Since religious and spiritual belief is a near universal characteristic it must confer a survival advantage on its host and therefore have a genetic basis.
Has anyone found the “religion gene, or genes” yet.
Has anyone suggested this to their pastor or priest.
I myself am atheist.
I was thinking that because atheists form such a small percentage of the population that the relative proportions of believers and atheists in what has been a prolonged period of relative peace and prosperity by historical standards may have something to do with the relative abilities associated with each genotype to do well in good times vs. bad times.
That is, the genes associated with religious belief may confer an advantage to their carriers in times of plenty and stability, whilst those for atheism may confer an advantage during times of chaos, scarcity and disorder.
Just because something is near universal it needn’t have any survival advantage whatsoever. An inability to manufacture vitamin C is near universal amongst humans, that doesn’t mean it has any survival value. It just means that it has no detrimetal value.
Just because something confers a survival advanatge that doesn’t mean it has a genetic basis. Literacy confers a survival advanatge without any doubt, that does not allow us to conclude that literacy must have a genetic basis. In reality we know for a fact that literacy is only taught and can not have any genetic basis.
So your argument starts with two critical flaws that make your entire position baseless.
No, and they haven’t found a literacy gene either, or a dancing gene. Hell they haven’t even found a speech gene, and we know that speech is genetically hardwired into humans.
Those things are incredibly complex metal constructs and there is simply no way that a “gene” could exist for religion or dancing or speech. If they do have an genetic basis then it is derived from the entire architecture of the brain and is genetically inseparable form the other traits that make us mentally human.
Lot of ignorant folk out there so I’m sure someone has.
Any evidence for this? Even some speculation? As it stands it’s a total non sequitur. Why should we accept this any more than the idea that religion protects against mosquito bites?
Not at all. All the means is that whatever genes are involved are better at passing themselves along, whether or not the host benefits from them.
My personal theory is that religious genes spread and survive better primarily via a combination of rape and killing. The Bible’s full of it. Religion promotes mass killing and outright genocide, which eliminates competitor genes ( and ideas ). It promotes conquest and the treating of outsiders as subhuman, which promotes rape and murder, spreading itself and destroying competitors. By promoting belief in the soul, it creates a general disregard for human life and welfare, including one’s own which both makes warriors more dangerous and makes people more willing to rape and kill. Religion tends to relegate women to the status of subhumans and breeders, which will naturally help spread any genetic components of religion, promotes rape, and produce more warriors for more conquest, rape and killing.
I understand there are indications of a genetic tendancy toward religiousity, but no specific genes identified as yet.
Evolutionary processes can operate in domains other than DNA (I was going to say non-genetic, but I think that could be misleading) - anywhere that things are passed down to offspring (probably with inherent variation and error), and subject to differential effectiveness, is somewhere that evolution will operate - so social entities such as language, speech, ethics and religion can and do evolve.
There can be positive survival value in unquestioningly following the instruction of elders (‘don’t eat the orange berries on that kind of bush’) - as well as in acting in accord with a peer group (individuals striking out alone can be picked off by predators, for example) - simple, expedient factors like these can combine to result in quite complex emergent behaviours. Couple that with our species’ insatiable curiosity - which often means we’ll prefer any explanation to no explanation, and you’re well set.
Since vitamin c is easily obtained from food and we need it all we need is the gene to make use of it. there is no need for a gene to produce vitamin c because it is plentiful. We don’t have a vitamin c producing gene because we don’t need one. This argument does not make sense to me for that reason.
Everything we are and do has a genetic basis, and if a behavior which by this reasoning is genetic then for it to be so widespread it must confer a survival advantage on its host. Otherwise it would not be so common. Genes survive only if they confer a survival advantage on the host, and genes that are very common confer greater survival advantages than those that are less common. The trait it produces is common, religious belief, therefore the gene or combination of genes is common. Therefore it confers a survival advantage.
The basis for language, and therefore speech and literacy, is genetic. These abilities do not magicially spring from nothing. They are an expression, as is everyone of our characteristics and behaviors, of our genes (our genotype) interacting with our environment to produce our phenotype. Which includes language, speech and literacy.
Last time I checked genetics was incredibly complex. Sexual behavior, child rearing, tool use, digestion, vision processing, consciousness, are all complex and are all manifestations of our genes. Why then not religious belief?
It might just be someone who is curious, or who has a sense of humor.
I was thinking more along the lines that religion encourages cooperative behavior and therefore helps make humans social organisms, provides an organizing force, and therefore increases the survival chances of the members of the group as opposed to isolated or smaller groups who are less cohesive.
Religion probably does protect against mosquito bites. How many anti malaria and mosquito eradication programs in the third world are sponsored and run by religious organizations? I am betting plenty.
We have one - but it’s broken - this doesn’t represent a detriment to most of us because of the availability of vitamin C in our diet, except that this amounts to us having evolved dependency on dietary vitamin C - hardly an advantage.
I believe that in good part the universality of religion is based on the majority of the population being introduced during their very initial development into the concept of an omnipotent beign that saciates our needs, protects us and answers to our calls.
Of course I´m talking about a baby´s parents, but the concept is ingrained on the neo-natal mind and predisposes most people to a religieous belief.
My understanding was that, like the guinea pig, humans generally gain enough vitamin C through their diet, so the bodily need to synthesise it has become redundant. And the advantage would be that the body saves energy in not having to produce the vitamin itself.
Advantages and disadvantages are largely dependent upon context - the point is that it can’t be argued that everything that exists now is still advantageous - it might have been so in the past (or might just have not been disadvantageous enough - at the time - to have been deselected, but then a population can get stuck with it, and be reliant upon a suboptimal workaround.
IMHO most/many religion has come about from spiritual practices/experiences, things like ‘esp’, supernatural encounters, and various out of body experiences to name a few, which though we can’t scientifically even prove these things even happen, to those who have had them have no doubt they are real.
Even if I accept your premise - you will never be able to prove your statement to those who have experienced spirituality without extensive brainwashing techniques.
No one has ever had a “spiritual” experience, in the supernatural sense you mean. I can’t “prove” it to them because they are irrational; nothing would convince them, as you’ve just admitted.
And it is their logical obligation to prove they experienced something, not mine to prove they didn’t, anyway. Just like everything else; religion doesn’t deserve a free pass, no matter how many times it’s agents claim it does.
My best guess is that the human penchant for religiosity is a byproduct of our capabilities for abstract thinking, pattern recognition, and creating social order. I see no reason to believe that an individual’s religiosity is genetic in nature, rather than based on personal experience and social atmosphere. IOW, there’s no genetic difference between Dawkins and the Pope.
IMO, if a person was born physiologically incapable of being religious (as opposed to have being raised irreligious, or deciding to reject religion), they’d also be quite deficient in reasoning and creativity.
Richard Dawkins hypothesises that the “religious gene” might be a side effect of the “trust what other people say gene”. (those are not the scientific names, in case you where wondering! )
That is, it is benificial for a child to believe what it’s parents say, and not feel the urge to get it’s own empirical evidence that the alligators in the river are indeed dangerous. Or that this-and that mushroom is not good for eating, etc.
This might have created an advantage for those who are prone to believe what other people say without questioning, and religion has prospered as a consequence.
Specifically, Blake was addressing a common misunderstanding of evolutionary theory. You originally said:
This is wrong. “Near universal characteristic[s]” do not have to confer a survival advantage. Rather, they might simply not be disadvantageous to the host. Lack of vitamin C production is not disadvantageous, for the reasons you give.
Furthermore, you say:
Based on what you’ve further written, this is a matter of begging the question. As a counterexample, take the case of a dedicated Cartesian dualist, who believes in a strictly separated body and soul (with the pineal gland as their interface). Since soul has absolutely no physical component, there is no way that genetics plays any role. You have, however, (pre)concluded that genetics is responsible for “everything we are and do”.
And you take it a step further by considering indirect characteristics/abilities (e.g., literacy) as having a genetic basis. One might as well claim that the common use of 8 foot ceilings in buildings has a genetic basis.
Note that I haven’t taken any positions here on evolution, religion, nor the relationship between them. Although I will state, for the record, that I find dualists pretty silly.
If you type, “god gene” into amazon.com, here is what you get for what it is worth. It shows, at any rate, that several people have written books related to this subject.
I think religion comes from our inherent tribalism, our dislike of the unknown, and our tendency to take the path of least resistance. Humans have been making stuff up to cover the unexplained since the first time someone saw something they didn’t understand. Once humans began getting organized, it was just a matter of time before anything important to them also got organized. Once something gets organized to any significant degree in a society, it has its own inertia. ‘We’ve always done it that way’ has a lot of power.
People tend to automatically believe things they already agree with, so if they hear something that sounds ok to them it’s easy to just take it as the answer and not worry about it anymore. So someone makes up something that is literally all the answers, godidit, and now you’ve got something you can fall back on no matter what. Once you’ve established something like a ‘priest’ who is held to be an expert, then you can tell people to believe whatever you want.
If that is the belief you are trying to claim as fact, then yes.
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