Why do gods and spirits matter?

The title of this blog post asks a question that's a chapter title in Pascal Boyer's challenging, but intensely interesting, book, "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought."

Boyer is an anthropologist who is also well-versed in psychology. His book isn't an easy read, but I'm enjoying making my way through it, occasionally by skipping a chapter and moving ahead to a chapter that grabs my attention more.

Not surprisingly, I'm carefully reading the "Why do gods and spirits matter?" chapter, since this is such an important question. Below is how the chapter starts off. I decided to share these passages verbatim because there's no way I could encapsulate Boyer's central point (which I've boldfaced) better than he does himself.

This is a way of looking at religious belief that's quite different from how most people look upon religiosity -- which is why Boyer starts off the chapter the way he does. 

Enjoy...

"Why do you let some religious doctrine determine what you may or may not do?" This is a common question addressed to religious people, generally by skeptics or outsiders. 

Why indeed should the existence of some supernatural agents -- the ancestors or some invisible spirits or a whole pantheon of gods or just a single one -- have consequences for what people are allowed to do? When we ask such questions we take for granted a particular scenario about the connections between belief and morality.

We assume that religion provides a certain description of supernatural agents and their moral demands ("There are five gods! They hate adultery and will smite the transgressors.") We then imagine that people are convinced, for some reason or other, that the doctrine is actually true.

It follows that they take the moral imperatives to heart, given the powers of the gods or ancestors to enforce morality. So there seems to be a simple story here: however fit for treason, stratagems and spoils, human beings happen to believe in the existence of the gods, the gods demand a particular behavior, so people abide by the rules.

Now consider another common statement: "So-and-so became more religious after his accident" (or: "after his partner had a brush with death," "after his parents died," etc.). 

The way this is formulated may be typical of modern Western conditions (in many places everybody just takes it as obvious that there are ancestors or spirits around, so it makes little sense to talk about anyone being more or less "religious") but the connection between misfortune and religion is salient the world over.

This is one of the principal contexts in which people activate concepts of gods and spirits. Again, we find this natural because we commonly accept a particular scenario about religious doctrines and salient events: that gods and spirits are seen as endowed with great power, including that of bringing about or averting disasters.

People struck by misfortune strive for an explanation and for some reassurance, and this is what religious concepts would seem to provide. A simple story again: accidents happen, people want to know why, if they have gods and spirits they can say why.

But both stories are probably false.

The facts themselves are not disputed. People do connect notions of gods to what they may or may not do, they indeed connect misfortune to the existence of supernatural agents. It is the way these connections are established in the mind that anthropology would see in a very different perspective.

Religion does not really support morality, it is people's moral intuitions that make religion plausible; religion does not explain misfortune, it is the way people explain misfortune that makes religion easier to acquire.

To get to that point we need to explore in much more detail the way social inference systems in the mind handle notions of morality and situations of misfortune. That we have evolved capacities for social interaction means that we tend to represent morality and misfortune in a very special way, which makes the connection with supernatural agents extremely easy and apparently obvious.

When I finish the chapter I'll write another blog post about the social inference systems Boyer is referring to. From what I've read already, I have a fairly good idea of the sorts of mental capacities that make religious beliefs easy to latch onto.

For example, we humans are highly social animals. We're always wondering what other people are saying about us, how much they know about us, and such. So it is an easy leap to imagine that a supernatural being is doing the same, as in the familiar Santa Claus song:

You better watch out
You better not cry
You better not pout
I'm telling you why
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town

He's making a list,
Checking it twice;
Gonna find out who's naughty or nice.
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town
Santa Claus is coming to town

He sees you when you're sleeping
He knows when you're awake
He knows if you've been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake

Comments

[pooh bear]

Quoting Brian quoting Pascal Boyer: 'Religion does not really support morality, it is people's moral intuitions that make religion plausible'

It would be wonderful if the entire populace had moral intuitions, but unfortunately they don't. Some possess them innately, some learn them, and others are not receptive to much more than base instinct.

Think of William Golding's exploration of children in 'Lord of the Flies'. The fundamental conceit is that youngsters require guidance, otherwise they are likely to turn feral.

As for adults, history shows us plenty of examples of extreme savagery and barbarism when base instinct takes power over moral intuition.
I think therefore that the guidance of children and adults is necessary, even if it has to be in the hands of religious institutions.
The alternative is of course for educational institutions to fulfil this role. I'm not holding my breath on this one.

[Spencer Tepper]

Religion reflects the internal experience, whether consciously understood or unconsciously affecting our feelings, reactions, sentiments and behavior.

We call it divine generally because when we witness that part of ourselves often we cannot scope its circumference.

Just as daily life can seem overwhelming and negative, prayer can bring us to an equally powerful love, an equally overwhelming experience of something so much greater than ourselves, so powerful, that we can trust there is a greater benevolence at work.

Because this feeling is accessible through focus, concentration, of which prayer and devotion are simply two methods to achieve it, human beings try as best they can to understand and state in objective terms that experience. Hence internal experience becomes "spiritual" experience, and in its lesser forms, spiritual experience becomes the rules and rituals of religion.

Out of fear early humanity prayed. But out of prayer they witnessed a love within that had no reason to be, except that it was larger than reason. And that faith grew, and that power of love became theology.

Without this experience, witnessed directly or indirectly; understood or merely felt; or not even consciously perceived but only working unconsciously and thought of only as a distant remote possibility, no consideration of God could persist.

That power is built into our physiology, and therefore is inescapably and irrevocably part of our psychology, however much we decry the exploitations of lesser minds.

[Spencer Tepper]

To explain what happened in the past can only be a means to calmly understand the dynamics of what is very much part of the human construction today, within each of us. And what human beings, lesser or greater, have done with that. And therefore the past can only be a mirror of things to come. The past is prologue so long as human beings are so constructed.

[Dungeness]

For example, we humans are highly social animals. We're always wondering what other people are saying about us, how much they know about us, and such. So it is an easy leap to imagine that a supernatural being is doing the same, as in the familiar Santa Claus song

Ah, Santa's "List". I think that's an accurate picture of our entire
life. The "List" overhangs because we're afraid most of the time.
Angst never lets up . What if a friend betrays me? How many
"Likes" am I getting? Do I look/sound too weird? What if the roof
leaks again? When am I gonna die?

All of us become "religious" at some point to try to cope. We
do good deeds hoping it'll protect us from "bad" things coming
our way, we hang on to "step on a crack, break your Mother's
back" kind of superstitions, ... or we distract ourselves toys, or relish
various rituals and "dog whistles" - both the church/unchurched.
But mostly we hide from ourselves. We look outside for answers.

The mystic doesn't want that monkey on his back. So, he searches
inside himself to confront his fear, to understand it, to subdue it.
Most importantly, he doesn't chatter about it as I'm doing. He/she
begins searching and keeps on. He's headed the right way..

[Dungeness]

For example, we humans are highly social animals. We're always wondering what other people are saying about us, how much they know about us, and such. So it is an easy leap to imagine that a supernatural being is doing the same, as in the familiar Santa Claus song

Ah, Santa's "List". I think that's an accurate picture of our entire
life. The "List" overhangs because we're afraid most of the time.
Angst never lets up . What if a friend betrays me? How many
"Likes" am I getting? Do I look/sound too weird? What if the roof
leaks again? When am I gonna die?

All of us become "religious" at some point to try to cope. We
do good deeds hoping it'll protect us from "bad" things coming
our way, we hang on to "step on a crack, break your Mother's
back" kind of superstitions, ... or we distract ourselves toys, or relish
various rituals and "dog whistles" - both the church/unchurched.
But mostly we hide from ourselves. We look outside for answers.

The mystic doesn't want that monkey on his back. So, he searches
inside himself to confront his fear, to understand it, to subdue it.
Most importantly, he doesn't chatter about it as I'm doing. He/she
begins searching and keeps on. He's headed the right way..

[Sita]

Good post Dungeness.

[777]

We loved @first Sita,
Only Love can do !

Please love again

and Rumi's Falcon will land on your shoulder ( while "living" )

I'm seduced to declare :
If you feel no Love, . . don't sit , don't meditate

But that is a giant under_estimation of those rssb 5 words
The words can easily recreate C.Q. delete All that is, all that ever was, next re-create
and it happens all the time, per second
Such is their Power
So, . . Simran gives what we need: Love, . .
at any time
at any place

777

[Sita]

Please love again?

What says there is no love?

777
I don't understand..