The cognitive science of religion : Implications for morality

A cognitive scientific approach to religion reveals the moral role of religion in human evolutionary history and provides insight into the continuing influence of religion in human affairs. While morality can be understood and justified apart from any religious foundation, religion cannot be separated from its moral function. After setting out the evolved cognitive bases of religious beliefs and behaviors, a model for the nexus between religion and morality is developed. From this it follows that religions constitute moral worldviews that emerge from and tap into deep moral and emotional instincts. This makes religion, and moral worldviews more generally, profoundly important, but also makes them dangerously problematic. A case study of the intersection of religion, race, and politics in contemporary American presidential politics will be used to explicate these ideas.


Introduction
The connection between religion and morality is often taken to be fundamental and necessary.A formulation attributed to Dostoyevsky concisely states this view: "If there were no God, then a l would be permitted." A cognitive scientific ap roach to religion and to morality, one grounded in an evolutionary context, sup orts the fundamental connection between the two, but reverses the dependency.It is more accurate to claim, If there ere no morality, then there would be no (need fo ) Go .From the per ective of the cognitive science of religion (CSR), religion is a product of human bio-cultural evolution that functions to meet social cooperation cha lenges that accompany increasing group size and complexity (e.g.Guthrie, 1993;Boyer, 2001;Bu bulia, 2004a;Bar ett, 2004;Johnson and Kruger, 2004;Henrich et al., 2010;Teehan, 2010;Norenzayan, 2013).In this sense, religion is a moral innovation and as such it is insepara le from its moral function.However, the converse is not true, i.e. we can have morality without religion, but we cannot have religion without morality.The goal of this essay is to provide the evidence and ar uments to sup ort this thesis.
Before we turn to that goal, we must stipulate what is intended by the terms "religion" and "morality." Religion is notoriously difficult to define, but we need not enter into this debate here.For present purposes, we are concerned with "behaviors, badges, bans, and beliefs" (Sosis, 2006) that we would typica ly "deem religious" (Taves, 2009).Specifica ly, we wi l consider the generation of god-beliefs (where "god" represents any of the numerous supernatural entities found in diverse cultures, e.g.spirits, ghosts, demons, ance or-spirits, etc.) and the ritualistic behaviors that incorporate/re-inforce such beliefs.Morality is to be understood in a compara ly broad and general sense.It is not restricted to formal systems of ethics, or to axiology, but denotes a l behaviors, attitudes, and beliefs that may be deemed prosocial.

The priority of morality
Given this understanding of morality, we can see that morality predates anything that could be deemed religion.Prosociality is the defining chara eristic of social mammals.Such creatures evolved the biological and neurological capacities for cooperative behavior as an adaptive response to the cha lenges of survival and reproduction.Humans are descended from a line of social mammals dating back tens of mi lions of years.While it may be ar ued that attributing anything resem ling human morality to such distant ance ors is an inap ropriate anthropomorphizing, these creatures-by definition-had evolved capacities a lowing for the extension of cooperation to, at a minimum, near kin.That is, they had at least the primitive building locks of morality.When we consider our extant relatives, we find these building locks distributed widely across ecies of social mammals.
The most we l-known examples come from the "higher" mammals.Empathy, fairness, reciprocal altruism, moral anger have a l been documented in chimpanzees (de Waal, 2012;Brosnan and de Waal, 2014;Clay et al., 2016).The last common ance or of humans and chimpanzees dates back some 5-7 mi lion years ago, indicating that these moral building locks predate that split.Cetaceans, which diverged from the lineage that led to primates at a much earlier date, are also known to demonstrate empathy, fairness, and social complexity (Marino et al., 2007;White, 2007).A bit closer on the evolutionary bush, but sti l further away than primates, are rats, and studies show even the "lowly" rat exhibits empathetic concern and helping behavior (QiLiang et al., 2009;Bartal et al., 2011).For social mammals, shared patterns of normative behavior make successful group living possi le.Prosociality is for social mammals the defining adaptation.
As many of the core elements of human morality are found throughout social species, it may only be anthropocentrism that prevents us recognizing chimpanzee morality.However, one need not be anthropocentric to deny that there is anything that might reasona ly be deemed chimp religion.
Since morality, from an evolutionary per ective, is an adaptive response to the cha lenges of group living, the more complex the group structure, the more developed and complex wi l the morality need to be.Humans live in the largest and most complex groups of any ecies on earth.There are, of course, much larger groups of organisms, the eusocial insects such as ants and bees come to mind.However, while such groups are larger than the typical group size for humans throughout most of our evolutionary history, they are relatively simple, with place and function in the social organization often determined genetica ly; and, significantly, such groups have high levels of genetic relatedness.No ecies lives in groups comprising so many non-kin, nor does any ecies possess the social fluidity and dynamics of even human hunter-gatherer societies.Consequently, humans and our direct ance ors faced more complex cooperation pro lems than any ecies of which we are aware.Meeting this cha lenge required sophisticated cognitive abilities, and indeed it is posited that the evolution of our brains, and particularly that of the neo-cortex, was driven by the need to successfu ly manage this social complexity (Dunbar, 1998;Dunbar and Shultz, 2007).For humans, as for social mammals in general, successful negotiation of the social environment is as essential to evolutionary success, on both an individual and group level, as survival and reproduction tasks.Developing systems for managing social complexity-i.e.morality-in a way that a lowed for successful group a ion was the key adaptive advantage that allowed homo sapiens to achieve global dominance.Morality, understood in this way, is not simply a concern for humans, as a prerequisite for evolutionary survival, it is central to our nature.

The evolution of religion
A key question that CSR seeks to answer in relation to belief in gods is not primarily "why do people (or particular individuals) believe in god(s)?"-how any one person comes to accept a ecific religious belief is complex and highly idiosyncratic-but rather "how did humans (as a ecies) come to have the cognitive capacities that give rise to god-beliefs?"As such, CSR is necessarily grounded in an evolutionary context, and the basic ap roach is to understand what cognitive strategies would have provided our ance ors with an advantage in the stru gle for evolutionary success.Such an ap roach, however, does not constitute an act of constructing so-ca led "just so stories." It is rather a process of abductive reasoning based on empirical evidence about human psychology provided by contemporary cognitive science, neuroscience, behavioral economics, etc., in conjunction with a reconstruction of the relevant environment of evolutionary adaptation based on evolutionary biology, paleontology, archaeology, and anthropology.
The implicit model of the evolved mind employed by CSR treats cognition as ena ive. 2 Ena ive cognition sees the mind functioning to bring forth from the environment that information salient to the organism's goals; in this case, those of evolutionary success, i.e. predator avoidance, resource acquisition, detection of prey, etc. (Varela et al., 1991;Stewart, 2010).This ap roach is captured succinctly by Stewart Guthrie: "Perception is interpretation" (Guthrie, 1993, p. 41).

Guthrie continues:
If perception requires choosing among interpretations and therefore requires betting, and if the payoff is discovering significance, then the first bets to cover-those with the biggest payoff-are bets as high on the scale of organization as possible.The discoveries of order they yield are those we most need.Some such bets are built into perceptual systems genetically (p. 45).
This leads to one of the basic "god-generating mechanisms" (Shults, 2014), agency detection.Humans have a we l-e a lished predisposition to interpret under-determined stimuli as agents, i.e. things a ing with intent-and we can readily understand why such a cognitive process would have evolved.Given the dangerous and often under-determined environment in which our ance ors lived for mi lions of years, it was vital to detect whatever agents might be lurking in the brush (as there often were predatory agents lurking in the brush).It was so important to detect agents that false-positives were less costly than false-negatives (Guthrie, 1993) and so even a hypera ive agency detection device, or HADD (Bar ett, 2004), would be favored by natural selec-tion.A consequence of HADD is that humans have a natural cognitive capacity to perceive the presence of agents based on minimal evidence and to act on the basis of such perceptions-even if no actual agent is present.
Of course, perceiving an agent does one little good unless one can devise some plan of a ion in relation to that agent.As defined, to perceive an agent is to perceive a being that acts with intention, and so determining just what that intention may be is crucial.This leads us to a second a ect of the process-Theory of Mind (ToM), the ability to read-into the mind of another based on external cues.This is something humans do readily and automatica ly when intera ing with other humans.Indeed, it is an essential a ect of social intercourse, and given our nature as ultra-social animals, this capacity is quite sophisticated in humans (Boyer, 2001;Bloom, 2005).In typical, everyday intera ions, cues are facial expressions, body lan uage, vocalizations, etc., but we are also primed to infer intentions from much less obvious signals.
A noise up ahead, while wa king on a dark night, is sufficient to tri ger our fight/flight/freeze instinct (Damasio, 1994).We automatica ly interpret such a cue as a sign of danger.The noise in the brush that we interpret as an agent, we may also interpret as a sign of predatory intent, and we act on that interpretation.Humans evolved to be predisposed to perceive agents (even with minimal and under-determined stimuli) and to attribute mental states to those agents (also based on minimal and under-determined evidence).
These cognitive strategies of HADD and ToM are aspects of a more general cognitive tendency-that of searching for meaningful patterns.In an environment that is both dangerous and under-determined, there is an urgency to making decisions on how to act; we are often denied the luxury of trial and er or, or a patient investigation of the evidence.Re ularly occur ing relations between elements of the environment provide valua le maps for negotiating that environment and deciding how to act.Patterns that provide evidence of agents and intentions are particularly salient.We need to not only detect such patterns, but to read into them; that is, to interpret what intentions, purposes, designs, those patterns may evince.As with HADD, it is better to infer purpose in a pattern than to miss out on a potential clue to some agent's intent.This leads to a tendency that has been termed "promiscuous teleology" (Kelemen, 2004).Humans are natura ly predisposed to search for and read into the environment signs of purpose, intent, design.
These cognitive strategies are ena ive processes the ena le humans to negotiate their environments in pursuit of evolutionary goals.They also constitute that natural bases for beliefs in gods.As Justin Bar ett has put it: Belief in gods requires no special parts of the brain.Belief in gods requires no spe-

cial mystical experiences […]. Belief in gods requires no coercion or brainwashing […]. Rather, belief in gods arises because of the natural functioning of completely normal mental tools working in common natural
and social contexts (Barrett, 2004, p. 21).
This is, of course, a very basic treatment of the topic, but it should suffice for our present purposes.The question now is, what does this have to do with morality?

Morality and the gods: The cognitive connection
For many people and in many religious traditions, the notion that the gods have a role in human morality is a central assumption; one that does not even have to be explained.While the salience of morality for god is not as universal as commonly sup osed, belief in mora ly relevant gods is ubiquitous throughout history and across the globe.How this came to be can also be explored from an evolved cognitive per ective.To understand how gods come to play a role in human morality we need to explore how humans come to think about the mind of god.There is a rich literature exploring this (Boyer, 2001;Atran, 2002;Purzycki and Sosis, 2011;Purzycki et al., 2012), but we can summarize the general conclusion: humans model their understanding of the mind of god on their intuitive understanding of human minds.As Scott Atran writes, "Gods and other supernatural beings are systematica ly unlike us in a few general waysmore powerful, longer lived, more knowledgea le…-predicta ly like us in an enormously broader range of usual ways" (Atran, 2002, p. 93).
A particularly nota le way that the mind of a god is unlike that of a human is in its access to socia ly relevant information.Pascal Boyer states that while we conceive of humans as "limited-access strategic agents, " (i.e. they have imperfect access to the minds of others), gods are, often, conceived as "fu l-access strategic agents" (Boyer, 2001, p. 155).This supernatural access is not necessarily conceived as a l-encompassing.It seems particularly focused on information relevant to social exchanges (Purzycki et al., 2012).This is not surprising.Negotiating social relationships is key to human existence.Knowing who can be trusted, who may be cheating the group (or you) and who is doing their part (or not) to sup ort the group's efforts, how to encourage cooperation and discourage antisocial behavior, how to repair damaged relationships, etc., are vital and regular tasks faced by humans, and always have been.These constitute a major function of our mental a ivity, and so when we conceive of the mind of god, we natura ly, instinctively, conceive god as having compara le concerns.This makes gods particularly we l-suited to assume a moral role in human society.The nature of that role is, however, a complicated and evolving issue.
It has been ar ued that there are three distinct (even if frequently overlap ing) moral roles for the gods to play: that of enforcer of group norms, that of legislator of group norms, that of moral exemplar.However, before gods can come to assume such exalted moral positions, they must first be conceived as moral agents with whom humans interact.Given that the mental states of the gods are mode led on the mental states of human agents, the same cognitive tools for social exchanges are employed with gods as are employed with other agents.
To explicate this further, let's consider a case study: Yahweh as a jealous god (see Teehan, 2010).In setting out the commandments on Mt.Sinai, we are informed at the very beginning that Yahweh demands an exclusive relationship with the Hebrew people and warns of ter i le punishment for cases of infidelity, because "I the Lord your God am a jealous God" (Exodus 20:5).Throughout the Hebrew Bi le we are reminded, in the most visceral terms, of this divine chara eristic.For example, in Hosea, Yahweh warns of the consequences of Israel "playing the harlot" with foreign gods: "I [wi l] strip her naked and make her as in the day she is born, and make her like a wilderness […] and slay her with thirst […].Upon her children I wi l have no pity, because they are children of harlotry" (Hosea 2:2-5).
Jealousy is a particularly ugly human emotion that too often is the source of just the kind of spousal abuse ascribed to Yahweh.That this is ascribed to Yahweh should give us pause, and yet countless editors, redactors, and ra binic scholars responsi le for the construction of the Hebrew Bi le saw fit to preserve this representation of their god (and those responsile for selecting texts from the Hebrew Bi le to become part of the Old Te ament in the Christian Bi le saw no reason to do otherwise).While a jealous god does not fit contemporary conceptions of God as a moral exemplar, such a conception does fit with certain moral intuitions.Once the relationship between Yahweh and his people is cast in terms of an exclusive intimate relationship, then jealousy in the face of violations of that relationship, even violent retribution, made intuitive sense: this is how people, e ecia ly powerful males, often respond in similar circumstances.Granted, this is intuitive to a moral psychology underlying a patriarchal view of gender relations, but that is just what we should expect from a text in which patriarchy is a foundational assumption and which represents god as male.
Yahweh as a powerful (male) deity is intuitively understood to act as a powerful (male) human would (although scaled up to divine proportions): "visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments" (Exodus 20:5-6).
Basing the mind of god on the human mind is so natural and intuitive a move that attempts to push back against it have not met with much success.This has been termed the "tragedy of the theologians" (Boyer, 2001).Despite the best efforts of theologians to develop and spread more refined, less anthropomorphic conceptions of God, people readily revert to ta king and thinking about gods in terms that more readily match our evolved cognitive intuitions (Bar ett, 1999;Slone, 2004).And this is not simply a pro lem for contemporary thinkers; we find an early example of this phenomena in the case of .
Epicurus ar ued that people misconceive the gods in that they believe that "the greatest evils hap en to the wicked and the greatest lessings hap en to the good from the hand of the gods" (Epicurus, 1993, p. 62).That is, people, believing that the gods are good and powerful, natura ly infer that they reward those who do good and punish those who do evil.That is, in the lan uage of CSR, they employ their moral psychology in which defection from the moral code needs to be punished and pro-social behavior rewarded in order to make sense of the gods.Epicurus pushed back against this intuitive belief, ar uing that since the gods are "immortal and lessed" they have no interest in the behavior of human beings.While Epicurus inspired devotion from his disciples and continues to influence the skeptica ly inclined, he has been excoriated by believers throughout history and denounced as an atheist (despite asserting that we know the gods exist).Why?Because a god that does not care about human affairs might as we l not exist.To think of god and to not think of god in terms consistent with our intuitive moral psychology just pushes too hard against our moral cognition. 3o conceive of a god, then, is to conceive of a potential actor in social exchanges-i.e.someone to whom behavioral norms are relevant.So, what is it that the gods want?
To answer this question, we cannot restrict our discussion to Bi lical accounts or to Epicurus' contemporaries' beliefs, for these god-conceptions come relatively late in the history of god-beliefs.What we are looking for is the earliest evidence of the religion-morality nexus in order to gain some insight into the role god-beliefs have played in human evolution.In this context it ap ears that whatever it was that the gods wanted, it was not that humans treat each other in an ethical manner.
One of the most influential models within CSR for the moral role of gods involves "big gods" (Norenzayan, 2013) who act as supernatural enforcers of local group norms (Johnson and Kruger, 2004;Johnson, 2005;Johnson and Bering, 2006).We can look past nuanced distinctions between these theories and classify this ap roach as the Supernatural Punishment Hypothesis (SPH).The basic logic of this ap roach is straightforward: Social cooperation comes with a cost; such costs are offset by reciprocal cooperation, whether directly or indirectly via contributions to the group.Defectors from this system of reciprocity raise the risks, and hence the costs, of cooperation.Keeping track of who is a relia le cooperator and who is prone to cheat may tax the cognitive capabilities of any individual, particularly as groups increase in size and complexity.Communal belief in a punishing god-a being conceived as a fu l-access strategic agent-reduces the risks and associated costs of cooperation by making the detection and punishment of cheating more certain.
Despite its strengths, there is a pro lem with this model: the earliest gods were typica ly "sma l gods, " i.e. localized deities, with limited domains of a ivity, who did not seem particularly intere ed in the ethical behavior of humans (Stark, 2001;Baumard and Boyer, 2013;Purzycki, 2011).If such gods did not care that you were sleeping with your neighbor's wife or coveting his oxen, then what did they care about?As Baumard and Boyer put it: "People did think the gods watched them, but that was to monitor the ap ropriate performance of rituals and sacrifices." Therefore, "there seems to be no reason to assume […] that believers in such gods would have been more cooperative, or that this increased cooperation would have made their societies more successful" (Baumard and Boyer, 2013, p. 276).
As I have ar ued elsewhere, this criticism, while salient, does not undermine the case for the moral role of religion in human social evolution, but it does demand that we rework SPH (Teehan, 2016;Teehan and Shults, forthcoming).
While it does seem that most gods were not concerned with personal ethics (at least not until relatively late in the historical record), the fact that they were concerned with ritual behavior and prone to punish ritual violations was sufficient for such gods to play a moral role in human history.Such gods may not have been mora ly-concerned, but they were mora ly-relevant (Teehan, 2016). 4 Even as late as the texts of the Hebrew Bi le, we can see that gods often engaged in corporate punishment.If gods were conceived as punishing the group for individual violations of ritual behavior, then the ritual behavior of individuals had group-wide existential repercussions and would have encouraged punishment of such individuals.This would have a dressed the second order pro lem of altruistic punishment (Fehr and Gachter, 2002;Boyd et al., 2003) since individuals would be motivated to incur the costs associated with punishment as failure to punish ritual-violators would have group-wide costs.This a lows us to understand the role that belief in gods could play in promoting proper ritual behavior.However, we need to do some more work to account for moral behavior.
The key to this is grasping how participation in a group ritual modulates our moral psychology.Rituals function as signals of commitment to an in-group (Irons, 2001;Bu bulia, 2004b;Sosis, 2006;Bu bulia and Sosis, 2011;Whitehouse and Lanman, 2014).Since our moral cognition was shaped to function within groups, morality functions as an in-group adaptation.The group was the site of our strivings for survival and reproductive success; for social ecies, such success was crucia ly dependent upon group solidarity and coherence.This has left a deep imprint on our moral psychology.We can see this most dramatica ly by considering one of the key proximate causes for moral concern, empathy.
There is an impressive body of literature focusing on the role of empathy in morality.Empathy is a complex phenomenon with numerous manife ations (Singer, 2006;Decety and Cowe l, 2014;Singer and Klimecki, 2014;Decety, 2015); neuroscientists have identified up to ten brain areas involved in empathetic responses (Baron-Cohen, 2011).For the sake of our discussion, however, we can define empathy as the cognitive capacity to recognize the emotional states of another and to respond affectively to such emotional states (de Waal, 2008).Studies have shown that tri gering our empathetic systems can motivate a broad suite of prosocial emotions and behaviors, e.g.increased trust, generosity, sensitivity to the suffering of others, motivation to help, and that these empathy-based responses are sensitive to in-group/out-group distinctions.A l of the manife ations of prosociality generated by empathy are scaled up in relation to in-group members.It does not fo low that we do not/cannot feel empathy for strangers, but it seems that, as a general rule, such empathy is dampened compared to in-group empathetic responses (De Vignemont and Singer, 2006;Avenanti et al., 2010;Chiao and Mathur, 2010;Hein et al., 2010;Xu et al., 2009;Cikara and Van Bavel, 2014).Interestingly, this in-group bias in empathy does not necessarily result in out-group hostility; but such hostility does result in the context of inter-group competition (Cikara, et al., 2011).
Rituals then, as signals of in-group status, serve as empathy tri gers and generate a suite of prosocial emotions and behaviors.This serves the moral function of uniting a disparate group into a more cohesive and cooperative community.This process is not dependent on mora ly-concerned gods.Individual members of the group are not cooperating for fear of divine punishment, they are cooperating because of their moral sensitivity and empathetic concern for fe low in-group members.The gods may not care if you are cheating your neighbor, but by participating with your neighbor in a ritual to ap ease that god, you come to care about your neighbors and about treating them fairly.In this way religion comes to serve a moral function within society.We have termed this revision of the SPH the Religion-Empathy-Cooperation Hypothesis, or REACH (Teehan and Shults, forthcoming). 5here is literature attesting to the function of rituals in promoting cooperation and in fusing identity between group members (Whitehouse and Lanman, 2014).There is also evidence that the synchronous movement involved in many rituals also results in increased prosociality (Re dish et al., 2014)-significantly, synchrony is also a recognized empathy-tri ger (Valdesolo and DeSteno, 2011;Behrends et al., 2012).What the REACH model a ds to the literature is the identification of the neural mechanism that may underlie and make possi le such pro-social effects of rituals.Not only does a consideration of empathy a d to a more complete causal explanation, it also has implications for signaling theory.A general position in terms of signaling theory is that rituals function to increase group cohesion through costly, at times painful, rituals (Irons, 2001;Xygalatas et al., 2013).However, research shows that the brain is quite sensitive to signals of in-group status, and therefore even minimal signals can serve as empathy tri gers and contribute to increased prosociality (see Shaver and Bu bulia, 2016).This is consistent with what we know: many religious rituals are not particularly costly, and yet sti l function as in-group markers.The ability of even minimal signals to promote prosociality a lows us to see how religion may have contributed to the expansion of human social units.It su gests that spreading cooperation beyond the boundaries of sma l, homogeneous groups may not have been as difficult as once thought.If empathetic concern can be readily tri gered by minimal signals of in-group status, and antipathy toward strangers is most pronounced in competitive situations, then religious rituals become sites for extending moral bonding to individuals who otherwise are strangers.
It may be countered that this model of religion's role in promoting cooperation effectively eliminates "religion." Prosociality results from the tri gering of our empathy system by signaling of in-group status.It does not seem to matter whether such signals are religious or not.This is a valid point.It is not being claimed that only religion can serve this function; clearly there are many such tri gers (e.g.race, ethnicity, nationalism, favorite soccer team, etc.).The claim is that this is a function that religion and religious rituals serve.Given the antiquity and the ubiquity of religion, this model ar ues that religion was particularly we l-suited, perhaps uniquely we l-suited, to serve this function throughout the evolutionary history of our ecies-and this has, I believe, profound import.

Religions as moral worldviews
Evidence su gests that rituals have been part of human culture going back at least 40,000 years (Rossano, 2009).Belief in gods, spirits, etc. also seems to be present at the earliest stages of human culture, and the cognitive building locks of religion plausi ly pre-date Homo Sapiens (Turner et al., 2017).Therefore, significant components of what we recognize as religion go deep into our evolutionary history, and the social function of those a ects of religion also go deep into that evolutionary history.This su gests that the cognitive nexus between religion and morality (Teehan, 2016) is embe ded in our nature.This cognitive and emotional entanglement of morality and religion has sweeping implications.
A religious ritual is not simply a signal of in-group identity.By tri gering our moral cognition, the ritual itself becomes imbued with moral and emotional significance.Since the group was essential to our survival, a sense of belonging to the group provided emotional sup ort and comfort.This is the evolutionary basis for the felt need for connection to something larger than ourselves.Religion can so often serve this purpose because from our earliest history religion served to tri ger that sense of belonging in a very concrete manner.And it is not only religious rituals that come to have this association; images, beliefs, clothing, texts, etc. a l gain symbolic significance.Religion becomes deeply imbued with moral weight and emotional valence; it comes to constitute a moral worldview.
At this point, I can do no more than loosely set out what is comprised by the term 'moral worldview, ' but hopefu ly this wi l suffice for the conclusions I seek to draw.Ninian Smart made the case that the academic study of religion is a study of religions as worldviews (Smart, 1981).My understanding of 'moral worldview' is consistent with this ap roach but emphasizes the moral a ect.I am using the term 'moral' very broa ly to denote not simply concerns of duties or virtues, but also of meaningfulness, of identity and connection.By 'moral worldview' I refer to a general outlook that includes an understanding of the world and our place in it; a conception of the good and right which provides an ethical framework for our a ions and decisions.A moral worldview defines an in-group, with a l the moral significance that entails; it connects us symbolica ly with a larger reality/community and provides a sense of existential security.A moral worldview imbues life, and our life, with meaning.Each of these a ects, I would ar ue, is grounded in our evolved cognition; and while we may be a le to explicitly articulate certain aspects of this worldview, moral worldviews operate largely at a pre-conscious level.They serve as the moral-cognitive background that structures our sense of value and significance.
As defined here, a l religions may function as moral worldviews, but not a l moral worldviews are religious in nature.Secular Humanism, to cite just one example, serves as moral worldview; so too may a political ideology.Here, however, our concern is with religion.This deserves a more detailed treatment, but we can highlight some key implications.
The psychological roots of moral worldviews make them incredi ly important-they may be essential to living a meaningful, mora ly rich life.As such, they can serve as a buffer against hopelessness and nihilism-but this also makes them pro lematic.For one, it renders them relatively immune to rational critique, as they are not ultimately grounded in reason but in intuitive moral and emotional cognitive processes.Literature on "sacred values" shows that cha lenges to deeply-held moral positions are not only resistant to rational evaluation, but that rational critiques can deepen commitment to them and make conflicts involving sacred values more difficult to resolve (Tetlock, 2003;Ginges et al., 2007;Sheikh et al., 2012).This is further cor oborated by research coming out of Ter or Management Theory that shows that threats to worldviews lead individuals to cling more tightly to and become more defensive of their worldviews (Greenberg et al., 1990;Burke et al., 2010).
Understanding the moral-cognitive dynamics of moral worldviews may shed further light on the role of religion in the lives of individual believers and of religious communities, and help us come to a better understanding of the complex role of religion in the world today.As a case study, let's employ this model to assess a much discussed paradox involving religion and politics, i.e. the overwhelming and robust sup ort of the evangelical community in the United States for Donald Trump.
In the 2016 U.S. presidential election, evangelical sup ort for Donald Trump stood at 81%.A religious denomination that advocates a Bi lica ly based morality, and has made a candidate' s values a central consideration in voting, constituted the major voting lock for a twice-divorced, bi lica ly i literate, boastfu ly licentious candidate.This has generated a great deal of analysis and commentary.One common explanation was that these evangelicals were simply hypocrites who abandoned their values in order to gain the political power that they hoped to gain from Trump, who energetica ly courted them.Certain statistics seem consistent with this charge.
A po l conducted by the Pu lic Religion Resea c Institute prior to the 2012 election asked constituents of various religious groups whether they believed that an elected official who commits immoral acts in their personal life can sti l behave ethica ly and fulfi l their duties in their professional life.Only 30% of white evangelical Prote ants answered "yes"the lowest of any group surveyed.The same po l conducted prior to the 2016 election found that 72% of white evangelicals now answered "yes"-the highest of any group surveyed (PRRI, 2016).And this sup ort has not wavered: as recently as April 2018, po ls showed white evangelical sup ort for Trump at an a l-time high (Jones, 2018).
An insightful analysis by Robert Jones points to changing demographics as a significant factor in understanding this phenomenon.He points out that white Christians, who had been the dominant religious and cultural force in the United States since its founding, presently only constitute 43% of the population; white evangelical Prote ants only account for 32%-and population trends are not favora le for this group.With a median age of 57, whit e evangelicals are the oldest religious group studied (the youngest, at a median age of 37, are those labeled the "nones" , i.e. those who do not identify with any e a lished religion).Jones su gests that white evangelicals are facing a cultural crisis, and a recent study ar ues that a sense of cultural threat was the most significant factor in explaining the presidential vote (Mutz, 2016).
Seeing religion as a moral worldview fits with and helps to explain these numbers.White evangelicals6 are facing serious demographic cha lenges, and this has translated into decreased cultural power.This loss of cultural influence is reflected, for example, in the progress made in terms of LGBT rights, the dramatica ly swift change in attitudes toward marriage equality that culminated in the Supreme Court of the U.S. deeming it a constitutiona ly protected right, and the cultural effects of globalization.Nor should we underestimate the election of an African-American as President (twice).White evangelicals perceive their moral worldview as under attack, and such threats are processed as existential dangers, which lead people to cling more tightly to their worldview and to become more xenophobic.Donald Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again" represented a vision of America that was much more white and much more Christian.His obvious moral failings and ir eligiousness were not obstacles to evangelical sup ort because he represented, on a moral-cognitive level, a defense against the existential crisis they were experiencing.Since taking office, his repeated use of racist rhetoric and his Islamophobic immigration proposals provided sup orting evidence that he was a ing to re-e ablish the vulnera le moral worldview of his white evangelical sup orters.In the face of such deep and powerful moral/ emotional processes, rational ar uments and evidence have little chance of influencing people's views.
On one level, the charge of hypocrisy seems compe ling, but that is only if we ignore the underlying dynamics of religion as a moral worldview.Whatever the explicit teachings or stated values of a particular religion, a more basic and powerful function of religion-as-moral worldview is to provide existential security.It taps into some of the most primal and ancient instinctual drives in human nature.From this perective, white evangelicals are responding in a manner consistent with the model of our evolved moral cognition set out in this paper.
Understanding religion as a moral worldview grounded in our evolved cognitive capacities not only provides insight into the history of religion, it provides a more effective lens through which to assess the on-going influence of religion in the world today.