Abstract
Why is it so easy to ignore the ecological and economic crises of the Anthropocene? This article unveils some of the religious biases whose covert operation facilitates the repression or rejection of warnings about the consequences of extreme climate change and excessive capitalist consumption. The evolved defaults that are most relevant for our purposes here have to do with mental credulity toward religious content (beliefs about supernatural agents) and with social congruity in religious contexts (behaviors shaped by supernatural rituals). Learning how to contest these phylogenetically inherited and culturally fortified biases may be a necessary condition for adapting to and altering our current natural and social environments in ways that will enhance the chances for the survival (and flourishing) of Homo sapiens and other sentient species. I outline a conceptual framework, derived from empirical findings and theoretical developments in the bio-cultural sciences of religion, which can help clarify why and how gods are imaginatively conceived and nurtured by ritually engaged believers. Finally, I discuss the role that “adaptive atheism” might play in responding to the crises of the Anthropocene.
Highlights
In one sense—and, in the one sense that is perhaps most obvious and yet at the same time easiest to disavow—none of us are going to survive the Anthropocene
In a similar study in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Preston and colleagues examined the role of heuristic biases in “adaptation discourse”, which all too lead to ways of framing the problems, and to policy proposals for solving them, that rely on affective reasoning processes rather than analytic reasoning [13]
Even if religiously affiliated and committed individuals explicitly accept the scientific consensus on climate change and act publically in environmentally friendly ways, insofar as they are implicitly activated by evolved defaults that engender conceptions of person-like, coalition-favoring disembodied spirits whose intentions are allegedly relevant for interpreting natural phenomena and normatively inscribing the social field, they are strengthening the very biases that are contributing to the crises they are trying to solve
Summary
In one sense—and, in the one sense that is perhaps most obvious and yet at the same time easiest to disavow—none of us are going to survive the Anthropocene. In a similar study in Mitigation and Adaptation Strategies for Global Change, Preston and colleagues examined the role of heuristic biases in “adaptation discourse”, which all too lead to ways of framing the problems, and to policy proposals for solving them, that rely on affective (quick, innate) reasoning processes rather than analytic (slow, methodical) reasoning [13] Scholars in these fields are recognizing the extent to which cognitive biases help to explain resistance to the scientific consensus about climate change and the relative lack of success in policies aimed at promoting pro-environmental behavior. Even if religiously affiliated and committed individuals explicitly accept the scientific consensus on climate change and act publically in environmentally friendly ways, insofar as they (and their affines) are implicitly activated by evolved defaults that engender conceptions of person-like, coalition-favoring disembodied spirits whose intentions are allegedly relevant for interpreting natural phenomena and normatively inscribing the social field, they are strengthening the very biases that are contributing to the crises they are trying to solve
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