Is religion inevitable ?

While most modern individuals are convinced they are living only in the rational realm, what if humans evolved psychologically hard wired to also be religious ?

“ When men stop believing in God they don't believe in nothing, they believe in anything. ”

G. K. Chesterton

To the contemporary liberal westerner, simply thinking about this question will trigger laughter and disdain as very little spotlight or credibility is given to religious beliefs in an era of rapid scientific progress where every phenomenon, physical or psychological, is systematically proclaimed to be explained, understood, and mastered, through the lens of scientific inquiry alone. After all, once free from the shackles of religion, individuals and nations can now reach their true potential, or so they say.

But is it that simple ? Are we really heading towards a post-clerical world where ideals and norms stemming from the great monotheistic religions will be thrown in the basket of discarded superstitious ideas of history ? It all depends on how we define religion in the first place.

What if there was an evolutionary necessity for us to coalesce around shared ideals, often religious in nature, to better survive as groups. Is the current value structure we espouse in this post-modern era really based solely on scientific principles and rationality ? It is doubtful, to say the least.

Humans are group oriented and tribal by nature. We tend to like gossip, stories about heroes and vilains. We swiftly distinguish right from wrong or good from evil. Storytelling binds us together, not the pursuit of any scientific endeavor. Without any shared narrative, how could we be able to peacefully collaborate within large groups; in cities, large multinational corporations or entire nations. The ritualization of our lives is still present today regardless of its secular nature.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt who has extensively studied the fondations of morality in individuals, was himself surprised by the evolutionary utility of religions. It is not to say that Haidt (or me for that matter) is suddenly promoting any form of religious renaissance, with all the old rituals and pitfalls it might entail, but psychologically speaking, humans have evolved for this sense of group belonging that can only be achieved through a shared story, much like a national historical narrative that lead to all forms of nationalism in history.

Here’s how Haidt himself would summarize it:

“ If you think about religion as a set of beliefs about supernatural agents, you’re bound to misunderstand it. You’ll see those beliefs as foolish delusions, perhaps even as parasites that exploit our brains for their own benefit.

But if you take a Durkheimian approach to religion (focusing on belonging) and a Darwinian approach to morality (involving multilevel selection), you get a very different picture.

You see that religious practices have been binding our ancestors into groups for tens of thousands of years. That binding usually involves some blinding - once any person, book, or principle is declared sacred, then devotees can no longer question it or think clearly about it. ”

Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist

The religious switch

The blinding aspect as described by Haidt above must be taken with the necessary seriousness for us to better understand our proclivity for such behaviors. Shared values and ideals did help us as a species in expanding and developing our civilizations but have a blinding dark side that makes rational thinking not necessarily our default mode 100% of the time. If we would only agree and accept this basic reality in human nature, it would go a long way in preventing the negative aspects of this religious switch.

With the long and slow decline of Christianity in the West for the last couple of centuries, the void seems to have been replaced by a succession of new pathological ideologies. The quote from Chesterton at the beginning of this essay, in retrospect, should probably have resounded as a warning for all of us. Or at the very least, a realization that we are only replacing a set of beliefs for another set of beliefs.

Like others, he witnessed the risks of continuous secularization in western societies, especially since the industrial revolution. The now famous “death of god” proclaimed by Nietzsche back in the 19th century could also fit this warning category. This monument in philosophy also foreseen that future wars would most likely be fought over ideas, ideologies, and probably taking millions of lives in the process.

His prophecy surely materialized when the 20th century came around.

As predicted, entire populations were overtaken by the creation of new secular value structures that morphed into full blown political systems; like fascism and communism. These political ideologies surely demonstrated the deadly outcome of such utopian value systems, akin to religious beliefs but with obvious defects compared to the belief systems they aspired to replace. The terrible outcomes are limitless, from Soviet gulags, to Nazi concentration camps and Maoist China’s cultural revolution, all of which ended with incalculable numbers of people dead in the name of proclaimed utopias that never materialized as advertised.

If there is one takeaway from all the horrors of the 20th century, it’s this: we need to teach this particular history to the next generations and have some humility when facing the emergence of new ideologies like the ones we are experiencing now.

Our western culture is again going through a crisis of meaning. Thus hungry for a new set of beliefs.

The limits of atheism

In the eyes of the New Atheists like Sam Harris or Richard Hawkins, religions are only a combination of supernatural beliefs influencing the behavior of individuals and reducing their capacity for rational thinking. But what these thinkers missed in their analysis of the nature of religion is the moral and group belonging utility in human societies. Not mentioning the fact that it just might be futile to pretend that we could completely rationalize our way out of the necessity for belief systems.

Modernity pushed a scientific angle to every aspect of our lives but our religious inclinations have been striking back with a vengeance ever since we decided to cast aside the old religious frameworks. Since nature abhors a vacuum and rituals have been part of the human experience for times immemorial, the gradual secularization of our civilization has lead to the multiplication of man made ideologies that completely failed us in the long run.

This process appears to be continuing to this day. Since we seem to be throwing away the baby (some Christian values for example) with the bath water (religious rituals) during this secularization of our societies, we are now vulnerable to emerging new sectarian value structures coalescing into potentially the new faith of tomorrow.

Recently, it takes the form of a second coming of communist ideals - once aimed at protecting the proletariat - now transformed into the idealization of cultural minority groups. It also takes the form of ever growing fanaticism for environmental issues completely detached from the physical realities of life.

Below, a couple of interesting quotes from keen observers of this recent phenomenon:

“ Wokeism is a system of luxury beliefs for the ruling class. Luxury beliefs are ideas and opinions that bestow status on the upper classes at minimal cost while wreaking havoc on the lower classes.”

Rob Henderson, sociologist

“ Unlike traditional religion, woke victimology seeks not universal morality, and laws, but rather one aimed at dismantling “the system”. It is for this reason that progressives are narrowly concerned with African Americans killed by the police rather than with the 30 times more African Americans killed by civilians.

And the narrow concern among progressives for victims of “the system” is why progressives in San Francisco are allowing hundreds of people to die every year from drug overdose deaths, since the alternative requires working with the system. ”

Michael Shellenberger

The quest for meaning in the West might explain the emergence of these movements; such as radical environmentalism or the more recent woke ideology. Both of these belief systems even express signs of traditional religions. For example, by identifying an original sin like capitalism in the case of environmental degradation. Other religious markers are purification rituals; such as people kneeling to express culpability on racism. Or when a self-proclaimed indigenous militant burns books she finds offensive for her community and then utilizes the ashes as a fertilizer to plant a tree that will help purify the sins of the world around her.

Why do we keep pretending these examples are not religious by nature ?

Philosopher Karl Popper famously stated that any theory that is impermeable to falsification cannot be considered scientific, thus becoming the definition of religion. Our contemporary political discourse is riddled with these artificial barriers to challenge any dogma regurgitated by the political-media elites; climate emergency, transgenderism, systemic racism, and even new forms of communism (Even though it’s one of the worst and most murderous political systems that has ever been implemented in large scale societies).

We seem to have lost more than usual our capability for rational reasoning and entered a never ending litany of life altering social prescriptions only beaten by the strickest religious dogmas of conventional faiths.

While I have no issue in judging Christians for their belief in the creation myth, how is it different than the “new faith” challenging the realities of biological sex ?

For all its worth, we must remember that we still live under the ethics of Christianity that served us well in many instances. Our legal system, for example, is predicated on values such as the sanctity and sovereignty of the individual thus permitting the presumption of innocence. Try breaking all these core values from underneath our society and see if our court system will function the same.

On this particular subject, we already have seen some direct jabs in recent years at the principals behind the presumption of innocence. We are currently playing with fire if we think we can dispense with such values altogether.

“ The last 300 years are often depicted as an age of growing secularism, in which religions have increasingly lost their importance. If we are talking about theist religions, this is largely correct. But if we take in consideration natural-law religions, then modernity turns out to be an age of intense religious fervor, unparalleled missionary efforts, and the bloodiest wars of religion in history.

The modern age has witnessed the rise of a number of new natural-law religions, such as liberalism, Communism, capitalism, nationalism and Nazism.

These creeds do not like to be called religions, and refer to themselves as ideologies. But this is just a semantic exercice. If a religion is a system of human norms and values that is founded on belief in a superhuman order, the Soviet Communism was no less a religion than Islam.

Yuval Noah Harari, historian

So is religion inevitable in human societies ? It sure looks that way even though new atheists have worked hard in arguing that morality and the understanding of the world around us can be based on science alone.

Our definition of religion might have been just too narrow all along.

The so-called death of god and the rapid secularization of western cultures has brought only an avalanche of new ideologies that are also predicated on faith based assumptions and modern idols. When comparing the historical outcomes of all these competing “religions”, it appears to me that some can be sustained longer and with more positive outputs than others.

If a shared story, a shared ideal, is necessary for human societies to flourish, we could at least choose the ones that will provide the best outcomes and long term social stability.

Granted, reading this short essay might feel as walking across a canyon on a hard-wire, pushing the enveloppe of our daily assumptions but that was the whole point of it and one of the main goal of this newsletter from the start. Until next time…