Sacredness

As we have said, the older parts of the brain—the brainstem and the limbic system—are responsible for our desires, feelings, and emotions. At appropriate moments, they take control, while the cerebral cortex, which appears to be the source of our conscious awareness and capacity for deliberate decision-making, often serves to fulfill desires originating in the older parts of the brain.

Ordinarily, no amount of logic or calculation can persuade a mother not to behave like a mother or not to love her child. When we fall in love, our actions, personality, and decisions change and come to serve that love. When jealousy is aroused in us, our reasoning may be recruited to justify our unethical thoughts and actions. When the need or desire to use an opiate or opioid drug arises—a desire originating in the ventral tegmental area of the limbic brain—we forget all the promises we made to ourselves about giving up drugs. Under such circumstances, our prefrontal cortex is no match for the limbic system, and all our cerebral cortex does is find a way to obtain and use the drug.

When we are alone, we may decide that if we ever encounter a bully, we will stand up to them and teach them a lesson. But when we actually face that bully, information about their appearance, size, and build first reaches the older parts of our brain and is processed there. It is these regions that generate the necessary feeling—fear, for example—and issue the necessary instructions, such as remaining silent and avoiding any provocative action. We abandon all our previous decisions so that we can leave the situation safely. We may not even think for a moment about what we had previously decided; our entire attention may be devoted to whatever the older parts of our brain have determined for us.

Now, if we have come to believe that an invisible, supernatural being exists who knows our innermost thoughts, the contents of our minds, everything that passes through our heads, and every thought, fantasy, and intention we have, we cannot simply think whatever we please without taking that being’s presence in our mind into account. At times, we may become so absorbed in certain thoughts that we forget its presence. But as soon as we remember that it is aware of our thoughts, we begin to wonder how it might react to them—and we may even apologize to it for our thoughts and repent.

From the moment we are told that this supernatural being is watching us, the mind we automatically attribute to it will have the characteristics of a human mind like our own. Through Theory of Mind, our default assumption is that other minds, like ours, are capable of different states such as attention, anger, kindness, jealousy, stubbornness, social embarrassment, understanding the meaning of words and sentences, seeing, hearing, fear, hope, despair, and so on—unless the storyteller who introduced the supernatural being to us has described it as lacking some of these human psychological characteristics, perhaps by telling us that it never becomes angry, or has attributed to it characteristics different from those of our own minds.

If, in describing this guardian of the mind, we have been told that it dislikes certain thoughts—for example, that it does not want us to doubt its existence—we will take this into account in our thinking. If we have been told that anyone who doubts its existence and dies while still in doubt will be sent to a place of eternal torment in hell, it should hardly be surprising if the older parts of our brain prevent the cerebral cortex from engaging in critical thought about its existence and suppress any emerging doubt.

We should bear in mind that if this being has been described to us as frightening and merciless, the meaning and experience of its being frightening—like any other feeling or emotion—has arisen nowhere other than in our older brain systems. Thus, when its presence is brought to mind, those same older systems, now knowing what kind of being they are dealing with, take control of everything.

As it happens, those who tell us the story of that supernatural being, and the clergy of the religion in which we are raised, do not usually tell us that the being who knows our thoughts and the contents of our minds wants us to question its existence as much as possible, to doubt whether its rules and commands are right or wrong, and to contribute freely and continually to our intellectual growth through critical reflection.

Rather, they present it as a being that prefers faith to doubt; one that becomes angry and enraged when its existence or the correctness of its commands is questioned—or, at the very least, becomes disappointed and saddened—and that has a plan to take revenge on unbelievers: those who doubt and whose thinking does not lead them to believe in it.

In this way, the ever-present and watchful God of believers creates an obstacle to their natural cognitive development. Under normal circumstances, children who trust their parents and the adults around them eventually reach adolescence and observe, on the one hand, that they have grown to roughly the same physical size as their parents and, on the other, that their parents make mistakes and do not necessarily know everything. They come to realize that a statement is not valid simply because it came from their mother or father; otherwise, their parents’ words would never turn out to be wrong.

They therefore conclude that they need other criteria for distinguishing true statements from false ones. They begin to apply these other criteria, and disagreements, arguments, and debates with their parents emerge. Through such exchanges, they practice argument and criticism, and this is part of the natural course of cognitive development during adolescence. Religious beliefs and matters of faith, however, are usually excluded from this process.

If we have come to believe that the supernatural being who serves as our guardian of the mind loves certain objects, we will feel respect for those objects and will no longer regard them as ordinary. We will not behave toward them as we would toward other objects of the same kind. When we encounter such an object, our brainstem and limbic system—which process visual information before our cerebral cortex does—evoke feelings of caution, reverence, and fear, lest we displease the ever-present and watchful guardian of the mind.

We notice that the moment we encounter the object, our state of mind changes, as though we have been struck by its awe-inspiring presence, and we may attribute this quality to the object itself. This inability to see the object as we see ordinary things, and our inability to behave casually and unconcernedly toward it, is what we call sacralization. We regard the object as sacred, not simply because we have been told that it is sacred, but because we have been led to believe that it is cherished and honored by the guardian who is present in our mind.

Just as we are careful about how we behave toward a child in the presence of that child’s parents, because we know how precious the child is to them, so too, in the permanent presence of our guardian of the mind, we become careful even about our thoughts concerning a sacred object. This is why I have used the word guardian for the mind that watches over our own.

A guardian’s role requires more than merely observing what is happening around them; when necessary, and according to their own judgment, a guardian intervenes to prevent what should not be allowed to happen. The combination of “belief in a mind that observes the contents of our own mind” and “the distinctive responses of our older brain systems to that belief” means that not every thought is permitted to emerge and find expression. A form of control—like the control exercised by a guardian—begins to operate over our minds, feelings, thoughts, and actions.

If we believe that the supernatural being loves a particular human being and that this person enjoys its support and approval, we can no longer think about that person in the same way we think about other people. This usually happens when miraculous stories are told about that individual and miracles are attributed to them—acts beyond the power of any ordinary human being, which the person is said to have performed only with the help of that supernatural being. We may be told, for example, that this person spoke or walked at birth, raised the dead, split a mountain apart, and so on.

Once we believe such miraculous stories, we can no longer, in the presence of the guardian of the mind, view that person’s words and actions with criticism and doubt. Whatever that person does or says will appear to us correct and beyond question. If our religion tells us that this person is infallible, we regard them as infallible. Even if our religion does not explicitly claim that the person is infallible, we may nevertheless treat them as infallible in our own minds, even while verbally insisting that they are not.

That is, not only do we refrain from questioning the correctness of their words and actions, but we also try to reject any criticism of them and find some way to justify whatever they have said or done. Once again, the older parts of our brain recruit its newest part to construct plausible reasons for every action and statement of the person favored by our guardian of the mind.

We cannot approach that person with the same behavior, way of thinking, or attitude that we apply to other people. Our limbic system and brainstem do not allow us to do so. This means that the person is sacred to us, even if we do not acknowledge it in words.

We may never have consciously decided to add that person to our list of sacred figures. The point is that our conscious and voluntary decisions are made by the cerebral cortex, whereas the decision to avoid all doubt and criticism regarding this person is made and implemented by our older brain systems according to their own priorities. In this matter, they are in control and even dictate what the cerebral cortex is to do. In other words, sacralization is not a voluntary decision; it occurs beyond our conscious control.

Likewise, if we believe that a collection of sayings, books, commands, or rules comes from that supernatural and all-powerful being, these too become beyond doubt and criticism and are added to the realm of things we regard as sacred.

If someone tells us that a particular action is morally right, we may question the claim through critical thinking and freely examine and criticize what they have said. But if that same person can persuade us that the supernatural being who knows the contents of our mind has commanded us to perform that action, critical thought and questioning may no longer be permitted to arise in our minds.

We may have claimed that we accept no statement without first criticizing and evaluating it, and perhaps we genuinely follow that principle in every other situation. Yet when confronted with the words, commands, and rules of the guardian within our mind, the older parts of our brain take into account the need to avoid provoking its anger and the possible consequences of that anger, and shut down our system of critical thinking.

But our brainstem and limbic system do not merely fear the anger and vengeance of the guardian of the mind. They have other reasons as well for preventing us from critically examining and evaluating religious faith. We will turn to those reasons next.