Is Religion an Artifact of the Brain?
Is Religion an Artifact of the Brain?
A great deal of additional evidence of this sort makes it seem that religion is a natural product of the mental tools of a properly functioning human mind. But doesn't this show that religion is just a trick our minds play on us? Some scientists and philosophers have answered with a resounding yes! Michael Persinger, professor of behavioral neuroscience at Laurentian University, argues that this work shows us that “God is an artifact of the brain.” Archatheist Richard Dawkins concludes that “the irrationality of religion is a by-product of the built in irrationality mechanism in the brain.” Matthew Alpers, author of The God Part of the Brain, argues as follows:
If belief in God is produced by a genetically inherited trait, if the human species is “hardwired” to believe in a spirit world, this could suggest that God doesn't exist as something “out there,” beyond and independent of us, but rather as the product of an inherited perception, the manifestation of an evolutionary adaptation that exists exclusively within the human brain. If true, this would imply that there is no actual spiritual reality, no God or gods, no soul, or afterlife. Consequently, humankind can no longer be viewed as a product of God but rather God must be viewed as a product of human cognition.8
Even less subtle is Jesse Bering, who is quoted as saying that with such research “we've got God by the throat and I'm not going to stop until one of us is dead.” For Bering the deliverances of the psychology of religion are “not going to remain in the privileged chapels of scientists and other scholars. It is going to dry up even the most verdant suburban landscapes, and leave spiritual leaders with their tongues out, dying for a drop of faith.”9
Are these scientists right? Has science showed belief in God to be a delusion? Not exactly. It looks as if those drawing this radical conclusion must be arguing as follows:
However, this argument commits a well-known logical fallacy called the “genetic fallacy.” Genetically fallacious reasoning aims to argue for the truth or falsity of a belief simply from considerations of the origin of belief. But, of course, perfectly true beliefs can emerge even from crazy sources. I might think there are 449 people in the library because my watch reads 4:49. Can we conclude that this belief is false as a result of my strange reasoning? Of course not. It may be true, despite the strange origin.
Still we can modify the above argument in such a way that it does not commit the fallacy but still seems to raise trouble for religious belief, as follows:
Just as my belief that there are 449 people in the library on the basis of reading my watch would be unwarranted, perhaps believing in the existence of God based on the workings of the identified mental tools would be unwarranted.
But would it be? Let's look at the argument again, taking out the italicized word gods and replacing it with any of the following: human minds, rocks, rainbows, the past, that science can discover the truth, etc. Surely scientists would accept that each of the sentences including the replacement words is true. But those scientists would be equally convinced that the conclusion of those arguments is, in each case, false. Human minds naturally form beliefs in those things, and in doing so, we think, they get things right. So why not conclude that we get things right when it comes to belief in God? What makes this case different? One could say: “Well, because religious belief is false.” But that is not much of an argument; it just assumes what the critic was trying to prove.
Perhaps the problem raised by these accounts is something different altogether. We might put the worry this way: in the case of our natural disposition to believe in rocks or human minds, the beliefs we form are caused by rocks and human minds acting directly on our minds (through our senses, for example). But in the case of religious belief, belief in God arises from our “agency detector” firing off in the presence of the wind and the waves. That makes these religious beliefs very different. Rock beliefs are caused by rocks while God beliefs are caused by…the wind. So, one might say, we would believe in God even if there were no God. And that is a problem.
This critic is right—if this is the way things are, that would be a problem. If our belief in God has no causal connection with the actual existence of God, that would seem to undermine the justification of our belief. But it is not clear that things are that way, even if these scientific accounts are right. For these scientific accounts to generate a real problem, (5) would have to be true:
5. Human minds would exist and believe in God, even if there were no God.
Is it true? I don't think so. I don't think there would be a universe if there were no God. I don't think the universe would be fine-tuned for life if there were no God. And I don't think there would be any actual life, believers, human beings, or religion either if there were no God. Am I wrong? If I am, nothing about evolutionary or cognitive psychology leads me to conclude that I am. So, contrary to our initial conclusion, these psychological accounts of religious belief do not teach us that we would have religious beliefs whether or not they are true. And so they do not undermine the justification for religious belief. As a result, this argument fails.
Perhaps there are other reasons to think that these psychological accounts raise problems for religious belief, but it is not at all clear what those reasons would be. For the moment it seems perfectly acceptable for the Christian to hold that God created the world, human beings, and human minds in such a way that when they are functioning properly, they form beliefs in the existence of rocks, rainbows, human minds, and God.
For now, what we should conclude is that contemporary psychology has shown us (rather unsurprisingly) that, in the words of Oxford psychologist Justin Barrett, “Belief in gods and God particularly arises through the natural, ordinary operation of human minds in natural ordinary environments.”10 This discovery echoes the claim made four hundred plus years earlier by John Calvin that “there is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity.”11