2024年5月9日发(作者：罗马夺欧协联冠军)

高三英语阅读培优训练

落在愤怒的上帝手中

【原文】

Ⅰ①Many people think that religious belief is inherent to human psychology. ②This

does not mean that specific beliefs are wired, but that the brain is predisposed to believe in

supernatural agents. ③Some proponentsof this idea argue that supernatural beliefs have

hijacked innocent or otherwise useful features of the mind. ④But Dominic Johnson argues in

“God Is Watching You”, belief in God—specifically, in supernatural forces that can punish—

is a useful evolutionary adaptation.

Ⅱ①Mr Johnson argues that there is little harm if you overreact to something that turns

out not to exist. ②But underestimating a rustling in the undergrowth, which might conceal a

predator, could be fatal, leading to evolutionary selection of a tendency to see agents

everywhere. ③The instinct is easily triggered, even in atheists. ④Even pictures can set it off:

in one experiment, an office honour-system to pay for shared coffee got more contributions

when someone taped a picture of a pair of eyes on the collecting tin.

Ⅲ①There is also a tendency in most people to put greater emphasis on punishment

than on reward: losing $100 is far more painful than winning the same amount is pleasing.

②Why would belief in an angry god be any use? ③When humans developed language, they

could spread word of cheating, freeriding and the like. ④Raping your neighbour’s mate

might once have made evolutionary sense—spreading your own genes at little cost—but

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“in a clever and gossiping species, knowledge of selfish actions could spread and come

back to haunt us” in the form of a furious husband or a village mob. ⑤Since cheating is

now costlier, belief in an invisible monitor helps people avoid those costs, and so survive

with their reputations intact, and pass on their genes.

Ⅳ①Mr Johnson noted that societies which punish cheaters are more likely to survive

and grow. ②He quotes John Locke, a 17th century English philosopher: “Those who deny

the existence of the Deity are not to be tolerated at all. ③Promises, covenants and oaths,

which are the bonds of human society, can have no hold upon or sanctity for an atheist.”

④Those bonds and covenants allow societies to co-ordinate action and plan for the future.

⑤Mr Johnson’s own research into 186 preindustrial cultures found that moralising religious

beliefs were more prevalent in larger and more complex societies. ⑥The fact that moralising

religious beliefs are more prevalent in more complex societies does not prove that one

caused the other. ⑦But the striking number and variety of examples add credence to Mr

Johnson’s theory.

Ⅴ①The religious instinct is too deep-seated, he thinks. ②Instead, critics of superstition

are best advised to work with the grain of human psychology rather than against it, finding

more benevolent ways to satisfy human yearning for something “out there”. ③What form

such an atheist religion should take, though, God only knows.

【词汇短语】

1. wire [ˈwaɪəd] v. 接通电源

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