7 - Religion and the emergence of human imagination

Summary

Introduction

Relating the emergence of religion directly to single minds has grown hopelessly out of fashion, and even though the cognitive science of culture delves deep into the human brain, we recognize that religions are first and foremost socially negotiated phenomena. All religious ideas, however, must first surface somehow. At some point in evolutionary history, an ancestor or close relative to the human race had the first proto-religious idea. We have no way of knowing what the content of this thought might have been, what part of life in the Pleistocene inspired it, or if this “first believer” ever shared it with others of his kind. What we do have, however, are advances in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology that allow us to venture certain guesses about what kind of mind may have afforded this first religious thought, a mind so powerful and playful that it grabbed bits and pieces out of thin air, to create a marvel of its own devising. Imagination had entered the scene, and the world would never be the same again …

Imagery and make-believe are words commonly used by critics of religion. Many aspects of ritual involve object substitutions and juggling of facts, which we know well from fiction and children's play. The abilities to embrace stories or be carried away by mystical experiences are hallmarks of spirituality all over the world.