THE IMPETUS FOR BELIEVING IN GOD
By Dr. Muhammad Solaiman
Why do humans always believe in God?
Why are more than 90% of the world’s population embracing some sort of a religious belief? Why has religion survived and thrived for more than 10,000 years in every human culture? Is religion an illusion propagated by early civilization? Could it be set aside, as postulated by Sigmund Freud, in favor of reason and science of modern times? Could people forsake religion, if they are brought up in communist societies where religion is ridiculed?
Is religion a pathological irrational thought?
Sigmund Freud (1856-1939) postulated that God is an illusion based upon the infantile emotional needs of a powerful, supernatural protector. He considered religious beliefs as a pathological and a malignant social force that encourages irrationality thoughts and ritualistic behaviours.
He also thought that in modern time religion could be set aside in favour of reason and science. Interestingly, according to a 2014 statistical study by the Pew Research Centre, 76.5% of the adult population in the USA have identified themselves as religious, though they do not suffer from survival pressures.
Religion and communism
Fighting religion was the cornerstone of the entire ideology of the former Soviet Republics. Therefore, religion was ridiculed and atheism was propagated. A strong sense of social stigma was imposed on religion by the official structures and mass media.
However, in spite of the fierce war on religion, it remained dormant under communism and once people were given some freedom, they gradually returned to God and religion.
Religion is deeply rooted in human
The persistence of religion for more than 10,000 years in every human culture and its persistence in communist countries and rich countries leads us to the conclusion that religious concepts are deeply rooted in human beings and humans. So, how does science explain this persistence?
Modern science and the inclination to religious belief
The modern science of religion has been trying to tackle some questions such as: why is the religion so common around the world? Why do religious practices take on common characteristics across cultures? Why do some religious ideas and practices out-compete others? Why is the believing in God is so enduring over thousands of years?
The answer to these questions may be concluded after the analysis of what researchers have found.
The inborn inclination to religious
Justin Barrett, the director of the Cognition, Religion and Theology Project at the Centre for Anthropology and Mind at Oxford University, has documented that the majority of humans are “born believers”, and are naturally inclined to find religious claims and explanations attractive and they attain fluency in using them. He and his co-workers think that the attraction of humans to religion is an evolutionary by-product of our ordinary cognitive equipment.
Barrett also argues against the ‘‘indoctrination hypothesis”, which suggests that religion can be reduced to a product of cultural brainwashing. He presented data which argue convincingly against the indoctrination hypothesis and tried to demonstrate that children’s minds are not sponges that gullible and indiscriminately soak up cultural information. However, he believes that the tendency to believe can still be shaped and modulated by individual differences and the exposure to various environmental conditions.
The inborn inclination to believe in God
Data are building up to suggest that children have a natural propensity to believe in powerful supernatural agents, and God in particular. Their supernatural concepts are formed within the first few years of life as a nearly inevitable product of human development.
The inborn inclination to the intention-based creation
Research suggests that young children have a broad tendency to reason about natural phenomena in term intention-based accounts. They have a cognition tendency to see the world as a place with an intentional design, created by someone. Children as young as age 3 naturally attribute supernatural abilities to “God,” even though they have never been taught about God. They also see natural phenomena as a result of nonhuman design and that they are created for a purpose. Kelemen, therefore, suggests that children may be particularly receptive to the idea of a creator deity.
This tendency also extends to adults who also search for meaning in their lives, particularly during times of uncertainty and are primed to see signs and patterns in the world around them.
The inborn inclination to believe in a pre – and afterlife
There are themes which are common to most of the world’s religions. Research suggests that humans have basic cognitive equipment that biases them towards certain kinds of thinking about a pre-life, an afterlife, God and invisible beings that are doing things.
Taken together, we may conclude that several articles of scientific research have been published asserting that “faith in God” exists within each one of us. In other words, researchers believe that we have a cognitive tendency which biases us toward religion and the tendency to believe in an omnipresent God.
On the left one of the scientific papers indicating the effect of prayers on brain networks. On the right, the brain of a Muslim before and after his prayer. Notice the differences in the patterns of the green and red fluorescent colours of the brain scan after praying. This indicates that prayer tunes the brain waves produced by masses of communicating neurons.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eg-Kzku0zXg . Retrieved in January 2018.
Researchers in developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and particularly the cognitive science of religion, have come to the conclusion that religion comes nearly as naturally to us as the language.
Evidence that the brain is primed to believe
Neuroscience research of Jordan Grafman and his colleagues (the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke) supports the idea that the brain is primed to believe.
In one of the studies of this group in 2009, they used Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) which proved that religious thoughts activate the area of the brain involved in the deciphering of emotions and intentions. In this study, when people heard phrases such as “God’s will guide my acts” and “God protects one’s life,” areas of their brains lit up. This is evidence that the brain uses the same circuits to think about and experience religion as it does about beliefs.
In 2009, another team of researchers also found that the same brain areas were activated when religious participants were praying.
The fMRI and the electrical activity of the brain (EEG) were also used to monitor the brain activity of Buddhists during a long-term meditation. The study revealed that these Buddhists had a stronger and better-organized attention system than people who are just starting to learn how to meditate.
The changes in the electrical circuits were located in the anterior cortex of the brain and the study concluded that meditation changes the brain circuits involved in the regulation of emotion and attention.
This study also found that people with more religious zeal and greater belief in God are calmer and more graceful under pressure. These findings mesh with a large body of research and clinical reports which suggest that religious people are less prone to depression and anxiety.
Why do religions have common characteristics?
As discussed before science has suggested that believing in God is inherited as a part of the human nature which is called in Islam “Fitrah“. Part of this Fitrah is also the moral commitment of humans. Therefore, regardless of their type of religion, people of different civilizations and cultures have innately realized that it is bad to cheat, lie, steal, kill or to torture others.
God has sent His guidance to all the humanity through successive prophets since the creation of Adam (PBUH), who is considered the first prophet. On the other hand, God wouldn’t deprive the humanity of his Mercy for thousands of years until the coming of a Messiah like Jesus (PBUH), to carry their sins.
“We sent you with the truth; a bearer of good news, and a warner. There is no community, but a warner has passed through it” (Qur’an 35: 24).
Therefore, both Fitrah and the revelation of God’s guidance to all nations may explain why religions of all nations have common characteristics. They all have roots in the revelations of God. Though these religions by time could have been mixed up with myths of a certain society, they still keep some of the remains of the original message of God revealed to them through one of His prophets.
Why does a religion out-compete other religions?
It seems that religious ideas and practices which fit well with the inherited natural instinct of human beings (Fitrah), would be more agreeable and attractive to people. This is because it arouses what has been deeply rooted in their nature.
Therefore, because Islam was revealed by God, Who created humans and seeded the Fitrah in their body and spirit, it fits well with their nature. This perhaps may explain why Islam is the fastest growing religion. Interestingly, Islam spreads fast, in spite of the efforts of some Western media to distort it and the fact that Muslims are not well organised in their missionary activities like Christians.
“So devote yourself to the religion of monotheism—the natural instinct (Fitrah) God has instilled in mankind. There is no altering God’s creation. This is the true religion, but most people do not know” (Qur’an 30: 30).
Islam explains the impetus for religion
The Qur’an preceded researchers’ reports that Children are “born believers” and they do not simply acquire religious beliefs through indoctrination.
“And when your Lord brought forth descendants from the loins of the sons of Adam and made them witnesses against their own selves by asking them: ‘Am I not your Lord?’ They said: ‘Yes, we do testify.’ Thus you cannot say on the Day of Resurrection, ‘We were unaware of this’” (Qur’an, 7:172).
This verse of the Qur’an suggests that at the time of the creation of Adam God genetically printed in Adam (PBUH), and consequently in his offspring, an inborn tendency to believe and recognize Him as his God.
In other words, the tendency to be religious is not a by-product of an evolutionary process, which took thousands of years; it is rather because God has printed it in the genes of every single cell in the human body, which of course includes the neural cells. Therefore, believing in God is a natural phenomenon which has been impeded in all humans whenever and wherever they are.
This inherited information may explain why children acknowledge the presence of God as their Creator and acknowledge Him as an all-Knowing, Supreme and Mighty Lord as discussed before.
The Blue Brain Project is an attempt to reverse engineer the human brain using a computer simulation. The project was founded in May 2005 at the EPFL which is widely regarded as a world-leading university in Lausanne, Switzerland.
The Blue Brain is a Swiss national brain initiative, which aims to create a digital reconstruction of the brain. Neuroscientists working on Blue Brain Project try to simulate the mammalian brain to identify the fundamental principles of brain structure and function. The research team led by Professor Henry Markram have discovered clustered which contain a network of about fifty neurons on average and they represent part of the building blocks responsible for the basic innate knowledge.
The inherited innate knowledge is not a strange phenomenon found only in humans. It can be easily watched and admitted in animals. For example, when a horse is born, he can immediately walk. He walks without learning because the knowledge of walking is simply inherited genetically in him.
God called the innate acceptance and believing in Him, in the Qur’an, Fitrah as exemplified in the following verse, and the same term (Fitrah) was also used by the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), to indicate the same phenomenon.
“So devote yourself to the true faith – Fitrah (the innate belief in God) – that has been instilled in mankind. There shall be no altering of God’s creation. That is the upright religion, but most people do not know” (Qur’an 30:30).
“Every child is born with Fitrah (innate belief in God), and it is his parents that may make of him a Jew, a Christian or a Majus” (Narrated by Al-Bukhari).
Muslim scholars have defined Fitrah as an instinct, intuition, or insight to believe in God. This Fitrah does not only give mankind the tendency to believe in God, but also the innate disposition towards the right actions and how to live in balance in Societies. A study on children – with biological or adoptive parents – asserts that they are innately inclined to religion and they tend to mirror the religious beliefs and behaviors of their parents.
Fitrah is believed by Muslims to be implanted by God into humans in the purest form of goodness. We are all born with Fitrah including even those who disbelieve in God. This may explain why atheists possess an internal disposition that still tells them how to differentiate between the right and wrong actions.
For Further Reading
1. Public Becoming less religious- http://www.pewforum.org/2015/11/03/u-s-public-becoming-less-religious/. Retrieved, 11. 2017.2. Religion in the Soviet Union, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_the_Soviet_Union#Islam. Retrieved, 11. 2017.3. Barrett, J. L. (2012). Born believers: The science of children’s religious belief. Simon and Schuster.4. Knight, N., Sousa, P., Barrett, J. L., & Atran, S. (2004). Children’s attributions of beliefs to humans and God: Cross-cultural evidence. Cognitive Science, 28 (1), 117-126.
5. Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children “intuitive theists”? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15(5), 295-301.
6. Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A. K., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106(12), 4876-4881.
7. Schjoedt, U., Stødkilde-Jørgensen, H., Geertz, A. W., & Roepstorff, A. (2009). Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(2), 199-207.
8. Teper, R., & Inzlicht, M. (2012). Meditation, mindfulness and executive control: the importance of emotional acceptance and brain-based performance monitoring. Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 8 (1), 85-92.
9. Perin, R., Berger, T. K., & Markram, H. (2011). A synaptic organizing principle for cortical neuronal groups. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108 (13), 5419-5424.
10. Koenig, L. B., McGue, M., Krueger, R. F., & Bouchard, T. J. (2005). Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness: Findings for retrospective and current religiousness ratings. Journal of Personality, 73 (2), 471-488.