Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods
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71. Karl Jaspers, The Future of Mankind (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), 135; John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004), 31; E. Weil, “What Is a Breakthrough in History?,” Daedalus 104 (1975): 21–36; Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 27.
72. The inscription on Babylon’s Royal Way can be seen in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Random House, 1929), 514, first published in 1902. Luther is quoted in Corliss Lamont, The Illusions of Immortality (1935; New York: Continuum, 1990), 2.
73. H. Horn, “Where Does Religion Come From?,” Atlantic, August 17, 2011, www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2011/08/where-does-religion-come-from/243723/.
74. Bismarck is quoted in Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel, 420.
75. Annemarie deWaal Malefijt, Religion and Culture: An Introduction to Anthropology of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 17. See also Arthur Cotterell and Rachel Storm, The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology (London: Hermes House, 1999), 21; and Armstrong, The Great Transformation, 106.
76. Kramer, The Sumerians, 292–296; Armstrong, A History of God, 23; for the influence of the Persians on the Judaeans, see Isaiah 45:1 and Ezra 1:2 and 6:3–8; Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (Boston: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 51–53, 76–77, 99, 152–153. According to Zoroastrian theology, a virgin birth would be possible because it was said that Zoroaster’s semen had been preserved in a lake, “and in the course of time each of the three virgins … will bathe there and conceive a son by the prophet, and each of these three sons will have his share in furthering the work of redemption.” See Peter Clark, Zoroastrianism: An Introduction to an Ancient Faith (Portland, OR: Sussex Academic Press, 1998), 65–67; Mary Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 1 (New York: Brill, 1989), 285; Boyce, Zoroastrians, 154–155; and Richard Foltz, Spirituality in the Land of the Noble: How Iran Shaped the World’s Religions (London: Oneworld, 2004), 25.
77. Robin Dunbar, The Human Story: A New History of Mankind’s Evolution (London: Faber and Faber, 2004), 183, 197; Armstrong, A History of God, xix, 4, 362.
78. Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (New York: Free, 1973), 26, 51.
8. OTHER THEORIES OF THE ORIGINS OF GODS
1. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (New York: Penguin, 2009), 134.
2. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: John Murray, 1871), pt. 2, pp. 67, 68.
3. Sam Harris, The End of Faith (New York: Norton, 2004), 38.
4. Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches Into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art and Custom, 2 vols. (1871; New York: Holt, 1874), 2:2.
5. Daniel L. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 114, 112, 89; Émile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 46.
6. Nicholas Wade, The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures (New York: Penguin, 2009), 58, 10, 2, 9; Barbara J. King, Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion (New York: Doubleday, 2007), 7, 56.
7. David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 165.
8. Wade, The Faith Instinct, 280.
9. Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (New York: Basic, 2001), 23; M. Bateson, D. Nettle, and G. Roberts, “Cues of Being Watched Enhance Cooperation in Real-World Setting,” Biology Letters 2 (2006): 412–414. This theme is also well summarized in Dominic Johnson and Jesse Bering, “Hand of God, Mind of Man: Punishment and Cognition in the Evolution of Cooperation,” in The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, ed. Jeffrey Schloss and Michael I. Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 26–43. For the study of children, see S. Vogt, C. Efferson, J. Berger et al., “Eye Spots Do Not Increase Altruism in Children,” Evolution and Human Behavior, 2015, doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2014.11.007. One of the strengths of prosocial theories are attempts by its adherents to subject it to scientific verification; see, for example, B. G. Purzycki, C. Apicella, Q. D. Atkinson et al., “Moralistic Gods, Supernatural Punishment and the Expansion of Human Sociality (Letter),” Nature 530 (2016): 327–330.
10. Jesse Bering, The Faith Instinct (New York: Norton, 2011), 190.
11. Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Dominic Johnson, God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016). The two books are very similar, as is detailed by Johnson, “Big Gods, Small Wonder, Supernatural Punishment Strikes Back,” Religion, Brain and Behavior 5 (2015): 290–298. For a good summary of prosocial theories, see also A. Norenzayan, A. F. Shariff, W. M. Gervais et al., “The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2016, doi:10.1017/S0140525X14001356.
12. Johnson, God Is Watching You, 3, 96, 73.
13. Karen Armstrong, A History of God: The 4,000-Year Quest of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam (New York: Ballantine, 1993), 389; Robert H. Bellah, Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2011), 1.
14. Patrick McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 41, 163, 258.
15. Pals, Seven Theories of Religion, 79.
16. Coke Newell, Latter Days: An Insider’s Guide to Mormonism, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2000), 240, 236, 241–242.
17. Robert A. Hinde, Why Gods Persist: A Scientific Approach to Religion (London: Routledge, 1999), 67; David J. Linden, The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), 225.
18. Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire, God’s Brain (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2010), 20, 202–204.
19. Boyer, Religion Explained, 21; Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 13.
20. Hinde, Why Gods Persist, 215, 216; Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biology of Ultimate Concern (New York: New American Library, 1967), 92.
21. Stewart Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds, 3, 7, 6.
22. Michael Shermer, How We Believe: The Search for God in an Age of Science (New York: Freeman, 2000), 38–39; Boyer, Religion Explained, 318, 330; Daniel C. Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Viking, 2006), 109, 114.
23. McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. See especially chapter 5.
24. Matthew Alper, The “God” Part of the Brain (New York: Rogue, 2001), 113; V. S. Ramachandran and Sandra Blakeslee, Phantom in the Brain: Probing the Mysteries of the Human Mind (New York: HarperCollins, 1998), 179; Michael A. Persinger, Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (New York: Praeger, 1987), 14, 19.
25. D. De Ridder, K. Van Laere, P. Dupont et al., “Visualizing out-of-Body Experience in the Brain,” New England Journal of Medicine 357 (2007): 1829–1833; P. Brugger, M. Regard, and T. Landis, “Unilaterally Felt ‘Presences’: The Neuropsychiatry of One’s Invisible Doppelgänger,” Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and Behavioral Neurology 9 (1996): 114–122; C. Urgesi, S. M. Aglioti, M. Skrap et al., “The Spiritual Brain: Selective Cortical Lesions Modulate Human Self-Transcendence,” Neuron 65 (2010): 309–319;
Alper, The “God” Part of the Brain, 188.
26. R. Joseph, “The Limbic System and the Soul: Evolution and the Neuroanatomy of Religious Experience,” Zygon 36 (2001): 105–136; A. D. Owen, R. D. Hayward, H. G. Koenig et al., “Religious Factors and Hippocampal Atrophy in Late Life,” PLoS One 6 (2011): e17006; McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, xi, 245.
27. Andrew Newberg and Mark R. Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe (New York: Free, 2006), 175–176. See also Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew G. Newberg, The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999); R. D. Hayward, A. D. Owen, H. G. Koenig et al., “Associations of Religious Behavior and Experiences with Extent of Regional Atrophy in the Orbitofrontal Cortex During Older Adulthood,” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1 (2011): 103–118; M. Inzlicht, A. M. Tullett, and M. Good, “The Need to Believe: A Neuroscience Account of Religion as a Motivated Process,” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1 (2011): 192–251; N. P. Azari, J. Nickel, G. Wunderlich et al., “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience,” European Journal of Neuroscience 13 (2001): 1649–1652.
28. McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, xi; D. Kapogiannis, A. K. Barbey, M. Su et al., “Neuroanatomical Variability in Religiosity,” PLoS ONE 4 (2009): e7180.
29. R. Dale Guthrie, The Nature of Paleolithic Art (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 440; Nancy L. Segal, Born Together—Reared Apart: The Landmark Minnesota Twin Study (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2012), 144, 252.
30. Alper, The “God” Part of the Brain, 78, 82.
31. Dean Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired Into Our Genes (New York: Anchor, 2004), 9–12, 139.
32. Julian Jaynes, The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1976), 143.
33. R. M. Henig, “God Has Always Been a Puzzle,” New York Times Magazine, March 4, 2007, 37–85, at 39. For an extended discussion of this issue, see J. P. Schloss and M. J. Murray, “Evolutionary Accounts of Belief in Supernatural Punishment: A Critical Review,” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1 (2011): 46–99, and the book edited by them: Schloss and Murray, The Believing Primate.
34. A. F. Shariff and A. Norenzayan, “God Is Watching You,” Psychological Science 18 (2007): 803–809; Wade, The Faith Instinct, 9–10.
35. Hamer, The God Gene, 10; Alper, The “God” Part of the Brain, 102; McNamara, The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, 28.
36. C. S. Alcorta, “Religion, Health, and the Social Signaling Model of Religion,” Religion, Brain and Behavior 1 (2012): 213–216.
37. Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 279; Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2006), 172.
38. This contest is described in the Old Testament, 1 Kings 18:20–40. It was also memorialized by Felix Mendelssohn in his oratorio Elijah.
39. Matthew White, The Great Big Book of Horrible Things: The Definitive Chronicle of History’s 100 Worst Atrocities (New York: Norton, 2012), 107, 112; Sam Harris, Letter to a Christian Nation (New York: Knopf, 2006; New York: Vintage, 2008), xii, 91.
40. Dostoevsky is quoted by Dobzhansky, The Biology of Ultimate Concern, 63; J. Gorden Melton, ed., The Encyclopedia of American Religions: Creeds (Detroit: Gale Research, 1988); John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, God Is Back: How the Global Revival of Faith Is Changing the World (New York: Penguin, 2009), 215; James G. Frazer, The Fear of the Dead in Primitive Religion (New York: Collier-MacMillan, 1933; New York: Biblo and Tannen, 1966), vi.
41. Jesus, a Humble Prophet of God, Al Islam, www.alislam.org/topics/jesus/index.php; S. Aziz, “Death of Jesus,” bulletin, October 2001, Ahmadiyya Anjuman Ishaat Islam Lahore, UK, www.aaiil.org/uk/newsletters/2001/1001ukbulletin.pdf; A. A. Chaudhry, “The Promised Mahdi and Messiah,” Islam International Publications Limited, www.alislam.org/library/books/promisedmessiah/index.htm?page=50; James E. Talmage, Jesus the Christ (Salt Lake City: Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, 1981), 721–736.
42. Michael Balter, The Goddess and the Bull: Çatalhöyük: An Archeological Journey to the Dawn of Civilization (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast, 2006), 320–321.
43. Timothy Darvill, Long Barrows of the Cotswolds and Surrounding Areas (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2004), 239; Robert Silverberg, The Mound Builders (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1970), 204–205; Moundbuilders Country Club, “The Beginning,” www.moundbuilderscc.com.
44. Percy Bysshe Shelley, “Ozymandias,” 1818, www.rc.umd.edu/rchs/reader/ozymandias.html.
APPENDIX A: THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN
1. Gerhard Roth, The Long Evolution of Brains and Minds (New York: Springer, 2013), 234.
2. Ibid., 235. The glial cells that make myelin are called oligodendrocytes.
3. P. T. Schoenemann, M. J. Sheehan, and L. D. Glotzer, “Prefrontal White Matter Volume Is Disproportionately Larger in Humans Than in Other Primates,” Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005): 242–252; T. Sakai, A. Mikami, M. Tomonaga et al., “Differential Prefrontal White Matter Development in Chimpanzees and Humans,” Current Biology 21 (2011): 1397–1402; David C. Geary, The Origin of Mind: Evolution of Brain, Cognition, and General Intelligence (Washington, DC: American Psychological Association, 2005), 230. See also J. K. Rilling and T. R. Insel, “The Primate Neocortex in Comparative Perspective Using Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” Journal of Human Evolution 37 (1999): 191–233; and C. C. Sherwood, R. L. Holloway, K. Semendeferi et al., “Is Prefrontal White Matter Enlargement a Human Evolutionary Specialization? (Letter),” Nature Neuroscience 8 (2005): 537–538.
4. O. Langworthy, “Development of Behavior Patterns and Myelinization of the Nervous System in the Human Fetus and Infant,” Contributions to Embryology 139 (1933): 1–57. Regarding this, see also P. I. Yakovlev and A.-R. Lecours, “The Myelogenetic Cycles of Regional Maturation of the Brain,” in Regional Development of the Brain in Early Life, ed. Alexandre Minkowski (Oxford: Blackwell, 1967), 3–70, at 64–66.
5. Paul E. Flechsig, Anatomie des menschlichen Gehirns und Rückenmarks auf myelogenetischer Grundlage (Leipzig: Thieme, 1920). Flechsig’s studies have been largely replicated by others; see Percival Bailey and Gerhardt von Bonin, The Isocortex of Man (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1951), 265. For timing of myelination, see F. M. Benes, “Myelination of Cortical-Hippocampal Relays During Late Adolescence,” Schizophrenia Bulletin 15 (1989): 585–593; and Yakovlev and Lecours, “The Myelogenetic Cycles,” 61.
6. Rilling and Insel, “The Primate Neocortex”; K. Zilles, E. Armstrong, A. Schleicher et al., “The Human Pattern of Gyrification in the Cerebral Cortex,” Anatomy and Embryology 179 (1988): 173–179; N. W. Ingalls, “The Parietal Region in the Primate Brain,” Journal of Comparative Neurology 24 (1914): 291–341; Bailey and von Bonin, The Isocortex of Man, 49; R. Holloway, “Evolution of the Human Brain,” in Handbook of Human Symbolic Evolution, ed. Andrew Lock and Charles R. Peters (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996), 74–125, at 83. There are other measures of brain evolution, such as the formation of nerve connections (synapses) that also point in this direction, but these have not been as well studied. See P. R. Huttenlocher, C. De Courten, L. J. Garey et al., “Synaptic Development in Human Cerebral Cortex,” International Journal of Neurology 16–17 (1982–1983): 144–154; and P. R. Huttenlocher and A. S. Dabholkar, “Regional Differences in Synaptogenesis in Human Cerebral Cortex,” Journal of Comparative Neurology 387 (1997): 167–178. Such studies have shown that the formation of synapses in the prefrontal cortex occur later than in other brain areas.
INDEX
Page numbers refer to the print edition but are hyperlinked to the appropriate location in the e-book.
Accidental Mind, The (Linden), 212
Adaptionists
, 218–20
Adonis, 201
Africa, 69–71, 236; ancestor worship in, 139–40
Afterlife, 125, 152, 165, 211–13. See also Ancestor worship; Dreams
Afterworld, 169–70, 181–82
Age, 44–45; axial, 198–202. See also Children
Aggregation sites, 110, 134
Agriculture, 205; ancestor worship and, 147–49, 153–55; autobiographical memory without, 161–64; burial related to, 147, 149; climate and, 133–34; diffusion of, 144–45; domestication in, 20, 133, 140–44; as epiphenomena, 137; parallel evolution of, 145–46; villages and, 148
Ahmadiyya, 222
Ahman, Mirza Ghulam, 222
Ahura Mazda, 201, 240n3
Aiello, Leslie, 78
Ainu, 238
Akhenaten, 196
Alaska, 231–32
Alcohol, 141–42, 145–46, 154
Alper, Matthew, 219
Altamira cave art, 96–97, 99, 103, 110
Alzheimer’s disease, 43
Americans, 1–2, 221
Amon, 177
Amsterdam, Beulah, 41
Amygdala, 24, 46–47, 216–17; autobiographical memory and, 126, 127–28
Ancestor worship, 4, 151, 191, 205; agriculture and, 147–49, 153–55; cave art and, 124; deification from, 156, 165; by hunter-gatherers, 138–40; in Papua New Guinea, 156–58; parallel evolution of, 20; places for, 135–38; power from, 155–56; reasons for, 138–39, 204; shrines and, 152–53; skull cults as, 149–53; Tylor on, 140, 156, 204; white people and, 157. See also Dreams
Ancient Rome, 2, 115–16
Andaman Islanders, 237
Andrews, Carol, 180
Animal domestication, 143–44
Animals, 100; autobiographical memory and, 108; in cave art, 98–99, 121, 124; migration of, 109; mummification of, 180; spirits as, 157; theory of mind and, 57–59; without introspective self, 77
Animism, 114, 234
Anterior cingulate (BA 24 and 32), 46–48, 47; intelligence and, 31–32, 32; theory of mind and, 60, 63, 64, 84, 85, 86, 126, 126