Diverse religions and beliefs throughout the world

1. Diverse religions and beliefs throughout the world • Batu caves – hindu – pierce cheeks, hang from hooks, many different gods, Cameron highlands woman; Abrahamic one true god but also a pantheon of angels, demons, saints etc. Other religions deify people – e.g. Confucius, buddha, boddhisatvas, paganism and Japanese tradition honour nature spirits ‘kami’ ancestor worship; cargo cult in Papua New Guinea worship a particularly special set of ancestors known as the ‘Village Government’ who will return to earth one day in Western bodies with Western materials and knowledge and turn the island into the Utopia that we have : ) • Obviously, throughout history – roman, greeknorse gods etc • How do we account for the ubiquity but also the diversity of belief in ‘supernatural beings’?

2. Cognitive psychology – brain/mind as an information processor - workshop with a rack of tools to help it analyse the world • Face tool – show examples of pareidoilia • assumption is that we process ideas about gods in the same way as other ideas – although these concepts are different in many ways from ordinary concepts and are remarkably successful • Evolutionary psychology (and anthropology) has a massive influence in suggesting how the development of the mind/brain has shaped and limited god concepts with anthropology demonstrating these effects in real life – Boyer – “there are only so many ways to build a god” • This talk will outline a few of the main ideas from this newly emerging approach to understanding religious belief and behaviour but is of course only one way among many of approaching the issue and relies on many underlying assumptions.

3. Evolution – central assumption – the way in which our mind works has been shaped by selective pressure in order to survive and reproduce – and this was shaped 100 000 years ago – Atran – “stone age minds in a space age world” • Fodor – “it is, no doubt, important to attend to the eternally beautiful and true, but it is more important not to be eaten” • For survival – we are not particularly powerful physically nor do we have defensive capabilities. – huge increase in survivability comes from living in co-operative groups :more eyes and ears to see predators, to confuse predators if attacked or to defend against predators, better chance of foraging, hunting, building, sharing of resources, and defending of territory – this requires significant changes in the information we need to be successful and the way that information is processed – development of language to facilitate group living subserves development and transmission of ideas.

4. How the mind is organised affects survivability too • Early idea was phrenology – use prop • Localisation of function – further idea of modularity • Specialised processors that are very fast and (usually) very accurate at what they do – but they can’t do anything else and give very particular output based on quite particular input – increasing communication between specialised processors is the basis for theories of consciousness (Baars) and intelligence (Rozin) • Wason card selection task demo • Cosmides and Tooby - argue for predator detection modules, mate selection, cheater detection etc

5. One survival ‘mechanism’ – ability to detect agency • Example of branch and snake – why hypersensitive? • HADD and gods – the world moves around a lot so HADD often pushes its way into interpretation of objects as well as living things - • Barrett and Johnson – marbles moving in unexpected ways via magnets under a table – people tended to describe the marbles as if they had agency but when controlling the marbles themselves did not – HADD tries to find the most obvious agent for an event - rock in cave, volcano erupting – no evidence of human or animal so spirit – superhuman abilities – one reason why knowledge of gods is important – powerful allies, dangerous enemiesd • Sartre – Hell is other people – another module is ToM – understanding that other people have intentionality based on thoughts and beliefs – beliefs which may be wrong but we can understand why – autism – shapes moving • Children – clouds move because they want to

6. “a woman wearing a coat and carrying a purse walks into a kitchen. After scanning the countertops and even the floor, she quickly opens several drawers, searches through their contents and then closes them. Finally she throws her hands up in the air and walks out”. • She wanted something because she believed it was in the kitchen and was frustrated when she couldn’t find it • A dog would observe movement (or think food food food) • Ascribing beliefs and intentions to agents may help them to be seen as real whereas no sensible motivation being found may cause the HADD detection to be questioned – “god works in mysterious ways”

7. Just experiencing detections of agency probably not enough to cement a belief in gods – religious ideas are exceptionally durable showing transmission across continents and down through generations for thousands of years. Something memorable about these ideas that when encountered may further reinforce the earlier detection of agency in an ambiguous situation or keep the concept in memory to later explain such an instance Minimally counterintuitive concepts – what is intuitive – young children seem to be intuitive ‘biologists, physicists and (with ToM) psychologists’ Can spot violation of these – objects moving down slope and then obscured, horse with gears inside it isn’t an animal Violation of these basic understandings of the world are counterintuitive and are better remembered than intuitive, maximal or counterschematic Example rose speaking Latin, maximal one – doesn’t make sense and so not predictive

8. MCIs draw attention, may be talked about more – more memorable • What’s this got to do with gods – stories in the bible man walking on water, burning bush talking • Are gods MCI – the forest spirits are – they need to spy on us • But what about Abrahamic – omniscient, omnipresent, eternal, all-powerful – doesn’t sound very minimal • Theological god vs anthropomorphic god – people reason about god in a human-like way – moves to help someone, does things in order, act of praying? Bishop and me primed the anthropomorphic vs theological concept of god • Alternative – Barrett suggests that ToM has no problem in conceiving of ‘theological’ superpowers in a god based on experiments with children and what they think good would know, see etc as compared to their mother, other pertinent comparisons

9. Thus belief in a ‘supreme’ type of god favoured by early mental processes and so the Abrahamic religions are easier to transmit vertically (Barrett argues) • Of course, there are other ways that our minds help reinforce belief e.g. through rituals (e.g. cognitive dissonance – if I don’t believe in god why am I here in church) – rituals that are successful are hard to falsify – e.g. African rituals for rain, return of ancestor spirits etc may obviously not work whereas major religions tend to use rituals for e.g. blessing, marriage, forgiving of sins – etc – so difficult to show it didn’t work. These rituals thus stick around and reinforce belief

10. Why are there atheists? Given the ‘naturalness’ of beliefs with respect to the underlying mental processes that are argued to subserve • Is it education? There is a correlation between IQ and religiosity but only a correlation – it doesn’t account for the many very highly intelligent people who are religious there may be no causal link and perhaps a 3rd factor related to IQ – SES? • Religion tends to decrease where urbanisation happens – in subsistence farming, e.g. poverty means your crops must not fail or you will starve – you will pray to get any advantage you can – but what about the large religious population in the USA? • Being immersed in a situation where reliance on the intuitive tools is diminished and having access to alternative models which can explain ‘stuff’ (a bit like when Darwinism came along) can help

11. So why might scientists be religious? • Do they need something extra? • Lewis Wolpert – ‘magical thought’ • James’s study – creativity – and linked with positive schizotypy • Only predicted religiosity in scientists – not in non-scientists • PS – a bit like ‘magical thought’ though – unsatisfactory • (although PS is linked to the ability to make disparate connections in memory more easily??) • PS also linked to Transliminality – hand over to Heather