MsD:
Actually, the point that Nat invoked is actually pretty good, solid evolutionary biology. I understand the point you are making and don't, necessarily, disagree with any particular point of it. However, the idea that religion is an evolved adaptation has some fairly good support for it. While reams of paper has been used to delve into this matter, I'm going to try to give a Cliff's Notes version of it. Before I start the explanation though (which is elegant and I hope I can do it justice) I have two caveats that I ask you to keep in mind: 1) When I talk about nature "designing" or "wanting" or "intending" I mean it *only* in a metaphorical sense. Things happen in nature, some of those things are solutions to various engineering problems, when looked at in retrospect it appears as-if nature was trying to get to a particular solution when, in fact, things just happened. 2) I am not a fan of group selection models, I think they are fundamentally flawed most times, however religion *may* be one of those instances where there is some selection pressure on groups. However, we can get to the same place without invoking group selection but for these purposes here, I'm going to use an explanation *as-if* groups were the unit of selection in regards to religion. So that out of the way...
Humans are a social species and in the environment in which we evolved we lived in small, fairly tight-knit bands of around 150 people or so. While there was, of course, out-breeding most members of any given band were related to one another through either blood or marriage. What this meant is that in any given group, your genetic interests and my genetic interests were similar while not being identical. Because our genetic interests are similar, it behooves us to cooperate and maintain social harmony most of the time. However, because they are not *identical* if you can get the best of me and
get away with it then you can promote your genetic interests over mine. This is the problem of any social species that aren't hymenoptera (ants, bees, etc.)--we need to cooperate but *perfect* cooperators are vulnerable to free riders. So for species like ours the most stable strategy is cooperate most of the time and cheat if you can get away with it.
There are certain things that are destructive to social harmony. There's the obvious big ones--theft, murder, rape, lying and infidelity, however there's *also* things like hoarding or boasting that can be destructive to harmony and group cohesion. Most tribal groups have prohibitions against, for instance, being a braggart. Even the best hunter, who everyone in the group *knows* is the best hunter, will face disapproval if HE claims to be the best hunter. But how to enforce these rules? Well, you can *try* to just convince people that this is in the their best interest. However, that argument may not work effectively. Far better if human brains had one or more modules that could be exploited for the purpose of making people believe that they were always being observed and that a breach of the rules or taboos would result in punishment. So are there such modules?
Yes, there are at least in play. The first is an overactive agency detector. The second is our penchant for bartering. The third is an overactive belief engine. The agency detector works sort of look like this; imagine you're out on the savanna in the tall grass. You hear the grass rustle and now there's a question before you; is it a lion or is it the wind. The answer can have serious consequences to one's reproductive fitness, to say the least. If you guess wind and it's a lion, you're eaten. We are the descendants, however, of people who imputed agency to the rustling grass and decided that it was caused by a lion. Here's the thing, even if you impart agency (the lion) to the rustling and it turns out that you're wrong and it was just the wind, you're out some calories but you live. If you get it wrong the other way, you're lunch. So our brains are tolerant of false positives (guess lion when it's wind) but not of false negatives (guessing wind when its lion). The penchant for bartering is so obvious that I won't belabor the point. The belief engine deserves some explanation. Anyone who has raised children know that kids will believe what the adults in their lives tell them. Again, there are very good evolutionary reasons this should be so.
So there we are: We tend to believe what our parents or elders tell us (the gods will be angry if you do X which is why X is not done). We tend to believe that, for instance, since the Sun moves across the sky someone must be behind the movement (imputing agency) and we tend to barter with other intelligent agents. None of those brain modules are 'for' religion but there are lots of parts of our behavioral repertoire that are cases of us hijacking one mental tool to achieve a different end. For example, we are all doing it right now as you read this. We didn't evolve to read, our brains did evolve to use language and we hijack the language module(s) and bond them with the vision modules to allow us to read.
So having explained the mechanics of it, why would this evolve? Imagine two groups living on opposite sides of, say, a valley. There are limited resources in this valley and both groups have need of those resources. Now, one group has a belief that they are watched by the gods or their ancestors. Even when tempted to cheat the thought that the gods or ancestors can restrain people. When conflict arises with the other group the group with gods is more cohesive *and* more willing to see the other as alien and deserving of destruction. Over time, any genes that create the right mental conditions for religious belief will proliferate through a population and become fixed.
This can *all* be true in the EEA (environment of evolutionary adaptation) while having quite different effects in the current environment. Whenever we're talking about human behavior that evolved, it is useful to jettison--as much as possible--everything you know about humans living in modern cities and think about us as nomadic, hunter-gatherers living on the African savanna because while that's not where our *bodies* live anymore, our brains haven't gotten that memo.
Cheers
Aj
Quote:
Originally Posted by MsDemeanor
*cough bullshit cough* Churches are stuffed to the gills with folks who pray on Sunday and then go out and hate, extort, abuse, lie, cheat, etc. I'd bet that pretty much all of those CEOs that laid off tons of folks and then gave themselves big pay raises have a religious belief. Glenn Beck spouts god and lies in the same sentence. It takes about two minutes of looking at the history of the Catholic church to see the destruction caused by people with those beliefs. I've spent a lot of time online arguing with folks who spout god and love and compassion and stuff but then show an incredible lack of compassion for anyone who doesn't live up to their behavioral standards.
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