In an interview on Science

So do I. But what’s next?

Povinelli’s Folk Physics for Apes. I was interested in people’s beliefs and the origins of religion, and somebody recommended this book. What Povinelli looks at is that humans as distinct from animals have a set of causal beliefs about the physical world. Animals don’t have a concept of cause and effect. It’s a somewhat controversial book and many of the animal behaviouralists don’t like it, but it had an enormous influence on me. Tool making drove human evolution, and in order to make tools you had to have a concept of physical cause and effect. If you show an ape an array of tools to get a banana, the ape will frequently choose the wrong thing because he doesn’t have a concept of cause and effect that any human child would have. So a very important book for me.

I assume that you see theology as an extension of that concept?

Yes. One of the evolutionary advantages of having a concept of physical cause and effect is that you can make tools. That’s what drove evolution. But my theory, which nobody takes seriously, is that once you have a concept of cause and effect you want to explain everything that has happened to you. And that’s where God comes from.

It sounds very sensible. Who finds that difficult to believe?

Well in the literature on religion nobody ever mentions it. But I do think that’s the origin of mysticism and all sorts of things like that. Apes can break nuts with a stone, get insects with a stick, but they don’t really have a sense of cause and effect, and so no physics and certainly no metaphysics whatsoever.

None at all? I wonder how they’d react to the spike set in the steering wheel?

Well I don’t think they’d be able to drive a car frankly.