God in the brain

Contemporary atheist writers are increasingly inclined to forsake purely rationalist or psychological arguments against the existence of God. The current bunch are gnawing at the edges of neurological and genetic explanations, with the implication that religion may emerge as a ‘natural’, built-in navigational error. The subtitles of the two books under review say more about the pitch they are making than the rather whimsical titles. The genetic approach suggests that religion could be a (sort of) virus inherent in the brain’s response to the human condition. ‘Sort of’ analogies abound in this experimental playground.

Psychological explanations of religion were the norm among early 20th-century writers like Freud, Wells, Shaw and the estimable C. E. M. Joad. Caustic rationalism was already in evidence during the enlightenment of the 17th and 18th centuries. Marx’s theory of ‘alienation’, which subsumes religion as the opium of the masses, is one version of materialist psychology: how, why, do people (the oppressed) come to believe in pie in the sky? Psychology or psychoanalysis treated religion as error, as the refraction of ignorance, fear, anxiety, desire and of man’s frightening mortal insignificance under the vast, cold gaze of immortal nature. But beyond these agreed existential points, the psychologists divided: Joad marked down religion as the manipulative tool of the rich and privileged, Freud headed for the universal Oedipus complex.

The rationalist psychologists were fascinated by the reports of anthropologists. Students of religion worshipped a god called Malinowski, normally to be found taking notes in the Trobriand Islands. Lewis Wolpert recounts a report by the anthropologist Pascal Boyer of how the Fang people believed in flying witches but were puzzled by the Trinity and the Christian belief that all human misfortunes could be traced to two ancestors eating some exotic fruit.