Evolutionary basis for religious faith?

Great Debates
1

The thread on Intelligence and Religious Belief set me to thinking about an idea that’s been kicking around in my head for a while, and that I’d like to see others comment on.

As prologue, let me say that I’m thoroughly in the camp of evolution by natural selection (including kin selection and sexual selection) as the main force shaping the physical form and behavior of every organism on the planet, including humans. While recognizing that there’s much work to do before we can have any degree of certainty about these things, I do believe that what’s already been done in evolutionary psychology has contributed an enormous amount to our understanding of human behavior, and that so far, the evolutionary explanations for most aspects of human behavior are a closer fit for the majority of the observed phenomenon than any of the alternative explanations.

As a starting point, I’ll suggest that when we observe a set of human behaviors to be nearly universal (that is, existing in every or nearly every society about which we have any information, whether contemporary or historical), we often may profitably inquire whether that set of behaviors may have been evolutionarily advantageous in the original adaptive environment. The evolutionary mechanisms leading to reciprocal altruism and cooperation, for instance, have been explored in detail by Matt Ridley, Robert Wright, and others, while human mating and sexual practices have also been discussed in terms of their evolutionary origins by Ridley, Wright (op. cit.), Jared Diamond, and David Buss, as well as a number of others whom I’ve not read.

Among the aspects of human behavior that have been observed in nearly every known society is some degree of religious belief. While inconsistent perhaps with the scientific approach that has increasingly dominated intellectual life for the last 400 years or so, belief in the supernatural and practices based on those beliefs occur univerally among human societies, and indeed have not been supplanted by scientific, rational (in the limited sense of the word) beliefs and practices even in societies (such as American and European cultures) where science holds the greatest sway.

Is it not possible, even likely, therefore, that a “temperament” (for want of a better word) predisposed to creating or accepting religious notions about the world was evolutionarily advantageous in man’s original environment? Perhaps religious beliefs tended to make one more likely to cooperate with others, to mate only with certain other individuals instead of dying before reproducing in an battle for a more desirable mate, etc. May it not be possible, furthermore, that such a temperament is still advantageous? Evolutionary psychology has already suggested a number of areas where self-deception may be in a particular individual’s reproductive self-interest. Might not religious faith, particularly where it leads to more harmonious relations among an individual’s native group, give an individual a better chance of passing along his/her genes in quantity, and hence to preserve itself among the behavioral traits that make us human?

2

Humans are questioning animals, and seek to understand and explain the world around them. In the absence of what we recognize as scientific procedure and the accompanying technology, those explanations would come from empirical evidence and metaphor. For instance, an Egyptian sees a scarb beetle pushing a ball of dung along the sand, and tit occurs to him that that the sun rolling across the sky could be propelled in a like manner. Hellenic Greeks, on the other hand, descending from chariot-using people, might think that a chariot driven by a god is more reasonable.

Very simplistcally put, evolution allows our brains to reason, reason allows us to make metaphors, metaphors become myths over time, and myths combined with morals and political dogma becomes religion. So yes, you could make a very shaky case for evolution promoting religion. I don’t see how religion could have a positive impact on our survival (excepting a totally artificial selection, like religious genocide). In fact, a whole lot more people have probably been killed off because of it, rather than saved by it. The effects of some of the Great Plagues might have been greatly mitigated if Europeans hadn’t demonized and killed their herbalits, killed cats as devils (allowing the rat populations to explode), cast suspicion on anyone promoting hygiene (vanity is a deadly sin, after all), and hopelessy alienated the Moslems, who might have been willing to share their medical knowledge. Just for an example.

3

Sure we evolved reason, but we also evolved empathy. Empathy can be a survival mechanism, although my tired brain is out of examples right now.

4

In most primate societies, there is an alpha male. In human societies, there is always some one (usually male) who is the highest in the pecking order: father of the family, mayor of the town-city, govenor of the state, president, king, etc. I think that god is just a logical extension of this structure.

5

Then explain why the most powerful gods in many societies originally were female? Ishtar for example was the most powerful god in Babylon. Athena, Aphrodite and nymphs existed in Greek mythology before Zeus. Alpha male–god extension would be quite inconsistent with the origins of religion. I would say that males overly asserted themselves the leadership mantle in society, with the influence of Zoroastrian religion, which was the first religion to promote man, and therefore, male godhood, to be first and foremost in the pecking order.

6

I presume in this context you mean that a god is that being with the greatest bravado or seduction. I think such a god is easily enough attributable to culture.

But there is a different kind of God, i.e., the Love Everlasting, the apprehension of which is indeed explainable by evolution, specifically of the human limbic system. See Phantoms in the Brain by neurologist V. S. Ramachandran, in particular the chapter titled “God and the Limbic System”.

7

Michael Shermer discusses this topic in How We Believe.

To summarize very briefly, he says humans evolved to be pattern-seekers and story tellers. We are story tellers to help us survive by communicating better with each other (cooperation). As pattern seekers, we see that A follows B, therefore B caused A (a belief engine). This can be very helpful (Og touched poison ivy, Og got a rash, therefore the poison ivy caused the rash) but also leads to false assumptions (Og killed a calf, it rained that night, therefore killing the calf caused the rain.) In the long run, it was more helpful to our survival to keep this belief engine, despite the errors, or magical thinking, that occurred. So our story telling ancestors passed on the patterns they observed (B causes A). Some were right and some were wrong. The right ones helped us survive and reproduce better, while the wrong ones didn’t hinder us enough to matter. This is Shermer’s theory as to why humans believe in so many things without proof (faith, religion) and also why superstitions are so common.

8

But if you accept the premise (as I’ve said already I do, and to which you do not object in your post) that human behavior, as much as human physiology, has been shaped by evolutionary processes, and some degree of religious belief occurs universally, or nearly so, then you’re forced to concede that religious belief has been at the very least evolutionarily neutral, with it being far more likely to have conveyed some evolutionary benefit. The example you mention (and I realize it’s only one of many potential examples) comes too late in the day and is too localized to have had any lasting effect on the human species in general. Perhaps if Europe had become reproductively isolated from the rest of the world and if the negative selection pressure exerted by religious belief in your example were strong enough and persisted long enough, we might have seen speciation, resulting in a new European species of Homo without the tendency to religious belief, but that wasn’t the case.

As for the argument that religious belief has historically been responsible for killing more than it has saved, it’s a convenient commonplace, but I’m not sure you can support it with evidence. Certainly, religion has provided a pretext for lots of inter-group warfare and persecution, but so have any number of other types of distinctions between groups (skin color, hair color, language, etc.). But all of these things have just as certainly offered bases around which small groups of people (up to about 150 individuals or so, the size beyond which hunter-gatherer groups start to splinter off into smaller groups) could cohere and support one another. I don’t think it’s possible to quantify the number of humans in the early stages of our existence who survived to reproduce because they were part of a group that shared beliefs and supported one another, and who would not have survived otherwise, but I’m willing to believe that it’s greater than the admittedly more visible numbers killed in clashes between groups.