The theists listen to this thought experiment and say “yes those people most probably will think that the Avengers are real gods, but that does not mean our religion is false”. They compartmentalize their current faith by accepting the validity of the thought experiment while they still hold on to their beliefs.
As someone who has lost his “faith” in Gods/Devas/Devis/After-Life/Heaven/Hell etc for the last two decades, I find none of the answers that I have mentioned above sufficient. They are extremely shallow and do not answer what is really happening with us as a species. Here we have a scenario where almost every memory of our past is as good as eliminated over time and the moment the surviving humans are exposed to books with “supernatural” claims they build a religion out of comic book characters. This says how much of a role religion/religious thinking plays in our functioning as a species.
Humans also tend to entertain social relations with these and other non-physical agents, even from a very young age. Unlike other social animals, humans are very good at establishing and maintaining relations with agents beyond their physical presence; social hierarchies and coalitions, for instance, include temporarily absent members. This goes even further. From childhood, humans form enduring, stable and important social relationships with fictional characters, imaginary friends, deceased relatives, unseen heroes and fantasized mates. Indeed, the extraordinary social skills of humans, compared with other primates, may be honed by constant practice with imagined or absent partners.
It is a small step from having this capacity to bond with non-physical agents to conceptualizing spirits, dead ancestors and gods, who are neither visible nor tangible, yet are socially involved. This may explain why, in most cultures, at least some of the superhuman agents that people believe in have moral concerns. Those agents are often described as having complete access only to morally relevant actions. Experiments show that it is much more natural to think “the gods know that I stole this money” than “the gods know that I had porridge for breakfast”.
Boyer further states that ” Religious concepts and activities hijack our cognitive resources, as do music, visual art, cuisine, politics, economic institutions and fashion. This hijacking occurs simply because religion provides some form of what psychologists would call super stimuli. Just as visual art is more symmetrical and its colours more saturated than what is generally found in nature, religious agents are highly simplified versions of absent human agents, and religious rituals are highly stylized versions of precautionary procedures. Hijacking also occurs because religions facilitate the expression of certain behaviours. This is the case for commitment to a group, which is made all the more credible when it is phrased as the acceptance of bizarre or non-obvious beliefs.
We should not try to pinpoint the unique origin of religious belief, because there is no unique domain for religion in human minds. Different cognitive systems handle representations of supernatural agents, of ritualized behaviours, of group commitment and so on, just as colour and shape are handled by different parts of the visual system. In other words, what makes a god-concept convincing is not what makes a ritual intuitively compelling or what makes a moral norm self-evident. Most modern, organized religions present themselves as a package that integrates all these disparate elements (ritual, morality, metaphysics, social identity) into one consistent doctrine and practice. But this is pure advertising. These domains remain separated in human cognition. The evidence shows that the mind has no single belief network, but myriad distinct networks that contribute to making religious claims quite natural to many people.
The findings emerging from this cognitive-evolutionary approach challenge two central tenets of most established religions. First, the notion that their particular creed differs from all other (supposedly misguided) faiths; second, that it is only because of extraordinary events or the actual presence of supernatural agents that religious ideas have taken shape. On the contrary, we now know that all versions of religion are based on very similar tacit assumptions, and that all it takes to imagine supernatural agents are normal human minds processing information in the most natural way.
Knowing, even accepting these conclusions is unlikely to undermine religious commitment. Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. By contrast, disbelief is generally the result of deliberate, effortful work against our natural cognitive dispositions — hardly the easiest ideology to propagate“.
Religion and belief in deities seem to be the most convenient strategy for our species. It acts like an anchor/scaffolding for us which helps us understand and make sense of this complex world around us. But is it the right answer? Many times it isn’t, but even when it isn’t we keep going back to it. So what should we be doing in such a scenario? Should we be actively trying to “destroy” religion as many Neo-Atheists claim? Or should we just ignore any evidence that challenges religious beliefs and go about believing in unsubstantiated claims?
I am afraid the answers are not as simple as we want them to be. Beliefs that have stemmed from religions have directly resulted in the oppression of men/women over the history of the human race. We must actively fight against those beliefs and make sure they do not become the essence of our society. But while we do that we have to make sure that we do not throw the baby out with the bathwater. No matter what Neo-Atheists say religion does offer humans something much more than just so rituals and bigoted beliefs. That super-stimuli that Boyer talks about means a lot to our species and religion plays a humongous role in the generation of that super-stimuli. Also, we have already started seeing that when the Old religions die they are replaced with New religions like Wokeism.
Maybe there is a 3rd way of dealing with this conundrum. Maybe religion is like money, i.e. it is real if we attach some sort of intrinsic value to it. In the words of Yuval Noah Harari “Money is anything that people are willing to use in order to represent systematically the value of other things for the purpose of exchanging goods or services”. He says “money is the most universal and efficient system of mutual trust ever devised”. He then says “money is the only trust system created by humans that can bridge almost any cultural gap, and that does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, age or sexual orientation. Thanks to money, even people who don’t know each other and don’t trust each other can nevertheless cooperate effectively.”
Similarly, religion/religious thinking is a system that has been created by evolution due to” the human brain’s evolved ability for agency detection and intuitive morality“. So while it isn’t “real” in the literal sense, it is as real as it gets when we attach some intrinsic value to it as a species. It is that tool in our arsenal that helps us live together as a group. It gives us “meaning” where none exists. It helps our ” brains that seem wired to find agency and intention everywhere “with a toolkit to move forward with our lives.
So maybe we need to respect religion more than the Neo-Atheist and question it more than the Theist. Maybe we can enjoy the rituals, prayers, songs, and dances while we get rid of all the racism, misogyny, homophobia, etc inside that memeplex. You can love it, hate it but you simply cannot ignore or avoid it.