Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe

by Brian Greene

Religion is story, enhanced by doctrines, rituals, customs, symbols, art, and behavioral standards. By conferring an aura of the sacred upon collections of such activities and by establishing an emotional allegiance among those who practice them, religion extends the club of kinship. Religion provides membership to unrelated individuals who thus feel part of a strongly bound group. Even though our genetic overlap is minimal, we are primed to work together and protect one another because of our religious attachment. Such cooperation matters. Deeply. As we have seen, humans prevailed in no small part because our species has the capacity to pool brain and brawn, to live and work in groups, to divvy up responsibilities and effectively meet the needs of the collective. The greater social cohesion of those in a religiously bound group would have made them a more formidable force in the ancestral world, and according to this line of argument, securing an adaptive role for religious affiliation.