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Leafs | Freemen | Ottawa | Kenya | Syria | Concordia | BlackBerry | NFL | Marois | TrudeauOnly the biggest God builds acivilization: Author posits religion isessential building block of society

T RI STI N HOPPER, NATI ONAL POST STAFF | 31/08/13 4:44 PM ETMore from National Post Staff

Among mor e mi l i tant atheist ci r cles, the ar gument is often made thatr el igion is a human invention ser ving only to stand in the way of societalpr ogr ess. I n the new book, B ig Gods: H ow R el igion T r a nsfor medCooper a tion a nd Confl ict, Univer si ty of Br i tish Columbia psychologypr ofessor Ar a Nor enzayan ar gues the exact opposite: R el igions — at leastthose equipped with an omniscient, omnipr esent “Big God” — ar e not onlyimpor tant, but the sour ce of almost al l known ear thly civi l ization. T hePost’s T r istin H opper r eached Mr . Nor enzayan in V ancouver .

I f r el igion is the “glue” that bonded moder n civi l ization together , as your

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MENAHEM KAHANA/AFP/Getty I magesBig Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict argues it was no merecoincidence that human civilization and the beginnings of organized religion first took root some 12,000 years ago.

book asser ts, what did human society look l ike befor e?Let’s go back 12,000 years; you have all of humanity living in small bands of hunter-gatherers. T hen something happened which, still, we’re trying to understand: I n only afew thousands years, which is nothing from an evolutionary perspective, people settledown, populations skyrocket and societies start to build monumental architecture likethe pyramids. At exactly the same time you have the growth of religion. My argument isthat this is not a coincidence. Maybe what happened was, these human groups stumbledon the idea of a Big God, found they could solve co-operation dilemmas much better, andas a result they expanded. Other things then kicked in: Agriculture, specialization, moreefficient armies, etc.

Y our book makes a clear distinction between the tr ibal gods wor shipped bymost hunter -gather er societies and “Big Gods”; omniscient al l -power fulbeings l ike the J udeo-Chr istian God. W hat’s the di ffer ence?I ’m arguing that some gods are more effective than other gods in creating civilization.Limited gods [tribal gods] know very little about what people do, they might demandsacrifices, maybe not; these gods are not going to build large-scale societies. T he big,omniscient, all-powerful, morally-demanding gods, they’re the ones that are going to dothe job. I f you just count the number of supernatural beliefs people have in the world,there are thousands of them. Yet, the vast majority of human beings are devoted to BigGods; probably more than 80%. So, how do you get from tribal gods to the vast majorityof human beings worshipping big gods? T here has to be an explanation.

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I f the Big Gods ideasuddenly cr opped up12,000 year s ago, wher edid i t come fr om? W as i tsomething people“discover ed” or — her e’swher e things might getcontr over sial — do youasser t i t was somethingthat somebody made up?

T he backbone of the book islooking at that question: Howdid these ideas come about?Are we naturally endowedwith these ideas? Did weinvent them? I t’s possiblereligious visionaries thoughtof them, were charismatic,and spread the idea. Or theidea was spread by conquest.But it’s not an intentionalprocess, necessarily. T herewasn’t a committee ofMachiavellian priests who satdown and said, “Let’s think ofan idea that would really

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HandoutHow Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict by Ara Norenzayan

make people co-operate.”

Y our book notes thatwhi le r el igion — andpar ticular ly the thr eat ofH el l — was instr umentalin keeping or der in theancient wor ld, some ofthe moder n wor ld’s mostsecular societies, l ikeNor way and Canada, ar ealso some of the mostwel l behaved. H ow?I n places like Canada andNorthern Europe, societiesdevelop solutions to co-operation and trust throughsecular means, religiondeclines. T hen, the religionthat is left is much morebenevolent, a much kindermore gentler kind of religion;there much more laxnessabout what people canbelieve. T here’s aninteresting recent trend —and we find a lot of it here inVancouver — where people say they’re spiritual but not religious. You custom-makeyour own religion.

Many of the ideas in your book have been floating ar ound for some time,but B ig Gods seeks to back i t up with r esear ch. H ow?You can’t rely on one single type of evidence; part of it is psychology, part of it isanthropology, part of it is history, so I was weaving together a lot of this evidence fromdifferent fields.

As wel l as cr editing r el igion with for ming the moder n wor ld, your booknotes the “toxic” sides of fai th. I s the same for ce that helps r el igion tobui ld civi l izations also the same for ce that causes people to r aise theirswor d against an infidel?T he niceness that religion encourages is primarily directed towards your in-group.People who are going to sacrifice for their co-religionists are the same people who aregoing to be, under the condition of threat or conflict, intolerant or even violent to peoplewho are not of their own religion. A great example is suicide terrorism; it’s the ultimatealtruism. I t’s a toxic form of altruism.

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Martin Dee/University of British ColumbiaAra Norenzayan is also a UBC professor

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