Say what? I’m serious. Bear with me, and I’ll explain.
After thousands of years of religion, people still argue about why it exists and what purpose it fulfills. So much depends on how religion is defined of course. What aspects are we talking about? Is it organized, hierarchical, monotheistic institutions or is it about ritual behaviors? Is it evolved and adaptive or is it a byproduct of other cognitive features? If you embrace evolution and accept that religion is a complex of human behaviors, the approach must be biological and based on the scientific method. You remember—observation, hypothesis, experiment, theory if you’re lucky to get consistent confirmation of the hypothesis, and repeat.
First, however, I need to deal with beliefs. Many people believe religion is about belief in supernatural agents (gods) or getting answers to existential questions? Why we die, our purpose in life, reason for quakes, hurricanes, where we came from, the creation myths, etc. Religions answer with mythologies including belief in god(s), but in essence, they are all just beliefs.
Beliefs are a feature of human cognition. Humans have beliefs about everything. Social, political, even scientific. Religion is just a special case of belief. Before asking why humans have religious beliefs I ask, why do humans have beliefs at all? Do other animals have cognitive beliefs like humans? Do other animals believe in supernatural beings or ponder their own death far in the future? No, they don’t. At least there’s no evidence for it, so what evolved cognitively for humans that they needed beliefs? That might inform the role of beliefs in religion.
Beliefs simplify and relieve our cognitive load. Whether 60,000 years ago or today, life is far too complicated and overwhelming for our evolved cognition. Evolution gave humans this new consciousness to be able to conceive ideas and create culture, but there’s way too much information constantly bombarding us to figure out everything in the moment. Beliefs offload the cognitive burden of always having to make decisions every step of the way. A belief is a shortcut for reality regardless if it is true or not.
Humans have had the ability to form beliefs as long as they’ve had complex culture and been able to pass down knowledge to offspring for manufacturing stone tools and other goods, controlling and using fire, using language—all done far longer than religion has existed. The real question is not why humans needed this special form of belief called religion that arrived much later. It’s why humans needed beliefs in the first place.
But back to our scientific method. The first step is observation. The behaviors of religion we observe are sacred rituals as opposed to mundane or profane rituals. The difference is simply that we know why we do mundane rituals. Eating, elimination, sleeping, going to work or school all have obvious benefit. Rituals like music, dance, art, mythology, and prayer don’t seem to have obvious practical purpose.
Pretty much all anthropologists list these five ritual behaviors among the many universal religious rituals humans perform. This includes Paleolithic hunter-gatherers as far back as 100,000 years ago when evidence for religion first appeared. I like these five because they are easy to identify thru observation, and they are ritual behaviors that usually comprise more complex rituals like festivals, ceremonies, and rites of passage.
Now just hold on a second, you may be thinking. You’re not going to claim that, because we continue to enjoy most or all of these so-called ritual behaviors, that doesn’t mean that they have the same function today that they did in Paleolithic times. That can’t be what you mean by “All humans are religious.” Well, that of course depends on what the functions of rituals are, and what it means to be religious.
One widely observed consequence of sacred ritual practice noted in many studies is temporary reduction of anxiety levels. Other findings described in three articles by Professor of Evolutionary Psychology Pascal Boyer and Professor of Anthropology Pierre Liénard are:
- ritual inhibits or suppresses unwanted or intrusive thoughts
- ritual “swamps” working memory in which the person cannot attend to stimuli and situations outside the ritual itself
And yes, these rituals still have the same results on modern ritual participants just as they did in ancient and modern hunter-gatherers. Consider the popularity of meditation and yoga, what were once religious ritual practices from the Buddhist and Hindu traditions. What do these rituals ask you to do? Quiet your noisy, overactive mind. Hmm.
Also note that the five sacred rituals I listed all have therapies based on them. Art therapy, music therapy, etc. There are literally thousands of studies showing psychological and physiological benefits from these secular therapies that were once (and still?) sacred rituals. Hmm. This is evidence that suggests sacred rituals are adaptive and increase evolutionary fitness.
Other consequences of sacred rituals in general can be altered states of consciousness. The anthropological literature is replete with examples of rituals that send people into trance or mystical states. Just a different, often intense, way of swamping working memory.
Is there a pattern here? Humans rely heavily on beliefs to reduce their cognitive load. Humans have historically gravitated towards activities—rituals—that suppress unwanted or intrusive thoughts and swamp working memory.
Sure, there is plenty of bad and batshit crazy stuff that religions do, but there is still an original function of ritual underpinning religious behavior that led to it being historically and geographically ubiquitous.