Religion

Every day we run into countless strangers. People we will likely never know and are unlikely to see again. How do you know that when you get into the car and drive to work you are not going to get hit by someone running a red light? We could say it is because there are traffic laws and there are consequences for breaking them. When we get into our cars, we believe that other people accept these laws and that they are going to abide by them. They likely would want to get home safely as well. While at work you ask a co-worker whom you are not related to, know nothing about their personal life and have no relationship with outside of work to help you. Your co-worker will help you; however, because they believe that you would help them in a similar situation. You both believe that you work for the company and will receive a paycheck from the company. It is because we believe that cooperating with one another furthers us both in some way that we can cooperate.

The more beliefs two people share, the closer the worlds in their heads are and the closer are their goals to each other. If two people’s goals are similar, the more likely their cooperation will benefit both parties. Society is built around the requirement of shared beliefs and shared expectations. In order to determine that people possess the same beliefs in certain situations, these beliefs must be communicated in a way that is unmistakable (Atran and Norenzayan 2004). While at work, it is the uniform, the employee badge, punching in and punching out that communicate a set of shared beliefs. Religions often involve a set of visual features meant to communicate one’s adherence to them (be they symbols, or pieces of clothing). People of different cultural groups often wear similar clothes, create similar art styles, perform certain rituals in order to communicate their belonging to a wider group. If one does not communicate these traits correctly, people around you will be less likely to discern your beliefs, motives and whether or not they should help you, or if you will help them. We both believe that we are going to paradise by these actions. Religions use what cultures have already created to discern a shared history and elaborate it to communicate shared belief systems. The more elaborate, the more you have to gain from getting it right, and the more you risk, by getting it wrong (Norenzayan 2013; Crespi and Summers 2014).

Many amphibian species are brightly coloured to mark that they are poisonous. These colourations communicate to the predator not to eat them. Likewise, snake species have different colourations and we humans have been able to recognize which are poisonous or not. Building on the HADD, once we have decided the presence of an agent (be it human or otherwise) we must somehow decipher its intentions in the scenario—am I in danger? Likewise, we must be able to communicate our intentions to said agent quickly and accurately (so that the agent detected knows if it is in danger or not). However, as soon as a method of communication has been determined, is as quick as the same method will be bluffed. Going back to our analogy, a non-poisonous species would benefit from having similar colourations to a poisonous species when faced with a predator. In order to fight off deception, these signals must require a large amount of commitment to make them harder to fake (Irons 2001; Sosis 2004; Atran and Norenzayan 2004; Murray and Moore 2009). The more work one has to put into creating the signal, the more likely the signal, when given, is to be genuine (Atran and Norenzayan 2004). This is where religion comes in: the set of rules, rituals, beliefs and other behaviours are tied to a set of beliefs which are typically tied to some form of supernatural watchful deity and an afterlife (Irons 2001; 2008; Sosis and Bressler 2003; Atran and Norenzayan 2004; Sosis 2006, Norenzayan 2013). You also need to throw in some nonsense beliefs that are not directly related to morality in order to tell yourself apart from other groups (these people don’t eat pork, and these people don’t eat beef). It is not enough to just be good. Would you go to church every week, fast during the day for an entire month, or cover yourself from head to toe if you did not truly believe that God is watching you? These behaviours also provide accountability: I see this person at church every week, they helped my neighbour fix their roof, they give to charity, yes I can trust them! You see a person in uniform and you automatically know the role they play in society and their intentions. You could forge all your tests and your degree and get caught and lose everything and potentially go to jail, or you could just get the degree honestly and keep your job and avoid all the anxiety of keeping up the charade. Religions also typically come with a mythology surrounding them that require a level of commitment to study and recall this information. The morality and rules of the religion are interwoven into these actions. In order to properly understand the rules, one must pay attention to the small details. Prior to the written word, these mythologies were passed down orally and through the participation in ritual, and thus the participation in activities ensured commitment (Atran and Norenzayan 2004). The package of morals and hard to fake signals provided a method to discern friend or faux and to discourage deception and free-riding (Atran and Norenzayan 2004). When it is easier to do the work than to pretend that you did it, it becomes beneficial to be honest (Irons 2001; 2008; Murray and Moore 2009; Atran and Norenzayan 2004). Those who correctly determined the intentions of others were more likely to survive and help others to survive and thrive over those that did not. Meet a person with a gun in a dark ally and stretch open your arms to hug them. A shared set of beliefs and morals in a supernatural watcher(s) reduced interpersonal anxieties and insured greater cooperation within communities (Norenzayan 2009; 2013). This insurance of cooperation allowed humans to live in larger and larger groups and to accomplish more than what we could otherwise (Harari 2016).

This in turn allowed us to extend our relations and live in larger and larger groups (Atran and Norenzayan 2004; Norenzayan 2013; Norenzayan et al. 2014). Rather than hold individual peoples’ relations to us in our heads, we could instead hold these symbols in our heads. These symbols allowed us to determine our relationship with other people in the group, even if we knew very little or nothing about them as individuals (Norenzayan 2013, Norenzayan et al 2014; Harari 2016). The higher the population density of an area, the more cogs in the machine, the more levels of government that you need (Harari 2016). Opposed to seeing people as individuals, you begin to see people as larger groups and what those groups of people mean to you in different contexts (Thomson 2011). The larger the group, the greater the potential anonymity and the greater the need to know who to cooperate with (Norenzayan 2013). Religion facilitates us in predicting shared beliefs (Norenzayan 2013). The better we are at determining the shared beliefs of others, the better we are discerning who to cooperate with and to what extent. The increased morality that religion provides us reduces the anxiety of living in large groups with virtual strangers, which in turn allows groups to become larger and larger (Norenzayan 2013). The larger and larger groups become, the fewer people in proportion to group size are required to secure basic resources. Larger groups sizes allow people to specialize and develop new skills, which creates increased roles in the group. With more specializations groups can become even larger to facilitate these new roles and that leads to a greater need to quickly and accurately determine the intentions of others. Thus people develop more elaborate visual identifiers to communicate their affiliations and intentions which creates more elaborate religious behaviours, rituals and beliefs. In most cases, evolution reaches a physical threshold and stabilizes: the taller the giraffe gets, the more force is placed on its limbs. Where is the threshold in this case? What are the stopping mechanisms to human group size?

If we do not believe in shared beliefs, then the very system breaks down. You cannot trust people when you get into that car—I have seen that one of the most difficult things for autistic people is learning to drive. You do not know who to trust. If you are unable to perform the required tasks and behaviours that communicate your beliefs to others, then people around you do not know to trust you. These people may not readily pick up what someone is trying to communicate to them through outward signals. Some people may fail to properly grasp the significance of these rituals and thus perform them incorrectly, or not at all. It takes more time for people with this different mindset to become integrated into society because they do not spontaneously connect with the symbols being communicated. They may be treated as outcasts by others for not being able to properly communicate the correct belief at the right instance and to the right person. They may more easily improperly discern friend from foe. They may be led into dangerous and even fatal situations by not knowing who to trust. Because they failed to integrate into the larger group, people will be less likely to help them in such situations. They will appear as a foreigner in their own land and will be less likely to successfully pass on their traits.