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