The vast majority of the planet’s seven billion people ascribe to some kind of religious belief — that is, a faith in things that cannot be proven. This makes no sense from a scientific and psychological point of view, because supernatural beliefs — in contrast to our evolved thinking in general — serve no apparent purpose. They don’t help us comprehend and navigate the world. Why would the human mind create them, and allow them to persist?

Two cognitive psychologists now offer an intriguing explanation for this philosophical puzzle. Nicolas Baumard of the University of Pennsylvania and Pascal Boyer of Washington University in St. Louis argue that beliefs result from the interplay of two distinct human thinking processes that make up the human mind. Years of research have demonstrated that we all have a powerful intuitive system of thought — fast, automatic, largely hidden — as well as a slow and analytical system of thought. According to Baumard and Boyer’s theory, religious beliefs originate in deep-rooted intuitions about things completely unrelated to gods and afterlives — intuitions that were once adaptive but no longer are. Beliefs are not simply intuitions, however. They are the slow, deliberate mind’s attempt to explain these vestigial gut feelings.

Here are some of their illustrations:

It made sense for our ancient ancestors to be keenly on guard for signs of peril in the world — a predator’s tracks or natural poisons, for instance. As a result of this hypervigilance, humans learned to respond emotionally and defensively to threats and contagion, a response that continues today — even though those old threats are largely irrelevant to most of us. Other people were one source of dangerous contagion, and we still respond — on a gut level — to our intuitive avoidance of others, especially the sick. But this lingering gut feeling leaves a lot unexplained, like the biology of how germs are actually transmitted, so it’s left to the slow reflective mind to make sense of these strong but mysterious impulses. Our modern mind elaborates on these old intuitions, creating beliefs about magical contagion, both good and bad. According to Baumard and Boyer, this may be why believers worldwide will ritualistically touch relics and kiss the likenesses of saints. Modern belief in the protective power of these rituals “hitchhikes” on an ancient fear of germs.

We all know that when someone dies, their “agency” dies, too. They are no longer active in the world in the same way they were. Even children get that when grandpa is gone, he’s gone. Even so, our intuitive sense of that person — the thinking, feeling grandpa — can still be activated by memories of the deceased. This intuitive discrepancy persists, and the rational mind steps in to make sense of it. The discrepancy become the dual nature of human beings — the body and soul. This in turn leads to idiosyncratic thoughts — that dead people are “still around” — and especially to beliefs in ancestral spirits.

The human mind craves synchrony. Acting in unison with others — whether it’s a military procession or a church choir — triggers a biochemical surge in the brain, which increases social bonding and cooperation. This ancient bias was probably crucial to the forging of early societies, but the modern reflective mind — unaware of the original link between congregation and pleasure — seeks a supernatural explanation for the urge to unite, in the form of angels and gods.

We all have an intuitive sense of right and wrong. Moral intuitions likely originated in the need to have fair relationships with others because, if we didn’t treat others fairly, we were excluded from future interactions. One of these ancient moral intuitions dictates that we should compensate others whom we have harmed, and if we can’t for whatever reason, that we should redress the unbalance with self-inflicted suffering. This could take the form of flagellation, mutilation, fasting or giving away money to a third party — an orphanage or church, for instance. These actions seem intuitively to restore symmetry, yet to the reflective mind the reasons for such acts are mysterious. This mystery generates possible explanations, including divine justice and karma.

These are just a few examples of common religious beliefs and practices, drawn from an article to be published in the journal Current Directions in Psychological Science. There are many more. What they all have in common is that they all originate in intuitive beliefs, which “pop up” without deliberate thought, and demand an explanation. In that sense, Baumard and Boyer say, religious notions are not special. They are just one form of evidence that the human mind is motivated, as a result of evolution, to comment on its own gut feelings.

Wray Herbert’s blogs — “Full Frontal Psychology” and “We’re Only Human” — appear regularly in The Huffington Post.

The Post reporter, Robert Samuels, did an admirable job of trying to track down the source of Cups—though in the end it remains somewhat of a mystery. It’s apparently akin to other rhythmic games—Miss Mary Mack and Slide—enduring products of an oral culture based on clapping and chanting, which today spread from child to child, playground to playground, town to town, state to state.

There is actually some intriguing psychological science that illuminates Cups and other rhythmic traditions. They have the same basic appeal as military marching formations, high school marching bands, church choirs, and synchronized swimming. Anthropologists and cultural historians have offered up a variety of theories about synchrony over the years, mostly having to do with group coherence. One theory, for example, holds that various communities benefit from the actual physical synchrony—or “muscular bonding”—which builds group cohesiveness. Another idea is that synchronous activities lead to “collective effervescence”—positive emotions that break down the boundaries between self and group.

But neither of these theories has been proven, and what’s more, neither is complete. Muscle bonding may explain the coherence of the 14th Infantry Regiment, but those guys don’t seem very effervescent—not in the way that, say, carnival revelers are. And gross motor coordination doesn’t explain the almost motionless chanting of Tibetan monks. Psychologists have been looking for a unifying theory for the appeal of synchrony.

One idea, put forth by psychologists Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath of Stanford University a couple years ago, is that all synchrony—movement and sound and both together—is an ancient ritual that evolved for the economic benefit of the group. The primary goal of rhythmic dancing and marching and chanting is to solve the problem of the freeloader—the community member who hurts the collective good by taking but not contributing. Muscular bonding and collective joy are mere byproducts of this more fundamental economic ritual.

Wiltermuth and Heath ran a series of lab experiments to test this idea. In the simplest version, the researchers simply took groups of Stanford students on walks around campus; some walked in step—marching basically—while others just strolled the way students usually stroll. Later, after the students thought the experiment was over, the psychologists gave them all what’s called the “Weak Link” test. In this test, each volunteer chooses to act either self-interestedly or cooperatively, depending on what he anticipates others will do. The test basically measures the expectation that others will value the group over themselves.

The marchers acted more cooperatively than the strollers. They also said that they felt more “connected” than did the strollers. Notably, they did not report feeling any happier, suggesting that positive emotions were not necessary for the achieving the boost in group cohesiveness.

The psychologists wanted to do a more fine-grained test of their idea. It’s well known that a sense of common identity and shared fate boosts group cohesiveness, but the researchers wanted to see if synchrony contributes to group cohesiveness above and beyond this. They did a rather elaborate test to sort this out. They had students perform tasks—moving plastic cups—that required differing degrees of coordination with others. While doing this, they listened to “O Canada” through headphones. Remember that these were Stanford students, so the Canadian national anthem presumably had no emotional resonance for them; it was merely a synchronous act.

So some of the students sang and moved the cups in rhythm, while others just sang in unison and others merely read the lyrics silently. Still others sang and moved to different tempos—sort of like a really bad dancer moving at odds with the music. Then they did the same “Weak Link” test on all of them, only this time there was real money involved. As before, those who had experienced synchrony were more economically cooperative than those who had not. The bad dancers were bad citizens, but the physical movement otherwise made no difference; choral singers were selfless with or without the swaying, suggesting that muscle bonding is (like joy) unnecessary to get the desired group coherence. The swaying may be enjoyable, but the group singing was sufficient.

The choral singers also said they felt more part of the team. They felt they had more in common with the others, and they trusted them somewhat more. Interestingly, as they reported a couple years ago in the journal Psychological Science, they also made more money in the end, because they shared in the group bounty.

Synchrony rituals are powerful—so powerful that they may have endowed certain groups with a competitive advantage over the eons, perhaps even causing some cultures to flourish while others perished. It’s no wonder then that such potent impulses remain entrenched in today’s churches and armies—and even in middle school cafeterias.

It’s also flat as can be — not a mountain in sight. Not even a hill really. So the road’s name is one of those linguistic anomalies, like Greenland and the Los Angeles Lakers, which demand an explanation.

Well, it turns out there is a story, and one involving none less than Captain John Smith, the English explorer. Smith sailed up the Chesapeake in 1608, mapping the region and describing its topography, vegetation and animal life in his journals. Both his maps and the journals describe the Bay’s western shore as “mountainous,” and other early mapmakers pinpointed various peaks as well. Indeed, Gibson Island, the tiny gated community at the eastern end of Mountain Road, was originally known as Seven Mountains, though it hardly rises above sea level.

Why would this be? Well, one theory is put forth in Between Two Rivers, Isabel Shipley Cunningham’s engaging pictorial history of the Peninsula. Cunningham speculates that these western shores, compared to the low-lying coastal plains of the Eastern Shore, did in fact appear mountainous, especially when viewed from water level, as they would have been by these sea-going colonists. There is no evidence that Smith ever actually set foot on the Peninsula, nor did he sail up the Magothy. He had his eyes set on bigger prizes, like the future Baltimore harbor, but his perplexing observations stuck.

That’s an interesting theory, and not inconsistent with another idea from psychological science. This theory has to do with our basic vision and perception of the world — especially unfamiliar terrains. For many years, behavioral scientist Dennis Proffitt of the University of Virginia has been exploring the idea that what we see is not merely what’s projected on the eye’s retina. Our perception of the world is filtered through our emotions, especially fear and caution. Proffitt and his many colleagues and students have come to believe that we don’t all “see” the same world with the same topography. Each of us has an idiosyncratic vision that is shaped by the emotional baggage we carry.

I actually took part in one of the University of Virginia studies some years ago. It was quite simple. I stood on an outdoor balcony looking down at the ground, and I estimated the distance to the ground below. I also estimated the size of a disc lying on the ground. Taken together, these estimations capture how my brain perceives the distance down, and guess what? I seriously over-estimated the distance — not even close. This, I learned later, is because I have a pretty serious fear of heights. This fear literally alters the distance from balcony to ground — at least in my reality.

I’m in good company here. Indeed, another 17th century explorer had a very similar experience, on a much larger scale. Father Louis Hennepin was the first European to describe the wonder of Niagara Falls, and in his 1677 journal, he described this future honeymoon destination as a “prodigious high” 600 feet. That wasn’t even in the ball park — the falls are a mere 167 feet high. This lousy guesstimating suggests to psychologists that the French friar probably had a pathological fear of heights.

But here’s the interesting thing. We all misperceive such drop-offs — falls, cliffs, even steep hills — to some degree. This is probably because our ancient ancestors learned the hard way that cliffs are dangerous and should be approached with caution. This deep, careful habit of mind stays with us today, even though we live in much safer environments for the most part. It keeps us from taking untoward risks, but also steers us away from novelty and challenge.

But back to Cpt. Smith. A powerful and ancient fear of falling makes intuitive sense, but why would Smith overestimate distance upward? Why would he look at our rolling woodlands and see peaks? Well, think of it as a fear of climbing. One of our ancient ancestors’ most valuable commodities was energy, stamina. Running out of fuel could be dangerous, even fatal, so the brain learned to conserve wherever possible. These ancestors didn’t calculate energy costs in any literal way, but on an unconscious level, every ascent represented a choice — is this peak worth it? This ingrained caution lingers in our neurons today, making us see every hill as just a little steeper than it is in fact.

Consider, too, that Hennepin and Smith were traveling in a strange and perilous land. It makes sense that their perceptual distortions would have been even more out of whack than ours today. No wonder Hennepin saw the thunderous Niagara Falls as three times their actual height, and Smith saw mountains where we see level mile after level mile of Mountain Road.

The names of these inlets speak to the river’s rich colonial history. Beginning in the 1600s, English explorers sought refuge in these small, protected harbors, and named them Cockey Creek, Blackhole Creek, Dobbins Pond, Redhouse Cove. Tarcoal Cove, now shortened to Tar Cove, is where those seamen came to extract pitch from the nearby pits, valuable for patching chinks in the hulls of their weary vessels.

The lucky ones claimed land and built homes and plantations here. Indeed, for most of its modern history, the Peninsula was farm land, a rich source of tobacco, then corn, berries, and lumber, shipped to Baltimore and Europe. Because it is a peninsula, and was not easily accessible by road, development happened slowly. The Dena still has a rural feel to it in parts, though most of the farms are now gone, replaced by driving ranges and high schools and gated communities.

The Peninsula was also a hotbed of moral instruction, according to what I’m finding in Marianne Taylor’s lyrical regional history, My River Speaks. Beginning in the early years of the 20th century, church leaders in Baltimore started sending their teenage boys to summer camps along the north shore, to build their integrity and character and keep them from drifting into urban temptations. One of these camps was built by the Grace Methodist Church, in 1914 on Cockey Creek. Kids would hop on the train from Baltimore to Jones Station, and then paddle in a flotilla of canoes across to the plain cabins of Grachur Club. There they spent their summers roughing it, doing calisthenics and high-diving and swimming and boating, and of course listening to frequent sermons, delivered from a stone pulpit in the waterside chapel.

Another such camp, Camp Milburn, was built right here on Cornfield Creek in the 1920s, a project of the Brantley Baptist Church. When I sit on our dock, I try to picture those young men doing their military drills along the water, bugles blaring. Grace Methodist later added a second camp for underprivileged Baltimore kids, near Cockey Creek, called Whippoorwill Hills. A modernized version of camp Whippoorwill is still in operation, now used by the Girl Scouts.

All of these wilderness camps shared a belief that nature had restorative powers. Physical discipline was essential to moral development, and being outdoors added a spiritual dimension that was lacking in the city. I feel this myself, quite a lot, and we also have evidence that it’s true — though not necessarily with all the Christian trappings. Studies have documented the mind’s deep, powerful, evolved attachment to nature, and shown convincingly that even brief exposure to nature can refuel us mentally — focusing our attention and replenishing the cognitive resources needed for everyday challenges. It doesn’t have to be untamed wilderness — even urban parkland can give some of this benefit. Walking around city streets, by contrast, places demands on those executive powers, running them down.

Don’t get me wrong — I love the city, especially my hometown Washington, D.C. But I do feel that living on a creek is supplying something that has been missing. Peter Kahn, a behavioral scientist at the University of Washington, has verified this in the lab, exposing some people to natural scenery and others to artificial versions of nature — videos and plasma windows depicting the outdoors. The artificial versions don’t work. Actual vistas have a calming effect, even when Kahn deliberately stresses people out. But the artificial scenes don’t have that same effect on thinking and emotion. Apparently, we need the smell of pine needles and crunch of twigs and acorns under our feet. We need to jump into creeks on occasion.

I worry with Kahn and other environmental psychologists that our modern detachment from the natural world may be taking a toll, cognitively and emotionally. Kahn has been interviewing young kids around the world, and he has the impression that, with every generation, our kids are losing a bit more of the direct experiential knowledge of the natural world. Our kids may also be losing their expectations for what is a normal interaction with nature, creating a kind of generational amnesia. We as a species may be adapting to this un-natural world, but in the process we may be losing some measure of human flourishing. This loss could emerge as one of the most compelling psychological issues of the not-so-distant future.

I like that we live where youngsters once came for right thinking and moral compass. It may be that the Baltimore churchmen had at least some of it right. They seemed to know intuitively that roughing it on the jagged branches of the Magothy was a source of mental and emotional and spiritual replenishment.

Nine of the boaters were seriously injured, including five kids, according to reports I read this morning. We should have known something was amiss, because jet skiers were zipping up and down the creek. The creek is a no-wake zone, and neighbors generally respect that rule and keep it quiet, so the speeding jet skis were unusual. Soon after, we saw flashing lights of the emergency vehicles — six of them — and all of the neighbors started gathering outside, exchanging what little information anyone had. Some of us walked down onto the lawn where the neighbor had witnessed the accident. Police boats were already patrolling the waters, and three helicopters flew overhead.

All we had were questions, and fragments of answers. Someone thought that a neighbor named Randy was out in his powerboat, and others believed he may have had his grandchildren with him. We’re new to Cornfield Creek, and don’t know Randy, but we learned that he lives a short way down Grandview — the guy with the yellow Lab. Just this morning, a neighbor said, she had been looking at photos that Randy posted on Facebook, photos of his visiting grandchildren having fun in the creek. Another neighbor reported that rescuers were still pulling the boaters out of the water, and that only one uninjured was the child on the tube.

There was quiet when emergency workers gently rolled a gurney through the crowd, with the slight body of a young boy strapped to it. He was immobilized, and blood trickled from his nose. We learned later that he was rushed to Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, and others were taken to other local hospitals, one to a shock trauma unit. All are in serious condition, but nobody died in the accident, and nobody drowned.

We learned later that Don Dwyer, a Maryland state delegate who lives on the creek, was piloting one of the boats, and that he had been drinking heavily before going on the water. But the neighbors weren’t discussing legalities, questions of right and wrong. The boating accident will be investigated, and fault will be assigned, but by someone else, elsewhere. Here, tonight, all that mattered was that all boaters had survived this harrowing event.

Neighbors lingered a long time on the lawns and street, long after the emergency workers and police had left. There was nothing we could do to help, and we had all the information we would be getting for the time being. But nobody seemed quite ready to give up the sense of solidarity that emerges around such threatening experiences.

I know a little about the psychological dynamics of such events. We all carry around, in our heads, some deep-rooted habits of mind. When primed by our immediate experiences, these old habits click into action, often with mixed results. Think about scarcity, for example. When we know something is in short supply, we automatically value it more. This is as true of gold as it is of time. When an event — like a serious boating accident — reminds us that life is short, we immediately begin treasuring the time we’re given. We think of life as more meaningful, and have more zest for simple pleasures, like neighbors and community.

Our thinking and emotions are also shaped by another powerful cognitive bias. The idea of death is always with us; we know that our short periods of existence will inevitably come to an end. This would be a terrifying thought if we dwelled on it constantly, so the mind has developed a protective mechanism to keep us from being paralyzed by this existential angst. When threatened with reminders of death and oblivion, we automatically start reaffirming our values and beliefs. These might be religious beliefs, or they might be secular values, like neighborliness and family devotion. I think these ancient habits of mind kept us out on our lawns last night. Randy and his grandkids had a near-death experience, and we all, unconsciously but rapidly, started reaffirming what’s good, including our little community on the creek.

This psychological dynamic can have a downside, however. Reaffirming core values can go too far, making us circle the wagons and protect what’s ours. The threat of death can make us overly cautious, fearful of losing what’s meaningful to us. I experienced this just a bit last night, in the privacy of my own thoughts. Seeing that bleeding boy wheeled by on the gurney, I immediately started thinking of my grown sons. Where were they? Are they safe? These young men are adventurous. They ski down mountains and camp alone in the wilderness and jump out of airplanes. I always worry when I know they are doing these things, but I also celebrate them for their gusto. I don’t want to lose that feeling, but admit that Cornfield Creek is feeling a bit threatening at the moment.

There’s not a lot of human activity on Cornfield Creek, in part because it is so placid and in part because it doesn’t go anywhere. Sailors find better winds out on the river, where we also spot an occasional water skier. We get paddlers and gunk holers, and in pre-dawn darkness, when most days I’m out on our dock, I see fishermen quietly wending their way to the river and beyond.

I’m an anomaly on Cornfield Creek, because I don’t fish. I’ve never fished, even though I grew up on the water, among avid fishermen. I’m intrigued by that world, but it’s a culture that, for whatever reason, I was never initiated into. I was reading in the Baltimore Sun this morning about a (apparently) famous fisherman named Bernard “Lefty” Kreh, a native Marylander who has fished with presidents and has been honored on a U.S. postage stamp. The story was actually about Topps, the chewing gum and trading card company, which recently issued a trading card depicting Kreh, but mistakenly labeled it with the name of another famous local fisherman and guide, Capt. Norm Bartlett. How this happened nobody knows, but Kreh and Bartlett are longtime buddies and both are taking it in good humor. The misprinted cards are now being auctioned on eBay.

This story, which ran on the front page of the Sun, intrigued me. Not because of the mix-up at Topps, but because the very existence of a fisherman trading card surprised me. I don’t know why it should: I grew up as an avid collector of baseball trading cards and suffered more than one cavity trying to find treasured and elusive cards, like Mickey Mantle and Sandy Koufax. I traded cagily in the elementary school card market, and I also spent hours reading the statistics on the backs of these cards. I wanted to know Bill “Moose” Skowron’s batting average over the years, and Don Newcombe’s ERA. So I get the obsession with a sport or hobby.

Even so, reading about the “Lefty” Kreh trading card got me thinking. What is a hobby in the human mind? What’s going on, psychologically, when we develop an interest and pursue it? Why do we not get bored thinking about stand-up doubles and RBIs — or striped bass and swim shad lures — but instead get more and more involved and passionate? Everybody is an expert on something, foreign coins or Civil War battle sites or organic gardening. What’s the motivation?

Scientists have actually studied this kind of interest and have some insights. In one study, researchers exposed volunteers to real world experiences, but things they weren’t necessarily interested in — abstract poetry, say. Some of the volunteers were just left on their own to read the poem, while others were given a small hint about its meaning. When they were all asked later on to rate the verse, those who had been given a hint said they found it much more interesting and engaging. Similarly, volunteers who had some familiarity with art history — just a bit — found a modern art gallery much more engaging and less threatening.

This makes sense to me. It’s like, intellectually, getting a foot in the door. Think about fishing again. We all are constantly appraising our experiences, trying to make sense of what’s around us. But we size up the same experience very differently, depending on the knowledge we bring to it. I may be a bit curious about fish and the culture of fishing, but I know so little that the whole thing seems incomprehensible to me. Even novices have enough knowledge that they feel they can cope intellectually with the experience. They might know that the Magothy is home to white perch and channel catfish, or they own a decent rod and reel, so they are not complete outsiders in this mysterious world. They are comfortable enough to explore a bit more. To me, it’s all a mystery.

So why do some novices persist with a hobby? How did “Lefty” Kreh get started, and how did he get so good at his chosen hobby that he’s on a Topps trading card? Why not just learn a little about fishing, then move on and learn a little about French wines and then a little about collectible cuckoo clocks or the novels of William Faulkner? Well, it seems that passions propel themselves. Watermen like Kreh and Bartlett have an entire roadmap of fishing etched into their neurons, a roadmap that includes the bay and its tributaries, the customs and legends and technology and equipment and lures and flies and, of course, the perch and stripers and bluefish. They see subtleties and nuances that are lost on the rest of us, even on somewhat experienced fishermen. It appears that, initially, an intellectual challenge is what motivates us to develop expertise, but this mastery in turn allows us to keep searching and learning, adding layer upon layer to our understanding.

I am new to Cornfield Creek, so I am just beginning to piece together my neuronal map. It’s sketched only in broad strokes for now, and under constant revision. I learned recently that my dock, the one I visit early mornings, is my front yard. The “back” of the house is what faces the road, where we park our cars, and the creek is our local street, a watery cul-de-sac. I’ve begun paddling a bit on the creek and river, and I’m beginning — just beginning — to see the world from this new perspective.

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