Nature of Human Religious Experience

Nature of Human Religious Experience

Religion is so common to human cultures both today and throughout recorded history as to suggest to many observers that religious orientation in some respect must be attributable to humanity at the evolutionary physiological level. Otherwise, as that line of reasoning goes, it would be far too implausible to explain how such similar religious spirit could possibly permeate distant human cultures with histories and specific beliefs that long predate any possible influence of remote cultures.

On the other hand, it may simply be the case that religious beliefs arise so naturally in connection with the identical external circumstances encountered by all human beings that they arise independently in each and every different culture and society. That argument assumes that the religious impulse is attributable to the profound need for explanations of observed phenomena that defied primitive explanation. According to that view, the myriad different (and mutually incompatible) religious belief systems demonstrate that the only aspect of "religious spirit" shared by distant human societies is a natural curiosity and a tendency to prefer even fictitious explanations over admissions of ignorance, particularly in relation to concepts and circumstances that have the capacity to induce fear and apprehension. Moreover, any such beliefs would have been transmitted through generational learning and their persistence would primarily be a function of the suggestive power of (1) parental teaching, and (2) socialization and the internalizing of cultural values in the individual.

This research project is intended to determine, on the basis of a survey of existing authoritative literature, which of those two diametrically opposite views is more likely reflective of the truth. Either the tendency to believe in a higher power is an inherent element of human physiologic evolution or that tendency is not attributable directly to humanity except to the extent different societies have proposed similar "answers" to the same questions raised by their individual exposure to similar natural phenomena and external circumstances.

Research Question and Experimental Hypothesis

Research Question

The specific research question is whether contemporary human beings who are not socialized to believe in any "gods" by their parents still exhibit a similar preference for or tendency toward a more traditional religious perspective when compared to individuals who are presented with the more common parental teaching that includes a belief in a supreme being called "God." To the extent theistic orientation is attributable to an evolved predisposition for religiosity, a significant number of individuals raised without any suggestions that a "god" exists should still arrive at a theistic orientation, notwithstanding the absence of any direction from parents in that regard. Conversely, to the extent it is parental teaching and socialization that is responsible for religious orientation in the individual rather than any evolved predisposition, those individuals not introduced to religious explanations by their parents should not exhibit a significant rate of departure from that perspective in favor of a more traditional theistic religious perspective.

Experimental Hypothesis

The principal hypothesis of this project is that the religious perspective in modern society is directly attributable to parental teaching and to prevailing social norms and values encountered by society, particularly in childhood and not to any inherent evolved predisposition toward a belief in "gods" or toward supernatural explanations for the unknown. More specifically, the hypothesis is that individuals taught by their parents that the societal belief in "God" is an illusory belief without factual merit are considerably less likely to reject that view in adulthood and that their rate of conversion to more traditional theistic and religious orientation is much too low to support the proposition that such beliefs are elements of human biological evolution. A very low rate of such conversion would support the proposition that the universal religious impulse is merely the result of natural behavioral moral tendencies and impulses channeled artificially into a religious explanation by external influences, particularly during the most impressionable period of human psychology in early childhood.

Discussion

According to theorists such as professor of Religion Michael H. Barnes (2003), a tremendously wide range of different religious beliefs and thought on religion (both across contemporaneous cultures as well as among cultures existing at different historical periods) is exceptionally useful for evaluating the literal truth of specific beliefs in any particular society. On the other hand, it may be possible to strip away those differences that are impossible to reconcile to reveal a more general fundamental religious perspective or tendency that exists as a common natural theme throughout humanity, with specific societal differences more akin to harmonics on the same chord rather than to different chords altogether (Barnes, 2003).

That view is sharply contradicted by several renowned authorities in so-called "hard" sciences, including neurobiological theorist Daniel Dennet, the late paleontologist and evolutionary biologist, Stephen J. Gould, and evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. According to their view, any similarity among distant societies with respect to the belief in gods and with respect to a religious perspective is strictly a function of two elements: (1) the natural tendency of all primitive human societies to create fictitious explanations for that which they could not understand, and (2) the exceptionally powerful influence of social learning, especially in connection with anything taught directly by parents to young children (Dawkins, 2006 p84; Dennet, 1996 p 126; Marantz-Henig, 2007 p62).

Furthermore, contemporary research has documented that a fundamental moral impulse and a desire for shared communal values exists in human beings completely apart from any supposed specific inherent desire for a theistic religious perspective (Dawkins, 2006 p 87; Pinker, 2008 p35-6). Likewise, primate research demonstrates that this impulse and the ability to fine shared moral rules is hardly even limited to human beings (Pinker, 2008 p36), and that to the extent human evolution is the source of any common impulse in this regard, it is the only the impulse to establish meaning (even from apparent randomness) rather than a more specific tendency toward the nature of the answers proposed (Dennet, 1996 p68-70; Marantz-Henig, 2008 p 77-8).