get along. But is it possible we evolved to have religion?

Hey believers and skeptics, Julian here for DNews. Recently a study published in the journal

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience examined how a certain part of the brain is

linked to belief in God. The study used 39 college undergraduates who were all religious

and politically moderate. They were split into two groups, the first group had their

posterior medial frontal cortex, or pMFC, temporarily inhibited with pulses from a transcranial

magnet, and the second group got a similar treatment but with the magnet turned down

so it didn’t actually affect how their brain worked.

The participants were first primed with a discussion on death and then asked whether

they believed in various aspects of a religion: the devil, hell, God, heaven. Those who had

their brain inhibited reported believing in all that almost a third less often than the

students in the uninhibited group. The conclusion the researchers drew is religion could be

a method for overcoming an ideological problem.

You see, according to the researchers the pMFC they were tinkering with is used for

solving concrete problems, like figuring out the best way to climb over a fallen log. It

perceives a problem, determines the threat, and decides a course of action. So the scientists

from the University of York and UCLA wanted to see if the same hardware was implemented

when a person is confronted with the knotty problem of death. Death is scary and inevitable,

so our brains need a way to cope with that.

This echoes what some other scientists believe about religion. In 2008 the prominent atheist

Richard Dawkins was asked if religion must give humans some evolutionary advantage, considering

how ubiquitous it is across culture and history. Dawkins responded that he did indeed believe

that humans had evolved to believe in God, but that it was the byproduct of mental machinery

that was advantageous in some other way. He compared it to a moth’s tendency to fly

into a candle flame because they evolved to use bright but distant light sources like

the moon to navigate, and a candle confused what had been useful for their survival for

millions of years before artificial light.

Self immolation is clearly a bad survival strategy for a moth, so it’s easy to write

that off as some other biological function being coopted. But it’s possible believing

in a higher power helps our species. In a 2006 study published in the journal of Developmental

Psychology,Psychologist Jesse Bering devised an experiment where he challenged children

to play a game that was impossible to win without cheating. For a third of the children,

each child played by themselves with no supervision. For another third a researcher stayed in the

room with them. And the last group were told that there was a magical invisible princess

who would be there watching them play.

The result was the unsupervised children cheated way more. And the ones who believed a presence

was there cheated about as often as when an actual adult was sitting right behind them.

Bering repeated the experiment with adults, although presumably he didn’t tell them

a magic princess was there, and the results were about the same. The thinking goes that

if we believe we’re being watched and judged, we all benefit. Professor Domenic Johnson

of the University of Edinburgh liked it to riding the subway: in order for the subway

to function, we all have to pay. If one person cheats and doesn’t pay, sure they have given

themselves a little advantage. But if too many people do it, the whole system collapses.

It’s possible there are other explanations for why dialing down the posterior medial

frontal cortex made participants say they were less religiously inclined. The same study

also found that those with their brains inhibited were more accepting of immigrants criticizing

their country. A 2011 study in the Journal of Neuroscience found that similarly inhibited

participants conformed to social norms less, and another study in the journal from earlier

this year showed that the pMFC keeps us making choices that are consistent with ones made

in the past. So maybe this part of the brain, along with helping us solve problems, preserves

how we’ve learned to solve them before and so keeps religious beliefs rigid. To quote

the researchers of the original study themselves, “more research is needed.”

Like it or not, religion is an essential part of the human story. You’ve got your own

story too, and no domain extension will help you tell it like a DOT COM or DOT NET domain

name from Domain Dot Com. And because you watch DNews, you can get 15% off Domain Dot

Com’s names and web hosting by using the code DNews when you check out.

The topic of God and science is a great one, there’s so much to talk about we couldn’t

possibly do it in one episode. So Trace devoted an entire week to discussing it over on Test

Tube Plus. Check it out right here.

This is normally the part where I’d say something to get you involved and talking,

but I know for this episode I don’t have to. Just remember to keep it civil, even if

you believe there’s no higher power watching. We’re all human beings people, let’s work

together for the benefit of the species. Subscribe for more, and I’ll see you next time on

DNews.