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Technorati"These facts are an embarrassment for those who see supernatural beliefs as a cultural anachronism, soon to be eroded by scientific discoveries and the spread of cosmopolitan values," Bloom asserts. "They require a new theory of why we are religious – one that draws on research in evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, and developmental psychology."
Bloom sets out to provide just such an explanation. He considers and then dismisses the functionalist theories offered by sociologists in recent times, focusing instead on an understanding based in evolutionary science. In essence, Bloom argues that belief in God is itself an accident of evolution. What he calls "the religion-as-accident theory" asserts that belief in God is a function of the fact that human beings are wired to believe in a distinction between the physical and the psychological.
"Where does the distinction between the physical and the psychological come from?" Bloom asks. "Is it something we learn through experience, or is it somehow pre-wired into our brains? One way to find out is to study babies. It is notoriously difficult to know what babies are thinking, given that they can't speak and have little control over their bodies . . . . But recently investigators have used the technique of showing them different events and recording how long they look at them, exploiting the fact that babies, like the rest of us, tend to look longer at something they find unusual or bizarre."
In essence, Bloom argues that the study of infants indicates that human beings, from the earliest stages of conscious life, possess a thought pattern that distinguishes between physical and psychological realities. Making the distinction between bodies and minds, these babies appear to be pre-wired to believe in something like a soul.
In a fascinating anecdote, Bloom recalls a conversation he had with his six-year-old son, Max. "I was telling him that he had to go to bed, and he said 'You can make me go to bed, but you can't make me go to sleep. It's my brain!' This piqued my interest, so I began to ask him questions about what the brain does and does not do. His answers showed an interesting split. He insisted that the brain was involved in perception – in seeing, hearing, tasting and smelling – and he was adamant that it was responsible for thinking. But, he said, the brain was not essential for dreaming, for feeling sad, or for loving his brother. 'That's what I do,' Max said, 'though my brain might help me out.'"
In other words, Max had conceived his personality as distinct from his brain-the psychological as distinct from the physical. From this starting point, Bloom argues that the move to believe in the survival of a soul after death-an afterlife-seems both short and natural.
Similarly, Bloom argues that human beings are also wired to be creationists. Bloom is a champion of evolutionary theory, but he is not willing to call creationists stupid. "Richard Dawkins may well be right when he describes the theory of natural selection as one of our species' finest accomplishments; it is an intellectually satisfying and empirically supported account of our own existence," Bloom affirms. "But almost nobody believes it."
This is what drives so many evolutionary theorists crazy-the persistence of the belief that the cosmos can be explained only by a Creator. Bloom points to evidence indicating that the vast majority of Americans, including those with a college education, believe that God created human beings in their present form and largely reject Darwin's theory of evolution. Continue »
