Do Other Animals Have Religion?
Do other animals have religion?
I think domesticated animals do but wild ones generally do not. Here is why.
All animals, including humans, have an embedded suite of instincts and the ability to figure things out on the fly that guides behaviour. We call this “common sense” for humans.
Then on top of that some animals can be programmed with an alternative set of pseudo-instincts (called values or morals) and a story of the world to replace figuring things out for yourself. This is called training in animals but in humans is called religion.
Generally this programming comes from an external source and must override some or all native instincts. This is what we call surrendering to an “authority”. The literal meaning of authority is “he who writes”.
Domesticated dogs surrender their authority to a human trainer. Humans are much cleverer than dogs and dogs live wholly in the human world so it is very easy for humans to pose as a greater authority than the dog’s own instincts and intelligence.
Humans are not so easy to train by other humans, because the power gap between one human and another is much smaller. This is why religions all must conjure a super powerful authority which is plausibly more powerful than a human to facilitate and justify entrainment.
For many religions this is where the gods come in. They serve as the more-powerful-than-a-human external authority needed to cause a human to surrender his own authority and have his instincts and intelligence overridden.
This authority does not necessarily have an intelligent agency as the gods generally do have. For example communists have substituted the gods for a mysterious and abstract force called “dialectical materialism” to serve as their ultimate authority.
What this means is religion is not necessarily unique to humans. Any animal that can be trained is an animal that can be given a religion, because they are essentially the same thing.
It is harder to train a wolf than a dog. Dogs have had thousands of years of selective breeding to make them more biddable by an external authority. Training overrides instincts but training is easier if there is an instinct that welcomes training.
Humans are have been domesticating other humans for much longer than they have been domesticating dogs and other animals. There is selective breeding here too and this is why humans have an instinct for religion, that will not easily go away.
Indeed it may be that what we call civilisation is impossible without it.
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