Magic and Religious Beliefs: Universalist and Relativist Perspectives

Magic and religion are domains that have persisted across time in almost all societies. To answer how and why this came to be, discourse is organized around two perspectives, a universalist perspective that attempts to reveal a universal truth that can be applied across all societies during all times, and a relativist perspective that considers the cultural differences and diversity that contextually alter human societies. For magic and religion, a universalist perspective would support the existence of universal cognitive systems that all people intuitively have, whereas a relativist perspective would position the pervasiveness of different forms of magic and religion as culturally independent from eachother. Balancing these two positions and putting them into conversation provide insights into the reasons behind not only the existence of supernatural beliefs but also the evolutionary origins and persistence of these beliefs in contemporary society.

Research done connecting principles of magic and religion has named the cognitive functions of the contagion system as one area that plays a role in captivating supernatural beliefs. Studies conducted with around 36 American adults on their reaction to contagious scenarios and then purification methods provided insight to this system as well. For cases surrounding what they call “sympathetic magical beliefs”, researchers concluded that “ a case can be made that these are useful heuristics that guide behavior adaptively in at least some domains”. (Nemeroff & Rozin 2002). The case that sympathetic magical beliefs are useful in the way they protect against contagions in the world prior to common knowledge about germs and microbes is useful to appealing to a universalist perspective that situates these cognitive functions as a universally evolved function. However, a relativist position would argue how even the contagions system is culturally responsive based on the environment of the individual. For example, individual variations of contagion sensitivity in levels of religious orthodoxy and cultural norms. According to experiments done with college students, wide ranges of willingness to do certain tasks were observed when students were presented with tasks like drinking apple juice from a bed pan or drinking from a glass that had been stirred with a washed comb. Results from Nemeroff 2002 would position a universalist perspective of magic and religion as a free ride of the intuitive contagion system, especially in terms of moral contagion, but would also address the diversity in applied communities as an important characteristic of a relativist perspective. These contrasting perspectives on contagion roll over to further questions of understanding the cognitive systems that lead to the creation and perpetuation of magic and religious tendencies.

For universalist perspectives, the neural and mental systems that are activated by religious and magical contexts, are of particular interest. Boyer 2003 offers a perspective that “it is the joint, coordinated activation of these diverse systems, a supposition that opens up the prospect of a cognitive neuroscience of religious beliefs” (Boyer 2003: 119). To illustrate this, Boyer connects the systems of mind that are intuitively recognized with the properties of religious tendencies, such as the way supernatural agents are conceptualized often attracts systems that are used when we conceptualize regular, everyday agents, and the way the brains capacity for complex social interaction could help understand why religion and magic is often invoked during times of death, misfortune, especially for practical notions of death and corpses. Here the before mentioned ideas of death and contagion come into play. Just as contagion systems are activated during death, so are systems that regulate animacy and social intelligence systems that deal with feelings surrounding deaths of those close to us. In regards to death, a relativist position would consider the work done by Astuti 2002 to understand the cultural variants of grieving processes. Astuti puts into conversation two accounts of her interaction with Madagascan communities as they deal with death, noting how her adoptive Vezo father’s attitude around death contained elements of supernatural themes, insisting that his angatse would visit her in her dreams after his own death, whereas with her encounter with the death tompokovay, local attituded differed by insisting that after death people no longer have the same sentiments as those alive. These very contrasting ways of thinking are an interesting way to contextually frame the discussion of death and its intersection of supernaturality in a relativist perspective, for while evidence does entertain that there are universal systems that make supernaturality appeasing to the mind, these accounts of discontinuity versus continuity of mind, body and spirit provide variety in actual practices and ways of thinking that structure peoples lives.

In the same way that the contagion system is viewed in a relativist perspective in the way that various contagion triggers are contextualized by culture, Boyer posits a similar argument when he notes “People do not generally have religious beliefs because they have pondered the evidence for or against the actual existence of particular supernatural agents. Rather, they grow into finding a culturally acquired description of such agents intuitively plausible.” (Boyer 2003:123). This position reveals the merits of a relativist position in regard to supernatural beliefs, for it starts to unpack the mechanism by which the cultural transmission of beliefs are made plausibly by the cognitive systems we attain. Astuti also observes the discrepancy between evidence and culturally communicated practices noticing how although when surveying the Vezo people, many people were reluctant to say that the dead had any capacities, but universally understood that the spirits of the dead were universal. Interestingly, when noting these discrepancies Astuti affirms that “[t]he fact that different participants bring very different personal interpretations of what they are doing does not interfere with the smooth orchestration of the offering” (Astuti 243). This quote speaks to the dynamic of the relativist v. universalist debate in the way that it acknowledges the variance in beliefs, but also uncovers an underlying mechanism that helps perpetuate these traditions.

For a more specified and relatively recent domain, moral religions are a unique area of study. For the context of moral religions, a universalist perspective might explain why although all unique, moral religions conceptualize morality in similar ways. Boyer 2013 suggests that “evolutionary dispositions” for cooperation may explain the similarities of moral religions across beliefs. Specefically, proportionality may be a factor that informs the moral intuitions all people have. For social exchange, mutual aid, and punishment, proportionality becomes a factor that is universally had and leads to greater cohesion, aligning with partner choice models that prove when a partner is freely chosen, their outcomes are mutually beneficial. In this same realm of moral religions, the relativist perspective would highlight the way humans have moral intuitions conjoined with their ability to be so consistently reproduced is a form of “biased cultural transmission” (Boyer 2013:275).

The biases of cultural transmission informed by cultural relevance is an area of study that dovetails relativist ways of thinking and has merit in the way that it allows us to understand the differences of cultural practices under universal cognitive mechanisms that we all have. Boyer claims that “[h]uman minds also entertain reflective beliefs that provide reasons for, explication of, and connections between intuitive beliefs. The main force that drives their occurrence is relevance, not truth. They are all the more stable, frequent, and culturally recurrent when they either fit our intuitions or else contradict them in an attention-grabbing manner.” (Boyer 2013: 275). This claim highlights the dynamic and sometimes complex relationship between our automatic thoughts and our more deliberate reasoning process in a similar way that our universal intuitions work together with cultural relevance to inform our traditions and ways of life. Both perspectives offer a way to understand questions not only to why we have supernatural beliefs, but also how these beliefs evolutionary came to be and continue to exist within modern society.