Why, in the midst of the digital revolution, the number of believers on the planet is only increasing.
Our time has become an era of triumph of scientific knowledge and technical progress. People have created the Internet, which has completely changed our lives, have landed research vehicles on other planets … But at the same time 6 billion people, which is 84 percent of the world's population, believe in God. And it's not about people from third world countries. According to polls in Western Europe - this stronghold of secular society, 60 percent of people believe in the existence of the soul. And in the pragmatic United States, 90% of citizens are confident in the presence of some "higher power." Isn't it surprising: education is becoming an integral attribute of modern man, in scientific knowledge, as you know, there is no place for God, nevertheless, religious beliefs are becoming more and more popular (see table).
For science, people are insects
Naturally, scientists, who paradoxically lose the competition for minds and souls to priests during the digital revolution, are trying to analyze this phenomenon from the point of view of science. Anthropologist Scott Atran, director of the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris and a professor at Oxford University, believes that science has no chance to supplant religion.
- One of the main reasons for the dominance of the religious worldview is that science considers people as a product of the development of the world of atoms and molecules, - explains the anthropologist. - And for a person, the main place in the universe is occupied by questions of his own being: death, love, blows of fate, loneliness, justice … Science is not very adapted to solve such existential problems. But for religion, man is the central figure. And she thrives because she explains how to live, answers people's needs, sets moral standards.
I know exactly the impossible is possible
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But there are deeper historical reasons for the triumph of religion. According to Scott Atran, belief in the supernatural is absolutely natural even for an educated person, since the idea of God appeared as a result of the evolution of the human brain.
People stood out from the animal world thanks to their intellectual abilities. Our ancestors were good at reconstructing a picture of reality based on fragmentary data: from the paw prints in the sand, they could guess that a lion was wandering around their camp, although they did not see the predator itself. Such observation helps to avoid enemies by barely noticeable signs, look for food, predict the weather. But on the other hand, the constant desire to look for cause-and-effect relationships, even where they do not exist, often led people into the jungle. For example, from here grow ears for fortune telling on coffee grounds or in the palm of your hand, sports superstitions and much more. For example, in 2004, a toast with cheese was sold on eBay for 28 thousand dollars, on the toasted side of which enthusiasts saw the face of the Virgin Mary.
Regularly, like Sherlock Holmes, honing the deductive method (and it consists in the ability to reconstruct the big on the basis of small details), people could not help but see traces of divine providence in their daily lives.
Scientists believe that this desire to discern all causal relationships in part created God!
Is it profitable to believe?
- Religion, probably, appeared together with man, - says Professor Atran. - Wherever we excavate the sites of an ancient man, we see its traces everywhere. First of all, burials tell about this: next to the deceased, his fellow tribesmen laid food, weapons, dishes that were supposed to be useful to him in the afterlife. And this is a big mystery: people see that the body is being destroyed, but, nevertheless, they believe that the person will still exist. This is contrary to logic and life experience.
Moreover, many religious practices provide no practical survival benefit. For example, there is no benefit to a hunter-gatherer in sacrificing some of the prey to a deity. But he does it with enthusiasm!
Canadian psychologists Azim Sharif and Ara Norenzayan seem to have understood what the matter is. Religion pushes a person to care more for the welfare of the community, even if with some harm to himself. The fact is that in any group of people there are, on the one hand, workers and altruists, and on the other, selfish and loafers. If the former prevail, the team is viable, if the latter, any team will fall apart. The presence of an all-seeing and almighty God helps to rein in rogue renegades (after all, they are now always in sight!) And motivate the hero for new exploits. This makes the team stronger. As evidence, the authors compared the survivability of 200 gated communities that operated in America in the 19th century. Among them were both religious sects of all stripes and secular communities - in particular, communes that tried to implement the ideas of the utopian socialists. It revealed,that religious associations turned out to be more stable: every fifth community existed for about 80 years - this is a solid period. For comparison, the Soviet Union ceased to exist after 70 years. But not religious communes, almost without exception fell apart after 40 years. Their participants were not ready to sacrifice their interests to the end for the common good.
The size and growth prospects of the main religious groups:
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV