Human Dominance
Researchers in the areas of biology, neurology, and social psychology have discovered a mechanism in the brain called the Dominance Behavioral System (DBS). (See, for example, The Dominance Behavioral System and Psychopathology There are a large number of other such articles online.) The DBS mechanism is grounded in biology, and it explains why some people are motivated to dominate others, while other people are motivated to be subservient. In the words of these researchers, the DBS guides behavior, directs sensory processing, and it ensures the efficient, rapid learning of behaviors that increase the likelihood of attaining control over social and material resources—resources that are critical for survival and reproduction. As a result of the DBS, people naturally size up situations in such a way that they either seek to acquire power or submit to the actions of those who do. The malfunctioning of the DBS is linked, on the one hand, to the psychopathologies of mania and narcissistic personality disorder, and on the other to anxiety and depression.
The DBS is found not only in humans but in all higher primates and probably in all mammals. But even chickens have a pecking order—a form of social organization in which a bird higher up the scale will peck others lower down without fear of retaliation, and a lower level bird will submit to being pecked by a bird higher up. This fact about chickens suggests that the behavior of many, if not all, animal species may be influenced by a dominance behavioral system. Further, since the DBS of humans (as well as other animals) is grounded in biology, it likely reflects peculiarities in our DNA. Also, since human DNA has not changed much in the last twelve thousand years, we can be reasonably assured that it operated in humans of the Neolithic period in much the same way that it does in humans today. Given these facts, humans of the Neolithic period were perfectly primed to generate belief in gods and the religions that accompany those beliefs. Religion is thus a likely natural outcome of our DNA.
Chapter 2 of Religion, Power, and Illusion shows how people of the Neolithic period were drenched in beliefs about spirits. They thought that everything related to survival had spirits associated with them—the wind, the rain, the clouds, the sun, the seeds in the ground, and so on. They also believed in fetishes, which were physical objects such as puppets, amulets, musical instruments, and sheaves of grain, and these fetishes too were imbued with spirits. Given these beliefs and the operation of the DBS, it was virtually assured that some people (those seeking power in the tribe) would claim to be able to communicate via their fetishes with the spirits of the clouds, the spirits of the sun, and the spirits of the seeds in the ground. In this way, the power-seeking members of the tribe could assure other members of the tribe that they (the power seekers) had the power to ensure a bountiful harvest. Therefore, these power seekers should be rewarded for their services with enhanced power in the tribe, higher status, better mating opportunities, improved living accommodations, and so on.
The Dominance Behavioral System also assured that other members of the tribe would be receptive to the message of the power seekers. If everyone were a power seeker, the result would be a war of all against all, a condition depicted in Hobbes’s state of nature. But the DBS guaranteed that the power seekers would be matched with others in the tribe who were subservient and who would cooperate with the power seekers. By the time that the power seekers had succeeded in converting the spirits of the wind, rain, and seeds into gods, the power seekers became priests and the subservient tribal members became slavish believers. In this way the DBS theory confirms and supplements the account given in Religion, Power, and Illusion for the emergence of religion.