Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World (35 page)

When an investigative reporter asks, “Why do so many people take Tylenol?” she is told, “Because it cures headaches.” Yes, but so do lots of other things. Why Tylenol? And so she wonders, Were we really all neurochemical blank slates suffering from headaches? Can it really be that, independently, almost every person on Earth has arrived at the same strategy for curing his or her headache? This seems improbable at best. Something must be going on besides analgesia. Might it not be possible that we come equipped with some sort of neurochemical predisposition that Tylenol grabs on to like a pair of vice-grips?

It’s not like the folks who make Tylenol did it on purpose, but they sure managed to exploit a chemical predisposition in their consumers. No one in her right mind would argue that taking Tylenol is an adaptation. But when those predispositions started to assert themselves, Tylenol use was going to spread like crazy once the human race got a taste of it. A lot of people would wonder where Tylenol came from and why it was so popular. On which receptors was Tylenol piggybacking its success? But don’t be duped into asking the wrong questions about Tylenol. Its success just rides the coat tails of some other qualities of human existence that were in place well before Johnson & Johnson came on the scene.

One more thing to remember: this story is not about a few chemically unbalanced individuals; rather, it is
Homo sapiens
in general who display this collection of biochemical quirks and predispositions. And given what we are beginning to learn about human neurochemistry, it appears that our descent into Tylenol use was inevitable.

And so, questions like, “What selective advantage does belief in God confer?” are off-target. It is more productive to ask, “How could belief in God have occurred so easily and frequently in humans given what we know about the human mind?” What are the (already existing) features that lend themselves so well to the creation and maintenance of religious belief? This question has been answered differently by various authors, although it seems a step in the right direction to combine overactive pattern and causal agency detectors with a tendency toward anthropomorphism.

The latter is a vital component of religion. A simple exercise will underscore its importance. Remember that religions, like all cultural things, face strong competition. The ones that are most successful are able to mesh with evolved characteristics of the human mind. If you doubt that, ask yourself whether the following religion would catch on:

Do you think this is a religion that is likely to be devised by humans? If it were, do you think it would catch on and spread? What does this tell us about the role of the human mind in determining the content and success of religion or any supernatural belief system?

Whether or not religion, per se, is a good thing is not the issue. Surely, there are those who believe that organized religion is at the core of what ails our species. Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins argues persuasively and passionately that the world would be a safer, more intelligent and compassionate place were it not for our species’ descent into religion. I dwell on religion or the various ways that gods are constructed by human societies simply because religious belief and religious membership are two of the chief beneficiaries of what is wrong with our minds.

How would you complete this sentence: If there were no ______, there would be no religion (or no God). Various philosophers and authors have offered their answers, which are surprisingly different. One approach, perhaps argued most persuasively by Pascal Boyer in his book
Religion Explained
,
⁹
is that death, or more specifically dead bodies, are the primary impetus for religion. Matthew Alper
¹⁰
makes a somewhat similar case, arguing that there is a specific “God Part of the Brain,” to quote the title of his book. Alper sees religion as an evolutionary adaptation, prompted by primitive man’s early realization of death and ultimate need to establish some sense of immortality. Dean Hamer also argues for a hardwired spirituality in his book
The God Gene
.
¹¹
On the other hand, some theologians might simply argue that the question, itself, is meaningless. Their case might be: there will always be religion because there will always be a God, and it is just a matter of time until humankind finds the way to him.

My own view is that religion and man’s quest for supernatural agents are not in and of themselves adaptations. Others share this view. Neither author Scott Atran nor Ara Norenzayan believe that religion, per se, is an evolutionary adaptation. One way or another, each makes the case that religion itself is not an adaptation, but rather the beneficiary of many cognitive and emotional traits that
are
adaptations. Perhaps a stronger way to put this is that religion is, in a sense, a parasite. It takes full advantage of how our minds perform. In this sense, religion is not unique. Traits may be selected for because of the reproductive advantage they confer, but once the phenotype is in place, there is no restriction on the secondary uses to which its components can be put. In some cases, traits can combine in ways that were not part of the original selection process. As Atran and Norenzayan put it, the qualities of our minds that form the backbone of religion were, themselves, probably “evolved for mundane adaptive tasks.”

It is thus possible that religious thinking and behavior are mediated by mental mechanisms that are, in their own right, absolutely ordinary. It is their unique combination that has given rise—probably quite unexpectedly—to something central to our species. Putting the case even more strongly:
Religion is the inevitable byproduct of how our minds
misperform. It is the result of mental misfiring, so to speak. Of course, once such belief systems are socially transmitted and well established, there is a rapidly decreasing likelihood that they can be dislodged. Breaking free from both beliefs and group cohesion become a very costly process.

Seeing religion in this way is not a mainstream point of view. It is far more common to note the universality of religion, assume it is adaptive, and ask how it has contributed to our reproductive fitness. Whether that might be “alleviating anxiety,” “providing comfort,” or a host of other glib attributions, the conclusion is usually that religion is an independent adaptation. I disagree, and argue that religion serves no evolutionary function whatsoever. It is certainly possible that a man and woman might meet at a Wednesday night Bible study group and embark on a rich reproductive life together. Happy endings aside, that story falls well short of meeting the criteria for a species-wide increase in reproductive fitness.

Once one views religion as an inevitable outgrowth of our inherited mental defects, it becomes clear that religion is really just a symptom of the problem. The problem is in that defective underlying software. Being religious is simply an easy, one might even say lazy, use of our minds, which are capable of so much more in the way of processing ability. In this regard, religion is a sign of intellectual laziness. It is far easier to believe in God than to question or deny his existence.

There is probably no life experience that illustrates better than prayer just how inadequately we collect and evaluate evidence. One-third of Americans surveyed by the 2008 Pew Trust poll
¹²
reported that they “receive answers to their prayer requests at least once a month.” Needless to say, people aren’t running experiments when they pray. But those who report how their prayers have been answered and those who argue for the efficacy of prayer in general are making strong statements that require a reasonable standard of evidence. These are important issues. Should we not have our wits about us when we address them?

It is probably safe to say that billions of prayers go unanswered every day. The case is dramatically illustrated during prolonged natural disasters that cause suffering and death. Presumably, many of those affected spend considerable time praying. Most of those prayers, by any reasonable standard, are not answered. As Carl Sagan has argued, “Their failure constitutes data.” As most of us realize, data of this nature is unlikely to be acknowledged, much less elevated to the level of hypothesis or theory. Yet occasional, often shaky, evidence of success will be shared between individuals or touted by the news media.

There is a loophole that can silence these concerns, although it is rarely invoked. This position states simply that prayer “works” because it makes the person feel better. Just uttering the prayer, regardless of its outcome, is helpful. The mechanisms don’t even have to be specified. Perhaps it is the release of endorphins, endogenous opiates designed for just this purpose. At a less reductionist level, perhaps it is the illusion of control in a sea of huge, largely uncontrollable events that provides the comfort. From this point of view, prayer is a useful strategy and would remain so whether or not God existed. In fact, by setting the standard so low, prayer can be said to work 100 percent of the time.

But this is not what people mean by “the efficacy of prayer.” When they tout the benefit of prayer, it is usually about prayers being answered—about outcomes that match the content of requests. It is rare to hear someone say, “I prayed to the Lord to make the flood go away and to spare my house and cherished possessions. I prayed for him to roll back the waters as I know only he can. But it didn’t work. I lost everything. My house, my stuff, it’s all gone. Washed out to sea. But I sure felt good there for a while praying to the Big Guy.”

If more arguments sounded like that, people like myself would spend less time questioning the efficacy of prayer. Again, it is when specific claims are made for tangible consequences that were unlikely to have occurred otherwise, that scientists become curious or are drawn into the fray. Sometimes they put that curiosity into action. The March 31, 2006, issue of the
New York Times
published a story headlined, “Long Awaited Medical Study Questions the Power of Prayer.” The widely publicized study (later to appear in the
American Heart Journal
) was the most detailed and thorough investigation of the topic, taking almost ten years to complete and involving over 1,800 subjects. Nevertheless, the research became the stuff of comedy routines almost immediately and prompted a wave of criticism by advocates of prayer who were unhappy with the results.

Not surprisingly, this was not the first attempt to scientifically test whether prayer works. The
Times
article points out that at least ten studies on the effects of prayer have been published in the past six years. The present work, led by cardiologist Herbert Benson, was designed to remedy design flaws present in earlier work. In effect, the study tested whether prayers offered by strangers had any effect on the recovery of patients who underwent heart surgery. They did not. Worse yet, patients who knew they were being prayed for actually had a higher rate of postoperative complications. The researchers speculated that these complications, such as abnormal heart rhythms, may have resulted from additional pressure to “do well” felt by the patients who knew they were being prayed for. Subjects were divided into three groups prior to receiving coronary bypass surgery: two of them received prayer and one did not. Half the subjects who were prayed for had knowledge of that prayer; the others did not. Unfortunately, the study did not include a group that received no prayer but were told that they had. The study, which cost $2.4 million to perform, employed three teams of persons who were instructed to “pray in their own way” but to use a standardized phrase “for a successful surgery with a quick, healthy recovery and no complications.”

Prayer givers were asked to identify the patient to God using only the patient’s first name and the first letter of his or her last name. Presumably, this was sufficient information for God’s purposes, although Carl Sagan’s comment about why God would need to be prompted about who needs help seems relevant here. There was concern expressed by some that the study was confounded by having no control over the occurrence of prayers by family members and friends. Presumably God would listen to such entreaties also, even if they had not been sanctioned by Dr. Benson and his team. Obviously, design of the study could have been improved, but there would have been ethical concerns had Benson et al. forbidden prayers by the loved ones of patients in his no-prayer group. Indeed, some critics worried about general prayers that are routinely offered for all the sick and afflicted everywhere. How highly does God weigh those messages? Are they worth as much as a specific prayer from a wife or a customized prayer from a stranger using only first name and last initial of the patient? Also left unanswered are questions about whether God would fail to heal a patient (or, worse yet, throw impediments in his way) simply because no adequate “prayer quotient” had been received on his behalf. Such a deity could be said to victimize atheists and their families. Obviously, these are complicated metaphysical questions and without their resolution it will be hard to design a definitive study.

Even if this long-term project had done a better job, can you imagine a scientist stating prior to data collection, “We’ll go ahead and test this hypothesis, but even if the data disconfirm it, I’m not going to give it up. I just know in my heart it’s right, so the results don’t matter.” How long would science last if that were the prevailing approach? But that very attitude seems to do no damage to religion. Bob Barth, the director of Silent Unity, the Missouri-based ministry used as a source of prayers in the study, made it clear that the results of this study would not affect the beliefs or actions of his ministry. “We’ve been praying a long time and we know prayers work.”