Two Wheels of a Bicycle: Religion, Secularism and Evolutionary Strategy

In my previous post, I explored Nietzsche’s surprisingly scientific stance on morality, human nature and cultural evolution. But there’s one piece I deliberately left out: the concept of the “will to power.” Rather than digging further into Nietzsche himself, I want to use this idea as a departure point for something broader.

What if, from an evolutionary perspective, religion isn’t simply a tool of repression or a remnant of superstition, but a clever, adaptive strategy? And what if the tension between religious and secular power, often seen as a conflict, is actually a kind of balance mechanism? In this essay, I offer a model for understanding the moral and political role of religion in modern life, not from a standpoint of belief, but of function.

Two Wheels of a Bicycle: Religion, Secularism, and Evolutionary Strategy

Nietzsche’s Blind Spot

Friedrich Nietzsche, one of religion’s fiercest critics, famously denounced Christianity as a tool of control and a “slave morality” that, in his view, stifled human excellence and elevated weakness over strength. His declaration of the “death of God” was not merely a rejection of belief, but a call to liberate human potential from inherited moral constraints.
And yet, for all his brilliance and prophetic reach, Nietzsche seems to have overlooked one crucial function of religion: its evolutionary utility. While he acknowledged the psychological depth and cultural influence of religious belief, he dismissed too easily the idea that religion could also be a form of resistance and a collective power by which the weak, through unity and shared moral codes, could challenge domination. In some historical moments, religion was not the tool of the rulers, but the only force that kept them in check.

Although not grounded in biology, Nietzsche’s thought is steeped in evolutionary overtones: His concept of the “will to power” reads like a psychological analogue to natural selection and can even be seen as a prototype of what we now call evolutionary psychology.
But where evolutionary science studies trade-offs, adaptation and cooperation, Nietzsche remained fixed in a stark binary: strength versus weakness, nobility versus herd. To be fair, his concern was not social survival or cohesion, but the flourishing of the exceptional individual. Still, from an evolutionary standpoint, the “herd morality” he scorned may in fact embody a deeply adaptive strategy: the power of collective conscience to regulate and restrain unchecked power.

In this essay, I propose that religion and secular authority represent two complementary systems of governance, each of which rooted in different evolutionary logics. Like the two mismatched wheels of a bicycle, they aren’t designed for a smooth ride, but together provide far greater stability than either could alone.

Origins of Religion

Cognitive scientists have proposed that religion may have first emerged not as a deliberate invention, but as a by-product of other survival mechanisms. One such theory is the Hyperactive Agency Detection Device (HADD). According to it, our ancestors evolved to over-detect agents in the environment (mistaking wind in the grass for a predator, for instance), because false positives were less dangerous than false negatives. This agency-overdetection could easily have been extended to unseen beings, such as spirits, ancestors and gods.
In evolutionary terms, this makes religion a spandrel, which is a by-product of a feature that evolved for another reason. But unlike a purely vestigial trait, religion turned out to have beneficial consequences: it helped form strong, cohesive communities by enforcing social norms and shared moral codes. As psychologist Ryan McKay and anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse argue, religion’s emphasis on moral surveillance and punishment may have enhanced cooperation and prosocial behaviour, making religious communities more resilient.

What began as an individual-level cognitive bias may have, through cultural evolution, given rise to group-level advantages. In this light, we might even say that gods were the personified collective conscience of early societies developed as a moral force that stabilised group behaviour. This perspective helps us reconcile how something illogical or unverifiable (supernatural belief) could serve a deeply practical, even biological, function.

The Balancing Powers

Fast forward to the modern era. Though institutional religion often clings to outdated traditions, it sometimes performs a critical role in restraining the excesses of secular power. One striking example stands out: the Catholic Church’s resistance to the Nazi eugenics program. While Nazi Germany pursued the systematic extermination of people deemed “genetically unfit” to “improve” the German population, being propelled by pseudoscientific rationalism, the Church opposed these measures. In countries where Catholic influence was stronger, such as Poland and Czechoslovakia, eugenics programs were less successful or met stronger resistance.
Here, religious authority acted as a moral counterweight to a coldly logical but deeply inhumane policy, which had gained widespread scientific support in the early 20th century, in the US and several European countries before reaching Germany. This illustrates how religious institutions, often dismissed as irrational, can in fact serve a rational evolutionary function: protecting moral norms against ideological overreach.

But this balancing act works both ways. Secular society has, in turn, acted as a necessary check on religious institutions, pushing them to evolve. One clear case is the Church’s stance on gender and LGBTQ+ issues. For centuries, the Catholic Church held a rigidly exclusionary position, often reinforcing discrimination. However, social pressure from increasingly inclusive secular societies forced a gradual shift in tone. During his papacy, the previous Pope, Francis, made notable efforts to soften the Church’s rhetoric. He spoke of treating LGBTQ+ individuals with dignity and compassion, and while doctrinal changes were limited, he opened space for conversations once unthinkable within Church walls.

This is a mirror image of the previous example: in this case, secular culture acts as the moral corrector. The more recent return to traditionalism under his successor underscores how the balance between secular and religious authority remains dynamic, but the precedent of adaptation has been set.

The Evolutionary Logic of Faith

How can this structural tension be justified in a modern, pluralistic world? After all, religion is not based on evidence, and in liberal democracies, we do not usually give authority to claims that can’t be rationally defended. But if religion, as described, is a reflection of our evolved conscience, in other words, an expression of our genes’ preference for prosocial behaviour, then it has a claim to legitimacy not through proof, but through function.

The secular state may be seen to represent the mind: rational, evidence-driven, but potentially cold and utilitarian. Religion, then, may represent the heart: intuitive, moral and sometimes irrational but deeply human. Both are biological mechanisms shaped by evolution, and both are needed to maintain balance.
In this model, religious and secular powers operate like two decision-making systems in the human brain: the emotional and the rational, with each correcting the other’s blind spots. That’s likely why religions persist, despite scandals, outdated doctrines and intellectual criticism: our genes may “know” that having two powers that check each other is safer than entrusting everything to one.

A Shared Moral Compass

It’s important to note that none of this is a defense of belief. Accepting religion’s evolutionary utility is not the same as believing in its metaphysical claims. Religion demands submission, and atheists, including myself, may always remain outside the circle of faith. Perhaps this is why thinkers like Kant, who recognized the value of religion, still declined to fully embrace it.

But this isn’t defeatist’s resignation as long as we all agree on the direction for the whole bicycle to move. Whether one believes in God or not, we can all unite in one moral imperative: reducing human suffering must remain a common goal.

References
McKay, R. & Whitehouse, H. (2015). “Religion and Morality”
Wikler, D. (1999). “Can We Learn from Eugenics?” Journal of Medical Ethics, 25(2), 183–194.