Where in the past almost every Dutch person was Christian and went to church, some of the faithful now shop elements from different religions together. Where does religion come from and why is one more susceptible to it than the other? Answers from evolutionary biology, theology and neuroscience.
Today, Western society is more individualistic than ever. This is also reflected in the declining number of churchgoers and the emergence of other forms of religiosity. Some of the believers now choose elements from different religions and movements and make their own religious convictions from them. For example, by meditating as a Christian or engaging in astrology or tarot. What determines which religious choice you make? For example, what is the role of your brain, upbringing and society in this? Where does religion come from anyway? Neuroscientists and theologians have their own ideas about this, but they all agree on one thing:religion is complex.
Moral gods
Religion must have originated somewhere in the evolution of man. Michiel van Elk, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Amsterdam specializing in religion, explains:“Religion probably originated as a by-product. The way our brains started to work allowed us to imagine things like life after death, our purpose in the world, and immortality.” Phenomena for which our ancestors could not pinpoint an instigator, such as the movement of planets, volcanic eruptions and lightning, they attributed to higher powers. This primitive belief helped them understand the world. Van Elk:“We started to see meaning in events and started to believe in ghosts and demons.”
When people came to believe in higher powers is difficult to determine, but the more modern form of religion is a fairly recent invention. From about ten thousand years ago, the larger and more complex societies arose and people started to believe in moral gods. This religious element promoted cooperation and connection between large groups of people. “When groups living together become larger, it is no longer possible to keep an eye on everyone. Believing in a God who rewards you if you behave well and punishes you if you don't follow the rules was the solution," according to Van Elk.
Prone to religion
If belief in the supernatural is something humans developed during evolution, it's ingrained in all of us. Then you have little choice, you would say. Why then is one extremely religious, but others are not? “The most important factor that predicts whether people are religious is their upbringing,” says Van Elk. In other words, going to church and praying is copied from your parents. In that respect religion is not really a free choice:you do not choose your parents yourself. Although you can of course shake off your faith when you are older. Van Elk:“On the other hand, there is variation in how sensitive people are to religious experiences, such as a revelation or hearing God's voice.”
Receptivity to the 'unusual' differs between people, confirms research from 2016 by psychologist David Maij, who at the time obtained his PhD at Van Elk. At the Lowlands music festival, he did an experiment with the 'Godhelm', a technical-looking helmet that would evoke mystical experiences in the brain through electromagnetic stimulation. About 180 blindfolded festival-goers tried it out. Only the helmet, a converted snowboard helmet, did nothing at all. Nevertheless, one in five participants reported strong or less powerful supernatural experiences, ranging from 'exiting the body' to shaking and feeling 'forces'.
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Some have the most fantastic, or dark, experiences, while others have nothing at all. How is that possible? Expectations play a major role in this. People who experience spiritual experiences generally have a vivid imagination, Van Elk knows. When they read a book they are drawn into that fictional world, in a movie they take on the role of the main character. Van Elk:“There is certainly a hereditary component to it, which means that some people have more predisposition to become religious, so to speak.”
The minds of believers
That predisposition does not arise from one brain area that is responsible for spirituality. There is no such thing as a 'God spot', Van Elk assures. The whole brain participates. Neuroscientists can now well explain how religious experiences and spirituality come about in the brain. They use MRI scanners to measure which areas of the brain become active during religious activities.
For example, in prayer there is activity in areas that also become active in thinking about other people, having an internal dialogue, and planning for the future. “There are many aspects to religion, such as praying, rituals, meditating, thinking about God. In all those aspects, something else happens in the brain.” It is clear that there is a relationship between brain development and religion. Van Elk:“Research shows, for example, that after damage to a specific brain area – such as the temporal-parietal junction, an area on the side of our brain – people become hyper-religious or more spiritual. People in whom another part of the brain is damaged do not show this effect, so we can rule out that the change occurs because they are confronted with disease and mortality. So it seems that if something changes in biology, people may also become more receptive to being religious.”
Natural beauty
The experiences of religious and non-religious are not so different from each other. In any case, you don't have to believe in the supernatural to experience feelings of awe and wonder. Van Elk and his colleagues showed subjects in an MRI scanner videos of landscapes with waterfalls, mountains and oceans, among other things. Natural beauty can be so overwhelming and intense that in the brain the default mode network is taking a break, they saw. This network is normally active when we engage in self-reflection, continue to ruminate on problems and worry.
“If you are sucked into a beautiful natural landscape, that self-reflection is interrupted for a while,” explains Van Elk. You see the same thing happen with LSD use. Whether you call it a spiritual experience is up to you; that depends on your own interpretation. “A believer will see God's hand in it, while the natural scientist may think:how beautiful the world is through natural selection.”
Religion Shoppers
Theologian Manuela Kalsky, professor at the Free University, agrees:“When you are touched by something in nature, you can also call it an experience of God. Being religious does not necessarily have to be accompanied by divine revelation. You can be touched by something bigger than yourself that you can't put into words.”
Kalsky recently conducted research into religious polyphony, also known as 'flexible belief'. She looked at how the Dutch believe today and what that belief consists of. Some of the believers combine elements from different philosophies of life and thus form their own religious conviction. These 'religion shoppers' hardly appear in the official statistics because they are too limited, according to Kalsky. “In the standard questionnaires about religion you can usually only tick one box, you are Buddhist or Christian or Jewish and so on. It is not possible to be both or all three at the same time.”
She is not a fan of the term religion shoppers because she finds it derogatory and he suggests superficiality. “Our research shows that this is not the case. Moreover, religions are always combinations of different movements. Just look at Christianity, which is a mixture of Jewish, Egyptian and Greek influences and natural religions. Religions are continuously evolving, with the result that different currents arise, such as Catholics and Protestants within Christianity,” explains Kalsky.
She emphasizes that every religion is too diverse and complex to be viewed in its entirety, let alone adhere to. “Religions are shaped by people and by the context in which they exist. Catholicism in South America is different from that in Africa, even though both belong to the same Catholic Church.” It is therefore difficult to give a definition of what religion is or exactly means, according to Kalsky.
Other religious
The 1960s marked the end of pillarization and the rise of individualism. Until then, almost everyone in the Netherlands was a professing Christian who went to church every Sunday. Today that is only a quarter of the population, but that does not mean that we have become so much less religious, Kalsky believes. “Nowadays, the Dutch are religiously different, but not necessarily less. In our survey, 64 percent indicate that they are indeed religious.”
Of these, 41 percent are mono-religious, that is, associated with a single religion, and 23 percent are associated with two or more religious traditions. These multiple religious are again divided into three categories:three percent combine the teachings of two or more religions or movements, often Buddhism and Christianity, and twelve percent have one faith tradition as a basis and supplement it with elements from other religions. The last group, the eight percent flexible believers, combines elements from different religions and philosophies of life and thus composes their own meaning.
According to Kalsky, flexible belief or spirituality also falls under religion. “When someone is spiritual, but doesn't fall into the classical picture of being a believer or atheist, that doesn't mean he's non-religious. You have those colored world maps for education:the Christians live here, the Hindus there, the Muslims there. Nicely organized, but those boxes are often not there in reality. In societies with great cultural and religious diversity, such as in Asia, it is much more common to combine elements from different religions.”
For example, it is common for the Japanese to associate Buddhism and Shintoism with different aspects of their lives. In Europe, Christianity has long been the dominant religion, but that is changing. The number of believers in other religions and religious experiences is clearly growing. “That is often overlooked when it is stated that the Dutch are no longer religious, and that is because this form of religiosity eludes traditional definitions and criteria such as being a member of a church,” says Kalsky.
Religion as a rational choice?
But when you rationally choose the elements from different religions, such as the flexible believers, does that mean that being religious is a free choice? Kalsky doesn't think so. “You do not choose a religion or be religious if you are not emotionally addressed by it. Rather, it is a trade-off. People believe because they long for meaning and purpose in their lives, especially when you have reached a point in your life where suffering plays a role. When it turns out that life cannot be made after all, you try to get to the essence of life. And religion is about fundamental questions of being:the meaning of life and death, why we are on earth.”
The choice to become spiritual, or even religious, is not a matter of flipping a switch, says neuroscientist Van Elk. "So, and now I'm going to believe in God," that doesn't work, even with the right dose of brain stimulation. A particular pattern of brain activity is only one aspect of belief. He also thinks that for many people the choice starts with inner turmoil and a search for meaning. People who are more open to new experiences based on their personality will search more actively.