Thoughts on the evolutionary advantage of believing in God

In the NPR report, “Is Believing in God Evolutionarily Advantageous,” Alex Spiegel interviews Jesse Bering, a psychologist and researcher who is investigating the links between evolution and belief in the supernatural. The interview explores Bering’s research into this field and some interesting theories about the origin of belief in God or gods. Here is a link to the article: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196.

Bering did several tests to try to understand how human psychology might respond to the belief in God. In one test, he asks children to perform a very difficult test that would make it a temptation to cheat in order to pass. For one group of children he told them there is an invisible woman sitting in a chair who can see everything they do. In a second group, he had a real woman sitting there. The third group had nobody there at all. The group with the invisible woman cheated less and about the same amount as the group with the real woman. This seems to concur with the idea that belief in God or gods is socially advantageous over non-belief. This is Bering's theory of how the concept of divinities has arisen in an evolutionary setting.

The first thing I ask myself is what is this research presupposing. Evolution presupposes a chemical and biological basis for mutations and changes to human beings. If indeed everything we are, think, and believe is the product of natural selection, then it would be logical to assume that belief in God is a matter of evolution. There is also a certain logic to the idea that belief in God would help society from a purely social perspective, which is an interesting question apart from the question of whether God exists.

In a way, I find the article interesting and useful, but I question the logic that underpins it. It seems like the whole idea is predicated on the flimsy ground of unexamined assumptions.

The assumption behind the article seems to be that beliefs and, more broadly, intellectual constructs are the product of evolution. Since evolution is very broad sweeping, it would appear to me that all beliefs and concepts would have to be included in here. The materialism that presupposes evolutionary theory is really just as much an unprovable belief as belief in God is. It seems logical to ask the question of whether the concept of naturalistic evolution is, itself, the product of evolution.

Here is where I think we run into the shaky ground. If our minds are merely firing off neurons and giving us beliefs and thoughts and concepts, then why should evolution itself be excluded from those concepts. This view would seem to invalidate human reason in general because we are merely thinking whatever our biology is telling us to think. It would turn us away from the idea of free will and that we are independent agents and actors in the world.

It also seems to me to be self-contradicting. Every worldview has to be applied to itself and still hold up under self-scrutiny. The idea that we have evolved into the theory of evolution makes no sense. That is precisely the question that has to be addressed once we begin asking how humans have evolved into believing certain meta-narratives.

I'm not implying that evolutionary studies hold no value. I'm not saying that Theism is true by default. I'm not saying that it isn't possible that God created the world via a process of evolution. I'm merely stating the obvious; naturalistic evolution is loaded with assumptions and not a neutral way of looking at the world.