Why Do People Act Badly? | The Story of God

In small-scale societies and ancestral communities, there were only a couple of hundred individuals. It was relatively easy to keep tabs on one another, and that was really important because social reputation matters.

The problem is that the larger the society becomes, the more easy it is to take advantage of other people within the group. So that's where this construct, or this idea of a moralistic interventionist God that can read our thoughts, that can punish us for our misdeeds, that can act on our behaviors in some symbolic way, really comes into the picture.

These communities that had this idea of such an entity would have been at an advantage over those that lacked the idea of such moralistic gods because they kept people basically in check.

Would you rob a bank if you thought that nobody could possibly know that you've done that? I think if we're honest with ourselves, and we think that there's no hidden camera, there's no security guard, it's completely empty, there's a bank vault that's filled with all sorts of currency and jewels, many of us would walk in there and actually take all that currency.

So I think the idea, or the impression, or the sense that something is watching us and will punish us for our misbehaviors is a very potent, very powerful social factor.