God Is Watching You: How the Fear of God Makes Us Human

305 Pages·2015·3.22 MB·English

by  Dominic Johnson

g od i s w atching you

g o d i s
w a t c h i n g
y o u
how the fear of god makes us human
dominic johnson
1
3
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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© Dominic Johnson 2016
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Johnson, Dominic (Professor of International Relations)
God is watching you : how the fear of God makes us human / Dominic Johnson.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–989563–2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Religion—Philosophy. 2. Fear of
God. 3. Punishment—Religious aspects. I. Title.
BL51.J675 2015
202′.3—dc23
2015009949
1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
contents
Acknowledgements vii
Chapter 1 Why Me? 1
Chapter 2 Sticks and Stones 13
Chapter 3 Hammer of God 39
Chapter 4 God Is Great 68
Chapter 5 The Problem of Atheists 98
Chapter 6 Guardian Angels 138
Chapter 7 Nations Under God 174
Chapter 8 The World Without God 212
Chapter 9 God Knows 234
Notes 245
Index 281

cknowledgements
a
One afternoon in Uganda in 1994, Oliver Krueger jumped off the back
of our truck to get a low level photo of a beautiful male lion that
was gazing at us intently through the tall grass a short distance away.
Seeing this unkempt German wielding a massive 500 mm telephoto
lens on the end of his camera, the lion perfectly reasonably decided to
charge, issuing a booming, bone-shaking roar as it bounded toward us
with effortless leaps. The driver of the truck, unaware of Oliver’s dis-
embarkation at the back, hit the gas and the truck sped off in a cloud
of dust, leaving our seemingly doomed friend sprinting along the track
behind us. We banged madly on the roof, and the truck screeched to
a halt. Oliver covered 100 m in what seemed like 3 seconds and clam-
bered on board, camera in one piece, nerves shattered. The lion drew
up, his point made. There are some things that human beings don’t
argue with, even if they’re only making a threat.
I’m glad Oliver didn’t get eaten that day, because among the many
things I gained from our long friendship in Africa and later in Oxford
was inspiration for our original paper laying out an evolutionary per-
spective on the fear of God and human cooperation, entitled “The
Good of Wrath.” Evolution, it seemed to us, had good reasons to make
use of our fear.
I am grateful for the support of the Kennedy Memorial Trust and
Harvard University, where that paper was completed, with valuable
help and advice from Nick Brown, Mark Molesky, Stephen Peter Rosen,
Monica Duffy Toft, Luis Zaballa, and Richard Wrangham. Special
thanks are also due for the support of Branco Weiss and the Society in
Science program at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, and to Leonard Barkan,
acknowledgements
Mary Harper, Simon Levin, and the Society of Fellows at Princeton
University where I spent three heavenly years writing a series of subse-
quent papers that developed the supernatural punishment idea further.
Further thanks are due to my co-author Jesse Bering during those years,
who brought remarkable insights from human cognition that power-
fully bolstered the theory, and to the John Templeton Foundation for a
generous grant on the adaptive logic of religious beliefs and behavior.
I am particularly indebted for a wonderful residential research year
that allowed me to complete this book at the Center of Theological
Inquiry back at Princeton. William Storrar and Robin Lovin had the
vision to bring together a group of scientists, philosophers, and theo-
logians to think seriously about the interactions between religion and
science in understanding human origins, and were extremely generous
in their support for this project and the writing of the manuscript. We
were assisted in these efforts by unerring help from Shirah Metzigian,
Carlee Beard, and Linda Arntzenius. I am especially grateful for
the intellectual input from the assembled fellows that year, many of
whom spoke a very different language, but ones that were vital for me
to learn. Thanks to Lee Cronk, Conor Cunningham, Celia Deane-
Drummond, Agustin Fuentes, Hillary Lenfesty, Jan-Olav Henriksen,
Nicola Hoggard-Creegan, Markus Muehling, Eugene Rogers, Robert
Song, and Aku Visala. I continue to hear your voices when I write—
which is sometimes heaven and sometimes hell.
A special mention is reserved for Jeff Schloss and Richard Sosis,
also two of the Princeton fellows and long standing colleagues in
the field who have repeatedly surpassed my expectations of human
nature. Over many years, they have displayed such an incredible
degree of intellectual openness, goodwill, and generosity of spirit
that sometimes I doubted the logic of natural selection—at least in
their lineage.
I am indebted to Ara Norenzayan and Azim Shariff, who have pains-
takingly conducted so much brilliant empirical work on the cognitive sci-
ence of religion and the role of supernatural surveillance and punishment
on prosocial behavior. Without their work, it would still be largely just a
theory. The Oxford University Press marketing department (not me) chose
viii
acknowledgements
the same title for this book as their seminal paper on religious primes and
cooperation. I am grateful for their blessing in that decision.
I am exceptionally grateful to Will Lippincott, my agent, who
eventually beat me into shape after too many years writing for aca-
demic journals. At Oxford University Press, I thank my editor Theo
Calderara, who has done wonders to the manuscript, patiently chip-
ping away at the narrative to reveal to me a much better product that
lay beneath. Thanks also to assistant editor Marcela Maxfield, who
kept us wonderfully organized in the final stages, and to Lauren Hill,
Phil Henderson, and Jonathan Kroberger for their work on marketing
and publicity for the book. I also thank Suvesh Subramanian for his
careful and thorough help in the production process. A special thanks
is due to my research assistant Silvia Spodaru, who has provided fan-
tastic research support and tracked down hard-to-find images some-
times apparently into the depths of the underworld.
Other colleagues who have immensely helped me with the ideas
herein over the years include Dan Blumstein, Clark Barrett, Rob Boyd,
Joseph Bulbulia, Terry Burnham, Sarah Coakley, Oliver Curry, Dan
Fessler, Martie Haselton, Ferenc Jordan, Barnaby Marsh, Michael
McCullough, Ryan McKay, Michael Murray, Martin Nowak, Dominic
Tierney, Drew Rick-Miller, Michael Price, Zoey Reeve, Pete Richerson,
Rafe Sagarin, Montserrat Soler, Robert Trivers, Paul Wason, Harvey
Whitehouse, Mark Van Vugt, David Sloan Wilson, Paul Zak, and last
but not least, the late Jeffery Boswall, teacher and friend, who was a
committed humanist but is nevertheless one of the spirits that lives on
with me.
This book would never have been conceived without the intellectual
curiosity instilled in me by my parents, Roger and Jennifer Johnson.
Whatever else they believed in, they always believed in me—even when
good evidence may have been lacking. My sister Becci has my love and
thanks for her unswerving support of my family and our adventures,
and for reminding me how to keep my feet on the ground even when
my head is up in the air.
Finally, no book would have been written without the love and
support of my wife Gabriella de la Rosa, whose insights, help, and
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