Why do human beings believe in God?
The sacred approach to this question might well conclude because God wants us to.
In contrast to the more profane approach of the natural and social sciences,
this question has always presented a conundrum.
Sociobiologists suggest that religious belief could only have been transmitted through generations
if it enhanced survival or reproductive opportunities.
Unfortunately, natural science has been unable to convincingly describe
the source of such evolutionary benefits. I will argue that religion confers survival
benefits on societies and individuals because it allows a general lowering of time preference,
allowing for employment of capital in time-consuming roundabout means of production.
Time preference is the desire to enjoy immediate gratification. For example, time preference
is especially high in children who lack experience and maturity, and in individuals with low
life expectancy. Time preference is also high for criminals and the poor, and the general
lowering of time preference both facilitates and is facilitated by the development of civilization
and the increase in complexity of social relationships. People with high time preference consume more
of their income or output immediately, while those with low time preference save more.
If an individual's time preference were zero, all the individual's income would be saved
and available for investment.
If an individual's time preference were infinite, no income would be saved.
Time preference varies significantly across individuals.
Often the increase in time preference occasioned by diminishing life expectancy accompanies
an increase in interest in religion.
From the perspective of sociobiology, religion has to confer survival benefits which should
to be observable in order to be transmitted to future generations.
Clearly religious societies dominate unless we view Western secular societies which emphasize
tolerance and pluralism as having supplanted them.
This is a plausible view, but I will take the view that religious societies have always
and continue to dominate human civilization even if they are no longer as culturally monolithic
as they may have been in the past.
Religion poses a problem for sociobiology. It has existed from the dawn of known history
so it almost certainly conferred or at least accompanied evolutionary benefits, but these
benefits are difficult to identify from a secular perspective. Clearly one function
religion served in primitive times, the explanation of natural phenomena has largely been superseded
by science. Stephen Jay Gould suggested we inherited important ethical behaviors such
such as empathy, reciprocity and peacemaking, because they were successful evolutionary adaptations
which enhanced our ancestors' survival and reproductive opportunities, and that religion
was transmitted as a byproduct of the ethical behavior regularities it accompanied.
In this view, religion is at best a non-functional spandrel, to use Gould's expression, and
at worst a negative inheritance.
Atran and Norenzayan frame an argument around minimally counterintuitive narratives which
a religion allows a community to adopt. Societies which can rapidly reach a consensus about
responses to challenges and opportunities have an evolutionary advantage over societies
which cannot commit to decisive action. Furthermore, the observance of mass communal rituals contributes
to Social Cooperation and Coordination.
Of course, from the perspective of religious belief, there is no problem to explaining
why religion exists.
It is divinely ordained and our observance of particular rituals is required to obey
the deity or deities.
Thus, I will emphasize the solution I will propose only addresses the secular dimension
of this problem because it can only be considered a problem from a secular perspective.
Basically, I am providing a solution or proposing a solution to a problem in sociobiology, not
a problem in theology.
There is no problem in theology.
Does religion provide an evolutionary advantage?
If not, how did it evolve as a human institution?
If it did once provide evolutionary advantage, does it still, or have we outgrown it, as
a species?
Religion may have facilitated the coordination of preferences, including time preferences,
and if this was a source of evolutionary advantage, this helps explain why monotheism supplanted
polytheism.
Religion may have served as a carrier of behavioral norms which conferred survival benefits such
as empathy, reciprocity, social hierarchy, and peacemaking.
I propose that the answer to these and other questions is found in the economics of time
preference.
Lower time preferences in patients, the desire for immediate want satisfaction or gratification.
Lower time preference enables individuals to save, to plan for the future and to engage
in entrepreneurial activity.
Ceteris paribus, religious belief, allowed humans to have significantly lower time preferences
and significantly longer planning horizons which accompany them.
Recall that until the start of the Industrial Revolution, infant mortality approximated
100%, and in primitive times, life expectancy approximated 15 years for the survivors. This
suggests that compared to modern humans, early humans should have had very high time preference.
This would have limited opportunities for wealth accumulation or capital intensive roundabout
means of production. Indeed, it appears that for numerous millennia, it had not yet occurred
to any of our ancestors that agriculture could be more effective than hunting and gathering.
The principal way religion lowers time preference among people with short life expectancy is
because the deity or deities worshipped are immortal. Occasionally they are merely long
live but this would still allow for lowering the time preference of their worshippers.
I have in mind particularly the wooden Polynesian idols described by Herman Melville in his
novel Taipi. The oldest of the island gods had been carved by priests about 50 years
before the time of Melville's story and was rotten and being eaten by termites. It was
The Islanders considered it a particularly venerable god both because of its age and more pointingly their realization that it would shortly depart this world, in their belief the god would be dead and beyond veneration.
More typical categories of religious beliefs such as belief in an afterlife, life after death, spirit survival, reincarnation, etc. seem particularly suited to address humans with short life experiences.
are suited to address humans with short life expectancy and, consequently, with high time preference, not to mention an obsession with death.
These beliefs serve to lower time preference by expanding the individual's planning horizon, even to extend beyond their temporal lives.
Early chapters of Genesis and the Gilgamesh epic mention Macrobians, people like Methuselah, who lived many centuries.
Because it does not appear that any of our ancestors in fact live that long, it becomes interesting to speculate why such features were introduced into the narrative.
I suggest they originated as artifacts of the introduction of lower time preference beliefs among people with initially high time preference.
Time preference lends some light on the sacrifice of Isaac in chapter 22 of Genesis.
In this narrative, Jehovah commands Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, and Abraham intends to comply, though Jehovah protects Isaac from harm.
Human sacrifice is an extraordinarily expensive resource-wasting ritual practice, which is consistent with extremely high time preference.
Reference. Basically, under the Semitic deities that demanded human sacrifice, they were in
this particular practice basically contributing to a higher time preference among their believers
and this helps explain why that practice died out in addition to, of course, its moral repugnance.
It is less troubling that Jehovah asks for human sacrifice which was commonly given to
to other deities, since having created the universe, he is the final arbiter of life,
death and morality.
We cannot ever be dead to Jehovah.
It is more troubling that Jehovah apparently misleads Abraham about his desires and intentions.
Jehovah can kill us without that being wrong.
It is less clear that he can authorize us to commit murder.
It is perfectly clear that he cannot lie.
It is less that he is subject to our limited and defective moral judgment than that this
is an act we simply cannot conceive of him doing.
As Esqua says of Zeus, a far less perfect deity, the father knoweth not how to utter
falsehood in all that he sayeth he will accomplish.
Jehovah explicitly prohibits human sacrifice in chapter 20 of Leviticus and chapter 32
of Jeremiah.
One tradition of medieval rabbinic commentary proposes that Jehovah's command was not real
but a misinterpretation by Abraham, though this view is far from unanimous.
Without glossing the text, we can observe that a more important evolutionary adaptation
for primitive humans derives from obeying God, improving group cohesion than from loving
Him.
I will suggest further that from the beginning Abraham recognized Jehovah as immeasurably
greater and more virtuous than the gods of his fathers, some of whom demanded human sacrifice.
It is not a tremendous leap to imagine that in Abraham's mind this greater God called
for a Greater Sacrifice, and I will skip unresolved problems and cut to the chase.
Religion conferred survival benefits on our ancestors by promoting a lowering of their
time preference and lengthening their planning horizon, allowing for increased use of time
consuming capital intensive, saving based and roundabout means of production.
This in turn enhanced the wealth, well-being and survival of the societies which adopted
it.
Today our longer life expectancy generally results in a sufficiently low time preference
that the survival value of religion is lost.
However, objectively we can still say religious belief may provide tangible benefits, that
is lower time preference, among groups with high time preference, children, those with
low life expectancy, the poor and criminals.
The survival benefit of religious belief is mostly lost once life expectancy lengthens
to the point where, as in modern society, it results in lowered time preference even
in the absence of religious belief.
The perspective of economics is particularly valuable to address evolutionary biology's
inability to explain whether religion is a successful evolutionary adaptation or merely
a useless byproduct of some other successful adaptations.
Since religion contributes to lowering time preference and lowered time preference necessarily
and the improved group survival opportunities, it should be clear that religion is a highly successful evolutionary adaptation.