A society where the devil or other evil forces are associated with disease is more effective at preventing its spread, new research suggests. Let’s try to show why in real life everything may not be quite so, or even not so at all.
An international group of scientists, having surveyed thousands of people around the world, found that superstition and belief in the existence of the devil (an evil force) are more common where infectious diseases are more likely. From this, the authors of the work conclude that belief in evil forces in the past could help society in the fight against infectious diseases. A related article was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
The more epidemics, the more often they believe in evil forces.
The researchers surveyed 3,140 people from 28 countries about their belief in evil forces (including the devil). They then compared the survey results to the prevalence of infectious diseases in the 28 countries. It turned out that the more common these diseases were there, the greater part of the respondents from this or that country believed that the devil exists.
Scientists denote belief in the existence of evil forces as “moral vitalism” and draw from the survey and other earlier works on the topic: before the advent of modern medicine, belief in evil forces created adaptive benefits for society. By avoiding those “afflicted with an evil force,” that is, those with infectious diseases, people were less likely to contract them. They note that it is often the evil force that is attributed to the infection of infectious diseases.
In antiquity and the Middle Ages, epidemics were much more important to society than they are today. For example, the 1346-1353 plague pandemic killed half the population of Western Europe and most of the rest of the world.
In total, 70 million people died from that epidemic in Eurasia, which is more than the total number of victims of both world wars.
It turns out that religious beliefs, often associated with belief in evil forces, at a certain stage could greatly help the survival of populations that had such beliefs. At the same time, populations that did not have them had to survive without such an adaptive advantage. This, in theory, could explain the spread of religious beliefs. The new hypothesis, at first glance, looks quite convincing and logical.
Superstition and religion appeared before epidemics
Unfortunately, the authors have omitted a number of points in their work that raise doubts that their hypothesis works for all human communities – or even for most of them. First, the initial signs of religious beliefs date back about 175 thousand years ago (ritual constructions in a Neanderthal cave in modern France, including, apparently, a place for burning sacrificial animals).
To date, nothing is known about epidemics in such a deep antiquity. Moreover, until the beginning of agriculture and the corresponding increase in population density, epidemics were generally not so dangerous for people, since their spread was quickly interrupted as the death or immunization of a small population of hunters, where the disease broke out.
It turns out that religious beliefs were quite widespread without adaptive advantages.
Second, it is known from ethnography that belief in evil forces and superstition in general is often widespread in societies that were initially free from infectious diseases. Before the arrival of the Europeans, the Polynesians practically did not know of epidemics: isolated islands in the ocean are not subject to migrations of animal carriers of infections. Meanwhile, already the first Europeans note the extreme superstition of the Polynesians, their tendency to taboo and belief in evil forces. Again, it appears that such beliefs and religiosity generally spread even in societies where they do not provide adaptive advantages in the fight against disease.
Thirdly, it is known from the scriptures of a number of religions that effective quarantine and the fight against epidemics are possible, even if there are no personified evil forces in this or that religion. For example, in the Old Testament in the book of Leviticus (chapters 13-14, written around the 7th century BC), detailed instructions are given on how priests should distinguish leprosy from deprivation and other less dangerous diseases, how and for what period of time they should isolate patients with leprosy in quarantine. and how – patients with less dangerous diseases. Explanations are also given of which leprosy patients are less contagious, how to burn their belongings, and sometimes at home, and so on.
Meanwhile, in the Old Testament there is generally no personified evil force analogous to the Christian devil: the word “Satan” there means anyone who obstructs God (including people). Nowhere in the Old Testament does an evil personified force send epidemics to people. In the Old Testament, this is done by God himself (in fact, he creates diseases after the expulsion of a person from paradise). Only one case is mentioned when one of his “fallen” angels sends a disease, but even then he does it with only one person, Job, and only after the sanction received personally from God.
In Judaism, both in the 7th century BC, and to this day, there is no belief in a personified evil force. The so-called “Satan” there is one of the angels of God, who does not have any free will and serves by his actions solely to provide people with a choice of what they should be – good or evil. From this it is clear that religion can also spread where epidemics are not associated with a personified evil force (the devil), but are associated exclusively with good.
The authors of the work did not consider the possibility that the places of belief in an evil force and places of epidemics may coincide, not because belief in the devil is useful where epidemics are frequent. A reverse connection is also possible: epidemics are frequent in the most backward countries of the world, where superstition is also strongest and the erosion of traditional religions by atheism, secular religions or their analogues is weakest.
Religion and biology: the connection is unclear
I must say that this work is not the first one trying to find some objective factors contributing to the spread of religions. Biologists from Moscow State University recently suggested that unicellular organisms contribute to the spread of religions. They are known to be able to control the behavior of humans and animals to some extent, “reprogramming” it in their interests – so that they more widely spread the species of unicellular organisms living in them.
Scientists from Moscow State University argued that major world religions include rituals that contribute to the spread of diseases. As we can see, there is a funny situation: the new work of Western scientists believes that religions helped fight the spread of microorganisms, and researchers from Moscow State University argue that religions, on the contrary, contributed to the spread of microorganisms.
Which one is right? Probably no one. The big problem with any approach that looks for some objective adaptive advantage behind religion is that ethnography does not know a single primitive people without religious beliefs. If the spread of religion were really determined by some objective factor, then it could not be universal in all parts of the world, including extremely isolated ones.
It is impossible to seriously assert that the religious beliefs, which appeared even among the Neanderthals, could have been the result of the activity of microorganisms: in the days of small Paleolithic tribes, no rituals would have contributed to the spread of bacteria living in a person beyond this particular tribe.
Works where scientists with a biological background try to ascribe a particular biological basis to religion may not fully take into account the fact that religion does not have a purely biological nature. Behind it can be processes that are characteristic only of the human psyche, subjective, and not having a rational basis.
