The Varieties & Illusions of Religious Experience: Chapter 1, Spandrels, Memes & Adaptations

In the last essay I discussed how conversations regarding the validity and nature of religious belief can, in turn, focus on either reasons or functions. The classic questions of apologetics focus mainly on reasons, the warrants for religious belief given the available evidence. By contrast, the focus on the function of religious belief tends to downplay the contents of belief (e.g., Did Jesus rise from the dead?) to ask questions about how religious beliefs, such as life after death, might have originated and spread.

When we raise the question of function we ask if religious belief has some utility that might explain its existence and universal appeal. For example, it seems a stretch to some to ague that religion is a cultural universal because the evidence for God is both clear and indisputable. It obviously is not. So if evidence isn't driving religious belief then it is speculated that religion must be helping us in some way. Believing in God must have some biological, sociological or psychological function. And it is this function that explains why religion originated and became a staple of human culture.

In this essay I want to survey biological approaches that try to explain the origin of religion or its utility from an adaptive stance. Broadly, these are the approaches inspired by Darwin's thought and evolutionary theory.

The crux of a biological approach to religious belief is to claim that faith is associated with biological utility, generally understood to be adaptive success. This association might be direct or indirect. For example, it might be claimed that faith is directly adaptive. Religious belief leads to survival and reproductive success. By contrast, an indirect association claims that faith isn't directly adaptive but that it is intimately associated with a trait that is adaptive. Faith is piggy-backing off a trait that has direct adaptive utility. In either case, if it can be shown that faith is either directly or indirectly adaptive then we might have an evolutionary explanation for the origins and prevalence of religious belief. The function of belief, in this scenario, is biological adaptation and fitness.

Let me outline the shape of these arguments along with some illustrations. (This list is not exhaustive and if you know of any substantive additions please let me know in the Comments to this essay.) Generally speaking, evolutionary arguments break down into one of three types (and they are often combined):

1.) Adaptation-based approaches
2.) Spandrel-based approaches
3.) Meme-based approaches

I. Adaptation-Based Approaches
The most direct way to argue for biological utility is to argue for a direct link between faith and biological fitness. The argument would be that belief in God and the life associated with that belief aids the individual in surviving and becoming reproductively successful relative to non-believing counterparts.

An argument of this sort can be made but it immediately runs into problems. Specifically, the difficulty with this argument is that natural selection tends to work at the level of the individual (or gene). And it's difficult to see how religious belief confers adaptive advantage to a sole individual. Particularly if the religious instinct was facilitating pro-social impulses (e.g., charity, altruism, self-sacrifice). In the Darwinian crucible of competition among individuals a religiously motivated pro-social instinct might be decidedly maladaptive rather than adaptive.

In short, any directly adaptive benefit for pro-social impulses requires a communal context. That is, two pro-social persons, working together, should fare better than two selfish individuals trying to stab each other in the back. This much seems reasonable. The difficulty comes in protecting the advent of cooperation from defection. Darwinian agents are not wholly altruistic. They approach the act of cooperation with a fair degree of self-interest. And that self-interest is always creeping into cooperative encounters. In short, we always want the biggest piece for ourselves, even if we are trying to divide things fairly.

In short, cooperation is clearly adaptive but very fragile. Self-interest is a chronic condition. Cooperation is seasonal and episodic. Consequently, what is needed is some countervailing force that keeps cooperation afloat upon the sea of self-interest. Various countervailing forces have been proposed. Commonly proposed mechanisms are kin selection, non-zero sum dynamics (see Robert Wright's Nonzero) and group selectionism (see David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral).

It's not important to get into the details of any of this, we simply want to note the common attempt to link religious faith to a pro-social impulse that confers adaptive utility. The general notion is that religion motivates groups of people to live more harmoniously and cooperatively, a outcome that works well in the collective fight against "Nature red in tooth and claw."

However, although the idea that religion facilitates cooperation has an intuitive appeal a couple of objections can be raised:

1.) On scientific grounds many of the proposed countervailing mechanisms are hotly debated. For example, no scientific consensus has emerged concerning the viability of group selectionism.

2.) Even when the cooperative mechanism, such as kin selection, is largely endorsed by the scientific community there seems to be no compelling reason as to why those mechanisms require a religious veneer. No doubt, religious belief can, and likely does, come alongside kin selection and reinforce tribal allegiances. Religion, ritual and the memories of ancestors clearly provide a symbolic world where self-reflective creatures can explain and maintain the felt biological impulses of kin selection within themselves. But we are now moving away from biological utility and into the realms of sociology and anthropology. Clearly, tribal religions can reinforce preexisting kinship bonds, but the social power of religion begins, at this point, to outweigh and override any concurrent biological utility. And, in the end, even if religion did promote group cooperation and fidelity this finding isn't necessarily inconsistent with religious thought. That is, the notion that religion helps us communally is consistent with many religious belief-systems. This functional critique of religion isn't necessarily a deflationary critique. If anything, it supports the claims of faith.

3.) Related to #2 it is by no means clear that religion consistently reinforces group cohesion. If religion did consistently help people get along better we might feel comfortable with the notion that faith has adaptive value. But the history of religion is a mixed and violent bag. Religion is a source of both intra- and inter-group conflict. One only needs to look at the Thirty Years war in the wake of the Protestant Reformation to see how divisive and maladaptive, even among kin and clan, religion can be.

To summarize, appeals to the adaptiveness of faith generally attempt to link faith to group cooperation. Clearly, cooperation, when it can be had, is adaptive. But at the end of the day in each of these models the engine of cooperation is some other mechanism (e.g., kin selection, group selectionism) that religion supplements, reinforces, or renders more potent. Further, that religion consistently fosters cooperation is a point to be debated. And even if it did foster cooperation this outcome is consistent with religious sensibilities. But either way, at the end of the day, in these models the adaptive utility of faith is no longer seen as being the direct effects of faith. Rather, religion is a secondary mechanism, coming alongside a pre-existing adaptive influence.

This brings us to our second class of theories.

II. Spandrel-Based Approaches
A spandrel is an architectural term for the space created when an arch (or arches) abuts a rectangular enclosure. Because the curve of the arch cannot fill in the square corner some space is left over. Think of a circle inside a square. The corner areas where the circle can't fill are the "spandrels." In cathedrals these "extra spaces" were often filled in with religious artwork.

In a famous 1976 essay entitled "The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme," biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin used the spandrel as a metaphor concerning how mistakes are often made in reasoning about biological adaptations. Gould and Lewontin ask us to imagine looking at the artwork on a cathedral spandrel. As we looked at this artwork we might be tempted to think that the spandrel was created so that a space for the artwork could be made. But, Gould and Lewontin argue, this would be reasoning backwards. Due to the geometry of the arch a spandrel is necessarily created, out of architectural necessity. Once created, artists discovered that the spandrels provided nice spaces for extra artwork. But the spandrel was not created for the artwork. Rather, the spandrel exists to fill a vital structural need. As it performed this function the spandrel created some "extra space" which, after the fact, allowed for an additional use. In short, the spandrel has two functions. A vital architectural function (structural support) and a secondary artistic, non-functional use.

Gould and Lewontin's point is that when we see a biological trait (morphological, cognitive or behavioral) we might be looking at a spandrel and not an adaptation. That is, traits that arise for one purpose (architectural support) might be put to a secondary use (artwork). This secondary use might be adaptive or it might not. The point being, not every trait we see in an animal necessarily has an adaptive function. The trait might be, like artwork on a spandrel, "extra." Think of your nose and eye-glasses. The shape of your nose has an adaptive history that has resulted in its sticking out from your face. But once that protuberance exists we can use it to balance eye-wear. But it would be silly to theorize that because the nose was put to this use that balancing eye-wear was the adaptive function behind the evolution of the nose.

A spandrel-based approach to religion generally argues that religious belief isn't adaptive but has arisen, like artwork on a spandrel, as a secondary, non-functional development associated with a more vital adaptive trait. That is, many behavioral and mental traits evolve to solve certain adaptive challenges. However, once these behavioral and mental traits exist they can be put to other uses. These secondary cognitive or behavioral uses are spandrels. In spandrel-type arguments religion is considered to be a artwork on a spandrel, a secondary tendency that is piggybacking on a trait that is of primary adaptive value.

Let me give an example of this kind of argument using the work of Paul Bloom (since Keith linked to an interesting video featuring Bloom in the last post). Bloom, see his book Descartes' Baby, argues that human minds evolved two distinct mental modules that allow us to make inferences concerning events the world. First, there are physical objects and how they behave. Consequently, humans (and other animals) have developed an innate sense of "physics," general expectations about how physical objects move and behave, particularly when they come into contact. But in addition to physical objects the world is also populated by minds, a world of intentions, desires, motivations and beliefs. In short, to predict human social behavior we need an innate "theory of mind" that allows us to make reasonable guesses about human behavior. That is, we are all innate psychologists. This "theory of mind" seems to be unique to humans and is implicated in disorders such as autism and Asperger's (where the theory of mind module is not functioning properly thus affecting social interactions). Consider, in contrast to animals, how humans follow the gaze of other other humans. If you see me staring over your shoulder you don't look into my eyes, you turn around to see what I'm staring at. This simple response is actually a fairly sophisticated reaction requiring an ability to understand mental states. I'm routinely reminded that my dog has no theory of mind when I point to a ball he can't see. My dog just stares at my hand. He doesn't appreciate that my pointing is referring to a mental model inside my head. Humans are the only animal we know of that points.

According to Bloom, these two different mental modules--an innate physics and psychology--makes us intuitive dualists. We have innate and distinct expectations for how objects work and how minds work. Thus, it becomes very easy for us to imagine that minds and objects are separate things. This tendency toward dualism biases us to think that there are "spiritual" entities, agents and existences. Minds that exist independent of bodies.

For Bloom, religious belief is a spandrel. A theory of mind is a vital, important adaptation. It helps us navigate our social world. But once this mental module came into existence it predisposed the human species to think that minds exist independent of bodies, that there were two planes of existence. Each culture populated and configured this "spiritual" realm differently, but at root these religions are just like the artwork on the spandrels. They are beautiful, masterful and existentially meaningful, but, in the end, non-functional by-products of a pre-existing adaptive trait (i.e., a theory of mind).

How should we evaluate spandrel-based arguments? In contrast to adaptive-arguments, where faith is, in a certain sense, "good" for us and promotes pro-social behavior, spandrel-based arguments tend to be more deflationary. That is, spandrel-based arguments are functional arguments that reach the conclusion that religion is a non-functional "by-product." Religion is reduced to a cognitive hiccup, glitch, sideshow or add on. A tacit implication is that the mind has some serious stuff going on, heavy adaptive loads to carry, and religion just isn't one of them. If anything, these extracurricular cognitive activities (e.g., religion) can actually interfere with proper mental functioning.

Two responses seem in order. First, showing that religious belief is the product of a mental bias doesn't have any strong implications for the ultimate claims of faith. One might even argue that the mental bias, the ease of acquiring religious belief, is a sign of God's design. Technically, this response is a good as far as it goes. But I think another response is also in order.

Even if belief in the supernatural is somehow "easy" or "natural" for us, due to spandrel-type factors, this does not explain how vital religious beliefs are to people. That is, a theory like Bloom's might explain why we believe in ghosts or spirits, it might even explain our belief in a spirit-realm after death, but intuitive dualism cannot explain why we imbue the supernatural realm with such vital ethical and existential importance. Intuitive dualism might render the world spooky, but it doesn't explain the faith we see in someone like St. Francis of Assisi or Gandhi.

III. Meme-Based Approaches
Meme-based approaches to religion are similar to spandrel-arguments but different enough to warrant their own discussion. Meme-based arguments are based upon the notion of the meme, a word and idea coined by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins proposed in The Selfish Gene that discrete "units" of cultural information might be considered the cultural equivalent of the gene. Dawkins called this unit of cultural evolution a "meme," a word that looked similar to "gene" and has linguistic roots in the Greek word meaning "to imitate." Imitation was important for Dawkins as imitation is the basic means of mimetic "reproduction," the way a meme could make copies of itself and spread through a population. Here is Dawkins' original description of the meme:

“Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothing fashions, ways of making pots or building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation…When you plant a fertile meme in my mind you literally parasitize my brain, turning it into a vehicle for the meme’s propagation in just the way that a virus may parasitize the genetic mechanism of the host cell.”

If imitation is the means of mimetic reproduction and transmission a critical feature of the meme is its ability to prompt imitation in others. Meme-based approaches to religion tend to argue that religious ideas have strong mimetic abilities leading to increased transmission and imitation. That is, religious ideas have a way of both sticking in the mind and prompting sharing. More, many religious memes often demand that the carrier of the meme share the meme with others (e.g., "God into all the world and make disciples of all nations..."). This sharing-imperative is built into many religious memes which may account for their ubiquity. Even more, many memes threaten punishment if they are not propagated. This intensifies the sharing-impulse leading to greater meme sharing in the population. For example, here is a comment by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene:

“…an aspect of doctrine that has been very effective in enforcing religious observance is the threat of hell fire. Many children and even some adults believe that they will suffer ghastly torment after death if they do not obey the priestly rules. This is a particularly nasty piece of persuasion, causing great psychological anguish throughout the middle ages and even today. But it is highly effective…The idea of hell fire is, quite simply, self-perpetuating, because of its own deep psychological impact. It has become linked with the god meme because the two reinforce each other, and assist each other’s survival in the meme pool.”

Although there is a cogency to this analysis, important objections can be raised. First, Dawkins' is targeting only a very thin slice of religious experience, the slice that annoys him the most: Christian fundamentalism, particularly in its revivalistic and evangelistic manifestations. But this narrow focus ignores the vast majority of religious believers, believers who aren't very evangelistic and who don't worry much, if at all, about hell. Given that the vast majority of religious believers fall into this camp, this particular meme-based argument only explains a small slice of religious experience.

I think a more persuasive meme-based approach can be found in Pascal Boyer's book Religion Explained. Simplifying greatly, Boyler's argument centers upon how certain ideas are so ontologically strange that they are easily remembered. Spiritual and supernatural ideas have just these characteristics causing them to be biased in our memories. That is, we remember these ideas more readily than others (Boyler presents some nice data on this in his book). This memory bias creates mimetic advantage relative to other ideas. Initially, these ontologically strange ideas were simple campfire tales and folk stories. Over generations these stories ritualize and become locations for expressing tribal unity. They morph into myth and religious belief.

Combined with Bloom's work on intuitive dualism, Boyer's theory is a reasonable account for why stories of spirits and ghosts were ubiquitous in pre-technological cultures and persist into the modern era. Without a doubt, the ontologically strange (e.g., a statue of Mary weeping blood) is a striking meme, one sure to get told and retold. But the objection we raised with Bloom can also be raised with Boyer. Although these theories might explain why religious beliefs are intuitive or memorable they fail to explain the ethical and existential vibrancy of religious belief. There's no reason, given these theories, why the world should be anything more than spooky or superstitious. That is, these theories fail to capture why religious belief becomes a life and death issue for many. In the end, the view of religion being described by Bloom and Boyer is very thin, experientially speaking. This is not so say their ideas are not true or don't have merit. I find them very persuasive and accept them. Rather, the claim is that these theories only account for a thin slice of religious experience, and a not very interesting slice at that. The vast and rich tapestry of faith is left unexplored and unexplained.