Deity - Scientific Positions On Deities

Scientific Positions On Deities

See also: Evolutionary origin of religions, Evolutionary psychology of religion, and Neurotheology

Pascal Boyer argues that while there is a wide array of supernatural concepts found around the world, in general, supernatural beings tend to behave much like people. The construction of gods and spirits like persons (anthropomorphism) is one of the oldest characteristics of religion. He cites examples from Greek Mythology which is, in his opinion, more like a modern soap opera than other religious systems. Anthropologist Stewart Elliott Guthrie, contends that people project human features onto non-human aspects of the world because it makes those aspects more familiar. Sigmund Freud also suggested that god concepts are projections of one's father. Likewise, Émile Durkheim was one of the earliest to suggest that gods represent an extension of human social life to include supernatural beings. In line with this reasoning, psychologist Matt Rossano contends that when humans began living in larger groups, they may have created gods as a means of enforcing morality. In small groups, morality can be enforced by social forces such as gossip or reputation. However it is much harder to enforce morality using social forces in much larger groups. He indicates that by including ever watchful gods and spirits, humans discovered an effective strategy for restraining selfishness and building more cooperative groups.

More recently, neurotheology, which was originally introduced by Aldous Huxley, studies religious experience of god and spirituality in terms of cognitive neuroscience. Closely related, evolutionary psychology hypothesizes on the reason for the existence of these cognitive processes by examining the survival and reproductive functions they might serve.