What Are the Origins of Religion?

Summary of Chapter Three
Alister and Joanna McGrath’s

The Dawkins’ Delusion, IVP, 2007

James W. Gustafson, PhD 


Traditional naturalistic explanations for the idea of God are two: the psychological explanation (God as wish-fulfillment) and the sociological explanation (God brings solace to the powerless classes).



Dawkins suggests that the idea of God may be a “by-product of some other evolutionary mechanism.” (55) This explanation (also similar to that Daniel Dennett makes in Breaking the Spell) defines religion cognitively, that is, as a set of concepts that make up a mental map or worldview.



But religion is more than that. It encompasses rituals, bonds of social community, moral and ethical behavior, engines of motivation and personal experiences of the transcendent.

Dawkins’ and Dennett’s explanations refer to hypothetical (that means a theory for which there is currently no evidence whatsoever) possibilities, such as a “god center” in our brains that derives from some “mystical gene” that enabled organisms to survive better. Dawkins suggests that this mechanism has now gone wild, producing religion in its current destructive manifestations. However, there is no scientific data to support this hypothesis—none whatsoever.

McGrath outlines this circular argument: 



Proposition 1. There are “no spiritual realities outside us.” 

Proposition 2. Natural explanations can be given for the origins of belief in these non-existent spiritual beings. 

Conclusion 3. Therefore we can conclude that there are no spiritual beings. 



Dawkins assumes that religion has progressed from belief in animism (every object has a spirit) to polytheism (various classes of objects—such as the mountains, the sea and the sky—have a deity) to monotheism (there is one deity). Dawkins hopes that atheism is the last stop in this progression.

But in reality the history of religions shows increasing diversification not simplification. Besides, the foundational question is this: What is the difference between a worldview and a religion? (58) There is no precise way to differentiate the two and attempts to do so are often biased by what the definer is trying to accomplish.



“A worldview is a comprehensive way of viewing reality that tries to make sense of its various elements with a single, over-arching way of looking at things. Some worldviews are religious; many are not. Some claim to be universal, others local. None can be proved, even though reasons can be given to support them.” (58)



Any worldview “can easily promote fanaticism.” (58) Dawkins tends to cite religious fanaticism and while ingoring atheistic fanaticism—Hitler and Stalin, for example, whose ideology was explicitly atheistic. This is the logical fallacy of comparing “our best with their worst.”

Dawkins seems to follow James Frazier’s interpretation of the origins of religion in The Golden Bough (1890), even though this work is generally discredited as “imperialistic” in attitude and without empirical foundation.

But religion is now known to exhibit no universal features sufficient to support “universal Darwinism” such as Dawkins espouses. Dawkins selects only the three major monotheistic religions out of the hundreds of religions out there. And he over-simplifies those he selects.



Religion cannot be reduced to a projection of our wishes. Religion also enables us to hang on to our method of facing a challenging and changing world. “We have a built-in resistance to change our position.” (62) This may be due to the unsettling energy that would be required to constantly be shifting one’s worldview.

This may be what moves Dawkins to reject attacks on his atheistic worldview with strong emotion, blatant bias, and disregard for careful and comprehensive reasoning. “Cognitive bias helps us cope with a complex world.” (62) But some disciplines require a serious attempt to overcome such bias. Science, along with philosophy, is such a discipline. In religion, however, two factors can be found—the conservative factor that helps a worldview maintain itself in the face of threats to it and a iconoclastic one that seeks to supplant established religion in order to bring out something new.


What Dawkins fails to see is that belief in God is not the whole of religion. Hence he attempts to show religious ideas to be “ridiculous or pernicious” while ignoring its other “levels of meaning.” Many believe in God but do not exhibit religious behavior. (63) And there are those who exhibit religious behavior but do not believe in God—such as classical Buddhism.

Thus Dawkins focuses on beliefs as “creedal statements” and ignores a great deal of what religion is about. This defeats any attempt to explain religion away by Darwinian categories. Religious faith is influenced by its implications for life, not merely its propositional abstractions. “Dogmas are not only propositional; they arise in a social context and fulfill a social function.” (64)

In addition to failing to refute religious ideas about God, Dawkins also fails to explain the function of religion in the human psyche and in society. These are serious deficiencies. 

“Dawkins, in my view, makes his critique of religion dependent on a hypothetical, unobserved entity that can be dispensed with completely in order to make sense of what we observe. But isn’t that the core atheistic critique of God—that God is an unobserved hypothesis which can be dispensed with easily?” (73) 


Consequently we can conclude that Dawkins neither defines what religion is nor explains its origins in a way that stands up to scrutiny. These are serious flaws in his argument seeking to establish an anti-theistic worldview.