Paul Bloom: uncertainty

Transcript context

…Why that? Why something that runs counter to instinct that would be dominating? One idea — and this is Robert Wright’s claim, but I think other people have argued this — is that polytheism is the default. Society starts off polytheistic. Even in the Hebrew Bible, it might begin rather polytheistic. When God talks about not worshipping other gods instead of him, he’s literally talking about other gods. But you’re right, monotheism has won, and there has to be some sort of design features that allow it to win even though it may not be our natural default. The answer is I don’t know, but one argument that I have heard is that these singular big gods actually serve moral purposes. They hold communities together. If you believe in a single omniscient God that looks at you and looks at me, it could govern our behavior in certain ways, coordinate it, cause us to be nicer when we’re not being observed, and so on. The claim is that societies that have that have an advantage over societies that have a hundred mischievous little gods running around. That’s enforced through some kind of group selection mechanism?…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.