WE ARE ALL DESIGNIST NOW:

[O]ver the past few years, evidence has been accumulating that religious beliefs and practices may have stimulated our willingness and ability to engage in fair, cooperative behavior with many random, anonymous people. This level of cooperation can be used to create larger social networks and societies; but it can also bring people together to engage in collective violence and conflict.

Our team of anthropologists and psychologists decided to experimentally investigate how beliefs in gods - specifically those who care about how we treat each other and punish us for immoral behavior - may have contributed to more widespread cooperation. We tested this prediction in eight different societies from around the world to see if religious beliefs might have contributed to expanding humankind's social horizons. [...]

After playing the games, we asked participants a host of questions designed to understand what people thought their gods cared about, whether or not these gods punished for immoral behavior, and whether or not these gods knew people's thoughts and actions. This allowed us to link up the experimental data with individuals' beliefs.

We already knew from earlier studies that commitment to moralistic, punitive, and omniscient gods curbs the selfish behavior. But how far can this extend? We predicted that people who characterize their gods in this way ought to play the game more fairly than those whose gods are less punitive and not very knowledgeable about human actions.

And that's exactly what we found: those who said their gods didn't punish or know much about human behavior were more likely to put coins into their own cups and the cups for their local community.

These results suggest that certain religious beliefs may have contributed to the stability of expanded trade, the moderation of conflict among coreligionists, and how coreligionists might be coordinated when confronting outsiders. Belief in a moralistic, punishing god could have helped people overcome selfish behavior to cooperate fairly with more far-flung individuals, laying the groundwork for larger social networks.

Our findings also partially explain why some religions have dominated the globe; conquest, violence and conversion all require extreme levels of coordination and cooperation. Indeed, Christianity and Islam in particular often tout belief in a moralistic, punishing and omniscient deity, and these traditions have spread around the world.

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