STUDY: Climate may influence religious beliefs

Thursday, November 13, 2014, 6:00 PM - A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that the environment may play a critical role in adoption of religious beliefs.

"Although ecological forces are known to shape the expression of sociality across a broad range of biological taxa, their role in shaping human behavior is currently disputed," The paper's abstract reads.

"Both comparative and experimental evidence indicate that beliefs in moralizing high gods promote cooperation among humans, a behavioral attribute known to correlate with environmental harshness in nonhuman animals."

Chris Botero, the lead author on the study, told the Washington Post that it became "very clear" that people who live in a harsh environment are more likely to believe "there is some kind of deity that is involved in human morality."

The team argues that adopting a "moralizing religion" may be a mechanism to help cope with environments where there is little access to food and water.

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Botero told Medical Daily that belief in a moralizing god may reduce cheating and increase fairness -- both of which are necessary when resources are scarce.

Researchers analyzed data on 583 societies along with high-resolution logs on plant growth, precipitation and temperature.

Botero told Medical Daily the climate conditions present in a given society  "has a really great ability to predict whether a society believes in a moralizing high god" -- and he may be right.

According to the paper, the researcher's model has an accuracy of 91 percent.

The full study can be read online at PNAS.

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