The Darwinian Theory Of The Origin Of Religions

The origin of religions and Darwinian theory have been inextricably linked in the last 150 years. With his magnum opus, the famous scientist turned everything we knew about our origin and evolution upside down. It changed our view of who we were and, therefore, who we are.

Let us remember that Charles Darwin himself dedicated a chapter in one of his most important books, The Origin of Man , to the origin of religions. Thus, if our characteristics are the product of evolution, religion would be no less so.

Darwinian theory

Do not forget that Charles Darwin left one of the most important legacies in the human history of science. With the publication of The Origin of Species , he turned everything we thought we knew about the appearance of life on Earth upside down.

Although his thinking was then the stimulus from which many controversies were born, the influence of all Darwinian research to this day has been enormous. In fact, its advances have shaped the way we see the current human being, changing scientific thinking in the last 100 years and showing a new direction to know the past, present and future life on our planet.

Once Darwin shows that the creationist theory has nothing to do with the appearance of life, why do religions appear? The author shows that behavior and the brain have also been products of human evolution itself. In other words, everything that has survived the passage of time, including religion, necessarily has an evolutionary explanation.

The origin of religions through the prism of Charles Darwin’s theories

One of the most important texts that we currently have to establish this union between Darwinian evolutionism and religious origin is found in the research of Elizabhet Culotta, whose essay On the Origin of Religion was published on the Origins blog belonging to the scientific journal Science , of great prestige.

According to the author, there is a natural and human propensity to believe in invisible deities. To explain this, the author turns to the theories of Darwin, who already in his day considered that belief in gods and religions was not something mysterious at all. According to Darwin, at the same time that the human being had a certain capacity for reasoning, he could have vaguely speculated about its existence. However, in the absence of scientific method, curiosity, imagination and wonder prevailed.

That is, the human being, curious by nature, was looking for an explanation of his own origin. Thus, in the absence of answers, religion springs naturally from the human mind, so that a cognitive science in this regard can be established based on anthropology, neuroscience and psychology, in a way that can explain the mental construction of a religious thought.

Other sources

In his work, Culotta names other interesting sources, for example, in reference to the study of the experimental psychologist Justin Barrett, of the University of Oxford. Following Darwinian theories, this professor discovered that there are functional properties in human cognitive systems that incline us to the belief in supernatural agents, that is, something like a god.

That is, following Barrett’s theories, we can easily link with Darwin’s, since both consider that the elaboration and roots of religions lie in a sophisticated social cognition.

In this sense, we can consult the Yale University psychologist Paul Bloom. According to his studies, the human being has a great capacity to imbue everything with spirituality, even inanimate objects. This is how it adds to all belief, desire, emotion, and even consciousness, forming the core of a religious movement.

All of them take as their origin Darwin’s theories about the origin of religions, which even goes so far as to compare the follow-up to the existence of the gods with the love that a dog can profess for its master. There is no doubt that Darwin was the forerunner of these current professionals. According to this researcher, many societies showed their beliefs in the idea of ​​the existence of a divinity, the search for spiritual or invisible agents.