In this blog post, I’ll explore which human tendencies and social characteristics have influenced the long-term persistence of religion, focusing specifically on the persistence of religion from the perspectives of the tendency to follow trends and cooperation.
As someone raised in the faith, it’s already been seven years since I last attended church. It’s almost an excuse to say that I was busy preparing for college entrance exams in high school, and even as a college student, I was too occupied with tutoring, school assignments, and various other tasks to make it work. In reality, attending Mass requires only about an hour once a week, and since the church is within walking distance of my home, I could go anytime if I really set my mind to it. However, the reason I don’t readily head to church is my lack of faith in God and Jesus. The existence of Jesus, whom I cannot see, has never held much appeal for me. Although I attended countless Masses and prayed regularly through middle school, Jesus never once revealed Himself directly to me. The priest’s words urging me to believe in His existence and Resurrection also didn’t make logical sense to me. It was a mystery to me why so many Catholics and Protestants continue to attend church, and furthermore, how Christianity could have been sustained for over 2,000 years by people who have never once seen Jesus in person. This was not a question I alone had. For many evolutionists, the persistence of religion was a major point of contention. Richard Dawkins, a leading Darwinist, posits genes as the agents of evolution and successfully explains various animal behaviors in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’. However, many human cultural phenomena seem difficult to explain fully from a genetic perspective alone, and religion is a prime example. “Abstinence,” emphasized in many religions, may appear to be a value that starkly contradicts the human drive to pass on and spread one’s genes. In the Catholic Church, the obligation of celibacy applies to priests in the Latin Rite, and many believers accept this way of life as a religious ideal. Furthermore, questions arise as to why the value of charity—epitomized by the passage “Love your neighbor as yourself”—has persisted to this day within any evolutionary context. However, it is an undeniable fact that countless people have embraced Christianity over thousands of years, and that religious doctrines such as asceticism and charity have had a profound impact on human history. Richard Dawkins attempts to explain this by introducing the concept of “memes,” which can be described as the genes of culture. He argues that just as genes are the units of trait transmission in heredity, memes are the units of cultural transmission. Examples of memes include melodies, ideas, slogans, fashion trends, and methods of making pots; when memes spread within a “meme pool,” they are transmitted from brain to brain through a process that, in a broad sense, can be described as imitation. He also discusses the meme of God. In his book ‘The Selfish Gene’, he argues that the survival value of the “God” meme lies in its powerful psychological appeal. Beliefs such as “the injustices of this world will be rectified in the afterlife” and “our imperfections will be saved by the eternal arm of God” provide superficially plausible answers to the many questions that torment the human mind. However, this explanation did not strike me as particularly convincing. I thought the phrase “powerful psychological appeal” was an explanation that any psychologist or anthropologist could offer. I wanted to interpret it from a more biological perspective. I was curious about what human habits or genetic tendencies allowed religion to persist, or how feeling a psychological attraction to the “God” meme contributed to the survival of genes. I found an explanation for this in Matt Ridley’s ‘The Selfish Gene’. In this book, Ridley introduces the concept of “information sequentiality,” proposed by mathematical economist David Hershleyfer and his colleagues. When faced with a decision—such as buying a skirt or choosing a movie to watch—many people tend to disregard their own opinions if everyone else has made the same choice. This is because the choices others make serve as a very useful source of information.
This tendency to follow trends is also observed in other animals. In the case of the curassow, which inhabits the highlands of the Americas, 10% of the males account for 90% of all matings that take place at the courtship site. This is because the females mimic one another. Females are attracted to males simply because they are surrounded by other females—this is because such males can pass on superior genes to their offspring. Of course, they could ignore the line of females waiting for the popular male and choose a neglected one instead, but in that case, they must accept the risk of giving birth to an incompetent son who takes after his father. When one follows trends in mating, there is a corresponding reward. Humans, too, possess this tendency and follow trends. This is because it is often easier and more beneficial to follow what others are doing rather than trying to accomplish something on one’s own. Religion, too, can be seen as something that later generations have adopted and believed in simply because people thousands of years ago believed in it. This phenomenon would have been even more pronounced during the Middle Ages, when the Church held great power. In many cases, people likely began believing in God and attending church without much doubt simply because everyone around them did. Since attending church was a common practice, going together helped foster good relations with neighbors and brought numerous social benefits. It can be argued that the persistence of religion is due to this human tendency to follow trends. Along with trends, cooperation has also contributed to the survival of religion. Cooperation, too, is not a trait unique to humans. Countless animals cooperate and reap the resulting benefits. Thomson’s gazelles travel in herds and join forces to escape threats from lions and cheetahs. Male warthogs on the East African savanna even form alliances to attack and steal mates from other males. Worker ants also join forces to carry food back to the queen. Beyond this, there are countless other examples of animals that form groups and cooperate with one another. Cooperation plays an especially crucial role in human evolution because humans possess “culture.” Due to the nature of memes—which transmit traditions and customs directly from person to person—humans have undergone a new kind of evolution. Just as with the Thomson’s gazelle and the cheetah, competition did not occur only between genetically distinct individuals or groups, but also between culturally distinct individuals or groups. In such cases, groups that prioritize cooperation have an advantage in competition. A cooperative society that pursues the common good can sometimes outlast a society that does not, even if the latter possesses superior genes. The values pursued by Christianity are closely linked to group cooperation. The value of abstinence, epitomized by the commandment “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” can to some extent reduce the causes of conflict within Christian communities. In societies that practice abstinence, fights among males decrease because they avoid behaviors such as those of the bibi on the East African savanna, which steals another’s mate. The value of charity, epitomized by the passage “Love your neighbor,” may also be seen as a virtue necessary for fostering bonds and cooperation among Christians and for prevailing in competition with other groups. With few exceptions, religious doctrines other than abstinence and charity have emphasized distinctions between the group’s internal and external members—dividing the world into “us” and “them,” such as Israelis and Palestinians, or Jews and Christians. Religion sometimes teaches its followers that they belong to a chosen group, while rival groups are uncivilized barbarians or subhuman tribes. In ‘The Selfish Gene’, Matt Ridley cites Hartung’s research on the verse “Love your neighbor.” This verse originated during a period when the Israelites were divided by interclass strife and bloodshed in the desert. Shortly before this passage appeared, 3,000 people had been killed. Moses called for loving one’s neighbor to restore harmony within the tribe, but it is said that the term “neighbor” here referred directly to “the children of your own tribe.” Of course, Christianity teaches us to love not only fellow Christians but all people. Jesus, too, taught in the Gospels to love both Jews and Gentiles alike. However, when viewed through the lens of events such as the Crusades, the Inquisition, and the Thirty Years’ War, actual Christian behavior was far less inclusive than the content of these sermons would suggest. From an evolutionary perspective—where the stronger the cooperation within a group, the more violent the conflict between groups tends to be—humans are no exception, and Christian communities, which place a high value on cooperation, can be seen as a prime example of this.
It seems inevitable that I feel a bit uneasy while making this argument. Whether by choice or circumstance, ever since I can remember—or even before that—I have attended church, offered many prayers before the statue of Jesus, and recited numerous Bible verses alongside my priest. Some of those verses have provided me with profound lessons throughout my life. Yet, it feels strange to me that I am now seeking the reason for Christianity’s survival in humanity’s tendency to follow trends and its inclination toward cooperation. I can already picture my mother flying into a rage the moment I show her this essay. But such an explanation does not affect the validity of the message religion conveys to us. Whatever the reason, people have believed in Christianity for thousands of years, and the various virtues taught in the Bible have had a positive impact on human life. Abstinence and charity clearly play an important role in creating a society where people help and respect one another. I find the sociologists’ argument—that belief in God has persisted to this day because these values benefit human society in many ways—to be persuasive. I simply hope readers will take this blog post as an opportunity to think, “Oh, so this is another way to view the continued existence of religion.”
