Conceiving God Preface

The Cognitive Origin and Evolution of Religion
By David Lewis-Williams

Preface

It appears to me (whether rightly or wrongly) that direct arguments against Christianity and theism produce hardly any effect on the public; and freedom of thought is best promoted by the gradual illumination of men’s minds which follows from the advance of science. It has, therefore, been always my object to avoid writing on religion, and I have confined myself to science.

No evidence is powerful enough to force acceptance of a conclusion that is emotionally distasteful.

In 1880, Charles Darwin wrote the first of these quotations to the British socialist Edward Aveling. In the second quotation, written some 60 years later, Theodosius Dobzhansky acknowledged the difficulty of getting people to change their minds about some immensely important things.

These epigraphs may seem a depressing start to a book such as this, but both writers were correct. Today, in the current science versus religion controversy, we see the publication of numerous books filled with arguments designed to show that humankind would be better off without religion. The reasoning in these publications is often rigorous and inescapable; we need such books. Yet whether they have any impact on the thinking of religious people is doubtful. Perhaps some do. And that is why I have somewhat reluctantly decided to address some key, indeed unavoidable, logical issues. Still, it seems clear to me that the gradual advance of scientific knowledge over the last three and more centuries has done better than logical arguments against supernaturalism: it has led to Darwin’s ‘freedom of thought’.

My own experience has tended to confirm Darwin’s lack of faith in ‘direct arguments against Christianity and theism’. I did not wrestle with arguments and then, after much intellectual agonizing, come to the conclusion that, logically, there is no such thing as a supernatural realm – and consequently no such thing as God, a Devil, angels, divinely inspired books, miracles, and so forth. Instead, over the years I pondered the long history of religion. In particular, I thought about the implications of the earliest archaeological evidence for religion. It seems indisputable that Upper Palaeolithic people who lived in France and Spain from about 45,000 to 10,000 years ago believed in a supernatural realm and spirit beings whom they tried to contact. They therefore clambered and crawled to a nether world deep inside caves. There they made images of supernaturally powerful spirit animals. Was the God of present-day monotheistic religions trying to get through to these ancient hunters? Or were they struggling to come to terms with something quite different, something going on in their own brains? And so it was through the ages, through the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome, through medieval times and up to the present day. People seem always to have believed in two domains: the material world in which they conduct their daily lives and a spirit realm that they try to contact.

Then I found it salutary to explore social (cultural) anthropology. People live in vastly different societies with different economies, social structures and, of course, religions. There were (and still are) those who believed that God wanted them to sacrifice other people; those who believed that God wanted them to kill animals by bleeding them to death; those who believed that stubborn infidels should be killed; those who claimed that special people could float up into the sky; those who believed that they should cause, by whatever means necessary, other people to accept their religion. For all these people, their own beliefs were divinely revealed and therefore beyond discussion or evaluation. Famine, fire and sword have been religion’s dogs of war for so long that there are now many who doubt the possibility of tolerance between major religions. As we look over this sorry tapestry, we must face a fundamental question, one that many today, believers and non-believers alike, try to avoid: Is there really a spirit realm occupied by supernatural beings and forces that are concerned with human life on earth? By contemplating the history of religion and science we are able to answer that question in a way that gradually leads to ‘freedom of thought’.

Half a century ago, it seemed that politics was the dangerous dividing
factor in the world. Democracy, fascism and communism contended for (in an awful modern cliché) the hearts and minds of the world’s people – not to mention economic wealth. Today, many speak of an impending clash between the Christian (or post-Christian) West and Islam. They realize that religion, rather than politics, lies at the very root of the matter, but they feel that they dare not say so. In trying to dodge the issue, they claim that all religions are fundamentally and intrinsically good; freed from ‘fanaticism’, diverse religions will eventually come to live in contented harmony with one another. ‘Ecumenical’, ‘multi-cultural’, ‘dialogue’ and ‘inter-faith’ are the key buzzwords.

If all religions are equal, why, we must ask, did the Christian Church spend so many centuries spreading its gospel throughout the world, hunting down heretics, and waging religious wars? Is it conceivable that, for most of its history, the Church was founded on an error? If each religion, not just Christianity, believes that it is a recipient of supernatural intimations, can we really expect them to cease proselytizing? Belief in supernaturally revealed knowledge is fundamentally incompatible with the equality of all organized religions. This gloomy thought is, however, best kept out of sight: to express it is to court accusations of defeatism, moral blindness, incitement to violence, and much else.

Viewing current conflicts from the perspective of an immense past means that you do not see features of present-day religion and the strife that it brings as the product of a few hundred (or even two thousand) years of history. Instead, you see continuities that seem to be independent of history, that are so deep-seated that they cannot merely be products of specific historical events and processes. The long view shows that there are underlying currents that point to something innate in human beings, something that from at least Upper Palaeolithic times has produced what we recognize as ‘religion’.

I therefore begin with three Windows on the Past. They are vignettes taken from strongly contrasted societies and periods of history. Why, despite their obvious differences, do they seem to have something in common? These windows introduce themes that the following chapters explore.

The first of these sketches the history of scientific thought from ancient Greece to the Roman emperor Constantine and his official, political, recognition of Christianity. It also deals with the role of Greek philosophy in the formulation of Christian theology, especially as the new religion was conceived by St Paul. Crucially, this chapter identifies the origin and development of two contrasting kinds of knowledge: supernaturally revealed knowledge and that which comes from scientific thought and observation – two warring empires of the mind. This epistemological question lies at the root of the present conflict between religion and science.

Chapter 2 takes the story forward from the time of St Augustine of Hippo, one of the most influential early Church Fathers, to the first two great public clashes between science and religion: the Galileo affair and, four centuries later, the impact of evolution on not just religious thought but all aspects of life. Here we see the gap between the two types of knowledge widening. Science has emerged from the cocoon of religion but still finds it difficult to free itself from the shreds of its previous existence.

Scientists are ordinary people living in diverse communities, not insensate robots. The third chapter therefore outlines the lives and beliefs of Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace also thought of natural selection as a mechanism for evolution but nevertheless pursued an interest in spiritualism. Tensions caused by the contradictions between science and religion were playing themselves out in real life.

Chapter 4 takes the previous chapters as its foundation and discusses some of the ideas that have been advanced to explain how human activities that are readily identifiable as religious have been understood. Any explanation for religion must take into account both its continuities and its diversity. Why do all people at all times seem to have had a religion?

In answering this question, Chapters 5, 6 and 7 consider, respectively, religious experience, belief and practice. Although certain mental experiences are foundational, religion cannot be reduced to them. Rather, religion is the outcome of complex interactions between human neurology, social contexts and repeated practices.

Chapter 8 takes up the story that began at, or even before, the time of the first of the Prolegomena’s Windows on the Past. It begins with a brief outline of Upper Palaeolithic religious experience, belief and practice in the deep caves of France and Spain. I then ask how Upper Palaeolithic people used the varied spaces provided by the configurations of the caves. The exploitation of space in Upper Palaeolithic times can be compared with the structure and use of a Christian cathedral. The Upper Palaeolithic caves are the earliest evidence for what I argue is an inevitable relationship between religion and social discrimination.

Chapter 9 shows how religious experience, belief and practice work in vastly differing societies. The two contrasted examples are medieval Europe, with special reference to Hildegard of Bingen, and southern Africa, with its archaeologically known San rock paintings. This rather unexpected juxtaposition shows that specific religious visions are evident in the writings and manuscript illuminations of Hildegard and also in rock paintings made by the San. A coincidence? Almost certainly not.

The final chapter considers responses that religious people are today advancing as they confront the rising tide of disbelief and the secularization of Western civilization. I argue that this sceptical surge derives from the fact that many people no longer believe in a supernatural realm and divinely revealed knowledge – despite the apparently contradictory example of the United States. Increasingly, people are achieving ‘freedom of thought’.

The respected Harvard philosopher A. N. Whitehead tackled the problem of religion and science in his 1925 Lowell Lectures:

The clash is a sign that there are wider truths and finer perspectives within which a reconciliation of a deeper religion and a more subtle science will be found.... Science is concerned with the general conditions which are observed to regulate physical phenomena; whereas religion is wholly wrapped up in the contemplation of moral and aesthetic values. On the one side there is the law of gravitation, and on the other the contemplation of beauty and holiness. What one side sees, the other misses; and vice versa.

We may be forgiven for thinking that Whitehead was writing at the beginning of the twenty-first century, so little has changed. But the position he adopts is manifestly untrue. It is one of those apparently finely balanced and therefore rather attractive statements that do not stand up to scrutiny. As the following chapters show, religion does impinge on ‘physical phenomena’: Christians are asked to believe that Jesus was born of a virgin, that he rose from the dead, and that prayers for healing, rain and so forth are sometimes answered. At the same time, it is clear that ‘moral and aesthetic values’ are not the exclusive preserve of religion. People of no religious beliefs whatsoever are capable of moral action and human empathy.

Throughout the writing of this book I have been deeply aware that some readers will find any criticism of religion offensive. I have no wish to hurt their feelings. There are a few aspects of religion that almost have me too ‘hoping it might be so’. I merely ask believers to ponder Darwin’s words at the beginning of this Preface.

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