Do Animals Have a Concept of God?

Some chimpanzee populations throw stones into hollow trees, and the claim is that this parallels human rituals of worship. It has been offered as an argument that the two species evolved from a common ancestor. [1]

The story reached the Turkish press under the headline “An observation that will shake the opponents of evolution: belief in god found in chimpanzees” [2], and people who hold to evolutionary thinking did not welcome it. It was pointed out that claims of worship might unsettle the defenders of evolution as much as its opponents. [3]

The underlying study is on PubMed, the United States database of biomedical research. Of the thirty-four references it cites, only one dwells on the religious side of the subject, which weakens the case for reading anything spiritual into it. [4]

So answering “do animals have a concept of god?” brings a second question with it — why such a concept could not exist in non-human animals — and shows that the subject needs a far wider study than this.

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References

[1] Evrim Ağacı — A scientific and evolutionary look at religions and gods [2] Sözcü — Belief in god found in chimpanzees [3] Ateist Forum — Belief in god in chimpanzees [4] NCBI / PMC4770594