For those of us raised in Mormonism, we were taught that our faith is the “one true church” restored through a prophet who saw God the Father and Jesus Christ in a grove of trees. Christians more broadly believe that God revealed himself through scripture, miracles, and the life of Jesus. Muslims trace their faith to revelations given to Muhammad. Jews look back to Moses and the covenant at Sinai.
Each tradition claims a divine origin: God reached down to humanity.
But what if the story runs the other way? Does research flip it religion on its head?
What if humanity reached up and invented God?
“Some call it evolution, and others call it God”
Charles Darwin (attributed)
This isn’t a new question. Philosophers have asked it for centuries. But in recent decades, psychologists, anthropologists, and evolutionary scientists have begun assembling a compelling answer. They’ve found that religious belief isn’t random or mysterious; it follows predictable patterns rooted in how human minds evolved. The same cognitive quirks that helped our ancestors survive on the savanna also made us prone to see invisible agents, assume purpose in random events, and bind together through shared rituals and beliefs.
This research doesn’t single out Mormonism or Christianity. It explains all religions: from ancient polytheisms to modern monotheisms, from indigenous animism to New Age spirituality. The forms differ, but the underlying psychology is universal. We are, it turns out, a species built to believe.
For those who have left Mormonism, or any faith, understanding why we believed can be as important as understanding what we no longer believe. This article explores the evolutionary and psychological origins of religious belief, drawing on recent research into how and why humans created gods.
How Humanity Evolved Belief
For as long as humans have walked the earth, we’ve looked up and wondered at the stars, the storms, and especially the mysteries of life and death. Every civilization has gods to explain these wonders.
In a 2018 episode of NPR’s Hidden Brain titled Creating God, host Shankar Vedantam explores the work of psychologist Azim Shariff, who studies religion not through theology or revelation, but through the lens of human behavior and evolution. His findings echo what many former believers and deconstructing thinkers have come to see: that religion emerged naturally from the way our minds evolved — as a tool for cooperation, survival, and meaning.
The many religions we see around us today emerged in different societies at different times as mechanisms to solve problems of trust and cooperation.
Dr. Azim Shariff, Social Psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
Creating God, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode NPR, 2018
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
The application of evolutionary theory has really revolutionized our understanding of the origins and functions of religion. Now, in evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting developments is extending the Darwinian logic of selection of organisms based on how well they fit their environment to cultural ideas, as well, and cultural groups, as well. And this is what’s called cultural evolution, or cultural evolutionary theory. It’s also called dual inheritance theory. And the reason it’s called dual inheritance theory is because unlike most other animals, humans come into the world with not just a genetic inheritance from their parents but an entire line of cultural ideas that get passed down to them, as well. And, for about a hundred thousand years, we have been a necessarily cultural species. We have not been able to survive without the cultural knowledge that we inherit.
And so a good example of this is fire. That’s a cultural idea. If we didn’t have that, we would not be able to survive because our bodies have now adapted to needing fire to predigest – that is, cook our food. And so the idea is that religion is one of these cultural ideas that similarly serves these functional roles in our lives and has done for at least 10,000 years. So what that means is that you can understand religions as they are today – today’s major religions – as bearing the legacy of thousands of years of trial and error and selection so that what current religions are made up of, they’re made up of those things because those served social functions in the past. They contributed to the societies that they were attached to surviving.
Dr. Azim Shariff, Social Psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
Creating God, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode NPR, 2018
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
The Cognitive Spark: Minds That Seek Meaning
Human brains are built to look for patterns, to find cause and effect, even when none exist. Early humans who assumed there was agency behind every rustle in the grass were more likely to survive than those who didn’t. It’s safer to think there’s a predator than to risk ignoring one. Our brains evolved to connect dots, even imaginary ones, because it’s safer to believe something is out there than to risk ignoring a real danger.
Over time, this survival instinct, called hyperactive agency detection, made us prone to see invisible forces at work in the world. Lightning wasn’t just electricity; it was a god’s anger. Illness wasn’t random; it was punishment or a curse. This tendency to attribute intention and purpose gave rise to spirits, ancestors, and eventually, gods. Ara Norenzayan, a renowned psychologist and Professor of Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia, best known for his pioneering research on the intersection of religion, culture, and human cooperation, shares in his influential work “Big Gods,”
Our mental architecture plays a really big role in the way that we entertain religious beliefs and practices around the world in predictable ways… You imbue the world, the natural world, with these kinds of spirits. Mountains have spirits, and rivers can have these agentic qualities. Natural events like hurricanes or earthquakes evoke also these kinds of agentic understanding of the world. And then from there, it’s a small step to then understand or conceptualize gods or spirits as being separate, but controlling these events. So that’s probably the next stage of our religious evolution. There is tremendous diversity in the way that people understand their gods and spirits and other supernatural beings. But one thing that seems to be quite common around the world and throughout history is that these gods and spirits have human-like qualities. In some cultures and traditions, it could even be physical human-like qualities. They could have bodies, and for example, many Hindu gods have that. But also, even if they don’t have physical qualities, they surely have mental qualities that are human-like. And that is even more common around the world, which again, verifies this idea that our anthropomorphic tendencies feature prominently in the way that our religious mind operates.
Dr. Ara Norenzayan, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia and Author of Big Gods
Our God-shaped Brains, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode, 2024
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/our-god-shaped-brains/
https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691169743/big-gods
This creates an uncomfortable tension for believers. If we believe in tree spirits or animalistic spirits as gods, we may make sacrifices to them and, through cognitive biases, find fulfillment in our faithfulness. The same is true for more recent monotheistic religions.
“People who are people of faith believe their religions to be divinely inspired. And so when you’re reaching for naturalistic explanations for religion, that leaves little room for the divine inspiration. The origins for the religion become overdetermined. You have both a naturalistic reason for why it exists, and you have a divine reason for why it exists. And you don’t need both.”
Dr. Azim Shariff, Social Psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
Creating God, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode NPR, 2018
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
Religion, from this view, was not a divine revelation but an emergent property of our cognition. The same intelligence that built tools and language also built gods. Our minds didn’t discover the divine; they invented it.
Which is it, is man one of God’s blunders or is God one of man’s?
Friedrich Nietzsche, German Philosopher, Twilight of the Idols, 1889
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_of_the_Idols
The Social Advantage: Belief as Cooperation Technology
In the Hidden Brain interview, Shariff explains that religion’s greatest evolutionary success was not individual comfort, but social cohesion. As small tribes grew larger, a problem emerged: how do you trust strangers? In a group of 50, everyone knows everyone. Cheaters get caught. But in a city of thousands, anonymity allows people to free-ride without consequence, unless something bigger is watching.
Let’s take a moment to go back in time. For the vast majority of human history, we lived in small groups of around 50 people. Everyone knew everybody. If you told a lie, stole someone’s dinner or didn’t defend the group against its enemies, there was no way to disappear into the crowd. Everyone knew you, and you would get punished. But in the last 12,000 years or so, human groups began to expand from a few dozen to more than a thousand. And now it wasn’t so easy to punish the cheaters and the free riders. So we needed something big, vast, an epic force that could see what everyone was doing and enforce the rules. Since individual people could no longer police gigantic groups, the policing had to be done by a force that was superhuman. That force, according to psychologist Azim Shariff, was the modern idea of a punitive God, the kind that many preachers warn can send you to hell.
Shankar Vedantam and Dr. Azim Shariff, Creating God, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode NPR, 2018
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
The podcast discusses this isn’t just theory — it shows up in experiments. Researchers found that when the Muslim call to prayer was audible in Morocco, shopkeepers donated significantly more to charity. In one study, “everybody gave all the money to charity” when the azaan was playing. The mere reminder of divine observation changed behavior in measurable ways. Similarly, studies show that people who believe in a punishing God cheat less than those who believe in a purely loving, forgiving deity.
In other words, the stick works better than the carrot.
A belief in an all-seeing god helped enforce honesty even when no one was watching. It bound communities with shared moral rules and reinforced behaviors that benefited the group. The idea of divine judgment was, in a sense, an early form of social surveillance, one that allowed larger societies to function peacefully. Religion was humanity’s first operating system. One that taught cooperation, generosity, and identity.
“If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him.”
Voltaire, French Writer, Philosopher, and Historian (1694-1778)
Epistle to the Author of the Book of the Three Impostors, 1768
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Épître_à_l’Auteur_du_Livre_des_Trois_Imposteurs
Cultural Evolution: From Local Spirits to Universal Gods
In time, our small tribal gods expanded to match our expanding societies. As city-states and nations grew, their deities became more powerful, more moral, and more centralized. The gods evolved alongside civilization, from river spirits to sky gods to all-knowing monotheisms.
The evidence for this evolution is striking. Modern hunter-gatherer tribes, societies that still live in ways similar to how humans lived before the agricultural revolution, tend not to have the big, moralizing gods we associate with major world religions. As Shariff notes, groups like the Hadza of Tanzania have gods that are “more like trickster spirits. They’re neither omniscient, nor are they punishing the types of immoral behavior that would be necessary to get rid of in order to be cooperative. The gods are small, forest spirits or trickster spirits that don’t have the power, nor the punitive ability nor, really, concern for these moral issues.”
As societies scaled up, so did their gods.
“There’s evidence from history and anthropology that suggests modern religions arose to solve problems related to trust and cooperation. All the world’s major religions today arose at times when human societies were struggling with the challenges of size, complexity or scarcity.”
Shankar Vedantam
Creating God, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode NPR, 2018
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
Big, omniscient, punishing gods appear most frequently in societies facing specific challenges: large populations, where we start to need to cooperate with anonymous strangers, we face acute resource scarcity, or the need to share critical resources like water in trustworthy ways. The gods we worship aren’t random; they’re solutions to social problems.
“You could have dualistic intuitions, you could have agency detection, you could see purpose in the world where none exists, but you may not necessarily develop the elaborate belief in something like a god without the proper cultural input. So these things like lock and key, they fit each other and complement each other.”
Dr. Ara Norenzayan, Professor of Social Psychology at the University of British Columbia and Author
Our God-shaped Brains, Hidden Brain Podcast Episode, 2024
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/our-god-shaped-brains/
This transition marked one of the great turning points in human history. Religion became not just a reflection of the natural world, but a reflection of our social world. It filled the social need for structure, moral accountability, and even meaning.
“Take man’s most fantastic invention — God. Man invents God in the image of his longings, in the image of what he wants to be, then proceeds to imitate that image, vie with it, and strive to overcome it.”
Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind, 1955
https://archive.org/details/passionatestateo00hoff/
The Psychological Comfort of the Divine
Beyond order and cooperation, religion provided deep psychological comfort. It soothed existential fears and gave purpose to suffering. Believing that a higher power guided life’s events made the unpredictable feel manageable. We didn’t just invent gods to explain the world; we invented them to survive it.
“People benefit a lot from religion. People suffer a lot from religion, as well. But you can see when you know somebody very closely who is religious, often who’s potentially going through struggles in their life — illnesses, whatever — that they benefit from the religion.”
Dr. Azim Shariff, Social Psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
But religion’s psychological power goes deeper than comfort — it creates belonging through shared ritual. Evolutionary theory explains why religious practices often involve costly sacrifices: fasting, pilgrimages, vows of poverty, and dietary restrictions. These aren’t arbitrary burdens. They’re signals. Like the peacock’s elaborate tail, which proves genetic fitness precisely because it’s costly to maintain, religious sacrifices prove genuine commitment. Someone who fasts for days, travels on pilgrimage, or wears distinctive clothing is demonstrating they’re a true believer, not a free-rider. This “costly signaling” creates trust within religious communities.
Ritual also binds us through synchrony. When people chant “Om” together, sing hymns in unison, or march in rhythm, something powerful happens. Research shows that observers watching fire-walkers experience heart rate synchronization with the performers, and the more synchronized, the more they feel part of the group. This is why military drills involve marching, why congregations sing together, and why chanting creates a sense of unity. We feel fused with those who move and sound like us.
Even today, faith can help people cope with loss and uncertainty. But as science and humanism have advanced, many find that the functions of religion, community, meaning, morality, can survive even when belief in the supernatural fades. The question becomes: can we create secular rituals and communities that provide the same psychological benefits?
“Man has done nothing but invent God so as to go on living, and not kill himself; that’s the whole of universal history up till now.”
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons, 1872
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demons_(Dostoevsky_novel)
The Debate is Ongoing on How Religion Evolved
This saying, often (mis)attributed to Voltaire or Mark Twain, gets to the cynical point, “Religion was invented when the first con man met the first fool.”
A 2017 review in Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, Konrad Szocik argues that scholars have been too quick to dismiss religion’s benefits: “Despite this pervasive negativity, it seems unwarranted to deny the great usefulness of religious beliefs — particularly concerning their past utility.” While scientists broadly agree that religion is a product of human evolution rather than divine revelation, they may still disagree about how it evolved. Two competing explanations dominate the academic debate, and understanding both can deepen our appreciation for why belief feels so natural — and why leaving it can feel so disorienting. These approaches are broadly distinguished as the adaptationist approach, which argues religion evolved because it provided survival benefits, and the by-product approach, which argues religion is merely a side-effect of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for other purposes, like pattern recognition and agency detection.
The first explanation is called the by-product approach. This view, dominant in the cognitive science of religion, holds that religious belief is essentially an accident — a side effect of cognitive mechanisms that evolved for other purposes. Our brains evolved to detect predators, recognize faces, infer intentions, and find patterns. These mental tools were useful for survival, but they also misfire: we see faces in clouds, assume intention behind random events, and sense invisible agents watching us. Religion, in this view, is what happens when these cognitive quirks combine. As Konrad Szocik explains: “The cognitive approach assumes that cognitive mechanisms or models shaped by evolutionary processes affect or even favor the acquisition of religious beliefs.” We don’t believe in gods because it helps us — we believe because our brains are wired in ways that make supernatural thinking feel intuitive. From this perspective, religion is a glitch, not a feature.
The second explanation is the adaptationist approach. This view argues that even if religious belief began as a cognitive by-product, it became genuinely useful over time — so useful that cultures with strong religious systems outcompeted those without them. Religion provided psychological comfort in the face of death, strengthened group cooperation, and created in-group markers that helped tribes identify trustworthy allies. Whether religion started as an accident or not, it clearly worked — helping societies grow larger, more cohesive, and more resilient.
The truth likely involves both explanations. Our brains come pre-loaded with cognitive tendencies that make us prone to belief, and culture then shapes those tendencies into specific religions that serve social functions. As Ara Norenzayan’s research suggests, “cultural evolution has promoted the development of phenomena that were compatible with the mechanisms of intergroup competition.” The gods we worship aren’t random hallucinations; they’re culturally refined tools for cooperation, meaning-making, and social control. For those leaving Mormonism, or any faith, this insight is liberating: the feelings of spiritual connection were real, produced by genuine features of your brain — but the specific doctrines you were taught were cultural inventions, refined over generations to maximize commitment and cohesion.
Beyond Belief: Wonder Without the Supernatural
All the gods of the past have lived upon worship. While they were worshipped the gods of Egypt, of Rome, of Greece, were fine, lusty fellows, who gave their followers all that the Christian God gives his worshippers. These gods of the ancient world sent rain and gave their followers good health; they answered prayers; they sent their faithful worshippers to a prepared heaven and their enemies to a prepared hell. But as man’s worship declined so the objects of the worship declined also. Gods are fragile things, they may be killed by a whiff of science or a dose of common sense. They thrive on servility and shrink before independence. They feed upon worship as kings do upon flattery. That is why the cry of gods at all times is “Worship us or we perish.” A dethroned monarch may retain some of his human dignity while driving a taxi for a living. But a god without his thunderbolt is a poor object.
Chapman Cohen, English freethinker, Atheist, Author, The Devil (1930s), in An Anthology of Atheism and Rationalism (edited by Gordon Stein, Prometheus Books, 1980), p. 258
https://archive.org/details/anthologyofathei0000unse_t4e9/page/258/mode/2up
When you step back and see religion as a product of human evolution, something profound happens. The mystery doesn’t disappear — it shifts. The awe we once reserved for gods can be redirected toward the universe itself, toward human creativity and compassion, toward our capacity for love and discovery.
“Once you can set up those types of trusted secular institutions, well, that obviates the need for a lot of what religion has done… In those places where we are, we see ourselves moving towards a post-religious world where a lot of the functions of religion are accomplished by other means and potentially better means.”
Dr. Azim Shariff, Social Psychologist, Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia
https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god
The data bears this out: countries with the least importance of religion in daily life are the same countries with the highest faith in the rule of law. When you trust banks, courts, and contracts, you don’t need shared religion to do business with strangers. Secular institutions have taken over much of what gods once provided.
“As societies become wealthier, they become existentially more secure. And as a result, people have more predictable and safer lives. As a result, people become less religious.”
Ara Norenzayan
https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/our-god-shaped-brains/
But humans still have what Shariff calls “a fertile psychological meadow that’s ready to sacralize things.” We not only sacralize religious ideas; we also sacralize things like nations, flags, freedom, and ideals. Consider the Pledge of Allegiance, the national anthem, and patriotic fervor. These are secular rituals that tap the same psychological mechanisms religion once monopolized. Sacred values, whether religious or not, can inspire people to sacrifice and even die for something larger than themselves.
This means leaving religion doesn’t mean leaving meaning behind. You don’t have to believe in the supernatural to experience reverence. The very fact that our species developed minds capable of imagination, morality, and meaning is itself wondrous. The supernatural may not be real, but the values it carried still are.
We can still honor principles like empathy, honesty, and connection. Not just because a god demands them, but because they make us more fully human. The question isn’t whether to believe, but what to believe in, and why.
In the history of evolution, it is the biological morality of humans that spawned religion, and not religion that brought morality to humans. The same as the debate on the origin of Man. Evolution in all its layers of complication is the source not only of man, but of his religion too.
“Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy the interposition of a great deity. More humble and I believe true to consider him created from animals.”
Charles Darwin, Notebooks, 1837
What This Means for Mormons — and All Who Question
If you were raised in the LDS Church, you were taught that Joseph Smith’s First Vision was a singular historical event, that of God literally appearing to a teenage boy in upstate New York. You learned that the Book of Mormon was translated by divine power, that priesthood authority was restored, and that the temple ordinances were revealed directly from heaven. These weren’t presented as metaphors or mere stories. They were facts.
When those truth claims begin to crack, through historical research, doctrinal contradictions, or simply honest questioning, the loss can feel devastating. If Mormonism isn’t what it claimed to be, what was it? Why did it feel so real? Why did the Spirit seem to confirm things that turned out not to be true?
The evolutionary perspective on religion offers answers. The “burning in the bosom” that Mormons interpret as the Holy Ghost is the same phenomenon that Muslims feel when reading the Quran, that Hindus feel during puja, that Catholics feel at Mass. It’s not evidence that any one religion is true, it’s evidence that human brains are wired to generate transcendent experiences, especially in contexts of ritual, community, and authority. The feelings were real. The interpretation we were given was not.
This doesn’t diminish what religion gave us. Mormonism, like Christianity and other faiths, provided community, identity, moral structure, and meaning. These are genuine human needs. These are needs that evolved over hundreds of thousands of years. But they can also be met in other ways. Seeing gods as human creations doesn’t mean abandoning ethics, community, or wonder. It means building them on a more honest foundation.
Consider that a believing Mormon already rejects thousands of religions as false: Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, Scientology, ancient Greek mythology, and countless others. Thus the only difference between a Mormon and an atheist is that the atheist rejects just one more.
“I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”
Stephen Roberts, freethought forum post, 1995
https://mesazero.com/freelink/quote_history.php
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/17095-i-contend-that-we-are-both-atheists-i-just-believe
Lorenzo Snow’s ole’ couplet has a different ring to it, still circular, yet more confusing and depressing, when we consider that God was more likely created by Man, “As Man Now Is, God Once Was; As Now God Is, Man May Be“.
Share Your Story
Many who leave organized religion feel both liberation and loss. The world can seem larger, more uncertain, and yet more beautiful. If you’re questioning, deconstructing, or rebuilding your beliefs, remember: you are not alone. Millions have walked this path before you, leaving Mormonism, leaving Christianity, leaving Islam, leaving faith traditions of every kind. The questions you’re asking have been asked by humans for as long as we’ve had language to ask them.
At wasmormon.org, we invite you to share your own story. Share how your understanding of belief has evolved, what you’ve learned about yourself, and where you now find meaning. By speaking our truths, we give voice to a quiet revolution. A revolution that replaces fear with curiosity, and blind faith with conscious wonder.
Understanding that humanity created God doesn’t make us less human. It makes us more honest about who we are: a species capable of profound imagination, deep connection, and the courage to keep seeking truth, even when it requires us to let go of comforting illusions.
You don’t need a prophet to tell you how to live. You don’t need a god watching over you to be moral. You just need the courage to think for yourself, to build genuine community, and to find awe–not in supernatural claims, but in the remarkable fact that we exist at all. If Heavenly Father and Jesus are no longer convincing as your deity of choice, consider Love itself.
More reading:
- https://www.npr.org/2018/07/16/629616978/creating-god – Creating God Hidden Brain NPR Podcast Episode
- https://hiddenbrain.org/podcast/our-god-shaped-brains/ – Our God-Shaped Brains
- https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1090513802001344 – Belief in moralizing gods
- https://www.zygonjournal.org/article/id/14374/ – Religion and religious beliefs as evolutionary adaptations
- https://riojournal.com/article/66132/ – Evolutionary explanations for religion
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iMmvu9eMrg – Why We Believe in Gods – Andy Thomson
- https://www.edx.org/learn/religion/university-of-british-columbia-the-science-of-religion