Recently I saw a small science article that pondered whether non-human species have religious ceremonies. Absurd idea? Maybe, but then the author pointed out this example: Apparently during violent thunderstorms, male adult chimpanzees have been observed climbing down from trees carrying sticks that they bang against tree trunks and brandish in the air while making loud cries. The author postulates that, as intelligent as the chimps are, they have no scientific knowledge of nature; not knowing what causes storms they fall into a collective ritual behaviour to scare away the unseen power that is attacking them.
We humans know it is impossible to stop a storm by waving a stick, but do the chimps realize there is no causal connection between their ritual and the storm’s inevitable ending? We cannot know for sure what chimpanzees believe but to me the image of male apes banging sticks, shouting in fear and pointing at the sky sounds a lot like a religious ceremony. One of the obvious purposes religion serves is to provide comfort in the face of a chaotic universe. If waving a stick and shouting helps achieve this, then isn’t it a religious ceremony, as valid as breaking bread, burning incense or praying to Mecca?
In another article I read some years ago, anthropologists described a small tribe they found deep in the Amazon jungle. This group, living at a subsistence level as hunter- gatherers had no living memory of contact with other tribes. They had lived the same way for unknown centuries. Luckily their language were similar to known tribes allowing the researchers to get to know their customs and beliefs.
One of the beliefs the tribe held was that pregnancy is caused when a woman sleeps outside under a full moon. In other words, these people did not know there was a connection between sexual intercourse and pregnancy. They had come to attribute pregnancy to the moon. In some ways their fallacy makes sense. After all it would be weeks after sex before a swollen belly would show. Without an understanding of science, why would they relate an act of pleasure one night with a birth many months later? Perhaps the moon’s shape is similar enough to a pregnant belly to lead to this moon theory. One thing was certain: the tribe was absolutely convinced that their belief in moon pregnancies was a fact. The anthropologists’ attempts to explain about sperm, ovum and monthly cycles was met with much laughter and shaking of heads. What a silly idea, everyone knows that the moon creates babies.
For me, these are perfect examples of the roots of religion and its mythological hold on groups. When confronted with the unkown, whether a scary storm or a mysterious birth, primates seek an explanation. Lacking facts, they will fabricate an imaginative theory because any explanation is better then uncertainty and fear. Before long it becomes an accepted cultural Truth. And later, when new facts don’t fit the belief system they are denied, often violently, and at very least, rationalized away.
A human tribe with no access to science, tries to explain these seemingly random births. The answer is the moon; again myth becomes fact. And if a woman who sleeps outside doesn’t get pregnant, obviously the moon was covered by a cloud or the woman faced the wrong way. The chimpanzee’s stick ritual didn’t stop every storm, but it “worked” enough to become a belief within that tribe. Only an idiot or a madman (or in this case a madchimp) would doubt the power of the tribal ritual.
True-believers filter reality through their belief system; they can always find a way to make the facts fit what they know to be true. The history of humans is strewn with beliefs posing as facts: the earth is the centre of the universe, the world is flat, certain races are inferior and suitable for slavery, disease is caused by demons and strong-willed women are witches to be burned. Because we now have factual information we know these beliefs as absurd, dangerous and crippled human advancement. And yet the battle between faith and facts continues to play out around the world.
We may never know if chimpanzees and people worship the same god but we can see that both species create myths to explain an often mysterious universe. Perhaps not god, but the “need to believe” gene is what we share.
