Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast by Lewis Wolpert

This was a frustrating read. In alignment with its subtitle, the author tries to explain “the evolutionary origins of belief,” essentially, why humans believe (sometimes correctly and sometimes incorrectly) that one thing causes another.

In doing so, the author comes up with a hypothesis. It was the rise of tool making in early humans that gave us this system of “causal” beliefs. To make effective and ever more complicated tools, the author seems to argue, we needed to understand and correctly predict that one thing causes another, an awareness that we then mapped onto all aspects of the world around us.

The evolution of the skills for tool making and the use of tools, together with language, opened up a whole new set of mental operations. Humans were now thinking about the causes involved in all sorts of activities: hunting, food gathering, social relationships, illness, probably dreams, and even life and death itself. This, I am proposing, is the origin of what we now call beliefs.

But maybe, assuming Wolpert is even in the right ballpark, it’s not tools that gave rise to beliefs, instead it’s beliefs that gave rise to tools. Or some unidentified third thing that gave rise to both beliefs and tools at the same time. It’s never very clear which is the chicken and which is the egg, and the author actually does very little to make such distinctions clear.

I must admit that the transition from understanding cause and effect in relation to tool use, to trying to understand the weather and death, is not easy to explain, and probably requires creative thinking. It is possible that the evolution of consciousness and language could have been involved. It has been argued that people experience consciousness because they are aware of their own casual actions.

What what that I said about some unidentified third thing?

The problem is pretty much that Wolpert admits this fuzziness. So although he claims again and again that he has made an argument, he never cites any actual evidence in support of his claim. Instead, he makes two hundred pages of interesting observations, few of which seem to cohere into any plausible mechanism that explains his hypothesis.

And worse, sometimes he just makes assertions.

I think that religious beliefs were adaptive for two main reasons: they provided explanations for important events, and offered prayer as a way of dealing with difficulties. Those with such beliefs most likely did better, and so were selected for.

Were they? I don’t know. And I don’t think Wolpert does either.

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This post first appeared on Eric Lanke's blog, an association executive and author. You can follow him on Twitter @ericlanke or contact him at eric.lanke@gmail.com.