Perhaps you recall the 1980 movie, The Blue Lagoon, starring Brooke Shields and Christopher Atkin, where families are shipwrecked and only two youngsters survive on a deserted island without the benefit of parental influence. Now imagine a similar, but more unlikely scenario, where two toddlers miraculously survive and somehow manage to find food and shelter. Without language, they can only communicate with grunts, facial expressions and hand motions. Because there are no parents from which to acquire language, the youngsters cannot inherit beliefs, religious or otherwise. As they age, their beliefs will be based solely on their understanding of and responses to the environment in which they live. This will determine their ultimate survival–at least for the time being.
Princess Alice is watching!
Once children begin to learn language, their only authority is parents or other adults from which they inherit beliefs about the world which are accepted as truth in their malleable minds. A white paper appearing in Academia titled, Princess Alice is Watching You, describes an experiment where a group of children were taught to play a game and were expressly told that cheating was forbidden. When an adult observer left the room, the children began to cheat. At the next session the children were shown an empty chair and told Princess Alice was sitting there watching for cheaters. This time, when the adult left the room, cheating was effectively curbed by the children's newfound belief in an invisible observer.
Like most American Christians, I was taught in childhood that Santa was watching to see if I was naughty or nice and would not stop by on Christmas day if the former. And, as a teen, from the pulpit I was warned (and believed!) that although I may think I am getting away with unseen bad behavior, God sees all and on Judgment Day there will be hell for me to pay!
Whether Princess Alice, Santa Claus or God, the experiment highlights the power of adult authority in using language to influence belief and behavior on the impressionable. Likewise, the belief that a supernatural authority is watching over us is common to all religions and can be an effective way to control behavior in populations.
During the Middle Ages, emperors and kings learned quickly to align themselves with Christianity by using the scriptural concept of "divine right of kings" as promulgated by the Apostle Paul in Romans 13. By claiming divine authority, authoritarian rulers were better able to maintain a grip on their brainwashed subjects. As well, Islamic theocracies are still alive and well in the Middle East. As I write, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu's coalition is moving toward a government that would enforce certain religious prohibitions over democratic liberties. Even Russia's war criminal dictator, Vladimir Putin, sporting a crucifix, has locked arms with the Russian Orthodox Church, thereby making his war against Ukraine a 'holy war' to his people.
Self-replicating beliefs
Besides foisting superstition and conspiracy theories on the credulous, language is used effectively to spread values, taboos, laws, and cultural norms, and acceptable standards of behavior–"memes", if you will.
In 1976, in his book The Selfish Gene, British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins first introduced the term meme. He postulated that memes were the cultural equivalent to biological genes and considered such ideas capable of self-replication. (Since then, the term has been hijacked by internet culture to mean a graphic image bearing a message that is spread virally by users to their followers.) Due to language, ideas, whether beneficial or harmful, can be infectious.
Imagine no religion
Theoretically, without language, religious beliefs could (should) not exist–or at least have a more difficult time spreading. Beliefs would be limited to silent observations and interactions with the world around us, much in the same way animals form beliefs about friends and foes, safety and danger, food and shelter. Beliefs, when acquired “correctly”, would ensure our survival long enough to pass along our genes to a new generation.
To paraphrase philosopher, neuroscientist and author of End of Faith, Sam Harris, if all religious texts were to suddenly disappear from historical records and all memories of religions were somehow wiped from our brains, religions based on superstition and faith would have an extremely difficult time restarting and would struggle to take hold in the face of modern science, logic and reason.
Not to say that religions would never regenerate as humans have evolved with a survival instinct, becoming pattern-seeking creatures that helplessly wish to assign agency to events we cannot explain. Call it the "god of the gaps" impulse or the "god gene" misnomer. But with philosophy and the vast amount of scientific evidence acquired in recent centuries, logical explanations would be mostly accepted. Well, at least in the more literate, educated and developed societies on the planet.
Again, to paraphrase Sam Harris, there is yet to be a society that has suffered because its people were too reasonable. We can say just the opposite for societies plagued by religious superstition and mythology.