From the editor’s desk

I believe; therefore I survive

Common to most progressive thinkers of the twentieth century was the conviction that human enlightenment would sooner or later banish religious dogma. If religion was merely irrational superstition (Voltaire) or a way to manipulate power relationships (Marx), the arrival of a better educated or a more equal society would eliminate the space it occupied. Those thinkers are still waiting. Indeed, the delay has sparked interest in a different question - whether the persistence of belief suggests that the inclination to believe is hard-wired into the brain - on the basis of Darwinian theory that would suggest that it bestows some evolutionary advantage. It was recently announced that two research bodies in Oxford have joined forces to investigate these and similar matters, financed by the Templeton Foundation.

The foundation normally supports work that advances religion, and the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion is named after a former Bishop of Durham, so their collaboration with the Centre for Anthropology and Mind should not be thought of as anti-religious. But it is still a sign of these secular times. In the days when religious belief was universal, the need for an explanation of its survival would hardly have arisen. That does not mean that there are not good questions to pursue. A theological system that is not open to scientific input will eventually be as dead as the dodo. On the other hand, a gene pool that fails to be enriched by the best genes from previous generations - which is one possible result of clerical celibacy - is not as good as it might be.

As long as human culture has existed, religion in some form has been a central part of it. Even where it has been eliminated by ruthless state decree, it has reappeared. Why? To a theist, the human mind appears to have an almost instinctive capacity for religious belief that must have come originally from God - the Creator who wanted to be known and loved by his human creatures. To an evolutionary biologist, particularly one dissatisfied with the "selfish gene" school of evolutionary theory, the idea of God must have been fostered by the natural selection of the fittest. These are not mutually incompatible approaches. To a believer they suggest that God chose to have his creation slowly perfected through self-sustaining evolutionary processes. That is a much more awesome - and intelligent - idea than "intelligent design", which has God endlessly tinkering with creation to keep it on track.

Scientists in Harvard, also financed by Templeton, have applied game theory to this evolutionary hypothesis and found that what favours group survival is a measure of cooperation rather than all-out competition. They suggest that the rules of cooperation developed into a form of morality. Indeed, the capacity for forgiveness begins to play a powerful role, as if justice has to be tempered by mercy because evolution says so. The community has to have some way of coping with transgression that is not mutually destructive. Divine sanction looks a more robust basis for that cooperative morality than mere social convenience. So tribes that believed, survived. Believers may say that was exactly what God had in mind all along. To atheists, however, this poses a painful question: will their lack of belief eventually lead to their extinction?