Gods Are Popular for the Same Reason Superheroes Are

"All popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction. If that theology went not beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised." - David Hume (The Natural History of Religion, 1757)

It wasn't until 250 years after David Hume said this that cognitive scientists discovered how necessary absurdity is for the success of religious narratives.

Absurd Gods Are Memorable 

In 2001, Pascal Boyer and Charles Ramble published a study in which participants read a short story. The story contained characters and objects that were counterintuitive, meaning that they defied fundamental expectations about reality. Some objects had psychological attributes (e.g., “objects that hide away when they are scared”) and some people lacked physical attributes (e.g., “a person who can be in two places at once”). Other concepts were merely unusual (e.g., “a man who could uproot a tree with his bare hands”) or entirely normal (e.g., “objects designed by engineers”).

After reading the story and taking a 5-minute break, participants recalled as many concepts as they could. Boyer and Ramble found that the counterintuitive concepts were recalled significantly better than the others (a result that was unaffected by the participants' religiosity or their familiarity with the concepts).

Given that religions often include counterintuitive concepts, such as omnipresent gods and statues that listen to prayers, the authors surmised that our brains are hardwired to remember gods. Curiously, they also found that excessively counterintuitive concepts (3 or more counterintuitive features) are harder to remember because they become too disconnected from what we encounter in the real world (i.e., not worth remembering).

In other words, there is a sweet spot in which something is memorable but remains relevant, called minimal counterintuitiveness. For example, most gods have emotions and concerns that make them appear broadly human. Furthermore, most of the Jesus narrative is about mundane events (e.g., fishing or having dinner) with counterintuitive concepts sprinkled in between (e.g., walking on water, or turning water into wine).

“If we examine, without prejudice, the ancient heathen mythology, as contained in the poets, we shall not discover in it any such monstrous absurdity as we may be apt at first to apprehend.” - David Hume (The Natural History of Religion, 1757)

Boyer and Ramble’s experiment became one of the founding pillars of the cognitive science of religion — a new field of study that asks how our brains are hardwired for religion — and it has been replicated many times, with further studies finding that counterintuitive concepts attract attention (see Pascal Boyer's book Religion Explained) and are easily communicated between individuals.

Although there has been criticism of the research, the basic idea that unexpected entities are easy to recall is demonstrably true and it provides religions that employ such entities with a competitive advantage in the marketplace of ideas.

Superheroes, Talking Toys, and The Force

Of course, the marketplace of ideas is populated by other counterintuitive concepts that are not part of religions. Almost half of Americans and a third of Brits believe in ghosts, and most people are entertained by ghost stories. 

One need only look at the movie industry to see how captivating counterintuitive themes are. Of the top 20 highest grossing movie franchises, fourteen clearly include counterintuitive concepts (Marvel, Spider-Man, Star Wars, Wizarding World, Avengers, DC Extended Universe, X-Men, Middle Earth, Toy Story, Twilight, Shrek, Pirates of the Caribbean, Avatar, Transformers) while the other six are borderline counterintuitive or manifestly unrealistic (Batman, Mission Impossible, James Bond, Despicable Me, Fast & Furious, Jurassic Park).

The success of these movies is testament to our attraction to absurdity. Whether it be Mickey Mouse, Superman, Greek myths, or religious texts such as the Bible and Koran, these stories never die because our brains are hardwired to remember them.

Of course, an attraction to religious ideas does not explain everything. People believe gods are real and worship them, but they don’t worship Dracula or Mickey Mouse. Academics call this the Mickey Mouse problem, and solving this problem requires digging deeper.

Why Are People Attracted To Absurdity? 

The evolutionary reason for our superbeing fetish is difficult to pin down, but it helps to know what counterintuitive really means. Beings like Zeus and Superman have powers or attributes that violate deeply held intuitions that we have about the world. For example, we intuitively know that solid objects cannot occupy the same space, be invisible, or be in two places at once. We know that living things grow, require sustenance, and die, and we know that mindful beings move in accordance with their beliefs and goals.

These things are intuitive because all human beings figure them out, without being taught, in their early childhood if they live in a typical environment. So, when a god or superhero violates these intuitions, all human beings are drawn to it, regardless of where they grow up. The question, then, is why?

Some theorists have suggested that we pay attention to counterintuitive beings because they are capable of possessing strategic knowledge about our lives, such as about our personal thoughts and secret transgressions.

However, this explanation is difficult to attribute to fictional characters on the big screen, or to mindless counterintuitive objects. Alternatively, if the “strategic knowledge hypothesis" just applies to gods, perhaps as the reason for our belief in them, it becomes difficult to explain the disinterested creator gods that appear in several African religions (i.e., who create the universe and withdraw).

In my own research, I suggested that strategic knowledge is part of a larger category called fitness relevance. Put simply, fitness relevant beings have a greater capacity to help or harm us than beings that are not fitness relevant. Knowing secret information about us is part of this, but so are all the other counterintuitive abilities that could make a being or object especially useful or dangerous (teleportation, resurrection, shapeshifting, etc.). In several studies, I found that beings with counterintuitive abilities are perceived as a greater potential threat and benefit, and that this partially explains why they are remembered well.

Why Do People Believe in Gods?

To answer the deeper question of why people believe in gods and not Mickey Mouse, I conducted another study to compare people’s perceptions of religious and fictional beings. I found that gods are attributed more mind-based abilities (mindreading, answering prayers, etc.) and ambiguously-defined abilities (e.g., omnipotence, controlling events), and are seen as more benevolent and ambivalent (i.e., combining benevolence with threat) than fictional beings.

Each of these traits, I concluded, can either motivate belief directly by being comforting (e.g., benevolence), or they make it easy to convince yourself that a comforting belief is plausible (e.g., when ambiguity is present). The research therefore supported an emotional/motivational explanation, such as that religion is wishful thinking. Whether this answer is correct remains to be seen.

In sum, gods have a small number of counterintuitive traits that grab our attention and make them easy to remember and talk about. These qualities ensure that religious ideas and narratives spread prolifically in a culture, in much the same way that ghost and superhero stories do. This popularity doesn't cause people to believe in religious ideas (we're not entirely sure why they do), but it does make the ideas more ubiquitous and accessible for anyone who is willing to believe them.