On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind
of thousands of pyramid builders and artisans la-
bored willingly for their Pharaoh’s afterlife and for
their own. Today, with five billion of the world’s six
billion as adherents, ancient religions are alive and
flourishing, 143 years after On the Origin of Species
and their predicted demise. In a nationwide poll by
The New York Times and CBS News of over a thou-
sand teenagers, “ninety-four percent say that they
believe in God” (Goldstein/Connelly 1998). Den-
nett writes of religions, “They have kept Homo sapi-
ens civilized enough, for long enough, for us to have
learned how to reflect more systematically and accu-
rately on our position in the universe” (1995, p518).
Yet, from the record, the majority of people reflect
on our position in the universe in much the same
way that they did before Darwin. The refusal of reli-
gion to die has become an embarrassment (d’Aquili/
Newberg 1998). I believe that part of the explanation
for this lies in the nature of the mind itself.
“Okay”, the reader might say; “we can agree that
religious belief has been of prime importance since
the beginnings of human culture. So what? What
does that have to do with natural selection and other
natural forces? Are you suggesting a marriage of
heaven and earth, with religious belief an offspring
of God and Mother Nature?” No. I argue that the
products of imagination, including religious belief,
are natural products (memes: cultural material,
based on genes: DNA), and that the brain structures
to conceive and store such belief are natural struc-
tures that aid human survival. However, I am sug-
gesting a somewhat different view of nature: the na-
ture of “human”.
In relation to human phylogenetic processes and
cultural change, Lorenz notes: “If we discover that
certain behaviour patterns and norms of social con-
duct are found in all human beings in all cultures in
exactly the same form, we can assume with virtual
certainty that they are phylogenetically pro-
grammed and genetically specified” (Lorenz 1977,
p182). While the content of religions differs from
culture to culture, “the behavior patterns and
norms” of seeking meaning and continuity in life, of
searching for supersensory powers, and developing
belief in such powers, this seems to be present in all
existing cultures, even those practicing Buddhism
(Brown 1959; Smith 1958). This behavior existed at
the dawn of civilization some ten thousand years
ago, and, I suspect, existed earlier, shortly after the
advent of imagination in Homo sapiens. d’Aquili and
Newberg, based on their neurological research,
make the claim that “the brain constructs gods, spir-
its, demons, or other personalized power sources
with whom individuals can deal contractually in or-
der to gain control over a capricious environment”
(1998, p191). Religious behavior seems part of the
nature of “human”, in dual existence with the ani-
mal behavior (Persinger 1987).
As scientific investigation led to the seemingly im-
possible dualism of light: “how can something really
be both wave and quanta?” so too, I suggest, has
scientific investigation led (at least temporarily) to a
certain dualism of the human animal: animal in the
evolution of all its quantifiable parts, human in the
evolution of mind, and in behavior based on beliefs.
Lorenz goes so far as to say, “the human mind—and
this one can say without exaggeration, is a new kind
of life” (1977, p172). If so, a Darwinian approach
should be to look for a new situation that might have
led to “this new kind of life”, which appears to be
both animal and some other form that is still evolv-
ing. Human survival requires nourishment for this
new form: the mind, as well as nourishment for the
animal housing it. The mind and the animal brain
seem to be shaped differently; they seem to have
different needs. This conception is compatible with
a materialist philosophy; brain and mind fit to-
gether. However, they do not simply fit together. The
irregular-shaped human mind cannot be pounded
into the preexisting animal brain cavity; the attempt
to do so seems to be based on a preconceived belief
of “mind” as merely an extension of brain (“what
else could it be?”), and a yearning for evidence to
support that belief. A structure for doubting reality,
for imagining an alternate reality, adapts a qualita-
tively different approach to the world than does the
animal brain (Beres 1960). It seems to have evolved
to make use of that different approach for survival
purposes. This does not mean that such a structure
is in all respects superior for survival. Lorenz, com-
menting on the double edge of the reflecting process,
“man’s greatest discovery in the history of the hu-
man mind”, states that it was “immediately followed
by the greatest and gravest mistake—that of doubt-
ing the external world” (1977, p15). I suggest a sim-
ple explanation of that doubt: “man’s greatest dis-
covery” was made to do just that: to justify the
doubting of an external world that showed human
death as the final reality of life. Denial of death and
other “unacceptable” realities seem an inherent part
of human emotional life (Brown 1959; Becker 1973;
Langs 1996).
It seems plausible that an inner-directed sense, a
sense “that creates images of what is not actually
present”, was not designed to search the external
environment for food; the preexisting primate
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 6 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1