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Authors: Nicholas Wade
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up traits that vary in the population, such as height, and estimate how much of the variation is due to environmental factors and how much to genetics. But the studies cannot pick up the presence of genes that don’t vary; genes for learning language, for example, are apparently so essential that there is almost no variation in the population, since everyone can learn language. If religious behavior is equally necessary for survival, then the genes that underlie it will be the same in everyone, and no variation will be detectable.
Religious behavior itself is hard to quantify, but studies of religiosity—the intensity with which the capacity for religious behavior is implemented—have shown that it is moderately heritable, meaning that genes contribute somewhat, along with environmental factors, to the extent of the trait’s variation in the population. “Religious attitudes and practices are moderately influenced by genetic factors,” a large recent study concludes. 40 Another survey finds that “the heritability of religiousness increases from adolescence to adulthood,” presumably because the influence of environmental factors decreases in adulthood (when you leave home you go to church if you want to, not because your parents say so). 41 The aspects of religiosity that psychologists measure include factors like the frequency of church attendance and the importance assigned to religious values. Their studies show that there are genetic influences at work on the intensity of religious behavior, but do not yet reach to the heartof the issue, that of probing the neural circuitry for learning and practicing the religion of one’s community.
In the absence of direct evidence about the genes underlying religious behavior, its evolutionary basis can be assessed only indirectly. The effect of cultural learning in religion is clear enough, as shown by the rich variety of religions around the world. It’s the strong commonalities beneath the variations that are the fingerprints of an innate learning mechanism. These common features seem very unlikely to have persisted in all societies for the 2,000 generations that have elapsed during the 50,000 years since the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland, unless they have a genetic basis. This is particularly true given the complexity of religious behavior, and its rootedness in the emotional levels of the brain.
To no less an observer than Darwin himself it seemed that religion was like an instinctive behavior, one that the mind is genetically primed to learn as indelibly as the fear of heights or the horror of incest.His two great books on evolution, Origin of Species and Descent of Man, have nothing directly to say about religion but in his autobiography, written in his old age, he was more explicit about this controversial topic. He wrote, “Normust we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.” 42
To understand how the instinct for religious behavior evolved, it is necessary to explore the circumstances in human development in which it first arose.
From Male Dominance to Egalitarianism
For most of their existence, modern humans have lived as small bands of hunters and gatherers. Only 15,000 years ago did people begin to settle down in fixed communities, forming the large societies that are commonplace today. Religious behavior evolved in hunter gatherer society, well before settlement. The social structure of these hunter gatherer bands therefore has considerable bearing on the nature of religion.
Five million years earlier, human social structure was very different and probably resembled that of chimpanzees today. In chimpanzee societies everyone
Religious behavior itself is hard to quantify, but studies of religiosity—the intensity with which the capacity for religious behavior is implemented—have shown that it is moderately heritable, meaning that genes contribute somewhat, along with environmental factors, to the extent of the trait’s variation in the population. “Religious attitudes and practices are moderately influenced by genetic factors,” a large recent study concludes. 40 Another survey finds that “the heritability of religiousness increases from adolescence to adulthood,” presumably because the influence of environmental factors decreases in adulthood (when you leave home you go to church if you want to, not because your parents say so). 41 The aspects of religiosity that psychologists measure include factors like the frequency of church attendance and the importance assigned to religious values. Their studies show that there are genetic influences at work on the intensity of religious behavior, but do not yet reach to the heartof the issue, that of probing the neural circuitry for learning and practicing the religion of one’s community.
In the absence of direct evidence about the genes underlying religious behavior, its evolutionary basis can be assessed only indirectly. The effect of cultural learning in religion is clear enough, as shown by the rich variety of religions around the world. It’s the strong commonalities beneath the variations that are the fingerprints of an innate learning mechanism. These common features seem very unlikely to have persisted in all societies for the 2,000 generations that have elapsed during the 50,000 years since the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland, unless they have a genetic basis. This is particularly true given the complexity of religious behavior, and its rootedness in the emotional levels of the brain.
To no less an observer than Darwin himself it seemed that religion was like an instinctive behavior, one that the mind is genetically primed to learn as indelibly as the fear of heights or the horror of incest.His two great books on evolution, Origin of Species and Descent of Man, have nothing directly to say about religion but in his autobiography, written in his old age, he was more explicit about this controversial topic. He wrote, “Normust we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.” 42
To understand how the instinct for religious behavior evolved, it is necessary to explore the circumstances in human development in which it first arose.
From Male Dominance to Egalitarianism
For most of their existence, modern humans have lived as small bands of hunters and gatherers. Only 15,000 years ago did people begin to settle down in fixed communities, forming the large societies that are commonplace today. Religious behavior evolved in hunter gatherer society, well before settlement. The social structure of these hunter gatherer bands therefore has considerable bearing on the nature of religion.
Five million years earlier, human social structure was very different and probably resembled that of chimpanzees today. In chimpanzee societies everyone
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