Why do people belong to a religion

The first three studies had shown direct causal evidence of religion on self-control—and downstream effects on enduring discomfort, delaying rewards, and exerting patience. But is it possible that the religious priming might have activated something else—moral intuition, or death-related concerns? In order to rule out these possibilities, the scientists used a completely secular self-control task, one with no moral overlay: the so-called Stroop task. This is the task where one must rapidly identify the ink that words are printed in, rather than read the words.

The scientists primed some with religious words as usual, but others were primed with moral words—virtue, righteous—and still others with words related to mortality—deadly, grave, and so forth. Then all the volunteers attempted the Stroop task on a computer, which measured accuracy and reaction time. The results, as reported in a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science , showed that religiously primed volunteers had much more self-control than did controls or those primed to think about mortality.

But those with religion on their minds were statistically no different than those with morality on their minds. This was an unexpected finding, and it suggests that activating an implicit moral sensibility may have some of the same effects as religion. One possibility is that religion makes people mindful of an ever watchful God, and thus encourages more self-monitoring. Or religious priming may activate concerns of supernatural punishment.

A more secular explanation is that religious priming makes people more concerned about their reputation in the community, leading to more careful self-monitoring. Notably, almost a third of the volunteers in these studies were self-defined atheists or agnostics, suggesting that these robust effects have little or nothing to do with the suggestibility of the most devout.

I think that religion was created by people and for people. When you look at the similarities between religions, they all have a core idea of something being there after death, and in Christianity especially, there is a punishment for doing the wrong thing and a reward for doing the right thing. But I also believe that religion is for people who are unable to think for themselves. Religions tell you how to think, what to think, when to think, and what to think about. Nothing in this world was invented by man without a need.

Religion should have been invented to meet a need. To understand the need we need to port ourselves years hence leaving behind our prejudices and beliefs. Every king made his own laws. And it was not uncommon to find a new king ruling every now and then. Law kept changing with every king. Life should have been pretty difficult.

Home India News Entertainment. HT Insight. My Account. Sign in. Sign out. Essentially this hypothesis is that religion is a by-product of a number of cognitive and social adaptations which have been extremely important in human development.

We are social creatures who interact and communicate with each other in a co-operative and supportive way. In doing so we inevitably have stronger attachments to some individuals more than others. We continue to rely on these attachments in later life, when falling in love and making friends, and can even form strong attachments to non-human animals and inanimate objects.

It is easy to see that these strong attachments could transfer to religious deities and their messengers. Our relationships depend on being able to predict how others will behave across situations and time. We can imagine what they would do or say. Eventually hunter-gatherers set down roots in permanent settlements, which required even more prosocial behaviour management to alleviate the stresses of group living. These seeds became institutionalised throughout the Neolithic Revolution, which laid the groundwork for the so-called Axial Age to occur.

The major ideas of this period — from Confucianism to Judaism and Ancient Greek philosophy — are still with us today. There are others, and perhaps some of these get the story more correct. Human knowledge — especially about our past — is constantly evolving, and therefore our theories are constantly being confirmed, fine-tuned, or left behind. The emergence of art, architecture and writing brought new expressions of religious beliefs Credit: Getty Images.

Better to leave it to science and rationality to help us forge our way ahead. But this perspective is shortsighted. For one thing, science itself is not neutral, and it has facilitated some of the worst modern phenomena, including eugenics, the atomic bomb, and drone warfare.

Should we also leave science behind because of its checkered history? Of course not. None of us should deny either the ugliness or nobility found in the deep history of religion. Instead, we should acquaint ourselves with that history, appreciate it where can, interrogate it where we ought, and, with both eyes open, trek on toward the future opening up before us. Whatever that future ends up being, at the moment it looks like humans will be there, at least in some form.

Religion is so bound up with everything we know about our species that it seems near impossible to imagine a future human without any religious sensibilities. Maybe it can be replaced by something better, but it cannot disappear. One of the better somethings, for many people, seems to be religion sans doctrine or hierarchy. Evolutionary psychology may explain why "spiritual but non-religious" behaviours continue in modern society Credit: Getty Images.

Some have referred to the SBNR trend as yet another example of DIY culture: practice whatever helps you achieve a sense of union with the transcendent. Which means even those who participate in traditional religions may go about it non-traditionally. Without a doubt, these syncretistic trends attest to the processes of globalisation. Paul Tillich, one of the most famous 20th Century theologians, developed a theology of correlation: the answers religion has to offer should correspond to the questions that a culture is asking.

If it fails at this endeavour, then it becomes irrelevant. Much of the loudest theology preached by the loudest practitioners of religion seems to have failed in precisely this way. So many people have decided to take their questions elsewhere. But the questions remain. At the centre of religion, says Dunbar, is a mystical concern with belonging — a concern that predates and will outlive Homo sapiens , who will, in the end, be said to have occupied a narrow sliver of time and space in the great cosmic story of the universe.

He lives in Delaware. This is the second of a two-part special examining the evolutionary roots of religion. Join more than one million Future fans by liking us on Facebook , or follow us on Twitter or Instagram.

If you liked this story, sign up for the weekly bbc. Deep Civilisation Religion. Share using Email. By Brandon Ambrosino 30th May Are spiritual beliefs an inevitable consequence of evolution?