Early in the history of humans, nobody believed in a god of any sort. And yet, as University of California at Irvine psychologist Brett Mercier and his colleagues point out in a recent article, there was once a time in the prehistory of our species when nobody believed in a god of any sort. There is just no physical reason why these constants and quantities should have the values they do. Why does the Northern Hemisphere get so much sun on the summer solstice and through the summer? But religious hate speech differs from racial hate speech, a point that has not received much attention. The evolution of religious belief. At this point, we see cultural evolution taking place. He came out of the womb clutching Esau’s heel, indicating that he would seek to trip up his brother and take his place. We tend to automatically detect agency in inanimate objects whenever the situation is unpredictable and out of our control. Because of hypersensitive agency detection, we also have a tendency to infer intentionality in natural processes or inanimate objects. That is to say, we not only believe we have agency, we also believe others have agency as well. If you live day in and day out with the same 150 people, you get to know them really well.

For example, when someone cuts us off in traffic, we generally assume they did it on purpose-that is, knowing full well how dangerously they’re driving-rather than supposing they looked but just didn’t see us. Consider, for example, birds flying south for the winter. In contrast, the proximate cause is the decrease in daylight hours, serving as a trigger that it’s time to head south. As tool users, humans quickly developed an understanding that they can intentionally cause things to happen. The ultimate cause of bird migration is the increase in survival and reproduction experienced by those who seasonally moved to warmer climates where food was plentiful. As is common practice in evolutionary science, Mercier and his colleagues distinguish between ultimate and proximate causes. Animistic beliefs are also common in hunter-gatherer societies, but what they don’t have is organized religion. In these primitive societies, the men hunted, fished, or scavenged for meat, while the women gathered fruits, roots, and vegetables.

But in anonymous societies, it’s easy to take advantage of others, as there’s no way for the rest of the group to punish those who take advantage of the system. Our evolutionary ancestors were all atheists, but somewhere along the way they found religion. Or have you ever complained that your computer has a mind of its own because it doesn’t behave the way you want it to? Be sure to have a camera handy. By the way, if you think that you-an intelligent human being living in modern society-are free of such superstitious nonsense, you need to ask yourself: Have you ever begged your car to start on a cold winter morning? When we live in small groups, cheaters are punished by other members, and they quickly learn that they have to get along. The solution was to invent ever-watchful gods who’ll punish cheaters for us. Nevertheless, religious belief in one or more gods that watch over our actions and judge us accordingly is quite common. Such thinking is common in children, and as adults our animistic thinking is shaped by the norms of our culture. Beliefs in water sprites and woodland spirits, specters and spooks, ghosts and demons, are ancient and observed in every culture around the world.

Those demigod figures, well-known to the ancient authors and readers of the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament, were the “mighty men of old” and “men of renown” referred to in Genesis. We can easily forgive the person who accidentally steps on our foot, but we really need an explanation and an apology if someone purposely treads on our toes. This kind of animistic thinking-that is, the belief that supernatural agency inhabits the world and can influence events-is a universal human trait. Because the natural world is complex and acts in mysterious ways, we detect agency all around us. It is far too easy to focus on individual acts of terrorism and extremism, and ignore the global patterns in such violence. It is also there because Islam permits individual ingenuity in making wealth and gives right of isolated ownership of possessions. If there is also fear, it is the precondition for our dignity. You needn’t. There is no proof of this, nor disproof. The two had met many years earlier when the then-struggling young actor rented a room in Herzog’s family apartment, and Kinski’s often terrifying antics during the three months he lived there left a lasting impression on the young Herzog.