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. For example, one king might say all food is common for the village. And you just can pick up anything you want and eat it. The next guy might say if you keep food in your house it is yours. And if you pick food from others house, you will be beheaded. A kid moving from one king to the other might end up getting beheaded! So people thought of common rules and laws.
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?
In the second article in a two-part series, Brandon Ambrosino examines the ways that spiritual beliefs emerge from ancient psychological tendencies. This is your brain on God. Atheists were at least as knowledgeable as Christians on Christianity-related questions — roughly eight-in-ten in both groups, for example, know that Easter commemorates the resurrection of Jesus — and they were also twice as likely as Americans overall to know that the U.
Say "Alexa, enable the Pew Research Center flash briefing". It organizes the public into nine distinct groups, based on an analysis of their attitudes and values. Even in a polarized era, the survey reveals deep divisions in both partisan coalitions. Use this tool to compare the groups on some key topics and their demographics. Pew Research Center now uses as the last birth year for Millennials in our work. President Michael Dimock explains why.
About Pew Research Center Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. Other main religions have an older median age: Christians, 30; Buddhists, 34 and Jews, The religiously unaffiliated come in at Islam is the fastest-growing religion in the world — more than twice as fast as the overall global population. But proportionately, these religious groupings will be smaller than now because their growth is lower than the increase in the overall global population.
Muslim women have an average of 2. And while Christian women have an overall birth rate of 2. There are reckoned to be another million Catholics. In contrast, Christianity is in decline in Western Europe. In Ireland, traditionally a staunchly Catholic country, the proportion of people identifying with Catholicism fell from Those with no religious affiliation increased to 9.
Seven in 10 people under the age of 44 said they were non-religious; the only age group in which the majority are religiously affiliated is the overs. The Islamic Republic of Iran is probably the one that springs to mind first. Until the revolution, the country was ruled by the Shah, or monarch. But the leader of the new state was the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who implemented a political system based on Islamic beliefs and appointed the heads of the judiciary, military and media.
He was succeeded in by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
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