Is believing in God evolutionarily advantageous?

[jsgoddess]

NPR has been running a series called "The Human Edge" about how evolution has given humans a leg up on other species.

But the one from yesterday: Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196) just struck me as people trying to make the fact of religious belief fit their notions of what could make it advantageous.

The basic idea of the story is that people cooperate because they believe in supernatural forces that are watching them.

In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.

"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says. "Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that's not to say that they don't experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way."



If God is everywhere and sees everything, people curb their selfish impulses even when there's no one around. Because with God, there is no escape. "God knows what you did," Johnson says, "and God is going to punish you for it and that's an incredibly powerful deterrent. If you do it again, he's going to know and he is going to tally up your good deals and bad deeds and you will suffer the consequences for it either in this life or in an afterlife."


Now, I recognize that this was a short piece for general consumption, but dayum! There are a lot of assumptions here. They seem to be using only an omniscient, omnipresent god-idea. They are making claims about atheists (that all atheists believe in the supernatural). They are ignoring what seem to me to be easier explanations (which is something god belief does in general, so this is particularly fitting).

So, did believing in God or gods help humans evolutionarily? If so, in the way they are positing?

[Hello Again]

NPR has been running a series called "The Human Edge" about how evolution has given humans a leg up on other species.

But the one from yesterday: Is Believing In God Evolutionarily Advantageous? (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129528196) just struck me as people trying to make the fact of religious belief fit their notions of what could make it advantageous.

The basic idea of the story is that people cooperate because they believe in supernatural forces that are watching them.

In fact, Bering says that believing that supernatural beings are watching you is so basic to being human that even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.

"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says. "Sort of override or stomp on their immediate intuition. But that's not to say that they don't experience it. We all have the same basic brain. And our brains have evolved to work in a particular way."


Now, I recognize that this was a short piece for general consumption, but dayum! There are a lot of assumptions here. They seem to be using only an omniscient, omnipresent god-idea.

No, they said, for example, that "karma" is the exact same thing - the idea that some force or observer is tallying your behavior.


They are making claims about atheists (that all atheists believe in the supernatural).
I don't agree that they made this claim at all. In fact, their claim is that atheists specifically DON'T believe it with their rational mind. However, with their irrational mind, they sometimes experience the thought or perception that some force is observing them. Then they use their rational mind to determine that it is unlikely.

So, did believing in God or gods help humans evolutionarily? If so, in the way they are positing?

I thought their argument, that delegating discipline to a force outside the community avoided certain social problems inherent in the enforcement of norms (ie, retaliation and vendetta against the person who does the enforcing), was quite persuasive. I have to agree with them that when you see a behavior as completely universal as belief in supernatural observers, you have to conclude that there is some advantage to having that belief. If it was a neutral factor, some human social groups would have it, and others wouldn't. But pretty much every human social group has it (not necessarily every individual).

[kanicbird]

A large part of that depends on if there is a God who can be known.

If there is no God then the practice of that believe is that of mind control, and can be used to enslave a population. So a advantage for some, at the expense of the others, but they will be more content slaves, giving a more stable oppressive society. Overall I'd say that this would be a disadvantage for society.

If there is a God with powers that can be tapped into, then yes it is a advantage to use powers beyond human power.

[Skammer]

I thought it was a good story, and I agree with Hello Again. The researcher they focused on was an atheist and obviously did not really believe in the supernatural -- yet had the uncanny feeling that his mother communicated to him after she died. He wanted to explore what is is about the human mind that draws us to believe in the supernatural, even if many people intellectually reject those feelings they themselves have.

I missed the end of the story; I'll need to go to NPR to hear the rest.

[Wesley Clark]

Darwin's cathedral is supposedly a good book on this subject. Someone on this board once recommended a good book to me about religion and evolution, but I've forgotten the title. I can probably search later for it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55h1FO8V_3w

[jsgoddess]

No, they said, for example, that "karma" is the exact same thing - the idea that some force or observer is tallying your behavior.

...

I thought their argument, that delegating discipline to a force outside the community avoided certain social problems inherent in the enforcement of norms (ie, retaliation and vendetta against the person who does the enforcing), was quite persuasive. I have to agree with them that when you see a behavior as completely universal as belief in supernatural observers, you have to conclude that there is some advantage to having that belief. If it was a neutral factor, some human social groups would have it, and others wouldn't. But pretty much every human social group has it (not necessarily every individual).

Karma is still an omniscient "idea." But there have historically been lots of god-beliefs that aren't omniscient at all. And no, not all of us have the feeling of being watched, which the first researcher said was universal. You start claiming X is universal when it isn't, and the whole house of research cards starts to fall down.

Certain optical illusions are universal. Does that mean optical illusions are evolutionarily advantageous, or does it mean those illusions are a byproduct of the way we see? Religious belief can simply be a byproduct of brains that seek explanations and patterns. Bringing in a god as an enforcer might heighten a group's ability to punish, but other species punish just fine. Other species work in concert just fine. Shunning, physical retribution, etc. are all present even and especially with religious belief, so how in the world can we argue that a god somehow makes human-sourced punishments unnecessary? They are given an added boost, and often an added zeal, through religion, but we don't just say, "Oh, God'll get you. I don't need to judge."

It just strikes me as an added complication with no justification. We cooperate because we're a social, cooperative species. Other species are social and cooperative without having gods.

[jjimm]

I wrote this for a friend a few years ago following a drunken 'discussion':The capacity for religious belief, and the resultant organisational structures behind the belief, would have been actively beneficial to early humanity, and tribes that followed religious practice would have had an advantage over secular or spiritually anarchic ones. In other words, we evolved the capacity for religious belief: any tribe that had the ability to ascribe divine intervention to the preponderance or scarcity of game for hunting would have coincidentally have been putting in place structures that would strengthen that tribe to the detriment of its secular neighbours, who would fare less well in reproduction and survival. The religious humans would dominate. And, if the recent 'religious gene' research is proven true, they would have passed this on to their offspring, with the capacity for religious belief growing to the strength it needed to be, until the point that it was no longer advantageous for it to grow, which would be extremely recently, in my opinion. Far too recent to have any kind of genetic effect - probably beginning around 1789.

Personally speaking, after some initial hostility, I have now concluded that religion should be tolerated and respected by atheists. It is, after all, an integral part of humanity. It's the basis for most of our laws and societal customs, even in secular societies. It's also a means by which public declarations of life-changing events can be celebrated. Also, people's one-to-one experiences of the divine should be tolerated too, even if one believes they are actually only in the mind - simply out of common decency.

I get annoyed by intolerant atheists who decline to participate in any religious ceremony. They should accept that religion is built into society, and that public celebration serves a useful sociological purpose. Why should it matter to you if you have to go to a wedding in a church? The church doesn't have some mystical hold over you, so why shouldn't you set foot through the door? You don't believe the words have any power, so where's the problem in singing the hymns? I don't seek them out, but when I have to attend, I find participating in forms of worship fascinating, out of casual anthropological interest. I apologise if that sounds patronising. The only time I would decline to participate is if I thought my participation would offend genuine worshippers.

That I have no faith, and think the capacity for religious belief is an appendage from early evolution, doesn't negate the strength of religion. If, for horrible example, Al Qaeda and their ilk continue their current highly succesful recruitment drive (no small thanks due to fundamentalist Christian GW Bush and his misguided foreign policy), and manage to cohese huge chunks of humanity into a Wahhabist empire, then perhaps it's an indication that religion is still a viable evolutionary and sociological tool.

Facetiously I propose this theory: maybe the Neanderthals died out because they were atheists.

[Inbred Mm domesticus]

It just strikes me as an added complication with no justification. We cooperate because we're a social, cooperative species. Other species are social and cooperative without having gods.

Since we are also a lying, deceitful, and cruel species, how do we decide on who to cooperate with? A simple rule to follow is that members of my group will be more likely to cooperate with me than members of some strange foreign group. So how do I know who is part of my group? Mice solve this problem easy because all members of the same group smell like the same urine. Humans have a wonderful variety of ways of telling each other we are part of the same group. One of these is religion. Religion and similar cultural characteristics allow people to make the decision to cooperate with a stranger because even though the stranger is unknown, their manner of dress, their religious beliefs, and body art/disfigurements/tattoos help me to know that the stranger is likely to be a potential friend or foe.

[jsgoddess]

Just to clarify my own position: I think there could be an evolutionary advantage to religious belief, I just feel that the examples they chose for this story are flawed. Though, again, that may be an artifact of this story format.

For example, the Princess Alice test. They claimed there were three rooms, one with no observer known to the kids, one with an invisible princess, and one with a human observer. Then the researcher says that he gave the same test to adults.

So, who did they put in the first room of adults? Because if they had religious beliefs and still cheated, doesn't that completely invalidate the idea that it's the existence of a supernatural entity that keeps people from cheating? And what did they tell people about the second room that was a supernatural watcher without being God? Because I don't think many adults are going to go along with the idea of Princess Alice, the invisible witness. Most adults believe in God, sooo how does this even work?

[John Mace]

This falls into the realm of evolutionary psychology, which is not really science. It's fun to speculate, and you can certainly make some educated guesses, but most, if not all of it, is not falsifiable.

[ITR champion]

I've posted my position on this issue many times. If you want me to believe that there's a gene that causes religion, tell me where in the genome that gene is and back it up with a study showing that people are religious if and only if they have that gene. If you want me to believe that religion arises from the interaction of multiple genes, do the same for those multiple genes. If you want me to believe that religion arises partially from genes and partially from social or environmental factors, still show me those genes.

But, in any case, the particular theory discussed in the NPR article looks like obvious bosh to me. Does religion promote social cooperation? Consider the martyrs of early Christianity. They were willing to face death rather than cooperate with Roman society, because they believed that society was cruel and unjust. They didn't accomplish anything in favor of social cooperation and they certainly didn't propagate their genes much by martyrdom either.

In my personal opinion I think that evolutionary psychology is on the decline already, based mainly on the unscientific method of observing how often it gets mentioned on the news outlets and message boards that I read. It seems to me that as a group, latte-sipping pseudo-intellectuals are getting bored with it and waiting for the next fad to grab their attention. But there are always a few holdouts in academia who cling to ideas after the rest of the world moves on.

[Sage Rat]

Say that a big chieftan says that he's inhabited by the Great Spirit and if you don't do what he says, he's going to curse you.

Now, some percent of the populace will say, "Waaaaahahahaha, whatchoo smoking?"

Another percentage will say, "Oh yes, sir. I can see the Greatness in you."

Yet another percentage will not only say, "I can see the Greatness in you.", but even convince themselves that they can.

Now, it's worth mentioning that group A will have a tendency to find themselves assassinated in quick succession.

Humans aren't built to be religious, per se, but it seems likely that we're built to be credulous and impressionable, and with a good ability for self-deceit when our social position would be risked otherwise. Not to say that people can't deceive themselves just for fun and games as well.

[Hello Again]

Because if they had religious beliefs and still cheated, doesn't that completely invalidate the idea that it's the existence of a supernatural entity that keeps people from cheating?

I think you wanted this program to be more extreme than it really was. All they ever said was that the "watched" groups cheated less. They never said religion in general, or belief in a Watcher specifically, is a panacea against cheating.

[ITR champion]

Now, it's worth mentioning that group A will have a tendency to find themselves assassinated in quick succession.
Why?

Also, which group is group A? You didn't label the groups with letters.

[jsgoddess]

Because if they had religious beliefs and still cheated, doesn't that completely invalidate the idea that it's the existence of a supernatural entity that keeps people from cheating?

I think you wanted this program to be more extreme than it really was. All they ever said was that the "watched" groups cheated less. They never said religion in general, or belief in a Watcher specifically, is a panacea against cheating.

But he had already said that we all believe we're being watched, so where did he find people for the first room that aren't being watched?

[Really Not All That Bright]

jjimm, that's brilliant.

[Darwin's Finch]

So, did believing in God or gods help humans evolutionarily? If so, in the way they are positing?

No. It perhaps had some effect with regard to our social development, but it had nothing whatsoever to do with our biological evolution.

[Sage Rat]

Now, it's worth mentioning that group A will have a tendency to find themselves assassinated in quick succession.
Why?

Also, which group is group A? You didn't label the groups with letters.

Group A is the ones who (vocally) disbelieve the Big Chief.

They die because one does not disagree with the Big Chief.

[Skammer]

This was part of a series on the Human Brain, and what sets us apart from other animals. So yes, the focus (except for the very first installment) is about social behavior that results from our big, superior brains.

jsgoddess, I'm skeptical that you've never experienced the numinous (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numinous) in any way. Not necessarily that something or someone was judging you, but that something - the Universe - knew what you were up to. Maybe you haven't, but I think you are in the minority. The story was an attempt to explain why that phenomenon is so embedded in every civilization in the history of our race.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The premise is completely fraudulent. Humans are a social species because evolution wires them to be that way. Just like ants or pack wolves. Belief in hoodoos is not necessary to cause people to behave ethically, and we were social before we were religious (or even verbal). Hardwired emotional responses dictate "moral" behavior. Religion is a caveman way to try to explain these emotional responses, just like it tries to explain what happens to the sun at night or what causes disease.

One of the most profound ironies of religion is that it can actually be perverted to cause people to behave in ways that are contrary to their biological moral wiring.

[jsgoddess]

I did when I was a believer. Now that I'm an atheist (and I was never a very good believer), I don't.

And I'm sure I'm in the minority, since atheism is the minority.

[Revtim]

I've speculated that religion (not necessarily just a belief in god) is a "thinking time-saver", which sound like an insult, but is not necessarily so. Having an existing framework of explanations and moral decisions already made saves the time of having to think out this stuff yourself. And although a lot of that framework might be counter-productive, in a lot of cases it will be less so than everybody figuring out their own moral decisions.

[John Mace]

It could just be a by-product of our hardwired need to see cause and effect and our ability to think symbolically. When there is an effect, but seemingly no cause, we invent a cause.

Darwin's Finch: When you say "social development" vs "biological evolution", you seem to exclude genetically predisposed behavior patterns. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I'm misinterpreting your terminology.

[Skammer]

The premise is completely fraudulent. Humans are a social species because evolution wires them to be that way. Just like ants or pack wolves. Belief in hoodoos is not necessary to cause people to behave ethically, and we were social before we were religious (or even verbal). Hardwired emotional responses dictate "moral" behavior. Religion is a caveman way to try to explain these emotional responses, just like it tries to explain what happens to the sun at night or what causes disease.

One of the most profound ironies of religion is that it can actually be perverted to cause people to behave in ways that are contrary to their biological moral wiring. But the question that the subject of the story was trying to answer is, why is religion (or some kind of supernatural belief system) universal across human cultures back to the caveman days? Does it (or did it) bestow some kind of advantage to emergent human societies over non-religious groups?

[Lemur866]

It seems to me that humans have a general psychological rule, "Don't cheat other people in your group when they can see you cheating them". So whenever people are about the cheat, they look around to see if anyone is watching them cheat. There's this feeling that someone may be looking at you who might catch you cheating, so you better be sure no one is.

This feeling of "watch out, someone may catch you even if you can't see them" is the source of the feeling that the gods or spirits are watching you. The worry that unseen entities might catch you cheating is not a quality that is beneficial in itself, it's a byproduct of the need to avoid being caught cheating by other real human beings. It's a kind of mistake, just like how people ascribe emotional states to inanimate objects. We have to spend a lot of effort imaging the emotional state of other human beings, and so it's natural for us to mistakenly believe other things have emotions too.

Here endeth the Just-So story.

[Darwin's Finch]

Darwin's Finch: When you say "social development" vs "biological evolution", you seem to exclude genetically predisposed behavior patterns. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I'm misinterpreting your terminology.

I don't see any evidence that religious proclivity is a genetically predisposed behavior.

In general, the mechanisms for social evolution differ from those of biological evolution. For example, societies make ample use of group selection (indeed, they practically require it...), whereas such has long since been decried as a mechanism for biological evolution. Social evolution can also proceed at much faster rates than biological evolution because ideas (which are the currency, so to speak, of social evolution) spread through a population faster than alleles.

The two are certainly linked, but are by no means one and the same.

[Sage Rat]

But the question that the subject of the story was trying to answer is, why is religion (or some kind of supernatural belief system) universal across human cultures back to the caveman days? Does it (or did it) bestow some kind of advantage to emergent human societies over non-religious groups?
Well yeah: Imagination

Of course that bestows an advantage. It lets us envision possibilities that we haven't actually observed, allowing us to go and then actually test those possibilities. Of course, that's assuming that we can test them. If someone sees a volcano that erupts randomly and imagines that the eruptions might be a signal from a bigger chieftain who is happy or upset with them, there's no real way to tell whether that is true or not.

If he then suggests that they place food on the lip of the volcano and the volcano quiets down over the next few days, the people may well consider this proof. They'll imagine that the man knew something -- not imagined something -- and ask him to keep on as their advisor to the volcano chieftain. In return for this position, he'll have a bias towards perceiving that anything he does is proof of the existence of the volcano chieftan. The people will feel safer if he can control the volcano, so they'll be biased towards buying into his explanations as well. When they raise their children, those children will be taught to perceive the volcano as a humanistic spirit, which becomes how their minds are wired to think from that point forward. They don't think, "Is the volcano erupting?" Instead they think in terms of, "Would the volcano be unhappy with what I am doing?" They'll feel like the volcano is watching them.

This is universal across humanity because this process is fairly easy to start when you're living in a state of fear. At any moment of any day you could be attacked by a wild animal, a storm could destroy your farm and hut and force you into starvation. An illness could wreak havoc on the village and steal away all the young. In a position like this, anything which gives you the slightest advantage would be very dear -- even if the advantage is only imagined.

[Hampshire]

So it's their assumption that the reason people don't do bad things is because they think someone is watching and that they'll face consequences?
Really?
To me that's a scary thought.
That the only reason people don't cheat, steal, lie, etc. is for fear of consequences.

Is it that hard to believe some people don't cheat, lie, steal simply because it's the right thing to do and is beneficial for the common good?

[Little Nemo]

Believing in higher powers (of which God would be a subset) could serve several advantages.

1. It would give people a sense that there is a guiding force behind what appears to be random circumstances and the inevitability of death and therefore would help them avoid be crippled by despair.

2. It would unite society and allow a group of people to achieve greater things than they could do as individuals.

3. It would act as a constant source of ethical guidance and help deter people from acting in harmful ways and support them acting in beneficial ways towards others.

4. It is possible that higher powers do objectively exist and if so it's a good idea to have them working in your favor.

[tim314]

I think for some people believing in God probably makes them more emotionally resilient. That is, it's easier to deal with life's ups-and-downs without giving in to despair if you're able to tell yourself "It's all part of God's plan." For other people, I think that only makes things more frustrating; better to believe your bad luck is just random than some cosmic entity trying to teach you a lesson.

So I would speculate that there might be some evolutionary pressure for people who have the sorts of personalities that benefit from belief in God to also be more predisposed to belief, and vice versa.

[Hello Again]

I think you wanted this program to be more extreme than it really was. All they ever said was that the "watched" groups cheated less. They never said religion in general, or belief in a Watcher specifically, is a panacea against cheating.

But he had already said that we all believe we're being watched, so where did he find people for the first room that aren't being watched?

Except he didn;t say that. He said many of us have had the feeling or sensation of being watched from time to time. However, atheists discount an actual watcher as the source of the feeling. In fact, they specifically reject the concept of a watcher as the source of the feeling. They may regard the sensation of emerging from inside themselves (conscience) or as a fleeting and irrelevant impulse of the brain.

[jsgoddess]

But he had already said that we all believe we're being watched, so where did he find people for the first room that aren't being watched?

Except he didn;t say that.

Yes, he did.

"I've always said that I don't believe in God, but I don't really believe in atheists either," Bering says. "Everybody experiences the illusion that God — or some type of supernatural agent — is watching them or is concerned about what they do in their sort of private everyday moral lives."

And even if he would exempt atheists from this, which he clearly does not do, then is the argument that the first room is populated solely by atheists? Because otherwise, how is it different than room two?

[Hello Again]

Except he didn;t say that.

Yes, he did.




even committed atheists regularly have moments where their minds turn in a supernatural direction, as his did in the wake of his mother's death.

"They experience it but they reject it," Bering says.

What part of this contains a statement about belief? In particular, that atheists believe in supernatural beings or watchers?

I did hear the program on the radio yesterday, and I am agnostic in the sense that I don't believe the idea of "god" can be disproven, but by all practical measures, I am an atheist. I have always been an atheist.

The program did not make an assertion that atheists "believe" that a Watcher is the source of the sensation of being watched.

[begbert2]

I did when I was a believer. Now that I'm an atheist (and I was never a very good believer), I don't.

And I'm sure I'm in the minority, since atheism is the minority.I've never felt it. I've always been an atheist, internally.

[jsgoddess]

For Bering, and some of his friends, the answer to that question has everything to do with what he discovered in his lab — the way the kids and adults stopped cheating as soon as they thought a supernatural being might be watching them.

If Bering claims, as he does, that we all think, at least at time, that a supernatural being might be watching us, then how can he populate room 1 with people who don't think a supernatural being might be watching them? And if "a supernatural being" has to be "a supernatural being who is not God yet is something you actually believe in" how did he find people to populate room 2?

He's using room 1 as the control group but by his own definition there is no such thing as a person who is untouched by the idea of being watched.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I've never felt this sensation of "being watched." That doesn't even make sense to me. How can being watched be a sensation?

I've certainly never thought that anything supernatural was watching me. I would be incapable of believing that.

[Der Trihs]

But the question that the subject of the story was trying to answer is, why is religion (or some kind of supernatural belief system) universal across human cultures back to the caveman days?My opinion? Probably systematic rape and murder. The standard method that believers use to deal with unbelievers, at least in places and times they can get away with it. The believers murdered the male unbelievers and their children, then raped and impregnated the unbeliever-women. That's behavior straight out the Bible. The unbelievers didn't have that extra motive to attack and destroy their neighbors, so over time were wiped out. Religion is very good at co-opting the human impulse towards genocide.

I notice that people are assuming that "evolutionarily successful" means "good for the species"; it doesn't. It just means that the gene is good at spreading itself, regardless of the damage done to the species much less individuals within that species.


As for Bering, given his claim that he doesn't believe in atheists and that all atheists feel something supernatural watches them (which is simply wrong), I seriously doubt he's really an atheist in the first place. He sounds like one of those disgruntled theists who is just looking for an excuse to believe. I expect that eventually he'll "find God" again and switch to making speeches about how horrible atheism is and the Obvious Truth of whatever religious sect sucks him in.

[Skammer]

Intellectually, you would be incapable of believing it. But are you saying you never in your life had the impulse, quickly dismissed, that karma would get you, or a deceased loved one was still with you, or that there was another presence besides you in an otherwise empty room?

I'm not asking if you ever seriously thought any of that was happening -- just if it crossed your mind and you rejected it.

[Skammer]

My opinion? Probably systematic rape and murder. The standard method that believers use to deal with unbelievers, at least in places and times they can get away with it. The believers murdered the male unbelievers and their children, then raped and impregnated the unbeliever-women. That's behavior straight out the Bible. The unbelievers didn't have that extra motive to attack and destroy their neighbors, so over time were wiped out.
Yes, that's it. These prehistoric societies were inspired by fundamental literalist interpretations of the Bible. :rolleyes: Teach your pony a new trick.

[ITR champion]

They die because one does not disagree with the Big Chief.
I still do not understand your reasoning. Also, do you have any cites supporting the actual occurence of the scenario described in post 27?
Hardwired emotional responses dictate "moral" behavior.
Cite, please.
My opinion? Probably systematic rape and murder. The standard method that believers use to deal with unbelievers, at least in places and times they can get away with it.
This is note true. Such is not a "standard" way for believers to deal with unbelievers, nor a non-standard way. Perhaps you got confused by the fact that rape and murder are how atheists generally deal with believers when they can get away with it. (For instance in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Yugolsavia under Tito and Milosevic, communist Cuba, etc...)

[Chronos]

Quoth ITR Champion:I've posted my position on this issue many times. If you want me to believe that there's a gene that causes religion, tell me where in the genome that gene is and back it up with a study showing that people are religious if and only if they have that gene. If you want me to believe that religion arises from the interaction of multiple genes, do the same for those multiple genes. If you want me to believe that religion arises partially from genes and partially from social or environmental factors, still show me those genes.Have we ever successfully identified a gene or complex of genes for any psychological trait? I mean, clearly, humans are genetically more intelligent than, say, sheep. What genes do humans have that sheep lack that give us this greater intelligence? Would you claim that a failure to identify such genes calls into doubt the assertion that humans are smarter than sheep?

[Kobal2]

Perhaps you got confused by the fact that rape and murder are how atheists generally deal with believers when they can get away with it. (For instance in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Yugolsavia under Tito and Milosevic, communist Cuba, etc...)

Pssst, Nazi Germany wasn't atheistic. Gott mit uns.
Besides, rape and murder is what conquerors do. I don't think you can ascribe it to any specific belief system.

[jsgoddess]

But the question that the subject of the story was trying to answer is, why is religion (or some kind of supernatural belief system) universal across human cultures back to the caveman days? Does it (or did it) bestow some kind of advantage to emergent human societies over non-religious groups?

Honestly, it appeared they were trying to answer a question with an important difference. It seemed they were trying to say, "Since this is universal, it must convey an advantage. So, what is that advantage?"

[Chronos]

This is note true. Such is not a "standard" way for believers to deal with unbelievers, nor a non-standard way. Perhaps you got confused by the fact that rape and murder are how atheists generally deal with believers when they can get away with it. (For instance in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Yugolsavia under Tito and Milosevic, communist Cuba, etc...) Those are all examples of religious folk persecuting others, though the victims aren't identified by religion in some of the cases. For Stalin, communism was, for all practical purposes, a religion.

[Sage Rat]

They die because one does not disagree with the Big Chief.
I still do not understand your reasoning.
Look at pack animals, like wolves. If one of the follower wolves challenges the lead wolf, that's seen as an act of antagonism. The pack can't survive the hardships of the world if it's split between leaders, so the challenger either has to become the leader, die, or leave the group. Within a human pack, rather than duking it out with fisticuffs, it's more likely that the chief will send the challenger out on a particularly dangerous hunt, devise some sort of crime to charge the guy with and have him killed, or simply kill him straight out. I'm not saying that this happens every time. Some chiefs might be more accepting or diplomatic about rebellious attitudes, but over the course of thousands of generations there will be some amount of evolutionary pressure towards a default setting of taking what the big boss says as inviolate -- particularly where there doesn't seem to be any useful purpose in arguing with him.

Also, do you have any cites supporting the actual occurence of the scenario described in post 27?
There's evidence to make it (or something similar) seem likely, yes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

We know that cognitive biases are true, as shown by testing on human subjects. If we then take Occam's Razor to the two options:

1) Some chain of cognitive biases resulted in poor reasoning.
2) Invisible, intangible, otherworldly creatures injected themselves into the minds of humanity via unknowable means for non-obvious purposes, leaving no other clear evidence of their existence than vague feelings in human beings -- a creature already shown to suffer cognitive biases and poor reasoning.

[Ludovic]

Perhaps you got confused by the fact that rape and murder are how atheists generally deal with believers when they can get away with it. (For instance in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Yugolsavia under Tito and Milosevic, communist Cuba, etc...)

Pssst, Nazi Germany wasn't atheistic. Gott mit uns.
Besides, rape and murder is what conquerors do. I don't think you can ascribe it to any specific belief system.Not to mention that Japan committed much more rape than Nazi Germany, who probably committed about as much as the Western Allied powers, especially when you take into account the greater opportunities for it.

[Der Trihs]

This is note true. Such is not a "standard" way for believers to deal with unbelievers, nor a non-standard way. Perhaps you got confused by the fact that rape and murder are how atheists generally deal with believers when they can get away with it. (For instance in the Soviet Union, Germany under Hitler, China under Mao, Yugolsavia under Tito and Milosevic, communist Cuba, etc...)Germany was quite Christian, acting the way Christians typically do when they can. Mass murdering Jews is as Christian as it gets. As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, and acts like one. That's why when you want to vilify atheism you need to turn to communism, and pretend they are the same thing. Or pretend that Nazi Germany was atheistic.

[begbert2]

But the question that the subject of the story was trying to answer is, why is religion (or some kind of supernatural belief system) universal across human cultures back to the caveman days? Does it (or did it) bestow some kind of advantage to emergent human societies over non-religious groups?

Honestly, it appeared they were trying to answer a question with an important difference. It seemed they were trying to say, "Since this is universal, it must convey an advantage. So, what is that advantage?"Such a question would be leaping to a conclusion; it is equally possible that there are other evolutionarily advantageous traits for which religion is a side effect. Possibly even a detrimental side effect - so long as the detriment isn't worse than the benefits gained from the orignal traits that (incidentally) cause the predelication towards religion.

In fact, I would say this is obviously what happened; imagination, pattern detection, the tendency to presume that things have a cause, and the tendency to seek ways to influence the world around onesself are all obviously advantagous traits, which just as obviously would, taken with a largely unmapped and misunderstand environment, lead a person or society to search for intelligence in their surroundings as a way to both infer explanations of seemingly random events; and to possibly find some way to predict or appeal to the natures of these spirits in order to more safely navigate "their" domains.

This phenomenon would only cease to occur when science advanced to the point where people felt that their environment was sufficiently mapped without requiring gods to fill in the gaps in their understanding.

How this relates to the "I feel the universe watching me" phonomena, I suspect, is that once a person believes that there are observers, there is a natural tendency to imagine that one is "aware" of their gaze - this might be an evolutionary advantagous trait as well, in that wariness in the presence of known or potential threats would be obviously advantageous. But once one has convinced themselves that God is everywhere, watching, always watching, then this "I am being watched" sense could in theory occur anytime, triggered from within by the belief that an observer is present.

This would explain the apparent difference in frequency of this sensation between the theists and atheists in this thread.

[jsgoddess]

Such a question would be leaping to a conclusion; it is equally possible that there are other evolutionarily advantageous traits for which religion is a side effect. Possibly even a detrimental side effect - so long as the detriment isn't worse than the benefits gained from the orignal traits that (incidentally) cause the predelication towards religion.

In fact, I would say this is obviously what happened; imagination, pattern detection, the tendency to presume that things have a cause, and the tendency to seek ways to influence the world around onesself are all obviously advantagous traits, which just as obviously would, taken with a largely unmapped and misunderstand environment, lead a person or society to search for intelligence in their surroundings as a way to both infer explanations of seemingly random events; and to possibly find some way to predict or appeal to the natures of these spirits in order to more safely navigate "their" domains.


Yep, that's what I find likely too. I think I called it potentially a "byproduct" upthread, but same dealio.

I think religion could make some groups more cohesive, and by doing so could give them an advantage. But we're always grouping things, and hardly need religious groupings, too.

[John Mace]

I've never felt this sensation of "being watched." That doesn't even make sense to me. How can being watched be a sensation?

I've certainly never thought that anything supernatural was watching me. I would be incapable of believing that.

Perhaps it's more a feeling of guilt. It may seem like someone is watching you because you think you wouldn't feel guilty if no one was watching you.

[GHO57]

It's probably not, it's just a by-product of other evolutionary advantages.

Kinda like masturbation... We've got the manual dexterity for it, (and the handy opposable thumbs for us guys), the cognitive ability to create scenarios in our heads to make it more pleasurable... and react to them as they really existed. It's not that masturbation as such has an evolutionary advantage, it's just that we have several otherwise advantageous traits that we employ for that purpose.

[Malthus]

I believe religion offers advantages, but on the societal level - in essence, it offers mechanisms for integrating human societies on a scale much larger than the tribal, or even the early state. Historically, this offers groups which adopted religion obvious advantages over groups which did not.

Other mechanisms offer such transcending effects, but they tended to either rely on personal leadership/military power/charisma and so have a short life-span (examples: empire of Alexander, Mongols) or developed more recently (such as the modern nation-state, poltical-imperial state such as the Soviet Union, or more or less voluntary association such as the EU).

To an extent, religion competes with these other forms of cohesion, but over human history it has proved remarkably successful and durable in offering solid advantages to adherants as a group - a set of rules for social organization that do not depend on personal charisma alone for enforcement, for example.

[XT]

I've never felt this sensation of "being watched." That doesn't even make sense to me. How can being watched be a sensation?

I've certainly never thought that anything supernatural was watching me. I would be incapable of believing that.

There was a show a while ago on one of the learning type channels (Discovery maybe) where a scientist was studying this sensation. He was testing a device that could induce this sensation a high percentage of the time...supposedly even in atheists. :p

Now, that's not the same thing as believing it was god, but I'd say that even you could be induced to FEEL some sort of presence or sensation of 'being watched', since it seems to be part of the general make up of the human mind. Unless your mind doesn't work the same as the rest of us humans, of course.

-XT

[Sage Rat]

To an extent, religion competes with these other forms of cohesion, but over human history it has proved remarkably successful and durable in offering solid advantages to adherants as a group - a set of rules for social organization that do not depend on personal charisma alone for enforcement, for example.

I have to object to both this and the thread title. There isn't "religion", there are and have been many religions. There isn't "God", there are a variety of various magical creatures.

The earliest religions, from what I'm aware, didn't set any rules for living. They didn't teach morality nor social structure. Outside of a few ceremonies to be performed from time to time -- probably quite often as some sort of village party -- there wasn't any more "there" there than that.

[John Mace]

The earliest religions, from what I'm aware, didn't set any rules for living. They didn't teach morality nor social structure. Outside of a few ceremonies to be performed from time to time -- probably quite often as some sort of village party -- there wasn't any more "there" there than that.

We know nothing about the form that the earliest religions had. Nothing. We know our stone age ancestors buried (at least some of) their dead. We don't know why. But we don't even know when the concept of spirit or supernatural first entered our ancestors thoughts. It might have been before we evolved as a species. In fact, it is likely to be so since Neanderthals also buried their dead. The implication of that shared behavior is that it might have been inherited from our common ancestor.

[Sage Rat]

We know nothing about the form that the earliest religions had. Nothing. We know our stone age ancestors buried (at least some of) their dead. We don't know why. But we don't even know when the concept of spirit or supernatural first entered our ancestors thoughts. It might have been before we evolved as a species. In fact, it is likely to be so since Neanderthals also buried their dead. The implication of that shared behavior is that it might have been inherited from our common ancestor.

Eh, true in a sense. But looking at the similarities of religions among hunter-gatherer tribes which have survived to the days of writing that there's enough confluence to say that it's likely that the beliefs of any hunter-gatherer society, during any age, likely bears those same shared traits.

[XT]

We know nothing about the form that the earliest religions had. Nothing. We know our stone age ancestors buried (at least some of) their dead. We don't know why. But we don't even know when the concept of spirit or supernatural first entered our ancestors thoughts. It might have been before we evolved as a species. In fact, it is likely to be so since Neanderthals also buried their dead. The implication of that shared behavior is that it might have been inherited from our common ancestor.

Nothing? What about the earth mother cults and figurines? I thought that at least some conclusions could be drawn from the archeology. Also, I thought there was a lot of evidence of ancestor worship and spirit totem worship.

-XT

[John Mace]

We know nothing about the form that the earliest religions had. Nothing. We know our stone age ancestors buried (at least some of) their dead. We don't know why. But we don't even know when the concept of spirit or supernatural first entered our ancestors thoughts. It might have been before we evolved as a species. In fact, it is likely to be so since Neanderthals also buried their dead. The implication of that shared behavior is that it might have been inherited from our common ancestor.

Eh, true in a sense. But looking at the similarities of religions among hunter-gatherer tribes which have survived to the days of writing that there's enough confluence to say that it's likely that the beliefs of any hunter-gatherer society, during any age, likely bears those same shared traits.

Nope. It's unlikely that the earliest religious beliefs sprung forth fully formed in their modern sense. And I use the term "modern" for the practices of any extant human group. Like I said, those earliest beliefs could very well predate our existence as a species.

[John Mace]

We know nothing about the form that the earliest religions had. Nothing. We know our stone age ancestors buried (at least some of) their dead. We don't know why. But we don't even know when the concept of spirit or supernatural first entered our ancestors thoughts. It might have been before we evolved as a species. In fact, it is likely to be so since Neanderthals also buried their dead. The implication of that shared behavior is that it might have been inherited from our common ancestor.

Nothing? What about the earth mother cults and figurines? I thought that at least some conclusions could be drawn from the archeology. Also, I thought there was a lot of evidence of ancestor worship and spirit totem worship.

-XT

We can only guess at what those things were. And we have no idea what predated them, as something surely did.

[XT]

We can only guess at what those things were. And we have no idea what predated them, as something surely did.

Sure. But I'd say it's a good bet that SOMETHING predated them. Our brains haven't changed that much in the last few hundred thousand years, after all...merely our knowledge base (hardware vs software, so to speak). Myself, I don't think there is an evolutionary advantage to spiritualism...I simply think that it's a side effect of our rather unique brain. More a bug than I feature I suppose.

-XT

[John Mace]

We can only guess at what those things were. And we have no idea what predated them, as something surely did.

Sure. But I'd say it's a good bet that SOMETHING predated them.
Yeah. That's what I said. And we don't know what that something was. We can only speculate.

Our brains haven't changed that much in the last few hundred thousand years...

We don't even know that for sure. There are lots of anthropologists who think our brains went through considerable evolutionary change about 70k years ago.

[TriPolar]

It is unlikely that a religion can be demonstated to have an evolutionary advantage. All of the advantages ascribed to religion could be found as well in other human constructs, such as political parties, fraternal organizations, etc.. In addition, religious beliefs didn't give the Shaker's much of an evolutionary edge, nor did it help all those who died for having the wrong religion. That doesn't mean that religion is not an evolutionary advantage, but given the difficulty in defining religion, conducting experiments, collecting historical evidence, it isn't likely to be resolved.
I would point out that pacifistic and suicidal religions probably are not advantageous in an evolutionary sense.

[Cisco]

I've always been inclined to believe this. It just seems kind of obvious on its face to me, because most humans are religious.

The "because you're being watched" thing sounds silly to me, though.

The reason I've dreamed up in my head, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that if you just believe in/accept God outright, you can sort of run that program in the background and get on with hunting/gathering/building/making babies, etc etc etc. It's those of us who don't believe or aren't sure who are more likely to spend all our time thinking about it, or devote ourselves to more artistic/intellectual/esoteric pursuits, and maybe not ever get around to that whole spreading our genes thing.

[Ludovic]

The "because you're being watched" thing sounds silly to me, though.Nonesense, it made me chew my food thoroughly, because my mom always told me that ceiling cat was watching me masticate.

[Cisco]

We were a basement cat household.

[TriPolar]

The "because you're being watched" thing sounds silly to me, though.Nonesense, it made me chew my food thoroughly, because my mom always told me that ceiling cat was watching me masticate.

Watching you... oh wait, nevermind.

[Inbred Mm domesticus]

This falls into the realm of evolutionary psychology, which is not really science. It's fun to speculate, and you can certainly make some educated guesses, but most, if not all of it, is not falsifiable.

Of course it's a science. Properly constructed hypotheses are falsifiable and the works of evolutionary psychologists are filled with such hypotheses. Unless, of course, you think that all evolutionary studies are garbage then there is no way to convince you.

I've posted my position on this issue many times. If you want me to believe that there's a gene that causes religion, tell me where in the genome that gene is and back it up with a study showing that people are religious if and only if they have that gene. If you want me to believe that religion arises from the interaction of multiple genes, do the same for those multiple genes. If you want me to believe that religion arises partially from genes and partially from social or environmental factors, still show me those genes.

But, in any case, the particular theory discussed in the NPR article looks like obvious bosh to me. Does religion promote social cooperation? Consider the martyrs of early Christianity. They were willing to face death rather than cooperate with Roman society, because they believed that society was cruel and unjust. They didn't accomplish anything in favor of social cooperation and they certainly didn't propagate their genes much by martyrdom either.

In my personal opinion I think that evolutionary psychology is on the decline already, based mainly on the unscientific method of observing how often it gets mentioned on the news outlets and message boards that I read. It seems to me that as a group, latte-sipping pseudo-intellectuals are getting bored with it and waiting for the next fad to grab their attention. But there are always a few holdouts in academia who cling to ideas after the rest of the world moves on.

At the risk of being called a latte-sipping pseudo-intellectual, here are recent heritability studies that shows gene and environmental influences on variation in religious behavior among several populations:
1. Stability and change in religiousness during emerging adulthood.
2. Coalitional Affiliation Rather Than Religiosity Might Explain the Heritability of Church Attendance
3. Religiousness, antisocial behavior, and altruism: Genetic and environmental mediation
4. Individual differences in adolescent religiosity in Finland: familial effects are modified by sex and region of residence.

Here is an association of religious upbringing on positive outcomes:
Religious upbringing and neuroticism in Dutch twin families

Fitness and life history traits, among them religion:
Natural selection and quantitative genetics of life-history traits in western women: A twin study

Although I can't provide you a cite concerning specific genes, it's easily understandable considering the lack of interest in the behavior genetics of religious belief in general. Of course evidence can be obtained by learning what psychological characteristics bias a person toward religious belief followed by looking for the relevant behavior genetic studies on those traits, but I suspect there will be a snowball's chance in hell of that happening (just a prediction).

Your example of Christians in the Roman period does not seem like a good one. Clearly the Christians were cooperating with each other and if they had not, would there be more than a billion Christians on the planet today? If you want to find research on somebody generally interested in cooperation and religious belief, then look up Richard Sosis. Last I knew he was a professor at UCONN.

Darwin's Finch: When you say "social development" vs "biological evolution", you seem to exclude genetically predisposed behavior patterns. Can you elaborate on that? Maybe I'm misinterpreting your terminology.

I don't see any evidence that religious proclivity is a genetically predisposed behavior.

In general, the mechanisms for social evolution differ from those of biological evolution. For example, societies make ample use of group selection (indeed, they practically require it...), whereas such has long since been decried as a mechanism for biological evolution. Social evolution can also proceed at much faster rates than biological evolution because ideas (which are the currency, so to speak, of social evolution) spread through a population faster than alleles.

The two are certainly linked, but are by no means one and the same.

Could you please describe how group selection acts in social evolution? You've made the declaration, but I doubt there are examples of your statement. Also, concerning the proclivity for religion and genes, see the twin studies above. It's not my favorite type of evidence but it's a start.

[Trepa Mayfield]

I feel like someone's watching me all the time. Then I turn, and there's that stack of money I left behind! So foolish. ahahaha.

It just seems kind of obvious on its face to me, because most humans are religious.

Pretty sure evolution doesn't work that way.

[Darwin's Finch]

I don't see any evidence that religious proclivity is a genetically predisposed behavior.

In general, the mechanisms for social evolution differ from those of biological evolution. For example, societies make ample use of group selection (indeed, they practically require it...), whereas such has long since been decried as a mechanism for biological evolution. Social evolution can also proceed at much faster rates than biological evolution because ideas (which are the currency, so to speak, of social evolution) spread through a population faster than alleles.

The two are certainly linked, but are by no means one and the same.

Could you please describe how group selection acts in social evolution? You've made the declaration, but I doubt there are examples of your statement. Also, concerning the proclivity for religion and genes, see the twin studies above. It's not my favorite type of evidence but it's a start.

By "group selection", I refer to any selection that benefits the group over the individual. It may well not be the preferred term for such, but there you go. That doesn't happen with natural selection, but it absolutely happens with human social groups.

As for the studies mentioned, I don't have access to any of those papers, so cannot comment. Have those studies done any testing along the lines mentioned previously in this thread - namely, that religious proclivities are emergent, rather than directly traceable to genetic sources which control brain development? If not, then I don't put much stock in them.

[GHO57]

By "group selection", I refer to any selection that benefits the group over the individual. It may well not be the preferred term for such, but there you go. That doesn't happen with natural selection, but it absolutely happens with human social groups.


Altruism? Kin selection? SIT (http://www.ur.umich.edu/0506/Jul24_06/02.shtml)?


As for the studies mentioned, I don't have access to any of those papers, so cannot comment.

... which is probably why they were selected; stealth citing.

[John Mace]

This falls into the realm of evolutionary psychology, which is not really science. It's fun to speculate, and you can certainly make some educated guesses, but most, if not all of it, is not falsifiable.

Of course it's a science. Properly constructed hypotheses are falsifiable and the works of evolutionary psychologists are filled with such hypotheses.
I may have been a bit too sweeping in that statement, as I really meant "as it applies to humans". If you have some that apply to humans, I'd like to see them.

I suppose there might be some experiments that could be done to test a hypothesis with fast breeding animals like fruit flies, but I can't see how we could do the same for large, slow breeding mammals like humans.

[Darwin's Finch]

By "group selection", I refer to any selection that benefits the group over the individual. It may well not be the preferred term for such, but there you go. That doesn't happen with natural selection, but it absolutely happens with human social groups.


Altruism? Kin selection? SIT (http://www.ur.umich.edu/0506/Jul24_06/02.shtml)?



Group selection is technically the idea that alleles can be fixed by anything that benefits the group rather the individual (that is, the level of selection is "group", rather than "individual"); that pretty much doesn't happen. However, if you substitute "ideas" or whatever else can be considered the "basic unit of social development" for "alleles" (Dawkins prefers "memes", so, if that works for ya (generic), great), it works as an analogous process.

Kin selection isn't quite what I'm looking for, since that does happen in biological evolution, and is a major factor in the evolution of, for example, eusocial insects.

[Leaper]

I want to believe it's true, just for the humorous irony value. :D

[Cisco]

It just seems kind of obvious on its face to me, because most humans are religious.

Pretty sure evolution doesn't work that way.
While it is probably true that a trait does not necessarily have to provide an advantage to be present in a species*, the presence of that trait is generally considered highly suggestive that it does.


*Though this is debated. Various roles of the appendix have been proposed lately, for instance.

[Inbred Mm domesticus]

Altruism? Kin selection? SIT (http://www.ur.umich.edu/0506/Jul24_06/02.shtml)?



Group selection is technically the idea that alleles can be fixed by anything that benefits the group rather the individual (that is, the level of selection is "group", rather than "individual"); that pretty much doesn't happen. However, if you substitute "ideas" or whatever else can be considered the "basic unit of social development" for "alleles" (Dawkins prefers "memes", so, if that works for ya (generic), great), it works as an analogous process.

Kin selection isn't quite what I'm looking for, since that does happen in biological evolution, and is a major factor in the evolution of, for example, eusocial insects.

What's an example of an idea or meme that reached fixation because it benefited human groups over the individuals that make up the group as well as allowing the group to outcompete other groups?

[Inbred Mm domesticus]

Could you please describe how group selection acts in social evolution? You've made the declaration, but I doubt there are examples of your statement. Also, concerning the proclivity for religion and genes, see the twin studies above. It's not my favorite type of evidence but it's a start.

By "group selection", I refer to any selection that benefits the group over the individual. It may well not be the preferred term for such, but there you go. That doesn't happen with natural selection, but it absolutely happens with human social groups.

As for the studies mentioned, I don't have access to any of those papers, so cannot comment. Have those studies done any testing along the lines mentioned previously in this thread - namely, that religious proclivities are emergent, rather than directly traceable to genetic sources which control brain development? If not, then I don't put much stock in them.

Here's a link to twin studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study), it's a decent wikipedia article. Since most twin studies are essentially the same, you can read the abstracts and get a good idea of the parameters they are attempting to estimate. The data is descriptive so it cannot test any specific hypothesis concerning the role genes play.

I fail to understand why you are differentiating between emergent properties and brain development. Much of our behavior can most easily be understood as an emergent property contributed to by genetic control of neural development. In fact I think that last sentence might win the uncontroversial statement of the year award.



Of course it's a science. Properly constructed hypotheses are falsifiable and the works of evolutionary psychologists are filled with such hypotheses.
I may have been a bit too sweeping in that statement, as I really meant "as it applies to humans". If you have some that apply to humans, I'd like to see them.

I suppose there might be some experiments that could be done to test a hypothesis with fast breeding animals like fruit flies, but I can't see how we could do the same for large, slow breeding mammals like humans.

Here is Daly and Wilson's discussion of evolutionary psychology and behavior patterns associated with homicide (http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/chapter5.pdf). It's not the primary research but it covers their application of mainly kin selection to homicidal human behavior patterns. They specify their falsifiable predictions based in theory and summarize the data that tested these hypotheses. Simple science.

[Half Man Half Wit]

As stated, I don't think that the belief in god, as such, is evolutionarily advantageous; I don't even think it's been around long enough to make much of an impact on our evolution as a species. However, I do think that there are several heritable traits that are both advantageous and contribute to the emergence of such a belief, most of which have already been named (by begbert2 mainly, if memory serves), but the point doesn't seem to have caught on in the thread. Indeed, I even think that going from these traits, one would have to expect the development of religion and its interaction with society much the way we see it today, regardless of whether or not there actually are any supernatural forces to believe in.

First, we're all superstitious. This is, I trust, rather uncontroversial -- famously, even pigeons have been shown to be superstitious, which seems to point very strongly to a genetic origin of the behaviour. Mostly, this means susceptibility to a fallacious 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc'-reasoning: we see correlations were there are none, and then, mistake those correlations for causation. In the case of the pigeons, it was easy to train them to repeat certain behaviours that led to them being fed; however, even if they were fed at completely random intervals, certain behaviours that they randomly engaged in when they were fed stabilized themselves anyway: they became simple rituals. This makes great sense -- if some behaviour appears to cause a desired effect, there is at least a certain likelihood that it might again, which is the root of learning; however, the prize to pay for this is the occasional misfire, which is the source of the belief that unseen forces react to your behaviour.

Secondly, we're pattern-recognition machines. This is just a part of how our sensory systems work: instead of laboriously building up, say, an image from visual data, by laboriously comparing each element of the image with an internal database to identify it, we go into every situation with a pre-formed expectation of what we're likely to see; dispelling those expectations until only those over a given likelihood barrier remain is computationally far less taxing, and hence, quicker to perform. In a sense, it's a very scientific process. The kind of expectations we have of our visual data may be shaped by many things, including experience -- see, for instance, the phenomenon of 'priming' --, and possibly genetics (it would certainly make sense if we knew what to look for before we encounter our first tiger, and there's at least some data that we may have an innate fear of snakes), but the mechanism at work is certainly part of our genetic blueprint. The thing is, this mechanism is subject to false positives -- we see things that aren't actually there. All that takes is a single failure to dispel one of the expectations we had going in -- a single glitch. This shows itself most clearly whenever we are subject to essentially random data, and suddenly, out pops a face (something we clearly have good evolutionary reasons to look for), i.e. in the phenomenon known as pareidolia.

Thirdly, we misattribute intention. This is similar to the previous section, only acting not on a sensory, but rather a cognitive level. I don't really wish to come up with the EP mainstay of the hunter-gatherer in the jungle running away from a tiger that's not actually there and surviving vs. the hunter-gather that missed the tiger that was there, and thus, also missed the chance of passing on his genes, since it would rub some posters the wrong way, but in a way, it's pretty much that -- it's less dangerous to believe something that doesn't actually want to eat you does, than it is the other way around. In the absence of rational explanations for the forces at work in nature, an animistic misattribution of intention is the most successful heuristic.

With these three points, we have essentially all we need for most religions -- unseen, intentional forces populating the world around us which we can influence through our behaviour. Knowing about these three human traits, one would have to predict belief in the existence of supernatural entities, and ritualistic behaviour surrounding this belief, whether or not such entities actually exist.

So, it's not the case that believing in god, as such, is evolutionarily advantageous; however, there are evolutionarily advantageous traits that may well -- and, I believe, should be expected to -- lead to such a belief.

[Darwin's Finch]

Group selection is technically the idea that alleles can be fixed by anything that benefits the group rather the individual (that is, the level of selection is "group", rather than "individual"); that pretty much doesn't happen. However, if you substitute "ideas" or whatever else can be considered the "basic unit of social development" for "alleles" (Dawkins prefers "memes", so, if that works for ya (generic), great), it works as an analogous process.

Kin selection isn't quite what I'm looking for, since that does happen in biological evolution, and is a major factor in the evolution of, for example, eusocial insects.

What's an example of an idea or meme that reached fixation because it benefited human groups over the individuals that make up the group as well as allowing the group to outcompete other groups?

I'm not going to get into a semantic pissing match with you. The point is that ideas spread more rapidly through a population than do alleles. If that doesn't fit the exact definition of "group selection", fine, submit your own term.

[Malthus]

To an extent, religion competes with these other forms of cohesion, but over human history it has proved remarkably successful and durable in offering solid advantages to adherants as a group - a set of rules for social organization that do not depend on personal charisma alone for enforcement, for example.

I have to object to both this and the thread title. There isn't "religion", there are and have been many religions. There isn't "God", there are a variety of various magical creatures.

The earliest religions, from what I'm aware, didn't set any rules for living. They didn't teach morality nor social structure. Outside of a few ceremonies to be performed from time to time -- probably quite often as some sort of village party -- there wasn't any more "there" there than that.


Some points:

1. As others have said, we don't actually know much about the earliest religions. Nonetheless, I am willing to believe, for the sake of argument, that it resembles somewhat modern-day shamanism. In that case, I strongly disagree that modern-day shamanism is devoid of social utility for hunter-gatherers!

2. Obiously, there are a great many varieties of religious belief and inumerable gods. Purely for the purposes of argument, I'm using "religion" as a catch-all phrase for any sort of organized and systemic belief in supernatural forces.

3. However, my original point was examining "religion' as we know and love it today - which is, as far as we know (and obviously we could be totally wrong), something that developed after the last ice age, as evidenced by the creation of large-scale and apparently religious structures (I believe a very ancient temple complex, deliberately buried, was discovered in Turkey recently - pushing the date of this back a few thousand years!).

4. This form of "religion" is clearly the product of a society that has gone beyond the hunter-gatherer stage. Arguably, it was instrumental in going beyond the hunter gatherer stage. The two are clearly correlated, but as to whether it is instrumental or not is, naturally, going to be a subject of a good deal of speculation, because we lack a 'laboratory' for human cultures. What we do know, is that invariably social evolution of the band/tribe/chieftianship variety is accompanied by religion.

5. Thus, it makes a certain amount of sense to postulate that the one (religion) is perhaps a necessary ingredient of the other (social evolution).

6. One could equally postulate that the one (religion) is more of an unwanted and unnecessary side-effect of the the other (social evolution). However, this strikes me as much the harder of the two arguments to support logically, given that in many cases pretty well the whole point of social organization appears to have been religious in focus over long periods of time.

7. How it worked may have been like this: large-scale undertakings, and thus concentrations of effort beyond the hunter-gatherer state, may have been originally required for religiously-sanctioned events - such as communial celebratory/ritual feasting, such as the rites still observable today in soime New Guinea tribes. This in turn required oversight by organizers - big men and shamans - who gradually attempted to extend their authority for bigger and better projects - creation of elaborate totems, megalithic monuments, temples - which required ever-larger concentrations of effort (thus larger social organizations). Without supernatural sanctions, and an explaination of how this effort benefits the many (as in appeasing the ancestors or gods for the good of all), such concentrations of effort, wealth and power are effectively impossible - you can't convince a bunch of hunter-gatherers to erect a Temple to Reason. What's in it for them?

Once large-scale groups develop, they are clearly going to be more powerful than any hunter-gatherer group, and expand at their expense. The only defence is development of one's own, competing large-scale organization, generally based on competing ancestors, gods, etc.

8. Note that this argument focuses on social and not physical evolution. There is clearly a link, but that link lies far back in time - our social evolution has been far, far too rapid to be in lockstep with physical evolution.

[Darwin's Finch]

By "group selection", I refer to any selection that benefits the group over the individual. It may well not be the preferred term for such, but there you go. That doesn't happen with natural selection, but it absolutely happens with human social groups.

As for the studies mentioned, I don't have access to any of those papers, so cannot comment. Have those studies done any testing along the lines mentioned previously in this thread - namely, that religious proclivities are emergent, rather than directly traceable to genetic sources which control brain development? If not, then I don't put much stock in them.

Here's a link to twin studies (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twin_study), it's a decent wikipedia article. Since most twin studies are essentially the same, you can read the abstracts and get a good idea of the parameters they are attempting to estimate. The data is descriptive so it cannot test any specific hypothesis concerning the role genes play.

I fail to understand why you are differentiating between emergent properties and brain development. Much of our behavior can most easily be understood as an emergent property contributed to by genetic control of neural development. In fact I think that last sentence might win the uncontroversial statement of the year award.


Twin studies are inherently flawed, for all the reasons mentioned in that Wikipedia article. Further, measures of heritability, particularly regarding complex behaviors, have their own problems.

I am differentiating between emergent properties and genetic properties because the latter are heritable, the former are not necessarily. If religious proclivities are emergent, then any attempts to explain why they are adaptive must first show that they are adaptive. And if they are not adaptive, then evolutionary psychologists are clearly barking up the wrong tree as far as attempting to understand such behaviors.

[John Mace]

Here is Daly and Wilson's discussion of evolutionary psychology and behavior patterns associated with homicide (http://psych.mcmaster.ca/dalywilson/chapter5.pdf). It's not the primary research but it covers their application of mainly kin selection to homicidal human behavior patterns. They specify their falsifiable predictions based in theory and summarize the data that tested these hypotheses. Simple science.

That cite is 14 pages long. Can you summarize the salient points? What is the hypothesis they make, and how is it falsifiable?

[ITR champion]

Germany was quite Christian, acting the way Christians typically do when they can.
The Nazis were extremely proud of the fact that they had rejected Christianity, as as these quotes will show (http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/1699/was-hitler-a-christian):

'National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable." - Martin Bormann

"One is either a Christian or a German. You can't be both." - Hermann Rauschning

"We have no sort of use for a fairy story invented by the Jews." - Adolf Hitler

More relevant than any quote is the simple fact of the Nazis' mass extermination of a large number of Christians. (See links in this thread. (http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=526767)) And the fact that the Nazis banned Bible study from schools. And so forth. How exactly does all this fit with your claim that "Germany was quite Christian"?

Mass murdering Jews is as Christian as it gets.
Cite, please?

As for Communism, Communism is just another religion,
Communism appeals to a divine agency? I'm afraid I'm going to need a cite for that. I'd someone gotten the impression that communist big wigs like Marx, Lenin, and Mao were all strongly opposed to religion. Oh, wait, they (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:LgW0t5zIXWwJ:www.angelfire.com/or/sociologyshop/marxrel.html+Marx+Religion&hl=en&client=firefox-a&gl=us&strip=0) were (http://sfr-21.org/lenin-religion.html).

Good day.

[Cisco]

As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, and acts like one.
I'm an atheist* and I'm dead sick of hearing this dumbass meme. If you feel like you have to cling to some sort of "atheist unity" (and I sure as hell don't), then own up to it. If you don't feel that way, then why are you making excuses for it? Communism is an economic system. It's as much a religion as capitalism or socialism or bartering.

Speaking of acting religious, though . . . you might want to sneak a peak in a mirror sometime, Der Trihs.


*Though I guess it depends on how you define "atheist", I'm certainly not a theist, and I don't believe in the supernatural, so I think most people would call me an atheist.

[ITR champion]

Look at pack animals, like wolves. If one of the follower wolves challenges the lead wolf, that's seen as an act of antagonism. The pack can't survive the hardships of the world if it's split between leaders, so the challenger either has to become the leader, die, or leave the group.
True, but watching wolves tells us nothing about humans.

Within a human pack, rather than duking it out with fisticuffs, it's more likely that the chief will send the challenger out on a particularly dangerous hunt, devise some sort of crime to charge the guy with and have him killed, or simply kill him straight out. I'm not saying that this happens every time. Some chiefs might be more accepting or diplomatic about rebellious attitudes, but over the course of thousands of generations there will be some amount of evolutionary pressure towards a default setting of taking what the big boss says as inviolate -- particularly where there doesn't seem to be any useful purpose in arguing with him.
I can't recall ever seeing any evidence that primitive human societies functioned this way. I readily admit that my knowledge in this field is limited. However, I have studied examples such as the Indian tribes of the Pacific Northwest. It was absolutely not true that there was a "big boss" who maintained power by violence. Rather, men competed with each other to prove themselves generous and friendly. The only primitive societies I know of that match your descriptions are in Far Side cartoons.

There's evidence to make it (or something similar) seem likely, yes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases

We know that cognitive biases are true, as shown by testing on human subjects.
First of all, I'm going to assume that when you said "we know cognitive biases are true", you actually meant "we know that cognitive biases exist." But do they? How many of the nearly 100 biases listed there can you actually name a study for? And how did those studies determine that the behavior they observed was actually a result of the bias they imagined? And if all humans have a bunch of cognitive biases, then why should I trust the researchers who are doing those studies? After all, that list you gave me includes:

Experimenter's bias the tendency for experimenters to believe, certify, and publish data that agree with their expectations for the outcome of an experiment, and to disbelieve, discard, or downgrade the corresponding weightings for data that appear to conflict with those expectations.

Confirmation bias the tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions.

Focusing effect the tendency to place too much importance on one aspect of an event.

Availability cascade a self-reinforcing process in which a collective belief gains more and more plausibility through its increasing repetition in public discourse.

Any of those or a dozen others could cause researchers to erroneously believe in a cognitive bias that did not actually exist.

If we then take Occam's Razor to the two options:

1) Some chain of cognitive biases resulted in poor reasoning.
2) Invisible, intangible, otherworldly creatures injected themselves into the minds of humanity via unknowable means for non-obvious purposes, leaving no other clear evidence of their existence than vague feelings in human beings -- a creature already shown to suffer cognitive biases and poor reasoning.
If human beings are "already shown to suffer cognitive biases and poor reasoning", then why should I take the word of you (a human being) that these are the only two options and are accurately described.

But, in any case, I was specifically asking about the scenario you presented in post 27, and nothing in this post seems to have anything to do with confirming that scenario. So back to my original question: can you give me any evidence that said scenario has ever actually occurred?

[GHO57]

As for Communism, Communism is just another religion, and acts like one.
I'm an atheist* and I'm dead sick of hearing this dumbass meme. If you feel like you have to cling to some sort of "atheist unity" (and I sure as hell don't), then own up to it. If you don't feel that way, then why are you making excuses for it? Communism is an economic system. It's as much a religion as capitalism or socialism or bartering.

Exactly like bartering...with the exception of iconography (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Socialist_realism), cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Repercussions), a holy book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital), a reliquary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Mausoleum)for worshipers, symbolism (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Hammer_sickle_clean.png)...

Deification of leaders ("A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn't get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years." (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.))

Extended to the belief in the infallibility (http://www.nevanews.com/index.php?id_article=25&section=13) of said leaders...



...Just saying...it's not much of a stretch to call it a religion, take a look at these (http://laist.com/attachments/laist_dara/stalin.jpg) two pictures (http://www.rainbowcastle.org/ascension.jpg). Admittedly it would be more appropriate to call religions a subset of comprehensive belief systems, of which Communism definitely is one... Functionally they're really not all that different, and you gotta admit, "it's a religion" is a helluva lot easier than explaining how adherence to a certain doctrine influences the person's behavior and contrasting that with Communism; you'd assume religious people understand religious behavior and can draw the inference themselves.



...Sorry for the hijack.

[Cisco]

Exactly like bartering...with the exception of iconography (http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Socialist_realism), cognitive dissonance (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism#Repercussions), a holy book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Das_Kapital), a reliquary (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenin's_Mausoleum)for worshipers, symbolism (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/56/Hammer_sickle_clean.png)...

Deification of leaders ("A tailor laying aside his needle stuck it into a newspaper on the wall so it wouldn't get lost and happened to stick it in the eye of a portrait of Kaganovich [a member of the Soviet Politburo]. A customer observed this. Article 58, ten years (terrorism). A saleswoman accepting merchandise from a forwarder noted it down on a sheet of newspaper. There was no other paper. The number of pieces of soap happened to fall on the forehead of Comrade Stalin. Article 58, ten years." (Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago, vol. 2, p. 293.))

Extended to the belief in the infallibility (http://www.nevanews.com/index.php?id_article=25&section=13) of said leaders...



...Just saying...it's not much of a stretch to call it a religion, take a look at these (http://laist.com/attachments/laist_dara/stalin.jpg) two pictures (http://www.rainbowcastle.org/ascension.jpg). Admittedly it would be more appropriate to call religions a subset of comprehensive belief systems, of which Communism definitely is one... Functionally they're really not all that different, and you gotta admit, "it's a religion" is a helluva lot easier than explaining how adherence to a certain doctrine influences the person's behavior and contrasting that with Communism; you'd assume religious people understand religious behavior and can draw the inference themselves.



...Sorry for the hijack.

Surely this post is a joke.

Unless you're saying Capitalism is a religion, too.

You could not possibly be saying that we don't have a holy book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wealth_of_Nations), cognitive dissonance (http://www.purselipsquarejaw.org/b-w_living.jpg), shrines (http://classicist.blogs.com/weblog/images/Lincoln_Memorial.jpg), and deification of leaders (http://www.learnnc.org/lp/media/uploads/2007/09/apotheosis_of_washington.jpg), by the same standards as the ones you listed.

[Malthus]

Seems to me that the issue of whether or not Communism is a "religion" is totally irrelevant. Communism, the ethos of the modern capitalist nation-state, religion - all are ways people have of understanding and ordering their relations with the persons around them, it is true; any of these can take on the characteristics of a "True Belief" in the manner described by Eric Hoffer, also true; and there are clearly relevant differences between them as well.

[John Mace]

The totalitarian regimes in the USSR, China and North Korea are/were, in many respects, like a religion. But their economic system of communism was just one part of the whole package. Communism, itself, is an economic system, and calling it a religion is ridiculous. It's economics. Bad economics, but still economics.