Religion has been with us as long as there has been human civilization, if not longer. Conversely, for as long as there has been human civilization, religion has been a battleground, both real and theoretical. Even today we see it in fanatics killing those with whom they disagree or the advent of the so-called "new atheism." Too often lost in both the pervasiveness of religion and the commotion it can generate is the key question of its purpose.
Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire are among the latest to investigate and opine on the answer to that question. At bottom, the one they provide in God's Brain is quite simple. Taking the position that any one religious belief or total lack thereof is immaterial to finding the answer, they conclude that the purpose of religion is to "brainsoothe." In other words, religion exists to help the brain deal with both internal and external stress and anxiety, something they call "brainpain."
Tiger and McGuire are not the first to analyze the brain's role in religion. Some have argued that religion is an evolutionary tool so humans can cope with knowing death is inevitable, an awareness other species do not possess. Others debate whether the brain specifically originated religion or if it is simply the result of neural connections that evolved for other purposes. Still others question the whole idea that religion may be "hardwired" into the brain, containing it is simply a sociological adaptation. Tiger, a professor of anthropology, and McGuire, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, combine their expertise and ultimately conclude the brain is both the source and principal beneficiary of religion.
God's Brain is meant for a lay audience. The authors frequently express their concepts in simple, everyday terms. For example, "Religion is to the brain what jogging is to the legs." Even those of us who can barely cope with chemistry for dummies can grasp that concept. That may be in part due to the fact that they are dealing with a subject that has far less empirical data than other subjects. Still, McGuire and Tiger invoke a wide range of social and "hard" sciences, whether brain chemistry or the study of nonhuman primates. Although the range can make the material somewhat kaleidoscopic at times, they do not let the book become too abstract or academic.
Article comments
1 - Moooooo
I can’t figure out why this “theory” is getting any attention. Fundamentally, it’s nothing new, and the new aspects are a simplistic “just-so story.”
First, the idea that God is all in the mind (or brain) has been around for centuries (if not millennia). If one doesn’t accept supernatural explanations, of course one thinks religion originates in the brain"where else could it possibly come from?
Tiger and McGuire simply adorn this basic materialist proposition with a bunch of fashionable concepts from evolutionary biology and neurology, with their own pseudo-scientific variations (I mean, really"“brainpain”? “brain juice”? Can anyone take that seriously?). The idea that such a varied, rich phenomena that holds such deep meaning to so many people (whether it’s true or not) can be defined as a simple chemical “secretion” is reductive to the point of absurdity.
As an aside"if the brain is capable of producing these “juices” whenever it wants to feel good (and if this good feeling is evolutionarily beneficial, as the authors suggest)"why doesn’t it produce them all the time? Why is there sadness, grief, or depression?
Finally, despite the authors' contention that they're trying to take religion more seriously than other atheists, there's a definite note of intellectual arrogance in their viewpoint (I think it's unintentional, but it's there nonetheless). The underlying assumption is that religion is something that happens in other people's benighted brains--but not theirs. Other people's brains (the vast majority of humanity) are capable of producing fictions that are readily believed, but Tiger and McGuire's brains secrete only truth. If their basic contention is that our brains mislead us, how can they be so sure that their own brains aren't doing the same thing?