What is first: Big Gods or big societies?
The main position of the target article that Big Gods and related prosocial religions “promoted large-scale cooperation and high fertility, often leading to success in intergroup competition” (abstract) is not well founded in history. History suggests that the direction of causality might be inverted. That is, reaching a critical mass in a population, a certain level of intragroup cohesion, and role diversification serving group efficiency were necessary for pondering of rules (moral or other) governing the functioning and preservation of the group vis-à-vis the challenges of the natural environment or other competing groups. Under this conception, Big Gods and related prosocial religions emerged from, rather than resulted in, big societies.
The history of ancient Greek religion aligns with our position rather than the position of the target article: the belief in Big Gods appeared long after people began to live in big cities. In fact, several crucial supernatural characteristics attributed to Big Gods (immortality, omnipresence, ability to oversee humans, and their role in the preservation of moral and social order) resulted from other concerns rather than the preservation of the group as such. For example, the omnipresence of Big Gods was first attributed to anthropomorphic gods and seems to have come from the need to continue paying homage and respect to ancestors abandoned in remote lands. Their moral role seems to have come from a shift from aristocratic to democratic governance with all ensuing consequences for personal responsibilities, duties, and rights. There is also some evidence for this sequence in the development of Christian (Pnevmatikos Reference Pnevmatikos2002) and Muslim children (Pnevmatikos & Makris Reference Pnevmatikos, Makris and Håkansson2010). Admittedly, though, once invented and widely accepted, Big Gods might then have exerted the influences suggested by the target article.
Can every mind invent a Big God?
The fundamental assumption of the target article in concern to the grasp of Big Gods is limited. We concur with it that mentalizing is crucial for belief in entities whose properties are mental constructions: Minimally, a creature must have an insight that the world is representable and that there may be variations between representations of his co-creatures to extrapolate to the Big Holy Creature knowing and controlling everything. However, plain theory of mind (ToM) would make a very simple Big God, most probably an anthropomorphic god, if any. Mentalizing is much broader than ToM and develops much beyond it. It involves, in addition to the recognition of the representational nature of the human mind, recognition of the multiplicity of the origins of representations – perception, inference, learning from others, logic itself, and the recognition of its amenability to control by oneself and others (Demetriou et al. Reference Demetriou, Spanoudis and Shayer2014). Research suggests that grasping the representational nature of the human mind is a long process (Spanoudis et al. Reference Spanoudis, Demetriou, Kazi, Giorgala and Zenonos2015). At 4–6 years, children understand that minds represent the world, but it is only later that they discriminate the human from the god's mind by attributing different properties to each one of them (Makris & Pnevmatikos Reference Makris and Pnevmatikos2007; submitted). This differentiation is facilitated by mastering executive control that enables children to discriminate between similar minds (humans) from supernatural minds (Makris & Pnevmatikos, submitted). That, for example, gods know for good and ever, beyond human fallible thinking, create and recreate in the name of justice, judge but negotiate their decisions vis-à-vis motives and intentions, and distribute favors and punishments. This is the mind of the adolescent rather than the mind of the toddler. To extrapolate, we might even assume that gods’ minds are reshaped by humanity to reflect the possibilities of the human mind. This, however, occurs with huge time lags, in the fashion of Gödel's incompleteness theorems: human possibilities are projected to God's a few thousand years after they are attained.
Education for religion in post-modernity
Despite our previous objections, we accept that this theory is an excellent framework for rethinking the teaching of religion. Specifically, this framework may be used to develop curricula that would enable students to understand how different aspects of social, individual, and historical change resulted into important cultural institutions, such as religion. This curriculum would have to highlight how interaction between social needs (e.g., arising from the enlargement of societies), ruling and operational needs (e.g., autocratic vs. aristocratic vs. democratic governance), personal needs (e.g., existential needs), and abilities (e.g. mentalizing, reasoning, and knowledge) resulted in different religions, and how change in these needs resulted into changes in religions and religious thinking. This curriculum seems important now more than ever because vanishing time, geographical, and national boundaries and the emergence of supranational entities, such as the European Union, requires that citizens have a better understanding of the forces binding individuals and groups together. This framework may be used to compare religion with other forms of political organizations, such as justice and lawmaking and enforcement at the national and the supranational level.
Our model suggests that at different ages children can grasp different aspects of these interactions (Demetriou et al. Reference Demetriou, Spanoudis and Mouyi2011). At the preschool level, teaching about gods may help children conceive of practices that may facilitate them to cope with their obligations to others. This would facilitate executive control, which is important to master at this age. At the primary school level, children may learn that religion is one social institution among many that relate to the functioning of the society, as it regulates individual behavior, rights, and duties. Personal responsibility to ideals for humanity, life, and civilization beyond time must come later in adolescence. At this phase, God may be understood as the Big Mind, a huge historical projection of the struggle of humanity over time to understand and cope with its raison d’être and its destiny! At any phase, children must also differentiate actual causal forces governing societies and nature from mental constructions about them, however “holy” they may be.
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We focus on two of the claims of the target article and advance an argument about its possible educational implications.
What is first: Big Gods or big societies?
The main position of the target article that Big Gods and related prosocial religions “promoted large-scale cooperation and high fertility, often leading to success in intergroup competition” (abstract) is not well founded in history. History suggests that the direction of causality might be inverted. That is, reaching a critical mass in a population, a certain level of intragroup cohesion, and role diversification serving group efficiency were necessary for pondering of rules (moral or other) governing the functioning and preservation of the group vis-à-vis the challenges of the natural environment or other competing groups. Under this conception, Big Gods and related prosocial religions emerged from, rather than resulted in, big societies.
The history of ancient Greek religion aligns with our position rather than the position of the target article: the belief in Big Gods appeared long after people began to live in big cities. In fact, several crucial supernatural characteristics attributed to Big Gods (immortality, omnipresence, ability to oversee humans, and their role in the preservation of moral and social order) resulted from other concerns rather than the preservation of the group as such. For example, the omnipresence of Big Gods was first attributed to anthropomorphic gods and seems to have come from the need to continue paying homage and respect to ancestors abandoned in remote lands. Their moral role seems to have come from a shift from aristocratic to democratic governance with all ensuing consequences for personal responsibilities, duties, and rights. There is also some evidence for this sequence in the development of Christian (Pnevmatikos Reference Pnevmatikos2002) and Muslim children (Pnevmatikos & Makris Reference Pnevmatikos, Makris and Håkansson2010). Admittedly, though, once invented and widely accepted, Big Gods might then have exerted the influences suggested by the target article.
Can every mind invent a Big God?
The fundamental assumption of the target article in concern to the grasp of Big Gods is limited. We concur with it that mentalizing is crucial for belief in entities whose properties are mental constructions: Minimally, a creature must have an insight that the world is representable and that there may be variations between representations of his co-creatures to extrapolate to the Big Holy Creature knowing and controlling everything. However, plain theory of mind (ToM) would make a very simple Big God, most probably an anthropomorphic god, if any. Mentalizing is much broader than ToM and develops much beyond it. It involves, in addition to the recognition of the representational nature of the human mind, recognition of the multiplicity of the origins of representations – perception, inference, learning from others, logic itself, and the recognition of its amenability to control by oneself and others (Demetriou et al. Reference Demetriou, Spanoudis and Shayer2014). Research suggests that grasping the representational nature of the human mind is a long process (Spanoudis et al. Reference Spanoudis, Demetriou, Kazi, Giorgala and Zenonos2015). At 4–6 years, children understand that minds represent the world, but it is only later that they discriminate the human from the god's mind by attributing different properties to each one of them (Makris & Pnevmatikos Reference Makris and Pnevmatikos2007; submitted). This differentiation is facilitated by mastering executive control that enables children to discriminate between similar minds (humans) from supernatural minds (Makris & Pnevmatikos, submitted). That, for example, gods know for good and ever, beyond human fallible thinking, create and recreate in the name of justice, judge but negotiate their decisions vis-à-vis motives and intentions, and distribute favors and punishments. This is the mind of the adolescent rather than the mind of the toddler. To extrapolate, we might even assume that gods’ minds are reshaped by humanity to reflect the possibilities of the human mind. This, however, occurs with huge time lags, in the fashion of Gödel's incompleteness theorems: human possibilities are projected to God's a few thousand years after they are attained.
Education for religion in post-modernity
Despite our previous objections, we accept that this theory is an excellent framework for rethinking the teaching of religion. Specifically, this framework may be used to develop curricula that would enable students to understand how different aspects of social, individual, and historical change resulted into important cultural institutions, such as religion. This curriculum would have to highlight how interaction between social needs (e.g., arising from the enlargement of societies), ruling and operational needs (e.g., autocratic vs. aristocratic vs. democratic governance), personal needs (e.g., existential needs), and abilities (e.g. mentalizing, reasoning, and knowledge) resulted in different religions, and how change in these needs resulted into changes in religions and religious thinking. This curriculum seems important now more than ever because vanishing time, geographical, and national boundaries and the emergence of supranational entities, such as the European Union, requires that citizens have a better understanding of the forces binding individuals and groups together. This framework may be used to compare religion with other forms of political organizations, such as justice and lawmaking and enforcement at the national and the supranational level.
Our model suggests that at different ages children can grasp different aspects of these interactions (Demetriou et al. Reference Demetriou, Spanoudis and Mouyi2011). At the preschool level, teaching about gods may help children conceive of practices that may facilitate them to cope with their obligations to others. This would facilitate executive control, which is important to master at this age. At the primary school level, children may learn that religion is one social institution among many that relate to the functioning of the society, as it regulates individual behavior, rights, and duties. Personal responsibility to ideals for humanity, life, and civilization beyond time must come later in adolescence. At this phase, God may be understood as the Big Mind, a huge historical projection of the struggle of humanity over time to understand and cope with its raison d’être and its destiny! At any phase, children must also differentiate actual causal forces governing societies and nature from mental constructions about them, however “holy” they may be.