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21 reviews for:
The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
Jesse Bering
3.78 AVERAGE
21 reviews for:
The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life
Jesse Bering
3.78 AVERAGE
The primary idea Bering presents is that theological beliefs serve a crucial evolutionary and present us with an "adaptive illusion", a useful trait that we humans have evolved over time. In other words, humanity is evolutionarily hard-wired for a belief in God. Why is this useful? The belief in a supernatural being that monitors and judges us always encouraged early humans who were:
... to avoid acting on these impulses, helping us to survive as a species.
Consider this assertion in conjunction with the development of language. Language allows us to communicate easily and disseminate important information. Language also lets spectators report on someone else’s behaviour and even to characterize the thoughts and intentions (theory of mind) of others long after any incident had occurred. So not only are people being judged by God but also by other people too.
Before long, the “reproductive success” of those who failed to restrain their behaviour began to suffer. Over time this meant that people who couldn’t curb their urges became fewer leaving more people who could exercise self-control. In this way, our theory of mind and our ability to communicate, when combined with the need to reproduce merged to make the human species uniquely inclined toward religious values and philosophies.
In fact, due to a “developmental regularity” [1] the primitive want to consider thoughts and intentions is so powerful that we sometimes attribute mindfulness to events in nature and lifeless objects — we trip over a rock and then kick it in retaliatory rage. We also imagine what we'll be thinking about when we're dead, the immortality of the soul, as we find it unbearable to consider of our own annihilation. All of which means that:
I like the thought process which Bering outlines. It makes sense to me as an explanation for the development of religious beliefs. He states:
So at a personal level if you believe in a God or not really all depends on which of these intuitions we can intentionally accept or not.
[1]Dev Psychol. 2004 Mar;40(2):217-33. The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity. Bering JM, Bjorklund DF. Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA. The study shows that we are "teleo-functional" – we see designed to detect signs of order, purpose, and justice in the world and of any event, particularly in our own lives. This supports criticism of other people's behaviour when we question they are not doing what they are "meant" to do
impulsive, hedonistic, and uninhibited
... to avoid acting on these impulses, helping us to survive as a species.
Consider this assertion in conjunction with the development of language. Language allows us to communicate easily and disseminate important information. Language also lets spectators report on someone else’s behaviour and even to characterize the thoughts and intentions (theory of mind) of others long after any incident had occurred. So not only are people being judged by God but also by other people too.
Before long, the “reproductive success” of those who failed to restrain their behaviour began to suffer. Over time this meant that people who couldn’t curb their urges became fewer leaving more people who could exercise self-control. In this way, our theory of mind and our ability to communicate, when combined with the need to reproduce merged to make the human species uniquely inclined toward religious values and philosophies.
In fact, due to a “developmental regularity” [1] the primitive want to consider thoughts and intentions is so powerful that we sometimes attribute mindfulness to events in nature and lifeless objects — we trip over a rock and then kick it in retaliatory rage. We also imagine what we'll be thinking about when we're dead, the immortality of the soul, as we find it unbearable to consider of our own annihilation. All of which means that:
contrary to what many atheists tend to believe . . . at least some form of religious belief and behaviour would . . . probably appear spontaneously on a desert island untouched by cultural transmission.
I like the thought process which Bering outlines. It makes sense to me as an explanation for the development of religious beliefs. He states:
atheism is more a verbal muzzling of God--a conscious, executively made decision to reject one's own intuitions about a faceless übermind involved in our personal affairs--than it is a true cognitive exorcism....This doesn't make us weak, ridiculous, or even foolish. It just makes us human.
So at a personal level if you believe in a God or not really all depends on which of these intuitions we can intentionally accept or not.
[1]Dev Psychol. 2004 Mar;40(2):217-33. The natural emergence of reasoning about the afterlife as a developmental regularity. Bering JM, Bjorklund DF. Department of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR, USA. The study shows that we are "teleo-functional" – we see designed to detect signs of order, purpose, and justice in the world and of any event, particularly in our own lives. This supports criticism of other people's behaviour when we question they are not doing what they are "meant" to do