For What It's Worth

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Fast Food and Faith

(10 minute read)

Key Takeaways:

• Belief in religious institutions is long-standing and widespread, perhaps in part because humans appear naturally inclined to seek meaning, purpose, and explanations for uncertainty
• Faith traditions are evolving systems shaped by a number of variables including the generational experiences of the people who practice them
• The same psychology that lures us to find the perfect mate, food cravings, and the exhilaration of using social-media helps us to understand religious commitments
• The same instincts that once helped humans survive now contribute to both unhealthy consumptions and supernatural beliefs

Seeing’s believing, but feeling’s the truth.

—Thomas Fuller, Gnomologia: Adagies and Proverbs; Wise Sentences and Witty Sayings

According to Darwin’s Origin of Species, it is not the most intellectual of the species that survives; it is not the strongest that survives; but the species that survives is the one that is able best to adapt and adjust to the changing environment in which it finds itself.

—Leon C. Megginson, Lessons from Europe for American Business, Southwestern Social Science Quarterly

Gimme That Ol’ Time Religion

As I write this essay, I’m reminded of a dedication page from a book I once read. The authors’ work¹ covered some of the topics we will explore here. Before I read a single word, I saw that the book was dedicated to the author’s grandson, whom he hoped would grow up in a world freer of religion’s destructiveness.

I like that sentiment, and these essays are written in that same spirit. I am not opposed to those who practice religion or hold to a specific faith; though, personally, I think we would be better off shedding them if that’s what it took to rid the world of toxic behaviors carried out in their name.

There is an old saying that one should never raise the topic of politics or religion in mixed company, as avoiding such subjects is thought to help maintain social harmony. For some, it triggers a powerful need to vehemently defend personal views and strongly held beliefs.

I understand this.

But the impulse to believe in any faith system may be rooted in something more fundamental: the way the human mind evolved. In this essay, we will look beyond the question of which faith is true to ask why belief in the unseen has remained such a powerful and persistent part of human life.

A harder question still: how can the human mind be so susceptible to beliefs that some are willing to kill and die for?

Despite advances in science, technology, and medicine, the human brain retains evolutionary tendencies inherited from our ancestors that influence many judgments and decisions we make every day. Much of our behavior reflects cognitive systems shaped across millions of years of human evolution.

These tendencies contribute to our existence, survival, and personal wonder about the world, including our tendencies toward supernatural beliefs, unquestioned convictions, and tribal conflicts.

The innate capacities of the human brain help explain why people tend to believe in an unknowable or absent god of their choosing. Rather than being literally hard-wired for faith, we possess evolved cognitive tendencies that make religious belief feel intuitive and compelling. Reinforced by the emotions associated with those beliefs, faith can become a difficult habit to break.

Take exhibit A, for example. Today, nearly 76% of the world’s population—approximately six billion people—identify themselves as having a religious affiliation.

• Christianity: 2.3 to 2.4 billion followers (29–32% of the global population)
• Islam: 2.0 billion followers (25–26% of the global population)
• Secular/Nonreligious: 1.9 billion people (24% of the global population)
• Hinduism: 1.2 billion followers (15% of the global population)
• Buddhism: 400 to 500 million followers (4–7% of the global population)
• Folk Religions:* 400 million followers (6% of the global population)
• Sikhism: 25 to 30 million followers (<1% of the global population)
• Judaism: 14 to 16 million followers (0.2% of the global population)

For some, the central question of why we have belief systems in the first place is moot. If religion is so pervasive in all cultures, how could any of it not be true?

Well …

While some people rarely question the existence or validity of their own faith, they may readily question—and even categorically dismiss—the beliefs of others. For our purposes, it’s enough to recognize that at least those others subscribe to a faith.

Exhibit B. No single faith commands a majority of the world’s population. Look at that list again. Viewed globally, every religious tradition represents a minority position. You may feel deeply connected to your faith community, but it is only a part of a much wider and more diverse world.

The need to dismiss other traditions may be more about clinging to the belief that we are on the winning team. That sense of certainty may reveal less about which faith is true than about how strongly people identify with the beliefs they inherit or adopt.

While some people eagerly draw sharp distinctions among faiths, others do not. Many mainstream traditions embrace ecumenicalism, at least at the local level, putting differences aside and pooling resources to address issues like food scarcity, secularization, migration, and climate change.

Let’s be more like this.

Exhibit C. While labels and cultures can seem to separate us, the commonality found in the human condition is what ultimately matters. The overwhelming majority of humans subscribe to a religious affiliation, and that is telling.

The persistence and diversity of religious traditions across history and cultures may reveal as much about the human condition as they do about beliefs in unseen realities. In that context, debating which faith is correct becomes secondary to asking why religious belief has remained such a common feature of human life.

Once you peek inside the box for an answer, it becomes impossible to ignore.

Losing My Religion

As a student of Christian theology, I have never been satisfied with simply accepting doctrine without examining its origins. Admittedly, that is an unusual approach, one that I have written about before.

I find it more enlightening to explore how and why religious tenets take hold in the first place. Anthropology’s role in deciphering human thought and behavior has interested me even more. The scientific approach of evolutionary psychology—the study of human thought, emotion, and behavior through the lens of evolutionary biology—rounds out that understanding.

When I first began to dig into these subjects, I could not help but come away with more questions than answers. It is one thing to appreciate how doctrines concerning the divinity of Jesus and the Trinity developed over time. It is another to ask why humans so readily accept extraordinary beliefs involving unseen agents, forces, or realities, often without objectively verifiable evidence.

Within the Christian tradition, doubting Thomas is, in my estimation, a far more sympathetic character.

Believers in the unseen might respond with a simple, It’s called faith for a reason—fair enough. But Christianity did not appear fully formed overnight, and the expressions of faith familiar to us today have not always existed. Over the centuries, Christian beliefs and institutions have developed and changed amid social change, theological councils, political shifts, and internal disputes.

To accept that premise is to admit that faith systems are living, breathing, and evolving. They are not fixed. And if they are not fixed, then they must be open to change—shaped by the questions, experiences, and insights of the people who practice them.

Your present understanding of your faith is not the final word. Historically, such understandings have been questioned, challenged, revised, and transformed. It stands to reason that the faith you rely on today may look as foreign to people in the future as medieval religions look to you now.

Things change.

Whether one considers Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, or any of the thousands of religious traditions that have emerged and disappeared throughout the roughly 300,000-year history of Homo sapiens, a broader question arises: How and why did belief in unseen agents, forces, or realities become such a common feature of human life?

The Feeling of Matter-ing

While teaching media literacy classes to college students, social media emerged as a viable alternative to mainstream media companies and their content, literally changing everything. Whether silly entertainment or personally important issues, young people adopted these formats and learned to be their own media companies, sharing content that carried personal meaning.

Of course, without an objective gatekeeper, a lot of NSFW content was foisted onto the world, often without much consideration of any fallout.² Drunk videos, toga parties, suggestive images, and vitriolic statements about people and groups became critical fodder for naysayers of this new mass communication.

As an internet user from way back, I know the value that can be gleaned from online communities. The amount of content and information is staggering, and the instant human connection (though some would add, fleeting) that social media provides is equally monumental—maybe more so.

So the question that is still asked is, how can people say and do the things they do on social media, knowing they are broadcasting it to the whole world? Have they no shame?

As a student of human behavior, I want to rephrase the question: WHY do they say and do those things they release to the world? What inherent drive motivates them? What significant benefit is derived—validation, connection, or that 15-minutes of fame thing?

The reason and underlying motivation may be much simpler: I am here and my life matters.

In the end, that same motivation may explain why we subscribe to religious beliefs—not necessarily the what, but the why and how we believe. The underlying motivation is that it produces agency, identity, and purpose, giving us the much-needed feeling that life matters, a feeling often powerful and, yes, fleeting.

But why and how did THAT motivation remain within us, and why is it still so important?

Using evolutionary biology as a springboard, evolutionary psychology studies the mind by asking why people evolved to think and behave as we do, examining how our mental traits developed to solve the everyday challenges our ancestors faced.

Is This Order to Go?

This is often where people who hold to a faith-based worldview may start to resist this premise. But evolutionary psychology does not disprove the existence of a supreme being; it simply explains how human nature works and identifies the mechanisms that, over time, have shaped our instincts and behaviors.

Evolutionary psychologists focus on the ultimate rather than the proximal causes of behavior. For example, your feelings of physical attraction toward someone with appealing features are a proximal cause. Ultimately, however, choosing a partner with those traits increases the likelihood of passing on your genes. For most of human history, not finding or losing a romantic partner jeopardized one’s ability to do just that.

Our diets offer another example. The proximal purpose of craving calorie-rich, sweet, fatty foods was vital for our ancestors’ survival. When food was scarce and unpredictable, they depended on high-calorie foods that, ultimately, were more likely to keep them alive.

What does that mean for us? While food scarcity once pushed our ancestors to gorge on sugar and fat to survive, that hunger still persists in us today. By contrast, we now have an almost endless supply of cheap food. This once-useful evolutionary adaptation no longer fits our environment and may directly contribute to many health crises.

If you understand the psychology of fast food, you understand the psychology of religion. An open-ended craving for sugar, fat, and protein can now be easily satisfied, and if those cravings go unchecked, consuming too much of these foods can seriously damage one’s health.

Our brains are essentially running ancestral software in a modern world.

The human tendency to believe in the unseen is heavily shaped by biological evolution, genetic predispositions, and the structural design of the human brain.

Many researchers think that our tendency to believe in things we can’t see comes from how the human mind evolved. For example, we’re quick to sense that someone is behind us (even when nothing is there), we naturally try to guess what others are thinking and feeling, and we often assume that events happen for a purpose.

These mental habits likely helped our ancestors stay safe and maintain social bonds, and they may help explain why beliefs in unseen forces still feel so natural today.