A Need for God

Common to nearly all stories we heard today and last time is some kind of deity. Why?

People all over the world have realized (with no influence from other cultures) that they are clearly imperfect beings, so they must be inferior to something. This idea seems to be programmed into our minds.

Toward the end of the 18th century, the scientific minds hypothesized that religion would soon perish from the earth. As higher criticism and scientific method became more prevalent means to evaluate the world, the “scientific elite” believed that any idea that could not be proven by naturalistic means (such as religion) would become irrelevant. However, more than 200 years later, religion is still well established in modern culture and has not shown signs of disappearing from the earth.

In his book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, sociologist Emile Durkheim said, “A society has all that is necessary to arouse the sensation of the divine in minds, merely by the power that it has over them”. Thus, society defines what kind of religion it will promote. Because the people of that society will be nurtured into having the needs of the society, they will be drawn to the religion that is promoted to fit those needs. Therefore, many religions are dynamic: changing in order to continue to satisfy the needs of the culture. This means that a mind will be programed to rely on religion.

Dr. Andrew Newberg, Director of Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College, has been on the leading edge of exploring the neurophysiological correlate of religious experiences. In 1998, Dr. Newberg and Dr. Eugene G. d’Aquili published their research on mental activity during such experiences.

Newberg and d’Aquili propose, in a paper published in 2000, that a key part of religious experience is self-transcendence. This often occurs in the form of what they call a state of Absolute Unitary Being (AUB). In this state, “people lose all sense of discrete being, and even the difference between self and other is obliterated”. In Christian traditions, this is often referred to as a “union with God”, while in Hindu traditions it is described as a “manifestation of God”. This state of transcendence is a part of every major religion in the modern world. 

Newberg and d’Aquili postulate that the state of AUB comes from the holistic operator which produces the perception of mystical states, often accompanied with the feeling of an ultimate transcendent “other”. This holistic operator can be simulated by a model proposed by Newberg and d’Aquili. They propose that if either the ergotrophic system (“extended upward to include dominant hemisphere”) or the trophotropic system (“extended upward to include the nondominant hemisphere”) were saturated, it would stimulate the other system, giving a feeling of wholeness. This state is described by the experience of “beauty”, “religious awe”, or “religious exaltation in the perception of unity”. Thus, the AUB state is a state of intense consciousness.

Religion has been shown to have social benefits to aid in its survival. A paper, written by Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff, discussed the benefit of religious prosociality. They showed that major religions that are centered on a moralistic god facilitate altruist tendencies. Those who claimed religious affiliation were shown to be more likely to engage in behaviors that were not beneficial for the individual but beneficial to the group. However, they quote empirical evidence to show that religious individuals are selective in their prosociality. “Religion’s association with prosociality is most evident when the situation calls for maintaining a favorable social reputation within the ingroup”. The authors also state that religion is not the only prompt that will induce prosociality. Secular institutions such as courts and policing forces have also been shown to induce the same effects (such as donating to charity) as religious associations.

Religion is still present in the modern world because it offers benefit to society and to many individuals of that society. It appeals to basic needs that many humans have. It has also been shown to be one method to promote prosociality (among other secular methods). Studies in spiritual neuroscience have also shown religious traditions to have benefits for many individuals.

The future of religion and belief in deities lies in the hands of what culture determines to be its needs. As long as aculture defines needs that are met by neurological and social benefits offered by religion, I predict that religion will continue to manifest itself in that culture.

So is there a divine design to our desire to need a god, or did it arise spontaneously? And so the debate rages on...