From Social Function to Ontological Conclusion: Reassessing Yuval Noah Harari’s Account of Religion in Sapiens
Abstract
Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind explains religion as a humanly created framework that enabled large-scale cooperation, political order, and social stability. He also presents monotheism as emerging when followers of a polytheistic deity came to treat their patron as the sole supreme God. This article critically evaluates these claims through anthropology of religion, sociology, history, and philosophy of science. It advances a three-level inference test: a claim about religion’s social function does not by itself establish its historical origin, and a historical explanation does not settle the truth or falsity of religious belief. The article argues that Harari correctly identifies some social functions of religion. Still, his account is weakened by functional reductionism, a simplified account of monotheism, and a shift from methodological naturalism to philosophical naturalism. Contemporary cultural-evolutionary research provides partial support for the proposition that certain religious beliefs can facilitate cooperation. Yet this literature is probabilistic, multicausal, and contested; it does not show that religion was consciously invented, that monotheism universally arose from polytheism, or that a scientific account of religion disproves the existence of God.
Keywords: Harari; religion; monotheism; methodological naturalism; anthropology of religion; sociology of religion; cultural evolution.
