The God Spot, Biology, Evolution, and Religious Belief

Linköpings domkyrka, the Medieval cathedral at Linköping, Sweden.

Brandon Keim writes on David Barash's perspective that "religion should not be immune from evolutionary analysis," and "whether or not one is a believer," Barash "(that) the popularity of religious belief should be considered in terms of the benefits such convictions have historically conveyed. Weighing the pros and commons, however, is a difficult task," Barash freely admits.

"On the one hand, religious belief of one sort or another seems ubiquitous, suggesting that it might well have emerged, somehow, from universal human nature, the common evolutionary background shared by all humans. On the other hand, it often appears that religious practice is fitness-reducing rather than enhancing — and, if so, that genetically mediated tendencies toward religion should have been selected against. Think of the frequent advocacy of sexual restraint, of tithing, of self-abnegating moral duty and other seeming diminutions of personal fitness, along with the characteristic denial of the “evidence of our senses” in favor of faith in things asserted but not clearly demonstrated. What fitness-enhancing benefits of religion might compensate for those costs? [...]" Keim summarizes Barash.

Keim contrasts Barash's perspective with that of noted evolutionary biologist, David Sloan Wilson. "Not all biologically based hypotheses for the evolution of religion are negative, however. In Darwin’s Cathedral, David Sloan Wilson explored the possibility that religious belief is advantageous for its practitioners because it contributes to solidarity — including but not limited to moral codes — that benefits the group and wouldn’t otherwise be within reach. That notion, appealing as it might be, is actually a logical and mathematical stretch for most biologists, relying as it does upon group selection. The problem is that even if groups displaying a particular trait do better than groups lacking it, selection acting within such groups should favor individuals who “cheat.” Mathematical models have shown that group selection can work in theory, but only if the differential survival of religious groups more than compensates for any disadvantage suffered by individuals within each group. It is at least possible that human beings meet this requirement, especially when it comes to religion, since within-group self-policing could maintain religiosity; it certainly did during the Inquisition.".

"Barash makes some interesting points," Keim contends, "though glib comments like "it certainly did during the Inquisition" make it difficult to read him without suspicion.".

"A more interesting example of self-policing religious groups," Keim explains, "is American evangelicals, many sects of which have maintained internal order in the absence of thumbscrews and racks.".

Keim believes: "Barash is quick to dismiss the supposed benefits of religion or the possibility that many people need it.  But is it so difficult to imagine the appeal of worldviews capable of explaining life and death and right and wrong? Or so difficult to see the social framework — both in terms of human interaction and the provision of goods and services — that religious communities provide, particularly in poor and undeveloped regions?"

"Finally, Keim explains that "group selection is hardly a theoretical: the animal world is full of species that have developed characteristics that operate on the group rather than individual, and are thus selected at that level. Bacteria and parasites, for instance, often produce effects in their hosts that are only seen when  the invaders are present in large numbers."

"Religion can and should be studied in scientific terms," according to Keim's "reading but those studies need to operate on many scales and be framed in a way that doesn’t predetermine the answer according to already-held sentiments. If framed by narrow perspectives like Barash’s, they will not likely illuminate either religion or ourselves."

 

Neural activation produced by God’s perceived love (left) and anger (right)/PNAS

"Whether or not God exists, thinking about Him or Her doesn’t require divinely dedicated neurological wiring," writes Brandon Keim.

"Instead, religious thoughts run on brain systems used to figure out what other people are thinking and feeling."

"The findings, based on brain scans of people contemplating God, don’t explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."

“In a way, this is a very cold look at religious belief,” said National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. “We’re only trying to understand where in the brain religious beliefs seem to be modulated.”

"Though scientific debate about God’s existence has transfixed the public, Grafman’s findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."

"Some scientists think it’s just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren’t present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."

"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."

"The argument breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps. Of course, they might both be right."

“Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,” said Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion, “but once in place, they’re pretty handy.”

"Grafman started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God’s perceived level of involvement in the world, God’s perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."

"Statements based on God’s involvement — such as “God protects one’s life” or “Life has no higher purpose” — provoked activity in brain regions associated with understanding intent. Statements of God’s emotions — such as “God is forgiving” or “the afterlife will be punishing” — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as “a source of creation exists” or “religions provide moral guidance,” activated linguistic processing centers."

"Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."

"The advantages of a Theory of Mind are clear. People who lack one are considered developmentally challenged, even disabled. Anthropologist Scott Atran, a proponent of the byproduct hypothesis, has suggested that it let our ancestors quickly distinguish between friends and enemies. And once humans were able to imagine someone who wasn’t physically present, supernatural beliefs soon followed."

"But just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."

"Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring."

"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals."

“You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality,” said Barrett. “And maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced.”

"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it."

“It could be that when you’re in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking,” he said. “Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust.”

"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them."

“It’s tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level,” he said. “But there’s a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That’s not true in this case.”

"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties."

“The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on,” he said.

"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God."

“He, or She, didn’t come in for the evaluation,” he said.

Citation: “Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron Barbey, Michael Su, Giovanna Zamboni, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol. 106, No. 10, March 9, 2009.

Possible "God regions" in the human brain denoted by blue dots

"Brain scans of people who believe in God have found further evidence that religion involves neurological regions vital for social intelligence."

"In other words, whether or not God or Gods exist, religious belief may have been quite useful in shaping the human mind’s evolution."

“The main point is that all these brain regions are important for other forms of social cognition and behavior,” said" Jordan Grafman, a National Institutes of Health cognitive scientist.

"In a study published Monday in Public Library of Science ONE, Grafman’s team used an MRI to measure the brains areas in 40 people of varying degrees of religious belief."

"People who reported an intimate experience of God, engaged in religious behavior or feared God, tended to have larger-than-average brain regions devoted to empathy, symbolic communication and emotional regulation. The research wasn’t trying to measure some kind of small “God-spot,” but looked instead at broader patterns within the brains of self-reported religious people."

"The results are full of caveats, from a small sample size to the focus on a western God. But they fit with Grafman’s earlier work on how religious sentiment triggers other neural networks involved in social cognition."

That research, published in March in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, suggested that the capacity for religious thought may have bootstrapped a primitive human brain into its current, socially sophisticated form.

"Grafman suspects that the origins of divine belief reside in mechanisms that evolved in order to help primates understand family members and other animals. “We tried to use the same social mechanisms to explain unusual phenomena in the natural world,” he said.

"The evolution of our brains continues," said Grafman. “The way we think now is not the way we thought 3,000 years ago,” he said. “The nature of how we believe might change as well.”

Find the God Spot!

"You can forget about the "God spot" that headline writers love to highlight (as in "‘God spot' is found in Brain" or "Scientists Locate ‘God Spot' in Human Brain"). There is no one place in the brain responsible for religion, just as there is no single location in the brain for love or language or identity. Most popular articles these days actually say that, but the headline writers continue to speak of a single spot."
 

"There isn't a separate religious area of the brain, from what we can tell from the data," said Dr. Andrew Newberg, an associate professor of radiology and psychiatry at the Penn university hospital and author of several books on neuroscience and religion. "It's not like there's a little spiritual spot that lights up every time somebody thinks of God. When you look at religious and spiritual experiences, they are incredibly rich and diverse. Sometimes people find them on the emotional level, sometimes on an ideological level, sometimes they perceive a oneness, sometimes they perceive a person. It depends a lot on what the actual experience is."

"The image above shows two different brain scans, one from someone who is singing, and the other one from someone who is speaking in tongues. They look almost entirely identical, but you can just about glimpse a slight difference in blood flow to the frontal lobe, and specifically to the left caudate, among the "speaking in tongues" brains."
 


Citation: “Neuroanatomical Variability of Religiosity.” By Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Frank Krueger, Jordan Grafman. Public Library of Science ONE, Vol. 4 No. 9, September 28, 2009. Reuters News Agency and The NeuroCritic Blog that provided the brain scan imagery.