The Worth of an Angry God?

The Worth of an Angry God: How supernatural beliefs allowed societies to bond and spread.

Brian Gallagher

Did humans need belief in a God-like being—someone who can punish every immorality we might commit—to have the big societies we have today, where we live relatively peaceably among strangers we could easily exploit?

Harvey Whitehouse, the director of the Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University, doesn’t think so. “Complex societies,” he and his colleagues declared in a March Nature paper, “precede moralizing gods throughout world history.” They relied on a massive historical database, called Seshat, which over a decade attracted contributions from over a hundred scholars. With the database “finally ready for analysis,” Whitehouse and his colleagues wrote in The Conversation, “we are poised to test a long list of theories about global history,” particularly “whether morally concerned deities drove the rise of complex societies,” some hallmarks of which are more economic integration and division of labor, more political hierarchy, the emergence of classes, and dependence on more complex technology and pre-specialists. Whitehouse concluded that those deities did no such driving. As he told Nautilus in a 2014 interview, as societies became more agricultural, what researchers see “in the archeological record is increasing frequency of collective rituals. This changes things psychologically and leads to more doctrinal kinds of religious systems, which are more recognizable when we look at world religions today.”

Joseph Henrich, chair of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University, sees it differently. He contends that moralizing gods spurred societal complexity because belief in moralizing gods leads to success in intergroup competition. It increased trust and cooperation among a growing population of relative strangers, he said, and buttressed traits like bravery in warfare. “The word ‘moralizing’ is not a useful term,” though, he added. “People use it casually, because people are interested in morality, but the theory specifies this very specific set of things that increase your success in intergroup competition. Most people want to call greater cooperation, helping strangers, things like that, moral. That’s just a Western preoccupation.”

I caught up with Henrich earlier this month to discuss the anthropological chicken-and-egg problem of whether gods or complex societies came first. He was gracious in defending his position that gods were the bonds that allowed societies to gain strength and grow.

I have always found the preoccupation with punishment and vindictiveness somewhat at odds with what I learned in scripture classes in my youth. I was taught by a methodist lay preacher at Sunday School (until about the age of 12, at least) and he concentrated on the words and works of Jesus and the New Testament. It seemed to me that the emphasis was on forgiveness, avoiding judgement and showing compassion. Yet I see American evangelists who call out hallelujah to Jesus yet are quick to condemn and eager to punish "in the name of the lord". I see people who consider themselves "saved" yet would damn those who do not follow their example to burn in hell for eternity. What kind of morality is that?

I have always found the preoccupation with punishment and vindictiveness somewhat at odds with what I learned in scripture classes in my youth. I was taught by a methodist lay preacher at Sunday School (until about the age of 12, at least) and he concentrated on the words and works of Jesus and the New Testament. It seemed to me that the emphasis was on forgiveness, avoiding judgement and showing compassion. Yet I see American evangelists who call out hallelujah to Jesus yet are quick to condemn and eager to punish "in the name of the lord". I see people who consider themselves "saved" yet would damn those who do not follow their example to burn in hell for eternity. What kind of morality is that?

"Any God worthy of worship would not wish to be."
James Driscoll.

I have always found the preoccupation with punishment and vindictiveness somewhat at odds with what I learned in scripture classes in my youth. I was taught by a methodist lay preacher at Sunday School (until about the age of 12, at least) and he concentrated on the words and works of Jesus and the New Testament. It seemed to me that the emphasis was on forgiveness, avoiding judgement and showing compassion. Yet I see American evangelists who call out hallelujah to Jesus yet are quick to condemn and eager to punish "in the name of the lord". I see people who consider themselves "saved" yet would damn those who do not follow their example to burn in hell for eternity. What kind of morality is that?

Interesting - I remember in 2nd grade a white female classmate coming up to me and saying that though we were different skin colors we were both children in the eyes of God.

Only later did I learn [from someone else years after] that I'd be damned for not accepting any particular ticket for what the philosopher Bakker calls the "Magical Belief Lottery".