The God Inside
by Francois Tremblay (e-mail: FTremblay@liberator.net) [October 1st, 2000]The atheist position seems, at first glance, precarious [see Herding Cats: Why Atheism Will Lose]. Most people throughout the history of civilization have believed in deities of some sort (especially during the Dark Ages, but let's put that aside). To say that gods do not exist is equal to saying that the majority of people of all times were deluded, at least on this one point. How can the atheist explain this universal belief?
It may seem like a difficult proposition, especially more so since we have been trained to think, mainly by society, that intersubjectivity is the barometer of truth. If everyone thinks it is true, it must therefore be true. Or must it? Logically speaking, the answer is no. This is called the fallacy from numbers, or argumentum ad numerum. Because reality is objective -- that is, outside of our minds -- there is no necessity that what we think, exists. The prime example of this is religion itself. Because most religions are directly contradictory, most of them must necessarily be false even before we started examining their consistency with reality.
“Recent neurological research has helped us discover what is now called the "God Module", that is, a particular area of the temporal lobe which is functional for approximately 90% of people (which, by perhaps coincidence, is the approximate percentage of theists in the world) and which is activated by religious words.” However, we must not fall in the opposite trap. It is not because most people believe something that it is not true. What popularity tells us is that there are compelling reasons to believe in the corresponding meme or meme complex. In the case of theism, its almost total universality indicates that it is either obviously true, or it is part of human nature itself in some way. Since there is no god, theism must therefore be part of human nature.
For example, we observe that almost all societies have family units. We know that the family is the basic grouping that evolution has favoured in order to insure the survival of the young. Of course nowadays we can transcend this instinct and, thanks to technology and civilization, have very viable and loving monoparental or homosexual families. However the fact remains that this has been one of the means behind reproduction and survival.
Can we therefore conclude that religion is instinctual? Not directly. It would be unreasonable to believe that religion, as we know it today, has always existed. We know that, like all other meme complexes, religions have evolved over time, and has been much simpler than it is today. For example, during the Antiquity most civilizations believed in a pantheon of gods which each concerned themselves with one particular area of nature. Today's notions of egotheism, "life-forces" and "global awareness" are probably too subtle for somebody from these times to grasp, but I admit this is speculation on my part. What I do know, however, is that these relatively new notions are better adapted to our current philosophical outlook than traditional religions. You can see from the sheer variety of belief systems today that religions and religious beliefs come in many packages. As for biological evolution, this variety is a living testimony of the past.
If religious belief itself has changed, what is the constant on which it was built? We can now answer this question scientifically. Recent neurological research has helped us discover what is now called the "God Module", that is, a particular area of the temporal lobe which is functional for approximately 90% of people (which, by perhaps coincidence, is the approximate percentage of theists in the world) and which is activated by religious words. This area amplifies religious stimuli by stimulating the pleasure center.
The fact that not all people have a functioning god instinct shows that this module in the brain appeared rather late in man's evolution. This is perfectly normal: most animals have no need for spirituality, since they are not sufficiently aware to use it.
However, homo sapiens' emerging awareness must have posed certain problems. One of them is death. Being the first species aware of its own existence, we are also aware of the fact that we all die. Even religionists, who supposedly believe in souls and the "afterlife", are keenly aware of this. Since we are made to survive, and want to survive, the existence of death becomes emotionally problematic. The easiest solution to this side-effect of consciousness is to induce or encourage belief in the individual that death is not real in some way -- that there is a higher plane of existence. Inadvertently, the evolution of man's mind has later encouraged this belief because of its own complexity (in the form of the belief in souls).
One other problem of an emerging awareness is individuality. With the awareness of the person's unity comes also many problems: responsibility for oneself, having to face life's problems, lack of purpose. They are difficult things to accept because being at cause over things requires a lot of thinking and energy, which is not only tiresome but could be used for other more important things. Here too the easiest mechanism to counter this is to delegate one's responsibilities to a superior being or beings. But of course one needs to believe in this being beforehand.
How about the common explanation, which is that spirituality gives a sense of community? We do observe today that religion's most important role is to give people this sense of community. However this is probably a later evolution rather than a basic function. The reason I say this is because growing spirituality does not initially give cohesiveness in a society, especially when notions of gods are ill-defined and vague. To have this cohesiveness that helps survival, you need to have a formalized system of belief which is at odds with other systems of belief. However growing spirituality does help in terms of the fear of death, the fear of responsibility, and such.
“From about 3 to 5 years old, babies go through what is called the 'magical thinking' phase, when they still don't understand cause and effect and therefore attribute causalities to important entities or beings in their lives. Adults who adopt magical thinking (like religion, the paranormal, and other such complexes) are said to regress to this stage of life.” Numinous experiences are then shown to be the fruit of this biological interaction. After all, the best mechanism to further a belief in something is to be convinced of having perceived -- in some way, not necessarily objective -- the thing in question. It reinforces the existing belief, transmitted through education in most cases. There is good reason to believe that the notion of gods, which is the form that spirituality has taken for most of our known history, emerged primarily as a form of explanation (through anthropomorphism or some similar process). Having established the notion of gods, it could be easily applied to the instinctual spiritual pattern. And if you think about it, it is only natural: after all, what other beings could give us purpose and reassurance but the ones that created and regulate nature?
Actually the instinctual nature of spirituality was not completely unevidenced before we found the god module. Psychologists have known for a long time about it, in an indirect way. From about 3 to 5 years old, babies go through what is called the "magical thinking" phase, when they still don't understand cause and effect and therefore attribute causalities to important entities or beings in their lives. Adults who adopt magical thinking (like religion, the paranormal, and other such complexes) are said to regress to this stage of life. It is also interesting to note that parents are usually considered by the small child as more or less "supreme beings". Freud thought that belief in gods was a remnant of this childhood impression, that gods were nothing more than supernatural father-figures. In a sense, he may have been correct: he just got it the wrong way around.
The discovery of the god module is probably the most important for atheism to acknowledge, and perhaps the one that will shape our understanding of spirituality the most in modern times. If we start from the premise that religion is a strictly learned phenomenon, one would think that education would undo this concept. However, this is obviously not the case: even when people are snapped out of their faith-based viewpoint, we find that they are still motivated by the basic principles of spirituality.
We observe this phenomenon in modern society. Many people search actively for a purpose in their lives ever since the influence of religion has diminished, and have fallen back to various belief systems like New Age egotheism, homogenous cult environments, and such. I am not saying, by the way, that everyone who is in cults or religions is there because of his impulses given by the God Module, or vice-versa, but that this instinct is a very powerful factor.
The only way that a rational philosophy can take the place of such complexes is by answering to these instinctual needs. Atheism by itself is not a comprehensive answer to this problem, since atheism qua atheism does not presume any positive beliefs.
The uncomfortable conclusion of this is that the progress of atheism during the last centuries is not stable and is only due to the increased propagation of information apart from the established mores. Fluctuations in independent thought depend mainly on the prevalent epistemic viewpoint of a society, but no real advance in atheism is possible unless the gene pool is culled. This is improbable for the simple reason that atheists do not have sufficient time to establish themselves as a strong social force before we have the possibility of manipulating the gene pool. Therefore this avenue is definitively closed for us.
To be furthered, atheism must be inserted in its proper place, that is as an ontological point of view. What many ideologies do is use atheism in order to free spiritual mindspace, as it is, for their own purpose-giving beliefs (for example, collectivist or socialist political systems, or cultist indoctrination). It is necessary to integrate one's atheism with a view of the big picture -- that is, starting from appropriate metaphysical and epistemic premises. More concretely, a system of thought must also have a sense of community, rituals, direct people's energies towards their own meaning, and bring a reassurance or assurance. Only then can it hope to replace more comforting belief systems, whose memetic components have evolved to play with our spiritual instincts.
Further Research
DETOX: Neuroscientists Map 'God Module' Slate: Yours, Mine, and Ours: Whose God is it, Anyway? [Visit Francois Tremblay's personal pages at http://www.objectivethought.com.]