He sees you when you’re sleeping
He knows when you’re awake
He knows if you’ve been bad or good
So be good for goodness sake. (64)
Although the above words are about a supernatural being, that being is not considered a god. Maybe a saint, but not a god. Yet the watching is god-like. Besides Santa Claus, personal gods tend to have the ability to monitor behavior. They can watch you and judge your behavior as bad or good. Because there is no limit to their seeing, you will not get away with violating the rules of your religion. As the Biblical character Job laments, Will you never look away from me? (Job 7:19)
In any primate group their must be a balance between behavior that is directly self-serving and behavior that serves to maintain group integrity. There are thus checks and balances, including the instinct to be vigilant for cheaters—you can’t trust them, can you?—and to punish violators. A good example of this are the many economic/psychological studies employing the “ultimatum” game. In an extreme version, two complete strangers–individuals not of the same group past or future–must divide a sum of money. One stranger decides upon his cut of the money, say a total of $100. He or she then slides the remaining amount under the door to the unseen and unknown other. If the other accepts that amount, they both get to keep the money. If not, neither gets any money. Manifesting just how social a species we are, most individuals in this scenario will split the money equally or near-equally and slide 40 or 50 dollars under the door. Both players walk away richer. When the money is unevenly divided, however, the risk for rejection of the sum rises dramatically, the result being that both players walk away with nothing gained. And it happens more often than you would think. Many an individual receiving a 20 dollar cut will refuse the free money. He or she will instead punish the unfairness, in effect punishing themselves as well. No one likes a cheater.
In her paper on the evolution of cheater detection, Denise D. Cummins wrote, “[C]heater detection plays a broader role in social coordination as a fundamental, primitive cognitive adaptation to dominance hierarchies. . . . In order to maintain priority of access to resources, dominant individuals monitor the behavior of subordinates and aggress against those who “cheat” (violate social norms).” (65)
As a super-dominant being, you would expect a god to monitor the behavior of all of its subordinates and punish those caught cheating. Even in social groups where rules and laws have not been codified by religion, and where a single, supreme alpha has not been designated, you will often find invisible spirits that take an interest in ‘who does what.’ (66) Why would these para-normal entities care? Because, in some way, they are one of us; we are them. One characteristic that distinguishes the religious from the paranormal is consistent involvement and interest of the invisible party. Thoughts of a door-banging and chain-dragging kind of ghost may be spooky, but they fail to incite social emotions as readily as the holy-ghost kind of invisible entity. Only one of these kinds of ghosts will make us wonder if “they” know about our recent behavioral transgression.
In his book on evolutionary underpinnings of religion, anthropologist Scott Atran notes that if we want to enforce a social contract made between individuals, get more people involved. Make social contracts a community affair. For then there will be more eyes watching for violation and a greater probability that a wronged party will have someone to back them up in a dispute. What typically makes social contracts a community affair? Religion. Atran writes, “Displays of commitment to supernatural agents signal sincere willingness to cooperate with the community of believers.” (67)
Not only do invisible alphas provide a super-member for a group to form around, as dominant beings they are especially good at catching cheaters, and thus, presumably, at deterring cheating. Psychological experiments conducted on human primates have found that when adopting a status of high-rank, an individual will be more vigilant for cheating than when adopting a position of low rank.(68) It seems we innately expect for more dominant individuals to watch over less.
When a king sits on his throne to judge, he winnows out all evil with his eyes. (Proverbs 20:8)
And so we invite a super-being into our social circle to help us be good, to get along. In her ruminations about the origins of church-going rituals, Karen Armstrong notes that from early Biblical texts it can be surmised that early, semi-nomadic Israelites carried the “home” of their god with them—the Ark of the Covenant. In tent-walled temples, they renewed their commitment to Yahweh, their number one, and through him, to one another. (69)
Is this a reason for church-going behavior today? Do individuals gather together to acknowledge their number one? Does church-going strengthen individual commitment to a group, does it remind members of important social rules? Do the texts and teachings inform them they are being watched, and if they violate the special rules they will receive not coal in their Christmas stocking, but something worse?
Do you really want to risk being bad? You better watch out.
—
(64) “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” by John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie
(65) Cummins, D. D. “Cheater Detection is Modified by Social Rank: The Impact of Dominance of the Evolution of Cognitive Functions,” Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 20, Issue 4, July 1999, 220-248.
(66) Wilson, D.S. Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society, University of Chicago, Chicago, 2002, p. 64
(67) Atran, S., In God’s We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002, p.16
(68) Cummins, D. D., July 1999, 220-248.
(69) Armstrong, K. The Great Transformation: The Beginning of our Religious Traditions, Knopf, New York, 2006, p.43
