31. Religious Belief by Robert Sapolsky

Psychiatrist Judith Rapoport described OCD using the metaphor of a fixed action pattern—like a dog circling its blanket before sleep—where the person with OCD is the dog that can never stop circling; they can only temporarily hold off the anxiety and dread, which inevitably returns.

“Psychiatrist Judith Rapoport, who wrote a great book 30 years ago, um, case studies of individuals with OCD, I think the book was called The Boy Who Couldn't Stop Washing, had a metaphor, a metaphor straight out of everything we know about a fixed action pattern. Lots of us recognize the fixed action pattern of when a dog is getting ready to go to sleep. It goes over to its blanket or its pillow or whatever it is, and it circles around, sort of patting it down. And then it circles around some more, and then it's about to settle, and then it does a little more circling, and then a few more times it maybe once, and then finally settles down. In Rapoport's view, OCD is the dog circling the blanket who could never, ever stop. It can never, ever feel as if you have kept that dread permanently at a distance. You've only held it off. You've only held off the anxiety for a while.”

In contemporary American polls, 25% of Americans believe in ghosts, 36% believe in mental telepathy, 47% believe in alien visitation and UFOs, and more than half believe the devil is a literal being rather than a metaphor, indicating that Western culture has not eliminated irrational magical thinking but rather celebrates it in different forms.

“Here are some recent statistics from a poll looking at Americans, American adults, American adults who are allowed to vote and drive motor vehicles, and things of that sort. And what did this recent poll show? 25% of Americans say that they believe in ghosts. 36% believe in mental telepathy. You can project your thoughts into somebody else, or pick them up. 47% believe that not only are there alien life forms out there, but they have visited us, and there are UFOs. And more than half of Americans believe that the devil is not a metaphor, that the devil is a literal being in some version of flesh and blood.”

Damaging the hippocampus in lab rats lowers the threshold for superstitious conditioning, making it easier to condition false causality beliefs—suggesting a neural substrate for susceptibility to magical thinking and religion.

“And what you see is, in lab rats, if you damage the hippocampus, you lower the threshold for superstitious conditioning. It's easier to condition them that way.”

Damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (measured in war veterans with head injuries from bullets or shards) is associated with higher rates of mystical experiences and increased reliance on intuition over rational cognition.

“Really interesting recent paper looking at war vets, and of course they are like God's gift to neurology in terms of head injuries. And this was looking at populations of people with different parts of the frontal cortex damaged by a bullet or a shard or who knows what. And what they showed there was, if you have damage specific to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, you have people reporting a higher rate of mystical experiences. You have a higher rate of rational cognition tossed out in favor of intuition and metamagical stuff.”

Across European history, religiosity correlates with poverty, violence from feudal lords, and infectious disease burden—the more hardship and disease, the higher the religiosity; this pattern continues worldwide.

“You also see what types of cultures produce what sorts of religions. What you see is across European history, the more poverty in a culture, the more violence from on high, usually top-down violence from the feudal lords, the more disease, infectious disease load, all of that, the higher the levels of religiosity. And this is something that continues to be a pattern throughout the world.”

Schizophrenia is unique to humans and shows no analogous condition in other species, with documented downsides including decreased reproductive success and shortened lifespan, and possible advantages including lower risk of cancer.

“No other species has anything that looks like it. And are there any downsides to it? Yeah, decreased reproductive success, shortened lifespan. Are there any upsides evolutionarily? Some indication that individuals with schizophrenia have a lower risk of cancer.”

Individuals who struggle with religious belief questions—whether religion has meaning, if there's an afterlife, what our purpose is—and arrive at different conclusions through different mechanisms (genetic, neurobiological, social, intellectual) is fascinating because multiple paths can converge on the same existential endpoint, raising profound questions about the nature of belief and meaning.

“What do we make of the fact that instead here, biologically, this type of hiccup or that type of hiccup or this type of any of the things we know about by now biologically, and you arrive at the same place, and it feels just as valid. I find this to be fascinating.”

The speaker emphasizes that his analysis of religious belief's biological bases does not imply that religious people are psychiatrically suspect or mentally ill, nor that religiosity itself is a mental disorder, and that non-religious people have equally interesting but less-documented biological bases for their worldviews.

“nowhere in there am I saying anything nutty like, 'Ooh, you got to be crazy to be religious,' or, 'Ooh, most people who are religious, they're psychiatrically suspect.' Not in the slightest. What I'm also saying is that it's just as interesting stuff going on with atheism and loss of faith and agnosticism. It's just harder to study because there's fewer people like that, and you don't have centuries worth of ritualistic traditions to look at their evolution.”

In heterozygotic inheritance (like sickle cell trait providing malaria resistance), schizotypy genes are maintained in populations because the mild version provides adaptiveness through cultural roles like shamanism, while the homozygotic version (full-blown schizophrenia) is costly; thus there has been selection for schizotypy genes, not schizophrenia genes.

“So you look at that, and what that begins to suggest in traditional human cultures, we've got the same kind of heterozygotic, homozygotic argument that we've seen in other cases. Heterozygotic, you got the shamans. Shamans, like every culture has come up with shamanistic individuals and celebrated their metamagical stuff, and all of that. And if the price is, if the homozygotic price is every now and then you deal with a cousin with what we would call full-blown schizophrenia, the trait is carried along by the adaptiveness of the partial version. That is the argument that comes out of that for the evolution of schizophrenia. There has not been selection for genes pertinent to schizophrenia; there has been selection for milder versions of those genes with schizotypy.”

Religious ritual gives sanctuary and sanction to individuals whose lives might otherwise be completely taken over and destroyed by obsessive-compulsive drives, by providing a shared social framework that names, legitimizes, and structures the compulsions as devotion rather than pathology.

“Now, where we're obviously heading is the notion that religious ritual in this case gives sanctuary and sanction for people whose lives might otherwise be completely taken over and destroyed by their pull towards ritualism. Now, all sorts of people have noted this.”

Religious notions like the world being made in seven days, someone walking on water, or turning water into wine did not originate from committees but from schizotypal individuals who were immensely influential and supplied the metamagical thought that shaped entire cultures for centuries or millennia.

“Where did these notions come from? Where did the idea come that the world was made in seven days, or that when snakes are talking to you about apples, be careful because they're up to no good? These were not made by committees. These were made by schizotypal individuals who were immensely influential and wound up supplying the metamagical thought for their whole culture for centuries, for millennia afterward.”

Religious evolution shows a progression from comprehensible anthropomorphic gods (like Greek gods with human desires) to unknowable, hidden gods (invented by Judaism) who lack familiar appetites and cannot be understood, requiring individuals to project their own needs onto the blank canvas of the unknowable deity.

“And there's been a really interesting evolution with this. Earlier, back when predominant religions had gods that were recognizable, gods that were in human's image, gods that had gargantuan, godly appetites, but nonetheless appetites that were the familiar ones. And there's all those Greek gods wanting the, wanting the biggest sheep slaughtered for them, or wanted more nymphs than everybody else. And they seemed so human, so understandable. They were human with godly-sized appetites. They were understandable. And in a book called The Gift of the Jews, a very interesting one, um, what the person went over, I'm forgetting his name, an Irish historian, what he went over is, counter to what is often claimed, Judaism did not invent monotheism. That was almost certainly the Zoroastrians many, many centuries before. But what Jews seem to have invented back when is the unknowable God. A God who didn't have familiar appetites. A God who wasn't understandable in terms of what he or she wanted out of things. A God that was unknowable.”

Anthropologist Paul Radin identified shamans across multiple traditional and indigenous cultures as 'half crazy' individuals who exhibit schizotypal personality traits, including trances, communication with the dead, metamagical beliefs, and extended periods of social isolation.

“an anthropologist named Paul Radin gave what I find to be very convincingly the answer to that question. Radin studied northwest Native American populations and wrote various dictionaries and stuff, and like a very accomplished anthropologist. And Radin at the time began to talk about how in lots and lots of traditional societies, indigenous cultures, there would be an individual who he would call 'half crazy.' Half crazy. Who was he talking about? Shamans.”

Alfred Kroeber argued in his essay 'Sanction or Sanctuary' that in many indigenous religions, individuals with schizotypal personality profiles are not only given sanctuary but are actively sanctioned and celebrated, with shamans often achieving high status, power, and elevated reproductive success despite schizophrenia's association with decreased reproductive success.

“Alfred Kroeber, early in the last century, was considering this whole issue of people who were psychiatrically suspect, half madmen, healed madmen, half and associating it with shamanism. And he wrote a really interesting essay called 'Sanction or Sanctuary,' where the whole point of it is, in culture after culture, as we heard last week, people who are mentally ill, people with schizophrenia, are peripheralized, are out-grouped, or mistreated, or persecuted, or all of that, including people with milder versions. And he's emphasizing that in lots of indigenous religions, not only is religiosity there a place of sanctuary for individuals with a personality profile like this, but in fact is sanctioned. It is celebrated.”

Kroeber distinguished between full-blown psychotic individuals and schizotypal individuals by defining the latter as those with mild, transient psychopathologies—specifically, those experiencing hallucinations and delusions at the 'right time' in the 'right context'—a definition that predated the formal term 'schizotypy' by half a century.

“Kroeber made this very, very clear distinction, which comes down to, for example, this quote: 'In general, the psychopathologies that get rewarded among primitives are only the mild and transient ones.' And he at one point said, 'Yes, yes, uh, you know, it's great having shamans, but society is ill-served by somebody who 24/7 believes that he is a tree.'”

The Scandinavian example demonstrates that religiosity is largely environmentally determined: Scandinavian countries were highly religiously observant in the mid-19th century, but as socialist social safety net models developed, religiosity declined to the lowest rates in Europe within a century—a timeframe too short for genetic change, showing social context determines religiosity more than genes.

“And to see how paper-thin whatever genetic component there is to religious belief, all you have to do is say one word: Scandinavians. Back when, sort of mid-19th century, Scandinavian countries were highly religiously observant, Lutheran, and as devout as anybody else in Europe. And somewhere around that time, the Scandinavian socialist model of states taking care of its people evolved. And with each passing decade, fewer and fewer people in Scandinavia say that they are religious, that they have a god, that they believe in. And it is now probably the lowest rate of any European population. You don't breed out your genes for religiosity over the course of a century or so. Tells you a lot about the social context for where religiosity is coming from.”

Desert-dwelling populations developed monotheistic religions with punishing afterlives and gods who actively monitor and judge human behavior, while rainforest-dwelling polytheistic religions have different structures; these ecological patterns reflect different survival pressures and livelihood strategies (pastoralism vs. farming vs. hunting).

“And desert dwellers are monotheistic and come up with punishing afterlives and gods who pay attention to what you're doing. And rainforest polytheistics and all of that, and how you make a living. Are you a pastoralist? Are you a farmer? Are you a hunter? Very different sorts of religions that are made.”

Religion depends on a constant tension between cognitive rationality and intuitive faith, where faith is defined as belief in what cannot be proven and cannot be disproven; religion loses its power if the things one is supposed to have faith in are actually proven, as Jesus indicates by refusing to jump off the temple to prove his divinity to Satan.

“In science, faith is a vice. In religion, faith is a virtue. And what you see is there's this constant battle between the two. In different religious traditions, there's the notion of faith for its own sake. Faith is belief in what cannot be proven and what cannot be disproven. A great example of that in both Luke and Matthew in the New Testament: Satan shows up and he's like hassling Jesus and dissing him and like all of that. And he says, 'Okay, here's the deal. You know, you're Son of God. I get, I get. Okay. So, if you're really a Son of God, why don't you go up to the roof of the temple in Jerusalem and there will be a big crowd there and jump off. Jump off because if you're really the Son of God, then God is going to catch you, and you'll have proven it.' And Jesus said, 'Not so fast, you trickster. There's no way I'm doing that.' What's the good of believing in a God who you see has actually caught somebody falling off a building? It's all supposed to be invisible. It's all supposed to be based on faith. Religion loses all of its oomph if the things you're supposed to have faith in have been proven.”

Religious groups act as a textbook example of group selection because they are glued together with cultural 'green beard' traits—simple symbols indicating group membership (religious dress, dietary practices, ritual participation) that trigger cooperative bias toward co-religionists, enabling competition and domination of rival religions.

“Finishing up here with group selection, because a religious group is like our textbook example of something that should be brought about at a group selection level that is glued together with cultural green beards. The fact that you could go on the other side of the planet and see somebody with just one simple symbol that they are communicating a green beard trait, and you know that this is a co-religionist, and already you are biased towards cooperative behavior with them.”

Martin Luther, a 16th-century Augustinian monk, exhibited severe OCD symptoms throughout his monastic life: taking vows of silence for extended periods, repeating prayers obsessively, extending his first mass to four hours due to perceived errors in pronunciation or sincerity, and confessing intrusive thoughts about God's anger—behaviors his mentor recognized as pathological (saying 'For some reason, you are angry at God').

“Luther grew up anxious, hypochondriac, filled with all sorts of dread. At one point, he was out walking across a meadow and a thunderstorm came up and he had a panic attack, and he at that point prayed to God and said, 'If you let me survive this thunderstorm, I will devote the rest of my life to you.' And he survived the storm, and he became an Augustinian monk, and he threw himself into it like crazy. He took vows of silence for days on end. He would repeat the same prayers over and over and over. The first time he led a mass, what was supposed to be, I don't know, half an hour long, it went on for four hours because he kept deciding he had stumbled over a word or he had said a word without thinking sincerely enough about it, or and had to start all over again.”

Hinduism's Brahminical tradition includes six hours of daily handwashing and body washing rituals, specific rules about which foot to place outside first in the morning, rules about which direction to face while on the toilet, ritualistic breathing ratios involving nostril-blocking, and the magical number 24, which structurally parallels OCD cleansing and numerological compulsions.

“if you were going to be in the upper strata of religion, and this particular religion honored all of that, what's involved is you have six hours of handwashing and body washing a day. There are rules as to the first sight you're supposed to see in the morning, which foot first steps outside in the morning. There are rules about what direction you are facing when you're sitting on the toilet. There are rules when you are doing certain rituals as not only the number of breaths that you take, but the ratio of one nostril that you hold closed and then the other nostril, rituals of the ratios of washing the left hand and the right hand, stuff like that. There's a magic number. The number 24 is considered magical in this particular religion.”

Religious traditions celebrate self-mutilation and self-flagellation as proof of devotion—believers beat themselves bloody, whip themselves, pierce their fingers and cheeks—which is psychiatrically suspect as a sign of psychosis in non-religious contexts but is sanctioned and celebrated in religious ones.

“And this is built around the frequency with which religions view the body. The body as a place where you test your faith, where you prove how devout you are by doing something difficult with your body, by doing something damaging to your body. Self-mutilation, self-flagellation. And religion after religion, including all of these, have rituals where people beat themselves bloody. They whip themselves bloody. They pierce their fingers with things. They pierce their cheeks with a knife, all of that, to show their devotion. Self-mutilation is way up on the list of a troublesome sign for somebody with elements of psychosis. Self-mutilation in these religious settings is sanctioned, condoned, celebrated, where people will particularly celebrate the folks who are most good at it.”

Holy anorexia (anorexia mirabilis) was common during the 13th-15th centuries among nuns who fasted to the point of death to prove their love of God, framing starvation as devotion; one nun consumed only leper scabs and pus for the final month of her life, claiming it was the most delicious nectar she had ever eaten.

“And this is something that is now known historically as holy anorexia or anorexia mirabilis, that during the 13th, 14th, 15th century, it became very common for nuns, various nuns, to fast, to fast and fast and fast, sometimes to the point of death, to prove their love of God, to prove that they really could subsist without food, to prove.”

Religiosity is not genetically determined; rather, it emerges as an emergent property of having 80 billion neurons with all their complexity, similar to how aesthetics, philosophy, and economic views emerge; there is zero evidence for a gene or handful of genes for religiosity.

“Religiosity is almost certainly genetic insofar as you got a genome that, among other things, specifies 80 billion neurons. And we get some emerging complexity stuff, and out pops structures like religiosity, along with aesthetics and philosophy and economic views and everything else there. Yeah, it's an emergent feature of us, but there is zero evidence for a gene, a handful of genes, for any feature of religiosity.”

A 6th-century Christian monk wrote that prayer doesn't count if you're not concentrating on it, and 15th-century Ignatius of Loyola warned priests to watch for individuals who were 'scrupulous' and doing rituals 'for the ritual's sake' rather than with genuine faith—indicating that religious leaders have long recognized and attempted to constrain obsessive-compulsive ritualism.

“Throughout the centuries, religious leaders have recognized the exact same thing. Um, a sixth century monk who was writing about how prayer doesn't count if you're not concentrating on it. If you're not thinking about it, if you're just doing it by rote, it doesn't count. 15th century Ignatius of Loyola, when he was training new priests, said, 'Be on the lookout for people who would be giving their prayers but were showing scrupulosity. All they were doing was doing the rituals for the ritual's sake.' And what you're supposed to take them aside and say, 'God doesn't care how many times you say this. God cares that you are thinking about this, that you are feeling it. Be on guard against people who are doing this stuff just out of mindless rote stuff.'”

Seymour Kety's Danish adoption study found genetic evidence for schizophrenia by comparing adopted individuals with schizophrenia to both their biological and adoptive relatives, showing that schizophrenia correlates with biological rather than adoptive family membership, demonstrating that genetics alone transmit the trait.

“This was the Danish adoption study that they did with every case in Denmark, or whatever Scandinavian country they wound up in, looking at whether there was or whether there was or wasn't schizophrenia and the adoptive family and the biological, and we know this whole thing. And the number nine was the first screaming evidence of a genetic component to schizophrenia. All you've gotten from your biological mother is genes.”