Why religion is literally false and metaphorically true | Bret Weinstein | Big Think
Why religion is literally false and metaphorically true
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Where do your beliefs come from? There’s a school of thought that sees religion as a mind virus that wastes the time and effort of human beings, but evolutionary biologist Bret Weinstein offers a more reasonable explanation: “belief systems have flourished because they have facilitated the interests of the creatures involved,” he says. Religious people are evolutionarily fitter than non-believers, not because they are protected by a deity but rather because religion is a form of adaptive evolution. Religion is so widespread because it has massive survival advantages beneath the supernatural elements—that’s what Weinstein refers to as “literally false and metaphorically true”. For example, believing in heaven is literally false—there is no such place—but believing in it keeps your descendants in good standing in the religious community after you’re gone, thus setting your lineage up to continue. The thought itself may be untrue, but the result of the thought is evolutionarily effective. “Despite the fact that human beings think that they have escaped the evolutionary paradigm, they’ve done nothing of the kind, and so we should expect the belief systems that people hold to mirror the evolutionary interests that people have,” Weinstein says. For more from Bret Weinstein, visit bretweinstein.net.
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BRET WEINSTEIN:
Professor Bret Weinstein has spent two decades advancing the field of evolutionary biology with a focus on adaptive trade-offs. He has made important discoveries regarding the evolution of cancer and senescence as well as the adaptive significance of moral self-sacrifice.
He applies his evolutionary lens to human behavior in order to sketch a path through the many crises we face as a species. By confronting emerging authoritarianism, and abandoning the archaic distinction between political right and left, we can discover a new model of governance that frees humanity to seek a just, sustainable and abundant future.
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TRANSCRIPT:
Bret Weinstein: We have minds that are programmed by culture that can be completely at odds with our genomes. And it leads to misunderstandings of evolution, like the idea that religious belief is a mind virus, that effectively these beliefs structures are parasitizing human beings and they are wasting the time and effort that those human beings are spending on that endeavor rather than the more reasonable interpretation, which is that these belief systems have flourished because they have facilitated the interests of the creatures involved.
Our belief systems are built around evolutionary success and they certainly contain human benevolence, which is appropriate to phases of history when there is abundance and people can afford to be good to each other. The problem is if you have grown up in a period in which abundance has been the standard state you don’t anticipate the way people change in the face of austerity. And so what we are currently seeing is messages that we have all agreed are unacceptable reemerging because the signals that we have reached the end of the boom times, those signals are everywhere, and so people are triggered to move into a phase that they don’t even know that they have.
Despite the fact that human beings think that they have escaped the evolutionary paradigm they’ve done nothing of the kind, and so we should expect the belief systems that people hold to mirror the evolutionary interests that people have rather than to match our best instincts—when we are capable of being good to each other because there’s abundance, we have those instincts and so it’s not incorrect to say that human beings are capable of being marvelous creatures and being quite ethical.
Now I would argue there’s a simple way of reconciling the correct understanding that religious belief often describes truths that, in many cases, fly in the face of what we can understand scientifically, with the idea that these beliefs are adaptive. I call it the state of being literally false and metaphorically true. A belief is literally false and metaphorically true if it is not factual but if behaving as if it were factual results in an enhancement of one’s fitness. To take an example, if one behaves in let’s say the Christian tradition in such a way as to gain access to heaven one will not actually find themselves at the pearly gates being welcomed in, but one does tend to place their …
For the full transcript, check out https://bigthink.com/videos/bret-weinstein-how-evolution-explains-religion
@bigthink
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
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@Alex-xc6tm
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
This is basically what Jordan Peterson thinks behind all the jargon, he just doesn't want to say it out loud because he knows he would lose most of his audience if he did. He literally called God "the ultimate fiction."
@StraitGateApologetics
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
I used to doubt too—until I died. I had a near-death experience that shook my entire existence. I was pulled into a thick black cloud—just like the one that covered Mount Sinai, the one that overshadowed Mary—and there, I met Jesus Christ. Not a vision. Not a hallucination. A divine encounter. He knew everything about me—my failures, addictions, pain—and yet He loved me. He saved me. You can say “God isn’t real,” but I met Him. And I came back different. No man can fake the peace, the power, and the truth that He gave me. One day, you’ll see Him too. I just hope it’s in grace, not judgment. Ask Him yourself… He’s not far.
@danielford5329
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Why don’t you read the bible and try and disprove it.there has never been evidence of a dog turning into a cat for example,the best example you Darwinist have are some beaks of finches changing. Come on brother. Historically the bible is stronger than any text that any college teaches
@imcool2236
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Should we even listen to this guy?
@hermanmunster714
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Evolution favors the fittest for survival as a species. Fittest, as in most adaptable. The present-day distribution of resources has nothing whatsoever to do with evolution. They're man made modern constructs, created for purpose of control. If you stripped away weapons, medicines, creature comforts and were left with a mano v mano world, the end result would be very different from leadership today. 80yr old high Priests would not be weilding authority from DC, for example.
@peacelovehealthpowerresthe7940
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
I think the heaven/hell concept of abrahamic religion extrapolates the reward/survival instincts. Not sure it's always useful though. A more balance good/bad approach sounds healthier and I guess prone to more resilience and sunstainable well being ?
@PaulMelton-p8r
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Religion is fake, made up by smarter humans for control and power over other humans. Religion is genocide, think of how many humans died in the name of religion.
@SmokeyRobbinson
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
What does he mean by “they” is this an alien?😂😂
@rizeluke8977
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Although evolution is also true, Jesus is our true king. I don't understand why people are making it so hard to comprehend that they're both real
@aminnikmehr4738
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
A religion is supposed to bring order, discipline, equality, a great hope to survive and motivate its followers to try for greatness. Life is all about trying our best to survive and reproduce in every moment. Most of Religions discourage people to commit crimes and inflict pain to others. But the disagreement between the followers of religions over unreligious matters such as possession of a land, resources and wealth often cause conflicts and hostilities among them.
@a.g.m989
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
It’s insane how desperately people will cling to false beliefs. Religion is not true. That’s it. No need to wiggle the frame, stand on your head or squint your eyes. It doesn’t stand up to any amount of logical or evidentiary scrutiny and completely fails as a functioning epistemology
This has been known for centuries now and the moment the majority of the population is no longer religious it will be considered a delusion. This is of course a categoric error but I won’t get into how biased our classification systems are and how they’re controlled by w/e the current cultural zeitgeist is. This has been known for a long time too
@MoonstrollerRexrino
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
A lot of words and high sounding talk does not truth make. There are three basic truths: we did not put the Universe here, We were all born to die, we need some basic morality guides to keep a strong sense of peace or violence will rule. As you go back in time, the big problem in most families was keeping the kids around the fire so the wolves did not eat them. Enter Grandpa and all his ghost stories to put the fear of ghosts in the minds of children, which lead to the first books of ghost stories which eventually got called Bibles.
@AidanCho-s9p
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
christianity is not literally false but you are right about christianity being metaphorically true
@beitforgot0688
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
You're right my mom and dad in to this
@ReapingTheHarvest
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
We are raised from day 1 to hate religion. It's sad that most people fall for it, and believe everything they are taught in the secular government schools. People never learn from history.
@ReapingTheHarvest
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Evolution is an unscientific, religious belief. We did not magically evolve from a magical exploding dot.
@rizmacadillac
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
"God helps those who help themselves" is a piece of ancient religious wisdom and is probably as true today as it was before the first Christian. But what do some stories mean? I received a replica of the Widow's Mite in the mail a few weeks ago and was reminded of the story. But what does this mean to me? Was the widow foolish when she had so little to waste her mite when it really might not matter, or should she spend her might and be ignored anyway? Who knows?
@tyemaddog
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Jesus taught using metaphors for a reason. Brilliant really. Base same, but difference branch out. as with any other religion or secularism. We are all different.
Yet one uses modern science to point out more apparent "problems" in these different 66 books.
but the interpretations can't dare evolve ? Ridiculous.
@R___a___h___l300
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
🕋🕋🦵🦵🦵🦵🦵🦵🦵🦵
@hakeemtehron9315
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Metaphors taken literally are doing more harm, but belief exists only because of that thing.
@michaeljohnson3845
August 14, 2025 at 3:39 pm
Gay
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