have to be learned during the span of one’s own individual life. Indeed, our innate abilities have probably not even had time to adapt to an agricultural type of life.

No, when we talk about our innate behaviour patterns and common psychological characteristics, we are almost exclusively talking about the ways in which Pleistocene people had to respond to the challenges thrown up by their need to hunt animals and gather plants in the African savanna. This accounts, for example, for the well-­established difference in the spatial abilities of the sexes. Males have a superior ability, this arising from their role as hunters in the Pleistocene epoch – a role that required navigational skills used in tracking down prey and cutting off their retreat, and finding one’s way home if one has had to go far in pursuit. Females, on the other hand, have an innate advantage when it comes to remembering objects they have seen and their locations – a skill that arises from their trad­itional role as the gatherers of plants for food. They have to recognize which plants are edible and where in their surroundings they have been found in past excursions. Unlike prey, plants don’t move but are often partially ­hidden in complex vegetation; and it can require a specific skill to identify them.

Some of these inborn mental characteristics are so basic we tend to take them for granted. There is, for instance, from the age of ten weeks, a clear understanding of what an object is; that is, it is a bounded something that occupies space and is continuous in time. Its solidity means no two objects can occupy the same space. Another example is the recognition of which events are causally connected and which are not. Then we note that young children can make the distinction between animate and inanimate objects, this being based on the idea that living objects are self-propelled in their movements whereas the non-living only move when acted upon. This, of course, is not invariably true, but is a useful criterion as a rule of thumb.

Yet another example is the distaste that one can have over having sexual relations with a sibling with whom one has been raised. Given that mating with close relatives can often lead to birth defects, this is again a useful trait to have.

We are born with an ability to recognize faces and to discern from facial expressions and body language what emotions the other is experiencing.

We have an innate ability to master a language. Not any specific language, of course, but a generalized readiness to learn a language of some kind when introduced to one. Here we are specifically referring to spoken language – not necessarily the ability to read or write. It is believed that the acquisition of language ability was a slow process whereby genetic variations gradually led to increasing competence. Each component, as it emerged, led to some evolutionary advantage for our ancestors in that it allowed for communication at a more sophisticated level. The use of language made it possible to learn from the experience of others rather than having to learn everything from one’s own personal involvement. In this way language became a feature throughout the human population, to the point where we now come into the world pre-programmed ready to handle highly subtle and complex sentence constructions. Children as young as three years are able to be quite fluent in their use of complicated grammatical sentences – all this without being formally taught such skills.

A point to bear in mind is that not all inherited traits are directly related to the adaptive solution of some problem. There can be by-products – properties that are coupled in some way to an adaptive function, but that of themselves do not convey any additional evolutionary advantage. These are sometimes known as spandrels. The word ‘spandrel’ is an architectural term referring to the roughly triangular space between the tops of two adjacent arches and the ceiling. One finds them, for example, in cathedrals, where the ­barrel-vaulted nave and transepts meet, forming four arches separated at the top by spandrels. These spaces are often painted with religious scenes. That being the case one might be tempted to ask why the artist chose a triangular shape for his painting rather than the traditional rectangle. The answer of course is that the artist did not have any special reason for choosing a triangular configuration. The shape of the picture was dictated by conditions that had nothing to do with artistic preferences.

In the same way, when dealing with some inherited characteristic we must not automatically assume that it has to be an adaptation to meet some specified problem. It could well be nothing more than an indirect by-product of something that was a genuine adaptation. To be recognized as a spandrel it must be possible to identify the functional adaptation to which it is related and show how the coupling has come about. So, for instance, bones are functionally adapted in that they lend rigidity and strength to the architecture of the body. But the fact that bones are white does not confer any additional advantage. The whiteness just happens to be a property of the chemicals that make up the bone, mostly calcium salts.

Again, as we have seen, there is advantage to be had in being ready at birth to learn a language and thus able to communicate with other people. This was originally done by the spoken word. Later came the development of writing. But that was not because there was additional survival advantage to be had specifically from writing. The ability to write is just a by-product of what really matters: the ability to master a language. Likewise, there is little if any survival advantage to be had from engaging in modern-day sports such as football and athletics. We might be good at such activities, not because our ancestors living in the African savanna played games, but the skills exercised in sport, such as strength, fast running, being nimble, are to some extent the same as those that made our ancestors successful hunters.

Not all of these inborn abilities date back to the Pleistocene epoch. Language acquisition, for example, is a comparatively late development. It has happened since hominids split off from the other great apes. But that is an exception. Most of our innate characteristics were gained in the distant past. It is strange to realize that, lurking in the deepest recesses of our mind, there is an ancient person from a long ago different age from the one we are living in today!

Not all of these traits manifest themselves at birth. Interest in sexual relations does not become apparent until later. The manner in which a woman takes to being a mother is another feature that comes into its own as an adult. Because these attitudes are not apparent at birth they might lead one to think that they must be absent at that stage and have had to be learned from the culture in which one has been raised. But this is not necessarily so. In such examples, the evolutionary adaptations we have acquired are there from birth, but for a while lie dormant awaiting the circumstances encountered later in life when they can to advantage take effect.

In summary, evolutionary psychologists hold that we have a vast number of innate characteristics, each fashioned in response to our ancestors adapting to some specific demand repeatedly posed by the environment. We definitely display a certain amount of flexibility when tackling new problems. However, this is not thought to be due to some generalized skill divorced from any specific content. Rather it is thought to arise through our calling simultaneously on a range of specific skills, it being the combination of these skills that gives rise to the perceived flexibility when tackling novel situations.

Thus the mind from birth has a certain built-in architecture and, so far at least, we have satisfactorily been able to account for it in terms of it being the kind of mind we would expect to be associated with the brain of a self-replicating survival machine operating in accordance with the laws of nature. For that is the description of ourselves as seen from a purely physical point of view. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the genetic code wrote: ‘Our highly developed brains, after all, were not evolved under pressure of discovering scientific truths but only to enable us to be clever enough to survive and leave descendants.’ The sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson puts it like this: ‘Knowledge of the world ultimately comes down to chemistry, biology, and – above all – physics; people are just extremely complicated machines.’

According to those who subscribe to this materialist philosophy it should be possible to explain not just those features of the mind we have so far discussed, but all the innate characteristics of the mind as being those expected of such a machine. But is this the case? This is the important question.

In what follows we shall explore further features of the mind. Unlike those we have considered up to now, these appear to pose problems for this line of reasoning. Though evolutionary psychology will be seen to have further successes in accounting for the innate nature of the mind, as already mentioned, other aspects of mental experience will be more difficult, if not impossible, to explain away under the assumption that we are nothing but survival machines. And if that is the case, we must ask how such an additional input might have been made. How could such extra patterns of thought and feelings have got into the very structure of the mind?

Awareness

According to a materialist philosophy, consciousness is of secondary importance. It is something that just happens to run in parallel to what really matters, namely what is going on in the physical brain. It is dismissed as an epiphenomenon. It is affected by, indeed caused by, the primary phenomenon: the brain processes. The interaction between brain and mind is one-way; the brain governs consciousness; consciousness is incapable of affecting the brain.

Furthermore, physical objects such as the brain slavishly obey physical laws. Cause is predictably followed by effect. When it comes to trying to account for what is going on in the world, consciousness plays no part. The mind is wholly circumscribed by the nature of the physical object that has given rise to it, namely its brain, and the brain in turn is blindly following the dictates of the physical laws.

So if this self-replicating survival machine, in some unknown way, were to become conscious, what would we think its experience of consciousness would be like?

At the most basic level it becomes aware. It becomes aware of its surroundings – its environment. In addition, it becomes aware that it has an especially close relationship with a particular object of ­experience – its body. And when I say ‘aware’ I mean just that. It is aware of the existence of certain objects and how they are behaving in space and time, but nothing more. One would expect the mind to be but a passive observer of what is going on in the physical world – much in the same way as one might view a film on television. We can follow the story as it develops, but are unable to influence the events being depicted. Given that this survival machine’s movements are entirely governed by the laws of nature, there appears to be no scope for the mind to intervene to alter the course of events. What will be, will be. One is able merely to look on and be aware of what in any case is inevitably going to happen.

But how does that tally with experience? Are we really nothing more than disinterested observers of what is going on?

Feelings

Touch a hot saucepan and one is hardly ‘disinterested’! One experiences an unpleasant pain. Why do we feel pain? It is a warning. It is telling us to take evasive action; it is part of our survival strategy. The same goes for other feelings. The unpleasantness of hunger is a signal that the body needs food, thirst that it needs drink. Feeling cold is a sign that one needs to light a fire or put on more clothing. The pleasant feeling of becoming warm again tells us we have done the right thing. These are the standard explanations as to why we need to experience feelings, pleasant or otherwise. Feelings are a call for us to take actions.

All very reasonable. Except that it is not. At least, it is not according to the materialist point of view. As we have just been saying, according to this standpoint, we are nothing but machines operating slavishly according to the laws of nature. There are no decisions to be made. Yes, one needs to remove one’s hand from the hot saucepan, or to find food or drink, or to find warmth. But – and it is a big ‘but’ – these actions are going to happen anyway. Through the evolutionary process, the machine is in a sense ‘programmed’ in its genes to perform these actions automatically. The future is determined. There are no decisions whatsoever to be made. In any case, the mind is, so we are assuming, no more than an epiphenomenon with no power to act in the world. It has simply, indeed helplessly, to watch what is in any case going to happen. Consequently, all feelings, pleasant and otherwise, are irrelevant; they serve no useful purpose. So why have them? They are surplus to requirements. What one expects to find in the mind is a purely disinterested awareness. But that, obviously, is not how it is.

So the existence of feelings is the first characteristic of consciousness that takes us by surprise – or, at least, it ought to take us by surprise. What else?

Free will

One of the most persistent problems in philosophy is that posed by free will. It is the common belief that the future is open, and that it is dependent upon what we choose to do out of a number of options available to us. However, in a famous experiment conducted by Benjamin Libet in 1983 it was revealed that when a subject was asked to choose a moment for moving his or her wrist, there was distinctive electrical activity in the brain about a third of a second before the conscious decision was made. This specific electrical activity is named the ‘readiness potential’. Observation of this type of activity allowed the experimenter to anticipate when the so-called conscious decision was about to be made. This finding, naturally enough, was seized upon by materialists as proof that our ‘decisions’ were illusory; the brain had already determined what the outcome would be. Observation of the readiness potential allowed one to predict what the conscious ‘decision’ was going to be.

This, however, was not to be the interpretation that Libet himself put on his findings. He pointed out that one could well regard the electrical activity as corresponding to unconscious volitional processes, which only later were given conscious expression. Moreover, he pointed out that subjects know consciously that they are about to move the wrist about a fifth of a second before the action actually takes place. This gives them time to change their mind if they choose to do so. Indeed, some subjects spoke of deciding to move the wrist but at the last moment vetoing the action. In this way Libet seeks to preserve free will through the manner in which the conscious mind decides whether or not to go along with the promptings of the unconscious.

With the interpretation of that experiment being in doubt, we turn to a seemingly more potent and straightforward threat to free will, namely that posed by strict determinism. The idea that everything that happens in the physical world is determined by the laws of nature, and that from any given state of affairs, the laws dictate what the next state is going to be, seems, of course, to be completely at odds with everyday experience. As far as living our lives is concerned, the making of decisions affecting the future seems inescapable. Suppose for the sake of argument we agreed that the future is determined and there is nothing we can do about it. As a result, we decide that in future we shall make no further decisions and will simply go along with the flow letting nature take its normal course. The decision not to make decisions would, of course, itself be a decision. And deciding to persist with this attitude of not making decisions would be an ongoing sequence of making further conscious decisions not to act.

So how might we be able to wriggle out of the straitjacket of determinism and exercise free will? There is no consensus. One possibility is that when dealing with matter in the exceptionally complicated form of a human brain, new ‘higher’ laws might come into play. Were that to be the case, whatever happens in the brain cannot entirely be accounted for in terms of the laws with which we are familiar – those that are adequate for describing matter in its simpler forms. The coming into operation of the higher laws might then give rise to a mind that is indeed capable of making an impression on the brain. But that, of course, is a possibility expressly denied by the materialist claim that the mind is but an impotent epiphenomenon.

One way of loosening the strict causal chain of determinism is to call upon quantum theory. Without going into details, let me just say that at the subatomic level, a different kind of physics takes over. When dealing with the behaviour of tiny subatomic particles, one can no longer predict the future with absolute certainty. One can only assess the relative probabilities of a whole host of possible outcomes. This all goes under the name of ‘Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle’, so named after the German physicist who first proposed it. It states that the more accurately one knows the position of one of these tiny particles, the less one can know about its velocity – how it is moving. And vice versa. The more one knows about how it moves, the less precisely one can fix its position. But in order to predict exactly what it is going to do next, one needs to know both its precise position and its precise velocity. According to the principle, this is an impossibility. Thus the future is subject to an element of chance; it is not strictly determined.

This all sounds very strange and counter-intuitive. It does not accord with everyday experience, where the future does appear to be predictable. (OK, when playing tennis, for example, the ball often does not go in the direction expected. But it would be a lame excuse to blame that on quantum uncertainty rather than a lack of skill on the part of the player!) The reason why the world appears predictable is that generally speaking in our normal everyday life we are dealing with objects on the macroscopic scale. What we are observing is the average behaviour of a vast ensemble of subatomic particles. Though the behaviour of its constituent particles is subject to quantum uncertainty, when dealing with the ensemble as a whole, the uncertainty involved is too small to be noticed. Hence the behaviour of the ensemble, to a very good approximation, appears to conform rigidly to the laws of nature – the law of conservation of energy, the law of conservation of momentum, and so on.

This quantum uncertainty has been seized upon by some defenders of free will. Quantum uncertainty does indeed break the chain of strict determinism and allows a degree of openness as regards the future. This in turn would seem to imply that if the process of ‘decision-making’ is taking place in the brain at the level where the behaviour of individual atoms comes into play, then various courses of action appear to open up.

But what are we substituting for strict determinism? Conscious decision-making in accordance with one’s intentions? Nothing of the sort. We are calling upon chance – random chance. Recall how, when faced with a choice that has to be made, we sometimes resort to the toss of a coin. Is this the making of a conscious decision? No. Rather it is a case of opting out of making a conscious, deliberate decision. We are leaving it to chance instead. Quantum uncertainty is, therefore, no answer to why we feel we are decision-makers possessing free will.

An elaboration of this argument involving quantum uncertainty holds that some mental agency might act within the limits allowed by the uncertainty to produce the chosen outcome. Acting within those limits it does not violate any physical law. However that might be, this argument, like any other that depends on quantum uncertainty, has to face the objection that these uncertainties are exceedingly small – so small that it is difficult to believe that an event occurring at the atomic level could somehow be magnified so as to become an action at the macroscopic level of human action. This seems especially to be the case when one bears in mind that, on account of the brain being warm, its atoms and molecules are randomly jiggling about with what is known as thermal noise. Such movements are typically a thousand million times greater than the uncertainties due to quantum physics, and yet they do not interfere with the smooth operation of the brain at the macroscopic level.

Going back to the materialist position, there being no way of accommodating free will into such a world view, the response is to dismiss it as an illusion. When performing some action, whatever it might be, that action is governed by the laws of nature. It is the natural action that follows on inevitably from what was previously happening. And because it is natural for the body to be taking that action, the conscious mind – through its association with that body, and especially its intimately close link to the brain that initiated the action – is in agreement with that action taking place; it feels it ‘owns’ the action; it feels ‘responsible’ for it. This is called the compatibilist approach to the problem of free will. It essentially involves a redefinition of what one means by the term free will.

The illusory aspect of the common idea of free will resides in the thought that one could have acted differently. Yes indeed one could have acted differently if that is what one wanted to do at the time. But at that time one did not want to take that different course of action. That would have been a different version of oneself – one corresponding to a different state of the brain from the actual one. Instead one acted in a manner true to the actual state.

But that still leaves one with the question as to why such an illusion should arise. How did the mind come to acquire it? Why doesn’t the mind simply, in a manner of speaking, sit back and contentedly let matters take their natural course? This seems especially odd when what one is dealing with is a self-replicating survival machine. In order to survive in a sometimes hostile environment it is important that the actions taken are appropriate to the actual circumstances in which one finds oneself. In general, the harbouring of illusions can be dangerous. They certainly are unlikely to be conducive to survival. Far better to have a realistic assessment of the situation. Why waste valuable time and effort contemplating various alternative courses of action when, according to the materialist, none of them can be taken?

The notion of free will becomes the second feature of consciousness that a materialist would not expect to find there.

Altruism

There can be no exaggerating just how harsh the evolutionary process can be. Premature death plays an integral part in it. It is essential that those unfortunate enough not to possess advantageous variations to their genetic material have to be eliminated; and, what is more, they must be eliminated before they have a chance of getting to the stage where they are able to mate and pass on their less well-endowed genes. There thus arises a strong element of competition. One would expect individuals to put their own interests first: they will be selfish; they will grab what food and shelter there is; they will compete to secure a suitable mate. This competitive spirit might well manifest itself as overt aggression. And all this is written in the genes.

We don’t need to look into ourselves too deeply in order to find this self-centred trait. The urge to put one’s own interests first is strong. Throughout our lives we are involved in competition with others. We encounter this as youngsters over our ranking in school tests and examinations. Later in life we compete over getting good jobs. There are likely to be many applicants for the same job, so we have to make the strongest case for ourselves. We might have to compete with other suitors over the person we wish to marry. We haggle with the sellers over the price of the house we wish to buy from them. It seems only sensible to get the best deal in all our commercial transactions.

On the larger scale we find that the firm we work for is liable to be in competition with other firms working in the same area. As a new shop opens in the high street, so another selling the same goods might have to fold. Banks steal a march on their rivals by poaching high-­flying executives with salaries and bonuses that strike the ordinary person as obscene. One’s country might find itself having to strike tough bargains with other countries over such things as fishing rights, oil exploration rights, the setting of tariffs to protect the interests of one’s own industries, and so on. This is selfishness writ large.

Nor are we talking here merely of our openly selfish traits. Psychologists have drawn attention to the fact that in the social interactions of our ancestors, there could have been evolutionary advantage to oneself in being deceitful; that is to say, in cheating the other out of what was rightfully theirs. Thus one must expect to find in ourselves an inborn trait to be dishonest in our transactions. Indeed, the charge goes further than that. Those who are most successful at deceiving others are those who deceive themselves. People who mistakenly consider themselves to be altruistic and caring can be those most likely to exploit others. They are only dimly aware, if at all, of their true motives. This self-deception is brought about by a process known as repression. One is repressing the truth. And sure enough, there is plenty of evidence for this. At least it is obvious to us when we observe the behaviour of other people. The fact that it is less often seen as a feature of one’s own behaviour only confirms the theory!

Our innate sense of being in competition with others can manifest itself in subtle ways. Take for instance gossip. We all love a good gossip – hearing about what other people are getting up to. But note that we are selective in what we talk about. We are not particularly interested in other people’s sleep patterns, what food they prefer to eat or any such mundane matters. No, the topics of gossipy conversations tend in the main to concern births, deaths, who is going out with whom, divorce, scandals of any kind, money difficulties, wins on the lottery, promotion at work, redundancy, and so on. They all have some relevance to the idea of competition over matters such as social status and sexual activities. And in the main they concern people we know and come into contact with, so, theoretically at least, they could be our rivals.

We are not so interested in the activities of strangers we have never met and are not likely ever to encounter. With one exception: so-called celebrities. We have in mind those we see on television: film stars, footballers, politicians, royalty and others in the news. How come we take an interest in such people, even to the extent that some magazines are entirely devoted to celebrity gossip? The lives of such people seem to have no relevance to ours. An interesting suggestion is that it arises because we, in a sense, ‘encounter’ such personages in our home environment through the medium of television, radio and the newspapers we read over the breakfast table. Our Pleistocene ancestors had no such devices, so at some level of our unconscious the evolutionary imprints we have today inherited from them make no clear distinction between meeting people in the flesh and interacting with them virtually through these modern means. Indeed, these celebrities do not even have to be real people. How often has one found oneself concerned with the welfare and motives of some character in a soap opera to the extent where we hold conversations with others as to what the next episode might reveal. The fact that the character is entirely fictitious need be no bar to our having a gossip about them.

Gossip, as we have noted, is a somewhat more subtle manifest­ation of our competitive streak. At other times selfish competition can escalate and become overt aggression. One thinks. for instance, of burglary, rape, the infliction of grievous bodily harm, slavery, torture, football hooliganism, race riots, gang fights, to name but a few crim­inal acts. There are the atrocities carried out by jihadists. There was the Holocaust. There is the never-ending succession of wars throughout the world.

Of course, we ourselves would wish to dissociate ourselves from such violent acts of aggression. We like to think of ourselves as leading decent, peaceable lives. But the tendency to be aggressive is nevertheless there. It is simply that we sublimate it. A common channel through which it can be indulged is sport. Sport provides an alternative way of expressing rivalries between individuals, teams and nations. It is one of civilization’s means for containing potentially dangerous tendencies so that they cause less harm. And not all sports go to the trouble of disguising the aggression. Here we are not just thinking of boxing and wrestling. What of the so-called ‘professional fouls’ meted out by footballers? Even that gentleman’s sport of cricket, played with a hard ball, has fast bowlers hurling 90 mph bouncers at the batsman’s head while indulging in fierce sledging.

All of this we find manifest in human behaviour and in human consciousness. And this is exactly what the evolutionary psychologist would expect to find there. Given that entities fashioned by harsh evolutionary pressures were to become conscious, this is what one would anticipate their minds to be like.

Thus far, so good. But matters are more complicated than that. There is a much more agreeable side to human consciousness than the picture we have until now painted. The human psyche is not exclusively about selfishness and aggression. How are we to account for that?

Take, for instance, the love of a mother for her children. There is no stronger bond. As a man myself, I can only conclude that this special relationship arises out of the way that the child was once part of the mother; the mother giving birth to the child. But whatever the reason, there is nothing a mother will not do for the child – to the extent of laying down her life for the child should that be necessary. All very laudable and unselfish.

But such altruistic behaviour is fully understandable in terms of evolutionary theory. Recall how what counts is not necessarily the survival of the individual but that of the genetic material. Mother and child to a great extent share the same genes. And as we saw earlier with the bird being attacked by the hawk, it might well be advantageous for the genes if the mother bird were instinctively to be driven to make a great display of herself as she leaves her young behind in the nest, thus drawing the attention of the predator towards herself and away from her young. By sacrificing herself, she increases their chances of surviving the attack, and thus being able subsequently to further pass on the genes to future generations. Hence we should not be surprised to find that a gene has developed in humans that encourages the mother to behave in this selfless manner. This type of altruism goes under the name altruism on behalf of close kin.

Indeed, evolutionary theory has been even more successful in accounting for seemingly altruistic behaviour. One thinks, for ­example, of one monkey grooming another – a helpful and praiseworthy act. Except there immediately comes to mind the saying, ‘You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.’ And that’s the key to understanding this and other patterns of behaviour where someone goes out of their way to help another who is not necessarily closely related. It is done on the understanding that those benefiting from these seemingly generous acts will, in due course, be returning the favour. The cost of performing the altruistic act is more than compensated for by the value to oneself of what one gets in return. What at first sight might appear to be a kindly, self-sacrificing act is more accurately to be seen as one of enlightened self-interest. Overall it is to one’s own advantage to engage in such behaviour; it is not sacrificial at all. Such acts are known in biological circles as examples of reciprocal altruism.

It is easy to see how this trait could have become entrenched in the human psyche. Along with the other innate characteristics we find in the mind, it presumably became encoded during the Pleistocene epoch, when our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. Hunting for animals involves an element of luck. Some days you make a kill, ­others you do not. If you go through a long lean patch you can end up dangerously hungry. On the other hand, make a kill and you may have more than you can eat. So it clearly makes sense to enter into a reciprocal arrangement whereby the other helps you out on your bad days, on condition that you will return the favour on other occasions. The donation is being made at little or no cost to the giver because he has more than enough for his own needs. Whereas for the receiver it can literally be a matter of life or death.

So much for the hunting aspect which, by its very nature, is likely to be hit or miss. Gathering plants is a different matter. Either there will be an abundance of food available or, given a spell of inclement weather, there will be a shortage. This means either everyone living in that district will have enough to eat and will not need handouts, or everyone goes short and so is unable to help others even if they wished to. The development of the practice of reciprocal altruism would therefore appear to depend on there being a community where, at any particular time, certain individuals go short while ­others have an abundance of resources, this being due to continuously changing fortunes.

So far so good. There are clearly circumstances where there can be evolutionary advantage to be gained from this type of arrangement. However, there would seem to be even greater advantage were one to benefit from the favour but then renege on the obligation to reciprocate. Those inclined to adopt such a strategy are known as ‘cheaters’ or ‘freeloaders’. Accordingly, because the cheaters have the advantage of only ever gaining from the arrangement, one would expect that eventually everyone would become cheaters – whereupon the whole idea of reciprocal altruism falls to the ground. That is why this form of altruism only works in situations where the individuals concerned are repeatedly meeting up with each other. Through such repeated interactions, each individual acquires a reputation as to how likely they are to reciprocate past favours. Based on observation of their past behaviour, those who come to be recognized as cheaters can in future be excluded from the arrangement. From then on, they are on their own, never again receiving favours.

This so-called ‘altruism’ is the key to understanding many aspects of human behaviour. It can, for example, explain why we care for the sick and elderly. At first sight it appears difficult to reconcile the exist­ence of the medical profession with the idea of ‘survival of the fittest’. If people are disabled or past their prime, why expend limited resources on trying to cure them and prolong their lives? From an evolutionary point of view they have served whatever purpose they had. So why help the ‘unfit’? Reciprocal altruism provides a ready answer: there is likely to come a time when one might oneself fall ill or be injured and require medical attention. Most of us end up old, frail and in need of care and attention. In the long run, therefore, it is to our own advantage to support a system whereby vulnerable people are protected. This is not so much a case of two individuals coming to an agreement over mutually helping each other. It is somewhat more complicated than that. It is more the case of person A agreeing to look after B (who is not in a position to return the favour), on the understanding that when A in turn needs help, his or her earlier generous act towards B will be repaid by C – C acting on the assumption that he or she in turn will be repaid by D, and so on. It all comes to the same result in the end: one’s altruism is reciprocated, even though the payback might not come from the particular individual who benefited from your act.

I began by perhaps giving the impression that evolution was all about conflict: one was continually engaged in fighting rivals. ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’, as the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson put it. But now we see how this is not the whole story. It does not have to be a matter of always engaging in competition. Reciprocal altruism can to some extent offset the violent, selfish acts referred to earlier.

These acts generally come under the rule of law. There is, for ­example, the law against stealing. Certainly there is something in us that urges us selfishly to grab whatever we want or feel we need, regardless of who it might belong to. But society decrees that stealing is to be discouraged. This is for the obvious reason that it is in everyone’s long-term interests if we can safely hang on to what we own. In effect, it is a case of: ‘You leave my stuff alone and I will leave yours alone.’ Reciprocal altruism.

Similarly, violent assaults and murder are forbidden by society. ‘I will refrain from harming and killing you, if you agree to refrain from harming or killing me.’

All such agreements might go against the grain and be hard to adhere to because of our inherent tendency towards pursuing our own self-interest. For that reason, society exacts punishment on offenders who flout its rules.

Take another example: the question of promiscuity. It is only to be expected that there is evolutionary advantage in the male spreading his seed (and hence genes) as widely as possible. One would also expect promiscuity in women to some extent, through a desire to have as many children as possible. But she has to look to the future care of her offspring. She needs a mate who will stick by her and help care for her young. This will incline her to be more choosy and more demanding of a mate who will be faithful to her.

The male will experience sexual jealousy as he does not want to find himself wasting his energies and resources bringing up children fathered by some other male. A male lion, for instance, on ­taking possession of a new female, will systematically bite to death any offspring she has had by a former partner. Such behaviour has a certain parallel in human behaviour. It is known that ­stepchildren are at greater risk than normal of sexual abuse, ill-­treatment and emotional deprivation. Indeed, an important risk factor where child homicide is concerned is the presence of a stepfather. Generally speaking, the woman is inclined to be more forgiving of the sexual infidelity, but is more emotionally jealous. She asks, ‘Do you love me?’ She is more concerned as to whether the liaison is likely to break up her relationship and disrupt the support provided by her male.

There is, therefore, an underlying tendency towards promiscuity. However, this can be countered by the recognition of there being mutual benefit if we all respect other people’s partners. ‘Keep your hands off my spouse, and I’ll keep my hands off yours.’

So what we find is that if one does stick to these strictures, then in the long run it confers a measure of benefit on oneself (as well upon the others). And that benefit can outweigh what one might have gained through giving in to the urge for instant gratification. It should, therefore, not surprise us if our genetic material has over time acquired DNA codes that lead to a tendency to behave in these seemingly altruistic ways.

It is sometimes said that science has nothing to say about morals. But that is not true. Some of those rules we have described are perfectly summed up in some of the Ten Commandments: thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not steal; thou shalt not commit adultery. Indeed, in the evolutionary struggle for survival it is important to know accur­ately the true nature of each situation we might find ourselves in; we need to know the truth. So there has developed a further rule that it is bad to tell lies. And that gives yet another of those Commandments: thou shalt not bear false witness.

All of this, of course, is music to the ears of materialists. For them it must be gratifying to learn that one can, in this manner, account for so much of what we find in the human mind – the mind of a survival machine that is sophisticated enough to recognize that there are circumstances where, rather than resorting to open selfishness and aggression, it is more prudent to adopt a strategy involving a measure of co-operation with others. This latter strategy has the added pay-off of being regarded by society as ‘morally praiseworthy’.

But is that all there is to be said on the subject? Should we think of the word ‘altruism’ as always being in inverted commas, signifying that it is nothing more than a rather subtle form of self-interest?

To answer that I begin on a personal note: I have an adopted son. Why? Was it because my wife and I were unable to have children of our own? No. We already had two of our own. We wanted more and were perfectly capable of having them. But at that time there was considerable concern about the population explosion. We felt it wrong to add further to that global problem, so decided instead to give a home to a child who had no parents. Indeed, a mixed-race child. But why? Doesn’t that go against the evolutionary strategy of proliferating one’s own genes, rather than spending one’s efforts bringing up a child who is not related genetically – one who furthermore was even partly of a different race? Yes. But there it is: that is how we felt about the world situation, and many people feel the same way. So how do I emotionally feel about my adopted boy? Exactly as I feel about the children I biologically fathered. I truly feel he is as much my very own child as my other children.

The mystery deepens when I go on to consider how I feel about my three stepsons by a later marriage. Earlier I painted a rather grim picture of stepfathers. And undoubtedly it is true that children, on average, are at a somewhat greater risk from a stepfather than from their own father, this being in accordance with what might be expected on the basis of the stepfather’s underlying animal nature. But that is not true of myself. Again I see no difference in my attitude towards my stepchildren than to my natural children. One of those stepchildren, Nick, was the lead guitarist in a well-known pop group called Big Audio Dynamite, formed by Mick Jones, the former singer from an earlier group, The Clash. One of Nick’s golden discs is up on the wall of our lounge. I am as proud of that as I am of the achievements of my other children. And when sadly Nick died young of a heart attack, the grief was as intense as if he had been one of my own. And I am sure such sentiments are common among other stepfathers. What we feel simply does not resonate with what might be expected of us if evolutionary psychologists were right and we were nothing but evolved animals concerned solely with the welfare of our own genetic material.

But that’s enough of me. How about you? Say you are walking along the street and you come across a homeless person huddled in a shop doorway. How do you feel? Compassion? Of course you do. You might be moved there and then to give the person some money. Alternatively, you might resolve to make a donation to Shelter – the charitable organization that helps the homeless, both the obvious ones we see in the street and those whose plight is made less public.

There is a disaster: people are starving to death in Ethiopia; or thousands are made homeless because of fighting in the Middle East; or many have lost their homes and relatives to a tsunami in the Philippines; or there is the devastation caused by an earthquake; and so on. Again, out of pity, one feels moved to do something about it – to respond when the appeals are launched. This results in our giving money that might otherwise have been spent on ourselves. Alternatively, someone might undertake to perform a demanding, and indeed occasionally unpleasant, sponsored task, the proceeds going to the charity.

But why? What does one expect to get out of such acts? One attempt to account for acts of ‘genuine altruism’ is to point out that often there is a pay-off: the approbation of others. Having an enviable reputation for being a generous giver can be a powerful incentive. One suspects many a prominent philanthropist, perhaps unconsciously, is motivated by a desire to gain the approval of society in this way. He or she likes to see his or her name listed on a plaque as being one of the benefactors, and especially as one of the main benefactors. Better still to have a building named after oneself.

But such an explanation of altruism, though doubtless true in many cases, also has its problems. The claim is that society approves of such acts. Society considers them to be good. But what does society consist of? It consists solely of survival machines like oneself. One is thus forced to ask how a collection of such survival machines comes collectively to consider unselfish philanthropy to be praiseworthy when the individuals that make up that society are themselves intrinsically selfish. After all, if one has a son who shows an inclination towards football hooliganism, it would be foolish to think that the cure for such undesirable behaviour would be for him to join a gang of like-minded football hooligans. Such an association can only lead to mutual reinforcement of shared attitudes. In similar vein, one must surely expect that someone with a tendency towards being selfish will hardly change course through being in the company of those who are similarly selfish. So why doesn’t society dismiss genuine altruism as being just plain stupid?

In any case, what are we to make of the many – probably the ­majority – of cases where the giving is made anonymously? In such instances there is no approval from society because society does not know the identity of the giver. That is known only to the giver. Such private acts of generosity must surely count as ­genuine altruism.

Recent research work appears to cast some light on this problem. Subjects have been asked to perform mental tasks while their brain activity is being monitored using a functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) scanner. The subject is set the task of making a decision as to whether to receive a sum of money for oneself, or alternatively give money to an unknown stranger. When the amount one would receive exceeded that which would be given to the stranger, the ­majority (83 per cent) opted to take what was on offer. However, when the sum the other would receive exceeded that which one would get for oneself, no less than 50 per cent decided to be charitable and give the money away, even though it meant they themselves would receive nothing. So why the generosity?

The researchers found that, on examining the brain circuits when the subjects acted generously, this type of decision was accompanied by activity in the orbit frontal cortex – a part of the brain’s reward circuitry. In other words, the subjects were rewarded with a pleasant sensation. On the other hand, when they acted in their own interests by taking the money and leaving the stranger with nothing, it was another part of the brain that was activated – the anterior insula, a brain area associated with disagreeable emotional states such as pain and disgust. Thus generous behaviour was rewarded whereas selfish behaviour was punished – a finding that I am sure most of us can corroborate from our own experiences of feeling ‘good’ when we are generous, and feeling ‘bad’ or ‘guilty’ when we do not respond to the needs of others. Thus the fMRI scan provides a neat explanation of what at first looked like puzzling behaviour.

Or does it? Where is the evolutionary advantage – the reciprocal benefit? There isn’t any. Recall how I earlier said how reciprocal altruism only works in a closed community where there are repeated interactions between individuals so cheaters can be identified by their past actions and thus be excluded from the arrangement. With most acts of charity one never expects to meet the recipients of our giving. And even if we were in continual contact with them, their impoverished circumstances would mean they would not in any case be in a position to return the favour. So reciprocal altruism does not apply. Neither does altruism on behalf of close kin, because, of course, none of the people we are helping are closely related to us genetically. So how, under some supposed evolutionary pressures, did our brain come to acquire this quirky reward/punishment system – one that rewards actions that are not to one’s own advantage either as an individual or as the preserver of our DNA?

The ultimate example of this kind of altruism is when one is prepared to go to the length of sacrificing one’s very life for the other. As Jesus taught, and was later to demonstrate in his own life, ‘No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends’ (John 15.13). It was an example followed by many martyrs. Of course, these days the idea of committing suicide in a religious cause has taken on a different connotation. We are naturally appalled at the action of Islamic suicide bombers. But we must not confuse the issue. The latter commit suicide out of hatred and a desire to kill others. What we have in mind are those who sacrifice themselves out of love for the other. Jesus allowed himself to die with the intention of saving others.

In summary, we have seen how much of what we call altruistic behaviour can be satisfactorily accounted for in evolutionary theory as being nothing more than enlightened self-interest or, if close kin are involved, in terms of benefit to their shared genes. But following on from that, we have come across examples – and there are countless others we could have cited – where there is genuine giving with nothing in return, and where it is for the benefit of those not closely related. It is those kinds of acts that evolutionary psychology has difficulty explaining.

The moral sense

In dealing with the subject of altruism we began to broach the broader question of morality in general. So far I have no doubt given the impression that reciprocal altruism is a cold, calculating strategy. Before acting, the human survival machine weighs up the pros and cons of performing a certain action to see whether the expected return pay-off is going to be worth the effort of making the altruistic act. But that is not how it seems at the time. One does not refrain from stealing simply because it is against the law, or because one has consciously worked out that, overall, it is a cleverer tactic to belong to a society that has such a rule, or because one fears punishment if caught. We refrain from stealing because we think it is wrong.

Likewise, it is wrong to commit murder. Take the Holocaust. If it is true that one is nothing but a machine concerned primarily with ­promoting one’s own interests, why be concerned about the fate of 6 million ­people of a different race, none of whom one knows personally? Yet that emphatically is not the case. The spectre of the Holocaust disgusts any right-thinking person. The Holocaust was pure evil.

Or take adultery. Yes, many, many people resort to having an affair if they feel their spouse no longer satisfies them sexually. As we have seen, one indeed expects there to be an underlying tendency towards promiscuity. But such acts are commonly accompanied by feelings of guilt. One knows in one’s heart that adultery is wrong.

How does one feel about paedophilia? It is not for nothing that convicted paedophiles are separated in prison from their fellow inmates through fear for their safety. The abuse of innocent children is universally regarded with revulsion. It is pure evil.

As for war, there are certainly times when going to war seems the only viable option, the alternatives being even worse. How to define a ‘just war’? Never easy. War might be the lesser of two evils, but it is nevertheless evil. And so one could go on citing further examples that we can all agree are instances of evil.

On the other hand, there are acts that are universally agreed to be good. We have spoken of acts of charity. These are often referred to as ‘giving to good causes’. Why? Because we instinctively feel that such acts are intrinsically good; they are commendable. Unless one is extremely rude and inconsiderate it seems only reasonable to hold a door open to allow an elderly person to pass through, or to help lift a pram up some stairs if the mother is having difficulty, or to give way to an oncoming vehicle approaching from the opposite direction if some other parked vehicle is partly blocking the way. Most of us are kind to animals; we positively enjoy feeding ducks. We approve of those who, when out in the countryside, pick up litter left by others. All these acts, and many others too numerous to mention, are regarded as ‘good’.

Thus we find that we can generally agree that certain acts are to be commended as good, whereas others are to be condemned as being evil. But where does this sense of right and wrong come from? In the physical description of the world – the world in which we survival machines operate – there is no call for distinguishing between actions in this way. Nature simply takes its course dispassionately. It was the Scottish philosopher David Hume who, in the eighteenth century, was first to point out that scientific facts were about what is and not about what ought to be. It is only in consciousness that we assign moral value to our actions. So it is only natural to ask how it might have originated.

The sense of beauty

We turn now to the appreciation of beauty and the pleasure it can give us. Can this be explained (away perhaps?) as an evolutionary adaptation to do with survival? Possibly to some extent, as we shall see. There are various forms of beauty.

Sexual beauty

Let us begin by considering a type of beauty that should prove easy to explain in terms of evolutionary adaptation: beauty in the oppos­ite sex. So far we have concentrated on evolution by natural selection. This involved the finding of suitable food and shelter, together with the avoidance of predators. But there has also been another type of selection going on, and that is sexual selection. This concerns the finding of a suitable mate.

Take, for example, the question of the peacock’s tail. It is hard to imagine anything more attention-grabbing and flamboyant. Does this not run completely counter to the conclusion to be drawn from natural selection that there is evolutionary advantage in being camouflaged so as to escape the notice of potential predators? Yes, it does run counter. The tails are heavy and require much effort to drag around. They make its owner more obvious and prone to predation. But there is a competing force at work here. Being able to display a great tail is effectively declaring to a peahen that its possessor is strong, fit and healthy. In other words, he is a desirable mate. And, of course, acquiring a mate is a cardinal requirement if one is to pass on one’s genetic material to offspring. Hence we need to take into account sexual selection as well as natural selection.

We consider first the preferences of men. At first one might think that men would not have much in the way of preferences. If the overriding consideration is to reproduce, then surely a man would want to impregnate as many women as possible regardless of looks! It is not for nothing men are inclined to boast of their sexual exploits. They are also far more willing to pay for sex than women. How often do we hear the excuse, ‘Ah well. Men are naturally promiscuous.’

While there is obviously some truth in this, it is by no means the whole story. Fathering babies is a necessary first step on the way to ensuring that one’s genes will continue into the next generation. But this will come to nothing unless there is someone to care for the baby and bring it to adulthood. So one must also expect there to be in the male psyche a drive towards settling down in a long-term relationship with a suitable partner so as to be on hand to protect and nourish her and her child.

Assuming, of course, the woman’s child is his own. As we have ­earlier noted, it is only to be expected that, as a general rule, he will not want to expend his time and resources bringing up a child he has not fathered – one who does not share his genes. Thus for men an important characteristic of a suitable mate is that she should be chaste – preferably a virgin.

Certain physical characteristics of the prospective mate may be suggestive of fertility and health. For example, younger women are more likely to be successful at having babies. One would, therefore, expect men to find youth attractive. However, there is no direct way of assessing a woman’s age. Indeed, without a counting system, one’s age would be unknown. Thus one finds throughout history that ­hunter-gatherers tend not to know their age – this is likely to have been the case with our distant ancestors. One must fall back on indir­ect signs such as a smooth unblemished skin, bright eyes, good teeth, full-bodied non-grey hair, vigorous behaviour and an alert mind. Furthermore, wide hips and large breasts are beneficial when it comes to giving birth to a child and to suckling it, so one would expect a man to take an especial interest in those parts of a potential mate’s anatomy. It has been shown that men indicate a preference for women whose lower spine is strongly curved, thus giving rise to a behind that sticks out. It has been pointed out that such a spinal structure allows pregnant women to balance their weight over their hips better. This in turn implies that such women living in the Pleistocene epoch would be better able to carry on foraging during pregnancy without sustaining spinal injuries. Hence they would be more effective as mates.

With men exhibiting such preferences as regards what they are looking for in the opposite sex, it is not surprising that this encourages in women a sense of competition with each other over ‘trying to stay young’ with the help of cosmetics – to say nothing of plastic surgery. Also, in the Pleistocene epoch when evolutionary adaptations were taking place, life expectancy was probably shorter than it is now, so one’s mate was in any case likely to be young.

As for women’s views of men, they look for someone capable of providing for them and their children. In the Pleistocene epoch they also had to be strong enough to fight off rivals when necessary. Research shows that women look for someone who is tall, has a muscular V-shaped torso, narrow waist and broad shoulders. They prefer men who are ‘high status’. Again this makes sense in terms of having a mate who is capable. Moreover, the woman would want this support in the long term and so will be looking for a mate who is likely to be able to resist his inclination to be promiscuous, and instead prove to be a faithful partner.

Thus it is indeed easy to see how evolutionary psychology has successfully come up with an explanation for these various preferences, many of them to do with physical characteristics.

But what are we to make of the current preference among men for models as thin as rakes? One might have thought that, when food was in short supply, our distant ancestors would have preferred fat women to thin ones on account of their carrying extra stores of energy in their fat. Not only that, such women could resist the cold better by being more insulated by the extra layers of fat. Indeed, there does seem to be some evidence that in societies where there are food shortages, there is a preference for stouter women. And, I suppose one should add, fatter women have the further advantage of being more cuddly than those who are all skin and bone. So why the current trend to prefer one’s women to be slim?

Again, is it not odd that some women are regarded as attractive and others plain? Research shows that men prefer women shorter than themselves, having a symmetrical face with full lips, high forehead, broad face, small chin, small nose, short and narrow jaw, high cheekbones and wide-set eyes. Asian men favour women to have black hair, whereas non-Asians tend to go for blondes. But what has any of this to do with survival?

The same goes for women’s preferences. It has been shown that there is a general tendency for them to be attracted to men who possess a high degree of facial symmetry, a broad forehead, promin­ent chin and brow, a chiselled jaw and defined cheekbones. But why should women find certain males, like George Clooney, attractive and others not? Why should the arrangement of their facial features be regarded as at all relevant to securing a suitable mate, for protecting one’s young?

What we find is that we can account, in evolutionary terms, for why certain physical features of a potential mate might strike one as being attractive and desirable, but not all. We lack a full understanding of the nature of human beauty.

Art

How about the beauty we find in art? For a start one might ­question why there is any art at all. Why should our cave-dwelling ancestors have spent time drawing pictures on the walls of animals they hunted when perhaps it would have been better in terms of increased survival had they actually been out hunting? Why did they spend so much time fashioning axe heads into objects of exquisite smoothness and symmetry – resembling the sculptures of Jean Arp, which give so much pleasure today? The workmanship invested in them is often far beyond what was required for the utilitarian purpose of being an implement.

It has been suggested by some evolutionary psychologists that the popularity of certain landscape paintings might hark back to primitive times and have something to do with the need for our ancestors, living in the East African savannas, to find a suitable place to live. The ability quickly to recognize those features of the landscape indica­tive of a suitable habitat would clearly have had survival value and accordingly could have been selected for by the evolutionary process. It has been established, for instance, that people show a preference for scenes of nature to those of built environments. They favour built environments incorporating trees to those lacking such vegetation. It is thus concluded that paintings showing trees (which can provide shelter and places to hide from predators), rivers (an indication that there is drinking water), game-animals such as deer (good for ­hunting), a wide vista (so one can see potential predators a long way off and take avoiding action), and so on, are likely to be popular. The ability to recognize a suitable habitat in such an environment might not have any relevance today when it comes to choosing a home in a city; nevertheless, because that ability had survival value in the past, it might remain imprinted in the genes of modern humans.

This conclusion is backed up by a study in which children were asked to state a preference for one of several scenes: a desert, rain forest, savanna, mixed hardwoods and a coniferous forest. Why involve children? We are looking here for any inborn preference. With an adult there might have been some pleasant personal experiences of other environments, possibly masking what was innate. The savanna won out. It is argued that this could account for the popularity of landscape art such as that found on calendars displaying country scenes – a ­preference that surveys show is evident in all cultures worldwide.

That said, one surely needs to ask why we gain infinitely more ­pleasure from a landscape painting by Constable than we do from a landscape painting we are likely to find in a typical annual art show held in the village hall. The Constable and the amateur effort are depicting similar scenes. Thus the claim that appreciation of art is solely due to an inherited preference for scenes similar to those where our primitive ancestors wished to live might lead us to believe that both paintings ought to produce the same effect on the viewer. But this is not the case. The Constable possesses a quality that the other lacks. This missing element is sometimes referred to as ‘the sublime’.

One might expect appreciation for the painting to depend on how realistic it was in its depiction of the scene – how closely it resembled what would actually be observed with one’s eyes. In other words, how photographic it was. Indeed, some people do express a preference for painstaking art (‘You can see every hair on that dog!’). There has been the suggestion that the popularity of such paintings has a sexual connotation. Much of sexual attraction is bound up with displays of one kind or another. Human males have various ways of showing off their prowess and gaining female attention. To be able to paint in such a realistic, ‘photographic’ manner undoubtedly requires a certain kind of skill. It is claimed that any display of talent and ability might owe its origins to some sexual source. But if that were to be true of this kind of artistic skill, wouldn’t one expect women to appreciate art more than men? After all, it tends to be males (such as peacocks) who display to females, not the other way round. There is nothing, however, to suggest that men appreciate art less than women.

A further reason for doubting that evolutionary theory is able to give a comprehensive account of our love of landscape painting is provided by the overwhelming popularity of the impressionists like Monet and Renoir. Such artists completely eschew photographic realism, drawing instead on some other source of pleasure-giving beauty.

So much for paintings that might have a link to the requirements of life on the savanna. What about the pleasure to be gained from a painting of jagged snow-covered mountain ranges? One would not want to set up home in such a hostile environment. Certain evolutionary psychologists counter this by claiming that such paintings tap into a different, though related, primitive need of our ancestors. They point out that there was advantage to be gained from being high up where one had a good view of the surroundings and so could more easily judge where a good habitat might lie. What better viewpoint than the top of a mountain. No wonder, so the argument goes, most of the USA’s national parks are based on spectacular, monumental scenery, and artists are moved to depict such scenes of grandeur.

Which is all very well, but one must surely take into consideration that if there are mountains, the surrounding terrain is likely also to be rocky and inhospitable. Not only that, but some of the monumental national parks are not based on mountains at all but on valleys. One thinks, for example, of the breathtaking beauty of Zion Narrows in Utah, where the visitor is enclosed at the bottom of a steep, winding valley. Not much of a view from that vantage point.

What of paintings not based on landscapes? One might think, for example, of a Turner painting of a violent storm at sea. Powerful, beautiful and deeply moving, but one would hardly wish to be caught up in such a storm.

How about the great paintings of artists such as Rembrandt? Where lies the appeal in a painting of, say, a haggard old woman? Is it the skill of the brush strokes and how the artist has rendered the wrinkles on the subject’s face so realistically? Surely not. It has more to do with the way the artist, in some indefinable manner, has exposed the ­woman’s inner character. Like the Constable landscape, it is endowed with the sublime.

And what of the more abstract forms of art, such as Rothko’s broad swathes of colour, Jackson Pollock’s drip paintings, and so on? These do not depend on conventional notions of technical skill as such. How often do we hear comments on such paintings along the lines of, ‘My young son could do better than that!’? The popularity of such works seems to go against the notion that art is derived from what were courtship strategies displaying superior skill.

In an attempt to explain how the appreciation of abstract paintings arises, it has been suggested that the human mind has a preference for regularity and symmetry. In trying to understand the world, it is easier to grasp what is going on if one is confronted with repeated examples of the same features rather than chaotic randomness. This might have something to do with the popularity of, say, Damien Hirst’s spot-paintings displaying a regular array of coloured spots, or Mondrian’s use of only horizontal and vertical lines. But again, what are we to make of the many other successful abstract paintings that do not seem to exhibit any obvious regularity?

In summary, what we find from the study of art is that evolu­tionary psychology has had some success in providing an explan­ation of the pleasure to be gained from certain kinds of painting – the ­savanna-like paintings, those that display skill and those displaying regularity. But it does have difficulty in accounting for other types of painting and, in particular, why certain paintings are endowed with what we call the sublime.

Literature

How about poetry? There has been an attempt to account for the pleasure such words and phrases can bring as possibly resonating with some biologically based metre or rhythm. But surely there is more to the beauty of a poem than its tum-ti-tum rhythm. Much of the verse one is likely to find in a birthday card possesses rhythm, but that does not stop it being banal. In any case, much modern-day poetry dispenses with rhythm altogether, as well as rhyme.

Turning to other forms of literature, we find that storytelling appears to be a feature of all cultures. It is through the medium of story that one can explore alternative realities and see what others might do in the situations so described. As some evolutionary psychologists have suggested, one’s interest in novels might have connections with survival in as much as fictional novels are exploring different strat­egies as to how one might behave in given situations.

Fair enough. But that does not account for why we gain add­itional pleasure from works by Shakespeare, Ibsen, Tolstoy, and so on, compared to those of cheap novelists of today. Indeed, the latter are generally writing about events in the modern world conducted by people like ourselves faced with similar problems. So on the face of it, one might expect the works of contemporary novelists to have more relevance to our daily lives than those of authors living long ago. Shakespeare often wrote about kings and noblemen – not the kind of people we are likely to have to deal with. Not only that, they speak in a style that is often not as it would be today. Yet it can be the beauty of that language that appeals to us more than the more realistic but mundane day-to-day language adopted by the modern novelist. So there is far more to our appreciation of literature than its just being a way of exploring alternative strategies vicariously.

Music

Any complete theory of the mind needs to explain, among other features, the important part played by music. A number of researchers have considered parallels between vocal expressions and music. It has been suggested that, in its primitive form, music may have originated from the manner in which one group of animals sends characteristic warning signals to other groups, identifying the boundaries of its particular territory and its intention to defend it. This could account for the different notes that make up music.

How about rhythm? When our ancestors switched to walking on two feet the act of walking produced a rhythmic sound that was more pronounced than that when moving on all fours. The sounds being made are more predictable and one finds that members of a group tend subconsciously to fall into step with one another. This for our ancestors had the advantage that there was silence in between the steps so one could keep one’s ears open for one-off sounds from a different source that might indicate the presence of prey or predators.

Combining the production of different notes with the development of rhythm gives us music, so the theory goes. Moreover, this tendency to fall into step with a regular repeated sound accounts for why we might find our foot instinctively tapping out the beat of the music. And not only the foot, why not the rest of the body? Hence we have dance. What this does not explain, however, is why many pieces of music today do not rely on any recognizable rhythm – so-called mood music.

Next we note that music plays a part in the expression of emotion. Giving vent to our feelings vocally can be an important means of expressing anger to warn off potential enemies, or to indicate affection towards a potential mate, and so on. The idea has been put forward that making music vocally might have started out as an enhanced expression of the emotion, this then leading to what these days we would recognize as singing. The emotional impact could then have been reinforced still further by accompanying sounds, these in turn leading to the development of instruments made specifically for that purpose because of their voice-like character.

Music might have a certain amount of survival value through ­helping social cohesion. A group might express their togetherness through singing. Hence, each country has its national anthem; a football team’s supporters are likely to adopt a song as their own. In addition, loud rhythmical singing, accompanied by drumming and war-dance movements, could be a means of intimidating a potential enemy. One thinks of the Maori war dance performed before a New Zealand rugby match.

A very different theory as to how music originated – one advocated by Darwin himself – is based on sexual selection. It holds that singing came about as a courtship display. It was a way of attracting a mate.

There is doubtless much to be commended in these various theor­ies of how music might have originated. But is that all there is to be said on the subject? Not at all. That might be the way music began, but it does not address the question of why we respond to music in the manner we do. It is all very well saying that it conveys emotion. Conveying emotion, as we have just noted, can be functional. It was useful to our ancestors to give out signals as to whether one was feeling aggressive or loving towards another. But why, in addition, do we find some music sublimely beautiful? Why might one experience shivers down the spine and a tingling in the scalp at the climax of a Bruckner symphony? How are we to explain the power of music to move us to tears? It does not account for why we like certain pieces and not others.

The making of music requires considerable skill. It has been proposed that it is the display of virtuosity from the musician that produces the response. But as we saw earlier, when this sort of argument was advanced in an attempt to explain why we are moved by great art, this idea would lead one to expect men – who are the ones who have to convince their potential mate of their prowess and hence their ability to be a good provider – would be better musicians than women, and women would appreciate music more than men. There is no evidence that this is the case.

Nature

As for the beauty of things that have nothing to do with human invention, we have only to observe nature. Consider, for example, how we react to the sight of a rose. I have a rose garden. Why? Would it not be more beneficial to grow vegetables instead? Vegetables can be eaten; they provide food necessary for survival. With a rose all one can do is look at it. The reason, of course, is that the rose is beautiful. It gives pleasure just to look at it. And not just a rose. We decorate our houses with many different kinds of flowers. We give bunches of flowers as a token of friendship. They give pleasure. But why?

Certain evolutionary psychologists have forwarded the following suggestion. In the Pleistocene epoch it was important to locate plants that could be gathered for food. Flowers by their often spectacular appearance attract attention. The observation of flowers in the distance might be indicative of there being good soil in that location. It would thus be worthwhile taking the trouble to go to that location in order to see whether, in addition to the inedible flowers, there might also be edible plants.

As I see it, the trouble with that suggestion is that the flowers are only capable of indicating that there might be edible plants close by; there is no certainty of this; one could be disappointed. Would not our ancestors have taken even greater pleasure in recognizing a plant that was actually edible? How come they did not find the sight of their equivalent of today’s cabbage, spinach, lettuce, and so on, even more beautiful than that of useless flowers? Why when visiting ­hospital today do we not cheer up the patient by giving him or her a bunch of carrots?

Or take a rainbow. Each time I see a rainbow I am struck by its sheer beauty. Then there is the delight of waking up to find that it has snowed overnight and transformed one’s world into a wonderland. And so one could go on indefinitely citing example after example of the things that cause us pleasure through their beauty. But why? Why do we feel this way?

Even Darwin himself was puzzled by this question. In On the Origin of Species he wrote:

How the sense of beauty in its simplest form – that is the reception of a peculiar kind of pleasure from certain colours, forms, and sounds – was first developed in the mind of man and of the lower animals, is a very obscure object.

Mathematics and science

Scientists and mathematicians often speak of aspects of their work as being beautiful. This might seem strange to anyone who struggled with those subjects at school. But it is nevertheless the case that some scientific theories are regarded as such.

To a large extent it seems to have something to do with the idea of simplicity. For example, confronted with the bewildering number of different chemical compounds in the world, it is satisfying that such diversity can be accounted for by postulating that everything in nature can be described in terms of being built up from 92 naturally occurring elements. It then becomes even more satisfying to discover that these elements in their turn are built to the same basic pattern of a nucleus surrounded by electrons, the nuclei themselves being composed of just neutrons and protons. Thus is born order out of chaos.

In the same way it was once thought that electricity and magnetism were distinctly different phenomena. However, the Scottish physicist Clerk Maxwell was able to show that they were but different mani­festations of the same electromagnetic force. Later came a further simplification with the recognition that this same force was also associated with certain forms of radioactivity, which until then had been attributed to a separate force called the weak nuclear force. The combined force was named the electroweak force. The hope is that this in turn will get joined to the strong nuclear force responsible for binding the neutrons and protons together in the nucleus. Theories such as these, capable of fusing together a whole range of seemingly disparate phenomena (rubber balloons sticking to one’s clothes, magnets stuck to fridge doors, radioactivity and nuclear physics), together with the simple mathematical formulae in which they are often expressed, are valued for their having great explanatory power and are held by ­scientists to be ‘beautiful’.

Indeed, many scientists claim that in their search for new insights into the workings of nature, they are sometimes guided by a sense of beauty. Some possible solutions to a problem are regarded as beautiful or elegant and therefore more likely to be correct, while others seem less attractive.

Can beauty of this kind be accounted for in terms of some evolutionary adaptation? Certainly it must have been important for our ancestors to be able to understand what was going on around them in order to avoid dangers and make use of opportunities offered. One can imagine them being rewarded with a sense of satisfaction at gaining some useful insight into nature’s processes. So far so good. But a sense of beauty? That is more problematic. Why there should be an aesthetic pay-off in addition to the more prosaic sense of having achieved something useful could be another matter.

Beauty as a by-product?

We have found that we experience beauty in several different forms. We have pointed out that it is difficult to account for many instances of this sense in terms of its signifying survival value. An alternative suggestion is one referred to earlier when we pointed out that a particular developed trait does not of necessity have to possess survival value. Characteristics that do have survival value might sometimes spawn by-products. We saw how evolutionary psychologists speak of these as spandrels. For example, one might ask what the use of chewing gum might be, seeing that it provides no sustenance. It is simply a by-product of what really has survival value, in this case, eating. An often-cited example of the production of a by-product is that of cheesecake. We need to consume fat and sugar. Sometimes these essential ingredients are consumed in the form of cheesecake. But, of course, not everyone eats cheesecake. It is just one of several possible by-products that might arise. Accordingly it has been suggested that appreciating beauty might be such a by-product. However, it has to be pointed out that most civilizations do not have cheesecake; it is a quirky localized phenomenon. A sense of beauty, on the other hand, is a universal. How did this come about if it is merely a by-product that started out in some locality and possessed no special survival value to help it to spread?

The sense of awe

Closely associated with the sense of beauty is the sense of awe. This has been defined as an overwhelming feeling of reverence, admir­ation, fear, dread, wonder, and so on, produced by what is grand, ­sublime, extremely powerful or beautiful or the like.

In evolutionary terms, the awe evoked by something like a thunderstorm is easily accounted for. One fears being killed by a lightning strike. It can be a matter of survival. The same would be true if one were to be faced with a charging bull. All that bulk hurtling towards one would certainly provoke awe in the sense of fear. It is a signal to take avoiding action. Awe makes one feel small and insignificant, and so draws attention away from oneself and focuses it on the environment. Paying heightened attention to what is going on around oneself could clearly be advantageous, particularly if one’s safety is at stake.

But what interests us are those instances where we are dealing with the other senses of awe – those induced in the absence of any danger to oneself. Why the feeling of awe when looking out over an ocean, or gazing at a mountain range, or looking up at a towering church spire?

Closer to home, as I write this I am in my study and can look out of the window and see the 250-year-old oak tree that dominates my garden. It is huge and craggy. A scar runs down its trunk where at some time in the past it was struck by lightning. I love it. It has a strange beauty of its own. It exudes a powerful presence. But why? We have already noted that we might have an affinity with certain trees that our ancestors could have used for climbing out of trouble. However, my tree has no reachable lower branches so it is blindingly obvious it is useless as a means of escaping some danger as it cannot be climbed (without a ladder). And yet I feel awestruck. Why aren’t I indifferent to it?

One has the same sense of awe when one goes out on a cloudless night and gazes up at the stars. I find that this is especially so on nights when shooting stars are expected. But I cannot help asking myself why I feel that way. Yes, the cosmos is big. But so what? It is far off; it does not affect me in any way. It has no relevance for my survival. Why then don’t I have a take-it-or-leave-it attitude towards it? How come I gain pleasure from contemplating the cosmos even on nights when it is bitterly cold being out in the open? As for those shooting stars – yes, I know they are nothing more than mere tiny grains of dirt coming from space and burning up in the atmosphere and are of no consequence whatsoever. But each year, come 12 and 13 August, I am guaranteed to be on the look-out for the Perseids meteor shower.

It has been conjectured that the sense of awe manifest in such situations originated with our hunter-gatherer ancestors in the deference shown by lower-status persons to the powerful leader of their group. A tendency to hold such a person in awe, coupled with a willingness to follow his lead, would have enhanced social cohesion and conferred evolutionary advantage over less organized groups. Deference towards persons exuding strength shows itself today, for example, in the way studies indicate that we prefer our political leaders to be tall. In 58 per cent of US presidential elections, the taller candidate has won. This has given rise to what is known among political pundits as the ‘presidential height index’. But what has height to do with ­politics? Nothing. The explanation seems to lie with our hunter-­gatherer ancestors preferring their tribal leader to be strong. Under the circumstances prevailing at that time, having a physically tough and resilient figure to lead the hunt over what was probably a wide and demanding terrain was an advantage.

It is argued that this sense of awe towards a powerful leader has in our own time become generalized and displaced on to other objects – objects exuding power of some kind. Whether this is so or not, of course, has to be a matter of speculation.

The sense of creativity

Another characteristic of humans is the desire to be creative. Many species show indications of being creative, but humans are in a league of their own in this regard. Just think of the way humans have transformed the world we live in. The computer revolution is but one aspect of the way life today would be completely unbelievable to someone living 50 years ago. Being responsible for creating something new can give one enormous satisfaction. Creativity is a universal feature of all human cultures, so we must ask whether this points to its having some evolutionary origin.

Being creative is all about being innovative – coming up with ­something new, at least something new for the individual concerned. But at first sight the brain, as understood by evolutionary psychologists, does not seem particularly suited to this task. As we have seen, according to evolutionary psychology, the brain developed a whole range of individual circuits, together with their associated thinking processes, each adapted to meet some particular demand repeatedly presented by the environment. The brain has a modular structure, each element of which deals with a specific situation that our ­hunter-gatherer ancestors habitually encountered. So how could this array of separate mini-computers, each dedicated to performing a familiar and often repeated task, come up with something novel?

By way of answer it has been proposed that creativity might come about when several of these circuits become involved with each other. Though each individually is devoted to some routine task, if a number of them can be accessed at the same time and so can work together in a variety of combinations, that might give rise to novelty. That is one possibility. Another is that some evolutionary psychologists, though accepting the main hypothesis of the modular structure of brain circuits, have recently indicated that they do not entirely rule out some element of a wider-ranging super-computer ability, this having the flexibility to be creative.

But what interests us is not so much the mechanics of how cre­ativity arises, as the pleasure and satisfaction it affords. In my own small way I find that on completing the writing of a book I experience this rewarding sense of achievement. As for my hobby, that is sculpture. My garden features nine large sculptures I have made and there are many smaller ones located in the house. I gain pleasure from having them around me and knowing that it is I who created them. In this I am sure I share the same feelings as Stone Age people fashioning symmetrical hand axes, probably the first aesthetic artefacts in the archaeological record. I am fortunate to possess one of these exquisite tools – or should I call them sculptures. It never ceases to amaze me how beautiful it is, and how much time and effort someone has invested in producing it.

Making sculptures today is but a minority interest. Painting as a pastime is much more popular. Who hasn’t had a go at painting or drawing? From early childhood one has delighted in such activities – even if it is just painting by numbers – proudly showing off one’s efforts to one’s parents. I don’t myself play any musical instrument; I have tried to learn but failed. But I do know that many gain great satisfaction from creating music.

In setting up home there is satisfaction to be gained in choosing furniture, curtains and carpets, deciding on a colour scheme, and so forth, all this in order to create a pleasing environment in which to live. Then, from the proliferation of cookery programmes on the television, it is clear that many find it rewarding to cook and prepare exotic culinary delights. Others go in for flower arranging or engage in crafts.

There is the creativity exercised by scientists and technologists in coming up with new ideas as to how the world works and how it might be manipulated for one’s own ends. And, of course, there is the supreme example of being creative: the pride women can take in bearing and nurturing children.

These are but a few examples of the various ways in which one might attempt to satisfy this urge to be creative. But why do we show this tendency? What relevance does it have for the evolutionary imperative of surviving and reproducing?

Concerning the last two examples, there is no problem accounting for their usefulness in this regard. Bearing and nurturing children is clearly relevant. Engagement in scientific activities can likewise be useful as an indication of intelligence and a gift for problem-solving. But most of the examples cited appear to serve no obvious useful evolutionary purpose.

It has been suggested that the ability to produce beautiful works of art enhances one’s sexual attraction. That being the case, one would expect creative people to have a better than average chance of marrying and having children who would inherit their parent’s creative ability. In point of fact, the opposite appears to be the case. Though artists have something of a reputation for engaging in short-term relationships with the opposite sex, they are less inclined to marry, and have fewer children than the average. Not for nothing does one tend to think of the successful artist as a loner, starving in a messy garret, and the brilliant, but introverted scientist absorbed in a world of equations and mathematics.

So is it not strange that for most of us our creative activities serve no apparently useful purpose, and yet they reward us with feelings of pleasure and of having done something that was worthwhile?

The sense of purpose

Humans are endued with a sense of purpose. There are goals to be achieved. When one is young these might take the form of aiming to pass exams or to be a member of a winning football team. Later it can have more to do with seeking promotion and recognition at work. There is the insatiable urge to earn more and more money. Or there might be the aim of being a good mother bringing up children.

Such purposeful activities can easily be accounted for by evolutionary psychologists in terms of their being survival strategies. They are actions consistent with achieving benefit for oneself through competition with others. Either that or looking after one’s children – those who share to a large extent the same genes.

But then there are other manifestations of purpose, the origins of which are more difficult to explain. For instance, there is the question as to whether life has an overarching purpose rather than being a fairly meaningless existence. Is there more to life than simply surviving for as long as one can?

By way of answer I imagine most people feel it is a good thing to try and make the world a better place. To this end many devote themselves to ‘good causes’ of various kinds. This might take the form of supporting charities to do with research into cancer, heart disease, multiple sclerosis and other life-threatening diseases. One might be concerned about animal welfare, the protection of the environment, missions to seamen, helping the aged or lifeboat provision. There are those who volunteer to act as unpaid guides to country houses or cathedrals out of a perceived need to preserve our heritage. There is the religious belief that the ultimate purpose of life is to do the will of God – more of that later. What I am saying is that there are many ways in which people see their lives as being invested with purpose and meaning regarding causes that seem to have little if anything to do with their own survival or that of their kin.

What is so strange about this is that the scientific description of the world has no place for the concept of purpose. It provides a mater­ialistic account of what the world consists of – structures built out of atoms – and how these objects behave in a predictable fashion in strict accordance with the laws of nature. There is no need to invoke concepts such as purpose and intention at all. Matters blindly follow their inevitable course. There is no flexibility; there can be no other course of action.

As a scientist this is the approach I have to adopt. Nuclei fuse together in the Sun to form larger nuclei not because that is what they have decided to do in accordance with their chosen aim. It is not because they think the world would be a better place if they were to contribute to warming planet Earth by releasing some of their ­internal energy. It all happens strictly according to the dictates of the laws of physics.

But is that the last word on the subject? Is that the attitude I carry over into my ordinary daily life? Of course not. That approach, while being inescapable for the scientific investigation of the physical workings of nature, does not at all seem to apply to the business of living one’s normal life beyond the laboratory. There one finds acceptance of the role of purpose is universal. The fact that we act in accordance with adopted aims in life is self-evident. So why is that?

The universal religious drive

The sense of purpose is nowhere more evident than in the context of religious belief. The belief that there is something more than this world is common to most if not all civilizations. The first known ­ritual burials go back 100,000 years, with more elaborate burials dating back 40,000 years. Ideas about God, or about gods and goddesses, or some other supernatural agents, can vary. But regardless of the exact nature of the belief system, it can have a profound effect on one’s life, leading to adherence to certain rules of conduct, rituals, prayer and meditation.

Attempts to understand how we acquire and generate religious thoughts and practices come under the general heading of the ‘cognitive science of religion’. This is a cross-disciplinary research field, drawing, for example, on psychology, anthropology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, evolutionary biology, sociology, and so on. Our concern continues to lie specifically with the nature and structure of the mind at birth, so we shall concentrate on what evolutionary psychologists have to contribute to the subject.

Research shows that, whether or not one’s parents are religious, agnostic or atheist, most young children start out with a natural tendency to believe in God or gods. The religious sense has great resilience, as witness the re-emergence of religion after decades of oppression in countries such as Russia and China. The recognition of an innate religious drive resonates with what was said in the previous section about how one senses that life has purpose.

There are two aspects to religion. First, there is the personal aspect, consisting of what one actually believes about God, together with what one does in private by way of prayer and devotional practice. Second, there is the social aspect – the manner in which like-minded religious people join together to engage in shared worship and other activities. The question arises as to whether evolutionary psychology can explain (away?) these features.

Let us begin with the latter of these features. The word ‘religion’ is thought to have its Latin root in religare, meaning ‘to bind together’. We have already seen how there can, in certain situations, be advantages in acting together rather than in competition with each other. Belonging to a closely knit Christian, Jewish or Muslim community can ensure, for instance, that there are friends on hand to offer mutual help in time of sickness, bereavement and other difficulties. This being the case, there arises the question as to whether belief in God – whether a real God or an imaginary one – is to be regarded primarily as a commitment device for cementing together a social group, a convenient arrangement that confers advantage on the group’s members.

This attempt to account for religion has been subject to argument and counter-argument. For example, one of the difficulties it faces is the price one has to pay for membership of such a community. The price can be considerable. In biblical times it could involve the sacrifice of precious livestock. There are the strictures of celibacy, repetitive (and to be honest sometimes boring) ritual, fasting, making pilgrimages, investment in costly objects and architecture and meeting other financial demands. Religious belief has admittedly the advantage of providing hope and solace to the suffering. But it is hard to see what survival value there is supposed to be in entertaining false hopes as to what the future might bring, if indeed they are false. If the supposed survival value of religious adherence is simply that of belonging to a mutual-help group, why not come clean that that is indeed the rationale for belonging to this group? Why add all the baggage that goes with religion? Why hasn’t selection weeded out any such religious tendency in favour of group commitment devices that are less costly and onerous?

Countering this objection, some evolutionary psychologists point out that for mutual-help groups to work they must be policed so as to root out any who are tempted to cheat; that is to say those who join the group seeking to benefit from others but do not return the favour when it is their turn. Though there are benefits to be obtained by mutual co-operation, the benefits to oneself of cheating are likely to be even greater. Thus the detection and expulsion of those who cheat is important if the co-operating group is to survive. However, for most groups such policing is unlikely to be 100 per cent effective. Thus, so it is argued, there is evolutionary advantage if all members of the group share a belief in an all-knowing God who sees all misdemeanours and is capable of meting out punishment to wrongdoers. Those belonging to a group that accepts the existence of an imaginary super-policeman are more likely to stick together, thus enjoying the benefits of mutual co-operation. Groups not sharing that belief have to rely on fallible human policing.

But is that how religious people think of God – a moralistic super-policeman whose main function is to hand out punishments to those who don’t toe the line? One hardly associates the old Greek gods with being particularly moral. The modern idea of God certainly regards him as moral, but rather than God handing out penalties for the infringement of moral laws, he is seen more as a god of love and forgiveness. In the view of Christians, far from punishing sinners he is believed to have sent his own son to suffer on our behalf.

A further problem with the idea of the super-policeman is that any group bound by such a device would still be prone to infiltration by cheaters. These are those who join the group, but who do not themselves really share the belief in an all-knowing God monitoring what is going on. As far as they are concerned the policing in such a group is a fiction, which, though compelling conformist behaviour for other members of the group, has no relevance for their own behaviour. Hence the attraction. Enough infiltrators of this sort would surely spell the end of groups bound by a shared illusory religious belief.

It has been suggested that it is precisely in order to counter this threat to the cohesion of the religious group that all the paraphernalia and self-sacrifice associated with religious practice is an integral feature of this type of group behaviour. It is there to act as a deterrent to non-believers joining. These costly religious devices are hard-to-fake signals that authenticate one’s commitment to the moralistic supernatural agency that is supposed to be policing the running of the group.

The trouble with this suggestion, however, is that such a forbidding set of requirements for membership acts not only as a deterrent to atheistic would-be cheaters but also to genuine believers.

Atheists respond by arguing that the deterrent effect is not as great for believers as it is for non-believers. This is because believers hold that conforming to all these religious requirements will lead to rewards in the next life. This is an incentive the cheater does not share, so cheaters are more likely to be put off by the self-sacrificing demands of religious practice. This, in turn, assumes that religious believers are highly motivated by the prospects of supposed rewards in heaven. But is that the case? Fanatical jihadists might indeed go about their murderous suicidal activities in the belief that they will be rewarded in the next life with 72 virgins, but I suspect the incentive of ‘jam tomorrow’ plays a far less important role in the thinking of normal believers than atheists assume.

Yet another point to bear in mind is that evolutionary adaptations take a long time to be established within the genetic code. It is believed that little can have been established in Homo sapiens in the last 50,000 years or so (hence evolutionary psychologists’ preoccupation with the extended Pleistocene epoch). But complex theistic belief systems and religious rituals must be counted, on the evolutionary timescale, very recent innovations. There does not seem to have been enough time for them to become part of our shared genome.

In any case, all this supposition that religion arises solely out of its usefulness as a device for binding communities together suffers from one further drawback. That is the fact that the majority of ­people who believe in God do not in any case belong to a worshipping community. In 2010, the European Commission conducted a poll of UK citizens which revealed that 37 per cent believed in God, a further 33 per cent believing in ‘some sort of spirit or life force’. Only 25 per cent declared that they did not believe in ‘any sort of spirit, God or life force’. This finding was backed up by a YouGov poll in 2011 that went on to show that only 9 per cent of the population attended a place of worship in a typical week, 63 per cent of the population having not attended a place of worship in the past year. Thus we have a situation where, of those members of the UK population who subscribe to a belief in there being a spiritual dimension to life, no more than one in seven actually belongs to any religious group. The majority that do not belong presumably hold the commonly expressed view that ­‘religion is a private matter between myself and God’. This in itself seems to indicate that if belief in God is nothing more than an artificial commitment device, then it is not very effective!

That at least is the situation in the UK, and in other countries in Europe that have become increasingly secular in nature. One thinks, for example, of the Scandinavian countries. However, it is not true of the USA, nor was it true in the UK in Victorian times. Here we have to recognize that there can be other forces at work promoting adherence to religious observance – social forces. As was pointed out in the Prologue, in those Victorian times it was the ‘done thing’ to be in church on a Sunday. Today things could not be more different. Absence from church has become the norm. It is in times such as these that one finds out what adhesive power a belief in God actually has, and, as we have seen, it is not as strong as some would have us think.

Which should not surprise us. There are so many other much better candidates for welding groups of people together. A sense of nationalism can lead to people joining in common cause to defend one’s country in time of war. One cannot help but be aware that one belongs to a particular race with all its cultural inheritance. There are those who are activists working for a political party as a means of bringing about some desired policy if elected to government. One might follow a charismatic leader. One might join a trade union to bring about better work conditions and increased pay. One can join the gay rights movement, or try to save the planet, or support a football team, or become a freemason, and so on. An advantage these other commitment devices have over a belief in God is that with all of them it is agreed they are real. No one can doubt that there is a nation called Britain and a football club called Chelsea. But with an invisible, intangible God there is always room for doubting that he exists at all. Such lack of conviction, combined with the aforesaid demands of adhering to religious strictures, must surely act as a potent force tending to lead to the disintegration of any group held together solely on the basis of such a belief.

Yet another attempt to account for religion draws attention to the fact that, like many social institutions, religions tend to have hierarch­ical structures to them. From time immemorial there was doubtless advantage to be gained through recognizing those in one’s community who had leadership qualities, together with those who were counted wise. Having recognized such gifted people, one follows their guidance. Accordingly, religions are structured so as to have leaders – ­bishops, priests, ministers, rabbis, and so on – and then there are those who defer to them – members of the congregation. Why should a person aspire to become a religious leader? In order, so it has been suggested, to gain prestige in the community and the perks that go with it. Why should people join a congregation? Because throughout evolutionary history it has been sensible to learn from those with a reputation for possessing useful knowledge. Religion, so it is claimed, is just another manifestation of this tendency to build social hierarchies.

There was a time when there was perhaps a grain of truth in this conjecture. There was no doubt that the vicar in his palatial vicarage and church was a leading figure in the life of the village, on a par with the lord of the manor. But that changed a long time ago. Today’s television dramas more often than not portray the clergy as nothing more than bumbling figures of fun. And if today’s clergy are unfortunate enough to live in an old-style rambling vicarage, they are unlikely to be able to afford to heat it. And yet people still put themselves forward for ordination to the priesthood and there are still congregations.

Any theory that religion is an adaptation fashioned by evolution by natural selection has to show how it enhances reproduction. For religion to spread as an adaptation, religious believers have to have more children than non-believers so eventually those carrying the religious gene will prevail. But does religion lead to more offspring? The signs are mixed. On the one hand, certain of its practices would appear to be orientated towards encouraging fertility. One thinks, for example, of attempts to ban contraception and abortion, and the prejudice shown against homosexuals (though these attitudes are changing). By way of contrast, there has always been the encouragement of chastity. In times past there were restrictions on when it was permissible to have intercourse with one’s married partner. One was expected to refrain on Sundays, during Lent and three days before taking communion. Indeed, the practice of total celibacy has been widely commended. All of which hardly lends itself to expanding the influence of the social grouping through the abundant production of like-minded progeny.

But enough of religion as a social phenomenon. What of that other feature of religion: the personal aspect, the actual belief system itself? How did this set of beliefs about an invisible God come about?

It is at this point we set aside attempts to account for the existence of religion on the grounds of its possessing some survival value, and instead explore the possibility that belief in God is but a by-­product – a side effect of other features that do help us to survive and reproduce. May I remind you that in the evolutionary psychologist’s vocabulary the term by-product, or spandrel, refers to such matters as the ability to play football or ride a bike or skate or write or solve complicated mathematical problems. None of these arise as specific adaptations our hunter-gatherer ancestors formed in response to some challenge they faced. They are instead enabled by adaptations that were designed by natural selection for other functions. So it is that various attempts have been made to account for at least certain features of religion as by-products rather than adaptations.

For instance, there was advantage for our ancestors in being alert and sensitive to detecting the presence of other people and animals, some of whom might pose a threat. It has been proposed that this ability might have developed to the extent that it becomes what is known as a ‘hyperactive agent detection device’. It is hyperactive in the sense that it leads one to believe in agents that are in fact not there, such as an invisible God or gods.

However, this suggestion regarding the origins of religious belief is open to the criticism that, should such a tendency exist, one would presumably mistakenly imagine further examples of what one is already familiar with, namely additional humans and animals. As one would be out to detect agents relevant to reproduction, these imagined agents would presumably be predatory animals, desirable mates, and so on. There seems no reason why it would lead one to the conclusion that there were imaginary unfamiliar superhuman gods, the existence of which had no corroboration in actuality. Those who do habitually believe they are being watched or stalked have in mind another person, not some mythical creature. And in our modern age of CCTV cameras, who does not get the feeling that, when out in a built-up area, one is continually being observed? But again, observed by another person.

An alternative suggestion as to how belief in God might have arisen as a by-product concerns the distinction between animate and inanimate objects. Suppose our hunter-gatherer ancestor sees ahead of him lying on the ground what looks like a stick. Is it actually a harmless stick or could it be a potentially dangerous snake? There would be survival advantage in having an innate ability to make the ­distinction between what, on the one hand, is living and could be a potential threat and, on the other, that which is not living. Moreover, there could be additional benefit in erring on the side of caution; that is to say, suspecting that certain things are living when in fact they might not be. It is this tendency to be overcautious that leads, so it is argued, to our imagining the existence of conscious life – spirits, perhaps – where in truth there is none.

A problem with this suggestion is that whereas it might make sense were this overcautious defence mechanism to generate imagin­ary malign and potentially dangerous spirits to be avoided, it is hard to account for why it has instead come up with an imaginary God who is the epitome of love and goodness and whose presence is to be embraced. In order to answer that kind of objection, an evolutionary psychologist trying to discount belief in God has to set aside this argument specifically concerned with defence for one based on the more general theory of mind (ToM).

ToM is the capacity each of us has from birth to accept that other people have mental experiences; one is not alone in this regard. As we have already noted, we have no direct experience of anyone’s mind except our own. One might suppose therefore that in the absence of such first-hand evidence, a newborn baby would have to be taught that because the mind is associated with the brain, and other people have brains, it is reasonable to deduce, even without proof, that they might also have minds. Consequently, one might expect to be able to anticipate their behaviour in terms of their having intentions, feelings, and so on.

However, contrary to this expectation, the baby does not have to be taught this; it already assumes it to be the case. From the outset, the baby interacts with the mother as one intentional agent to another. Such an innate disposition presumably in the past conferred evolutionary advantage. It meant that the baby responded to the mother in an appropriate manner. And not only to the mother. Later in life it would have been useful to have been aware of the likely intentions of potential predators and prey. A natural openness to the possibility that others might have a mental capacity, and that their actions might be anticipated in terms of their having been driven by conscious motives, almost certainly arose as a valuable adaptation.

Useful though this ToM undoubtedly was, and still is, it can be ­inappropriately applied. It is argued that it can lead us into ­concluding that objects have purposeful minds when in fact they don’t. For ­example, in one investigation children were asked why a rock was pointy. One response was that it adopted that shape in order that ­animals could scratch themselves on it when they got itchy; it was ­trying to be helpful. Another suggestion was that it was in order to stop animals sitting on it and crushing it. The assignment to inanimate objects of purposeful intentions is very common at an early age.

Adults too can show the same tendency to accord objects a mental capacity. Take for instance the plant called Mimosa pudica. It is a member of the pea family. On lightly touching its thin delicate leaves they instantly recoil and curl up. For all the world they look as though they have been hurt, or that they are embarrassed by the touch. Not surprisingly the plant’s common names are ‘sensitive plant’, ‘shy plant’ and ‘tickle me plant’.

Another inappropriate assignment of feelings and thoughts was provided by the stage play War Horse. This involved life-size puppets of horses, operated by puppeteers. Although the puppeteers were in full view of the audience this did not matter; one soon found one was no longer paying them any attention. Instead, one’s concentration became exclusively fixed on the ‘horse’ – the realistic way it breathed more heavily after exertion, the way its ears pricked up when someone spoke, and so on. The audience was happy to enter a state of mind where the horses became real.

A further example of how the ToM can become overactive is in the anthropomorphic tendencies shown by owners to their pets. Pets have brains of varying capacities, so it seems reasonable to assign to them minds of some sort or other. But what sort? The tendency is unthinkingly to assume that they have the same kind of mental experiences as we humans would have in the given circumstances. But do they? It is hard to say, but one suspects that our ToM has become overactive in this area.

One further example: Susie. This is the name I gave to one of my first cars. This was in the days when cars were far less reliable than they are these days. She was continually breaking down. Often it was difficult to get the engine started, especially on cold winter mornings. She needed lots of attention, including a service every thousand miles. In short, she was temperamental. Of course, looking back I now realize how blatantly sexist I was being (weren’t we men all like that in those days!). But at the time it just seemed so natural to conclude from such behaviour that this inanimate machine must be feminine. Again we see ToM was at work. And so it goes on. At this very instant I am writing this book on my computer. Who has not thought at some time or other that their computer has a mind of its own!

So how is this talk of ToM relevant to our discussion of religious belief? The claim by atheistic evolutionary psychologists is that an overactive ToM fully accounts for belief in gods or God.

Such a claim does, admittedly, have some merit. ToM certainly appears to have been at work with primitive, early ideas about god(s). For instance, the Sun was once thought to be a god. In various past cultures stone statues were thought to have god-like qualities. One recalls, for example, the biblical account of the Jews worshiping the Golden Calf. These days, of course, gods are no longer thought of as being so embodied.

Another manifestation of ToM at work in the past was the manner in which unpredictable happenings in nature – earthquakes, droughts, epidemics, and so on – were thought to be the intentional acts of God. Thunderstorms were regarded as manifestations of his wrath. Disasters were a punishment for sin. Good times were examples of his benevolence. Whatever could not be understood at the time in natural physical terms was to be assigned to an intentional act of God. This was the God of the gaps we talked about earlier. And as we have seen, the progressive plugging of the gaps by scientific endeavours has put paid to this line of reasoning. The explanation of such events in nature does not require any conscious agent.

And yet despite the jettisoning of these ancient ideas, belief in God has not disappeared. So is an overactive ToM still at work in today’s modern versions of belief?

In this regard, note that we have now moved away from how we might casually talk about things, and the mindsets we might unthinkingly adopt. We have now entered the realm of what we actually believe – what on reflection we believe to be the actual case. Thus, yes, thanks to ToM we were happy to go along with the convention that the puppet horses were real; it was all part of enjoying a night out at the theatre. But did we actually believe them to be real? Of course not. Did we believe that the sensitive plant was embarrassed to be touched by a stranger? Did I really believe my car was being wantonly temperamental? When I finish writing for the day, do I really believe that the computer will go to sleep? When the weather forecaster speaks of the threat of possible thunderstorms, do I really believe the clouds are going to issue actual threats? In these and in so many other ways we are led by ToM to speak of the behaviour of objects in these terms. But that is all it is: talk. What one actually believes can be a very different matter entirely.

Nevertheless, the atheist will want to argue that belief in God is a different matter. Even though one might have stopped assigning a mental dimension to individual objects or actions, the overactive ToM might still lead to a more generalized belief that there is a Mind behind the totality of everything. That is the claim of some evolutionary psychologists. But how is this supposed to come about? ToM does not lead us to believe atoms have minds, nor molecules, nor rocks, nor planets, nor stars, nor galaxies. So if, apart from living creatures (who have their own minds), the world is made up entirely of objects that have no minds, why should anyone conclude that the totality of these mindless objects will give rise to a Mind?

Regardless of that, however, suppose – just suppose for the sake of argument – that we grant that ToM has indeed led us to a belief in an all-pervasive God, would that automatically indicate that the God idea was an illusion? By no means. If there is a God, and he wanted us humans to get to know him and enter into a loving relationship with him – if indeed this was, in fact, the whole purpose behind our existence – would it not be strange if we came into the world with no idea that he even existed? Far from being a source of illusion, might not ToM be regarded instead as our God-given way of ensuring that we are alerted to the reality of his existence? That is certainly how I would interpret matters.

In fact, the same could be said of any other attempt to dismiss the truth claims of religion on the grounds that there might be an adaptive advantage in being religious. Suppose, for example, there was an adaptive advantage in taking mathematics seriously. Those who were good at mathematics had a better chance of surviving to the point where they could pass on their superior mathematical skills to their young. I have no idea whether this is true or not, but it sounds reasonable. If one is good at maths then that is indicative of a rational mind and that could have been helpful in the evolutionary past when it came to finding food, shelter, impressing a potential mate and avoiding preda­tors. Would the fact that one was in this way able to explain how an ability to do mathematics became imbedded in the psyche mean that one now had explained away mathematics as no more that an adaptive device – an illusion? Of course not. On the contrary, one might rather want to argue that the adaptive advantage of being mathematically rational stemmed precisely from the fact that it resonated with the underlying rational structure of nature itself. In the same way, any adaptive advantage arising from religion could be interpreted as res­onating with an underlying religious dimension to reality.

One final point about the origin of the religious drive. Current research suggests that there might be a genetic basis for religiosity. The gene concerned is VMAT2. It is sometimes referred to as the God gene and it is supposed to predispose people to have spiritual and mystical experiences. It is a contentious hypothesis, but even if it were to be confirmed, would this undermine belief in God?

It is hard to see why. We have already noted that if evolution is to be regarded as God’s way of making us, what could be more natural than his seeing to it that the evolutionary process had incorporated into it a DNA-induced propensity to be open to the possibility of other kinds of mind, including the Divine mind? After all, according to the religious perspective, the overall aim of life is that we should seek God and enter into a loving relationship with him.

How might God have built such a tendency into our DNA? We have described how the DNA molecule consists of a chain of smaller molecules, the order in which these smaller molecules are arranged constituting the various codes governing our physical characteristics and genetically influenced behaviour patterns. The overall form of the chain is that of a double helix. So are we to believe that God has somehow interfered with the sequence of smaller molecules in order to produce a code that manifests itself as the religious drive? Possibly. But I prefer to think that, with the religious outlook affecting every aspect of one’s life, perhaps its code has more to do with the overall helical shape of the DNA. The God-directed instinct derives from the general structure of the DNA molecule rather than from a particular sequence of component parts it might have acquired by chance over the course of evolutionary history. That way God would not have had to interfere with the coding in a supernatural manner. The God instinct was inevitable. I hasten to say there is, of course, absolutely no proof that there is any truth in this suggestion; it is just a pure guess as to one way in which it might have come about. But I must say I rather like it!

The sense of the presence of God

Closely related to the religious drive, and perhaps most striking of all, is the sense that, even when there is no one around, one is not alone. A Gallup survey conducted in 1990 revealed that 54 per cent of those polled answered ‘Yes’ to the following question: ‘Have you ever been aware of or influenced by, a presence or power – whether you call it God or not – which is different from your everyday self?’ Religious believers, myself included, have a powerful feeling that Someone is always present. Moreover, this Someone knows one’s very innermost thoughts.

Which is odd. Knowing that I have no way of directly reading the minds of other people, I would have thought that what goes on in my own mind was strictly private to myself. And yet there is this conviction that Someone has access to it; nothing is concealed. This is called the sense of the numinous.

What does it feel like? Certainly this Someone exudes a benign presence, indeed a loving presence. There is nothing threatening about it. And yet it evokes a profound sense of awe. One feels one is dealing with a Someone who is greater and more powerful than oneself. The feeling generated has much in common with what one might experience on entering a great religious building such as a cathedral, synagogue or mosque.

In prayer one senses that one is not talking to oneself. Not all the time, of course. There can be arid periods. This might be due to one not being in the right mood. Or it might be that, when faced with a choice of action and wanting guidance as to which one to take, and getting no response, one is in effect being led to understand that it does not really matter which course one takes. God is able to use either. But to set against these arid periods are those occasions where one has been wrestling with some problem for a long time and getting nowhere. Then, when deciding to pray about it, the answer comes immediately. I have myself on a number of occasions experienced examples of this. Sometimes the answer is so unexpected that one is left wondering where on Earth that came from.

The numinous manifests itself in other ways. For example, it might be a case of having hurt someone, and there is this persistent inner voice urging one to take steps to mend the relationship. Perhaps one has always profoundly disliked someone, and for good reason, but suddenly one realizes that they are not all bad. In distressing times when one is anxious and fearful, one might find comfort. When angry about someone or about the situation in which one finds oneself, a short prayer can bring calm and a more rational state of mind. On reflecting about the world one might be led to the recognition that, living in the affluent West, one is comparatively well off. One is then challenged to give generously to charities helping those in need at home and abroad. When one has done something wrong one feels admonished. This is commonly known as the voice of conscience. Not that the voice of conscience is to be regarded as the plain unequivocal voice of God. Persisting in actions contrary to the prompting of one’s conscience has the effect of diminishing that voice, in some cases to the point where the person acts as though they have no conscience at all, no sense of right or wrong.

These then are some of the ways the numinous can be experienced. However, before proceeding further, let me make one point absolutely clear. I emphatically am not claiming that only religious believers have these kinds of experiences. Of course not. Although atheists do not benefit from the practice of prayer, they obviously are perfectly capable of experiencing a voice of conscience and acting upon it; they can feel the need to give to charity and to mend relations with ­others. They recognize that in order to give meaning to their lives they should devote themselves to a good cause. No, the difference between ­believers and atheists lies not so much in what they experience as to how they attribute these inner promptings. Where do they come from?

The religious believer attributes them to God; the atheist has to find some other way to account for them. The atheist dismisses belief in God as an illusion – an artefact thrown up by the evolutionary process. But how exactly has this counter-intuitive sense that one’s mind is an open book to an invisible Someone arisen? If we are nothing more than a self-replicating survival machine, how has this illusion come about? As we have noted previously, falling prey to illusions regarding what is real and what is not cannot be good for survival. One needs to know what actually exists in order to be able to take appropriate action. No, this sense of the numinous is yet another feature of the mind that appears difficult to explain through the means of evolutionary psychology.

Religious experiences

As you won’t need reminding, the declared aim of the exercise in which we are engaged is that of identifying those common, permanent mental features we all share and which are hard, if not impossible, to explain in terms of their having been fashioned in response to ­evolutionary pressures. However, it might be argued that I have already begun to stray somewhat from that objective. Not everyone has ­experiences of prayer. Not everyone shares the sense that their innermost thoughts are not actually private. Rather than being inborn features common to all human minds, these have the character of being intermittent interactions between the mind and something outside the mind.

Indeed, when certain individuals look inside themselves they find further examples of the mind seemingly being in contact with ­something beyond itself. For such people, these experiences provide further justification for a belief in God.

For instance, there are mystical experiences involving an ineffable, temporary feeling of oneness with nature or with God, accompanied by the elimination of self. There is the intense one-off ‘born-again’ conversion experience of certain Christians. There is the whole range of different types of religious experience investigated by Alister Hardy and his Religious Experience Research Unit at Manchester College in Oxford. These might involve feelings of trust, awe, joy, bliss or ecstasy. Others engage the senses: seeing lights, hearing voices or feeling that one is being touched.

For those individuals who have first-hand experience of such phenomena it is likely that these features of one’s inner life are the ones most potent in shaping one’s spiritual beliefs. Indeed, when theologians declare that the search for God begins within oneself, it might well be that, for some at least, what they have in mind are these types of experience. But that is not the approach being adopted in this book. We are not concerned with the transient experiences of a ­limited number of individuals. Our approach does not depend on the reader having had these experiences.

Of course, it could be argued that even if not everyone has these experiences, that does not rule out the possibility that we all share from birth a capacity, or tendency, to have them. Indeed, research shows that such experiences are widespread, transcending cultures and belief systems. What might be lacking for any given individual might be an adequate trigger to manifest this underlying capacity. It is known, for example, that even an avowed atheist might in conditions of extreme danger find themselves involuntarily issuing a prayer. But if an individual has had no religious experience, and never feels the need to pray, then one cannot blame him or her for doubting that they do have such an underlying tendency.

No. We shall continue to concentrate on those features we can all agree are indispensable to the working of all human minds, namely the possession of feelings, the need to make decisions, the appreciation of beauty, the experience of awe, the moral sense, being creative and purposeful – those features of the mind that are hard if not impossible to account for in terms of evolutionary psychology or, indeed, other approaches to the psychology of the mind.

The mind: other approaches

Evolutionary psychology is a fairly new scientific discipline. But, of course, attempts to understand the mind date from long ago. As far back as the nineteenth century the view began to form that the thoughts of which we are aware at any time make up only part of the contents of the mind. In order to explain certain aspects of conscious experience, it became helpful to postulate an additional part of the mind: the unconscious. This was held to be capable of influencing the conscious mind through the production of dreams and hallucin­ations, as well as accounting for involuntary acts, such as slips of the tongue and other faulty actions.

The unconscious is a postulate: there is no incontrovertible, ­deductive proof of its existence. We have no way of entering and examining the unconscious directly. As soon as one thinks about a supposed aspect of the unconscious, the very act of thinking about it means that it has now been absorbed into consciousness. The exist­ence of the unconscious can only be inferred through the way it appears to have an impact upon consciousness from outside, so to speak. For example, one has no conscious control over the contents of one’s dreams. The explanatory power of the hypothesis is so great that the existence of the unconscious is universally accepted.

In order to progress further we need to know more about the unconscious, particularly as regards what it is likely to contain. The study of the mind from the point of view of an evolutionary psychologist has proved a fruitful approach to understanding how our conscious thoughts and attitudes are moulded by an underlying architecture of the mind. But other strategies have also proved fruitful in the past. To illustrate this we look at the work of two prominent psychologists: Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung.

Sigmund Freud

Some insight into the workings of the mind is afforded by the practice of psychoanalysis as pioneered by Sigmund Freud. He held that an understanding of the unconscious begins with the recognition of two kinds of content: the id and the superego. The id is something we ­possess from birth. It is associated with instinctual drives towards infantile gratification. These are to be thought of as essentially sexual. The superego, on the other hand, is derived from the environment. It consists of the attitudes of mind absorbed from other people – the standards of behaviour expected by society, especially those ­originating from one’s parents. These beliefs are acquired in early childhood by an unconscious process that leaves one unaware of their origin. A tension is then set up between the centre of one’s consciousness, called the ego, and the value system so assimilated. From this is derived one’s ­‘conscience’. Because the behaviour dictated by this set of beliefs often runs counter to that which would arise from self-­gratification, the id and the superego come into conflict. This results in those thoughts regarded as shameful, painful, disagreeable or alarming being repressed into the unconscious. Although repressed, these thoughts can, nevertheless, affect behaviour. In neurotic personalities these can have a debilitating effect, giving rise to unreasonable fears and compulsive actions. The aim of psychoanalysis is to bring these unconscious thoughts into the conscious mind so that they can be dealt with rationally. All of us have repressed thoughts, not just those accounted neurotic. The difference is that most of us are able to channel the drive stemming from such thoughts into some socially acceptable activity.

What did Freud specifically have to say about the unconscious in relation to religious experience? Though at times he could be somewhat ambivalent in his attitude to religion, he generally spoke as an atheist. It is important to note, however, that his atheism did not come about as a result of the development of psychoanalysis. Though certain of his followers claimed that it was psychoanalysis that destroyed the credibility of religion, Freud himself consistently denied this. He had formed an atheistic outlook from early childhood. His view of religion, therefore, was something added to his psychological findings and theories, rather than something drawn out of them.

Freud took over, and further developed, an idea originated by Ludwig Feuerbach, 150 years ago. This held that God was nothing more than an idealized psychologically projected image of a human being. It is human qualities of personhood, including love, sense of justice, wisdom, and so on that are externalized by the mind and become an object of worship. Why should only the good aspects of humankind be so projected, rather than an image of its totality, warts and all? Wish fulfilment. That is to say, the gratification in fantasy of that which is denied in reality. A particularly important example of wish fulfilment, so it is claimed, concerns our natural desire to feel protected. In childhood, a sense of security is generally provided by the presence of one’s earthly father. On reaching adulthood, however, this protection is lost. At this point, wish fulfilment takes over. It gives rise to a belief in God, who can assume the vacated role of the protective father figure. Accordingly, belief in God is to be interpreted as nothing more than a prolongation of an infantile dependence on an earthly father – an avoidance of the need to face up to the harsher realities of life. The loss of the earthly father figure – either through death or through the recognition in later life of his inadequacies, at least in respect of his being able to continue indefinitely providing protection – is something that affects us all. For this reason it is not surprising that the community of religious believers is able to reach a consensus over the nature of God as a benign father figure. Having given rise to a belief in God, wish fulfilment goes on to endow him with further desirable attributes. We want his protection to be complete, so we regard him as omnipotent. We desire justice in an unjust world, so he becomes a God of justice. We wish to be loved, so God is a Heavenly Father who loves us. We wish to go on living indefinitely, so we believe in a life hereafter.

How are we to assess such a theory of religious experience? As a preliminary, it needs to be remarked that the general view of the unconscious so far presented – that it constitutes, in effect, a dustbin for unwanted thoughts – straight away casts some doubts on its being the main source of religious experience. It is hard to account for how such a morass could give rise to the sense of wonder, awe, beauty and nobility associated with the sense of the numinous. Any discussion of the origin of religious experience must surely pay due attention to the quality of the experience, and whether or not it correlates with the nature of that which is supposedly giving rise to it. Second, it has to be noted that although some people do admittedly develop unhealthy religious obsessions – perhaps being overwhelmed by an exaggerated sense of guilt – this is not common. It is far more usual to find religion regarded as life-enhancing and fulfilling, the very antithesis of a debilitating mental disorder. To be taken into account, therefore, is not only the quality of the experience, but the fruits to which it gives rise.

Next, we note that all of Freud’s pronouncements on religion were founded on assertion alone; there was, and is, no proof for them. Even if one does accept that wish fulfilment is at work to some extent, this does not of itself, of course, determine one way or the other whether that which is wished for actually exists or not.

The notion that religion is grounded in wish fulfilment does not give due weight to the extent to which religious believers are challenged by their faith, rather than comforted by it. The very phrase ‘being comforted’, when used in a religious context, more often means ‘being strengthened’ (to carry out some task) than being merely made to feel reassured. In the lives of many great religious figures – Moses, Jonah, Jeremiah and others – we find them being forced into taking courses of action that were against their own wishes. Jesus himself, on the night that he was betrayed, asked that the cup of suffering be removed. So much of religious belief is to do with self-denial, not self-gratification. Again and again one confesses that one has wishes that are immoral. One asks for God’s help, not that such wishes be satisfied, but that they be resisted. Of course, it can be countered that the superego has gained the upper hand. Fair enough. A victory for the superego is, in the language of the religious believer, a victory for God. But there is no denying that each win for the superego can be a wish not fulfilled.

Another reason for believing wish fulfilment to be less important for religion than Freud imagined comes from studying the prevalence of religion according to social status. Wish fulfilment, as already mentioned, is the gratification in fantasy of what is denied in reality. This being so, it ought mostly to be in evidence among working-class ­people – those deprived of both worldly goods and social esteem. Yet in those countries where statistics are most reliable, the UK and USA, working-class people are less interested in religion – the opposite of what is expected according to the theory of wish fulfilment. Rather than turn to a fantasy belief in God, they look to whatever economic system they think is likely to afford the greater material benefit, be it socialism, communism or capitalism – ‘religions’ in the wider sense.

Perhaps the aspect of religious belief that appears, from the outside at least, to be the most open to the accusation of wish fulfilment is the idea of an afterlife – the belief that the future offers some form of compensation for the injustices of this present life. But as we have already noted, only those who are themselves believers can appreciate just how little in fact the notion of rewards in an afterlife is the motiv­ating force. Most of them see the religious way of life as the means of achieving one’s potential and fulfilment in this life, and this holds good regardless of whatever the consequences might be for a future exist­ence. Again, there are many believers who, if pressed, admit to having little or no belief in an afterlife – despite what they might recite in the Creed each week. Even in the Middle Ages, when thoughts of the afterlife were given more prominence in preaching and teaching than they are now, it was not so much the forthcoming joy of heaven that was held in prospect as the terrible consequences of being sent to hell.

This is not to deny that most of us from time to time indulge in wish fulfilment. We fantasize over our supposed abilities and import­ance. This being so, it would be unreasonable to imagine religious beliefs to be immune from this insidious tendency. Indeed, one has only to look back over the course of history, or at one’s own personal life, to see instances of the image of God being manipulated to make it conform to some desired end – the justification of courses of action that perhaps only later come to be seen as self-interested and out of keeping with a more consistent view of the nature of God.

But while fully accepting the need for the religious believer to be on his or her guard over wish fulfilment, it is only fair to point out that the atheist is equally open to the same influence. Can it not be argued that atheism might sometimes arise out of a desire to consider oneself independent and self-sufficient, master of one’s own destiny? Could one not find in certain atheists a wish to evade the uncomfortable, self-denying, demands of religious commitment? If even the most devout believers can sometimes find themselves daunted by the magnitude of the tasks laid upon them by the sense of doing one’s religious duty, to say nothing of the cost imposed in terms of time, effort and money, it would be hardly surprising if some people, through the process of wish fulfilment, manage to convince themselves that they have no such responsibilities. In this way one sees that the argument against religious belief on the grounds that it is merely a manifestation of wish fulfilment is easily turned on its head.

The idea of a Heavenly Father being nothing more than a projection of childish fantasies concerning one’s own earthly father is likewise a claim that can be turned around. This was pointed out by Jung, who held that Freud’s concept of the superego could be regarded as just another name for the repressed and rejected God experience. In other words, it is an introjected God – ‘a furtive attempt to smuggle in the time-honoured image of Jehovah in the dress of psychological theory’. Accordingly, God is not conceived of as a substitute for the physical father; rather the physical father is a child’s first substitute for God. Whereas Freud saw religion as a symptom of psychological illness, Jung saw the absence of religious experience as the root of adult psychological illness.

One further point should be made about Freud’s suggestion that God is a projection of one’s earthly father: it goes no way towards explaining Eastern religions. Unlike Judaism, Christianity and Islam, these do not draw on the father figure image. Indeed, Western religions are little more than caricatured if they are represented as a belief in a crude, larger-than-life father figure. The projected father-­figure hypothesis, therefore, at best addresses only naive versions of Western religions and cannot in any way be regarded as a comprehensive ­explanation of worldwide religion based on fully developed ­theological consideration of the nature of God.

In summary, we conclude that, no matter how justly pre-­eminent Freud was in other areas of psychology, when it came to religion his pronouncements were at best arbitrary. He tended to attack particularly unsophisticated forms of religious belief, and even that was done unconvincingly. Not surprisingly, his chief works on religious subjects – Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion and Moses and Monotheism – are today among the most neglected of his books among serious psychologists. The arguments they contain are rejected with remarkable unanimity by most specialists in the subjects around which they are based.

Before leaving the subject of Freud, however, it is only fair to point out that the study of his work does have a positive side in helping us understand better the nature of our religious beliefs. Rightly we reject his main thesis regarding the origin of religious experience. But it would be foolish to think that he had nothing of value to offer. For those of us who subscribe to a religion that draws on the Heavenly Father metaphor, we would do well to be alive to the possibility of that image being too heavily overlain with inappropriate connotations deriving from our view of the role of an earthly father. Surveys have shown that those who have had a strict upbringing tend to regard God as more severe than those who have been brought up by parents who were more easy-going. With the wholesale changes that have taken place in society in recent times, especially regarding attitudes towards parents and those in positions of authority in general, we could find ourselves unconsciously adopting a changed attitude towards God. This might or might not be a good thing, but at least we ought to be aware that it is happening.

Carl Jung

Someone with a more profound appreciation of religion than Freud was Carl Jung. On the basis of his own deeply felt first-hand experience of religion, Jung sought to incorporate religious insights into his study of the unconscious mind.

His work begins with the recognition that the unconscious contains much more than had hitherto been suspected. In particular, an aspect of the unconscious that we all share: that which is innate and does not depend upon the circumstances of the individual’s own life. His studies led him to the conclusion that in a wide variety of situations we all tend to think and act in similar ways. This he discovered long before today’s evolutionary psychologists came to adopt the same idea as the basis of their discipline. These common traits arise not because we have been taught to react so. Rather, from birth, these predispositions lie dormant deep within the unconscious awaiting a suitable occasion to give expression to themselves. These patterns of potential thought and behaviour constitute what he called the collective unconscious. It is to be seen as a pre-existing framework into which the events of the individual’s life history are received. One’s experiences are moulded by the structure of that framework, as well as by whatever previous experiences the individual has had. It is something like a jelly mould. The mould starts out empty; it has no contents. But once it receives the poured jelly mix it comes into play, shaping the eventual jelly. The collective unconscious consists of various component features. These Jung called archetypes. The term derives from the Greek words arche, meaning ‘beginning’, and typos, meaning ‘imprint’.

Thus, according to Jung, an individual’s unconscious is characterized by two aspects: that which derives from the individual’s past ­experiences and that which shapes the collective unconscious. The first is specific to the individual, the second is innate and common to us all.

The notion of a collective unconscious fits in well with what we have learned from evolutionary theory. There we discovered that in our inherited DNA there are codes to do with genetically influenced behaviour patterns, these being adaptations or by-products of those adaptations. As a first approximation one can say that Jung’s idea of a collective unconscious bears an uncanny similarity to the kind of conclusions drawn by today’s evolutionary psychologist.

He arrived at this insight, however, by a very different route. Jung began his investigation by carefully considering his own dreams and those of his patients. He paid particular attention to those aspects that did not seem to have any direct connection with the actual experiences of the one reporting the dream. He also analysed the fantasies and delusions of the insane. He studied comparative religion and especially mythological stories, seeking out recurring themes. These he found to be common to many disparate cultures all over the world, and throughout human history. There was a universal quality about them.

The archetypes represented certain regularities or consistently recurring types of situation and figures. How many archetypes are there? It is hard to say. One expects as many archetypes as there are typical repeated circumstances conferring survival advantage on those with the appropriate genetic make-up. Jung was able to ­delineate many of them. He found archetypes associated with psychological dispositions towards various figures: mother, father, family, hero, wise old man, and so on, as well as those associated with situations arising out of one’s relationship to such figures.

As an example, let us take the mother archetype. A baby on being presented to the breast for the first time instinctively knows that it has to suck. It does not need to be taught this because this knowledge is already encoded into its genetic make-up. It is behaviour that arose in the course of evolution through natural selection in the far distant past when mammals first put in an appearance. Since that time, any mammalian offspring that lacked the appropriate gene failed to get sustenance and so did not survive to the point where they could themselves mate and pass on the gene lacking in this characteristic. That is how the situation is described in terms of evolutionary biology. In the mental domain, the corresponding predisposition the baby has towards the mother – the thought forms that give rise to the sucking behaviour – derive from the mother archetype. Not that this is all there is to the mother archetype. Breastfeeding is but one small, rather superficial aspect of an intricate and far-reaching set of thought patterns controlled by this archetype. The archetype orientates us from birth to expect a mother who will nurture, protect, care and love, and, it should be added, a mother who might abandon, withhold, deprive, destroy and hate. In all kinds of ways, this archetype predisposes us as to how we relate to our mother and to mother figures; it can even affect the way we relate to women in general.

According to Jung, one of our natural tendencies is to possess a religious drive. He held that one ignored this at one’s peril. If it did not find its outlet as a belief in God then it would be diverted into other channels. He declared that ‘whenever the Spirit of God is excluded from human consideration, an unconscious substitute takes its place’. It might, for instance, manifest itself in a devotion to some other cause, such as campaigning for women’s rights, a concern for the environment, an avid devotion to a football team, joining with others to oppose the building of nuclear power stations, fighting for one’s country in time of war, and so on.

One can even see the same religious drive at work in the protests against religion of people like Richard Dawkins. In a sense, atheism is his religion. In one of his attacks on religion he likens it to a virus. The mistaken notion of religion, he claims, is insidiously passed on through what parents tell their children when their developing minds are particularly receptive. In this manner, this dangerous and unwelcome idea is spread throughout the world, polluting the natural state of the mind, much like an unwanted virus invades the human body. This alien idea has to be eliminated. Such is his claim. The flaw in the argument is that the natural state of the mind is to be religious. What is new and spreading is atheism. If there is a mental virus of some kind it is more likely to be atheism than religion.

Are the images thrown up into consciousness by the archetypes to be regarded as nothing more than the psychological correlates of genetically influenced behaviour? If so, it should be possible to see how each of the thought forms controlled by the archetypes in the mental domain leads to behaviour in the physical domain that is conducive to the survival of the individual or its close kin. We have already noted that to a large extent we do consciously act in such ways, engaging in selfishness, competitiveness and, if necessary, aggression. Sometimes we co-operate with others when the favour is to be reciprocated. But having said that, it has to be added that the richness and variety of archetypal images are such that it is difficult, if not impos­sible, to demonstrate that they are associated exclusively with behaviour having survival value.

Indeed, among the archetypes there is one of particular importance for religion and religious experience. As previously noted, religion has always been a universal phenomenon. It affects peoples everywhere and at all times. For instance, there is the widespread desire to be wed in church even when the couple are not normally noted for attending church. Even in countries where religion is officially discouraged, pseudo-religious rituals are observed. It does not take much imagin­ation to see a parallel with the visit that newly wed couples in Moscow pay to the tomb of Lenin, or with the requirement to observe a reverential hush and remove one’s hat on entering Chairman Mao’s mausoleum in Beijing. As for countries where organized religion is not discouraged but appears to be on the decline, one finds that decline in part compensated for by a growth of interest in the occult, visitors from space, and so on.

The seemingly irrepressible urge to give expression to religious feeling indicated to Jung that it must have an archetypal basis. He associated it with an archetype of especial significance – one occupying a dominant position at the centre of the psyche (the psyche being the totality of the conscious and unconscious minds). This archetype is different from others in that all the other archetypes relate to it. It is called the self. This can be a little confusing in that the term as used here does not quite carry its normal meaning. Customarily ‘self’ is thought of as synonymous with ‘ego’. In the present context, however, the self is defined as the centre of the entire thinking individual, embracing both the conscious and unconscious processes, together with the exchanges between the two. The ego, on the other hand, is specifically the centre of consciousness.

How does the ego react when it searches into the fathomless depths of the unconscious and is confronted by the self? It responds in a way very similar to, indeed indistinguishable from, that which was earlier spoken of as the inner experience of the numinous. Jung held that the discovery of one’s inner self has the closest possible affinity to being confronted with the religious experience. The same characteristics of awe and wonder are there. There is an indissoluble link between the two activities.

What does this mean? It is held by religious believers that if one searches for God and succeeds in establishing a relationship with him, that discovery at the same time leads to the realization that there is a spiritual dimension to oneself. In other words, discovering God simultaneously deepens one’s understanding of what it is to be human. What Jung appears to be proposing is that this process of discovery works both ways: discovering one’s true inner self at the same time points to an experience of God.

The otherness of the mind

So where have we got to? Recall how we began this study of the mind in an attempt to understand why so many theologians believe that one finds God not by looking to the physical world but by seeking him in the very depths of oneself. We noted that the attributes of God are described exclusively in the language commonly used for the description of conscious mental phenomena. It therefore seemed reasonable to conduct an investigation that was to be carried out in that same language – an investigation into our personal experience of consciousness. We embarked on this even though it was unclear at the time how a study of one’s own mind could reveal the existence of Someone who was not oneself.

We asked what kind of mind we would expect to find. As we have seen, the mind does not start off at birth as a blank – it has an inbuilt architecture. Evolutionary psychologists have enjoyed great success in accounting satisfactorily for many of these innate features of the mind as being the evolutionary adaptations of self-replicating survival machines. But that was not the whole story. Not all of our universal mental features could be accounted for as adaptations to meet identifiable demands to do with the survival and reproduction needs of our ancestors. This led to the suggestion that these additional features might have arisen as by-products of adaptations – what we have been calling spandrels. Providing these were neutral as regards survival, they might have become incorporated into the human genome as extra baggage.

In order for any feature to be reliably classed as a spandrel one needs to identify which adaptation or adaptations are likely to have spawned it. Thus one can happily account for our interest in sport in terms of the competition between our ancestors over gaining food and shelter, the need to channel aggression, the admiration of physical prowess once used in hunting, and so on. Many of the qualities of top-class athletes and sportsmen and -women were those required by our ancestors if they were to survive.

But then we came across other innate features that did not so ­readily lend themselves to explanation in terms of either adaptations or by-products. We spoke of the appreciation of beauty. Not just ­sexual beauty, for which a good case could be made for why we prefer certain characteristics in a mate, but also the beauty of flowers, a rainbow, and so on. There was the feeling of awe. There was the conviction that life has a purpose and that there is a moral law extending beyond that which can be reduced to mere reciprocal altruism or altruism on behalf of close kin. We noted the uplift to be derived from art, literature, music and the contemplation of nature, and the sense of accomplishment that arises out of being creative. There is the question of why we have feelings at all rather than experience a mere indifferent awareness of what is going on. There is the conviction that one possesses free will; one is not an automaton. In addition there are religious experiences.

Yes, there have been attempts to explain to a limited extent how activities such as making music might have come about. But these have hardly touched on the question as to why we react to them in the way we do – why some instances of them are regarded as aesthetically pleasing and others not. One can well understand why evolutionary psychologists are driven to do their best to offer explanations of as many features of the mind as they can, using the techniques they have developed. There are surely further advances to be made. However, especially in regard to the so-called by-products, it is difficult to see how their views on how they might have originated can ever be corroborated. Indeed, one might be pardoned for thinking that some of the attempts that have been made to explain away these features seem pretty arbitrary, not to say far-fetched.

One thing seems pretty clear: there are features of the mind we are born with that are difficult to explain in terms of their simply being what one would naturally expect were a self-replicating survival machine to become aware of itself. There is an otherness to the mind. This in turn raises the question as to how this otherness got there.

So is this where God comes into the picture? Let us be clear. Our search for God in our innermost being is not a search for two entities: our mind and something separate, namely God. All we discover there is our mind. What we are saying is that the workings of that mind have not only been shaped by our evolutionary origins, but they might also carry the imprint of the Creator of that consciousness. It is through the study of the characteristics of that imprint – that otherness – that we get to know the nature of the God responsible for it.

The roots of belief

It is all very well saying that God might be ultimately responsible for these extra features, but what kind of God are we talking about?

Humankind’s understanding of the nature of God has undergone a long and tortuous history. Here I have particularly in mind the major religions of the Abrahamic tradition, namely Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Our ancestors sought God by trying to make sense of the often puzzling and contradictory events of life. With there being so many diverse features of life it was initially surmised that there must be several gods, each with their own particular characteristics and interests, these often coming into conflict with each other, giving rise at times to seeming chaos.

One of these gods was called Yahweh. He was a territorial God, living up Mount Sinai. He came to an agreement, or covenant, with a particular tribe – the Israelites. From then on he became a tribal god. He would fight for them, provided they worshipped only him, he being jealous of the other gods. He went wherever his people went. He cared only for them. He thought nothing of killing off the first-born Egyptian children. He helped his wandering people to take over the lands belonging to the Canaanites, presumably because he had no regard for the rights of other peoples belonging to other tribal gods.

But given time, this perception of Yahweh was to change. This was largely due to the insights of a series of prophets. Elijah came to the conclusion that Yahweh was not exclusively a warlike god. One could pray to him in times of peace, when, for example, there was a need for rain to water the crops the Jews had planted. Rain comes from clouds. Clouds spread out across the whole sky and cover all land, so Yahweh’s supposed domain of influence spread until he was regarded as being in charge everywhere, not just one mountain or one country. And if he was in charge of everywhere it was because it was his creation. Yahweh had now become the great Creator God – the God who had created the whole world. As such, all peoples belong to him. He was no longer confined to being the god of a particular tribe.

Later still, the peasant Amos had the insight that God, being the god of all peoples, was as much concerned with lowly, humble people such as himself, as he was with kings, princes and other rulers and leaders of nations. Hosea, through finding that he could forgive his wayward wife, discerned that God was not the fearsome vengeful deity he had until then been thought to be. He was a God who could love deeply even to the extent of being able to forgive sins and be merciful.

At a time when the Israelites were taken into captivity and exiled from their homelands, it was Jeremiah who insisted that God had not been left behind; one did not have to worship him exclusively in the Temple in Jerusalem; he was still with them and could be worshipped in their hearts.

Then, finally, for Christians at least, there came the perfect personification of God in human form through Jesus Christ. He did not originate the two greatest commandments, namely to love God with all one’s heart, soul, mind and strength, and to love one’s neighbour as oneself. These had already by then been accepted. Rather, Christ demonstrated both by his life and his death what it meant to live wholly according to God’s wishes. As he claimed, anyone who had seen him had seen the Father.

And, one might add, this process of continually refining one’s understanding of God goes on into our own times. One has only to think of changes in attitude that have recently taken place regarding the status of women and relationships between homosexuals.

As I said, this progressive coming to know God took a long time. Unravelling that sequence takes some doing because the writings of the Bible are not in chronological order. The Bible begins, for instance, with a description of the great God creating the world. But as we now recognize, that was quite a late insight – a much later account than, for example, the story that immediately follows in Genesis depicting God walking in the garden in the cool of the evening. It is only when the writings of the Bible are placed in the order in which they were written that one comes to recognize how much progress was made in coming to a consensus as to what God is really like.

And what we find is that the nature of the God we have ended up with resonates very closely with those extra features we have found in our own minds. Thus, for example, God created the world; we get satisfaction from being creative. God has feelings of sadness, pain, anger, and so on; we too have feelings. God has a purpose in mind in that he wants his people to know him and love him; we are convinced that our lives too could and should have purpose. God loves and is compassionate towards everyone; we too have the ability of expressing unconditional love to all, not just to close kin. God is good and hates evil; we too have a moral sense. God, through his Son, is self-sacrificing; we too feel compelled at times to be self-sacrificing, even if necessary to the point of death. God has the freedom to act according to his will; we too, despite what we might conclude from the apparently deterministic behaviour of our physical selves, have been given an experience – illusory or otherwise – of what it is like to have freedom of action, with the concomitant sense of personal responsibility for those actions.

These are the characteristics that make up the otherness of our minds – those features that are hard to account for in terms of evolutionary psychology. They have a certain quality about them. They are features that are highly desirable. To put it bluntly, if somewhat simplistically, we humans are a darned sight nicer people than we have any right to expect to be – given our origins! Not everyone all the time, of course. History, to say nothing of our own times, has many examples of people displaying appalling brutality and nastiness. Faced with such atrocities we instinctively react by accusing the perpetrators of ‘behaving like animals’. In doing so, we are in effect admitting that, given the same circumstances, this is how we ourselves would expect to behave if in truth we were nothing but evolved animals. But that is not the way we are – at least not to the same extent. On the whole, we possess and display characteristics that are moral, noble, kind, loving and wholesome. That being so, it is but a short step to conclude that the source of such finer qualities, God, must similarly be so endowed.

It is no coincidence that these desirable qualities characteristic of God are embodied in those buildings built to the glory of God – cathedrals, mosques, synagogues and temples. They incorporate architecture that is lofty and awe-inspiring; there is the splendour of the vestments worn by the priests who are the representatives of God; there is uplifting music, the beauty of the language used, and of the art work symbolizing the presence of God. There is the sense within those who worship there that they have a calling to serve the needs of the wider community.

It is the close similarity between the qualities attributed to God, on the one hand, and the characteristics of the otherness of conscious experience, on the other, that suggests that those extra characteristics of the mind we are born with have been imprinted by God. That at least from now on is going to be our assumption.

In this regard we would do well to note an uncanny resonance between this conclusion and the mythical account of our origins to be found in Genesis. There we learn from the part of the story concerning the taking of the forbidden fruit by Adam (the Hebrew word Adam denoting humankind in general) that we are basically selfish and are quite prepared to take what does not belong to us; we are inclined to put ourselves first. This accords well with our evolutionary tendencies to give priority to our survival. But then to offset this somewhat harsh feature of human nature there comes the statement that we are nevertheless made in the image of God; we have the potential to be like God. Genesis is pointing out that we have this twofold nature – much like the twofold nature we have discovered in our study of the mind.

But if this is so, immediately we are faced with a problem: if our internal examination of consciousness has not brought us directly in contact with God, but just with his supposed effects on our mind, how were such thoughts and attitudes transmitted into the mind from God. Are we supposed to believe that they come from outside by some kind of telepathic link from a God situated up there in heaven, or somewhere out there?

No. Such thinking is naive. Earlier we noted that the theologian Paul Tillich described God as the Ground of All Being. At the time, we were enquiring as to why the physical world existed. And coupled to the idea of the world coming into existence, there was the further question of what sustains it in existence. At that time, we were asking these questions solely of the physical world. We concluded that, if these questions were meaningful, such a source of an impersonal world might itself be an agency that was impersonal. The argument for there being an ultimate source did not in any way have to point to a god who was consciously interested in each individual – the type of god for which we were seeking evidence.

However, if God is to be regarded as the Ground of All Being – note the word ‘All’ – then one has to take into account the totality of exist­ence. In particular, one has to recognize that consciousness also exists. Consciousness, like physicality, needs an explanation for its existence. God must therefore be the source not only of that which is physical but also of consciousness. Furthermore, besides being the reason why consciousness came into existence, God also fulfils the function of sustaining it in existence.

But given that the Ground is the ultimate source of our consciousness, does this not imply that the Ground itself must have at least some sort of affinity to consciousness? Call it a Super Mind if you wish, though that is almost certainly too crude. That would be to treat God as one more existent conscious entity (albeit of a superior form) rather than the means by which conscious entities exist.

The manner in which consciousness is applied to God is probably way beyond what we humans can put into words. We can but use analogies. For example, take the case of someone who has a thought. She decides to write it down. What is written is not itself a thought; it is but ink marks on paper. Nor is the thought in the person’s head to be regarded as ink marks writ large – obviously. Yet it is the thought in the person’s mind that is responsible for the existence of the written sentence, and in turn the written sentence manifests the thought.

In the same way we might expect an examination of our consciousness to reveal something of the nature of consciousness as it might be applied to God, without our necessarily advocating that God has a mind much like ours only better. Indeed, with the Ground being capable of giving rise to creatures that are aware, it all but forces us to accept that it would itself possess awareness of a sort – an awareness of everything it had created. At the very least we might conclude that it is more appropriate to consider God to be conscious than it would be to regard God as not.

In the same vein, we can further argue that if in addition the Ground of All Being is capable of giving rise to persons, we must surely expect this Ground to incorporate personhood of a sort within itself.

Given this to be the case, we return to the question of how we would expect God, in his capacity as being the Ground of consciousness and personhood, to communicate to our minds and thus help to shape who we are.

We know the means by which our minds are influenced by the minds of other people. This exchange of thoughts is conducted not through any direct telepathic link but through the medium of the physical world. It is accomplished through talking, writing, and so on. You have a thought or an idea; you translate it into writing or speaking; I read what you have written or hear the sounds you have made; I decode the message; it ends up as a thought or idea now incorporated into my own mind. As we shall be seeing in the third and final part of this book, God can also use the physical world as a means of transmitting thoughts into our mind. But that does not concern us at the present stage of our discussion. What we have to understand is that God does not need the physical world as a medium for transmitting thoughts and messages. And no, I am not falling back on the kind of telepathic link from outside that I mentioned earlier. God is able to communicate with us at a much more basic level. As the Ground of All Being, none of this is necessary. As the very means by which the mind is held in existence, God has a unique, direct link into our consciousness.

Perhaps an analogy will be helpful: consider a plant rooted in the ground. Its characteristics are governed by those inherited from the earlier bulb or seed from which it was grown. In the same way, many of the characteristics of the mind are shaped by what was passed on to us by our parents in our DNA (and hence collective unconscious). Just as the plant is affected by external happenings – buffeted by the wind, being pruned by a gardener, irradiated by the Sun – so our mind is affected by external experiences. But of immense importance as far as the plant is concerned is its relationship to the ground in which it is embedded. It is from the earth the plant draws life-giving and sustaining water. Without the earth it would not survive. The earth sustains it. So it is with the relationship between our mind and the Ground of consciousness. Without that ground it would not survive.

But the analogy does not end there. We note that a plant’s roots draw up not only the basic necessity of water, but also nutrients. It is nutrients that allow the plant to be truly healthy, to flourish, to fulfil its potential, rather than merely exist. Furthermore, what the plant draws from the earth can markedly affect its characteristics. For example, the colour of the petals of a hydrangea depends on the acidity of the soil. If the soil is acid, the colour will be blue; if it is alkaline it will be pink. It all depends on the uptake of aluminium from the soil.

In the same way the Ground of All Being not only creates and then keeps our conscious mind in existence, helping it to flourish, but is also able to pass up into that mind thoughts that mould its very nature – its otherness – all those features of the mind that one would not expect to be there if it were the mind of an evolved animal and nothing more.

Whether the qualities so offered are embraced and incorporated into the psyche depends on the individual. They might be absorbed into one’s being; they might be rejected. Evil people such as Hitler and those running the death camps of the Holocaust clearly suppressed these finer feelings. Mother Teresa, on the other hand, provides an example of someone who welcomed them.

But as we have previously argued, one does not need to be religious, like Mother Teresa, in order to lead a decent, moral life. Atheists are perfectly capable of having a moral sense. Indeed, on occasion their basic decency, their efforts in support of good causes, and so on, might outshine those of certain religious believers. Moreover, they appreciate beauty just as much. They possess free will and have feelings. Their general experience of life can be equated to that of believers, with the exception of those experiences specifically associated with religion – the sense of the numinous and so forth. How do we account for this?

By way of response we point out that just because they do not acknowledge God does not mean they are not in contact with him. It is God who gives existence to their consciousness just as much as he does to that of believers. Thus God is able to implant into them all the non-religious features of the mind that are hard to explain in terms of evolutionary history. But instead of questioning where such features come from, atheists, in effect, simply see these features as a natural part of who they themselves are. After all, these feelings and sensations are there in their own mind and therefore seem to be a part of them. It is something they own and identify with.

In this way, idealistic non-religious humanists incline to the view that we are naturally good. We become corrupted only in later life – that corruption coming from society. But what are the grounds for believing in this natural goodness, given our ancestral background rooted in the so-called struggle for survival? And how come society is such a bad, corrupting influence if it is entirely made up of individuals who are all naturally good?

In contrast, the religious believer affirms that we start off in a very imperfect condition – possessing what is sometimes known as ‘original sin’. It is then up to the individual to repent (meaning change their mind) and consciously re-centre their life on God. This entails acknowledging that all our desirable qualities emanate from the Ground, and that we are called upon to live by these adopted qualities even though sometimes this outlook on life comes into conflict with the basic instincts stemming from one’s evolutionary past.

This relationship between ourselves and God is two-way. Not only do thoughts and mental dispositions arise out of the Ground of ­consciousness, but through prayer we can transmit our own thoughts down to that Ground. It is in recognizing that we have entered into this relationship with God that we come to know God.