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Will religion ever disappear?

Rachel NuwerScience & Environment

The lighting of a cross during the Christian Los Escobazos Festival in Spain, celebrating the conception of the Virgin Mary(Getty Images)

Atheism is on the rise around the world, so does that mean spirituality will soon be a thing of the past?Rachel Nuwer discovers that the answer is far from simple.

A growing number of people, millions worldwide, say they believe that life definitively ends at death – thatthere is no God, no afterlife and no divine plan. And it’s an outlook that could be gaining momentum –despite its lack of cheer. In some countries, openly acknowledged atheism has never been more popular.“There’s absolutely more atheists around today than ever before, both in sheer numbers and as a percentage of humanity,” says Phil Zuckerman, a professor of sociology and secular studies at Pitzer College in Claremont,California, and author of Living the Secular Life . According to a Gallup International survey of more than50,000 people in 57 countries, the number of individuals claiming to be religious fell from 77% to 68%between 2005 and 2011, while those who self-identified as atheist rose by 3% – bringing the world’sestimated proportion of adamant non-believers to 13%.

While atheists certainly are not the majority, could it be that these figures are a harbinger of things to come?Assuming global trends continue might religion someday disappear entirely?It’s impossible to predict the future, but examining what we know about religion – including why it evolvedin the first place, and why some people chose to believe in it and others abandon it – can hint at how ourrelationship with the divine might play out in decades or centuries to come.

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A priest in Ukraine holds a cross in the ruins of Kiev's Trade Union building earlier this year (Getty Images)

Scholars are still trying to tease out the complex factors that drive an individual or a nation toward atheism,but there are a few commonalities. Part of religion’s appeal is that it offers security in an uncertain world. Sonot surprisingly, nations that report the highest rates of atheism tend to be those that provide their citizenswith relatively high economic, political and existential stability. “Security in society seems to diminishreligious belief,” Zuckerman says. Capitalism, access to technology and education also seems to correlatewith a corrosion of religiosity in some populations, he adds.

Crisis of faithJapan, the UK, Canada, South Korea, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Germany, France andUruguay (where the majority of citizens have European roots) are all places where religion was important justa century or so ago, but that now report some of the lowest belief rates in the world. These countries featurestrong educational and social security systems, low inequality and are all relatively wealthy. “Basically,people are less scared about what might befall them,” says Quentin Atkinson, a psychologist at the Universityof Auckland, New Zealand.

Yemeni girls show their hands decorated with traditional henna designs as they celebrate the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)

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Yet decline in belief seems to be occurring across the board, including in places that are still stronglyreligious, such as Brazil, Jamaica and Ireland. “Very few societies are more religious today than they were 40or 50 years ago,” Zuckerman says. “The only exception might be Iran, but that’s tricky because secular peoplemight be hiding their beliefs.”

The US, too, is an outlier in that it is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but also has high rates ofreligiosity. (Still, a recent Pew survey revealed that, between 2007 and 2012, the proportion of Americans whosaid they are atheist rose from 1.6% to 2.4%.)

Decline, however, does not mean disappearance, says Ara Norenzayan, a social psychologist at the Universityof British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Big Gods . Existential security is more fallible thanit seems. In a moment, everything can change: a drunk driver can kill a loved one; a tornado can destroy atown; a doctor can issue a terminal diagnosis. As climate change wreaks havoc on the world in coming yearsand natural resources potentially grow scarce, then suffering and hardship could fuel religiosity. “People wantto escape suffering, but if they can’t get out of it, they want to find meaning,” Norenzayan says. “For somereason, religion seems to give meaning to suffering – much more so than any secular ideal or belief that weknow of.”

In the Philippines, survivors of Super Typhoon Haiyan march during a religious procession (Getty Images)

This phenomenon constantly plays out in hospital rooms and disaster zones around the world. In 2011, forexample, a massive earthquake struck Christchurch, New Zealand – a highly secular society. There wasasudden spike of religiosity in the people who experienced that event, but the rest of the country remained assecular as ever. While exceptions to this rule do exist – religion in Japan plummeted following World War II,for instance – for the most part, Zuckerman says, we adhere by the Christchurch model. “If experiencingsomething terrible caused all people to become atheists, then we’d all be atheists,” he says.

The mind of godBut even if the world’s troubles were miraculously solved and we all led peaceful lives in equity, religionwould probably still be around. This is because a god-shaped hole seems to exist in our species’neuropsychology, thanks to a quirk of our evolution.

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A rabbi reads during Purim festivities (Getty Images)

Understanding this requires a delve into “dual process theory”. This psychological staple states that we havetwo very basic forms of thought: System 1 and System 2. System 2 evolved relatively recently. It’s the voicein our head – the narrator who never seems to shut up – that enables us to plan and think logically.

System 1, on the other hand, is intuitive, instinctual and automatic. These capabilities regularly develop inhumans, regardless of where they are born. They are survival mechanisms. System 1 bestows us with aninnate revulsion of rotting meat, allows us to speak our native language without thinking about it and givesbabies the ability to recognise parents and distinguish between living and nonliving objects. It makes us prone

to looking for patterns to better understand our world, and to seek meaning for seemingly random events likenatural disasters or the death of loved ones.

An Indian Sikh lights candles during Bandi Chhor Divas, or Diwali (Getty Images)

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In addition to helping us navigate the dangers of the world and find a mate, some scholars think that System 1also enabled religions to evolve and perpetuate. System 1, for example, makes us instinctually primed to seelife forces – a phenomenon called hypersensitive agency detection – everywhere we go, regardless of whetherthey’re there or not. Millennia ago, that tendency probably helped us avoid concealed danger, such as lionscrouched in the grass or venomous snakes concealed in the bush. But it also made us vulnerable to inferringthe existence of invisible agents – whether they took the form of a benevolent god watching over us, anunappeased ancestor punishing us with a drought or a monster lurking in the shadows.

Similarly, System 1 encourages us to see things dualistically, meaning we have trouble thinking of the mindand body as a single unit. This tendency emerges quite early: young children, regardless of their culturalbackground, are inclined to believe that they have an immortal soul – that their essence or personhood existedsomewhere prior to their birth, and will always continue to exist. This disposition easily assimilates into manyexisting religions, or – with a bit of creativity – lends itself to devising original constructs.

An Indian Hindu devotee a day ahead of the Chhat festival (Getty Images)

“A Scandinavian psychologist colleague of mine who is an atheist told me that his three-year-old daughterrecently walked up to him and said, ‘God is everywhere all of the time.’ He and his wife couldn’t figure outwhere she’d gotten that idea from,” says Justin Barrett, director of the Thrive Center for Human Developmentat Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, and author of Born Believers . “For his daughter, godwas an elderly woman, so you know she didn’t get it from the Lutheran church.”

For all of these reasons, many scholars believe that religion arose as “a byproduct of our cognitive

disposition”, says Robert McCauley, director of the Center for Mind, Brain and Culture at Emory Universityin Atlanta, Georgia, and author of Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not . “Religions are culturalarrangements that evolved to engage and exploit these natural capacities in humans.”

Hard habits to breakAtheists must fight against all of that cultural and evolutionary baggage. Human beings naturally want tobelieve that they are a part of something bigger, that life isn’t completely futile. Our minds crave purpose andexplanation. “With education, exposure to science and critical thinking, people might stop trusting theirintuitions,” Norenzayan says. “But the intuitions are there.”

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Azerbaijani Muslims pray at the end of Ramadan (Getty Images)

On the other hand, science – the system of choice that many atheists and non-believers look to forunderstanding the natural world – is not an easy cognitive pill to swallow. Science is about correcting System1 biases, McCauley says. We must accept that the Earth spins, even though we never experience thatsensation for ourselves. We must embrace the idea that evolution is utterly indifferent and that there is noultimate design or purpose to the Universe, even though our intuition tells us differently. We also find itdifficult to admit that we are wrong, to resist our own biases and to accept that truth as we understand it isever changing as new empirical data are gathered and tested – all staples of science. “Science is cognitivelyunnatural – it’s difficult,” McCauley says. “Religion, on the other hand, is mostly something we don’t evenhave to learn because we already know it.”

“There’s evidence that religious thought is the path of least resistance,” Barrett adds. “You’d have tofundamentally change something about our humanity to get rid of religion.” This biological sticking pointprobably explains the fact that, although 20% of Americans are not affiliated with a church, 68% of them saythat they still believe in God and 37% describe themselves as spiritual. Even without organised religion, theybelieve that some greater being or life force guides the world.

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Buddhist monks file towards a ceremony at Sampov Treileak pagoda in Cambodia (Getty Images)Similarly, many around the world who explicitly say they don’t believe in a god still harbour superstitioustendencies, like belief in ghosts, astrology, karma, telepathy or reincarnation. “In Scandinavia, most peoplesay they don’t believe in God, but paranormal and superstitious beliefs tend to be higher than you’d think,”Norenzayan says. Additionally, non-believers often lean on what could be interpreted as religious proxies –sports teams, yoga, professional institutions, Mother Nature and more – to guide their values in life. As a

testament to this, witchcraft is gaining popularity in the US, and paganism seems to be the fastest growingreligion in the UK.

Religious experiences for non-believers can also manifest in other, more bizarre ways. Anthropologist RyanHornbeck, also at the Thrive Center for Human Development, found evidence that the World of Warcraftisassuming spiritual importance for some players in China, for example. “WoW seems to be offeringopportunities to develop certain moral traits that regular life in contemporary society doesn’t afford,” Barrettsays. “People seem to have this conceptual space for religious thought, which – if it’s not filled by religion –bubbles up in surprising ways.”

The in-groupWhat’s more, religion promotes group cohesion and cooperation. The threat of an all-powerful God (or gods)

watching for anyone who steps out of line likely helped to keep order in ancient societies. “This is thesupernatural punishment hypothesis,” Atkinson says. “If everyone believes that the punishment is real, thenthat can be functional to groups.”

A devotee at Thailand's Vegetarian Festival (Getty Images)

And again, insecurity and suffering in a population may play a role here, by helping to encourage religionswith stricter moral codes. In a recent analysis of religious belief systems of nearly 600 traditional societiesfrom around the world, Joseph Bulbulia at the University of Wellington, New Zealand and his colleaguesfound that those places with harsher weather or that are more prone to natural disasters were more likely todevelop moralising gods. Why? Helpful neighbours could mean the difference between life and death. In thiscontext, religion evolved as a valuable public utility.

“When we see something so pervasive, something that emerges so quickly developmentally and remainspersistent across cultures, then it makes sense that the leading explanation is that it served a cooperativefunction,” says Bulbulia.

Finally, there’s also some simple mathematics behind religion’s knack for prevailing. Across cultures, peoplewho are more religious also tend to have more children than people who are not. “There’s very strongevidence for this,” Norenzayan says. “Even among religious people, the more fundamentalist ones usually

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have higher fertility rates than the more liberal ones.” Add to that the fact that children typically follow theirparents’ lead when it comes to whether or not they become religious adults themselves, and a completelysecularised world seems ever more unlikely.

Enduring belief For all of these reasons – psychological, neurological, historical, cultural and logistical – experts guess thatreligion will probably never go away. Religion, whether it’s maintained through fear or love, is highlysuccessful at perpetuating itself. If not, it would no longer be with us.And even if we lose sight of the Christian, Muslim and Hindu gods and all the rest, superstitions andspiritualism will almost certainly still prevail. More formal religious systems, meanwhile, would likely onlybe a natural disaster or two away. “Even the best secular government can’t protect you from everything,” saysMcCauley. As soon as we found ourselves facing an ecological crisis, a global nuclear war or an impendingcomet collision, the gods would emerge.

“Humans need comfort in the face of pain and suffering, and many need to think that there’s something moreafter this life, that they’re loved by an invisible being,” Zuckerman says. “There will always be people whobelieve, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they remain the majority.”